Poets, Patrons, and Professors

Sir Philip Sidney, Daniel Rogers, and the Leiden Humanists

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Introduction

An ideal academia

On 8 February 1575, some eight years after the beginning of the Dutch struggle against the tyranny of Spain and at a time so unsettled that few would have risked predicting an ultimate victory, the solemn opening ceremony of the first University of the northern Netherlands took place, little more than a month after the Prince of Orange had urged its foundation¹.

‘So great is the confidence of the Gueux’, the politician Hubert Languet wrote to the Duke of Saxony, ‘that now they consider the foundation of a public school or Academy in the Dutch fortress of Leiden which the Spanish have besieged only a few months ago’.² Perhaps Leiden's loyalty in recent trials had not itself been the immediate occasion for the establishment of this Protestant University, but at least there was an obvious connexion between the University's location and the momentous year of 1574. In that year the city guard under the poet-scholar Janus Dousa (Jan van der Does), and the citizens of Leiden themselves, had successfully endured the hardships of a Spanish siege - assisted only by a handful of others, who happened to be Englishmen³.

1 See Bronnen tot de geschiedenis der Leidsche Universiteit, ed. P.C. Molhuysen, The Hague, I, 1913, pp. 1*-2*.

2 H. Languet to August Duke of Saxony, Prague, 1 March 1575 (Huberti Langueti epistolae secretae, Halle, 1699, I, [ii], p. 75). See Appendix II, no. 1.

3 Avis, 23 August 1574: ‘Within the towne are noe soldiers, but the burgars (saving George Gascoyns lieutenent, named Cromvell, with 30 of his compagnye, whiche, beinge owt to discover, recoverid into the towne, as the reast of theire compagny in Valkenburgh weare invironed by the ennymye)’ (Relations politiques des Pays-Bas et de l'Angleterre, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, Brussels, VII, 1888, no. MMDCCCXV). The poet-soldier Gascoigne himself had had the gates barred against him and was imprisoned by the Spanish (see G. Gascoigne, The fruites of Warre, in Complete Poems, ed. W.C. Hazlitt, London, 1869, I, pp. 147-196). A few documents relating to payments made to these English soldiers are preserved in the Leiden town archives (Secr. arch., nos. 1334, 1335, 1364); among them is a minute description of various goods left behind by ‘Ritsard lasenbe’, servant of ‘Coronnel Chester’.

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Twelve years later these same citizens were to dramatize their gruesome experience in the ‘seven several shewes’ with which they entertained their English Governor General, the Earl of Leicester, and his retinue on the occasion of his state entry into the University town¹. For, then and at all times, the University has never wearied of linking its origin with those perilous months and of considering itself as having been established to commemorate the event and to further the cause of Libertas.

During the first few years after the great siege of 1574 the country as a whole was impoverished and badly in need of military and economic support from without². With England, it is true, a close political relationship was to develop in a not so distant future. But at this stage the Dutch had little immediate hope of succour from abroad, not even from Queen Elizabeth, though Leicester, long before his actual commission - in a letter to William Davison, the Queen's ambassador in the Low Countries - shows that he is conscious of their distress in the following lines written from Norwich, ‘somwhat nere you’, where he could almost hear the oppressed people from the Netherlands ‘crye out uppon such neghboures’. ‘Well,’ he added, ‘God help them and us too, fearing our neede wylbe more than thers.’³

The ‘confidence of the Gueux’ seemed great indeed, but the foundation of an Academia must have been more than either a symbol of optimism or an irresponsible gesture of self-confidence. To at least one practical and urgent problem - the

1 The Third volume of Chronicles... First compiled by Raphaell Holinshed... continued to the yeare 1586, London, [1587], p. 1419. It is worth, observing that the considerable detail with which the Earl's visit is described exceeds any Dutch account (see also p. 77, note 2).

2 Cf. N. Bruyninck to W. Davison, Antwerp, 14 August 1578 (London, Public Record Office, SP 83/8, no. 28) on the critical condition of the Leiden and Haarlem clothtrade.

