This book gives a detailed account of the most interesting period in the life of the Dutch humanist scholar Isaac Vossius (Leiden 1618 – Windsor 1689). It is largely based on Vossius’s extensive correspondence, much of which has never been published before. In particular, Isaac’s correspondence with his father, Gerardus Joannes Vossius, has been thoroughly investigated and is a prime source of information here. Isaac Vossius’s travels through England, France and Italy followed his formative years at Leiden and Amsterdam, during which time he had come under the strong influence of the French scholar, Claude Saumaise. A narrative account of these travels is given, and Vossius’s contacts with the various circles of scholars that he encountered are discussed in detail. Such contacts allowed him to enter libraries otherwise difficult of access, and there he continued his search for manuscripts. Vossius’s period as a wandering scholar can be said to have been rounded off with the year that he spent in Paris, as secretary to Hugo Grotius. All this time Vossius was building up his own collection of books, and the fruits of these library researches were the philological editions that he began to publish in the four years that followed. A new phase of Vossius’s life opened in 1648, when Queen Christina of Sweden invited him (then still only thirty) to come to her court. The following six years were the most turbulent in the scholar’s life. He became the queen’s tutor in Greek, and also her personal confidant. Under Vossius’s guidance, the queen steeped herself in the study of Plato and the Neoplatonists; while the philosophy of Descartes – whom she likewise invited to Stockholm – seems to have held little interest for her. It was while Vossius was at the Swedish court that he finally came into open conflict with Saumaise, his former mentor. Vossius built up a magnificent library for Christina. This collection was however dispersed even before it has been completed; though, unfortunately, not before Vossius’s own books had been inadvertently incorporated into that library. With the queen’s approval, Vossius then selected a new collection for himself from the royal library. In 1655 Vossius, disillusioned, withdrew to the quiet of his own study, in The Hague. Since 1690 his collection of books and manuscripts has been housed in the University Library at Leiden, where it forms the basis of the international fame of that institution.

Of the many fine scholars who made and have maintained the high reputation of the Dutch Republic in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Franciscus Junius the Younger (1591-1677) is one who has not yet been given the attention he deserves. Born and brought up among the élite Calvinist scholars of Leiden University, he began his career as a theologian. As a consequence of the religious quarrels between the Arminians and Gomarists, he resigned from his office, and went to England where in 1620 he was attached as a tutor and librarian to the household of the Earl of Arundel, an assiduous art-collector. His work as Arundel's librarian resulted in the publication in 1637 of De pictura veterum, a penetrating analysis of the Classical arts. This book laid the foundation of modern art-history. Later in his life Junius devoted most of his time and energy to the study of the Old Germanic languages, culminating in 1665 in the publication of the first edition of the Gothic Bible, together with a Gothic dictionary. The present volume contains contributions on many aspects of Junius's life, his work as an art-historian, as a Neo-Latin author, his studies of Philip Sydney and Edmund Spencer, and of his Germanic philology. A check-list of his correspondence completes the volume. Contributors include C.S.M. Rademaker, Philipp Fehl, Colette Nativel, Judith Dundas, Chris H. Heesakkers, Ph.H. Breuker, Peter J. Lucas, E.G. Stanley and Rolf H. Bremmer Jr., and Sophie van Romburgh.

This volume deals with the comparative study of Old Germanic languages in the Low Countries, in the middle of the seventeenth century; with special attention to the work of the philologist and lawyer Jan van Vliet (1622-1666).

As an historiographic monograph, this book offers a detailed survey of the professional evolution and significance of an entire discipline devoted to the history of science. It provides both an intellectual and a social history of the development of the subject from the first such effort written by the ancient Greek author Eudemus in the Fourth Century BC, to the founding of the international journal, Historia Mathematica, by Kenneth O. May in the early 1970s.