Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography/Volume 3/Scaliger, Julius Cæsar

by James Frederick Ferrier

SCALIGER, Julius Cæsar, was one of the ablest of those energetic but unsettled spirits, who during the fifteenth century were at once the effect and the cause of the revival of letters in Italy. The story of his life has been told in two different ways. By his own and his son's account, he was descended from the Scaligeri, the ancient princes of Verona, and was born in 1484, in the castle di Riva, on the banks of the lake di Garda. His father, by this account, was a renowned captain in the service of Matthias, king of Hungary; his mother was Berenice Ladronica, a noble lady, the daughter of Count Paris. Soon after his birth the castle di Riva was besieged and laid waste by the Venetians, the inveterate enemies of his race, who were bent on exterminating the last remnants of the sovereign house of Verona. The mother and her infant escaped with difficulty with their lives. At the age of twelve (so the story runs) Scaliger was presented to the Emperor Maximilian, and educated as a page at the German court in a manner befitting his illustrious ancestry. He afterwards served with distinction in the Italian wars, and was present at the battle of Ravenna, where his father and brother were slain before his eyes. He carried their remains to Ferrara, where they were buried, and where his mother died. Here a pension was settled on him by his relative the duke of Ferrara; but nothing would satisfy his ambition except the recovery of what he conceived to be his rightful inheritance. How he designed to compass this end is thus related by his son:—"That which rendered my father so learned in logic and scholastic theology, was the design he had formed of being made pope, in order that he might have the means of waging war on the Venetians, and of wresting from their grasp the principality of Verona. He meant, first, to be a monk, then he hoped to be made a cardinal, and from that to step into the papacy. Hence he applied himself diligently to the study of the works of Scotus. But he abandoned his design on account of something which he observed in the conduct of the monks, and which disgusted him so much that he resolved never more to hold any communication with their order." According to another, and probably a truer narrative, Scaliger was the son of Benedict Bordoni, a miniature painter and geographer of Padua. Here he was born and baptized Julius Bordoni. He was educated at the university of his native town. He studied medicine and practised it with so much success that he received an invitation from Antoine de la Rovere, bishop of Agen, a town in France, to take up his residence in his diocese, and under his patronage. Scaliger accepted the invitation, repaired to Agen in 1525, and was naturalized as a Frenchman under the name of Jules Cèsar de Lescalle de Bordoni. In his letters of naturalization no mention is made of his descent from the princes of Verona; and this omission, taken with other circumstances, has been held by the best authorities as a sufficient disproof of his claim. At Agen Scaliger applied himself to the study of languages and general literature on a scale the most extensive and profound, and composed works which, although their fashion has passed away, stamped him as the most powerful intellect of his time. Here too he married in 1528 a young lady of sixteen, who bore him fifteen children, and with whom, in spite of the disparity of their ages, he lived happily for twenty-nine years. He died in 1558, in the seventy-fourth year of his age. He is described as a man of commanding presence, and his son says that you had but to look in his face to see that he was the descendant of princes—an easy ground whereon to found a title to nobility, but one which the heralds' office could scarcely be expected to recognize. Scaliger's opinion of himself was not less exalted. "Try," he wrote to one of his friends, "Try to unite into one portrait the figures of Massinissa, of Xenophon, and of Plato, and you will obtain an imperfect representation of me." His manners were haughty, and he was very impatient of contradiction, but withal so charitable and benevolent, that his house presented the appearance of a hospital. The works which furnish the best evidence of his learning and acuteness, and by which he is best known to posterity—although even they are not much consulted—are his "Poetices Libri Septem," and his "Exercitationes de Subtilitate ad Hieronymum Cardanum."—J. F. F.