Justus Lipsius Research Articles

Tacitus for the instruction of ambassadors: Vera’s Enbaxador (1620)

ABSTRACT Juan de Vera’s El Enbaxador (1620) was one of the main treatises on the role of the ambassador in Early Modern Europe and the first one published in Spanish. At the time, Spain was no exception to the influence of Tacitus as a significant ancient author to inspire the political practice of the age. Juan de Vera, a nobleman and writer, soon an ambassador and entitled count, incorporated his own reading of Tacitus into El Enbaxador. Justus Lipsius, the outstanding editor of Tacitus’ works, was also a main source for this book which was defined by John Elliott as a ‘quintessentially Lipsian handbook for diplomats’. The focus of this article is on Tacitus’ citations in El Enbaxador and their contexts within the book. My aim is to identify the specific themes for which Tacitus served as an exemplary source of guidance according to this particular text. Notably, some of such themes pertain to ambassadorial affairs, while others are common political topics in Early Modern Europe. Vera's reading of Tacitus in El Enbaxador gained wider dissemination beyond Spain as the work was subsequently translated into French and Italian.

Earthly fruitfulness and the gods of nature in Rubens’ imagery

This article explores themes of fertility and fecundity in Peter Paul Rubens’ work and investigates their role in a peculiar Rubensian category of subject, somewhere between landscape and myth, which can perhaps be described as ‘mythological genre’. Here we see the ancient gods of nature inhabiting the countryside and engaged in their ‘everyday’ activities, though, as in The feast of Venus (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum), their presence is usually sensed rather than seen by any human characters depicted alongside them. A particular focus of the article is one of Rubens’ most personal works, the Nymphs and satyrs gathering fruit (Madrid, Museo del Prado). It was his happy invention to give the nymphs, satyrs and even the old Silenus the job of collecting fruit together, to keep the cornucopia – symbol of abundance and fecundity – in a state of constant overflow. It has not been realised, however, that Rubens had a classical source for the idea of Silenus and the satyrs helping the nymphs gather apples: a passage in Propertius’ Elegies (II.32.37-40). The poetry of Propertius was especially familiar to Rubens’ circle as Justus Lipsius planned an edition of the poet’s work. Moreover, the lines had been the subject of a notable emendation by Joseph Justus Scaliger, as well as an extensive discussion by Lipsius in his Antiquae lectiones (III). Rubens was surely familiar with the Propertius passage, whether he came across it in his reading or in his conversations on ancient literature and customs with his brother, Philip, Lipsius’ favourite pupil. In Nymphs and satyrs, the poet’s lines seem to have helped inspire a joyous celebration of the earth’s fruitfulness by the gods of nature themselves.

Forgotten Scholars: Rediscovering Women in Medieval and Early-Modern Academia for Gender-Inclusive Place Naming in Universities

In our universities, many places have names after great scholars of all times. For example, in our region,we find: Place Montesquieu, Auditorium Erasmus, Justus Lipsius Straat, etc. A small minority of places are named after women. This is true in any country. Now, more and more universities adopt the following political statement: increasing the visibility of women in the public domain is one of the possible levers to promote equality between women and men. To help administrators of European Universities in this task, we provide here a list ofwomen who were either professors at a university or member of an science academy before the year 1800. These women from the past started to blaze the trail, and it is to them that we must look for inspiration. This list is an updated version of the appendix to our paper David de la Croix, Mara Vitale, Women in European academia before 1800 — religion, marriage, and human capital, European Review of Economic History, 2023;, heac023, https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/heac023

Ketidaksetujuan terhadap Interpretasi Pendamaian Stoa dan Kekristenan dalam Pemikiran Justus Lipsius

Justus Lipsius drew up an intellectual project to reconcile stoic thought with Christianity. In this project, Lipsius started with two assumptions. First, Stoicism's “divine fire” as the highest principle is to be explained by making reference to Scripture where God manifests himself through fire. Second, destiny is a manifestation and an expression of Divine Providence that plays an important part in concrete situations. Has Justus Lipsius been successful at reconciling the Stoics and Christianity? This paper is intended to address this question using a literature review approach. The author goes through the philosophical thoughts of neo-stoicism, Justus Lipsius. Basically, Stoicism showed differences to Christianity. Stoicians believe that the Divine is material. Destiny and divine providence become one. Both are a series of causes that bring matters to mechanical work. Consequently, the space for freedom is almost nonexistent because stoic humans wish to align themselves with Nature fully. Christianity tells the opposite. God is nonmaterial, and the nuances of human freedom are held in high regard. As a result, Lipsius could not reconcile the Stoics with Christianity.