3 R. Dudley to W. Davison, [Norwich], 18 August 1578 (P.R.O., SP 83/8, no. 36).

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training of Protestant preachers - it hoped to supply the answer. Thus ‘Sacra Scriptura’, seated in her chariot, led the procession of magistrates and scholars who went to hear the opening address in February 1575. She was, however, not alone, but followed by ‘Justitia’, ‘Medicina’, and ‘Pallas’; and in Neptune's barge, rowed down the Rapenburg canal, ‘Apollo’ plucked the strings of his lute to accompany the nine Muses' singing and playing.

It may be worth our while to enquire into the background of the occasion a little further. More than once it has been shown that the guiding principle of the founders of the University of Leiden was simply to provide the Low Countries with a Protestant school of Theology.¹ That this motive remained unexpressed until Town Secretary Jan van Hout's speech in 1592² - and then only to an audience of officials assembled for the opening ceremony of a ‘College of Theology’ - is no ground for arguing that it was not the main one, because at the time, certainly before 1581, the year of the ‘Placard of Dismissal’, there was ample reason to disguise so audacious an endeavour. But there is evidence in the foundation-day pageant which makes it desirable to qualify this claim.

In accordance with the tradition of the period, this pageant was a tableau whereby ‘secret’ intentions could be displayed without the stricter commitment of the written word. As a testimony, both chronologically and formally, it should surely be given priority over Van Hout's later assertion. The pageant itself was simple, crude almost compared with what Italy, France, and even Flanders would have made of it, but at least it expressed in a ‘modern’ idiom what the University proposed to introduce. Jan van Hout himself, Dousa's closest comrade in arms and poetry, was responsible for the devices

1 See P. Dibon, L'Enseignement Philosophique dans les Universités Néerlandaises à l'Epoque Pré-Cartesienne (1575-1650), Amsterdam, 1954, Ch. I, passim. Dibon gives a full account of other contributions to our knowledge of the subject.

2 Inneleydinge ende aenvang vant Collegie der theologien, 1592 , Leiden, F. Raphelengius, 1593, p. 23 [i.e. p. 15]: ‘... De voornemste bewegende oorsaecke der stichtinge deser Universiteyt (t'sy my geoorlooft t'geheym te openbaren) was de Theologie.’ Cf. also Bronnen, I, p. 126*.

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and the triumphal arches.¹ When the procession reached the University gate, ‘Apollo’ and his nine Muses welcomed the four Faculties and pronounced the Latin verses which Dousa - whose motto was Musae ante omnia dulces - had composed for the occasion. There were thirty verses in all, including the ones painted on the arches.² But there is no evidence of any unusual emphasis on the Faculty of Theology - on the contrary, every figure in the pageant had his lines, except ‘Sacra Scriptura’ and the four evangelists. Dousa had even added one figure, or group, to those shown on the engraving, viz. ‘Artes, sive Humanitatis studia’.

When we also consider Dousa's enlightened views and remember that he held - and retained - a key-position in these formative years, we begin to realize that ‘the confidence of the Gueux’ had a much more general, and decidedly philosophic basis. The liberal poet-politician, who was in charge of the earliest preparations for the enterprise, was enough of a humanist to share the belief that states are ruled by knowledge, not by arms - as if to remind us, ‘Plato’ also rode in the opening pageant. If a well-governed state has need of learning and virtue, the pageant seems to say, then how much more strongly must this apply to a state which is struggling to establish itself? Seen in this light, the opening ceremony symbolized not a defiant move, nor merely the foundation of a Divinity School, but the introduction of a ‘new’ intellectual movement into the northern Provinces.

The Frenchman Guillaume Feugueray - who had been appointed Professor of Theology - drafted in June 1575 the programme of studies in comparable terms. The opening paragraph read:

Divine Plato, whom Tully called the philosophers' god, enjoyed such a reputation for wisdom that the Thebans and Phocenses allowed him to found a city to be ruled by such laws as he deemed requisite; among other things he decided that in the perfect common-wealth all arts of mind and body should be acquired

1 See R. van Luttervelt, ‘De optocht ter gelegenheid van de inwijding der Leidse Universiteit’, Jaarboekje voor geschiedenis en oudheidkunde van Leiden, 50, Leiden, 1958, pp. 87 ff.

