Joseph Justus Scaliger

French historian and scholar

• Born: August 5, 1540
• Birthplace: Agen, France
• Died: January 21, 1609
• Place of death: Leiden, Holland, United Provinces (now in the Netherlands)

Scaliger was the foremost scholar of Greek and Latin in his time. His editions of Latin authors set high critical standards and his research on ancient chronology established the study of ancient history, introducing to Europe the literature and history of Byzantium.

Early Life

In 1525, the father of Joseph Justus Scaliger (SCAHL-ih-guhr), physicianJulius Caesar Scaliger, accompanied the Italian nobleman M. A. de la Rovère to Agen, a small town in western France, where the nobleman would serve as bishop. The physician claimed a remarkable record. Julius Caesar Scaliger was descended from the family (the della Scala) that once had ruled Verona. He had studied art (with Albrecht Dürer), medicine, theology, natural history, and classical literature. He had earned military distinction during seventeen years of service under his kinsman the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. Now the physician devoted himself to other pursuits. His medical practice at Agen flourished, and in 1528, he married an adolescent orphan of a noble family, Andiette de Roques Lobejac. From this union came fifteen children.

The physician studied Greek and Latin in his leisure. He circulated a brilliant (if misguided) polemic against Desiderius Erasmus’s criticism of contemporary Latin in 1531, from 1533 to 1547 wrote volumes of his own Latin verse, which would be critically disparaged but read widely and reprinted often, and composed his own Latin grammar in 1540 and a notable treatise on Latin poetry (published in 1561 after his death). His major work was a massive commentary on the ancient Greek tradition of natural history as understood by Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Theophrastus. This great study was completed in 1538 but not published until after the author’s death, when Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz praised it as the best contemporary guide to Aristotle.

Julius Caesar Scaliger’s love of classical learning bore its greatest fruit in his third son (and tenth child), Joseph Justus. Educated at home to age twelve, Joseph was then sent, with his brothers Leonard and John, to the College of Guyenne at Bordeaux. There they read standard Latin authors and learned Greek by using the fashionable new grammar of the Protestant educator Philipp Melanchthon. Plague erupted in Bordeaux in 1555, and the three boys returned to Agen to be educated again by their father. The elder Scaliger required of his sons daily composition and declamation in Latin studies in which Joseph excelled: By age seventeen, he had composed an original Latin drama (Oedipus), of which his father approved and of which he himself remained proud in his old age.

His father, however, did not instruct his son in Greek. Therefore, after his father’s death in 1558, Joseph Scaliger set out for the University of Paris. There he attended the lectures of a contemporary master of Greek, Adrian Turnèbe, but soon realized that he knew insufficient Greek to profit from the course. Scaliger thereupon dedicated two years to reading basic Greek authors and, in the process, compiled his own Greek grammar. He then went on to study Hebrew and Arabic to a good level of proficiency. Scaliger’s formal education at Paris ended in 1563, when another Greek professor, Jean Dorat, was sufficiently impressed by Scaliger’s learning to recommend him successfully as companion to the young nobleman Louis de Chastaigner.

Life’s Work

Scaliger’s position as companion to Chastaigner provided secure employment and other advantages: extensive travel, access to learned men and to scholarly collections throughout Europe, and, what was of especial importance in an age of turmoil (for these were the years of religious and dynastic wars in France), freedom to study and write. Thus, in 1564, Scaliger published his first work, Coniectanea in M. Terentium Varronem de lingua latina , a wide-ranging discussion of textual problems and the etymologies of Latin words in the De lingua latina (first century b.c.e.; On the Latin Language, 1938) by the Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro. The book attracted scholarly attention, because in it Scaliger demonstrated his profound knowledge of classical and Near Eastern languages and revealed what would become a deep interest in archaic (before 100 b.c.e.) Latin. Thus, as well, Scaliger accompanied Chastaigner on several journeys to Italy, where he met the great French Humanist and textual critic Marc-Antoine Muret, who introduced Scaliger to Italian scholars and their libraries.

Chastaigner and his companion next traveled to England and Scotland, where Scaliger disliked the insularity, ignorance, and vulgarity of the scholars he encountered but found time to continue his studies on Varro and record his negative impressions of Mary, Queen of Scots, and his positive impressions of Queen Elizabeth I. The years from 1567 through 1570 Scaliger spent with the Chastaigner family, moving from place to place in France to avoid the ravages of civil war.

