Georgius Candidius

Georgius Candidius (1597– 30 April 1647) was a Dutch Reformed Church missionary to Dutch Formosa from 1627 to 1637. He was the first missionary to be stationed on the island.

Name Candidius's Latinate first name He sinified it as , whose modern pinyin romanization is Gān Zhìshì.

Biography Candidius was born in 1597 at Kirchardt in the Palatinate. He studied at Leiden in the Dutch Republic from 1621 to 1623, when he was persuaded by Sebastiaen Dankaerts to minister overseas. Before arriving in Formosa in 1627 Candidius worked in Ternate, Moluccas. Having arrived in Taiwan he refused to live in the Dutch castle Zeelandia and settled in the native village of Sinckan (modern-day Sinshih) instead.

After a year in residence in the region of Tayouan (present-day Tainan), Candidius commented regarding his missionary duties that:

Candidius returned to the Netherlands in 1639 and went to Batavia (Jakarta) in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) in 1643. There, he served as rector of the Latin school until his death

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