CASAUBON, ISAAC (1559-16r4), French (naturalized English) classical scholar, was born in Geneva on Feb. 18, of French refugee parents. On the publication of the edict of Jan. 1562, the family returned to France and settled at Crest in Dauphine. Till he was 19, Isaac had no other instruction than could be given him by his father, Arnaud Casaubon, during the years of civil war. His father was away from home whole years together in the Calvinist camp, or the family were flying to the hills to hide from the fanatical bands of armed Catholics who patrolled the country. Thus it was in a cave in the mountains of Dauphine, after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, that Isaac received his first lesson in Greek, the text-book being Isocrates's ad Demonicum.
At 19 Isaac was sent to the Academy of Geneva, and in 1581 became professor of Greek. At Geneva he remained as professor of Greek till 1J96. Here he married twice, his second wife being Florence, daughter of the scholar-printer, Henri Estienne. With few books and no assistance, in a city peopled with religious refugees, and struggling for life against the troops of the Catho lic dukes of Savoy, Casaubon made himself a consummate Greek scholar and master of ancient learning. His great wants at Geneva were books and the sympathy of learned associates. He spent all he could save out of his small salary in buying books and in having copies made of such classics as were not then in print. The sympathy and help which Casaubon's native city could not afford him, he endeavoured to supply by cultivating the acquaintance of the learned of other countries. Geneva, as the metropolis of Calvinism, received a constant succession of visitors. It was there that Casaubon made the acquaintance of young Henry Wotton, the poet and diplomatist, and of Richard Thomson ("Dutch" Thomson), fellow of Clare college, Cam bridge, through whom the attention of Joseph Scaliger, settled in at Leyden, was directed to Casaubon. Scaliger and Casau bon began in 1594 a correspondence which culminates in a tone of the tenderest affection and mutual confidence. Influential French men of letters, the Protestant Jacques Bongars, the Catholic Jacques de Thou, and the Catholic convert Philippe Canaye, sieur du Fresne, aided him by presents of books and en couragement and endeavoured to get him invited, in some capac ity, to France.
In 1S96 Casaubon accepted an invitation to the university of Montpellier, with the titles of conseiller du roi and pro f esseur stipendie aux langues et bones lettres. He held the professor ship there only three years as he was badly treated by the authorities. But the love of knowledge was gradually growing upon him and he began to perceive that editing Greek books was an employment more congenial to his peculiar powers than teach ing. At Geneva he had first tried his hand on some notes on Diogenes Laertius, on Theocritus, and the New Testament, the last undertaken at his father's request. His debut as an editor had been a complete Strabo (1587), of which he was so ashamed afterwards that he apologized for its crudity to Scaliger, calling it "a miscarriage." This was followed by the text of Polyaenus, an editio princeps, 1589; a text of Aristotle, 1590; and a few notes contributed to Estienne's editions of Dionysius of Hali carnassus and Pliny's Epistolae. It is not till we come to his edition of Theophrastus's Characteres (1592) that we have a specimen of that peculiar style of illustrative commentary, at once apposite and profuse, which distinguishes Casaubon among annotators. At the time of his removal to Montpellier he was engaged upon the capital work of his life, his edition of, and commentary on, Athenaeus.
In 1598 Casaubon was in Lyons, superintending the passage of his Athenaeus through the press. There he lived in the house of Meric de Vicq, surintendant de la justice, a Catholic but a man of acquirements whose connections were with the circle of liberal Catholics in Paris. In the suite of de Vicq, Casaubon was pre sented to Henry IV., who said something about employing his services in the "restoration" of the university of Paris. In Casaubon was summoned by de Vicq, who was then in Paris, to go to him in all haste on an affair of importance. The business proved to be the Fontainebleau Conference. Casaubon allowed himself to be persuaded to sit as one of the referees who were to adjudicate on the challenge sent to du Plessis Mornay by Cardinal Duperron. By so doing he placed himself in a false position. The issue was so contrived that the Protestant Party could not but be pronounced in the wrong. By concurring in the decision, which was unfavourable to du Plessis Mornay, Casau bon lent the prestige of his name to a court whose verdict, with out him, would have been worthless, and confirmed the suspi cions already current among the Reformed churches that he was meditating abjuration. From this time onward he became the object of the hopes and fears of the two religious parties ; the Catholics lavishing promises and plying him with arguments; the Reformed ministers insinuating that he was preparing to forsake a losing cause and only higgling about his price. At the time it was not possible for the immediate parties to the bitter contro versy to understand the intermediate position between Genevan Calvinism and Ultramontanism, to which Casaubon's reading of the Fathers had conducted him.
Meantime the efforts of de Thou and the liberal Catholics to retain him in Paris were successful. The king repeated his in vitation to Casaubon to settle in the capital and assigned him a pension. No more was said about the university. The reform of the University of Paris had already closed its doors to all but Catholics. In Nov. 1604 Casaubon succeeded to the post of sub librarian of the royal library, with a salary of 400 livres in addi tion to his pension.
Casaubon remained in Paris till 161O. Those ten years con stituted the brightest period of his life. He had attained the reputation of being, after Scaliger, the most learned man of the age. He was placed above penury. He had such facilities for religious worship as a Huguenot could have. He enjoyed the society of men of learning. Above all, he had ample facilities for using Greek books, both printed and in ms., which no other place but Paris could at that period have supplied.