2 Janus Dousa, Nova poemata, Leiden, 1575, sig. M v-vij.

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1. Sacra Scriptura in her chariot, attended by the four Evangelists; Apollo and the Muses in Neptune's barge.
From the engraving of the pageant on 8 February 1575, the foundation-day of the University of Leiden.

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before the twentieth year, and the rest of a man's life devoted to the public duties of war and peace.¹

Feugueray accordingly proposed an educational system, based on a period of fourteen years, at the end of which a doctorate in Theology, Law, or Medicine might be acquired to follow the degree of Artium Magister that had completed the student's schooling in the encyclopaedia of knowledge. Thus a School and a University were to be founded: that is to say, only after having been well-grounded both in Letters and in the special subject of their Faculty - Theology, Law, or Medicine - would the young graduates be fit for public office. Though Feugueray's humanistic ideal was not to be completely realized, in the statement of this professor, who had, incidentally, been recommended by the Prince of Orange², there is no explicit indication that the University was to be primarily a Divinity School, however patently this equality of Faculties expressed the revolutionarily scholarly approach of the time to the study of Theology. Moreover, there was a considerable number of Catholic students in the University, who suffered more from the opposition of their church authorities than at the hands of University officials, who actually protected them.³

Both Feugueray's programme and the foundation-day pageant express the proposed activities of the new Academia more clearly than the official administrative correspondence of the period. They already warrant a certain reconsideration of the popular view of the University's underlying idea. But besides, there is more evidence. To publicize the new University, which was intended to emulate Louvain and Douay, Dousa produced a volume of Nova poemata printed ‘in nova academia nostra’, for which Van Hout supplied the funds. In it, in the form of a long ‘Carmen’ which apparently dated

1 Bronnen, I, no. 26. See Appendix II, no. 2.

2 Bronnen, I, no. 19. To a large extent this spirit still guided the next generation, as may be seen in Constantyn Huygens's education. Cf. A.G.H. Bachrach, Sir Constantine Huygens and Britain: a Pattern of Cultural Exchange in the Seventeenth Century, Leiden, 1962, pp. 12-16, 44-50.

3 For this information and that contained at p. 7, note 2, I am indebted to Dr. P.A.M. Geurts.

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from the early weeks of 1575, he formulated his aims in eloquent and unmistakably tendentious terms. The lecturers of Louvain, he claimed, were ‘rustic and unrefined’, while ‘the bald herd of Baccalaurei’ at Douay suffered from a sad lack of intellectual freedom. Leiden, he promised, would bring a complete change:

The Prince himself has left Themis, the genius of Holy Scripture, and the art of Medicine in the hands of Minerva, saying: ‘The Lycaeum be your concern, I gladly leave it to you because it is yours by right’.

At Leiden, he goes on to say, with us ‘who favour politer Muses’, the arts will be restored to their rightful place. ‘Louvain must therefore give way to Leiden, and Douay must follow Louvain, and so must all other Academiae’ - Pisa, Paris, Dôle, and even ancient Athens. ‘From everywhere young men will flock to learn the Ars Palladia which the Greeks called Sophia, and the Romans Sapientia’. Therefore,

Ephebi from everywhere, gather where Phoebus calls and the Nine Sisters: because there Minerva presides over Dutchmen and foreigners alike.¹

This poem anticipates both in date and content the foundation day pageant, and even Feugueray's draft for a programme of studies.

The evidence, in other words, suggests that the guiding principle in founding this Protestant University was the introduction of a complete humanistic Academia in which no Faculty was necessarily to be superior to another. And it can be concluded, in view of the avowed educational theories and the peculiar moment selected for putting them into practice, that the University was confidently created not in spite of, but because of the political chaos of the moment, in an attempt to let Sapientia establish order and harmony. The same motive is implied in the University Charter which, fearing that ‘morals, science, and learning

1 ‘Iani Duzae Nordovicis carmen hendecasyllabis addendum, in gratiam novae ab Aurasino Principe recens constitutae Lugduni Batavorum Academiae conscriptum, Ad Cornelium Regium, & Gerardum Hoghevaenium AEmilij F. Collegas, unaque secum Decreto Publico Academiae eidem inaugurandae Curatores delegatos’ (Dousa, Poemata, 1575, sig. P iij-Q iiij). See Appendix II, no. 3a.