Incontri nel testo. Fidus comes di Andrzej Schoen e i suoi contesti

Meetings in the text: Andrzej Schoen’s Fidus comes and its contexts The main purpose of this paper is to show how a literary work (in this case Fidus comes, published in 1601 in Kraków) mirrors non only the author’s humanist culture and worldviews, but also his intellectual and social relationships. In addition, it deals with the idea of a text as a form of making oneself present, demonstrating that Andreas Schoneus (1552‒1616), a humanist and poet from Silesia being not able to travel with his former pupil (a Polish magnate, Jan Magnus Tęczyński, 1579‒1637) to the Netherlands, makes his own book the addressee’s companion. The analysed poem displays the importance of their former journey to Italy, and Padua’s milieu is involved in its history. The book served also as a kind of “portfolio”, commending the author to the Belgian humanist Justus Lipsius. The article is divided into four parts. The first presents short biographic profiles of the Fidus comes’ author and its addressee. The second describes the work, its genesis, metamorphoses and context. The third analyses the portrayal of Tęczyński in the poem in the context of his further career. The last one explains the interplay of ideas and contexts and the main function of Schoneus’ work.

Montaigne, penser en temps de guerres de Religion. Sous la direction d’Emiliano Ferrari, Thierry Gontier et Nicola Panichi

This publication combines two conferences, both purportedly relating to the topic of its title; which is slightly surprising because Montaigne is not even mentioned in two of the nineteen contributions, Michele Ciliberto on Niccolò Machiavelli and Simonetta Bassi on Giordano Bruno. Among the rest, particular trends are discernible, underscored by the tripartite division of the volume itself: political parties, lessons of the civil war, and interlocutors. Following a thoughtful editorial Introduction, Jean Balsamo and Frank Lestringant launch the proceedings with complementary analyses of Montaigne’s anti-Protestantism; Lestringant’s chapter partly overlaps with Celso Martins Azar Filho’s on the notion of reformation in the Essais. Several contributions discuss Montaigne’s political position, which Alexandre Tarrête describes in terms of neutrality, comparing the essayist with Jean Bodin and Justus Lipsius, whereas Gaia Anselmo and, later, Philippe Desan prefer Montaigne’s own term, ‘mestis’. To these the late Arlette Jouanna adds a fine reflection about the essayist’s political balancing act, showing how and why he managed to hold on to Protestant friends without fuelling suspicions of treachery to the Royalist cause. Nicola Panichi, contrariwise, finds him separating theology and philosophy in reaction to the Roman censors’ criticisms of the notably Protestant or ‘heretical’ writers, works, and beliefs in his writings. Meanwhile, Alain Legros, expanding work already published about the absence of any mention of St Bartholomew’s Day in Montaigne’s personal copy of Beuther (and those of other contemporaries), considers ideas of massacre and carnage in the Essais before re-examining ‘De l’utile et de l’honneste’. Other contributions stress the social and moral dimensions of Montaigne’s politics. Education is presented as a bulwark against violence (Federico Baglivo) or as a means to facilitate human interaction, even in civil wars (Douglas I. Thompson, in a wide-ranging study). On the ethical side, Baglivo investigates the essayist’s moderation, Thierry Gontier his ‘liberalism’, and Véronique Ferrer his ‘santé’ and ‘gaieté’, which she sees as a humanist antidote to the barbarity of his times; Rosanna Gorris-Camos’s well-documented chapter illustrates ideas of tolerance and therapy. A further set of contributions considers Montaigne’s interlocutors and influences. Italian presence in the Essais features quite extensively and is touched on by Panichi, Thompson, and Gontier, as well as Gorris-Camos. Among non-Italians, Sébastien Castellion, already mentioned in Gorris-Camos, is given individual treatment by Marco Sgattoni. In a more specific vein, Renzo Ragghianti and Desan take Montaigne and the law as their topic. Desan, in one of two contributions on the influence of Étienne de La Boétie, situates the essayist’s changing attitude towards the law in respect of the Discours de la servitude volontaire and the Mémoire touchant l’édit de janvier 1562, while Olivier Millet, echoing the religious themes of the volume’s opening pages, restates his argument that Montaigne’s letter on the death of La Boétie is an example of modern Catholicism impervious to the trappings of traditional devotion. Supplementing rather than replacing established studies of Montaigne and the Wars of Religion, this publication offers, all in all, a well-rounded picture of the historical, political, philosophical, theological, ethical, and occasionally literary strands in the essayist’s thinking about his turbulent age.

