Junius,_Franz

Junius, Franz (in French, François du Jon), the name of two Huguenot scholars.

(1) Franz Junius (1545-1602) was born at Bourges in France on the 1st of May 1545. He had studied law for two years under Hugo Donellus (1527-1591) when he was given a place in the retinue of the French ambassador to Constantinople, but before he reached Lyons the ambassador had departed. Junius found ample consolation in the opportunities for study at the gymnasium at Lyons. A religious tumult warned him back to Bourges, where he was cured of certain rationalistic principles that he had imbibed at Lyons, and he determined to enter the reformed church. He went in 1562 to study at Geneva, where he was reduced to the direst poverty by the failure of remittances from home, owing to civil war in France. He would accept only the barest sustenance from a humble friend who had himself been a protégé of Junius’s family at Bourges, and his health was permanently injured. The long-expected remittance from home was closely followed by the news of the brutal murder of his father by a Catholic fanatic at Issoudun; and Junius resolved to remain at Geneva, where his reputation enabled him to live by teaching. In 1565, however, he was appointed minister of the Walloon church at Antwerp. His foreign birth excluded him from the privileges of the native reformed pastors, and exposed him to persecution. Several times he barely escaped arrest, and finally, after spending six months in preaching at Limburg, he was forced to retire to Heidelberg in 1567. There he was welcomed by the elector Frederick II., and temporarily settled in charge of the Walloon church at Schönau; but in 1568 his patron sent him as chaplain with Prince William of Orange in his unfortunate expedition to the Netherlands. Junius escaped as soon as he could from that post, and returning to his church remained there till 1573. From 1573 till 1578 he was at Heidelberg, assisting Emmanuel Tremellius (1510-1580), whose daughter he married, in his Latin version of the Old Testament (Frankfort, 1579); in 1581 he was appointed to the chair of divinity at Heidelberg. Thence he was taken to France by the duke of Bouillon, and after an interview with Henry IV. was sent again to Germany on a mission. As he was returning to France he was named professor of theology at Leiden, where he died on the 13th of October 1602.

He was a voluminous writer on theological subjects, and translated and composed many exegetical works. He is best known from his own edition of the Latin Old Testament, slightly altered from the former joint edition, and with a version of the New Testament added (Geneva, 1590; Hanover, 1624). The Opera Theologica Francisci Junii Biturigis were published at Geneva (2 vols., 1613), to which is prefixed his autobiography, written about 1592 (new ed., edited by Abraham Kuypers, 1882 seq.). The autobiography had been published at Leiden (1595), and is reprinted in the Miscellanea Groningana, vol. i., along with a list of the author’s other writings.

(2) Franz Junius (1589-1677), son of the above, was born at Heidelberg, and brought up at Leiden. His attention was diverted from military to theological studies by the peace of 1609 between Spain and the Netherlands. In 1617 he became pastor at Hillegondsberg, but in 1620 went to England, where he became librarian to Thomas Howard, earl of Arundel, and tutor to his son. He remained in England thirty years, devoting himself to the study of Anglo-Saxon, and afterwards of the cognate old Teutonic languages. His work, intrinsically valuable, is important as having aroused interest in a frequently neglected subject. In 1651 he returned to Holland; and for two years lived in Friesland in order to study the old dialect. In 1675 he returned to England, and during the next year resided in Oxford; in 1677 he went to live at Windsor with his nephew, Isaac Vossius, in whose house he died on the 19th of November 1677. He was buried at Windsor in St George’s Chapel.

He was pre-eminently a student. He published De pictura veterum (1637) (in English by the author, 1638; enlarged and improved edition, edited by J. G. Graevius, who prefixed a life of Junius, with a catalogue of architects, painters, &c., and their works, Rotterdam, 1694); Observationes in Willerami Abbatis francicam paraphrasin cantici canticorum (Amsterdam, 1655); Annotationes in harmoniam latino-francicam quatuor evangelistarum, latine a Tatiano confectam (Amsterdam, 1655); Caedmonis monachi paraphrasis poetica geneseos (Amsterdam, 1655) (see criticism under Caedmon); Quatuor D.N.I.C. evangeliorum versiones perantiquae duae, gothica scilicet et anglo-saxonica (Dort, 2 vols., 1665) (the Gothic version in this book Junius transcribed from the Silver Codex of Ulfilas; the Anglo-Saxon version is from an edition by Thomas Marshall, whose notes to both versions are given, and a Gothic glossary by Junius); Etymologicum anglicanum, edited by Edward Lye, and preceded by a life of Junius and George Hickes’s Anglo-Saxon grammar (Oxford, 1743) (its results require careful verification in the light of modern research). His rich collection of ancient MSS., edited and annotated by him, Junius bequeathed to the university of Oxford. Graevius gives a list of them; the most important are a version of the Ormulum, the version of Caedmon, and 9 volumes containing Glossarium v. linguarum septentrionalium.