- First name
- Martinus Henricus
- Last name
- Swaen, de
- Date of Birth
- 1651
- Date of Death
- 1713
- Born in
- -
- Died in
- -
Martinus Henricus de Swaen studied theology in Mechelen, Leuven (1669) and Paris. He received holy orders in Utrecht in 1677, and worked as a priest (1679) in Assendelft. In 1705, De Swaen published a collection of theological theses in the two-volume Opuscula (Leuven). See: Goethals, 1840–4, vol. 3, pp. 186–95; Ackermans, 2003, pp. 448–9, no. 0586.
On 31 October 1677, Van Neercassel writes a letter to his informant De Swaen about the network set up to collect information about Spinoza. He points out to the Amsterdam priest that, through the intermediary of ‘your rabbi’, they might discover what books were actually written by Spinoza. The remark indicates that De Swaen even interviewed people in the Amsterdam Portuguese-Israelite community to find out more about the Dutch philosopher. From Van Neercassel’s letter, it becomes also clear that ‘a Socinian’, ‘a candidate in Arminian theology’—a friend of the Amsterdam priest Johannes Wandelman—were now also on the lookout to uncover which manuscript and printed writings the ‘impious Spinoza’ had left behind. The names of the rabbi, the Socinian and the Arminian theology candidate are not detailed in Van Neercassel’s letter of 31 October (quoted in Orcibal, 1949, pp. 460–1, Annex 4).