Fulfilling God's Mission: The Two Worlds of Dominie Everardus Bogardus, 1607-1647

Fullling God’s Mission

The Atlantic World Europe, Africa and the Americas, 1500–1830 Editors

Wim Klooster Clark University

Benjamin Schmidt University of Washington

VOLUME XIV

Fullling God’s Mission The Two Worlds of Dominie Everardus Bogardus, 1607–1647

by

Willem Frijhoff

Translated by

Myra Heerspink Scholz

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2007

This book is printed on acid-free paper. On the cover: Young orphan reading the Bible before dinner. Detail of the Ceremonial meal at the town orphanage of Oudewater, 1651. Oil painting on canvas by H. van Ommen. [ Photograph by the author]. The translation of this book was made possible by a grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientic Research (NWO). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Frijhoff, Willem. [Wegen van Evert Willemsz. English] Fullling God’s mission : the two worlds of Dominie Everardus Bogardus, 1607–1647 / by Willem Frijhoff ; translated by Myra Heerspink Scholz. p. cm. — (The Atlantic world ; v. 14) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-16211-2 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Bogaert, Evert Willemsz., 1607–1647. 2. Clergy—Netherlands—Biography. 3. Dutch Americans—New York (State)—New York—History—17th century. 4. New York (N.Y.)—Social life and customs—To 1775. I. Title. II. Series. BX4705.B547F7513 2007 284’.2092—dc22 [B] 2007031997

ISSN 1570-0542 ISBN 978 90 04 16211 2 © Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. 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 Koninklijke Brill NV 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

For Sabine and Laia

CONTENTS

Preface ......................................................................................... ix Conventions ................................................................................ xvii Abbreviations .............................................................................. xix List of Illustrations ...................................................................... xxiii

PROLOGUE A little spiritual song ................................................................... The mystical experience .............................................................

3 7

PART ONE

VOCATION Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter

One A child without parents .................................... Two Evert’s world ...................................................... Three An orphan in Woerden .................................. Four Words, sounds, images ...................................... Five Election .............................................................. Six Body language ..................................................... Seven Deliverance ..................................................... Eight Recognition ......................................................

41 76 115 153 181 204 235 263

INTERMEZZO

REACHING MATURITY Chapter Nine

Comforter of the sick in Mouri .......................

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contents PART TWO

MISSIONS Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter

Ten A minister in Manhattan ................................... Eleven A New Netherland family ............................. Twelve Confrontations .............................................. Thirteen War ............................................................. Fourteen Responsibilities ........................................... Fifteen Mission work ................................................. Sixteen Taking stock ..................................................

319 364 413 452 490 524 558

EPILOGUE The Anneke Jans story ...............................................................

571

APPENDIX Relatives by blood and marriage of Evert Willemsz Bogaert: a reconstruction ........................................

595

Index ...........................................................................................

605

PREFACE

An author is like an orphan. A person who sits down with pen and paper, a typewriter, or a text processor is left without a father or mother. The support of family and friends, education or social environment melts away. The fear of the blank page or the black screen recalls an orphan’s sense of helplessness in a world of friends with all-powerful fathers and mothers. Yet something emerges. The writer completes his book, the orphan nds a place in society. Is writing a metaphor of life? This book reverses the metaphor. The life of this seventeenth-century orphan resembles a writing process: with pen and ink supplied by others, in old words and images, a uniquely new and personal book came to be written. At one time I thought it should be possible to write a biography of an “ordinary” boy from the past. I wanted to get a grip on the “other” that gives body to history. I collected material about people who seemed unexceptional, made (and rejected) some rst attempts and tried to nd a way between lachrymose populism and the tiresome elitism that keeps cropping up in the writing of history. That was of course illusory. Evert Willemsz, the hero of this book, was born an “ordinary” boy, but he made his life into something that goes far beyond anything we perceive as ordinary. Even if he had not done so, every writer gives an extraordinary dimension to things that were at one time unremarkable. The “ordinary” is by denition shallow, at, two-dimensional, and insignicant. Meaning emerges from depth, from a play with similarities and differences that reveals the unique in the ordinary. It is the author who reconstructs the life strategy of his hero and gives it that label. Whether the subject of such a biography would recognize himself in it is another question. The only certainty here is that the biographer should respect the desire every person has to be taken seriously as an acting subject, as an individual with specic thoughts and images, feelings and emotions, words and gestures. Although contained in categories determined by time, space, environment, and group, they nevertheless change with the tides and currents of personal experience. Here we also nd an answer to a second, almost inevitable question: How representative is the hero of this book? This, too, is a question

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based on an illusion. No one is representative. The historian who uses the word “representativeness” means representation, presentation, image. The writer re-presents his subject, in both senses of the word: he places him in the present, and he introduces him to readers in an image from which the author emerges as clearly as the subject himself. The writer raises to higher power, as it were, the life story that the hero of his book already wrote about himself. He rethinks choices made in the past and revamps old interpretations. The protagonist of the story would not necessarily recognize himself in this—but is anyone master of his own image? This book was born not only of an illusion but also of a small misunderstanding. Early in 1987, while searching for suitable material for group research in my postdoctoral seminar at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, I came across two pamphlets detailing the religious experience of the fteen-year-old orphan Evert Willemsz of Woerden. Here was the voice of a boy from the past! And this was an average youngster, not a highly gifted child like Grotius, Huygens, or Mozart. What at rst struck me as a curiosity soon crystallized into a challenging question: Was this strange orphan boy a common dissembler—as his contemporary Wassenaer maintained, although without mentioning his name? A closer analysis soon gave rise to doubts. This was no streamlined story about a model religious child, but an account of an orphan with a mind of his own and a pronounced personality. Not a sympathetic, God-fearing boy, but a recalcitrant and yet captivating individual. The members of the seminar shared my doubt and we laid out plans for joint research. The situation changed instantly thanks to a discussion with Nico Plomp, vice-director of the Central Bureau of Genealogy (The Hague) and expert on both Woerden and New Netherland. He told me that the boy who in the pamphlets is called only by his patronymic (Willemsz) had a surname (Bogaert) and a family, and that as Dominie Bogardus—the Latinized form of his name—he played a special role in the history of New Amsterdam, now New York. While little had been written about him in the Netherlands, a great deal had appeared in New York. But the American historiography lacked information about his youthful experiences because they were recorded in seventeenth-century Dutch and printed in pamphlets with Gothic type, illegible for an American public. Unaware of the link with New Netherland, the Dutch public was equally unfamiliar with the material. The analysis thus acquired an entirely new dimension. How to bring together these two historical

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personalities, the unusual orphan and the militant minister? How to reconstruct a single person from two totally different types of sources and two independent historical images? Such a synthesis requires a single author. From that moment I decided to assume responsibility for all of the research. Since the publication of the book I have also presented my ndings at various international congresses and in articles in scholarly books and journals.1 Postmodern clichés easily turn the historian back into the personal creator of an individual view of history. Fashionable subjectivism of this kind is as untenable as the old, positivistic idea of a distant and strictly objective researcher. Too many people and books, texts and images, objects and sensations cross the path of the historian for him to retain anything resembling individuality. I take that for granted and acknowledge it with gratitude. Many people have contributed to this book, but a few colleagues and friends have played a more signicant part in collecting material, constructing the narrative, or providing

1 The original Dutch version Wegen van Evert Willemsz: een Hollands weeskind op zoek naar zichzelf 1607–1647 was published at Nijmegen by SUN publishers in 1995, in the collection ‘Memoria. Cultuur- en mentaliteitshistorische studies over de Nederlanden’ (ISBN 90-6168-402-1). This version is accessible, free of charge, in the Dutch DAREnet repository, under the URL: http://hdl.handle.net/1871/3251. International publications following this book include ‘The healing of a lay saint: Evert Willemsz. Bogardus’s conversion between personal achievement and social legitimation’, in: De Halve Maen. Magazine of the Dutch Colonial Period in America, published by the Holland Society of New York 68:1 (Spring 1995), 1–12; ‘Popular Pietism and the language of sickness: Evert Willemsz’s conversion, 1622–23’, in: Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra, Hilary Marland & Hans de Waardt (eds.), Illness and healing alternatives in Western Europe (London & New York 1997), 98–119; ‘Identity achievement, education, and social legitimation in early modern Dutch society: the case of Evert Willemsz (1622–23)’, in: Shirahata Yozaburo & W.J. Boot (eds.), Two faces of the early modern world: the Netherlands and Japan in the 17th and 18th centuries (Kyoto 2001), 137–163; ‘Experience and agency at the crossroads of culture, mentality, and contextualization: the biography of Everhardus Bogardus (c. 1607–1647)’, in: Hans Erich Bödeker (ed.), Biographie schreiben [Göttinger Gespräche zur Geschichtswissenschaft, 18] (Göttingen 2003), 65–105. Other related publications will be quoted in the relevant footnotes. Finally, the Dutch version of my book inspired the former Dutch minister of Economic affairs and practicing artist Jan Roelof van den Brink (regretfully deceased in 2006). His 33 watercolors of Evert’s life were exhibited in New York in 1997, by courtesy of the ABN-Amro Bank: Everardus Bogardus 1607–1647: the life and times of a Dutch orphan. A series of thirty-three watercolors by Jan Roelof van den Brink. Exhibition catalogue, New York Historical Society, May–June 1997 (New York & Amsterdam 1997). The methodological approach of this book has been critically assessed by Gerard Rooijakkers, ‘“De wegen van Willem Frijhoff ”. De methodologie van de contextuele biograe als (kerk)historische uitdaging’, in: Trajecta 9:3 (2000), 310–315.

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inspiration. I wish to take this opportunity to express my thanks. First of all to the members of my postdoctoral seminar in Rotterdam, where elements of this research were presented at various times beginning in September 1987. Also to Nico Plomp, former vice-director of the Central Bureau for Genealogy in The Hague, himself a specialist in the history of Woerden, who from the rst moment proved an interested, expert, and stimulating conversation partner. William Brower Bogardus, the indefatigable soul of The Anneke Jans and Everardus Bogardus Descendants Association, and his wife Raymona were informants who in a short time became friends. At their home in Wilmington, Ohio, where their immense documentation is stored, they were as hospitable as they were helpful. Most important for a historian, they were also willing to take a critical look at the ever-proliferating family mythology. I was touched by their ability to mold the past into a new, living heritage and to let others share in their emotions.2 Although I arrived on the wrong day, the Reverend Dr. O. Springsteen, then chairman of the Holland Society of New York, generously allowed me access to the Society’s library and collections. An equally warm welcome awaited me from the staff of the New Netherland Project in the New York State Library at Albany, especially from Charles Gehring, Janny Venema, and Nancy Zeller. Janny Venema in particular proved an unfailingly competent, interested, and helpful guide, to whom I owe many insights into concrete life in New Netherland.3 Despite the tragic state of the New Netherland archives, which were damaged by re in 1911, the staff of the New York State Archives at Albany showed a heartwarming understanding for the limited time available to a foreign visitor. Because my stay in New York in March 1993 coincided with the heaviest snowstorm of the century, I gained a better understanding for the unexpectedly harsh paradise that Roelof Jansz, Anneke Jans, and

2 The new and veried genealogical data from the Dutch version of this book (1995) have been incorporated into the denitive family genealogy by William Brower Bogardus, Dear ‘Cousin’. A charted genealogy of the descendants of Anneke Jans Bogardus (1605– 1663) to the 5th generation—and of her sister, Marritje Jans (Wilmington, Ohio 1996), who also discusses the problems related to the family mythology presented in the epilogue of this book and still circulating on the Internet, together with many false or fantastic genealogical data. 3 After the publication of my book I had the pleasure of supervising her important PhD dissertation (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, June 26, 2003) on the beginnings of Beverwijck (Albany): Janny Venema, Beverwijck: a Dutch village on the American frontier (Hilversum & Albany 2003).

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Evert Willemsz encountered. They must have had moments of deep despair. For more than twenty years Henk Hoeks of SUN publishers has been a demanding and absolutely reliable partner in publishing books that we both consider inspiring. He reviewed the Dutch manuscript, and it was thanks to his efforts that the book appeared in a complete and unabridged edition. In the name of the publisher he gave permission for the translation. The length of the book, however, meant that abridgement was necessary. That presented a special problem for this contextual biography, since trimming back the text threatened to eliminate the context and thus change the nature of the book. My former student Marc Wingens agreed to take on the thankless and time-consuming task of making compelling suggestions as to how I could shorten the original Dutch edition to a length that would be acceptable to an American publisher and at the same time would respect the contextual approach. He succeeded amazingly well, in my opinion. Without him this second text would never have come about—which author, after all, likes to cut into his own esh? For his support and help, given in friendship and trust, I am extremely grateful. His editorial suggestions were carried out by Govert Boterblom, who provided me with a workable text for last corrections. I owe him thanks as well for his meticulous and empathetic adaptation of my text, which I could fully endorse. It has become an entirely new book. Since the publication of the Dutch version of this study many new books and articles have appeared on the history of the Netherlands and of New Netherland, including some summary overviews with a distinct approach to Dutch or early American history. I have worked them into my text to the extent that it seemed necessary but deliberately refrained from citing all of them. In the last two decades New Netherland studies in particular have experienced a true revival on both sides of the ocean, and, what is really new, these two research communities have found each other. New themes are being developed, and, more importantly, new approaches are surfacing thanks to the renewal of political, social and economic history, to the rise of gender history, historical anthropology and cultural studies, and to new ways of assessing the ethnic variety of early colonial America, the group identities, and their social and cultural issues. Interrogating in a variety of ways the issue of “Dutchness,” New Netherland studies also go far beyond the traditional limits of New

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York parochialism and old Knickerbocker prejudice. They are presently evolving into a truly international topic of study.4 By now, one of the most important questions under review is to discover how Dutch (or better, European) culture, traditions, and mentalities interacted with the American context; how they clashed with the cultures of the Natives and the Blacks, managed somehow to cope with them or were in turn inuenced and changed. The question of just how Dutch (or European) early American colonial society must have been pervades most of the recent historical literature on New Netherland.5 Indeed, such research may change our vision of the roots of American democracy, toleration, freedom of conscience, and political representation. It will also yield new insights into the relation between religion and community, immigration and integration, authority and the individual. All these themes play their part in the life of Bogardus as analyzed in this book, which assigns a pivotal role to his changing and multifaceted identity. The references in this abridged translation have therefore been updated to a limited degree. They have mainly been reduced in number and, where necessary, adjusted for an English-speaking public, and more precisely for an American audience. In the original Dutch edition the interested reader can nd a much more extensive bibliographic apparatus up to 1994. Because the original sources are central to this book, the reader should not expect a systematic résumé of all the literature that has appeared on any one facet of the subject. Because a summary bibliography seemed to make little sense in a book that brings together two completely different countries and historiographic traditions and provides in-depth analyses for a broad

4 Of the many important and stimulating works relevant for my topic in general, I wish to single out the following outstanding studies. For more detailed work I refer to the footnotes of the relevant chapters. Transatlantic cultural imagination has been explored in Karen Ordahl Kupperman (ed.), America in European consciousness, 1493–1750 (Chapel Hill 1995); and Benjamin Schmidt, Innocence abroad: The Dutch imagination and the New World, 1570–1670 (Cambridge 2001). An excellent synthesis of New Netherland history from the Dutch side is: Jaap Jacobs, New Netherland: A Dutch colony in seventeenthcentury America [The Atlantic World, 3] (Leiden & Boston 2005), translated and updated from the original 1999 Dutch edition. Its American counterpart, well researched though written in a more persuasive style and for a broader public, with an obvious message for the American reader, is Russell Shorto, The Island at the center of the world: The epic story of Dutch Manhattan and the forgotten colony that shaped America (New York etc. 2004). 5 The interactions and clashes between European Dutchness and the American context have been placed on the agenda by Donna Merwick in several inuential books, beginning with her Possessing Albany 1630–1710: the Dutch and English experiences (Cambridge 1990).

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variety of themes, it was decided to use the following system of documentation. In the rst footnotes of each chapter or section the most important literature relevant to the topic of that chapter or section is given, including books and articles published after 1994. References to archival sources and publications which are frequently quoted throughout the volume appear in abbreviated form; the abbreviations are listed below. For literature cited in only some of the chapters, the complete title is given at the rst occurrence in each chapter; further references to that work in the same chapter make use of an abbreviated title. Complete bibliographic references can therefore always be retrieved within a chapter, and each chapter provides a suitable documentation of its own. Funding for the translation of the abridged text was provided by the Netherlands Organization for Scientic Research (NWO), for which I am very grateful.6 The translator, Myra Heerspink Scholz, previously translated the synthesis of Dutch culture in the Golden Age which Marijke Spies and I wrote in 1999 under the title 1650: Hard-Won Unity (Assen & Basingstoke 2004) and which in a sense provides the broader backdrop for this contextual biography.7 She proved to be familiar not only with the culture and institutions of the seventeenth century but also with the language of Evert Willemsz’s milieu, and she saved me from some errors. Her consensual translations of Evert’s own texts are, in my opinion, particularly successful renderings not only of the content but also of the often clumsy form and primitive rhyme. For her efcient and awless cooperation I am extremely grateful.8 For the ne, faithful translation of Evert’s Little Spiritual Song my thanks go to James F. Cool of Wilmington, Ohio. Finally I wish to thank all those who were willing to listen to my endless stories about the remarkable orphan of Woerden and his fascinating life. Especially Sabine and Laia—with what enthusiasm they

6

I was one of the last to have beneted from a translation grant, since an ill-conceived effort at scaling up their organization and a failure to acknowledge the importance of well-written translations for international communication in the humanities has led the NWO recently to close its publication grants department. 7 For the state of the art in historical biography, see the excellent introduction to Hans Erich Bödeker (ed.), Biographie schreiben [Göttinger Gespräche zur Geschichtswissenschaft, 18] (Göttingen 2003), 9–63. 8 The translation of the rst half of the prologue has beneted from a prior version by Wendy Shaffer.

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followed my explorations! What an interest they showed for people and events light years removed from our experience! And how patient they were with me all those years! Rotterdam, April 1, 1994/April 1, 2007

CONVENTIONS

A wide variety of sources and literature went into the making of this book. References to archives and primary literature are given in the factual notes accompanying each chapter. In principle, reference is always to the original source, in some cases together with the data of its publication—which for material from New Netherland is usually in English translation. For the original edition of this book, however, I consistently used the original Dutch texts, also when citing sources kept in American repositories. These have now been directly translated into English for this edition and may deviate slightly from earlier translations published in English. In view of the interpretive problems surrounding the sources for more than two centuries, this seemed the most responsible approach. I am grateful to the relevant archivists and librarians for their permission to quote from the documents studied. For the translation of the Bible quotations, the King James Version has been used; when necessary, the numbering of the chapters and verses has been adapted. Because a large number of passages were eliminated for this abridged version, the footnotes include references to sections of the Dutch edition (quoted as Wegen) when they seemed relevant for deeper insight into the material. In Holland and Zeeland as well as in New Netherland (but not in the rest of the Dutch Republic, nor in England) the new Gregorian calendar was in use. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, all the dates are therefore new style. After the rst mention of the old names of regions, towns, and streets the present name, when necessary, is given in parentheses. The same applies to obsolete idioms in the quotations.

ABBREVIATIONS

ACA ARCA BLGNP

Breeden-Raedt

DCM

Donck, Beschryvinge (1656)

DRCHNY

DTB

Archive of the Classis Amsterdam (in GAA, PA 379) Archive of the Reformed Consistory of Amsterdam (in GAA, PA 376) Biograsch lexicon voor de geschiedenis van het Nederlandse Protestantisme (6 vols., Kampen 1978–2006). Breeden-Raedt aende Vereenichde Nederlandsche Provintien [. . .] gemaeckt ende gestelt uyt diverse ware en waerachtige memorien, door I.A.G.W.C. (Antwerp 1649); English transl. ‘Broad Advice to the United Netherlands Provinces’, in: Henry C. Murphy (transl.), Vertoogh van Nieu Nederland, and Breeden Raedt aende Vereenichde Nederlandsche Provintien. Two rare tracts, printed in 1649–’50, relating to the administration of affairs in New Netherland (New York 1854). Dutch Colonial Manuscripts (in NYSA). Unless otherwise required, I quote the published edition of these papers in NYHM. Adriaen van der Donck, Beschryvinge van Nieu-Nederlant [1655] (2d ed., Amsterdam 1656); English translation of the 1655 edition: A description of the New Netherlands [1st ed. 1841], Thomas F. O’Donnell ed. (Syracuse, NY 1968). E.B. O’Callaghan and Berthold Fernow (transl. and ed.), Documents relative to the colonial history of the State of New York (15 vols., Albany 1853–1883). Doop-, trouw- en begraafboeken (Baptismal, marriage and funeral records).

xx ER ERA

GAA GAL Gehring

LP

NA NAN NNBW

NNN NYCM NYGBR NYHM, I–IV

NYHS NYPL NYSA NYSL OWIC SAW VRBM

abbreviations Edward T. Corwin (transl. and ed.), Ecclesiastical records. State of New York, 7 vols. (Albany 1901–1916). J. Pearson and A.J.F. van Laer (transl. and ed.), Early records of the City and County of Albany and Colony of Rensselaerswyck (4 vols., Albany 1869–1919). Gemeentearchief Amsterdam Regionaal Archief Leiden, Gemeentearchief Leiden Charles T. Gehring (ed.), A guide to Dutch manuscripts relating to New Netherland in United States repositories (Albany 1978). Charles T. Gehring (transl. and ed.), Land papers [ NYHM: Dutch, vols. GG, HH & II] (Baltimore 1980). Notarial Archives National Archives of the Netherlands, The Hague P.C. Molhuysen, P.J. Blok and F.K.H. Kossmann (eds.), Nieuw Nederlandsch biograsch woordenboek (10 vols., Leiden 1911–1937; reprint Amsterdam 1974). J. Franklin Jameson (ed.), Narratives of New Netherland 1609–1664 (New York 1909, reprint 1967). New York Colonial Manuscripts (in NYSA) New York Genealogical and Biographical Record New York Historical manuscripts: Dutch. Vol. I: A.J.F. van Laer (transl. and ed.), Register of the Provincial Secretary, 1638–1642 (Baltimore 1974). Vol. II: A.J.F. van Laer (transl. and ed.), Register of the Provincial Secretary, 1642– 1647 (Baltimore 1974). Vol. III: A.J.F. van Laer (transl. and ed.), Register of the Provincial Secretary, 1648–1660 (Baltimore 1974). Vol. IV: A.J.F. van Laer (transl. and ed.), Council minutes, 1638–1649 (Baltimore 1974). New York Historical Society New York Public Library New York State Archives, Albany New York State Library, Albany Old West India Company Archive (in NAN) Streekarchief Rijnstreek (Woerden), Stadsarchief Woerden vóór 1811 A.J.F. van Laer (transl. and ed.), Van Rensselaer Bowier manuscripts, being the letters of Kiliaen van Rensselaer, 1630– 1643, and other documents relating to the colony of Rensselaerswyck (Albany 1908).

abbreviations De Vries, Historiael

Wegen

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David Pietersz de Vries, Korte historiael, ende journaels aenteyckeninge, van verscheyden voyagiens in de vier deelen des wereldts-ronde . . . (Alkmaar 1655) [ Facsimile in: M. Visser (ed.), Straat- en bochtvaarders (Utrecht 1943); new. ed. by H.T. Colenbrander (The Hague 1911)]. Partial transl. by Henry C. Murphy, Voyages from Holland to America, AD 1632–1644 (New York 1853). I quote the original ed. of 1655, referring also to the passages translated in NNN. Willem Frijhoff, Wegen van Evert Willemsz. Een Hollands weeskind op zoek naar zichzelf, 1607–1647 (Nijmegen 1995).

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1. Melody of Psalm 100 according to the Dathenus Psalter, in use in the Dutch Reformed Church until the publication of the States version of 1637 (1589 edition of the “Deux-Aes” Bible). [Courtesy of the Nederlands Bijbelgenootschap, Haarlem] ................................................ 2. Messages of Evert Willemsz, short dialogue with his brother Pieter, and rst stanzas of his Spiritual Song, reproduced in the second pamphlet Waerachtige Geschiedenisse . . . (Amsterdam, 1623), f. B2v°. [ Royal Library, The Hague, P. Knuttel 3500] ............................................. 3. Map of the town of Woerden, 1632. From: Marcus Zuerius Boxhornius, Toneel ofte beschryvinge der steden van Hollandt (Amsterdam, 1634), p. 310. [Courtesy of the Streekarchief Rijnstreek, Woerden] ...................................... 4. The synod of Dort, 1618. Title page of the pamphlet Afbeeldinghe des Synodi Nationael (s.l., 1618). [Royal Library, The Hague, P. Knuttel 2727] ............................................. 5. Willem Mulock, secretary of Woerden, grants the Woerden scholarship for the States College of Leiden University to the orphan Evert Willemss Boogaert, June 25, 1629. [Leiden University Library, Archief Curatoren, n° 687] .... 6. Will of Evert’s brother Cornelis Bogaert and his wife Gryetgen Paludanus, June 7, 1636. [Gemeentearchief Leiden, Notarial archives 264, n° 196] ................................. 7. Catechism written by Henricus Alutarius, Melck-spijse der Kinderen Godes (Amsterdam, 1621). [Library of the University of Amsterdam, OK 77.185 (2)] .......................... 8. The former town orphanage of Woerden in its present state. In the background the Renaissance town hall with the scaffold. [Photograph by the author] ............................. 9. Ceremonial meal at the town orphanage of Oudewater, 1651. Oil painting on canvas by H. van Ommen. [Courtesy of the municipality of Oudewater; photograph by Foto Rijkelijkhuizen, Oudewater] ....................................

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56

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list of illustrations

10. Education of the orphans in the town orphanage at Alkmaar. Anonymous oil painting on wood, 1619. [Courtesy of the Municipal Museum, Alkmaar] ................ 11. The orphan Evert Willemsz and the matron of the orphanage. Engraving on the title page of the rst printing of the rst pamphlet Waerachtighe ende seeckere gheschiedenisse . . . (Utrecht, 1623). [Royal Library, The Hague, P. Knuttel 3501] ................................................... 12. The tailor’s workroom. Oil painting on canvas by Quiringh Gerritsz van Brekelenkam, 1661. [Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam] ......................................................................... 13. Young orphan reading the Bible before dinner. Detail of the Ceremonial meal at the town orphanage of Oudewater, 1651. Oil painting on canvas by H. van Ommen. [Photograph by the author] ................................ 14. The comet of 1618. Title page of a prognostication by Johannes Velsius, physician at Leeuwarden (Leeuwarden, 1618). [Provincial Library, Tresoar, Leeuwarden] .............. 15. Diagram: Times, rhythms, and modalities of Evert’s spiritual experience .............................................................. 16. The Holy Spirit inspiring Mary and the apostles. Engraving on the title page of the second printing of the rst pamphlet Waerachtighe ende sekere gheschiedenisse . . . (Utrecht, 1623). [Library of the University of Amsterdam, P. C.p.19] ........................................................................... 17. Title page of the second pamphlet Waerachtige Geschiedenisse . . . (Amsterdam, 1623). [ Royal Library, The Hague, P. Knuttel 3500] ........................................... 18. Map of the city of Amsterdam, by Dirck Cornelisse Swart, 1623. [Gemeentearchief Amsterdam] ................................ 19. Pamphlet issued by Reformed “Patriots” in favor of the West India Company Voortganck vande West-Indische Compaignie (Amsterdam, 1623) [Royal Library, The Hague, P. Knuttel 3426] ................................................................ 20. Warehouses of the West India Company on the corner of Oudeschans and ’s-Gravenhekje in Amsterdam, built in 1641–42. [Photograph by the author] ................................ 21. Map of the Coast of Guinea showing the indigenous tribes and kingdoms, signed and dated at Mouri,

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255

271 286

291

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list of illustrations

22.

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24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

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30.

31.

December 25, 1629 (detail). [National Archive of the Netherlands, Section Maps and drawings, VEL 743] ........ Fort Nassau and the village at Mouri on the Coast of Guinea. Drawing by Hans Propheet, July 17, 1629. [National Archive of the Netherlands, Section Maps and drawings, VEL 782] ............................................................ Jacob Steendam, comforter of the sick on the Coast of Guinea. Engraving after a portrait by J.M. Quinkhard in the Panpoëticon Batavum. [Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam] ......... Autograph signature of Everhardus Boghaerdus in the Formula book of the classis Amsterdam, July 15, 1632 [Gemeentearchief Amsterdam, Archive of the Classis Amsterdam, n° 32] .............................................................. Title page of a textbook for “Dutch clerks” by Johan P. vanden Broeck (Amsterdam, 1622). [Library of the University of Amsterdam, 1210 F 29] ................................ Autograph signature of Everardus Boghardus as minister of Manhattan, January 8, 1642. [New York State Archive, Dutch Colonial Manuscripts, 2:5] ....................................... Map of New Netherland with early view of New Amsterdam, 1655. [Appended to: Adriaen van der Donck, Beschryvinge van Nieu-Nederlandt (2nd ed.; Amsterdam, 1656)] ................................................................................... View of New Amsterdam, before the construction of the church in the fort (1642). From: Beschrijvinghe van Virginia, Niew Nederlandt …, published by Joost Hartgers (Amsterdam, 1651) ..................................................................................... Anonymous portrait, considered by family tradition to represent Anneke Jans. Painting on wood, early 17th century. [Private collection; courtesy of William B. Bogardus, Wilmington, Ohio] ............................................. Declaration by Tryntgen Jonas, as New Amsterdam midwife, on the paternity of Hillegont Joris’s child, July 7, 1644. [New York State Archive, Dutch Colonial Manuscripts, 2:118a] ........................................................... Detail of the oldest map of Rensselaerswyck, showing the site of De Laetsburch (in the center, opposite Fort Orange), about 1632. [After the copy in A.J.F. van Laer, ed., The Van Rensselaer Bowier Manuscripts (Albany, 1908)] .................

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list of illustrations

32. Reputed portrait of Dominie Everardus Bogardus (probably representing Dominie Gualterus Du Bois, a close relative in the second generation). Reverse painting on glass, early 18th century. [Courtesy of The New York State Ofce of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, Senate House State Historic Site at Kingston, New York] ............................................................................ 33. Detail of the so-called Manatus map, showing the boweries in New Netherland in 1639. [After an 18th-century copy in I.N. Phelps Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island 1498–1909 (6 vols.; New York, 1915–1928), vol. II, p. 196, plate 41–42] ........................... 34. Lease contract of Bogardus’s tobacco farm with Rufus Barton, August 14, 1642. [New York State Archive, Dutch Colonial Manuscripts, 2:26b] .............................................. 35. Signatures of Anna Ians and her second husband E. Boghardus under a settlement in favor of her daughter Sara, June 21, 1642. [New York State Archive, Dutch Colonial Manuscripts, 2:20b] .............................................. 36. View of New Amsterdam, about 1650 (the “Montanus View”). [After I.N. Phelps Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island 1498–1909 (6 vols.; New York, 1915–1928), vol. I, plate 6] ................................................. 37. View of New Amsterdam, shortly after 1664. Color drawing by Johannes Vingboons. [ National Archive of the Netherlands, Section Maps and drawings, Atlas Vingboons, VELH 619–14] ................................................ 38. Gossip about Anneke Jans in New Amsterdam, 1638. Lithography by J. Scott Williams, 1920. [ Private collection] ............................................................................. 39. Captain John Underhill’s attack on the Pequot village, 1637. [Engraving in John Underhill, News from America (1638)] .................................................................................. 40. Ritual dance of the Native Americans. Engraving in David Pietersz de Vries, Korte Historiael ende Journaels aenteyckeninge (Hoorn, 1655), p. 177 ..................................... 41. Captain David Pietersz de Vries. Engraving by Cornelis Visscher, 1653, in: David Pietersz de Vries, Korte Historiael

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list of illustrations

42.

43.

44.

45.

46.

47.

ende Journaels aenteyckeninge (Hoorn, 1655). [ Photograph by Iconographic Bureau, The Hague] ..................................... The ruinous state of New Amsterdam after the Indian War, about 1648. [Drawing in the Austrian National Library, Map Department] .................................................. Map of South-West Wales by Robert Morden, about 1660, showing the Gower Peninsula, Swansea and The Mumbles, where The Princess was shipwrecked on September 27, 1647. [Courtesy of Professor Stuart Clark, Swansea] .............................................................................. Leaet by Mrs. E. Kepler for the promotion of the interests of the Anneke Jans Heirs, showing the claimed extension of Anneke Jans Estate on Manhattan, late 19th century. [Courtesy of William B. Bogardus of Wilmington, Ohio] .............................................................. Inscription in memory of Anneke Jans and Everardus Bogardus on the 1940 memorial column in Duane Park, Tribeca, Lower Manhattan (now replaced by a memorial tablet). [Photograph by the author, 1993] .......................... Memorial tablet on the putative site of the house in which Anneke Jans died, 63 State Street at Albany. [ Photograph by the author] ...................................................................... Anneke Jans prophesying the future of Manhattan. Drawing by Peter Spier, The Legend of New Amsterdam (New York, 1979). [Courtesy of Peter Spier, Shoreham, New York] ............................................................................

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PROLOGUE

Fig. 1. Melody of Psalm 100 according to the Dathenus Psalter, in use in the Dutch Reformed Church until the publication of the States version of 1637 (1589 edition of the “Deux-Aes” Bible). [Courtesy of the Nederlands Bijbelgenootschap, Haarlem].

A LITTLE SPIRITUAL SONG written at Woerden in Holland on 8 October [1622]1

On the melody of the 100th Psalm of David Glory to God in Heaven above That he has shown his powerful love To a young boy, be it understood To him God has done so much good For deaf and dumb though he had been Witless and blind, God cured him then Sending his angels as we do know Who ew from Heaven down here below And said to him: O young man, hear, I come to thee, but do not fear That I may bring two gifts so dear: Your power to reason and sight so clear I give you sight and sense once more You fear the Lord now as before And serve Him now in gentle awe And live obedient to His good law For it is the will of God today You do what his commandments say

1

English translation by James F. Cool. The original Dutch text was printed in the pamphlet Waerachtige Geschiedenisse / Hoe dat Seker Wees-Kindt binnen Woerden / out ontrent xv. Jaren / tot tweemalen toe vanden Heere met stommigheyd / doofheyd / somtijts oock met Blintheyt besocht / ende van het gebruyck syns verstants berooft zijnde [. . .]: by een gestelt ende vergaderd door L. Zasium, Rectorem binnen Woerden (Amsterdam: Marten Iansz Brandt, 1623), f. B3r°–B4v°. This English translation was previously published in William Brower Bogardus, Dear ‘Cousin’. A charted genealogy of the descendants of Anneke Jans Bogardus (1605–1663) to the 5th generation—and of her sister, Marritje Jans (Wilmington, Ohio 1996), 30.

4

prologue

The holy acts on earth you do Are why I give sense back to you And that he did quick as he could And then went back to God so good He still was deaf for more than a week*2 And could not reason nor could speak Then came an Angel in the night That hear and speak again he might He did not see him later on For he had back to Heaven gone And now he sight and sense again And speech and hearing has as when He had before he lost them all Glory to God that is not small Do we not read in God’s own Book What care the living God once took He made the crippled walk and yet The lepers too did not forget For God has let his strength be known And to the dumb his power shown: And he made whole all that was weak The deaf could hear, the dumb could speak The people all around him then Told him when he could hear again That when for nine days no bite at all Did he consume nor big nor small Even when people are not aware They still are in God’s mighty care He will help them through the worst Whether they hunger or they thirst

* [ In the margin:] Evert refers to himself

a little spiritual song Did he not in the Desert feed Five thousand in their greatest need With only two shes wee and small And ve bread baskets for them all He fed ve thousand pious men Not counting women and children And afterwards his people took Twelve baskets up, it’s in the Book Elijah with the ravens fed, Daniel safe from lions led And by Habakkuk served so fair All these bear witness of God’s care O God, You are good indeed To protect people in their need To help them to avoid disgrace You clasp them up in your embrace But all we people every one Do not wish His will be done Do not His commandments hear And laws inspire contempt, not fear The Lord has given us His word But with our sins, it is not heard Love is often pushed aside Replaced by Envy, Hate, and Pride Be ready for the Lord’s return And from the foolish Virgins learn Christ’s teachings we must never shirk But watch and wait prepared for work Alas, you people one and all, God shall you to judgment call All people shall then receive the pay For all they did before that day

5

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prologue

O God, You are indeed so sweet That all of us fall at your feet We pray that mercy will be shown When we appear before your throne The person who this Song did write The same as he who lost his sight His sense, his hearing, speech and all Is still a Child yet, young and small He has regained his sense and sight His speech and hearing is now right By the strong hand of God alone And by the power God has shown Hear me, my Brothers, one and all And you too, Sisters, great and small Always turn to God’s holy word Always trust the Almighty Lord Under the song was written: Observe the world and you will see It offers only misery.

THE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE

An exceptional young man? The voice from the past is that of an adult and almost always male. Just occasionally, we hear from a member of a younger generation. Such a voice speaks through this book. “But if once more I should be granted the gift of speech and hearing, my calling by the Lord God Almighty is such that I shall walk in the paths of the Lord in righteousness” (b9).1 With these words Evert Willemsz (or Willemszoon) Bogaert, a 15-year-old orphan living in the Dutch town of Woerden, summed up his life’s mission: he was called by God. In the autumn of 1622 he was stricken with paralysis and became deaf and mute. Bedridden, he was during a short period in the limelight of his town. Yet he was later to travel great distances, from Woerden to the coast of Guinea, from Africa back to Amsterdam, thence to Manhattan, and nally back to his fatherland—a journey never completed, for he was shipwrecked off the coast of Wales and drowned. He also made a spiritual journey. The words above speak of his trust in God, a Lord who tests and punishes but who also redeems and saves. Evert was sure that God would help him follow His path. This book deals with the paths that Evert traveled in order to discover his identity, to give voice to his ideals and to accomplish a life’s mission. We cannot look inside the mind of Evert Willemsz, nor analyze his motives. But we can still explore the paths he took and try to understand what made him tick. This book is divided into two sections: the rst deals with Evert’s youth, where we see him searching for his life’s mission; the second part shows him as an adult, trying to realize his calling as a minister. These two phases of his life are quite distinct, not only because the historical

1 All the quotations of Evert Willemsz’s words during his youth at Woerden are taken from the two pamphlets (both printed twice) relating his spiritual experience in 1622–23. For a bibliographic description of the pamphlets, see the appendix to this Prologue. Immediately after each quotation, its source is given by a letter and a page number. The letter a refers to the rst pamphlet (Utrecht 1623), b to the second (Amsterdam 1623).

8

prologue

sources are so different, but also because they need to be analyzed differently in the story of his life. In both stages Evert Willemsz is a public performer, presenting himself to his contemporaries and to us today. But while in the rst stage he is primarily concerned with the discovery of who he is himself, the second stage sees him engaged in trying to follow God’s ways as honestly and completely as he can, as the leader of a religious community. The rst series of events, remarkable in the setting of seventeenthcentury Holland, took place in the orphanage of Woerden where he lived. They mark the transition in Evert’s life from childhood to “adolescence” or “young adulthood” in the years 1622/23 (for the time being our term for this stage in a person’s life will remain somewhat vague). Later, after the calling had been quietly maturing inside him for a good ten years, came a second period marked by passionate public appearances. This stage extended from 1633 to 1647 and is set chiey on the island of Manhattan in what was then known as New Amsterdam, where the young man had been appointed minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, under the name of Everardus (or Everhardus) Bogardus. The two stages throw light on each other. Historical research can, in fact, benet greatly from considering the two phases as interrelated. This does not mean we should attempt at all costs to construct a seamless continuity between the stages of a person’s life; the life of an individual is too enmeshed in situations and networks only minimally under his control for that to succeed. A deterministic approach to a person’s development would ignore the possibility—open to every human being—of making choices and changes. The aim of this book is not to arrive at a rigid unity of personality that would dene an entire life’s mission, but rather to bring to light the delicate threads connecting various expressions of life, often hugely different but always forming part of one person, and thus to reveal both the wealth of available choices and the limitations imposed by circumstance on the realization of these choices. Also, if we understand the connection between the two separate stages in Evert’s life, we hold the key to comprehending the intervening years. This was a period of maturation, divided into three parts: the Latin School (a kind of secondary school or grammar school) in Woerden and Leiden; the States College attached to Leiden University; and a period of training to be “comforter of the sick” in Fort Nassau, in the town of Mouri on the coast of Guinea (today Ghana in West Africa).

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We know what happened to Evert Willemsz in 1622/23 from two pamphlets that corroborate and partly repeat each other.2 The pamphlets were written by Lucas Zas, master of the Latin School in Woerden, who witnessed many of the events described. In a sense, however, Evert authored them himself, for both texts consist mainly of the messages he wrote down at the time of his spiritual experience. Temporarily struck deaf and mute, Evert communicated with those around him by penning short notes, in the pamphlets referred to as “copye” and printed in large letters. Master Zas organized the material and wrote an introduction, thereby creating a readable whole. Within a week the pamphlets were printed, rst in the city of Utrecht, then in Amsterdam. Both were reprinted at least once. For a short moment young Evert Willemsz was headline news. The contents of the pamphlets were endorsed by the town council of Woerden and the local Reformed Church, to reassure the people that this was not a question of pia fraus, holy fraud. The texts are sprinkled with the classic topoi of a youthful conversion but have not been honed into a model history of a young hero. Unlike many stories of the divine visions of youth, they contain no more than a bare statement about Evert’s calling.3 At rst glance these pamphlets appear to have a somewhat confusing construction and clearly do not conform to conventional storytelling. We are actually hearing a voice from the distant past, from one particular young man at a particular date and in a particular setting, telling us about his life, feelings, and behavior. Removed from its context, the testimony loses much of its interest. Instead of being the account of a remarkable personal experience it becomes dry and bloodless, a curious collection of commonplaces. Structure and signicance fade, because the interaction between the personal experience and the social context, essential for understanding the narrative, disappears from view. As the historical context changed, the signicance of the story was no longer immediately evident. This explains why the tale of Evert Willemsz eventually fell into disuse,

2 See the appendix at the end of this Prologue. On Dutch pamphlets: Craig Harline, Pamphlets, printing and political culture in the early Dutch Republic (Dordrecht etc. 1987). 3 Cf. Leendert F. Groenendijk & Fred A. van Lieburg, Voor edeler staat geschapen. Levens- en sterfbedbeschrijvingen van gereformeerde kinderen en jeugdigen uit de 17 e en 18 e eeuw (Leiden 1991); F.A. van Lieburg, Living for God: Eighteenth-century Dutch Pietist autobiography (Lanham, Md. 2006).

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prologue

even in educational and edifying literature. It remained the singular tale of one young man, conned to the events of his life. This in itself is remarkable enough, for history seldom allows us to discover what a boy of fteen actually felt, without immediately canonizing him and placing him on a pedestal. So what is this boy’s story? Evert Willemsz, a child who had lost both parents, was sent with his elder brother Pieter and two younger brothers to live in the orphanage of Woerden. When he had completed his elementary schooling he went to work as a tailor’s apprentice for one Master Gijsbert Aelbertsz. Orphanage and workplace were two separate but complementary worlds. The pamphlet records that Evert was seriously ill for some time [see Fig. 15]. Scarcely had he recovered when he fell sick once more, and this time both body and spirit were affected. For nine days, from June 21 to 30, 1622 he neither ate nor drank. This was truly curious behavior in an orphanage full of bubbling youth, and it left Evert peculiarly isolated. The rst phase of physical isolation was followed by a second one lasting seventy days, from June 30 to September 8. During this summer Evert became deaf and mute, at times he was also unable to see, and “for long periods [lost] the ability to reason and understand” (b6). This phase of almost complete shutdown of his senses formed the climax of his ordeal. It was clearly a borderline experience, since the boy was for a time beyond the pale of social normality. He seems to have suffered a slowly mounting agony that eventually erupted, hurtling him in a transitional moment towards the far side of reality. This prepared Evert for a third, this time ecstatic phase. Again he fasted for nine days and could neither hear nor speak, but then an angel of the Lord appeared to him bearing a message from the heavenly Father: Evert was to lead people to conversion, bidding them leave their lives of sin. The boy was then in a heightened state, spending day after day writing down the heavenly messages that he heard. Mostly simple texts of a repetitive nature, they urge: [Evert:] Spread the word, spread the word, for God is greatly grieved that his marvelous works are not spread abroad. O spread the word, o my dear friends I pray you spread it abroad, for God is sorely troubled that his holy deeds are not proclaimed throughout the whole world. Spread it, O spread it. (a3)

The message is as simple as the worldview assimilated by the young tailor’s apprentice: There are good people and bad people. It is God’s

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will that the bad people repent. To bring this about, God’s Word must be preached. A youthful radicalism is in evidence here—and a kind of religious reex—untroubled by whys, wherefores, or other nuances. It happily makes use of church and government to attain the desired godly end, without becoming their passive victim. Later events in Evert’s life would bear this out. In what way do the wicked commit sin? Evert tells the story in verse: [Evert:] Woe unto us that ever we were born. The Lord is now exceeding wroth For men heed not His word of truth. Swiftly now, His word does warn, He will expose it all: man’s pride and wantonness, The drunkards’ wicked ways and foul adulterers . . . O, people, turn from all your sin to God your Lord . . . I have seen these things, and it is very true, Have seen it with God’s angels and tell it unto you. Amen. Oh, people, live in peace. (a3)

Pride, drunkenness, adultery—the vision of the orphan boy sounds like a highly derivative sermon. Evert at this stage had more bookishness than life experience. His performance, not surprisingly, caused a great stir in little Woerden, and all the more so because he had now gained an enthusiastic supporter in the person of Lucas Zas, head of the Latin School, who acted more or less as Evert’s literary agent. The minute Evert summoned him, Zas came running, gathered up the boy’s written notes and had them printed in pamphlet form. It was clever of Evert to choose the headmaster, for besides the call to repentance directed at others, Zas received a special message for himself: [Evert:] I hope that God will set me free from this darkness, that I shall hear once more and once again shall speak. For I know this not out of myself but out of the Holy Ghost, who will enlighten me. I have always trusted in Almighty God, for He has given this unto me. If He has the power to give unto me, then He has the power to set me free once more. For do we not read in God’s word that He made the deaf to hear, the blind to see, the lame to walk, and the dumb to speak? God created the world and the sea and all that in them is. Has He not then the power to give me back two of my ve senses? Yea surely, I have trusted in him and I trust in him still. But if once again I am restored to speech and hearing, if it please God and His Holy Spirit to allow me to go to school until I have completed my time there—that will be a blessing. And if I study diligently and complete my courses, I intend to become a minister

12

prologue and nothing else. Then you will behold those things that the Spirit of God will work in me. No longer will I have to work as a tailor and make clothes; for it is the will of Almighty God and the Holy Spirit that this no longer be my work. My task is to fear the Lord as I was commanded by the angel of the Lord, and that is what I must do. (b11)

Evert’s physical and spiritual experience combined to make him suddenly aware of his true calling—to be a minister. He underwent an internal change and was shown the mystical vision that would thoroughly permeate his conduct and view of life. Faithful to his newly discovered self, he could then go his “own” way despite all obstacles.4 These happenings caused quite a stir in the local community, and he made use of this fame to achieve his calling. He thus gave his life story a new direction, not only spiritually but socially as well. From then on, “minister” became the model for the life he was to lead, although it would be many years before he actually assumed this role. Evert’s testimony did not, of course, sufce to make the local community believe in him unconditionally. His message was taken up by a religious faction and used for its own ends. All this took place just three years after the Synod of Dort (or Dordrecht, 1618–19), which had established orthodoxy in the Dutch Reformed Church. As the only traditionally Lutheran town in Holland, and one where the Remonstrants had a large following in the 1620s, Woerden, more than any other town in the province, was strained with religious discord. The third group comprised the orthodox Calvinists, who held the reins of power but were certainly not the majority. Not everyone was overjoyed at Evert’s experiences. There was a clear need to have them legitimized by a higher authority. Critics even threatened to beat the deaf-muteness out of the boy (b34). The legitimization then took the form of a ritual of deliverance, or healing, foretold by God’s angel. Evert prophesied the precise moment: [Evert:] Oh my beloved brothers and sisters, I pray you from the depths of my heart, from deep within me although my mouth be dumb, that

4 On spiritual “ways” and the distinction between mystical way and mystical experience, see Kees Waaijman, Spiritualiteit: vormen, grondslagen, methoden (Gent & Kampen 2000), 125–139, 452–479, 670–683 [transl. Spirituality: Forms, foundations, methods (Louvain 2002)]. On mystical experience: Michel de Certeau, La fable mystique, XVI e–XVII e siècle (Paris 1982); the same, Le lieu de l’autre: Histoire religieuse et mystique (Paris 2005), in particular chapter 14: ‘Mystique’, 323–341, reprinted from Encyclopaedia universalis, vol. XII (new ed., Paris 1985), 873–878.

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you spend an hour together with me in prayer and keeping watch; for the all-powerful God has a marvelous work for me to do. Therefore let us pray and watch and await the coming of the Almighty God from above. Until this hour you have seen me in this state of afiction, but you shall not see me thus for much longer. For God will give me back my speech and hearing, for I know this not of myself but from God’s Holy Spirit who will come and rescue me through the power of God. For my speech will return in a Psalm and I shall sing. Be not afraid, for it is of the Holy Ghost and through the power of God. (b9)

Nine days later the healing came—a remarkable parallel with the nine days of the Catholic novena. It is also tempting here to see this as a spiritual analogue to the nine months of pregnancy. Evert in any case underwent an accelerated process leading to a spiritual rebirth, reminiscent of his physical birth fteen years earlier. The orphans, the headmaster, and the matron stood around Evert’s bed. They began to sing the hundredth Psalm, and suddenly Evert joined in. His speech and hearing were restored, he was completely himself again. Three days later the town council of Woerden decided that he should stop working at the tailor’s shop. No longer required to earn his keep, he could now attend the Latin School and study under his chosen mentor, Master Lucas Zas.

From youth to adulthood Here we see a young man who at the critical age of fteen was able to give his life a fundamental change of direction. But he could not achieve this without God’s intervention, made manifest in his own body by a series of marvels like those found in the classical Vitae, or Lives of the Saints. Evert’s psychosomatic symptoms are described in a report of the events, a narrative shaped by his personal testimony and laced with quotations from the Bible. Although the young man urged that his words be published, they initially remained a private affair. For the benet of his fellow orphans, Evert composed two lengthy statements in doggerel telling of his tribulations. These were printed in the second pamphlet. If he had been concerned only with redirecting the course of his life, he could have left it at that. But the farewell to childhood is marked by an entrance onto the public stage, and this requires a goal that is recognized and, if possible, approved by the community. Here we nd

Fig. 2. Messages of Evert Willemsz, short dialogue with his brother Pieter, and rst stanzas of his Spiritual Song, reproduced in the second pamphlet Waerachtige Geschiedenisse . . . (Amsterdam, 1623), f. B2vº. [Royal Library, The Hague, P. Knuttel 3500].

14 prologue

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a parallel with the threshold experience of the twelve-year-old Christ, who in the Temple in Jerusalem read from the Torah and disputed with Scriptural scholars (Luke 2:46–47). His parents suddenly realized that their son could stand on his own feet and knew what he wanted. But Evert’s parents were dead. He had to earn recognition from the community. Many people in Woerden were skeptical about this callow youth, and had only heard second-hand reports about his experiences. They tended to think that the boy simply needed a good whipping. Again the parallel with Jesus is striking, for when he preached in Nazareth he was greeted with skepticism and barely escaped being killed by the unbelieving crowd (Luke 4:16–30). Evert, too, could not leave his task unnished. Which brings us to the next phase. Four months later, on the morning of Wednesday, January 18, 1623, Evert awoke with a raging headache. Once again he refused food and drink. He prophesied that he would again lose his speech and hearing. And indeed, towards noon it happened exactly as he had predicted. This time it lasted three days. But now Evert’s behavior was quite different. Still surrounded by the ock of orphans, who found this deviation from the everyday routine extremely exciting and did not want to miss a moment of it, Evert proceeded to properly organize the public recognition of his message and the transition in his life. In a room made available for him, he summoned, one by one, the representatives of the various milieus that constituted his world. He persuaded each of them to acknowledge the validity of his experience, thereby ensuring that every part of his world had been dealt with. First came the matron of the orphanage, representing the domestic sphere; then he summoned his elder brother, who lived in the town (but happened to be absent) to represent his family; then came the head of the Latin School, the man of knowledge and education; then his former employer, the tailor Gijsbert Aelbertsz; then one of the burgomasters, the contractor Jan Florisz van Wijngaarden; and nally one of the two ministers, the Reverend Henricus Alutarius, on behalf of the consistory. His entire community in all its ramications, secular and religious, public and private, came in symbolic procession before Evert where he was seated, and proclaimed his message to the world. Each person was given his own task. We thus hear Master Gijsbert Aelbertsz requesting instructions: I, Gijsbert Aelbertsz who was your master, am lled with pity for you, for you have been a good apprentice; write down I pray you, what you would have me do.

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prologue [Evert:] I beg you to proclaim my story, not to the mighty of this world, but to God’s poor sheep whom He has placed in this world. Spread it abroad, for it is God’s will that it be made known; and that all people should follow my example; for if the people do not follow my example God will smite them with a rod, that is, punish sins so mightily, that no man will know where to hide his head. Therefore follow my example: for I am persuaded that God does not act in vain but in order that all mankind will turn unto him, unto their God. For God would not be scourging us if mankind did not ll him with wrath. But God will come as he did to Sodom and Gomorrah if we do not repent. So cast my words not into the wind but let everyone hear the name of God. (b23–24)

In the dialogue that follows between Evert and his former master, we catch a glimpse of the way in which Evert had been subconsciously schooled for his religious experiences during the preceding months: [Gijsbert Aelbertsz:] Evert, how many times have we not spoken together from the Psalms of David? But in the words of the prophet, David cries out in Psalm 42, “As a hart panteth after water, so panteth my soul after God’s holy Word.” Therefore the prophet Isaiah in chapter 55 says especially, “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye hither.” If only all the people of the world were like this. [Evert:] The Spirit led us to speak aloud the Psalms of David. The Spirit was with us, just as he appeared to the two disciples on the road. Thus the Lord Jesus said, where two or three are gathered in his name, there he is in the midst of them. So is it now: Like as a hart panteth after fresh waters, so my soul panteth after the Lord my God. In the Holy Word, Almighty God says: Call unto me in thy need and I will help thee. He who seeketh me shall nd me. Unto him who thirsteth after me shall I give to drink heavenly water from my heavenly Father, which my Father has given me. [Gijsbert Aelbertsz:] If you so desire I shall come to you this evening and we shall speak together from God’s Word. [Evert:] I hope that God will grant this unto me. I thank you and may God strengthen you with His Holy Spirit. Amen. Do that which you have written down. (b24)

For Evert and his former employer daily labor was sprinkled with biblical quotations. Work acquired meaning through continual contemplation of God’s Word. It was not so much the literal biblical text, rather a kind of corrupted version that we continually encounter in Evert’s messages: words remembered from biblical readings, from sermons and discussions and oral tradition; words continually measured against the reality of everyday life.

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Religion, faith, church Religion here emerges as the way in which the younger generation is initiated into the secrets of adult society. Religion provides patterns of behavior, values, and meanings; it supplies models and strategies, and makes identications operational. It is the narrative framework in which Evert could explain who he was. It enabled him to conceive of, construct and present himself as a complete personality. Because it dominated his thought patterns and was the central factor in his experience of reality, religion became the obvious instrument in his coming of age. It was the language of his ego, his self. It is difcult for us today to imagine how intense and all-pervasive religious experience could be four hundred years ago. Religion is no longer the main key to experiencing the world, as it was for almost everyone in the days of Evert Willemsz. No longer the exclusive symbolic form for interpreting life, it is at most one system among many others. However intense a religious experience in our time may be, and however thoroughly it is intertwined with other aspects of human experience, it cannot be directly compared with Evert’s experiences, owing to the distinctly secular shape of our world. Even for the believer of today, experience of the world runs primarily through secular, not sacred, channels. In Evert’s time, however, religion was not a marginal phenomenon, restricted to the church with its conservative functions, to certain clerical milieus and specic ethical questions. Rather, religion was an intense form of interaction with, and appropriation of reality, a discourse-made-esh about the pressing issues of this life in the light of another life—the other life. Above all, religion was the reective and explanatory, symbolic and emotional form that life experience acquired because the world itself was pictured as replete with religious signicance. Religion made experiences tangible and at the same time comprehensible by referring to God’s deeper meaning. It was the language of experience, the way in which reality was controlled and explained. Ritual, dogma, ethics, asceticism, and mysticism were some of the many aspects of this language, and the Bible was its idiom. During his life Evert was to play a variety of religious registers. It is important at this point to distinguish three levels on which religion can be analyzed: religion in its more intuitive or pre-reective form, as an explanation of, and method for dealing with natural and human reality; religion in a more reective form as ultimate faith in God; and religion in its more social form, as the framework for the

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thought, expression, and organization of that faith, in the spheres of dogma, church order, and liturgy.5 Religion is not the same as faith, and faith is not by denition identical with church, confession, or denomination. But the three forms overlap and in religious experience are rarely found in strict isolation from one another. The distinction between them is basically an analytical one. Religion gives meaning to what happens, faith is expectation of “the other,” church is the embodiment of community—to put it schematically. Certainly for the period we are discussing here, religion should be viewed far more as a continual reection on everyday life, a form of social representation, an ongoing process of interpreting broadly shared culture, than as an objectied group practice regulated by the church. Religion certainly did not stand in opposition to the church, but it lay in a different sphere, one that often only partially intersected with the church in the experiential world of the believer. The pietism in which Evert shared can thus be seen as an attempt to close the gap between religion and church in the real world by extending the realm of faith to the entirety of personal experience. We here therefore dene religion primarily as the need for, and the process of ascribing meaning—with reference to supernatural powers—to the everyday things that happen to individuals in their communities.6 Religion provides the meaningful connection between a person and a reality experienced as “other” and ultimate.7 Thus it is chiey a method of communication with that reality; it is simultaneously a form of representation, a language and a ritual, and only secondarily a norm for faith and life. Clifford Geertz put it succinctly when he said that religion is both a “model of reality” (religion in 5 See for these distinctions and their application to historical research: Willem Frijhoff, Embodied belief. Ten essays on religious culture in Dutch history (Hilversum 2002); the same, ‘Church History without God or without Faith?’, in: Concilium. International Journal for Theology 42:2 (2006) [Theology in a World of Specialization], 65–75. I am much indebted to the subtle analysis of Michel de Certeau, ‘Une pratique sociale de la différence: croire’, in: Faire croire. Modalités de la diffusion et de la réception des messages religieux (Rome 1981), 363–383. 6 There is a huge literature on religion and its denitions. Among the more basic references: R. Horton, ‘A denition of religion and its uses’, in: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 90 (1960), 201–226; M. Spiro, ‘Religion: Problems of denition and explanation’, in: M. Banton (ed.), Anthropological approaches to the study of religion (London 1972), 85–126; Rubem Alves, What is religion? (Maryknoll 1984). 7 This denition comes very close to that of Theo Sundermeier, Was ist Religion? Religionswissenschaft im theologischen Kontext. Ein Studienbuch (Gütersloh 1999), 27: “Religion ist die gemeinschaftliche Antwort des Menschen auf Transzendenzerfahrung, die in Ritus und Ethik Gestalt gibt”.

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the broad, anthropological sense) and a “model for reality” (here in the ecclesiastical, normative sense).8 Beginning with the early modern offensive to Christianize Europe, the churches did their best to make faith and religion coincide by reducing the eld of religion to a system of “faith and church order,” that is, belief and ecclesiastical rules.9 Of the many varieties of religious experience that drifted across boundaries separating social groups and group cultures, the church was willing to recognize only those forms of religious expression that measured up to her own cultural norms. The Spirit of course continued to “blow where it listeth,” but the churches were only too eager to cork it into a bottle. This selective acceptance of the Spirit by the churches, in effect a delimiting of their eld of action, created ever more space for a secular experience of the world. That, however, falls outside the timeframe of this book. Religious experience in the existential sense of the word is to be found at the intersection between religion and church. The structure of the religious experience is certainly not bound to the cultural expression of the moment or of the group. With Joachim Wach we can describe religious experience (in the full sense of the word) as “the total response of man’s total being to what he experiences as ultimate reality.”10 This experience fundamentally transcends every possibility of expression. Wach is primarily concerned here with mystical experience. For the time being I shall only speak of “religious experience”—although of course in the strong, reective sense of “religion.” Wach adds that every experience of this kind, although essentially ineffable, tends to seek expression in concrete terms. It is these manifestations that are embedded in culturally bound ways of thinking, organizational systems, forms of expression, and categories of emotion. Because religious experience impinges on the group cultures of churches, it runs the risk of being

8 Clifford Geertz, ‘Religion as a cultural system’, in: the same, The interpretation of cultures. Selected essays (New York 1973), 90, with the well-known hermeneutic denition of religion as “a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic”. Cf. Talal Asad, ‘Anthropological conceptions of religion: Reections on Geertz’, in: Man, new series, 18 (1983), 237–259. 9 Willem Frijhoff, ‘Popular religion’, in: Stewart J. Brown & Timothy Tackett (eds.), Cambridge History of Christianity. Volume 7: Enlightenment, reawakening and Revolution 1660–1815 (Cambridge 2006), 185–207. 10 Joachim Wach, Types of religious experience, Christian and non-Christian (Chicago & London 1951, 5th ed. 1972), 35.

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exploited by them, and not infrequently comes into conict with church interests. While the experience itself, however it is conceived, belongs to the realm of intimate personal life, the outward form it assumes is by denition determined by the group. This does not necessarily imply a limitation. Any group can work with concrete images that are in principle universally recognizable: God appears in a gentle wind, as a light, in the shape of an angel. Those who know these signs are able to recognize God, in whatever culture they nd themselves. The simple fact that these signs are recognized makes the experience credible for the insider. This forms the basis of the collective belief in epiphanies, or “appearances,” throughout Christendom. But the meaning attached to the signs as expressions of concrete religious experience—the “message” in other words—is embedded in a semantic pattern bound by limitations of time, space, and group. The church, located at the point where these three coordinates intersect, claims the right to decide for the group to what extent the religious experience actually transcends culture and is thus “authentic.” For the good of the group the church assumes the task of separating the wheat from the chaff, distinguishing “deceit” from “truth,” “message” from “false prophecy.” The Woerden minister summoned by Evert Willemsz was therefore understandably wary of the young man’s religious experience, even though they both shared the same environment of religious orthodoxy. The Reverend Alutarius sought instruments, signs that could be incorporated into his report on Evert’s experience to the church, into the rationale of church order, into the culture of the group he belonged to. He sought to distill a plausible “message” from the situation. This does not necessarily mean that the minister was suspicious or uncooperative. He may just as well have hoped to make Evert’s experience as accessible as possible to a wide public. He accordingly looked for a method of translating the personal experience into the experience of the group. At the same time, however, the minister was the guardian of orthodoxy. He assessed the “truth” of the visionary’s spiritual experience and tested it against the criteria of the church. He rationalized “signs” into “facts,” and “miracles” into “reality.”11 11 For the general background of this perspective, cf. the two seminal contributions by Michel de Certeau, ‘L’inversion du pensable: l’histoire religieuse du XVIIe siècle’, and ‘La formalité des pratiques: du système religieux à l’éthique des Lumières’, in: the same, L’Écriture de l’histoire (Paris 1975), 131–152, 153–212.

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In such cases the churches could appeal to a long tradition of institutional control over mystical experiences, the high point being the judicious and extremely inuential tract by Jean Gerson, De probatione spirituum, prompted by the debate surrounding the canonization of the visionary Brigitta of Sweden in 1415 and the appearances to Joan of Arc somewhat later.12 For the church, religion was only creditable if it tted within the canon of belief. God granted exceptional spiritual experiences to only a few believers, it argued. The visionary had to be clearly lled with the Holy Spirit and the signs had to be independently veriable. The church was particularly suspicious of an inner voice or an exceptional “feeling” because these were not susceptible of an external test of verity. Visionaries could all too easily appeal to a higher holy authority and so gather around them a group of “like-feeling” souls. Gerson admitted, however, that there were few truly spiritual people who could judge the ways of the Holy Spirit. For many centuries Gerson’s opinion held sway in church order, including that of Protestants.

Mysticism, the self, and the church In the rst decades of the seventeenth century, with innovative forms of mysticism springing up everywhere in new monastic orders, the problem again became acute among Roman Catholics.13 But it was no less so among Protestants. In all churches and brotherhoods, conventicles and sects, the god-fearing and pious attempted to create a new religious idiom, experimented with new forms of mystical expression and developed new codes of conduct. Before they could be branded “stepchildren of Christianity,” a term coined by the Dutch church historian J. Lindeboom, these devout believers frequently formed the vanguard of mysticism within the churches.14 New models of the saintly 12 P. Boland, The concept of discretio spirituum in John Gerson’s ‘De probatione spirituum’ and ‘De distinctione verarum visionum a falsis’ (Washington, DC 1959); William Christian Jr., Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain (Princeton, NJ 1981), 188–203; Jan van Herwaarden (ed.), Joan of Arc: Reality and myth (Hilversum 1994), 38–44. 13 Gabriella Zarri (ed.), Finzione e santità tra medioevo ed età moderna (Turin 1991); Alison Weber, ‘Between ecstasy and exorcism: Religious negotiation in sixteenth-century Spain’, in: Journal of Medieval and Renaissance studies 23 (1993), 221–234; Jürgen Beyer, Albrecht Burkardt, Fred van Lieburg & Marc Wingens (eds.), Confessional sanctity (c. 1500– c. 1800) (Mayence 2003). 14 J. Lindeboom, Stiefkinderen van het Christendom (The Hague 1929; reprint Arnhem 1973); Leszek Kolakowski, Chrétiens sans Église. La Conscience religieuse et le lien confession-

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life blurred the familiar late-medieval borderline between genuine and specious saintliness. How should we interpret the extreme behavior of the new “saints?” Was it holiness to a more than natural degree, physical illness, earthly magic, human deception, or devilish inspiration? Did their “spiritual imaginings” belong to the mystic order associated with the experience of God, or to pathological delusions? How can we distinguish between an impostor and someone genuinely lled with grace?15 It was hardly surprising that Alutarius rst cautiously inquired of Evert how the Spirit had manifested itself to him: [Alutarius:] Has the Lord given any special promise to you or any other revelation that He will keep you alive without the normal means of food and drink that He wishes us to use for our sustenance? [Evert:] Yes, most surely; for it was a promise given by the voice that spoke to me that God will keep me healthy and strong here in this world; for this was spoken by the mouth of the angel that said these things to me. (b26)

Because Evert could cite only a private promise from the angel, the minister became suspicious. He feared that such universally recognizable signs would undermine the critical faculties of ordinary believers and that the boy would appear creditable outside the Church as well. The subordination of the specially blessed believer to the authority of the church community—for both Catholics and Protestants the ultimate standard for the truth of the experience—would thus be threatened. So Alutarius posed the fundamental question: do these signs and messages come from God? [Alutarius:] The Lord who in the New Testament manifests himself unto His people does so in a different way from in the Old Testament, with visions and holy revelations. And the Holy Spirit admonishes us not to give them our trust too easily, for there have been many who have been deceived by foolishness. Therefore I pray you, consider most carefully whether your actions be based upon a rm foundation. For much depends upon this, and it shall be made known everywhere; therefore it is necessary to act most circumspectly in this affair, and to be very sure of everything before revealing it to others. So tell me now what you believe

nel au XVII e siècle (Paris 1969); Willem Frijhoff & Marijke Spies, 1650: Hard-Won Unity (Assen & Basingstoke 2004), 349–427. 15 For a Catholic case contemporary to that of Evert Willemsz, cf. Micheline Cuénin, ‘Fausse et vraie mystique: signes de reconnaissance, d’après la Correspondance de Jeanne de Chantal’, in: Jean-Pierre Massaut (ed.), Les signes de Dieu aux XVI e et XVII e siècle (Clermont-Ferrand 1993), 177–187.

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will be the outcome for you. But do not burden your heart too greatly; rather wait until tomorrow and write it down for me in detail. [Evert:] What I have written is the truth, for the Spirit of God is in me. I have not read much in the Old and New Testament. But God does this to me, by way of punishment, as an example to all people, so that mankind will repent and be converted. For God is mightily displeased that people do not live according to His word, because God performs so many miracles, yet people ignore them as if they were nothing. Do take this to heart. (b26)

Here Evert emphatically presents his own role as part of a larger action. His trials formed the proof that he was an instrument of divine will, regardless of what the Church authorities might think. His legitimacy was based on what had happened to him, and not on a biblical text. He had read little of the Bible—at least so he claimed, and this may have been true. His approach to the Word of God appears to have been determined more by circumstances of the moment than by systematic study, a point I shall return to later. He here clearly makes use of the classic image of the inspired illiterate, a person who has acquired his knowledge neither through self-teaching nor through instruction by the Church, but directly from the Spirit, through undeserved divine inspiration. It is the Taulerian tradition of the layman who understands secrets better than the scholar; the pauper quidam idiota, or poor illiterate, whom the great Nicolaus Cusanus contrasted with the learned rhetorician; l’enfant sage à trois ans (the wise three-year-old), the gure in popular literature endowed with complete wisdom and insight long before the ofcial age of discretion.16 Evert thus also places himself in the tradition of the unknowing child who in his purity and innocence is so near to God that he can become His chosen instrument. Children specially endowed with God’s grace would cry His holy word aloud when the tyrant had silenced the speech of the adults—like the shepherdess Isabeau Vincent and other children who prophesied in the Huguenot province of Dauphiné after the French king had repealed the Edict of Nantes in 1685.17 16 Michel de Certeau, ‘L’Illettré éclairé’, in: the same, La Fable mystique, XVI e–XVII e siècle (Paris 1982), 280–329; Willem Frijhoff, ‘Autodidaxies, XVIe–XIXe siècles: jalons pour la construction d’un objet historique’, in: Histoire de l’éducation 70 (May 1996), 5–27. 17 Daniel Vidal, Le Malheur et son prophète: inspirés et sectaires en Languedoc calviniste (1685–1725) (Paris 1983), 84–86; Clarke Garrett, Spirit possession and popular religion from the Camisards to the Shakers (Baltimore & London 1987); Georgia Cosmos, Huguenot prophecy and clandestine worship in the eighteenth century: ‘The Sacred Theatre of the Cévennes’ (Aldershot 2005), 58–71.

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Evert, wise without having studied, had no qualms about presenting his case. He set about constructing the justication of his public calling in a manner tailored to a discursive public proclamation. He had learned from the relative failure of his rst religious experience, however. The argument could no longer come from himself, as an unassailable child prodigy. We now see an aspiring adult humbly submitting himself to the scrutiny of his fellow adults for the sake of public recognition. This explains the importance of the discussion about the validity of his claims. His second healing was therefore public in nature. It again took place in the orphanage, but this time Evert announced it well in advance. He made sure that not only the head of the school but also the two ministers were present as qualied and reliable witnesses. When he saw the other orphans sitting at the hearth writing and talking, he felt a ash of inspiration. He wrote a message saying that the headmaster and the two ministers should be summoned, after which they should all sing together the highly appropriate Psalm 8, verse 2: “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength. . . .” During the singing of the Psalm Evert’s senses were restored to him one by one, until he was no longer a child—as in the Psalm—but could sing as an adult together with the headmaster and the ministers. For the two ministers this was sufcient evidence. The following day being Sunday, they gave Evert permission to take part in the afternoon church service. In the presence of the entire congregation he read out the answer to Question 35 of the Heidelberg Catechism for the fourteenth Lord’s Day of the year.18 Again a highly relevant text in which the young man could see the hand of God: “What is the meaning of these words ‘He was conceived by the Holy Ghost . . .’?” Evert, as we have seen, repeatedly insisted that the Holy Spirit was working within him. The catechism answer refers to the incarnation of Christ, the Son of God who “took upon Himself . . . esh and blood” and became “like unto his brethren in all things, sin excepted.” We can see this public performance as the nal stage in Evert’s rite of passage, the moment at which he ofcially entered public life. From then on he was qualied to speak in public together with the adults. He thus acquired a new role: from an anonymous orphan he became an aspiring minister. In Woerden, however, this public afrmation of his new life’s course 18 Ever since the synod of The Hague (1586), a sermon on a passage of the Heidelberg catechism had to be preached every Sunday.

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aroused sharp criticism, this time not only among those of his own denomination but also among the dissenters. They were skeptical. Evert then played his last trump card. Two nights later his brothers, who shared his bed, and the other orphans were awakened by Evert talking in his sleep. The boys fetched the matron, who anxiously woke him up and asked what was the matter. Evert assured everyone that he was all right and told them to go back to sleep. Scarcely had he fallen asleep himself when he started talking again, as if in a dream. His brother Pieter, ve years his elder, knew his sibling well and probably saw this coming, for he was ready with pen, paper, and a candle to write down Evert’s message. The beginning and end of his “dream” reect the tone: [Evert:] O woe, o woe to men of pride and wantonness, O wicked people with your evil ways, You live so godlessly these days. They shouted in their pride—and still they say— That they would smite me hard, beat me so terribly That I would learn to speak and hear as usual again. O woe, woe to such men, for God in His Kingdom knows of them. .... And that people through the work of God the Lord, Through me might soon repent and learn the ways of God. Let everything you say be kind and circumspect, Use slanderous words no more, think twice before you speak. Then God will surely grant you His own gracious blessing, Now I’ll be on my way again to life everlasting. (b34–35)

After this dictated dream—a message from beyond this world, a divine revelation—Evert’s last opponents had to admit defeat. Here God Himself justied and legitimized Evert’s experiences and the new direction he desired for his life. The next day the magistrate summoned the witnesses, authenticated the entire story and ordered the consistory to have it published in Amsterdam as soon as possible. And so it was.

