Griffis, William Elliot, The story of New Netherland

(Boston and New York :  Houghton Mifflin Company,  1909.)

Tools


 

Jump to page:

Table of Contents

  Page [40]  



CHAPTER V

THE FIRST CHURCH AND DOMINE

The career of the first Domine, or reverend
pastor, in New Netherland, shows how rich life was
under the risen sun of the Dutch Republic, then
the land of opportunity. Whether in the army,
navy, merchant marine, trade, diplomacy, law,
medicine, or theology, there was not only sure pro¬
motion for the alert and diligent, but a fair chance
of advancement to " everybody that was anybody."

The Reverend Jonas Michaelius, or, in plain
Dutch, Michel, was born in 1577, and was educated
in Holland's public schools. When twenty-three
years old he went to the great University of Ley¬
den, then in its lion-like youth, and matriculated
September 6, 1600. He was a student at the same
time with Jacob Cats and Vossius. He received
his heroep^ or call, to two villages in North Hol¬
land, and was settled as pastor at Hem, from 1612
to 1614, on a salary of seventy-five guilders, or
thirty dollars. Then he took himself a wife, who
bore him three daughters.

Though now but a place of six or seven hun¬
dred people Hem has an interesting history. Its
story during feudalism, its elevation to the rank of
a city with citizen-rights, magistracy, and govern-
  Page [40]