ARMINIUS, JACOBUS (156o-16o9), Dutch theologian, author of the modified reformed theology that receives its name of Arminianism from him, was born at Oudewater, South Hol land, Oct. i o 156o. Arminius is a Latinized form of his patro nymic Hermanns or Hermansen. His father, Hermann Jakobs, a cutler, died while he was an infant, leaving a widow and three children. Theodorus Aemilius, a priest, who had turned Protes tant, adopting Jakobs, sent him to school at Utrecht, but died when his charge was in his 15th year. Rudolf Snellius (Snel van Roijen, 1S46-1613), the mathematician, a native of Oudewa ter, then a professor at Marburg, happening at the time to visit his early home, met the boy, saw promise in him and undertook his maintenance and education. He had just settled at Marburg when the news came that the Spaniards had besieged and taken Oudewater, and murdered its inhabitants almost without excep tion. Arminius hurried home, but only to find all his relatives killed. Arminius was then sent to study theology at the newly established University of Leiden. The six years he remained at Leiden (1576-82) were years of active and innovating thought in Holland. The War of Independence had started conflicting tend encies in men's minds. To some it seemed to illustrate the neces sity that the State should tolerate only one religion, but to others the necessity that the State should tolerate all religions. Dirck Coornhert argued in private conferences and public disputations that it was wrong to punish heretics and his great opponents were as a rule the ministers, who maintained that there was no room for more than one religion in a State. Caspar Koolhaes, the heroic minister of Leiden—also its first lecturer in divinity— pleaded against a too rigid uniformity; for such an agreement on "fundamentals" as had allowed Reformed Lutherans and An abaptists to unite. Leiden had been happy, too, in its first profes sors. There taught in theology Guillaume Feuguieres or Feuguer eius (d. 1613), a mild divine, who had written a treatise on per suasion in religion, urging that "men could be led, not driven" in religious matters; Lambert Danaeus, who deserves remembrance as the first to discuss Christian ethics scientifically, apart from dogmatics; Johannes Drusius, the orientalist, one of the most en lightened and advanced scholars of his day, settled later at Fran eker; Johann Kolmann the younger, best known by his saying that high Calvinism made God "a tyrant and an executioner." Snellius, Arminius's old patron, now removed to Leiden, ex pounded the Ramist philosophy, and did his best to start his stu dents on the search after truth, unimpeded by the authority of Aristotle. Under these men and influences, Arminius pursued his studies. In 1582 he went to Geneva, studied there awhile under Theodore Beza, but owing to his active advocacy of the Ramist philosophy, soon had to remove to Basel. Af ter a short but bril liant career there, he turned to Geneva, studied for three years, travelled, in 1586, in Italy, heard Giacomo Zarabella lecture on philosophy in Padua, visited Rome, and, open-minded enough to see its good as well as its evil, was suspected by the stern Dutch Calvinists of leanings toward Catholicism. Next year he was called to Amsterdam, and there, in 1588, was ordained. In 1603 he was called, in succession to Franz Junius, to a theological professorship at Leiden, which he held till his death on Oct. 19 1609.
Arminius is the founder of the anti-Calvinistic school in Re formed theology, which created the Remonstrant Church in Hol land (see REMONSTRANTS), and contributed to form the Armin ian tendency or party in England. He was a man of mild and lib eral spirit, broadened by varied culture, constitutionally averse to narrow views and enforced uniformity. He lived in a period of severe systematizing. Calvinism had become, towards the close of the i 6th century, supreme in Holland, but the very rigour of the uniformity it exacted provoked a reaction. Coornhert could not plead for the toleration of heretics without assailing the dom inant Calvinism, and so he opposed a conditional to its uncondi tional predestination. The two ministers of Delft, who had de bated the point with him, had, the better to turn his arguments, descended from the supralapsarian to the infralapsarian position; i.e., had made the divine decree succeed the Fall rather than to precede or determine it. This seemed to the high Calvinists of Holland a grave heresy. Arminius, fresh from Geneva, familiar with the dialectics of Beza, was simultaneously invited in 1589 by the ecclesiastical court of Amsterdam to refute Coornhert, and by Martin Lydius, professor at Franeker, to combat the two infralapsarian ministers of Delft. Thus led to confront the ques tions of necessity and free will, his own views became unsettled, and the further he pursued his inquiries the more he was inclined to assert the freedom of man. This change occasioned much con troversy in the ecclesiastical courts where, however, he success fully defended his position. The controversy was embittered and the differences sharpened by his appointment to the professorship at Leiden. He had as colleague Franz Gomarus, a strong supralapsarian, perfervid, irrepressible; and their collisions, per sonal, official, political, tended to develop and define their respective positions.
Arminius died, worn out by uncongenial controversy and ecclesiastical persecution, without having developed any logical and consistent system such as that maintained by his successor, Simon Episcopius. His work was rather a criticism than a new logical creed. His position with regard to the supralapsarian and infralapsarian doctrines has been thus summarized by Dr. Fair bairn: "He held that it (the doctrine) made God the author of sin, that it restricted his grace, that it left multitudes outside without hope, that it condemned multitudes for believing the truth; viz., that for them no salvation was either intended or provided in Christ, and it gave an absolutely false security to those who believed themselves to be the elect of God." Arminius's works are mostly occasional treatises drawn from him by controversial emergencies, but they everywhere exhibit a calm, well furnished, undogmatic and progressive mind. He was essentially an amiable man who hated the zeal for an impossible orthodoxy that constrained "the church to institute a search after crimes which have not betrayed an existence, yea, and to drag into open contentions those who are meditating no evil." His friend Peter Bertius, who pronounced his funeral oration, closed it with these words: "There lived a man whom it was not possible for those who knew him sufficiently to esteem; those who entertained no esteem for him are such as never knew him well enough to appreciate his merits." For the formal development of the ideas of Arminius, see EPISCOPIUS, SIMON.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-The works of Arminius (in Latin) were published Bibliography.-The works of Arminius (in Latin) were published in a single quarto volume at Leiden in 1629, and at Frankfort in 1631 and 1635. Two volumes of an English translation, with copious notes, by James Nichols, were published at London, 1825-28 ; three volumes (complete) at Buffalo, 18S3. A life was written by Caspar Brandt, son of Gerard Brandt, the historian of the Dutch reformation, and was published in 1724; republished and annotated by J. L. Mosheim in 1725; and translated into English by the Rev. John Guthrie, 1854. James Nichols also wrote a life (London, 1843).