Historical analysis and patterns of meaning The analysis sketched above is of course far from exhaustive. Every historical event can be read in a variety of ways, depending on the categories applied, the perspective chosen, and the method followed. If we wish to gain some idea of the signicance of an event, it is important

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to avoid reductionism of every kind. For those involved in an event, it is by denition something special. The outsider and the historian, on the other hand, attempt to place it back in line with the ordinary and the familiar in order to grasp its meaning. They tend to reduce the event, and thus its signicance as well, to a recognizable basic pattern. The experience of young Evert could thus easily be reied into a “case,” or type, making him one in a long, homogeneous series of visionaries, idealists, impostors, hysterics, victims of anorexia, delusions, or religious ecstasy. With his temporary blindness, deaf-muteness, and paralysis Evert exhibits all the symptoms of what in psychiatry is labeled a conversion disorder: the translation of psychological problems into physical ailments. Nor would it be difcult to come up with a psychoanalytical explanation for the orphan’s special relationship with members of his spiritual and social family: his heavenly Father, the orphan master and matron, his brothers inside and outside the orphanage. To a certain extent such a reduction to a prevailing model or syndrome is unavoidable. It has heuristic value in that it exposes a pattern and thus enables us to see what was so special about this boy. People from the past normally reveal themselves to the later observer against a more or less anonymous backdrop. Only by remaining continually alert to the delicate balance between what the individual shares with his peers and what makes him stand out from the masses can we bring depth into the picture of his uniqueness. The historian cannot be satised, however, with the mechanical application of clinical diagnoses. Labels from psychopathology threaten to crowd out the concrete, historical questions—the ones I am tempted to call the “genuine” questions. Why this particular boy? Why in this particular way? And why at that particular moment? Most importantly, they block our view of the continually shifting borders between illness and health, the self and the other, the ego and the group as historically, socially and culturally determined constructs. We must in any case never reduce the individual to an exponent of one single group. The price to be paid for such a reduction is too high: the self is sacriced, the context disappears from view, and we no longer see either the consequences of an event within the individual life or its impact on the history of the collective. We become blind to how the historical individual, along numerous lines offered to him by history and society at the precise place that he alone occupies, goes about making himself into a recognizable but unique human being with his own, singular signicance. We then no longer talk about people in

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the complexity of a society, with its uncontrollable pattern of phases, contrasts, and oppositions, its multiplicity of discursive forms and linguistic registers, which together reveal something of how it functions and how it affects human beings. Instead, we pass verdicts on uniform structures, projections—presumed to be timeless—of our own needs, desires, and fears. In this book I advocate a different approach. Confronted with a complex life story—one divided by the available sources into two radically different parts, a youthful experience in Woerden and a missionary task in New Netherland—this book takes as its point of departure the event of Evert’s intense youthful experience and constructs around it the expectations he had for his life. To the extent that our way of thinking and perceiving allows it, I intend to explore the signicance of such an event in its own time by applying a threefold analysis, viewing it from three different vantage points. Every event can be minimally dened by the interplay of three dimensions, for it is the point where diachronic lines intersect in a synchronic eld. First of all, an event has an internal structure; it takes place in a particular way, in a process with dynamics all its own. It is also anchored in the contemporary space (simple physical space and society), which allows for ever widening, concentric waves of meaning—for the individual himself, for his group or other groups, for society in a given city, and so on. Finally, it is located on the time axis: embedded in a cluster of traditions relating to form and meaning, it can later become the subject of new images—interpretation, in other words—but it can itself already actualize the meaning of earlier events. And it can serve as a stepping-stone in the life of a concrete person in the future. That entire structure of meaning is by denition historical in character: it is the common language of communication between human beings. In order to make ourselves comprehensible to others we draw on a repertoire of forms, words, images, and meanings that make up the fabric of the collective memory in a particular historical context. This shared fabric makes recognition by the group possible, but it must rst be assimilated through a process of selection and actualization. Only then can there be attribution of meaning, an “event” in the full sense of the word. Events do not simply happen to us; we construct them ourselves through procedures the historian must try to imitate in order to understand them. The historian can therefore clothe an event with meaning in at least three ways—by means of structure, synchrony, and diachrony. His analysis will remain incomplete as long as he makes no serious attempt to reconstruct those different levels and styles of ascribing meaning.

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For the historian a human life, like an event, has no autonomous signicance. A person attributes meaning to his life through interaction with his environment and with all those who sooner or later pass judgment on it. It is important to take this process of attribution seriously and, to the extent that it is possible, subject it to systematic reection. This means, for example, that we cannot be satised with what a person says about himself, or with determining the degree to which he or she corresponds to an ideal image, a model, a pattern of expectations, or a totality of topoi and traditions. The signicance will only come to light if we listen to, and incorporate into our analysis the full range of signals about the meaning of life that reach the individual person from the sounding board of his culture. Topoi, clichés, imagery, and narrative genres serve as aids to anchor individual or collective experience in recognized and transmittable traditions. An event is therefore not about the topoi themselves, but about their recognition, their reception and appropriation, the specic selection and combination of topoi that enable an individual to ascribe a unique meaning at a particular moment in history.19

Tradition, negotiation, appropriation Because that meaning is not inherent in the event, it cannot be attributed once and for all. It is not enough to analyze the rationality peculiar to an older or foreign culture, or to a human life from the past, if we wish to understand its meaning. Culture always implies a process of assimilation and transformation. There is no unique, singular meaning, just as there are no individual people who make sense of their lives in complete coherence, without any inner contradiction. Meaning is always relational, and relations change. The attribution of meaning is dynamic in nature, arising out of the interaction between subject and context, between observer and object. It is located in the free space left to the individual after he has come to terms with all the necessary social traditions. But the traditions reverberate in that space, because they offer models of interpretation that make language, imagination, and behavior collectively recognizable, and therefore meaningful. They 19 Aviad M. Kleinberg, Prophets in their own country. Living saints and the making of sainthood in the later Middle Ages (Chicago & London 1992), 16, puts it nicely: ‘No saint was just a collection of topoi, nor would such a product reect people’s interactions with real human beings’.

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are articulated by conversation partners and opponents who challenge the actor to whet his sword and enter the interpretive fray. Whenever the issue in history is one of granting recognition to a holy or exemplary life, it always entails negotiation between at least two parties: on the one hand the subject, and on the other his or her conversation partners from nearby or far away, in space or time.20 The subject offers his life for examination. It is then measured against traditions and models of saintliness or godliness which can either promote or hinder the subject’s own life project. Thus in Evert’s illness we hear echoes of the tradition of suffering typical of the medieval model for saintliness, even though his aim was not self-denial but self-realization. He had no desire to forsake the world, but loudly proclaimed his intention to work in the world. How did he manage to balance traditional, recognizable forms of expression with his desire for ofcial recognition of his life project? And how did he then tip the balance in his own favor? To answer these questions it is as important to listen to the supporters and opponents of an event or a concrete life trajectory as it is to analyze its internal structure or to determine its conformity with a xed model. Meaning is always ascribed meaning, here and now, regardless of whether the “now” is the timeframe of the event itself or of the later historian. This book will therefore devote as much attention to the world around Evert Willemsz as to his own desires and actions. In the rst place, an event in the life of a human being can be examined in terms of its internal structure. In the case of Evert, this involves the various dimensions of his religious experience: the vision of the angel, the ecstasy, the role of the senses, the part played by the community of orphans, the use of Scripture, song, and language, the deliverance rituals, the forms of legitimization. Since each of these dimensions stands in its own tradition and belongs to a specic genre, they are also located on the diachronic axis. They are forms of communication: body language, verbal language, or ritual language. As such they are elements of a collective strategy of interpretation in which both the subject and his surroundings participate. This also explains why the people around the

20 Cf. for this approach also: Jean-Claude Schmitt, ‘La fabrique des saints’, in: Annales ESC 39 (1984), 286–300; Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski & Timea Szell (eds.), Images of sainthood in medieval Europe (Ithaca & London 1991); Willem Frijhoff, ‘Confessional sanctity. Concluding reections and questions for the future’, in: Beyer et al., Confessional sanctity, 373–386; the same, ‘Witnesses to the Other, incarnate longings: Saints and heroes, idols and models’, in: Studia Liturgica 34 (2004), 1–25.

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boy could recognize them. But their signicance amounts to more than their place in a recognizable, centuries-old tradition. Similarity of form (isomorphism) in itself explains nothing. It merely indicates layers of meaning that may or may not be activated in a process of appropriation, either individual or collective. We can illustrate this with an example. When Evert refuses to eat for several days, it is tempting to reach for our contemporary label of anorexia nervosa. Evert may well have known about concrete cases of food deprivation. But by calling his fasting a variant of anorexia we do not elucidate his experience. Nor do we gain additional insight into his self-awareness or his historical personality if we reduce his ecstatic experience to clinical forms of neurosis or psychosis, hysteria or delusion.21 A label of this kind threatens, in fact, to short-circuit the analysis. The boy’s reaction is “typical,” we say then, and thus postulate a strictly minimal form of appropriation totally determined by conformity with traditional meanings and preclude a uniquely personal form of assimilation or interpretation. Verication or, to the extent that it is possible, falsication of any additional signicance that the individual case might hold is then rejected in advance. One aspect of Evert’s behavior is thus reied, and can no longer be conceived in a meaningful relation with other facets of his conduct. An event derives its structure, however, precisely from the specic relations between its various aspects. The resulting constellation enhances the meaning of each individual aspect and makes every event unique. Separate formal traditions thus combine to constitute the event of a mystical experience. The French historian and psychoanalyst Michel de Certeau has rightly championed a historical approach to such forms of mysticism.22 As cultural phenomena they derive their meaning from the way in which they play with the social and political dimensions of reality. Their signicance consequently reveals itself only if we examine them in situ. Both the personal meaning that Evert invested in his experience and the specic meaning it acquired for his surroundings rest on the total conguration of formal elements, individually traditional but in 21 On these questions, see also Michael MacDonald, Mystical Bedlam: Madness, anxiety and healing in seventeenth-century England (Cambridge 1981); Roy Porter, A social history of madness: Stories of the insane (London 1987), 82–102: ‘Religious madness’; and the casestudies in Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra, Hilary Marland & Hans de Waardt (eds.), Illness and healing alternatives in Western Europe (London & New York 1997). 22 Michel de Certeau, ‘Historicités mystiques’, in: Recherches de science religieuse 73 (1985), 325–354.

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combination unique, and as such constitutive for an event. Is this specic clustering simply the result of chance, or is there also an inherent structure hidden in the convergence of the elements? This is one of the questions we must address. The second form of interpretation places an event in its context, that is, in the timeframe of synchronous rings surrounding the occurrence. It is a form of community history that confronts the local past with an ever-widening network of relations. The orphanage where Evert lived in 1622/23, for example, was a specic type of micro-society with its own group dynamics. Evert also belonged to a family network, even though he was orphaned—or perhaps in a very special way precisely as an orphan. And he proted from protection, patronage. Moreover, we must not forget that the synod of Dort had just taken place and the campaign against Remonstrants was in full swing. Woerden was full of Remonstrants; it was also the only town in the Netherlands full of Lutherans. The Counter-Remonstrants therefore had to face opponents on two fronts. It was precisely in this part of the country, along the perimeter of the rural heart of Holland, that resistance to the religious politics of the stadholder was brewing. But the circles can be drawn even wider, to include factors like social structure. Society in Holland around 1625 had not yet become a closed system with a xed hierarchy, and an energetic person could prot from the openings available to work himself up the social ladder. The widest circle extended overseas, to the colonies, where Evert Willemsz was twice appointed to a different function. The third way of ascribing meaning assesses the event on the scale of duration. We of course would like to know how the various facets of the occurrence stood in their respective traditions, what images it called up, and what kind of verdict was passed on it later. But I am most concerned here with its impact on the lives of those directly involved, particularly on that of Evert himself. Evert’s early experiences, which the events of 1622/23 present in concentrated form, also helped him make choices later in his life. Choosing is a matter of selecting a particular conguration from the reservoir of forms and meanings stored in the personal and social memory. Given the rapidity of change in patterns of meaning, formal traditions do not necessarily dominate our choices. But they do create conditions for the social recognition (in both senses of the word) of what we do, and they steer the perception of the group. Without wanting to reduce a human life to a chain of actions predictable from its prior history and its context—which would in this case yield a stereotype drawn on the saintliness model—we have to recognize that every human being

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works with models and identication schemes supplied by others. In order to determine the extent to which individuals either conform to them or adapt them according to their own insights, it is essential to reconstruct in detail the models, the context, and the action itself in time and space. Only in this way can we open up all the possible semantic elds and explore deeper levels of meaning.

Text and representation Young Evert Willemsz made his own selection from the repertoire of formal and substantive traditions, and he presented it to the community as a meaningful whole, a pattern of deeds, words, and images. We can sum this up with the term representation—or better, presentation. In the actions, gestures, and words that he offers us, but also in what he omits, Evert tells a story about himself. Actually more than one, for the song printed at the beginning of this book, composed in 1622, selectively summarizes what we nd scattered through the pamphlets of Master Zas, who made his own selection of events to construct a different, continuous narrative. Evert thus presents an image of himself that is inextricably bound up with his identity but is not totally congruent with it. Nor is that image the only conceivable one, for under and behind the choices that Evert makes in order to reveal himself to his surroundings lies a world of experience, a resource he can tap again for hidden strategies. The public, social identity and the personal, intimate identity do not necessarily coincide, as Paul Ricoeur has perceptively argued. But for a life to remain manageable, they cannot diverge too widely either. Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical approach, particularly his well-known distinction between frontstage and backstage behavior, can be illuminating here, even though it threatens to reduce the complexity of Evert’s behavior to simple alternatives.23 That which is shown on the front stage does not remain purely dramaturgical representation, objectied role behavior aimed at elevating one’s status; it also has repercussions for the concealed backstage, in this case for young Evert’s entire behavioral repertoire and emotional makeup. Façade behavior is certainly not neutral: an event has

23 Erving Goffman, The presentation of self in everyday life (Garden City, NY 1959); the same, Stigma. Notes on the management of spoiled identity (Englewood Cliffs, NJ 1963).

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a denitive quality. From that moment on the actor will have to live with his public identity. In one way or another it becomes part and parcel of his future actions. There may, of course, be hidden dimensions in those actions, elements of backstage behavior. This was certainly true of Evert Willemsz, a boy with few opportunities, who managed to protect himself from the rejection or envy of those in power by pursuing his goal along obscure back roads.24 We must also view the self-presentation as more than a conscious image or interplay of images. Representation works with partially subconscious codes of conduct that are taken for granted by the collective in its world of experience and expectation: honor codes, for example, role patterns, symbolic or ritual repertoires. Despite all these limitations, Evert’s story remains one of the rare instances of a young voice reaching us from the early modern age. He was helped, to be sure, by his mentor (whom he chose himself), but this man showed respect for Evert by only steering his work and passing it on. Because Evert lost his power of speech in his rapt state and could communicate only in writing, we nd his own words in the pamphlets, selected perhaps, but still in sufcient quantity for an analysis of what could inspire an enthusiastic boy of fteen in those years. In addition, we can compare the life project that he formulated then with what he eventually was able to realize. We can examine how the two phases are related and how each sheds light on the other; analyze how an individual life emerges from a multiplicity of collective images, discourses, models, and styles—how it is actually embedded in them; discover how much space a motivated young man could secure for himself to maneuver freely within those early seventeenth-century parameters; and nally inquire how almost four centuries ago, with the aid of various kinds of largely traditional material offered by the community, it was possible to construct a unique human life. That is the aim of this book. A few words should still be devoted to the most important source of information about Evert’s mystical experience: the pamphlets of 1623. In terms of content they form a remarkable genre. Headmaster Zas faithfully and literally recorded what the god-fearing orphan wrote about his spiritual development and his (intended) identity in the short period of

24 For a rst approach, see Willem Frijhoff, ‘Identity achievement, education, and social legitimation in early modern Dutch society: The case of Evert Willemsz (1622–23)’, in: Shirahata Yozaburo & W.J. Boot (eds.), Two faces of the early modern world: The Netherlands and Japan in the 17th and 18th centuries (Kyoto 2001), 137–163; reprinted in: Frijhoff, Embodied belief , 67–91.

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his double religious experience. The pamphlets document how Evert Willemsz was delivered from his old self and reborn in Christ. On the other hand, Zas acts as editor and turns the material into a comprehensible and meaningful story, also for outsiders. He describes the phases and forms of Evert’s physical and spiritual experience, and adds marginal notes and textual transitions, which of course include value judgments. In the context of the moment Master Zas’s story has a highly specic signicance. It not only offers readers insight into the spiritual and social implications of the experience for Evert personally and in the perception of his fellow actors; it also polemicizes against the skeptics and opponents in the town; and, nally, it aims to present the event in its totality as a meaningful episode in the salvation history of the Reformed Netherlands.25 Evert’s own texts clearly place the pamphlets in the category of “ego documents,” as the Dutch historian Jacques Presser broadly termed historical sources in which “the user encounters an ‘I’ as a writing and describing subject.”26 But these are mediated ego documents, fragments of an autobiography given the form of a biography by the pen of another writer. In spiritual circles it was certainly not unusual for the experience of a male or female mystic to be recorded by a confessor or spiritual mentor. Autobiographical writings were at times also reworked into an edifying text. Here, however, Evert keeps the reins rmly in his own hands, and his words appear as if straight from his pen. While in other cases the messages were often edited, rewritten or adjusted by the mentor, Evert personally sees to it that his texts are reproduced and distributed strictly word for word. The editor’s task is simply to provide the linking commentary. But it is by means of this commentary that Master Zas creates a biographical document. Evert’s pamphlets thus assume a kind of hybrid form, an “autobiography by others,” a collage of the subject’s own texts presented as a spiritual biography. It is with such documents that this book works to create a biographical narrative. Biography, one of the most ancient forms of historiography,

25 For a more elaborate evaluation of these sources, their genesis and problems, see Wegen, 53–61. 26 Jacques Presser, ‘Memoires als geschiedbron’, in: Uit het werk van J. Presser (Amsterdam 1969), 277–282; on ego documents: Rudolf M. Dekker (ed.), Egodocuments and history: Autobiographical writing in its social context since the Middle Ages (Hilversum 2002); more specically in this context: W. Sparn (ed.), Wer schreibt meine Lebensgeschichte? Biographie, Autobiographie, Hagiographie und ihre Entstehungszusammenhänge (Gütersloh 1990).

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here acquires special features.27 Not only is this study partly based on an existing (auto)biography, it also incorporates that semi-biography as a source and a formal element into a broader biographical approach, one which continually shifts back and forth between the ego document and the world of the collective. The term I wish to apply is a “biography in context,” a historical study of the mentality of an ordinary person who cannot be inated into a hero or a saint. It aims to be a personal alternative to various forms of historical biography that have so far left me dissatised. Prosopography (collective biography), for example, that describes average personalities instead of individuals—often with pallid, thoroughly anemic results. Or the new forms of culturalistic descriptions of persons that reduce the protagonist to an exponent of a group culture. His values, images, opinions, and forms of behavior are presented as typical specimens of the thought and action of his time, as group-specic cultural forms. The life of the subject thus acquires exemplary value, but at the expense of the person’s uniqueness, of everything about a human life that remains stubbornly irreducible to schemes and systems. The individual is reduced to the norm, and whatever falls outside that framework is deviance. This study describes neither an average person nor an exemplary life. Nor does it aim so much to document the course of a personal life as to use such documentation (the basis, of course, for every historical work) to expose the many threads that went into the fabric of an individual life in the early seventeenth century, the many cues supplied by fellow actors from various sectors of that historical stage. My intent is to show how the individual person can draw on traditions he shares with those around him for elements of form and meaning in his thought and actions. How he explores possibilities and degrees of solidarity with others, probing its usefulness for achieving something that reaches beyond his own life. We will investigate how an individual develops into a unique personality by continually making new choices from the alternatives offered to him,

27

See recently the contributions to: Hans Erich Bödeker (ed.), Biographie schreiben [Göttinger Gespräche zur Geschichtswissenschaft, 18] (Göttingen 2003), including my essay ‘Experience and agency at the crossroads of culture, mentality, and contextualization: The biography of Everhardus Bogardus (c. 1607–1647)’, 65–105; and the forthcoming volume by Volker R. Berghahn & Simone Lässig (eds.), Biography between structure and agency (Oxford & New York 2007), with my essay on the Bogardus enterprise: ‘The improbable biography: Uncommon sources, a moving identity, a plural story?’ For a useful critical reection, see: Giovanni Levi, ‘Les usages de la biographie’, in: Annales ESC 44 (1989), 1325–1336.

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with the aid of instruments he employs without becoming their victim. In this particular instance we will see how the interaction between individual and environment yielded a highly specic signicance, a sense of mission, which in turn imparted meaning to forms of life, thought, and society peculiar to that time and that group. And how this man remained a unique and intriguing personality, if not always a sympathetic one. Such a verdict is both the privilege and duty of the historian. Without judgments no distance is possible, and no depth. But a judgment is not necessarily a condemnation.

APPENDIX

Bibliographic description of the two pamphlets relating Evert Willemsz’s spiritual experience, 1623 a Waerachtighe ende seeckere gheschiedenisse / dewelcke is gheschiedt binnen de Stadt Woerden / hoe dat Godt almachtich zijn Wonder-werck heeft betoont aen een seecker Wees-kindt genaemt Evert Willemsz. het welck hy heeft besocht met doofheyt ende stomheyt / ende hoe dat hem wondere dingen zijn wedervaren / dewelcke hem / so hy schrijft / vanden Engel Gods zijn geopenbaert / ende tot ghetuygenisse der Waerheyt / so is dit vanden Rector binnen Woerden / als wesende zijn Meester geafrmeert ende bevesticht / ende met eyghener hant onderteeckent. Dit is ghepasseert den 18. ende 19. Januarij / niewen Stijl / men seght dat hy nu wederom wonderlijcke dinghen spreeckende is. [Illustration on the title-page: orphan with matron in the entrance-hall of an orphanage] t’Utrecht / Ghedruckt by Herman van Borculo / onder den Dom. 1623. Met consent. In-4°, 4 unnumbered pages. [A]2. Gothic letters. Fingerprint: 162304—b1 = b2 ofte or$ Copies known: The Hague, Royal Library, P. [Knuttel] 3501. Second printing (identical text, with a slightly modernized spelling and adjusted lay-out): Waerachtighe ende sekere gheschiedenisse / dewelcke is geschiedt binnen de stadt Woerden / . . . [illustration on the title-page: Mary and the apostles reading a book, inspired by the Holy Ghost (Acts of the Apostles 2:1–13)] t’Utrecht / Ghedruckt by Herman van Borculo / onder den Dom. Anno 1623. Met consent. In-4°, 4 unnumbered pages. [A]2. Gothic letters. Fingerprint: 162304—b1 = b2 ick oft Copies known: Library of the University of Amsterdam, P. C.p.19 and 19a (2 copies). b Waerachtige Geschiedenisse / Hoe dat Seker Wees-Kindt binnen Woerden / out ontrent xv. Jaren / tot tweemalen toe vanden Heere met stommigheyd / doofheyd / somtijts oock met Blintheyt besocht / ende van het gebruyck syns verstants berooft zijnde: De sonden bestraffende / ende Gods toorn verkondigende / wonderbaerlijcken door de kracht des Heeren ‘t selve alles wederomme verkreghen heeft. Op het alder-oprechtste, nae de waerheyd, by een gestelt ende vergaderd door L. Zasium, Rectorem binnen Woerden. Naer voor-gaende visitatie by den Kercken-Rade der Stede Woerden gedaen, behoorlijcken by den E. Magistraet ter selver Stede geapprobeert. [illustration on the title-page: publisher’s mark showing the scene of the men of Emmaus walking with Christ (Luke 24:13–35)] t’Amstelredam,

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Voor Marten Iansz. Brandt, Boeck-verkooper / wonende aende Nieuwe-Kerck / inde Gereformeerde Catechismus, 1623. [in ne: t’Amstelredam, ghedruckt by Paulus van Ravesteyn, Anno 1623]. In-4°, 36 unnumbered pages. A–D4, E2. Gothic letters. Fingerprint: 162304—b1 A3 ee: b2 E $t Copies known: The Hague, Royal Library, P. [Knuttel] 3500. Second printing (identical text, but with a more archaic spelling): t’Amstelredam, Voor Marten Iansz. Brandt, Boeck-verkooper / wonende aende Nieuwe-Kerck / inde Gereformeerde Catechismus, 1623. [in ne: t’Amstelredam, ghedruckt by Paulus van Ravesteyn, Anno 1623]. In-4°, 36 unnumbered pages. A–D4, E2. Gothic letters. Fingerprint: 162304—b1 A3 n$t : b2 E $t, and b1 A3 n$t : b2 E t. Copies known: The Hague, Royal Library, P. [Knuttel] 3500a; Library of the University of Amsterdam, P. C.p. 18 and 18a (2 copies); Library of the University of Utrecht, p. Knuttel 3500. NB. For the quotation mode, see footnote 1 of this Prologue. Fol. C2r°–C4r°of the second pamphlet (b19–23) reproduce the text of the rst pamphlet (a2–4), with some slight corrections and variants.

PART ONE

VOCATION

CHAPTER ONE

A CHILD WITHOUT PARENTS

A small community In times past the Old Rhine was the lifeline of Woerden.1 It owed as open water through the middle of the town, which began as a Roman outpost along the limes. In 1961 the course of the river was diverted into the city canal, and the picturesque waterway inside the town was lled in. The location of Woerden, at the point where the Rhine ows into the province of Holland, gave it long-standing strategic importance. As a border fortication it was granted its municipal franchise. The waterway brought life to the town, which served as a transit point on the route from Utrecht to Leiden and The Hague. Woerden had a well-dened market function, as the center of an area never easily accessible and in the winter largely cut off from the outside world. The small community with its extensions into the surrounding countryside thus acquired a closed character, which encouraged group formation with sharp local contrasts. At the beginning of the sixteenth century brickworks and tile kilns sprang up in the basin of the Old Rhine and its tributary the Linschoten, exploiting the local resources of river clay. Fuel for this industry was conveniently available from the nearby peat bogs, as in Nieuwkoop. Before that Woerden was a small country town that lived on the agriculture and cattle farming in the surrounding area, a market town with a large number of craftsmen. It was above all the brick and pantile works that brought prosperity to Woerden during Holland’s phase of expansion. Finally, the castle of Woerden housed a garrison. At most this was a matter of a few hundred soldiers, more likely fewer, but it did color the life of the town, and in times of crisis, as around 1620, it assumed a more prominent role. The garrison also served as guard

1 On the town’s history: C.J.A. van Helvoort, Hoofdstukken uit de geschiedenis van de stad Woerden ( Hilversum 1952); N. Plomp, Woerden 600 jaar stad (Woerden 1972).

Fig. 3. Map of the town of Woerden, 1632. From: Marcus Zuerius Boxhornius, Toneel ofte beschryvinge der steden van Hollandt (Amsterdam, 1634), p. 310. [Courtesy of the Streekarchief Rijnstreek, Woerden]. Nº 2: town church. The small arrow in the middle of the map, just below the Rhine (nº 4), points to the town orphanage.

42 chapter one

a child without parents

43

dog of the provincial government during the mandatory Calvinization of the town. Woerden was by no means a large city, however. The house tally made in the province of Holland in 1629 reports 672 houses in Woerden.2 Assuming an occupancy rate of 4.9 persons per house, as in nearby Gouda in 1622, we arrive at a maximum of 3,293 inhabitants for Woerden in 1629. Of those, approximately 2,587 lived in the town itself. That gure still seems high, even in a situation of rapid growth, considering that the census made for the poll tax seven years earlier, in the autumn of 1622, reports only 1,676 Woerden inhabitants. Adding the 530 inhabitants of adjacent neighborhoods and hamlets yields a total of 2,206 persons, with a division of inhabitants between city and surrounding area almost identical to that in 1629. With even the most optimistic growth hypothesis it seems safer, therefore, to place the population of Woerden and its direct environs at 2,500 to 3,000 in 1622, the year in which Evert Willemsz rst spoke out publicly. It was society on a human scale, a typical face-to-face community, where the inhabitants knew one another by name and in conict situations could easily resort to spying and gossip. Woerden was not always the predominantly pietistic, orthodox Calvinist town that it became in the nineteenth century.3 In earlier days it was at rst mainly Lutheran, then Remonstrant. Estimates based on baptismal records indicate approximately 1,500 orthodox Calvinist inhabitants around 1630, and 2,750 ten years later: within one decade, in other words, this group grew from less than half to approximately two-thirds of the total city population, including the buitenpoorters (citizens living outside the town walls). Did Remonstrants gradually start having their children baptized in the town church? That is the most likely explanation. A large part of the growth can probably be attributed to citizens who out of conviction, fear, or indifference defected to the public church, and much less to an increase in confessing members—although their numbers may also have been higher in Woerden than elsewhere. During Evert Willemsz’s childhood the orthodox Calvinists had in any

2 Plomp, Woerden, 123–124, 136; cf. J.G. van Dillen, ‘Summiere staat van de in 1622 in de provincie Holland gehouden volkstelling’, in: Economisch-historisch Jaarboek 21 (1940), 167–189. 3 On nineteenth-century religious Woerden, see Rob van der Laarse, Bevoogding en bevinding. Heren en kerkvolk in een Hollandse provinciestad, Woerden 1780–1930 (The Hague 1989).

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case not yet won the day. In fact, they probably comprised less than one-third of the city population and were overshadowed by both the Lutherans and the Remonstrants. For both of these confessional groups Woerden was an important base of operations.4 A double front-line situation, in other words. This was also true of a town like Haarlem, with its large number of Mennonites and Catholics. In neither Woerden nor Haarlem was the principle of the Reformed Church as public church abandoned, but the two towns sought radically different solutions for the tensions that arose from the religious divisions. While the Haarlem magistracy aimed at creating a unied civic culture above the denominational diversity, the authorities in Woerden strove to absorb as many of the dissidents as possible into the true Reformed faith, into a genuine, all-embracing town church.5

Arminians and Gomarists When the Twelve-Year Truce (1609–1621) brought a temporary halt to the war with Spain and with it new opportunities for expressing differences of political opinion, the conicts that had long been smoldering between two factions within the Reformed Church ared up in all vehemence.6 Formally the issue was theological in nature. In reality, however, it concealed various controversies, and the differences between opposing political camps crystallized around the theological issue. Contemporaries were fully aware of this. Theology was a political matter, and politics was not alien territory for theologians. Followers of the one faction, Arminians, were named after the Leiden professor Jacobus Arminius (1560–1609), a native of the town of Oudewater, near

4 This particular position of the town is still visible on the 1800 confessional map of the Netherlands: Hans Knippenberg, De religieuze kaart van Nederland (Assen & Maastricht 1992), 39, g. 2.8. 5 For a general interpretation of the evolution of the seventeenth-century confessional landscape of the Dutch Republic, see Willem Frijhoff, ‘Kalvinistische Kultur, Staat und Konfessionen in den Vereinten Provinzen der Niederlande’, in: Peter Claus Hartmann (ed.), Religion und Kultur im Europa des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt am Main, etc. 2004; 2d ed. 2006), 109–142. The Haarlem case is unraveled in my essay ‘Damiette appropriée. La mémoire de croisade, instrument de concorde civique (Haarlem, XVIe–XVIIIe siècle)’, in: Revue du Nord 88:364 (2006), 7–42. 6 For these controversies and their social implications, see A.Th. van Deursen, Bavianen en slijkgeuzen. Kerk en kerkvolk ten tijde van Maurits en Oldenbarnevelt (Assen 1974; 2d ed. Franeker 1991).

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Woerden. This group maintained that God saves or condemns people on the basis of his “foreknowledge.” God foresees from eternity which persons will accept and which will reject His grace and then decides, if they persist in their ways, to elect them or damn them. That “if ” is essential here: a person remains responsible for his or her faith and for persevering in or rejecting the work of grace.7 Followers of the other faction acquired the name Gomarists, from their leader Franciscus Gomarus (1563–1641), originally from Bruges and professor of theology rst in Leiden, then Middelburg, later Saumur (France), and nally Groningen. This group gave an even more central place to predestination: God freely and out of undeserved love ordains some persons for eternal life, and others he condemns to eternal death. A human being can respond to that divine decree, but in no way change it. Because God’s grace is irresistible, an elect person will persevere and never really be able to lose his faith. Arminius also took predestination seriously. But he placed it not at the beginning of the doctrine of salvation but after God’s decision to appoint Christ as mediator and to receive in grace those who believe. While Arminius’s rst concern was to safeguard human responsibility, foremost for Gomarus was the absolute sovereign freedom of God’s will. For him the grace of God was irresistible. Professor A.Th. van Deursen has aptly capsulized the controversy as follows: for the Arminians election was the fruit of faith, for the Gomarists faith was the fruit of election.8 Early in the conict, after 1609, the Arminians—with the support of the provincial government—either already had or were gaining the upper hand in numerous towns. Here and there this led to the suspension of Gomarist preachers, who then formed dissenting congregations “under the cross,” that is, in a position of persecution. Gradually, however, the balance of power shifted in their favor, most decisively when stadholder Maurits publicly joined the dissenting faction on Sunday, July 23, 1617. The result was civil war.

7 Keith D. Stanglin, Arminius and the assurance of salvation: The context, roots and shape of the Leiden debate, 1603–1609 (Leiden & Boston, 2007), forthcoming. 8 A.Th. van Deursen, Plain lives in a Golden Age: Popular culture, religion and society in seventeenth-century Holland (Cambridge 1991), 272.

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The Woerden city council in those years was predominantly Arminian.9 The name commonly used for Arminians was Remonstrants, after the famed remonstration of January 14, 1610, in which 44 Arminian ministers formulated their view of predestination and asked the government to protect them from attacks by “orthodox” Calvinists and to promote tolerance for their ideas. The orthodox Gomarists, or Counter-Remonstrants, were still a minority but did not hesitate to speak their mind. At the beginning of 1617, a few Counter-Remonstrants in Woerden formally seceded from the public, Remonstrant church and formed a dissenting congregation. In the background we can see the Act of Secession drawn up by the Counter-Remonstrants during their meetings of January 25 of that year in Amsterdam. By April 21, 1617 the conict came to a head in the city council itself. The immediate cause was the call received by the notorious Arminian minister Petrus Cupus (1580–1646) to ll a vacancy in Den Briel.10 On January 3 Cupus had requested permission of the Woerden magistracy to accept the call, but he was turned down. Petrus Cupus, along with a few colleagues from the classis, belonged to the group who had signed the remonstration of 1610. The magistracy’s refusal to let him leave is therefore a clear indication of the religious color of the town government. It was still predominantly Remonstrant. That was not to everyone’s liking, however. On April 21 ve inhabitants of Woerden, one of whom was a member of the city council, submitted a petition requesting “a minister of the old, true religion.” This clearly meant someone of the Counter-Remonstrant persuasion. As far as they were concerned, the sooner Cupus left the better. Three of the signatories we will encounter later in the circles around Evert. All three eventually served as city council member, elder, and delegate from the classis Woerden to the South Holland synod: Gerrit Gijsbertsz Vergeer (dissenting elder, synod delegate in 1623, and future orphan master); Jan Florisz, or Flooren, also known as Van Wijngaarden (Woerden’s representative at the synod of 1620 and 1621 and burgomaster in

9 On the religious conicts in Woerden, see: J. Haitsma, ‘De remonstrantse en contra-remonstrantse twisten in Woerden’, in: Holland 9 (1977), 97–111; the same, Hoofdstukken uit de geschiedenis van de Hervormde (gereformeerde) kerk van Woerden van 1593 t/m 1963 (Woerden 1978), 30–48; and Wegen, 73–118, with details about the Woerden sources. 10 On Cupus: NNBW, VIII, 348–349; BLGNP, II, 150–152.

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1622/23); and nally the brewer Cornelis Buyck (delegate to synod in 1622 and one year later governing burgomaster).

Lutherans The oldest group of Protestants in Woerden were not Remonstrants, however, but Lutherans.11 Just how unpredictably history can unfold we see in the fate of the Lutheran congregation in Woerden. In retrospect, Dutch Lutheranism seems to be little more than an odd twist, an anomaly imported into the history of a nation that was by nature Calvinist, and at most tempered with some indigenous traditions of Anabaptism and Catholicism. The rst martyr of the Reformation in the Northern Netherlands, Jan de Bakker, who was strangled and burned in The Hague on September 25, 1525, was a citizen of Woerden. Whether he was a full-blooded Lutheran can be doubted, but he certainly went down in history as such—especially in Woerden itself, where Jan de Bakker alias Johannes Pistorius soon became the symbol of Lutheran liberty.12 We know, for example, that more than a century after Jan de Bakker’s execution the Woerden orphan master Aert Jansz van Rijnevelshorn (ca. 1601–1665), an educated merchant and a confessing Lutheran, had a painting “of the burning of Jan of Woerden” hanging in his house alongside portraits of Luther and (owing to his Remonstrant wife) Arminius.13 Just how Lutheranism rose to the level of a full-edged denomination in Woerden is not clear. The mortgaging of the grand seigniory of Woerden City and Environs to the military commander Duke Eric of Brunswick (1528–1584) in 1558 by King Philip II must have played some role. Woerden was thus placed in private hands and removed from the direct jurisdiction of the monarch—a fact that the States of Holland, as legal successors to the king, never wished to acknowledge. In 1617 they actually paid off the mortgage. Duke Eric was certainly not a Lutheran. But it now became easier for Woerden to chart its own religious course. 11 On Dutch Lutheranism: C.Ch.G. Visser, De Lutheranen in Nederland tussen katholicisme en calvinisme, 1566 tot heden (Dieren 1983), on Woerden: 18, 41–42. 12 On Jan de Bakker: BLGNP, I, 207. 13 SAW, NA 8537, n° 115 ( January 29, 1655); cf. Plomp, Woerden, 95. On Rijnevelshorn: Willem Frijhoff, ‘Predestination and the farmer: An incident of life and faith in early seventeenth-century Holland’, in: the same, Embodied belief. Ten essays on religious culture in Dutch history (Hilversum 2002), 93–110.

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Ideas about religion that elsewhere were branded sheer heresy had a chance here. It was not until the Revolt, however, that a group of Woerden Lutherans, in part immigrants from the South (Lutherans were driven out of Antwerp on April 12, 1567), proposed the Augsburg Confession as the basis for the leading religious denomination of the town. This was the condition on which they were prepared to choose the side of the prince of Orange. On August 8, 1572 that transition became a fact. From that moment on Woerden was the only ofcially Lutheran town of Holland; all the others were either still Catholic or already Calvinist. Lutheran sermons were preached in the town church and the sacraments administered in Lutheran fashion. However, from the very beginning pleas were made for the Calvinization of Woerden by the Reformed synod of South Holland.14 In 1586 the synod of The Hague expressly declared itself opposed to a double religion in the province. Before long it could count on support from the States of Holland, particularly that of the Woerden superintendent and governor Jacques van den Eijnden, member of the landed gentry and military representative of the States’ authority. In ofce until 1629, he was a mainstay of the Counter-Remonstrant cause. It proved extremely difcult, however, to eradicate Lutheranism among the churchgoers of Woerden. Despite the statutes of July 11, 1593 and February 2, 1597 forbidding “conventicles”—the private gatherings of confessing Lutherans in Woerden—the Lutherans, by now schooled in deance, continued to hold services in private homes. The militant burgomaster and Lutheran elder Cornelis Hendricksz van Bersingen was their untiring source of inspiration. For a short time Woerden was even the center from which the Lutherans in the Northern Netherlands were able to consolidate their church organization, a role subsequently taken over by the large Lutheran congregation in Amsterdam. In the second decade of the seventeenth century the conict between Remonstrants and Counter-Remonstrants claimed the full attention of the public church. But this does not mean that the Lutherans were left to their own devices. Their presence in large numbers considerably complicated the religious scene in Woerden—as it did in the neighboring town of Bodegraven, where the situation was similar.

14 Geeraerdt Brandt, Historie der Reformatie, en andere kerkelyke geschiedenissen, in en ontrent de Nederlanden (4 vols., Amsterdam 1671–1704), I, 662–664.

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When the Counter-Remonstrants assumed power in 1618, they must have been tempted to seek a denitive solution to all the problems.

Remonstrants Woerden was long known as a breeding-ground for Remonstrants.15 The classis was also far from unswervingly orthodox. When the winning party drew up the balance after the synod of Dort, classis Woerden was found to have only six Counter-Remonstrant ministers in ofce as opposed to eleven Remonstrants and one who refused to choose sides.16 We can be fairly sure that Calvinist orthodoxy was only able to take root in Woerden thanks to the active support of the provincial government and against the wishes of the majority of the population. The thick dossier assembled by the dissidents as a weapon against the two Remonstrant ministers of the town, Cupus and Bricquigny, yields considerable insight into their methods and their following. There was a clear difference between the two ministers. Petrus de Bricquigny (1557–1625), by far the senior in terms of age and years of service, was thoroughly detested by some because of the biased role he played in various appointment procedures.17 He ignored the majority of the consistory and sought support from the magistracy. Doctrine was not his strong point. Even many a Remonstrant must have raised an eyebrow when Bricquigny admitted to schoolmaster Gerrit Croon that he no longer wanted to read Calvin because his doctrine of predestination was in error.18 Cupus at least still considered Calvin worth reading, because he wrote such splendid expository prose. As early as November 1617 the classis, at that time still dissenting, had two declarations drawn up about the procedural faults of Bricquigny, with the intention of ring him at the next opportunity.

15 Brandt, Historie der Reformatie, II, 884–885; III, 728, 758–759, 833; IV, 543–558; Johannes Tideman, De Remonstrantsche Broederschap (2d ed. Amsterdam 1905), 187–194. For the general context: Van Deursen, Bavianen, 241–274, 320–345. On the Remonstrants: G.J. Hoenderdaal & P.M. Luca (eds.), Staat in de vrijheid. De geschiedenis van de remonstranten (Zutphen 1982). 16 NAN, Oud-Synodaal Archief (2.19.064), n° 157. 17 On Bricquigny: NNBW, II, 249–250. 18 The following statements and events can be found in the voluminous le built up against the Remonstrants of Woerden by the local Counter-Remonstrants, in: NAN, Oud-Synodaal Archief, n° 157.

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The main offensive began a year later, however, with the much more erudite minister Petrus Cupus as its main target. The dissenters followed his sermons with a highly critical ear. Between September 14 and December 7, 1618, on the initiative of the dissenting consistory, several “spontaneous” declarations by Counter-Remonstrant Woerdeners documented incautious or unorthodox statements by Reverend Cupus, in some cases immediately following the sermon. The campaign was orchestrated, of course. Not only are the formulations in many of the notes nearly identical, the handwriting is as well. Also striking is that of the 21 men who signed declarations, more than half were members of the magistracy or would become members soon. The hard core of this group, appearing three or four times in the le, consisted of the alderman (and instigator?) Gijsbert Gerritsz Vergeer, son of the elder Gerrit Gijsbertsz (whom we will encounter again later), the former deacon and prospective burgomaster Cornelis Buyck, the prospective city council member and former elder Willem Jacobsz van Westveen, at that moment a deacon, and the Dutch schoolmaster Gerrit Dircksz Croon. Most of the declarations are simple statements in which the essence of the doctrinal conict is rendered in comprehensible images. Cupus, for example, was said to have asked several of the ten women signatories whether they could accept a doctrine that declared one of their two baptized children innocently damned and the other undeservedly saved. This was apparently a common shibboleth in the dispute, for Cupus’s opponent, the minister Petrus Paludanus, had submitted the same question to his congregation in 1603, while still serving in the village of Aalsmeer.19 Governor Van den Eijnden went to great lengths to explain how during a dinner conversation Cupus had defended the heretic Miquel Servet (in 1553 burned at the stake in Geneva) against Calvin. This was more than just cocktail-party conversation. All through the seventeenth century Servet’s anti-Trinitarian conviction remained explosive material that might cost a follower his job, if not his freedom—and occasionally even his life. Finally, the declarations reveal that various members of the congregation had not taken part in the “heretical” Lord’s Supper of the Remonstrants for several years, even though they had been repeatedly addressed on this point by the ministers.

19

Van Deursen, Bavianen, 190.

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The accusations against Cupus and Bricquigny form an odd mix of arguments about doctrine and church order, and in some cases even politics. What stands out, however, is how the doctrine of predestination, in the simplied form in which it circulated, had become the pivotal issue in a power struggle affecting all of Woerden society, from the lowest to the highest levels. The debate supplied a community in ferment with clear points of identication. To the extent that the predestination doctrine also affected the behavior of believers, it could be coupled with values that subsequently crystallized into group norms. In this way Woerden society acquired its specic oppositional structure: the old doctrine versus the new, old elites versus up-and-coming new groups, immigrants versus natives. And along with all this came occasional squabbles between church and town hall about the interpretation monopoly on church order, if not on dogma. Cupus’s dossier was all the more explosive because he felt no qualms about attacking the civil government itself for its laxness. It soon became clear that dismissing him would be an utterly simple matter. On January 8, 1619—even before the solemn condemnation of the Remonstrants by the national synod of Dort on May 6, 1619—Cupus was formally removed from ofce by the delegates of the South Holland synod, assembled in Woerden, on the charge of having mocked predestination, of placing the New Testament above the Old, and not considering the Trinity a fundamental tenet of faith.20 At the same time his colleague Bricquigny was summoned to resign because, among other reasons, he was said to have stirred up the Lutherans against the Counter-Remonstrants. Unlike Cupus, however, he retained his salary, owing to his advanced age. But the Remonstrants immediately resumed their services in private homes. Cupus kept hovering in the vicinity of Woerden, which led the magistracy to le charges against him in April 1619. Out of protest against this measure more than 200 male and 168 female inhabitants of Woerden signed a declaration on April 7 stating that Cupus and Bricquigny had come to preach on their express request.21 The

20 Brandt, Historie der Reformatie, III, 304–333; IV, 315. On the Synod of Dort: J. van den Berg, ‘The Synod of Dort in the balance’, in: Dutch Review of Church History 69 (1989), 176–194; W. van ‘t Spijker, et alii, De Synode van Dordrecht in 1618 en 1619 (Houten 1987). 21 Brandt, Historie der Reformatie, III, 727–728; Tideman, De Remonstrantsche Broederschap, 188.

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Fig. 4. The synod of Dort, 1618. Title page of the pamphlet Afbeeldinghe des Synodi Nationael (s.l., 1618). [Royal Library, The Hague, P. Knuttel 2727].

signatures under the petition give us a small glimpse of the relations between the various religious groups of Woerden. Proceeding on the cautious estimate of around one thousand families, we can conclude that confessing Remonstrants accounted for at least 20% of the town’s adult population. But considering that mixed marriages were not uncommon, more households were probably at least partly Remonstrant. And this does not include those who felt Remonstrant but did not dare to defy the lawful authorities by signing such a declaration. We can safely say, then, that in the years immediately following the synod of Dort, the Woerden Remonstrants could count on the sympathy of at least a third, and possibly half of the town’s population. This also means that the true “church of the people” was still the Remonstrant and not the orthodox Calvinist congregation. When the orthodox minister Jacobus van Cralingen (ca. 1589–1645) of Edam received a call from classis Woerden in May 1619, the Counter-Remonstrant congregation

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boasted a good two hundred members, but that was still not enough to give it numerical superiority.22

Evert Willemszoon Despite the many historical traces left by the orphan Evert Willemsz, his family origins remain uncertain and his parents unidentiable. Nowhere do they appear in the sources, and at no point does he mention them himself. It is clearly the orphanage matron who lls the role of mother for him, as intimately and completely as a boy could wish. She is happy with him, sad when things go wrong, and afraid if something is troubling him. “Mother asks you why you are so sad,” an orphan girl sent by the overworked woman tells him (a4). Evert must have felt secure with such a caring mother. When he woke up with a headache on January 18 he was allowed to stay home from school. That afternoon he was upstairs writing, “but when the mother came to him he covered what he had written so that she wouldn’t see it.” She was worried “that the Lord once again might have something special planned for Evert” and tearfully hurried to Master Zas, who was then teaching his class (a2). “O my dear mother, how you were happy with my happiness when I received my speech and hearing again. But do not be overly sad, trust in God,” Evert writes tenderly a little later that same day in one of the spontaneous messages that make up his pamphlets (a3, b21). So when Evert needs help at night the boys wake up not the orphanage master but the matron (b34). It can be no coincidence that the printer Herman van Borculo used a woodcut of an orphanage matron with a child for the title page of one of his pamphlets about the boy. For him or for the engraver that semi-public intimacy was an essential element of the story. “Further particulars about his [Bogardus’s] family could no doubt be found at his birthplace,” the American historian Edward Corwin optimistically surmised more than a century ago.23 But at that time his

22

Van Deursen, Bavianen, 243, footnote 12. On Van Cralingen: BLGNP, V, 124–

125. 23 Edward T. Corwin, A Manual of the Reformed Church in America 1628–1902 (4th ed. New York 1902), 332.

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birthplace was still unknown, and it would long remain obscure. The Woerden archives are frustratingly silent about the biological parents of the orphan. The archives of the Woerden orphan chamber does contain two thick folio registers of the management of property belonging to Woerden orphans for the entire period 1588–1653, detailed documents that record with great precision names of the parents, the orphans, and their guardians.24 But no Evert Willemsz is to be found in that register; nor does the name Evert appear in combination with Cornelis and Pieter, the names of his two brothers who (besides two younger brothers not mentioned by name) gure in the reports about his experiences in the orphanage; nor does any Bogaert at all appear in the register for those years. Unfortunately the records of the city council resolutions under secretary Gijsbert van Arckel were poorly kept, and entries about admissions to the town orphanage are scarce. We have to conclude that all four (half-)brothers were admitted to the orphanage before 1619; in that year Van Arckel was dismissed for his Remonstrant convictions and the records promptly improved. This is in keeping with the tenor of the pamphlets, which breathe a thorough familiarity of the brothers with the community of children in the orphanage. Is it really so important, we might wonder, to nd out more about Evert’s family if the orphanage had in the meantime become his home environment? At least two reasons can be given here. In early modern times the family was still the most important frame of reference for the individual. In a world marked by great differences and uctuations in fortune, occupation, religion, nuclear family, status, and social standing, the extended family of blood relatives and in-laws offered the only xed point in all the ux of life. Because the family was experienced in this way, it played a major role in transmitting basic knowledge, values, behavioral norms, a view of reality and practical ways of applying it—in short, culture. If we wish to gain a proper perspective on individual actions in that age, we cannot ignore the family. Who was Evert? And rst of all, what was his real name? In the pamphlets of 1622/23 no surname is mentioned. This does not necessarily mean that he did not yet have a family name—or rather, a xed last name. Immigrants from the Southern provinces were the ones

24 SAW, Weeskamer (Orphan chamber), n° 4–5 (registers), 14a–b (accounts) and 21 (incoming correspondence). For admission to the town orphanage, orphans should be born of two parents from Woerden, both deceased, and have a minimum age of 3.

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most likely to have a surname in those days, but it was rarely used in everyday life in the North. Only later in the seventeenth century did the use of surnames increase rapidly in the public life of Holland.25 This undoubtedly came about with the shifting relation between public life and the private sphere, to say nothing of the needs arising from the rapid growth in population and the increase in administrative culture. In 1622/23, however, things had not yet reached that point. If there was a family name or a xed last name it was left out in communication between acquaintances: the patronymic (Willemszoon), the title (Dominus, i.e., Reverend, Monsieur, etc.) or the address, which often functioned as a surname (de Kerksteeg, i.e., the Church Lane, where Evert’s brother Cornelis lived), sufced to identify a person in a small community like Woerden. In city council resolutions and orphanage accounts, orphans were even referred to exclusively with their rst name, without patronymic, as in any average family. Everyone knew who was meant. Evert’s brother Pieter, for example, is mentioned in the pamphlets by his rst name only (b12, b34, b36). And Evert himself is addressed by Master Lucas Zas and Master Gijsbert Aelbertsz simply as “Evert.” Only burgomaster Jan Florisz, a representative of the civil authorities and clearly on a less intimate footing, calls him “Evert Willemsz” (b25). The nuclear family was buttressed by a broad network of living relatives. Like the network of more functional relations, they were simply called “friends” and could be relied on to help in time of need.26 These “friends” supplied the social capital—to use the term of Pierre Bourdieu—on which members of the nuclear family could draw. But group solidarity could help as well: people from the same town, village, or region, members of the same guild or the same church could, if necessary, provide important support. Besides all this there was patronage, the possibility of placing oneself under the protection of a regent or other person with more power or wealth.27 Even an orphan was not completely on his own in society. In the following chapters we shall see how Evert Willemsz found ways to play with these forms of support. 25 A.M. van der Woude, ‘Het gebruik van de familienaam in de 17e eeuw’, in: Holland 5 (1973), 109–131. 26 Luuc Kooijmans, Vriendschap en de kunst van het overleven in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw (Amsterdam 1997). 27 Antoni MAczak, Klientelsysteme im Europa der frühen Neuzeit (Munich 1988); Sharon Kettering, Patrons, brokers and clients in seventeenth-century France (New York & Oxford 1986).

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Fig. 5. Willem Mulock, secretary of Woerden, grants the Woerden scholarship for the States College of Leiden University to the orphan Evert Willemss Boogaert, June 25, 1629. [ Leiden University Library, Archief Curatoren, nº 687].

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The obscurity surrounding Evert’s parents does not apply to his brothers. In the pamphlets we hear about his apparently older brother Cornelis (b31–32), who then happens to be in Leiden, about a second older brother Pieter (b12, b34, b36) in the orphanage, and about two younger brothers (b34), not mentioned by name, who also live in the orphanage. For none of them is the family name given, but there can be no doubt at all about the identity of Evert and his brothers. When the scholarship earmarked for a theology student from Woerden to the States College of Leiden University becomes available in 1629, regent Festus Hommius (1576–1642) ofcially requests the Woerden city council to name a candidate. Municipal secretary Willem Mulock replies on June 25 by return mail “that we nd it advisable to award the vacant scholarship, mentioned in Your Honor’s missive, to a certain Evert Willemss Boogaert, raised in the orphanage of our city, presently residing in Leiden.”28 Unfortunately no traces have yet been found of the use of the name Bogaert by this family in Woerden.29 But two years before the decision of the Woerden city council Evert is already matriculated in Leiden under the Latinized form of that name, Bogardus. This indicates not only the existence of a reasonably xed surname, but a determination on Evert’s part to declare himself an independent and autonomous representative of his family. Otherwise, like so many other educated persons of simple background, he would have used his patronymic (Wilhelmius) or the name of his town (Woerdanus), as Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus had done a century earlier. It was under the name “Everardus Bogardus Woerdanus” that he registered at Leiden University as a student in the humanities, twenty years old, on July 17, 1627.30 This sort of matriculation did not necessarily mean that the young man actually ended up in the lecture halls

28 Leiden University Library, Archief Curatoren (Archive of the Board of Trustees of the University), n° 687, ad ann. 1629. No other mention of Evert Willemsz has been found in the States College archive, but it shows many gaps for those years. See further chapter 10. 29 In 1654 a Pieter Jansz Boogaert, widower of Marichje Gerritsdr Schalkwijck, and his son Hendrick lived just outside Woerden, on the Zandpad in Oudeland (SAW, Weeskamer, n° 6, f. 10). However, no connection has been found with Evert’s family. 30 Leiden University Library, Archive of the University Senate, n° 8, p. 247: “Everardus Bogardus Woerdanus studiosus b[onarum] literarum habitans apud Jacobum Guilelmi in de Vrouwe Camp Ann. 20”; Album studiosorum Academiae Lugduno-Batavae MDLXXV–MDCCCLXXV (The Hague 1875), 202. I have not been able to establish a link between this Jacob Willemsz and the Bogaert family, though he may well have been a relative. Poor students often found shelter with family members.

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of the humanities faculty. In keeping with old custom—going back to the days when the humanities section of the artes faculty provided the foundation course, a function later taken over by the higher classes of the Latin school—the pupils of the tertia (the third class) of the Latin school in Leiden were considered students of the university and were registered in the album studiosorum. Evert was one of those pupils. On June 9, 1627 his situation was presented to the Woerden city council by the clothier, or woolen draper, Gerrit Gijsbertsz Vergeer. Appointed in 1623 to serve alongside the two ministers as superintendent of the Latin and Dutch schools, Vergeer was the person responsible to the town for Evert’s schooling. Since he had also been orphan master in 1619 and 1623, he must have known Evert well. Vergeer explained in the meeting that Evert had been a pupil in Master Zas’s school for several years and “has come so far that he can no longer benet from his study with the same rector.”31 Would he be allowed to go to Leiden, Vergeer inquired. There was probably the additional consideration that Evert was approaching the age at which he would have to leave the orphanage. His exact birth date is unknown, but because he is reported to be fteen years old in 1622/23, and in Leiden in 1627 he gives his age as twenty, he was undoubtedly born in 1607 or 1608. Twenty years old and still without a job—a risky situation for a boy from the artisan class. He would gradually have to start thinking about earning his living. At that time the Latin school in Leiden had for two years been under the leadership of the highly learned rector Dr. Theodorus Schrevelius (1572–1652).32 It was probably this man’s erudition rather than his orthodoxy that recommended him as a good successor to Master Zas, given that Schrevelius, a lover of the good life, had in 1620 been dismissed as an Arminian in Haarlem, and his orthodoxy remained doubtful all his life. We can assume that Evert set out for Leiden mainly on the suggestion of Master Zas, but before long he had his ll of academic learning. Later Zas’s son Salomon taught at the Leiden school, and Dr. Schrevelius acted as a witness at the baptism of Salomon’s two youngest children. Perhaps he was an older acquaintance of Master Lucas Zas. By this time Evert had attended Master Zas’s school for nearly ve years. He may well have reached the level of the highest class. Two years

31 32

SAW, I, n° 10, f. 92v°. On Schrevelius: NNBW, V, 703–704.

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later, after a short foundation course in the humanities, he was already admitted as a student of theology. The city fathers granted Vergeer’s request and in June 1627 gave Evert permission to live in Leiden for half a year in order to continue his studies at the Latin school, “after some of his friends presented his case and agreed to provide him with food and lodging for half a year.”33 The city, in other words, could afford to be generous: others were acting as patrons for the boy and paying his expenses. An intriguing detail is the date on which Evert registered in Leiden: July 17, shortly after the council decision but just before the vacation, while his living expenses were guaranteed for only six months, to the end of that calendar year. Did he receive private tutoring from the rector or one of the other preceptors (as the teachers were called at that time), thus turning the vacation into a period of intensive work rather than simply lost time? Leiden was more than just a school town, however. With 45,000 inhabitants, according to the census of 1622, it was the second-largest city of the Republic, full of migrants, orthodox Calvinists, and laborers, and bustling with industry. Unlike half-hearted Amsterdam, the consistory wielded real power in Leiden—which made it the Mecca of a devout and determined boy like Evert Willemsz.

Cornelis, Pieter, and the others Were his guardians not yet thinking in terms of theological studies, were they simply lacking the nancial means, or was Evert himself not yet sure what he wanted to do with his life? Whatever the reason, his living expenses were guaranteed for only six months. The “friends” mentioned by the town council were most likely relatives or close acquaintances, perhaps also connections of his parents. It is possible, of course, that the “friends” were sympathizers from the same religious camp, people who believed in the boy and were prepared to invest in his future, but nothing denite is known on this point. How should we picture those relations? No grandparents, uncles, or aunts are mentioned in the sources. As for Evert’s older brothers, who might have been able to support him, we actually know of only Cornelis—unless Pieter was still living (we will come back to this later).

33

SAW, I, n° 10, f. 92v°.

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In 1623 Cornelis Willemsz Bogaert resided in the Kerksteeg (Church Lane) in Woerden, just a few steps from the orphanage, but at the crucial moment of Evert’s mystical healing he was staying in Leiden (b31–32). We know that on March 26, 1636 he ofcially informed the Reformed Church of that town of his intended marriage with Gryetgen Pellidanus (a bastardized form of Paludanus, a latinization of Van den Broecke current among Flemish immigrants).34 Both are listed as natives of Woerden and as living on the Oude Vest (Old Moat) in Leiden. Cornelis Willemsz had by this time opened a grocery shop there, across from the Nieuwe Mare canal. In Gryetgen (Willemsdr) Paludanus we can very likely recognize the “Grietgen Willemsdr van Woerden” who in 1622 worked as a maid for the young and still childless couple Mouring Cornelisz van der Aa, a market-gardener, grocer, and future magistrate, and Neeltgen Mattheusdr (alias Hoochboot), on the corner of the Korte Koornbrugsteeg (Short Corn Bridge Lane) in the center of town.35 They happened to provide lodging for a student from Amsterdam, called Willem Bogaert, son of the vehemently orthodox soap boiler, deacon, and alderman Jan Willemsz Bogaert.36 A coincidence? This Willem came from a completely different Bogaert family, but the Van der Aa home clearly was a reliable Calvinistic nest. Gryetgen was of course still very young in 1622, certainly no more than 15, the same age as Evert. At the time of her marriage she must therefore have been about 30, if not older, and her husband over 33. On April 10, 1637 Cornelis Bogaert was sworn in as poorter (full citizen) of Leiden.37 He is then called a vettewariër, a dealer in fatty goods such as butter and cheese, candles and oil—a grocer, in other words.38 Cornelis’s entry in the citizens’ register suggests that the Bogaerts were not originally from Leiden and that there were no close blood relatives residing in the town. Soon after her marriage Gryetgen Paludanus must have fallen seriously ill. Since 1636 was a plague year with thousands of deaths at Leiden alone, some lesser problem may have led her to

34

GAL, DTB, church marriage licenses, book L, f. 164v°. GAL, Hoofdgeld (Capitation) 1622, Wanthuis district, f. 24r°. 36 Leiden University Library, Archive of the University Senate, n° 8, f. 76v° (matriculated on October 7, 1621 as student in philosophy, 16 years old, living at the home of Maurits Corneliss, cruijenier [grocer]). 37 GAL, SA-II, n° 1267, f. 272. 38 The same trade as that of his wife’s former employer, which may suggest some help from that side. However, Gryetgen’s brother-in-law Cornelis Engelsz van Gelder was also a Leiden grocer, apparently prosperous. 35

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Fig. 6. Will of Evert’s brother Cornelis Bogaert and his wife Gryetgen Palu danus, June 7, 1636. [Gemeentearchief Leiden, Notarial archives 264, nº 196].

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take extra precautionary measures. On June 7, 1636, with Gryetgen sick in bed, the couple, in the presence of notary Pieter Dircksz van Leeuwen, drew up a will in which they named each other as heirs.39 Three months later, on September 12, 1636, when Gryetgen had recovered somewhat and Cornelis had proved himself a solid retailer, a more balanced will was drawn up with the same notary.40 The rst will was revoked, and the benets for Cornelis in the event that his wife were to die rst, and childless, were greatly reduced. Cornelis would now pay the Paludanus brothers and Gryetgen’s nephew Engel van Gelder ten Flemish guilders each, while Gryetgen in the opposite case would pay ten guilders to Cornelis’s full brother Evert Bogaert and to his half-brother Pieter Muysevoet. Should there be surviving children, then—the second will stipulated— the two ministers in the family, Evert Bogaert and Cornelis Paludanus (Gryetgen’s brother), would be appointed as their guardians. Another consideration may also have played a role in this revision. On March 13, 1636, two weeks before announcing his intended marriage, Cornelis had submitted a claim to the Amsterdam chamber of the West India Company (WIC), in the name of his brother Evert, for the amount of 600 guilders that the WIC owed the minister in salary.41 Did Evert need this money himself ? His marriage plans came only later. Or did he want to lend it to Cornelis, who was then setting himself up in Leiden? The close proximity of the two dates lends plausibility to the latter hypothesis. Cornelis Bogaert’s second will contains another clue crucial to this story. His mother, whose name unfortunately remains unknown, had children from two different husbands, Bogaert and Muysevoet. A son from that second marriage, Evert’s half-brother Pieter Muysevoet, probably worked as an assistant teacher or ran a tutoring school in Woerden. He subsequently succeeded Charles de Cuyper, who had left in 1637, as a schoolmaster, sexton and cantor in nearby Linschoten, a village located just across the border in the province of Utrecht.42 At the end of

39 GAL, NA 264, n° 196. This notary was an evident choice for Cornelis, since he owned a house in Woerden. Its luxurious interior and many paintings are described in his probate inventory of March 26, 1649 in SAW, NA 8531, n° 71. See Wegen, 335, 342. 40 GAL, NA 265, n° 63. 41 NAN, OWIC, n° 14, f. 124r° (March 13 and 17, 1636). 42 SAW, NA 8519, deed of February 17, 1648; Het Utrechts Archief, Archive of the Utrecht Classis, n° 165, p. 250 (his signature as ‘P. Muysenvoet’). In 1633 the manor

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1647 he belonged to Linschoten’s small Reformed congregation, which at Easter 1648 “again received” his wife as a member.43 Where had she been in the meantime? In Woerden perhaps? In November 1648 Master Pieter informed the consistory of Linschoten that he would like to return to Woerden. It was his hometown, and it had more to offer. The consistory could not refuse the letter of reference he requested, “considering his good comportment both in his employment and his life (to the extent known to us).” But the “general affection of the inhabitants for this man” was so great that he was given the prospect of a higher salary if he stayed. He was obviously an excellent teacher and a pious Protestant, a pillar of the still shaky congregation. But Master Pieter was no fool. Only after he was given the offer in black and white did he make his decision to stay in Linschoten.44 He must have died there in 1650 or 1651.45 Pieter Muysevoet therefore also succeeded in obtaining a function that most orphans could not have hoped for. Were the half-brothers Evert and Pieter such intelligent boys that the orphan masters made an exception to the unwritten rule that a simple trade was enough for orphans? Surely some family background was asserting itself here. Cornelis also proved more successful than the average orphan. As a protégé of the Leiden alderman and later burgomaster Mouring Cornelisz van der Aa, he was appointed commissioner of the ferry services to Zeeland and Flanders in 1643.46 That must have placed him several rungs higher on the social ladder, making it possible for his oldest son Willem to attend university and become a minister.47 The Bogaert and Muysevoet boys not only came from a good background, they were also bright, persevering, and pious. Is this why the family was given preferential treatment? Or did Pieter Muysevoet later benet from the goodwill his half-brother Evert had garnered in the orphanage in 1622/23? In the orphanage accounts preserved of Linschoten had been bought by the Utrecht patrician Johan Strick, who rebuilt the castle in 1637 and gave the local community a new impetus. 43 Het Utrechts Archief, Archive of the Linschoten Consistory, n°1, f. 1. 44 Ibidem, f. 2r°. 45 Het Utrechts Archief, Archive of the Manor of Linschoten (R 84), 176–54 (accounts of the churchwardens), 1638 to 1651. As of 1639 the schoolmaster earned a salary of 15 pounds, plus 6 pounds for the maintenance of the churchyard (ibid., 176–55). In Sept. 1644 he also acquired the ofce of undertaker and grave-digger (ibid., 600). 46 GAL, SA-I, n° 21, f. 61v°–63v°. 47 See the genealogy at the end of this book.

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from 1630 onward, Pieter does not appear among the names of the orphans who learned a trade or received an outt upon leaving. He must therefore have left the orphanage before 1630. Assuming that he was then at least 14 or 15 years old, we can place the date of his birth around 1616 at the latest, and quite possibly earlier. This also tallies with the fact that he must have married before 1640. He was probably trained as a teacher at a young age, under the supervision of one of the Woerden schoolmasters—or in the orphanage itself—before setting out on his own in Linschoten.

Mother and father Both Cornelis Bogaert and his half-brother Pieter Muysevoet had a daughter named Niesje (from Agnes, a saint popular in the Utrecht diocese). This is a clue that points us in a new direction. Namesakes played an important role in the culture of that time.48 Children were customarily named after close relatives according to a system nearly identical in all the provinces and followed as strictly as possible: rst in line were the paternal grandfather and maternal grandmother, then the maternal grandfather and the paternal grandmother, and after that uncles and aunts, more distant relatives or “friends.” The pool of rst names consequently remained fairly constant in the short and middle term. Variation came mainly through the constant mingling of family traditions in each marriage and through the permutations in the names themselves ( Jan, Hans, Johan, and Johannes, for example, were all forms of the same rst name). There is good chance, then, that the name of Cornelis Bogaert and Pieter Muysevoet’s mother was Niesje or, in the spelling of those days, Niesgen. The pamphlet of 1623 also mentions a brother Pieter living in the orphanage. Described as being “about 20 years old” (b36), he exhibits great self-condence in his dealings with Evert and as the oldest family member present also plays a critical role (b12). He notes down Evert’s dream in detail during the night (b34) and testies before the magistracy (b36). A special point is then made of distinguishing him from “two 48 A detailed survey of the Bogaert and Muysevoet families in Wegen, 134–142. See for the New Netherland region: Edward H. Tebbenhoff, ‘Tacit rules and hidden family structures: Naming practices and godparentage in Schenectady, New York, 1680–1800’, in: Journal of Social History 18 (1985), 567–585.

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other brothers of his, still minors.” This Pieter was probably about to leave the orphanage, since the age limit for residence there was 21. He was therefore older than Evert but denitely younger than Cornelis, who had already left the orphanage—if he had ever entered it in the rst place. This would make him a son of Willem Bogaert, which means he must have carried the name Bogaert himself, in contrast to the younger children, of whom at least one was the product of the marriage of Evert’s mother with a certain Muysevoet. Here we encounter another small riddle. Unless Master Zas made a mistake—which is unlikely in view of the careful check of the manuscript by the consistory and the magistracy—Evert’s mother must have had a son named Pieter from each of her two marriages. Later we hear only about Evert’s younger half-brother Pieter Muysevoet. We have to assume that Evert Willemsz had two brothers named Pieter, a full and a half-brother—a situation not uncommon in those days. The older of the two, Pieter Bogaert, plays an active role in January 1623 but undoubtedly dies before 1636, for he is not mentioned in Cornelis’s will. The other Pieter—Muysevoet—must be one of the two younger brothers who were “at his side” (meaning, no doubt, that they slept in the same bed) and “sat up” excitedly when Evert had his public dream in order to miss nothing of what was happening, as they declared before the magistracy (b36). If the two half-brothers Pieter came about as double namesakes, it seems likely that their common maternal grandfather’s name was Pieter, and that their mother went through life as Niesgen Pietersdochter. Evert himself called his fourth son Pieter, while his third son was named Jonas, after the boy’s maternal great-grandfather. We can similarly make a very good guess at the name of Evert’s father, since naming the oldest son after the paternal grandfather was a custom upheld by the Bogaerts in the old and the new world. Considering that Cornelis Willemsz behaved as Evert’s oldest brother, and that he also named his oldest son Willem, while Evert himself called his rst son Willem and his second Cornelis, the obvious conclusion is that their father was called Willem Cornelisz. Although this is not a frequent combination, it does crop up now and then in the Woerden archives. The signatures of two different citizens of Woerden with the name Willem Cornelisz appear on documents executed by notary Jacob Verwey on September 12, 1602 and October 10, 1604 respectively.49

49

SAW, NA 8498, n° 7 and 26.

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For the will of a married couple from the village of Noorden, signed in September 1602, Willem Cornelisz was evidently brought in at the last moment, for his name appears above the crossed-out name of the other witness. He is identied there as a “cabinetmaker” (schrijnwercker) and was probably a neighbor of the notary. His practiced signature suggests some level of cultivation. The signature on the document of 1604 is very different and clearly belongs to someone else. Perhaps to the pantile maker Willem Cornelisz, who in 1606, together with his wife, donated the annuity from property in the Spekstraat to the orphanage?50 This well-to-do citizen hardly ts the prole for Evert’s father. During the rst decades of the seventeenth century a few more men with the name Willem Cornelisz appear in the Woerden archives, but they are for the most part ship or barge captains from the Land of Woerden, occupations which have little to do with those of the later urban Bogaerts. For now the cabinetmaker remains a plausible candidate for Evert Willemsz’s father. A further advantage of this hypothesis is that it explains why the cooper Isaac Paludanus, brother of Gryetgen, generously supported Cornelis Bogaert at his establishment in Leiden, and why Cornelis in turn became the guardian of all the Paludanus children, not only those of Isaac himself but Maertgen’s illegitimate son as well: they came from the same occupational milieu, the wood trades.51 Isaac’s father, Willem Paludanus of Woerden, might then have been a close colleague of father Willem Cornelisz Bogaert, who was also of the same religious camp. As “friends” (i.e. next of kin), the Paludanuses were then very likely involved in placing the children in the orphanage. After leaving Woerden they remained in contact with the Bogaerts, which would explain Cornelis’s marriage. They were probably also among the “friends” who nanced or supported Evert’s studies. Given his slender nancial means, Cornelis Bogaert was not able to act as Evert’s patron himself. The bond between Isaac Paludanus and Cornelis Bogaert must have been particularly close, for we know that probably as early as 1624, well before his marriage with Isaac’s sister, Cornelis served as a witness at the baptism of Isaac’s oldest son. Twenty years later he did the same for a child from Isaac’s second marriage, and after Isaac’s death again for two of his grandchildren.

50 51

SAW, II, n° 102 (Orphanage accounts 1606/07), f. 20r°. For the details of this kinship network, see Wegen, 129–140.

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The early demise of Evert’s father, mother, and stepfather naturally leads to the question of the cause of their death. Was it perhaps the plague, the most deadly of all diseases in those decades? In that case the plague proved a highly selective killer in the family, for ve children survived the epidemic. We do not know exactly where Evert’s parents lived, but both Evert and Cornelis are reported as coming from Woerden, which indicates that the family must have lived in the city itself for some time. The admission of the children to the town orphanage, reserved for children of poorters, points in the same direction. At least one of their parents must have been born in Woerden, and Evert’s father or stepfather must have been a poorter, or full citizen of the town. Perhaps one of the two poorters named Willem Cornelisz who acted as witnesses in 1602 and 1604? Or was it only the longest surviving father, stepfather Muysevoet, who had full citizenship? Father Bogaert had certainly been dead for many years by the time his children were admitted to the orphanage. It is doubtful, then, that his background carried much weight. Moreover, the rules were less strictly applied during the plague years. For Woerden only a few plague years are known for sure during this period, namely 1600, 1603, 1624–25, and 1635–36, although our information on this point may be incomplete.52 None of these years match the death dates of Evert’s (step)parents: during the rst two Evert had not yet been born and by the last two periods they were already dead. It seems that between 1605 and 1623 the province of Holland was largely spared ravages of the plague, with the exception of 1617–18. If the plague of that year is singled out as the culprit, the victims would have been Evert’s mother and his stepfather Muysevoet. This is in line with the probable age of half-brother Pieter Muysevoet, who was born before that epidemic. By 1622 the boys had spent at least four or ve years in the orphanage, which would explain both Evert’s attachment to the matron and the absence of any reference to his biological parents. The year 1617 can certainly be considered the terminus ad quem for the children’s admission to the orphanage. Pieter Bogaert was then fourteen, which was everywhere the maximum age for children to qualify as sufciently needy for care in an orphanage. After that they simply had to fend for themselves.

