This was especially the case during the terrible time when Germany was devastated by the Thirty Years' War.
Among the scholars and philologists, who held chairs at Leyden during the first century of its existence, are included a long list of names of European renown.

Justus Lipsius and Josephus Justus Scaliger may be justly reckoned among the founders of the science of critical scholarship.

These were of foreign extraction, as was Salmasius, one of their successors, famous for his controversy with John Milton.

But only less illustrious in the domain of philology and classical learning were the Netherlanders Gerardus Johannes Vossius (1577-1649) and his five sons, one of whom Isaac (1618-89) may be even said to have surpassed his father; Daniel Heinsius (1580-1665) and his son Nicolas (1620-1681), men of immense erudition and critical insight; and the brilliant Latinist Caspar Barlaeus (1584-1648).

Of theologians and their bitter disputes posterity retains a less grateful remembrance.