10 Facts About Justus Lipsius

Justus Lipsius was a Flemish Catholic philologist, philosopher, and humanist.

Justus Lipsius taught at the universities in Jena, Leiden, and Leuven.

Justus Lipsius's parents sent him early to the Jesuit college in Cologne, but they feared that he might become a member of the Society of Jesus, so when he was sixteen they removed him to the University of Leuven in Leuven.

Justus Lipsius then returned to Leuven, but the Eighty Years' War soon drove him to take refuge via Antwerp to the Northern Netherlands, where, in 1579, the newly founded University of Leiden appointed him professor of history.

Justus Lipsius held the position of rector of the university for four terms and was a driving force behind the growth and innovation in the early years.

The eleven years that Justus Lipsius spent in Leiden were the period of his greatest productivity.

Justus Lipsius wrote that a government should recognize only one religion, and extirpate dissent by fire and sword.

Justus Lipsius was not expected to teach, and appointments as privy councillor and historiographer royal to King Philip II of Spain eked out his trifling stipend.

Justus Lipsius continued to publish dissertations as before, the chief being his De militia romana and his Lovanium, intended as an introduction to a general history of Brabant.

The former headquarters of the European Council and the Council of the European Union, the Justus Lipsius building, bears his name, having been constructed over the site of Rue Juste Lipse, which linked Rue Belliard to Rue de la Loi in the European Quarter of Brussels.