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INTE 003 Gelderblom, De Jong, Van Vaeck - The Low Countries as a Crossroads of Religious Beliefs 2003 PDF

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THE LOW COUNTRIES AS A CROSSROADS OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS INTERSECTIONS yearbook for early modern studies volume 3 – 2003 Editorial Board B. Blondé (University of Antwerp) K.A.E. Enenkel (University of Leiden) A.J. Gelderblom (Utrecht University) J.L. de Jong (University of Groningen) E.E.P. Kolfin (University of Amsterdam) W. Neuber (Free University of Berlin) H.F.K. van Nierop (University of Amsterdam) P.J. Smith (University of Leiden) M. van Vaeck (Catholic University of Louvain) Advisory Board K. van Berkel (University of Groningen), F. Egmond (National Archives, The Hague) A. Grafton (Princeton University), A. Hamilton (University of Leiden) G.L. Heesakkers (University of Amsterdam), H.A. Hendrix (Utrecht University) F.J. van Ingen (Free University of Amsterdam), J.I. Israel (Princeton University) M. Jacobs (Free University of Brussels), K.A. Ottenheym (Utrecht University) K. Porteman (Catholic University of Louvain), E.J. Sluijter (University of Amsterdam) THE LOW COUNTRIES AS A CROSSROADS OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS EDITED BY ARIE-JAN GELDERBLOM JAN L. DE JONG MARC VAN VAECK BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2004 Illustration on the cover: Theodorus Beza, Icones, id est Verae Imagines [...]. Geneva, Ioannes Laonius, 1580, emblem, no. 39: ‘Religio.’ This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Low Countries as a crossroads of religious beliefs / edited by Arie-Jan Gelderblom, Jan L. de Jong, Marc van Vaeck. p. cm. – (Intersections, ISSN 1568-1181 ; v. 3) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 90-04-12288-5 1. Reformation—Netherlands. 2. Netherlands—Church history—16th century. 3. Reformation—Belgium—Antwerp. 4. Antwerp (Belgium)—Church history— 16th century. I. Gelderblom, Arie-Jan. II. Jong, Jan L. de. III. Vaeck, M. van. IV. Intersections (Boston, Mass.); v. 3. BR395.L69 2004 274.92’06—dc22 2004051821 ISSN 1568-1181 ISBN 90 04 12288 5 © Copyright 2004 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands CONTENTS List of Illustrations ........................................................................ vii Introduction .................................................................................... 1 H��� ��� N����� ‘Totius Mundi Emporium’: Antwerp as a Centre for Vernacular Bible Translations, 1523–1545 .............................................................. 9 P��� A�������� Protestant Conversions in an Age of Catholic Reformation: The Case of Sixteenth-Century Antwerp ............................................ 33 G���� M����� Imagines Peregrinantes. The International Genesis and Fate of two Biblical Picture Books (Hiël and Nadal) Conceived in Antwerp at the End of the Sixteenth Century .......................................................... 49 R���� D�������� Justus Lipsius’s Treatises on the Holy Virgin .................................. 65 J������ D� L��������� The Religious Position of Abraham Ortelius .................................... 89 J���� H����� The quandary of the Dutch Reformed church masters ........................ 141 M�� M. M�������� ‘A Serpent in the Bosom of Our Dear Fatherland’. Reformed Reaction to the Holland Mission in the Seventeenth Century .......................... 165 C�������� K��� Obedience with an Attitude. Laity and Clergy in the Dutch Catholic Church of the Seventeenth Century .................................................... 177 C������ H. P����� Remarkable Providences. The Dutch Reception of an English Collection of Protestant Wonder Stories ............................................................ 197 F��� ��� L������ From Minister to Sacred Orator. Homiletics and Rhetoric in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Century Dutch Republic ................ 221 P.J. S������� ‘Ardens Martyrii Desiderium’. On the Martyrdom of Anna Maria van Schurman (1607–1678) .......................................................... 247 P���� ��� B��� Cornelis van Bynkershoek and Religion. Reflexions of a Critical Mind in The Hague in 1699 and his Reactions to Crossroads of Religious Beliefs ............................................................................ 