Magazine on history and heritage in Groningen

Stad & Lande

Lennart van den Broek and Juriën van den Broek

The story of the forgotten torchbearer

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The Olympic fire of Westerwijtwerd

In the parsonage of Westerwijtwerd, Reverend Theodorus Antonides worked for years on a unique project. While the harsh wind blew outside, he brought the Olympic Games to life on paper. Meet the minister whose hand produced the very first printed standard work in the world on the Olympic Games in 1732.

The contrast could hardly be greater. We are at the end of the seventeenth century. In the modest village of Westerwijtwerd, under the smoke of Middelstum, Theodorus Antonides is hunched over stacks of books. The farmers in his congregation are busy with the harvest, with the battle against the water, and with surviving the day. Their minister, however, has his mind thousands of kilometers away and centuries back in time. He is delving into the classical Olympic Games.

His life's work, the book Olympia, which was published posthumously only in 1732, is a monument in itself. Today, sports and book historians consider it the oldest printed book in the world that is entirely dedicated to the Olympic Games. Not in Latin, the lingua franca of the elite, but in Dutch (Nederduits). Antonides brought the Games to the people, almost two centuries before Pierre de Coubertin would breathe new life into the modern Games. But who was this 'forgotten torchbearer' and what drove a pious reformed minister to delve so passionately into pagan rituals?


A Child of the North

Theodorus Antonides (ca. 1647-1715) was a child of the North. Although his exact date and place of birth are shrouded in mystery, we do know that he went to study at the academy of Groningen in 1684. Afterwards, he left for the university of Franeker. At that time, that Frisian city housed one of the most prestigious universities in the Republic, second only to Leiden; a place where theology, classical languages, and history went hand in hand.

After his studies and some wanderings, he settled in Westerwijtwerd in 1689, where he would continue to preach until his death in 1715. Contemporaries and later biographers described him as a man of 'incessant diligence'. Yet he was not a worldly recluse. Antonides stood right in the middle of his time and was a convinced supporter of the theology of Johannes Coccejus (1603-1669).

This choice for 'Coccejanism' is crucial to understanding his work. Coccejus taught his followers not to read the Bible as a static collection of texts, but as the history of a covenant between God and man. This theological movement placed a strong emphasis on philological precision and studying source texts in their original languages. Antonides applied that method not only to the Bible but also to classical antiquity. He read authors like Pausanias, Pindar, and Philostratus in the original Greek, compared their texts, and forged them into a coherent whole. That a village minister in a 'remote corner' of Europe had access to such an impressive corpus testifies to great learning and an extensive bibliographic network.


Sacred fire or pagan entertainment?

Why did this minister occupy himself so intensively with chariot races, fistfights, and running competitions? The motivation behind Olympia can be read as a layered story. According to his son Meinardus, who would later publish the book, writing was not heavy labor for Theodorus, but 'an honest refreshment of his weary mind'. After his pastoral tasks, classical antiquity offered him intellectual relaxation.

At the same time, the Bible offered him a theological justification. Antonides regularly encountered sports metaphors in the letters of the apostle Paul. Paul wrote about 'running the course', 'obtaining the imperishable wreath', and 'struggling in the arena'. Without knowledge of the ancient sports practice, those images would lose their power. Antonides wanted to know what that reality looked like: what did Paul envision with that laurel wreath and what were the rules of boxing in antiquity?

Yet modern analyses indicate that this religious layer was perhaps more of a cover than the actual core. The book radiates a genuine fascination for sports, physical education, and human excellence. Antonides reveals himself in this as a humanist, influenced by medical and philosophical thinkers like Galen, Plato, and especially Hieronymus Mercurialis, author of De Arte Gymnastica. Sport was for him not merely pagan entertainment, but an instrument for health, discipline, and character building—a remarkably modern vision for a seventeenth-century reformed minister.


