The last of the Renaissance humanists, Bonaventura Vulcanius, is still a mysterious figure, even though he left a correspondence, at least two Alba amicorum, and a collection of books and manuscripts. Born in Bruges in 1538, the son of a disciple of Erasmus, he spent the troubled decades of 1560 and 1570 in wanderings before his appointment in 1581 as a Professor for Greek and Latin Letters at the University of Leiden. He edited and translated many a rare text, composed dictionaries, sent laudatory poems, and compiled the first chapters of a history of Germanic languages. This volume gathers...

Books That Made History highlights historic 25 books published in Leiden or written by a Leiden scholar or alumnus, that have a lasting, global impact on our way of thinking, and are relevant up to this day.