267 J.J.V.M. �� V�� L’âme amante de son Dieu by Madame Guyon (1717). Pure Love between Antwerp, Paris and Amsterdam, at the Crossroads of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy .......................................................... 297 A���� G���������-B����� Notes on the Editors of this Volume ................................................ 319 List of Contributors ........................................................................ 321 Index Nominum .............................................................................. 325 vi �������� LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS* Figures 1 & 2 belong to the article by Guido Marnef: 1. Image of Our Lady, placed on the facade of the Antwerp City Hall. Engraving in F. Costerus, De cantico Salve Regina septem medi- tationes (Antwerp: C. Plantin), p. A1. (Reprinted with the kind per- mission of the Ruusbroecgenootschap Library, Antwerp). 2. Description of a heretic, in J. David, Veridicus Christianus (Antwerp: J. Moretus: 1601), plate 8. (Reprinted with the kind permission of the Ruusbroecgenootschap Library, Antwerp). Figures 3 & 4 belong to the article by Ralph Dekoninck: 3. Pieter van der Borcht, Abel’s murder by Cain, in Hendrik Jansen van Barrefelt, Imagines et Figurae Bibliorum (Leiden: c. 1592) (Photo: Museum Plantin-Moretus, Antwerp). 4. Hieronymus Wierix (after Maarten de Vos), Adoratio Magorum, in Hieronymus Natalis, Evangelicæ historiæ imagines, ex ordine Evangeliorum, quæ toto anno in missæ sacrificio recitantur, in ordinem temporis vitæ Christi digestæ (Antwerp: 1593). (Photo: Museum Plantin-Moretus, Antwerp). Figures 5–7 belong to the article by Jeanine De Landtsheer: 5. Justi Lipsi Diva virgo Hallensis (Antwerp: 1604), pp. 14–15. On p. 15 the interior of the church, with the miraculous statue, as Lipsius saw it (Photo: Museum Plantin-Moretus Antwerp, B 1071). 6. The Sedes Sapientiae at St Peter’s Leuven. 7. Justi Lipsi Diva Sichemiensis (Antwerp: 1605), title-page of the first edition (Photo: Museum Plantin-Moretus Antwerp, A 1371). * The illustration section (Figs. 1–11) can be found at the end of the Introduction. Figures 8 & 9 belong to the article by Mia M. Mochizuki: 8. Anonymous, Last Supper, ca. 1581, oil on panel. (Courtesy of the Hervormde Gemeente Haarlem, Haarlem, The Netherlands). 9. Anonymous, Siege of Haarlem, 1581, oil on panel. (Courtesy of the Hervormde Gemeente Haarlem, Haarlem, The Netherlands). Figures 10 & 11 belong to the article by Fred van Lieburg: 10. Title-page of William Turner’s major work on remarkable provinces (1697). (Photo: Library Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam). 11. Title-page of the Dutch translation of a part of Turner’s work (1738). (Photo: Library Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam). viii ���� �� ������������� INTRODUCTION Henk van Nierop In April 1527, the president of the Privy Council in the Netherlands, Jean Carondelet, told a perplexed delegation of magistrates from Amsterdam that he believed that ‘Lutheranism,’ by that time ram- pant in their city, was mostly or even entirely due to ‘foreigners.’ The magistrates, he suggested, were reluctant to punish them severely ‘so as not to chase them away.’1 Even though the delegates indig- nantly dismissed the allegation—had they not recently sentenced a merchant from Bremen to the pillory for abusing a group of Friars?— the president certainly had a point. The great commercial cities of the Netherlands, such as Amsterdam and especially Antwerp, were situated at a crossroads of important trade routes. Already in the Middle Ages the Low Countries owed their wealth largely to their fortunate geographical position straddling the estuaries of the rivers Rhine, Meuse and Scheldt. Here the trade routes connecting the Baltic, England, the Rhineland and the German hinterland, and the Iberian peninsula and the Mediterranean basin converged. It was inevitable that not only cargoes of grain and timber, silk and spices, woollen cloth and splendidly executed altarpieces were being exchanged in the bustling seaports of the Low Countries, but also manuscripts and books, news, information, ideas and gossip. Thus the Netherlands were touched by the evangelical Reformation movement at an early stage. Already in July 1523 Brussels witnessed the first ever Protestant martyrs when two Augustinians were publicly burnt as obstinate heretics. Several years later, despite the govern- ment’s determination to crack down on heretics, the English ambas- sador to the Low Countries thought that ‘if there be three men that speak, the twain keep Luther’s opinion.’2 It was, however, not the 1 Corpus documentorum inquisitionis haereticae pravitatis Neerlandicae, ed. Fredericq P. (5 vols., Ghent and The Hague: 1889–1906) v, 207. 