Oldal 29 [29]
26
Vilmos Voigt
Icon Animorum by John Barclay and
the Origins of the Characterization
of European Nations
Gente Caledonius, Gallus natalibus, hic est
Romam Romano gui docet ore logui.
[Scotsman by nation, Frenchman by his birth,
Here is the person who teaches the Roman to speak as a Roman.]
—Hugo Grotius: distych for the portrait of John Barclay
In illo tempore the famous political essayist and writer John Barclay (born January
28, 1582, in Pont-a-Mousson; died August 12, 1621, in Rome) is today a neglected
figure in the history of “European ethnology” and of European social and cultural
studies.
A classical authority of characterology of the various groups of Europeans, son
of a Scottish teacher of law and a French mother, he was an English nobleman who
spent most of his life on the Continent, writing exclusively in elegant Latin (i.e.,
neither in French nor in English). Educated in Jesuit schools, he did not become a
priest, and he was not a courtier or an employee of any person or institution. Today
we might call him a freelance intellectual or an independent scholar. In 1618, he
moved to Rome, receiving support from Pope Paul V. Barclay died in Rome.' Con¬
tinuity and shifts earmarked his biography.
His first important book was the Satyricon (1603), a picaresque novel in three
parts, written under the influence of the classical Latin novel of Petronius (arbiter
elegantiarum), so much cherished by decadent intellectuals of the turn of the twenti¬
eth century, for example, the Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846-1916; see his
famous novel Quo vadis? 1896) and by the Hungarian—at least relativist—Dezsö
Kosztolänyi (1885-1936; see his famous novel Emperor Nero, the Bloody Writer,
1922), and immortalized recently (1969) by the even more decadent film Satyricon
of Federico Fellini.
' On Barclay’s life with a later evaluation from Scotland, see Lord Hailes (n.d.) and Irving 1839. Sir
David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes (1726-1792) was a noted historian of Scotland, and, among others
the Grand Master of the masonic Grande Lodge of Scotland (1774-1776). A useful bibiography of
his works: Becker 1903. The entry in Pierre Bayle’s famous Dictionnaire (primary source in late 18"
century) has some errors.