All Scholars

Nicolaas Heinsius (“the Elder”) showed the same precocious aptitude for poetry, philology and diplomatic skill as had his famous father, Daniel (1580-1655). Educated at home by his father and the French classicist Claude Saumaise (1588-1653), he developed a knowledge of classical literature that was augmented by the scholars in his father’s intellectual circles in Leiden. At eleven he composed a panegyric for Queen Christina of Sweden while his father was serving a diplomatic post in Stockholm. In his teens Heinsius corresponded directly with leading scholars, offering comments or asking questions about their areas of expertise. At 16 he published, from the Elzevir Press in Leiden, of which his father was a principal adviser, an epic Latin poem, Breda expugnata, a Lucanesque account of the surrender of Breda to the Spanish in 1624-5. 

      Realizing that most texts available to him could be improved by the addition of uncollated manuscripts. Thanks to his family resources, Heinsius did not need a university degree or employment to conduct his research and at the age of 21 he investigated manuscripts at Oxford and Cambridge. After an illness he continued his research in Paris, where he also published his first book of poems at the age of 24. The Laurentian Library yielded manuscripts of Claudian and Ovid and greatly aided Heinsius’s work on the Metamorphoses. He found more Ovid manuscripts in the Ambrosian Library in Milan in 1648. He then returned to Leiden and began publishing editions of Ovid, the elegists, and other Latin authors based on his discoveries. His extensive travels, his generous relations with other scholars in his field, and the new light he brought to Latin poetry led Joan van Broekhuizen (Janus Brouckhusius, 1649-1707) to call him the poetarum Latinorum magnus sospitator, the great savior of Latin poets.  

         After reading Heinsius’s poems in 1649, Queen Christina of Sweden (1626-89) invited him to her court through the agency of the Hellenist Isaac Vossius (1618-89). Heinsius moved to Stockholm in 1649 to organize and expand the royal library. Swedes were fond of having Dutch scholars (like Heinsius’s father) in their midst as a means of raising the level of intellectual activity in the court. In Stockholm Heinsius found his father’s old enemy Claudius Salmasius (1588-1653), who had bitterly and publicly disputed with Daniel Heinsius over Greek New Testament readings and carried his disagreements over to Nicolaas. Heinsius and Vossius were sent to France and Italy on a diplomatic mission but were also expected to collect treasures for Christina’s library. After two years and a decline in the Swedish economy, Heinsius and Vossius returned to Stockholm, but were never paid for their efforts. Nevertheless, his travels (recounted in Italia)Heinsius developed personal relationships with numerous scholars, beginning a network of shared activity. He remained in Stockholm until Christina abdicated in 1654. 

      Back in Amsterdam, Heinsius’s diplomatic and scholarly abilities were put to use. He was named Resident of the Republic to the Swedish Court, but after falling ill in Danzig following his return to Holland at the death of his father in 1655, the States-General appointed him to a sinecure as city clerk of Amsterdam, which allowed him time for his scholarship. 

      An artist’s model with whom Heinsius had a relationship in Stockholm, Margaretha Wullen, appeared in Amsterdam with two boys whom she claimed were Heinsius’s sons. Heinsius fought her charges of breach of promise at The Hague from 1658 to 1661, but the aldermen of Amsterdam and the courts ruled that Heinsius and Wullen were legally married (he participated in the trials only by proxy). The legal fees and the marriage depleted his fortune and cost him income when he was fired as City Clerk. Even so, one of his sons by Wullen, the hot-tempered Nicolaas the Younger (1656-1718), pressed his father to continue financial support of his mother. When Heinsius returned to Sweden in 1661 as envoy of the States General he encountered Christina, who, though she acknowledged her debt, could not pay him. In 1669 he was sent to Moscow to negotiate an end to hostilities between Sweden and Russia. He remained as Resident until he retired in 1671 and returned to the Netherlands. He resumed his scholarship, publishing editions of Virgil, Velleius Paterculus and Valerius Flaccus. 

         He left a library of 13,00 volumes, possibly the largest classical library in Europe at the time. Most of the contents were auctioned off in 1683. He materially increased the scholarly world’s manuscript resources but was most remarkable for a kind of genius at empathy with a given author. He showed a combination of poetic gifts (he was one of the best of the Neo-Latin poets) and a deep knowledge of Latin, but he stands apart from his coevals in his remarkable ability to inhabit the temperament and style of the authors who interested him. Heinsius’s poetry often reflected the graceful easy style of Ovid and his edition of the Metamorphoses is one of his great contributions. Wrote Wilamowitz: “It is hard to believe that anybody ever had such an intuitive understanding of what these poets, especially Ovid, were trying to say and how they expressed themselves.” (72)