2 Quoted in Duke A., Reformation and Revolt in the Low Countries (London and Ronceverte: 1990) 80. causa Lutheri that bedevilled the Habsburg government and the local magistrates, even if ‘Lutheranism’ was to remain for decades to come a convenient shorthand for many different heretical strands. Due to the absence of influential local reformers such as Luther, Zwingli, or Calvin, but also—and not in the last place—due to its wide-open commercial economy, the Netherlands’ Reformation was essentially an event that should be properly understood in its full international context, as a broad stream fed by many different tributaries.3 The connection between trade networks and the interchange of religious ideas was particularly strong in Antwerp, until 1585 by far the most important commercial town. In 1545, for example, almost three quarters of the total value of registered exports from the Netherlands were shipped from that town.4 Apparently, religious ideas followed trade. ‘A Babylon, confusion and receptacle of all sects indifferently, the town most frequented by pernicious people’, was how the Duke of Alva, admittedly not a sympathetic witness, described Antwerp in 1568. A Spanish soldier who took part in the siege of 1585 claimed that the town sheltered ‘seventeen different religions and ninety-four sects,’ and the Spanish humanist and theologian Benito Arias Montano concurred with his judgement, complaining about ‘Lutherans, Zwinglians, Anabaptists, Calvinists, Adamists, lib- ertines, atheists and innumerable other pestilences.’5 Antwerp, how- ever, did not only receive heterodox religious ideas; it also digested them, processed them and sent them back into the wider world. As one of Europe’s major printing centres Antwerp churned out an innumerable number of books, bibles, pamphlets and prints for the international market, many of them of dubious orthodoxy. The situation changed after 1585, when the Spanish army cap- tured the town and the Dutch rebels closed off the river Scheldt, 2 ������������ 3 Useful introductions to the Reformation in the Netherlands are Duke A., “The Netherlands” in: Pettegree A. (ed.), The Reformation in Europe (Cambridge: 1992) 142–165; Bergsma W., “The Low Countries” in: Scribner B. – Porter R. – and Teich M. (eds.), The Reformation in national context (Cambridge: 1994) 67–79, and Woltjer J.J. – Mout M.E.H.N., “Settlements” in: Brady T.A. – Oberman H.A. – Tracy J.D. (eds.), Handbook of European History 1400–1600. Late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation (2 vols, Leiden, New York, Cologne: 1995) II, 385–415. 4 Lesger C., Handel in Amsterdam ten tijde van de Opstand. Kooplieden, commerciële expan- sie en verandering in de ruimtelijke economie van de Nederlanden ca. 1550–ca. 1630 (Hilversum: 2001) 33. The second export harbour, according to value, was Amsterdam, fol- lowing at a huge distance with only 6 per cent of the value of registered exports. 5 Quoted in Marnef G., Antwerp in the Age of Reformation. Underground Protestantism in a commercial metropolis 1550–1577 (Baltimore-London: 1996) xi. thus strangling the town’s trade and prosperity and putting an effective end to its leading position as an intellectual powerhouse. During the following century Antwerp’s position as an international entrepot of trade and ideas, philosophy and learning (religious and otherwise) was taken over by Amsterdam. While Antwerp became a bulwark of the Catholic Counter-Reformation, Amsterdam, along with other towns in the Dutch Republic, became a melting-pot, a laboratory where many religious ideas flowed together, amalgamated and were re-exported, both to Europe and the newly discovered worlds over- seas. The political context could not be more different. If in Antwerp, due to the ever-vigilant ecclesiastical authorities, heterodox ideas could only be expressed in secrecy, the towns of the United Netherlands did not only tolerate, but in certain cases even welcomed religious fugitives and thereby actively promoted religious pluriformity. The Reformed Church never succeeded in taking over the monop- oly on organised religion formerly possessed by the Catholic Church. Although its ministers constantly admonished the civil magistrates to be vigilant against