Cruquius
（Jacques de Crusque). A Flemish scholar, born at Messines, near
Ypres, about the middle of the sixteenth century, and for many years professor of the
classical languages at Bruges. He is best remembered by his elaborate commentary on Horace,
which first appeared at Antwerp in 1578. A second and improved edition was issued in 1611. The
value of this edition lies chiefly in the fact that it gives readings from four MSS., known as
the Codices Blandinii, that were then preserved in the Benedictine monastery of Blankenberg
(Mons Blandinius), and that were subsequently destroyed, possibly in the sack of the monastery
by a mob in 1566 (Palmer). The importance of one of these MSS., known to Cruquius as
vetustissimus, and now styled V, is very great, and the same thing is true of
the marginal comments which it contained written by some unknown scholar, who is usually cited
(from Cruquius) as the Commentator Cruquianus. Besides this edition of Horace, Cruquius
published an edition of Cicero's
Oratio pro Milone (Antwerp,
1582), an
Encomium Urbis Brugensis, and some miscellaneous Latin verse.
See André,
Bibliotheca Belgica, s. v.
“Cruquius”; Jordan,
De Commentatore Cruquiano
(Königsberg, 1883); and Palmer,
Satires of Horace
(Introduction), pp. xxix.-xxxi.
(1883).
