Isaac Casaubon

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Isaac Casaubon (1559–1614) was a French-Swiss scholar who became one of Europe’s leading classical philologists. Born in Geneva to French Huguenot refugees, his family fled Catholic danger after the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. He began learning Greek in a mountain cave and, at nineteen, studied at the Geneva Academy, where he later taught Greek until 1596. He married twice, including Florence Estienne, the daughter of a famous scholar-printer.

Casaubon’s career as an editor and commentator began in Geneva. He produced important editions of Greek and Latin authors, such as Strabo (1587), Polyaenus (1589), and Aristotle (1590), and he created an early edition of Theophrastus’s Characters (1592). He worked on Athenaeus, his grand project, while in Lyon in 1598 and continued to develop his distinctive, sometimes lavish, style of commentary. He also edited works by Persius, Suetonius, Aeschylus, and the Scriptores Historiae Augustae, and he began a major revision of Polybius, which he did not finish.

In Montpellier and Paris, he faced difficult conditions and low pay, but his reputation as a learned man grew. He spent years pressing for a broader, more open scholarly environment and was drawn into the religious and political debates of the time, living between Calvinism and Ultramontanism.

With the assassination of Henry IV, opportunities opened in England. In 1610, Casaubon went to England in the suite of Lord Wotton and was warmly received by King James I. He was made a prebend in Canterbury and given a pension, while still keeping his French positions. He faced social and linguistic barriers in England, and some courtiers and clerics distrusted him, but he also formed important friendships, especially with Lancelot Andrewes, and he enjoyed access to the Bodleian Library in Oxford and the university at Cambridge.

During his time in England, Casaubon remained deeply engaged in scholarly work. In 1614 he published De rebus sacris et ecclesiasticis exercitationes XVI, a philological study of the Corpus Hermeticum that argued these texts were from the 3rd or 4th century AD rather than the much earlier “Hermetic” period. He also examined Pagan and Christian texts and continued his work on Athenaeus and other authors. He played a role in the scholarly efforts surrounding the translators of the King James Bible.

Casaubon died in London in 1614 from a congenital bladder malformation, worn down by overwork and the stresses of his career. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a monument by Thomas Morton marks his memory. He left unfinished the great Polybius edition, but his commentaries and editions—along with his letters and diary—made him one of the era’s most influential scholars. His son Méric Casaubon also became a noted classical scholar, continuing his family’s scholarly tradition.