Scioppius

Scioppius (Latinised form of Schoppe), KASPAR, a classical scholar and controversialist, was born at Neumarkt in the Palatinate, 27th May 1576, and studied at Heidelberg, Altdorf, and Ingolstadt. Whilst on a visit to Prague in 1598 he abjured Protestantism and became a Roman Catholic. Henceforth his career is a series of fierce onslaughts on his former co-religionists, on the old Latin writers, and on all who enjoyed a reputation in the world. He was honoured with the title of a count of Spain, and was made a pensioner of the Vatican. Amongst the first to feel his venom was Scaliger (q.v.), against whom in 1606 he launched Scaliger Hypobolimæus. Sent in 1608 by the court of Rome to the diet of Ratisbon for the purpose of observing the religious condition of Germany, he published numerous pamphlets against the Protestants, recommending the Catholic powers to use every means for their extermination. Shortly afterwards he fired off several venomous libels against James I. of England. For this the servants of Lord Digby, ambassador in Madrid, gave him a sound cudgelling in that city in 1614. Scioppius fled from Spain to Ingolstadt, where he issued his Legatus Latro (1615) against the ambassador. In 1618 he went to Milan, where he resided for the next twelve years, devoting himself partly to philological studies and partly to theological warfare. He died at Padua, 19th November 1649, the reviler of all respectable parties, loved by none, but also feared by none. Scioppius was a prodigious scholar, and might have rivalled Scaliger himself in reputation, as he did in learning, had it not been for the infirmities of his temper and judgment. His most important work is Grammatica Philosophica (1628); next in value come Verisimilium Libri Quatuor (1596), Suspectæ Lectiones (1597), De Arte Critica (1597), Observationes Linguae Latinae (1609), Paradoxa Literaria (1628), and De Scholarum et Studiorum Ratione (1636).