gorlaeus at franeker university

As we have just heard, Gorlaeus enrolled at Franeker University in 1606. He was 14 years old, a normal age in those days for beginning one’s Arts studies. The Frisian university of Franeker (see Figure 11), which lies at a distance of 20 kilo-meters from both Cornjum and Leeuwarden, was founded in 1585 as the Dutch Republic’s second university, after Leiden (1575). A quite unique feature of the new Frisian university was that, in contrast to other early modern Dutch universities, its statues did not prescribe the teaching of Aristotelian philosophy.³¹ The only non-negotiable requirement for its teachers was that they regard themselves as an integral part of the Reformed Church and did not violate the doctrines of the

Hei-delberg Catechism. Indeed, Franeker’s professors of theology made sure everyone understood the link between theology and the other disciplines.³² In Frisia, the Reformation had gained the upper hand only recently, in 1580, in a very fast and violent operation, and the establishment of the university was intended to produce the new Protestant elite that the province needed. Philosophy, which was viewed as subordinate to theology, was expected to contribute to this enterprise, but di-vergent views quickly developed as to how this contribution could best be defined.

Rivalling proposals as to how to reconcile philosophy with Protestant theology were offered, and not all of them relied on the Aristotelian corpus. While Lollius Adama (1544-1609), for example, still explicitly followed in the “footsteps of the Preceptor” (Aristotle), in 1610, the Ramist logician Frederic Stellingwerff (d. 1623) called Aristotle dismissively “that pope of nebulous opinions.” ³³

It was at this nascent and still rather small institution that Gorlaeus enrolled in 1606, as the university’s 928^th student, signing up for philosophy, the discipline in which he presumably took his Arts degree three or four years later.³⁴

In his work on the philosophical teaching at Franeker, Sybrand Galama has singled out two anti-Aristotelian figures whom he assumes to have been of particu-lar influence on Gorlaeus’ intellectual development, namely the young law student

Fig. 11: Franeker University looked very much like this when Gorlaeus studied there. This (hand-colored) illustration is taken from Pierius Winsemius, Chronique ofte historische geschiedenisse van Vrieslant (Franeker, 1622). Incidentally, Winsemius was also one of De Veno’s students. (Courtesy of Tresoar, Frysk Histoarysk en Letterkundich Sintrum, Leeuwarden)

Frederic Stellingwerff (d. 1623) and the professor of philosophy Henricus de Veno (c. 1570-1613).³⁵ Both figures have justly been associated with Gorlaeus in the sub-sequent scholarship, although partly for the wrong reasons. As we shall now see, these two men played very different roles in Gorlaeus’ life. About Stellingwerff we may be brief, whereas De Veno will deserve a very detailed treatment.

Frederic Stellingwerff, who was a few years older than Gorlaeus, studied law.³⁶ The two young men appear to have known each other even before Gorlaeus moved to Franeker, because they showed up together at the auction of Alardus Auletius’

vast library in June 1606.³⁷ Stellingwerff, who stayed at the house of Franeker’s mayor, Hobbe Jelles Ansta, seems to have been well connected and may even have been appointed as mentor to the fourteen-year old Gorlaeus. In a rhetorically self-deprecating gesture, Gorlaeus signed off a touchingly adolescent panegyric on Stellingwerff, which was attached to a printed disputation the latter held in 1609, with the words: “David Gorlaeus of Utrecht, yours eternally, the one whom you have come to know so intimately, has hissed (stridebat) [this poem].”³⁸ However, while Gorlaeus may have admired the older Stellingwerff, the latter seems to have relied on Gorlaeus, who was of a higher social standing, for moral and quite prob-ably for financial support. In his logical disputations, which he published in 1610, Stellingwerff publicly acknowledges this debt:

Here, reader, you have my scholastic disputation which I elaborated about two years ago at the Frisian Academy of Franeker, when I gave private lessons, and which are now published at the instigation of the young David Gorlaeus, my in-timate friend, who himself is setting in motion much bigger things than these.³⁹ The last words may well contain a reference to Gorlaeus’ own work-in-progress – probably the Idea physicae, or possibly already the Exercitationes – which he would have discussed with his friend Stellingwerff. Intellectually, however, the two young men went quite separate ways. While Gorlaeus tried to cast the founda-tions of philosophy anew by means of his ontology, Stellingwerff followed Ramus and chose dialectics. Although the above-named auction catalogue of 1606 evinces Gorlaeus’ initial interest in Ramus – he bought a number of Ramist treatises, including an expensive compendium containing a dialectica Rami and an Arith-metica Rami, as well as Johannes Piscator’s Animadversiones in dialecticam Petri Rami of 1580 – Gorlaeus’ extant treatises betray no discernible debt to either Ra-mus or Stellingwerff, nor do the latter’s later publications indicate any influence by Gorlaeus.⁴⁰ What the two shared was at any rate a rebellious dissatisfaction with traditional school philosophy, from which they both attempted to break away in their different ways.

Gorlaeus’ intellectual debt to Henricus de Veno, professor in philosophy at Franeker, was undoubtedly more substantial. Very importantly, this influence did not just take place through classroom teaching. For, as the fascinating 1606 auc-tion catalogue of the Franeker sale of the library of Auletius also reveals, Gorlaeus lodged at De Veno’s house.⁴¹ This sheds a very new and intriguing light on the student’s debt to his teacher. Given that De Veno hid behind his façade quite a few personal secrets and probably nurtured a number of intellectual heresies, which we shall now have to examine, we may presume that Gorlaeus obtained from him far more unorthodox ideas than can be documented on the basis of written records.