Scaliger’s Early Years in Leiden
In the summer of 1593 Joseph Juste Scaliger moved to Leiden in the Dutch Republic, where he succeeded Justus Lipsius as Professor of Roman History and Antiquities at the recently established University. His arrival was the culmination of a lengthy campaign by the Curators of the Calvinist university:
Then the trip had to be arranged. A gun for Scaliger and an expensive horse to escape from enemies, transport for his books—it was all provided. Henry IV also cooperated and on 29 June 1593 Scaliger was dropped off at Tours by an escort of thirty-two horsemen and a few lackeys and servants. On 10 July they left for Dieppe and then on to Schiedam, arriving on 19 August. On the twenty-first Scaliger was the guest of the States [of Holland], and on 26 August he arrived in Leiden, where the mayors offered him a supper in the lodging house De Clock on the Breestraat.
The following day was spent looking for a house. Initially, Scaliger stayed with Raphelengius, where Vulcanius also lived. But his choice soon fell on a large house a little further away on the Rapenburg [Canal] (now number 40-42), diagonally opposite the Academy Building. The rent, with room and board, came to thirteen hundred guilders per year, which the States paid for. They also added eight hundred guilders to the salary of twelve hundred guilders offered by the university. The journeys of [Gerard] Tuning and [Hans] Joostens [who had fetched Scaliger from France] and other expenses, including the entire enterprise, had cost more than seven thousand guilders, the price of two large Rapenburg buildings. And all this ‛just to be able to boast,’ as one Catholic historiographer speculated, ‛that Scaliger now lived in Leiden’. (Otterspeer 178-179)
In his article Josephus Scaliger in Leiden, Henk Jan de Jonge argues that Scaliger never actually lived on the Rapenburg Canal:
... attempts have been made to paint a historical portrait of Scaliger by identifying the places where he lived and worked in Leiden. Unfortunately, mistakes were made in this regard and have been taken over and passed on unverified time after time. In particular Molhuysen’s misconception that Scaliger lived on the Rapenburg opposite the Academy Building is still widespread. And also Du Rieu’s idea that Scaliger moved in 1607 to the house known as “The Bunch of Grapes” on the south side of Breestraat—the second or third building to the east of the junction with Diefsteeg—can’t be right. All these mistakes were expertly corrected in 1973 by H J Witkam in his excellently documented article “Schaliger” in the fifth volume of De dagelijkse zaken van de Leidse universiteit [The Day-to-Day Affairs of Leiden University], the first section of which (Number 1417) deals extensively with Scaliger’s houses in Leiden. (de Jonge 72)
According to Witkam and de Jonge’s research, Scaliger first lived in a house belonging to Jan Marcuszoon van Ypre on the corner of Breestraat and Craensteeg (now Mandenmakerssteeg). A few days later, however, he took up lodgings in a house on the Schoolsteeg, a narrow lane just to the north of the Pieterskerk, where his remains now lie:
So on August 31, Scaliger moved into the house of Jonkheer Van Lanscroon, which was rented to Brandt. Which house this was has been determined by Witkam on the basis of various archival data: it was the house at the rear of the large house on the Pieterskerkgracht, now number 9, located along the Schoolsteeg, with the Latin inscription above the entrance: ‛Pax huic domui’ [Peace to this House]. The history of this grand house is described in the Leids Jaarboek [Leiden Annual] of 1957 by Pelinck, who did not fail to mention that the house at the rear was bought by Van Lanscroon in 1590 and that, according to Lieferinck’s map (1578), it was already ‛a very considerable house’, before it was radically renovated in 1619. (de Jonge 74)
Wherever he lived, Scaliger must have been pleased with the initial reception he received in the city:
His reception at Leiden was all that he could wish. A handsome income was assured to him. He was treated with the highest consideration. His rank as a prince of Verona was recognized. Placed midway between The Hague and Amsterdam, he was able to obtain, besides the learned circle of Leiden, the advantages of the best society of both these capitals. For Scaliger was no hermit buried among his books; he was fond of social intercourse and was himself a good talker. (Chisholm 285)
The positive reception, however, was not unanimous:
Scaliger’s consuming interest in recondite subjects, his French manners, and his pride in his noble ancestry also elicited unfavourable evaluations at first. One early observer, the younger [Franciscus] Raphelengius, wrote to Lipsius ... that “Those [Scaliger] calls scoundrels, asses, beasts and ignoramuses today will be gentlemen, learned and erudite men another day. And he makes both the praise and the abuse public. Many would be offended had he not become more a figure of fun than a cause of hatred.” (Grafton 378)
Scaliger’s initial impressions of Leiden were not particularly favourable (Grafton 374-375). He described the place as a swamp in the midst of swamps (Otterspeer 52). He found the climate inclement, the city life disagreeable, and the inhabitants cold and boorish. His neighbours were noisy. He was particularly disgusted by the pervasive drunkenness of the Dutch. Even his colleagues at the University seemed to spend much of their time in drunken stupors, and it was not uncommon for them to deliver lectures while still hungover. His favourite pupil Daniel Heinsius was once said to be no longer a man but a jug. (Grafton 375)
Scaliger also found it difficult to secure satisfactory accommodations. Protestant refugees from both the French Wars of Religion and the Dutch Revolt had been flooding into the city since 1575, pushing up the price of land and housing. Despite his handsome salary Scaliger spent more than a year crawling through the whole town ... wasting my labour. As we have seen, he resided in a house on Schoolsteeg from 31 August 1593. Sometime between 1594 and 1597, following constant complaints, he moved to a large house on Breestraat, which he rented from a Marie Vanden Bergh with the help of an allocation of 200 guilders per annum from the States. The building is now numbers 111-113, across the road from Leiden’s City Hall. It comprised two storeys and attics over a ground floor, and had a large garden with oak trees at the rear. Scaliger liked the new accommodations and later boasted: I have three or four oak trees, which make a forest (Desmaizeaux 525). In 2012 a commemorative plaque was unveiled outside Breestraat 113—now the bookshop Van Stockum. It bears the legend: In this house a man spoke more languages than anyone else in Europe. Scaliger remained her for at least ten years, not moving again until 1607.
