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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.' Continuity 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 twentieth 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.
