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The life of Jan Gruter (or de Gruytère; Lat. Janus Gerus) was affected by two conflicts between Catholics and Protestants: the Eighty Years War (1566-1648) between rebels in the Spanish Netherlands and Spain and the hugely costly Thirty Years War (1618-48). His Calvinist family took refuge in his mother’s home in Norwich, England when Gruter was seven as Antwerp was fighting the forces of Spain. He initially learned Latin from his English mother, then at the schools in Norwich, and finally at Cambridge, where he stayed for one year before enrolling at Leiden. When peace was made between England and Holland (1576-8), Gruter’s family returned to Antwerp. Gruter took a law degree at Leiden but under the influence of Justus Lipsius (1547-1606), he focused on ancient history. He traveled through France, Switzerland, Italy and finally Germany. When Antwerp was captured by the Spanish in 1585, its citizens were given two years to leave the city. Gruter’s family left for Lübeck and then Danzig, where his father died in 1588. At Wittenberg Gruter published nine books of Suspiciones and commentary on portions of Plautus, Apuleius, Seneca, but as a Calvinist he was fired after two years because he refused to sign the Formula of Concord, the Lutheran statement of faith. Following his first book, his contentious objections to the 1590 edition of Seneca by Dionysius Gothofredus (1549-1622) impressed the authorities at Heidelberg, where he was given a position and subsequently named librarian. Here he published unremarkable classically referential poems in the style of Lipsius. An avid collector of books and manuscripts, he published many editions of Latin authors (sometimes under assumed names for fear of religious persecution) often from Heidelberg manuscripts: Seneca (1592-3), Florus, 1595, Seneca (1604); Livy 1607-12; Sallust, Tacitus, Velleius Paterculus, Panegyrics (1607); Scriptores Historiae Augustae (1610-11); Pliny’s letters (1611); Cicero, Omnia opera(1618-19); Plautus (1621) to name but a few. It was joked that he produced an edition at least every year. His division of Livy and Tacitus into chapters has remained to this day. He was well liked by both the social and scholarly circles of Heidelberg and the respect he earned as a text editor outside Germany led to many professional friendships that would greatly help when he began searching out inscriptions. His ability to organize texts and work unceasingly naturally attracted his fellow Calvinist Joseph Justus Scaliger Scaliger (1540-1609). Though there had been many editions of Latin inscriptions, chiefly those of Martin Smetius (ca. 1525-78) and Stephanus Pighius (1520-1604), there was no omnibus volume. Scaliger set Gruter the task of collecting, organizing, and editing all the known Latin inscriptions. Scaliger supervised Gruter’s work and led him to much of the material. He also supplied 24 indices. It had errors and omissions, but was the authority until Boeckh’s Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum and Mommsen’s Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum.

      Gruter’s Lampas sive fax artium liberalium was a thesaurus of theological, legal, medical, naturalist writings by scholars of the 15th-16^th centuries in defense of liberal arts. Wilamowitz wrote that the Lampas “inaugurated the fashion for collecting the writings of other scholars.” (66) Indeed, J.G. Graevius (1632-1703) followed Lampas with his Thesaurus antiquitatem Romanorum.

      When the Palatinate fell to the commander of the Catholic League, Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly (1559-1632) in 1622, part of the library that Gruter had so lovingly built up in the Palatine was carried off to the Vatican Library as were many of Gruter’s own books. Others of his books were destroyed. This crushed his spirit and ended his scholarly career. He moved to Bretten and then Tübingen where he devoted himself to his gardens.