Daniel Heinsius (9 June 1580, Ghent

Ghent

Ghent is a city and a municipality located in the Flemish region of Belgium. It is the capital and biggest city of the East Flanders province. The city started as a settlement at the confluence of the Rivers Scheldt and Lys and in the Middle Ages became one of the largest and richest cities of...

 – 25 February 1655, The Hague

The Hague

The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...

) was one of the most famous scholars of the Dutch Renaissance.

His youth and student years

The troubles of the Spanish war drove Heinsius' parents to settle first at Veere in Zeeland

Zeeland

Zeeland , also called Zealand in English, is the westernmost province of the Netherlands. The province, located in the south-west of the country, consists of a number of islands and a strip bordering Belgium. Its capital is Middelburg. With a population of about 380,000, its area is about...

, then to England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, next at Ryswick and lastly at Flushing

Flushing, Netherlands

Vlissingen is a municipality and a city in the southwestern Netherlands on the former island of Walcheren. With its strategic location between the Scheldt river and the North Sea, Vlissingen has been an important harbour for centuries. It was granted city rights in 1315. In the 17th century...

. In 1596, being already remarkable for his attainments, he was sent to the University of Franeker

University of Franeker

The University of Franeker was a university in Franeker, Friesland, presently part of the Netherlands. It was the second oldest university of the Netherlands, founded shortly after Leiden University....

 to study law

Law

Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

 under Henricus Schotanus. In 1598 he settled at Leiden for the nearly sixty remaining years of his life. There he studied under Joseph Scaliger

Joseph Justus Scaliger

Joseph Justus Scaliger was a French religious leader and scholar, known for expanding the notion of classical history from Greek and Ancient Roman history to include Persian, Babylonian, Jewish and Ancient Egyptian history.-Early life:He was born at Agen, the tenth child and third son of Italian...

, and there he met Marnix de St Aldegonde, Janus Dousa

Janus Dousa

Janus Dousa [Jan van der Does] lord of Noordwyck , Dutch statesman, historian, poet and philologist, the first Librarian of Leiden University Library and the defender of Leiden,-Biography:...

, Paulus Merula, Hugo Grotius

Hugo Grotius

Hugo Grotius , also known as Huig de Groot, Hugo Grocio or Hugo de Groot, was a jurist in the Dutch Republic. With Francisco de Vitoria and Alberico Gentili he laid the foundations for international law, based on natural law...

 and others; he was soon taken into the society of these celebrated men as their equal.

Professor at Leiden University

His proficiency in the classical languages won the praise of all the best scholars of Europe, and offers were made to him, but in vain, to accept honourable positions outside Holland. He soon rose in dignity at the University of Leiden. In 1602 he started lecturing, in 1603 he was appointed professor of poetics, in 1605 professor of Greek, and at the death of Merula in 1607 he succeeded that illustrious scholar as the 4th librarian of Leiden University Library

Leiden University Library

Leiden University Library is a library founded in 1575 in Leiden, Netherlands. It is regarded as a significant place in the development of European culture: it is a part of a small number of cultural centres that gave direction to the development and spread of knowledge during the Enlightenment...

. As a classical scholar Heinsius edited many Latin and Greek classical as well as patristic authors, amongst others: Hesiod (1603), Theocritus

Theocritus

Theocritus , the creator of ancient Greek bucolic poetry, flourished in the 3rd century BC.-Life:Little is known of Theocritus beyond what can be inferred from his writings. We must, however, handle these with some caution, since some of the poems commonly attributed to him have little claim to...

, Bion

Bion

Bion , Greek bucolic poet, was a native of the city of Smyrna and flourished about 100 BC. Most of his work is lost. There remain 17 fragments and the Epitaph of Adonis, a mythological poem on the death of Adonis and the lament of Aphrodite...

 and Moschus

Moschus

Moschus , ancient Greek bucolic poet and student of the Alexandrian grammarian Aristarchus of Samothrace, was born at Syracuse and flourished about 150 BC...

 (1603), Aristotle’s

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

 Ars poetica (1610), Clement of Alexandria

Clement of Alexandria

Titus Flavius Clemens , known as Clement of Alexandria , was a Christian theologian and the head of the noted Catechetical School of Alexandria. Clement is best remembered as the teacher of Origen...

 (1616) and Terentius (1618). He brought out the Epistles of Joseph Scaliger in 1627.

Especially influential was his treatise De tragica constitutione (‘How to make a tragedy’, 1611). It was a personal and easily accessible version of what Aristotle had written on tragedy in his Poetics. A revised edition appeared in 1643 with a slightly different title: De constitutione tragoediae.

