 Born a Catholic on 18 October 1547 in Overijse, a small town between Brussels and Louvain, Lipsius first studied in Brussels (primary school, Kapelleschool; 1553–1557) and Ath (Latin School, 1557–1559). He then pursued his studies with the Jesuits in Cologne (at the Bursa Nova Tricoronata, 1559–1564), returning to Louvain where he matriculated at the university on 14 August 1564. There he studied law, while also attending courses by Cornelius Valerius, professor of Latin, at the Collegium Trilingue, a humanist institution of Erasmian inspiration; among his fellow students were Ludovicus Carrio, Janus Dousa, Martin-Antonio Del Río, Andreas Schott. Lipsius was already engaged in the emendation and critical examination of Latin texts, especially of Cicero, Propertius and Varro; and, as early as 1566, he put together three books of Variae lectiones (“Variant Readings”), which were published in 1569 at Antwerp. He embarked on an extended academic journey to Italy, ending in Rome, where he became private secretary to Cardinal Granvelle, to whom he had dedicated his Variae lectiones, and where he made the acquaintance of leading humanists such as Marc-Antoine Muret, Fulvio Orsini, Paolo Manuzio and Guglielmo Sirleto.