Isaac Casaubon

Abstract

Isaac Casaubon (1559, Geneva–1614, London) has been widely regarded as the most significant classical scholar of his generation. More recently, his equally important contribution to the history of the early church and to theological controversy has received recognition. The son of Calvinist minister Arnaud Casaubon, he held university positions in Geneva (1582–1596) and Montpellier (1596–1599), was summoned to Paris (1599–1610) to subsequently serve as royal librarian to King Henri IV of France and, after his patron’s assassination, died in London as an advisor to King James I of England (1610–1614). His second wife Florence was the daughter of the influential printer-publisher Henri Estienne II. They lived happily and had at least seventeen children, including the Anglican minister and classical scholar Meric Casaubon. Isaac Casaubon is best known for his editions of classical Greek and Roman authors, his groundbreaking treatises on satire and other forms of classical literature, his biblical scholarship, his polemical writings against Ultramontane Catholics and especially the Jesuits, and his unusually well-preserved correspondence and private diary. Beyond his universally acknowledged Greek and Latin scholarship, he also studied Hebrew and Arabic, and knew modern languages to varying extents, including Italian and perhaps even some English. Casaubon knew and corresponded with scholars, printers, theologians, and statesmen throughout Europe, from Dublin and Bath in the west to Gdańsk and Kaliningrad in the east. After the monumental volume of Casaubon’s correspondence published in 1709, general interest in Casaubon waned, even as classical scholarship continued to build on Casaubon’s textual criticism and scholarship, until the publication of the Ephemerides in 1850, which prompted Mark Pattison to write his ever since unrivaled biography. According to Pattison, Casaubon was first and foremost a historian of ancient times and an editor of Greek and Roman authors, who was later in life lured into the murky waters of religious controversy and politics, where he was out of his depth. More recently, there has been a revival of interest in Casaubon’s work as a major figure of intellectual history and the history of scholarship, including conferences, edited volumes, and journal special issues (Erudition and the Republic of Letters 4.3), as well as monographs and editions. Recent scholarship has increasingly shown that Casaubon always had a strong interest in religion, to the extent that even pagan authors often gave him an opportunity to contemplate Biblical interpretation. He has always tried to play an active part in giving credibility as a scholar to what he believed to be the true religion, but was often reined in by Henri IV and his circle—until in England he had the opportunity to engage openly in debates with Catholics, especially Jesuits.