Antonius Walaeus

Antonius Walaeus (Antoine de Waele, Anton van Wale) (October 1573, Ghent – 3 July 1639, Leiden) was a Dutch Calvinist minister, theologian, and academic.

He was born at Ghent, where his father Jacques de Waele had moved from Brussels, after the execution of Lamoral, Count of Egmont in 1568. Jacques de Waele being a supporter of William I, Prince of Orange, the family left for Zeeland in 1585.

Walaeus was educated at Middelburg school, where he was taught by Jacobus Gruterus and Murdisonius, and then at the University of Leiden, under Franciscus Junius, Lucas Trelcatius, and Franciscus Gomarus. He travelled to France and Geneva, staying with Charles Perrot. After a time at Basel he returned to the Netherlands in 1601, and became minister at the Dutch reformed church in Koudekerke in 1602. He then taught at Middelburg.

In the period of rising theological tension between Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants, Walaeus was on good terms with Hugo Grotius, despite the latter's Arminian views. In 1615 Walaeus published Het Ampt der Kerckendienaren, against the leading Remonstrant and ally of Grotius, Johannes Wtenbogaert, taking up the relationship of church and state. It replied to the Ampt ende Authoriteyt of Wtenbogaert, but also implicitly took aim at the Pietas Ordinum of Grotius. Its tone was quite peaceable and open to compromise; the work put Walaeus at the centre of the theological debate, but Wtenbogaert decided on a polemical reply.Gerard Vossius wrote a private letter to Grotius about Het Ampt, unsympathetic to Walaeus, which was published much later as Dissertation epistolica de iure magistratus in rebus ecclesiasticis.(1669).

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