Scaliger gradually warmed to Leiden, and came to believe that the Athens of the ancient Greeks had been transported to this little corner of Batavia, where letters were free to flourish once again (Grafton 393). But true to his agreement, he declined to deliver any public lectures, preferring to spend his time in private study and research. He did instruct several pupils privately, however. Among these were the jurist Hugo Grotius, the geographer Philipp Clüver, the philologists Franciscus Dousa, Johann von Wowern Geverhart Elmenhorst and Heinrich & Friedrich Lindenbrog, and the classical scholar Daniel Heinsius, who became not only his favourite pupil but also his closest friend. Scaliger taught his students by guiding their own research rather than by tutoring them in their chosen fields:
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 : Dilthey 443-443)
First Fruits
One of the first fruits of Scaliger’s years in Leiden was a fulsome Latin epistle dedicated to the Estates of Holland, West Friesland, and Zeeland, and the Curators of Leiden University. It is addressed grandiloquently:
Nobilibus Academiae Lugdunensis Batavorum Curatoribus Et Magnificis Eiusdem Civitatis Consulibus F.
To the Noble Curators of the Academy of Leiden, and to the Magnificent Consuls of the Same City
It was in this letter that Scaliger famously wrote that the University of Leiden had reignited the torch of learning before humanity was plunged into perpetual night:
Ut vere quis dixerit Athenas Atticus huc immigrasse.
So that one can truly say that the Athens of Attica has immigrated here. (Bernays 191)
This epistle was the letter of dedication which Scaliger wrote for the second part of the first book he published in Leiden. The years Scaliger had spent working on ancient calenders for his opus magnum De Emendatione Temporum had not only given him a taste for figures and calculations but also instilled in him an inflated sense of his own mathematical abilities:
Early in the 1590s Scaliger decided that he had cracked three famous problems in ancient geometry: the quadrature of the circle, the determination of two continuously proportional means between two lines, and the trisection of an angle. He circulated a broadside in Greek and Latin verse claiming these discoveries. His exact contemporary François Viète, one of the most gifted mathematicians in the world, refuted his assertions in public lectures given at Tours and then—without naming Scaliger—in the eighth book of his Varia responsa, published at Tours in 1593. (Grafton 378-379)
In 1592, the year before his move to Leiden, Scaliger had bet 1000 or 1200 nummi to any mathematician who could refute his proofs. This was a common practice of contemporary mathematicians, among whose ranks Scaliger now counted himself.
In 1594, shortly after he had settled in Leiden, he published a number of mathematical works that introduced his “discoveries” to a wider public:
Cyclometrica Elementa, Books 1 and 2, Franciscus Raphelengius, Leiden (1594)
Mesolabium, Cyclometrica Elementa, Book 1, Book 2, Appendix (Mesolabium), Franciscus Raphelengius, Leiden (1594)
Publication was a mistake. Scaliger’s books both offended the small and paranoid community of mathematicians and gave them ample opportunity to avenge themselves by making him a laughing-stock. (Grafton 379)
Scaliger had acquired such an inflated opinion of his own abilities that not even Archimedes—arguably the greatest mathematician of all time—escaped his condemnation. When other mathematicians, such as François Viète, pointed out all the errors in Scaliger’s book and refuted his conclusions, Scaliger wrote to the English mathematician Henry Savile for support. But Savile was as uncompromising as his colleagues on the Continent. He wrote a lengthy and polite letter to his noble friend, patiently pointing out all the errors he had committed. But privately and before his own students he was less inclined to be either patient or polite:
Joseph Scaliger—a better grammarian than logician—understood that many unpleasant rumours had spread in France, Germany, and England after the publication of his Cyclometrica. And he heard that a good many were considering refuting him. And he distrusted me among the rest—or even more than the rest—I who had known him well at Paris, in earlier days. So he sent me what he thought was a probable refutation of Archimedes’ argument in his golden book on the measurement of the circle, though it was the work of a man entirely ignorant of logic, who rejected all reductions to absurdity as paralogistical and false. (Grafton 383-384)
According to his friend Jacques Auguste de Thou, Scaliger later cultivated a private admiration for François Viète and came to regret publishing his blunders, but he never forgave the mathematical community for the way they had treated him:
... he never recanted his belief that the mathematicians had treated him with unprovoked incivility—a belief perhaps even more bizarre than the mathematical ones that had inspired him in the first place. In substance, Scaliger’s mathematical work is a mere curiosity, devoid of value even as a historical study of Greek science—a field to which Viète made far more profound contributions than Scaliger did. (Grafton 384)
In the same year of 1594, even before this latest dispute had died down, Scaliger found himself embroiled in another public altercation—one that would affect him on a very personal level.
