Friedrich Spanheim

Friedrich Spanheim the Elder (January 1, 1600, Amberg – May 14, 1649, Leiden) was a Calvinistic theology professor at the University of Leiden.

In 1621 he became tutor in the house of Jean de Bonne, Baron de Vitrolle, governor of Embrun in Dauphiné, and after three years he visited Geneva, and Paris, and England, returning to Geneva in 1626 and becoming professor of philosophy.

There Spanheim became one of the most prominent defenders of the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination against Amyraldism.

He published anonymously, Le Soldat suedois (1633), a history of the Thirty Years' War until 1631 and Le Mercure suisse (1634); Commentaire historique de la vie et de la mort de .

His principal theological works are: Against the Anabaptists he wrote Variae disputationes anti-Anabaptisticae (1643) and Diatribe historica de origine, progressu, sectis et nominibus anabaptistarum (1645; English translation, Englands Warning by Germanies[1] Woe, London, 1646).