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Calvinism and Religious Exile During the Revolt of the Netherlands (1568–1609)
Abstract
This article examines the Calvinist refugee community in the German city of Wesel during the Revolt of the Netherlands (1568–1609) as a test case to understand how refugees lived out their Calvinist ideology of exile in practice. It argues that while they understood their trials in terms of established Christian models of suffering and redemption, what it meant to live up to those models changed significantly according to the historical context. In this case, a dramatic shift in the war encouraged social elites among the exiles to alter their behaviour as they realised that they may never return home. They increasingly engaged in civil society and with their hosts, while at the same time heightening their regulation of moral behaviour among ordinary members of their community.
... Spohnholz also demonstrated complete endogamy within the exile community, making Beyma'sd e c i s i o nt or e m a i n single or at least to delay marriage unsurprising. 35 Beyma's spouse, Maijke Gadema (?-1619), was also Frisian. In 1596, the couple relocated from Leiden to Friesland, where Beyma accepted a professorship at Franeker. ...
Misogamist discourse prevailed among western European early modern scholars. This article examines whether misogamist discourse translated into behaviour in the Dutch Republic. We identify marriage trends of professors employed by the universities of Leiden and Utrecht in the seventeenth century, using quantitative and qualitative approaches. We analysed a prosopographical dataset of professors and their wives, explored here through several case studies. Against views of exceptionality, seclusion and celibacy in scholarly culture, based on self-fashioning and a handful of memorable examples, we argue that scholars overall replicated and intensified the European Marriage Pattern, and marriage strategies of the Dutch civic elite.
During the sixteenth century, migration of mainly French Protestants into Geneva resulted in a significant refugee community dedicated to discipline and poor relief. This article examines the ongoing impact of migration on the formation of religious communities and their correlation with the development of poor relief funds in a leading Reformation city. The social dislocation of religious refugees fostered a high commitment to their new identity as advocates of the Reformed religion and proponents of poor relief for foreigners. John Calvin, chief minister and French immigrant, articulated his ideals for establishing a truly Christianized community through the institutions of the church, the consistory and the Bourse française (French Fund) to support the formation of a distinctive religious identity. This article argues that aid for the refugees became an integral part of establishing this religious and social reformation from the 1540s to the 1560s as waves of refugees landed in Geneva.
According to historiographical convention, the experience of exile by Protestants from the Habsburg Netherlands between the 1550s and the early 1570s played a critical role in promoting confessional Calvinism in the early Dutch Republic. But there are too many problems in the evidentiary basis to sustain this conclusion. This essay traces the historiography on the Dutch Reformation in order to isolate where and why this idea emerged. It demonstrates that no specific role for religious refugees in the development of Dutch Calvinism can be found in historical writing from the late sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Only in the late nineteenth century, during a debate about the role of the Dutch Reformed Church in the Netherlands, did the experiences of religious refugees come to take on a specific role in explaining the development of Dutch Calvinism. The idea first emerged among Neo-Calvinists who critiqued state supervision of their church. By the twentieth century, it came to be used by orthodox and moderate Reformed Protestants, as well as liberal and secular academic historians. This paper thus demonstrates that this key interpretive framework for understanding the Dutch Reformation was the product not of developments in the sixteenth-century Habsburg Netherlands, but of religious politics in the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the late nineteenth century.
This book seeks to liberate and broaden our understanding of the European Reformation, from its origins in medieval philosophy and theology through the Puritan settlers who brought Calvin's vision to the New World. Ranging over many topics, it finds connections between aspects of the Reformation and twentieth-century history and thought—most notably the connection to Nazism and the Holocaust. The book revisits earlier work on the history of anti-Semitism, rejects the notion of an unbroken line from Luther to Hitler to the Holocaust, and offers a new perspective on the Christian legacy of anti-Semitism and its murderous result in the twentieth century. The book demonstrates how the simplifications and rigidities of modern historiography have obscured the existential spirits of such great figures as Luther and Calvin. The book explores the debt of both Luther and Calvin to medieval religious thought and the impact of diverse features of “the long fifteenth century”—including the Black Death, nominalism, humanism, and the Conciliar Movement—on the Reformation.
p>The thesis examines the French-speaking Reformed community in Southampton, the antecedents of the members of the community, the establishment of the community and its impact upon the town of Southampton 1567 and c . 1620.