Empire of Eloquence: The Classical Rhetorical Tradition in Colonial Latin America and the Iberian World

Empire of Eloquence: The Classical Rhetorical Tradition in Colonial Latin America and the Iberian World

Academiae voluntas mihi potior est… Letters by the Livonian Humanist and Lawyer David Hilchen to the Professors of the Academy of Zamość 1603–1609

Academiae voluntas mihi potior est… Letters by the Livonian humanist and lawyer David Hilchen to the professors of the Academy of Zamość1603–1609 This paper is an annotated edition of 44 letters written by humanist lawyer David Hilchen from Livonia (1561–1610) to the professors of the Academy of Zamość, and a response by poet Szymon Szymonowic to Hilchen. A preliminary analysis of these letters, all from 1603–1609, reveals a dichotomy in Hilchen’s portrayal of the academic environment designed by Jan Zamoyski. In the first decade of its activities (almost until the death of Jan Zamoyski in 1605) it is depicted by Hilchen as a mental locus amoenus, a place for beautiful minds. It should be noted that this expression served a purpose of denoting a specific concept rather than being used as an amplificatio. Zamoyski's death brought on the academy’s decline, which was then depicted by Hilchen using motifs characteristic of the locus desperatus: the loss of light and warmth, the rise of calumny, and the deterioration of the quality of education. Yet according to Hilchen’s letters, despite external political and partly religious pressures, even stronger friendships and greater loyalty developed between the members of the academy. In shaping and describing this strategy of humanist friendship against desperation and calumny in everyday situations, Hilchen referenced inter alia the experiences of his previous correspondent, Justus Lipsius, as expressed in Lipsius’ letters, his treatise De Constantia and his speech De Calumnia. Not being an academic sensu stricto himself, Hilchen therefore stood up for its humanist and academic ideals.

Reading Lipsius in early modern Italy: Ercole Cato and the transformation of the Politicorum Libri Sex

ABSTRACT Navigating the tension between moral virtue and realism in a ruler’s effort to preserve power, Justus Lipsius’ Politicorum libri sex (1589) was a foundational text in Catholic reason of state, but its ambiguous form and content leave it open for interpretation. The present article shows how in his Italian translation, the Ferrarese secretary and scholar Ercole Cato offers an individual reading of the Politica, transforming it to underline its usefulness and enhance its orthodoxy. Through a creative use of examples from ancient and modern history, Cato presented Lipsius’ political prudence as one that rejected political calculation without virtue, and placed in direct dialogue with contemporary political events. This article argues that in reshaping and expanding the Politica, Cato presented his own intervention in the debate on Catholic reason of state, and it suggests that translators like Cato should be taken seriously as active and inventive participants in early modern political languages.

Ethics and the Orator: The Ciceronian Tradition of Political Morality

Ethics and the Orator: The Ciceronian Tradition of Political Morality

‘Fair Quiet, have I found thee here?’: The relationship between garden settings and otium–negotium in sixteenth‐century philosophical dialogues

AbstractWhilst the literary form of the Renaissance philosophical dialogue has increasingly received scholarly attention in recent years, dialogic settings have rarely been the specific, concentrated focus of these efforts. This article will thus pay close attention to the settings, namely garden settings, of Thomas More’s Utopia, Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Art of War and Justus Lipsius’ De Constantia. Building on recent scholarship exploring Renaissance gardens, it suggests that the garden settings of these philosophical dialogues were chosen in order to reflect concerns about the relative merits of the contemplative and active life. Reading the garden as being associated with the contemplative life of otium, it compares the different approaches each of the authors take to their respective garden settings, arguing that the differing portrayals of the garden are informed by an author’s stance on otium and the active life of negotium. It demonstrates that paying attention to the settings of philosophical dialogues can open up new and interesting ways of interrogating a text, and that the utility of the garden setting for authors concerned with the otium‐negotium conflict was that it was both a stable symbol of otium as well as a site of potential ambiguity and contestation.