52 Leo Noordegraaf & Gerrit Valk, De gave Gods. De pest in Holland vanaf de late middeleeuwen (Bergen 1988), 43–47, 231.

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Evert’s contact with his oldest brother Cornelis was more lasting than with his half-brother Pieter Muysevoet. Pieter certainly did not lose touch entirely, however. It seems more than mere coincidence that Pieter’s son who was baptized in Linschoten on June 17, 1649, just over a year after Evert’s tragic death became known, went through life as Evert Muysevoet.53 A homage, perhaps, to his celebrated uncle? Or simply the predictable response to Evert’s own naming of his youngest son after his half-brother Pieter in 1645? Both possibilities presuppose continuing contact between the old world and the new. When Pieter Muysevoet and his wife died a sort time later themselves, the Woerden magistracy admitted two of their children to the same orphanage in which their father and uncles had grown up.54 What does seem strange is that Cornelis, active man that he was, did not take over responsibility for his nephews. Perhaps the inheritance left by schoolmaster Muysevoet was too small to cover the living expenses that were also customarily paid to family members. Cornelis was in any case the normal point of contact for Evert, his wife, and his children. He was the oldest brother, and as such head of the Bogaert family. We have already seen that in 1636 Evert authorized him from New Netherland to claim from the WIC the 600 guilders owed to him. Later, too, Cornelis remained the contact person in Holland for the colonists. As late as August 17, 1649, two years after Evert’s death, Cornelis was authorized by his brother’s widow, Anneke Jans, in New Amsterdam to collect not only the back payments that the Company owed her husband, but also the salary that her mother, Tryn Jonas, still had coming from the Amsterdam chamber for her work as midwife in New Amsterdam. She also gave him power of attorney over all that might be due to herself or her deceased husband “from any other private party, whether friends or blood relatives, by way of inheritance or otherwise.”55 Anneke’s estimate of Evert’s claims in the mother country may have been too optimistic. Her authorization nevertheless reveals a relationship of trust, even though we can be fairly sure that Anneke Jans had never met her Leiden brother-in-law—a

53 Het Utrechts Archief, Archive of the Linschoten Consistory, n° 1, f. 39r°. See the genealogy at the end of this book. 54 SAW, I, n° 10, f. 178v° ( June 7, 1656): two orphans of Master Pieter Muysevoet, aged 13 and 14. In fact, the two middle sons, Cornelis and Pieter. 55 NYHM, III, 149–150. Cornelis’s family name is spelled here rst Bogaert (the current form in the Netherlands), then Bogardt.

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clear example of how trust in pre-industrial society was usually based on motives other than successful eye contact. Evert and Cornelis, like the London Puritan Nehemiah Wallington and his former neighbor in Massachusetts, may also have exchanged letters once a year with news about family and neighbors, town and country, church and faith.56 All in all, it is now possible to construct a hypothesis about why the Bogaert children were admitted to the town orphanage despite their rather unclear citizenship. They were certainly born in Woerden and resided there. Perhaps their admission was mediated by the consistory or the classis during one of the plague years when the magistracy was turning a blind eye, most likely 1617/18. The orphans Bogaert and Muysevoet may have been born in the town, but their parents were not well off, nor were they originally from Woerden. This was certainly true of stepfather Muysevoet. Their total lack of assets would explain why the children were admitted to the orphanage but do not appear in the registers of the municipal orphan chamber. They may have had a few possessions that were administered elsewhere, but it is highly improbable that the family had sufcient means to own a house and plot of land, or any letters of credit or other securities. Cornelis Bogaert’s rst will suggests that all his nancial resources came from the Paludanus family and their in-laws. The mediation by the church could have come about through an old (family) connection either with the Muysevoets, from the time the Puritan Vincent Meusevoet served as minister of the Word in nearby Zevenhoven—more on this in the next chapter—or with the Paludanus clan, the orthodox Calvinist family whose daughter Gryetgen married into the Bogaert family and whose son Cornelis became a minister in Noorden.

Family strategies The data collected here shed some light on the strategy pursued by the orphans Bogaert and Muysevoet in their socialization and in their attempts to leave the artisan milieu behind and enter the world of culture. The death of their parents and the absence of close relatives meant that the orphans were in the rst place thrown back on their own

56 Paul S. Seaver, Wallington’s world: A Puritan artisan in seventeenth-century London (London & Stanford 1985), 191–192.

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resources. They subsequently made use of a large network of cognate relatives. It was not the family that determined their strategy but they themselves. In doing so, however, they exploited the possibilities offered by the broad early-modern concept of kinship and family ties. In the absence of father, mother, grandparents, uncles, and aunts, the children developed for themselves a system of social support that assigned an important place to brothers and half-brothers, but also brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law. Cornelis fully accepted the responsibility that fell to him, as the oldest son, for his orphaned younger brothers, and Evert played that to his own advantage: the naming of children, testamentary dispositions, guardianship, legal authorizations, nancial help, and religious sponsorship all point in this direction. From the moment that Cornelis was called on to legitimize Evert’s religious experience to the moment when Evert’s estate was settled a quarter of a century later, we see numerous ties binding Evert to his oldest brother. With his half-brother Muysevoet the bond seems to have been less close, even though they were together in the orphanage. Yet Pieter gives the name Evert to his son who was born shortly after the minister’s tragic shipwreck. Out of brotherly piety or simply the namesake convention, the reason remains unknown. But Pieter and Cornelis are then clearly very close again. Are we here witnessing an early form of modern agnate (patrilineal) family ties rather than a broad, cognate system of kinship? In the former, half-brothers from the maternal side occupy only a secondary place. But for orphans in particular patrilineal relations often have little social signicance. Parents try to bequeath to their children their own social head start by providing them with useful social capital: social status, socialization networks of kinship, friendship, and occupation, and the means for making all of this operational, such as social skills, knowledge, worldview, religion, and culture. In the case of full orphans this mechanism of socio-cultural transmission becomes dysfunctional. Orphans are thus in danger of being deprived of a survival instrument, one that is all the more vital if the family is woven into large areas of the social fabric. This explains why the Bogaert children sought support in the broader clan. The various ties they had developed from a young age with the Paludanus family led to a marriage for the oldest Bogaert son, and along the way gave him access to a fully functioning family, new social networks, and a certain degree of prosperity. That this mediating role fell to the Paludanuses was no doubt more than mere coincidence: they possibly shared the same Southern Netherlandic

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origin, very likely the same occupational milieu, and denitely the same religious coloring. But a clan is not a nuclear family. Evert Willemsz therefore augments his strategy with a second element. In the place where he nds himself, he creates what he lacks, reproducing in the orphanage the structure of the nuclear family. It is striking how the kinship group of the Bogaert/Muysevoet children functions as a separate family unit in the orphanage. The children seek each other out, sleep together, testify for each other. Evert himself calls for his brothers as the rst witnesses to his experience—if not the most credible they were certainly the most qualied. The orphanage therefore in no way severed the family ties in favor of different kinds or orientations of affective relationships. On the contrary, it created a social space in which the children could cultivate their fraternal bonds. Evert had lost his biological father long before, and we cannot be sure if he had any conscious memory of him. But he found a new, heavenly Father with whom he conversed as if face-to-face. The weak point was the mother. The matron that Evert found in the orphanage seems to have been admirably suited to her task. She assumed the affective role of his natural mother. But was that enough for him? More than fteen years later, as a bachelor in New Amsterdam, he married a widow who had already given birth to six children, ve of whom were certainly still in her care. The daughter of the midwife, no less. Here, certainly, is food for speculation.

Utrecht citizens? Not everyone frets about the uncertainty of Evert’s background. In a series of articles published in 1971/72 in De Halve Maen, the journal of The Holland Society of New York, the Dutch publisher and amateur genealogist P.H. Bogaard claimed to have identied Evert Willemsz Bogardus as the son of Willem Bogaert (ca. 1563—before February 13, 1616), clothier in Veenendaal, and his second wife Susanna Adriaensdr van Ruyteveld.57 This places Evert at the end of a glorious seven-generation line of well-to-do Utrecht citizens, going back to

57 P.H. Bogaard, ‘Dutch ancestry of Domine Everardus Bogardus’, in: De Halve Maen 46:2 ( July 1971), 5–6, 11; 46:3 (October 1971), 9–12; 46:4 ( January 1972), 1–14, 17; 47:1 (April 1972), 13.

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the fourteenth century. Among them was the Jerusalem pilgrim Frans Bogaert, immortalized by the painter Jan van Scorel shortly after 1535. The family also boasted many Catholic clerics, including a canon and dean of St. Peter’s in Utrecht and other persons with a university education. This family was mainly engaged in the textile trade and a short time before had invested in peat bogs—which explains the tie with the newly founded village of Veenendaal (‘Peat Valley’). Unfortunately this identication does not hold up under scrutiny. Bogaard erroneously places clothiers (woolen merchants) and tailors on the same social level, while the former belonged to the better middle classes and the latter to the world of crafts. If we follow Bogaard’s hypothesis, a sharp drop on the social ladder would have taken place in Evert’s generation. This not only remains unexplained but is also at odds with the occupations of the Utrecht Bogaerts that are known for those years. In the end, the only thing that can be said for sure is that these two Willems had the same name. For the persons at issue the birth date is as uncertain as the birthplace, but P.H. Bogaard suggests that Evert was not born in Woerden. This conicts both with Evert’s own matriculation in Leiden and with his admission to the Woerden orphanage. The supposition that Evert and Cornelis were children of a Veenendaal father is supported by no document whatsoever. Probably the Veenendaal clothier did have a son Cornelis, but he was buried in Utrecht already on September 25, 1626. The actual relation with Woerden remains uncertain, but it is in any case highly improbable that the orphans of a Veenendaal woolen draper would be placed in the Woerden orphanage for impoverished citizens. Located not only in a different town but in a different province, it was certainly not intended for the offspring of clothiers, usually the most prosperous occupational group in the local retail sector. Moreover, clothier Willem Bogaert had a brother Johan, who plied the similarly well-paying trade of silversmith in Utrecht and who was still alive on November 8, 1627. On that date he acted as guardian for the minor children of his brother Willem.58 This document also reveals that the woman identied by Bogaard as Evert’s mother, Susanna Adriaensdr van Ruyteveld, was still alive at that moment. She was married to Otto van Ommeren and lived in Willige Langerak, which would mean that

58 Het Utrechts Archief, NA, notary Willem van Galen, deed of November 8, 1627.

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the Bogaert children had a set of (step)-parents. Under those circumstances Evert and his brothers would never have been accepted into the Woerden orphanage before 1627. Bogaard gives one more argument, which at rst sight seems more convincing. He identies Evert’s brother Pieter, who is mentioned in the pamphlet, with the tailor and button maker, bombazine and caffa (silk taffeta) worker Pieter Bogaert, who must have been born around 1603. He became a citizen of Utrecht in 1628, and on March 22, 1629, as a resident of Ter Aa Manor in the village of the same name, married Maychgen Hendriksdr, also of Utrecht. In May 1629 their daughter Susanna was baptized in the Utrecht St. James parish church ( Jacobikerk).59 Maychgen’s burial in the Buurkerk (Utrecht’s main parish church) in 1673 was paid for by charity. Although this identication is not, strictly speaking, impossible (the age is right, for example), Bogaard offers no argument for the identity of the two Pieters other than that Evert’s brother was supposedly trained as a tailor in the orphanage. This information does not appear in the pamphlet in question, however. Here he confuses Evert with his brother. In orphanages it was certainly not a rule that all the children from one family learned the same trade. Nor is there any evidence in the genealogy of the Utrecht Bogaerts that children were named Evert or Cornelis after these relatives, even though the custom of namesakes was clearly observed in this family. Conversely, none of the many members of the Utrecht Bogaert clan played a demonstrable role in the continuing life story of the Woerden boys. At the time of his marriage in Ter Aa, the bombazine worker was identied as a bachelor from Utrecht, not Woerden. On April 8, 1640 he was still alive and working as a tailor in Utrecht.60 Could Cornelis Bogaert possibly have forgotten him in his two wills of 1636? What we have here are simply two different clans with the same name—a name that was far from rare in Holland, attached as it was to many different family trees. The author obviously fell prey to his desire to trace as many Bogaerts as possible (including even the famous Remonstrant Uytenbogaerts, diametrical opposites of the Woerden Bogaerts with respect to church orthodoxy) back to one clan, namely his own.61

59 Het Utrechts Archief, DTB; The Hague, Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie, copy of the Reformed marriage register of Ter Aa, March 22, 1629. 60 Het Utrechts Archief, NA 202, deed of April 8, 1640. 61 Other false afliations by P.H. Bogaard include The owering orchard. Genealogy of an American branch of the Bogaard family that lived in the medieval Dutch town of Utrecht, covering the

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A craving for august ancestry and an unbroken lineage has also led a good many American genealogists astray. This is especially true of the Bogaerts. Careful research led one descendant to conclude that Bogaerts from at least twenty different families brought the name to New Netherland.62 One of those colonists was Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert, who in May 1630 sailed to Manhattan on the ship De Eendracht (The Concord), and subsequently worked as a surgeon in the employ of the WIC at Fort Orange (Albany), where he later served as a commissioner. He authored the rst report of an expedition into Mohawk and Oneida territory in 1634–35.63 On January 8, 1642 in New Amsterdam he signed a legal authorization as “Harmannus A. Boghardij,” the Latinized form of his name, directly under the signature of the minister “E. Boghardus.”64 Imitation perhaps? We have no reason at all to assume that they were related in any way; Harmen Meyndertsz was simply an educated surgeon. Many persons with the same name, however, have been so eagerly pasted together in the existing genealogies that researchers today have a hard time avoiding all the pitfalls found there. A telling example is an article in the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record in which the coat of arms belonging to another Woerden family with the name of Bogaert is ascribed to Evert Willemsz and his descendants.65 Although the author expressly states that Bogaert (i.e., Orchard) is a common name in the Netherlands, “which is famous for its abundance of fruit trees,” and that certainly not all the families bearing that name are related, he cannot resist the temptation to identify Evert’s family with that of the regent family Bogaert that enters the Woerden scene three-quarters of a century later. His reasoning: “It is hardly possible that two individual families of the same name and the same social standing should exist there at the same time.” There is a

period from about 1320 to 1974 (De Meern 1974), and ‘The Dutch ancestry of Cornelis Janszen Bongaert’, in: De Halve Maen 51:4 (1976) till 53:1 (1978), which quite uncritically couples German Catholic nobility to Dutch burghers. 62 John A. Bogart, ‘Derivation of Bogart family’, in: De Halve Maen 36:3 (1962), 14; the same, Seven Bogert-Bogart families in Canada, whose ancestors were among the early Dutch settlers of New Netherland (Harrison NY, s.a.) [copy in the library of The Holland Society, New York]. 63 Charles T. Gehring & William Starna (eds.), A journey into Mohawk and Oneida Country, 1634–1635. The Journal of Harmen Meyndertsz. vanden Bogaert (Syracuse, NY 1988). 64 NYHM, II, 9 ( January 8, 1642); cf. IV, 281 ( January 16, 1647). 65 William J. Hoffman, ‘An armory of American families of Dutch descent’, in: NYGBR 65 (1934), 349–350.

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double kink in the logic here. Actually, more than half a century separates the documents mentioning the two families, and they denitely did not enjoy the same social standing. The author considered Evert’s profession of Reformed minister sufcient reason to boost his family to the regent level, while we know that the boy had to struggle hard just to reach that position, and that ministers mostly were recruited from lower social strata. The second Bogaert family of Woerden came from Amsterdam, however, and was university educated. In the last quarter of the seventeenth century it attained a seat in the Woerden city council through marriage. But homonyms are always deceiving. Fortunately the author of this article was not aware that the theology graduate Cornelis Willemsz Bogaert (1672–1718), who became a candidate for the ministry at Utrecht in 1697 and was appointed rector of the Latin School in Woerden in 1700, was a grandson of Evert’s brother with the same name. It would certainly have given him a triumphant argument. Nevertheless it remains both oddly coincidental and confusing that the rector’s letter of appointment was signed in 1700 by Abraham Bogaert, councilor and secretary of Woerden, and that Abraham himself had a brother Cornelis Bogaert living and working in Woerden at the same time as the rector with that name . . .66

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CHAPTER TWO

EVERT’S WORLD

Evil deeds The borders of Woerden formed the horizon of Evert’s rst world. If we wish to understand the full thrust of his message, we have to inquire into the structure and content of that early environment. The network of relationships revealed in Evert’s messages seems at rst sight very limited in scope. Evert’s “dearly beloved Brothers and Sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ” (b7, b9) comprise the orphanage and its young residents, his close relatives, his employer and his teacher, the civil and ecclesiastical authorities in the town, and a few opponents. Only indirectly do we hear of a world outside Woerden. But the information Evert passes on to us is a selection from the pool of knowledge that he acquired either directly or indirectly. And that selection presupposes that he synthesized his knowledge into a worldview of his own. Although we have no direct access to that worldview, we can reconstruct it in rough outline from the information that Evert considered crucial enough to share with us. That communication reaches us through a second lter, for Evert translated his picture of the world into the terms he learned in the orphanage, in catechism, school, and church. It is a world of “evil deeds” (a2). God is angered because of our sins, he keeps repeating. “Repent of your sins before it is too late. If you do not cease from sinning, God will visit us. Pray that God will forbear, for God will visit us. But pray that God will forbear: for God is greatly angered, o people. Our sins have risen high before God, and they call for vengeance” (a4). These are largely clichés—but clichés can be seen as the understandably clumsy attempts of a young man to gain a verbal grip on all that goes on in the world and to make value judgments about it. Oral information and visual experience, rumor and conversation formed the age-old basis for such judgments, but since the fteenth century there was also an ever-increasing ood of visual information provided by books and prints. The clichés were fed by the devout literature that circulated in Evert’s environment: edifying booklets, pamphlets,

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emblem books, perhaps a few prints.1 The pious authors scrupulously supplied biblical references, but were cautious about naming specic sins and sinners. It would, of course, be naïve to assume links of cause and effect between concrete misdeeds in the local or regional community and Evert’s indictment of sins in the world. For that his individual power of expression was still too underdeveloped and too dependent on the established Calvinist language that surrounded him from his birth. Yet the boy must have experienced the pious clichés as relevant. For Evert to accept the re-and-brimstone sermons of the town’s orthodox Calvinist ministers like Jacobus van Cralingen and even Henricus Alutarius as adequate interpretive forms for his own worldview, he must have been able to forge from his perceptions a meaningful synthesis of image and reality. He must, in short, have been able to invest the clichés with a concrete meaning and to recognize them as relevant to his everyday life. The world was the stage of God’s judgments. God revealed His will there in signs, miracles, and punishments. The mechanism was simple. When the Amsterdam burgomaster Reinier Pauw (1564–1636), a stern Calvinist, declared that the linden tree in front of his house could wither if he had anything to do with counterfeiting, God made the tree wither within 24 hours, a pamphlet from 1624 reported.2 But there was more to the classic miracle of punishment than met the eye, as perceptive observers realized: Pauw had been chief judge of the court that condemned grand pensionary Johan van Oldenbarnevelt to death in 1619; now he would face judgment himself. There were lessons to be learned from history and current events: a victory was a sign of divine grace, a disaster a sign of punishment. Evert gained

1

Cf. for such “godly books” and other popular ction related to morals and religion: Margaret Spufford, Small books and pleasant histories: Popular ction and its readership in the seventeenth century (Cambridge 1981), 194–218; Andrew Cunningham & Ole Peter Grell, The four horsemen of the Apocalypse: Religion, war, famine and death in Reformation Europe (Cambridge 2000); Willem Frijhoff, ‘Prophétie et société dans les Provinces-Unies aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles’, in: Willem Frijhoff, Robert Muchembled & Marie-Sylvie Dupont-Bouchat, Prophètes et sorciers dans les Pays-Bas aux XVII e et XVIII e siècles (Paris 1978), 263–362; Willem Frijhoff & Marijke Spies, 1650: Hard-won Unity (Assen & Basingstoke 2004), 220–279. 2 Copy van een seecker boecxken dat onlanckx is wt ghegaen, Trackterende van een Miraeckel oft Spectakel, dat te Amsterdam gheschiet is van eenen groenen Lindeboom . . . (Antwerp, s.a. [1620]) [copy in Bibliotheca Thysiana, Leiden, n° 2712; cat. Petit, n° 1274]. On burgomaster Reinier Pauw: NNBW, IX, 769–776.

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access to God’s will by way of the world, and he eventually interpreted his mystical experience as itself a miracle. A detailed reconstruction of the context is consequently of prime importance for understanding the nurturing forces in Evert’s world. What exactly should we understand by “evil deeds?” What was the point of Evert’s indictment? What were the terrible sins that Evert and the preachers of his time so sharply condemned? These are important questions if we wish to analyze the world of Evert’s experience, but we must beware of presenting an oversimplied picture of his communication circuit. Answers to the above questions are not only a matter of information but of interpretation as well, and that interpretation is embedded in the emotions that could grip a boy of this kind. What could a fteen-year-old schoolboy of that time know about what was happening in the world? What was his criterion for distinguishing good and evil? And what about all those people with whom he was in contact and who helped shape his life—what did they know about the world, and how did they arrive at moral judgments? This question can be answered in several ways. Evert’s contemporaries naturally had a certain amount of common knowledge: the knowledge shared by all the members of a group, a town, a region, or a church, and without which no conversation is possible. But because it is hardly ever made explicit, the common knowledge of an earlier age is almost impossible to pin down. The acquisition and use of information in the life of a seventeenthcentury boy involved at least three levels of communication. On the rst, most general level we nd the news that circulates through all the crevices of a society: world news or reports about political events with broad repercussions, news about rulers and people in high places, conicts and wars, epidemics and disasters, discoveries, inventions, wonders of art, nature, or the supernatural. In Evert’s day that would have been news about the war in the German empire; conspiracies by compatriots supportive of Catholic rulers; the defeat of the Protestants at the Battle of the White Mountain near Prague in November 1620 and the arrival of the defeated elector Frederick of the Palatinate, the “Winter King” of Bohemia, in Holland in 1621; the siege of Bergen op Zoom by Spinola in the summer of 1622 and the relief of that town in October of the same year by stadholder Maurits and the Count of Mansfeld.3 This news is often carefully worded but usually makes no

3

This is the information given by the Courante published by Caspar van Hilten at

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direct appeal to personal knowledge. It gives the recipient no more than a broad framework in which to place current issues that are more directly relevant to the individual or the community. Chronology is of little importance in this general news. What counts is the moment at which the news reaches the recipient, not the moment at which the event took place. In the eyes of Evert’s contemporaries, the very existence of their country—and of the Reformed faith—was at stake in September 1622. That feeling must have been especially intense among orthodox Calvinists. Already in February 1622 Amsterdam had expelled the Counter-Remonstrant faction of burgomaster Reinier Pauw, Frederick de Vrij, and Jan Willemsz Bogaert from the municipal government. As if that were not enough, a “Remonstrant” conspiracy against the prince was discovered on February 6, 1623.4 Small wonder that the States General proclaimed a national day of prayer and fasting for February 8, 1623 ( January 29 old style), to protect the Republic from the enemies who wished to attack it, overthrow the Reformed religion and reinstate Catholicism. God’s wrath towards the Republic had not yet cooled, they declared, “because of the excessively great sins committed by its inhabitants who have no fear of God and act as if sin were not sin; it is therefore more than high time and necessary that each person set about bettering his life.” A few months later, on May 31, the day of prayer was repeated, this time with a distinctly anti-Remonstrant accent.5 Even more than in the Year of Disaster 1672 half a century later, people in 1622/23 must have been gripped by the realization that a critical moment had arrived in the life of the Republic. Only God, they believed, could rescue the situation, and the radical conversion of each individual person was needed for the collective bolstering of the state. On the second level we nd information more directed at the concrete community, but still formulated in general, if not abstract terms:

Amsterdam. See Folke Dahl (ed.), Dutch corantos 1618–1650. A bibliography (The Hague 1946), 26: facsimile of the June 4, 1622 issue. 4 Willem Baudartius, Memoryen (2 vols., Arnhem 1624–1625), book XV, 27–75; XVI, 2–8; Lieuwe van Aitzema, Saken van staet en oorlogh, I (The Hague 1669), 167–180; Geeraerdt Brandt, Historie der Reformatie (4 vols., Amsterdam 1671–1704), IV, 900–1116; A.Th. van Deursen, Bavianen en slijkgeuzen. Kerk en kerkvolk ten tijde van Maurits en Oldenbarnevelt (Assen 1974; 2d ed. Franeker 1991), 361–371. 5 Baudartius, Memoryen, book XV, 28–30; N.C. Kist, Neêrlands bededagen en biddagsbrieven (2 vols., Leiden 1848), II, 121–124.

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such news as proclaimed from the pulpit, about the sinfulness of the world or the saintliness of the pious, about God’s plans for humanity and His punishments for our sins. Hot items here were observation of the Sabbath, discipline exercised by the church, but also the disciplining offensive of the magistracy, measures taken to steer the conduct of citizens into the desired, more civilized channels. We do not know how concrete the preachers made their sermons—whether people felt personally targeted by charges of prostitution, or whether names and places were mentioned when the issue was drunkenness. These are in any case all forms of persuasive communication that streamline the news and package it in a clear message: this is the way things should be, this way and no other, here and now.

The talk of the town On the third and last level we nd everyday local information of direct import for the recipient, for his or her life circumstances, knowledge, or emotions. To carry its full charge, this information must appeal directly to the common knowledge which the recipient shares with others of the same time, place, and group, and which in this case can be summarized with catchwords like news reports and church talk, gossip and backbiting, carnival and summer fair, marvels and prodigality, adultery and murder, misdemeanors and felonies. In 1623 Evert himself was for a short moment the talk of the town. To determine the signicance of this “talk” we must analyze it as carefully as any other conversation. The three levels of news distinguished above shed light on the possible structure and signicance of conversation of that time. Pamphlets and other sources offer clues to topical issues of the day. They document what was talked about. Finding causes for all the current forms of disaster and misfortune in order to get some mental grip on them—this is what preoccupied the large majority of people.6 Punishment for sin was the most evident form of causality. When punishment was felt, it was important to identify the sin; and when sin was discovered, there was a clear sense of impending punishment.

6 Cf. Jerome Friedman, Miracles and the pulp press during the English Revolution (London 1991), p. XII.

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What did Evert himself talk about? What signicance can we attach to it? What kind of echoes do we hear in the background? What were the conscious and subconscious criteria of his judgment? His explicit message is not difcult to reconstruct. In various rhymed notes he states it clearly: “The Lord is now exceeding wroth, / for men heed not his Word of truth” (a3). “[We] Do not His commandments hear, / And laws inspire contempt, not fear” (b15). “O you people with your wicked ways, / you live so godlessly these days” (b34). How does this godlessness evidence itself ? Evert does not go beyond the four classic topoi from the time-honored canon of cardinal sins: time and again he targets pride and prodigality, adultery and drunkenness (a3, b34, b35). The tenor of Evert’s rst, general message to Woerden society is therefore that of reformatio vitae, reshaping the way people go about their lives: repent and be converted to a better life, regardless of your religious persuasion. But behind this denunciation of sinful living lies another debate, about the political and disciplinary consequences of theological correctness. Evert is still too young to fathom the ne points of theological hairsplitting, but he has already understood that the opposing parties are irreconcilable: The Lord has given us his Word But with our sins it goes unheard. Love is often pushed aside, Replaced by Envy, Hate, and Pride. (b15)

In this conict he takes the side of orthodoxy, the party of the elect: Faith and loyalty have ed the land. All love is gone. Dishonor comes to those whom God elected as His own. (b20)

The victory of the true Reformed religion will, Evert believes, put an end to hatred and envy and reinstate the rule of love. Owing to his young age the devout could see him as an unspoiled spokesman of God, with no vested interests of his own. Evert Willemsz could thus assume an active role in the Woerden intolerance debate. His message did not emerge from the ecclesiastical strife, nor was it meant primarily in a churchly sense, to justify one particular denomination. But it could be interpreted as such and almost automatically became one more voice in Woerden’s religious conict. Evert himself gave instructions to this effect. Consistory and magistracy eagerly complied and were grateful to the boy for years to come. He, for his part, took the Calvinist social

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ideal, which he had assimilated in Woerden and for a brief time publicly promoted, overseas to lands where he had to administer church discipline himself.

Role models: Reverend Paludanus, a Woerden autodidact A disadvantaged boy of fteen is even less able than an adult to conquer the world completely by himself. No matter how much a person may later forget, disparage, or even deny the inuence and aid of men and women in his surroundings, they nevertheless help him develop his dream or ideal through their example, their instruction, or their support. Evert Willemsz was also surrounded by such helpers. He makes no secret of it, and in fact calls on one after the other to play a role in his public performance. But outside of these conscious acts they also steer the awareness of his calling, the discovery of his social task, his life project. They serve as role models but at the same time as cultural mediators, agents of culture who not only transmit traditional forms of behavior but also familiarize Evert with the new meanings such forms can acquire in a changing context. Through their example, support, or instruction they lead the boy into a new cultural universe: that of a pious, biblical view of reality. For Evert Willemsz this is a genuine revelation, one so overwhelming that he devotes his entire life to testing the world against the Word of God. In his religious experience of 1622/23 that universe bursts open for Evert, his actions become patterned on biblical metaphors, and in stammered messages he charts his intellectual course. In the previous chapter we saw how Evert’s oldest brother Cornelis entered the family web of his Paludanus in-laws and how he drew benet from this for his social position. Although we have little information on this point for Evert himself, we should now take a closer look at a few of the “friends” (that is, relatives by blood or marriage) and helpers who must have been important for the formation of his early worldview and the budding awareness of his calling. Around the time of the Dordrecht synod the Paludanus family played an active role in the orthodox reformation in Woerden. In Evert’s immediate surroundings there were two ministers with that name: the somewhat older Petrus Paludanus (1572–1631), an assertive and inuential orthodox minister, whose expulsion from Zoetermeer in 1614 and short imprisonment in nearby Schoonhoven in 1617 had lent him an aura of martyrdom that

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he placed in the service of the Counter-Remonstrant cause in classis Woerden; and Evert’s in-law mentioned earlier, Cornelis Willemsz Paludanus (ca. 1600–1637).7 The latter of these deserves closer attention, for in him we see the ideal role model for the disadvantaged orphan. Cornelis Paludanus must have been born shortly before 1601. His father’s occupation is unknown, but we have already noted that he was probably a craftsman, for Cornelis’s brother Isaac Paludanus plied the trade of cooper in Leiden. If the family was not originally from Woerden it must have moved there around 1600, because the birthplace of both Isaac and his sister Gryetgen is recorded as Woerden. In Leiden, in March 1622, Isaac married the young Abigael Thomasdr of that town.8 His sister Gryetgen must have been born no later than about 1605, if she is indeed the same Grietgen Willemsdr mentioned in the previous chapter. The Paludanus and Bogaert children were therefore very likely old acquaintances. Cornelis Paludanus was probably at rst trained as an artisan himself. He is described as a “Dutch clerk” (Duytsche clerck), that is, a candidate for the ministry who had not attended the Latin school or university and therefore spoke no Latin, only Dutch, but could be admitted to the ofce of minister on the basis of “singular gifts” as an autodidact.9 Some of these candidates had already worked a number of years as a craftsman, schoolmaster, or “comforter of the sick.” In any case, Cornelis Paludanus was living in Woerden in 1618. By then he had presumably reached adulthood, for on November 29 of that year he and three other advocates of orthodoxy—among them elder Cornelis Buyck—drew up a document for the synod, accusing the Reverend Cupus of having attacked the Counter-Remonstrants too harshly in his sermons.10 On June 28, 1622—a week after Evert Willemsz began his rst fast—Cornelis Paludanus, member of the Woerden congregation, presented himself to the classis.11 At that moment he was still unmarried. Hardly a week later, at the synod of Gorinchem ( July 5–9, 1622), the classis declared him competent as a “Dutch clerk” to eventually

7

On Petrus Paludanus: Wegen, 152–156. GAL, DTB, church marriage licenses, book I, f. 123 (March 30, 1622). 9 On the notion of Duytsche clerck, see chapter 10. 10 NAN, Oud-Synodaal Archief (2.19.064), n° 157, le Cupus (November 29, 1618). 11 NAN, Classis Woerden, n° 7 ( June 28, 1622). 8

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ofciate at worship services, on the condition that he continue practicing his preaching skills for some time as a candidate. The Woerden elder Cornelis Buyck was present at the synod on behalf of the classis. We can assume that he offered advice, and that it was positive. The synod supported the recommendation and placed the delegates in charge of further examination.12 And indeed, on September 22, 1622—in the week after Evert’s rst deliverance—Cornelis preached his sermon of candidacy on Galatians 4:4, a classic text about the place of the incarnation in the Old Covenant. On January 4, 1623 he passed his preparatory examination and was awarded his certicate by the synod. During the next three years Cornelis must have continued to hone his skills. From his base in Woerden, where he was still residing in 1625, he no doubt occasionally served as a substitute or assistant minister. Not until June 25, 1625 did he receive a call: the congregation of Noorden in classis Woerden wanted him to ll their vacancy. He managed to persuade the synod of July 1625, which happened to be meeting in Woerden, to appoint him as the regular minister of nearby Noorden.13 The opportunity was especially favorable, for an orthodox consistory had not yet been established in the half-Remonstrant and half-Catholic community of Noorden. This, in other words, was mission territory, which apparently could be entrusted to orthodox Cornelis Paludanus. For young Evert, in search of his life’s calling, he must have been an inspiring—and safe—example.

Flemings from England: Muysevoet or Muesevoet A second connection between the Bogaerts and the orthodox milieu runs via the Muysevoets, the family of Evert’s stepfather. This merits some further attention. Besides Evert’s half-brother(s) we know of another minister from that time called Muysevoet or Muesevoet, a name that soon took on the Northern Dutch form of Meusevoet.14 This family name is unique in the Northern Netherlands, which makes it reason12 W.P.C. Knuttel (ed.), Acta der particuliere synoden van Zuid-Holland 1621–1700 (6 vols., The Hague 1908–1916), I, 60 (art. 51). 13 Ibid., I, 154–155 (art. 47), 196; NAN, Classis Woerden, n° 7 ( June 25, October 10, and December 15, 1625); n° 21, f. 3r (with his signature). 14 On the title page of Vincent’s rst translations, he spells his name Muesevoet, later always Meusevoet. As of 1602 he signs the proceedings of the North Holland synod as Meusevoet.

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able to assume that the handful of persons who are known to have borne the name in the rst quarter of the seventeenth century, and who for a brief time lived near one another, were all closely related. Although no conclusive evidence for this has been found, close family ties are highly plausible. Reverend Vincent Meusevoet was born around 1560 as the son of the shoemaker Reinier Vincent (or Vincentsz) in the Flemish town of Eeklo, near Ghent.15 For religious reasons his parents moved to the more tolerant town of Breda, in Brabant, where father Reinier was sworn in as a poorter on January 18, 1564. But on April 5, 1568 he was imprisoned, along with a few others, on charges of heresy. The Reformed elder and goldsmith Pieter van Ceulen and his servant girl Betgen were burned at the stake, but Reinier managed to escape in August and ee to England.16 He settled in Norwich, then one of the most populous cities of England, and probably felt quite at home there, given the large colony of Netherlandic refugees. As early as 1568 the bishop counted 1,132 Flemish speaking and 339 Walloon Protestants, who gave a powerful new impetus to the agging local textile industry.17 Vincent Reiniersz spent his entire youth in Norwich, probably as a craftsman. It is hardly surprising that later, in Holland, he was able to keep up with the most recent English Puritan and pietistic literature and translate it at a breathtaking rate. When his father died in or shortly before 1586, Vincent left for Holland.18 The situation was favorable there, for the count of Leicester, who had come to Holland at the end of 1585 and was soon elevated to the ofce of viceroy by Queen Elizabeth with the consent of the States General, was an orthodox Protestant who expressly supported the Calvinist faction. A good many other Calvinists followed Leicester

15 On Vincent Meusevoet: BLGNP, I, 179–180; W.J. op ’t Hof, Engelse piëtistische geschriften in het Nederlands, 1598–1622 (Rotterdam 1987), 441–455. More details on his family in Wegen, 159–168. 16 According to Vincent Meusevoet’s own remarks in his dedication to the Reformed Breda magistracy of his translation of Theodorus Beza, Predicatien over de historie der heerlijcker verrijsenisse onses Heeren Jesu Christi (Amsterdam 1599), f. a3v°; see also A.J.M. Beenakker, Breda in de eerste storm van de opstand. Van ketterij tot beeldenstorm 1545–1569 (Tilburg 1971), 141, 145–147. 17 Raingard Esser, Niederländische Exulanten im England des 16. und frühen 17. Jahrhunderts (Berlin 1996). 18 If he is identical with Vincent Meersevoet, he was already in Leiden on July 7, 1584, as a witness at the marriage of Geleyn Jorisz from Poperinge: Jaarboek van het Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie 11 (1957), 174.

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to Holland. On September 1, 1586 Vincent Reiniersz matriculated as a student of the humanities at Leiden University.19 He was then already 25 years old—another indication that he was rst trained for a craft, even though he certainly knew four languages: from Latin, English, and French he translated into his Dutch mother tongue. Had Vincent’s father for nancial or other reasons opposed the profession of minister for his eldest son, and did the young man then seize his chance after his father’s death? Or was it simply the political situation that motivated him to leave? Since Vincent was of age, he could have acted as guardian of his brothers and sisters, but his departure for Holland no doubt made that impossible. Vincent certainly did not sever his ties with Norwich, for as late as 1601 he prefaced one of his translations with an acrostic on Johannes Cruso, elder of the Dutch congregation in Norwich.20 In 1590 Vincent Meusevoet was appointed minister in Zevenhoven, a village located a good ten miles northwest of Woerden. In classis Woerden & Upper-Rhineland, to which this congregation belonged at the time, Vincent soon came to play an active role. Consequently, eight years later, in 1598, he was called to the much larger congregation of Schagen, classis Alkmaar, where he died around 1624.21 In this strifetorn classis Meusevoet joined the front lines of the Counter-Remonstrant faction. The meetings of the dissenting classis were held in Schagen, and Meusevoet chaired them. By 1600 he was already secretary of the North Holland synod, by 1618 assessor, and in 1620, when his party had gotten the upper hand in Dordrecht, he almost automatically became one of the active persecutors of Remonstrant ministers and was elected president of the provincial synod. On May 5, 1614 a certain Thomas Meusevoet, a shoemaker by trade, acquired citizenship in Leiden. He is identied as coming from “Norwits” (Norwich).22 From the assessment register for poll tax we know that Thomas Muesevoet—there labeled a clog maker—lived

19

Leiden University Library, Archive of the University Senate, n° 7, f. 35: “Vincentius Reineri Aecloviensis Flander”; Album studiosorum Academiae Lugduno-Batavae MDLXXV–MDCCCLXXV (The Hague 1875), 20. 20 In: William Perkins, De standt eens Christen mensches in desen leven (Leiden & Amsterdam 1601). 21 J. Reitsma & S.D. van Veen (eds.), Acta der provinciale en particuliere synoden, gehouden in de noordelijke Nederlanden [. . .] 1572–1620 (8 vols., Groningen 1892–1899), I, 250, 287; II, 102, 108. 22 GAL, SA-II, n° 1267, f. 77.

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in the Backerspoort (Baker’s Court) in 1622, in the district South Rapenburg, and that his household consisted of eight persons. He is listed as “insolvent,” that is, unable to pay the one guilder per person owed in poll tax. Belonging to his household were Elysabet Muesevoet, Lysbet Reynier, and the children Sara, Davidt, Vincent, Marij, and Jonatan Muesevoet.23 Jonatan was still an infant; he was baptized in Leiden on December 12, 1621. The other children were probably still relatively young as well. Thomas must have married already in Norwich, however. Elysabet Muesevoet would have been Thomas’s wife, for at his second marriage in June 1625 he is called the widower of Lijsbeth Odelt.24 Lysbeth Reynier could then very well have been the wife of the shoemaker Reynier Vincentsz, and thus the mother of both the clog maker Thomas, who belonged to the same occupational group, and the minister Vincent Muesevoet. Among the names of Thomas’s children, that of Vincent stands out. Together with Thomas’s Norwich origin, this also indicates a close family tie with the minister of that name. Considering that Thomas had several more young children living in his house in 1622, he may have been a younger brother, who married after 1600. Evert’s stepfather Muysevoet could then not have been one of Thomas’s sons. But it is very tempting to see in that stepfather another brother of preacher Vincent and shoemaker Thomas Muysevoet, one who was not much older than Thomas. We can even make an intelligent guess at his name. Two rst names are likely. The fact that Susanneken Huybrechtsdr in 1639 and in 1642 served as a witness at the baptism of Cornelis Bogaert’s children, and that Evert’s half-brother Pieter Muysevoet named his oldest son Huybert, strongly suggests that the name of Evert’s stepfather was Huybert Muysevoet, and that besides a son Pieter he had a daughter Susanna. Proof of blood ties between the Leiden Muysevoets and the Bogaert/Muysevoet family has not yet been found.25 What we can see, however, are countless points at which they intersect in a network of relatives and baptismal witnesses—an indication that the two families belonged to the same social and cultural milieu.

23

GAL, Kohier Hoofdgeld 1622, Bon Zuid Rapenburg, f. 31. GAL, DTB, church marriage licenses, book I, f. 5v° ( June 11, 1625). 25 I have not been able to recognize Evert’s stepfather Muysevoet in any of the documents of the Woerden town archives, but he may have simply used a still unknown patronymic. 24

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chapter two Vincent Meusevoet, Puritan translator

The importance of the Meusevoet-Bogaert connection becomes clear from Reverend Vincent Meusevoet’s work as a translator of Puritan bestsellers from English into Dutch, writings that indicate a specic religious milieu.26 We here encounter the social underpinnings of early pietism, before it was shaped into an orderly, respectable movement within the church. Meusevoet probably made his rst sample translations while serving as minister in Zevenhoven, but only after moving to Schagen did he go public with his work. In less than a quarter of a century he published three translations from French, two from Latin, and no less than 35 from English, almost all of them religious in nature. This made him not only the rst important translator from English in the Netherlands and the most productive one of the entire seventeenth century, but also the person who rst disseminated Puritan theology and devotional literature in the Dutch Republic.27 Just as the development of Reformed Protestantism in the Northern Netherlands was stimulated mainly by the diaspora in eastern England (London) and East Friesland (Emden), its spiritual content was greatly indebted to English Puritanism. Indefatigable Vincent Meusevoet played a vital role in bringing this about. Meusevoet’s rst ve translations, published in 1598–1599, were short works by the famed divine William Perkins (1558–1602), the “Puritan oracle,” as the English historian Keith Thomas has characterized him.28 Thomas Hobbes branded Perkins’s doctrine of predestination “virtual fatalism.” And Perkins did, in fact, maintain that all human beings were predestined to eternal damnation, with the exception of the elect. Arminius therefore soon explicitly denounced Perkins’s teaching

26 On Puritanism in this context: Charles Lloyd Cohen, God’s caress. The psychology of Puritan religious experience (New York & Oxford 1986); Paul S. Seaver, Wallington’s world: A Puritan artisan in seventeenth-century London (London & Stanford 1985); Peter Lake, ‘Puritan identities’, in: Journal of Ecclesiastical History 35 (1984), 112–123; Christian Durston & Jacqueline Eales, The culture of English Puritanism, 1560–1700 (Basingstoke 1996). 27 Op ’t Hof, Engelse piëtistische geschriften; Cornelis W. Schoneveld, Intertrafc of the mind. Studies in seventeenth-century Anglo-Dutch translation, with a checklist of books translated from English into Dutch 1600–1700 (Leiden 1983). 28 Keith Thomas, Religion and the decline of magic. Studies in popular beliefs in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England (London 1971), 16. On Perkins: Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XLV (London 1896), 6–9; J.J. van Baarsel, William Perkins (The Hague 1912); his works in the Netherlands: Op ’t Hof, Engelse piëtistische geschriften, 320–388.

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in his Examen modestum.29 Perkins’s worldview leaves little room for any human inuence. What God in His covenant of grace ordains is for him an absolute guideline for moral and intellectual issues: the mere fact that God wills something makes it right and reasonable. Perkins was a born orator, who made efcient use of the new Ramist logic.30 His sermons stimulated the masses. Cambridge citizens crowded his lectures in Great St. Andrews. But Perkins was in the rst place a pietist, and it was as a pietist that he exerted the greatest inuence on the Calvinism of the young Dutch Republic, a denomination still in search of it own confessional group identity.31 He sketched an elevated and demanding image of the Christian, who had to be reborn as a new person in conformity to God’s will. Scripture, the gospels in particular and especially Paul’s interpretation of them, would give the Christian concrete help in that process of rebirth. This explains the duty to carefully read and contemplate God’s Word. With his systematic teachings and clear language Perkins attracted a considerable following. The States General also recognized the importance of Perkins’s writings. In 1603 they gave Meusevoet the considerable sum of 200 guilders for having dedicated to them his Dutch translation of Perkins’s An exposition of the symbole or creed of the apostles.32 Vincent Meusevoet rst introduced Perkins in Holland in 1598, with his anonymous translation of A discourse of conscience.33 After an intermezzo in 1599–1600 devoted to three volumes of French sermons by the Genevan theologian Theodorus Beza (1519–1605)—also an important source of inspiration for Perkins—Meusevoet permanently applied himself to English treatises, three-quarters of which were by Perkins. He translated these at an average rate of two per year. Perkins’s works appeared in England only after Meusevoet had left Norwich. Since he must have come to know about them in the Netherlands, we can infer that he maintained the necessary contacts with England, or at least with the English book trade.

29

Jacobus Arminius, Examen modestum libelli, quem D. Gulielmus Perkinsius edidit [. . .]De praedestinationis modo et ordine (Leiden 1612). Cf. NNBW, I, 170–173 (here 171). 30 Donald McKim, Ramism in William Perkins’ theology (New York 1987). 31 For the background: Keith L. Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism. A history of the English and Scottish churches in the Netherlands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Leiden 1982). 32 William Perkins, Eene grondige ende clare uytlegginghe over de twaelf articulen des Christelycken geloofs (Amsterdam 1603). Cf. De Navorscher 23 (1873), 118 ( June 11, 1603). 33 William Perkins, Een excellent tractaet van de conscientie (Haarlem & Amsterdam 1598).

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After Meusevoet had worked through most of Perkins, he turned to other English authors who wrote in the same edifying, consoling, or admonishing vein, most of them Puritan by conviction: George Downame 1610, John Dod and Robert Cleaver 1614–17, John Brinsley 1620, Richard Rogers 1620, Thomas Brightman 1621, Robert Yarrow 1622, Robert Linaker 1625. In short, a signicant part of the pietistic canon as found, for example, in the conversion story of the Haarlem merchant Mattheus du Bois and ridiculed in 1691 by Johannes Duijkerius in his Spinozist roman à clef Het Leven van Philopater (The Life of Philopater).34 In between Meusevoet found time to produce several other translations: in 1603 three early works by King James I (VI of Scotland), who in that year united the crowns of England and Scotland—his Daemonologia, the Confession of Faith, and his defense of absolutism, Basilikon dôron—as well as the sermon preached by the bishop of Winchester at his coronation; and in 1607 and 1609 two English tracts against the Jesuits and their suspected conspiracies.35 These intervening activities show that Meusevoet did not ood the book trade with timeless translations of devotional literature from some remote ivory tower of piety; instead, most likely pushed by his publishers, he followed current events closely and drew them into his work whenever it was opportune for his beliefs and his church. Some special attention should be given to the work Meusevoet translated in 1621, in the contentious years immediately preceding Evert’s mystical experience: Een grondighe ontdeckinghe ofte duydelijcke uytlegginghe [. . .] over de gantsche Openbarige Iohannis des apostels by Perkins’s contemporary Thomas Brightman. In 1609 this scholarly work had appeared in Latin in Frankfurt, under the title Apocalypsis Apocalypseos, and in 1611 and 1615 in earlier English translations in Amsterdam, which were then smuggled to England.36 Several editions followed, but only after 1640 could Brightman’s explosive erudition be printed in England itself. The Puritan theologian Thomas Brightman (1562–1607) has been called

34

M.D.B., Godts wonder-werck voor en in de weder-gheboorte . . . (3d ed., Amsterdam 1680), 70; Johannes Duijkerius, Het leven van Philopater, ed. by Gerardine Maréchal (Amsterdam & Atlanta 1991), 61–62. 35 On these translations, see Astrid J. Stilma, A King translated: James VI & I and the Dutch interpretations of his works 1593–1603 (PhD diss., Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam 2005). 36 Thomas Brightman, A revelation of the Apocalyps, that is the Apocalyps of S. Iohn, illustrated with an analysis and scolions (Amsterdam 1611); A revelation of the Revelation, that is, the Apocalyps of St. John opened (Amsterdam 1615).

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one of the “high priests of chiliasm.”37 The seven seals, the trumpets, and the angels from the book of Revelation contain for him detailed references to the future, and that future is imminent. Brightman makes some very precise calculations. The forty-two months of the two witnesses (Rev. 11:2) began with Emperor Constantine and ended in 1558. From there it was a simple countdown. For Brightman, therefore, the seventeenth century formed the climax of human history. The papacy is the Antichrist, the apocalyptic beast that rose up out of the sea and out of the earth (a metaphor of the double authority of the pope, spiritual and temporal), whose destruction is eagerly awaited (Rev. 13). Brightman believed that the Roman church and the Turks would be denitively defeated around the middle of the century, after which the Jews would be converted and return to the Holy Land, while the Antichrist would nally be overthrown in 1686. Most impressive about Brightman was his calm erudition. That was no doubt what attracted Meusevoet as well: not wooly-headed babble but solid exegesis, in a wellargued discussion with Catholic theologians like Robertus Bellarminus and Francesco Ribera. Meusevoet had translated apocalyptic literature before: as early as 1610 William Perkins’s exposition of Revelation 1–3 and George Downame’s treatise on the Antichrist.38 His great interest in King James I also suggests an enduring enthusiasm for things apocalyptic, if not concrete expectation of the Last Days—although the king soon proved a disappointment in this respect. It will sufce here to keep this apocalyptic feature in mind as one of the facets of the Puritan milieu. Vincent’s appointment to Zevenhoven in classis Woerden can explain how the Muysevoets came into contact with the Bogaerts. As we shall see, Vincent’s translations were present in the library of the Woerden minister Henricus Alutarius. But on a personal level, too, he remained highly respected by the orthodox of Woerden after his departure from the classis. Unexpected testimony to this effect is found in the incriminatory dossier compiled by Woerden Counter-Remonstrants in 1617–18 for the purpose of removing Remonstrant ministers from

37 On Brightman: K.R. Firth, The apocalyptic tradition in Reformation Britain 1530–1645 (Oxford 1979), 164–179; Christopher Hill, Antichrist in seventeenth-century England (London 1971), 26–27. 38 William Perkins, Een uyt-nemend tractaet vervaetende de lessen, uytlegghende de drie eerste capittelen der Openbaringhe Iohannis (Amsterdam 1610), including George Downame, Twee boecken van den Antichrist.

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ofce.39 Former consistory members Dirck Versteech Stevensz and Aert Dircksz ’t Hart drew up a detailed declaration on November 20, 1617 about the misconduct of Reverend Bricquigny with regard to the call of a colleague. When Reverend Petrus Petraeus was called from Woerden to Emden in 1608, Bricquigny conspired with the youngest burgomaster Jan Pietersz Broeckhuysen, who was also an elder in the church, to nd a successor they preferred, namely one who was not strictly orthodox. The majority of the church council (in fact, all the other members) wanted a Counter-Remonstrant, but the minister and the burgomaster wielded the political power. Their opponents then proposed a compromise: they would nominate four candidates, two of whom Bricquigny and Broeckhuysen would submit to the magistracy, which would make the nal decision. First on the list was “Vincent Musenvoet, minister in Schagen,” the other three came from within the classis. This shows that Meusevoet’s reputation was still very much intact ten years after his departure. Evert’s stepfather Muysevoet was probably living in Woerden at the time—which must have strengthened Vincent’s tie with the town, quite aside from the fame he derived from his translations in a milieu of burgeoning piety.

Church and town hall The public signicance of Evert’s mystical experience in 1622/23 was shaped by the tensions between the church and the town hall. On the side of the church were the two orthodox ministers and the rector of the Latin school, on that of the civil authorities the burgomasters, aldermen and orphan masters. Although orthodoxy was a common feature of both parties, the interests of civil society were not necessarily identical with those of the church community, as we shall see from the actions of the rector, who belonged to both social spheres. We will therefore rst take a closer look at each of the two parties. In the summer of 1622, when Evert had his rst religious experience in the orphanage, the burgomasters of Woerden were Mattheus Hugensz van Rijck and Bartelmeus Gisbertsz Blijeel, and the orphan masters Cornelis Willemsz van Breda and Michiel Harmensz.40 None of the four played a

39 40

NAN, Oud-Synodaal Archief (2.19.064), n° 157, le Bricquigny. See the lists of Woerden magistrates in: SAW, I, n° 9 (Culverboeck), f. 364r°.

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demonstrable role in these events, and two of the four had until then been of little signicance for ecclesiastical life in Woerden. From our perspective the four regents had no clear prole. It is not surprising then that news of Evert’s rst experiences hardly extended beyond the walls of the orphanage. The situation soon changed, however. The installation of a new Woerden magistracy took place on November 1 of that year. Schoolchildren could not have been unaware of this, as they were given the day off from school. This civil ritual, known as “being chased out of school,” was still a cherished custom in Evert’s day. This meant that in January 1623, when Evert called on the secular community—in the person of the burgomaster—to legitimize his experience after his second visit from an angel, there was a new magistracy. Claes Elbertsz and Jan Florisz van Wijngaarden were burgomasters, Heyndrick Jansz (van Segveldt) and Matthijs Cornelisz van Bersingen orphan masters. This was a team with a much clearer prole. Evert could hardly have wished for a more auspicious moment. Jan Florisz was one of the ve signatories of the petition of April 1617 directed against Reverend Cupus. When the law was changed on September 29, 1618 in favor of Counter-Remonstrant orthodoxy, he became a member of the town council and retained his seat there until 1630. In 1620 he was orphan master. Claes Elbertsz was one of the two burgomasters (the other was the later bailiff Adam van der Mijl) who came into power on the same occasion, while Heyndrick Jansz was the ex-burgomaster whose actions a short time earlier had provided the impetus for the change in government. With the installment of the new magistracy in May 1623 Heyndrick Jansz again assumed the position of burgomaster, together with the brewer Cornelis Cornelisz Buyck, who later, from 1626 to 1648, occupied a seat in the town council. Three of the four men who at the beginning of 1623 shouldered the highest responsibility for the welfare of the town and the orphanage were solidly orthodox Calvinists of a militant cast. They were established artisans and shopkeepers. Heyndrick Jansz was a goldsmith. Jan Florisz had bought from his father, the skipper Floris Pietersz, a house on the Rietvelderstraat and a warehouse on Honthorst in February 1612; he may have been a contractor—we know at any rate that he traded in a building material like limestone. One of the orphan masters of the following year, Gerrit Gijsbertsz Vergeer, who in 1627 would take an interest in Evert’s future, was a key gure in orthodox Woerden: an early dissenting elder, he rose to

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prominence during the change of law in 1618, becoming a member of the town council as well as farmer of the poll tax. Like his father Gijsbert Gerritsz and burgomaster Gijsbert Jansz Camerick, he was by trade a woolen draper. All these men were established retailers and, from all appearances, social climbers. The third reformation of the town (after those of the Lutherans and the moderate Calvinists) had in any case opened up the town hall for them. The link between purity of life and social success, a corollary of the program of orthodoxy, here seemed to have been realized. Evert, too, must have been struck by this turn of events. The same small group, together with the ministers, dominated the Reformed consistory. Because the documents of the Woerden consistory have disappeared over the years, its exact composition cannot be determined, but we do know the names of elders from the town who served as delegates of classis Woerden to the synod of South Holland. In 1620 and 1621 it was Jan Florisz, in 1622 Cornelis Buyck, in 1623 Gerrit Gijsbertsz Vergeer, in 1624 Bruyn van Cleef (owner of a brickyard, then 45 years old), in 1625, when the synod met in Woerden, burgomaster (and clothier) Dick Cornelisz van der Mij as elder representing the town, and bailiff Adam van der Mijl representing the States of Holland—men we have already encountered several times.41 This unity of town hall and consistory was certainly not a rule in Holland. In several large cities like Amsterdam, Haarlem, and Rotterdam there was tension between the two poles of public order; only Leiden deviated from this pattern. Woerden therefore conforms more to the stricter model we nd in the inland provinces, in cities like Groningen, Deventer, or Arnhem. Orphan master Matthijs Cornelisz van Bersingen, whose wife Beatrix Jansdr would later play a role in Evert’s experiences as the municipal orphan matron (b27), was to a certain extent the odd man out in this group. He came from an old Woerden family that in earlier times had been strictly Lutheran, and unlike the other regent families of that moment, included persons of higher education.

41 Knuttel, Acta, I, 2, 39, 66, 94, 130, 163, 236, 288, 326, 373, 472; II, 2, 43; Reitsma & Van Veen, Acta, III, 411.

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Reverend Henricus Three witnesses from the church supported Evert’s spiritual experience: the Woerden ministers Jacobus van Cralingen and Henricus Alutarius, and the rector of the Latin school, Lucas Zas. Although all three were beyond any doubt Counter-Remonstrant, they occupied different positions on the chessboard of orthodoxy: Van Cralingen was a genuine theocrat, Alutarius a pietist, Zas a Christian humanist. The last two in particular played a more or less active role in steering the events. This was partly due to their personalities, which indicate the direction in which we should look for the public signicance of Evert’s experiences. Of the two orthodox ministers who were appointed after the dismissal of the Arminians in 1619, Henricus Alutarius was the strongest, but also the most exible personality.42 He was born around 1592 as the son of Conradus Johannis Alutarius, who in 1584 held the post of deputy rector in Alkmaar, shortly before 1592 moved to the school of Rhenen, in 1596 accepted a call to be minister of Oldeboorn in Friesland, and from 1602 to 1627 served as minister in Tzum, near Franeker. His humanistically tinged schoolmasters’ background may explain why Henricus proved somewhat more exible and self-condent than his colleague Van Cralingen, more respectful towards the secular authorities, and more inclined to remain at any rate on friendly terms with the regents. But like his father, he felt called to debate with those of other persuasions. In 1604/05 father Conradus had written three simple tracts that took a clear stand against the Mennonites, who were present in large numbers in his region. Twenty years later, in 1624, he published his Sterf-const (Art of Dying), an ars moriendi in dialogue form, which he expressly dedicated to the Mennonites in an irenic letter urging them to show understanding and openness towards the Calvinists. Henricus soon followed in the footsteps of his father, and in the year 1624 made this known by means of a rm but similarly irenic discussion with the Lutherans. Already in 1610 Henricus Alutarius, then a student of the Franeker theology professor Henricus Antonisz van der Linden (1546–1614), defended several theological theses about the

42

On Henricus Alutarius: BLGNP, V, 17–18; NNBW, I, 102–103.

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central doctrine of free will.43 One year later he honed his debating skills against Van der Linden’s colleague Sibrandus Lubbertus (1555–1625) on the most important points of contention between the “orthodox” and the “papists”: papal infallibility, sola de, the sacraments and transubstantiation, images in the church and veneration of saints, purgatory, and papal power.44 For good measure he added the traditional thesis: the pope is the Antichrist. In 1613 we nd Alutarius, barely 21 years old, a minister in Blankenham in northern Overijssel. But by 1616 he was already dismissed, a victim of the pro-Remonstrant campaign by the States of that province. The charge was that he had authored a publication rejecting the resolution of the Overijssel Ridderschap (the political representation of the nobility in the States) of March 11, 1616 against the extremists of the predestination doctrine.45 Alutarius maintained that while visiting his father-in-law Calckmans in Amsterdam he had lent his manuscript to a friend, who published it without his knowledge. A transparent white lie? It was in any case of no help. He was forbidden to preach in Overijssel and left for Ouderkerk on the Amstel. In 1617 he declined a call to Zaandam, but on September 10, 1619 was called by the new consistory of Woerden, where he was installed by the classis on October 29.46 In the Woerden classis he played a persistently dominant role, as delegate to synod, ofcial visitor, and member of committees. Alutarius realized very soon that the Achilles heel of the Woerden congregation was not the Mennonites, whom his father had taken to task, nor was it the papists, against whom he had debated himself, nor was it really the Remonstrants, but the Lutherans. The synod of Dort, followed by the States, had expressly broken off dialogue with the Lutherans. At the beginning of 1620 Alutarius was accordingly sent by the classis to the States to discuss the situation of the Lutherans in nearby Bodegraven.47 With predictable regularity the attempts of the Lutherans to maintain their own church life appeared on the agenda of

43 H. Alutarius, Theses theologicae de libero hominis arbitrio, praes. H.A. van der Linden (Franeker 1610). 44 H. Alutarius, Disputatio theologica de praecipuis inter orthodoxos et ponticios maxime controversis quaestionibus, praes. S. Lubberti (Franeker 1611). 45 Baudartius, Memoryen, book VIII, 1–9; Brandt, Historie der Reformatie, II, 442; J. Revius, Daventria illustrata (Leiden 1650), 586–587. 46 NAN, Classis Woerden, n° 7, f. 18. 47 Ibid., f. 20v° (February 2, 1620).

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the classis. Central issues were baptism, marriage, preaching, deaconry, and funeral sermons.48 Had the South Holland synod perhaps suggested to Alutarius that he write a refutation of the Lutheran confession? He in any case set to work on one almost immediately. In the meeting of June 28, 1623 he was able to show his book to the members of the classis, and they unanimously advised him to submit it to the synod of South Holland as soon as possible.49 Alutarius dedicated his work to the States General but also to the Woerden magistracy, which was most troubled by the Lutheran problem. The latter provided the author with an honorarium of 50 guilders, certainly a royal sum for a municipal government that was not particularly given to cultural patronage.50 The States of Holland added 120 guilders of their own.51 Alutarius entitled his book Spieghel ofte proef-steen der genaemder Luters[ch]en (Mirror or Touchstone of those called Lutherans).52 He attacked the Lutheran problem with great thoroughness, systematically examining all the main points of doctrine. But he at the same time employed a subtle strategy. While summoning one proof after another that the Reformed religion was the only true one, he did not deprive the Lutherans of their historical dignity. For all his dead-sureness about Calvinism, he did not try to obliterate his opponent but instead offered a clear opening for a peaceable solution to the controversy. Point by point and with the texts in hand, Alutarius shows that Luther’s teachings and the Augsburg Confession agree on all major points with the various Reformed confessional writings, which in turn are in harmony with the Bible. The authors who now call themselves Lutheran, Alutarius declares, are not following either Luther himself or the unchanged Augsburg Confession, but have strayed into serious fallacies. They are “wrongfully named or bastardized Lutherans.” Luther reveals himself here as a perfect Calvinist; the Augsburg and Heidelberg Confessions suddenly seem to coincide. Alutarius’s syllogism

48

Ibid., f. 24 (Lutheran baptism), 25v° (sermons), 29 (funeral sermons), 31v° (marriage, poor relief ), etc. 49 Ibid. ( June 28, 1623); Knuttel, Acta, I, 79 (art. 30). 50 SAW, I, n° 10, f. 86v° (March 5, 1625). 51 NAN, States of Holland, n° 4398, f. 171 ( January 2, 1625). 52 It was published at Amsterdam in 1624 by Marten Jansz Brandt, the printer of Reformed orthodoxy who the year before had published Zas’s second pamphlet on Evert Willemsz. New enlarged editions by Jan van Waesberghe “for the author” at Rotterdam, 1632 and 1638.

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Fig. 7. Catechism written by Henricus Alutarius, Melck-spijse der Kinderen Godes (Amsterdam, 1621). [ Library of the University of Amsterdam, OK 77.185 (2)].

can be read in two ways: as a refutation of the Lutherans but also as in invitation to insight. For if the teachings of Luther and Calvin are essentially in agreement, the Lutherans had always been right—they simply did not yet comprehend exactly how and why. That was only revealed to them by Calvin. Alutarius therefore hopes that his book will bring the Lutherans and Calvinists to peace and concord. Although it would be going too far to call this a co-existence model, Alutarius was certainly not a frantic heresy hunter. Alutarius’s theses also t perfectly into the legitimization strategy of the Woerden orthodox Calvinists, for they proled themselves as the rightful heirs of the Lutherans, who considered themselves the successors of the ancient Christian church. His focus on polemics with the Lutherans did not blind him to the need to educate the Reformed segment of the population, or those who had recently joined his denomination, to be good Christians and true Calvinists. Classis Woerden

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pioneered the introduction of catechization in South Holland. As of September 1620 the Sunday catechism sermon became obligatory.53 Less than a year later Alutarius published for his congregation a catechism of his own, couched in simple language and with the appealing title Melck-spijse der kinderen Godes (Milk Food for the Children of God). For those well versed in the Bible the title immediately indicates the target group: milk food stands for the basic tenets of the faith for those who cannot yet sink their teeth into the solid food of deeper knowledge of God (Hebr 5:12–14). As far as I am aware, only one copy of this booklet has survived, and that one is incomplete.54 For this study it is of double importance. It gives us insight into the way Alutarius tried to Christianize the simple believers; and, because it was published in 1621, it is most likely the catechism used by the schoolmaster or orphan master in the orphanage in the months immediately preceding Evert’s mystical experiences. In the introduction Alutarius states that he wrote it in accordance with article 55 of the synod of Dort church order, which promoted catechization. It was intended for the congregation in Woerden, where young and simple persons not only had to be instructed in the faith but also conrmed and strengthened “against all sorts of erroneous foundations of false religion, by which many are misled nowadays (may God restore them) and remain ensnared for lack of better and clearer instruction”—the Remonstrants and Lutherans of Woerden, in other words.55 Finally, the book served as instruction in “the practice of godliness.”56 That last section has unfortunately been lost, but with this formula Alutarius gives evidence of clearly pietistic leanings. The initiative was expressly supported by the Woerden governor and castellan Jacques van den Eijnden, to whom the booklet is dedicated, and by the ministers of classis Woerden. Governor and classis probably nanced it jointly, for the commission to publish it evidently came from the classis, which had approved it on September 27, 1621. Alutarius

53

W. Verboom, De catechese van de Reformatie en de Nadere Reformatie (Amsterdam 1986),

114. 54 Henricus Alutarius, Melck-spijse der kinderen Godes. Dat is: Cort begrijp vande voornaemste fondamenten der Christelijcker Religie. Tot onderwysinge der eenvoudigen t’samen gestelt. By vraghe ende antwoort (Amsterdam: Jan Evertsz Cloppenburch, 1621). The only extant copy in the Library of the University of Amsterdam [shelf-mark OK 77.185(2)] contains the leaves A-D8 and [E6]. 55 Ibid., f. A3v°–A4. 56 Ibid., f. A7v°.

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seems to suggest that it had by then been circulating in Woerden for some time in manuscript form. The booklet gives us a glimpse into the doctrinal and biblical world that lled young Evert’s thoughts. Although Alutarius constructs his Melck-spijse around a long series of doctrines, he cites no authorities at all except the Bible, not even such familiar and safe writers as Perkins, Arndt, Brightman, the Teellincks, or Udemans, who (as we shall see in chapter 4) were certainly part of his library. After every question and answer one or more Bible texts are quoted in full and references are given to related passages. The booklet thus also functions as an introduction to Bible reading. Alutarius takes a clearly orthodox position on the issue of predestination, for to Question 15, about the “initial cause of this grace in God” he answers: “No quality in humankind, but only that gracious will of God in accordance with His eternal election, wherein he loved us from eternity in His beloved son Jesus Christ.”57 A stronger formulation would hardly have been possible. As in his university disputation of 1611, moreover, the Holy Spirit plays a central role in answers to the questions about the true faith: 66. Does the Holy Spirit use for this [i.e., arousing faith] only the outer preaching of the gospel? No, also a powerful inner and special working that is supernatural. 67. In what does this consist? In the enlightenment of the understanding. 2. In the activation of the will.58

This is, to be sure, classical doctrine. But in its conciseness it would have appealed to a bright and pious young man. The Spirit who enlightens the understanding and activates the will works in a powerful, supernatural way in human beings, and does so alongside the gospel that is guarded by church. Little more was necessary, then, to connect a supreme experience with the direct intervention of the Spirit and to thus consider it divinely conrmed. One of Alutarius’s most important talents was his ability to work harmoniously with an orthodox magistracy and anticipate their wishes. This accounts for his substantial inuence in Woerden. On occasion he even managed to manipulate the magistracy, as in January 1623, when he persuaded the public authorities to legitimize Evert

57 58

Ibid., f. B3v°. Ibid., f. D2r°.

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Willemsz’s religious experience. In 1626 the synod commissioned him, together with the Leiden theologian Festus Hommius, to mediate in an escalated controversy in Rotterdam between the consistory and the magistracy about the right to appoint ministers.59 On July 12, 1626 he successfully completed that mission with a sermon of reconciliation in the Rotterdam Prinsenkerk (Prince’s Church). It may have been that success, in combination with his unquestioned orthodoxy, that led to a call from Rotterdam in the autumn of that year. This was not at all to the liking of the Woerden magistracy, who wanted to keep him in Woerden at all costs, “since that resignation could not take place without causing considerable divisions, offense, and damage to the town and the congregation.”60 But it was precisely his ability to enlist both church and state in the cause of orthodoxy that proved his downfall. Hardly was he installed in Rotterdam when he encountered within the orthodox circle there fellow believers even more orthodox than he was, particularly the minister Petrus Nienrode (1591–1638), the son of a Utrecht patrician and a Voetian through and through.61 Alutarius’s diplomatic settlement with the municipal authorities now made him suspect in the eyes of theocratic fanatics like Nienrode, who were unwilling to make any compromises with either the secular authorities or the Remonstrants. What they wanted was simply a church state, a theocracy in which the civil government would be subordinate to the consistory, and where purity of doctrine and life would be maintained at any cost.62 Despite Alutarius’s mediation in 1626, the conict between the consistory and the magistracy soon ared up again. Once again the issue was that of appointing ministers—rst sparked off by the call of the Walloon minister Abraham Quevellerius (ca. 1589–1630), subsequently by that of Levinus Beeckman (†1633), then minister in Wormer, who

59 Knuttel, Acta, I, 174–177 (1626, art. 28); H.C. Hazewinkel, Geschiedenis van Rotterdam (4 vols.; 2d ed., Zaltbommel 1975), IV, 1022–1025. 60 SAW, I, n° 10, f. 91–92 (December 4 and 28, 1626; January 24 and May 26, 1627); NAN, Classis Woerden, n° 7 (November 30, 1626, and following). 61 On Nienrode: BLGNP, IV, 344–345; Op ’t Hof, Engelse piëtistische geschriften, 455–465 (with a summary of the conict unmistakably favorable to Nienrode’s point of view). 62 On this ideology, see G. Groenhuis, ‘Calvinism and national consciousness: The Dutch Republic as the New Israel’, in: A.C. Duke & C.A. Tamse (eds.), Britain and the Netherlands. Vol. 7: Church and State since the Reformation (The Hague 1981), 118–133; Simon Schama, The embarrassment of riches: An interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (New York 1987), 94–100.

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was supposed to become the fth minister of Rotterdam.63 It was not a question of the candidates’ ability—everyone was in agreement about their personal qualities—but of the magistracy’s right to make binding pronouncements about the appointment of a minister, and thus, even if only in appearance, infringe on the consistory’s freedom to call. The synod of Schoonhoven (September 10–October 9, 1630) made an attempt to reconcile all the parties, but its unmistakable preference for the radicalism of Nienrode and his faction, who played the innocent victim, further stoked the suspicions of the Rotterdam magistracy. The synod particularly resented the fact that Alutarius and his fellow minister Benjamin van Rijswijck (1588–1637) had absented themselves from the Lord’s Supper and thus materialized the division by means of the church ritual.64 The situation had consequently become untenable. Alutarius, who after his father’s campaign against the Mennonites could himself claim victories on the Catholic, Remonstrant, and Lutheran fronts, was now deserted by his own camp. He must have felt deeply hurt, and in his darkest moments probably doubted his calling. Together with Van Rijswijck, he submitted his resignation to classis on October 25, 1630. Their requests were granted, with a continuation of salary. At the end of December 1631 Alutarius, who had gone to live temporarily in Haarlem and resumed his activities as a medical specialist, received another call, this time to Gorinchem, where he was installed in May 1632.65 Less than a year later, on February 1, 1633, he died, weary from the years of strife. The conict in the Rotterdam church, one of the longest and most vehement in the years following the synod of Dort, gives us a clear picture not only of Alutarius’s temperament but also of the principles that guided his actions as a minister: orthodoxy, but in obedience to the civil authorities, and—if possible—in a symbiosis with them.

63

Knuttel, Acta, I, 306–308 (1629, art. 39). Ibid., I, 332–344 (Schoonhoven 1630, art. 18), 383–384, 402–405, 408–413 (Schiedam 1631, art. 31, 51, 56). 65 For Alutarius’s medical activities: Wegen, 210–213; Willem Frijhoff, ‘Predestination and the farmer: An incident of life and faith in early seventeenth-century Holland’, in: the same, Embodied belief. Ten essays on religious culture in Dutch history (Hilversum 2002), 93–110. 64

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Master Zas Nothing is known about the childhood and education of Lucas Zas, or Zasius, as the rector latinized his name. In the only surviving autograph of his beautifully owing hand his name appears as “Zasch,” the form also used in the pamphlets.66 Others wrote his name simply as Sas or Zas. He rst crops up in Utrecht, where the actively Remonstrant minister Jacobus Taurinus ofciated at his marriage in the Buurkerk (the main parish church) with Marichge Hermans, an Utrecht native who lived in the Buurkerkhof, right beside the church. There he is called Lucas Henrickx Zas from Gouda, although an attestation was also received from The Hague.67 He was perhaps employed as a beginning private tutor by one of the well-to-do families in The Hague, for his name does not appear in the documents relating to the local Latin school. At the end of 1618 he twice made a sworn statement in Woerden as “Master Lucas Heyndrickx Rector” about the content of Reverend Cupus’s sermons, which he apparently followed faithfully as rector together with his pupils.68 There he is said to be 27 years old, which would place his birth date around 1591. At the time of the events surrounding Evert Willemsz he was therefore well into his thirties. He must have been the son of Master Henrick Lucasz Zas, who appears in the Gouda poll tax register of 1622 as schoolmaster of the town’s main primary school in the Lange Geuzenstraat (Long Sea Beggar Street), and who, like his brother Jacob Lucasz Sasch, may have been active in the Gouda chamber of rhetoric, the local citizens’ society devoted to rhetorical exercises, poetry competitions, and mutual education.69 In terms of his background, then, Master Lucas Zas belonged to the group that could claim some literate culture, with expertise in the area of Dutch language. Meticulousness in written and spoken language

66 See the summary of a New Year’s sermon by Bricquigny drafted by Zasch, in: NAN, Oud-Synodaal Archief, n° 157, le Bricquigny. 67 Het Utrechts Archief, DTB Utrecht, n° 91, p. 125. 68 NAN, Oud-Synodaal Archief, n° 157, le Cupus (interrogations on October 16 and November 26, 1618). 69 Streekarchief Midden-Holland, Oud-Archief Gouda, n° 2922 (Hoofdgeld), f. 95v°; cf. NA, n° 180, f. 119. For the Zas family and the Gouda chamber of rhetoric, see: Mieke Docter & Marja van Delft, ‘Goudse rederijkerskamers in een roerige tijd (1546–1642)’, in: N.D.B. Habermehl et alii (eds.), In die stad van der Goude (Delft 1992), 195–220. On the role of these chambers: A.C. van Dixhoorn & B.B. Roberts, ‘Edifying youths: The Chambers of Rhetoric in seventeenth-century Holland’, in: Paedagogica historica 39 (2003), 325–337. See further chapter 4, footnote 26.

