Gerardus Joannes Vossius (1577-1649)

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Summary

Gerardus Joannes Vossius was born at Heidelberg in 1577. His father, Jan Vos, a protestant minister, migrated in the same year to Holland with his family, where he was soon called to pastorates at Leimuyden and Furnes and finally at Dordrecht. In the next year his wife, Cornelia van Buel, died, and in 1585, only three months after his remarriage, Jan Vos died too. Gerardus and his sister Maria were taken into the home of the widow Barbara van der Myle. The Latin School of Dordrecht was flourishing when Gerardus became a pupil there. In 1595 he entered the Leyden Theological College and attended lectures at Leyden University. After his taking the degree of Magister Artium, Vossius turned his attention to theology. In 1600 he accepted a call to return to his old school at Dordrecht as a teacher, where, after some months, he was chosen as rector, which he remained until 1615. Under his management the school flourished again and Vossius's publications in these years laid the foundation of his great scholarly reputation. In 1602 he married Elisabeth van den Corput, a daughter of a leading protestant minister in Dordrecht. Of their three children two died in infancy, and his wife died in 1606. In August of the next year, Vossius married Elisabeth Junius, a daughter of Franciscus Junius the elder. By her he had nine children of whom two died in infancy too.

In 1615 the Count of Bentheim invited Vossius to teach at the ‘Gymnasium’ of Steinfurt, but a more pressing call came from Leyden, where, on the recommendation of Hugo Grotius, he was asked to assume the regency of the Theological College. The position was very difficult. In these years the controversy within the Dutch Reformed Church over the doctrines of Grace and Predestination came to a head. In 1618 Vossius published his Historia Pelagianismi and he hoped to reach a peaceful settlement of the current religious disputes with this work, but it served only to raise doubts of Vossius's orthodoxy. When in the summer following the Synod of Dordrecht the university teaching staff was purged, Vossius was dismissed from his regency, though he was retained as a member of the university. In 1622 he was appointed professor of eloquence and chronology. From than on, Vossius's academic career was one of unbroken success. His reputation had extended to England and Vossius was offered the professorate of history at Cambridge, but invited to

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teach Greek at Leyden, he declined to move to Cambridge. Through the kind offices of William Laud, Vossius was given a canon's stall at Canterbury and his son John became a fellow of Jesus College at Cambridge. In November 1629 Vossius himself spent a few weeks in England, where he was taken to see Oxford and Cambridge, and where he met and greatly admired King Charles I, and was installed at Canterbury. In May 1631 Vossius moved with his family to Amsterdam, where he was invited to be the first rector and professor of history of the just founded Athenaeum Illustre. In January 1632 the opening ceremony of the new foundation took place, at wich Vossius delivered the first lecture, the Oratio de historiae utilitate. At Amsterdam Vossius not only prepared young men to go to university, but also lectured to the most eminent citizens and foreigners. His last years were marred by domestic tragedy. One after the other, his promising children died, until only Isaac was left, whose travels kept him far from home. The turn of events in England also saddened Vossius, for it meant the destruction of his own ideals. Vossius died on 17 March 1649.

Vossius wrote a vast number of books and his writings deal with every kind of learning. The object of his work was not to invent new ideas, but to systematize and interpret the ideas of the past and of his own day. It is not, therefore, the materials with wich he started, but the way in wich he selected and combined them that is interesting about Vossius. He was quite typical of his time and that is the reason why a study of his work suggests itself. It is impossible to give an account of all the works by Vossius, but the bibliography shows the great diversity of subjects Vossius studied on. His lexicographical works De historicis Graecis, De historicis Latinis, Institutiones Oratoriae, Institutiones poëticae and Etymologicon Latinum were read for the useful information they gave, wich was immense. These books were not a source of inspiration, but a quarry of facts. His books for schools had a wide influence on the teaching in the Latin Schools in the Netherlands. A few of his works, however, gave some new ideas and are very interesting for the critical way they deal with the traditional data. Fine specimina of that kind are Vossius's Dissertationes tres de tribus symbolis, his Aristarchus and his Theologia Gentilis.

Vossius lived in Holland at the height of its Golden Age. He had numerous friends among the best intellectual society of the Netherlands. His life, though devoted to study, was by no means a life of isolation. Vossius also belonged to the most prominent citizens of the European ‘Republic of Letters’. He kept up a voluminous correspondence with scholars in England and many parts of the continent. His work was unanimously accepted and approved by his contemporaries, and particularly by those among them were who were best qualified to judge. Even those who disagreed with him did so with expressions of high regard. Vossius was able to remains on friendly terms with reasonable men of every shade of

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opinion in the religious spectrum: orthodox-Calvinists, Lutherans, Arminians, Catholics; and even the Deist Lord Herbert of Cherbury and the Jewish scholar Menasseh ben Israel are to be found within the vast circle of his correspondents and friends. His large connection and his teaching gave him a wide influence in the world of learning of his days and the time after that. But Vossius was a man, who walked at the end of a file and closed the gate behind it. The work he did was what was most necessary in his own time, but it could never occupy the same pre-eminence again. Here we have what is certainly the deepest reason of the waning of Vossius's reputation, but which also suggests why a study of Vossius may be of interest. He must now be regarded as a representative of a very important stage in the history of thought.