Library of Alexandria and the fire that did not destroy it. I: Modern reflections up to Justus Lipsius

This paper (first of two parts) aims to gather the most important testimonies of modern age authors regarding the Library of Alexandria, so that can be observed how the fire in 47 b.C. is considered. The increasing knowledge of the classical texts improves gradually the historical reconstruction of the event and poses new questions. Some variae lectiones from greek and roman authors are also discussed in order to draw more accurate conclusions. Particularly is examined the probable source of the Isidorus’ strange number (70.000) in Or. VI, 3, 5, concerning the amount of books destroyed by the fire.

Staging Favorites: Theatrical Representations of Political Favoritism in the Early Modern Courts of Spain, France, and England by Francisco Gómez Martos

Reviewed by: Staging Favorites: Theatrical Representations of Political Favoritism in the Early Modern Courts of Spain, France, and England by Francisco Gómez Martos Carl Austin Wise Francisco Gómez Martos. Staging Favorites: Theatrical Representations of Political Favoritism in the Early Modern Courts of Spain, France, and England. ROUTLEDGE, 2021. 128 PP. FRANCISCO GÓMEZ MARTOS takes a pan-European approach to analyzing the figure of the king’s favorite minister in the theatrical traditions of Spain, France, and England during the seventeenth century. This comparative method is a fitting lens for an installment in Routledge Press’s Studies in Renaissance and Early Modern Worlds of Knowledge Series, which aims to frame its scholarship from a globally connected perspective. Historians have long presented royal favoritism from a broader European position after the seminal studies of J.H. Elliott’s Richelieu and Olivares (Cambridge UP, 1984) and Elliott and Laurence Brockliss’s subsequent The World of the Favourite (Yale UP, 1998), yet scholars of literature have largely remained siloed in their respective national literatures. Spain’s comedias de privanza, France’s drames des favoris, and England’s body of theater featuring Tudor and Stuart favorites all enjoy some degree of critical attention, yet, as Gómez Martos points out, there is a notable lack of literary scholarship that takes a comparative, pan-European perspective to favoritism plays as a single corpus. In adopting just such an approach, Staging Favorites examines how three select early modern plays from Spain, France, and England present royal favorites from the perspective of neo-Stoicism. Beyond its comparativism, perhaps the book’s most interesting contribution is the chapter on La paciencia en la fortuna (ca. 1615), an unattributed comedia that had never been published. Gómez Martos argues in another study that the two surviving manuscripts are copies of a play performed in Madrid in 1615, and he uses both the play’s production records and meter analysis to propose Lope de Vega as the author (“La paciencia en la fortuna: An Unprinted Play by Lope de Vega,” Arte nuevo: Revista de estudios áureos, vol. 6, 2019, pp. 57–89). After a brief introduction, chapter 1 gives a short overview of political favoritism in early modern Europe and discusses how court culture and literary patronage responded to the near absolute power over court life exerted by Philip III and Philip IV’s privados, the Duke of Lerma and the Count-Duke of Olivares; Louis XIII’s ministre Cardinal Richelieu; and James [End Page 107] II’s favorites, the Earl of Somerset and the Duke of Buckingham. Despite the enormous variety of plays about royal favorites and the lack of consensus among scholars on how to classify them, Gómez Martos proposes that this genre of plays is connected by a neo-Stoic understanding of kingship and royal favoritism. Developed in the writings of the Dutch philosopher Justus Lipsius (1547–1606), neo-Stoicism merged the classical philosophy of Seneca with Christian theology to propose the notion of how an ideal person, in this case the royal favorite, should behave. Chapter 2 looks at Spanish comedias de privanza, which emerged in the early seventeenth century when the newly crowned Philip III anointed the Duke of Lerma as his privado and gave him near king-like authority to rule in Philip’s absence. To seventeenth-century courtiers, Lerma’s rapid rise to power and unorthodox control over the monarchy strongly resembled Juan II’s medieval advisor Álvaro de Luna (ca. 1388–1453), who ruled Castile for decades before suffering a spectacular fall from power, imprisonment, and execution. Pulling from their own history of Juan II and Luna, Spanish writers saw royal favoritism as an unstable institution that could rise or fall without warning on the whims of the monarch. Damián Salucio del Poyo’s two-part La próspera fortuna and La adversa fortuna de Ruy López de Ávalos, and La privanza y caída de don Álvaro de Luna appeared in 1612 almost immediately after Lerma’s arrival in court and serve as the model for most of the privanza plays in the decades to follow. After discussing these well-known privanza plays, Gómez Martos...