In 1609 he printed a first edition of his Latin orations. Ever more voluminous new editions appeared until the final edition of 1642 which comprised 35 orations. The collection ended with the ironical Laus pediculi ('In praise of the louse'), which was translated in English by James Guitard in 1634.

Latin poetry

Heinsius first drew attention to himself as a Latin poet with his Senecan tragedy Auriacus, sive libertas saucia (‘William of Orange, or Freedom Wounded’). In 1607/08 he wrote another tragedy, Herodes infanticida (‘The Massacre of the Innocents’), which was published only in 1632. He was, however, especially prolific in writing elegies, of which a large part was dedicated to his love for a girl called Rossa. A first collection appeared in 1603. Ever larger and revised collections of his Poemata, also containing other genres, saw the light regularly.

Dutch poetry

In 1601 he published, under the pseudonym of Theocritus à Ganda (‘Theocritus from Ghent’), Quaeris quid sit Amor...? (‘Do you ask what love is?’), the first emblem book

Emblem book

Emblem books are a category of mainly didactic illustrated book printed in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries, typically containing a number of emblematic images with explanatory text....

 in Dutch. It was re-edited in 1606/07 with the title Emblemata amatoria (‘Love emblems’). A second emblem book, Spiegel vande doorluchtige vrouwen ( ‘Mirror of illustrious women’), was published in 1606. Heinsius also experimented in Dutch poetry after classical models. His efforts were collected by his friend Petrus Scriverius

Petrus Scriverius

Petrus Scriverius, the Latinized form of Peter Schrijver or Schryver was a Dutch writer and scholar on the history of Holland and Belgium....

 and published as Nederduytsche poemata (‘Dutch poems’) in 1616. They were greatly admired by Martin Opitz, who, in translating the poetry of Heinsius, introduced the German public to the use of the rhyming alexandrine

Alexandrine

An alexandrine is a line of poetic meter comprising 12 syllables. Alexandrines are common in the German literature of the Baroque period and in French poetry of the early modern and modern periods. Drama in English often used alexandrines before Marlowe and Shakespeare, by whom it was supplanted...

.

His later years

In 1617 he married Ermgard Rutgers, sister of Janus Rutgersius (alias of Mr. Johan Rutgers 1589-1625) one of Scaliger's favorite pupils. They had two children: Nicolas

Nikolaes Heinsius the Elder

Nikolaes Heinsius the Elder , Dutch classical scholar and poet, son of Daniel Heinsius, was born at Leiden.His boyish Latin poem Breda expugnata was printed in 1637, and attracted much attention. In 1642 he began his wanderings with a visit to England in search of manuscripts of the classics; but...

 (1620), who was to become a famous Latin poet and book collector, and Elizabeth (1623). At the Synod of Dort

Synod of Dort

The Synod of Dort was a National Synod held in Dordrecht in 1618-1619, by the Dutch Reformed Church, to settle a divisive controversy initiated by the rise of Arminianism. The first meeting was on November 13, 1618, and the final meeting, the 154th, was on May 9, 1619...

 (1618-1619) Heinsius was secretary on behalf of the States-General

States-General of the Netherlands

The States-General of the Netherlands is the bicameral legislature of the Netherlands, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The parliament meets in at the Binnenhof in The Hague. The archaic Dutch word "staten" originally related to the feudal classes in which medieval...

. Afterwards he paid more attention to theology and worked on the text of the Greek New Testament

New Testament

The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....

 for Elzeviers edition (1624, 1633). In these years he also wrote a large didactic poem, De contemptu mortis (‘On the contempt of death’, 1621), which has a Christian-Stoical content. His wife died in 1633, and Heinsius got into a conflict with Claudius Salmasius

Claudius Salmasius

Claudius Salmasius is the Latin name of Claude Saumaise , a French classical scholar.-Life:Salmasius was born at Semur-en-Auxois in Burgundy. His father, a counsellor of the parlement of Dijon, sent him, at the age of sixteen, to Paris, where he became intimate with Isaac Casaubon...

, who was appointed as his colleague in 1631. He became more and more lonely and embittered. He stopped lecturing in 1647. He died in 1655 and was buried in Leiden.

He collected some Greek manuscripts, e.g. codex 155

Minuscule 155

Minuscule 155 , ε 403 , is a Greek minuscule manuscript of the New Testament, on parchment. Palaeographically it has been assigned to the 13th century. It has marginalia.- Description :...

.