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was the most important quality Master Lucas owed to his upbringing. It explains something of his fascination for speaking and for the notes that Evert Willemsz wrote from his sickbed while temporarily deaf and mute. Thanks to his ingrained habit of respect for the text as text, he compiled two unique pamphlets that incorporate Evert’s texts exactly as they were written, without the rhetorical editing that makes it so difcult for us to interpret testimony about other visionaries and mystics from that time. Being appointed rector of the Latin School was a social promotion for Zas, but it did not involve an essential breach with his background. On the contrary, his own literary ambitions lay not in the area of Latin but of Dutch, a sphere of interest and activity he shared with his father as well as his uncle, the leading poet of the Gouda chamber of rhetoric. In 1614 Lucas Zas was employed as a Latin and French schoolmaster in Montfoort in the province of Utrecht, at an annual salary of 100 guilders.70 Montfoort was only one and a half hour’s walk from Woerden. He did not stay there long—understandably, considering the circumstances. The viscountship of Montfoort was property of the Catholic family De Mérode, high nobility from the bishopric of Liege. Confessional relations in Montfoort anticipated those that would a short time later prevail in the Generality Lands: a small Reformed minority occupied the public ofces, while the large majority of the population had remained Catholic and were able to continue holding their worship services on a semi-public basis. Zas probably realized very soon that in the small and predominantly Catholic town of Montfoort a Calvinist schoolmaster would not have much of a future. It comes as no surprise, then, that a vacancy in the neighboring and somewhat more prosperous community of Woerden led Master Zas to give up his job in Montfoort. Did he also discontinue teaching French in Woerden? We have no information at all on this point. The combination of Latin and French was common at the time, however, and Evert Willemsz may have proted from it. His congregation in New Netherland included several Francophone Walloons. He may well have conducted the occasional service there in French and addressed them in their own language. The enthusiasm with which Zas took up Evert Willemsz’s cause suggests in any case that Zas sought more than

70 E.P. de Booy, Kweekhoven der wijsheid. Basis- en vervolgonderwijs in de steden van de provincie Utrecht van 1580 tot het begin der 19 e eeuw (Zutphen 1980), 266.

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merely a sinecure in Woerden. He had ideals, and he wanted to realize them. He found possibilities for this in Woerden, not a large city certainly, but a religious microcosm with the kind of complex confessional relations that could make life exciting for a person with his ideals. On February 9, 1616 the magistracy, by then already predominantly Counter-Remonstrant, appointed him rector of the Latin school at an annual salary of 300 guilders plus free housing and a tuition payment of four stivers per pupil per month—all on the condition that “he would also serve as cantor if the gentlemen see t” and that he agree to a trial period of two years, after which the magistracy could extend his appointment by at least another six years.71 The rector could not have had more than 25 to 30 pupils at a time, for children like Evert Willemsz who reached the level of the tertia and wished to continue their education would have left for a school in a larger town. Zas must have died shortly before December 5, 1636, perhaps a victim of the plague which swept through Woerden in that year. Rector Zas was clearly well liked. He survived the religious turbulence of 1618–1619, but used the opportunity to show exactly where he stood as a man of letters with classical training, namely in the old Dutch intellectual tradition of Christian humanist thinkers who refused to blindly accept the dictates of either church or state. At the end of 1618 rector Zas, together with the Dutch schoolmasters Gerrit Dircksz Croon (age 65), Steven Cornelisz (age 60), and Jan Pietersz (age 37), who attended all the church services with the schoolchildren, and a few Woerden aldermen and military ofcers were summoned to conrm under oath before the bailiff and the aldermen that Reverend Cupus’s sermons were heretical and insurgent. As far as the doctrinal aspects of the sermons were concerned, Zas readily admitted that he had heard the challenged passages. But when Cupus was accused of criticizing the Counter-Remonstrants, the synod, or the civil authorities Zas refused to cooperate. He had never heard such things in Cupus’s sermons.72 The formation of factions in the town was obviously not something he wished to support. Signicantly, the thick dossiers prepared by the dissenters against the two Remonstrant ministers contain

71

SAW, I, n° 10, f. 58v°. NAN, Oud-Synodaal Archief, n° 157, le Cupus (interrogations on October 16 and November 26, 1618). 72

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no declaration by Zas against Cupus or Bricquigny except for the one ordered by the court. In 1619, after orthodox ministers had been appointed all over the country and the Counter-Remonstrants had assumed power in the classis, the time had come for a purging of schoolmasters. On October 8, 1619 all teachers were summoned to appear at the classis meeting, which was then still held outside Woerden, in Alphen on the Rhine. Most of the schoolmasters in attendance signed the confessional documents and the declaration of orthodoxy that was presented to them, often without reading them carefully, to say nothing of understanding them—as the classis remarked somewhat hypocritically one year later in a gravamen submitted to the synod. The two educated laymen from Woerden, Rector Zas and Master Steven Cornelisz, declared “not to have adequately considered” the resolution of the Dort synod, “and to not yet understand certain things in it.”73 Were the two men, like the Woerden magistracy a short time later, simply piqued at receiving orders from the inexperienced and self-appointed group in Alphen? There was more at issue, however. Zas was certainly aware of his position as man of letters in the predominantly artisan town of Woerden, and he made no secret of his critical opinion. Although a solid Calvinist, he had no use for hairsplitting quarrels or for anything resembling theocratic tendencies. Two months later, on December 4, 1619, the classis summoned the two teachers again, this time in Woerden itself. Had the gentlemen now had enough time to think it over, the classis wanted to know, and would they now please sign the document? Master Steven did sign, and Zas also replied that he “was willing.” But certain statements by Zas had in the meantime reached the ears of the assembly, statements that raised doubts about whether he would sign “in good conscience.” Zas then declared that “some of them he had indeed uttered in part, but others were unjustly ascribed to him, expressing regret for any contradiction of Reformed doctrine or the lawful authorities, and promising to behave with caution in the future.” He then signed the formula.74 In view of Zas’s career, it is unlikely that he made any statements in an openly Remonstrant vein. He comes across instead as an enthusiastic intellectual who minced no 73 NAN, Classis Woerden, n° 7, f. 17v° (October 8, 1619), 28v° (November 4, 1620). Cf. Reitsma & Van Veen, Acta, II, 70, for the resolution of the synod of Dort, session 164, art. 6. 74 NAN, Classis Woerden, n° 7, f. 19v°; n° 21 (their signature).

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words about the way the orthodox ex-dissenters, in collaboration with the civil authorities, at times used rather dubious means to justify their godly ends. From the moment he placed his signature on the formula, however, Zas behaved as a law-abiding schoolmaster.

Pedagogue and humanist Besides the pamphlets about his pupil Evert Willemsz, Lucas Zas authored two other publications. They give us a somewhat clearer picture of him and his role in Woerden. In 1628 Cornelis van Damme, bookseller beside the Grote Kerk (St. Lawrence’s or Main Church) of Rotterdam, published the comedy Borgerliicke huys-houdingh (The Burgher Household) written by Lucas Zasius, “rector of the renowned school in Woerden.”75 According to the printer’s dedication, a “good friend” had brought the comedy to his attention. We can of course only speculate about the identity of that friend, but the person who comes to mind most readily is Reverend Henricus Alutarius, who the year before had been called from Woerden to Rotterdam’s Grote Kerk. Zas’s comedy is highly moralistic and portrays the ofce of minister in a positive light, which very likely reconciled the church council to its content. In this respect it closely follows the moralizing trend of Renaissance drama. The printer expressly recommended the play to heads of families for “reading,” not for “playing.” He goes so far as to protect this non-play from the irony of stage actors: “and further to protect the same from all servants of Momus, who might calumniate it and attempt to misappropriate it.”76 The rector piously signs his drama with his rederijker’s name, the motto “Knowledge brings forth love.” It is a didactic text, not entertainment. It is tempting to see this comedy as a text for the Woerden school stage, or, still more likely, as an opening play for the Woerden equivalent of a chamber of rhetoric. Rector Zas may have had his pupils perform it as an exercise, just as they had to practice the rhetoricians’ rules of poetry. In that case Evert Willemsz, who attended the Woerden school from September 20, 1622 until the summer of 1627, would not only 75 Cf. on this play: H. Meeus, Repertorium van het ernstige drama in de Nederlanden 1600– 1650 (Louvain 1983), 201, n° 292; A.G. van Hamel, Zeventiende-eeuwsche opvattingen en theorieën over litteratuur in Nederland (Utrecht 1918; 2d ed. 1973), 53–54, 84, 87–88. 76 L. Zasius, Borgerliicke huys-houdingh. Bly-eyndigh-Spel (Rotterdam 1628), f. Aij v°.

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have been familiar with the text but may also have played one of the roles on stage. There are seven dramatis personae: father and mother, their three sons, maid May and manservant Roel. The domestic staff serves only to indicate the status of the family—that of the better burgher classes with a maid and a servant. The sons, in the order of their birth, are a theologian, a jurist, and an “inexperienced youth.” We can imagine how eagerly Evert would have played the oldest son. If one role was tailor-made for him, it was that of the “Theologus,” a position he had publicly claimed for himself ever since 1622. Zas’s comedy was intended to help parents with the perennial touchy problem of choosing the right profession for their children. The play specically evaluates various social positions—a highly topical issue for the pupils of the Latin school as they approached adulthood. The father of the family, a merchant or well-to-do burgher, but certainly not a regent, sent his oldest son to England for religious studies, after which he entered the service of the church. Worth noting here is that the young man went neither to Lutheran Germany, nor to the small, rather Arminian world of the French Huguenot academies, nor to Calvinist or Zwinglian Switzerland, nor to Presbyterian Scotland, but to England. Given the religious coloring of Zas’s environment that could only have meant immersion in pietism or Puritanism, in the milieu of William Perkins, the author so zealously translated by Vincent Meusevoet. The middle son has just arrived home by ship from Calais. He was awarded his doctorate in law in France and is destined for employment in the “town hall,” in other words a career as regent.77 Those two have already found their place. What is left for the inexperienced youngest son? He can become a merchant, or a broker. But this is a period of rapidly rising esteem for the academic professions. Benjamin will not be satised with second-best. He reproaches his father for having nanced the studies of his older brothers. Should he now pay for those parasites by working like a slave for them? There is never any doubt that the father will reply in defense of the merchant profession, especially since the Dutch merchant did not yet share the fate of his English colleague, who after 1603 evoked a nega-

77 On the ‘grand tour’ to France of the sons of Dutch burgher regents: Willem Frijhoff, ‘Éducation, savoir, compétence: les transformations du Grand Tour dans les Provinces-Unies à l’époque moderne’, in: Rainer Babel & Werner Paravicini (eds.), Grand Tour. Adeliges Reisen und europäische Kultur vom 14. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert (Ostldern 2005), 609–635.

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tive image in literature.78 Zas’s type of merchant is still a member of the powerful faction of traders who represent an aristocracy of their own, because—according to Dirck Volckertsz Coornhert in De Coopman (The Merchant)79—they ll a clear social need. They are the rulers of the two states within the state, the East India Company and the West India Company, both of which were at the peak of their prosperity and power in 1628. But Zas had already absorbed the English message: rising professions should not challenge the social hierarchy. Everyone ought to remain in his place: the minister as minister, the regent as regent, the merchant as merchant. But it is interesting nevertheless to hear what the merchant’s oldest brother has to say about his ofce as minister: And do you think that you will have to work like slaves for us, and your green meadows will be ours to graze? That is so far from true, my boy, the opposite in fact is so; for he who wishes to acquit himself with honor in affairs both politic and churchly, faithful always to whatever strict demands are made on him, as he with constant justice fullls the many obligations of his ofce —he is, it seems, a head of churches, and a lord of all those in the land. But really he’s much more the servants’ servant, always he’s the slave of slaves; never is the yoke of service from his shoulders raised. How can a lord then possibly be pleased to see his faithful servants languishing in poverty? The servant at the altar lives from the altar, too; the ox that pulls the plow gets from the plow its food.80

It is not difcult to imagine how this exalted ideology must have conrmed Evert Willemsz in his calling: the minister as servant of servants and slave of slaves, but at the same time, towards the outside world, a head of the church, a ruler over people living in the land, who is entitled to live at the expense of his congregation. Social prestige and

78 Laura C. Stevenson, Praise and paradox: Merchants and craftsmen in Elizabethan popular literature (Cambridge 1984). For the Dutch Republic: Marijke Spies, ‘De koopman van Rhodos. Over de schakelpunten van economie en cultuur’, in: De Zeventiende Eeuw 6 (1990), 166–174; Henry Méchoulan, Amsterdam au temps de Spinoza: argent et liberté (Paris 1990), 73–122. 79 Dirck Volckertsz Coornhert, De coopman, aenwijsende d’oprechte conste, om christelijck [. . .] coophandel te drijven (Norden 1620). 80 Zasius, Borgerliicke Huyshoudingh, f. Ei r°.

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spirituality are organically intertwined here. The argument is far from new, but it is here articulated by the man who helped Evert shape his ideal and nd his calling. In formulating this theocratic ideal, which places the ofce of minister above that of regent, and the ofce of regent above that of merchant, teacher and pupil must have encouraged and conrmed each other. For Zas, who did not have the satisfaction of seeing a son enter the ministry, this may have been a kind of personal compensation.

Bible and Stoa We also know of a fourth publication by Zas, which illuminates another facet of his personality. In 1631, three years after the appearance of the comedy, Herman van Borculo in Utrecht published a Dutch translation of the Introductio ad veram sapientiam, a text from 1524—but already considered a classic—by the Valencian humanist Juan Luis Vives (1492–1540), consisting of a long series of rules for living a rational, virtuous, and happy life.81 Zas’s translation bore the title Inleydingh tot de ware wijsheydt. Getrouwelick uyt den Latine in de Neder-duytsche tale overghesettet ende op rijm gestelt door Lucam Zasium (Introduction to True Wisdom: Faithfully translated from Latin into Dutch and versied by Lucas Zas). Vives’s short work was standard reading for the Christian humanist. But there were some humanists who had no knowledge of Latin, and for that public there was soon a lively tradition of translating from Latin into Dutch. How Zas came to translate this particular text is not clear. The work was more than a century old, but had not yet appeared in Dutch. Zas must therefore have become acquainted with it in Latin. Did he use it in school? Nothing is known on that point either, but as we shall see below, he evidently made the translation at least in part as a didactic piece for youthful readers. We can conclude from all this that the translation provides strong evidence of Zas’s own intellectual orientation.

81 On Vives: Carlos G. Noreña, Juan Luis Vives (The Hague 1970); the same, A Vives bibliography (Lewiston, NY 1990), who ignores this translation; S.A. Vosters, ‘Juan Luis Vives en de Nederlanden’, in: Verslagen en Mededelingen van de Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van Taal- en Letterkunde, new series (1964), 65–201. An unrhymed translation under the same title was later published by François van Hoogstraten (Rotterdam 1670).

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The revival of Neo-Stoicism as an educational ideal may have played a role here.82 With their common emphasis on piety, virtue, and neighborly love, Bible and Stoa could together form a new philosophia Christi to counter the unrelenting campaign by the apostles of dogmatic orthodoxy. As an educator, Zas’s life was most likely shaped by the complementarity of Bible and Stoa. His translation, however, includes a few clues that he intended it as a contemporary document. In his rhymed dedication of February 1, 1631 to the gentlemen of the Woerden Water Board, Zas subtly distances himself from the “true Reformation” in Woerden. He translated Vives’s rules into Dutch for young and old, so that, yes, most important here, the young in years will learn to wear the yoke of our Lord joyfully for their own soul’s felicity; and learn that moderation’s best to keep their bodies strong and blest, well trained to serve the Lord aright and in their calling nd delight.83

Moderation, calm, and balance in all things is Vives’s message, and Zas agrees whole-heartedly. What God intends for humanity can be read from the way in which He created it, Vives maintains. Because the body has its own dignity, we must honor it, care for it, and enjoy it to a reasonable degree. That enjoyment encounters its limits in interaction with others, which also serves as the touchstone of true religion. In keeping with the Neo-Stoic ideal articulated here, the task of caring for body and mind should be fullled from early childhood, not gloomily or morbidly, but with joy. Anyone still in doubt about Zas’s ultimate goal with this booklet need only leaf through to the end. There he shows himself much less subtle in the judgment he passes under the heading Aerdt der Huychelaren (The Nature of Hypocrites).84 God, Zas says, will pull the mask from the face of hypocrites,

82 On Neo-Stoicism in this context: Léontine Zanta, La renaissance du stoïcisme au XVI e siècle (Paris 1914); G. Abels, Stoizismus und frühe Neuzeit (Berlin 1978); Gerhard Oestreich, Neostoicism and the early modern state (Cambridge 1982). 83 J.L. Vives, Inleydingh tot de ware wijsheidt, transl. L. Zasius (Utrecht 1631), f. A2v°. 84 Ibid., f. D7v°–D8r°.

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And a little further on: Do you who in the past chastised adulterers and now act so yourself think you won’t have to give account of how you live? Woe, you who feast on esh and blood (most hatefully) of pious folk, and kill with shrewd hypocrisy, God’s kingdom—come it will. You who with Yea and Nay clothe all you do and say but with so little thought, while oaths you will not swear: pretense will come to naught.

Would it be too far-fetched to read this as a jab at the members of the Counter-Remonstrant consistory, the guardians of morality who hunted down all forms of sexual misconduct in Woerden as well as elsewhere? Who were quick and unsparing in their judgments? Who themselves gave the appearance of leading an innocent life, but as a result were all the more susceptible to the odium of hypocrisy? Certainly Zas is here addressing not only the people of Woerden. His plea can even be read as a defense of the true, balanced Calvinist, like his former neighbor and companion in arms Alutarius, against the hypocritically pious camp of Nienrode. Alutarius we know had been forced out of ofce in Rotterdam just a few months before. Bible and Stoa were as reconcilable as Erasmus and the Puritans—the same Erasmus whose new bronze statue erected on a public square by the Rotterdam municipality in 1622 had incensed the orthodox members of the Rotterdam church council a few years earlier. But Zas’s dedication to the gentlemen of the Water Board suggests that he was alluding specically to circumstances in Woerden, since the Water Board had a more ecumenical composition than the magistracy. We do not know in detail all that took place in Woerden during those years, but Zas is here clearly distancing himself from a

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form of Calvinistic intransigence and pious hypocrisy, and perhaps targeting similar faults in other denominations as well—the refusal to swear oaths ( James 5:12), for instance, was a feature of Mennonite culture. He is not, however, critical of the Reformation itself. On the contrary, the reformation and purication of the Christian life, which would become the core message of the Further Reformation, is of paramount importance for him as well. And to remove every shadow of doubt Zas concludes his booklet with the Nieuw liedt (New Song) that he composed against the Pharisees of his time, under his motto “Knowledge brings forth love” and to the melody of the (English!) song “I have a love so fair, so constant, &c.”: Pharisees, wicked breed, all virtue outwardly, whose deeds soon make it clear your heart is never cheered by a pure Christian face, but seeks instead its pleasure in self-love without measure, in gain, and not in grace; yet you exalt yourselves as salt of all the earth, proclaim your worth as those who will preserve us from our doom, why do you rant and fume?85

Although Zas formally remained within the Counter-Remonstrant fold, the pressure of circumstances in Woerden brought his Christian-humanist conviction into ever clearer contrast with Puritan pietism and the theocratic ideal of the Calvinist zealots—foremost among them very likely the new town council and militant elders of the consistory. Zas took no active part in the offensive against the Remonstrant ministers and detested the hard line of the rigid theocrat Van Cralingen. He made a plea for a different kind of pietas, a return to the true piety of life, above differences of dogma. As a consequence he felt more at home with the more pedagogical and diplomatic approach of Alutarius, who, however rmly he took his stand against Lutherans and Remonstrants, eventually assumed a moderate, politic position within the Counter-Remonstrant faction. Both Alutarius and Zas belonged, each 85

Ibid., f. D8r°.

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in his own way, to the Christian-humanist stream in their confessional group—Alutarius as a Puritan pietist, Zas as a Neo-Stoic who sought true pietas in a reconciliation of Bible and secular culture in the practice of life. There was actually very little that separated them, even though they drew their inspiration from different sources. It could hardly be a coincidence that these two men found each other in the events surrounding Evert Willemsz, and that Evert himself unerringly intuited their alliance. In Zas Evert sought the specialist in written culture and communication. He had come to understand how important that was for his legitimization. Although Zas was clearly an orthodox schoolmaster, Evert must have felt that Zas’s Neo-Stoically tinged humanism and practical pietism made him a more pliable and realistic conversation partner than the two ministers, who insisted on rm proof for all of Evert’s statements, tolerated no exibility in doctrine, and strictly observed hierarchical relations. Zas was prepared to take Evert as he was—which fully explains Evert’s choice. But once Evert was enrolled at the Latin school and had to deal with Master Zas day in and day out, he must have come to realize that his teacher would not follow him in his pursuit of true, God-fearing orthodoxy. Zas, in any case, played no further role in Evert’s life.

CHAPTER THREE

AN ORPHAN IN WOERDEN

The Poor People’s Orphanage The orphanage was Evert’s nearest social milieu. It served as the boy’s most important socialization framework on his path to adulthood. Given the leveling effect of peer pressure, an orphanage could stie the development of personal forms of religious expression, but it could also encourage the dominance of a strong personality within the group. Evert must have had just this kind of pronounced personality. We will therefore give close attention to the orphanage before further examining Evert’s personal experience. Every Dutch town of any signicance had an orphanage in the seventeenth century.1 With the Reformation such institutions had become a necessity, since older care facilities like monasteries, convents, and almshouses had either been abolished or given a different function, and their property conscated. In order to keep needy persons off the street, or at least from a life of begging, the Reformation expressly shifted Christian patronage from the religious foundations to secular institutions aimed exclusively at providing care for the needy: hospices, orphanages, hofjes (small-scale residential facilities arranged around an inner courtyard), but also houses of correction and workhouses. With

1 There is no general survey of the history of early modern orphanages in Europe. For the Netherlands: Simon Groenveld, J.J.H. Dekker & Th. Willemse, Wezen en boefjes. Zes eeuwen zorg in wees- en kinderhuizen (Hilversum 1997); Ingrid van der Vlis & Thijs Rinsema, Weeshuizen in Nederland. De wisselende gestalten van een weldadig instituut (Zutphen 2002). On Dutch education in the seventeenth century, see the synthesis by Nelleke Bakker, Jan Noordman & Marjoke Rietveld-van Wingerden, Vijf eeuwen opvoeden in Nederland: idee en praktijk 1500 –2000 (Assen 2006); and more focused on this period: Jeroen J.H. Dekker, Het verlangen naar opvoeden. Over de groei van de pedagogische ruimte in Nederland sinds de Gouden Eeuw tot omstreeks 1900 (Amsterdam 2006), 30–178, part of which is accessible in English: J.J.H. Dekker & L.F. Groenendijk, ‘The Republic of God or the Republic of Children? Childhood and child-rearing after the Reformation: An appraisal of Simon Schama’s thesis about the uniqueness of the Dutch case’, in: Oxford Review of Education 17 (1991), 317–335; J.J.H. Dekker, ‘A Republic of educators: Educational messages in seventeenth-century Dutch genre painting’, in: History of Education Quarterly 36 (1996), 163–190.

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his treatise De subventione pauperum (1526) the humanist Juan Luis Vives, whom we have already met in the preceding chapter, justied the social politics of the civil authorities, for which Emperor Charles V had provided the basis in his edict of October 7, 1531 on poor relief.2 But the stream of charitable institutions without church ties had in fact begun before the Reformation. The rise of a secular social politics was certainly related to the fear that the poor could upset the social balance. But equally important was the conviction that the collective had the duty to care for individual persons, children in particular. Every child had to be given the opportunity to learn to support himself. If the family for one reason or another proved inadequate in this respect, the authorities had the right and the duty to intervene. As early as 1491 the canon Evert Zoudenbalch founded in Utrecht the rst hospice in the northern provinces exclusively intended for “poor orphans” rather than an indiscriminate mix of needy persons (orphans, the sick, elderly, or handicapped, also poor students and transients).3 As a result of this specialization the care given in the areas of religion, education, and occupational training could be tailored to the needs of children and young people. From the medieval perspective a town in the rst place felt a responsibility to its own citizens. In the rst half of the seventeenth century almost every town in the Dutch Republic therefore founded a municipal orphanage for children of full citizens, or poorters. Sometime in the second half of the seventeenth or the rst half of the eighteenth century a second orphanage was then added for other townspeople, the poor and the foreigners, alongside whatever institutions may have been founded by confessional minorities such as the Catholics, Lutherans, or Mennonites. That second orphanage was usually administered by the deaconry, and was thus known as either the poor children’s orphanage or the deacons’ orphanage. Nouveau riche Hollanders of the rapidly growing Republic could satisfy their passion for gambling in the countless lotteries held to nance the construction of such charitable institutions.4

2 Paul Bonenfant, ‘Les origines et le caractère de la réforme de la bienfaisance publique aux Pays-Bas sous le règne de Charles V’, in: Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 5 (1926), 887–904; 6 (1927), 207–230. For subsequent developments in Holland: Charles H. Parker, The reformation of community: Social welfare and Calvinist charity in Holland, 1572–1620 (Cambridge 1998). 3 A. Pietersma & L.L.M. Smit (eds.), Burgerwezen van Utrecht. 500 jaar stichting van Evert Zoudenbalch (Utrecht 1991). 4 Anneke Huisman & Johan Koppenol, Daer compt de Lotery met trommels en trompetten! Loterijen in de Nederlanden tot 1726 (Hilversum 1991).

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Fig. 8. The former town orphanage of Woerden in its present state. In the background the Renaissance town hall with the scaffold. [Photograph by the author].

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The high death rate, particularly in plague years, but also owing to the perils of the army, the war eet, and the merchant marine, made an orphanage indispensable in urban society. Until the end of the large plague epidemics, around 1666, a considerable segment of the population—sometimes as much as a quarter or even a third—died every nine or ten years.5 If we add to this the deaths in childbirth and the need to remarry quickly in order to keep the family intact, it becomes clear that many children in the early seventeenth century grew up with one or two stepparents, or had to make do without any parents at all. Evert Willemsz suffered both fates. First his father died, and his mother remarried; but before long both his mother and his stepfather must have died, after which Evert, together with his three young (half-)brothers, was placed in the orphanage. Not every orphan ended up in the orphanage, however. In early modern times the family was still such an important framework for socialization that everything possible was often done to secure the upbringing in the family circle—with grandparents or stepparents, uncles or older brothers, or even more distant relatives—before considering the possibility of entrusting the children to strangers or an institution. On the other hand, only a fraction of the population was well enough off to support not only their immediate family but other, non-working children besides. Although relatives also recouped with great precision the costs of rearing an orphan from his or her inheritance, such a child was for many years unproductive and did nothing more than eat up his assets. Sooner or later there would be nothing left, and the family would have to pay from its own pocket. This convergence of factors necessitated a well-organized, public system of orphan care. Most towns therefore had an orphan chamber, directed by the orphan masters employed by the town, usually incumbent regents.6 They were responsible for managing the property of the orphans, supervising their upbringing, and ensuring that they learned a trade or trained for a profession. If at all possible, the more well-off orphans were placed with relatives. When that was not feasible, or if a child had no close relatives, there was the option of placement in an orphanage. If the surviving parent or relatives were destitute, the children were in some cases left in their 5 On the plague: Leo Noordegraaf & Gerrit Valk, De gave Gods. De pest in Holland vanaf de late Middeleeuwen (Bergen 1988). 6 On the orphan chambers: J. Smit, De Zuidhollandsche Weeskamers. Haar taak en inrichting, en de liquidatie van haar zaken (Alphen aan de Rijn 1946).

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charge with a subsidy paid from the funds of the orphanage, between 15 and 25 stivers per week (39 to 65 guilders per year)—the estimated cost of maintaining a child in a family situation.7 Conversely, children from well-off milieus were admitted to the orphanage on the condition that they assign to the orphanage their claims to the inheritance of their parents and/or grandparents. There was usually a right to recoup from the inheritance of deceased parents, and orphanages had no qualms about exercising this right to the full. When Jan Jansz Richter and Anneken Dircx presented two of their orphaned grandchildren to the Woerden town council on January 14, 1622, and Thonis Pietersz came to the orphan masters that same day with his own orphaned grandchildren, conditions were set for admission to the orphanage. Jan and Anneken had to promise that if the orphans survived and were brought up in the orphanage for eight years, their inheritance would fall to the orphanage. Thonis Pietersz had to contribute the inheritance of his grandchildren immediately and in addition promise their share in his own inheritance. Both grandfathers agreed to the conditions two days later in writing.8 We see here how the interests of orphan chamber and orphanage, property management and care of the children, could be intertwined in Woerden as well.9 Shortly after the rst religious alteration, Woerden had, in fact, ofcially adopted the new social policies. On May 23, 1574 the bailiff, burgomasters, and aldermen enacted an ordinance concerning the orphan chamber.10 On this occasion orphan masters were for the rst time appointed by the municipality to supervise the orphans, their guardians, and the administration of their property. Every year from then on two members of the town council would be appointed. Twenty years later, by the resolution of April 13, 1595, the States of Holland gave the town of Woerden permission to establish “an orphanage for the care of impoverished orphans and old people.”11 But it was 7 Thus in the Woerden accounts. See also: J.D. Schmidt, Weezenverpleging bij de Gereformeerden in Nederland tot 1795 (Utrecht 1915), 238–239. 8 SAW, I, n° 10, f. 73. 9 After the publication of this chapter in Wegen, 239–289, a history of the Woerden orphanage commissioned by the administering foundation was published by G.N.M. Vis, Het weeshuis van Woerden. 400 jaar Stadsweeshuis en Gereformeerd Wees- en Oudeliedenhuis te Woerden 1595–1995 (Hilversum 1996). 10 SAW, I, n° 4 (Keurboek), f. 85–89v°. 11 Unfortunately, the archive of the orphanage does not go back beyond 1771, and its accounts in the municipal archive of Woerden are missing precisely for the decades 1610/20 and 1620/30. Earlier notices on the orphanage include: Olivier Groeneyk,

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exclusively intended for children of full citizens ( poorters) and explicitly assigned the task of providing a strictly Reformed upbringing, regardless of the children’s religion. The other orphans, whose parents were not born in Woerden, but also transient foreigners and poor soldiers, could nd a place in the St. Barbara hospice, a former convent in the Voorstraat (Front Street). Cornelis Gijsbertsz was appointed master of this hospice in January 1622, as an assistant to his mother-in-law.12 The terms “wretched,” “miserable,” or “poor” (ellendig, schamel, arm) that appear in the Dutch names of municipal orphanages should not be taken too literally. The criterion was less economic than social. Important was not so much whether the orphans were left without nancial means, but whether they in one way or another received enough support in society to do without assistance from the community. Children of reasonably well-off citizens were also considered “poor” if relatives were unable or unwilling to take them in, or if they lacked sufcient means to guarantee years of food, lodging, clothing, education, and occupational training for one or more extra children. That was, in fact, the case in most families. The “poor people’s orphanage” (schamele weeshuis) was therefore intended to serve all burgher children who for nancial reasons could not be entrusted to the extended family. Repeatedly the Woerden magistracy admitted to the orphanage children whose parents evidently belonged to the local middle class or were master craftsmen. In the spring of 1622, admission was granted to the four children of the former councilor Cornelis Gijsbertsz Mey; the closest relatives were requested in return “to offer the orphanage some gift, left to their discretion.” Two children of Gijsbert Aertsz Vermij followed on December 19, 1624, and one month later Aert Jansz, son of pantile maker Jan Bouwensz.13 Well-to-do citizens in fact regularly set up pensions for orphans living both inside and outside the orphanage. The orphanage itself was also nanced from foundations and gifts, often from the specic rights to traded goods, nes, or surtaxes on existing imposts as well. The cost of bringing up individual orphans was deducted from their own assets, if they had any, and from Beknopte geschiedkundige beschrijving der stad Woerden (Zierikzee 1829), 60–62; C.J.A. van Helvoort, Hoofdstukken uit de geschiedenis van de stad Woerden (Hilversum 1952), 208–209, with a list of the orphan masters 209–211; N. Plomp, Ziekenzorg in Woerden (Woerden 1980), 11. 12 SAW, I, n° 10, f. 72v° ( January 24, 1622). 13 SAW, I, n° 10, f. 73, 74, and 85.

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their earnings if they exceeded a reasonable amount of pocket money. The orphanage was therefore in the rst place a care facility. Only secondly was it conceived as a charity. But the funds available were always managed as frugally as possible. The new municipal orphanage was established by resolution of December 12, 1595 in the house of Dirck Gerritsz de Jonge in the Haverstraat, now number 6 Havenstraat (Harbor Street).14 The States of Holland had given permission for a lottery to nance the construction already on July 5 of that year.15 It is not clear whether that actually took place. In any case, the new orphanage was completed in 1604. It stood on a strategic spot, in sight of the town hall and only two steps away from the church, which in 1594 had come into the hands of the Reformed Protestants.

The inside of the orphanage Thanks to the inventory of household effects drawn up on November 12, 1693 on the appointment of Jan Palingh as the new master of the orphanage, we have some idea of its layout and furnishings.16 The cellar room was most likely the living quarters of the master and the matron. The large kitchen of the orphanage, known as the “back kitchen,” must have been located on the back side of the building, behind the “side room”; it may have been an annex protruding from the main structure. The orphanage was remodeled in the nineteenth century, but that has little relevance for this story.17

14 SAW, I, n° 10, f. 14. The name of the street was later slightly altered from Haverstraat into Havenstraat. 15 Text in Vis, Weeshuis, 203–204; cf. Huisman & Koppenol, Daer compt de Lotery, 33. 16 SAW, II, n° 100 (text in Vis, Weeshuis, 219–220). This list corresponds roughly to the inventory made on July 31, 1696, at the nomination of a new master (ibid., 59–67). Since the 1970s, material culture studies have been ourishing in the Netherlands. See the overviews in: P.M.M. Klep, J.Th. Lindblad, A.J. Schuurman e.a. (eds.), Wonen in het verleden, 17e –20e eeuw. Economie, politiek, volkshuisvesting, cultuur en bibliograe (Amsterdam 1987); Anton J. Schuurman (ed.), Material culture: Consumption, life-style, standard of living, 1500–1900 [Proceedings of the 11th International Economic History Congress, Milan, September 1994, Session B4] (Milan 1994); Anton Schuurman, Jan de Vries & Ad van der Woude (eds.), Aards geluk. De Nederlanders en hun spullen 1550–1850 (Amsterdam 1997). 17 Vis, Weeshuis, 180–188, presents a slightly divergent picture of the orphanage’s

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On the ground oor there was the entrance hall, with two paintings hanging on the wall. The order of the inventory suggests that this hall was situated between the saall, a large room on a somewhat higher level above the cellar, and the side room. Or was the side room an enclosed part of the saall? As in burgher houses, the side room would also have served as a small ofce, and perhaps as the regents’ chamber as well. The presence of benches indicates that this room was used for catechism and/or school. The actual living area of the orphans appears in the inventory as de kamer (the “room”). In view of the many pieces of furniture this must have been the large, undivided space on the second oor, with the width of ve windows. With the exception of the kitchen it was the only space in which no bedding was visible at the time of the inventory. It was a combined living room, dining room and storage space. The copper chandelier (the only xed lighting in the house), thirteen paintings, ve “little boards” (painted panels), and two mirrors indicate a living-room function. Meals were no doubt eaten at two long tables on trestles with benches on both sides, and at the large oak table surrounded by sixteen chairs with cushions; all three tables were covered with woven carpets. There must have been a replace on the side of the house where the chimney ducts are still found today. We know that Evert awoke from his rapt state on January 21, 1623 after seeing the orphans “sitting at the hearth” writing, under the supervision of the town orphan matron Beatrix van Bersingen (b27). Finally, the attic was divided into a large and a small room: three beds with pillows and blankets stood in the “front attic,” fteen beds with bedding in the large room. A decade or so earlier, however, the orphanage accounts consistently mentioned several dozen orphans. As was customary, several slept together in one bed—perhaps a simple straw mattress on the oor. This was certainly the case if they belonged to the same family; Evert Willemsz, we know, had two younger brothers sleeping “at his side” (b36). From both the pamphlet of 1623 and the inventory of seventy years later it appears that little age differentiation was made among the orphans. Fifteen-year-old Evert was still sharing a bed with his younger (half-)brothers, and the boys who testied to Evert’s dream in front of the magistracy were already 18 and 20 years old (b36). There is not

interior, due to a different interpretation of the nineteenth-century alterations of the building, in relation to this inventory.

Fig. 9. Ceremonial meal at the town orphanage of Oudewater, 1651. Oil painting on canvas by H. van Ommen. [Courtesy of the municipality of Oudewater; photograph by Foto Rijkelijkhuizen, Oudewater].

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even a clear indication of a separation between boys and girls. The orphans evidently formed one large group, with few distinctions according to age or sex. The large “room” on the second oor was actually the living area of all the orphans, at least when they were present in the orphanage. The ground oor served a variety of purposes and could, if necessary, offer space for privacy. It was certainly not unusual for several children to eat from one plate or bowl.18 This intimacy over food must have intensied the impression made on the circle of orphans by Evert’s ostentatious fasting. Suddenly one member was missing from the little mealtime group. While the kitchen was not a matter of bare cupboards, the meals in the orphanage were of a soberness and monotony betting a Trappist monastery. A large portion of meat was the rare exception, a point beautifully made in a painting of 1651 depicting the annual banquet of the orphanage in nearby Oudewater, where the same regulations applied as in the Woerden orphanage.19 Unlike the many regents’ portraits, which breathe traditional values of charity and social order, this painting puts the orphanage community itself in the spotlight. The table covered with ne linen in the middle of the picture displays platters with enormous pieces of beef, and a knife beside each platter. For the rest there are just a few chunks of bread, some fruit, and a agon of wine. Feasting here clearly meant meat, while the orphanage’s specic task is represented by the fruit, a symbol of good upbringing.

Living and learning The number of children living in the orphanage in 1622/23 cannot be determined with any exactness. There are no registers or lists of orphans for that period, and nancial records for the crucial decades

18 On food consumption in Dutch charitable institutions: L. Burema, De voeding in Nederland van de middeleeuwen tot de twintigste eeuw (Assen 1953), 108–116, 179–279; Anne McCants, ‘Consumer behaviour in an early modern Dutch orphanage: A wealth of choice’, in: Journal of European Economic History 22 (1993), 121–142 (on the Amsterdam civic orphanage, which was however much richer than other institutions). 19 Painting on canvas by H. van Ommen, property of the municipality of Oudewater, reproduced in Wegen, 248, details on 257, 260, 261, and on the front cover. See N. Plomp & J.W.C. van Schaik, ‘Portretkunst in het Stichts-Hollandse grensgebied’, in: Heemtijdinghen 18:3 (1982), 79–80, g. More generally: Sheila D. Muller, Charity in the Dutch Republic: Pictures of rich and poor for charitable institutions (Ann Arbor, Mich. 1985).

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1610/20 and 1620/30 are missing as well. But the modest-sized building must have been full of children. The resolutions of the magistracy in the years preceding 1622 included numerous admissions to the orphanage, in some cases several children from one family; a total of thirteen new children were admitted between November 1620 and June 1622 alone.20 And those were not even plague years. Even taking into account a relatively high death rate in the orphanage, there must have been a steady inhabitancy of dozens, given the length of each child’s stay. We can therefore condently state that in 1623 a total of twenty to thirty orphans must have been living in the Woerden orphanage—several more than the seventeen depicted together with the master and matron and an old maidservant in the 1651 painting of the Oudewater orphanage mentioned above (see Fig. 9). One feature of that Oudewater painting is particularly striking. Of the seventeen persons who can probably be identied as orphans, no less than thirteen are boys, and only three of those are small children. Teenage boys form a clear majority and determine the image of the orphanage. Three of the four girls in the painting have nearly reached adulthood; only one is still a child. Unless the death rate of girls by far exceeded that of boys, we can conclude that it was less common for girls to be placed in an orphanage than boys. This may have been related to one of the most important social functions of the orphanage: to ensure that boys learned a trade and could fend for themselves. That requirement applied much less to girls, although their sewing may have been done in the orphanage itself, with the result that it left few traces in the sources. In theory there could have been yet another group of residents in the Woerden orphanage. At its founding it was also formally destined for “old people.” Needy elderly poorters did in fact regularly receive subsidies from orphanage funds, but nowhere is there evidence that older citizens were admitted along with orphans.21 The Woerden orphanage was in any case overfull. The orphans found little room for privacy there, supposing that the children felt any need for it. The dayroom was a collective space. When Evert withdraws to write his text on January 18, 1623, he goes upstairs, while the other children pray together downstairs (b19). Evert’s religious

20

SAW, I, n° 10, f. 68–74; cf. Vis, Weeshuis, 53, 97–98, 148–151, 222. Except perhaps the admission of Maerten Ottensz on August 13, 1620, who, bringing in his own goods, may have been an adult (SAW, I, n° 10, f. 68). 21

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Fig. 10. Education of the orphans in the town orphanage at Alkmaar. Anonymous oil painting on wood, 1619. [Courtesy of the Municipal Museum, Alkmaar].

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experiences placed him in an exceptional position that justied a minimum of privacy. Did Evert go up to the attic while the other orphans were gathered in the large “room” on the second oor? Or did he sit at one of the tables in that “room” while the others were in the saall on the ground oor? We know Evert did not write at a table, but on a small “board,” with pen and ink (b29)—like the orphans in the contemporary painting of the municipal orphanage in Alkmaar, The orphans receive instruction (1619), now in the Municipal Museum of Alkmaar. Evert would also have found a warm place at the hearth on those winter days. Although the winter of 1622/23 appears to have been rather mild and dry, conditions gradually worsened at the end of January, culminating on the 30th of that month in “extremely turbulent weather, with hail, wind, and snow, whereby the tower of Amersfoort was struck by lightning and caught re.”22 The painting of the orphanage in Oudewater portrays a milieu of adolescent boys, mothered by older girls and women. The orphans are clearly the central gures here, not the master and matron, despite their prominence in the painting. Not the master of the orphanage but one of the boys holds up an open Bible. This is very likely a reference to the mealtime Bible reading which the boys took in turns.23 It is also a symbol, of both the central position of the boys in the small community and the religious character of their upbringing. At Woerden too, the dominant picture we get from the pamphlets about Evert Willemsz is that of a community of boys, even though the matron at one point sends an orphan girl to him to inquire “why you are so sad” (a4, b22), and Evert himself speaks rather perfunctorily of “beloved brothers and sisters” (a2, b7, b9–10, b16). It is taken for granted that the girl helps the matron. But when witnesses are needed, only boys are called upon (b36). The Oudewater painting also incorporates elements of the traditional family portrait. If the cartouche in the lower right corner did not expressly state that the subject was a banquet in the orphanage, it might come across as a portrait of a large family. Regardless of whether the artist consciously followed that pictorial tradition, it reveals another facet of the orphanage—certainly a small orphanage like that

22

J. Buisman, Bar en boos. Zeven eeuwen winterweer in de Lage Landen (Baarn 1984), 92. A.Th. van Deursen, Bavianen en slijkgeuzen. Kerk en kerkvolk ten tijde van Maurits en Oldenbarnevelt (Assen 1974; 2d ed. Franeker 1991), 181. 23

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of Oudewater or Woerden—that made it a highly ambiguous microsociety. This was a community of and for children, but equipped with a clear family structure, a family image, and a family ideology. The way in which Evert and the matron interact makes this very clear. The matron is a caring woman who feels for the orphans as if they were her own children. “O my dear mother, how you were happy with my happiness, when I recovered my speech and my hearing,” Evert writes tenderly, “but do not be overly sad, trust in God, who is our helper” (b21). When Evert dreams aloud, she hurries over to nd out what is happening, and she testies favorably on his behalf to the magistracy (b34, b36). But Evert at the same time keeps some distance from that vicarious parental authority. When he stays home from school on January 18, 1623 and begins writing, the matron understandably comes to see if everything is all right. He then “covered up what he was writing so she would not see it.” From the matron we also see that relationships in her big family of orphans were slightly different from those in an average nuclear family of the time. She does not insist on her authority but takes some distance herself, as if the boy were not part of her family. “So the matron went downstairs,” Master Zas continues his account, “admonishing the children to pray, for the Lord again had something special planned for him” (b19). In the large family of the orphanage Evert had already won his case. Whatever might happen, it was known in advance that it would come from the Lord. According to the oldest surviving regulation the orphans learned reading and writing from the master of the orphanage, who was also required to catechize the children a few times per week. Besides the schoolbooks, the paintings hanging in the orphanage—as in any burgher’s home in the Dutch Republic of those days—could serve as a source of inspiration for their visual world.24 Unfortunately we know nothing about the subject of those paintings. It is also important to realize that the enormous production of paintings and the popularity of such art as wall decoration among all those who could in any way afford it came about only in the rst half of the seventeenth century, and that the orthodox Calvinists, strongly opposed as they were to an excessive ostentation of wealth, joined that mainstream only at a later 24 On paintings in Dutch interiors, see the synthesis by John M. Montias & John Loughman, Public and private spaces: Works of art in the seventeenth-century Dutch house (Zwolle 1999); and the contributions to David Freedberg & Jan de Vries (eds.), Art in history, history in art: Studies in seventeenth-century Dutch culture (Santa Monica, Cal. and Chicago 1991).

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point. We can surmise, then, that the walls of the Woerden orphanage were considerably barer in 1622/23 than in 1693. Did the orphans receive instruction in the town school as well as from their master? Although no books are mentioned on the list of 1693, an inventory made three years later reveals that the second-oor room contained “8 or 10 old books,” and in the side room on the ground oor there was a Bible on a lectern.25 This was no doubt the States Bible, purchased at a later point in the seventeenth century.26 In the Alkmaar painting we also see above the master’s head a shelf with six books, one of which is tied shut—a Bible perhaps? No mention is made of schoolbooks in the Woerden inventory, however. Yet the accounts of the orphanage for 1609/10 (those from the twenty subsequent years are unfortunately missing) contain an entry for a delivery by the local printer Andries Verschout of “books, paper, and other items” for the orphans, and earlier records expressly mention “abc booklets.”27 Probably such booklets were not classied as durable goods of the orphanage but as consumables, since the wear and tear from intensive use ruled out any economic value they might have. An apprentice’s contract often stipulated that the boy had to be given the opportunity to attend school for a certain amount of time each day. Evert in any case learned how to express himself quite effectively. And to judge from the few autographic signatures we have of him, he wrote a strong and clear hand.28 The master and matron of the orphanage in 1622/23 cannot be identied with certainty. In the accounts of 1609/10 they are listed as Willem Gerritsz and Geertgen Hermans.29 We do know that a new couple was appointed in 1625. Willem Gerritsz had quite possibly died of the plague of 1624/25, which also swept through Woerden. His widow would then have lost her job because the orphanage needed a married couple. She was still alive in 1633/34, as appears from the

25

SAW, II, n° 100 ( July 31, 1696); Vis, Weeshuis, 59–67. The Bible translation ordered by the States General was nished and rst published in 1637. See C.C. de Bruin, De Statenbijbel en zijn voorgangers (Leiden 1937). 27 SAW, II, n° 102, accounts of the orphanage 1609/10, f. 26v°; cf. Vis, Weeshuis, 139. 28 Unfortunately, virtually all documents from his hand are copies made by others, including his New Amsterdam baptismal and marriage registers. But some autograph signatures under various documents and one longer statement (1632) have been conserved. They will be quoted in the following chapters. 29 SAW, II, n° 102, accounts of the orphanage 1609/10, f. 24; Vis, Weeshuis, 73. 26

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Fig. 11. The orphan Evert Willemsz and the matron of the orphanage. Engraving on the title page of the rst printing of the rst pamphlet Waerachtighe ende seeckere gheschiedenisse . . . (Utrecht, 1623). [Royal Library, The Hague, P. Knuttel 3501].

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debt of shoemaker Willem Ruys to “Geertgen Jan Hermenss former matron.”30 Geertgen was therefore very likely the matron who treated Evert with such tenderness. The intimacy that speaks from the pamphlet also suggests long years of experience. Up to that moment, she was the only matron Evert had ever known, really a second mother. He would have addressed her, in keeping with custom, as “Geertgenmoer” (Geertgen Mother). Did the plague of 1624/25 also claim the lives of Evert’s two brothers about whom we hear nothing later? Surviving the plague epidemic may have strengthened the boy’s sense of calling. However that may be, on October 6, 1625 Evert Dircx Coppendraijer and his wife Erckge Pietersdr presented themselves to the magistracy as the new master and matron of the orphanage. Three days later they were appointed to that post by the town council, at the usual annual salary of 100 guilders, with free board and lodging.31 It was again expressly stipulated that they should bring up the children in all discipline and honesty and that they should daily practice the Christian Reformed religion, as prescribed in the orphanage ordinance and in keeping with former practice. Once again we see how the magistracy actively used the orphanage as an instrument in the Calvinization of the town. Woerden was not unique in this respect, but the circumstances there were very special. Other towns also provided for an edifying upbringing, full of prayer, Bible reading, catechism, religious practices, and church attendance. The orthodox Calvinists, and the pietists in particular, attached from the outset great importance to the education of the young, with an eye to harmonizing learning and life.32 Most of the elementary reading material—alphabet, Bible, catechism—carried a religious message. We have to remember here that the Bible and edifying literature were then seen much less than today as belonging to a specically churchly culture. They were, quite simply, “culture.”33 A boy or girl who wanted to rise in society 30

SAW, II, n° 103, accounts of the orphanage 1633/34, f. 25. SAW, I, n° 10, f. 87v°; Vis, Weeshuis, 75. 32 Cf. Leendert F. Groenendijk, ‘Die Reformierte Kirche und die Jugend im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert: eine Untersuchung von Predigten und anderer erbaulicher Literatur’, in: Paedagogica Historica 19 (1993), 205–227; F.A. van Lieburg, ‘From pure church to pious culture: The Further Reformation in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic’, in: W. Fred Graham (ed.), Later Calvinism: International perspectives (Kirksville, Miss. 1994), 409–429. 33 Willem Frijhoff, ‘Calvinism, literacy, and reading culture in the early modern Northern Netherlands: Towards a reassessment”, in: Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte/Archive for Reformation History 95 (2004), 252–265. 31

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could not avoid an immersion in biblical culture. The Coppendraijer couple did not last long in their function. On August 1, 1628 they were replaced by Pieter Jansz van Campen and his wife Aechgen.34 But by then Evert had been gone for more than a year. According to the ordinance of foundation, orphans whose parents were full citizens could be admitted to the municipal orphanage from the age of three, and they could remain there until they were 21 at the oldest (girls until they were 20), or in any case until they had made their confession of faith. This public statement of belief formed the rite of passage to independence, but it must also be seen as a requirement of the Calvinization strategy. Besides, members could derive from their confession the right to support by the deaconry in case of need. The boys were given a book and a black woolen jerkin with a linen lining, shirts of good serge, also lined with linen, and every year a new hat, one pair of black stockings and as many gray stockings as might be needed, two scarves, and two shirts. In view of the Woerden orphan masters’ expedition to Oudewater in 1627 to explain the Woerden regulations, the Sunday dress of the Woerden orphan would not have been very different from what we see on the Oudewater painting: a black woolen suit with a white linen collar, livened up by red and white piping on the seams of the sleeves. We see no indication that these orphans, like those in larger cities, wore conspicuous clothes of two or more colors that immediately identied them as orphans. The clothing of the orphan depicted in the title vignette of the Utrecht pamphlet of 1623 does in fact approximate the Woerden description, with the exception perhaps of the boy’s puff sleeves; as in Oudewater, they were replaced by simple piping. The orphanage enjoyed the services of a house surgeon, who, in keeping with the customs of his profession, may also have acted as the boys’ barber. On January 14, 1622 the town council appointed Jan Aertsz surgeon of the hospice and the orphanage at a salary of 10 guilders per year, and he remained in that function until 1638.35 The surgeon lived at a stone’s throw from the orphanage, in the Kruisstraat (Cross Street), three houses from the intersection with the Haverstraat. He very likely cared for Evert Willemsz during his illness and may have been consulted when the boy began to show strange symptoms,

34 35

SAW, I, n° 10, f. 94. SAW, I, n° 10, f. 72.

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before Reverend Alutarius took over in his double function as minister and physician. Was it perhaps the orthodox Calvinist Jan Aertsz who recognized in Evert’s initial illness the rst symptoms of deep piety and entreated the orphan masters to let Evert go his own way? The omission of his name from the pamphlets could hardly have been an oversight. Alutarius soon took a much more critical tack.

Education and apprenticeship Compared to other children from underprivileged backgrounds orphans were not all that badly off. Even poor orphans always learned reading and writing, at least according to the regulations.36 On the painting from Alkmaar mentioned above, instruction in reading and writing is presented as the central task of the orphanage, alongside its functions of providing care (portrayed on the left with the handing out of new clothes) and training in a trade (on the right). The tailor’s apprentice sitting on a table in the upper middle of the scene expressly attracts the attention of the viewer. In a society undergoing a rapid shift to a written culture, literacy was a prime requirement for independence. Orphans were even more in need of this than children who could rely on their parents. Less well-off parents did not always take the schooling of their children seriously and often could not afford do so either, if for no other reason because it entailed a loss of wages. Poor children, whether orphaned or not, were drawn into the work process as early as possible, but the orphanage allowed a little more room for a minimum of schooling, and money was set aside for the cost of an apprenticeship. Those expenses were, if possible, recouped from the inheritance of the orphan. This kind of occupational training was at least what the authorities and the founders of the orphanage intended, for it was in everyone’s interest to have young people leave the orphanage equipped to support themselves rather than join the masses of unemployed. Entrepreneurs often took a different view of the matter, however. Especially in the large cities of ourishing Holland, orphanages were considered reservoirs of cheap labor, which meant that the

36 On literacy in the Dutch Republic, see Willem Frijhoff & Marijke Spies, 1650: Hard-won unity (Assen & Basingstoke 2004), 236–243.

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work performed by the children had no value as vocational training.37 But in smaller towns like Woerden orphans were very likely better off. In the nancial records of the orphanage we nd no traces of boys being hired out to the brickyards. Orphan boys began learning a trade only after completing their schooling, around the age of twelve. If they were younger, the apprenticeship contracts included a clause that entitled the orphans to remain in the orphanage for instruction during school hours until they had completed their education. Orphans were almost never sent to work in a retail business. This is understandable considering the investment needed to set up a shop of their own later and the uncertain income from such an occupation. But an element of status was involved as well. Shopkeepers tended to consider themselves better than artisans, and a craft was thought to be good enough for orphans. Even Evert’s oldest brother, Cornelis, who at the time of his marriage was a grocer, a shopkeeper in other words, appears to have begun his working life as a tailor.38 He needed help from outsiders to struggle free from his artisan status. This preference for the trades is not surprising, considering that most of the children who ended up in the orphanage came from a milieu of artisans or laborers, while a different solution was often found for better-situated orphans. Society was for the most part conceived as static. There was no reason to have children learn a trade different from that of their father or their social background. In harbor towns like Middelburg and Delft (in fact Delfshaven, now a part of Rotterdam) quite a number of orphans left for the colonies in the employ of the VOC or the WIC, in some cases as punishment for serious misconduct. Many orphans were trained for construction or woodworking, becoming carpenters, masons, and coopers. Other trades were much less common, perhaps because the apprenticeship was too long, the craft required too much precision, or the cost of materials and tools was considered too high.

37

See, for instance, N.W. Posthumus, ‘Kinderarbeid in de 17e eeuw in Delft’, in: Economisch-historisch Jaarboek 22 (1943), 49–67; the same (ed.), Bronnen tot de geschiedenis van de Leidsche textielnijverheid, IV (The Hague 1914), 40–41, 363–364, 479–480. For New Netherland: Kenneth Scott, ‘Orphan children sent to New Netherland’, in: De Halve Maen 49:3 (1974), 5–6. 38 On November 2, 1635 ‘Cornelis Bogaert, tailor’ was a witness for his future sister-in-law Annetgen Paludanus, wife of the grocer Cornelis Engelsz van Gelder at Leiden (GAL, Weeskamer, n° 113–114, f. 215v°–217). The next year he would set up his own grocery shop.

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Or perhaps simply because the orphans were usually allowed to choose themselves and in their young years felt more attracted to carpentry and outdoor activity than to the delicate, eye-straining work of a craft like tailoring, which had to be done indoors. The employers to whom Woerden orphans were apprenticed in 1631/32 included three (perhaps four) tailors, one wheelwright, one turner, one bombazine worker, a pin maker, and a skipper. Two years later, however, no less than three boys signed on to a ship, and two were apprenticed to a tailor.39 At the end of the sixteenth century and in the rst decades of the seventeenth, however, it was not unusual for an orphan boy who showed intellectual potential to move up a rung on the social ladder. In Arnhem it was possible until the early seventeenth century for promising children to attend the Latin school in order to become a schoolmaster or catechist. In towns like Harderwijk and Rotterdam that still happened on an incidental basis in the 1640s, but the open doors of society soon slammed shut. Everyone was supposed to stay in his own social class, and prospects for an orphan from a poor family were limited to the trades and seafaring. A gifted but poor boy could then only hope for external nancial support in the form of a scholarship, but that presupposed some kind of patronage. In 1652 the Amsterdam magistracy even formally forbade the regents to send orphans to the Latin school, declaring that “they shall henceforth restrict them to suitable trades, in keeping with their ability.”40 The years invested in unproductive study were a thorn in the esh for the regents. Not until the eighteenth century was there a new trend to give promising orphans opportunities in education and the ministry, or in one of the other higher technical or intellectual professions. That a boy as verbally gifted as Evert Willemsz was apprenticed to a craftsman is a prime illustration of this pattern. During the years he spent in the orphanage a Latin education was not really considered suitable for orphans. Latin had by then already begun its upward rise. From a universal language of culture for all educated persons it rapidly became a group language of specic elites: the language of science, the language of the Republic of Letters, and a powerful status element for the juridically trained patriciate and the intellectual professions.41 Latin 39

SAW, II, n° 103, accounts of the orphanage, 1631/32 and 1633/34. Schmidt, Weezenverpleging, 177. 41 Cf. Françoise Waquet, Latin: The empire of a sign (London 2001); Peter Burke, Languages and communities in early modern Europe (Cambridge 2004), 43–60. 40

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education thus became a threshold for admission to the elite of civil administration, the church, science, and scholarship—and therefore a highly sought-after object of study for those intent on getting ahead. An orphan boy whose ambition lay in an area for which Latin was indispensable, or at least desirable, would therefore have to ght his way into an unfamiliar and often hostile milieu. He would have to enlist the help of responsible adults from three different levels: the master of the orphanage living on the premises (who had no higher education), the town orphan master (often a regent with university training), and his guardians. Each of the three had to be persuaded that the future of the boy was well worth the investment in unproductive work years and living costs. In a society where cultural levels and professional positions were much less an outgrowth of personal merit than of social background, that was no easy task. If the intellectual gifts of the orphan were not such that the guardians themselves suggested the possibility of a Latin school, an orphan could, as a last resort, devise a stratagem that testied to his powerful personality and his iron will. This was the path that Evert eventually chose. But when he completed his elementary education, his moment had not yet come. Presumably he was still unaware of his calling, which made a craft the logical choice.

Tailor’s apprentice “A tailor by trade, with the name of Evert Willemsz,” rector Zas calls him in the opening words of the Amsterdam pamphlet (b6). We do not know exactly when Evert began his apprenticeship, but it is reasonable to assume that it was after his years of schooling, perhaps when he was about twelve years old. His former employer, tailor Gijsbert Aelbertsz, gives the impression of a long apprenticeship when he reminds Evert during a visit on January 19, 1623 how often they “spoke to each other from the psalms of David” while doing their sewing (b23–24). When Evert announces his calling to the ministry, he adds that he will give up tailoring as soon as he has sewn his own suit. “I must do no more sewing after I’ve made my clothes; for it is the will of God almighty and the Spirit of God; for it will no longer be my work.” (b11). This indicates a completed apprenticeship, which for tailors involved a minimum of two years and in Woerden seldom seems to have lasted longer. The accounts of the orphanage from 1609/10 reveal, for example, that the orphan Pieter had learned “sewing” from tailor Claes Dircks in

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two years’ time.42 The same was probably true of Evert. It is therefore quite possible that Evert began his apprenticeship when his employer set up his business in a house on the corner of the Rijn (the Rhine Quay, now the Rijnstraat) and the “Stedesteege” (Town Lane) near the Woerden castle on June 7, 1619.43 The boy was then eleven or twelve years old. It must have been a fortunate coincidence that brought him together with a pious and orthodox master craftsman who recognized and stimulated his religious gifts. We have no way of knowing why Evert was apprenticed to a tailor. Perhaps his brother Cornelis was still plying this trade at the time. For orphans without any possessions tailoring was a good option. The only investment required was the training itself and the purchase of a good scissors, a thimble, and an assortment of pins.44 After that the boy could be sent out into the world, for it was work that could be performed anywhere. Tailoring was denitely a widespread trade. In the eighteenth century a tailor could be found in nearly every village of any size, to say nothing of the towns and cities. In 1811 there was an average of one tailor to every 250 inhabitants in the part of Holland north of the river IJ, and one to every 150 in the cities.45 In the town of Zutphen that ratio applied already in 1703.46 Records show that in Evert Willemsz’s time one out of every ten new citizens of Deventer (one out of seven, if we only count those whose occupation is known) was a tailor by trade.47 At the beginning of that century the tailors, or “cutters,” were already numerous enough in the small town of Woerden to form a guild of their own, probably shortly before its rst mention in the sources in 1606.48

42 SAW, II, n° 102, accounts of the orphanage 1609/10, f. 27v°. On tailors’ crafts in the Dutch Republic: Bibi Panhuysen, Maatwerk. Kleermakers, naaisters, oudkleerkopers en de gilden (1500–1800) (Amsterdam 2000). 43 SAW, Oud-rechterlijk archief, n° 45, f. 173. 44 On tailors’ training: A.G. van der Steur, De opleiding tot kleermaker in de loop der eeuwen (The Hague 1983). 45 A.M. van der Woude, Het Noorderkwartier. Een regionaal historisch onderzoek in de demograsche en economische geschiedenis van westelijk Nederland van de late Middeleeuwen tot het begin van de 19e eeuw (Utrecht 1983), II, 302–306; H.K. Roessingh, ‘Beroep en bedrijf op de Veluwe in het midden van de achttiende eeuw’, in: AAG-Bijdragen 13 (1965), 181–274 (here 212–231). 46 W.Th.M. Frijhoff e.a. (eds.), Geschiedenis van Zutphen (Zutphen 1989), 114. 47 Paul Holthuis, Frontierstad bij het scheiden van de markt: Deventer militair, demograsch, economisch 1578–1648 (Houten & Deventer 1993), 149, 166–167, 172. 48 A.G. van der Steur, ‘Woerdense kleermakersgildepenningen’, in: Heemtijdinghen 10:1 (1974), 2–8.

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Although tailoring was one of the most ubiquitous trades, it did not enjoy a great deal of respect in the seventeenth century.49 With only a few exceptions, the work was not well paid. An important factor here was very likely the strict separation between craftsmen and retailers in the clothing sector. Tailoring was manual work; the tailor did not himself deal in the fabrics, threads, and buttons that he used. He owned only a scissors and a needle, and a space for working—but that he could also do in his customer’s home. The scissors was the tailor’s personal possession, and he kept it with him at all times, just as the ordinary citizen was never without his pocketknife. With a scissors in his pocket he could set to work anywhere. His scissors was the attribute of his autonomy.50 It is not surprising, then, that in accounts of the orphanage we regularly nd an entry for the purchase of a scissors for an apprentice. The ownership of a “tailor’s scissors with three tailor’s rings” identied the apprentice as a recognized member of the tailors’ trade.51 The tailor made clothing from materials the customer had selected and purchased in the shops of a clothier, a thread and ribbon merchant, a passementerie maker, and a button maker. Or he altered old or second-hand clothing and gave them a new life. In the diary kept by the Hague schoolmaster David Beck in 1624, shortly after the death of his wife, we can follow the work of a tailor step by step. Berent Smidde (or Zwidde) worked twelve days on mourning clothes for the young widower, who stopped in almost every day to ask the tailor what he needed, to bring fabric, lining, or buttons, to see how the work was progressing or to try on the clothes. Another tailor, Abraham Pietersz Breeckevelt, came to his house regularly to make or mend clothes.52 A good living could be earned from selling fabrics and accessories, not from making the articles. Tailors were simple craftsmen, not retailers in woolen fabrics or other clothing textiles. This meant that clothiers like Gerrit Gijsbertsz Vergeer and Gijsbert Jansz Camerick, who as members of the Woerden town council decided Evert’s fate, had little

49 On the social and cultural image of the tailor: Annette de Vries, Ingelijst werk. De verbeelding van arbeid en beroep in de vroegmoderne Nederlanden (Zwolle 2004), 155–187. 50 One illustration among many is the beautiful painting of an anonymous tailor with a scissors (National Gallery, London) by Giovanni Battista Moroni (1522–1578/79). 51 As, for example, in SAW, II, n° 103, accounts of the orphanage 1633/34, f. 18v°. 52 David Beck, Spiegel van mijn leven. Een Haags dagboek uit 1624, ed. Sv.E. Veldhuijzen (Hilversum 1992), 43–47, 240.

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in common socially speaking with the local tailors. The Zutphen income tax register of 1678/79 reveals that clothiers were taxed almost ve times as much as tailors, who remained far under the scal level of the local tavern keepers, bakers, and smiths. Even shoemakers, one of the least prestigious crafts, paid more tax. On a standard of living index for the ten most common trades, tailors are near the bottom, just above weavers, the prototype of the penniless craftsman.53 Small wonder that tailors and their apprentices often appear in popular literature as shabby underdogs. And poverty leads to crime: scoundrels they were, who tried to overcharge for their services. But they were treated in kind by their customers, who postponed paying their bills as long as possible. In 1545, when the famous Italian writer Pietro Aretino (himself the son of a shoemaker turned social climber) wants to express his contempt for the pretensions of artisans, he sneers that nowadays even tailors and butchers can have their portrait painted.54 The trade of butcher was ranked especially low, near the disreputable occupations that stood outside the prevailing honor code of the community. And for Aretino that cannot have been at a far remove from tailors. It is hardly surprising, then, that Evert assigned his employer the specic task of proclaiming his message “not to the highest persons of this world but to God’s poor sheep, whom he has left in the world” (b23–24). The tailor stood in the middle of the community of the poor, but he often had one advantage over them: he had access to literate culture. Tailoring was a trade that required a minimum of investment in tools and materials but a maximum of patience and precision. Because little physical strength was needed, it would have been a likely choice for a young man with a weak constitution. It was also a quiet craft, which allowed for shared contemplation of God’s word. Did the young orphan choose it himself ? Or was there no alternative, given his nancial situation? Let us try to picture what went on in a tailor’s shop. The tailor was an artisan who could always be found in or near his workplace, together with a journeyman and/or apprentice. There was no buzz of machinery; all the work was done by hand, in a cross-legged position. There are a few more or less standardized depictions of tailors’

53

Frijhoff, Geschiedenis van Zutphen, 110, 113. Quoted by Peter Burke, The Italian Renaissance: Culture and society in Italy (Cambridge 1986), 169. 54

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Fig. 12. The tailor’s workroom. Oil painting on canvas by Quiringh Gerritsz van Brekelenkam, 1661. [Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam].

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workshops, including ten by the most important painter of sedentary trades, Quiringh Gerritsz van Brekelenkam (ca. 1622–ca. 1668). Probably born in Zwammerdam in classis Woerden, but a confessing Catholic, he worked as genre painter in Leiden. His best-known painting (The tailor’s workroom, 1661, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam) gives us a clear idea of Gijsbert Aelbertsz’s workshop.55 Two boys of different ages, the older one a journeyman and the younger certainly an apprentice not much older than twelve, sit opposite each other, cross-legged, either on a large table or on a raised oor in front of the window, doing their sewing as close as possible to the daylight entering the room. Their master, also in a cross-legged position and with his face turned towards them, is dealing with a woman customer. The workplace is clearly a semi-public space, without the homey attributes (cradle, bed, and cooking utensils) we usually nd in the weavers’ interiors of a painter like Johan Dircksz Oudenrogge (1622–1653), Brekelenkam’s brother-in-law.56 Nevertheless, Brekelenkam’s painting strongly suggests that this is a closed, hierarchically structured group of three craftsmen: master, journeyman, and apprentice have only each other for company when no customers are in the workshop. A large scissors, pins, and an iron are the only visible tools, and there is no trace of shopkeeping. A river scene on the wall adds a little cheer to the austere interior, and a bird in a cage near the window occasionally breaks the oppressive silence with its song. The silence is accentuated by the contrast with street noises of vendors and tradesmen, horses and wagons, people shouting and chatting. The quiet nature of the work, aside from the apprentices’ usual chatter and singing, at least when the master permitted it and when they formed a slightly larger group, naturally invited more structured forms of mental activity and communication. For a God-fearing employer like Gijsbert Aelbertsz that could have taken the form of psalm singing. In any case comments were exchanged there on the psalms and other Bible passages read each day at mealtime in the orphanage, or on the sermons preached by the minister in church. Evert must have had only his employer as a partner in these conversations, for his allusion to the disciples on the way to Emmaus, whom God joined as a third party, only applies if they were a twosome (b24). It is not surprising, then, 55 See also the comments by De Vries, Ingelijst werk, 185–187. On Brekelenkam: Angelika Lasius, Quiringh van Brekelenkam (Doornspijk 1992). 56 Cf. A. Heppner, Weverswerkplaatsen geschilderd door Haarlemsche meesters der 17e eeuw (Haarlem 1938).

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that the tailor’s workshop had the reputation of being a hotbed of religious zeal. But it was also a spawning ground for autodidacts. Like shoemakers, tailors were literate folk, and people from the community dropped in to exchange the news of the day.57 Gijsbert Aelbertsz was no exception. He had a ready tongue and effortlessly wrote down his conversations with Evert. The spectacles worn by the tailor in some prints not only indicate the near-sightedness of a precision worker with needle and thread, but also serve as a metaphor of the literate culture he had acquired. In Evert’s time that culture was the product of a complex interaction of reading culture, oral tradition, and discussion. The stereotype of the religious fanatic tailor appears in an anecdote noted down by the Lutheran lawyer Aernout van Overbeke a few decades later.58 The tailor in question had “ostensibly done some reading in Scripture” and as a result become “a sharp-tongued defender of the Reformed religion.” In the tow barge he encountered a Jesuit, in Protestant eyes the prototype of the religious fanatic. The Jesuit, however, was in no mood to argue about religion; he moreover considered it unseemly to do so in a public space. The tailor nevertheless kept provoking the Jesuit until he took up the challenge. Had the tailor read Scripture, he asked. “I know it like the back of my hand, because I have read the Bible 6 times in my life.” Whereupon the Jesuit referred to the angel in Revelation 10:2 who placed his right foot on the sea and his left on the earth. How many ells of fabric would the tailor need to sew trousers for the angel? “The tailor became so angry that he did not say another word.”

“Possessed” orphans All the evidence suggests that Evert had been living in the orphanage for several years by the time of his rst religious experiences, and that he identied emotionally with the community of orphans despite the strong family ties he retained with his brother(s). In one respect orphanages differed signicantly from a family environment. To use Erving

57 Cf. Eric J. Hobsbawm & J.W. Scott, ‘Political shoemakers’, in: Worlds of labour (London 1984), 103–130. 58 Aernout van Overbeke, Anecdota sive historiae jocosae. Een zeventiende-eeuwse verzameling moppen en anecdotes, ed. Rudolf Dekker & Herman Roodenburg (Amsterdam 1991), 393, n° 2427.

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Goffman’s term, orphanages were “total institutions.” In a relatively small space they united a large number of orphans from mixed backgrounds and of various ages. There was almost no opportunity for privacy. The regimentation of orphanage life made for a high degree of uniformity and could easily stymie the development of a child with a weak personality. Orphanages did, however, offer possibilities for strong bonding in peer groups, especially since age was usually a distinguishing criterion, possibly more so than in family life of the time. In school and catechism orphans were fed religious texts, images, and values even more systematically than other children of their age, while little attention was paid to how they processed it all psychologically.59 Life in an orphanage was subject to two opposing forces: the totalizing claims of the institution and the security of the group of fellow orphans. If the balance tipped in the direction of the group, an orphanage could easily become a hotbed of collective ideas and group behavior over which the town orphan masters, and even the internal master and matron, had little control. In the case of Evert Willemsz, too, the matron clearly had no idea how to deal with what was happening. When she found Evert writing upstairs on January 18, 1623, he covered the paper to hide from her what he had written. The fteen-year-old boy so overawed her—mentally, but perhaps physically as well—that she was unable or unwilling to coerce him. At a loss, she went back downstairs “admonishing the children to pray, for the Lord again had something special planned for him.” (b19) At times the group dynamics did take their own course, resulting in highly unusual forms of behavior. Ever since early modern times such behavior has often been interpreted as pathological, as forms of collective obsession or hysteria.60 Is that not an anachronism? An analysis made by the French historian Michel de Certeau of the religious group experience labeled as “demonic possession” in a Loudun monastery in 1632–34—famous from Aldous Huxley’s novel The Devils of Loudun

59

On the religious spirit in Dutch orphanages: Fred A. van Lieburg, ‘Niederländische Waisenhäuser und reformierter Pietismus im 17. Jahrhundert’, in: Udo Sträter & Josef N. Neumann (eds.), Waisenhäuser in der Frühen Neuzeit (Tübingen 2003), 169–181. 60 Cf. D.P. Walker, Unclean spirits. Possession and exorcism in France and England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries (London 1981); H.C. Erik Midelfort, ‘Sin, melancholy, obsession: Insanity and culture in sixteenth-century Germany’, in: Steven L. Kaplan (ed.), Understanding popular culture: Europe from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century (Berlin etc. 1984), 113–146; Willem Frijhoff, ‘Sorcellerie et possession: du Moyen Age aux Lumières’, in: Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 95:3 (2000), 112–142.

