THE MANY LIVES OF BONAVENTURA VULCANIUS 1614–2010 (EXPLORING BIOGRAPHIES AND INTRODUCING THIS COLLECTION OF PAPERS)* Hélène Cazes Ter denos docui Leidis binosque per annos Cattigenum pubem Graijugenum ore loqui. Nunc manibus, pedibusque oculisque, atque auribus aeger, Et senio languens, lampada trado aliis. 1 [For two and thirty years I have in Leiden Taught the Cattis’ youth to speak the Acheans’ language. Now my hands, feet, eyes, and ears are aching; Drained by old age, the lame I pass to others.] his epitaph—composed for himself by Vulcanius—is the irst portrait of the humanist to be collected in this volume of Vulcanius’ studies: the two elegant Latin distiches were given, surely by the author and biographee himself, to the young Joannes Meursius (1579–1639), who was then gathering material for his professors’ biographies, the Icons of illustrious men, which would be published in 1613. We know of several manuscript versions of this poem, now kept among Vulcanius’ papers at the University Library of Leiden: these drats attest to the * I would like to thank the following persons and Institutes for making this research possible, accurate, and fruitful: the Scaliger Institute of the University Library in Leiden and the Brill Publishers, who granted me a Brill Fellowship for a proj- ect on Bonaventura Vulcanius’ Album Amicorum. I am particularly grateful for the trust, guidance, and support of the curators and staf of Leiden’s library, notably Dr. Anton van der Lem, Mr. Kasper Van Ommen, Prof. Harm Beukers, and Mr. Ernst- Jan Munnik. Papers were read and diligently proof-read by Prof. Gordon Shrimpton, Prof. Jan Just Witkam, Mrs. Annick Macaskill, and Mr. Michael Kyle. Last but cer- tainly not least, I am very much indebted to all the authors of this volume, especially Prof. homas Conley, who patiently and scrupulously checked, edited and fostered this paper. 1 Illustris Academia Lugd.-Batava: id est Virorum Clarissimorum Icones, Elogia ac vitae, qui eam scriptis suis illustrarunt (Leiden: 1613) sig. D 1. (See Annex 1). he whole entry dedicated to Vulcanius in this 1613 edition appears verbatim in Melchior Adam’s Vitae Germanorum superiori, et quod excurrit, seculo philosophicis et human- ioribus literis clarorum (Francfort: 1615), 1, 525 (See Annex 2), and in Johannes Meur- sius’ Athenae Batavae. Sive, De Urbe Leidensi et Academia, Virisque, qui utramque ingenio suo, atque scriptis, illustrarunt: libri duo (Leiden: 1625), 105 for the epitaph. All texts commented and quoted in this paper are given in the annexes. © 2010 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands (ISBN: 978-90-04-19209-6)