Naeranus Samuel

Naeranus Samuel, of Dort, was Rector of the Gymnasium of Sedan in 1608, and afterwards of that of Amersfort. He attached himself to the Remonstrant party; and was among the earliest of the adherents and disciples of Arminius at Leyden. At the Synod of Dort, having been cited with the other Remonstrant Ministers, and questioned as to his religious belief, he complained, at the forty-sixth, and fifty-fourth Sessions of that Synod, of the unfairness with which the Ministers were treated, in not being allowed to explain their own opinions in their own way ; but he was borne down by numbers, and banished, with the rest of his Brethren, on the 5^th of July, 1619.

After lying concealed for some time in Friesland, without any fixed habitation, but principally on the coast of the Baltic, he was at length permitted to return to Holland. During the time of his exile, his wife, who remained at Amersfort, where he had formerly officiated as Minister, was taken violently ill ; and, when at the point of death, she requested permission to see her husband once more. This request being noised abroad, the house was closely watched ; and at night the informers placed ladders at the chamber-window of the dying woman, in the hope of surprising her husband in the house of mourning. But he was absent, and unconscious of these disgraceful proceedings ; nor was he made acquainted with what had happened, till he received intelligence of his wife's death. His own death took place at Amersfort in the year 1642, as we learn from a letter addressed, by his son John, to Martin Ruarus, shortly after that.event.

Samuel Naeranus was an excellent poet, but so obnoxious to the aristocracy of his country, on account of his attachment to the opinions of the Remonstrants, that, on one occasion, when he had dedicated a poem to them, they declined to receive it, and ordered it to be returned to him, out of dislike to his religious principles. He published a volume of Poems in 1610, consisting chiefly of Epigrams, which was received with applause by the learned world. In Ruarus's correspondence, there are three Letters addressed to that individual by Samuel Naeranus, and two of Naeranus's written in reply. Bock notices a Dutch work of Samuel Naeranus On the Christian Religion, as professed by the Remonstrants, written in the way of Question and Answer, and published at Rotterdam in 1640, 8vo.; and says, that other writings of Naeranus are sometimes quoted, with which it has not been his own lot to meet. Zeltner refers to a letter of Naeranus, (the 380^th in the Correspondence of the Remonstrants,) as throwing light upon the history of Conrad Vorstius.

(Vidend. Bock, Hist. Ant . T. I. pp. 523, 524. Ruari Epp. Cent. i. N. 77—80. Zeltneri Hist. Crypto-Socin. Altorf, pp. 42. 363. Brandfs Hist, of the Ref. in and about the Low Countries, Vol. HI. Bk. xx.wi. pp. 128. 142; Vol. IV. Bk. lii. p. 190.)

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