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(1953), Krzysztof Penderecki’s opera (1968/69), Ken Russell’s lm of the same name (1971), and Mother Johanna of the Angels by the Polish lmmaker Jerzy Kawalerowicz (1961)—shows that another interpretation is possible if such an incident is placed in the conceptual and perceptual categories of its own time.61 In the second half of the sixteenth and the rst half of the seventeenth century, when new religious values were mingling with old and elements of a new world picture came into conict with the old view, intimate group living offered challenges to try out new forms of thinking, speaking, and acting. At times those group dynamics no longer carried meaning for outsiders. The label “(spirit or devil) possession” then obscures a socio-cultural transformation: cities emancipating themselves from a countryside still in the grip of magical thinking, social groups loudly elbowing their way up in society, women no longer accepting the subtle dictatorship of their spiritual mentor. In all these situations the “spirit possession” or “hysteria” manifests itself as the laborious invention of a “modern” form of speaking by persons not (yet) authorized or capable of public speaking. While priests and ministers control the group entrusted to them by appealing to a public authority of a supernatural order (their ordination), possessed persons work with a psychological authority based on self-acquired knowledge and manifested in a specic behavior and a characteristic language. Possession in its early modern form thus comes to expression as an urban spectacle with elements of a star cult, a group of sympathizers around a hero who is inspired with a sense of mission.62 The demonological interpretation (“demonic possession,” or possession by evil spirits) of such behavior can, as in the case of the French Renaissance author Jean Bodin (1529/30–1596), arise in response to the attempt of the church to win back these new models of saintliness in an overheated public market of religious values.63 It is no mere coincidence that we nd such collective behavior predominantly in transitional periods or transitional zones, and in specic institutions: in orphanages and monastic communities, where religious training and exercises in piety not only determine the daily rhythm

61 Michel de Certeau, La possession de Loudun (Paris 1970); The possession at Loudun, transl. by Michael B. Smith (Chicago 2000). 62 Michel de Certeau, ‘Une mutation culturelle et religieuse: les magistrats devant les sorciers du XVIIe siècle’, in: Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France 55 (1969), 300–319. 63 Cf. Sophie Houdard, Les sciences du diable. Quatre discours sur la sorcellerie (XV e–XVII e siècles) (Paris 1992), 78–84.

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but also aim to totally shape and control the life of the monk, nun, or orphan. The group at times takes that aim literally and manages to dominate the individual members to such a degree that they escape the control of the master, the higher authority. On the other hand, it can also happen that the group comes under the spell of an enthusiastic master. In both cases a situation arises in which group language and group behavior struggle free from the normal, socially recognizable categories of existence—which monastery and orphanage as public institutions are meant to guarantee—and begin to lead a life of their own. They are then literally “beside themselves.” Essential here is the mental cohesion of the group. As soon as individual members become separated from the group, the spell is broken. Examples abound.64 The Dutch physician Johan Wier or Weyer (1515/16–1588), in his lengthy book on demonic deception, De praestigiis daemonum, rst published in 1563 but in later years repeatedly reprinted in his own new or supplemented versions, sums up numerous instances of demonic possession in monasteries in the Low Countries and adjacent regions, some of which he witnessed himself.65 Among the examples that Wier added to a later printing, one in particular stands out: a collective possession in the municipal orphanage of Amsterdam.66 Wier’s source is a letter sent to him by the Gelderland chancellor Adrianus Nicolai on March 18, 1566 when the affair was still in full swing. The 64 One of the rst authors to have assembled evidence on orphanage possessions (in particular at Amsterdam, Hoorn, and Lille) was the learned minister Balthasar Bekker, De betoverde weereld (2d ed., Amsterdam 1693), II, 210–218. 65 Wier’s book has been translated into English by George Mora (ed.), Witches, devils and doctors in the Renaissance: Johann Weyer, ‘De praestigiis daemonum’ (Binghamton, NY 1991). On Wier (Weyer is the German form of his name, used already during his lifetime, though he was born in the Netherlands): J.J. Cobben, Johannes Wier. Zijn opvattingen over bezetenheid, hekserij en magie (Assen 1970); R. van Nahl, Zauberei und Hexenwahn im Gebiet von Rhein und Maas. Spätmittelalterlicher Volksglaube im Werk Johan Weyers (1515–1588) (Bonn 1983); H.C. Erik Midelfort, ‘Johann Weyer and the transformation of the insanity defense’, in: R. Po-chia Hsia (ed.), The German people and the Reformation (Ithaca & London 1988), 234–261; the same, ‘The devil and the German people. Reections on the popularity of demon possession in sixteenth-century Germany’, in: Steven Ozment (ed.), Religion and culture in the Renaissance and Reformation (Kirksville, Miss. 1989), 99–120; Hartmut Lehmann & Otto Ulbricht (eds.), Vom Unfug des Hexen-Processes. Gegner der Hexenverfolgung von Johann Weyer bis Friedrich Spee (Wiesbaden 1992). 66 J. Wier, De praestigiis daemonum, book IV, chapter 8 (later 13): in the edition Basel 1568, 371–372; in the German translation Frankfurt am Main 1586, 253–254; and in the Opera omnia (Amsterdam 1660), 296–297. Curiously, this episode is missing in Wier’s own German translation of his work (1578). On this case: A. Querido, Storm in het weeshuis. De beroering onder de Amsterdamse burgerwezen in 1566 (Amsterdam 1958); Lydia Hagoort, ‘De weeshuisziekte van 1566’, in: Holland 26:2 (1994), 71–86.

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Amsterdam civic orphanage, then located north of the Heilige Stede (the miraculous Holy Place, later known as the New Side Chapel) on the Rokin canal, housed two hundred orphans in 1558.67 A large community of children! The group dynamics gave the orphans an internal autonomy that must have proved stronger than the external control by the master and matron of the orphanage, regents, and civil authorities. At the beginning of 1566 at least thirty children (other sources mention seventy, both boys and girls) suddenly exhibited bizarre behavior. They had seizures and would lie on the oor for half an hour or more at a time. When they came to, they had no memory of what had happened and thought they had been sleeping. The doctors at rst decided it was an ordinary illness that would subside by itself. When that failed to happen, suspicions turned to black magic. As soon as a group of exorcists went to work on the children, even stranger things began to happen. The orphans vomited thimbles, pins, needles, glass, hair, rags, and more such hard objects—a classic symptom of possession. The reality of this phenomenon was hotly debated in Wier’s time. Wier himself considered it proof that the devil was involved—as he had also testied in the case of the possessed girl Geertgen Heynricx, who exhibited identical vomiting symptoms sixteen years earlier in Nijkerk and Arnhem.68 Both he, as town physician, and his superior Adrianus Nicolai, chancellor of Gelderland since 1547, had been closely involved in that affair. The similarity of symptoms also explains why they contacted each other about the case in Amsterdam. This is where Wier’s report ends. The seventeenth-century historians Pieter Cornelisz Hooft (1581– 1647) and Geeraerdt Brandt (1626–1685) consulted a different contemporary source for their account of the events in the Amsterdam orphanage, namely the memoirs—now largely lost—of the prominent Calvinist grain merchant and rhetorician Laurens Jacobsz Reael (1536– 1601).69 Here there was mention of other strange behavior as well: the orphans “clambered, like cats, up onto the walls and roofs, pulled faces so hellish and wicked that the bravest hearts seemed to wither at the sight; they knew foreign languages, and said strange things with

67 On this institution: Anne E.C. McCants, Civic charity in a Golden Age: Orphan care in early modern Amsterdam (Urbana, Ill. 1997). 68 J. Wier, De praestigiis daemonum, German translation by the author (s.l. 1578), f. 90–93. 69 On Reael: NNBW, IV, 1119–1120.

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lisping tongues, also about what was happening elsewhere at the same moment, even in the town council.”70 The accusation of sorcery soon became an issue in the conict between the Amsterdam factions in this “year of marvels” 1566—the year of widespread iconoclasm and public manifestations of Calvinism, traditionally considered the start of the Dutch Revolt against Spanish rule. The children’s experience was in all probability used by the adherents of the new doctrine to strengthen their position in the city and discredit the ruling faction. The politics of that faction have been characterized as a premature attempt at a Counter-Reformation. Jacobgen Bam in particular, a close relative of the most prominent Catholic families in government, was accused of having bewitched the children. “They made many wicked gestures at the doors of certain women, who for that reason were loudly denounced as sorceresses. They were also said to have discovered many secret plans made against the new [i.e., Calvinist] preaching.”71 This episode clearly consists of two distinct layers. In the formal interpretation a reference is made to a classic form of bewitchment, with phenomena directly related to the actions of the exorcists themselves, such as the vomiting of hard objects. And in the customary manner specic actions are interpreted as a ritual indication of the guilty party. Sorcery is the familiar, and therefore reassuring picture to which alarmed contemporaries reduce the story. But the event did not have its origin in sorcery. The children were from the outset “possessed by evil spirits.” This is the image used by observers to indicate the new, disturbing ways the children collectively dealt with their bodies and with language—an adequate response to the equally new and disturbing religious politics of the municipal government. With the specic group dynamics no longer controlled by those in charge, behavior in the orphanage rapidly assumed extreme forms. But the very fact that it did so shows clearly that in this group of orphans—in interaction with followers of the new doctrine—a new religious awareness was manifesting itself, and a new spiritual language was unfolding. As one of the orphans put it in a startling image reminiscent of the highest expressions of contemporary mysticism, “If all the mountains had bristled with swords, I would have descended through their points to 70 Geeraerdt Brandt, Historie der Reformatie, en andere kerkelyke geschiedenissen, in en ontrent de Nederlanden (4 vols., Amsterdam 1671–1704), I, 331; P.C. Hooft, Neederlandsche Histoorien (Amsterdam 1642), I, 91. 71 Brandt, Historie der Reformatie, I, 331–332.

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be allowed just one glimpse of God’s countenance in grace.”72 Is the wounding here the usual metaphor for chastening and purication, as in the late medieval mystical writers, or does it stand for a wound of love that brings the body to an ecstasy of pain, as in Theresian mysticism? Eros myth and Song of Songs go hand in hand here. Why were the orphans in particular susceptible to new forms of mysticism? They were young, receptive to things new, and they lived in a group with its own dynamics, unhampered by the traditional culture of their parents. The orphanage, situated in the center of town, was freely accessible to the public, and the sources suggest that it was thronged with curiosity seekers. It gave the orphans, like no other group, a completely new framework of socialization, where all the inuences from the city—and what a city it was!—could freely manifest themselves. The events in Amsterdam must have attracted a great deal of attention at the time. Already on January 14, 1566 the magistracy came with a statute forbidding unauthorized persons to enter the orphanage, which had been drawing crowds “to see the children there who by God’s will . . . were recently visited and seized by a strange passion.”73 But Amsterdam was not the only town where such things happened. A little less than four years before Evert Willemsz made his public appearance, thirty children in the Enkhuizen orphanage manifested the same sort of possession. Another booming town! The event was reported a year later, as almost up-to-the minute news, in the chronicle of Pieter Jansz Twisck (1566–1636), clothier and Mennonite preacher in nearby Hoorn. In 1618 and 1619 the thirty orphans acted “as if they were bewitched or possessed.” “In a manner as if they themselves were the witch or the devil” they spoke “strange things, also throwing up or spewing out many kinds of things, such as hooks, pins, needles, or other things outside the course of nature.”74 Just as in Amsterdam half a century earlier, two supernatural phenomena, one psychological and the other somatic, were here intertwined: speaking in tongues and vomiting up hard or sharp objects. It is not completely clear in what context this event should be interpreted, but in view of the date it is tempting to link it to the vehemence of the religious conicts. The orphans seized

72 Ibid., I, 331 (quoting the Reael manuscript). For the transxio motive, see P. Adnès, ‘Transverbération’, in: Dictionnaire de spiritualité, fasc. 99–100 (Paris 1991), 1174–1184. 73 Quoted by Querido, Storm in het weeshuis, 20. 74 Pieter Jansz Twisck, Chronijck vanden onderganc der tijrannen (2 vols., Hoorn 1619–1620), II, 1779 (quotations), cf. 1228. On Twisck: BLGNP, I, 383–384.

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on the classic form of vomiting hard objects to legitimize the modern psychological phenomenon of logorrhea. According to “some old people” whom the chronicler Dirck van Bleyswijck (1639–1681) was still able to consult, the orphanage in Delft was also plagued with a form of collective possession at the beginning of the seventeenth century.75 And in the Cologne convent of Poor Clares the years 1621–1627 brought a series of exceptional happenings surrounding the nun Sophia Agnes von Langenberg, who was venerated as a living saint. When spiritually reborn after a serious illness, she was said to have received the gift of healing. In 1622 a crucix in her cell spontaneously began to bleed, and a short time later, at the outbreak of the plague, the entire convent came under the spell of possession.76 In July 1631 a convent in Coesfeld, just across the border with Westphalia, showed signs of bewitchment, and one of the nuns was burned at the stake.77 We here see the same overlap of the “old” magic and the “new” possession that Michel de Certeau found in France (Loudun 1632–34). In the year of Evert’s second deliverance we also nd traces of it in Leiden: when Janneken op ’t Levendaal had to appear before the consistory on the charge of practicing black magic, she was known to be a woman “who at times is visited with passions in church.”78

A new mysticism? Evert Willemsz’s experiences stand in a complex relation to such collective phenomena. The atmosphere in the Woerden orphanage encouraged pronounced, if not extreme forms of behavior. We can see this in the suspense gripping the orphans as they crowd around Evert to pray and sing while he is in his rapt state (a3, b12–13, b32, b34). He has only to awake from his lethargy to send a rush of “great joy” through the group (b27). When he dreams, his younger brothers “sit up awake.”

75

Dirck van Bleyswijck, Beschrijvinge der stadt Delft (Delft 1667), II, 494. Albrecht Burkardt, ‘Die Visionen der Sophia Agnes von Langenberg’, in: Jürgen Beyer, Albrecht Burkardt, Fred van Lieburg & Marc Wingens (eds.), Confessional sanctity (c. 1500 –c. 1800) (Mayence 2003), 271–290. 77 Contemporary note in the diary of Sweder Schele, quoted by Dick Schlüter, Betovering en vervolging. Over toverij in Oost-Nederland tussen de 16de en 20ste eeuw (Hengelo, s.a. [1991]), 64. 78 GAL, Dutch Reformed Consistory, n° 2 ( June 23, 1623). 76

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They later declare that they “saw what took place with their own eyes, and heard it with their own ears” (b36), as if they had never experienced anything so fascinating—which was probably true. Evert exhibits highly traditional forms of psychosomatic symptoms: fasting, sense deprivation, motor disturbance, ecstasy. I shall return to this point in the following chapters. In combination with a new message, these forms of behavior allude to the repertoire of the new religious mysticism. In a sense we can say that Evert extricated himself from the pathology of the collective hysteria of the orphanage, which must have been diffusely present there for years, by translating his internal tension into terms of a mystical experience: an encounter with God, communion with Him, and as such by denition an individual experience.79 Against the backdrop of what had taken place in Enkhuizen less than four years earlier, Evert’s individual religious experience does indeed appear as a form of modern mysticism. He was clearly no longer tuned in to what were by then rather “outmoded” supernatural expressions of demonic possession, such as the vomiting of hard objects, to say nothing of black magic. Johan Wier had in fact already given short shrift to the vomiting phenomena. And in Woerden, the last town in the province of Holland to hold a trial for sorcery, the black arts had lost their public credit. On June 29, 1614 bailiff Gillis van Benthem brought Neel Elbertsdr to court because she was known by “everyone” to be a “sorceress,” and wanted to put her on the rack because she had expressly made “a pact with the enemy of the human race.” The Woerden aldermen proved wiser, however. They rejected the torture, requested counsel of a few jurists, and on their advice let Neel go free after just two weeks.80 Sex with the devil was no longer credible to them. And while as late as 1634 in the Flemish town of Bruges a child who at times went deaf or mute and at other times blind was considered bewitched, we nd no such reactions in Woerden, where Evert exhibited the same symptoms.81 In Evert’s case the devil of the magic universe never enters the scene. No trace whatsoever of traditional demonic arts can be found in the

79 Michel de Certeau, ‘L’énonciation mystique’, in: Recherches de science religieuse 64:2 (1976), 183–215, has guided my interpretation of mystical expression. 80 SAW, Oud-rechterlijk archief, n° 2, f. 240v°; for the context: Hans de Waardt, Toverij en samenleving. Holland 1500–1800 (The Hague 1991), 116, 131, 226, 299. 81 Dries Vanysacker, Hekserij in Brugge. De magische leefwereld van een stadsbevolking, 16de–17de eeuw (Bruges 1988), 32.

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pamphlets. There is not even a faint resemblance between the structure of the events in Woerden and the plot of Mariken van Nieumeghen, for example, the famous Dutch miracle play of the late Middle Ages in which the devil Moenen is the great seducer. That play was reprinted as late as 1608 by Herman van Borculo of Utrecht—who fteen years later published Master Zas’s rst pamphlet about Evert—and may therefore very well have circulated in the region.82 The devil appears twice in Evert’s pamphlets, but only in a subordinate role, in complete agreement with church dogma. In his treatise on sorcery, William Perkins had resolutely branded magical connotations of belief in the devil as papist nonsense.83 In keeping with this view, Evert simply situates the devil in hell, as the opponent of God. To hell we all must go where the Devil rages free, And he will laugh at this, full of malicious glee; For God is now exceeding wroth That men heed not his word of truth. (b20)

And in Evert’s public dream the devil, in analogy with I Peter 5:8, stalks about, looking for believers whom he might destroy: For with his evil schemes the devil walks about, Intent on bringing down the faithful and devout. But God’s own dear elect will never vanquished be Or crushed beneath the weight of the devil’s slavery.

The all-powerful being here is not the devil but God Himself. He controls the actions of the devil and keeps him in his subordinate place in the plan of salvation—and more concretely in hell. God reveals Himself to Evert not by means of an accursed devil but through a healing angel. Evert’s image of God is essentially positive. In terms of De Certeau’s analysis, Evert is the one who stands out in the group of orphans as a “star” with a sense of mission, a “living saint” in the making. His ecstatic experience, shaped by traditional and therefore recognizable means, grew into a local spectacle that allowed him to make his voice heard and get what he wanted. The role played by the group of orphans becomes clear from the pamphlets. In Woerden there were no collective phenomena indicating that Evert’s 82 Een schone historie, ende zeer wonderlijke ende waerachtighe gheschiedenisse van Mariken van Nimmegen (Utrecht 1608). 83 William Perkins, Discoverie of the damned art of witchcraft (1608); transl.: Tractaet vande ongodlijcke toover-const (Amsterdam 1611).

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experience was infectious or that all the orphans shared equally in what overcame him. What can be stated without reservation is that the group collectively bolstered Evert’s experience and supplied one of the opposing forces needed to bring his exceptional achievements to a climax. In the essentially public space where the two forces operated, Evert Willemsz developed a personality strong enough to time and again secure a separate, private living space for himself, to attribute a highly individual signicance to experiences that were anchored along various lines in collective traditions, and to seize on the mystical experience as a way to change his personal circumstances. From a tailor’s apprentice he became a student. From the world of trades he moved into the employ of the church—and in the process climbed a rung or two on the social ladder.

CHAPTER FOUR

WORDS, SOUNDS, IMAGES

Reading In the early seventeenth century the Bible was everywhere—in the spoken word, in texts, songs, and images. Evert larded his notes with quotations from the Bible, at times in greatly modied form, then again almost verbatim. The historian A.Th. van Deursen, one of the best authorities on seventeenth-century daily life in the Dutch Republic, has pointed out how close the preaching of those years adhered to the biblical word. Bible texts formed the building blocks of the sermon, and the passages linking them were intentionally modeled on biblical language.1 People who often listened to sermons, as the orphans of Woerden were required to, became so familiar with the words of the Bible that they subconsciously assimilated them. Thanks to the active memory of the oral culture, the biblical word could then be ttingly quoted as needed. Evert, given his level of literacy, very likely read the Bible himself as well. Bible texts in any case played a key role in the acquisition of reading skills, whether this took place in the family, at school, in church, or in the orphanage.2 Did he perhaps already have a Bible of his own in the orphanage? This is unlikely. A Bible was a precious family possession that Evert’s father or stepfather would preferably have left to his eldest son.3 The 1 A.Th. van Deursen, Plain lives in a Golden Age: Popular culture, religion and society in seventeenth-century Holland (Cambridge 1991), 265; the same, Bavianen en slijkgeuzen. Kerk en kerkvolk ten tijde van Maurits en Oldenbarnevelt (Assen 1974; 2d ed. Franeker 1991), 181–192. For reading culture in the Dutch Republic: Willem Frijhoff & Marijke Spies, 1650: Hardwon unity (Assen & Basingstoke 2004), 227–279; Paul G. Hoftijzer & Otto S. Lankhorst, Boekverkopers en lezers in Nederland tijdens de Republiek: een historiograsche en bibliograsche handleiding (2d revised ed., The Hague 2000); Willem Frijhoff, ‘Calvinism, literacy, and reading culture in the early modern Northern Netherlands: Towards a reassessment’, in: Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte/Archive for Reformation History 95 (2004), 252–265. 2 Margaret Spufford, ‘First steps in literacy: The reading and writing experiences of the humblest seventeenth-century spiritual autobiographers’, in: Social History 4 (1979), 407–437. 3 The existing Bogardus family Bible (Amsterdam 1663), originally owned by Evert

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Fig. 13. Young orphan reading the Bible before dinner. Detail of the Ceremonial meal at the town orphanage of Oudewater, 1651. Oil painting on canvas by H. van Ommen. [Photograph by the author].

complete Bible was in any case associated with adult religious needs, for which the confession of faith—undertaken at a somewhat later age—served as the marker.4 But perhaps Evert could have occasionally made use of a Bible there? The master of the orphanage must have had one in order to fulll the religious duties for which he was

Pietersz Bogardus (1672–1717), has wrongly been identied as property of his grandfather Dominie Everardus Bogardus. See: Howard S.F. Randolph, ‘The “Domine Bogardus” Bible: The family of Evert Bogardus and his wife Tjaatje Hoffman’, in: NYGBR 59:3 ( July 1928), 255–258; Wegen, 815–816. 4 The Puritan Nehemiah Wallington, for example, acquired a Bible at age 17: Paul S. Seaver, Wallington’s world: A Puritan artisan in seventeenth-century London (London & Stanford 1985), 5.

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contracted. Or otherwise the schoolmaster. Both the town’s orphan master and the visiting minister could have made an exception and lent one to a highly gifted or deeply pious boy like Evert Willemsz. Reverend Alutarius owned several Bible editions. Evert certainly learned the psalms in the popular rhymed version of Petrus Dathenus set to Genevan melodies (1566), which by this time had gone through dozens of printings. In 1594 this version was ofcially introduced in Woerden. Andries Verschout, who ran a bookstore in Woerden in 1622/23, had in fact prepared three printings of this volume during his Leiden years (1578–87) when he served as the printer for the English governor, the count of Leicester. The Dathenus Psalter was by this time in common use by nearly all Remonstrants and orthodox Calvinists. It was also reaching more and more Mennonites. Only the Lutherans clung to the rhymed version of Willem van Haecht, although those in Woerden had a hymnbook of their own.5 Psalms were sung, memorized, read. But what was reading in those days? Research into the reading culture of the early modern age has opened new vistas in recent years, bringing fresh insight into the act of reading and furthering our knowledge of the public. The old intensive mode of reading was joined in the course of the eighteenth or nineteenth century by extensive reading behavior: instead of reading little, in depth, repeatedly and slowly, more and more groups in an increasing number of situations began to read much, broadly, once only and rapidly. We now also make a clearer distinction between the potential public of a text and the target public, and we know that the intended public need not be identical with the actual group of readers. Reception aesthetics, with its focus on text-immanent conventions and sign systems as well as the meaning associations that a text can subconsciously evoke in the reader, who is always to some extent preprogrammed, has shed light on the “implicit reader”—the reader, that is, whose pattern of expectations the writer or publisher actively anticipates by steering the content, the use of literary devices, and the form of the printed material.6 5 On this singing culture: J. Smelik, ‘O, sangerige keeltjes!’ De liedcultuur en het muziekleven in de Noordelijke Nederlanden tussen 1550 en 1650 (Leiden 1993), 57–81. 6 Wolfgang Iser, Der implizite Leser: Kommunikationsmuster von Bunyan bis Beckett (Munich 1972); the same, Der Akt des Lesens: Theorie ästhetischer Wirkung (Munich 1976). For the Netherlands: Rien T. Segers, Receptie-esthetica: grondslagen, theorie en praktijk (Amsterdam 1979); J.J. Kloek, ‘Van receptie-esthetica naar leescultuur—en terug?’, in: Forum der letteren 34 (1993), 242–252.

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Finally, the most important gain has been a rened perception of what reading meant in early modern times.7 Reading is more than the passive reception of signals that someone has set down in writing. More than anything else it is an active cultural practice in which every reader, with aid of the baggage he has acquired along the many paths traveled with his social and cultural group, decodes the signals in a personal way and turns the message into a meaningful text. Not that texts can automatically be linked to specic groups, with one providing direct information about the other. On the contrary, each reader assimilates what he reads in a personal manner. But in doing so he makes use of a culture of symbols and a value system which have taken shape within specic groups in society. Only with the support of such a group identity, an interpretive community (S. Fish), can he “recognize” the text in its form, intention, and content and give it a specic semantic interpretation. Not infrequently this involves struggling free from the semantic straitjacket that guardians of the word (in this case the clergy) attempt to impose on laypersons, particularly the unlettered. At the same time the reader usually “recasts” the meaning of an image that he assimilates or a text that he receives. He certainly does not always read a text as the writer intended. He gives it a new meaning, tailored to his own cultural world. This is denitely true of texts which the reader takes in by means of other texts, such as the Bible quotations liberally sprinkled through the writings of devout authors. Certainly in pietistic circles this was the order of the day. Here we have a double semantic embedding of the Bible text: rst in the cultural universe of the writer, then in that of the reader. With the aid of concepts like intertextuality we can attempt along semiotic lines to nd clues for the interpretation of texts that are, in one way or another, interwoven. An intertextual approach can also be fruitfully applied to Evert’s notes, texts that reect his style of dealing with the spoken and written word. On the basis of texts recognizable to his contemporaries he composes in a familiar linguistic code pieces to which they are attuned. But how exactly? How far removed are his own scribblings from the basic texts, and how did he come by those texts? What can be traced back to the daily perceptions of a young man in an environment permeated

7 On the practice of reading in the early modern Netherlands: Jeroen Blaak, Geletterde levens. Dagelijks lezen en schrijven in de vroegmoderne tijd in Nederland 1624–1770 (Hilversum 2004).

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with biblical language, what did he learn at school, what came from conversations about the Bible in the workplace? In Evert’s texts it is all but impossible to isolate quotations from the literature that he heard or read. The omnipresence of the Bible in preaching, catechism, and spiritual conversation gave all of everyday religious language a biblical coloring. Theological idiom Evert simply borrowed—more or less directly—from pietistic and orthodox literature, which makes it very difcult to distinguish what came from Bible reading (b15) and what from hearsay. Reading in the orphanage and the workplace emerges from his texts mainly as a form of memorizing and intensive reading, a slow collective rumination of a small number of edifying books, whose system of signs and relations was familiar to the entire group. Biblical gures supplied role models. This proved advantageous for Evert’s social and cultural strategy. If a comparison was necessary, he could readily summon up a biblical example or a biblical metaphor: keeping watch like the wise virgins (b15; Matt. 25:1–13), quenching thirst with living water (b24: John 4:10–14), life like a leaf blown from a tree and like a ower that withers (b7: Ps. 103:15–16). Evert breathes biblical language; after almost every line of his texts we can place a biblical reference—at times quoted verbatim, at other times paraphrased. He obviously grazed and poached his way through the Bible as his hunger for spiritual nourishment dictated.8 One random example: How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord [Ps. 84:1]; blessed is he who praises thy name in thy dwelling place [e.g., Ps.1:1, Ps. 65:4, Ps. 100:4 and Ps. 150:1]; Call upon me in trouble and I shall hear you [e.g., Ps. 91:15]; we come to thee with our prayer and fall down at thy feet [e.g. Matt. 18:29]; comfort us with the holy Comforter [ John 14:16], so that thy name may be praised [e.g., Ps. 100:4]; grant grace, o God (cf. I Pet. 5:5], and give thine angels charge that they may lead me in the right way [Ps. 91:11] (b7).

For such thorough familiarity there can be just one explanation: in the workplace master and apprentice talked together about the psalms and the prophets (Isaiah: b24) the way we talk about the weather or soccer. As soon as Gijsbert Aelbertsz reminds him in the orphanage of that spiritual conversation, Evert picks up the thread and comments on the passage cited. Without further thought he thus repeats the habitus of the

8 For the metaphor of poaching: Michel de Certeau, L’Invention du quotidien. Vol. 1: Arts de faire (Paris 1980), 239–255.

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workplace. And he immediately tacks on a few more scriptural allusions: he is reminded of the disciples on the way to Emmaus, and a verse from a psalm. When Gijsbert Aelbertsz is about to leave he proposes an evening exercise consisting of the very thing they have been doing: “to speak with each other from God’s Word” (b24). Not a simple Bible reading, in other words, but a spiritual conversation based on the Word of God. However, the Bible not only provided discussion material, it also determined the form of the conversation. In the biblical debate the Scripture was re-enacted and the foundations were laid for identication with biblical gures. In this sense, too, Evert’s association with the Emmaus characters is intriguing: he sees himself as a replica of a biblical gure who derives his signicance from an active discussion of scriptural material. In this way Bible texts steered a personal sense of meaning. Through a process of selection and ordering, the user created a meaningful whole relevant to his circumstances. In terms of content, Evert’s use of the Bible corresponds to what we know of Bible reading and sermons in the early seventeenth century. Contrary to what is commonly thought, not the Old but the New Testament dominated Calvinist preaching in the Netherlands. During the year 1624 David Beck, a faithful Counter-Remonstrant churchgoer, noted down in his diary nine sermons preached in The Hague on the Psalms, twelve on the rest of the Old Testament, but 57 on the New Testament, with 37 of those (half of the total) on the gospels.9 Evert cites from the Old Testament only what he could have known from the narrative tradition of the church or from prints, such as the episode of Sodom and Gomorrah (b24) or events in the lives of the prophets Elijah, Daniel, and Habakkuk, plus an occasional commonplace from sermons, such as “the people will bewail the day they were born” (b26; cf. Job 3:3).10 His genuine Bible quotations can all be found in the New Testament plus Psalter. The references to Psalms 8–9, 34–35, 57 and 100 indicate that children in the orphanage had psalm books at their disposal. Evert at least expressly requests one (b30). The children evidently not only sang rhymed psalms during religious services but also read them—or rather, recited them (b28). But the bulk of Evert’s quotations

9 David Beck, Spiegel van mijn leven: een Haags dagboek uit 1624, ed. Sv.E. Veldhuijzen (Hilversum 1993), 240–241. 10 On biblical prints and their use in everyday life: W.C. Poortman, Bijbel en prent (3 vols., The Hague 1983–1986); Jan van der Waals, Prenten in de Gouden Eeuw: van kunst tot kastpapier (Rotterdam 2006).

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come from the New Testament, at times verbatim, and mainly from the gospel of John, the epistles, and the Book of Revelation. Ten of the 29 explicit quotations in his second song (b16–18) are drawn from the last book of the Bible. On that point he deviates clearly from the church authorities, who distrusted Revelation. He thus placed himself in the contemporary, but rather alternative tradition of topical eschatology. In this he resembled Rijckaert van Spiere, a member of the Gouda chamber of rhetoric who originally came from the Southern Netherlands. Six years earlier, in 1616, he had published an allegorical play, Apocalypse 12, verse 1, which held out to the persecuted Calvinists the prospect of just rewards at the Last Judgment.11 Evert may have known of this play through Master Zas, also a native of Gouda and a rhetorician. At his second deliverance Evert again reveals himself to be a Calvinist with some ideas of his own. When he announces that he will be healed during a psalm, Zas asks which psalm they should sing. But Evert ignores the headmaster, who has no authority in the matter of psalms, and addresses the servant of God’s Word directly: “This is what God called you for, brother Henrice, choose one. Hand me a psalm book” (b30). Alutarius then shows him a psalter, opened to Psalm 8, with his nger at verse 2: “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings. . . .” Does he nd this text suitable? Whether the book just happened to fall open there or the psalm was consciously chosen for the benet of those present, no text could have been more tting. Evert realized this as well: “God imparts this to your heart, I was thinking of that one, too, but it was your task. God quickened that psalm in you” (b31). Evert here makes a point of respecting the role of the minister of the church, but subtly distances himself from it as well. He has his own source of inspiration, the Spirit, and the fact that his choice coincides with that of the preacher adds further proof to the authenticity of his experience. The pamphlets relating to Evert Willemsz therefore provide considerable insight into the complexity of religious practices in the orphanage and the workplace.12 God’s word was not only passively consumed but actively worked with as well. Two forms of dealing with the written

11 B.A.M. Ramakers, ‘Apocalyptiek op de planken: twee rederijkersspelen over het boek Openbaring’, in: Ons geestelijk erf 66 (1992), 187–223. 12 Similar considerations for Germany in: Patrice Veit, ‘Piété, chant et lecture: les pratiques religieuses dans l’Allemagne protestante à l’époque moderne’, in: Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 37 (1990) 624–641.

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word become visible here: a more egalitarian communal practice and a hierarchically ordered ecclesiastical practice. When the orphans happen to be amongst themselves they sing psalms. But they also come together for the express purpose of praying and reading together (a3, b9). “Therefore let us with one accord praise God with prayer and singing,” Evert invites them (b10). The account of the short conversation between Evert and his brother Pieter is instructive here. When Evert comments on his brother’s reading, Pieter is taken aback: Was the deaf-mute able to hear after all? “You know that I was just reading,” he writes, “Didn’t you hear something?” To which Evert replies, “No, but it seemed to me that you were reading.” He probably saw Pieter’s lips moving. A boy still in the early stages of his education would have done his reading aloud. We nd another example in the Frisian farmer’s wife Sw Anders, who after an epileptic seizure in 1618 began reading her Bible “so that the maid in the pantry could hear it.” When the maid no longer heard her, even though “she was listening the whole time,” she immediately thought the woman had had another attack.13 Pieter also reacted like a typical hearing person; he forgot that the deaf read lips. Evert’s text therefore reects practices self-evident to the people of his day: orphans do not sit in idleness but reach for a book as soon as one is available; they follow the age-old practice of intensive reading, spelling out words, memorizing, and speaking the text aloud, thus learning it as much as possible verbatim; nally, young children in the group benet, for the oral reading easily takes on the form of reading to them.14 In this way the illiterate read along with the others and, thanks to their life in the group, participate at an early age in biblical written culture. When the misunderstanding about his deaf-muteness is cleared up, Evert announces that he will be healed during the singing of a psalm. In preparation for that moment, he advises those present: “Read until I sing.” And Pieter replies: “You read to yourself [literally ‘in yourself ’], and we will too”—which presupposes a different, silent form of reading, at least for Evert, and probably for the others, too, to avoid cacophony in the sitting room. When Pieter has had enough of waiting and presses for the singing to begin, Evert corrects him again: “Let us rst praise

13 P. Gerbenzon (ed.), Het aantekeningenboek van Dirck Jansz. (1604–1636) (Hilversum 1993), 137. 14 P. Saenger, ‘From oral reading to silent reading’, in: Viator 13 (1982), 367–414.

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and thank the Lord with reading”—aloud this time, that much is clear. His meaning was self-evident to the children present, but the educated reader, for whom the pamphlet was intended, needed some explanation. The same was true of Master Zas: this was not his form of reading. When editing the pamphlet he asked Evert what exactly that note meant. The boy replied that “reading” here meant “praying,” specically “a common prayer” by the orphans “together, amongst themselves and with one another” (b12, in the margin). Taken for granted here is that reading stands for praying, but praying is also a form of collective reading. Not a text read aloud by a minister on behalf of others, but a group practice. The uid lines we see here between various forms of reading (reading aloud, reading silently, reading to others, listening to texts being read aloud) make it clear that we are moving in a border area between oral and written culture. The pamphlets illustrate how complex forms of dealing with the written word gradually crystallized into a culture of individual reading—at rst alongside collective reading, which retained its signicance in special situations. The educated are in the forefront here, particularly the schoolmasters, the professional mediators of the written word. Zas is one example, but also a schoolmaster like David Beck, who in 1624 systematically read the Bible from cover to cover for himself.15 At stake in the second healing was Evert’s legitimization by the church authorities. This time everything seems to conform much more to what the church expected of well-behaved orphans. It is also more recognizable in the light of what we now understand by communal reading. Onlookers gather, the preacher at hand offers a prayer, and only then do those present begin to sing a psalm “all together” (b27)—as during a church service, in other words. Just before his healing Evert himself once again urges that the proper ritual be followed: “In order to know for sure, sing together, and rst pray to God, so that it will not go amiss; I will again receive a psalm in my ear and speech from God” (b30). This time it is not the orphans who speak the “common prayer” but Reverend Alutarius, and they all wait with the singing until Reverend Cralingius has arrived (b31). The complex practice of hearing, reading, commenting, embroidering, memorizing, combining, and applying explains why Evert can innocently say to Master Zas that he has received his message, which

15

Beck, Spiegel, 222 (December 17, 1624).

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is couched in unmistakable biblical language, “through the power of God, but not from Scripture” (a4). And to Alutarius: “But the Old and New Testament I have not read very much” (b26). He probably did very little reading of the sort engaged in individually and in silence. No doubt he associated this silent practice with what the erudite Zas and Alutarius understood by “reading,” for that was the kind of reading learned in church or school. These institutions also enforced a strictly verbatim transmission of the Bible text. But reading in the manner of less educated persons, as a complex and inspired interaction with texts transmitted both orally and in writing, a practice both cognitive and affective, combinatory and hermeneutical, personal and embedded in the community—that he certainly did. Clear traces of this can be found in his scribblings: they are the fragmentary record of an orally processed collective reading practice. To use the striking image of Alphonse Dupront, they belong to the expression level of orality that repeatedly chews the cud of what it has been fed from written sources (“l’oral mâchonné”), a level located midway between oral and written transmission.16 Reading fed the oral tradition, which in turn determined the aroma and the avor of the texts that were read. For this the orphanage and the workplace provided the ideal environment. In the orphanage the Milk Food and the catechism helped to bring the Bible to life. Milk food is a revealing metaphor here, denoting as it does the basic nourishment fed to a subject not yet capable of choosing the right food. In the reciprocal process described above, the essential difference between speaking and reading, between oral culture and written culture lies in the source of the text’s truth. In oral culture the verication is in the memorization itself; in written culture the truth of a text rests on references indicating its source and origin. It was no mere whim that led Evert to add numerous Bible references to the margins of both his poems. In this way he not only places himself in the tradition of the “Scriptural song”; he more generally seeks a link with written culture, which typically shows its respect for the text with a veriable reference to the original. Evert thus places himself within an interpretive community and adheres to its system of texts and meanings. This explains how on two occasions he regained his ability to speak during the communal singing of a psalm (b9, b30). Evert’s speech did

16 Alphonse Dupront, ‘Du pèlerinage panique à la doléance collective’, in: Niveaux de culture et groupes sociaux. Colloque du 7–9 mai 1966 (Paris 1967), 150.

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not belong to himself alone, but was in this case concretely embedded in the collective speech act of a group of like-minded persons.

Writing The orphans were also brought up writing. Evert himself wrote songs to melodies familiar to him, and writing became the logical means of communication when he was deaf and mute. The quality of his texts does not, of course, exceed the beginner’s level of an adolescent. Evert does not use the long, owing periods modeled on the Latin sentence, as Master Zas does in his introductory remarks printed on the title pages of the pamphlets. When Evert describes what is happening to him or gives some concrete instructions, his style is factual and communicative. His short messages are composed in a simple, paratactic form that closely resembles spoken language, with countless repetitions: Master, I beg you from the bottom of my heart to write out the notes, everything that I have written, or yet shall write, o, do that; whether in life or death, that is what I desire of you. (a4)

But when he wants to achieve something on the moral plane, or for the longer term, his style becomes more imploring, and he almost automatically switches to rhymed verse. Early modern prose novels published in the Low Countries commonly employed rhymed verse to indicate strong emotion. It functioned as a marker for passages that carried a special emotional charge. When Evert uses rhyme, then, we know he is putting his heart and soul into what he says. Evert clearly felt a strong urge to write, and not only during his periods of ecstasy. The act of writing itself is described in the pamphlets without any aura of piety or amazement. Reading and writing were normal activities in the community of schoolchildren in the Calvinist orphanage, and paper was always at hand. Before entering the ecstasy preceding his second healing, Evert himself requests a written dialogue with those present, as if this were a routine matter: “Whoever now has something to write . . .” (b28). But it is not really clear if Evert wrote his notes only because he was unable to speak, or if they conform to the logic typical of an emerging written culture.17 In support of the 17 For the cognitive transformation caused by the passage from oral to written culture: Walter Ong, Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word (London & New York

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latter possibility we can note that he wrote his two lengthy songs about the rst healing long after he had regained his power of speech. With that double narratio of his experience, one narrative-analytical and the other biblical-typological, he created distance to what had overcome him. Writing (and the written word of Scripture) helped him objectify his experience and gain control of it emotionally. But what he produced were hymns, perhaps recorded for the purpose of singing in the orphanage but obviously written as school exercises assigned by Master Zas. Certainly Evert had “spent his years at school diligently,” to quote the master about his protégé (b18). He had sufcient mastery of the written word to effortlessly construct long, involved sentences. Did Evert write under divine inspiration? Or even through divine coercion? The Bible offers countless examples here, from Moses and the prophets to the evangelist John. When these men wanted to keep God’s wonders secret, He forced them to write by sending them physical or existential afictions until they took up the pen. Evert’s delight in writing forms an almost natural compensation for his deaf-muteness. In this situation he in fact nds himself at the crossroads of two traditions. In the prophetic tradition of pietism, quotations from the Bible were effortlessly and endlessly strung together to produce an effect of biblical “overkill” that would overwhelm even the most doubting reader. When deployed as a conscious strategy, however, as among some of Evert’s contemporaries, it easily became a form of biblical terrorism and lost its effectiveness; the reader would not even nish a text, for fear of losing his freedom of interpretation and consequently his sense of self. This blunt emphasis on scriptural content we also nd in Evert occasionally, but it is tempered with another tradition, that of speaking mechanically, as if in a trance. This was known as the gift of speaking in tongues.18 It can also refer to what the French social anthropologist Arnold Van Gennep has labeled a langue spéciale, a language limited to a specic situation and typical of the intermediate phase of a rite of passage.19

1982); Jack Goody, The interface between the written and the oral (Cambridge 1987); R.E.V. Stuip & C. Vellekoop (eds.), Oraliteit en schriftcultuur (Hilversum 1993). 18 Watson E. Mills (ed.), Speaking in tongues: A guide to research on glossolalia (Grand Rapids. Mich. 1986). 19 Arnold Van Gennep, ‘Essai d’une theórie des langues spéciales’, in: Revue d’études ethnographiques et sociologiques (1908), 327–337; the same, Les Rites de passage (Paris 1909), 241–242.

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Strictly speaking Evert did not speak in tongues. He had in fact lost his tongue. It was precisely this speech disorder that worked like a magnet on his surroundings, and this may have been his subconscious intention as well. Evert’s aphasia, the silence in which he was shrouded, forced those around him to “listen,” that is, to enter into written communication with him.20 It is as if God provided a sensory compensation for Evert’s muteness, as if his hand were moved by God to perform automatic writing.21 He writes in the way he would have spoken if he had been able to speak. Did he write in ecstasy or some rapt state? There is no indication of this in his discussions with those around him. But occasionally he becomes ecstatic about writing itself, like a child discovering a new dimension of the world. On the day of his rst healing, for example, when he feels the end of his ordeal approaching, he starts repeating the words he writes, as in an incantation: God, abide with me; be my helper, I trust in thee, o God, that thou canst help me, but men cannot. God be gracious unto me. Look upon me with the eyes of thy lovingkindness. Be gracious unto me, a poor sinner. Be thou my refuge always; I put my trust in thee always, and in no other. Lord, be gracious unto me, comfort me with your comfort, and with your holy name. (b12)

On the rst day of his second experience, January 18, he gradually heightens the suspense, which is then suddenly released in mechanical writing (a3, b21). First he addresses all those present, then calls for his master; and the emotion evoked in him by the matron nally leads him to a meditative repetition: Spread the word, spread the word, for God is greatly grieved that his marvelous works are not spread abroad. O spread the word, o my dear friends I pray you spread it abroad, for God is sorely troubled that his holy deeds are not proclaimed throughout the whole world. Spread it, O spread it. (a3)

Evert is aware that his words are inspired by God: “My tongue will receive its speech from thee” (b17). His longer texts therefore seem to have come about through a strictly associative logorrhea (b7–8). Master Zas conrms with a good many words himself that Evert “in writing

20

Roman O. Jakobson, Studies on child language and aphasia (The Hague 1971). William James, The varieties of religious experience [1902] (Cambridge, Mass. & London 1985), 457–461. 21

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and re-writing became more and more enlightened in comprehension and understanding” (b27). The signicance of that act of writing goes far beyond the content of the text. It literally conrms Evert in his role as “mouthpiece” for the community—the children in the orphanage, the Calvinists in Woerden. His unusual but nevertheless recognizable language is living proof that the Holy Spirit is working in him. He is the intermediary between dogma and faith, intellect and emotion. The sturdy idiom of Calvinist orthodoxy he translates into a devout idiolect that can also be understood by children and the uneducated. He speaks the language of the group from which he comes, but his ecstasy enables him to mediate the language of a higher level of abstraction and make it comprehensible for his own group. For a short moment he embodies what Michel de Certeau terms the “vocal utopia.”22 Evert’s linguistic usage is far from perfect. His constructions are shaky, his sentences fragmentary, his rhymes clumsy, his terms seldom well chosen. His language does not faithfully conform to an existing literary model, such as found in booklets about exemplary conversions.23 Evert stammers, but in his stammering captures his feelings by naming them. Almost automatically, it seems, he expresses himself in biblical language, the idiom with which he has learned to play, even though the Bible in some cases stands for a secular experience. Evert’s speaking/writing is thus the actual account of an inner searching. It also testies to his entry into the world of written culture. But at the same time it explains something of his uctuating success in Woerden. The orphans recognize his language and look up to him. They hang on his every word. As an educated person, Master Zas understands the importance of what is happening, but the guardians of the ecclesiastically approved biblical Word, the preachers, remain skeptical. In the boy’s jumble of words they cannot recognize the clear language of God. When they eventually are persuaded, it is not by Evert’s writings but by the impact of what overcame him through the providence of God. In Evert’s direct surroundings writing was not yet taken for granted as a means for expressing and ordering reality—that status it would acquire later. But for Evert himself the situation was different. The ecstatic replacement of the spoken by the written word testies to the

22

Michel de Certeau, ‘Utopies vocales: glossolalies’, in: Traverses 20 (1980), 26–37. Patricia Caldwell, The Puritan conversion narrative: The beginnings of American expression (Cambridge 1983), 135–162. 23

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intensity of his longing for a more structured way of articulating meaning, in keeping with the logic of a religious written culture. It is hardly surprising, then, that the angel commanded him to go to school and become a servant of the Word, of Scripture. In his rapt state Evert was anticipating his future.

Writing poems and singing Evert’s four longest texts are rhymed. Rhyme stands for emotion, as mentioned above. But there is more. Ut pictura poesis, the well-known formula of Horace’s Ars poetica, declares that a poem, like a painting, visualizes. Rhyme also aids memorization, as the educators of children discovered long ago. For a young man who still stood with one foot in the oral culture, rhyme made it easier to remember texts. With rhyme as a crutch, he was able to absorb their content in such a way that it could be summoned up at a moment’s notice. On the other hand, the rhyme—and especially the internal rhyme scattered through all the texts—indicates that he carried his texts around with him a long time, ruminating, adjusting and reformulating before committing them to writing. His ecstasy was then the capstone of a long process of inner maturation, one that perhaps began during his illness. In any case, the rhyme here still testies to an aural culture. Yet the singing in the orphanage was not simply done from memory: only when Evert is given a Psalter does the group begin to sing, carefully following the lines as printed. When they nish Psalm 8, they go on to Psalm 9 (b32–33). All of this indicates a collective singing style based on the use of a book with texts. But there is yet another dimension. Singing occupied a special, personal place in Evert’s cultural world. Did Master Zas, who was previously cantor of the town church, take special notice of the boy for this reason as well? In June 1626 the magistracy of Woerden hired a new organist, Master Gerrit Dircx (Verhey), at a salary of 200 guilders per year. It was stipulated that Master Gerrit was required, until further notice and without additional remuneration, to provide instruction “if Evert in the orphanage, and another orphan besides him, wishes to learn music.”24 This certainly seems to indicate a desire—and perhaps

24

SAW, I, 10, f. 90 ( June 10, 1626). The other orphan may well have been his younger half-brother Pieter Muysevoet. He would later become a schoolmaster in the

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a feeling—for music. Unless Evert was already an advanced pupil, ready to begin learning a trade, this probably would have been a matter of organ lessons. Singing he could just as well learn from the cantor Master Zas. Organ playing was not a matter of course for a prospective minister, however. The use of the organ in church was still hotly disputed—most of those in Evert’s circles were opposed to it. Not until 1638 did the synod of Delft declare organ playing to be a “middling matter” that should be left to the discretion of the congregation (art. 50). But as late as 1641 Reverend Alutarius’s father-in-law Jan Calckmans wrote—in response to Constantijn Huygens’s plea in favor of the church organ—that organ music entices people to “thoughts of eshly delights, without any sighing to God about their sins,” and that “the sound of the organ is an unfamiliar language to which the congregation cannot say Amen.”25 Organ playing was profane. The organist was not in the employ of the church but of the town, and he played only after the service was over. Evert’s musical education was therefore not simply an attribute of his clerical calling. His desire to sing and play music was much more a matter of an inner drive. Singing was for him a special form of communication. We see that clearly in his texts as well. Repeatedly he refers full of hope to the singing that will take place in the presence of God or the Lamb (b17: Col. 3:16; James 3:9; Rev. 14:1–5). For Evert singing is actually speaking with God. Moreover, the fact that he was twice healed during the singing of a psalm (rst Psalm 100, then Psalm 8), imparts a magical quality to song: it is the language that can induce God to act. But it is also an instrument of physical enjoyment, so full and rich that it relaxes tense limbs and quickens dulled senses. Song brings deliverance. It makes Evert a new man. The two rhymed texts that he writes shortly after his healing reect this intimate experience. As literary artifacts, however, we can view them as school exercises related to the art of the rederijkers or rhetoricians.26

village of Linschoten, a job that in small rural communities usually entailed the function of cantor and organist. 25 Jan Jansz Calckmans, Antidotum. Tegen-gift vant gebruyck of on-gebruyck vant orgel inde kercken der Vereenighde Nederlanden (The Hague 1641); Simon Groenveld, ‘ “Speelstryt”. Constantijn Huygens en het orgelgebruik in zijn tijd (1640/41)’, in: Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 79 (1966), 260–278, on Calckmans: 273–275; Smelik, De liedcultuur, 92–95. 26 On the Dutch rederijkers, their chambers of rhetoric, and their art, see Nelleke Moser, De strijd voor rhetorica. Poëtica en positie van rederijkers in Vlaanderen, Brabant, Zeeland

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The careful construction of the rst and longest song (“Glory to God in heaven above,” see the text on pp. 3–6) observes all the rules of classical rhetoric that the boys learned in the Latin school.27 It indicates an active part played by Evert’s mentor—both a Latin teacher and a rederijker—from the moment that Evert was admitted to that school. Stanza 1 forms the exordium, which invokes the good favor of the audience. Stanzas 2–8 present the story of the events (the narratio). The factual recounting of the case is followed by the argumentatio, subdivided into the conrmatio and refutatio. The conrmatio (stanzas 9–16) conrms God’s omnipotence by citing a variety of miracles and biblical exempla; the refutatio (stanzas 17–20) presents a rebuttal to the opponent, in this case sinful humanity, with a reference to the Last Judgment, and is preceded by the example of the foolish virgins. The denitive conclusio (stanza 21) ends with a peroratio (stanzas 22–24), which summarizes the content up to that point, then addresses a nal warning to the audience. The classical form of the poems lends them a persuasiveness well matched to the urgency of the boy’s message. Yet these texts are not simply poems but songs intended for singing. Melodically they have the form of a contrafact—a new song, that is, set to an already existing melody.28 The formal elements point not only to a school exercise but to the singing culture and the poetry of the rederijkers: the frequent use of internal rhyme in successive lines, the “Hear me . . .” (“Oorlof . . .”) as opening words of the last stanza in both songs, the direct second-person address of the Brothers and Sisters, the moralizing motto (again with internal rhyme) placed under the songs to identify the author. They testify to partly oral, partly written forms of a collective use of word and melody, traditions older than the individualized reading culture for which Evert supplies only halfhearted evidence.29 He is clearly more at ease with songs and singing.

en Holland tussen 1450 en 1620 (Amsterdam 2001); B.A.M. Ramakers (ed.), Conformisten en rebellen. Rederijkerscultuur in de Nederlanden (1400–1650) (Amsterdam 2003); Arjan van Dixhoorn, Lustige geesten. Rederijkers en hun kamers in het publieke leven van de Noordelijke Nederlanden in de vijftiende, zestiende en zeventiende eeuw (PhD diss., Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 2004). See also chapter 3, footnote 69. 27 I am grateful to Marijke Spies for her suggestions on this matter. 28 Louis Peter Grijp, Het Nederlandse lied in de Gouden Eeuw: het mechanisme van de contrafactuur (Amsterdam 1991). 29 On the transition from singing culture to reading culture: E.K. Grootes, ‘Het jeugdig publiek van de “nieuwe liedboeken” in het eerste kwart van de zeventiende eeuw’, in: W. van den Berg & J. Stouten (eds.), Het woord aan de lezer: zeven literatuurhistorische verkenningen (Groningen 1987), 72–88; Marijke Spies, ‘Zoals de ouden zongen,

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The schoolmaster must have helped Evert polish his nal product. The numerous Bible references in the margin of the second song certainly create the impression of thorough familiarity with the printed biblical word. Evert is supposed to have added them himself (b13), but Master Zas may have guided his hand in order to accentuate his virtuosity to the outside world. The rst song is dated October 8, the second has no date. Both Evert and his teacher may have labored long over it. The melodies, however, were most likely Evert’s own choice. They are mentioned above the text: “To the melody of the 100th Psalm of David” (b13) and “To the melody of the 23rd Psalm of David. The Lord is my Shepherd, etc.” (b16). These melody specications testify that Evert’s cultural practice belongs in the tradition of the spiritual song, or hymn, which believers are called to sing in Colossians 3:16 (cited by Evert in a motto under the second song, b18), and more concretely in that of psalm singing. Evert’s reason for choosing Psalm 100 is obvious: because he was healed during the singing of Psalm 100, he soon afterward composes a text about that event to the same melody. The parallelism shows how thoroughly he was gripped by his mystical experience; it apparently occupied him for weeks. The rst line of Psalm 23 as quoted by Evert is in fact taken from the Dathenus Psalter. Psalms 23 and 100 were also two of the most commonly sung psalms, and the ones most frequently used for contrafacts: they were thought of in the rst place not as psalms for reading but as typical melodies. It is conceivable that Evert did not sing his compositions by himself but that the other orphans sang, or hummed, along with him. The centrality of psalm singing in the daily life of a Calvinist from those years speaks clearly from the diary of David Beck (1624). As if in passing he notes down when and where he sang psalms, and how many in succession. On the evening before his birthday, January 17, he sang with two housemates “at the re before we started eating Psalms 50, 51, and 19.” The next day, on his birthday, he sang by himself before going to sleep Psalms 6, 91, 100, 131, 130, 129, and 103. The following day he sang Psalms 2, 8, 13, 16, and 18 before the evening meal, and after the meal a Lord’s Prayer. Three days later, on Sunday morning, he sang Psalms 79, 80, 81, and 101 and (as a Calvinist!) a

lazen de jongen: over de overgang van zang- naar leescultuur in de eerste helft van de zeventiende eeuw’, in: ibid., 89–109.

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few High German songs from the Lutheran hymnbook.30 His listings suggest that Beck at times opened his Psalter randomly, but then sang the next (or preceding) few psalms as well. For Beck, psalm singing was almost literally a form of breathing. Luther and Calvin had both emphasized the power of song over the spirit. It kindles the heart of the believer, according to Calvin, causing him to praise God more ardently, and with God’s own biblical Word. This accounts for the central role of psalm singing in all the religious groupings since the sixteenth century that emphasized emotional or pietistic religious experience: Mennonites, Collegiants, and especially the pietists among the orthodox Calvinists. Psalm singing was everywhere. It denitely was not limited to congregational singing in church. Psalms were sung at home and in the street, in groups and alone.31 As in Germany, the rhymed psalms were very likely not only sung but read as well. Song transported the heart to God, and a person who felt close to God almost naturally produced poetry. About the quality of the congregational singing we should have no illusions. The singing was loud and slow, isometric but arrhythmic, with the texts emphatically articulated, syllable by syllable.32 At rst there was no organ accompaniment—the synods had banned the organ from the church service and reduced the task of the organist, who was in the employ of the civil authorities, to the playing of preludes and postludes. But it is quite possible that individual singing was different. Beck could never have sung seven psalms in succession at the tempo typical of congregational singing. And Evert’s songs would have taken hours for him to sing. Yet Evert closely follows the structure of the psalms in the Dathenus tradition, which were sung in a way so offensive to our ears.33 Line after line both songs have precisely the number of syllables required by the melody, always one note per syllable. Evert must have composed his texts while singing or humming, with the psalms themselves in mind.

30

Beck, Spiegel, 33–36. Van Deursen, Plain lives in a Golden Age, 269–270. 32 J.R. Luth, ‘Daer wert om ’t seerste uytgekreten’. Bijdragen tot een geschiedenis van de gemeentezang in het Nederlandse gereformeerde protestantisme ±1550–±1852 (2 vols., Kampen 1986); the same, ‘Remarks on the history of congregational singing in the Dutch Reformed churches’, in: Charles Caspers & Marc Schneiders (eds.), Omnes circumadstantes: Contributions towards a history of the role of the people in liturgy, presented to Herman Wegman (Kampen 1990), 189–196; J. de Bruijn & W. Heijting (eds.), Psalmzingen in de Nederlanden van de zestiende eeuw tot heden (Kampen 1991). 33 On Dathenus (1531/32–1588): BLPNP, IV, 110–114. 31

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They suggest thorough familiarity with the mechanism of the contrafact, an indication perhaps that this was not a rst attempt. Evert’s opening lines, for example, clearly allude to the rst words of both psalms and thus stand in the tradition that Louis Grijp terms the initial (in this case the thematic) borrowing.34 Where Dathenus’s Psalm 100 begins with “Ye peoples of the earthly realm” Evert draws attention to the other realm: “Praise be to God in heaven above.” And where Dathenus has David sing in Psalm 23 “My God feeds me as my shepherd (who is) praised,” Evert comes in the second line with “Glory be to God the Lord (who is) praised.” Evert was clearly familiar with psalm singing. He faithfully reproduces Dathenus’s incorrect word accents, so jarring to our sense of rhythm. End rhymes were essential, of course, but as often as not were achieved by llers, extra padding added to otherwise short lines. The double “wilt verstaen” (“be it understood”) in the rst two stanzas of the rst song, for example: Aen een Jonghelingh wilt verstaen, Daer aen heeft God seer wel gedaen, (b13) [To a young boy, be it understood, To him God has done so much good]

and in the next stanza: Door zijn Engelen wilt verstaen, Die quamen daer vliegende aen. [Sending his angels, as we do know, Who ew from Heaven down here below]

Or the pair “voorwaer” (“truly”)/“klaer” (“bright”) in stanza 7 (b14). Or the “reyne” (“pure”) in stanza 6 of the second song: Maer in’t singen moet niet mijn stem alleyne Komen te saem met Rijm en Musijck reyne, Maer oock den sin en ’s herten vreughd daer neven, Wild ons God u Heyligen Geest geven. (b17) [But in singing not my voice alone Must join with rhyme and music pure in tone, But all my mind and all my joyful heart If Thou, O God, Thy Spirit wilt impart.]

34

Grijp, Het Nederlandse lied, 81–90.

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This last quotation brings us to Evert’s conception of his singing practice: a song must rhyme, and the rhyme contributes to the spiritual pleasure of singing. Does this perhaps explain the un-Dathenian frequency of internal rhyme in the second song, on the melody of Psalm 23? Evert here gives evidence of a musical ear, for the internal rhyme in this case clearly reinforces the melody. We nd, for example, the pair “brand”/“band” (“burns”/“bond”) in stanza 4: Mijn herte brand door Gods liefde van binnen, Door liefdes-band aan hem zijn vast mijn zinnen (b17) [My heart’s are in me with God’s own love, All my desire is bound to Him above]

the pair “Lam”/“vlam” (“Lamb”/“ame”) in stanza 5: Volgen het Lam waer hem my heenen keeret, Door liefdes vlam met hert en mond u eeret [Follow the Lamb where he will have me graze, My heart will ame with love, my mouth with praise]

or the two successive pairs in stanza 8: Van een reyn hert Gods lof altijd vermonden, Sulck offer werd van ’s Hemels vier verslonden, Als Abel deed’, in alle dingen mede, Ter plaets en steed’ daermen het doet in vrede. (b17) [God’s ceaseless praise will from a pure heart spring, A heavenly blaze consumes such offering As Able brought, in ev’ry time and place Where deeds are fraught with peace and words with grace.]

Evert cannot sustain internal rhymes through the entire poem, however. Technically he is no match for his predecessor in contrafact use of Psalm 23, the popular Dutch poet Gerbrand Adriaensz Bredero (1585–1618), who fashioned a love song with clear and consistent internal rhyme throughout.35 Nevertheless these songs reveal a little more about Evert’s position on the cultural chessboard of the early seventeenth century: oral poetic practice and religious written culture come together for Evert in the medium of song. It is the cultural instrument that affords him

35 F.H. Matter (ed.), G.A. Bredero’s Boertigh, amoreus, en aendachtigh Groot Lied-Boeck. De melodieën van Bredero’s liederen (The Hague 1979), 154–155.

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access to God, his Father in heaven, and persuades Him to intervene in the earthly realm. This explains the implied analogy between the two realms in the opening lines of Psalm 100 and Evert’s contrafact.

Religious sources Although Evert Willemsz cites only Bible texts in the margin of his songs, he is also indebted, at least indirectly, to the other sources from which those in his immediate surroundings drew wisdom. The Milk Food of Alutarius has already been mentioned. The questions and answers it contained were no doubt intensively memorized. Did Evert read such texts himself, or only hear them read? He in any case actively assimilated them. We have no idea how many persons in his circle engaged in personal reading of Scripture or other religious literature. If we consider the ability to sign one’s name as evidence of at least rudimentary reading skills—uent writing of course requires a great deal more—then the level of literacy in Woerden in the rst quarter of the seventeenth century seems low. Estimates based on notarized documents and deeds drawn up before aldermen from those years reveal that at least as many persons used an x or a mark for a signature as wrote their own name. The custom of using a patronymic, even when a person had a surname, makes an exact count on this point illusory. But if we consider that only the somewhat better situated tradesmen and merchants, civil servants and regents appear in those documents, we can safely say that most of the people living in Woerden were unable to write. Does this mean that they were also unable to read? Recent years have brought a great deal of speculation about the difference between reading and writing skills.36 Pure reading ability almost by denition eludes empirical research, since the sources testify exclusively to the art of writing. Moreover, only a fraction of possible written sources (private correspondence or bookkeeping, for example) have survived, leaving us with no clear picture even of writing ability. It is nevertheless quite likely that more people could read than we might suspect. For the 300 to 350 boys and girls between the ages of 6 and 12 who must have been living in Woerden around 1620 there were ve

36

R.A. Houston, Literacy in early modern Europe: Culture and education 1500–1800 (2d revised ed., Harlow 2002).

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schoolmasters available, besides private tutors engaged in the home or elsewhere. Certainly half, probably even a much larger percentage of the children must have learned at least basic reading skills. The ability to read was also much more unpredictably distributed over social groups than in later centuries, depending as it did on the individual decision (and nancial resources) of parents to provide instruction for their children, and the role played by books in family life. This meant that in the rst decades of the seventeenth century some of the poor were literate, while shopkeepers, merchants, and even the occasional village or small-town administrator would be unable to sign their name or would still prefer to sign with a mark. The act of reading is of course linked to the availability of reading material, but exactly what was available is also one of the most important unknowns. We have to be on our guard here: the existence of large quantities of book titles and huge numbers of pamphlets in the broadly dened “Netherlands” of those years does not necessarily mean they were available to everyone in every town. How did people know what there was to read? And how did they gain access to it? Virtually unknown factors—price (crucial for those with smaller pocketbooks), distribution network, the role of passing on, inheriting, or lending books, to say nothing of the small chance that topical printed matter would be preserved, or even unofcial censorship in distribution—cloud every general statement on this point with doubt. The perfect condition of many pamphlets in our libraries, for example, indicates that they may have been bought or even hoarded, but denitely not always read to shreds. In any case, we know very little about the reading material circulating in Woerden in those years. There are no records of probate inventories of Woerden citizens prior to 1648. Even the existence of a full-edged bookshop offering more than the most essential items for church and school remains vague. Simple reading material could no doubt be purchased from a peddler or market vendor now and then, but we nd no traces of this in the sources. We have already seen that the orphanage itself bought only textbooks locally. But Utrecht and Leiden, two important centers of book production, with many large bookstores, were not far away. Educated Woerdeners who occasionally traveled out of town probably stocked up there.

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Some insight, however, can be gained from the probate inventories of deceased persons in the second half of the seventeenth century.37 We can assume that these were households formed at least one or two decades earlier. It is important to remember that persons whose belongings were inventoried by the notary were reasonably well off. The social underclass remains outside the picture. Most striking here is the monopoly of religious literature in the lower social strata. Nowhere is mention made of chapbooks, chivalric novels, or other popular prose. When books are present it is always “church material”: a Lutheran or Reformed Bible, a Testament, a Psalter, an authoritative Bible commentary, or perhaps a postille (moralizing meditations on Bible passages for everyday use in the home). Just as the Psalters indicate a concrete singing practice, a postille suggests a specic practice of reading, perhaps at mealtimes. People had almost no books in their houses besides the religious material. There may have been an almanac or a well-thumbed schoolbook, which remained outside the inventory because it had no sale value. But these were, each in their own way, more utilitarian items than books intended for reading in the strict sense of the word. Reading, we can conclude, formed part of the larger picture of interaction with God’s Word. But there is one more source that leads us to the immediate circles of Evert Willemsz. After the Reverend Henricus Alutarius left Rotterdam, he had a shipment of books sold in Franeker on May 18, 1631.38 Was this perhaps the library of his father, who had died in Tzum in 1627? The titles in any case reveal the spiritual coloring of the owner. They show how Alutarius owed his early inspiration to the English Puritans and felt very much at home in the emerging Dutch pietism. The godfather of English Puritanism, William Perkins, is the author who appears most frequently on the list. Besides his Armilla aurea salutis of 1590, there are ve Dutch translations of his work by Vincent Meusevoet: The estate of a Christian man in this life (1601), An exposition of the symbole or creed of the Apostles (1603), The reformation of couevetousnesse (Against greed, 1604), as well as his commentaries on the epistles to the Galatians (1607) and the Hebrews (1612). From the same quarter, but with an unmistakable chiliastic slant, are two volumes of treatises by William Cowper and the

37 38

SAW, NA, 8531–8539. Rijksarchief in Friesland (Tresoar), Nedergerecht Franeker, HH (May 15, 1631).

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commentaries on Revelation by John Napier and Thomas Brightman, the latter also translated by Meusevoet (1621). Finally there are works by the Zeeland pietist Godfried Udemans: Practice, that is, true exercise of the Christian cardinal virtues: faith, hope, and love (1612), an explication of the Song of Songs (1616), and The spiritual compass (1617), a devotional manual for sailors, shermen, and sea captains. An anonymous Exercise in godliness completes the picture of an orthodox Calvinist collection, oriented towards the practice of Christian living. The preference of young Evert for precisely this minister suggests that he, too, felt drawn to the spirituality so fervently propagated by his relative Meusevoet.

Visual culture Even more difcult to determine than the place of the written word is that of visual culture in the life of a seventeenth-century boy. Since writing did not yet dominate the transmission of knowledge, visual communication played a large role. Social groups like the one in which Evert Willemsz grew up developed conventions all their own. They already took part in the written culture, but still transmitted it largely by oral means; they also had only limited access to the high culture of the educated. We might expect that in such circles the appropriation of text and visual language came about through a special combination of the two. Certainly there was great receptivity for images. But it would be naïve to think that they were approached in a completely spontaneous or primitive way, as if they were direct and unmediated representations of reality. Even the simplest images and rituals stood in specic traditions of form and meaning. The viewer or participant may not always have been aware of them, but he shared in them nevertheless and absorbed their essence. For this reason alone it is likely that for most viewers it took a long time before the old allegorical representations slipped off their foundations of Christian moralizing and gradually entered the secular eld of social-ethical meanings. How can we gain some insight into the local visual culture of seventeenth-century Woerden? Among the few sources available are probate inventories of citizens’ movable property that mention paintings. Research comparing these documents with those in other large cities of Holland reveals that the visual world of Woerden art owners, like their reading culture, was unusually saturated with religious references. An analysis of almost three hundred inventories in seventeenthcentury Dordrecht shows a steady decline in the proportion of works with religious themes: more than 30% in 1620–29, less than 20% in

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1650–59, and barely 10% half a century later.39 Even in the estates of Dordrecht Reformed ministers, elders, and deacons religious paintings were relatively scarce, and of those that were present, most were on Old Testament subjects. The same was true in Delft.40 And in an analysis of 362 Amsterdam inventories dating from 1620 to 1679 that include art objects, the American art historian Montias found that one out of four had a religious subject around 1620, but that the proportion of religious themes then dropped rapidly, to approximately one in ten by 1680.41 Although implicit and hidden religious meanings are not taken into account by rough tallies like these, the fact remains that interest in religious topics in all these cities underwent a similar decline. Around 1650 they made up no more than one-fth of visual culture. In Woerden only the estate of notary Pieter Dircksz van Leeuwen, a Leiden native, ts this pattern.42 Percentages of 60 and more for religious subjects, as found in the two inventories of well-to-do Woerdeners dated 1655, indicate a sharply divergent local development.43 It would be unwise to hastily label this as “cultural lag,” although the large number of allegorical representations in both inventories from that year suggests a rather outmoded choice of subject. But such estates reect an acquisition pattern spanning several decades, to say nothing of older heirlooms. Moreover, owing to specic local circumstances, religious subjects were an important factor in determining a person’s social position in Woerden. Choosing a painting of the crucixion or a portrait of Luther was not only a matter of individual preference; it had symbolic signicance as well, giving a person a religious identity and strengthening his confessional position in Woerden society. The Lutheran pottery merchant Aert Jansz van Rijnevelshorn and his 39 John Loughman, ‘Een stad en haar kunstconsumptie: openbare en privéverzamelingen in Dordrecht 1620–1719’, in: P. Marijnissen et al. (ed.), De Zichtbaere Werelt: schilderkunst uit de Gouden eeuw in Hollands oudste stad (Zwolle & Dordrecht 1992), 34–64. 40 John M. Montias, Artists and artisans in Delft: A socio-economic study of the seventeenth century (Princeton, NJ 1982), 220–271. 41 John M. Montias, ‘Works of art in seventeenth-century Amsterdam. An analysis of subjects and attributions’, in: David Freedberg & Jan de Vries (eds.), Art in history/ history in art: Studies in seventeenth-century Dutch culture (Santa Monica, Calif. 1992), 331–372. See also: John Loughman & John M. Montias, Public and private spaces: Works of art in seventeenth-century Dutch houses (Zwolle 2000); John M. Montias, Art and auction in seventeenth-century Amsterdam (Amsterdam 2002). 42 SAW, NA, 8531, n° 71 (March 26, 1649); for details, see Wegen, 342–343. 43 SAW, NA, 8537, n° 115 ( January 29, 1655: estate of Aert Jansz van Rijnevelshorn) and 116 (April 24, 1655: estate of Willem Jansz Loos).

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Remonstrant wife made consistent choices in this respect. They stand much closer to the Catholic visual tradition, with its pronounced preference for the life and sufferings of Christ, than to that of the orthodox Calvinists. All through the seventeenth century the Calvinists retained their fascination with exemplary Old Testament gures, with Abraham, Lot, Moses, Jacob, Joseph, Jephtha, David, and Tobias as clear favorites. All these gures, except Tobias, also appear in the 1655 estates of the Lutheran citizens Rijnevelshorn and Willem Jansz Loos. But the Woerden inventories reveal a few additional accents that indicate an especially prominent position of religion in the local visual culture.

Biblical identication We nd an accent of this kind in the biblical characters that Evert Willemsz adopted as role models, gures who were also a familiar part of his visual environment in Woerden. This process of identication can be understood quite literally. Evert identied with the heroes of Scripture, whom he associated with visual images, just as teenagers of today decorate their rooms with posters of pop stars and athletes. The pamphlets give us a clear picture of Evert’s own visual world. In the growing pains of his religious experience he again and again compares himself with prophetic gures from the Old and New Testament whom God similarly aficted but also subsequently delivered from their suffering. After their deliverance they praised God exuberantly and went through life as public examples of His greatness. This is what he hopes to do himself if it pleases God to heal him. The identications give him the inner certainty that this will take place soon. Pivotal to Evert’s message is the power of God: God heals cripples and lepers, the deaf hear, the dumb speak (b11, b14). God has the power to feed the hungry with almost nothing: ve loaves of bread and two sh were enough for his audience of ve thousand (b15; Matt. 14:21). God is Evert’s supreme model: He is the way, the truth, the life, and the light (b18). But God’s power is revealed in frail human beings, as the boy writes in October 1622, after being delivered from his fasting: Elijah by the raven fed, Daniel safe from lions led And by Habakkuk served so fair, All these bear witness of God’s care. (b15)

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Like Abel, Evert has sacriced the best of himself and he hopes this will be pleasing to the Lord (b17; Gen. 4:4). Even more telling is Evert’s identication with a prophet at the borderline between the Old and New Testament, the priest Zacharias, father of John the Baptist and thus a close relative of Christ (Luke 1). “Thou didst open the mouth of the prophet Zacharias, and loosen his tongue, so that he would praise and glorify your name” (b7), Evert writes during his rst phase of deaf-muteness in September 1622. The opening lines of one of the two poems he wrote soon after his rst healing show to what extent he viewed himself as a replica of Zacharias: Zacharias had his speech restored And spoke: all glory be to God the Lord. God also rescued me in time of need, No work of man, it’s clear, but God’s own deed.

Zacharias was also visited by an angel with good tidings: Despite their advanced age, he and his wife would still have a son. When Zacharias hesitated to believe the angel he was struck dumb until the time that God’s words would be fullled (Luke 1:20). Only after he wrote on a tablet that the child should be called John, thus obeying the command of the angel, was his tongue loosened, enabling him to praise God in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, as Paul and James also urge in their epistles (b16; Col. 3:16; James 3:9).

