Conradus Vietor (1588–1657) was a Dutch Lutheran minister who is most famous today for his portrait painted by

Frans Hals Frans Hals the Elder (, , ; – 26 August 1666) was a Dutch Golden Age painter, chiefly of individual and group portraits and of genre works, who lived and worked in Haarlem. Hals played an important role in the evolution of 17th-century group ...

Biography

He was born in

Aachen Aachen ( ; ; Aachen dialect: ''Oche'' ; French and traditional English: Aix-la-Chapelle; or ''Aquisgranum''; nl, Aken ; Polish: Akwizgran) is, with around 249,000 inhabitants, the 13th-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia, and the 28th- ...

as the son of a Lutheran minister, but moved to the Netherlands, where he became a Lutheran minister in

Leiden Leiden (; in English and archaic Dutch also Leyden) is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. The municipality of Leiden has a population of 119,713, but the city forms one densely connected agglomeration wit ...

in 1614.Conradus Viëtor
in the

NNBW The ''Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek'' (''NNBW'') is a biographical reference work in the Dutch language. It has been succeeded by the ''Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland''. It was published in ten parts between 1911 and 1937 by ...

He served there from 1614 to 1617 in the Leiden Lutheran church, where he started their baptismal register.''Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis der Evang.-Luthersche Kerk in de Nederlanden'', Volume 5, 1841 He succeeded Henricus Justini, who had served only one year after the death of Bernhardus Aernoldi (or Muyners or Muykens). Arnoldi/Muykens/Muyners had been a Lutheran minister in Brussels and had fled to Aachen during the Protestant Reformation, where he may have influenced the young Vietor. After setting up the infant baptism registration in Leiden, Vietor moved to Haarlem in 1617 where he served in their new

Lutheran church Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Catholic Church launched th ...

. He began a long-drawn-out argument with the Mennonites there about the pros and cons of infant baptism, which started when a woman from his congregation married a Mennonite and left his church to join her husband's Doopsgezinde "Block". He went there to persuade her to come back and spoke "from ten in the morning until late in the evening", attracting quite a crowd of curious Mennonites in the process. Finally someone from Amsterdam was brought in to shut him up, promising him another chance to air his views, but this never happened and the rumor spread that he had "lost his argument". Piqued, he wrote a booklet in response, further explaining his "six reasons to baptise" and including the five other reasons that he had prepared for his second chance to air his views, which had never been granted. Four years later, Pieter Jansz Mooyer, a Mennonite leader in Amsterdam (and probably the same person who stopped his passionate speech in Haarlem) wrote an answer to this booklet. Vietor again responded with a warning. Mooyer closed the argument with a final booklet, which finally seemed to settle the matter. His portrait by Frans Hals that was painted in 1644 and shows him gripping his book in both hands, was sold in 2008 to the London art dealer

Johnny Van Haeften John Henry Van Haeften (born 1952) is a British art dealer, who specialises in 16th and 17th century Dutch and Flemish Old Master paintings. He has been a fanatical stamp collector from a young age, specialising in the stamps of Malta, and cred ...

for £1.2 million, which at the time was considered a "low estimate".December 2, 2008
recap of high prices paid at Christie's auction sale despite the financial crisis in London, by Scott Reyburn of art market news section of

Bloomberg L.P. Bloomberg L.P. is a privately held financial, software, data, and media company headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It was co-founded by Michael Bloomberg in 1981, with Thomas Secunda, Duncan MacMillan (Bloomberg), Duncan MacMi ...

References

External links

Portrait of Conradus Vietor
on

Christie's Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, at Rockefeller Center in New York City and at Alexandra House in Hong Kong. It is ...

website {{DEFAULTSORT:Vietor, Conradus 1588 births 1657 deaths Frans Hals Dutch Lutherans People from Aachen Clergy from Haarlem