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Hugo Grotius

Hugo Grotius

1583 CE1645 CE · Jurist · Delft

Hugo Grotius was a Dutch jurist, statesman, and scholar active in the United Provinces during the early seventeenth century. A prodigy who entered Leiden University at eleven, he practiced law at The Hague, served as Advocate-Fiscal of Holland, and became Pensionary of Rotterdam. Amid the religious-political conflict between Remonstrants and Counter-Remonstrants, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1619 and confined at Loevestein Castle, escaping in 1621 concealed in a book chest. In exile in Paris he composed De jure belli ac pacis (1625), a foundational treatise on the law of war and peace. After a failed return to Holland in 1631 and a period in Hamburg, he served the Swedish crown as its ambassador to France from the mid-1630s until his death.

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