 According to his Catholic biographers, Lipsius died in Louvain “a devout Catholic” during the night of 23 to 24 March 1606. They recount that he asked his wife to present his fur-trimmed robe to the statue of the Sedes Sapientiae in the church of St Peter at Louvain and that, surrounded by three Jesuits, he displayed “the constancy of Christian strength” (Christiani roboris constantia): when encouraged to think of the consolations of Stoicism, he replied: “those things were vain … this [pointing to a crucifix] is true endurance” (illa sunt vana … haec est vera patientia). Lipsius’s return to the Counter-Reformation Catholic Church in 1591 had prepared the way for this symbolic and propagandistic use of his scholarly genius and image.