CHAPTER FIVE

ELECTION

Close to God In Evert’s eyes Zacharias is more than just a divinely inspired prophet. As the man responsible for the conception of John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ, he is also a direct witness of God’s personal nearness. Evert is acutely aware of God’s consuming presence in his life. The parallel he draws between the discussions in the tailor’s workshop and the episode of the disciples on the way to Emmaus is especially striking (b24: Luke 24:13–35): he physically feels the breath of the Spirit in his spiritual conversations with his employer. As if inspired by God, he almost naturally reaches for words that identify him with Christ: “Not my will but thine be done” (b7: Luke 22:24); “I pray you . . . watch and pray with me one short hour” (b9: Matt. 26:40), for “you will not see me long in this state” (b9: cf. Matt. 23:39). And again: “O Father, I place my will in the will of my God” (b10). The context of suffering is no coincidence here. Faced with the inertia of his environment, the skepticism of the church, and the resistance by part of the town, Evert feels forced into the defensive. He ees into identication with the persecuted Christ, with the result that his personal identity becomes both elevated and blurred. He is himself briey the mediator between God and humanity—he, Evert, the young craftsman who like the carpenter’s son Jesus was destined by the Father for a religious ofce. This insight so pierced his awareness that it cropped up again days later at the end of his dream: “O people, do remember all that has befallen me. . . . Now I’ll be on my way again to life everlasting” (b35), he declared that night, as if he were Christ himself about to return to the Father for good. But no matter how Christ-like his aspirations, Evert never claimed to take the place of Christ. From this identication with Christ it was just a small step to his certainty of being one of the elect who “will then fervently sing the victory song/of God’s servant Moses, and the song of the Lamb” (b18: Rev. 15:3). “O Lord, that heavenly song teach me,/I long to sing it joyfully” (b17: Rev. 14:3). Being allowed to sing the song is a metonymy

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for election, because it is a privilege reserved only for those chosen by God. But for a boy who could be transported by the singing of psalms, singing could easily become a bodily metaphor for the exalted feeling that accompanies election. He rst, however, had to be puried by re, like Abel’s sacrice (Gen. 4:4)—an allusion to the sacrices he was required to make himself. The seal of election is God’s deliverance from the afictions that He had visited upon Evert: God punishes, aficts and saves, freely, unhampered by human logic. Signicantly, one of the song texts Evert composes in October 1622 is set to the tune of the extremely popular Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd.” With its appropriate feeding metaphor and implied identication with the young David, this psalm expresses the boy’s rm condence that God will lead him in paths of goodness and that he will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. This also explains the prominent place given to the book of Revelation in Evert’s texts and songs. Above all the uncertainties of his earthly existence he can condently proclaim that at the endpoint of his life he will belong to the Lamb’s elect (Rev. 14:1–5): I shall pray with the Spirit all my days And with the Spirit sing God’s praise, Follow the Lamb where he leads me, With heart and mouth aame for Thee, On Zion’s Mount learn from the Lamb To praise with the angels Thy great name. (b17)

As if to leave no room for doubt, Evert repeats again that he expects to be among the 144,000 elect who will sing the song of the Lamb: No one, Lord, may learn this song from thee But those who wish to praise thee ceaselessly. . . . That I one day might also learn to sing That Song so high, so heart-enrapturing. (b17)

Was Evert simply parroting what he had heard over and over again, or was he expressing a personal conviction? Arguments can be given for both. It was through his afiction that Evert arrived at his triumphant certainty about his own election. Sin and sickness, healing and salvation are here intertwined. We shall return to this aspect of pietistic thought in the next chapter. In formulating this certainty Evert made use of the analogies, models, and identications that the ecclesiastical tradition offered him. Evert’s double religious experience gives us a rare glimpse of how a devout boy assimilated the abstract dogma of predestination and distilled from it a concrete life project. It also shows the extensive

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social ramications of the predestination debate. In a sense Evert had already received his assurance with his rst deliverance, in September 1622, and gained a clear idea of his life’s work: he wanted to become a minister and as a minister let God’s Spirit work in him (b11). The rst religious experience, which remained completely within the walls of the orphanage, served to further his personal development. The benet accruing to his second afiction lay in a different sphere, namely in its signicance for Woerden society. The texts of January 1623 are briefer than those of 1622, and they contain little that is new. All the essential things had already been said. Now they are given a place in the broader message that the case of Evert Willemsz—in the local community he had by then become a topic of conversation, a case—could bring to bear on the sense and nonsense of the public discussion about election. That discussion is meaningful, Evert declares, for not only our personal salvation is at stake but that of the local community as well. The town should be a community of saints. The public recognition of his deliverance is then for him, and for those who believe in him, a necessary step on the path to a double certainty: that there is a core of elect living in Woerden, exemplied in Evert himself, and that this election demands holiness of life. Both themes dominate Evert’s last dream (b34–35). At three different points he alludes to the election of the group of like-minded persons in Woerden: But God’s own dear elect will never vanquished be Or crushed beneath the weight of the devil’s slavery.

God hears “the plaintive prayers of his elected friends who prayed there day and night,/with sighs and groans prayed constantly to God with all their might.” And He brings deliverance. Evert therefore concludes his dream with the words “Now I’ll be on my way again to life everlasting”—the life for which he now knows he is predestined. The grace of election, however freely given, demands a response of holy living, according to the will of God. “But if I shall speak and hear once more, my calling is from God the Lord, that I shall walk uprightly in the ways of the Lord” (b9). What holds for Evert holds equally for the people around him. Their ways must also be pure: O woe to wicked drunkards and to fornicators; If they do not repent, there’ll be no grace hereafter.

Pride, prodigality, fornication, drunkenness—repent of those sins and learn the ways of God. Although human works have essentially no inuence on election, there is no election without good works:

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Further Reformation The reformation of life that Evert Willemsz here sketches with a few quick strokes places him in the stream of the further reformation. That term requires some explanation. I intentionally write it without capital letters here in order to distinguish the initial broad movement of the further reformation as “interpretive community”1 of the Reformed message from the narrower group with specic ecclesiastical features that a short time later proled itself as the Further Reformation. Soon after various Dutch towns and regions had formally made the transition to the Calvinist confession, Protestants who had also undergone an inner conversion realized to their chagrin that people confessed and experienced the new dominant religion as supercially as they had Catholicism previously. They therefore declared that the public introduction of Calvinist doctrine and the institution of the Dutch Reformed Church were not enough to make the Dutch true Christians. People who took the Reformation seriously should also change their way of life (reformatio vitae), in a new spirit of practical piety ( praxis pietatis). No justication without sanctication. This second impulse to reformation can be termed a “further” reformation in a broad, socio-cultural sense, because it dened the term “reformation” more strictly and at the same time penetrated more deeply into Christians’ inner life of faith. But this stream was by no means restricted to the dominant Reformed church in the Dutch Republic. The same phenomenon could also be found in numerous other churches and denominational groups—including the Roman Catholic church, which ever since the Council of Trent (1545–1563) had given top priority to a thorough reformation of its hierarchy and members and had begun working toward this goal in the northern

1 For this term: S. Fish, Is there a text in this class? The authority of interpretive communities (Cambridge & London 1980). Cf. also its application to the religious domain by Gunnar Hansson (ed.), Bible reading in Sweden: Studies related to the translation of the New Testament 1981 (Uppsala 1990).

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provinces shortly before the Revolt.2 The broader Christianizing offensive that was sooner or later launched all over Europe led to divergent forms of Christian inuence on public mores, depending on the prevailing political constellation: Konfessionalisierung, Counter Reformation, and—in the Netherlands—Further Reformation (with capital letters) can be viewed as various public models of the Christianizing offensive. While the broad impetus for further reformation manifested itself in a variety of ecclesiastical groups, it acquired special signicance in the Dutch Reformed church, leading to the formation of an institutionalized socio-ecclesiastical movement with a political reform program, the Further Reformation.3 The reasons for this are clear: the theology of that church was the only theology publicly recognized and taught after the synod of Dort (1618–1619), and—more importantly—the Reformed church had at its disposal certain instruments of power in public life that enabled it to translate its conviction into concrete measures. However imperfectly the theocracy was realized, as an ecclesiastical ideal and a

2 From a very abundant bibliography, starting with the pioneering studies of John Bossy and Jean Delumeau on the (re)christianization of the West by the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, I refer in particular to the stimulating theses of Heinz Schilling on the process of confessionalization. See his collected essays, edited by Luise Schorn-Schütte & Olaf Mörke, Ausgewählte Abhandlungen zur europäischen Reformations- und Konfessionsgeschichte (Berlin 2002), and for this chapter in particular Heinz Schilling (ed.), Die reformierte Konfessionalisierung in Deutschland: das Problem der ‘Zweiten Reformation’ (Gütersloh 1986). Further the syntheses by Ronnie Po-chia Hsia, Social discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe 1550–1750 (London & New York 1989), and The world of Catholic renewal 1540–1770 (Cambridge 1998). For the Dutch Republic: Olaf Mörke, ‘“Konfessionalisierung” als politisch-soziales Strukturprinzip? Das Verhältnis von Religion und Staatsbildung in der Republik der Vereinigten Niederlande im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert’, in: Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis 16 (1990), 31–60; Willem Frijhoff, ‘Kalvinistische Kultur, Staat und Konfessionen in den Vereinten Provinzen der Niederlande’, in: Peter Claus Hartmann (ed.), Religion und Kultur im Europa des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt am Main 2004), 109–142. 3 Fred van Lieburg, ‘From pure church to pious culture: The Further Reformation in the seventeenth-century Dutch church’, in: W. Fred Graham (ed.), Later Calvinism: International perspectives [Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, XXII] (Kirksville, Miss. 1994), 409–429; Kaspar von Greyerz, Religion und Kultur in Europa 1500–1800 (Göttingen 2000), chapter 1; Philip Benedict, Christ’s churches purely reformed: A social history of Calvinism (New Haven & London 2002), 360–364. Dutch studies from within the movement: T. Brienen at alii, De Nadere Reformatie: beschrijving van haar voornaamste vertegenwoordigers (The Hague 1986); idem, De Nadere Reformatie en het gereformeerd piëtisme (The Hague 1989); C. Graaand, ‘De invloed van het puritanisme op het ontstaan van het gereformeerd piëtisme in Nederland’, in: Documentatieblad Nadere Reformatie 7 (1983), 1–24; W.J. op ’t Hof, ‘De invloed van het puritanisme in de Nederlanden’, in: W. van ’t Spijker, R. Bisschop & W.J. op ’t Hof, Het puritanisme: geschiedenis, theologie en invloed (The Hague 2001), 273–339.

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model for a civil society it was very much alive in circles of the Further Reformation. These claims found support in a specic conception of theology. The French humanist Pierre de La Ramée (1515–1572), better known as Petrus Ramus, appears to have played a key role here.4 His practical, highly didactic denition of theology as “doctrina bene vivendi” (the doctrine of living well) was rened by William Perkins into “doctrina beate vivendi” (the doctrine of living in eternal beatitude), a concept trenchantly reformulated by his pupil William Ames in his handbook Medulla theologiae (1623): “theologia est doctrina Deo vivendi” (theology is the doctrine of living for God).5 What mattered in the nal analysis was life, not doctrine. Not the mind, but the will was for Ramus the most important instrument of religion. This voluntaristic conception of spiritual life was essential for Puritan pietism.6 It explains the central place accorded to the Holy Spirit, who stimulates the human will, and it underlies the often tacit conviction that preaching can effectively appeal to the feelings of the listeners. For men like Perkins and Ames the furthering of the Reformation was therefore more a matter of depth than of breadth, an ongoing reform of piety, conduct, and mores. Their aim was not dogmatic and certainly not liturgical, but in the rst place spiritual and ethical. Orthodoxy required a foundation in orthopraxis: not words but deeds, no faith without works, no doctrine without life. Not that good works were necessary for justication. As Reverend Alutarius patiently explains to the Woerden youngsters in his Melck-spijse, even the best good works are not good enough before the judgment seat of God; all merits, in fact, come from Christ, and good works themselves are only the fruits of faith. Nevertheless, we have an obligation to perform them out of gratitude to God for our salvation. They have a primarily pedagogical function, for ourselves and others,

4

A classical study: Walter J. Ong, Ramus: Method and the decay of dialogue. From the art of discourse to the art of reason (Cambridge, Mass. 1958); R. Hooykaas, Humanisme, science et Réforme: Pierre de La Ramée (1515–1572) (Leiden 1958); Mordechai Feingold, Joseph Freedman & Wolfgang Rother (eds.), The inuence of Peter Ramus (Basel 2001). 5 On William Ames Sr. (1576–1633): BLGNP, I, 27–31; Keith L. Sprunger, “William Ames”, in: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, I (Oxford 2004), 941–946. Cf. C.A. van der Sluijs, Puritanisme en Nadere Reformatie: een beknopte vergelijkende studie (Kampen 1989), 43–45. 6 Van der Sluijs, Puritanisme en Nadere Reformatie, 24–25.

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“because they are the marks that assure us of our faith.”7 The watchword here is always a godly life. In Evert’s earliest texts we already nd these voluntaristic notions freighted with emotion: “The Spirit is so willing in my heart, it is so glad in me” (b11), he writes in September 1622. The metaphors of the heart, as the seat of the human spirit, and of comfort, as God’s working in man through the intervention of the Holy Spirit, repeatedly form the crux of his message: “Fear not, for it will come from the Holy Spirit, through the power of God, for my heart and conscience bear witness to this. . . . Be pleased, o God, to send me your Holy Spirit, who gladdens my heart and mind in the Lord, so that I may be given a good memory” (b9). The inner experience is so pivotal that the Holy Spirit takes the place of earthly food: “That I shall no longer eat is the work of the Lord. He will feed me through his Spirit and Word so powerful” (a2, b19). At times Evert even gives us the key for understanding the relation between metaphor and reality. When the matron inquires on January 19 what is making Evert is so sad, he answers curtly: “The human race, that it does not better itself, but I am not sad in spirit, I am of good cheer. God comforts me so that I am not sad in this life, and God will give me joy in His Kingdom. Why should I be sad if I have such a Comforter?” (a4, b22). We here clearly see how pietistic language slipped back and forth between metaphor and experiential reality. It is precisely this constant shift of register that makes for its suggestive power. The text is, as it were, always one step ahead of the reader, because metaphor and perception of reality keep overlapping. The popular Dutch pietistic author Willem Teellinck was a master of this art. His fascinating play with literary devices and linguistic levels explains a good deal of his continuing appeal. We nd similar ambiguities in Evert: outer expressions of dejection were not inconsistent with inner joy; they were simply located in different registers. But there is also a third meaning attached to gladness. “Such a gladness of the Lord is coming into in my heart,” Evert writes as his rst deliverance approaches (b9). Gladness at times stands for the spiritual sensation of divine intervention, then again for the theological certainty of consolation,

7 Henricus Alutarius, Melck-spijse der kinderen Godes. Dat is: Cort begrijp vande voornaemste fondamenten der Christelijcker Religie (Amsterdam: Jan Evertsz Cloppenburch, 1621), f. D2v°–D3r°, n° 70–74.

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and occasionally for a psychological state. In every case, however, it sets the will in motion to do good and avoid evil. Vexation at one’s own sins in no way excluded the certainty of election. Nor did the inner sureness of being predestined “for the kingdom that is prepared for me from now on through all eternity” (a2, b19) imply a license to forgo, even briey, the practice of godliness. Holiness of life was the watchword of the believer, because of the example given by Christ himself. Evert was deeply aware of this. He derived from it his life’s task. In his nal dream he summarizes his credo clearly once again: Woe to you, godless persons, he says, God is angry because you do not acknowledge his wondrous works. Those works are the sign that God has heard the prayer of his aficted elect. They are God’s form of pedagogy. What overcame me, Evert declares, shows in a microcosmic form accessible to human understanding all that transpires on a larger scale in society, where it is much more difcult to recognize. That is why God used my experience as a sign. God tried and tested me in my senses in order to bring about conversion and rebirth; he heard my prayer, healed me as a human being and gave me the assurance of my election. He will similarly also hear, heal and save you poor people beset by trials, in order to lead you to a better life. I am myself the living proof of this: O people, do remember all that has befallen me . . . Remember it was not work of man but God’s own mighty work, And that the people through this work of God the Lord, Through me might be converted and learn the ways of God. (b35)

Praxis pietatis This praxis pietatis placed the spiritual writers of the Further Reformation in the pietistic tradition and at the same time enabled them to adopt an important part of the Christian humanist heritage.8 After a French

8 On the rise of Dutch pietism: Wilhelm Goeters, Die Vorbereitung des Pietismus in der reformierten Kirche der Niederlanden bis zur labadistischen Krisis, 1670 (Leipzig & Utrecht 1911); Ernest F. Stoefer, The rise of evangelical pietism (Leiden 1965); Martin H. Prozesky, ‘The emergence of Dutch pietism’, in: Journal of Ecclesiastical History 28 (1977), 29–37; J. van den Berg, ‘Die Frömmigheitsbestrebungen in den Niederlanden’, in: Martin Brecht (ed.), Der Pietismus vom 17. bis zum frühen 18. Jahrhundert (Göttingen 1993), 57–112; F.A. van Lieburg (ed.), Confessionalism and pietism: Religious reform in early modern Europe and North America (Mayence 2006); Daniel Lindmark (ed.), Pietism, revivalism and modernity 1650–1850 (Cambridge 2006).

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beginning ( Jean Tafn) on a Genevan foundation (Calvin and Beza) against a late-medieval backdrop (the Modern Devotion), writers propagating the Further Reformation began appearing in the Dutch Republic at the end of the sixteenth century. For two decades most of them were inspired by the English Puritans—largely thanks to the translations of Reverend Vincent Meusevoet.9 But in the 1620s the movement began to take on a distinctively Dutch character, gradually distancing itself from the pietistic Puritans, with their reservations about university theology and their highly legalistic forms of regulating behavior. Not that the stream of translations or reprints of English devout literature came to a halt, but it was corrected, so to speak, by indigenous Dutch products that offered new opportunities for spirituality and asceticism. In the Further Reformation as an ecclesiastical movement we can in fact distinguish two streams, each with its own accent. In the rst, theological variant the orientation was militantly outward and included a program for political reformation: it aimed to make society conform as closely as possible to its own group ideal, and with that in mind it launched a cultural offensive in the direction of personal life, the family, schools, the church community, and public morals.10 All areas of life had to be radically sanctied. The nal goal in this variant was a transformation of the entire culture, and the prime means was Holy Scripture, soon canonized in the States Bible (1637). This movement has consequently been characterized as a bibliocracy. Christians had to be educated so that they could eventually permeate all of ecclesiastical and social life in their fatherland with their biblical asceticism. In the second variant—which made its appearance mainly after the synod of Dort and the disappointment it brought for those who desired a state church—the praxis pietatis remained much more a group affair. Here the Further Reformation gradually developed into a subculture that avoided involvement with the world and was characterized by 9 Van der Sluijs, Puritanisme en Nadere Reformatie; Keith L. Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism: A history of the English and Scottish churches of the Netherlands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Leiden 1982); Cornelis W. Schoneveld, Intertrafc of the mind. Studies in seventeenth-century Anglo-Dutch translation, with a checklist of books translated from English into Dutch 1600–1700 (Leiden 1983); W. J. op ’t Hof, Engelse piëtistische geschriften in het Nederlands, 1598–1622 (Rotterdam 1987); Joel R. Beeke, Assurance of faith: Calvin, English Puritanism and the Dutch Second Reformation (New York 1991). 10 See, e.g., Douglas Nobbs, Theocracy and toleration: A study of the disputes in Dutch Calvinism from 1600 to 1650 (Cambridge 1938); Leendert F. Groenendijk, De Nadere Reformatie van het gezin: de visie van Petrus Wittewrongel op de christelijke huishouding (Dordrecht 1984); D. van Meeuwen, Eeuwout Teellinck, een zeventiende-eeuwse politicus met theocratische idealen (Middelburg 1991).

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individualization, internalization, and pietism. The rigorism of the “practice of godliness” can be better preserved in this kind of inwarddirected group, and the pietistic attitude toward life undergoes little or no dilution through compromises with others. But initially there was no intention to retreat from the world. The rst, world-conquering variant also predates the second, world-avoiding type. It reects the expectation of the early days in which everything still seemed possible. To the extent that it professed non-involvement with the world, the issue was worldliness in the sense of ungodliness, and not the world itself. That was banned only in the second variant. In a more structural analysis Fred A. van Lieburg has identied four dimensions in the striving of the Further Reformation: the pietistic, mystical dimension oriented towards true piety; the socio-cultural dimension, aimed at translating that piety into a “precise” conduct based on biblical norms in all areas of social life; the ecclesiastical dimension that strove for a continuing reformation of church life; and the political, theocratic dimension, in which the civil authorities were called upon to spread the Reformed religion with all available means among their subjects in order to establish a “Dutch Israel.”11 Dened in this way, the Further Reformation shows a strong accent on movement from the top downward: ministers and the civil authorities articulate norms, values, and ideals and assume responsibility for disseminating and maintaining them. Against this “ofcial” pietism Van Lieburg places the popular pietism, initially a broad, loosely structured tendency in the further reformation, but from the second and especially the third quarter of the seventeenth century onward increasingly lled with the propaganda of the Further Reformation and reduced to a pietistic alternative for the diluted spirituality in the expanding public Reformed church. What place does the history of young Evert Willemsz occupy in this development? We know that the Further Reformation very soon penetrated towns outside its cradle in Zeeland, the province of the most important older writers, the Teellincks and Udemans. Woerden’s two ministers in 1622–23 unmistakably represent two variants of the Puritan-pietistic movement: Van Cralingen the theocratic, and Alutarius the more practical-pietistic stream. Evert Willemsz seems to feel more 11 F.A. van Lieburg, Levens van vromen: gereformeerd piëtisme in de achttiende eeuw (Kampen 1991), 179–180. For a critical assessment of the theses on Dutch pietism in the original edition of this book (Wegen): Fred van Lieburg, ‘Bevindelijke twijfels bij een singuliere domineesbiograe’, in: Wapenveld 47:2 (1997), 66–74.

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comfortable with Alutarius’s position. This is undoubtedly why he appeals not to the older but to the younger of the two ministers to legitimize his experiences. But not only Van Cralingen, Alutarius also distrusts young Evert’s spontaneous piety, unstructured as it is by the church. While Evert builds on the broad heritage of the further reformation, which he may have absorbed from his parents or in the orphanage, Alutarius has already adopted a party line—that of the Further Reformation with capital letters. This explains the misunderstanding between Evert and the minister, for the theologically uneducated tailor’s apprentice is unable at age fteen to fathom the subtle distinction between the two variants. We see here very concretely how the further reformation (in the broad, a-confessional sense) served to bolster the Further Reformation (as a confessional stream). In Woerden the movement began at the grassroots, in the circles of master craftsmen, shopkeepers, and the established burgher class that formed the hard core of orthodoxy. Against the backdrop of a rmly rooted popular pietism, the Further Reformation soon became a major weapon in the campaign to impose the Reformed faith onto the complex religious situation in Woerden. The lay movement, which must have formed the market for the endless stream of devout literature, was not so much a response to the stimuli of the religious writers and ecclesiastical authorities as an antecedent phenomenon, and it could serve to legitimize the Further Reformation as a “people’s movement” in a “people’s church.” With the consolidation and professionalization of the dominant church in the second quarter of the seventeenth century, this movement lost virtually all momentum, only to be revived decades later as a new, reduced form of “popular pietism” with an intra-ecclesiastical aim. The countless persons without higher education still being admitted to responsible positions in the church as “Dutch clerks” and comforters of the sick during the rst decades of the seventeenth century are a clear symptom of that grassroots movement. Such practitioners on the borderline between churchgoers and institution embodied the praxis pietatis from below. When the ecclesiastical authorities took the reins, however, such persons were no longer acceptable and were soon replaced by ministers whose education and status from the outset conformed to the model endorsed by the church. Nurtured by the broad orthodoxy of the further reformation, Evert Willemsz retrained himself during his formative years into a representative of the Further Reformation. In a later chapter we shall take a

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closer look at his activities as a minister in New Amsterdam. Here it will sufce to indicate the dialectic between the two movements. Although Evert at no point in his writings quotes a spiritual author of the Further Reformation, his formulations and claims allow no room for doubt that he was at least familiar with their message via the detour of preaching, catechism, and spiritual conversation. All through Evert’s jottings we hear echoes of Perkins and Teellinck. They probably helped him reformulate the socially undeveloped and undirected convictions of the old popular pietism into a public and ecclesiastical reform program. But only later did he become aware of this. In that respect Evert’s texts offer us a rare glimpse into a moment of fertile interaction between further reformation and Further Reformation.

Signs of the times Evert Willemsz was not the only one troubled by issues of sinfulness, election, and the need for conversion in the face of impending judgment. Voices both inside and outside the Land of Woerden declared that the Last Days were at hand.12 The biblically inspired reection on current events stands in a long tradition, both in its form and content. The conviction that God punishes sin with earthly calamities visible to everyone follows from the idea of an organic link between the natural and the supernatural.13 Isaac Beeckman (1588–1637), the otherwise skeptical precursor of modern science, formulated it very clearly in 1618, after the sighting of a comet. Natural phenomena can also be signs, he says, “for God is so wondrous in his providence that he causes things in nature to agree with those that exist in human action.”14 Not

12 For a more detailed treatment of this theme in the Dutch context: Wegen, 361–377; elements have been used in: Willem Frijhoff, ‘Predestination and the farmer: An incident of life and faith in early seventeenth-century Holland’, in: the same, Embodied belief: Ten essays on religious culture in Dutch history (Hilversum 2002), 93–110. In Utrecht too, people’s uncertainty about God’s election caused troubles in 1624: A. Buchelius, ‘Observationes ecclesiasticae sub presbyteratu meo, 1622–1626’, ed. S. Muller Fzn, in: Bijdragen en mededelingen van het Historisch Genootschap 10 (1887), 46 (March 15, 1624). 13 Keith Thomas, Religion and the decline of magic: Studies in popular beliefs in sixteenthand seventeenth-century England (Londen 1971), 90–132; A.Th. van Deursen, Plain lives in a Golden Age: Popular culture, religion and society in seventeenth-century Holland (Cambridge 1991), 239–241. 14 C. de Waard (ed.), Journal tenu par Isaac Beeckman de 1604 à 1634 (4 vols., The Hague 1939–1953), I, 261.

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Fig. 14. The comet of 1618. Title page of a prognostication by Johannes Velsius, physician at Leeuwarden (Leeuwarden, 1618). [Provincial Library, Tresoar, Leeuwarden].

superstition, in other words, but rational belief in God. In order to ward off such calamities, or at least to nd ways to cope with them, it was important to understand the meaning of the signs. Those who could read the signs could still repent in time. And because such signs stood in an analogous relation to earthly reality, they were indeed readable. This was the rationale behind the frequent and wide dissemination of public pamphlets with spectacular news, warnings, or sermons about disasters and accidents. In 1612, for example, an angel with a aming (i.e. bloody) sword in his right hand and a skull in his left appeared to a pious shepherd in Baarle near Breda, instructing him to go “to the men and women” and tell them “that they should do penance . . . for God will bear it no longer, and He will send his punishment over the entire land. Therefore

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proclaim to the people that they should keep God’s law, and if they do not do this, they will fare as did the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.”15 The bloody sword was a sign of the coming war, the angel informed him, and the skull of so many deaths “that the people will not know where to leave the dead, and the grain will rot in the eld, if they do not improve their ways.” With the exception of the two attributes that function as signs, the structure of this experience is identical to that of Evert Willemsz. The appearance of the angel, the message of God’s wrath, the call to repentance, the task of proclaiming God’s message, and the threat of horrible punishment in analogy to biblical examples form the ve basic elements of numerous epiphanies preceding Evert’s experience. We can only speculate about concrete examples he might have heard about or seen, but there is no doubt that his spiritual experience, in terms of its structure and idiom, stands in a tradition that made his unique personal experience recognizable for his environment. That tradition is not impervious to time, however. Like other cultural phenomena, the genre of visions and epiphanies is subject to trends, fashions, and preferences. These may be trends in form, but also in content. Vision, epiphany, and clairvoyance are forms of visual language for holiness when written language is not yet a familiar medium of communication, but this does not imply that they automatically disappear with the rise of written culture. The concrete forms can remain in use, but enriched with other meanings. One example of such a shift in meaning is the apologetic function that appearances of angels and devils, or the exorcism of demons, can acquire in an interconfessional context.16 Not the message is then of central importance; the appearance itself constitutes proof that in the conict with another party the person delivering the message has been placed in the right by heaven itself. The appearance thus has a double argumentative thrust: the one found in the content of the message, directed at the group of likeminded persons, and the one inherent in the form, intended for unbelievers or persons of a different persuasion. The epiphany serves as a stimulus for the group and a legitimation for others.

15 Een waerachtige beschrijvinghe van een wonderlijck gesicht ende openbaringhe, dat ghesien is in een dorp genaemt Baele, bij Breda, alwaer een Engel des Heeren ghekomen is bij een schaapherder . . . (Dordrecht 1612); cf. J.R.W. Sinninghe, ‘Verschijning van een engel te Baarle’, in: Brabants Heem 2 (1950), 82–83. 16 Cf. Willem Frijhoff, ‘The function of the miracle in a Catholic minority: the United Provinces in the seventeenth century’, in: the same, Embodied belief, 111–136.

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In Evert’s case the two functions are also clearly recognizable. “Only because of the guilt of our sins, because people continue in them, God provides a sign” (a4): “God will afict us, for He is very angry” (a2). “There will be times of tribulation, with fear and great sorrow” (a4). “The Lord will visit us before we know it, with times of great tribulation, with afictions of all sorts, so people will cry woe that they were born” (b25–26). A fteen-year-old orphan living in relative security could not have known all the implications of such catastrophe. But death had taken a great toll in his family, and the war continued with no end in sight. Did Evert himself ever regret that he had been born? How did he cope with his grief at the death of his parents, the fear of epidemics, the lack of care, the poverty and loneliness? In his prophecy of doom he rationalizes his personal emotions into a religious drama, as so many others must have done, though not in writing, when plague, famine, and war threatened a society still poorly equipped to provide adequate care. In that drama he himself plays the prophetic role of the instrument of God. This gives him unexpected peace of mind, but the signicance of his religious experience goes beyond his own personal interest. All that happens to him is a sign from God that can also be understood by unbelievers, “an example for all people, so that the people will be converted” (b24). For if people do not take an example from me, God shall so smite them with the rod, that is, for their terrible sins, that the people will not know where to hide. Therefore take an example from me: for God does not do this in vain, but so that everyone will turn to Him, namely to God, He is the one I mean; for God would not afict us if people did not anger Him. But God will come as He did in Sodom and Gomorrah if we do not repent. (b24)

Evert’s insistence on conversion arises out of his sense of urgency. “Therefore let us watch and pray, for it will truly come to pass, if we live longer, that we shall also see such things” (a3). As Christ said, the coming of the Lord can be expected at any moment (b15). Evert takes this literally. For him the Last Days are at hand. And there were good arguments to support such a conviction. The endless years of war in the rst quarter of the seventeenth century, when the whole world seemed to be turned upside down and all certainties were gone, proved fertile ground for alarmist eschatology.17 Such teachings grew

17

Andrew Cunningham & Ole Peter Grell, The four horsemen of the Apocalypse: Religion, war, famine and death in Reformation Europe (Cambridge 2000); Monika Hagenmaier &

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out of the more or less diffuse expectation of the Last Days that was a long-lasting feature of the entire Reformation. In countless skyscapes people perceived land and sea battles in cloud formations, comet tails, or northern lights. Times were still favorable for supernatural cosmology. The most important passage supporting these manifestations is found in a book considered apocryphal by Protestants but long included in Bible editions nevertheless. In Maccabees 5:1–4 we read how in the time of Antiochus’s second campaign against Egypt, in 168 B.C., the sky above all of Jerusalem was lled for forty days with visions of “horsemen charging in mid-air, in robes inwrought with gold, fully armed, in companies.” Entire squadrons carried out charges and countercharges, brandishing shields and “a forest of spears,” as swords were drawn and arrows showered around them. Everyone in Jerusalem prayed that this might be a good omen, for such skyscapes only revealed that a battle was imminent, not how it would turn out. But support for such a manifestation could also be found in the Protestant canon. Joel 2:30, for example, tells of “wonders in the heavens”: blood, re, and pillars of smoke. And the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost—was that not described in Acts 2:3 as tongues of re that rested on the heads of the disciples, with an explicit allusion to Joel’s prophecy of wonders in the heavens (Acts 2:19)? A rudimentary depiction of this biblical event would a short time later serve as the cover illustration of the rst, Utrecht pamphlet about Evert Willemsz. Whether the portents were good or bad, such manifestations helped people discover structure in the cosmos and a line in history and thus gain some grip on their fear and uncertainty. For better or worse, such signs pointed to an ultimate experience, and in the last analysis to God himself. They formed the language of everyday religion, the semantics of religious experience that stood outside the ecclesiastical framework and largely escaped the control of the church. Examples from those years abound.18 In the night of October 6, 1618 the citizens’ militia

Sabine Holtz (eds.), Krisenbewußtsein und Krisenbewältigung in der Frühen Neuzeit. Festschrift für Hans-Christoph Kublack (Frankfurt am Main 1992); Geneviève Demerson & Bernard Dompnier (eds.), Les signes de Dieu aux XVI e et XVII e siècle (Clermont-Ferrand 1993); Willem Frijhoff, ‘Catholic apocalyptics in a Protestant commonwealth? The Dutch Republic (1579–1630), in: Heinz Schilling (ed.), Konfessionsfundamentalismus in Europa um 1600 (Munich 2007), 245–270. 18 Willem Frijhoff, ‘Signs and wonders in seventeenth-century Holland: An interpretive community’, in: Frijhoff, Embodied belief, 137–152; the same, ‘Voorgezichten van strijd en straf in de zeventiende-eeuwse Republiek: naar een geschiedenis van de

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of Bolsward witnessed for more than an hour two armies advancing in the sky with muskets raised, banners ying, and drums beating. In 1621, with the war raging furiously in the German empire, the French king laying siege to Huguenot strongholds, and—since the Twelve Year Truce had expired—Prince Maurits setting off on a new campaign on August 22, a skyscape of a battle was seen all over western Europe on September 12/13 (new style). Earlier that year, on April 28, the inhabitants of La Rochelle had seen two men ghting in the sky. Lyon, Nîmes, Montpellier, and other towns with a large Protestant population were treated to all sorts of heavenly spectacles in mid-October 1621: a glowing castle and a battalion led by a star appeared on a moonless night above Lyon on October 12; late in the evening of the 13th a bright sun shone above the Roman amphitheater in Nîmes, and in Montpellier people saw ery torches and aming lances. Already in 1620 a fountain near Tübingen had predicted a terrible war by spouting blood for three days. Breathtaking battles among starlings above the Irish town of Cork on May 12 and 14, 1621 were later interpreted as a portent, as was a large town re the following year. In 1620 battles were seen in the sky above Hamburg, Geneva, and of course Prague, where it also rained blood. In Weimar a ery star as big as the moon appeared in broad daylight in 1622 or 1623, together with a terrifying vision of a sky torn open and spewing re, from which a voice spoke, warning the Saxons three times to turn from their evil ways. A short time later lightning destroyed numerous buildings, and the earth opened to gush blood.

Interpreting signs The signicance of such skyscapes does not lie in the physical reality of the phenomenon but in the belief that the vision corresponds to a genuine experience: not the objective but the subjective reality is what matters. This explains the appeals made to persons in authority, who, in keeping with the mentality of the time, endorsed statements that for us appear simply bizarre. Opinions of scholars with an academic

produktiewijzen van collectieve waarneming’, in: E.K. Grootes & J. den Haan (eds.), Geschiedenis, godsdienst, letterkunde. Opstellen aangeboden aan dr. S.B.J. Zilverberg (Roden 1989), 81–90; Wegen, 380–382 (with references).

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degree, astrologers, stargazers, established clerics, and especially the predecessors of such visions in classical antiquity and the Bible lent credence to these collective visions. We see this very clearly in the text describing the spectacle in Weimar, mentioned above.19 The apocryphal author follows the usual custom of protecting himself against skeptics by calling them ignorant persons who will repent when God truly plunges them into adversity. But at the same time he appeals to the authority of Jean Belot, the pastor of Millemonts who authored a series of widely read prognostications, beginning with an interpretation of the comet of 1618. Belot here serves as the scholar who guarantees the credibility of the prediction, not by discussing the content, but by stressing the reliability of the form, supported by numerous examples from classical antiquity. The collective vision must therefore be understood not only as a substantive message about what the future will bring; it is also a specic way of linking past, present, and future. How such a sign of God’s wrath was received in the local community remains for the most part obscure. But a witness from Woerden itself, more than forty years before Evert’s public appearance, gives us a glimpse of the reactions.20 On September 10, 1580 at 8 o’clock in the evening a group of Woerden residents stood talking in front of the house of the mason Dirck Cornelisz. Besides Dirck himself, age about 60, there were the 63-year-old woman Leen Hermansz, Claes Jansz de Rijck, and Niesgen, widow of Jacob Jansz—all older people who had already experienced a good many changes. Suddenly they saw “horrible signs in the sky like streams of blood and ames of re.” Given the date and the time this was undoubtedly in the glow of the sunset. They speculated about the meaning of the signs, until Claes Jansz said: “It can only signify terrible punishments that will follow, because of the terrible sins committed in the land, and especially the sins that are and have been committed in our town, towards such loyal servants who were persecuted here in Woerden and chased away, while a false teacher and wolf were brought in.” Claes Jansz here shows himself to be loyal follower of the strict Lutheran ministers Johannes Saliger and Hendrick

19 Recit veritable d’une lettre envoyée par Maistre A. Maginus grand astrologue et mathematicien à Maistre Iean Belot cure de Milemonts, touchant les signes et prodiges espouuentables aduenues sur la ville de Vimart en Allemagne (Paris 1623); cf. Willem Baudartius, Memoryen (2 vols., Arnhem 1624–1625), book XVI, 49–51. 20 SAW, NA, 8496 (September 26, 1580), published by M.E. Smelt, ‘Een buurpraatje in Woerden uit het jaar 1580’, in: Zuid-Holland 8 (1962), 58–60.

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Vredelandt, who shortly before had been expelled from the town by the Calvinists. God had, in fact, immediately revealed his displeasure, for “people should remember that the earthquake of that day was not for nothing”—the day referred to being April 4, 1580, when the two ministers were forced to leave.21 Because people had been unwilling to hear God’s true word, He was placing a threat of his wrath in the sky. Claes Jansz had heard Vredelandt himself say in a sermon: “If there is no repentance it is to be feared that such punishment will yet come that the land will be lled with blood, so that people will wade in it up to their neck.” Niesgen replies skeptically that “all things can be prayed about.” Let us pray and live better lives, she suggests, then this will pass. But this is only grist for the mill of Claes Jansz. Pray? Certainly, but then “pray aright,” chase out the false wolf—i.e., the lax minister Claes Simonsz—and bring back the “pure servants.” To which Niesgen replies: “That Saliger has been chased out of so many towns!” Claes Jansz: “And Paul then? Saliger was persecuted for no reason. He alerted people to their sins, and they couldn’t stand that.” Niesgen again: “Mr. Claes punishes enough, just as much as Saliger.” But Claes Jansz has the last word: “That is not true, Mr. Claes preaches nothing but peace, peace, and grace. But what kind of peace that is, you’ll nd out in the end. One thing is sure, that Mr. Claes is a false teacher, and a thief and a murderer, who murders people’s souls.” The reason why this dialogue was recorded by the notary appears in the last line. In the presence of independent witnesses, cooper Cornelis Jansz and carpenter Claes Aertsz Backer, it is declared that Claes Jansz left it at that, “that Claes Jansz did not accuse Mr. Claes Simonsz or his followers of being rogues or thieves, contrary to the stories that are circulating.” Ariën Jansz, at whose request the document has been drawn up, wanted to protect his gloomy brother from a charge of slander. For us the legal implications of the document are less important than the unexpected glimpse it offers into everyday life of religious Woerden. The apocalyptic interpretation of current events was clearly rooted in the tradition of Woerden church life. We successively encounter it among the Lutherans, the Remonstrants, and the Calvinists, always in situations of religious conict and at a moment of tension. We see how Woerdeners talk with neighbors outside their houses about matters of

21 In fact the earthquake had taken place on April 6; cf. Pieter Jansz Twisck, ComeetBoecxken (Hoorn 1624), 102.

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faith, so intensely that the heavens themselves begin to speak for them. Religion here proles itself as the language that discloses the inner coherence of the cosmos and gives meaning to events of the day: an earthquake, a bright sunset, the departure of two ministers all appear in a causal relationship. Not all Woerdeners were convinced by the interpretation of the orthodox Lutheran. But in the end, all religious divisions notwithstanding, good neighborly relations proved important enough to seek out the notary and ensure the peace.

Erudite apocalyptic teachings The sense of living at a crucial moment in the history of the world, humanity, and salvation—so intensely experienced by ordinary believers—also appears in scholarly apocalyptic writings of the time. Exactly how the general eschatological mentality was related to theological erudition is difcult to say. It is clear, however, that apocalyptic scholarship also created a stir among churchgoers. It formed the backdrop to Evert’s sense that the Last Days were approaching and that he himself would have a role to play in that drama. In 1624 the South Holland synod found it necessary to forbid ministers to interpret in their sermons the thousand-year reign announced in Revelation 20:2–7. They were required to “decline as much as possible disputations” on that issue.22 There were obviously some members of the congregation who wanted to provoke debate on this point, and who could not always be kept in check by the ministers. The synod was clearly torn between opposing interests. Many orthodox persons undoubtedly had chiliastic sympathies. Satan would be chained for a thousand years and Christ would reign in person, together with the witnesses who had refused to worship the Beast and for that reason had been slain. Those martyrs would be resurrected a thousand years before the other dead. This millennium, between the present dispensation and the eternal kingdom of God following the resurrection of the remaining dead, would thus usher in the rule of the elect. The orthodox, who still felt besieged from all sides and whose victory in the political sphere was still far from sure, must have found it easy to identify with the persecuted but pure witnesses of Christ.

22 W.P.C. Knuttel (ed.), Acta der particuliere synoden van Zuid-Holland 1621–1700 (6 vols., The Hague 1908–1916), I, 122 (art. 49).

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Although messianism is as old as the Bible itself, it had an unusually great impact in seventeenth-century Protestantism.23 Richard H. Popkin goes so far as to call the apocalyptic stream “the Third Force.”24 In Puritan and pietistic circles in particular messianism regularly set the tone. Chiliastic thinkers and prophets announced that the thousandyear Messianic reign on earth was at hand, as a transition to the future dispensation. In the Dutch Republic chiliasm rst attracted mainly adherents of the Further Reformation. Following the example of the English chiliast Thomas Brightman, translated by Meusevoet in 1621, leaders of that movement like Godfried Udemans and Eeuwout and Willem Teellinck believed that the conversion of the Jews, followed by the fall of the Roman church (the “Babylon” of Rev. 18:2), would take place around 1650, after which Christ could establish his thousand-year reign.25 A similar conviction about the imminent conversion of the Jews, their return to Palestine, and—in this case—the fall of the Turks is found in a pamphlet from 1621 by the English lawyer Henry Finch, which also appeared in a Dutch translation.26 It is easy to see why such notions had great appeal for orthodox adherents of the doctrine of predestination. Were they not potentially members of that small group of elect? But even within the Reformed church there was no consensus about concrete applications of the prophecies contained in the book of Revelation. While some agreed with Moyse Amyraut that they were merely metaphors for what was happening in the rst centuries of the church, there was also a militant stream that interpreted Revelation as a prediction of contemporary and imminent events. Calvin’s prudent restraint on this point was not shared by the

23 For the Dutch Republic, see: Frijhoff, ‘Catholic apocalyptics’; Theo Clemens, Willemien Otten & Gerard Rouwhorst (eds.), Het einde nabij? Toekomstverwachting en angst voor het oordeel in de geschiedenis van het christendom (Nijmegen 1999); C. Graaand, ‘De toekomstverwachting der puriteinen en haar invloed op de Nadere Reformatie’, in: Documentatieblad De Nadere Reformatie 3 (1979), 65–95; C.A. Tukker, Het chiliasme van Reformatie tot Réveil (Apeldoorn 1981); C.J. Meeuse, De toekomstverwachting der Nadere Reformatie in het licht van haar tijd (Kampen 1990); M. van Campen, ‘Het millennium gewogen: het duizendjarige rijk in de visie van de Nadere Reformatie’, in: Documentatieblad De Nadere Reformatie 24 (2000), 20–36. 24 Richard H. Popkin, The Third Force in seventeenth-century thought (Leiden 1992). 25 W.J. op ’t Hof, De visie op de joden in de Nadere Reformatie tijdens het eerste kwart van de zeventiende eeuw (Amsterdam 1984). For the inuence of Brightman: James A. de Jong, As the waters cover the sea: Millennial expectations in the rise of Anglo-American missions 1640–1810 (Kampen 1970), 16–27. 26 Henry Fincx [= Finch], Een schoone prophecye, van de groote weder-oprichtijnghe des wereldts (s.l. 1623) [Pamphlet Knuttel 3394]; cf. W.J. op ’t Hof, ‘Een pamet uit 1623 betreffende de bekering der Joden’, in: Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis 65 (1985), 35–45.

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Puritans. Because the synod was unable to come up with an unambiguous, uncontroversial statement on the matter, it declared that “for the time being there was no better means than silence to calm the questions arising from the issue.”27 The synod was here alluding especially, but not exclusively, to Daniel van Laren or Larenus (1585–after 1651).28 Daniel, son of the Flemish immigrant Joos van Laren, a minister in Flushing, was called in 1609 to join his father as a minister in that town. There he developed a chiliastic interpretation of the book of Revelation. It caught on quickly, especially because the disasters of the Protestant Bohemians in those years had led to numerous prophetic writings that were also disseminated in the Netherlands, while political-religious tension was running high at home as well. In a sermon delivered in Flushing shortly before November 22, 1622, Van Laren maintained on the basis of Rev. 20:4–5 that the martyrs would be bodily resurrected to reign with Christ on earth for a thousand years before the general resurrection. Did he see them as rulers of a materialized millennial kingdom? His statement closely follows the biblical text, but in his interpretation Van Laren very likely implied a link with current events, and so soon after the synod of Dort that was going a little too far. Neither the ecclesiastical nor the civil authorities needed any extra problems. The stir caused by Van Laren’s sermon in Flushing even brought the States of Zeeland into action, with the result that Van Laren had to seek a position elsewhere. As it happened, there was a vacancy in classis Woerden, in the congregation of Kalslagen, which the orthodox and pietistic minister Justus Heurnius (1587–1651/2), son of the famous Leiden medical professor Johannes Heurnius, had left at short notice.29 In 1618, while still a student in Groningen, Justus had called for the Christianizing of the East Indies: the ofcials of the Company should lead a pious life, schools should be built for the indigenous population and Holy Scripture translated into the native tongues.30 He himself was not given permission to leave, however, and subsequently became a minister in Kalslagen in 1620.31 But in 1623, despite resistance by Kalslagen, he was allowed 27

Knuttel, Acta, I, 122 (synod of 1624, art. 49). On Daniel van Laren: BLGNP, V, 330–331; G. Vrolikhert, Vlissingsche kerkhemel (Flushing 1758), 73–81. 29 On Heurnius: BLGNP, IV, 82–83; J.R. Callenbach, Justus Heurnius: eene bijdrage tot de geschiedenis des Christendoms in Nederlandsch Oost-Indië (Nijkerk 1897). 30 Justus Heurnius, De legatione evangelica ad Indos capessenda admonitio (Leiden 1618). 31 NAN, Oud-Synodaal Archief, 9, p. 349 (examination, December 23, 1619). 28

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to go to Batavia as a minister. The church council of Kalslagen, itself apparently zealously orthodox, then called Daniel van Laren. The classis, which a short time earlier had very likely discussed the case of Evert Willemsz (but without passing a verdict), remained noncommittal and declared that it would abide by the advice of the synod.32 Meanwhile, on the request of the prince, the theological faculty of Leiden issued a statement on Van Laren’s theses.33 The Leiden professors could nd nothing unorthodox in them, but the South Holland synod feared that such religious enthusiasm would only cause trouble in an already unruly classis. “As it gives great cause for concern in these times to accept a minister who has caused such unrest,” they refused to let Van Laren take the position in Kalslagen.34 He then went to Arnhem. It is worth noting here that the Leiden professors Polyander, Rivet, Walaeus, and Thysius—with whom Evert Willemsz would begin his theological studies a few years later—could hardly be accused of sympathy with chiliasm. A short time before, in the spring of 1622, the orthodox Kampen minister Wilhelmus Stephani (†1636), who held a doctor’s degree in theology and was one of the “martyrs” persecuted by the Overijssel Remonstrants in 1616/17, had given them a copy of his Basuyne des heylighen Oorloogs der Openbaringghe S. Johannis tegen den groten Antichrist den Romschen Paus (Trumpet of the Holy War of the Revelation of St. John against the Antichrist, the Roman Pope), which he had published himself.35 In this work he saw Rev. 12–20 fullled in the catastrophes that the Roman Catholics brought upon the “Winter King” Frederick of the Palatinate, and he philosophized with gusto about what would follow: the papacy would be destroyed and the king of Bohemia would eventually be victorious. These statements were in line with the somber predictions made by several German chiliasts, who were not really taken seriously by the Leiden professors. The faculty accordingly gave Stephani the wise advice to wait with the publication of his book until the predictions had come true.36

32

NAN, Classis Woerden, 7 (December 6, 1623, and April 10, 1624). A. Eekhof, De theologische faculteit te Leiden in de 17de eeuw (Utrecht 1921), 61–64, n° 31 (March 28, 1624). 34 Knuttel, Acta, I, 119–120 (synod of 1624, art. 42), and 122 (art. 49). 35 S.l. 1622 [Pamphlet Knuttel 3302]. 36 Eekhof, De theologische faculteit, 28*–29*, text on pp. 20–23, n° 11 ( June 8, 1622); Baudartius, Memoryen, XIV, 88–89. 33

CHAPTER SIX

BODY LANGUAGE

Fasting and eating In his classic study Primitive Culture (1871) the anthropologist Edward B. Tylor (1832–1917) remarks that a chunk of bread and a bite of meat would have robbed a good many ascetics of their visions of angels.1 The door of the refectory, he maintains, often blocks the seer’s view of the heavenly gates. The crude, now thoroughly dated reductionism underlying that remark should not blind us to the insight it offers into part of the reality. Spiritual experience does have a bodily component. Intentional abstinence from food, castigation of the body, and the use of certain herbs are time-tested means for creating the conditions necessary for extreme spiritual experiences. Instructed by the example of their predecessors, mystics have for centuries made grateful use of such techniques.2 Consciously or subconsciously the body and its physical functions play a large role in the experience of the mind. Even involuntarily at times: food poisoning, like that caused by ergot, can deeply inuence a person’s mental state or lead to forms of bodily expression that the subject does not experience—and in some cases would not want to experience—in a normal state. Evert Willemsz was certainly not the rst devout person whose ecstasy was linked to a period of fasting. It is quite possible, even probable, that the fasting was necessary in order to bring his body into the right condition for a spiritual experience. The recognition of a close tie between body and mind is in itself not particularly modern. The great Dutch physician Pieter van Foreest (or Forestus, 1521–1597), who worked in Alkmaar and Delft, devoted a long chapter of his Observationes (1584)

1

Edward B. Tylor, Primitive culture [1871] (3d rev. ed., London 1891), II, 415. Cf. the suggestive works of Piero Camporesi, Il pane selvaggio (Bologna 1980); Alimentazione, folklore, società (Parma 1980); La carne impassibile (Milan 1983); and the scholarly analysis by Peter Dinzelbacher, ‘Körperliche und seelische Vorbedingungen religiöser Träume und Visionen’, in: Tullio Gregory (ed.), I sogni nel medioevo (Rome 1985), 57–86. 2

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to the illnesses of body and mind and discussed more than a hundred cases from his own practice.3 One of those was a Delft weaver who was struck mute from one moment to the next when he saw blood. Another was a fourteen-year-old boy, nephew of the Alkmaar rector Laurentius Zasius, who suddenly became lame in both legs in the middle of the night. Closer to Evert’s experience are a case of convulsions resulting from extended fasting, the willpower of a man who exposed himself, naked and apparently without pain, to extreme cold, and a bedridden woman who for years exhibited similar behavior in the Alkmaar hospital. Van Foreest’s colleague in the eastern Netherlands, Johan Wier (or Weyer), also mentions numerous clinical examples of the close bond between body and mind in his inuential work De praestigiis daemonum (1563). One man examined by Wier himself stubbornly refused to eat or drink out of the conviction (“delusive idea”) that he was damned. A little further on, however, Wier states that fasting in the Christian tradition was rightly used as an ascetic aid to expel the devil. A person who empties his body also puries his spirit—a necessary preparation for distinguishing between good and evil and driving out the old Adam, the pernicious world.4 To do justice to Evert’s experience, we cannot simply shrug it off, as skeptics often do, by pointing out the interaction between physical condition and spiritual experience. Two other dimensions are also important for our analysis. First we should investigate the exact nature of the relation between the physical and spiritual experience. Tylor’s irony suggests that the spiritual experience is nothing more than a direct function of physical conditioning. Is it really that simple? On what psychosomatic traditions could a Dutch boy of fteen draw in 1622 to communicate what he wanted? What forms of expression offered themselves as vehicles for the new meaning he intended to convey to the community around him? How did he use and manipulate them in order to achieve his goal? That goal cannot be reduced to a strictly personal experience of a spiritual nature. Evert also had a message for the community and wanted to convey that as efciently as possible.

3 Petrus Forestus, Observationum et curationum medicinalium ac chirurgicarum opera omnia (Frankfurt am Main 1660), book X: ‘De phrenitide. De universis cerebri et menyngum eiusdem symptomatis et morbis’, in particular pp. 341–342, 428–431, 451–452. 4 Johan Wier, De praestigiis daemonum, book III, chapter 7, and book V, chapter 32. Wier later published a treatise on ctitious fasting: De lamiis et commentitiis jejuniis (Basel 1577) [Opera omnia (Amsterdam 1660), 667–769].

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This brings us to the second additional dimension. Evert’s fasting is a spiritual technique, but it is not purely instrumental. He appropriates the traditional cultural form of fasting by investing it with new meaning in the social context of his life. This is not only a religious, but also a social meaning. His fasting is in effect an act of deance. Everyone in the town talks about it, and when Reverend Alutarius in his double function of minister and physician points out to him the need to eat and drink, Evert defends himself with an appeal to higher authority: that he will remain alive despite the fasting “has been promised to me by the voice of an angel” (b26). Abstaining from food is recognized as charged with meaning. It is not a value-free, strictly individual practice, but alludes to interpretations and connotations familiar from time-honored traditions. Fasting is a provocation. It here proclaims values and meanings accepted by part of Woerden society but rejected by another part. Fasting signies abstinence, soberness, the lifestyle of the pious person who rejects luxury and is satised with mere necessities. These were values espoused by Calvin and especially the Puritans.5 Fasting can therefore be a stumbling block for other groups of believers who accept the formal tradition itself but not the concrete group meaning attached to it, in this case by the orthodox. In the personal experience of young Evert Willemsz fasting, that is, the gradual emptying of the body, is a metaphor for the emptying of his spirit. It is a rite of passage, as it was for Christ, who after being baptized by John fasted in the wilderness for forty days (Luke 4:2). But it is also an intimate sign conrming his salvation. It alludes to the pious tradition in which children refuse their mother’s breast as a sign of being chosen by God, foremost among them the young Nicholas of Myra—who as St. Nicholas came to play such an important cultural role in the Netherlands.6 God Himself feeds the child, and this gracious act serves as a sign and seal of his calling. In a sense, the same is true of Evert. He refers to himself as a small child who must be reborn through the grace of God (b8). By abstaining from food he places his survival in God’s hand. For a brief moment Evert is not completely sure of the outcome: “whether in life or in death, that I request of

5 W. Nijenhuis, ‘Vastenopvattingen en vastenpraktijken in de Reformatie, bepaaldelijk bij de Gereformeerden’, in: Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift 36 (1982) 12–28. 6 István Bejczy, ‘The sacra infantia in medieval hagiography’, in: Studies in Church History 31 (1994), 143–151.

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you,” he writes when Master Zas asks him whether his texts should be published (a4). God Himself will determine whether he remains alive. And God did indeed provide nourishment, although of a different, spiritual kind: That I shall eat no more is the work of the almighty Lord He will feed me through his Spirit and powerful Word. (a2, b19)

Such work of God is for Evert proof that he is not deceiving himself about his calling but that he has indeed been divinely chosen. His fasting is also spiritually instrumental. Only when his body is completely empty is there room for the Spirit. Because the boy interpreted this literally, food was off-limits: “I must neither eat nor drink tonight, for that is the pleasure of God and the Spirit. Pray that God will give me a blessed end,” he writes on the eve of his rst deliverance, well aware of the physical risk he is incurring (b11). In Evert we thus see various forms of fasting. His rst spiritual experience opens with a nine-day phase of intentional abstinence from food, which can be interpreted as a means to empty his spirit. Having recovered from a physical ailment, he now prepares himself for spiritual renewal. Both the rst and second episode then include a few days of fasting combined with other somatic symptoms. This can be attributed at least in part to the ecstasy he experiences between the appearances of the angel and the deliverance, as he implies himself in the verses written after his rst healing: From every side they told him then After he came to his senses again, He’d eaten no bite big or small For nine days running, nothing at all. (b14)

A close reading of the pamphlets reveals that all the texts about fasting at the command of the angel refer to the second episode, in January 1623. Evert’s fasting in September 1622 seems to have been much more a side effect of his total psychosomatic experience than a conscious choice: he was “deprived of his understanding and sight and taste for a time” (b7). When the angel appears to him again on January 18, 1623, however, the fasting immediately takes on a collective signicance. The inability to eat now becomes a deliberate refusal, with the inner voice of the angel standing for the compelling strength of Evert’s will. “I was told within me that I should not eat for a time” (b21). Master Zas asks

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him the next day why he is not eating.7 “For a time, as the voice of the angel commanded me,” is Evert’s reply. “I shall not eat before I speak and hear again: not before that, for it pleases God, and that is only because of the guilt of our sins. Because the people continue [in their sins] God almighty provides a sign” (b22–23). A short time later he conveys the same message to Alutarius: the angel had told him “that I should not eat for a time; so that people would be converted to the Lord” (b25). It is as if Evert now consciously wants to reproduce the structure of the psychosomatic experience that overcame him in September and elevate its initial personal signicance into a meaningful symbol for the community. Evert concludes his second episode by consciously abstaining from food for twenty-four hours, in preparation for his deliverance by the Spirit. But as soon as he is healed, he just as consciously begins eating and drinking again at the regular mealtime hour in the orphanage, as a ritual of return to the normal life of the community. In the words of Master Zas: “he immediately thereafter drank a little; about two hours after he began speaking it was about eight o’clock in the evening, and he quite naturally ate again at the customary mealtime. It was fullled what he had written earlier, when he rst abstained from food and drink: I shall not eat or drink before I speak and hear again” (b33). It is therefore represented as a biblical ritual, reminiscent of the quenching of Christ’s thirst on the cross ( John 19:28). The phrase “it was fullled” is far from random. They are the words spoken by the dying Savior Himself. In the perception of Zas, an episode of salvation history was being re-enacted in the person of Evert. How are these three forms of fasting related? Let us rst look at the tradition in which they stand. Abstinence from food and drink is one of the classic rituals of Judeo-Christian asceticism.8 Fixed days in the week were set aside for it, even entire periods in the year, particularly the forty days of Lent before Easter. That long fast, culminating in almost total abstinence on Good Friday, prepared believers for the resurrection of Easter. It could thus acquire the meaning of preparing the body and the spirit together for the birth of a new person, infused with the Spirit

7 Zas added in the margin that Evert ‘prophesied that he would not eat or drink before he could hear and speak again. Nota. This prophecy has been fullled’ (b22–23). 8 See the article ‘Jeûne’, in the dictionaries Catholicisme, vol. VI (Paris 1967), 827–850, and Dictionnaire de spiritualité, vol. VIII (Paris 1974), 1164–1179.

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of God. The Reformation toned down the bodily aspects of that total experience, but did not ban it entirely. Special days of prayer and sober eating continued and, together with Sabbath observance, retained an aspect of voluntary bodily control with a spiritual goal. For some Christians, however, fasting acquired such a dominant signicance that the totality of personal asceticism was compressed into that one phenomenon. Physical fasting stood for spiritual surrender to God and was linked with mystical experience, frequently expressed in visions. In many late medieval saints fasting took on spectacular forms. Catherine of Siena is the prototype here, but there were many more. Angela of Foligno, Mary of Oignies, and Catherine of Genoa ate only the consecrated host in their periods of fasting, which lasted months or even years. Such practices of extreme fasting have been examined by various scholars, often in the light of contemporary psychological categories.9 In her ne study Holy Feast and Holy Fast (1987) Caroline Walker Bynum attempts to take the phenomenon seriously in a different way.10 Instead of reducing it to an illness or a condition dened by current medical or psychiatric knowledge, she views it as a specic expression of the religious meaning that late-medieval women attached to food. Why that focus on food, Bynum wonders, and why especially among women? Her answer does not point in the direction of illness or deviance but of normality, the normality of a specic cultural model. According to Bynum feminine forms of religious experience in the Middle Ages were closely connected with food. The yearning for God was associated with food, not only in the Eucharist, but in daily life as well. Both eating and fasting were metaphors for the mystical encounter with God. When God lled the mystic, she was no longer able to eat or no longer needed to do so; the consecrated host could then replace daily food. The Eucharist brought about an ecstatic union with Christ, a process that was itself conceived as an act of feeding. Food and feeding were (and are) in fact the most immediate bodily metaphors of sensuality. They participate in the double process that the Dutch anthropologist Jojada Verrips has called “food made human”

9 Rudolph M. Bell, Holy anorexia (Chicago & London 1985); Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Fasting girls: The emergence of anorexia nervosa as a modern disease (Cambridge, Mass. 1988); Ron van Deth & Walter Vandereycken, Van vastenwonder tot magerzucht: anorexia nervosa in historisch perspectief (2 vols., Meppel & Amsterdam 1988). 10 Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy feast and holy fast: The religious signicance of food to medieval women (Berkeley, Calif. 1987).

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and “human beings made food”: a person who loves another wants to eat him or her up.11 We see this clearly in the Visions (ca. 1240) of the Dutch mystic Hadewych, where the food metaphor suggests that God is physically experienced—devoured, as it were—by all the senses simultaneously.12

Gendered narratives Extreme fasting practices form a topos in the lives of late-medieval holy women, especially in their young years. They are often accompanied by other somatic symptoms, such as sleeplessness, hyperactivity, or unusual physical sensations such as a feeling of oating. Fasting and illness are seen as an extension of Christ’s suffering on the cross, and like his suffering, they can be placed in the service of others. This complex of ideas and practices is most prevalent in women’s mysticism of the late Middle Ages. The Lives of Gertrude van Oosten, Hadewych, Beatrice of Nazareth, and Ida of Louvain reveal a close link between food/fasting and religiosity.13 We see this most clearly in Liduina (Liedewij) of Schiedam (1380–1433), whose life was given literary form by, among others, the famous representative of the Modern Devotion Thomas à Kempis, and later independently molded by the Franciscan preacher Jan Brugman to t the genre of medieval saints’ Lives. Thomas à Kempis’s text was itself an adaptation of the so-called Vita prior (1440) of the Brielle canon Hugo van Rugge.14 It would therefore be naïve to approach this kind of stylized saint’s Life as a directly useful historical source. There can be no doubt, however, that it is composed of narrative motifs culled from readily available narrative traditions. And it is precisely the continuity of such traditions that can link Liduina with Evert. 11 Jojada Verrips, ‘ “Ik kan je wel opvreten”. En(i)ge notities over het thema kannibalisme in westerse samenlevingen’, in: Etnofoor 4 (1991), 19–49. 12 Bynum, Holy feast, 160. 13 Ibid., 115–129. 14 Ludo Jongen & Cees Schotel (eds.), Het leven van Liedewij, de maagd van Schiedam. De middelnederlandse tekst naar de bewaarde bronnen uitgegeven, vertaald en van commentaar voorzien (Schiedam 1989). On the liation of these texts, see: Koen Goudriaan, ‘Het Leven van Liduina en de Moderne Devotie’, in: Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis 6 (2003), 161–236. Cf. also: Hans van Oerle, ‘Liedwy von Schiedam: Mystica oder Hysterica?’, in: Peter Dinzelbacher & Dieter R. Bauer (eds.), Religiöse Frauenmystik und mystische Frömmigkeit im Mittelalter (Cologne & Vienna 1988), 395–404.

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Liduina’s youthful experience as related in these texts is indeed comparable to that of Evert. For both of them the breakthrough to an authentic religious experience was accompanied by extreme somatic symptoms following recovery from an illness. In both cases the illness created time for a spiritual incubation. The fear of physical adversity could gradually be understood as the calling voice of God. It laid the foundation for a new view of how the ill person would live after recovery. Liduina was also nearly fteen when she became so sick and weak that she was no longer able to get out of bed. When she had somewhat recovered she asked her father for permission to go skating. Only then, on February 2, 1395, on the ice, did the famous incident take place that left her almost completely lame and bedridden for the rest of her long life. She was soon unable to eat anything and lived solely on the Eucharist. Meanwhile she was repeatedly visited by angels who showed her the instruments of Christ’s suffering. In Brugman’s version Liduina is a model of patience and trust in God. Contemporary scholars often cannot resist the temptation to pass a verdict on the authenticity of such amazing experiences, particularly on the probability of extended fasting. Such a verdict—mostly in terms of the unmasking of an impostor—can, of course, only claim validity if the fasting is tested against a recognizable modern norm: a syndrome, like that of anorexia nervosa. But is it legitimate to apply a clinical diagnosis formulated only long after Middle Ages (although the term anorexia existed already in classical antiquity) to older phenomena from another type of society?15 The last few decades have brought a great deal of discussion about the relation between extended fasting by medieval saints and present-day anorexia nervosa. Religious fasting and the mysticism of suffering has been presented as the ancient, religious counterpart of present-day, secular anorexia. Bynum rightly points out that this is actually a sterile discussion.16 Even in the Middle Ages there were widely divergent opinions about the long fasts undertaken by individuals, and it was not unusual for the phenomenon to be dismissed as a normal illness or even outright fraud. Rudolph Bell’s characterization of fasting as a strategic instrument to promote a feminine ideal of holiness in a patriarchal society also falls short, according to Bynum, who sees it more as the concrete expression of a specic cultural model. In

15 16

As in Van Deth & Vandereycken, Van vastenwonder tot magerzucht, I, 167–204. Bynum, Holy feast, 194–207.

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that model food occupies a pivotal position for three reasons. First, food is the prime means for controlling one’s own body (asceticism). What springs to mind here are the ascetic practices of the desert fathers, whose Lives belonged to the corpus of widely read hagiographies. Secondly, food offers the possibility of gaining control over one’s environment. Since eating is a highly social activity, not eating signies a separation from the group, isolation. Thirdly, food is closely bound up with bodily life, and variations in eating patterns soon inuence the way a person experiences and treats his or her body.17 Bynum, like her predecessors, composed her entire book around the hypothesis that long voluntary fasts in the Middle Ages were characteristic of feminine spirituality. For her the fasting of women is not an expression of dualism, a rejection of the world, but an attempt to take the incarnation seriously, by means of the metaphor of the Eucharist. Men and women, she maintains, select different types of symbols from their universe. Men use symbols that highlight a contrast to their everyday life or depict its opposite, while women choose their symbols from the sphere of their biological and social experience. They simply deepen the signicance of their everyday life. After the Middle Ages there were also numerous fasting women, as shown by the extensive inquiry of Ron van Deth and Walter Vandereycken, as well as that of Bell. At times their fasting served to promote an endangered cause and acquired an apologetic value. Such was the case with women from radical sects during the English Civil War: in 1647 Sarah Wight fasted for more than 75 days and the eleven-year-old Martha Hateld for more than two months, and Anna Trapnel wrote endless prophetic verses during the ecstasies she experienced while fasting.18 Yet some men undertook long fasts as well. John the Baptist, for instance, lived on locusts and wild honey (Matt. 3:4). The desert fathers of the rst centuries, however, are the best-known examples here. And we should not forget the Irish monks from the early and high Middle Ages, who very likely served as the link between the desert fathers and the medieval saints’ models in northwest Europe. In the life of the 17 Wier, De lamiis, already pointed to the link between malnutrition and melancholy or sorcery. 18 Keith Thomas, ‘Women and the civil war sects’, in: Past & Present 13 (1958), 42–62; Phyllis Mack, Visionary women: Ecstatic prophecy in seventeenth-century England (Berkeley, Calif. 1992); Diane Purkiss, ‘Producing the voice, consuming the body: Women prophets of the seventeenth century’, in: Isobel Grundy & Susan Wiseman (eds.), Women, writing, history 1640–1740 (London 1992), 139–158.

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most popular male saint of the late Middle Ages, Francis of Assisi, we also nd a strong tendency to abstain from food. Bynum correctly points out, however, that fasting is not a central metaphor, or ordering element, in Francis’s spiritual life, and that food has no specic signicance for him; it is simply one of the (in essence positively valued) aids for his asceticism, his experience of poverty. The same holds for later mystics like Heinrich Suso or Jan van Ruusbroec. For them fasting was not a metaphor for the encounter with God, as it was for the women mystics; they in fact explicitly associated Eucharistic devotion and fasting practices with women models of saintliness.19 Although their own fasting was interpreted as a sign of holiness, they derived their power as saints not so much from the experience of their body as from their words and writings, their message and deeds. Nevertheless, parallels can be found for Evert Willemsz’s experience. The spectacle of his Mennonite contemporary Adriaen Idsz Kaeskooper deserves only cursory attention. Adriaen claimed he could live without food because “an angel brought sweetness to his tongue or lips every day”—but was reported to actually live on carrots and peas from his garden.20 Almost a century later, in Rotterdam, another fteen-year-old boy, Jan Evertsz, went without eating for 24 weeks.21 In his case, too, this led to an ecstatic religious experience, but without any sense of calling on the boy’s part to send messages into the world. Jan’s mother, the Catholic widow Cornelia Everts, played an ambiguous role, for if we can believe the critics she tried to prot from the situation nancially. The case attracted countless medical explanations and became a scientic curiosity. By order of the magistracy the boy was admitted to the hospital, where he died on March 1, 1712. The town physician Dr. Herman Lufneu then performed an autopsy.22 The pamphlet published by a supporter of the boy makes it clear that in the perception of his contemporaries “fasting” did not necessarily mean total abstinence from

19

Bynum, Holy feast, 94–112. Jan Theunisz, Der Hanssijtsche Menniste gheest-drijveren historie . . . (Amsterdam 1627), 32–33 [Pamphlet Knuttel 3773]. 21 Oprecht en naeukeurich verhael van het overseldsaem langduyrich vasten en waecken van een Jonghelingh van 15 jaeren, genaemt Jan Evertsen . . . (s.l. 1712) [Pamphlet Knuttel 16096]. R. van Deth & W. Vandereycken, ‘Vastenwonderen en vlugschriften in Nederland’, in: Spiegel historiael 26 (1991), 446–451, present a rather reductionist interpretation of this case. See also chapter 8, hereafter. 22 C.L. Thijssen-Schouten, ‘Hermanus Lufneu, stadsarts te Rotterdam’, in: Rotterdams Jaarboekje VI:8 (1960), 180–227 (here 213–215). 20

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food. During his fast Jan Evertsz continued to drink “clean rain water mixed with a little wine and a lump of cane sugar.” The point was not to refuse all food but to deviate from normal eating patterns. In the rst phase of her long years in bed this was also true of Liduina of Schiedam. The fourth chapter of the oldest version of Liduina’s Life describes in detail how her fasting gradually, over a period of sixteen years, evolved from a form of selective eating to total abstinence. At rst “she ate for some time a piece of apple as small as a host that is customarily used for communion, and it had to be warmed in tongs over the re. She at times also took a little bread with a small beer soup [soaked in a little beer?] or a little sweet milk. When she was no longer able to eat these things, she for some years drank every week a half pint of wine that was undiluted, and subsequently for some years mixed with water. At times she ate a little sugar, cinnamon, or a date or a nutmeg. After that, when she could no longer eat these things, she used to drink every week a half pint of Meuse water, which through the special grace of God was for her tastier and sweeter than wine.”23 These two examples, which date from a century before and almost a century after Evert’s experience, show that the perception of fasting was closely bound up with the everyday practice of eating. Miraculous fasting was not always a matter of total abstinence from food, but could assume a variety of intermediate forms as long as they deviated structurally from everyday eating habits. Civil and church authorities set the example themselves by proclaiming a public day of prayer and fasting in response to disasters or other crucial events. And for an orphan like Evert that meant a diet a good deal more restricted than the already sober fare of the orphanage.

God’s work Who served as Evert Willemsz’s model of saintliness? Although Evert repeatedly identies himself with Christ, he does not really live out of a devotion to Christ’s humanity. It is the Father, not Christ, who lls his heart. “Great and marvelous are thy mighty works” (b18) is the theme he sings in endless variations. “For it is for us to pray, and for

23

Jongen & Schotel, Het leven van Liedewij, 26.

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the Lord to give” (b11). The emptying of his body plays a crucial role in his relationship with the Father. Evert’s fasting is like the human negative of God’s miraculous work: “For I shall again be preserved by God, but not by men” (b28). The topos of the body made receptive through emptying was often used for prophetic women as well.24 The body, empty from fasting and deprived of the use of its sense, becomes a passive, thoroughly puried vessel in which divine power can reside and from there reveal itself prophetically to the world. The human victim is totally consumed for the sake of God’s honor—a classic motif from Catholic asceticism which Catholic reformers like Ignatius of Loyola had a short time earlier emphasized anew. The borderline experience, heralded by Evert’s recovery from a long illness and realized in a twofold ecstasy, makes him an instrument of prophecy from beyond the border between this life and the next. For the young man himself his emptying epitomizes the harshness, fullness, and closeness to life of his experience of God. It is the guarantee he needs in order to grasp the reality of the contact with God, to give account of his union with Him and to believe in his own mission. The essence of Evert’s experience lies in the miracle that God works in his body through a chain of amazing events, positive and negative—events that rst strike him down and then heal, bring death and then resurrection, fetter and then free him. It is in the rst place about himself. In that experience he nds himself, and in the process nds his calling. This may be the main point of contrast with the religious experiences of Puritan women in the 1640s. Sarah Wight, Anna Trapnel, and Martha Hateld empty their bodies by fasting and close them off to the world by shutting down their senses. Given the division of religious labor between the sexes, women in the seventeenth century could derive from this only a spiritual mission, not a social one: their voice was always an echo of someone else’s authority. Evert, however, was destined by God’s miracle for the ofce of minister in his own right, for a social task with his own authority as interpreter of God’s Word.25 Various Bible texts supported the idea of physical forms of divine intervention: “Do we not read in God’s word that He made the deaf to hear, the blind to see, the dumb to speak?” (b11: Matt. 15:31). A

24 25

Mack, Visionary women, 34; Purkiss, ‘Producing the voice’, 141–143. Cf. Purkiss, ‘Producing the voice’, 150–151.