Protestant dissenters and—especially—Catholics, their confessional drive was only partly successful. Thus the towns in the Dutch Republic and particularly Amsterdam took over Antwerp’s dubious reputation as a save haven for the unorthodox. ‘It is well known,’ the Reformed Swiss military officer Jean-Baptiste Stouppe wrote in 1673, ‘that in addition to the Reformed, there are Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Brownists, Independents, Arminians, Anabaptists, Socinians, Arians, Enthusiasts, Quakers, Borelists, Muscovites, Libertines and many more . . . I am not even speaking of the Jews, Turks and Persians.’6 The Low Countries thus played an important part in the early mod- ern era as a crossroads for religious and philosophical ideas, serving as an intermediary between different parts of the world. The third volume of Intersections is devoted to this aspect of the ‘intertraffic of the mind.’7 Its multidisciplinary approach is focused on the exchange ������������ 3 6 Quoted in Hsia R.P.C., “Introduction” in: Hsia R.P.C., Van Nierop H. (eds.), Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age (Cambridge: 2002) 1. 7 Schoneveld C.W., Intertraffic of the Mind. Studies in Seventeenth-Century Anglo-Dutch Translation with a Checklist of Books Translated from English into Dutch, 1600–1700 (Leiden: 1983). of ideas and the interactions between religious groups in the Low Countries between ca. 1520 and 1750. The thirteen essays in this volume are arranged in a roughly chronological order. It is inevitable, given the economic and cultural preponderance of the Southern provinces during the sixteenth century, that the first essays explore ‘Southern’ topics—in most cases Antwerp topics—and that the focus thereafter swings to the North. In the first essay Paul Arblaster analyses the position of Antwerp as a centre for vernacular Bible translations between 1523 and 1545, by which date the town had lost its leading edge due to increasingly severe government repression. He argues that Antwerp was not in the first place a ‘crossroads’ where Bible translators such as Tyndale, Pedersen and Lefèvre could meet and converse, but rather ‘a round- about with traffic lights, where traffic in different directions was kept carefully separate.’ Three different types of biblical translation, based on different principles, appealed to different international markets. Guido Marnef in his contribution focuses on the large-scale con- versions to Catholicism and the reconciliations during the reign of the Duke of Alva and again during the years following the capitu- lation of the town in 1585. His figures of those who returned to the old Church must be seen against Antwerp’s dramatically declining population, which was not only a result of Protestants moving to the rebellious provinces, but also of economic emigration. By the end of the century, systematic religious education and propaganda con- tributed to a specific Catholic identity. Antwerp subsequently ceased to be a crossroads of religious ideas and became rather a frontier of faith, a dam or barrier against Protestantism in the North. Ralph Dekoninck compares the genesis and fate of two biblical picture books published in Antwerp at the end of the sixteenth cen- tury, one by Hendrik Jansen van Barrefelt, or ‘Hiël,’ the charismatic leader of the ‘second’ Family of Love, the other by the Jesuit Hiero- nymus Natalis (Nadal). The two books were to have strikingly different fates, for Hiël’s book was to inspire spiritualists in the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, whilst Nadal’s work was to become a paradigmatic monument of Jesuit engraving and Counter- Reformation spirituality. Yet the author argues that despite the obvi- ous differences between Familist and Jesuit spiritualities the two works shared a religious sensibility that was remarkably similar, and he invites us to be sensitive to continuities spanning the break of 1585. 