Jacques De Crucque

Jacques De Crucque (also known as Jacob Cruucke or by his Latinized name Jacobus Cruquius, d. June 22, 1584.) was a Flemish humanist, philologist, and scholar of the 16th century. He was born in the city of Mesen some time before 1520.

Little is known about his early life, though we know he enrolled in the Université catholique de Louvain on August 29, 1532. He received the degree of magister artium on February 18, 1535. He afterwards studied law, also at Louvain, and graduated with a licentiatus degree some time thereafter. While he was studying law he also took courses with renowned humanists Conrad Goclenius and Petrus Nannius at the Collegium Trilingue.

In 1542, Crucque was teaching Latin in a convent in Leuven. He applied for a job to replace Nannius in his teaching position, which did not come to pass, but in doing so he came to the attention of theologian George Cassander, who recommended Crucque as his successor for his own teaching position in Bruges, which Crucque did in fact take on. Crucque taught in this position from February 8, 1543, until his death on June 22, 1584.

Crucque became a prominent intellectual in Bruges, on account of his large collection of books, as well as his collection of ancient coins. As a teacher he taught many notable humanists of the age, including Jacobus Raevardus, Lucas Fruterius, Victor Giselinus, Janus Lernutius, and Franciscus Modius.

Cruquius is primarily known from his editions of the lyric poet Horace assembled from four ancient manuscripts in the library of the Benedictine monastery of St. Peter's Abbey, Ghent, or "Mont Blandin". These were the so-called "Blandinian manuscripts". All four manuscripts were later destroyed in a fire at the monastery in 1566, leaving Cruquius's edition the sole surviving record of a number of commentaries not otherwise known, such as from the so-called "Commentator Cruquianus".

Of special interest is Cruquius's access to an extremely rare and ancient manuscript of Horace now referred to as V, variously known otherwise as Blandinius, Blandinius vetustissimus, or codex antiquissimus Blandinianus.

Cruquius published several separate volumes of this work from 1565 to 1578—the first with Hubertus Goltzius then all the remainder with Christopher Plantin—and then one complete edition in 1578, and ultimately a standalone edition of Commentator Cruquianus's scholia. After Cruque's death, the editions were reprinted in 1597 with a small collection of notes from Janus Dousa the Elder.

Modern scholars have a somewhat dubious opinion of the merit of these works, but these editions were quite successful in their time. And even today virtually all rare book collections in Western Europe will hold at least one copy of one of Cruque's editions, either in an original printing or one of the expanded versions from 1597.