A Brill Calendar: July 8

Few aspects of life in Holland have been as beneficial to ‘town & gown’ as that of a municipal continuity.

In Leyden this developed in relative peacefulness compared to other regions and cities in the Republic, and especially after the triumph over the city’s Spanish besiegers on October 3rd 1574. The observation may sound abstract, but gets personal, if Leyden’s long-term affiliations with the Huygens family are considered. Let us consider two scions of that dynasty of Dutch patricians, both baptized as ‘Christiaan’, with 78 years separating the grandfather from the grandson.

Christiaan Sr. (1551 – 1624) acted as secretary to William of Orange, (‘Auctor Intellectualis’ of Leyden’s University from 1578) a post that ended with William’s assassination at Delft, July 10 1584, while continuing to act as Secretary to the Council of State ( the ‘Raad van State’), for forty more years thereafter.

Christiaan Jr., his most renowned grandson, died on July 8 1695; whilst his son, Constantijn Huygens (1596 – 1687), inherited the position as a courtier and secretary to the Orange Family. Constantijn filled the role of an incomparable ‘trait-d’union’ in the prestigious family-tradition: a ‘uomo universale’ if there ever was one: diplomat, statesman, scholar, poet, musician, composer, architect and wit.

When Christiaan, died eight years after his extraordinarily long-lived sire, Leyden University, the ‘Praesidium Liberatis, to which three generations Huygens contributed and owed debts, had celebrated its 24th Lustrum. It is seldom that three generations of one family suffice to summarize an era of 120 years.