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person who could read those signs in himself saw God at work. Was such a passage only a source of hope for Evert when his senses failed him? Or did it serve in advance as a model of trial and deliverance to which he conformed during his experience, as if to test God himself ? Evert was familiar with the biblical examples of divine help for the hungry and fasting: Elijah, Habakkuk, and Daniel in the Old Testament and the feeding of the ve thousand in the New (b15: Matt. 14:13–21). God can gratuitously transform a feeling of hunger into one of fullness, even abundance, those texts declare. The hunger for God’s unlimited power, the longing to be absorbed in the fullness of God, was no doubt the deepest motive behind the fasting of the poor orphan. For a brief period he managed to ignore the survival instincts of his body. Especially in an orphanage fasting was as difcult as it was spectacular, given the gentle pressure of the collective life rhythm and the strong group control. Refusing to heed the demands of one’s own body could easily be interpreted as a refusal to participate in the community of orphans.26 But Evert had in the meantime found a new community: God the Father and the Holy Spirit formed his new family. How did Evert manage to arrive at this certainty? Did he draw on a tradition of psychosomatic training methods: voluntary ascetic eating, sleep deprivation, or social isolation, as practiced in spiritual circles of the late Middle Ages? And if so, how did he come to know of such practices? Through reading, preaching, or catechism? Or simply through stories told by people who had heard them told by others? On this point our sources fall radically short. But the evidence we have suggests that Evert’s visions were stimulated by traditions that took for granted a certain receptivity to extraordinary occurrences, without declamatory effects. God deigns to make use of human will in his work of grace: “For Christ says: He that endureth to the end shall be saved” (b9: Matt. 10:22). Evert is not a passive recipient of God’s grace. His whole body exudes active collaboration with God. God’s will is his will. That much his willpower makes clear. But he desires more than his own salvation. By identifying himself with Christ he alludes unambiguously to the position of mediator, of broker or agent of salvation. He claims for himself the role of

26 For the body as metaphor of the community, cf. Natalie Z. Davis, ‘The sacred and the body social in sixteenth-century Lyon’, in: Past & Present 90 (1981), 40–70; Antoine de Baecque, Le corps de l’histoire: métaphores et politique (1770–1890) (Paris 1993).

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agent between God and man, between clergy and laity, between true (ecclesiastically approved) and false saintliness, between godly pietism and clerical devotion. Years later, in Manhattan, Evert’s fasting would acquire a parallel in his refusal to take part in the Lord’s Supper.27 That parallel sheds new light on his youthful experience, for a minister who abstained from communion in his own congregation was as unusual a phenomenon as a young boy who fasted among his peers in an orphanage—although Reverend Alutarius, as we have seen, once refused communion himself. Here, too, food functions as a symbol, and quite explicitly as a symbol of community. Evert’s straightforwardness made it impossible for him to turn the communal ritual of the Lord’s Supper into an empty show. A broken, sinful community was unworthy of the sacrament. In this light, Evert’s refusal to eat at age fteen can be interpreted in retrospect as an intimate, bodily protest against the divisions in Woerden society.

Seeing Evert’s vision formed the focal point of his ecstatic experience. In that vision his soul was united with the divine. It was not Christ that appeared to Evert but an emanation of God. Christ was the one who sent the heavenly messenger in the name of the Father: “May it please thee then, O Lord, to send thy holy messengers, in keeping with thy Father’s will, to open my mouth” (b8). While Evert immediately recognizes in the epiphany an angelic messenger of God, he is at rst unable to interpret the appearance. The experience is too full and rich to be accounted for by an angel. He hesitates then between the gure of an angel, the Spirit of God, a divine power, and a blinding light. His messages testify to this hesitation. The terms are used indiscriminately, and in one of his texts we nd all four of them in close succession: “Now the Spirit is entering me who will enlighten me. . . . There I see the Angel of the Lord, a brightly shining light, which completely lightens my inrmities . . .” (b9–10). Only later, in the poems he wrote after processing everything for a few weeks, did Evert reduce the epiphany to the heavenly winged angel from the classical visual tradition:

27

See chapter 14.

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chapter six . . . God cured him then Sending his Angels as we do know Who ew from heaven down here below And said to him: O young man, hear, I come to thee, but do not fear. (b13)

And a little later: Then came an Angel in the night That hear and speak again he might He did not see him later on For he had back to heaven gone. (b14)

Evert remained lucid about his experience. Unlike a “frenetic prophet” in Utrecht a year later, he did not use it to justify extravagant claims. That prophet claimed that he “had the Spirit of Michael, yea, was even the Paraclete whom Christ had promised to send to His own”—he in other words, considered himself an archangel and the Holy Spirit in one. Burgomasters therefore decided that the deranged man should either be locked up or banned from the town.28 Evert’s initial hesitation is a strong indication of the authenticity of his experience. For a brief moment his confusion was so great that he lost all sense of what was happening. Everything around him turned dark. He looked inside himself, but as long as the epiphany lasted he was unable to interpret what he saw. Forms became uid in the mystical experience of union, of merging with the All. It made him a new person. Visions, we can conclude, are not neutral phenomena. They create tension or give relief. In any case they bring about something in the recipient, give him new insight into his task or make him aware of his calling. Evert’s rst inner vision ended a phase of external blindness (b7, b13, b15–16). That was not merely a metaphor for his soul’s blindness to God. The boy also had to learn to close his eyes in order to see inside himself and discover his calling. Such outer blindness is not only a precondition for the concentration and deepening of the inner experience, it is also a result of that experience. The light that comes from above is so dazzling that it blinds earthly eyes. The ecstasy is, literally, a blinding revelation of the truth. For the seventeenth-century Calvinist, human nature is characterized by somberness, darkness. By 28 A. Buchelius, ‘Observationes ecclesiasticae sub presbyteratu meo, 1622–1626’, ed. S. Muller Fzn, in: Bijdragen en mededelingen van het Historisch Genootschap 10 (1887), 46 (March 26, 1624).

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contrast, that which a heavenly angel brings us from beyond our nature originates in such a tremendous concentration of light—the unapproachable light in which the immortal God lives (1 Tim. 6:16)—that a person who experiences it is bound to become blind, at least temporarily, to external reality. God’s true power then reveals itself in His ability and His will to restore earthly light to the blind person. Such motifs can be found in various medieval Dutch legends. A cleric who desired to see Mary, for example, was blinded by her appearance. Only later did she restore his sight, demonstrating that heaven has power over light and darkness.29 The classic prototype of the close relation between outer blindness and inner light was Teiresias, the blind seer of Thebes, who appears in dramas by both Sophocles and Euripides and who identied Oedipus as the murderer of Laios. He was the model for someone like the Frisian prophet Blind Simon, who in the early sixteenth century predicted that misfortunes of all sorts would befall Frisian churches and monasteries. He considered his inner prophetic gift a direct consequence of his outer blindness: “Our good Lord robbed me of that external light, what do you know about how he has enlightened me inside?”30 Old Isaac (Gen. 27) and father Tobit are biblical examples of blind men singled out for God’s blessing. The blind persons in the Old Testament are not seers, however. God tests the aged Tobit with a blindness that is simply the result of his own negligence, and He demonstrates His grace by restoring Tobit’s sight (Tobit 11:10–14). In the Bible blindness or pseudo-blindness is more often a metaphor of ignorance, as in Isaiah 9:2: “the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.” In the New Testament, however, we nd a model that must have been much more familiar to Evert, namely the apostle Paul. Signicantly, this is the story of Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus. According to Acts 9:3–19, Saul (as he was then called) was struck blind by God while on his way to persecute Christians. For three days he was unable to see, and he ate and drank nothing. But the “light from heaven” blinded him only physically, for he could hear the voice of God (Acts 9:7) and see in a vision what was going to happen (Acts 9:12). Those three days form a parallel to the death, burial, and resurrection of 29 C.G.N. de Vooys, Middelnederlandsche legenden en exempelen: bijdrage tot de kennis van de prozaliteratuur en het volksgeloof der Middeleeuwen (The Hague 1900), 79–81. 30 M. de Haan Hettema (ed.), ‘Prophetien van blynde Simon en bruer Hankis’, in: Nieuwe Friesche Volksalmanak 2 (1854), 51–54.

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Christ. They symbolize Paul’s rebirth to a new life. And that new life began with the liberation of his senses: he regained his sight, and he resumed eating (Acts 9:18–19). Evert’s sensitivity to the vision as the ideal communicative structure, the best means to acquire heavenly knowledge and attain mystical union, places him on the border between the old, medieval approach to sensory experience, revived by the Catholic (Counter) Reformation, and the new communication forms of the Protestant Reformation. Older forms of religious discourse revolved largely around the visual experience of God. The medieval preference for visions as the prime form of encounter with God was far from arbitrary, as Peter Dinzelbacher has convincingly shown.31 Writers of classical antiquity and the Middle Ages assumed that the eye provided a better, more direct and more reliable, access to reality than the voice or the ear.32 The Reformation, on the other hand, placed more emphasis on verbal forms of communication with God—not only in the actual experience of God but also in the symbols and metaphors used to report that experience. The privileged instrument of supernatural knowledge was no longer the (inner and outer) eye, but the ear. The metaphor of seeing was replaced with that of hearing.33 Eye contact with God and the holy—as in a vision—was distrusted, sculptures were smashed and texts elevated to a new level of sacredness, even in the design of church interiors. Although the Reformation also had its seers, their experience was no longer the rule but the exception. In this respect Evert reveals himself as a child of the older tradition. Humanism and Renaissance had in the meantime moralized that tradition, even secularized it into the emblem of the watchful eye, which would in turn serve as the model for Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon (1791).34 For Evert visions are the counterpart of that other, existential reality, namely that he is seen by God’s eye, that God has noticed him and chosen him to be His instrument. The light he sees is the human translation of God’s blinding eye that swallows him up

31 Peter Dinzelbacher, Vision und Visionsliteratur im Mittelalter (Stuttgart 1981); in Mittelalterliche Visionsliteratur: eine Anthologie (Darmstadt 1989), he makes a clear distinction between visions (linked with a rapt state, an ecstatic experience, or a loss of consciousness [“Tagesbewußtsein”]) and appearances (taking place in the seer’s own physical environment). In Evert’s case the term ‘vision’ seems to apply best. 32 David Chidester, Seeing, hearing and religious discourse (Urbana, Ill. 1992), 135–136. 33 Ibid., 111–128. 34 Cf. W. Deonna, Le symbolisme de l’oeil (Bern 1965).

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in an unfathomable depth. At the same time it “lightens” him, that is, brings relief and healing. Simply being looked at by God is enough for a person to have all his imperfections healed. In September 1718 this happened to the eighteen-year-old Janneke Pieterse of Amsterdam.35 For ve years she had been lame and crawled over the ground “like an earthworm,” until one day in front of the Westerkerk (West Church) she felt how in the compassionate looks of the churchgoers “God the Lord looked upon her with eyes of mercy.” She then felt a change surge through her body, and, grasping the hand of a passerby, found herself able to stand up.

The vision and the angel What actually is a vision? The Flemish psychologist A.Vergote has given a simple denition: “Visions are perceptions of images and words which are normally not perceivable through the senses but which are nevertheless experienced as images and words perceived by the senses.”36 Two elements stand out here: the perception is extraordinary but nevertheless real for the seer; and it is sensory in nature. A vision, in other words, is an inner form of seeing (and hearing) that is experienced as real but understood as supernatural in origin. In contrast to Dinzelbacher’s assumption about the Middle Ages, Vergote maintains that a vision need not necessarily bring about a feeling of ecstasy. While that may be true, the contrast between a vision and everyday perception often creates for the outside world the impression of an ecstatic experience. Sw (pronounced Shoe) Anders, the young wife of the Frisian farmer Dirck Jansz (1578–1636), suffered from severe seizures until an angel appeared to her in the night of February 26, 1618 and announced that God would release her from her afiction. Overjoyed, she woke Dirck. Although he had buried his mother the same day and may have been extra receptive to things out of the ordinary, he had noticed nothing of the appearance. At rst quietly, then gradually more and more loudly

35 Pertinent verhaal, wegens het groote wonderlyke mirakel, dat God de Heer heeft gedaan . . . (Amsterdam 1718). 36 A. Vergote, ‘Psychologische interpretatie van visioenen’, in: R.E.V. Stuip & C. Vellekoop (eds.), Visioenen (Utrecht 1986), 226–239 (quotation 226). Cf. also: Jean Dierkens, ‘Apparitions et théories psychologiques contemporaines’, in: Alain Dierkens (ed.), Apparitions et miracles (Brussels 1991), 7–46.

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Sw kept repeating the same words: “O Dirck Jansz, I am so happy! O Dirck Jansz, my dear husband, I am so happy! O Dirck Jansz, my dear husband, I am so happy.” Eventually Dirck became afraid, “because it went on for a very long time and we were alone in the house.” The next day Sw spoke about it again as a happy reality. For her it was not a dream or a fantasy; she truly believed she was healed, although two months later she died as the result of a new seizure. For Dirck, however, the experience was unmistakably ecstatic in character.37 Visions do not in fact take place without an altered state of consciousness. And that alteration explains the seer’s conviction that the perception is real: the vision overcomes him or her in a different order of reality. The night in which the vision takes place, on the border between light and dark, is both the framework and the metaphor for the Other that the vision makes visible—something so exalted that the individual cannot grasp it in everyday reality. The “peak experience,” the paroxysmal, transcendental character of visionary perception, makes the subject feel captive to the Other or Another, who can completely change his or her view of the world. The individual can experience a temporary escape of the self from the limitations of the body. The night, in which visions usually occur, is not only a semantic contrast with that “enlightenment/lightening”; it also stands for the shutting down of the senses, which brings the subject into a highly receptive state. This means that the reality communicated by the appearance stands for an authority distinct from that of the everyday world. Visions of laypersons can therefore easily undermine the status of the ofcial religious establishment as the mediator between God and the believer—which explains why ecclesiastical authorities almost always adopt a hypercritical stance towards such epiphanies. Notable in Evert’s visions is the place of the angel. Angels, as heavenly messengers, are a classic manifestation of the divine or the supernatural. They belong to the age-old narratives about encounters between the sacred and the profane. An angel is an anthropomorphic representation of the divine that makes the intrusion of the almighty God in the human world bearable, recognizable, and fruitful.38 An

37 P. Gerbenzon (ed.), Het aantekeningenboek van Dirck Jansz. (1604–1636) (Hilversum 1993), 133–139. 38 At present, narratives about angels are back on the research agenda of Protestant religious history. See, e.g., the studies by Fred van Lieburg, De Engelenwacht: geschiedenis van een wonderverhaal (Kampen 2000); ‘Ghosts, animals, or angels: Christian story-telling

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angel is the external power that leads a person into the other world where he receives his visual (and auditory) revelations. As a mediator of divine power an angel need only appear to the chosen person, simply be present, in order to work marvels that go beyond the categories of ordinary human experience and earthly explanation. We see this in the “miracle” that took place in the night of October 13, 1676 on the Amsterdam Prinseneiland (Prince’s Island).39 Jetske Claes, wife of the bargeman Rincke Abbes, both from Friesland, had been lame in both legs for fourteen years and could move about only in a cart or by crawling. One day a gure she recognized as an angel appeared to her. She immediately felt recovered and the following day was able to walk as usual again. In this case the angel said nothing; words were superuous. The gure was recognizable from the play of light and dark. God was here the metaphor of light and healing. God here revealed Himself in metaphors of light and healing. As mediators between two worlds, angels do not exist simply for our individual benet. The message they bring is intended primarily for the community, even though they are visible in the inner light only to certain individuals. But even when an angel manifests himself through outer light, the perception depends on personal dispositions. Seers receive their messages in accordance with their psychological structure, their specic human qualities, and the circumstances of their life. The epiphany speaks the “language” of the seer, both verbally and symbolically. What the seer takes in is more the thrust of the message than its wording; only secondarily does he or she try to transpose it into current language. This explains the vagueness of many messages, the hesitation about the formulation, and the feeling of many seers that they do violence to the message when they render it in words. Early seventeenth-century descriptions of angelic appearances never go beyond the horizon of the seer’s experience. The shepherd who in 1612 saw “a brightness before him” in a eld near Baarle in Brabant knew without hesitation that he “had seen an angel.” He interpreted

in a modern world’, in: Folklore: an Electronical Journal of Folklore 20 (May 2002), 17–36; ‘Sanctifying pillars of pietism and methodism: Guardian angels or heavenly helpers in international story-telling’, in: Jürgen Beyer, Albrecht Burkardt, Fred van Lieburg & Marc Wingens (eds.), Confessional sanctity (c. 1500–c. 1800) (Mayence 2003), 181–195; Peter Marshall & Alexandra Walsham (eds.), Angels in the early modern world (Cambridge 2006). 39 Een waerachtich verhael, van een mirakel en een gesichte Godts, geschiedt tot Amsterdam op ’t Prince eilandt . . . (Alkmaar 1676); cf. J.Z. Kannegieter, ‘Het wonder van het Prinseneiland’, in: Maandblad Amstelodamum 55 (1968), 193–198.

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the light as an angel, and immediately following this recognition the angel began to speak.40 Aniela Jaffé has described these xed patterns found in appearances widely separated by time and space as “transcultural invariants,” ahistorical archetypes transmitted in and by structures of the subconscious.41 This means that the seer does not fantasize them, but subconsciously makes use of “neutral” traditions of form. A concrete, context-bound meaning comes about only through the message such forms contain. For Jean-Claude Schmitt, on the other hand, the recognizable quality is itself the product of historical circumstances, for the epiphany circulates in a specic social group. As appearances become more frequent, the formal tradition is established with ever-greater precision, with the result that it becomes more readily recognizable for the group.42 In Evert’s case Schmitt’s is the more plausible explanation. The xed formal principle is for him the appearance of an angel. In fact, “angel” for him simply stands for “appearance.” The angel is the formal “given” that makes the epiphany recognizable. Angels are so familiar to Evert that he can immediately recognize them as mediators of the supernatural. Conversely, angels by denition usher in every form of contact with the other world. Evert’s rst spiritual experience began with the nocturnal visit by an angel who enjoined Evert to serve God and keep His commandments “that were commanded me by thy servant the Angel of the Lord, whom thou didst send to me in the night, who spoke to me with the words from thy mouth, that I should not be afraid, that he was a messenger of God who is all-powerful in heaven and on earth. He came to enlighten/lighten me, O God and Father. . . . How lovely it is to see an angel of the Lord, and then to hear him speak, too, as he spoke to me” (b8). The “lightening” or relief that Evert mentions refers to the restoration of his understanding, hearing, speech, and sight (b6). But it was also an “enlightening” manifestation of divine power. Evert in fact nds it difcult to describe what exactly overcame him. At times he talks about an anthropomorphic angel, then again about a

40 J.R.W. Sinninghe, ‘Verschijning van een engel te Baarle’, in: Brabants Heem 2 (1950), 82–83. See chapter 5. 41 Aniela Jaffé, Apparitions: An archetypal approach to death dreams and ghosts (Dallas, Tex. 1978). 42 Jean-Claude Schmitt, Les revenants: les vivants et les morts dans la société médiévale (Paris 1994), 213.

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vision of light (b9–10). But the dominant theme of his rst episode, in September 1622, is clearly the angel of light. Evert’s rst healing was also directly and exclusively the result of God’s intervention by means of an angel, still represented with the metaphor of light. Evert himself describes how his experience builds towards a climax: “the Holy Spirit is not far from me, God will soon come to comfort me. . . . Now the Spirit is entering me who will enlighten/lighten me. . . . There I see now the Angel of the Lord, a brightly shining light, which completely relieves me of my afictions” (b9–10). Evert’s longing keeps his body alert, ready to surrender to the least sign of the coming of the Other. “Because I so yearn for thee, O God, send one of thy holy angels and thy Holy Spirit” (b10). At the beginning and end of the rst episode Evert not only sees the angel but hears his voice as well. This double manifestation, visual and verbal, was necessary because a message was attached to his physical and visual experience: he was instructed to call people to repentance and assigned a life task as a minister. The angel was the voice that articulated this calling and, as the messenger of God, gave it authenticity. From that moment on God’s word was embodied in the boy. But Evert makes it clear that the angel does not dictate to him directly. Evert assimilates the message during his intimate encounter with the angel, decodes it and writes it down in the language of his environment, which is his language as well: “Truly, what I wrote there I wrote through the Angel, for he is with me, and he put that into my mouth, through the power of God, but not from any writings, as God knows” (a4, b22). For Evert, then, his messages are not copies of Bible texts—they do not well up in him out of his familiarity with Scripture—but instead come directly from God, through the angel, who assists in the formulation. That the message is eventually couched in biblical and edifying language is of course the result of Evert’s cultural baggage and his mental habitus. He simply could not have said it in any other way. When the ecstasy is over he also returns to the idiom of the church. The angel is duly distinguished from the Holy Spirit, whom Evert in the turbulence of his experience confused with the angel: Create in me a spirit new and full of harmony, That with Thy mighty angels I may call on Thee . . . O Lord, Thy Holy Spirit now to me impart To teach such things to both my mouth and heart That I may also be a rightful heir In heaven’s realm among the angels fair. (b17–18)

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During the second episode the angel manifests himself in a different way. In January 1623 Evert plays a much more active role in his mystical experience than in September 1622. He is in control, as it were, of the psychosomatic component, which he is now undergoing for the second time; but this time he has to make sure that his experience and his messages gain recognition in the local community. A verbal message is sufcient to bring this about, for Evert’s conversion is by then a fact. The Holy Spirit is more credible to ecclesiastical authorities, certainly to those of the Reformed church, if He speaks in public rather than in an intimate encounter. A temptation by the devil himself could even be lurking behind the angel of light.43 All-too personal, unveriable elements in visions had traditionally been considered clear counterevidence for the authenticity of a seer.44 The angel therefore now plays a different role. He no longer appears to Evert in the form of a blinding light but only addresses him. As Evert writes to Master Zas in response to his question about “the signs of God”: “Before noon when this came to me, it was told to me inwardly in my heart by God’s Angel. I heard someone speaking, but saw nothing, then it was told to me inwardly that I should not eat for a time. Now this afternoon I lost my speech and hearing; if it pleases God I shall gain it back again” (a3). He makes no mention here of the angel of light. This also works in his favor, for Reverend Alutarius, who does not believe in appearances of angels, is open to a divine message—as long as Evert remains God’s humble instrument and makes no attempt to usurp His place. Evert therefore makes a point of describing the angel to the minister only as speaking: “Because God is so grieved at our sins, He sent me the voice of an angel, not that I saw him, but he spoke, saying I should not eat for a time; this was all so that people would be converted to the Lord” (b25). And when the minister is surprised that God keeps Evert alive in spite of his fasting: “for that is the promise I have from the voice that spoke to me, that God will keep me healthy and strong here in this world; for it was spoken to me by the mouth of the angel” (b26).

43 Cf. Paul S. Seaver, Wallington’s world: A Puritan artisan in seventeenth-century London (London & Stanford 1985), 20–24. 44 Cf. William Christian Jr., Apparitions in late medieval and renaissance Spain (Princeton, NJ 1981), 188–203.

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A similar case: Pieter Dircksz We have seen that Evert’s contact with heaven came about in two different ways: rst visually, then aurally. And the message he received was intended not only for the community but for himself as well. He was both the instrument of divine will and its immediate target. Just how exceptional this was and the extent to which it was all embedded in a specic context becomes apparent when we confront Evert’s experience with that of a boy from the same time and the same region who underwent a similar ordeal. Seven years after the events surrounding Evert, Pieter Dircksz, “a quiet and capable young man,” was living as a basket maker’s apprentice with his employer Jan Pietersz on the Mare canal in Leiden.45 In 1629, one week before Christmas, a blinding light awakened him in the middle of the night. He then heard a voice telling him “that the great day of the Lord is near” and that the people had to mend their ways by “putting off and forsaking their accursed pride and calling on God with repentance and contrition, if they want to escape the wrath of the Lord.” Here, too, heaven made sure that the message would become known. When the voice faded away, Pieter lost his power of speech. The following morning his master was naturally surprised at his muteness. Pieter then showed him the message he had managed to write down during the night while the light was shining: Believe me, people, rich and poor alike, Turn from your sins, cast off your pride The day of the Lord is drawing nigh. Think of what God this past night wrought, In my own person He brought it about: From a sweet, sound sleep I woke suddenly And heard a voice reveal to me That we should repent of our sin and pride To turn the wrath of the Lord aside. And after that my mouth was closed, A thing less grievous than you might suppose, For on Christmas Day

45 Wonderlijcke ondeckinge, in wat manieren binnen Dordrecht gevonden sijn ettelijcke potten met nieu gheboren kinders [. . .] Mitsgaders het gheschrift van een jonghman, die acht dagen voor Kersmis, snachts op zijn bedde een stemme gehoort ende een licht gesien heeft . . . (Leiden: for Jerem. Jansz, 1629), f. A4.

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chapter six I will speak once again. To show us all mercy is God’s only aim, Through me—Pieter Dirckssen van der Tocht is my name.

This remarkable occurrence drew crowds of curious Leideners, including “the bailiff and the ministers who came to visit the boy.” His worried parents, God-fearing people, hurried over from Bodegraven to take their son home with them. And sure enough, in the afternoon of Christmas Day Pieter is able to speak again, “and talks to everyone and answers the questions people ask him.” The analogy with Evert Willemsz’s experience is striking on a number of points. Here, too, we see how a pious young man working at a quiet trade under an understanding master has his public identity conrmed by means of a religious experience: “In my own person He brought it about,” he writes; and to leave no room for doubt he concludes his poem with “Through me—Pieter Dirckssen van der Tocht is my name.” His experience is structured similarly to that of Evert: the appearance of light in the night, the heavenly message in pulpit language, the miraculous sign of muteness and healing, the verse form of the writings, the verication by the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, the recognition by the public. These are all elements of an established pattern that made the event recognizable and meaningful for his surroundings. We can certainly not rule out the possibility that young Evert’s experience was known in Leiden or that one of the pamphlets was still circulating. He was, in fact, living there himself at the time, as a student. But there are also differences. One that stands out clearly is the context in which the event took place. Unlike Evert Willemsz, Pieter Dircksz played no demonstrable role in the religious controversies of Leiden. He was, in fact, not Calvinist but Lutheran. Pieter probably soon left Leiden or died. The family must have belonged to the old Lutheran core of Bodegraven, a town near Woerden, and thus to the camp of Evert’s opponents. That of course did not hinder them from using the same forms to communicate their religious experience or from couching their message in identical terms. As printed in the pamphlet, however, Pieter’s experience is denominationally neutral and could be assimilated by any believer. The pamphlet itself is noncommittal on confessional issues. Even more important was the different signicance, personal and social, that the experience acquired for each of them. In Evert’s case it clearly emerged from a phase of personal growth. It conrmed Evert’s passage into another age group with other responsibilities, and he used

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it to eventually change his social position. This accounts for the highly personal orientation of the angelic appearance in his rst experience, the combination of vision and message (both individual and collective), and the shutting down of Evert’s senses: it was in the rst place all about him. Although Pieter Dircksz talks uninhibitedly with everyone who wants to listen after his healing, we are not left with the impression that he himself has become any wiser from his experience. In fact, his parents take him back home, out of the environment where he could have scored a victory. There is no indication that he used his miracle to promote the Lutheran cause in Bodegraven. Instead, epiphany, message, and miracle are completely embedded in the collective logic of early modern spirituality. Pieter stands out only as the most suitable instrument for proclaiming the message that is periodically needed to fan the ame of faith, and the miracle he experienced serves only as a sign to legitimize that message.

Speaking The angel of light and the voice in the night stand for the mediation between God and the world. The sharp contrast between light and darkness, voice and stillness, makes them the unmistakable sign of God, the totally Other. But God is not directly knowable. He works in the world through the agency of his emissaries, a role frequently played by the Virgin Mary when Christianity was still unied. We nd a typical example in medieval Delft, where the three-year-old Aldegonde caught a cold and for ve weeks lost both her ability to speak and the use of her limbs; she also ate no food “except what was given to her with a little feather.” Her mother then made a vow to Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows, whereupon Mary immediately appeared to the child and released her from her afictions.46 The essential point here is the awareness that God is the one who commands our senses. We nd this clearly articulated in Reverend Willem Baudartius’s account of a miracle that occurred a year and a half before the experience of Evert Willemsz.47 On April 12, 1621 a man stabbed a woman in the neck with the sheath of his knife. For fteen weeks she could neither 46

Gerrit Verhoeven, Devotie en negotie: Delft als bedevaartplaats in de late middeleeuwen (Amsterdam 1992), 89, 100, quotation 252. 47 Willem Baudartius, Memoryen (2 vols., Arnhem 1624–1625), book XIII, 60.

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eat nor speak. When the bailiff of Hoorn, who had arrested the man, confronted him with her on July 30, she suddenly cried: “You did it, you did it!” God, Baudartius tells us, opened her throat to reveal the truth. And we can be sure that the divine origin of that testimony lent it greater than usual force. And so it was with Evert as well. Time and again he insists that it is God who intervenes in his body. “Know, all you who stand around me, that God has again deprived me of my speech and hearing, which I had regained, and if it pleases God I shall receive them again from God almighty, if it pleases God,” he writes on January 18 (a3). “For, O Father, thou didst deprive me of my understanding and sight and taste for a time, and now I am still mute and deaf, and thou hast so abundantly delivered me, according to thy all-powerful wisdom, from everything except [my lack of] hearing and speech” (b7), he declared; and a little later, “O Father, I hope that thou, O God, wilt loosen my mouth and tongue, so that I with mouth and tongue and a clean heart may always joyously bear thy name engraved in my innermost heart” (b8). For Evert, God is above all the God who speaks. That becomes very clear from the pivotal role played by his deaf-muteness in his religious experience. Page after page he exclaims that he is overjoyed at the prospect of soon regaining his speech, through the work of the Holy Spirit. And he realizes that his deaf-muteness stands in the service of the message he must bring: “How would it be possible, except that it was the truth of the Lord, that I can write so freely and that I shall again receive my hearing and speech from God the Father?” (b9). When Evert regains his voice all the bottled-up words tumble out almost automatically in the form of psalms and hymns. For Evert himself the deaf-muteness was a sign of the divine origin of the message. His entire experience is dominated by words, not images. This explains why the powerful emotions that overcome him lead mainly to long-term loss of speech, while blindness aficts him only for shorter periods, on and off. He therefore emerges as a prime representative of the Reformation. The Protestant Reformation followed Paul in giving priority to hearing above sight. God’s word can only penetrate the soul through the ear. In the Northern Netherlands this is reected in cycles of allegorical representations, where sight usually has negative connotations of sensual experience and bodily lust, while hearing is associated with divine inspiration. Light alone as a metaphor for God was therefore in a sense anachronistic. The intense light indicated that something overpowering was happening, something supernatural that eluded the earthly coordinates of light and dark. The materialization

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of the experience of God in the image of the angel made it imaginable, and bearable, but it did not supply meaning. For that a voice was needed: that of the angel or of God Himself. Visual symbolism supported the voice, but it was not essential, as we can see from the case of Evert Willemsz. Raised in a deeply pious environment, he had by then probably outgrown the need for a visual prop. The voice alone proved sufcient for him the second time. The voice of the angel is thus the necessary counterpart of Evert’s deaf-muteness. The explosive power of the revelation left the boy literally speechless. There are more examples from this period of sudden fright, anxiety, or horror leading to temporary or even permanent loss of speech and hearing. The Overijssel nobleman Sweder Schele (1569– 1639) tells in his diary how Gerhard Schele was so frightened by a ghost at the age of nine that he immediately became deaf and mute.48 But what Evert sees is not a ghost but reality—a reality he cannot possibly apprehend through ordinary sensory perception. Overwhelmed by it, he becomes deaf and mute. His inability to hear or speak then isolates him from normal communication; he literally withdraws into himself in order to assimilate the message into his person. Time was needed for this. But his new “self ” is a spiritual self that has been called to awareness by a spiritual voice, the voice of an angel. Was it really an angel as traditionally depicted? It is remarkable how often Evert confuses the angel and the Holy Spirit, and how closely he associates the two. The angel is here a metaphor for the overpowering epiphany that deprived Evert of the use of his outward senses in order to make him receptive to the inner message: the blinding light and the language of God. The angel is at the same time the symbol of the reality of that encounter with God. To name the messenger is to name God Himself.

Motor functions Evert’s own perception of the psychosomatic aspects of his experience differs slightly from the way the community perceived them. Evert emphasizes not only his motor dysfunction, the crippling of his senses and limbs, but also his fasting. It is around this fasting that he constructs his performance. In view of what has been said so far, that was also the

48 Conrad Gietman, ‘Het adellijk bewustzijn van Sweder Schele tot Weleveld’, in: Overijsselse historische bijdragen 107 (1992), 83–114 (here 89).

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logical thing to do. His fasting was both the visible instrument and the most accessible metaphor for the emptying that makes an encounter with God possible. The contemporary seventeenth-century physician Jan Claesz Wassenaer, who some time later makes a point of Evert’s fasting, must have sensed this, despite his critical stance.49 But in the immediate perception of the townsfolk, the motor aspect dominated. This is evident from the titles of the two pamphlets, which mention only Evert’s deaf-muteness, blindness, and ecstasy, but not his fasting, and from the criticism in the town, which revolved mainly around his deafmuteness, although some of it also concerned his fasting (b23, b34). To fully appreciate the importance of the motor factor we have to realize how great a handicap it was to lose the power of locomotion in a society that had no mechanically driven carriages, a society in which it was also nearly impossible to work without using one’s legs. A cripple was at the mercy of others. This dependence was especially hard to bear with increasing age or a small income. It is not surprising, then, that lameness was through the ages a physical inrmity that occasioned some of the most fervent prayers to God for healing. As a neurological afiction closely associated with feelings of helplessness or numbness, and therefore often accompanied by psychosomatic side effects, it was also the type of inrmity that allowed for sudden improvement, if not healing, in a specic context. This explains why recovery from paralysis or lameness is one of most frequent miracles reported at pilgrimage sites.50 Echoes of God’s work in Evert were reported in that same year, 1623, from nearby Montfoort.51 Here the subject was a single woman from a large family, Susanna Gerritsdr van Twickel, aged 55. Sannichgen, as she was called, lived in the center of Montfoort in a house on the Hofstraat (Court Street) or perhaps the Oude Boomgaardstraat (Old Orchard Street), between the church and the castle. For 24 long years her “crippled and lame state had forced her to drag her legs over the ground behind her on two crutches.” On August 17, 1623 (old style) she went to bed at half past ten after saying her evening prayer. As usual she placed her crutches against the bedstead and fell asleep at

49

See chapter 8. Verhoeven, Devotie en negotie, 98–101; Marc Wingens, Over de grens: de bedevaart van katholieke Nederlanders in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw (Nijmegen 1994), 191–200. 51 C.C. de Glopper-Zuijderland, ‘Een 17e-eeuws wonder in Montfoort’, in: Heemtijdinghen 15 (1979), 60–65. 50

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eleven o’clock. Shortly after midnight she heard a voice saying: “Go forth.” She then began to tremble with fear, thinking, “What can this be?” Suddenly lightning and thunder burst forth over the earth. This made her even more fearful. She turned towards the dark side of the bedstead, kneeled on her bed and cried aloud: “O Lord, What can I do now? For I have no re in the house.” Did she think there was an intruder in her home? In any case she was spellbound by what was happening, for when the clock struck half past twelve the spell was broken. She thanked God with a sigh of relief and prayed “for a blessed hour.” She kept praying until the clock struck the full hour, then heard her half-brother Aelbert Gerritsz Smacht crossing the bridge over the ditch that separated her house from the street. She called out happily, “O brother, are you there?” When he answered her she said she would let him in. In view of the storm we can assume that Aelbert had come to see if everything was all right. As was her habit, Sannichgen took hold of the rope hanging on her bedstead in order to ease herself out of bed. But when she felt for her crutches they were not there. Surprised, she stood there for a moment, then noticed suddenly that she did not need to hold on to anything. A ash of lightning showed her where her crutches were standing: opposite the bedstead, against a cupboard. “Feeling her limbs to be unusually strong,” she took two steps forward, took hold of her crutches, and let her half-brother into the house. He had a lantern with him, so she was able to light a candle. Aelbert asked if she was afraid. “No,” she said, “you may leave again.” Reassured, her brother went away. He had noticed nothing of the miracle. When he was gone, she kept walking back and forth in her house, thanking God “for the wondrous and good works he had done for her.” She was so excited that it was half past three when she nally went to bed. At ve o’clock she was up again and went out her back door to tell her neighbor Willem van Duysel “about the great miracle that had been performed on her.” It was hard to wait, but because he was most likely still in bed, she rst walked back and forth for a time without her crutches. At last she was able to tell her neighbor what had happened and ask him to record it for the honor and glory of God.” And he did so faithfully. It is from his account of the miracle that we know this story. The person of Willem van Duysel offers a key to the meaning of this event in the local community. Willem, son of the former municipal secretary Jonatas van Duysel, was a notary in Montfoort, clerk of the feudal court of the viscounts of Montfoort, and secretary of

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Lopikerwaard. He was therefore the person best qualied to authenticate and publicize Sannichgen Gerritsdr’s miracle. An important point here is that Willem van Duysel, like Sannichgen, was Catholic. A short time later we nd that his brother Frans was a priest living in Montfoort. Signicantly, it was in 1622 that the marshal of Montfoort had tried to expel from the town the active priest Ludolf Hendricksz. A few Catholics, among them Willem van Duysel, then submitted a petition to the magistracy in order to prevent this from happening. We can now quite easily place the experience of Sannichgen Gerritsdr in the local context and interpret it along social lines, just as we did with Evert Willemsz. In Montfoort the miracle proved that the Catholic group was right to struggle for self-preservation. It was a sign from God that highlighted the dynamics of the Catholic community in a most concrete way: don’t give up as if you’ve been crippled, the message seems to be, but keep moving forward. Did Evert’s experience a short time before have some impact here? We will never know for sure. He belonged to a different denomination, but he spoke the same body language—a language understood by the fearful and oppressed, across confessional borders. Sannichgen Gerritsdr must have heard of him, if for no other reason because Master Lucas Zas had connections with the nearby town of Montfoort. We know for a fact that on February 3, 1623, ten days after Evert’s second healing, the town of Woerden paid 6 stivers postage for a letter that the orphan Claes Wessels sent to Montfoort, and it is hardly imaginable that it contained no mention of that dramatic event.52 In the months between Evert’s second healing and that of Sannichgen Gerritsdr she would have had time to take note of the news, peel away the outer Calvinist layer and penetrate to the core message, namely God’s deliverance as a sign of salvation for the community. As a result she herself experienced an ecstatic liberation, with an orgy of thunder and lightning serving as heavenly signs. But Sannichgen only heard a voice and Jetske Claes only saw an angel. Evert Willemsz was one of the few who had a double experience: the angel not only appeared to him, but spoke to him as well.

52

SAW, VI, 9 (town accounts 1622/23), f. 37r°.

CHAPTER SEVEN

DELIVERANCE

Illness, sin, and conversion narratives In the previous chapter we emphasized that Evert’s ordeal was embedded in ancient traditions of controlling and experiencing the body. The theatrical form of those traditions made the sequence of events in Woerden recognizable and meaningful for the community. The historian is here faced with a dilemma. Placing a mystical experience in a broad tradition can easily obscure its uniquely personal dimension. On the other hand, an emphasis on the experience itself tends to reduce it to something inexplicably personal, and to ignore that even the most personal experience works with elements from a standard repertoire of forms and meanings. To do justice to both perspectives we will concentrate in this chapter on Evert’s own perception of his mystical experience, as a structured process of conversion that in part simply overcame him and that he in part consciously steered. It all began with Evert’s illness in the summer of 1622. For the orthodox Calvinist, illness was closely associated with sin.1 Calvin had already stated that health, both spiritual and physical, stems from the hearing of God’s Word; the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. This close link between body and soul accounts for the popularity of the medical metaphor among orthodox Calvinists, in particular early pietists like Willem Teellinck (1579–1629) and Godfried Udemans (1581–1649), who were inspired by the same ideas as Meusevoet and Perkins. Teellinck used it mainly to illustrate the praxis pietatis, mysticism,

1

J.H. Smylie, ‘The Reformed tradition’, in: R.L. Numbers & D.M. Amundsen (eds.), Caring and curing: Health and medicine in the Western religious traditions (New York 1986), 204–239; Andrew Wear, ‘Puritan perceptions of illness in seventeenth-century England’, in: Roy Porter (ed.), Patients and practitioners: Lay perceptions of medicine in preindustrial society (Cambridge 1985), 55–99; M.J. van Lieburg, ‘Zeeuwse piëtisten en de geneeskunde in de eerste helft van de 17e eeuw: een verkenning van het werk van W. Teellinck en G.C. Udemans’, in: A.I. Bierman, et al., Worstelende wetenschap: aspecten van wetenschapsbeoefening in Zeeland van de zestiende tot in de negentiende eeuw (Middelburg, s.a. [1987]), 63–86.

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and Udemans the praxis vitae, asceticism. Drawing on the ancient motif of Christ the physician, they employed medical language to describe the life of the soul. Sin is then easily interpreted as the cause of illness, and repentance as the prerequisite for healing. Because illness is subject to divine Providence, it does not occur randomly or by chance. God aficts human beings as He pleases, but in doing so takes into account the individual person. Illness therefore contains a message of salvation. God heals both body and spirit. Teellinck and Udemans in particular view illness as closely related to the doctrine of the Fall.2 For Teellinck illness is characteristic of the old, “deformed” human being; health is a sign of re-creation, a property of the new, “rightly formed and upright Adam,” the spiritual human being. Sickness and pain, Teellinck maintains, are symptoms of God’s wrath—and that link is for him both close and concrete: the ill person should scrupulously ask himself for which sin he is being punished, for God sends afiction as a just punishment for sins. But illness also contains a lesson. By making a person aware of his or her sins it can, through God’s grace, lead to conversion and thus the beginning of a new, physically and spiritually healthy life. That conversion is the work of God alone. In his Querela patriae Willem’s brother Eeuwout Teellinck objects to those who claim “that in human conversion the working of the Holy Spirit is neither so strong nor so powerful as to overcome all human resistance, but that it is enough for Him to have given a human being sufcient powers to turn to God if he himself wants to do so.”3 This would mean that human free will is capable of dethroning God! On the contrary, his brother Willem argues, both punishment and deliverance are entirely in the hand of the one almighty God, a point he illustrates in 1624 with reference to three disasters: the scarcity of grain in the autumn of 1623, the ood of January 1624, and the enemy invasion of the Veluwe district in February of that year.4 Afiction and deliverance go hand in hand.

2 On Willem Teellinck: BLGNP, I, 373–375; Herman Westerink, Met het oog van de ziel: een godsdienstpsychologische en mentaliteitshistorische studie naar mensvisie, zelfonderzoek en geloofsbeleving in het werk van Willem Teellinck (1579 –1629) (Zoetermeer 2002). On Udemans: NNBW, X, 1065–1066; BLGNP, I, 385–386; W. Fieret, Udemans: facetten uit zijn leven en werk (3d ed., Houten, 1991). 3 Alexius Philopator [= Eeuwout Teellinck], Querela patriae. Dat is, Clachte des Vaderlants over de tegenwoordighe swaricheden door ettelijcke, en etterlijcke nieus-gesinde leeraers, in den lande van Hollandt verweckt (Amsterdam: Marten Jansz Brandt, 1617), 4. 4 Willem Teellinck, Godes handt ter straffe en ter verlossinghe: nu onlangs door driederley plagen in dese landen gesien (Amsterdam: Marten Jansz Brandt, 1624) [Pamphlet Knuttel 3561].

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Yet conversion takes place in two distinct steps. As Perkins explains: in the rst turning to God, the “rebirth,” a person is converted through God’s own work; subsequently, however, the reborn person must, through penitence, convert himself or herself to good works and a good life.5 Sanctication remains a personal responsibility. In his Melck-spijse Alutarius states this very plainly for the young people of Woerden: 16. How then do we become children of God? Through saving faith and a powerful rebirth by the Holy Spirit whereby we are renewed to the lost image of God and to obedience to His laws. 17. To what end should we know this? So that we may give greater glory to God’s grace in our salvation than in our creation. 2. So that we may conrm our election by the steadfast practice of good works.6

Against this backdrop Evert’s perception of his illness takes on clearer contours. Three different times God visits his body in the form of an angel. The angel is here a divine messenger who both punishes and heals. The image of the healing angel was, in fact, commonly used for physicians of the time, as by the engraver Hendrick Goltzius (1587). God’s angel strikes Evert with illness in order to kill the old human being in him and resurrect him as a new person. Evert states this explicitly during his rst experience, which was strongly focused on his personal salvation: “so that I may put off the old Adam and begin a new life, in all virtue and godliness” (b8). Is it a coincidence that this experience lasted nine days, or did it perhaps serve as a metaphor for a spiritual pregnancy? God in any case gives Evert new life by means of his physical healing. “O Father, I put my trust in thee, not in any human beings but in thee alone, because thou art the best doctor, because human power is nothing at all, for all perfect gifts and good works must come from above, from the Father of Lights” (b8). Once again the light metaphor serves as a sign of power, as in the rst two appearances of God’s angel. “God brought healing through his angels” (b13), Evert sings after his rst deliverance:

5 W.J. op ’t Hof, Engelse piëtistische geschriften in het Nederlands, 1598–1622 (Rotterdam 1987), 341–346. 6 Henricus Alutarius, Melck-spijse der kinderen Godes. Dat is: Cort begrijp vande voornaemste fondamenten der Christelijcker Religie (Amsterdam: Jan Evertsz Cloppenburch, 1621), f. B3v°–B4r°.

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chapter seven He has regained his sense and sight His speech and hearing is now right By the strong hand of God alone And by the power God has shown. (b16)

And before his second deliverance he derives hope from the angel’s message “that my God will keep me healthy and strong here in this world” (b26). This opens up the deeper signicance of Evert’s psychosomatic experience. God inscribes the essence of his message in Evert’s esh. He is so close that Evert’s weak body collapses, and one after another his senses fail him. He becomes disconnected from reality and loses himself in the contemplation of the angel of light. “What can be more lovely than thy heavenly kingdom, where we shine like stars in the rmament?”(b8). God touches me in my deepest self, seizes me completely, is the symbolic message of his physical ailments. But God’s light, which reveals our weaknesses, can also literally lighten them: “There I see now the angel of the Lord, a brightly shining light, that will completely lighten [i.e., relieve me of ] my inrmities” (b10). The call to conversion that Evert hears in his intense, physical experience of God he incorporates into his deepest self and derives from it his life’s goal. Now he cannot help but convey that message to the world. His texts repeat it time and time again. When his surroundings prove unreceptive, he a few months later once again experiences an ecstasy. But by then he already realizes that his entire life will be swallowed up by that task. He has no choice: he will become a servant of the divine Word—and thus himself an “angel of God,” as the minister was described by William Perkins.

Personal conversion Illness prods the devout person to conversion. In the world of the pious, trials and conversion are two sides of the same coin of godliness.7 Can we perhaps see in Evert Willemsz an example of the “early godliness” that Willem Teellinck already sensed in his own congregation and that

7 See on this theme also: Fred van Lieburg, ‘Reformed doctrine and pietist conversion: The historical interplay of theology, communication and experience’, in: Wout J. van Bekkum, Jan N. Bremmer & Arie L. Molendijk (eds.), Paradigms, poetics and politics of conversion (Louvain etc. 2006), 133–148.

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would soon come to play such a large role in the Further Reformation?8 Nothing in our sources suggests that the boy had a precocious interest in the Bible or demonstrated a greater than average piety before the events recounted in the pamphlets. The cultural practices described in the preceding chapters do not deviate from what we know of everyday life in that period. The effort the orphan had to make in order to have his experience recognized shows, in fact, that he could not even count on convincing the orthodox. His religious experience was in his own perception no doubt the conversion to the new life as presented in the pamphlets. But the forms it assumed were all-too spectacular to t the nascent literary genre of youthful conversions. Therefore Evert’s story could not easily serve as an example for other young people in the orthodox camp. The signicance of his conversion was consequently limited to its immediate context. The pamphlets document an event but intentionally omit any blueprint for imitators, such as found in the pious deathbed story of the eighteen-year-old Abigael Gerbrants, who after an exemplary pious life died of dysentery in the town of Purmerend on January 12, 1600, in full condence of her election.9 In her case the term conversion applies only in the metaphorical sense. It is in any case extremely difcult to separate the stereotypical or ideal aspects of the conversion story as a literary genre from the concrete experience of the orphan. The conversion genre was of course not restricted to a specic religious group. The particular spirituality of the Puritans led them to write narratives about personal conversions, but the same held for Catholic circles where new forms of spiritual life were in the making.10 Spiritual biographies and autobiographies of Catholic religious and laypersons also invariably exhibit a double structure: the predestination of the subject for salvation and the certainty of election make for a predictable, unbroken, but essentially impersonal plot line, while the struggle against a worldly life and a sinful body, portrayed as 8 Leendert Groenendijk & Fred van Lieburg, Voor edeler staat geschapen. Levens- en sterfbedbeschrijvingen van gereformeerde kinderen en jeugdigen uit de 17e en 18e eeuw (Leiden 1991), 68–73; F.A. van Lieburg, Living for God: Eighteenth-century Dutch pietist autobiography (Lanham, Md. 2006), 44–45. 9 Groenendijk & Van Lieburg, Voor edeler staat geschapen, 81–88. 10 Patricia Caldwell, The Puritan conversion narrative: The beginnings of American expression (Cambridge 1983); Joseph H. Fichter, Autobiographies of conversions (Lewiston 1987); Lucia Bergamasco, ‘Hagiographie et sainteté en Angleterre’, in: Annales. Économies, sociétés, civilisations 48:4 (1993), 1053–1085; Jacques Le Brun, ‘Conversion et continuité intérieure dans les biographies spirituelles françaises du XVIIe siècle’, in: La Conversion au XVII e siècle. Actes du XII e colloque de Marseille ( janvier 1982) (Marseille 1983), 317–333.

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a process of stumbling and searching in which the subject asserts his “self ” as powerfully as possible, adds a broken line to the narrative. The moment of conversion is not so much the point at which an unbeliever accepts the faith (or joins the group of believers) as when the individual personally assimilates the story of salvation. The issue, in other words, is not the socialization of the experience of faith but its internalization. This once again makes it clear that the conversion experience has to be understood in highly concrete terms. Stumbling and searching are often no more than metaphors for the spiritual struggle of the mystic to preserve his or her original innocence, which was never truly lost. The abyss of sin usually remains an abyss without a fall: what the sinner experiences as horrible misdeeds are in our view peccadilloes at most. But this does not make the feelings of anxiety, guilt, and salvation any less real. Even if the convert did not fall, he or she experienced at rst hand the vertigo of the void.

Collective catharsis The pious person is quick to understand God’s Word. Physical trials sufce to make him or her aware of God’s call to conversion. Impious and godless persons, on the other hand, need a more powerful sign. For them God has to reveal Himself in His majesty and omnipotence. In April 1611 there appeared to Marten Pieters and his hired hand Sake Wybbelts in the town of Norden (East Friesland) rst a shining arm pointing to heaven, then a light under a gooseberry bush, and nally a third light that followed them into the house. A voice in the night then explained the meaning of the signs and commanded them: “Go and proclaim to the people that they must turn from their ungodly life, for a terrible time is at hand, therefore cease from all pride and wanton living, fear God and pray.”11 God’s private revelation to the two men was made public by means of a solemn declaration made to the burgomasters and town councilors of Norden. But it was not unusual for the sign itself to be public in nature, such as the appearance of a comet or a nova, an eclipse or a conjunction, skyscapes or northern

11 Verscheyden, warachtighe wonderbaerlijcke lichten ende openbaringen, dewelcke nu gesien zijn, te Norden in Embderlandt in Barent Crijnen Huys inde Zijlstraet . . . (Emden: Nicolaes van Bodewits, 1611).

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lights, occasions when the rmament became, as it were, a transparency of heaven.12 What took place in the rmament was for earthly mortals a reection, in comprehensible symbolic language, of the will of the almighty, immaterial God beyond the visible heavens. With Evert, too, we nd a reference to the public signicance of the punishing “rod,” in this case denitely the comet of 1618, whose tail was described as having the form of a rod.13 In the case of Evert Willemsz the theme of conversion actually has three layers of meaning: inner conversion, personal change of behavior, and collective conversion of the ecclesiastical community. His physical ordeal is above all a sign of his rebirth in God. He jubilantly acknowledges this and thanks God for it, as Mary did in her Magnicat (Luke 1:46–55): See what great wonders God has performed in me! In the second place it summons him, together with his group of fellow believers, to lead a better life: So let us be converted now, and keep God’s law each day; If that we fail to do, ourselves we shall betray. (a2)

But in the third place the conversion of the pious together with the evidence of God’s signs should prove a powerful argument for the conversion of the impious. Evert therefore writes in September 1622, during the period of his deaf-muteness, “many things . . . to all people for repentance and conversion” (b6). God sent His angel and compelled Evert to undertake his spectacular fasting “so that the people would be converted to the Lord. . . . God sends plagues but we pay no heed” (b25). “O people, turn from all your sins unto the Lord your God; do not commit them lightly, in mockery of his Word” (a3). “If we are not converted” we risk the same punishment that struck Sodom and Gomorrah (b24). Farewell, brothers, do forsake the world, So that hereafter we may dwell with God. (b18)

The need to be converted, to live in concord (a3), and to forsake the world is particularly urgent because Christ’s second coming is at hand.

12 Examples in: Willem Frijhoff, Embodied belief: Ten essays on religious culture in Dutch history (Hilversum 2002), 145–150. 13 On the 1618 comet and its moral explanations: Jacob Cats, Aenmerckinghe op de tegenwoordige steert-sterre, ed. G.J. Johannes (Utrecht 1986), with illustrations taken from different pamphlets on the rod (p. 23), and on coming disasters (p. 31).

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At three different times Evert indicates that he expects to witness that nal event: So let us watch and pray, for surely it will come to pass; If we may go on living, we’ll see it too at last. (a3)

And shortly before his second healing: “O people, turn from your sins to the Lord, or God will come in a terrible way before we know it. So be converted, be converted, O people” (b26). As if that were not enough he repeats it once again at the end of his dream: But woe, o woe you drunkards and evil fornicators If you do not repent there’ll be no grace hereafter. There is so little time, so turn from sin today, For all our days and years will swiftly y away. They will not wait for us. (b35)

How literally should we interpret this expectation of the Last Days? Is it perhaps a new element of the conversion genre? If the convert has denitively broken with the world and from then on seeks orientation from God alone, time also acquires a new meaning. The temporal order is seen in the light of eternity, from a viewpoint outside history. These two levels of conversion, the inner conversion of the elect and the outward conversion of the wicked, are not unrelated. The individual conversion of the pious orphan provides the impious community with a model for its collective conversion. Taking him as an example, it can internalize the outward impetus to repent. Just as the devout person puts off the old Adam, the community has to rid itself of its sins. At rst sight the plea in these texts seems completely in line with seventeenth-century ideas of conversion as a primarily spiritual phenomenon, albeit with important repercussions for the sphere of behavior: the elect have to testify effectively to their election through their new spiritual attitude and their way of life. The reconstruction of the context attempted in this book, however, suggests that Evert’s conversion message also acquired an ecclesiastical dimension. In the years following the synod of Dort, and in the struggle against Lutherans and Remonstrants, the local community had been sensitized to the idea of a new, purged identity, the Ecclesia purior. Attuned as he was to biblical metaphors that articulate this expectation, Evert eagerly absorbed the message. Using the same language, he then passed it on as an inspired promise. This made him comprehensible for his surroundings. We can of course wonder to what extent Evert experienced all this consciously.

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Did he actually intend to address his church with a confessionally tinged message of purication? How, in other words, did he experience the religious pluralism of Woerden? As an inevitability ordained in the Providence of God, or as a stumbling block? As a sign, perhaps, of internal conict that could only be resolved through a collective conversion of dissenters? Were the Remonstrants being warned to convert to orthodoxy? Who were his real opponents? Evert Willemsz’s distinct preference for the more exible minister Alutarius rather than the rigid theologian Van Cralingen gives a clear indication of his position on this matter. The issue for him is not one of factional strife but of conversion within the group. Alutarius is for Evert a critical but benevolent partner. “Si facta dictis respondeant [= if the facts correspond to what people say], it is the greatest marvel that ever took place among us,” Alutarius remarks to Zas (b27). Alutarius has his ecclesiastical and medical biases: he warns Evert against credulousness with regard to visions (b25–26) and takes away his writing board, pen, and ink when he believes Evert should come to rest (b29). But the boy is not deterred. He will excuse Alutarius’s critical stance on the condition that the minister acknowledge that he was lled with the Spirit, that he will speak about him from the pulpit and pray to God for him (b29). Alutarius’s attempt to isolate him from the group and thus to enforce some rest on him Evert foils by taking back his writing materials and using them more zealously than before: “They will now be spread through the whole world, everything the Spirit inspired me to write” (b29). Evert demands of Alutarius only that he, in his ofcial capacity, contribute to the recognition of Evert’s experience within the congregation. As a minister Alutarius is the person responsible for community ritual, and on that level Evert wishes to make use of his services. Alutarius must therefore select the psalm that will be instrumental in Evert’s healing: “That is what God called you for, brother Henrice, you choose one” (b30). Alutarius also offers the opening prayer and the concluding prayer of thanksgiving (b31). In brief, he represents intra-denominational legitimacy. Most urgent for Evert was not the conict with the Remonstrants but the struggle to achieve inside his own broad Reformed church the Ecclesia purior, a puried church of elect who can serve as an example for the multitude of lukewarm believers, the dissenters, the heretics, and the heathen. That would be the essence of Evert’s mission, both in Woerden and later in Manhattan.

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Evert’s ordeal in 1622/23 was shaped by the interplay of three distinct forces: traditions, expectations, and personal experience. In his own pattern of expectations and that of the group he found traditions that could be molded into a personal experience in the specic context of Woerden. Outsiders remembered only one or the other isolated aspect of the event, such as Evert’s deaf-muteness or his fasting, the vehicles of his public message. For them it came across as a spectacular show or a form of fraud, and the deeper meaning of the event remained obscure. Evert’s mystical experience emerged as something incomprehensibly other. In order to get some grip on it they had to describe it in terms that made sense for them. The historian, too, tries to interpret the radically other in history, events that at rst elude understanding, as meaningful forms of otherness. By means of analytical work and synthesizing discourse, narrative and rhetoric, he or she restores to the event a meaning that may not be identical to that of an earlier age but nevertheless enables us to enter a meaningful relation, or confrontation, with the past. Those who do not dismiss Evert out of hand as an impostor—and historians cannot afford to do so—must undertake a careful analysis of his experience in order to uncover hidden patterns of meaning. Evert’s experience then reveals itself not as a series of separate spectacles but as an event with a clear and unied structure that acquired its shape in several phases (see Fig. 15). At two different times he reaches a state of ecstasy that can only be terminated with a ritual of deliverance. Various tradition-bound elements of that process have been discussed in the preceding chapters. Here we will turn our attention to their interrelations and to various facets of Evert’s personal experience. The rst thing that stands out here is the repetition in time. During the summer of 1622 Evert slowly built up a spiritual experience through a process of bodily emptying. From September 8 to 17 it metamorphosed into a cocoon of religious ecstasy from which only a public healing could release him. Four months later the entire process repeated itself, but in compressed and accelerated form—as if the boy was now in control of the physical component and went straight for his goal. There is one major difference between these two phases, however. In the summer of 1622 mental confusion preceded Evert’s peak experience; in January 1623 the peak experience itself formed the ecstasy in which he entered an altered state of consciousness. On June 30,

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Fig. 15. Times, rhythms, and modalities of Evert’s spiritual experience. Day

1622 Tuesday

Date

Fasting

Deaf and mute

Blind

Loses his understanding

Sees an angel

Writes messages

after recovery from illness 21 June 9 days

Thursday

30 June interover a 70 days mittently longer period

Thursday

8 September 9 days

Saturday

9 days

17 September rst deliverance 4 months (123 days)

goes to school

1623 Tuesday 17 January Wednesday 18 January headache morning predicts afternoon Thursday 19 January evening Friday 20 January 3 days afternoon Saturday 21 January 3/4 p.m. 6 p.m.

says ‘yes’ regains consciousness

sings drinks second deliverance

Sunday Monday Tuesday Thursday

8 p.m. 22 January afternoon 23 January 24 January 6 a.m. 26 January

eats speaks in church goes to school speaks in his sleep, dreams aloud public recogition

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1622 Evert lost “the right use of his understanding” and regained it from the Lord only on September 8 (b6). He then entered a nine-day phase of fasting and deaf-muteness. This led to an ecstasy in which he almost automatically wrote down his messages for anyone who wished to read them—in effect for all the residents of the orphanage. “O Father, thou didst deprive me of my understanding and sight and taste for a time; and now I am still deaf and mute,” he writes shortly before his deliverance (b7). The deliverance consisted not so much in breaking the spell of his ecstasy as in the “miraculous” return of his speech and hearing (b6), through the agency of the Holy Spirit, who sent him an angel of light. The rst peak experience therefore implied by its very nature a discursive message. Evert had something to tell. His deaf-muteness focused attention on his speech and compelled the observers to listen intently, by reading his messages. The summer of 1622 did not yet bring a true ecstasy, however. Four months later the sequence is reversed. Evert begins with fasting and prots from his knowledge of what happened in the previous year by predicting what will come. Now he is immediately taken seriously. From orphans to minister, all of orthodox Woerden les past his chair to hear his message. And the message is simple—essentially no different from what he has already said and written down. This time he is less concerned with its content than with its legitimization and dissemination. His new deaf-muteness is now not an instrument that enables him to record a divine message but evidence of its divine origin. That origin radiates through his ecstatic experience. “Yesterday afternoon God again laid his hand on me; and he did so only because His miraculous work [Evert’s rst healing] is not being proclaimed to others,” Evert writes in the presence of the burgomaster Jan Florisz on Thursday January 19. He asks him to spread the news of that miracle through the whole world (b25). He repeats this a short time later even more clearly to Reverend Alutarius. Once God’s message has been conveyed to the authorities in charge, he withdraws into a personal ecstasy. Alutarius notices that he is getting weaker and tries to prevent Evert from slipping away: “Do not overburden your heart; save it till tomorrow” (b26). For this highly practical minister-physician sleep is the best remedy. But Alutarius had barely left the room, Zas tells us (citing eyewitnesses), when “his [Evert’s] understanding began to decline, so that immediately thereafter he was completely deprived of the same” (b26). From the evening of Thursday January 19 until 3 or 4 o’clock

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on Saturday afternoon Evert remained “completely without the use of his understanding . . ., neither writing, nor reading, nor moving in any way whatsoever” (b27). Those around him are especially struck by his motionlessness. It frightens them. As we have seen in chapter 3, the episodes of collective “possession” in the orphanages of Amsterdam (1566) and Hoorn (1674) involved similar cataleptic symptoms. But they were accompanied by seizures that left the children completely unconscious; afterwards they had no memory of what had happened. Evert, on the other hand, is quite aware of his surroundings. Even though he later claims to know nothing of “what I did while out of my senses” (b29), he is not cut off from the outside world. When told that the rst pamphlet is in the hands of the printer, he writes, “briey, without making any further movement: ‘Yes’ ” (b27). That message he could not ignore, for it showed that the goal of his rst cycle of experiences had been reached. But he does no more than simply indicate that he has registered the information. A short time later he notices that his fellow orphans are sitting at the hearth writing. This imitation of his mode of communication touches a chord. For a brief moment it makes him aware of himself and of the gradual intensication of his ecstasy. “Whoever has something to write now should come to me, for it will not take much longer,” he informs them (b28). Completely absorbed in himself, he takes in from the outside world only those things that touch his personal experience of the moment. In this way he prepares himself for the ecstasy that will overcome him in the course of Saturday afternoon, when he is captured by the Spirit. Evert himself describes his experience as an altered state of consciousness: “that if it came into my heart from the Holy Spirit that God would again deprive me of it [my understanding]” (b28), then “there will soon be a change in me again” (b29). Those around him also sense the approach of an ecstasy. It is of short duration, however, soon culminating in a second deliverance. By 6 p.m., only two hours after Evert noticed that the resolution was at hand, his ecstasy is over. Once again he is released from his rapt state with the aid of a communal ritual: the assembled orphans lead him back to everyday consciousness by means of Psalms 8 and 9. All the evidence here points to a genuine ecstatic experience: Evert’s “emptying” and his transition to a dream-like state; his physical rigidity; his sense of entering a cosmic consciousness, which eliminated the borders between his personal identity and the absolute (the experience of the Holy Spirit); the short duration of the peak experience; Evert’s sensitivity to musical rather than verbal

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language when he returns to everyday reality; and of course his own description of his encounter with the Holy Spirit, as an unio mystica in which the Spirit takes possession of his heart.14

Deliverance While the ecstasy is primarily benecial for Evert himself, his deliverance is unmistakably bound up with his public recognition as messenger of God. “Send me thy Holy Messengers, O Lord, according to thy Father’s will, who will open my mouth so that I can say publicly that thou alone hast mercifully delivered me” (b8), he writes in September. The miracle of his healing must therefore serve as proof to others. Although the process of Evert’s deliverance can be analyzed in many different ways, it is difcult to nd an approach that does justice to all its facets by placing them in a coherent and illuminating context. The problem is soon resolved, however, if we take as our point of departure Evert’s own denition of the essence of his experience. The double process of mystical experience and deliverance brought his rebirth: his personal rebirth as a mature human being and his social rebirth as a man with a calling and responsibilities that gave structure and meaning to his life in community. The healing of his deaf-muteness is not only a liberation for himself and a miracle for others, it also indicates the direction of his life’s task: now that his tongue is loosened he is also required to use it, “to praise and thank thy name day and night” (b8). This double process of mystical experience and deliverance can be described as a social drama in Victor Turner’s analytical sense of the term, a concept closely related to the rite-of-passage model developed by the French folklorist Arnold Van Gennep.15 The social drama is both the ritual (the event itself, the performance) and the story about it (the way in which we narrate the event). Through his mystical experience Evert attains a new status in the community. He articulates this in his texts, which Master Zas arranges into a meaningful story. Both

14 On ecstasy: Ernst Arbman, Ecstasy or religious trance: On the experience of the ecstatics from the psychological point of view (3 vols., Norstedt 1963–1970); Ioan P. Couliano, Expériences de l’extase: extase, ascension et récit visionnaire de l’hellénisme au Moyen Age (Paris 1984). 15 Victor Turner, ‘Social dramas and stories about them’, in: W.J.T. Mitchell (ed.), On narrative (Chicago 1981), 137–164; Arnold Van Gennep, Les Rites de passage (Paris 1909) [ Transl. The Rites of passage (Chicago 1960)].

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the performance and the narrative contain at least three elements: a break with the status quo, liminality, and reintegration into the social structure. The ritual process of reorganization that takes place in the phase of liminality relies on a few dominant symbols that sum up the isolated elements of meaning and link them together into a coherent whole, on a continuum between norm and emotion. Thus food stands for emptying, blindness for incomprehension, reversal for conversion. Evert does not break with his environment or his family as the young Francis of Assisi did at his conversion a few centuries earlier, and countless saints after him.16 In his case the breach is with his way of life up to that point, with his childhood and with society’s unquestioned expectation of his life’s goal. Did his status as an orphan prove helpful in making this break? A boy without parents would not have to defy the psychological pressure or mental inertia of a father or mother. It is clear in any case that Evert’s conversion closely conforms to the model of youthful conversions. One or another form of “conversion” has always—right up to the present day—played a large role at the entry of young people into the adult world.17 Every conversion consists of three phases: fear or awareness of sin, preparation or repentance, certainty of salvation or faith. The conversion of a young person has an extra dimension: the experience of no longer being lived by others but beginning to live oneself. The youthful convert discovers a personal authenticity that at rst seems limitless, and derives from it the will and courage to address the entire world about its failures. Conversion is experienced as an unshackling, or unburdening. It is not surprising, then, that the conversion story employs images of imprisonment, birth, or even death throes. We see this in Evert, whose spiritual struggle to regain the use of his senses and his limbs resembles a death agony that precedes entrance into another life. Evert’s deliverance presents itself as a ritual of breach and reintegration, thus as a rite of passage, in three phases: his rst deliverance on September 17, 1622, his second on January 21, 1623, and his release

16 Donald Weinstein & Rudolph M. Bell, Saints and society: The two worlds of Western Christendom, 1000–1700 (Chicago & London 1982), 47–72. 17 R. Rambo, ‘Conversion’, in: Mircea Eliade (ed.), The Encyclopaedia of Religion, vol. IV (New York & London 1987), 73–79; John Loand & Rodney Stark, ‘Becoming a world-saver: A theory of conversion to a deviant perspective’, in: American Sociological Review 30 (1965), 862–875; W. Kox, W. Meeus & H. ’t Hart, ‘Religieuze bekering van jongeren: het bekeringsmodel van Loand en Stark getoetst’, in: Sociologische Gids 37:1 (1990), 46–62.

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from a dream three days later. Each of the three phases can be analyzed in terms of a xed pattern: the ritual itself with its message; its legitimation by eyewitnesses; its recognition by those involved and by outsiders. We see then that the September deliverance took place completely within the intimacy of the orphanage. Only his brother Pieter, the orphans, and the matron were present. They testify to what happened and pass Evert’s notes on to the proper (at that moment still external) authority: the rector, representative of written culture. In January the experts in written culture are themselves called in: the rector and two ministers. They function as qualied witnesses representing the municipal community. This expansion of the legitimizing body reects Evert’s desire to have his message put in writing. From circulation in oral form it now enters the printed and therefore public sphere, a process crowned by Evert’s reading in church. His third, even shorter and also more metaphorical deliverance, namely from his dream, resembles the rst one in that it takes place in the intimacy of the orphanage. This time, however, Evert’s message is recorded by others, making it possible for ecclesiastical and civil authorities to authenticate it without themselves being present. This completes Evert’s reintegration into the social fabric. Evert’s deliverance did not simply happen to him through the intervention of an external higher power. He actively contributed to it himself, prepared himself for it physically and mentally, and suggested to those around him the most effective ritual for his situation. In September 1622 he talks for days about his approaching deliverance before it becomes a fact. He calls on God, begging him for speedy relief. When the healing is at hand he brings his body into condition with a night of fasting and prayer: “I must neither eat nor drink tonight, for that is the pleasure of God and the Spirit” (b11). Both parties, he himself and the orphans, have to grow towards the event in quietness and mutual trust. “So when I speak, please do not shout loudly, so that I won’t be frightened,” he tells his fellow orphans. They must also trust him when he awakes from his deaf-muteness and begins to sing a psalm: “And do not be frightened, for it will come from the Holy Spirit” (b12). And so it happens. During the familiar collective ritual of psalm singing Evert regains his speech and hearing, and happily sings along. During his second ordeal Evert also predicts that his deliverance is at hand. Now, however, he deliberately works towards a public climax. By means of writing and dialogue he sets the stage for the act of healing: “to make sure, sing together and rst offer a prayer to God, for then it

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will not go wrong; I will again receive my hearing and speech during a psalm. This evening” (b29–30). This time instead of quietness he wants a theatrical resolution with a publicly demonstrated signicance. His ecstasy is an integral part of the performance.18 It forms the climax but at the same time prevents him from keeping a grip on the events. Evert is now swept along in the process that he himself unleashed. When he sees the orphans talking and writing at the re, something clicks in him. The association of what he cannot do (speak) with what he can do (write) reactivates his powers and unblocks his senses. While those around him begin singing at his request, he is given a Psalter. At the second line of Psalm 8 (“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength”) he responds as if personally addressed: “which line he sang aloud, like everyone else” (b32). Those present, now ecstatic themselves, continue singing, and Reverend Alutarius offers a prayer of thanksgiving, as if this were an ofcial ecclesiastical occasion. Evert, who must have been exhausted, seems almost indifferent. When Zas asks whether they should do more singing, he replies, “It’s up to you.” He then eats and drinks with the others again—a sign that he is reborn.

A new father Evert’s rebirth not only makes him a new person, it also conrms him in a new father-son relationship. The lack of a father and mother must have been a major factor in his mystical experience. If my reconstruction of the family ties is correct, he had very little, if any, memory of his biological father Willem Bogaert. After a short interval his stepfather Muysevoet must have become his “real” father. But he lost both his second father and his mother when he was barely ten years old. Our uncertainty about that reconstruction reduces every attempt at a psychoanalytic interpretation to an elegant shot in the dark. One thing is sure, however: the absence of a father gure at the moment he needed one, in the years of his spiritual growth preceding the events of 1622/23, played a crucial role in Evert’s conversion. This takes on an extra dimension when we consider the importance attached in the

18 On this notion: Peter Burke, ‘Performing history: The importance of occasions’, in: Rethinking History. The Journal of Theory and Practice 9:1 (2005), 35–52.

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Reformation to catechization by the father of the family and to his function as a religious and moral role model.19 That fatherly function was so essential that it could not be assigned to a surrogate father. “God is the Father of the fatherless” (Psalm 68:6) is inscribed on tiles in the former kitchen of the Amsterdam Walloon orphanage.20 Signicantly, the master—“father,” as he was called—of the orphanage is hardly mentioned in Zas’s pamphlets, and certainly not as a person of any inuence in Evert’s life. Evert did nd a new mother in the orphan matron (a3, b21). Alutarius’s Milk Food must have been not only spiritual food for him but also a metaphor of motherly care in his growing years. His biological brothers also surrounded him with love at all the turning points in his life, and in the orphans he found a new group of brothers and sisters “in the Lord Jesus Christ” (b7, b9, b16). But there was no father. Yet Evert’s biblical metaphor “babes and sucklings” (Ps. 8:2) clearly indicates his desire to grow under paternal guidance. Following his rst deliverance, only Master Zas acts as a spiritual guide, a substitute father who reveals Evert to himself and helps him nd his identity. This stress on spiritual fatherhood was part of a larger movement that was especially vigorous in Roman Catholicism of the time.21 But nowhere is Zas explicitly mentioned in terms of fatherhood. At most he is a mentor. Mystical experience nds its building blocks in everyday reality. It is not surprising, then, that Evert’s religious experience was modeled on his most important social quality, his orphaned state, with the father gure playing a pivotal role. A short time later we nd a similar theme in William Ames Jr., son of the Puritan professor of theology at Franeker of the same name, who died in Rotterdam in 1633.22 William had lost only one parent when he immigrated to New England with his mother in 1637. Yet his half-orphaned state so dominated his perception of the world that he describes his conversion with a double image of 19 Jean Delumeau & Daniel Roche (eds.), Histoire des pères et de la paternité (Paris 1990). 20 Presently the French cultural institute Maison Descartes. 21 Materialized in the Counter-Reformation cult of Jesus’ foster-father, St. Joseph, and in the role model of the (father) confessor or the spiritual father. See: Adriano Prosperi, ‘Dalle “divine madri” ai “padri spirituali” ’, in: Elisja Schulte van Kessel (ed.), Women and men in spiritual culture, XIV–XVII centuries: A meeting of South and North (The Hague 1986), 71–90. 22 Caldwell, The Puritan conversion narrative, 189. On William Ames Sr. (1576–1633) and his son William Jr. (d. 1682): BLGNP, I, 27–31; Keith L. Sprunger, “William Ames”, in: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, I (Oxford 2004), 941–946.