In spite of all these advantages Casaubon grew restless, and offers came to him from various quarters, from Nimes, from Heidelberg, from Sedan. His friends Lect and Giovanni Diodati wished, rather than hoped, to get him back to Geneva, but the principal source of Casaubon's uneasiness lay in his religion. The life of any Huguenot in Paris was hardly secure at that time, but Casaubon was exposed to persecution of another sort. Ever since the Fontainebleau Conference an impression prevailed that he was wavering. It was known that he rejected the outre anti popery opinions current in the Reformed Churches; that he read the Fathers and wished for a Church after the pattern of the primitive ages. He was given to understand that he could have a professorship only by recantation. When it was found that he could not be bought he was plied by controversy. By the king's orders Duperron was untiring in his efforts to convert him. On the other hand, the Huguenot theologians, and especially Pierre du Moulin, chief pastor of the church of Paris, accused him of conceding too much, and of having departed already from the lines of strict Calvinistic orthodoxy.
When the assassination of Henry IV. gave full rein to the Ultramontane Party at court Casaubon began to listen to over tures, which had been faintly made before, from the bishops and the Court of England. In Oct. 1610 he came to England at the invitation of Richard Bancroft, archbishop of Canterbury. He had the most flattering reception from James I., who was perpet ually sending for him to discuss theological matters. The English bishops were equally delighted to find that the great French scholar was an Anglican ready made, who had arrived, by inde pendent study of the Fathers, at the very via media between Puritanism and Romanism, which was becoming the fashion in the English Church. Casaubon, though a layman, was collated to a prebendal stall in Canterbury and a pension of 1300 a year was assigned him from the exchequer. He still retained his ap pointments in France, and his office as librarian. In order to retain their hold upon him, the Government of the queen regent refused to allow his library to be sent over. It required a special request from James himself to get leave for Mme. Casaubon to bring him a part of his most necessary books. Casaubon con tinued to speak of himself as the servant of the regent and to declare his readiness to return when summoned to do so.
Meanwhile his situation in London gradually developed un foreseen sources of discomfort. Not that he had any reason to complain of his patrons, the king and the bishops, but he had to share in their rising unpopularity. The courtiers looked with a jealous eye on a pensioner who enjoyed frequent opportunities of taking James I. on his weak side—his love of book talk. His windows were broken by the roughs at night, his children pelted in the streets by day. On one occasion he himself appeared at Theobalds with a black eye, having received a blow from some ruffian's fist in the street. The historian Hallam thinks that he had "become personally unpopular" ; but these outrages from the vulgar seem to have arisen solely from the cockney's antipathy to the Frenchman. Casaubon could not speak English. This deficiency excluded him altogether from the circle of the "wits"; either this or some other cause prevented him from being ac ceptable in the circle of the lay learned—the "antiquaries." Be sides the jealousy of the natives, Casaubon had to suffer the open attacks of the Jesuit pamphleteers. They had spared him as long as there were hopes of getting him over. The prohibition was then taken off, as he was committed to Anglicanism. Not only Joannes Eudaemon, Heribert Rosweyd, and Scioppius (Gas par but a respectable writer, friendly to Casaubon, Andreas Schott of Antwerp, gave currency to the insinuation that Casaubon had sold his conscience for English gold.
But the most serious cause of discomfort in his English resi dence was that his time was no longer his own. He was perpetually being summoned to one or other of James's hunting residences that the king might enjoy his talk. The king and the bishops wanted to employ his pen in their literary warfare against Rome. They compelled him to write first one, then a second pamphlet on the subject of the day—the royal supremacy. At last, ashamed of thus misappropriating Casaubon's stores of learning, they set him upon a refutation of the Annals of Baronius, then in the full tide of its credit and success. Upon this task Casaubon spent his remaining strength and life. He died July 1, 1614. His end was hastened by an unhealthy life of overstudy, and latterly by his anxiety to acquit himself creditably in his criticism on Baronius. He was buried in Westminster abbey. The monument by which his name is there commemorated was erected in 1632 by his friend Thomas Morton when bishop of Durham.
Besides the editions of ancient authors which have been men tioned, Casaubon published with commentaries Persius, Suetonius, the Scriptores Historiae Augustae. The edition of Polybius, on which he had spent vast labour, he left unfinished. His most ambitious work was his revision of the text of the Deipnosophistae 'Eudaemon was a Cretan, Rosweyd a Dutch Jesuit; Schoppe, a German philologist and critic.
of Athenaeus, with commentary. The Theophrastus perhaps ex hibits his most characteristic excellences as a commentator. The Exercitationes in Baronium are but a fragment of the massive criticism which he contemplated. His correspondence (in Latin) was finally collected by Van Almeloveen (Rotterdam, 1709), who prefixed to the letters a careful life of Isaac Casaubon. But the learned Dutch editor was acquainted with Casaubon's diary only in extract. This diary, Ephemerides, of which the ms. is preserved in the chapter library of Canterbury, was printed in 185o by the Clarendon Press. It forms the most valuable record we possess of the daily life of a scholar, or man of letters, of the 16th century.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.—The most complete account of Casaubon is the Bibliography.—The most complete account of Casaubon is the full biography by Mark Pattison (1875) , of which a second and revised ed., by H. Nettleship, was published in 1892 ; the most recent work on the subject is Isaac Casaubon, sa vie et son temps, by L. J. Nazelle (1897) ; there is a monograph on the Fontainebleau conference by J. A. Lalot (1889). Casaubon is the subject of one of Sainte Beuve's Causeries, July 3o 186o (a notice of the Oxford edition of the Ephemerides) . See also the article in E. Haag's La France Protestante (1882) , and J. E. Sandys, Hist. of Class. Schol. (vol. ii. (ed. 1908), p. 204, et seq.) .