Justus Lipsius Research Articles

:The World of Justus Lipsius: A Contribution towards His Intellectual Biography

:<i>The World of Justus Lipsius: A Contribution towards His Intellectual Biography</i>

The Politica of Justus Lipsius and the Commonplace-Book

Appliquant les principes rhetoriques et dialectiques des livres des lieux communs du XVI e siecle a certains textes de la Renaissance moins connus des interpretes modernes, l'A. se propose de comprendre les «Politiques» de Juste Lipse, le plus celebre recueil de sentences antiques de son epoque, comme un assemblage de lieux communs et de citations qui consituent la veritable organisation humaniste et post-humaniste de la connaissance. Examinant les differentes editions catholiques, ainsi que les differentes traductions latines et italiennes du texte, l'A. montre que le but de l'ouvrage de Juste Lipse est d'encourager ses lecteurs a faire retour aux oeuvres antiques comme fondement de la science politique

The Politica of Justus Lipsius and the Commonplace-Book

The Politica of Justus Lipsius and the Commonplace-Book

Primacy of Individual Conscience or Primacy of the State? The Clash between Dirck Volckertsz. Coornhert and Justus Lipsius

The bitter clash between Justus Lipsius and Dirk Volckertsz. Coornhert, occasioned by Lipsius' Politica, reveals the different agendas of these two men. Lipsius' almost axiomatic acceptance in the Politica of only one official religion in a state was abhorrent to Coornhert, a staunch champion of freedom of conscience. Coornhert proffered spiritualist objections to Lipsius' primarily political (and religiously neutral) views. Lipsius intended the Politica as a political manual for rulers and thus as a natural sequel to his earlier De Constantia, a Neostoic guide out of the morass of religio-political strife and vicissitudes so prevalent at the time. But Coornhert saw in Lipsius' arguments for uniformity the grave danger of a return to persecution and religious intolerance. He rejected the primacy of Staatsraison and argued instead for a pluriform state whose inhabitants would be allowed to follow the light of their own conscience in making a religious choice.

What's in a Name? Forging an Identity: Portraits of Nicolaes Tulp (1593–1674)

ABSTRACTThrough an exploration of the portraits identified with the name ‘Nicolaes Tulp’, a doctor and magistrate in seventeenth-century Amsterdam, this paper will analyse the visual persona of Nicolaes Tulp. The portraits did play (and continue to perform) an active, shaping role in the construction of his identity. As the two-part title suggests, on one level it will explore how Tulp's identity was forged in response to his changing social, professional, and political roles. This identity was constructed by and refers to a complex series of inanimate (the tulip), portrayed (Justus Lipsius, Vesalius, members of the Amsterdam elite), and ‘real’ historical references (Jan Six). Secondly, operating within a wider investigation of the nature of portrayed identity and historical ‘truth’, it will ask, ‘what's in a name?’ by examining how Tulp's identity was re-created in the nineteenth century through family politics, faulty attributions, and nationalist historiography. Portraits previously considered anonymous were newly identified as ‘Tulp’. This paper will suggest that Tulp's persona can not simply be understood through identifiable portraits, but his persona has a continual historical existence not bound by the body, the portrait.

Tacitus and Tacitism in Johannes Meursius’historia danica(1630–38).∗

The article examines the role of Tacitus in the Latin history of Denmark (1630–38) by Johannes Meursius. It is argued that “Ta‐citism”; ‐ a contemporary movement influenced by Tacitus both as a stylist and as a political writer ‐ is reflected in Meursius’ work in various ways. The first part deals with Meursius’ introduction and his use of Tacitus’ famous avowal of writing sine ira et studio. Next, Meursius’ Latin prose style, with its brevity, antitheses, and paradoxes, is seen in the context of the contemporary “Attic”; movement, which advocated primarily Seneca and Tacitus as prose models. Thirdly, Meursius’ portrait of the Danish king Nicolaus is shown to be inspired by the Tacitean archtyrant Tiberius. Fourthly, it is argued that Meursius also drew extensively on one of the seminal works of Tacitism in Northern Europe, Justus Lipsius’ Política (1589). Finally, the apparently incongruous union of Tacitean cynicism and Meursius’ generally Christian and moralistic outlook is taken up.