References
- Jacob Bernays, Joseph Justus Scaliger, Wilhelm Hertz, Berlin (1855)
- Harm Beukers, Studying Medicine In Leiden In The 1630s, “A Man Very Well Studyed”: New Contexts for Thomas Browne, Pages 49-64, Brill, Leiden (2008)
- Hugh Chisholm (editor), Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, Volume 24, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1911)
- Pierre Desmaizeaux (editor), Scaligerana, Thuana, Perroniana, Pithoeana, et Columesiana, Volume 2, Prima Scaligerana, Secunda Scaligerana, Covens & Mortier, Amsterdam (1740)
- Wilhelm Dilthey, Gesammelte Schriften, Volume 2, Weltanschauung und Analyse des Menschen seit Renaissance und Reformation, Second Edition, B G Teubner, Leipzig & Berlin (1921)
- John Glucker, An Autograph Letter of Joseph Scaliger to Sir Henry Savile, Scientarum Historia: Journal of the History of Science & Medicine, Volume 8, Number 4, Pages 214-224, South Netherlands Society of Medicine, Mathematics and Natural Sciences (1966)
- Anthony Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship, Volume 2, Historical Chronology, Clarendon Press, Oxford (1993)
- Daniel Heinsius (editor), Epistolae [All the Letters that Could Be Found of the Most Illustrious Man, Joseph Scaliger, Son of Julius Caesar Bordone, Collected and Edited for the First Time], Bonaventura & Abraham Elzevir, Leiden (1627)
- Henk Jan de Jonge, Josephus Scaliger in Leiden, Jaarboekje voor geschiedenis en oudheidkunde van Leiden en Omstreken, Volume 71, Pages 71-94, Beugelsdijk, Leiden (1979)
- Philippe Tamizey de Larroque (editor), Lettres Françaises Inédites de Joseph Scaliger, Alphonse Picard, Paris (1884)
- Willem Otterspeer, Groepsportret met Dame I: Het bolwerk van de vrijheid, de Leidse Universiteit 1575-1672 [Group Portrait with Lady I: The Bastion of Freedom, Leiden University 1575-1672], Bert Bakker, Amsterdam (2000)
1575–1672 (Amsterdam: 2000). - Joseph Juste Scaliger, De Emendatione Temporum [On the Correction of Dates], First Edition, Mamert Patisson, Paris (1583)
- Joseph Juste Scaliger, Cyclometrica Elementa, Books 1 and 2, Franciscus Raphelengius, Leiden (1594)
- Joseph Juste Scaliger, Cyclometria Elementa, Book 1, Book 2, Appendix (Mesolabium), Franciscus Raphelengius, Leiden (1594)
- Henricus Johannes Witkam, Schaliger, De dagelijkse zaken van de Leidse universiteit van 1581 tot 1596, Volume 5, Number 1417, Leiden (1973)
- François Viète, Variorum de Rebus Mathematicis Responsorum, Book 8, Jamet Mettayer, Tours (1593)
Image Credits
- Academy Building, Leiden University: © Leiden University, Fair Use
- Justus Lipsius: Peter Paul Rubens (artist), After Abraham Janssens I (artist), Museum Plantin-Moretus, Antwerp, Public Domain
- 113 Breestraat and Plaque (Leiden): Indebuurt, © DPG Media, Leiden, Fair Use
- Schoolsteeg, Leiden: Carin van der Meij (photographer), © Indebuurt, Fair Use
- Scaliger’s Mathematical Works: Jan Cornelis Woudanus (artist), Icones Leidensis, Number 31, Senate Chamber, Academy Building, Leiden University, Public Domain
- Henry Savile: School of Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, Private Collection, Public Domain
- Scaliger’s House on Breestraat: Anonymous Engraving, Leiden Municipal Archive Service (1618), Public Domain
Online Resources
