His father, Pieter de Smet, who was also known by the Latinized version of his name,
Petrus Vulcanius ("the blacksmith"), was attorney-general of the Grand Council of
Mechlin and counted
Erasmus among his friends. He gave his son a thorough education, and Bonaventura studied first in
Ghent, then for two years
medicine at the
University of Leuven, and finally philosophy and literature at
Cologne with
George Cassander. , founder of the Leiden University; written in
Rotterdam, February 3, 1578 In 1559 he traveled to
Spain to become the secretary to
Francisco Mendoza de Bobadilla, bishop of
Burgos, until the latter's death in 1566. He then became the secretary to the bishop's brother in
Toledo until
he died in 1570. Hereafter Vulcanius obtained a professorship of Greek in Cologne (though he never got to teach), then worked for the printer
Henri Estienne in
Geneva, and for the publisher
Froben in
Basel. In 1575, while in Geneva, he published (through Estienne) a scholarly edition of the
Historia Alexandri of
Arrian, incorporating a new
Latin translation. In 1577 he returned to his native
Flanders, and became secretary and family tutor of
Marnix van Sint Aldegonde, diplomat, burgomaster of
Antwerp and friend of
William the Silent. In 1578 he was appointed professor in Latin and Greek at
Leiden University, where in 1581 he (finally) arrived and where for 30 years he 'taught the future elite of the Dutch Republic', among them
Daniel Heinsius and
Hugo Grotius. Vulcanius had access to the silver-on-purple
codex containing the surviving portion of the ancient
Gothic translation of the
Bible by Bishop
Wulfila or Ulphilas. In 1597 he published the text, the first publication of a Gothic text altogether. He gave the manuscript the name by which it is still known,
Codex Argenteus, from the Latin word for
silver. ==Works==