Gardening without Eve: The Role of the Feminine in Justus Lipsius's De Constantia and in Neo-Stoic Thought

and goes on to lament that 'twas beyond a Mortal's share / To wander solitary there (53). Although a modern critic can dismiss the sentiment as a jest (Forster, Meditation 26), the notion ofa garden for men only took a serious turn in the philosophy of neostoicism propounded by the celebrated Flemish scholar Justus Lipsius (15471606). The second half of his 1584 bestseller, De Constantia, is set in just such a garden without women. The absence of Eve in this Eden proves to be but the surface symptom of an attitude to women, in the work and in the neo-stoicism popularized by Lipsius, that is profoundly troubling to the feminist reader both because of its mi-

Ben Jonson, Neostoicism, and the Monita of Justus Lipsius

Ben Jonson, Neostoicism, and the <i>Monita</i> of Justus Lipsius

:Stoics and Neostoics: Rubens and the Circle of Lipsius

In a vivid re-creation of late sixteenth-century Flemish intellectual life, Mark Morford explores the intertwined careers of one of the period's most influential thinkers and one of its most original artists: Justus Lipsius and Peter Paul Rubens. He investigates the scholarship of Lipsius (1547-1606), whose revival of Roman Stoicism guided his contemporaries during the revolt of the Netherlands from the rule of Spain and whose teaching prepared future leaders in church and state. Maintaining that Lipsius' thought reached Peter Paul Rubens through his brother, Philip Rubens, Morford analyzes the artist's use of Stoic philosophical and political allegory, beginning with his painting The Four Philosophers. This book discusses the revival of Stoicism in northern Europe, focusing on Lipsius' editions of Tacitus and Seneca, his widely read handbooks on constancy and politics, and his interaction with leading scholars and public figures. As his letters reveal, Lipsius was inconsistent in his life and unsuccessful in reconciling Stoicism with Catholic doctrine; Rubens, although at first sympathetic to the doctrines of Lipsius, is shown to have later transcended their limitations.

Humanists and Sewers: A Comment and a Coda

Sometime in the later 1590s Justus Lipsius and one of his Louvain students had a nice conversation about sewers. The student thought the topic comic and stifled a giggle, but Lipsius soon set him straight. The sewers of ancient Rome had been as physically imposing as any other great Roman artifact. Moreover—and more important to the student of history—they were directly linked with the other artifacts and institutions that had provided the material basis for Rome's uniquely splendid civilization, with its powerful armies, Stoic philosophy, and inimitable literature. Only a full study of the material life of ancient Rome could explain the continuous population growth that had enabled the city to expand so far and last so long. The two of them were off, happily embarked on a long inquiry into the secret and public means that Rome had used to enlarge its population, encourage trade, and avoid corruption over the many centuries between Romulus and the Antonines (Lipsius, 161-63).

The Stoic garden

Gardens were important to the Flemish classicist and neostoic, Justus Lipsius. As we examine the role that the garden played in his reconstruction of Stoic philosophy we shall see that he succeeded in adapting the garden, hitherto the symbol of Epicurean pleasure, to Stoic principles appropriate to the Netherlands in the sixteenth century.

