Editing Joseph Justus Scaliger (section)

==Veronese descent==
[[Image:Scaliger - Mesolabium, 1594 - 146259.jpg |thumb|''Mesolabium'', 1594]]

After several attacks purportedly by the Jesuits, in 1607 a new attempt was made. In 1594 Scaliger had published his ''Epistola de vetustate et splendore gentis Scaligerae et JC Scaligeri vita''. In 1601 [[Gaspar Scioppius]], then in the service of the Jesuits published his ''Scaliger Hypobolimaeus'' ("The Supposititious Scaliger"), a [[quarto]] volume of more than four hundred pages. The author purports to point out five hundred lies in the ''Epistola de vetustate'' of Scaliger, but the main argument of the book is to show the falsity of his pretensions to be of the family of La Scala, and the narrative of his father's early life. "No stronger proof," says Pattison, "can be given of the impressions produced by this powerful [[philippic]], dedicated to the defamation of an individual, than that it had been the source from which the biography of Scaliger, as it now stands in our biographical collections, has mainly flowed."{{sfn|Christie|Sandys|1911|p=285}}

To Scaliger, the publication of ''Scaliger Hypobolimaeus'' was crushing. Whatever his father Julius had believed, Joseph had never doubted himself to be a prince of Verona, and in his ''Epistola'' had put forth all that he had heard from his father. He wrote a reply to Scioppius, entitled ''Confutatio fabulae Burdonum''. In the opinion of Pattison, "as a refutation of Scioppius it is most complete"; but there are certainly grounds for dissenting from this judgment. Scaliger purported that Scioppius committed more blunders than he corrected, claiming that the book made untruthful allegations, but he did not succeed in adducing any proof either of his father's descent from the La Scala family, or of any of the events narrated by Julius before he arrived at Agen. Nor does Scaliger attempt a refutation of the crucial point, namely, that William, the last prince of Verona, had no son Nicholas, who would have been the alleged grandfather of Julius.{{sfn|Christie|Sandys|1911|p=285}}

Complete or not, the ''Confutatio'' had little success; the attack attributed to the Jesuits was successful. Scioppius was wont to boast that his book had killed Scaliger. The ''Confutatio'' was Scaliger's last work. Five months after it appeared, on 21 January 1609, at four in the morning, he died at Leiden in the arms of his pupil and friend Heinsius.{{sfn|Christie|Sandys|1911|p=285}} In his will Scaliger bequeathed his renowned collection of manuscripts and books (''tous mes livres de langues étrangères, Hebraiques, Syriens, Arabiques, Ethiopiens'') to [[Leiden University Library]].{{citation needed|date=July 2023}}