From 1570, Scaliger lived for two and a half years at Valence with the great scholar of Roman law Jacques Cujas. Cujas provided an introduction to a wide range of scholars (with whom Scaliger would correspond in years to come), expert instruction in the study of Roman legal texts, and a library of more than two hundred Greek and Latin manuscripts and instruction in how to discriminate among them. Cujas’s influence and the texts he placed at Scaliger’s disposal encouraged Scaliger to concentrate his energies on the manuscript sources for individual ancient authors and the ancient sources for specific topics. Thus, in 1573, Scaliger published an edition of the late, difficult Latin poet Ausonius, based on his own scrutiny of an important ninth century manuscript that Cujas possessed.

The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre the slaughter of Huguenots in France in 1572 caught Scaliger en route to Poland on a diplomatic mission. Scaliger had been reared as a Roman Catholic, but in Paris he had taken instruction from Calvinists and, by the time of his sojourn in England, had declared himself a Protestant. He therefore fled to Calvinist Geneva, where he was given a professorship of philosophy. He lectured on Aristotle and Cicero but did not enjoy his subjects. His private tutorials were more successful.

At the first opportunity, in 1574, Scaliger returned to France to live with Chastaigner. Intermittent wars made the next twenty years far from comfortable; Scaliger several times had to serve in the military. Nevertheless, with the financial support of Chastaigner, Scaliger produced important studies of individual Latin authors in which he demonstrated his skill at textual emendation (the correction of the received text of an author). Scaliger’s breadth of knowledge and technical skill at evaluating manuscripts changed emendation from a common and popular practice of haphazard guesses to a rational procedure founded on consistently applied principles.

In this same period (1574-1594), Scaliger produced works that established the study of ancient chronology on a solid basis. Scaliger’s 1579 edition of the poetry of the Latin astrologer Manilius was in fact a treatise on astronomy as understood by the ancients and served as preface to Scaliger’s De emendatione temporum (1583; on the correction of chronologies), in which Scaliger argued that a correct understanding of ancient history must be based on a comparative, critical, and analytic study of the surviving fragments of ancient chronological systems (king lists, calendars, and the like) and a correct understanding of how the ancients reckoned the passage of time. Furthermore, Scaliger in a sense here created a new discipline, ancient history, by establishing comparative chronologies not only for Greek and Roman civilization but also for the societies of the ancient Near East (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Judæa). These studies were the foundations of Scaliger’s most important work: Thesaurus temporum (1606; treasure of chronologies), a collection of the known Greek and Latin fragments on chronology and a reconstruction of the great Chronicon (fourth century) of Eusebius. Eusebius had compiled a comparative chronology of Greek, Roman, Christian, and Jewish events back to the time of Abraham, but his chronicle was known only from Saint Jerome’s and other Latin versions. Scaliger’s reconstruction of Eusebius was so good that some later scholars have mistaken Scaliger’s work for Eusebius’s own text. Later study and discovery of other manuscripts confirmed the accuracy of Scaliger’s reconstruction.

In 1594, Scaliger accepted a position at the University of Leiden, where, with no teaching responsibilities, he dedicated his time to scholarly correspondence and encouraging a new generation of scholars who, in their own ways, would carry on his work. He enjoyed complaining of his accommodations and the climate at Leiden but enjoyed even more the honor in which he was held at this Protestant university. His energies, however, were sapped by dispute. Leiden recognized his claim of descent from the princes of Verona. Assorted Jesuits and lay scholars, for whom Scaliger’s historical and textual criticism was perceived as a threat, did not. They attacked Scaliger’s scholarship and religious beliefs by questioning his ancestral pedigree. A few months after completing a pamphlet in his own defense, the embittered scholar died at Leiden, on January 21, 1609, in the company of his colleague and student Daniel Heinz. Scaliger was buried four days later in Saint Mary’s, the church of the Huguenots in Leiden.

Significance

A typical scholarly production of Scaliger’s time was the Adversaria, a miscellany volume wherein an author offered his observations, argued his criticism, and proposed his emendations on a variety of classical texts. Scaliger often affirmed that, while he could have written volumes of Adversaria, he preferred to work on complete scholarly editions of classical authors. Indeed, when his contemporaries saluted Scaliger as among the most learned of any age, they cited as evidence his skill at emendation exhibited in his editions of, for example, Catullus and Manilius.