Stuart Absolutism and the 'Utility' of Tacitus

Criticks say he had a concise and sententious way of Writing, but as to the use and of his History they vary, or it may be rather against each other.1 When he wrote that sentence about Tacitus, Degory Wheare newly appointed as the first incumbent of the Camden Readership in History at Oxford was trying to incapsulate, for the benefit of his students, the critical consensus on each of the historians in the curriculum. The result would be a sort of Jacobean Reader's Guide to the great historians which would serve generations of young Englishmen: De ratione et methodo legendi historias (1623). But in the case of Tacitus consensus gave way to polarization, and Wheare was forced to alter his scheme accordingly by presenting the conflicting viewpoints. His observation that Renaissance critics fight against each other over the utility that is, the contemporary relevance and applicability of a long dead historian, suggests what a curious phenomenon Tacitus' reputation had become. About Tacitus' controversial style his new, concise and sententious way of Writing and its influence on the development of Attic prose Morris W. Croll and others have taught us much.2 The controversy with which I shall be concerned here is the one over his utility: the debate about whether, why, how, and by whom his works (especially the Annals) ought to be read. At the risk of oversimplifying the issues in the interest of clarity, we might designate the polarities of opinion as the Tacitean revival and the anti-Tacitean reaction. Because the former especially with reference to its continental background is well documented elsewhere,3 I shall address myself primarily to the latter in these pages. Specifically, my topic is the way the anti-Tacitean reaction became enmeshed in the political dialectics of Stuart England. First, however, some account of the revival in its English manifestation, with a glance at its European origin, is in order. The widely ranging controversy over the value and of the Annals brought into opposition two members of the intellectual triumvirate of the late Renaissance: the Belgian humanist Justus Lipsius and the Huguenot theologian and classicist Isaac Casaubon.' The Tacitean revival, as a European phenomenon, began with Lipsius' great 1575 edition of Tacitus; thereafter, the editor was an indefatigable propagandist in behalf of his author. Tacitean apologists, in England as elsewhere, invariably derived

Essays on Medieval German Literature and Iconography

Preface Part I. Textual Studies: Iconographical Approaches: 1. The gothic image of Christ. The sources of medieval representations of the crucifixion 2. Exegesis and imagination. A contribution to the study of Rupert of Deutz 3. Trinitas creator: word and image 4. Justus Lipsius' De Cruce libri tres (1593), or the historian's dilemma 5. Goethe's 'Alexis und Dora' (1796). An interpretation Part II. Textual Studies: Historiographical Approaches: 6. Notes on Fate and Fortune 7. The 'fortune' of Hartmann's Erec 8. Historical thought and moral codes in medieval epic 9. The Western image of Byzantium in the Middle Ages 10. Economies of history. What is fiction? Part III. Syllabus Studies 11. On coming to terms with Curtius 12. University German and the syllabus of studies Notes Publications of F. P. Pickering.

The Dutch Humanist Origins of The De Witt Drawing of the Swan Theatre

J OHANNES DE WITT'S DRAWING of the Swan theatre in London is so fundamental a document in the history of the English theatre that it is easy to forget that it is a Dutch, not an English, document, and therefore best understood against the specific circumstances of its origin. The object of this article is to place De Witt and Aernout van Buchel in the Dutch literary and artistic traditions within which they worked; to demonstrate that both men were unusually skilled in drawing and also keenly interested in painting; and to show that the pattern for the sketch of the Swan is a piece of pictorial evidence that was central to their world, though to my knowledge it has never been brought into connection with the Swan. I refer to the copperplate engraving of the Colosseum at Rome in the often reprinted treatise De Amphitheatro by Justus Lipsius, the most widely-read scholar of De Witt's day.

Theme and Style in Roman Historiography

‘His combination of feeling for style with historical knowledge is still a challenge to any editor of an historical text’ (Momigliano on Justus Lipsius). It is a far cry from the scholarly humanism of the sixteenth century to the complex specialism of modern scholarship, but the overlapping results of detailed research begin to call for integration or, at least, some attempt to define them in a wider context. This paper, therefore, proposes a combined exercise in the study of Roman historiography, ranging from the historian's choice of theme through its literary composition to the quality of its ultimate effect—to relate (so to speak)res, ars, ingenium. The subject is large, but the argument involves mainly precise treatment of evidence at the critical points.

