 If Lipsius did violence to the Stoic conceptions of matter, body and God in order to keep faith with Christianity, he also violated certain Christian teachings when defending the Stoic view of the soul as a vital pneuma (“spirit” or “breath”; Physiologia III.9, citing Diogenes Laertius VII.157). A more detailed analysis of Stoic beliefs about the soul might have brought to the surface embarrassing incompatibilities with Christian doctrine. This would not have suited his selective approach to Stoicism, whose purpose was to produce a perfect marriage of pagan and Christian elements, which would serve to enhance the truths of Christianity. However inelegant some of Lipsius’s “adaptations” might seem, they belonged to the carefully considered program of a humanist who, by promoting free will, virtue and social commitment, based on a synthesis of Christian and Stoic ethics, wanted to achieve an acceptable, unifying and practicable Christian humanitas.