Johannes Arnoldi Corvinus born Joannes Arnoldsz Ravens (c.1582, Leiden â 2 January 1650, Amsterdam) was a Dutch Remonstrant minister, theologian, and jurist.
He was born in Leiden, and in 1606 was a Calvinist preacher there. A pupil of Jacobus Arminius, he took up the Arminian views, he was a public supporter of them by 1609, and in 1610 signed the Five Articles of Remonstrance. Subsequently, as a consequence of the Synod of Dort, he lost his church office in 1619. He left the country, being abroad until 1630. Studying law, he then had a career as advocate in Amsterdam. The details surrounding his conversion to Roman Catholicism late in life are unclear and debated. In a letter to Johannes Uytenbogaert on May 14, 1629, he expressed that if there are rumors âÂÂthat I would become Catholic, then those reasons should be properly understood.â Reports from 1630 suggest that he may have had inclinations toward Catholicism, which led to concern and even some mockery from his Remonstrant peers. In 1649, just days before his death, he declared his conversion to Catholicism, stating that, after âÂÂsharp investigation,â he had concluded that the âÂÂCatholic, Apostolic, Roman religionâ was the true path to salvation. This declaration, allegedly made in the presence of two witnesses, was documented in a letter to his son, but was only preserved through Philipp van Limborch, a secondary source. The motivations behind this conversion remain contested. From what we know, his conversion was likely related to the twin forces of disillusionment caused by schisms within the Reformed tradition and a shift towards Tridentine theology on matters such as justification, sacramentology, and the role of tradition. He could also maintain his views on predestination, free will, and grace, given that Molinism was alive and well, especially after the De Auxiliis controversy came to a close in 1607. It is also known that his son was a Roman Catholic, and with that, converting would provide spiritual comfort and personal assurance. It is also important to note that in John McClintock and James StrongâÂÂs Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, they said that Corvinus âÂÂis often confounded with his son, Corvinus of Beldern, who embraced Catholicism,â so, once more, it is difficult to come to a certain conclusion on this matter.
Corvinus had been quite close to Grotius, in the 1610s, and from around 1632 taught the law. With Gerard de Wassenaer and Pieter de la Court he was one of a group of legal writers with Remonstrant sympathies who commented on reason of state; Corvinus did this in an edition of the De arcanis rerumpublicarum of Arnoldus Clapmarius (1641). Other works were:
His son Arendt became a professor of law at Mainz.