Armchair traveling

It is fascinating to imagine how this process worked in the parsonage of Westerwijtwerd. There was no internet, no photography, and traveling to the Ottoman Empire (to which Greece belonged at the time) was dangerous and unaffordable for a village pastor. Antonides was a so-called armchair traveler. He traveled in his mind.

He translated Latin and Greek fragments, compared descriptions of temples and racecourses, and tried to resolve inconsistencies in the old texts. While outside the seasons passed over the Groningen land, on the paper in his study the sanctuary of Olympia slowly but surely arose.

 

Olympia: an encyclopedic masterpiece

The result of this years-long study ultimately ended up in a manuscript titled: Olympia, that is Olympic Games of the Greeks, imitated by the Romans, retrieved from old Greek and Roman writers.

Antonides divides his work into three 'books' or parts, in which the focus gradually shifts from the context to the physical sport and the ultimate crowning. The publication has the following structure:

What makes the work unique is that Antonides also had an eye for the soul of the event. He understood that for the Greeks, the Games were more than entertainment; the event was a religious service. The sacrifices, the processions, and the religious ecstasy received just as much attention as the athletic performances.


Why in Dutch?

A striking aspect of Olympia is the choice of language. Scientists in the eighteenth century published mainly in Latin, so that their colleagues in England, France, and Germany could read it. Antonides, however, chose the vernacular: Dutch (Nederduits). This was a conscious choice: he wanted to make ancient sports culture accessible to the interested citizen, the schoolmaster, and the minister. It makes Antonides a popular educator avant la lettre.

This choice proved fatal to him on the world stage. Seventeen years after the publication of Olympia, the Englishman Gilbert West published his Dissertation on the Olympick Games (1749). West's essay was concise in scope and depth compared to the encyclopedic work that Antonides had brought to light, but it had a crucial advantage: the language. It was written in English. As a result, Gilbert West acquired the international status of authority and became an inspiration for later generations, possibly including Pierre de Coubertin.

It is a bitter twist of fate. While West was internationally celebrated as the pioneer, Antonides' masterpiece—although published earlier and much more extensive—remained unnoticed outside the national borders. Thus, he missed the connection with the intellectual elite of Europe. The language barrier relegated the true founder to a footnote in history.


The forgotten torchbearer

Was the cradle of the modern Olympic Games secretly in Groningen? It seems a bold statement, but Antonides' work forces us to reconsider history. He was not merely a minister and a scholar; he can be considered a visionary who was far ahead of his time. In fact, Antonides functioned as an intellectual forerunner of Pierre de Coubertin, but one who missed out on recognition due to his loyalty to his mother tongue.

Antonides was the torchbearer who never carried the torch himself and the spectator who never sat in the stands, but who understood the Olympic spirit like no other. He ensured that knowledge about the Olympic Games was not lost, even though that knowledge remained limited to the Dutch language area for a long time.

Whoever walks through Westerwijtwerd today sees a small village that at first glance has little to do with the multibillion-dollar industry of the modern Olympic Games. But appearances are deceiving. In the soil of this village and in the archives of the province, lies the memory of a man who kept the Olympic flame burning, long before it was physically ignited again in 1928 in Amsterdam—and later worldwide. Perhaps Theodorus Antonides, alongside Pierre de Coubertin and Gilbert West, deserves a small statue? Not in Olympia, but simply on the clay of Westerwijtwerd.


About the authors

Lennart and Juriën van den Broek share a deep fascination for the history of the Olympic Games. Their joint research into the book Olympia forms the basis for this publication. Their quest reached further than just the archives; they consulted leading scientists in the field of sports and Olympic history and visited the historical locations on site. As a crowning achievement to their work, they were allowed to present their findings at the IOC in Lausanne last summer. With this, Lennart and Juriën truly bring the story behind this special book to life.


Used literature and sources


For those who want to know more about their search for Theodorus Antonides and his book Olympia, the authors have launched the website www.olympia.co.nl. Here, all background information about their research and the book can be found.