Primary Contributors:

Chris Heesakkers (†) and Wil Heesakkers-Kamerbeek

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Janus Dousa (1545–1604)

At the age of just five Janus Dousa, heer van Noordwijk, lost both his parents. He was educated in Lier, near Antwerp, as well as with Henricus Junius in Delft, before continuing his studies in Louvain, Douai, and Paris. As a student, he began an Album Amicorum. He had to break off his studies at the time of his marriage with Elisabeth van Zuylen van Nyeveld. Between 1571 and 1589 he served on the board of the Hoogheemraadschap Rijnland [the Water Board for Rijnland], and he was sent on three occasions by the States of Holland on a diplomatic mission to England to seek support in the struggle against Spain.

Dousa was a prolific Latin poet. His first collection of poems was published by Willem Silvius and appeared in Antwerp in 1569. His poetical activities furnished him with many friendships and contacts, for example with such scholars as Janus Lernutius, Lucas Fruterius, Victor Giselinus, Hadrianus Junius, Justus Lipsius, Paulus Melissus, and—later—Daniel Heinsius and Janus Gruterus. Within this circle he talked and wrote about his philological work on the texts of Sallustius, Horace, Catullus, Tibullus, Petronius, Plautus, and Lucilius.

Janus the Younger, the first of ten children, was born on 16 January 1571. Two years after his birth, the family moved from Noordwijk to Leiden, where Dousa was put in command during the second siege of the Spanish army (26 May–3 October 1574). Following the liberation Dousa, as commissioner of William of Orange, was appointed temporary governor of the city, together with Jacob van der Does, to whom he was distantly related. Early in 1575, Dousa and two other deputies of the States of Holland were charged to establish a university in Leiden. Dousa held the position of Curator of Leiden University for the rest of his life. In this role, he encouraged Lipsius to Leiden and also, after the latter’s unexpected departure, Scaliger. The reputation of these two figures as exceptional scholars attracted considerable numbers of students to the fledgling University.

From 1585, Dousa served as the first librarian of the University until, eight years later, he was succeeded in this role by his gifted son, Janus. At the same time, he was appointed historiographer of the province of Holland, a position that resulted in a series of contacts with other historiographers about, for example, the history of Friesland. In close cooperation with his son, Janus Dousa the Younger, he produced a history of medieval Holland, the Annales, that appeared initially in verse and later in prose. As sole author, Dousa finished this work after his son’s premature death in 1597, a heavy blow that shattered him, his wife, and their Leiden circle of friends. In 1591, Dousa was appointed judge in the Supreme Court in The Hague, a position that prompted his move to The Hague.

Through his correspondence and his poetry, Dousa is revealed as an affectionate and committed personality who took full advantage of his noble origin. Indeed, he expanded the network that he inherited through birth. Thanks to both his national and international contacts and his tireless, creative attitude he was able to play a vital role in the early years of the Dutch Republic.

Partners and Additional Contributors

At his death in 2018, Chris Heesakkers left in typescript an unedited inventory of the correspondence of Janus Dousa that had been waiting for the appearance of ILE IV [Justus Lipsius. Epistolae, IV]. By the time this was published in 2012, other work had taken priority and an edition of the inventory was never realized. Anton van der Lem, who had typed out the inventory in 1980, Dirk van Miert (SKILLNET project), and Jeanine De Landtsheer (†) promised Chris they would ensure it was published, a promise that has been fulfilled here in EMLO by his wife, Wil Heesakkers-Kamerbeek. Anton, Dirk, and Jeanine have been of great help with their advice.

For the correspondence with Giselinus, the resumés displayed in EMLO are those Chris Heesakkers drafted for the Giselinus letters in his dissertation ‘Praecidanea Dousana’ (1976). The resumés of the correspondence with Hadrianaus Junius were copied out from the Junius catalogue already in EMLO contributed by Chris Heesakkers, Dirk van Miert, and Nathalie Smit. The Dutch resumés of the correspondence with Lipsius in ILE were translated into English. The resumés of the Scaliger correspondence come from the edition of Dirk van Miert and Paul Botley (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2012). The resumés of the correspondence with William of Orange were translated from the database ‘The correspondence of William of Orange 1549–1584‘ (edited by J. H. Kluiver, J. G. Smit, and B. A. Vermaseren and available on Huygens ING at http://resources.huygens.knaw.nl/wvo/en). Where resumés of other writers or editors have been used, the references to the source have been given. For other works, where no source is mentioned, the resumés have been created by Wil Heesakkers. Among these number about fifty-five descriptions of unedited letters in MSS Burney 370 and 371 at the British Library, London. These do not include, however, the letters of Gruterus or the undated letters of Lipsius, whose handwriting proved largely illegible.

Contents

The letters recorded in this catalogue, 539 in total, span the years from 1567 to August 1604.

For this catalogue, no research has been done in the archives of the Hoogheemraadschap (where Dousa was hoogheemraad from 1571 until1589) or the Supreme Court (where he was judge between 1591 and 1604). The edition of Dousa’s Album Amicorum provides insight into Dousa’s network, but it is not possible to complement this further as no complete survey of his exchange of poetry exists.

