Justus Lipsius, the Flemish humanist, classical philologist, and literary critic, foremost interpreter of Stoicism in the later Renaissance, and the founder of modern neo-Stoicism, exercised a strong influence on later moral thought. Born near Louvain, he spent most of his life in exile. At the age of twenty-four, he renounced the Catholicism of his native land, accepting the chair of history and eloquence at the Protestant University of Jena (1572). After two years, he returned—ostensibly as a repentant Catholic and loyal Brabantian. Again forced to flee—this time to the Calvinist Dutch—and abjuring Catholicism a second time, he accepted the chair of history at Leiden (1579). Harassed constantly by political and religious pressures, he went to the University of Louvain, becoming one of its most prominent scholars.

The vicissitudes of his life began during the time of civil war in the Low Countries. His...