Lipsius

, the Latinized form of Joest Lips. A great humanist, born at Overyssche in Brabant, October 18, 1547. Educated at the Jesuit College of Cologne and the University of Louvain, he obtained, at the age of twenty, the office of Latin Secretary to Cardinal Granvella, to whom he had dedicated his first work, Variarum Lectionum Libri III. (1567). With the cardinal he visited Rome, and for two years studied the Latin classics and collected inscriptions in that city. He also familiarized himself with the great collection of MSS. in the Vatican, and his book, published in 1575, Antiquarum Lectionum Libri V., showed his familiarity with some of the greater principles and methods of text criticism—the collation, emendation, and classification of codices.

After making the acquaintance in Rome of such scholars as Muretus, Paulus Manutius, and Fulvio Orsini, he travelled in 1570 over Burgundy, Germany, Austria, and Bohemia, for the sake of meeting the great classicists of those countries. A little later he taught at the University of Jena for a year, and in 1579 received a call to the University of Leyden as Professor of History. This chair he held for eleven years, during which period his literary productiveness was very great, his numerous works being issued from the celebrated press of Plantin of Antwerp. In 1591 he left Leyden because of his failing health, and after travelling about from place to place, and refusing many calls from the courts and universities of Italy, Austria, and Spain, accepted the Latin chair at the Collegium Buslidianum at Louvain, with the understanding that he was not to be required to teach. With this appointment he coupled that of PrivyCouncillor and Historiographer to the king of Spain. He died at Lonvain, March 23, 1606.

Lipsius was the master of an epigrammatic and fascinating Latin style, and his writings were always readable. His great favourite of the classical authors was Tacitus, the whole of whose writings he could repeat from memory, and used to offer to do so with a dagger at his breast to stab him if he made a single error. His range as a scholar, however, was limited. He knew little Greek, though ostentatiously parading Greek quotations in his Latin letters, and he was wholly un-Ciceronian in his Latinity. He had no ear for metre and cared little for the poets. His general knowledge of classical antiquity was also comparatively slight. Nevertheless, he was ranked among the most noted scholars of his age, and with Scaliger and Casaubon formed the so-called “Triumvirate.” His chief strength lay in his knowledge of the Roman histories and of Roman antiquities in the narrow sense of the word. His two most elaborate works are his edition of Tacitus (1574), which was five times revised by him, the last edition appearing in 1606; and of Seneca (Antwerp, 1605). The former work is almost epoch-making in the completeness and elaboration of its exhaustive commentary. He also edited Valerius Maximus (Antwerp, 1585) and Velleius Paterculus (Leyden, 1591, and 1607). His complete works appeared in 4 vols. at Antwerp in 1637, reprinted at Wesel in 1675 with his life by Le Mire. A bibliographical list of forty-eight separate publications is given by Nicéron in his Mémoires, xxiv. p. 118. See De Reiffenberg, De Justi Lipsi Vita et Scriptis (Brussels, 1823); and L. Müller, Geschichte d. class. Phil. in den Niederlanden, pp. 249 foll. (Leipzig, 1869).