Natural inside Overijse, Brabant, he was sent early to the Jesuit college in Cologne, but was flushed at a age of 16 to the university of Leuven by his parents, who despised that he can turn into caused to become the member of the Society of Jesus.

A publication of his Variarum Lectionum Libri Tres (1567), dedicated to Cardinal Granvella, procured him an appointment as Latin secretary & the visit to Rome in the retinue of the cardinal. On this text Lipsius remained ii years, devoting his spare period to the survey of the Latin classics, collecting inscriptions & examining manuscripts in the Vatican. Another volume of miscellaneous criticism (Antiquarum Lectionum Libri Quinque, 1575), published after his go to from either Rome, equated by using a Variae Lectiones of eight years earliest, shows that he experienced advanced from either a notion of strictly divinatory emendation to that of emending by collation.

Within 1570 he wandered over Burgundy, Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and wwhen engaged for to a higher degree a year as teacher in the university of Jena, a position which implied an outbound conformity to the Lutheran Church. In his way back to Leuven, he stopped some period at Cologne, where he must develop comported himself as a Catholic.

He so returned to Leuven, however was before long caused per Civil War to require refuge around Antwerp, where he received, within 1579, a call for to the freshly based University of Leiden where he was appointed professor of history.

At Leiden, where he must keep around passed as a Calvinist, Lipsius remained eleven years, the period of his greatest productivity. It was okay, that he prepared his Seneca, perfected, in serial editions, his Tacitus and brought out a series of works, a few of pure scholarship, others collections from either authoritative authors, others over again of general interest. Of this latter class was the treatise in politics (Politicorum Libri Sex, 1589), around which he showed that, though a public teacher in the united states which professed toleration, he experienced non departed from either the state maxims of Alva and Philip II. He lays it down that the government should recognize exclusively 1 religion, & that dissent should become extirpated by fire & brand. From either the attacks to which this avouchment studied him, he was economised per prudence of the authorities of Leiden, world health organization prevailed upon him to publish a declaration that his expression, Ure, seca ("Burn and carve"), was the metaphor for the vigorous coarse of action.

In the spring of 1590, leaving Leiden under pretext of ingesting a waters at Spa, he went to Mainz, where he was reconciled to the Roman Catholic Church. A event deeply interested a Catholic globe, & invitations poured around in Lipsius from either a courts & universities of Italy, Austria and Spain. However he favorite to remawithin in his have united states, & eventually settled at Leuven, when prof of Latin in the Collegium Buslidianum.

He was non required to teach, & his negligible stipend was eked out per appointments of privy council member & historian to the King of Spain. He continued to publish thesis when prior to, a chief existence his De militia romana (1595) and Lovanium (1605), intended as an introduction to the general history of Brabant.

He died at Leuven.