Hugo Grotius: biography of this Dutch jurist.

Summary of the life of Hugo Grotius, one of the most important thinkers of the Netherlands.

Hugo Grotius is one of the key figures in European legal studies in the 17th century, contributing valuable works.

In the following we will take a look at his life through a biography of Hugo Grotiusdiscovering what were the most important milestones, how he influenced the society of his time and what is the impact of his legacy even in our days.

Brief biography of Hugo Grotius

Hugo Grotius, Grotius or de Groot, was born in 1583 in Delft, the Netherlands, in the middle of the Dutch war of independence.. The son of a good family, of an intellectual father and renowned politician, he received a very high level education, based on Aristotelian and humanist principles. Hugo Grotius' abilities soon became evident in different fields, for example in the arts. At the age of 9, he was already capable of composing poems of astonishing quality.

At the more than impressive age of 11, he began to study law at the University of Leiden, and it took him only 4 years to complete his education, taking advantage of the time to study other subjects as different as theology, astrology (which at that time was a scientific discipline of study) or mathematics. He even published the first of his literary works, a study of the works of Martianus Capella, which generated a great impact.

At the age of 15, Hugo Grotius was already involved in diplomatic activities, traveling to Paris and dispatching with King Henry IV of France.. A year later he received his law degree in The Hague and began a brilliant career as a jurist. He also became a historiographer and received the important task of writing the history of the Netherlands in such a way as to place them in a superior position to that of Spain (from which they had just gained independence).

He took advantage of his knowledge of law to also publish works on international principles of justice, based on the real case of the seizure of a Portuguese ship by the Dutch fleet off the coast of Singapore. This event was the precedent was the precedent to begin to generate legal treatises on the legality of international actions.Hugo Grotius was a pioneer in the field.

His career as a legal eminence

The event of the seizure of the Portuguese ratchet and the subsequent legal study on the matter by Hugo Grotius marked his takeoff as a reference figure in international law. His work culminated in the treatise known as De Indisor "De las Indias". In this work he began to talk about natural law and to debate about the very legality of wars.. His next major contribution was Mare Liberum, or The Free Sea.

In this text, what Hugo Grotius asserted was that the seas should be internationally neutral territories, that is, that they belonged to no one in particular and therefore all nations could make use of them. This argument was used politically by the Netherlands to demand that nations such as England cease their monopoly on the use of the sea, although they did so for the purpose of increasing their own naval power later on.

It must be said that Hugo Grotius was not the first author to deal in his work with the subject of free navigation on the seas, since Francisco de Vitoria, a Spanish author of the previous century, had already mentioned this idea in his work, using the principle of Roman law known as ius gentium. To this day, it is still considered that the waters of the high seas are to be free for any nation to use.

By the year 1613, Grotius was already such an influential person that he was even he was even elected as mayor (in his equivalent administrative capacity) of Rotterdam.. Just then a maritime conflict took place between the Netherlands and England, as the latter captured two Dutch ships. The government of the Netherlands saw in Hugo Grotius the ideal diplomat profile to travel to the British Isles and mediate in the situation, in order to recover the seized ships. However, the attempt was unsuccessful, as England did not yield.

Theological controversy

Another type of conflict also arose during these years, in this case of a religious nature, between the Calvinists and the Arminians. The power struggle between the two sectors was exacerbated by the appointment of Conrad Vorstius (Arminian) as professor of theology at the University of Leyden, and Calvinist followers accused him of exercising religious teachings beyond what their beliefs dictated.

Hugo Grotius took sides in this controversy, writing the Ordinum Pietasa manifesto in which he that the civil authorities had the power to appoint whoever they saw fit to practice in the universities, without having to have the approval of the authorities.without having to have the approval of religious leaders to do so. Unsurprisingly, the counter-remonstrants (the opposing faction) accused him of being an arsonist and started a campaign against him.

As a result of this conflict, Hugo Grotius, who by then was already attorney general of Holland, was asked to prepare a document to settle the problem. This work was to be the edict of toleration, called Decretum pro pace ecclesiarum. The aim of this edict was to to reach a harmonious position with respect to religious questions in the civil order, affirming that theological differences in the civil order could be resolved.It was to be a harmonious position regarding religious matters in the civil order, stating that theological differences should be set aside in this regard.

Of course, at that time, many powers were highly influenced by religion, and this position seemed inadmissible to them, and an escalation of protests began that would even lead to riots all over the country. The civil authorities tried to maintain order, but when one of the factions became strong, they arrested several of those they considered responsible for the conflict, among them Hugo Grotius.

Grotius was tried and sentenced to life imprisonment in Loevestein Castle.. After two years of imprisonment, his wife and his maid helped him devise a plan to escape from the fortress, hiding in a chest with which he was able to travel to France.

Exile in Paris

In 1621 Hugo Grotius arrived in Paris, where he began his life in exile, far from the religious conflict that had deprived him of his freedom in the Netherlands. The French government provided him with a pension. It was the time of King Louis XIII and the government of Cardinal Richelieu. Precisely to the monarch he dedicated what is probably one of his best known works, "On the Law of War and Peace"..

Another of his literary contributions at this time was De veritate religionis Christianaethe Latin translation of some verses he wrote in Dutch during his imprisonment. This work dealt with the fundamental truths of Christianity.

He had an attempt to return to his native country in 1631. However, the response of the authorities was hostile, so he had to give up his plan to return. Instead, he decided to move to the German city of Hamburg, but two years later, Sweden asked him to be its ambassador in Paris, so he returned again to the French capital, this time with a different status.

It was the time of the Thirty Years' War, and his main task was to work for a solution to this conflict from his new post as ambassador to Paris. from his new post as ambassador in Paris. He worked for a whole decade to achieve this. At the same time he also published new religious works, gathered mainly in the Opera Omnia Theologica.

Final years

The religious conflict began to subside in the Netherlands, and those who had been forced into exile were gradually able to return to their country of origin. As for Hugo Grotius, Queen Christina of Sweden sent him back to Stockholm after his work as ambassador in Paris. During the trip he suffered a shipwreck that caused him physical consequences from which he would never recover..

The year was 1645, and Hugo Grotius did not wish to remain in Sweden, but to return to his homeland, Holland. He did so, so that he was able to spend the last days of his life in his country, where he died that same summer. Grotius was buried in the city of Delft, specifically in the church of the Nieuwe Kerk. It is said that the last words he uttered were: "I have understood many things and have achieved nothing".

As a legacy remain all his works, his contributions to theological studies, to international law treaties, especially those having to do with maritime laws, and his work as a diplomat in which he tried to mediate in important conflicts that plagued European nations. And in addition to all this, he left a motto: Ruit hora, which means "Time is running out".

Bibliographical references:

• Forde, S. (1998). Hugo Grotius on Ethics and War. American Political Science Review.
• Haakonssen, K. (1985). Hugo Grotius and the history of political thought. Political theory.
• Van Ittersum, M. (2006). Profit and principle: Hugo Grotius, natural rights theories and the rise of Dutch power in the East Indies, 1595-1615. Brill.