Union Académique Internationale

Project nº70, adopted in 2006

When some sixty years ago Herman Bouchery was asked to hold a laudatio on Justus Lipsius (1547-1606) before the members of the Royal Academy of Letters, Arts and Sciences of Belgium in commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the scholar’s birth, he started in a rather unusual way with an apology for not being able to give a clear and complete portrait of his subject. Although Lipsius had been a brilliant academic with a wide range of talents and had been considered a prop and a beacon by his contemporaries all over Europe, research on his life, works, and ideas had been utterly neglected in spite of the abundant source material. Bouchery particularly emphasized the need of a critical and annotated edition of his prolific correspondence after the example of P. S. Allen’s then almost completed edition of Erasmus’ letters as an indispensable step stone towards a thorough biography of this eminent scholar. Bouchery died shortly afterwards, but Aloïs Gerlo and Hendrik Vervliet took over the torch: they contacted university and national libraries in Europe and America to gain a clear view of the available sources. The response was overwhelming: some 4,300 letters (about 600 more than Erasmus’ correspondence) either written by Lipsius or sent to him were traced and catalogued in the Inventaire de la correspondance de Juste Lipse (Antwerp, 1968). Since then, however, some two hundred more have been discovered. Most of them are written in Latin (not even 1% are written in a vernacular language, mostly Dutch or French), and it should be pointed out that neither Lipsius’s hand nor his idiom is a sinecure, not even for the skilled Latinist of our days with all the electronic tools at his disposal. Making this correspondence available has proven it to be an indispensable source for the study of both the Renaissance revival of Latin philology and Ancient History on the one hand, and on the other hand, of the history of late sixteenth- and early-seventeenth century civilisation in general and of Humanism in particular. The index to the Inventaire mentions the names of many of the most illustrious humanists of his age in the Netherlands, but also in France, Italy, the Iberian peninsula, the Habsburg reign, Poland and the Baltic countries. The major part of the correspondence was addressed to colleagues and students or former students, for Lipsius was eager to keep in touch with them, both regarding their further studies or careers, and their general well-being and family-life. Thus many testimonies and letters of recommendation or introduction have been preserved. Lipsius’s students, on the other hand, did not forget their mentor either, but kept him informed on their whereabouts, their successes or disappointments, and discussed their scholarly activities with him. Moreover, neither Lipsius or his correspondents were living in an ivory tower: they wanted to be kept informed about what was going on in the world. Time and again the political situation was discussed, in the Netherlands, but also in other European countries. Lipsius was eagerly looking forward to the letters of a number of friends who were occasionally sent on diplomatic missions, and he subscribed to the first ‘Gazettes’, journals gathering news from abroad. Especially scholars in regions far off were urged to inform Lipsius of the course of events in their country. But most of all, Lipsius’s ample correspondence with prominent scholars all over Europe, in as far as it was not under Ottoman rule, bears witness to his international reputation covering many fields and as such is an inexhaustible source for a biography. As a philologist and an antiquarian, Lipsius earned fame because of his familiarity with the classical authors. His editions of Tacitus and Seneca, still useful for modern editors, show both his critical insight in their texts and his extraordinary knowledge of the world of antiquity. The unremitting study of his preferred authors made him also develop his own concise, antithetic style. As a philosopher, Lipsius exercised great influence on the ideas of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Apart from his philosophical treatises and his correspondence, his pedagogical ideas show clearly how he tried to apply the principles of stoic philosophy in his own life. Prominent politicians of his country confided the education of their sons to him. Convinced that his task was not limited to their mere intellectual training. he admitted them to his own household trying, according to Stoic ideals, to develop them into adults capable of assuming responsible tasks in the government of Church and State. Finally, the fact that Lipsius entrusted all of his works to the Officina Plantiniana, either in Antwerp or in Leiden, depending on where he was living, the correspondence also offers a source of interest for historians of the book. Plantin and Moretus did their utmost to provide beautiful, careful editions on high quality paper and kept a close eye on the stock: whenever a title was nearly sold out, a reprint was undertaken, but not without asking the author for possible corrections or additions. Moreover, their business contacts throughout Europe were a great help for the smooth and safe delivery of Lipsius’s correspondence.