Erycius Puteanus

Erycius Puteanus [A latinization of Hendrick van den Putten, Errijck de Put or Eric van der Putte.] (4 November 1574, Venlo - 17 September 1646, Leuven) was a humanist and philologist from the Low Countries.

Life

He studied at the schools of Dordrecht and Cologne (Collège des Trois-Couronnes), where he took the degree of Master of Arts, 28 February, 1595. He then followed, at Leuven, the lectures on ancient history given by Justus Lipsius.

In 1597 he travelled to Italy, and lived in intimacy with the learned men of that country, especially Cardinal Federigo Borromeo, through whom he was appointed professor of Latin at the Palatine School of Milan from 1600 to 1606. Then the States of Brabant offered him the chair left vacant by Lipsius at Leuven.

He taught with éclat at the Collegium Trilingue at the University of Leuven for forty years. He was loaded with favours by reigning princes: the Archduke Albert appointed him his honorary counsellor (1612), and increased his annual pension by 200 ducats (1614), and added the reversion of Château-César. At the same time he filled, after 1603, the post of historiographer to Philip IV of Spain, on behalf of the Milanese, with other appointments, often ill-paid in consequence of a treasury depleted by continual wars. His rash language provoked political animosities, and he was almost driven into exile by request of James I of England, who wrongly believed him to be the author of an injurious lampoon.

He fathered 17 children.

Work

Puteanus was an encyclopedist; his ideal, which saw in numerous and varied acquirements the fullest measure of wisdom and the surest means of arriving at virtue the end of all knowledge, had been suggested to him by his master Justus Lipsius. During a certain period of his literary activity (1603-19), he detached himself from Lipsius by aiming at personal leadership of a school.

He dreamed of re-establishing in Belgium the splendid classical period and the cult of eloquence which he had derived from Italy. When he saw the uselessness of his efforts, the indifference of a too utilitarian age inclined towards positive sciences, he again threw himself into encyclopedic authorship and produced his best chronological works. His merit as a philologist is somewhat limited; but his dissertations, reproduced in the "Thesauri" of Grævius and Gronovius, are of value. As a whole, his influence on Belgian philology has been unfortunate.

Editions

For the history of the numerous writings and editions of Erycius Puteanus see

*Roersch and Vanderhaegen in Bibliotheca Belgica (1904-5), nos. 166, 167, 168, 171
*Roersch in Biographie Nationale de Belgique, XVIII (1904)
*Simar, Etude sur Erycius Puteanus (Louvain, 1909)

Notes

External links

* [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12584b.htm Source]