A Brill Calendar: April 5

Lipsius and Tacitus

Few historians rival the Roman historian Tacitus as connoisseur of human action and thought.

Rediscovery of his books in the 15th century remains a riveting chapter in the history of philology and literature. Unlike Tacitus, many Latin authors active in Classical Antiquity were not forgotten in the Middle Ages: like Cicero, Pliny, Virgil and Vitruvius, although just studied by few learned men.

Re-emergence of Tacitus’s oeuvre, reflecting a unique intellect & genius, was a boon to Renaissance scholars. Editors of printed books could be assured of attention by lovers of humanist ‘bonae literae’. One of them, Joost Lips (Overijse, Flanders, October 18, 1547 – Louvain, Southern Brabant, March 23 1606) published his first Tacitus edition in 1574, when this ‘Justus Lipsius’ was in his third year as Professor in Jena. After study in Louvain and Rome, Lipsius didn’t overstay his welcome on the German Chair: a brand-new Calvinist University of Leyden appointed him as a Professor on April 5 1578, even before its first Lustrum.

In Holland, Lipsius developed into much more than a classical scholar. He became a public political theorist as well: a moral philosopher in a Stoic mould, writing essays and tracts on current political affairs. As a matter of fact his personal interests were instrumental in his decision to leave Leyden & Holland. His ‘Politicorum sive Civilis doctrinae libri sex’ (1589), printed by the Academy, caused a clash with Dirck Volckerszoon Coornhert (1522 – 1590), a leading humanist and influential civil servant. When the States of Holland refused to silence this criticism and to shield Lipsius from Coornhert’s polemics, the famous Stoic left Leyden in a fit of anger to the more southern city of Spa, waiting for the moment he would be begged to return in triumph.

The call never came. But Lipsius received four different proposals and rejoined his Roman-Catholic Alma Mater, Louvain, in 1592, invited there by Holland’s foe, the King of Spain Himself, Philip II. In the history of Academia it is seldom, that academic job-hunting strategy & tactics vary.