An Orphan of Oudewater
Jacobus Arminius was born Jacob Harmenszoon at Oudewater in the province of Holland, probably on October 10, 1559, though many sources give 1560. His father, a cutler, died when Jacob was an infant. A former priest with Protestant sympathies, Theodorus Aemilius, took the boy in and sent him to school in Utrecht. After Aemilius died, the scholar Rudolph Snellius brought him to Marburg in Germany.
In 1575, during the Dutch revolt against Spain, Spanish troops sacked Oudewater and massacred much of its population. Arminius's mother, brother, and sister were among the dead. He returned from Marburg to find his town in ruins. The next year he enrolled at the newly founded University of Leiden, one of its first students, and his gifts soon drew attention.
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