Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Vaus, John
VAUS or VASCUS, JOHN (1490?–1538?), latinist and the earliest Scottish writer on grammar, was born at Aberdeen about 1490. He appears to have studied at Paris (verses addressed by him to his fellow students in Lockhart's Materia Noticiarum, Paris, 1514), and to have returned to his native town in 1515 or 1516, when he was appointed humanist or professor of Latin in the college of St. Mary (afterwards King's College), succeeding in that post a namesake and probable relative, Alexander Vascus (Boece, Episc. Aberd. Vitæ, ed. Moir, 1894, pp. 90, 96).
Boece, the principal of the college, describes him as ‘in hoc genere disciplinæ admodum eruditus, sermone elegans, sententiis venustus, labore invictus.’ By his pupil and colleague, Robert Gray, he is styled ‘clarissimus vir, optimis literis, amænissimo ingenio, suavissimis moribus, singulari probitate, gravitate, fide et constantia præditus’ (letter to Aberdeen students); and by Ferrerius, ‘vir cum literis tum moribus ornatissimus et de juventute Scotica bene meritus’ (Acad. Dissertat.)
In 1522 Vaus published, for the use of his students, a commentary on the first part of the ‘Doctrinale’ of Alexander de Villa Dei; combined with a more elementary original treatise ‘Rudimenta puerorum in artem grammaticalem’ (Sale Catalogue of D. Laing's library). He revisited Paris to superintend the printing of these books at the Ascensian press; and the former (of which the only known copy is in the University Library, Aberdeen) contains interesting letters to the Aberdeen students from Vaus and from his printer, Jodocus Badius, reprinted by M. L. Delisle in the ‘Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes’ (vol. lvii.) Of the ‘Rudimenta’ a second edition appeared in 1531; and a third, ‘Rudimenta artis grammaticalis,’ was issued posthumously in 1553, under the editorship of Theophilus Stewart, the successor of Vaus in the professorship of humanity. A fourth edition was printed at Edinburgh by Lekpreuik in 1566 (Dickson and Edmond, Annals of Scottish Printing, p. 23). The work is valuable to the student of early Scots, a great part of the book being in that dialect, though devoted only to Latin grammar.
Vaus was in office in 1538 (Off. and Grad. of King's Coll. p. 45), but probably died in that year, as on 17 April 1539 Stewart had succeeded to his professorship.
[Spalding Club's publications, especially Miscellany, vol. v. pref. p. 43; Aberdeen and Banff Collections, p. 65; Fasti Aberdonenses, pref. p. xxi; Ruddiman's Bibliotheca Romana; Delisle's Josse Bade et Jean Vaus, Paris, 1896; Kellas Johnstone's Script. Aberd. Incunabula in Scottish Notes and Queries, vol. xii.]