A Brill Calendar: March 22

Escape from Loevestein Castle

Few lives are more strikingly structured than the one of the Adam of International Law, Hugo de Groot (Delft, 1583 – Rostock 1645).

Its scenario has three parts of equal duration: the first twenty years sport a career as legal scholar and public servant, befitting a superior Leyden alumnus. The next twenty are true theatre: a rise to power and a spectacular Fall, ending in imprisonment for life. The third and last act starts with an escape from prison (Loevestein Castle, on a Monday morning, March 22 1621), and ends in a fatal ship-wreck; prototypical for a genius living in exile, working tirelessly for his ideals. Henk Nellen, who wrote Grotius’s biography in a great book, published in 2007, employed as an apt under-title: ‘A Life in Battle for Peace’.

It is difficult to deal with scholarly greatness, particularly when as multi-faceted as in Grotius’s case. His stature in Law may obscure the philologist, translator, diplomat, editor, theologian and historian; superimposed on a husband, father and friend. However, the easiest way to deal with diversities is reduction to anecdotes; and few are as hilarious as Hugo’s escape.

As soon as his interment starts - on June 6 1619 - he is allowed to receive books in Loevestein to continue learned pursuits. These books come and go from the water-logged medieval castle in chests carried by small boats. On this Monday morning the chest returning to Gorinchem - and to a free world – doesn’t carry heavy tomes, but the prisoner, his head resting on a New Testament from the library of Thomas Erpenius, Leyden arabist; a ruse prepared by in-laws sharing his seclusion, with jailers for laughing-stock. It is seldom that one wooden chest multiplied itself so successfully since. Several Dutch museums carry one of these national icons.

A contemporary witness, the Englishman Dudley Carleton, wrote: ‘They here apprehended the sharpness both of his tongue and pen, which he might use with liberty, being abroad; but whilst he is in their hands, he will be kept in obedience for fear of the sword.’