On the other, the followers of Gomarus.
The latter, although born of Dutch parents, had lived all his life in Germany and was a brilliant product of the Teuton system of pedagogy. He possessed immense learning combined with a total absence of ordinary horse-sense. His mind was versed in the mysteries of Hebrew prosody but his heart beat according to the rules of the Aramaic syntax.
His opponent, Arminius, was a very different sort of man. He was born in Oudewater, a little city not far away from that cloister Steyn where Erasmus had spent the unhappy years of his early manhood. As a child he had won the friendship of a neighbor, a famous mathematician and professor of astronomy in the University of Marburg. This man, Rudolf Snellius, had taken Arminius back with him to Germany that he might be properly educated. But when the boy went home for his first vacation he found that his native town had been sacked by the Spaniards and that all his relatives had been murdered.
That seemed to end his career but fortunately some rich people with kind hearts heard of the sad plight of the young orphan and they put up a purse and sent him to Leiden to study theology. He worked hard and after half a dozen years he had learned all there was to be learned and looked for fresh intellectual grazing grounds.
In those days, brilliant students could always find a patron willing to invest a few dollars in their future. Soon Arminius, provided with a letter of credit issued by certain guilds of Amsterdam, was merrily trotting southward in search of future educational opportunities.
As behooved a respectable candidate of theology, he went first of all to Geneva. Calvin was dead, but his man Friday, the learned Theodore Beza, had succeeded him as shepherd of the seraphic flock. The fine nose of this old heresy hunter at once detected a slight odor of Ramism in the doctrines of the young Dutchman and the visit of Arminius was cut short.
The word Ramism means nothing to modern readers. But three hundred years ago it was considered a most dangerous religious novelty, as those who are familiar with the assembled works of Milton will know. It had been invented or originated (or what you please) by a Frenchman, a certain Pierre de la Ramée. As a student, de la Ramée had been so utterly exasperated by the antiquated methods of his professors that he had chosen as subject for his doctor’s dissertation the somewhat startling text, “Everything ever taught by Aristotle is absolutely wrong.”
Needless to say this subject did not gain him the good will of his teachers. When a few years afterwards he elaborated his idea in a number of learned volumes, his death was a foregone conclusion. He fell as one of the first victims of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew.
But his books, those pesky books which refuse to be assassinated together with their authors, had survived and Ramée’s curious system of logic had gained great popularity throughout northern and western Europe. Truly pious people however believed that Ramism was the password to Hades and Arminius was advised to go to Basel where “libertines” (a sixteenth century colloquialism meaning “liberals”) had been considered good form ever since that unfortunate city had fallen under the spell of the quizzical Erasmus.
Arminius, thus forewarned, traveled northward and then decided upon something quite unusual. He boldly invaded the enemy’s territory, studied for a few semesters in the University of Padua and paid a visit to Rome. This made him a dangerous person in the eyes of his fellow countrymen when he returned to his native country in the year 1587. But as he seemed to develop neither horns nor a tail, he was gradually taken back into their good favor and was allowed to accept a call as minister to Amsterdam.