Leendert G. Westerink Explained

Leendert Gerrit Westerink (2 November 1913 – 24 January 1990) was a Dutch philologist and university professor, emeritus at the Department of Classics of the University of New York at Buffalo.

He was a specialist of Ancient Greek philosophical literature in prose, and widely studied its transmission and reception through Late antiquity and Byzantine Empire.

Biography

Born in Velp, he studied at the University of Nimegen, earning his MA in 1939 and his doctorate in 1948.[1] [2] He began his career teaching Ancient Greek, Latin and English at the Emmen high school from 1945 to 1965; in that year he moved to the U.S., having won a professorship at the University at Buffalo where he taught for the rest of his career, becoming Distinguished Professor of Classics in 1974. He was made emeritus upon his retirement in 1988.

He married Barbara Wilhelmina Schmidt in 1945 and their marriage lasted until his death in 1990, after a heart stroke.

Research activity

Westerink was a Classicist and a Byzantinist, specializing in Greek philosophical prose. His scientific output is chiefly concerned with textual criticism and the edition of texts. His first major publication being an edition of Psellos' "De omnifaria doctrina", he worked mainly on Plato and Neoplatonism, including the Byzantine philosophers and commentators Proclus, Olympiodorus and Damascius.

Other than that, he studied and published texts by Germanus I of Constantinople, Theophylact Simocatta, Photios, Arethas, the 10th-century rhetor Theodoros Daphnopates, Maximus Planudes, George Pachymeres, and the early 15th-century satirist Mazaris . In parallel, he worked on Greek medical texts and the transmission and reception of ancient medicine, contributing to the edition of the "Lectures on Galen's De sectis" by a 6th-century professor of medicine named Agnellus, and publishing the critical texts of the "Commentaries on Hippocrates' Aphorisms" by Stephanus of Athens. Germanus' treatise "On the Predestined Terms of Life", Simocates' on the same topic, Mazaris' satira and Agnellus' "Lectures" were edited co-working with the members of Seminar 609 of the University at Buffalo, and published in the departmental series "Arethusa Monographs".

He prepared the critical text of several works by Damascius, including the "Treatise of the First Principles" (3 vols., 1986–1991) and the "Commentary on Plato's Parmenides" (published posthumously, 1992) for the Collection Budé; in 1973, he edited the letters of the Byzantine statesman Nicetas Magistros (fl. IX-X cen.) for the French CNRS, and those of the Patriarch of Constantinople Nicholas I for the Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae.

He also published Arethas' minor works [3] and Photios' "Letters" and "Amphilochia" (theological opuscules) in the Bibliotheca Teubneriana. One of his last scientific enterprises was the organization and the launch of the critical edition of Michael Psellos' works, also for the Bibliotheca Teubneriana, which he contributed to by editing his poems and preparing a volume of the minor theological writings .[4]

Honors

Westerink was honored with a Festschrift in 1988 by his friends, scholars and colleagues, the year of his retirement:

Publications

Critical editions

In chronological order.

Articles

References

  1. Web site: WESTERINK, Leendert Gerrit . 2024-08-06 . dbcs.rutgers.edu.
  2. Saffrey . H. D. . 1991 . Leendert Gerritt Westerink . Gnomon . 63 . 1 . 76–78 . 0017-1417.
  3. Westerink . L. G. . 1965 . Une édition des " Scripta Minora " d'Aréthas . Byzantion . 35 . 1 . 360–360 . 0378-2506.
  4. Westerink . L. G. . 1977 . Psellos and the Bibliotheca Teubneriana . Byzantion . 47 . 369–369 . 0378-2506.

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