Leiden

Netherlands

Leiden is a city in the province of South Holland in the western Netherlands. After it withstood a Spanish siege in 1574 during the Dutch Revolt, William of Orange founded Leiden University there in 1575. It is the oldest university in the country, and by the 1640s it was the largest Protestant university. Its scholars included the theologian Jacobus Arminius, professor from 1603 until his death in 1609, whose views on predestination gave rise to the Remonstrant controversy. Leiden also became a centre of science and medicine, with one of the oldest botanical gardens in Europe and modern medical teaching begun by Herman Boerhaave in the early eighteenth century.