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would be extinguished to the lessening of the glory of God and involving great harm to the common-wealth’, instructed the Senate ‘freely and in public to teach Theology, Law, and Medicine, and also Philosophy and all other liberal Arts’.¹

Explicit and final evidence is given in three orationes on the Academy's foundation delivered in 1591 and 1592 by Dousa's friend Bonaventura Vulcanius (De Smed)², the Professor of Greek who, appointed in 1578, had been lecturing at Leiden since 1581. Vulcanius, who refers to the University as ‘tutissimum hoc Musis asylum’, praises the Prince of Orange for making ‘his Batavia to abound in men who not only protect it with martial courage but also stabilize the country with their insight and wisdom’³: at Leiden ‘a new generation would grow up, educated in the best arts and sciences for the benefit of State and Church’⁴. To him the Three Faculties hold equal positions, while the study of Letters provides each with a basic discipline, and gratefully he observes that

whereas in other Universities some one art or science prospers more especially and leaves the others in a state of neglect and non-practice, here every kind of art and discipline flourishes so greatly that each seems to vie with the others.⁵

Throughout the orationes, Vulcanius' unbiassed testimony stresses and repeats that the founders' ideal for this Musarum domicilium was to cultivate virtus and doctrina⁶ as a major contribution towards establishing order in church and state.

It must not be forgotten that this central aim has often

1 Bronnen, I, no. 7.

2 ‘Oratio... de Laudibus Academiae Leydensis, 6 July. 1592, quum Balduinus Hamaeus et Laurentius Brant doctores medicinae crearentur’; ‘Oratio... de Academiarum institutione, 4 Apr. 1591, quum Henricus Wyntgis doctor iuris crearetur’; ‘Oratio... de Academiarum institutione, 26 Sep. 1591, quum Ant. Hagenoius doctor theologiae crearetur’ (all three MSS. bound up together in MS. Vulcanius 9, Leiden, Univ. libr.). See above, p. 5, note 3.

3 f. 56^v. See Appendix II, no. 3^b.

4 f. 63^v. See Appendix II, no. 3^c.

5 f. 58^v. See Appendix II, no. 3^d.

6 This phrase continues to appear in their letters: cf. J. Lipsius to J. Dousa in 1585 (see p. 118).

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been modified by individual emphasis. While Van Hout in 1592 had to allude to the training of preachers, Dousa was led to favour the bonae literae for more or less private reasons. Both Dousa and Van Hout were concerned with the reform of Dutch poetry; and Dousa, a pupil of Dorat, acquainted with Ronsard, familiar with De Baïf, would scarcely have allowed such an ideal opportunity to pass without attempting to introduce into ‘his’ nova Academia that veneration for poetry which his Parisian period had taught him to propagate.

In fine, though there may possibly have been two ‘opposite’ schools of thought - one primarily interested in training for the ministry, the other more devoted to ‘the politer Muses’ - it seems more accurate to regard them as varying trends or interpretations within one and the same ideal Academia. The apparent absence, incidentally, of actual students to fill the lecture rooms in 1575 shows strikingly the idealistic nature of the experiment.

What has emerged, then, is that behind the University's foundation was a complex interaction of motives inspired by various liberal ideals within the realms of politics, religion, and the arts. This interaction was to account for the pattern of its early years, and these three aspects marked out the common ground for its first contacts with England. A growing interest in England is hinted at even in the foundation-day pageant. Dousa and Van Hout, the more deliberately because contrary to all the rules of heraldry, put a Garter - not the Golden Fleece - round the crests of the Prince and the Provinces on the festive barge. The floating pageant of the Leiden Muses displaying the Order of the Garter was not only a meaningful allegory in respect of subsequent political events, but also suggestive of the literary scene.