CHAPTER XIX. THE NETHERLANDS FROM 1575 TO 1700. A NEW era in the History of Scholarship in the Northern Leyden university of Leyden in 1575. heroism of the inhabitants was publicly commemorated by the institution of an annual fair and by the establishment of a university. The actual birth of that university was celebrated by a gorgeous series of ceremonies. In the van of an imposing procession were the allegorical representatives of the faculties of Theology, Law, and Medicine; in the centre, a personification of Minerva, surrounded by Aristotle and Plato, Cicero and Virgil; and, in the rear, the professors and other officials of the newlyfounded seat of learning. Meanwhile, a triumphal barge floated slowly down the Rhine, bearing to the place of landing the radiant forms of Apollo and the Muses. The barge was steered by Neptune, who had lately let loose the waters of the Ocean on the troops of Spain, and had thus relieved the siege of Leyden. As soon as the procession of the professors had reached the landing-place, each in turn was embraced by the Muses and Apollo, and all were welcomed by the recitation of a Latin poem'. It was the happy inauguration of a seat of learning that had come into being under circumstances that were absolutely unique. 1 Motley's Dutch Republic, ii 565-8; cp. Meursius, Athenae Balavae, 18-20. The current story that Leyden was offered a choice between a university and an annual fair free of tolls and taxes finds no support in the documentary history of Pieter Bor, vii 561, and (as I learn from Mr Hessels) is rejected by the latest historian of the Netherlands, Prof. Blok of Leyden. Dousa The newly-founded university owed much to the foremost of its three Curators, the lord of Noortwyk, Janus Dousa (1545-1604). As governor of Leyden he had been the brave leader of the beleaguered citizens; in Latin letters, he was then known for his poems alone, but he afterwards gave proof of his interest in Plautus (1587) and in other poets. His love of Plautus was inherited by his elder son, Janus (15711597), the Librarian of Leyden, while the younger, Franciscus (1577-1606), produced in 1597 a memorable edition of the fragments of Lucilius, in which the influence of Scaliger is apparent. The first Rector of Leyden was Petreius Tiara (1516-88), professor of Greek, translator of the Sophistes of Plato and the Medea of Euripides3. The same professorship was held from 1588 to 1612 by Bonaventura Vulcanius, or De Smet, of Bruges (1538-1614), an editor Vulcanius of Arrian, Callimachus, and Apuleius, who also published the glossary of Philoxenus*. Lipsius One of the two greatest services rendered to Leyden by its first curator, Janus Dousa, who was known as the 'Batavian Varro' and the 'Oracle of the University', was his happily inducing the great Latin scholar, Justus Lipsius (1547-1606), to take up his residence at Leyden in 1579. Born at Issche near Brussels, he had from the age of sixteen been a student at Louvain, where he specially devoted himself to Roman Law. In 1567 he had accompanied Cardinal Gravella to Italy as his Latin secretary. He spent two years in Italy, exploring the libraries and examining all the inscriptions he could find. In Rome he made the acquaintance of Muretus and other leading scholars, and collated transcripts of Tacitus, without ascertaining the existence of either of the two Medicean Mss. After returning to Louvain for a year of irregular life, he visited Dôle and Vienna. On his way back in 1572 he stayed for more than a 1 Portraits of Janus, father and son, in Meursius, 87, 151, and in Boissard, IV 2 and VI 14. 2 Portrait in Marx' Lucilius, 1906. 3 Portrait in Meursius, 83, and Boissard, VI 3. Portrait in Meursius, 102, and Boissard, vi 5. 5 ib. 89; cp. Hamilton's Discussions, 332 f. IVSTO LIPSIO LITTERARVM STVDIIS FLORENTISSIMO SAPIENTIAE ARTIBVS IMMORTALI VIRO IOANNES WOVERIVS ANTVERPIENSIS HANC DIGNISSIMAM VVLTVS VERITATEM PERENNI AERE SVO AERE ET AMORE INSCRIPTAM CVLTVS ET OBSERVANTIAE AETERNVM SYMBOLVM L. M. CURABAT ANTVERPIAE M.IOCV. From Pierre de Jode's engraving of portrait by Abraham Janssens (1605). Reduced from large copy in Max Rooses, Christophe Plantin (1882), p. 342 f. He there became a year at Jena, where he held a professorship. Protestant, and even delivered a violent discourse against the Catholics. He left Jena for Cologne, where he spent nine months, in 1574. In the same year his great edition of Tacitus was published at Antwerp. He then withdrew to his old home at Issche, but the horrors of civil