Welcome to the Libellus de patientia Project

This Digital Humanities resource provides several Open Access sources for the Libellus de patientia, a treatise composed in 1524 by the Dutch humanist Cornelius Aurelius (d.1531) while he was in prison suspected of Lutheran sympathies.

The text survives in a single autograph manuscript in the University Library at Leiden. It was first edited in 2003 by Dr. Karin Tilmans (Universiteit van Amsterdam), who provides her edition as an Open Access resource (https://karintilmans.nl/pdf/libellus.pdf).

This website provides a revised edition of Cornelius Aurelius' Libellus de patientia based on Tilmans' edition, which was developed by Samantha James in 2013 as part of her MA Thesis, supervised by Dr. Chris Nighman for the Tri-University History Graduate Program. Scholars are advised to credit James, Nighman and Tilmans as co-editors of the edition. Moreover, the URL of this website should be cited in any published academic work that employs this edition, and Nighman should be notified of any citations of this source. The apparatus for a number of quotations in the new edition contains links to Nighman's Open Access edition of the Manipulus florum (www.manipulusflorum.com), a popular florilegium that Aurelius almost certainly used in composing the Libellus.

Title page from
Cornelius Aurelius' Die cronycke van Hollandt Zeelandt ende Vrieslant (1517)

Also provided on this website as an Open Access source is Nighman's English translation of Aurelius' Treatise on patience. Scholars using this text for any published work should credit Nighman as the translator, cite this website, and notify him of any such citation.

Finally, this website provides a link to Samantha James' 2013 MA thesis, "Cornelius Aurelius, the upcycling humanist: a study of the Libellus de patientia," made available through Wilfrid Laurier University Library's Scholars' Commons.


©2019-23 Chris L. Nighman
History Department
Wilfrid Laurier University