He was the son of Anton Perizonius (1626-1672), the author of a once well-known treatise, De ratione studii theologici. Having studied at the University of Utrecht, he was appointed in 1682 to the chair of eloquence and history at Franeker through the influence of JG Graevius and Nikolaes Heinsius. In 1693 he was promoted to the corresponding chair at Leiden, where he died on the 6th of April 1715.
The numerous works of Perizonius entitle him to a very high place among the scholars of his age. Special interest attaches to his edition of the Minerva of Francisco Sanchez or Sanctius of Salamanca (1st ed., i587;ed. CL Bauer, 1793-1801), one of the last developments of the study of Latin grammar in its pre-scientific stage, when the phenomena of language were still regarded as for the most part disconnected, conventional or fortuitous.
Mention should also be made of his Animadversiones historicae (1685), which may be said to have laid the foundations of historical criticism, and of his treatises on the Roman republic, alluded to by Niebuhr as marking the beginning of that new era of historical study with which his own name is so closely associated.
The article on Perizonius in Van der Aa's Biographisch Woordenboek der Nederlanden contains full biographical and bibliographical particulars; see also FA Eckstein in Ersch and Gruber's Allgemeine Encyklopädie.
This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.