Isaac Casaubon - Early Life

Early Life

He was born in Geneva to two French Huguenot refugees. The family returned to France after the Edict of Saint-Germain in 1562, and settled at Crest in Dauphiné, where Arnaud Casaubon, Isaac's father, became minister of a Huguenot congregation. Until he was nineteen, Isaac had no education other than that given him by his father. Arnaud was away from home for long periods in the Calvinist camp, and the family regularly fled to the hills to hide from bands of armed Catholics who patrolled the country. It was in a cave in the mountains of Dauphiné, after the massacre of St Bartholomew, that Isaac received his first lesson in Greek, from the textbook Isocrates ad Demonicum.

At the age of nineteen Isaac was sent to the Academy of Geneva, where he read Greek under Francis Portus a Cretan. Portus died in 1581, recommending Casaubon, then only twenty-two, as his successor. He remained at Geneva as professor of Greek until 1596. There he married twice, his second wife being Florence Estienne, daughter of the scholar-printer Henri Estienne. At Geneva, Casaubon lacked example, encouragement and assistance and struggled against the troops of the Catholic dukes of Savoy, but became a consummate Greek and classical scholar. He spent all the money he could spare on books, including copying classics that were not then in print. Even though Henri Estienne, Theodore de Beza (rector of the university and professor of theology), and Jacques Lect (Lectius), were men of superior learning, they often had no time for Casaubon.

Casaubon sought help by cultivating the acquaintance of foreign scholars, as Geneva, the metropolis of Calvinism, received a constant stream of visitors. He eventually met Henry Wotton, a poet and diplomat, who lodged with him and borrowed his money. More importantly, he met Richard Thomson ("Dutch" Thomson), fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and through Thomson came to the attention of Joseph Scaliger. Scaliger and Casaubon first exchanged letters in 1594. They never met, but kept up a lengthy correspondence that shows their growing admiration, esteem and friendship. Influential French men of letters, the Protestant Jacques Bongars, the Catholic Jacques de Thou, and the Catholic convert Philippe Canaye (le sieur du Fresne) endeavoured to get Casaubon invited to France.

In 1596, they succeeded, and Casaubon accepted a post at the University of Montpellier, with the titles of conseiller du roi (king's advisor) and professeur stipendié aux langues et bonnes lettres (salaried professor of languages and literatures). He stayed there for only three years, with several prolonged absences. He was badly treated and poorly paid by the university authorities. Casaubon began to see the editing of Greek books as a more suitable job for him. At Geneva he had produced some notes on Diogenes Laertius, Theocritus and the New Testament. He debuted as an editor with a complete edition of Strabo (1587), of which he was so ashamed afterwards that he apologized to Scaliger for it. 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 Halicarnassus and Pliny's Epistolae. His edition of Theophrastus's Characteres (1592), is the first example of his peculiar style of illustrative commentary, at once apposite and profuse. When he left for Montpellier he was already engaged upon his magnum opus, his editing of and commentary on Athenaeus.