The Road to the Thesaurus Temporum

in scaliger •  last year  (edited)

Joseph Juste Scaliger – Part 19

~Part 1~

Joseph Juste Scaliger

After the publication of the Epistle on the Antiquity and Splendour of the Scaliger Family, and The Life Julius Caesar Scaliger in 1594 Joseph Scaliger turned his attention to his scholarly duties. As a respected member of the faculty at Leiden University, he was expected to make some meaningful contribution to the college’s academic pursuits. Freed of the onerous duty to deliver public lectures, he chose instead to offer private tutelage to a select number of promising students:

He evidently decided not long after his arrival that he could offer a kind of private tutelage that complemented the research he had been hired to perform. He provided it not by lecturing but by directing the research of others. As Scaliger looked over the young men of Leiden, he searched for real academic talent among the many precocious strivers who wanted something more than set lectures could give them. A discerning talent-spotter, he predicted that the teenaged Hugo Grotius would make an able politician and some day serve as the pensionary of a city (as Grotius indeed did for Rotterdam). He became a gifted provider of appropriate subject-matter as well. ―Grafton 389–390

Thus Scaliger came to direct the course of much of the academic research that took place in Leiden at the turn of the century:

Wilhelm Dilthey singled Leiden out as the first truly modern university because it made research and training in research a normal part of its business. Scaliger was largely responsible for both innovations. ―Grafton 392

In addition to his local pupils, Scaliger was sought out by many foreign students desirous of consulting the miracle of the age (as his friend the theologian Pierre Merlin once referred to him):

Scaliger made the new style of instruction in research that he had developed in the 1590s available to a larger and larger group of pupils. Young scholars from France and north Germany, Jean Nicolas Vassan, Joannes Wowerius and Gerardus Elmenhorst, Heinrich and Friedrich Lindenbrog, joined his Dutch pupils, demanding information on specific problems and asking advice on long-term projects. ―Grafton 492

Scaliger formed lasting and fruitful relationships with several of these men. He also maintained an extensive correspondence with others:

Sometimes he answered twenty letters in one of the day-long marathons by which, several times a month, he maintained his correspondence. Few other scholars of his time or ours, whatever their teaching duties, would enter into so much detail in their advice on the substance and style of their pupils’ work. ―Grafton 494

Leiden University Library in 1610, with the Arca Scaligeri (Right Foreground)

Scaliger also carried out research of his own. Initially, he devoted himself to revising some of his earlier works before turning to another major undertaking of original research. Scaliger was eager to take advantage of Leiden’s great printing houses, such as the one headed by Franciscus Raphelengius the Elder:

The elder Raphelengius’ shop ... proved an enjoyable meeting-place where conversation of all sorts, light and technical, buzzed on unhampered by formalities ... And Raphelengius was only one of the many Leiden booksellers and agents who helped Scaliger to make up, in part, the loss he suffered by leaving his early library in France. ―Grafton 387

New editions of the following works were published in these years by Raphelengius and another of Leiden’s famous printers Lodewijk Elzevir:

In addition to these, Scaliger’s name was also attached to a number of works by other authors to which he contributed in one capacity or another:

Scaliger’s Pupils Johannes Drusius & Johann von Wowern

And as if all this was not enough, Scaliger also took a keen interest in his many extracurricular activities:

Scaliger often looked up from his books. He became a close friend of the French envoy Choart de Buzanval in The Hague ... followed the progress of Dutch navigation and commerce in the East with informed interest, sometimes even serving as a consultant ... Unable, so he apparently felt, to travel even in years of truce after 1598, Scaliger enjoyed the cosmopolitan flow of visitors, objects, and information through the Low Countries, which gave him a chance to see and hear about such rare items as ‛the [Great] Wall and all the provinces of the Chinese empire depicted on their maps ...’ ―Grafton 495

But all this would soon be put in the shade, as Scaliger took up his next great project, one which would culminate in the publication of his second-greatest work: the Thesaurus Temporum.

Itaque hic finem faciam.

References

  • Anthony Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship, Volume 2, Historical Chronology, Clarendon Press, Oxford (1993)
  • Joseph Juste Scaliger, Epistola de Vetustate et Splendore Gentis Scaligerae et Iulii Caesari Scaligeri Vita [Epistle on the Antiquity and Splendour of the Scaliger Family, and The Life Julius Caesar Scaliger], Franciscus Raphelengius, Leiden (1594)
  • Pierre Desmaizeaux (editor), Scaligerana, Thuana, Perroniana, Pithoeana, et Columesiana, Volume 2, Prima Scaligerana, Secunda Scaligerana, Covens & Mortier, Amsterdam (1740)
  • Philippe Tamizey de Larroque (editor), Lettres Françaises Inédites de Joseph Scaliger, Alphonse Picard, Paris (1884)

Image Credits

Online Resources

scaliger leiden chronology philology research latin history classics
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