With respect to the correspondence that involves his work as the curator of Leiden University, it should be remembered that, in his role of President of the Board of Curators, Dousa was fully aware of what was going on in the University. For the EMLO catalogue, Chris Heesakkers’s choice of letters from the broad collection of official letters kept in the University Archives have been retained.

It should be noted that a number of alterations to the data in Heesakkers’s Praecidanea and to Heesakkers’s and Van Miert’s printed inventory of the correspondence of Hadrianus Junius have been made in this catalogue, for example in relation to the sequence of some hitherto undated letters (Praecidanea) and a handful of dates and the attribution of the authorship of a couple of letters (‘Inventory Junius’).

Provenance

Most manuscript copies of the letters are to be found in the following libraries: the University of Amsterdam Library, Special collections; Bibliothèque royale de Belgique / KBR (Brussels); Biblioteca Communale ‘Aurelio Saffi’; Unità Fondi Antichi e Raccolte Piancastelli (Forlí); the University Library Ghent; Tresoar (Leeuwarden); Leiden University Library; the British Library (London); Leuven University Library; the Musée Royal de Mariemont (Morlanwelz); the Bavarian State Library (Munich); the Morgan Library (New York) the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris); Uppsala universiteitsbibliothek; Utrecht University Library; as well as in the archives of Brielle (Streekarchief Voorne Putten); Delft (Gemeente Archief); Bois-le-Duc (Brabant Historical Information Centre); Leiden (Erfgoed Leiden en Omstreken and Museum De Lakenhal); and Zwolle (Collectie Overijssel); and in The Hague (the National Archive), and Hamburg (Staatsarchiv).

Further resources

Bibliography

J. A. van Dorsten, Poets, Patrons and Professors (Leiden, 1962).

C. L. Heesakkers, ‘Praecidanea Dousana’. Materials for a Biography of Janus Dousa Pater (1545–1604). His Youth, doctoral dissertation, Leiden, (Amsterdam, 1976).

C. L. Heesakkers, ‘Zes viercante witte manden …’, in Boeken verzamelen. Opstellen aangeboden aan Mr. J.R. de Groot, ed. J. Biemans e.a. (Leiden, 1983), pp. 182–97.

C. L. Heesakkers, ‘Lipsius, Dousa and Jan van Hout: Latin and the Vernacular in Leiden in the 1570s and 1580s’, in K. Enenkel and C. Heesakkers, eds, Lipsius in Leiden. Studies in the Life and Works of a great Humanist on the occasion of his 450th anniversary (Voorthuizen, 1997), pp. 93–120.

Chris L. Heesakkers, Een netwerk aan de basis van de Leidse universiteit. Het album amicorum van Janus Dousa. Facsimile-uitgave van hs. Leiden UB, BPL 1406 met inleiding, transcriptie, vertaling en toelichting, 2 vols (Leiden-’s-Gravenhage, 2000).

C. L. Heesakkers, ‘Bonaventura Vulcanius, Janus Dousa and the Pleias Dousica’, in H. Cazes, ed., Bonaventura Vulcanius, Works and Networks. Bruges 1538 – Leiden 1614 (Leiden and Boston, 2010), pp. 263–86.

Chris Heesakkers and Dirk van Miert, ‘An Inventory of the Correspondence of Hadrianus Junius (1511–1575)’, Lias, 37/2 (2010), pp. 109–268. This work has been replaced by the catalogue in EMLO.

ILE I, 1978:
A. Gerlo, M. A. Nauwelaerts, and H. D. L. Vervliet, eds, Iusti Lipsii epistolae. Pars I: 1564–1583 (Brussels, 1978).

ILE II, 1983:
M. A. Nauwelaerts and S. Sué, eds, Iusti Lipsii epistolae. Pars II: 1584–1587 (Brussels, 1983).

ILE III, 1987:
S. Sué and H. Peeters, eds, Iusti Lipsii epistolae. Pars III: 1588–1590 (Brussels, 1987).

ILE IV, 2012:
S. Sué, ed., J. de Landtsheer, rev., Iusti Lipsii epistolae. Pars IV: 1591 (Brussels, 2012).

P. C. Molhuysen, Bronnen tot de geschiedenis der Leidse Universiteit I (The Hague, 1913).

The Correspondence of Joseph Justus Scaliger, ed. Paul Botley and Dirk van Miert, 8 vols (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2012).

B. A. Vermaseren, ‘De werkzaamheid van Janus Dousa Sr († 1604) als geschiedschrijver van Holland’, in Bijdragen en Mededelingen van het Historisch Genootschap, vol. 69 (1955), pp. 47–107.

H. J. Witkam, De financiën van de Leidse universiteit in de 16de eeuw 5 vols (Leiden, 1979–82).

H. J. Witkam, De dagelijkse zaken van de Leidse Universiteit van 1581 tot 1596 (Leiden, 1970–4).

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