Institutionalization of a philosophical school: the origins of Justus Lipsius’ neostoicism

The article is devoted to the consideration of the neostoicism of Justus Lipsius (1547–1606) in order to show that there is a set of reasons for the renovation and institutionalization of any philosophical school: the historical context, education, community, personality and biography of its leader. As for Justus Lipsius, a philologist and publisher of ancient texts (Tacitus, Seneca), the following factors influenced. Since Lipsius lived in turbulent times (the 16th century was marked by the Reformation and religious wars), he could not help but pay attention to Stoic philosophy, designed to give peace of mind in an unsettled world. Lipsius received an excellent education at a Jesuit college and at two universities – Cologne and Louvain. He was instilled in a love of ancient literature during his education, which predetermined his work. He was an outstanding person by nature and was formed in the university environment and in the intellectual circles of his time. He was, for instance, a member of the Familists, whose founder taught, among other things, the permissibility of changing denominations. Lipsius’s interpretation of the Stoic doctrine suggests that the Stoics came closest to Christianity, unlike other ancient philosophers. All these factors determined the revival of Stoicism in the 16th century.

Lipsius’ De constantia, 17th Century Still Life Painting and the Use of Constancy Today

"Lipsius’ De constantia, 17th Century Still Life Painting and the Use of Constancy Today. The present article revisits the main ideas from Justus Lipsius’ De constantia in the light of the present ongoing pandemic. Through his interest for the Stoics, Lipsius was able to contribute to a more general and European interest towards this topic, reviving the Stoic philosophy under the name of Neostoicism. The influence of his ideas can be seen in some art production, especially the one that is connected to the places where Lipsius lived and it is a testimony to their popularity and the various ways of transmitting them. Even if the Stoic ideal remains an ideal, the Neostoicism of Justus Lipsius is meaningful in as much as any philosophy that deals with crises because it can help us view the text from both its relevancy and our recent general experience. The isolation, the anxiety, the uneasiness and fear are emotions that have been more or less present in our lives during this pandemic and they require a solution. Constancy is the solution that Justus Lipsius proposes. Keywords: Justus Lipsius, Neostoicism, Still Life Painting, Pandemic, Moral Philosophy, Crisis Philosophy."

Cultural entanglement in early modern letter-writing: David Hilchen’s correspondence with humanists from the Low Countries

ABSTRACT In the early modern times, correspondence doubtlessly formed an indispensable tool of intercultural communication, exchange, and influence. To determine exactly how far this correspondence did not serve merely as a projection screen reflecting otherwise separated worlds, but effected true entanglement among the letter-writers and their cultural spheres, requires a detailed analysis of the interconnectedness of the ideas and intents transmitted by them. This article undertakes this task through the correspondence between the Livonian humanist and diplomat David Hilchen (1561–1610) and the humanists Justus Lipsius, Johannes Wowerius, Josephus Justus Scaliger, and Janus Dousa in the Low Countries.

Virtue and Providence: Perceptions of Ancient Roman Warfare in Early Modern England

While historians have investigated how early modern Europeans gleaned instrumental lessons from ancient military sources, Nicholas Popper argues that this form of reading was part of a broad range of interpretative strategies derived from practices of historical analysis that figures like Machiavelli, Justus Lipsius, and Walter Ralegh directed to military texts. Historical modes of reading also underlay the methods of soldiers and scholars who devised alternative and arcane accounts of military success that challenged what they saw as the amorality of the new military science. By placing English military reading and writing in a wider context, the essay suggests that ancient Roman warfare emerged not only as a model for imitation but also as an instrument for assessing the providential significance of the forces threatening and protecting early modern Europe.

