terminus r.฀IX฀(2007)฀z.฀1฀(16) Grantley McDonalD (University of MelboUrne) laUrentiUs corvinUs anD the flowerinG of central eUropean hUManisM * Germans speak of delicate arts and sciences such as poetry and philology as Orchideenwissenschaften, ‘orchid sciences’: rare, demanding of intense cultivation and easily bruised, but of uncommon beauty and delight. the silesian poet valens acidalius, employing a similar metaphor, described the city of breslau (Wrocław) as the ‘sacred lower of Europe’ (los sacer Europæ).  part of the beauty of Breslau – still a lower of a city by any measure, despite the ravages of war and the strictures of modernism – was its cultivation of the arts and sciences, such that Philipp Melanchthon could write in 1558 that ‘no other community in Germany has more men learned in every kind of philosophy than Breslau. It not only has industrious craftsmen and talented citizens who  * For Dariusz Rott and Piotr Wilczek, in gratitude for their hospitality in Katowice. this is an expanded and revised version of a paper given at the University of silesia at Katowice and at the Jagiellonian University at Kraków in January 2007. Thanks to the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, for its support, both inancial and institutional, during the writing of this article. Gratitude is also due to Lutz Mahuke at the Ratsschul- bibliothek Zwickau, for kindly granting permission to reproduce the title woodcut of Cor- vinus Carmen ... de Apolline et novem Musis, Breslau: Baumgarten, 1503. Thanks also to Prof. Andrzej Borowski and the editorial team of Terminus for their invitation to contribute this paper to the journal.  Poematum Jani Lernuti, Jani Gulielmi, Valentis Acidali, Nova editio (liegnitz: impensis Davidis Alberti, 1603), p. 265. mcdonald.indd 47 2008-02-04 21:03:39