Later Life and Legacy
In the spring of 1590, leaving Leiden under pretext of taking the waters at Spa, he went to Mainz, where he reconciled with the Roman Catholic Church. This event deeply interested the Catholic world, and invitations from the courts and universities of Italy, Austria and Spain poured in on Lipsius. But he preferred to remain in his own country, and he finally settled at Leuven, as professor of Latin in the Collegium Buslidianum.
He was not expected to teach, and appointments as privy councillor and historiographer to Spain's King Philip II eked out his trifling stipend. He continued to publish dissertations as before, the chief being his De militia romana (1595) and his Lovanium (1605), intended as an introduction to a general history of Brabant.
Lipsius died at Leuven. For years, a street off the Wetstraat in the Etterbeek quarter of Brussels, commemorated his name. In the 1990s, construction for the new home of the Council of the European Union built over the road. The Justus-Lipsius name was attributed to a new nearby street. The honorific remains: the EU headquarters now resides in the Justus Lipsius building.
Read more about this topic: Justus Lipsius
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or legacy:
“When once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual authorities outside the ranks of those whose life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men than murder.”
—Simone Weil (19091943)
“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 14661536)