Menno Simons
Menno Simons (1496 – 31 January 1561) was an Anabaptist religious leader from the Friesland region of the Low Countries. Simons was a contemporary of the Protestant Reformers and his followers became known as Mennonites. "Menno Simons" (/ˈmɛnoː ˈsimɔns/) is the Dutch version of his name; the Frisian version is Minne Simens (/ˈmɪnə ˈsimn̩s/), the possessive "s" creating a patronym meaning "Minne, son of Simen" (cf. English family names like Williams and Rogers).
Biography
Early life
Menno Simons was born in 1496 in Witmarsum, Friesland, Holy Roman Empire. Very little is known concerning his childhood and family except that he grew up in a poor peasant environment. His father's name must have been Simon, Simons being a patronym, and he had a brother named Pieter.
Simons grew up in a disillusioned war-torn country. Friesland was ravaged by war in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Landsknecht soldiers haunted the Frisian lands in the 1490s to force the 'Free' Frisians to accept the duke of Saxony-Meissen as their head of state. The duke was the governor of the Netherlands for the Habsburg family. One of the archenemies of the Habsburgs, the Duke of Guelders, invaded Friesland in 1515 and conquered half of it. Saxony ceded the other half to the Habsburgs. The Frisians tried to regain their freedom but they were too weak and eventually accepted the imperial authority of the Habsburg emperor Charles V.
Simons
Simons is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
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