Ceratinus, James

, whose family name was Teyng, which he exchanged for Ceratinus, from xsfag, horn, an allusion to Horn or Hoorn in Holland, was born there in the beginning of the sixteenth century. It appears from Erasmus’s letters, that he thought Ceratinus one of the most profound scholars in Greek and Latin which the age afforded; yet, when he came to be ordained priest at Utrecht, he was rejected for ignorance of the rules of grammar; but when the examiners understood that he had given superior proofs of learning, they re-called him, pleaded that they were obliged to certain forms in their examination, and granted him letters of ordination. On the recommendation of Erasmus, George, elector of Saxony, appointed him to succeed Mosellanus in his professorship at Leipsic; and on this occasion Erasmus declared that he was worth, in point of learning, ten such as Mosellanus. He was also offered the Greek professorship in the college of three languages at Louvain. At Leipsic he did not meet with the reception he deserved, owing to its being suspected that he had imbibed Lutheran principles. He died at Louvain April 10, 1530, in the flower of his age. His works were, A very elegant translation of Chrysostom’s “Treatise concerning the Priesthood” an improved edition of the “Graeco- Latin Lexicon,” printed by Froben, in 1524, with a preface by Erasmus; and a treatise “De Sono Graecarum Literarum,” printed in 1529, 8vo, with a dialogue from the pen of Erasmus on pronunciation. These were reprinted ' by Havercamp in his “Sylloge Scriptorum,” or collection of commentators on the pronunciation of the Greek, Leyden, 1736. ¹