4 ������������ The following two papers explore two significant individual cases of religious convictions being shaped in an international context. Jeanine De Landtsheer writes about Justus Lipsius, a culture-hero and best-selling author of international stature. Lipsius after his return from Leiden to Louvain and after his reconciliation with the Catholic Church wished to demonstrate the seriousness of his intent by writing several treatises on miraculous shrines of the Virgin Mary, to the disgust of his Protestant admirers, especially in the Northern provinces. De Landtsheer’s paper suggests that we should regard Lipsius’s Counter-Reformation writings with a more dispassionate eye. The religious position of Lipsius’s friend, the Antwerp geographer Abraham Ortelius, is the subject of a paper by Jason Harris. His elaborate and subtle scrutiny of the sources demonstrates that Ortelius was not, as has been often alleged, a follower of the Family of Love. Rather, from his early encounter with reforming ideas to his later reading of the stoics, mystics, Jacobus Acontius and, above all, Sebastian Franck, it appears that he maintained a life-long interest in Reformation ideas without, however, ever embracing Protestantism. Remaining in Antwerp, from where he kept in contact with corre- spondents scattered all over Europe, he had little choice but con- forming outwardly to Catholicism, whilst privately disregarding confessional boundaries, insisting on internal rather than external devotion, and dissimulating rather than facing martyrdom. His case, too, suggests that there is more continuity beyond 1585 than is often suggested. All following papers deal with religious trends and developments in the Dutch Republic. Mia Mochizuki discusses Dutch church dec- oration after the break with Rome in the context of the ideas of Erasmus, Zwingli and Calvin. Images were replaced by visual rep- resentations of the Word. Mochizuki’s contribution focuses on a large text panel in Haarlem’s main church. One side of this panel fea- tures a text about the Avontmael (Holy Supper), while the other side of the panel is dedicated to a description of the siege of Haarlem by the Spaniards in 1572–1573. The panel reflects the ambivalent position of the Dutch Reformed Church. On the one hand church buildings were town property. The buildings were put at the dis- posal of the Reformed community but the wardens were appointed by the civic magistrates. The civic text therefore faced the nave, the public side of the Church which was not only used as a place for ������������ 5 preaching but also as a meeting place for citizens. The Haarlem panel to some extent reflects the ‘ambivalent face of Calvinism in the Netherlands,’8 where only a relatively small number of believers became full members of the Reformed Church and took part in Holy Supper, which was often celebrated in the church’s choir, from where the panel’s Avontmael text could be seen. The following two papers deal with religious identities of the Reformed and the Catholics respectively. Christine Kooi explores Reformed rhetoric against the activities of the Catholic mission in the Dutch Republic. The verbal hostility of the ministers against ‘popery’ and ‘idolatry’ became a significant part of a specifically Reformed confessional culture and it served the construction of a Reformed self-image. This public hostility is difficult to square with another characteristic of Dutch religious culture, diversity; yet inter- action between Protestants and Catholics, Kooi argues, could be quite amicable. Charles Parker in his essay explores the relations between Catholic clergy and laity in creating a Dutch Catholic identity. Basing his research on the copious correspondence between lay leaders and clergy in the archives of the apostolic vicars in Utrecht, Parker sketches out some of the chief ways in which lay folk interacted with their priests to suggest the importance of the clergy in Dutch lay identity. His study suggests that the development of religious piety in the seventeenth century was a negotiated process between laity and clergy. Even without the support of the state, Tridentine Catholicism firmly took root among the laity, and local lay leaders welcomed the Holland Mission’s programme of clerical reform. Fred van Lieburg discusses the reception in the Dutch Republic of a translated volume of providential writings by the English Puritan author William Turner. Studying the background, contents and recep- tion of the Dutch translation Van Lieburg highlights international traditions of religious communication. His paper suggests that Prot- estants, however dismissive they may have been as to superstition and idolatry, resembled Catholics in stressing the significance of divine providence. The paper by Jaconelle Schuffel explores the changing relation- ship between Reformed homiletics and rhetoric. Taking a very long 6 ������������ 8 Duke, Reformation and Revolt (note 2), 269–293.

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