war soon drove him from that defenceless town to the city of Louvain. In 1576 he was lecturing at the local university on the Leges Regiae et Decemuirales, and on the first book of Livy. The memorable invitation to leave the Spanish Netherlands for the Dutch university of Leyden led to his residing there with great distinction, as honorary Professor of History, from 1579 to 1591. In the latter year, when a controversy arose on the punishment of heretics, he asked for leave of absence, and quietly went to Mainz, where he was re-admitted into the Roman Church. After declining many tempting proposals from princes and bishops in Germany, in 1592 he accepted a call to his first university of Louvain, where, as professor of History, he lectured to large classes on the Roman historians and on the moral treatises of Seneca. He also received a stipend as honorary professor of Latin at the Collegium Trilingue, which long remained closed in consequence of the disturbed state of the country. In one of his Dialogues he writes of Louvain in 1602 :—nunc jacent ibi omnia et silent'. Even the office of President of the College continued vacant for thirty years until 1606,-the year of the death of Lipsius'. His main strength lay in textual criticism and in exegesis. His masterpiece in this respect was his Tacitus, of which two editions appeared in his life-time (1574, 1600), and two after his death, the latest and best, that of 1648, including Velleius. It was not until 1600 that the readings of the two Medicean MSS were published (by Pichena), when one of the earliest of his emendations, gnarum (for G. navum) id Caesari3, was confirmed. He was so familiar with the text of Tacitus, that he 'offered to repeat any passage with a dagger at his breast, to be used against him if his memory failed him". The exegesis of his edition rests on a profound and accurate knowledge of Roman history and 2 Nève, Mém. 103. Niceron, xxiv 119 (Hallam, i 4864). 1 Lovanium, lib. 111, c. iv. adoption he continued to be famous as the greatest scholar of his age. Among those who came under his immediate influence at Leyden was Daniel Heinsius, to whom we shall shortly return. Wowerius' (1574-1612), a native of Hamburg, was Scaliger's pupil at Leyden, and, after living at Antwerp, travelled for some years in France and Italy. He was aided by Scaliger in his edition of Petronius; he also edited Apuleius. A greater interest attaches to his Tractatio de Polymathia, a fragment of a vast work on the learned studies of the ancients, the first attempt at a general survey of the whole domain of classical learning (1604)*. He was an intimate friend of Philip Rubens (1574-1611), the elder brother of the artist. Both of the friends were pupils of Lipsius, and their friendship has been immortalised by the artist in a picture now in the Pitti Palace. The two friends are seated at a table covered with books, and between them is Lipsius. In a niche of the wall to the right, we see a copy of the bronze bust of 'Seneca' (whose works had been edited by Lipsius in 1605), with four Dutch tulips in a glass beside it; in the middle distance, we have a glimpse of a beautiful Italian landscape; while the artist himself is standing on the left3. P. Merula The teaching of History at Leyden was taken up in 1597 by Paulus Merula of Dordrecht (1558—1607), who had travelled extensively in France, Italy, Germany, and England, and was then practising as a barrister. Several of his antiquarian and geographical works were pub lished after his death. Two years before his appointment, he published an edition of the Fragments of Ennius (1595). He professed to have found some of these in a MS of L. Calpurnius Piso at the monastery of Saint-Victor in Paris, but this is now regarded as a fraudulent statement. Merula's successor Baudius was Dominicus Baudius (1561-1613), an excellent composer in verse and prose, as is proved by his Amores and his Orationes. One of these was addressed to queen Elizabeth, another to James I, while a 2 Bursian, i 303, Urlichs, 742. 1 Jan van der Wouwer. Cp. Émile Michel, Rubens, i 155. It is clear, from chronological considerations, that it is not Grotius who is here represented as the friend of Philip Rubens; and this opinion is confirmed, on other grounds, by Max Rooses as well as Émile Michel. A portrait of Lipsius, engraved for Wowerius, p. 302 supra. p. 424 of Hessel's ed. of Ennius, 1707. * Lawicki, De fraude P. Merulae, Bonn, 1852.—Cp. Meursius, Ath. Bat. 158 f; portrait ib., and in Boissard, vi 16. |