In the Prologue the links between religion, migration and capitalism are discussed. There is a brief consideration of aliens in Southampton, the historiography of the French church and the sources which have been used.
The first chapter examines the membership of the French-speaking community and their antecedents. In particular their association with the Reformed cause is considered. In the next chapter, the negotiations resulting in the establishment of the community are discussed. The economic impact of the community in Southampton is considered in the following three chapters which look at the involvement of the refugees in Southampton's trade, the introduction of the 'new draperies' and other occupations pursued by the refugees. The religious life of the community is discussed in Chapter 6. The ministry and organisation of the French church are also considered. The involvement of the refugees in the Dutch Revolt and the French Wars of Religion is examined in the following chapter. In the final chapter, the alien's links with their host community and the process of integration is explored. In the Conclusions, the position of the Southampton community is considered in relation to other exile communities.</p
p>Chapter I considers the demographic evolution of the local and Stranger populations in the Cinque Port and the attitudes towards the increasing influx of refugees into Sandwich. Chapter II analyses the religious organisation and discipline of the exile communities, including their contacts with the other Stranger communities in England and their co-religionists on the Continent, the attitude towards Anabaptism, their education and organisation of their orphanage. After outlining the economic relations between England and Flanders in the late middle ages and early Tudor times and the role of Sandwich during that period, Chapter III examines the important contribution the Strangers made to the Sandwich economy, the tension between the locals and the refugees in a national and international perspective, and the organisation of the exiles' `New Draperies'. Chapter IV is devoted to an analysis of social stratification and living standards of the exiles, based on information about wages, prices and taxes. The final chapter discusses the involvement of the Stranger communities in the Troubles in Flanders, especially during the 1560s but continuing until 1603. Subjects covered in this chapter include the debates on the use of violence, the Iconoclastic Fury, the Wood and Sea Beggars and support for Orange.</p
This sweeping book tells the story of Calvinism's origins, expansion, and impact across Europe from the upheavals of the early Reformation to the end of the seventeenth century. The faith's fundamental doctrines, diverse ecclesiastical institutions, and significant consequences for lived experience are all explored, revealing the ongoing interplay between a dynamic religious tradition and the worlds in which it took root. "This is a rare and great achievement: a broad survey . . . that is at once a gripping narrative and a fresh interpretation of the subject, as masterful with the small details as with the big picture." -Carlos Eire, Yale University.
The Dutch Reformation and the beginnings of the Exile Movement Emden Mother Church Emden printing the wonderyear recovery and reorganization victory in Holland - diminishing influence exile and the development of Reformed Protestantism. Appendix: Books printed in Emden 1554-1583.
In this last collection of his vital, controversial, and accessible writings, Oberman seeks to liberate and broaden our understanding of the European Reformation, from its origins in medieval philosophy and theology through the Puritan settlers who brought Calvin's vision to the New World. Ranging over many topics, he finds fascinating connections between aspects of the Reformation and twentieth-century history and thought-most notably the connection to Nazism and the Holocaust.
Most recent studies of Calvinist church discipline have used consistory records to attempt to quantify the intensity and the focus of early modern Reformed discipline. They do so on the assumption that consistory records form a representative record of disciplinary activity. This article questions that assumption. Using the journal of an Utrecht elder from the 1620s, it demonstrates, first, that his Reformed church kept no record at all of about 70 percent of the disciplinary cases that it handled. Secondly, it argues that the records give a flattering picture of the relationship between the church and the authorities, and of the relationships between ministers, elders, and deacons. Finally, it shows that much disciplinary activity was never discussed by the entire consistory, and that it was on the whole more informal in character than is usually presumed.
