24
January 1628 A.D. Michaelius:
America’s 1st Dutch Reformed Pastor & “Domine”
Graves,
Dan. “Michaelius: America’s 1st Dutch Pastor.” Christianity.com.
Jun 2007. http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1601-1700/michaelius-americas-1st-dutch-reformed-pastor-11630080.html. Accessed 10 Jul 2014.
Perhaps it was
a mid-life crisis that caused Jonas Michaelius to offer his services overseas.
For twenty years, after graduating from the University of Leyden, the
forty-year-old pastor had preached in quiet Dutch villages and reared his
family. Now, whatever the reason, he volunteered to serve in the Dutch
colonies.
During the early part of the
seventeenth century, there was a real
shortage of pastors in the Netherlands and the situation was even worse
overseas. The colonists had to be content with "comforters of the
sick." These were men authorized to read scriptures and sermons, hold
prayers and (with special permission) to officiate marriages and baptisms.
Jonas' first overseas assignment
was to Brazil which the Netherlands had just wrested from Portuguese control.
Before he could take up his new duties, Portugal seized Brazil back. Jonas was
diverted to Guinea, Africa for two years before returning to the Netherlands.
On this day, January 24, 1628, Jonas sailed for the New Netherlands (which is now the state of New
York). His wife and two of his children sailed with him. The ten-week voyage
was a miserable affair. The captain was drunk much of the time and the sailors
wild. Storms battered the ship. Food was poor and quarters were cramped. No doubt
the five were glad to land in New Amsterdam (now Manhattan).
Jonas was the first Dutch Reform
"Domine" in the American colony. He immediately organized a church in
New Amsterdam and began holding services above a grist mill for the
approximately 270 European inhabitants. He wrote, "At the first
administration of the Lord's Supper which was observed, not without great joy
and comfort to many, we had fully fifty communicants, Walloons and Dutch, a
number of whom made their first confession of faith before us..."
(Walloons were French-speaking Protestants.) The Church he founded became the
famous "Collegiate Church."
Mrs. Michaelius died just seven
weeks after the family landed. This was a severe blow to Jonas, but he tried to
bear it in a Christian spirit, "The Lord has done it. I must bear it. And
what reasons have I to object? For all things work together for good to them
who love him...I pray the Lord that neither through this nor through any other
trial I shall lose the courage I need so much in this ministry."
In spite of having to raise his
family by himself, facing continual friction with the director of the colony,
dealing with scarcity of food and dismal living conditions, Jonas stuck to his
post a year longer than he had agreed to do. He returned to the Netherlands
around January, 1632.
What he did after that or when
or where he died is not known. In 1637, the Dutch Church recommended that he be
sent back to New Netherlands, but the colony's leaders, remembering his earlier
sharp report on them, did not want him back. That is the last known mention of
his name in the old records.
Bibliography:
"Church of St. Esprit."
http://www.stespritnyc.net/history.html
De Jong, Gerald F. The Dutch Reformed Church in the
American Colonies. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978.
Jameson, J. F., editor. Narratives of New Netherland,
1609 - 1664.Original Narratives of Early American History. Barnes
and Noble, 1959, 1909.
Madey, Johannes. "Michaelius, Jonas." Kirchenlexikon.
http://www.bautz.de/bbkl/m/ michaelius_j.shtml
"Michaelius, Jonas." Encyclopedia
Americana. Chicago: Americana Corp., 1956.
Last updated June,
2007.
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