Conrad Vorstius

Conrad Vorstius
Conrad Vorstius, 1616 engraving.
Born	19 July 1569 Free Imperial City of Cologne
Died	29 September 1622 (aged 53) Tönning, Duchy of Schleswig
Doctoral advisor	Gilbert Jack Adriaan van den Spiegel
Doctoral students	Franciscus Sylvius

Conrad Vorstius (German: Konrad von dem Vorst) (19 July 1569 – 29 September 1622) was a German-Dutch heterodox Remonstrant theologian, and successor to Jacobus Arminius in the theology chair at Leiden.

Vorstius was born at Cologne on 19 July 1569. His parents were Roman Catholic but he converted to the Reformed religion. He studied at Düsseldorf from 1583 to 1587, he also studied at Aix-la-Chapelle and then entered the college of St. Lawrence in Cologne; he next studied for two years to prepare for business but in 1589 again altered his intention and studied at the Herborn Academy from 1589 until 1593, he entered further schooling at Heidelberg on 12 April 1593, focusing on theology on 12 April 1594. There he studied under Johannes Piscator and received a theological doctorate on 4 July 1594.

In December 1595 he went to Basel and Geneva, where he attended Lectures by Theodore Beza. It was also here where his disputations De sacramentis (Basel, 1595) and De causis salutis (1595) gained him the offer of a position as teacher (with the approval of Beza and Johann Jakob Grynaeus). Instead, he went to Burgsteinfurt in 1596, in the County of Bentheim. There, thanks to a recommendation from Beza and David Pareus, he taught at Graf von Bentheim's Hohe Schule for fifteen years. In Burgsteinfurt Vorstius defended the Reformed religion against the Catholic theologian Robert Bellarmine. He also received offers for teaching positions at Saumur and Marburg. It was in Burgsteinfurt that his De praedestinatione (Burgsteinfurt, 1597), De sancta Trinitate (1597), and De persona et officio Christi (1597) brought on him a suspicion of Socinianism; but in 1599 he successfully defended his orthodoxy before the theological faculty of Heidelberg. He was promoted in Burgsteinfurt, in 1605 receiving the additional appointments of preacher and assessor to the consistory.