 Although the claim that Lipsius’s Politica “launched the anti-Machiavellian tradition of the Counter-Reformation” (Birely, 99) is no doubt exaggerated, it is certainly true that the treatise found a wide audience and met with immense success. More than Jean Bodin in his Six Books of the Republic (1576) or Johannes Althusius in his Politics Methodically Set Forth (1603), Lipsius dealt with the issues which genuinely agitated his contemporaries. Even before the Politica came off the presses in Leiden, Lipsius was preparing himself for the criticism which he expected to encounter. In a second edition, which appeared in 1590, he included some Breves notae (“Brief Notes”) on the first three books; and a year later he published Liber de una religione (“Book on One Religion”), written in response to Coornhert’s objections to his views on toleration. After returning to the Catholic Southern Low Countries, Lipsius rewrote the Politica. This “Catholic” version, published in Antwerp in 1596 and supplied with additional notes, was an attempt to meet the criticisms of the Roman Church. Although both versions circulated throughout Europe, crossing confessional boundaries, the Politica was most enthusiastically received in France, Germany and Spain. During the reign of Henri IV alone, the Politica was published ten times in French translation. The treatise exerted a notable influence on Pierre Charron, author of De la sagesse (On Wisdom, 1601), Cardinal Richelieu, Duke Maximilian of Bavaria and the Count-Duke Olivares, among many others.