historical and political thought in the seventeenth - RePub - Erasmus ...

Chapter 3. Biography
During his life Boxhorn had to cope with several losses in his immediate
family circle. He had become an orphan before he was thirteen. A sister may
have died before he had reached the age of eighteen. 165 His grandfather, who
had taken Boxhorn and his brother and sister(s) to Leiden, past away circa 1632.
Boxhorn also outlived his twin brother Hendrik, who died somewhere between
September 8 and November 11, 1640, after an illness of at least nine months. 166
Besides the loss of relatives Boxhorn also had to deal with physical problems
during his life. His letters reveal that Boxhorn was ill from time to time.
In a letter of 1636 he writes to Johan Frederick Gronovius (1611-1671) that he
had been struck by a disease. According to a doctor a ‘great mass of slime had
struck my stomach’. 167 From another letter to Gronovius it becomes clear that a
year later Boxhorn had again suffered troubles with his stomach. 168 In 1645 he
reveals to Rochus Hoffer that he has been hit by the disease that troubles him
every year; he describes that disease as ‘a swelling of the spleen’. 169 The following
year Boxhorn finds himself ‘poisoned with a yearly and almost deadly
disease’. 170 These illnesses that struck Boxhorn could last for months. 171
nam, carendum & mihi intelligo regno delitiisque, ac divitiis coelorum.’
165 In the first letter listed in the Epistolae et poemata, dated April 4, 1630, Boxhorn sends Pontanus
the greetings of his grandfather, brother and sister. Ibidem, p. 2. ‘Salve, una cum uxore tuâ, & liberis, à
reverendo sene, avo meo, fratre, & sorore item meâ.’
166 In a letter to Constantijn Huygens, dated September 8, 1640, Boxhorn tells Huygens that his
brother has been sick for nine months. Ibidem, p. 164. ‘Et paullo diutius in Zelandia, sub finem feriarum
nostrarum, haerere coactus sum ob contumacissimum unici & jam desideratissimi fratris mei morbum.
Quem jam menses novem cum atrophia ac tabe colluctantem, ab humanae omnis artis praesidio defectum,
desertum, superioribus diebus vitae exemplum ita doleo, ut ob recentem & atrocem adeo plagam,
vix solatia nunc admittam.’ Two months later, on November 8, Boxhorn writes to Rochus Mogge that
‘thusfar I am so confused by the very sad death of [my] only brother, that I was hardly capable of thinking
about me or [my] friends’. Ibidem, p. 168. ‘Ego verò, vir amplissime, unici fratris tristissimo excessu
ita hactenus sum confusus, ut vix mei meminisse potuerim aut amicorum.’
167 Boxhorn to Gronovius, January 8/12, 1636. Ibidem, p. 68. ‘Quod ad postremas tuas tarde adeo
respondeam, Doctissime Gronovi, fecit qui me in urbem reversum invasit, sed jam deseruit, languor,
dicam an morbus, per quem nec valere mihi, nec aegrotare licebat. Stomachum meum, ut quidem Medicus
asserebat, magna vis pituitae invaserat.’ Boxhorn paraphrases here Seneca, Ad serenvm de tranqvillitate
animi, I.2. ‘… in statu ut non pessimo, ita maxime querulo et moroso positus sum: nec aegroto nec
ualeo.’ Latin text quoted from Seneca, Dialogorvm libri dvodecim. Recognovit breviqve adnotatione critica
instrvxit L.D. Reynolds (Clarendon Press; Oxford, 1977), IX.1.2, p. 207.
168 Boxhorn to Gronovius, January 23, 1637. Ibidem, p. 80. ‘Superioribus diebus ad me scripsit Pontanus
noster, voluitque ut has [epistolas-JN] ad te curarem. Quas quidem ante biduum transmissas
oportebat, sed imbecillitas ventriculi mei non permisit: Non quod eo ad scribendum sit opus, sed quod
affecto illo, totius corpusculi languorem miser sentirem[.] Cypriani codice M S. si usus fueris, velim ad
me transmittas.’
169 Boxhorn to Rochus Hoffer, January 7, 1645. Ibidem, p. 230. ‘Raptim & aegrâ manu, (nam anniversarius
mihi morbus, tumor lienis incubuit.)’
170 Boxhorn to Vincentius Fabricius, November 12, 1646. Ibidem, pp. 277-78. ‘Statueram humanitatem
hanc tuam praevenire ipse, sed cum annuo & prope ultimo commistus morbo coactus sum ea
intermittere officia, ad quae jam pridem obstrictum me agnoscebam.’ Born at Hamburg, Vincentius
Fabricius (1612-1667) studied medicine at Leiden University. Later in life he became pensionary and
burgomaster of Danzig.
171 Put Boxhorn’s letter of January 8/12, 1636, to Gronovius side by side with his letter to Pontanus,
dated June 14, 1636. Ibidem, p. 70. ‘Clarissime Cognate, doleo profecto quod fere semper mearum
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