All Scholars

Waszink was gripped by the Classics from a young age: he had read the entirety of Plato before coming to university. Whilst a Classics student in Leiden, he became interested in Tertullian. Although the Leiden Professor of Latin, Frederik Muller (1883-1944), had already begun to break down the traditional barrier between classical philology and patristics, this was considered unusual, especially since Waszink was not a religious man himself. He later declared that his interest in Tertullian had simply derived from the fact that he saw major scope for improvement as regards the editing of his texts. 

After finishing his Leiden degree, Waszink spent a year in Bonn to study with Franz Joseph Dölger (1879-1940), a world expert on the relationship between “pagan” and Christian culture and literature in antiquity. Shortly after, at the age of only 24, and when he was already working at a high school, Waszink finished a dissertation, an edition, with translation and commentary in German, of Tertullian’s De anima. 

After his Ph.D., Waszink spent 14 years as a high school teacher. This was common at a time when there were no other positions in Dutch academia other than chairs, for which recent graduates were usually considered too young. During this period, Waszink published widely on early Christian Latin texts. Furthermore, in conjunction with Dölger’s students Theodor Klauser (1894-1984) and Helmut Kruse (1908-99), Waszink laid the foundations for the Reallexicon für Antike und Christentum. This international project initially suffered greatly from the outbreak of the Second World War (see De Blaauw forthcoming). 

After the war, during which his own teacher Muller had died, Waszink succeded him as the Chair of Latin in Leiden. The post was originally offered to Hendrik Wagenvoort (1886-1976), then Professor of Latin in Utrecht, much-respected by Waszink but never officially his teacher.  Wagenvoort, however, preferred to stay in Utrecht. Waszink’s lectures in Leiden received a large audience, which often included students who did not study Classics. His students greatly appreciated the combination of learning and wit in them. Among his international colleagues, Waszink quickly established himself by his 1947 commentary on De anima, an expanded edition (in English) of his PhD thesis (which had been in German). In the following decades, Waszink would venture beyond patristics and build his scholarly oeuvre, covering topics as diverse as early Latin (with Ennius being one of his special interests), the influence of Greek literature on Latin, Aristotle and Plato, and the later classical tradition (with a specific focus on Petrarch and Erasmus). In addition, Waszink wrote more than 200 reviews over the course of his scholarly career, which lasted all the way up to his passing at the age of 81. Reviews of books related to patristic matters were usually published in Vigiliae Christianae, a journal which Waszink co-founded in 1947. He also served on the jury of the annual Certamen Hoeufftianum for about 30 years. 

Waszink’s convictions about the importance of the classical tradition were strengthened by the events of the Second World War. Not by chance did he choose the topic of Humanitas for his 1946 inaugural address and begin it with the observation that “the blatant violation of human dignity in the five-year period that lies behind us has once again made us realise the indispensability of humanism, a concept that had long been viewed regarded with a certain tenderhearted condescension.” Waszink was often described as a ‘humanist’ himself. Aided by his proficiency in modern languages and easiness in communication, he played an important role in the post-war re-establishment of relations between continental scholars. Waszink stayed true to the RAC after the war, and he sought to save this German project which was in danger of losing its international contributors. He also co-organised many of the annual Entretiens sur l’Antiquité Classique at the Fondation Hardt, and was president of the Conseil consultatif for eight years. He had equally good relationships across the Atlantic: he held no fewer than three visiting professorships in the US. 

Waszink received many distinctions over the course of his career, as evidenced by the list under ‘profession’ above. The most prestigious of these was the award of the Praemium Urbis (1981) as the winner of the Certamen Capitolinum of Rome. Formally, it was issued for his Opuscula selecta (1979), but it was the jury’s intention to pay homage to his entire scholarly oeuvre. Waszink’s acceptance speech was in Latin, a language of which he incidentally also had a speaking proficiency:

Multi, permulti hodie dicunt usum linguae Latinae cumque eo studia Latina sive iam interisse sive interire coepisse; Vobis vero rite ac recte persuasum est linguam Latinam unitati Europae nostrae firmandae, ut per multa iam saecula peracta, sic hodie quoque perutilem, immo necessariam esse. Qua de causa ubi Porta Latina stat, stet, immo stabit, in perpetuum.

“Many, very many now say that the use of the Latin language and with it the study of Latin has either already disintegrated or have begun to do so. But duly and rightly you are of the persuasion that the Latin language is most suitable — I should rather say necessary — for strengthening the unity of our Europe today, as it has been during the many centuries that have passed. For that reason, where the Porta Latina stands, may it stand — no, it will stand — forever.”

Waszink’s reputation lives on. In a survey article on late antique Latin literature Shanzer (2009) mentions a very select group of ‘brilliant’ scholars who were pre-eminent in their studies of Christian and non-Christian literature alike: Meyer, Schwartz, Norden, Dodds, Nock and Waszink.