Later generations acknowledged the worth of those editions but recognized that Scaliger’s studies of ancient chronology were more significant. Furthermore, the breadth of his chronological studies was the manifestation of Scaliger’s firm belief that as broad a knowledge of antiquity as possible was the prerequisite for a proper understanding of ancient texts. Scaliger thus anticipated the nineteenth century German scholarly ideal of Altertumswissenschaft a science of antiquity. In addition, Scaliger’s study of the sources for ancient chronology drew attention to an entire field of history and literature previously unrecognized in Western Europe. In the nineteenth century, students of Byzantine history and literature looked back to Scaliger as their master and as the founder of their discipline.

In retrospect, Scaliger may be recognized as the first of a new breed of scholar. That scholarship ought to impart skills and values was a basic principle of Renaissance Humanism. That principle, in turn, was founded on a tradition stretching back to the Greek historian Polybius and beyond: The ideal historian was involved politically and brought to his studies the experience of life; those studies would then instruct others to lead more effective lives. Scaliger’s father was of this mold. Scaliger, however, thought otherwise: “Scholars should not teach practical politics.” The scholar should, in Scaliger’s estimate, devote himself to scientific study; knowledge should be pursued for purely intellectual, not practical, ends. In this emphasis on “value-free” studies, Scaliger asserted an educational and academic principle that would not be widely recognized until two centuries later and still remains a topic of considerable debate.

Bibliography

Bietenholz, Peter G. Historia and Fabula: Myths and Legends in Historical Thought from Antiquity to the Modern Age. New York: E. J. Brill, 1994. Discusses the ideas of Scaliger and Richard Simon about Old Testament scholarship and objectivity. Includes photographic plates, illustrations, bibliographic references, and index.

Grafton, Anthony. Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship. 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983-1994. Volume 1 takes its subject up to 1579. Grafton treats well Scaliger’s early education and assesses Scaliger’s early writings in their contemporary context. The second volume, more than twice the length of the first, discusses Scaliger’s later life, concentrating especially on the work he did to determine accurate dates for the major events of ancient and medieval history. Includes bibliographic references and index.

Grafton, Anthony, and Lisa Jardine. From Humanism to the Humanities. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986. A fine study of education and the emergence of scholarly disciplines in Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Documents and discusses the education that Scaliger and his brothers received at Bordeaux. An excellent index and full bibliographic footnotes compensate for the lack of a bibliography.

Hall, Vernon, Jr. Life of Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484-1558). Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1950. This is the best single discussion of the elder Scaliger’s life and literary works. Contains information on the education the Scaliger sons received at home and at Bordeaux. Includes reference notes, a bibliography, and a full index. Hall’s discussion of the elder Scaliger’s early (pre-1525) career should be supplemented with Paul Oskar Kristeller’s discussion in American Historical Review 57 (1952): 394-396.

Pattison, Mark. Essays by the Late Mark Pattison. 2 vols. Edited by Henry Nettleship. Reprint. New York: Burt Franklin, 1978. Volume 1 contains two essays that constitute an excellent sketch of Scaliger. Pattison emphasizes both Scaliger’s scholarly work and the circumstances of his life. Volume 2 contains a brief index.

Pfeiffer, Rudolf. History of Classical Scholarship from 1300 to 1850. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. A standard discussion, with emphasis on Scaliger’s place in the history of classical philology. Pfeiffer offers sound critical judgments on Scaliger’s scholarly works and places those works in their contemporary intellectual context. Contains bibliographic footnotes and a full index.

Sandys, John Edwin. From the Revival of Learning to the End of the Eighteenth Century. Vol. 2 in History of Classical Scholarship. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1908. Reprint. New York: Hafner, 1964. Features a straightforward, brief literary biography of Scaliger, with little analysis. Contains bibliographic footnotes and a full index.

Scaliger, Joseph Justus. Autobiography of Joseph Scaliger with Autobiographical Selections from His Letters, His Testament, and the Funeral Orations by Daniel Heinsius and Dominicus Baudius. Edited and translated by George W. Robinson. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1927. The brief (five-page) autobiography takes Scaliger to Leiden in 1594; the selection of letters illustrates Scaliger’s personality; the will offers information on the scholar’s family, library, and other worldly goods. Contains an adequate index, a fine bibliographical introduction by Robinson, and two contemporary portraits of Scaliger.

Smitskamp, R. The Scaliger Collection: A Collection of over Two Hundred Antiquarian Books by and About Josephus Justus Scaliger, with Full Descriptions. Leiden, the Netherlands: Smitskamp Oriental Antiquarium, 1993. In addition to the detailed descriptions of books for sale by the author, this catalog includes a checklist of all known publications by and about Joseph Scaliger through 1993, a list of annotations made by Scaliger, and an index to a nineteenth century biography of Scaliger.