CONCLUSION

There could be no simple conclusion to a volume devoted to the many sides, traits, works and skills of such a complex character. Bonaven- tura Vulcanius was a key figure of the University of between 1581 and 1614, a virtuoso of the Greek language, a dedicated scholar and Erasmian humanist, and an unpublished poet. As such, he played a discreet but important part in the emergence of a new humanistic ideal: the republic of Letters, and of a new type of knowledge: histo- rical philology. The most tumultuous period in the history of the Low Countries was to endanger and transform Vulcanius’ posterity and legacy. The conciliation of his many loyalties, his universal quest for knowledge (in all languages and in all subjects), his attested dedication to teaching, the large scope of his experiences and friendships, and his sobriety in the matter of professions of faith were all factors that may have led to Bonaventura Vulcanius being left aside by the historians of particular disciplines or patriotic surges. His role has often been a secondary one, compared to famous scholars who were more productive, or historical heroes who were more explicit in their political or religious goals. His religious tolerance, anchored in an early acquaintance with Cassander and in familial and social links with Catholic and Protestant circles, may also have acted as an obstacle on the road to historiographical fame. But today, his ambiguities, silences and alliances are fascinating to scholars, as they show the inadequacy of dichotomies inherited from nineteenth-century ideologies and from modern European frontiers. Bonaventura Vulcanius was the worthy son of a Flemish humanist, an actor in the Dutch Revolt and an atypical scholar, who bequeathed several unpublished books and a priceless collection of manuscripts to the University of Leiden. Although a secretary in , a professor in Catholic , a book buyer for the Fuggers, an editor in Calvinist , an exile in , a protégé of William the Silent, a secretary to Philip van Marnix and Professor of Greek in Leiden, Bonaventura is understood better through his personal relationships (with Dousa, Marnix, Longuet or Daneau) than through his very rare and enigmatic declarations of a principle. For a man whose curiosity seems to have 452 conclusion had no bounds, he has puzzled historiographers with his sense of intel- lectual adventure, his personal loyalties and his religious tolerance. As an indefatigable lexicographer and editor, a historian of his time, a researcher of the Batavian roots of the Low Countries, and a trans- lator and collector of rare and difficult texts, Bonaventura Vulcanius seems to have made philology a model for expanding and transmit- ting knowledge. His interest in dictionaries, testimonies, manuscripts, texts, alphabets, and languages is structured as an unending collection of words, etymologies, signs and facts. This philological collection can also be identified as the pattern of the documentation he left about his life and works: a library, with two catalogues, correspondence, a set of unpublished manuscripts and drafts, a workshop and a set of documents pertaining to the Revolt. His alba amicorum—two of which are now known and recovered, with a possible third yet to be found—reproduce this structure and, like a kaleidoscopic image, these collections of inscriptions provide scholars with the different portraits of him drawn by friends, enemies or simple acquaintances (profes- sors, family friends, allies, colleagues and rivals). However, this other collection of portraits and public demonstrations of friendship does not solve the personal enigma of Bonaventura Vulcanius. Nor does it allow him to be ranked in a single category. Moreover, as an expert in the constitution of his public image, our humanist seems to have teased his future biographers by giving them too much and too little at the same time. A huge number of documents that contradict one another ensure continued and renewed interest in his person, though seemingly without providing a final word on his destiny. Chosen as the “last of the humanists” by Melchior Adam in his 1615 volume of Biographies, Bonaventura Vulcanius is the hero of a silent and pivotal moment in the history of ideas, when the universa- lism of Erasmian ideals and biblical philology was transforming into an appraisal of the historicity and multiplicity of cultures, languages and literatures. In these first sparks of the Enlightenment and in the redefinition of Humanities, one can already see national identities and patriotic recognitions emerging. The detailed compilations on the Ger- manic languages and the Getes by Vulcanius perfectly exemplify this crucial metamorphosis of philology into a tool of intellectual inquiry. The collections of Vulcanius thus emblematize the advent of a newly learned sensibility to history and linguistics.