Adrian Hamsted (also known as Adriaen van Haemstede) was the eponymous Dutch founder of the sect of Adrianists. Hamsted was born at

Dordrecht Dordrecht (), historically known in English as Dordt (still colloquially used in Dutch, ) or Dort, is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Western Netherlands, lo ...

in 1524. He was a minister in London at the Dutch Church in Austin Friars for some time. After the

Act of Uniformity 1558 The Act of Uniformity 1558 ( 1 Eliz. 1. c. 2) was an act of the Parliament of England, passed in 1559, to regularise prayer, divine worship and the administration of the sacraments in the Church of England. In so doing, it mandated worship acc ...

forced the

Anabaptists Anabaptism (from Neo-Latin , from the Greek : 're-' and 'baptism'; , earlier also )Since the middle of the 20th century, the German-speaking world no longer uses the term (translation: "Re-baptizers"), considering it biased. The term (tra ...

to meet in secret, Hamsted submitted a petition on their behalf to the bishop, Edmund Grindal. Grindal not only refused the petition on their behalf, he demanded that Hamsted renounce his Anabaptist beliefs, and, when he refused, excommunicated him in 1561. Jacopo Aconcio, a member of Hamsted's church, defended him to Grindal, who excommunicated Aconcio as well. Afterwards, Hamsted travelled to Holland, where he founded the Adrianist sect; he died at

Bruges Bruges ( , ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders, in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is in the northwest of the country, and is the sixth most populous city in the country. The area of the whole city amoun ...

in 1581. The Adrianists, who were mostly women, were

. Most of their specific beliefs are not recorded, but one is that they denied the

virgin birth of Jesus In Christianity and Islam, it is asserted that Jesus of Nazareth was conceived by his mother Mary, mother of Jesus, Mary solely through divine intervention and without sexual intercourse, thus resulting in his Virgin birth (mythology), virgin bir ...

References

Sources

* 1524 births 1581 deaths People from Dordrecht {{Netherlands-reli-bio-stub