LUCAS

See also:

• LUCAS HOLSTENIUS

HOLSTENIUS  , the Latinized name of Luc Holste (x596–1661), German humanist, geographer and theological writer, was born at Hamburg . He studied at Leiden university, where he became intimate with the most famous scholars of the age—J . Meursius, D . Heinsius and P . Cluverius, whom he accompanied on his travels in Italy and Sicily . Disappointed at his failure to obtain a post in the gymnasium of his native town, he left Germany for good . Having spent two years in Oxford and London, he went to Paris . Here he obtained the patronage of N. de Peiresc, who recommended him to Cardinal Francesco Barberini, papal nuncio and the possessor of the most important private library in Rome . On the cardinal's return in 1627 he took Holstenius to live with him in his palace and made him his librarian . Although converted to Roman Catholicism in 1625, Holstenius showed his liberal-mindedness by strenuously opposing the strict censorship exercised by the Congregation of the Index . He was appointed librarian of the Vatican by Innocent X., and was sent to Innsbruck by Alexander VII. to receive Queen Christina's abjuration of Protestantism . He died in Rome on the 2nd of February 166 .

Holstenius was a

man of unwearied industry and immense learning, but he lacked the persistency to carry out the vast literary schemes he had planned . He was the author of notes on Cluvier's Italia antiqua (1624); an edition of portions of Porphyrius (163o), with a dissertation on his life and writings, described as a model of its kind; notes on Eusebius Against II rocles (1628), on the Sayings of the later Pythagoreans (1638), and the De diis et mundo of the neo-Platonist Sallustius (1638); Notae et castigationes in Stephan Byzantini ethnica (first published in r684); and Codex regularum, Collection of the Early Rules of the Monastic Orders (1661) . His correspondence (Epistolae ad diversos, ed . J . F . Boissenade, 1817) is a valuable source of information on the literary history of his time . See N . Wilckens, Leben des gelehrten Lucae Holstenii (Hamburg, 1723) ; Johann Moller, Cimbria literata, iii . (1744) .