52 HARM-JAN VAN DAM
for the Silvae), published in Antwerp, and his real achievement, the
1599 commentary on the Silvae, the first since Domizio Calderini’s.^24
I have written about Bernaert and his commentary and about the ex-
plosion of interest in Statius and the Silvae elsewhere; so here I will
confine myself to a few remarks and additions.^25 Bernaert, a melan-
choly young lawyer, had apparently hit upon the idea of publishing a
Statius by himself, and succeeded, especially by a judicious choice of
influential patrons, in the first place Iustus Lipsius (1547–1606), who
imitated and praised Statius’ Silvae repeatedly. Besides Lipsius, who
had left the Protestant University of the North for Roman Catholic
Louvain, Bernaert’s patrons and dedicatees are a bishop and an
archbishop, and he was an ardent catholic.
It seems as if Bernaert gave the sign for a new philological interest
in Statius and, following that, new poetical interest in the Silvae, all
connected to the new Protestant university of Leiden in the North.
Scholars were feverishly preparing editions and annotating their mar-
gins. In 1600 a new edition of the whole Statius was published in
Paris, that of the Hamburg lawyer Friedrich Lindenbruch (1573–
1648), the first to give the scholia by Lactantius Placidus on the
Achilleid. His home-base was Leiden at the time, where he studied
under Joseph Scaliger, who wrote to him in Paris, praising his plans of
publishing Lactantius, sharing conjectures, and taking him to task at
other times.^26 Another pupil of Scaliger seems to have worked on Sta-
ti us in the same year 1600, Johannes Wower (1574/5–1612). In a let-
ter of 30 March Scaliger thanks him for sending some folia Lactantii
and expects to receive the rest soon, emended just as carefully; he also
refers to Wower’s forthcoming edition of Statius.^27 Wower was from
Hamburg like Lindenbruch, like him he studied in Leiden, with Sca-
liger; in 1597 he was in Paris and Lyons, where his edition of Si-
donius appeared in 1598, and in 1600 he was in Paris again.^28 It looks
24 The text, simply that of the second Aldina of 1519, was repeatedly reprinted
(1598, 1599, 1605, 1607, 1612), much more often than the commentary.
25 See van Dam 1996a, especially 316–9.
26 Scaliger 1627 numbers 212 of 19 April 1600 (I give all dates in Scaliger’s letters
according to the Gregorian Calendar) and following letters, see also van Dam 1996a,
n. 32. In the letter of 19 April Scaliger tries to answer all kind of questions by Lin-
denbruch about (the texts of) Lactantius and Statius.
27 Scaliger 1627 number 374. On the edition, “tuam editionem”, see also below.
28 On Wower, see Deitz 1995. He states (134) that in 1597 Wower was in the
company of Heinrich Lindenbruch, brother of Friedrich, who arrived in Paris in 1599.