The fierce debates about the Eucharist during the Reformation era highlight a central tension between individuals' desire to secure confessional purity and their instinct to protect the communal nature of Christian worship. Preserving confessional coexistence required balancing these forces, often by expelling nonconformists or driving them underground. Instead, civic leaders in sixteenth-century Wesel demanded that residents of all confessions attend communion together. This policy emerged as a result of leaders' fear of unmanageable disorder in the face of waves of Calvinist immigrants, even as the town was still reeling from struggles between Lutherans and Catholics. In practice, this policy preserved the sacral communalism of the pre-Reformation church, while leaving individuals lattitude to express confessional difference in informal but visible ways.
Bulletin of the History of Medicine 72.3 (1998) 535-536
The subject of this volume is introduced by a review of various concepts of the European and English Middle Ages concerning death and the dead, emphasizing contemporary concerns for the fate of the soul and methods for alleviating its purgatorial sufferings. This is followed by chapters on the rituals of death and burial, securing spiritual support for the dead, the significance of physical location of the corpse, and which dead bodies were excluded from Christian burial.
In the most interesting chapter, "The Bodily Evidence," the author (a researcher for the York Archaeological Trust) deals with skeletal evidence and its interpretation, with a good section on infant burials. Suggestions are made as to illnesses among medieval populations as indicated by osteological characteristics, and the potential for newer techniques, including DNA analysis, in reanimating the past. Daniell emphasizes advances in these studies since the 1960s. Chapter 6, "Cemeteries and Grave Goods," is less successful, the author too narrowly and immediately linking assumed changes in religious belief with changes in burial custom. His discussion of specific archaeological finds, however -- such as burials over charcoal, "ear muffs," and tokens of life buried with the dead -- is interesting.
The final chapter, "Death from the Conquest to the Reformation," is an attempt at an overview and, more than that, an examination of three themes that affected death and burial beliefs and rites: doctrines concerning purgatory from the twelfth century; the impact of the Black Death of the fourteenth century; and the English Reformation. There is a rather simplistic cleaving to the long-questioned idea propounded by, for example, Jacques Le Goff, that purgatory was a twelfth-century theological construct, though Daniell does acknowledge that purgatorial ideas were circulating long before this period. On the whole, however, the case for linking burial customs to purgatorial beliefs is weak, at least as propounded here. The author also creates problems for himself in assuming that there was such an entity as "the Church," when many variations, disputed doctrines, and local rituals marked that expansive corporation, even within the narrow compass of medieval England.
The emotional and psychological consequences of the Black Death, as these influenced ideas about death and burial, are adequately discussed, as are the effects of the Reformation -- for example, in causing the dissolution of monasteries and the destruction of tombs reflecting Catholic doctrines and of chantries, to which so much death-ritual was closely linked by the later Middle Ages. There is a good appendix on the burials of Jews and lepers, in which Daniell states that the latter were ritually buried while still alive. A second appendix, on "The Living," would have been better as part of the text itself.
On the whole, this is a helpful vade mecum for those who have no familiarity with the topic. However, the reader must be prepared for a somewhat wooden style and a rather naive, generalizing use of medieval visions and sermons (which included motifs sometimes as old as the fifth century). There are slips of interpretation and reason -- such as, for example, insufficiently explaining ad succurrendum burials, or the use of iron bands as penitential devices; or assuming that there was more sunshine in the Middle Ages, or that only non-Christians tended to drown. There are also slips of fact: for example, Lyndwood is usually known as a canonist rather than a sermon-writer, and Thomas Cantilupe's heart was buried at Ashridge, not in Hereford.
One would like to see more about translations (ceremonial reburials) of saints' bones, the effects of adipocere formation in creating "uncorrupted" bodies, and how society treated other special dead, such as traitors or heretics. The vast twelfth-to-thirteenth-century literature on ghosts returning from purgatory, which would have strengthened the author's contentions, is insufficiently explored, as are the numerous medieval records of men whose accustomed fare was death -- England's coroners. Apart from these cavils, however, this is a good book, packed...