The Rhetoric of Wounds in Coriolanus; or, a Tragedy of Renaissance Rhetoric

The Rhetoric of Wounds in Coriolanus; or, a Tragedy of Renaissance Rhetoric Jaspreet S. Tambar (bio) It is the sad lot of the tragic hero that he is essentially misunderstood. His pride and failure to engage the vicissitudes of vulgar society and its inclinations to deceit and vice are met with a hard misapprehension of malice in his stubborn resolution to absolute moral clarity. What's more, the tragic hero's pretension, born out of the greatness and simplicity that define his mind, of having comprehended his place and the place of others in the world ensures that tragedy is rife with misinterpretation. Hence the prominent acts of misinterpretation and misrecognition across the history of tragic drama, from Herodotus's story about King Creon having misinterpreted the prophecy of the oracle at Delphi, who told him to his ruin that if he attacked the Persians a great empire would fall; through Brutus's conflation of patrician Republican ideals with popular support; to Wotan's refusal to forfeit the absolute power of the ring despite the warnings of the Rhinemaidens in Wagner's Ring tetralogy. And especially in Coriolanus, a play obsessed with voice and understanding, such misinterpretations serve as a constant source of anxiety, and ultimately tragedy. Shakespeare's Coriolanus is a colossus, imposing in the weight of his stature and the hard finish of his resolutions. As strong as stone and as terse as its plinthed inscriptions, Coriolanus is the living embodiment of Roman virtus, the predicates of which include strength, fidelity, courage, and, most importantly, the Stoic principle of homologia, otherwise known as constancy. The ideal of Roman virtus tends toward uniformity and regularity in action and feeling, like a marble curve. Critics have noted the deep current of Stoicism running through the play, though some have also asserted its absence in the protagonist, arguing that Coriolanus's ostensible constancy is no more than what the Dutch Neo-stoic Justus Lipsius called "obstinacy or frowardness"; or else claiming that Coriolanus's disturbance by public honor and domestic affections proves him to "not have a drop of Stoic blood in his veins."1 Indeed, T.S. Eliot ridiculed Stoic [End Page 27] pretensions in Shakespeare as nothing more than "self-consciousness and self-dramatization."2 In Eliot's post-classical world, pride is opposed to the Christian virtue of humility, and Coriolanus's virtus thus easily reads as obstinacy and arrogance. But his intense regard for constancy, in both the domestic and public spheres, is in fact mistaken by critics for a failure in Stoicism. Nowhere is the play's fascination with the complexities of Stoicism and the hero's remarkable determination to virtus more apparent than in the pivotal scene in the marketplace when theatrical performance threatens Stoic constancy.3 By constancy is usually meant a kind of steadfastness, uniformity, and fidelity. Being constant implies virtue in remaining true to one's self, to be an unmoving rock upon which opinion and influence break like water. Geoffrey Miles argues that constancy is not merely local Roman coloring but the necessary question of the play, that "in a paradox characteristic of this intensely paradoxical play, the passionate traitor Coriolanus is Shakespeare's most self-consciously 'constant' character."4 In both antiquity and the Renaissance there are however two conflicting traditions of constancy, and the near impossibility of negotiating them contributes to Coriolanus's ruin. These conflicting traditions derive from the writings of two major classical authors: Seneca and Cicero. The Senecan ideal celebrates the kind of constancy to which has been referred above, which is primarily reflective and ethical. Seneca says in De constantia sapientis that such constancy is a rational imperative to moral conviction, and its wisdom should be exercised even in the face of tyrants who threaten torture as well as fortune's reversals.5 By contrast, the Ciceronian ideal, which is often described in theatrical metaphors, demands social propriety and thus a public responsibility to act according to a certain part. In the first book of De officiis, a treatise on duty, Cicero decidedly identifies social virtue with moral virtue, each a demonstration of constancy in either action or word.6 For Cicero, propriety is key...

Ancient Libraries and Renaissance Humanism. The De bibliothecis of Justus Lipsius, written by Thomas Hendrickson

Ancient Libraries and Renaissance Humanism. The De bibliothecis of Justus Lipsius, written by Thomas Hendrickson

When the Stoic Chameleon Came Across the Cylinder. Stoicism and the Matter of Confessions

This paper analyses the relationship between Justus Lipsius’ earlier and later thought on causation, and it claims that a major shift did take place between the author’s earlier stance (outlined in his De Constantia and Politica sive Civilis Doctrina) and his theories elaborated in later works (mainly in his Physiologia Stoicorum). While in his early works Lipsius endorsed a semi-compatibilist view (claiming that humans were not endowed with free will, but still, they could be held responsible for their actions), later in his life, he adopted a more libertarian stance. The paper does not only aim to challenge such theses of contemporary scholarship which claim that Lipsius held a mostly homogenous stance throughout his life, but it also intends to highlight the confessional importance of the shift between his earlier and later views: while his earlier works were written in a Calvinist milieu, his latter writings were authored after his recatholisation, and the two facts – according to this paper – are interrelated. Lipsian Neostoicism, hence, was not only intended to harmonize Stoicism with Christianity in general – as mainstream scholarship holds –, but with particular confessions as well.