Vambery, Arminius or Hermann, Hung. Ármin Vámbéry, 1832-1913, Hungarian philologist and traveler. In Constantinople (1857-63) he learned several languages and dialects of Asia Minor and then traveled through Armenia and Persia in the dress of a native. He was a professor of Oriental languages at the Univ. of Budapest from 1865 to 1905 and wrote many books on his travels and on languages and ethnology.

Arminius, Jacobus, 1560-1609, Dutch Reformed theologian, whose original name was Jacob Harmensen. He studied at Leiden, Marburg, Geneva, and Basel and in 1588 became a pastor at Amsterdam. He undertook to defend the Calvinist doctrine of predestination against the attacks of Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert, but as a result of the controversy he changed his own views of the doctrine. He was professor of theology at the Univ. of Leiden after 1603, and he engaged in violent theological debates, seeking to win the Dutch Reformed Church to his views. His teaching, known as Arminianism, was not yet fully developed, but he asserted the compatibility of divine sovereignty with human freedom, denied John Calvin's doctrine of irresistible grace, and thus modified the strict conception of predestination. In this respect his teaching resembled that of the Roman Catholic Council of Trent. Arminianism became a term of abuse among 17th-century Puritans. His ideas were formulated after his death into a definite system by his disciple, Simon Episcopius, who drew up the "Remonstrance" (see Remonstrants). Arminianism later was the doctrine of Charles and John Wesley and most of the Methodist churches.

Arminius, d. A.D. 21, leader of the Germans, called Hermann in modern German. He was a chief of the Cherusci (in an area of present-day Hanover) when the Romans were pushing east from the Rhine toward the Elbe. Arminius, who had been a Roman citizen and soldier, secretly gathered a great allied force and ambushed Publius Quintilius Varus in the Teutoburg Forest in A.D. 9. In the ensuing battle Varus' army was utterly destroyed, and Varus, in disgrace, committed suicide. So great was the shock in Rome that it is said that Emperor Augustus afterward would start up from sleep, crying, "Varus, Varus, bring me back my legions!" The Romans never again made any real effort to absorb the territory east of the Rhine, though Germanicus Caesar (called to aid the father of Arminius' wife, Thusnelda, against Arminius) badly defeated and wounded the German leader in A.D. 16. Arminius was later killed by treachery. Tacitus, the modern source for Arminius, glorified him as a noble barbarian. In the romantic period German nationalists made much of Arminius, who became a major national hero and was sometimes wrongly identified with Siegfried. F. G. Klopstock wrote a trilogy of plays about Arminius, and J. E. von Bandel erected a large monument to him near Detmold.