Samuel Johnson at War With the Classics

lTWO CENTURIES before Johnson's lifetime, Justus Lipsius, great Belgian scholar and critic, like many another from northern Europe traveled to Rome and contemplated ruins of classical past. Deeply moved, he wrote in Latin an account of most famous and monumental one of all-the Colosseum. In this little book, called de Amphitheatro liber (Leyden: C. Plantin, 1584), he allowed his imagination to play upon great ruin, describing it as the shadow and cadaver [umbra & cadaver] of famous edifice, every part of it either pillaged by hand of man or crumbling from passage of time, without joints or limbs of its former body [corporis]. And so he sighs to his companion and asks, who can unearth from such ruins a true likeness? (p. 13). de Amphitheatro is accompanied by a sensitive engraving of Colosseum as it appeared in sixteenth century: crumbling, weedy, and almost as if sinking into earth. The rest of book is author's patient effort to reveal monument's true likeness: he uses ancient writers to illuminate ruin, and facts about ruin to illuminate his texts. Such loving attention to symbols of and from classical past is characteristic of Renaissance; it leads through mythographers, antiquarians, editors, collectors, and many others to classicism so widespread in literature and arts at end of seventeenth century. It led most certainly to Pope's famous declaration in Essay on Criticism ( 171 1 ):

An unrecorded autograph letter by Paul Melissus to Justus Lipsius

An unrecorded autograph letter by Paul Melissus to Justus Lipsius

Lipsius en Livius

Whereas the Flemish humanist Justus Lipsius has won the highest praise for his successivecommented editions of Tacitus’ Annales and Historiae, hitherto no attention has been paidto his philological and antiquarian study of Livy. By editing, emending and lecturing onLivy’s monumental history of Rome, however, Lipsius not only followed in the footstepsof famous scholars such as Petrarch, Henricus Glareanus and Carolus Sigonius, but alsocontinued a tradition at the Louvain Collegium Trilingue. A close investigation of Lipsius’Epistolicae Quaestiones, which contain a masterly sample of textual criticism, enables usto judge Lipsius’ correction of Livy against the emendatio lipsiana applied to Tacitus, thusshedding light on both the methods and achievements of one of the leading classical philologistsof the sixteenth century.

Zoals een mooie maar onbetrouwbare vrouw?

In 1605 the Dutch humanist Justus Lipsius published his last political work,Monita et exempla politica, which served as an illustration of his more famousPolitica (1589) and which was dedicated to Archduke Albert of the SouthernNetherlands. In this article I present the various early modern translations ofthis mirror-for-princes. Thereby attention is especially paid to the context inwhich these translations functioned, the aims of the translators, and the audiencefor which their work was intended. Lastly, an analysis is given of theway(s) in which the various translators rendered Lipsius's Monita in the vernacular.This overview may be of crucial imporrance for the study of thereception of the Monita, since the history of the Latin original is not necessarilysimilar to that of the vernacular versions.

The Influence of Justus Lipsius on Juan de Vera y Figueroa's "Embaxador" (1620)

Almost thirty years ago M. Marcel Bataillon drew attention to the importance for Spain (as indeed for the rest of Europe) of the Neostoic movement whose great champion and leader was the Flemish humanist Justus Lipsius: ‘El neoestoicismo senalaba un renacimiento del humanismo filosofico. Por su afan de conciliar su fe moral con el cristianismo, fue un nuevo genero de Philosophia Christi. Justo Lipsio fue el nuevo maestro de este genero, a partir del momento en que, vuelto al redil del catolicismo, vino a ensenar en Lovaina.’ During Lipsius's own lifetime, of course, many Spanish scholars and men of substance, including Arias Montano, the Argensola brothers, Baltasar de Zuniga and the young Quevedo, corresponded with him, and the occasional, if often tangential, reference to his name in the literature of the early seventeenth century shows the extent to which he was known, suggesting that his influence had permeated far. However, little has yet been done to trace that influence, and the only study to date ...