Drawing on scholarship that highlights the fact that Calvin was a refugee who ministered to other refugees, this essay argues for a re-evaluation of 'the displaced Calvin' as source and motivation for Reformed witness today. The first part of the essay attends to some biographical details that amplify the centrality of the 'refugee reality' in Calvin's life. The second part of the paper traces the impact of this experiential reality on Calvin's theology, focusing mainly on how it may serve as a lens to aid our understanding of Calvin's reading of Scripture, as well as his doctrine of predestination. The brief conclusion suggests that, given increasing migration, displacement and xenophobia, the celebration of the legacy of the displaced Calvin requires a graceful theology of hospitality.
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1990. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 613-658). Photocopy.
Thesis (doctoral)--Vrije Universiteit te Amsterdam, 1911. Includes bibliographical references (p. xiii-xx) and index.
Book description: As religious violence flares around the world, we are confronted with an acute dilemma: Can people coexist in peace when their basic beliefs are irreconcilable? Benjamin Kaplan responds by taking us back to early modern Europe, when the issue of religious toleration was no less pressing than it is today.
Divided by Faith begins in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, when the unity of western Christendom was shattered, and takes us on a panoramic tour of Europe's religious landscape--and its deep fault lines--over the next three centuries. Kaplan's grand canvas reveals the patterns of conflict and toleration among Christians, Jews, and Muslims across the continent, from the British Isles to Poland. It lays bare the complex realities of day-to-day interactions and calls into question the received wisdom that toleration underwent an evolutionary rise as Europe grew more "enlightened." We are given vivid examples of the improvised arrangements that made peaceful coexistence possible, and shown how common folk contributed to toleration as significantly as did intellectuals and rulers. Bloodshed was prevented not by the high ideals of tolerance and individual rights upheld today, but by the pragmatism, charity, and social ties that continued to bind people divided by faith.
Divided by Faith is both history from the bottom up and a much-needed challenge to our belief in the triumph of reason over faith. This compelling story reveals that toleration has taken many guises in the past and suggests that it may well do the same in the future.
Europa Afflica This article has been reprinted, along with several others on related themes The Displaced Calvin
- Oberman
Oberman, " Europa Afflica, " 91 – 111. This article has been reprinted, along with several others on related themes, in Oberman, John Calvin and the Reformation of the Refugees. See also Vosloo, " The Displaced Calvin, " 35– 52 and Selderhuis, Calvijn als Asielzoeker.
Multiconfessional Celebration
- Spohnholz
Spohnholz, " Multiconfessional Celebration, " 705 –29.
Rest of their Bones', " 167– 83 and Karant-Nunn, Reformation of Ritual
- Spicer
Spicer, " 'Rest of their Bones', " 167– 83 and Karant-Nunn, Reformation of Ritual, 185.
Reformation of Ritual, 178 and Daniell, Death and Burial
- Karant-Nunn
Karant-Nunn, Reformation of Ritual, 178 and Daniell, Death and Burial, 87 – 115.
Christ's Churches Purely Reformed
- Benedict
Benedict, Christ's Churches Purely Reformed, 460– 89.
Sin and the Calvinists. Mü, " Volkskultur und Calvinismus
- Case For
- Mentzer
For case studies, see Mentzer, ed., Sin and the Calvinists. Mü, " Volkskultur und Calvinismus, " 291– 307.
Foreign Protestant Communities; Pettegree Thirty Years On Esser, Niederlä Exulanten im England; Backhouse, Flemish and Walloon Communities; Spicer, French-speaking Reformed Community; Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage
- Pettegree
Pettegree, Foreign Protestant Communities; Pettegree, " Thirty Years On. " Esser, Niederlä Exulanten im England; Backhouse, Flemish and Walloon Communities; Spicer, French-speaking Reformed Community; Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage. See also the essays by Patrick Collinson, D.J.B. Trim and Nigel Goose in Vigne and Littleton, ed., From Strangers to Citizens.