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fatherlessness: unconverted he was like Esau, who felt left in the lurch by his father; after conversion he resembled an orphan who is encouraged and supported by Christ. In this light we cannot help but notice how powerfully Evert experiences God as a father gure. We hear echoes of the New Testament here, of the ideology of orphan care, or of sermons preached in church. When Evert promises to pray for his brothers and sisters “to my Heavenly Father, who dwells in the New Jerusalem” (a2), he is alluding—once again—to Revelation 3:12. The family metaphor reverberates in the background, but no more audibly than in conventional biblical imagery. When Evert refers to the Father of Lights who sends every perfect gift and good work from above, he is simply quoting from the epistle of James 1:17. But there is more. A comparison with the bond that the Puritan turner Nehemiah Wallington (1598–1658) in London developed with his father is illuminating here.23 Wallington had great respect for his earthly father. Although he certainly made a rational distinction between his earthly and his heavenly father, the two coincided for him emotionally: his earthly father was the image of God. Consequently, when Wallington’s father died, the son found a heavenly father in God. That was for him an experience of rebirth. But Wallington was already forty years old at the death of his father. And twenty years earlier he had undergone his rst conversion. In Evert’s case the relation was reversed: his father was not the image of God, instead God was the emotional image of his father. “O God wilt thou soon deliver me with your Holy Spirit? Because I do so yearn for thee, O God, send one of thy holy angels and thy Holy Spirit” (b10), he sighs again and again. The angel functions here as a manifestation of the fatherly archetype. Evert thus strings together a whole series of father images: “What God wills is my will also” (a3); “God comforts me so that I am not sad in this life” (a4); “O Father, I hope that thou, O God, wilt loosen my mouth and tongue, so that I with mouth and tongue and a clean heart may always joyously bear thy name engraved in my innermost heart” (b8); and “I trust in thee, God, that thou canst help me, but not in human beings” (b12). To the world Evert speaks of a punishing God, but for himself and those close to him God is always a good father who will be present and intervene whenever needed:

23 Paul S. Seaver, Wallington’s world: A Puritan artisan in seventeenth-century London (London & Stanford 1985), 29–30, 74–75.

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And in his second song we even nd a timid budding of love mysticism: Driven by the Spirit’s ery love . . . I love my God with all my heart and mind, He is my friend, and through His love sublime He kindles in my heart love’s holy re, Inaming all my senses with desire. (b17)

Precisely because Evert’s personality was so strong, it was able to expand into this mystical experience of God. And that God was from then on all that the boy needed. Evert’s father image was mediated though his experience with the Spirit. In all of Evert’s messages the Spirit plays a central role. This came about in part through the pneumatological character of pietism: it is in the spirit/Spirit that Christ and humankind are united. Reverend Alutarius had devoted a few catechism questions to the Holy Ghost in his Milk Food, and Evert had no doubt eagerly absorbed the answers. The question about how the Holy Spirit works to “seal” (conrm) our faith is answered with a reference to Romans 8:26 and 10:13, and especially Galatians 4:6 (almost identical to Romans 8:15): “The devout Christian prayer that the Holy Spirit kindles within us and causes us to cry Abba dear father.”24 The answer then sets forth the conditions such a prayer must meet in order to be effective: we must call on the only true God in the name of Christ; we must do so in reverence and humility of heart, aware of our unworthiness; and nally, we must trust that, although unworthy, we will be heard by the Father because of Christ’s merits. For Evert, too, the Holy Spirit is the divine person who works in this world. In a very special way He enters his own life as a supportive and mediating force: “So be pleased, O Father, to send thy Holy Spirit into my heart and my soul, so that I may keep thy commandments, O God” (b8). The Spirit makes his will conform to that of the Father—completely in keeping with the emerging voluntarism of the times. “O Father, send me thy Spirit, who will not lead me astray but 24

Alutarius, Melck-spijse, f. E5v°–E6r°, question 115.

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Fig. 16. The Holy Spirit inspiring Mary and the apostles. Engraving on the title page of the second printing of the rst pamphlet Waerachtighe ende sekere gheschiedenisse . . . (Utrecht, 1623). [Library of the University of Amsterdam, P. C.p.19].

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into the godly path that thou, O Father, wouldst have me walk. Send me thy Holy Spirit, O God, who brings joy to my heart and mind, that my memory may be strengthened” (b9). The Holy Spirit is Evert’s alternative to learning. The Spirit bestows a holiness of life that can be acquired only toilsomely and imperfectly through study. In the nal analysis what matters in life are not words but deeds, the way one lives and exercises power over oneself and others. Evert puts it very succinctly: “God, thou art the mighty Spirit that empowers all human beings” (b10). It is the Spirit who has the strength to deliver him from his afiction: “O Father, hear us now, comfort us with thy Holy Comforter, send thy Holy Spirit who will come to deliver me” (b7). The knowledge that he will be delivered does not come from himself, “but I know that from the Spirit of God, who will come to enlighten/lighten me through God’s power” (b9). When the deliverance is nally at hand, Evert merges, as it were, with the Spirit: “for the Spirit is so willing in my heart, He is so glad within me” (b11). And again he cries: “The Spirit is with me now” (b28, cf. b26). It is the Spirit that gives him inspiration, knowledge, and protection. Because God the Father manifests Himself in the Spirit, the ecstatic experience becomes an encounter with the Father. The day after his second deliverance Evert was already allowed to read in church a catechism commentary that proved surprisingly relevant to his own experience: “What is the meaning of these words ‘He was conceived by the Holy Ghost . . .’?” And ten years later, during his examination for the ministry, he was asked about Galatians 5:16: “This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulll the lust of the esh”—a coincidence he must have interpreted as a prophetic conrmation of his calling. But his sense of prophecy never went beyond an awareness of his calling. Evert Willemsz had no use for the “frenetiquen prophete” who one year later made Utrecht unsafe, threatening ministers and deacons while claiming to possess the spirit of the archangel Michael, indeed to be “the Paraclete, whom Christ had promised to send.”25 Evert wanted to serve the Spirit, not usurp His place.

25 A. Buchelius, ‘Observationes ecclesiasticae sub presbyteratu meo, 1622–1626’, ed. S. Muller Fzn, in: Bijdragen en mededelingen van het Historisch Genootschap 10 (1887), 46 (March 26, 1624).

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Number and time One of the hidden dimensions of Evert’s religious experience is that of number symbolism.26 Ever since antiquity certain numbers carried a sacred value. But scholars in the Renaissance also believed that special meaning could be ferreted out of number symbolism hidden in the Bible. Augustine had set the example here in his De Civitate Dei. The Renaissance also recharged classical Pythagorean and Platonic number symbolism with meaning outside the Christian tradition, although in some cases with new Christian connotations as well. Two numbers stand out clearly in the reports of Evert’s spiritual experience: 3 and 70 (see Fig. 15). Evert’s deliverance took approximately three hours, following an ecstasy of three days. His rst ecstatic experience had lasted nine days (three times three) but had also been preceded by nine days of fasting plus seventy days in which he lost the use of his senses. The number three (or 3 u 3 = 9) is a Pythagorean symbol of perfection. Later it was reinterpreted as referring to the Trinity.27 Because Christ died at the ninth hour, 9 came to stand for the period of suffering preceding deliverance.28 This number symbolism is clearly present in the texts about Evert Willemsz, although it remains uncertain how he had come to know about it. Through preaching? Edifying literature? Contemplation of the Bible? All the crucial years in Christ’s life are divisible by 3: his rst public appearance in the temple at age 12, his baptism at 30, his death and resurrection at 33. Seventy is the number of the patriarchs, but also of the disciples appointed by Jesus to assist the 12 apostles (Luke 10:1). But 70 is primarily associated with the Babylonian captivity, the years of exile from God’s presence, of pilgrimage in the world in anticipation of salvation.29 Evert’s self-emptying through 9 days of fasting, followed by 70 days of painful waiting in the world, then another 9 days of suffering crowned with a rst deliverance,

26

‘Zahlensymbolik’, in: Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturgeschichte, vol. IV (2d ed., Berlin & New York 1984), 947–957; Chr. Butler, Number symbolism (London 1970); Georges Jouven, Les nombres cachés: ésotérisme arithmologique (Paris 1978); Thomas Crump, The anthropology of numbers (Cambridge 1990); Jean-Pierre Brach, La symbolique des nombres (Paris 1994). 27 H. Meyer, Die Zahlenallegorese im Mittelalter: Methode und Gebrauch (Munich 1975), 117–123. 28 Ibid., 141–142. 29 Ibid., 167–168.

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and nally the culmination in a three-day second ecstasy—all this is perfectly in line with traditional number symbolism. To what extent was this a deliberate numerical construction, one that the initiated would immediately understand as a sign of Evert’s identication with Christ or with other sacred persons or qualities? First of all, we should note the difference between Evert’s own experience, as we can reconstruct it from the pamphlets, and the account given by Master Zas. In Zas’s semantic composition the chronology is jumbled. He leaps from one episode to another, forward and backward in time. To gain a sense of temporal depth we have to unravel his narrative and rearrange the passages in the proper chronological sequence. For Zas only one thing mattered: to convey the meaning of the experience in its totality. Because that meaning was indivisible, and from the outset inherent in Evert’s ordeal, it is enough simply to view it in the right manner. Zas’s contribution therefore consists in organizing that view. The rest is secondary. This explains why he begins with the message (the call to conversion), not with the substratum (Evert’s trials and deliverance). They come only later. For Evert it was radically different. His experience unfolds in time. Time is itself an integral part of that experience, for the period between his physical affliction and his deliverance constitutes the proof of the reality of God’s intervention. “If it is His divine will and the most conducive to my salvation that I spend my life in this way, I am content to do so. I am willing to bear it patiently as long as it is thy divine will” (b7). That span of time legitimated his message. The afiction had to have a certain duration in order to be real and true. When Reverend Alutarius asks him if he does not feel “troubled or sad,” Evert replies: “No, my time has been lled with God. . . . But now that I have returned to my senses, I do not know what I did while I was without my understanding; but soon there will be another change in me” (b28). Shortly before his second deliverance he declares: “But I truly feel that I shall soon hear and speak again, that is what the Spirit is working in me. . . . I shall regain my hearing and speech from God in a psalm. This evening” (b30). Time is the human measure of what God brings about in a timeless moment. But all this involves no violation of the divinely ordained temporal order: both Evert’s rst and second deliverance take place on a Saturday, before the day of rest instituted by God himself. During his ecstasy, however, Evert loses his sense of time. Others tell him that he did not eat for nine days (b14); absorbed in the Spirit, he

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lost track of the passing days. In the Spirit he could also easily identify with Elijah, Daniel, Habakkuk, or gures from the gospels, for with time abrogated they stood very near him (b15). For Evert, therefore, the time span was an after-the-fact construct, but a necessary discursive construct nevertheless: the chronology of his narration translates his experience into terms accessible to human perception, which is bound to time and space. This brings it within range of interpretation, and thus of meaning.30 The sacred number associated with the time span then plays an integral role in communication with the holy. The number 3, the key unit of measure in Evert’s story, indicates the divine origin of his experience, thus making it comprehensible to those well-versed in the Bible and legitimating it to the outside world.

The dream Evert’s supreme legitimation was his dream (b34–35). That dream was of a different order from his visions, the earlier appearances of the angel. Was it then a direct revelation of God? The Bible itself is rather wary of dreams and other nocturnal phantasms of unclear origin. Although Joseph interprets the dreams of Pharaoh (Gen. 41), and Daniel those of Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. 2 and 4), both of these Old Testament characters remain reticent on the subject. They emphasize that God is the only one capable of revealing secrets (Gen. 41:16; Dan. 2:28). They are themselves no more than middlemen. These, after all, were the dreams of heathens. Both the lawgiver Moses (Deut. 13:2–4) and the prophet Jeremiah ( Jer. 23:25–32) make an explicit connection between dreams and false prophets. Caution is therefore advised. But the Middle Ages also inherited traditions from classical antiquity, and in them dreams played a major role. As early as the fth century Macrobius, in his commentary on Scipio’s dream, had given a typology of dreams that left a centuries-long imprint on language. He mentions three types of higher dreams that convey a prophetic meaning, but one shrouded in symbols: the oraculum (direct revelation by a supernatural authority), the visio (the seeing of earthly events, usually with a hidden

30 Cf. Marc Elchardus, ‘The rediscovery of Chronos: The new role of time in sociological theory’, in: International Sociology 3 (1988), 35–59.

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meaning), and the somnium (ctive images of a symbolic nature).31 In religious literature it is often difcult to determine whether the author is describing a dream, a vision, an acoustic experience, or an ecstasy, as all four phenomena occur outside the normal state of wakefulness, in the border area between consciousness and extrasensory perception. In all these cases the recipient is overwhelmed by the experience. He is himself the addressee of the message manifested in the epiphany. Evert’s dream was certainly not a visio, rather an oraculum. His dream presents itself as a divinely inspired narrative structure in which the boy himself attempts to shape the non-sensory, non-empirical reality that overwhelms him. For Evert the dream is a way of translating mystical contact between the natural and the supernatural order into earthly experience. By means of his dream Evert becomes the voice that delivers God’s own diagnosis of the misery of the world and calls for repentance. Strictly speaking it is not a prophetic dream. Although it conveys some sense of living in the Last Days (“so turn from sin today, for all our days and years will swiftly y away” (b35), the message is of the same order as the texts he wrote while fully awake. It is Evert’s own voice that speaks in the dream—that much is clear from the versied form of the long message he dictates. Rhyme was his usual means for ordering religious ideas, or perhaps a mnemonic device to help him remember texts as he composed them in his mind with the intention of writing them down later. His other long programmatic text (a2–3) and the two songs written after his rst deliverance are also in verse. Evert must have meditated and ruminated on them for a considerable time, gradually working out a structure before writing them down, singing, or reciting them. It is difcult to compare Evert’s dream with what we know about other dreams from that time. Unlike the dreams recorded by the English priest Ralph Josselin, archbishop William Laud, the Hague schoolmaster David Beck, or the famous dreams of Descartes, Evert’s dream did not arise spontaneously from his subconscious.32 For Evert’s contemporaries

31 A.M. Hats, ‘Traum und Traumvision in der deutschen Mystik’, in: Analecta Carthusiana 106 (1983), 22–55; Steven F. Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages (Cambridge 1992), 23; Jean-Claude Schmitt, ‘Les “superstitions” ’, in: Jacques Le Goff & René Rémond (eds.), Histoire de la France religieuse, vol. I (Paris 1988), 417–551, here 489– 495. 32 Peter Burke, ‘L’histoire sociale des rêves’, in: Annales. Économies, sociétés, civilisations 28 (1973), 329–342; Alan Macfarlane, Family life of Ralph Josselin, a seventeenth-century clergyman (Cambridge 1970), 183–187; Michael Keevak, ‘Descartes’s dreams and their

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the origin of his dream was not psychological but supernatural. Spoken “very slowly” soon after he fell asleep in the morning, Evert’s dream formed the conduit for a long-pondered divine message. It does not therefore belong to the genre of the dream-vision, so prominent in the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, offshoots of that genre in his own time—such as the political Vision in the dream of 1614, which was widely distributed in Holland in pamphlet form, or Jan Josepsen’s ctitious dream of 1619, prompted by the execution of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt and directed against the liberal States faction—may have supplied Evert with the form of his dream.33 A product of Evert’s conscious life, the dream was versied during waking hours and then memorized so thoroughly that the text welled up out of his subconscious at the climax of his quest for recognition. The children around him, awakened by the noise, found “that Evert was sleeping naturally” and that he woke up only from the commotion in the dormitory. Essentially Evert’s dream should be viewed as part of a strategy, as his way of making a religious point about matters of society, politics, and group identity. Within that framework the dream forms the ultimate, indisputable legitimation of his exposé and proves that its content applies to everyone. More than the object of individual psychology, the dream is here an element of social strategy. It is as much a personal performance as a divine gift. This does not necessarily mean that Evert deliberately recited his dream and deceived those around him. More likely he had internalized his strategy so thoroughly that he subconsciously took the necessary steps, using forms of action offered by his environment and tradition. And one of those steps was the divinely inspired dream. For Evert’s recognition it was important that the dream did not come from himself. Christianity categorized dreams differently from classical antiquity. Its typology was based not on external features but on the origin and possible truth content of the dream. Besides animal, natural, and devilish dreams, scholars from Saint Augustine to Juan Luis Vives (1520) recognized the somnium coeleste, a dream directly inspired by God

address for philosophy’, in: Journal of the History of Ideas 53:3 (1992), 373–396; David Beck, Spiegel van mijn leven: een Haags dagboek uit 1624, ed. Sv.E. Veldhuijzen (Hilversum 1993), 81, 167, 186, 191, 204–205. 33 Een Visioen in den droom, inhoudende den voorleden ende teghenwoordighen staet der Vereenichde Neder-landen (s.l. 1614) [Pamphlet Knuttel 2107b]; Wonderlijcken droom vande school-houdinghe van Mr. Ian van Oldenbarnevelt (s.l. 1618) [Pamphlet Knuttel 2777]; [Richard Verstegen], Ian Josepsens droom gheschreven door sijnen goeden vriendt aen den welcken hy het selver verhaelt heeft (s.l. 1619).

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as a revelation for a specic purpose. But as a supernatural manifestation a dream could also come from the devil in the guise of a divine message. It was crucially important therefore to distinguish “genuine” from “false” dreams, a distinction that implied an origin in either God or the devil. In 1590 this was the pivotal issue in the court case brought against the Spanish woman Lucrecia de León, whose more than 400 dreams contained a dramatic political message, such as the defeat of the Spanish Armada.34 This meant that for supernatural dreams criteria had to be found to distinguish divine from devilish origin. This could not always be decided on the basis of the content. The French theologian Jean Gerson (1363–1429) had therefore recommended that dreams be tested to identify those that genuinely came from God. This involved a thorough examination not only of the content of the dream but also of the seer’s personality, aims, and sources of inspiration. God-given dreams were in any case considered an exceptional occurrence. One indication of divine origin was an orderly, structured message. God does not speak like a stammering child or a confused drunkard, but as the ruler of the world. On that point all churches were in agreement. This throws new light on the swift reception of Evert’s dream. The divine origin of his message was acknowledged on the spot by those present, and already the following day by the ecclesiastical and civil authorities. Not only the structured nature of the message formed an argument here, but also the prehistory of the boy himself, who had proven that he was authentically singled out for God’s blessing. This made the divine origin of his dream plausible. Not that orthodox Woerden gullibly accepted all of Evert’s pronouncements. Each step of his experience was, in fact, investigated for its authenticity: Master Zas was alert to the possibility that Evert was merely repeating things he had read or that the boy was being be misused by other parties (a3); brother Pieter distrusted his sudden deaf-muteness (b12); Reverend Alutarius was duly skeptical about divine revelations (b26); consistory and magistracy were afraid of pious fraud (b3–4, b36). On all fronts Evert conquered the doubts. Even a man like Alutarius, who hesitated to accept the divine origin of Evert’s experience, did not question the boy’s integrity. After the dream he, too, was convinced. 34 Richard L. Kagan, Lucrecia’s dreams: Politics and prophecy in sixteenth-century Spain (Berkeley, Calif. 1990), 35–43; Alison Weber, ‘Between ecstasy and exorcism: Religious negotiation in sixteenth-century Spain’, in: Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 23 (1993), 221–239.

CHAPTER EIGHT

RECOGNITION

A prodigy Recognition relies on images. The formation and use of those images is determined by power relations on a variety of levels. Recognition as “genuine” will be granted to the person who manages—consciously or subconsciously—to manipulate the web of inuences, relations, and images around him. From the viewpoint of the recipient, this process can be dened as the assimilation of the images offered by the historical actors. Evert Willemsz began to be associated with certain images already in his adolescence, when the consistory and magistracy accepted them as authentic and others in Woerden subjected them to sharp criticism. The rst image, called up in 1622/23 in Woerden, is that of a prodigy. Or better, of a child on whom God performs miracles—for the point is not the boy’s personal precocity, as in many later stories about God-fearing young people, but his miraculous experience of God’s blessing.1 Alutarius speaks of “the most wondrous thing that ever happened among us” (b27), and Zas sees in “such remarkable miracles . . . God’s power and wondrous might” (b32–33) and the “supernatural, wondrous, gracious working of almighty God” (b32). It is a miracle, but one performed by the true, gracious God, not a curiosity like those long celebrated among the heathen. The title of the Utrecht pamphlet already proclaims “how God almighty has shown his miraculous work to a certain orphan . . . and how wondrous things befell him” (a1). The placing of the terms is important here. Wonder (“miracle” or “wonder”) does not appear in the rst lines of the title, only in the subtitle—an indication that the pamphlets do not belong to the genre of the Wonderlijcke geschiedenisse (Wondrous happening, or Marvel) or the Wonderlijck miracul (Wondrous miracle), popular prose that offered sensational, exotic, or unusual news 1 Leendert Groenendijk & Fred van Lieburg, Voor edeler staat geschapen. Levens- en sterfbedbeschrijvingen van gereformeerde kinderen en jeugdigen uit de 17e en 18e eeuw (Leiden 1991), 68–73; Michèle Sacquin (ed.), Le printemps des génies: les enfants prodiges (Paris 1993).

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for entertainment or (moral) instruction.2 They are not products of the seventeenth-century pulp press, although it is not impossible that the publisher of the rst pamphlet had that genre in the back of his mind. Nor were they early modern variations of classical or medieval miracle stories in which the hero, through no merit of his own, stands out from the mass of mortals as a result of his descent, the miracles surrounding his birth, his extreme precocity, or exceptional deeds. On the contrary, both pamphlets are entitled Waerachtighe [ende seeckere] gheschiedenisse (True [and certain] happening). The emphasis lies on veriability, the truthful rendering of substantiated facts. The miracle is what concretely happens to Evert; it is the interpretation of an experience that is in itself veriable. Rector Zas acts as guarantor of reliability in the Utrecht pamphlet, and the consistory and magistracy of Woerden stake their reputation on the description of events in the Amsterdam publication. These pamphlets also aim at instruction, but at a deeper, religious level. Yet the publisher fully realized that the story might seem odd. In the introductory text he speaks of a “wondrous, and nonetheless true happening” (b6), after whetting the reader’s appetite with a four-fold use of the term wonderbaerlijck (“marvelous” or “wondrous”) in the table of contents (b5). But the story is clearly of a different order from, for instance, the miracle and happening that was said to have taken place on January 14, 1599 in Purmerend and, like the Woerden event, was authenticated by the magistracy and consistory. In that case an unborn child was heard to cry in the body of his mother “O my God” and to sigh “Ah me, ah me, ah me”—a “miracle” obviously intended to prove to the local Anabaptists that “those small infants also have the Holy Spirit.”3 The consistory and magistracy of Woerden also use the term wonderbaerlijck in their approbations, but the magistracy adds that the story “must be taken as a true and incontestable happening” (b3). From its side the consistory gives the publication a threefold aim: to spread the glory of God, to edify the congregation, to warn the people (b4). God’s

2 See, e.g.: Jean-Pierre Seguin, L’information en France avant le périodique: 517 canards imprimés entre 1529 et 1631 (Paris 1964); Bert van Selm, ‘ “Almanacken, lietjes en somwijl wat wonder, wat nieuws”. Volkslectuur in de noordelijke Nederlanden (1480–1800): een onbekende grootheid’, in: Leidschrift 5:3 (1989), 33–68; Jerome Friedman, Miracles and the pulp press during the English Revolution: The battle of the frogs and Fairford’s ies (London 1993). 3 Een mirakel ende gheschiedenisse, hoe dat binnen de stadt Purmerent [. . .] gheboren is een kindt . . . (Amsterdam: Willem Jansz, 1599).

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deeds may be wondrous, but they are recognizable as such, which means that this case, too, falls within the established order of the miraculous. For the consistory Evert’s experience stands in a religious tradition that the congregation can recognize as divinely inspired. It is precisely on this point that the rst pamphlet differs from the second. The title of Master Zas’s Utrecht publication sees God’s miraculous work in the totality of what took place, in both the inrmities that aficted Evert and his deliverance. Echoes of the popular, undifferentiated conception of the marvelous (“le merveilleux”) are audible here—as they are in the reaction of the orphan matron, who thought the Lord was planning something “unusual” for Evert (a2).4 In the Amsterdam pamphlet authorized by the ecclesiastical and civil authorities the semantic eld is narrowed: the marvel was not in the way the orphan was aficted by God but in his miraculous deliverance. The orthodox believer would have recognized this nuance. Evert sensed it himself as well. Only after his healing does he exclaim with joy “that God has performed such miracles” (b10), and from outset he is aware of the extraordinary nature of the deliverance process. When his rst deliverance is approaching, he warns the orphans not to sing too loudly so that he will not be frightened, and he describes in detail what will take place so that they will not be afraid either (b12). Now the miracle also had to be publicized outside Woerden. Rector Zas’s function here can best be described as that of Evert’s impresario. That they were on the same wavelength is very clear from the pamphlets. What did they see in each other? Did the schoolmaster and rhetorician Zas, specialist in the art of the word, recognize Evert’s Godgiven verbal talent? Or did Evert simply embody what Zas expected of a God-fearing youth? Zas’s role remained limited: although he acted as a spiritual guide, he did not serve as a substitute for Christ or as a mediator between God and the sinner, a role often assumed by Puritan ministers.5 Zas was in any case the person who, for the sake of the local community, constructed Evert into a meaningful example of godliness and arranged his experiences into an image recognizable for us as well. Zas acted as the condant of Evert. Their relationship was one of mutual loyalty that brought mutual benet. Evert gained 4 Cf. the typology proposed by Jacques Le Goff, ‘Essai d’inventaire du merveilleux dans l’Occident médiéval’, in: the same, L’Imaginaire médiéval (Paris 1985), 28–35. 5 As was the case of Thomas Shepard. Cf. Patricia Caldwell, The Puritan conversion narrative: The beginnings of American expression (Cambridge 1983), 193–196.

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from it his publicity and his schooling, a double turn in his life, and Zas the opportunity to act as a true teacher by holding up to the divided community of Woerden an example of genuine piety as he conceived it. Evert’s loyalty to his teacher shines through page after page of the pamphlets—not only as the intentional result of Zas’s editing but also because it was highly advantageous for Evert. Zas was the man who could disseminate Evert’s message in the proper spirit, but without restrictions of church politics. As a free (and in fact courageous) orthodox person, he was the ideal intermédiaire culturel, the cultural broker who made Evert’s ideas accessible to the common person, just as he would later do with Vives. When Evert enters his second spiritual experience on Wednesday, January 18, his rst concern is therefore understandably to inform his teacher: “Does my teacher already know that I am again in this state? If he does not know, tell him” (a3), he writes to the matron. The rector comes immediately, but tests Evert’s credibility before giving him his loyalty. First he inquires about the interpretation: “How did you receive this? Did you have any signs from God?” He then wants to know whether Evert’s interpretation is of divine or human origin: “What you wrote this morning, did someone urge you to do that, or had you read it somewhere before?” (a3). The answer satises him, and from that moment on he is Evert’s devoted servant. Evert fully realizes that he is placing a burden on Zas’s shoulders, but like a shrewd negotiator he knows how to appeal to Zas’s vanity and ambition by praising the spiritual advantages of the “deal”: “the Spirit wants you to be a decisive man,” and “God expressly wants it done by you. Do it then with patience, and take it upon you, and make it known, publicize it in all lands in order to warn them, so that they will take an example” (a4). Zas keeps the agreement. He publishes the notes “owing to the charge I received, as described above” (a4). When Reverend Alutarius, who also acted as a physician, cannot help but urge Evert to rest and as a therapy takes away his pen and paper, Evert immediately turns to his condant and again urges him to publish his messages. “They will now be spread through the whole world, all the things the Spirit inspired me to write” (b29). The minister is there for legitimation, the task of the rector is publication. Zas is full of his pupil and becomes completely absorbed in his task. He cannot wait with publishing until everything has come to a conclusion, and can hardly nd words enough to express his loyalty. He is prepared to conrm Evert’s second deliverance “with an oath, even with several, if that should be required” (b33). He would, in brief, go through re and water for him.

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Evert Willemsz had chosen Zas to disseminate his message, but his only instruction was to “Spread the word!” (a4). Although the boy no doubt would have liked to see his work in print, it is not clear that he from the outset thought in terms of a printed publication. He may rst have had in mind oral dissemination, or a written form that would not go beyond the borders of his Woerden environment. His texts were supposed to literally “speak” to the people, to inspire them to new faith and new life. Did Evert perhaps imagine that they would be read aloud, in order to give them the old force of the spoken word? This seems plausible, considering his ambiguous position between oral and written culture.6 Zas had a different view. The lettered rector immediately associated dissemination with publication in print. The target group of the printed pamphlet would be larger than the circle of people who Evert himself thought would be interested in his story. The actual group of buyers, readers who out of piety or a craving for sensation were drawn to this type of narrative, might prove to be quite different again. The interests of Evert, Zas, and the printer did not necessarily run parallel. Zas in any case did what Evert expected of him. He put Evert’s jottings together, wrote a brief text around them and went to the most likely printer. Did Zas pay for the printing of the rst, small pamphlet himself, or did the printer anticipate some prot from it? The exact meaning of the phrase “With consent” that appears on the title page is not clear from the sources. Ordinarily the term refers to the express consent of the consistory, the magistracy, or other authorities. In the second, Amsterdam pamphlet the permission granted by the consistory and magistracy is mentioned explicitly. The rst case was perhaps a matter of a less formal approval by the authorities concerned. But certainly not of nancing. That Evert’s experiences reached the public in pamphlet form is not at all surprising. Pamphlets could be printed quickly, in a handy format, and their distribution mechanism was probably more exible than that for books.7 Small items like these were sold not only by the book dealer in town but by itinerant tradesmen and peddlers in rural areas as well.

6 Cf. Evelyn Birge Vitz, ‘From the oral to the written in medieval and renaissance saints’ lives’, in: Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski & Timea Szell (eds.), Images of sainthood in medieval Europe (Ithaca, NY 1991), 97–114. 7 Craig E. Harline, Pamphlets, printing, and political culture in the early Dutch Republic (Dordrecht etc. 1987); Sandra Clark, Elizabethan pamphleteers: Popular moralistic pamphlets 1580–1640 (London 1983), 86–120.

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The pamphlet was the prime form of mass communication in early modern times. Its small size kept the price low, even though there may have been a relatively high prot margin for book dealers. The Utrecht pamphlet about Evert Willemsz consisted of only one half of a printed sheet and probably cost no more than a stiver, and the Amsterdam pamphlet, with its four-and-a-half sheets, between two and ve stivers. This is not to say that the pamphlet always reached what we would consider large masses of people: on average 1000 copies were printed. But it aimed at a broader group than only the scholarly, specialist, or educated class; and the reading practices associated with it (including reading aloud) multiplied the number of both young and old that it reached. Many pamphlets were expressly intended for everyone, and that was literally true of the ones about Evert Willemsz. But “everyone” here was limited to a specic ideological segment of society. The pamphlet that reported marvels formed a genre of its own, governed by conventions of production and reception. A person who bought such a pamphlet knew that it would contain a moral message, with punishment for sins or a call to conversion the dominant theme. The convenient and quick pamphlet form chosen by Zas also appealed to a public hungry for the type of spiritual experience that overcame Evert. But the actual readership was most likely limited to the group of Calvinists with pietistic inclinations—those who shared Evert’s convictions right from the start. Within that group there would surely have been one or another compulsive pamphlet buyer, like the London Puritan turner Nehemiah Wallington, who admitted to spending an irresponsibly large portion of his family’s meager household money on hundreds of pamphlets and newsletters between 1630 and 1640.8

To the printer The pamphlets about Evert contain what for this medium is an unusually detailed account of how they came about. The texts are strewn with references to Evert’s intentions and to how the compiler followed them. Zas’s rst impulse was to go to a printer in the immediate vicinity. Was it mere chance that brought him to Herman van Borculo in

8 Paul S. Seaver, Wallington’s world: A Puritan artisan in seventeenth-century London (London & Stanford 1985), 156–157.

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Utrecht?9 There was very likely no print shop in Woerden at the time, and Utrecht, as the nearest larger town, would have been the main reference point for a Woerdener.10 Some thirty years earlier Van Borculo had printed a Lutheran Psalter for a Woerden bookseller. Moreover, just ten years earlier Zas had lived there himself, and his wife was a Utrecht native. The decisive factor for Zas was undoubtedly that he found in Van Borculo a kindred spirit: also a Christian humanist, this printer remained true to his religious conviction on a personal level but, thanks to his humanistic vision (and good nose for business), preferred to associate with persons of other persuasions rather than be separated by creeds. In 1619 he even published “papist” work—a Roman Catholic catechism and a prayer to Our Lady—which the Utrecht consistory did not allow to pass unnoticed.11 While the choice of printer Van Borculo was a logical one for Zas, it did not prove an altogether fortunate choice in the context of orthodox Woerden. It opened the door for misinterpretations about what had happened and thus threatened to undermine the intended effect. Evert’s efforts would then have been in vain. In any case, the two Utrecht printings appeared immediately after the rst events of January 1623, perhaps—as the title suggests—even before Evert’s second deliverance. The impression of haste is reinforced by the fact that the text was taken over verbatim for the second pamphlet, which was set in Amsterdam a good week later and again in the shortest time was rolling off the presses. A pamphlet of four pages like the Utrecht one could easily be printed in a few hundred copies in one day. Unfortunately we know nothing about how it was distributed or to whom. The rector may have waited and taken a few copies back to Woerden with him that same evening.

9 On the once famous Van Borculo printing ofce: Casparus Burmannus, Trajectum eruditum (Utrecht 1738), 30; P.T.A. Swillens, ‘De Utrechtsche houtsnijder Herman van Borculo en zijn werk’, in: Opgang 33 (1932), 514–522; the same, ‘Herman van Borculo’, in: Maandblad van Oud-Utrecht 9 (1934), 82–83; G.A. Evers, ‘Gegegevens betreffende Utrechtsche Staten-, Stads- en Academiedrukkers’, reprint from Het Grasch Museum 1–5 (Utrecht 1930–1935). For more details: Wegen, 462–468. 10 Andries Verschout, an Antwerp refugee who printed in Leiden from 1578 to 1587 and in Woerden in 1598–99, still ran a bookstore in Woerden in 1622/23. Though, as the town’s accounts show, he or his successor Floris van Sonnevelt occasionally printed placards for the local authorities, there is no proof of any publishing activity in the town during the seventeenth century, according to the Short Title catalogue, Netherlands. 11 A. Buchelius, ‘Observationes ecclesiasticae sub presbyteratu meo 1622–1626’, ed. S. Muller Fzn, in: Bijdragen en mededelingen van het Historisch Genootschap 10 (1887), 47 ( June 14, 1624).

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In view of the emphasis Evert had placed on spreading his message, he very likely saw the result himself before his second deliverance—supposing that he was still mentally present enough to take it in. But we can assume that distribution was not limited to Woerden. The few hundred orthodox households that could be counted on to agree with the message would not have justied the investment. And Evert certainly did not intend it only for them. He sought recognition outside the narrow walls of the orphanage and the borders of Woerden. It seems likely, then, that the pamphlet found its way into Utrecht bookshops, market stalls, and perhaps even the basket of an itinerant peddler. The Utrecht printer was in any case a personal choice of Zas, an enthusiastic man selected by the seer himself, and not the choice of a party. Van Borculo was a kindred spirit of Zas, not necessarily of Calvinist Woerden. Once Evert’s message had acquired a confessional thrust, the consistory took over the initiative from Zas in order to inuence its interpretation. The second choice was therefore a rational one. To ensure credibility a work with a distinct message had to be published by a printer from the target group. Ideological purity and optimal possibilities for distribution thus went hand in hand. The switch to the publisher Marten Jansz Brandt (ca. 1590–1649) in Amsterdam was a rational choice of this kind. It gives us an important clue for interpreting Evert’s secrets. Brandt was a German born in the Calvinist region of Ditmarschen, then pertaining to the Danish crown. Since his marriage at Amsterdam in 1613 he was established next to the New Church as a bookbinder, printer, and publisher under the telling sign ‘In the Reformed Catechism’. He was the privileged printer of the orthodox party, of the praxis pietatis of the Teellincks, Trigland, Udemans, and others of their camp, but also of the West India Company.12 He had one great advantage over Van Borculo: a personal religious conviction that was in line with the wishes of the orthodox party. And he had something concrete to offer: the self-acquired status of publisher of the triumphant party in the most important city of the Netherlands and, along with that, an aggressively exploited, countrywide distribution network.

12 M.M. Kleerkoper & W.P. van Stockum Jr., De boekhandel te Amsterdam voornamelijk in de zeventiende eeuw (2 vols., The Hague 1914–1916), I, 103; II, 1191–1193. The Short Title catalogue, Netherlands lists more then 250 titles published by Marten Jansz Brandt, and about 60 others by his widow, the most productive year being precisely 1623 with 19 titles. More details about his production in Wegen, 468–475.

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Fig. 17. Title page of the second pamphlet Waerachtige Geschiedenisse . . . (Amsterdam, 1623). [Royal Library, The Hague, P. Knuttel 3500].

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The Woerden magistracy understood this as well. The entry in the resolution book for January 26, 1623 contains an unusually lengthy decision, detailing all the considerations: Regarding the motion of the burgomasters, as propounded by the consistory in the board of aldermen, urging that printing be arranged for what Master Lucas Sasch [Zas], rector of the Latin School, had compiled and correctly transcribed from the writings of Evert Willemsz, orphan, and that the gentlemen be willing to give their approbation and consent to that end, the town council has consented that said rector should travel to Amsterdam, together with one other person to be selected from the consistory, and have the same printed.13

The Amsterdammers were as eager to take action as the Woerdeners, but this printing could not be done in one day. The pamphlet was longer this time, 36 pages in octavo format, and it had clearly been prepared with greater care. Marten Jansz Brandt must have had his hands full in those years with the struggle against the “seven-headed dragon” of Arminianism, but he very likely understood the urgency of this commission. Although each copy of the pamphlet required several sheets of print, the order was quickly lled. By February 9 the booklet was published, and the bill lay on the table of the town council. The frugal council then declared that “the costs incurred from the printing of the booklet of Evert Willemsz, orphan in this town, will be paid by the orphanage.”14 Reform, yes, but with a tight hold on the purse strings. The second edition of what apparently proved a brief commercial success was probably nanced by the printer himself.

Recognition? Heavenly messages and extraordinary experiences elude everyday ascriptions of meaning. Because they belong to a different order of reality, they beg to be clothed with exceptional signicance—as a divine sanction or a prediction of future events. Many visionaries in history have, consciously or otherwise, allowed themselves to be used to legitimize past or future political actions with their experience or message.

13 14

SAW, I, 10, f. 79r°. SAW, I, 10, f. 79v°.

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One difference between seers of the late Middle Ages and those of early modern times is that the messages of the latter were usually no longer conveyed directly in a political code, but via the detour of a confessional code or hermetic religious language. In a multiconfessional society—like that of the Netherlands, Germany, or England—churches and confessions represented divergent, often conicting political interests. Political oppositions were therefore often translated into religious differences. This was very clearly the case with the adherents of the Fifth Monarchy, the chiliasts who believed that Christ’s kingdom was about to be realized, but whose message could also be read as a political program. Evert Willemsz’s messages also steer clear of the political idiom of his time. Evert speaks the language he learned in Woerden: the idiom of the Bible and the catechism, and the language of confessional controversy—the forms of thought that dominate his perception of the world. But this does not mean that his messages could not be used in a different, more directly political manner. When such uses were made, we can be sure that it was largely on the initiative of others. Nothing concrete is actually known about this. But that the possibility existed is evident from the vehement reactions in the town, where political and religious divisions coincided to a signicant degree. Evert was no more than an instrument in these controversies. No matter how great his ambition and sense of mission, he never attempted to take the place of God. He differed from the Waterland Mennonites, who in the rst decades of the seventeenth century experienced similar dreams, visions, and ecstasies and even claimed to commune with the angels. The bedridden stocking mender Judith Lubbertsdr, for example, prophesied that she would be reborn during the night, made sure that three witnesses were standing watch, and conscientiously fullled her prediction.15 By contrast, Evert’s rebirth took place in the intimacy of an encounter with God. The spectacle was for him located elsewhere—in the social recognition he needed of that intimate event. Various reactions were possible to Evert’s experiences. We nd a useful typology of such reactions ninety years later, when an anonymous Rotterdam author defends the religious signicance of the long fast of the Catholic Jan Evertsz, also a boy of fteen, against skeptics. For 24

15 Jan Theunisz, Der Hanssijtsche Menniste gheest-drijveren historie . . . (Amsterdam 1627), 31–32 [Pamphlet Knuttel 3773].

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weeks Jan Evertsz ate almost nothing and went into such an ecstasy “that he at times said things and gave answers to questions that one would look for in vain in children of that age, if they were not sanctied by the Cross.”16 The reactions to Jan Evertsz’s psychosomatic state and his ecstatic utterances were sharply divided, according to the author of the pamphlet. Among those of his own faith the prevailing moderate (“dispassionate”) opinion was that this was a special work of God. Against that dominant interpretation, which recognized the marvel as a miracle but drew no conclusions from it for social life, the pamphleteer places a sectarian view, which saw in the boy’s experience the fulllment of Christ’s prophecy that the Spirit will be poured out upon all esh (Acts 2:17). Some persons, also outside the Catholic community, even considered him a prophet: they recognized in his body language a form of interaction with the divine that transcended confessional divisions. The third group of reactions the writer calls the “most irregular”: whether out of ignorance of pure religion or out of envy they rejected the authenticity of Jan Evertsz’s claims. They accused him of fraud and openly ridiculed his experiences. Those reactions were “irregular’ because they were not steered by any experience of faith, either denominational (as with the “dispassionate”) or non-denominational but yet religious (as with the sectarians). They nevertheless exhibited some diffuse or confused traces of belief, which formed the basis of their accusations. These persons, however, were exploited by a fourth group, the “secret atheists and free spirits”—in this case the physicians who with scientic arguments reduced the event to a medical case.17 They even seized on the presence of a prayer book and a print of the crucied Christ above the boy’s bed to support their highly reductionistic interpretation. They had no remnant of belief in a religious explanation and were so adept at manipulating public opinion that after a few weeks the boy lost all credibility and his experience was forgotten. Evert Willemsz provoked similarly divergent reactions. In a faceto-face community like Woerden almost everyone must have known him personally, even though he was just a tailor’s apprentice. We can 16 Oprecht en naeukeurich verhael van het overseldsaem langduyrich vasten en waecken van een Jonghelingh van 15 jaeren, genaemt Jan Evertsen . . . (s.l. 1712), 4 [Pamphlet Knuttel 16096]. See also chapter 6. 17 See the report (May 3, 1712) by three physicians: H. Lufneu, H. van Leeuwen & W. Vinck, Waaragtig verhaal van een zeldzaam geval in de persoon van Jan Evertsz. (Rotterdam 1712) [Pamphlet Knuttel 16097].

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therefore expect a wide range of responses. The rst and decisive form of recognition took place within the two smallest circles, that of his siblings and of the orphanage. When a person blessed with special gifts does not succeed at the very least in convincing his immediate surroundings of his authenticity, he has lost his case. Not that this rst recognition is always the most reliable test. Those around him can be swept along by a group feeling: it all happened right here among us, he is our visionary, and his saintliness radiates out onto us. Yet I am inclined to take the test of that everyday world seriously, especially in the case of a small orphanage. Escapism and simulation are always possible, but in an institution that offered virtually no privacy, under the merciless gaze of dozens of fellow orphans, it would be extremely difcult to keep that up for months at a time. All the evidence here points to a primary and unconditional recognition in the peer group. Evert’s closest blood relative in the orphanage, his brother Pieter, briey plays the role of critic: he notices that Evert heard him reading aloud and asks the deaf-mute boy whether he could perhaps hear a little (b12). But when the answer proves satisfactory, he takes charge of the deliverance ritual in the name of the orphans by leading them in the singing of a psalm. From that moment on the entire orphanage gives Evert its undivided support: the orphans sit in a circle around him singing a psalm (a3, b13); the master and matron of the orphanage, also the town orphan master and matron are present almost every day, showing their sincere concern (b27). Evert, too, considers this authentic experience of community an essential prerequisite. When Reverend Alutarius advises him, for the sake of his health, to withdraw “from the many people and various conversations” (b29), Evert protests vehemently. The visible community is for him a sign of spiritual communion. “Then stay together in unity of heart, and pray to God immediately” (b30). This also explains Evert’s need to see the entire community of God-fearing Woerden represented in the orphanage before his deliverance can be realized. Both ministers must come, also the incumbent burgomaster. Only when the Christian community has in this way acquired its ideal form, will the divine spark ignite the miracle. Evert cannot resist one last check: [Evert:] If all the people are here now to see me, tell me that in writing, then we will start to sing. [Zas:] They are here. [Evert:] Then let us now praise God. . . . (b32)

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Evert’s insistence on completeness is certainly related to the way in which he perceives and processes his experience: the boundaries between body, spirit, and community become uid for him. There is no spiritual experience without physical repercussions; bodily health or inrmity always has a spiritual meaning; and that meaning is intended for the entire community: “so that I may increase thy praise with all the pious who serve thy will night and day” (b10). But at the same time he does this in order to convince the last skeptics in his own camp. He follows a classic pattern here. Through the ages visionaries were always at rst distrusted, if not rejected outright, by the local community, only to be reincorporated by the skeptical authorities into ecclesiastical normalcy on the basis of a dramatic, recognizable sign (here Evert’s bodily afictions)—but then placed, so to speak, on a folding chair in a side nave of the church. The visionary’s overthrow of the power structure is thus no more than appearance. The marginal recognition actually neutralizes his or her message. For a brief moment the weak layperson seems to gain some control over the sacred, but conventional authority wins out in the end.18

Criticism in Woerden Woerden certainly had its share of skeptics. We have already seen Alutarius’s hesitations, and when Reverend Van Cralingen is called in, it is “so that he can see it with his own eyes” (b31). We hear in the background here the hesitation of an orthodox theocrat faced with the uncontrollable pietism of the orphan. Evert’s new mysticism, his highly personal religious experience, is not in line with the safe form of an organized congregation supervised by a consistory. Even those who were favorably inclined did not immediately understand all the implications. When tailor Gijsbert Aelbertsz began to express his sympathy, Evert corrected him with an order to spread his message. Reverend Alutarius, saddened “that the Lord has again visited you with this heavy afiction” (b25), was treated to the same response. To what extent Evert’s charisma—to use Max Weber’s term—proved helpful here is difcult to

18 Cf. André Vauchez, ‘Les pouvoirs informels dans l’Église aux derniers siècles du Moyen Age: visionnaires, prophètes et mystiques’, in: Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome, Moyen Age et Temps Modernes 96 (1984), 281–293.

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determine. We know for sure that for a short moment he had authority in Woerden, when “the rumor drew people in crowds too great to number” (b27) and “a large number of people” declared their willingness to conrm under oath what had taken place (b32–33). Such conrmation was necessary, for there was considerable reserve, if not hostility, towards the boy in Woerden itself. Zas testies that the rst deliverance “was little noticed, little publicized, and little taken to heart” (b31). The townspeople shrugged and reacted “to the matter rather disparagingly” (b32). But with the second deliverance that indifference changed to admiration. The declarations of the magistracy and the consistory testify that Evert was then accepted as a “living saint” by the party of godliness then in power in Woerden. In the inner circle of the orphanage, for his teacher and other intimates, Evert was even considered an authentic prophet, whose messages deserved wide dissemination. The circle of ardent followers in the town also criticized Reverend Alutarius when he lectured Evert on the unbiblical nature of his experiences. The following day Alutarius himself reports: “Because there were some who thought that I had instructed you too much; much is being said about that in the town” (b28). Evert gallantly forgives him on the spot: “this I desire, that you tell the people that they should not say such things about you” (b29). Here he truly acts like the charismatic leader who is unconditionally obeyed by his group. But there were opponents as well, and they spoke out loudly enough to provoke a reaction from Evert on two occasions. On January 19 he speaks about those who criticize his fasts: “They say they are lies, that is the rst thing they say” (a4, b23). But he has an answer ready: “I think that for this reason our God intends to send more punishments, and to do so through me, that you will see” (a4). In his nal dream one week later he refers to the resistance in the town among those who, as Zas puts it in his commentary, “did not accept the miracle of God (for there were a few who behaved like unbelievers in this matter) in the way it should have been accepted.” Evert’s own commentary makes it clear that they considered him an impostor: They shouted in their pride—and still they say— That they would smite me hard, beat me so terribly That I would learn to speak and hear as usual again. (b34)

His fasting is not genuine, they say, nor is he deaf and mute. Such accusations touch the heart of the matter, for it is precisely in his physical inrmities that God manifests his wrath and omnipotence.

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God scourges and delivers. After Evert regains his understanding, taste, hearing, and speech the rst time, he thanks God for the double miracle of the afiction (“O God, most almighty Father, I cannot fully thank thee for showing me, a poor sinful person, such a great miracle,”) and the deliverance (“and thou hast so abundantly delivered me”) (b34). The essence of the event is the twofold miracle that God performed on Evert’s body, not the message—that merely follows from the injunction to spread the news of God’s miraculous work (b5). Evert cannot therefore tolerate criticism of the physical expressions of his trial. It is worth noting, however, that the critics make no mention of his miraculous deliverance, at least not in Evert’s account of them. Did they simply dismiss that deliverance as fraudulent? Or did everyone, opponents as well as supporters, share some minimal feeling for the wonder worked by God? Belief in miracles was still strong in most circles, also among the educated. Embedding Evert’s physical experience into the spirituality of a specic party entailed a good deal more than simply conveying an ecstatic event—especially when it came to convincing those who had not witnessed it rsthand that his experience was genuine. For this, legitimization by a higher authority was needed. Although the rst pamphlet is integrally incorporated in the second one (b19–23), the two pamphlets differ considerably in both presentation and tenor. In the Utrecht pamphlet Master Zas reports the boy’s ecstatic experiences in a simple, associative way, with little concern for their place in the Woerden context. In the Amsterdam publication, however, the events, together with as many of Evert’s notes as possible, are placed in the framework of a steered learning process. Because Evert’s religious experiences need authentication, they are rst recounted in great detail. That reconstruction is then framed by the formal attestations of both the magistracy and the consistory about the reliability of the narrative (b3–4, b36). Finally, the reader is offered an aid to understanding the events described: a table of contents outlining the steps of the process (b5). From its somewhat muddled chronological structure, with earlier episodes interspersed among later ones, we can infer that the Amsterdam pamphlet was also compiled in great haste. But haste does not necessarily imply carelessness. In fact, it is precisely the elements intentionally added to Evert’s experiences that clearly steer the reader of the Amsterdam pamphlet in a particular direction. Not so much towards amazement as agreement, recognition of the meaningfulness of what overcame the boy in the specic context of that moment and

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of that town. For those who still found it insufciently clear, there was also the unmistakable stamp of the publisher. We can be quite sure that among the readers of his group the second pamphlet contributed most to a public recognition of Evert’s experience and his message of punishment and conversion. Echoes of that success could be heard in the synod. The objection raised by the North Holland synod in August 1623 against “the great license of printing all sorts of scandalous and offensive books” was probably aimed at the Remonstrants.19 But the South Holland synod came with a statement closer to home. Already in 1623 it asked whether there should not be some limits set to the publication of dreams and visions.20 One year later the assembled ministers and elders issued a warning against apocalyptic enthusiasm. We cannot be sure, of course, that one or the other of these statements was made with Evert Willemsz in mind, but the proximity of the dates is too striking to be purely coincidental—especially since the other black sheep of apocalyptic teaching, Reverend Daniel van Laren, appears elsewhere in the minutes of that year.21 There were good reasons for not mentioning Evert by name. Skeptical members of synod would certainly have been urged to exercise restraint by the delegates from classis Woerden, who had been actively involved in the events. At least one of them would prove a faithful supporter of Evert later as well: elder Gerrit Gijsbertsz Vergeer, present at the synod convened in Gorinchem on July 12, 1623.22 The public legitimation by the magistracy and the consistory of his second deliverance gave Evert unmistakable status in orthodox Woerden. We have already seen this in the obligation taken on by the new organist, Master Gerrit Dirckx, in 1626, to give organ lessons to “Evert in the orphanage” if he requested them. Evert’s rst name is sufcient here to identify him, and the formulation radiates the preferential treatment he enjoyed. He only had to say the word and the magistracy hastened to accommodate him. One year later, when he wanted to enter the Latin school in Leiden, the magistracy obliged once again.

19

GAA, ACA, 82 (synod of Hoorn, art. 23). W.P.C. Knuttel (ed.), Acta der particuliere synoden van Zuid-Holland 1621–1700 (6 vols., The Hague 1908–1916), I, 83. 21 Ibid., I, 119–120, 122 (synod of The Hague, July 1624, arts. 42 and 49); Reverend Cralingius and elder Bruyn van Cleeff from Woerden were present: I, 94. 22 Ibid., I, 66. 20

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Evert’s triumph was thus complete, but in the nal analysis it did not reach beyond the level of local neighborhood talk. His experiences failed to make it into the chronicles of those years, even via the detour of Master Zas’s pamphlets. We nd no reference to them in the resolutions of classis Woerden. The Woerden Lutheran Aert Jansz van Rijnevelshorn (ca. 1601–1665), who was a few years older than Evert, may have mentioned them in the diary he kept in those years—but that diary has been lost.23 The learned Utrecht elder Aernout van Buchell (1565–1641), a man of the right theological camp who must have experienced it all at close range, included nothing about Evert in his daily notes about events in those years.24 Nor do we nd any explicit mention of the pamphlet or of the happenings in Woerden in the Memoryen of Willem Baudartius (1565–1640), an equally reliable Counter-Remonstrant minister.25 Yet this extremely well-informed and communicative chronicler missed no opportunity in those years to preach the triumph of his party; he was also interested in visionaries and each year appended to his chronicle the minor news from the pamphlets.

A skeptic: Claes van Wassenaer That general silence is broken by only one voice.26 The Amsterdam physician Claes van Wassenaer (1571/72–1629) mentions Evert Willemsz, though not by name, in his annual chronicle that appeared from 1622 to 1630, a publication subsequently continued by his colleague Barent Lampe.27 The life of Claes Jansz van Wassenaer, son of the Amsterdam 23 He cites it repeatedly, together with other personal experiences and Woerden events, in his eschatological pamphlet Wisse tijding van de nabyheydt des jongsten dags: in vijftien ware ken-tekenen, uyt het H. Woordt Godts, en veele opmerckensnoodige historien en exempelen (Amsterdam 1665). 24 A. Buchelius, ‘Observationes ecclesiasticae sub presbyteratu meo, 1622–1626’, ed. S. Muller Fzn, in: Bijdragen en mededelingen van het Historisch Genootschap 10 (1887), 29–63. On the religious aspects of Van Buchell’s work: Judith Pollmann, Religious choice in the Dutch Republic: The reformation of Arnoldus Buchelius (1565–1641) (Manchester 1999). On Buchelius: NNBW, VI, 229–231. 25 On Baudartius: BLGNP, I, 40–42. 26 It may however be observed that copies of both pamphlets have been conserved in the library of the opponents, i.e., the Remonstrant congregation of Amsterdam (at present: Library of the University of Amsterdam, P. C.p. 18a and 19a). 27 Nicolaes van Wassenaer, Historisch verhael alder ghedenck-weerdichste geschiedenissen, die van den beginne des jaeres 1621 [. . .] tot 1632 voorgevallen sijn (21 vols., Amsterdam 1622–1635),

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minister Jan Claesz van Wassenaer, displays the uncertainties, vicissitudes, and changes of course that we encounter in so many lives from those transitional years in the Netherlands.28 After reportedly studying on a scholarship in Geneva, he was rst a minister in Weesp, then a teacher of classical languages in Haarlem; in 1607 he became a deputy headmaster in Amsterdam, and in 1612 began practicing there as a physician. Born and raised in a Calvinist milieu, the insatiably curious Wassenaer had also absorbed the skepticism of learned humanism. He was not a theological hairsplitter, but an inquisitive and critical observer of his time. In brief, the ideal informant. That attitude is also evident from his report about Evert Willemsz, written when the young man was already in Leiden. Wassenaer had apparently bought a copy of the pamphlet printed by Marten Jansz Brandt and saved it along with a pile of other curiosities. He did not nd the event worth noting in his chronicle of 1623. Only in 1628 does he mention it, when he considers it useful to present a series of pious impostors in the Netherlands and other countries who claimed to do without eating or who pretended muteness. Human deeds, no matter how well hidden, are likely to come to light, is his message. Is it the physician speaking here, a man overly focused on such isolated aspects of human experience? Or is he voicing the general opinion of his contemporaries? In any case, Evert Willemsz gures here in a group of unmasked deceivers: a nun in Portugal venerated for her long fast but eventually exposed by King Philip II himself, a woman in Marseille who had given up eating altogether, a stigmatized nun in Rome who had done the same, the “Woerden trickery” (of Evert Willemsz), the case of mute Jan Jansz on the river Gaasp near Weesp, who could speak even though the Turks had cut out his tongue, and nally Eva Vliegen, an unmarried woman from the town of Mörs in the Rhineland, who for years had pretended to eat nothing until she was unmasked “in the 6th month of this year.” Wassenaer very likely read about the last incident in the Courante uyt Italien, Duytslandt, etc. (Newspaper from Italy, Germany, etc.) of June 24, 1628. That unmasking must have prompted his digression in the chronicle. What Wassenaer has to say about Evert Willemsz deserves to be cited in full:

vol. XV (1629), f. 64r°. He had also been the rst to report on the settlement of New Netherland. 28 On Wassenaer: NNBW, VIII, 1307–1308; J.Z. Kannegieter, ‘Dr. Nicolaes Jansz. van Wassenaer (1571/1572–1629)’, in: Jaarboek Amstelodamum 56 (1964), 71–99.

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chapter eight Recently an orphan was seen in Woerden who subtly played the mute, and whose action was assumed by everyone there to be genuine, except by a discerning minister, who could not understand that a person could be so transported that he could at times lose his speech and afterwards could begin speaking again. In the end, however, it came to the point where the trickery was exposed, and a pamphlet was distributed in these regions in order to destroy the effect of the previous one, which was written very foolishly and to the disgrace of the writer.

This text confronts us with some riddles. Although he is not mentioned by name, the subject here is unquestionably Evert Willemsz. The references to the orphan, to the place and date, to the characteristics of the experience, and to the pamphlet leave no room for doubt. The link between the pamphlet and Wassenaer’s commentary was already made by P.A. Tiele and later taken up by W.P.C. Knuttel in their printed catalogues of the pamphlets kept respectively in the Collection Frederik Muller (1858–1861) and the Royal Library in The Hague (1889–1920). Wassenaer’s text conrms the impact made by the events in Woerden and points out, even more clearly than the pamphlet itself, the ecstatic element of Evert’s experience: he was “so transported” that he lost his speech. That Wassenaer himself did not believe this is not surprising, given his position in the ecclesiastical panorama. Like the learned Alutarius, the ex-minister Wassenaer can no longer acknowledge the mystical dimension of simple lay saintliness. We may, however, be astonished by the attack on Zas, a fellow teacher and a Christian humanist like himself. It is interesting that Wassenaer begins with a series of false fasting miracles but suddenly shifts his attention to Evert’s feigned muteness, making no further mention of his fasting, although he concludes the series with another fasting miracle. He presumably worked associatively here. Of Evert’s two characteristic features, fasting and muteness, the rst brought his case to mind but led Wassenaer almost immediately to the second feature, which was much more important for both Evert and his readers as a vehicle for his messages. Most surprising is the second part of Wassenaer’s report. A “discerning minister” in Woerden, he claims, did not believe in what had taken place, and a new pamphlet (written by that minister?) exposed Evert Willemsz as a pretender. The identity of this minister is a riddle. It cannot have been Alutarius, since he was the one who must have brought the manuscript to Marten Jansz Brandt. Cralingius kept very much to the background through the entire affair, but he was even more of a protagonist of orthodoxy than Alutarius—certainly not the

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type that would have enjoyed the sympathy of skeptical Wassenaer or merited the label “discerning.” Was it then perhaps the Remonstrant minister Reinier Walenburg, who regularly preached in Woerden as well as other nearby communities? None of these three is known to have commented in writing on the matter, and despite extensive searching I have found no later pamphlet that takes up the issue of Evert’s youthful experiences. It is possible, of course, that every copy of such a pamphlet has disappeared, as happened with more pamphlets and books that we know of only from references, reprints, or press notices.29 The question remains, however, why a skeptical minister would nd it necessary to debunk the story. His remarks are plainly at odds with the continuing favors conferred on Evert Willemsz by the Woerden magistracy. If the Counter-Remonstrants had unmasked Evert as an impostor, it is highly unlikely that he could have continued at the town’s Latin school for several years and even obtained a Woerden scholarship for the States College around the time of Wassenaer’s publication. The Reformed ministers, who had an important say in precisely such matters, would certainly have objected. Or was a sudden unmasking perhaps the reason behind the interruption of Evert’s studies at Leiden University? Did such a pamphlet, which according to that hypothesis must have appeared at the end of 1629, prompt his hasty departure from Leiden for a distant, not very desirable colony? But Wassenaer’s work had been published more than a year before he made that move. Or did Evert recognize himself in Wassenaer’s report, had he perhaps become the laughing stock of his fellow students, and did he then have no choice but to ee, even if he knew better himself ? The classis that sent him rst to Guinea and later to Manhattan did not in any case make that connection. We have here, in short, a little mystery. It is certainly not without importance for our interpretation of Evert’s life, but given the lack of sources leads at this moment only to unfounded speculation. All things considered, it may be as unwise to give uncritical credence to skeptics and opponents as to believers and supporters.30

29 Cf. Harline, Pamphlets, 238–239, who thinks however that few pamphlets have totally disappeared. 30 Recently, A.Th. van Deursen has endorsed Wassenaer’s scepticism, calling Evert a “notorious faker”: Plain lives in a Golden Age: Popular culture, religion and society in seventeenthcentury Holland (Cambridge 1991), 257–258.

INTERMEZZO

REACHING MATURITY

Fig. 18. Map of the city of Amsterdam, by Dirck Cornelisse Swart, 1623. [Gemeentearchief Amsterdam]. The numbers represent: 1. Dam Square with the town hall; 2. the New Church and the bookshop of Marten Jansz Brandt; 3. the Civic Orphanage; 4. the Nieuwmarkt, with the immigrants district; 5. The West India House (seat of the West India Company); 6. Warehouses of the West India Company, built in 1641–42.

CHAPTER NINE

COMFORTER OF THE SICK IN MOURI

The West India Company Evert Willemsz spent the last seventeen years of his life in the employ of the Chartered West India Company (WIC)—from 1630 to 1632 as a “comforter of the sick” in Mouri and from 1632 to 1647 as a minister in New Amsterdam. Or better, he placed himself in the service of God and the church, through the mediation of the Company. At least that must have been how he perceived his task, as we shall see from the further course of his life. This perception was in keeping with ideas common in certain circles of the Republic about the aim and tasks of the WIC: the Company, founded at a rather late point in 1621, was not only a trading enterprise but also an instrument for Christianizing the regions under its sovereign authority. This does not mean, of course, that there was no trade with the West Indies before that time. Ever since the last years of the sixteenth century, when the provinces of the Northern Netherlands considered themselves denitively independent and tolerated no more interference from foreign traders, Dutch merchants had been active on the west coast of Africa, in the Caribbean, and on the northeast coast of South America. The counterpart of the WIC, the United East India Company (VOC) founded in 1602, was from the outset a typical commercial enterprise with prot as its principal goal. The situation with the WIC was somewhat more complicated. Besides the intention of the States General to assign it a military role in the war against Spain, the rst advocates of such a company also clearly wished to bring about intensive colonization of the conquered territories. The richest among them, in particular the Flemish merchant Willem Usselincx (1567–1647), dreamed of a God-fearing empire, of ourishing commercial and agricultural colonies where God’s word would be preached in the true Calvinist manner.1 1 On Willem Usselincx’s proposal for founding the WIC as a colonial power with a social and religious aim: J. Franklin Jameson, Willem Usselinx: Founder of the Dutch and Swedish West India Companies (New York 1887); C. Ligtenberg, Willem Usselinx (Utrecht 1915), 12–87.

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Small wonder then that the WIC, founded so soon after the synod of Dort (1618–19), was initially viewed as a Counter-Remonstrant enterprise. The rst directors of the WIC also included a large number of active Counter-Remonstrants. In view of the religious and political climate of the Dutch Republic in 1621 and the inuence of the orthodox Pauw faction in the Amsterdam government, this is hardly surprising. The subscription for shares was initially boycotted by wealthy Catholics and Remonstrants, who still accounted for a large part of the capital and the wholesale trade of the new republic. As a result, the subscription period had to be extended until the end of August 1623, while delegates of the WIC toured the country and made propaganda among large and small capitalists. Although the latter, as holders of relatively few shares, were soon outmaneuvered by the large investors, they remain the silent witnesses of an ideal that was religious as well as economic. Marten Jansz Brandt, for example, already familiar to us as a publisher of fervent Calvinist writings, printed numerous pamphlets about the WIC and its missionary task, and as soon as the Company was founded subscribed for 600 guilders worth of shares. For years he functioned as the unofcial printer of the WIC. Finally, at the end of October 1623, the subscriptions amounted to 7,108,644 guilders, after which the States General, on the day of thanksgiving December 13, 1623, reiterated the principal goals: that God might “grant such success and progress as is required and necessary for the propagation of His Honor and Holy Word in those lands.” What was the organizational structure of the WIC?2 And how was it related to the States General, which on June 3, 1621 granted it a 24-year monopoly on trade in the Atlantic area and the Pacic Ocean, a charter that was renewed in 1647? The Company possessed a delegated right of sovereignty. In the name of the States General it could conclude treaties and alliances, recruit military personnel, build and man forts, govern and administer justice in the territories it subjugated (art. 2). It could wage war in order to promote its trading interests, but besides the commercial and military aim, it was also explicitly authorized to 2 On the WIC: Henk den Heijer, De geschiedenis van de WIC (Zutphen 1994); the same, ‘Bewindhebbers, gouverneurs en raden van bestuur (Het bestuur van de West-Indische Compagnie in de Republiek en in Brazilië)’, in: Marianne L. Wiesebron (ed.), Brazilië in de Nederlandse archieven (1624–1654) (Leiden 2005), 17–41. Many printed sources are presented and discussed in G.M. Asher, A bibliographical and historical essay on Dutch books and pamphlets relating to New Netherland and to the Dutch West-India Company and its possessions in Brazil, Angola, etc. (Amsterdam 1854–1867; reprint 1966).

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undertake intensive colonization. On October 13, 1629 an Order of Government was established for the possessions in the West Indies, comparable to the political decree of April 1, 1580 that dened the contours of civil law in the fatherland.3 Administrative ofcials and law enforcement ofcers of the WIC were required to swear an oath of loyalty to the States General, thus securing the fundamental unity of the state overseas as well. The WIC was governed by nineteen directors, the Heren XIX (19 Gentlemen), who were delegated according to xed ratios from the ve chambers (ofces) of the Company for a term of three years: eight from the Amsterdam chamber (which also comprised Utrecht, Gelderland, and Leiden), four from Zeeland, two from the chamber of the Meuse (Rotterdam, Delft, Dordrecht), two from the Northern Quarter of Holland and West Friesland, and two from Friesland and Groningen; the nineteenth member was appointed by the States General and had a decisive vote in cases of disagreement. This ponderous administrative structure was further complicated by the rivalry among the chambers, which in effect tied the hands of the Heren XIX. Each chamber had a different number of local directors (from twelve in Zeeland to twenty in Amsterdam), appointed by the town magistracy (but before long actually co-opted) from the group of principal investors for a term of six years. These were the major shareholders, who feared—with good reason—that a regents’ oligarchy would exclude immigrants from the Southern Netherlands and thus insisted at an early point that the charter be amplied to give them more say over the selection and policy of the directors as well as the right to appoint their own directors in a few chambers. Amsterdam and Zeeland each delegated one such shareholders’ representative to the Heren XIX. The Amsterdam chamber soon laid sole claim to the administration of New Netherland. For running daily affairs this chamber then formed a special commission that in effect determined the policy related to New Netherland. The States General viewed the WIC mainly through a political lens, as an inexpensive extension of the overseas army and eet and as an instrument to shift the war zone to areas outside the Republic by means of privateering and conquest of enemy territory (art. 5 of

3 J.A. Schiltkamp, ‘Legislation, government, jurisprudence, and law in the Dutch West Indian colonies: The Order of Government of 1629’, in: Pro memorie. Bijdragen tot de rechtsgeschiedenis der Nederlanden 5 (2003), 320–334.

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the charter). The Company would in fact take over the war for the Generality at its own risk. But the States General retained the right to decisions in military matters. In return it bought shares amounting to half a million guilders and promised an equal amount in subsidy (art. 39). The asymmetry here between private interest and state interest was extreme. No provision was made to ensure a balance between the hunger for immediate prot, understandable in a shareholder, and the institutional concern for collective interests, such as military cover of colonial enterprises and the defense of colonized areas. In order to prevent a conict of interests it was stipulated that the directors were not allowed to supply the WIC with goods or ships, or to buy the commodities brought by return eet. For this they were given compensation. But there was no external check on the policy of the Heren XIX. The often shortsighted trading policy of the major shareholders was not corrected by a more or less disinterested government that kept an eye on the interests of its subjects and on longer-term investments in goods and culture. Everything was placed in private hands, including even the interest of the state. The WIC reinvested very little of its prot in its colonies, paying it out instead immediately in dividends. This system worked as long as there were more prots on the horizon and private initiative was given extra stimulus. But what if the balance became negative and prospects took a plunge? A good deal of discussion has been devoted to the question of whether religious aims and a theocratic perspective lay at the basis of the WIC.4 The charter of the WIC originally made no mention of religious interests, but this changed after the Amsterdam consistory sent a delegation to the Heren XIX at the end of July 1623. From then on a minister and three comforters of the sick could be employed on ships bound for the West. To conclude from this that the religious motives were merely a pious cover-up for a crude drive for prot would show little understanding for the people of the seventeenth century. For them prot was God-given proof of well-directed missionary zeal. In studying the past it is always difcult to make clear distinctions between actions, motives, and legitimations. This is especially true of

4 See the discussion between: W.J. van Hoboken, ‘The Dutch West India Company: The political background of its rise and decline’, in: J.S. Bromley & E.H. Kossmann (eds.), Britain and the Netherlands, vol. I (London 1960), 41–61; W.J. van Dillen, ‘De WestIndische Compagnie, het calvinisme en de politiek’, in: Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 74 (1961), 145–171; and the ‘Wederwoord’ by Van Hoboken, ibid. 75 (1962), 49–53.

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Fig. 19. Pamphlet issued by Reformed “Patriots” in favor of the West India Company Voortganck vande West-Indische Compaignie (Amsterdam, 1623) [Royal Library, The Hague, P. Knuttel 3426].

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the religious dimension of action in pre-industrial society. Religion permeated all of individual and collective life, if for no other reason because motives for behavior were articulated in religious terms and the early modern state had delegated the denition of public morality to the churches. Although the reference to God and religion may seem to us rather perfunctory, it does reect a prime motivation of the early modern person—which is not to deny, of course, that other motives could dominate in everyday life. A petition presented to Prince Frederik Hendrik by the Amsterdam meeting of the major shareholders of the WIC on April 10, 1628 reiterates “that its people (almost all of whom profess the true Reformed religion) have had the following aims: First the glory of God; secondly the true Reformed religion, here, and the propagation of the same in other lands; thirdly, the welfare of the provinces, and principally of this city; and fourthly harm to the common enemy.” For a seventeenth-century believer (and could people of that time be unbelievers in our sense of the word?) this is the correct order of the four motives, even if it was usually reversed when it came to actual behavior: rst the spoils of war, then regular trade, next the church, and nally the glory of God. A little later in the petition the shareholders explain to the prince how they have realized those aims. At various places overseas “God-fearing ministers” had been appointed and congregations organized that observed Calvinist doctrine and church order according to the rules of Dort. “Foreign nations of those regions,” natives in other words, had even been brought to the Netherlands and “instructed there in religion and the Dutch language so that by means of that [language] they might give the same religion a foothold in their fatherland and make it appealing.” At that moment there was clearly a group of major shareholders and directors in the WIC who considered the Christianizing of overseas territories, the establishing of Christ’s kingdom among the heathen (as the pietistic minister Godfried Udemans put it a short time later), as the main goal of the WIC. Trade, and especially intensive colonization, were the necessary and appropriate means to that end. The religious mission of the WIC is, in the last analysis, mainly a matter of perception. We no longer tend to dene commercial enterprises in terms of a divine mandate. In the seventeenth century the large majority of people did think in such terms, which in no way implies that their actions also conformed to norms of Christian behavior as we would now dene them. We need only think of the privateering, the slave trade, the cruel war tactics, and the equally merciless commercial

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competition, to say nothing of the outright infamy of massacres, beheadings, or the starving out of civilian populations. If we wish to understand something of the past and do it justice, we must not lose ourselves in sterile outrage, no matter how much blood stains the hands of our ancestors, but instead try to track down, or at least reconstruct, the complex relations between behavior, motives, interests, and perception. The honor of the victims and the opponents demands that we not sacrice them again, this time on the altar of ignorance. In the seventeenth century, too, there were many persons in the Netherlands who censured the misdeeds; but short-term commercial motives and immediate factional interests led others to gloss them over, and even to justify them. A compromise was made between the exalted proclamation of God’s glory and the dignity of his creatures on the one hand, and on the other the earthly drive to give priority to selfinterest and, if necessary, to trample underfoot those higher values. In the seventeenth century, too, misdeeds were perceived in various ways, even among those of good faith. Witness the struggle of the Calvinists with slavery, a practice almost universally accepted in the western world of that time. Reverend Udeman’s inuential tract ’t Geestelyck roer van ’t coopmans schip (The spiritual rudder of the merchant’s ship, 1638) provides clear testimony here: Christ delivered us from spiritual slavery, the Zierikzee minister declares, but God in some cases allows worldly slavery; baptized Christians must not be made slaves, but if heathens are brought into slavery through a just war or through sale for a just price by their parents or legal guardians (as was the order of the day in Angola), it is permissible to use them, on the condition that they are treated well. It is with such forms of perception that we are confronted here, and with the behavioral motivation they generate.

On the coast of Guinea In times long past the entire west coast of Africa, from north to south was referred to as Guinea.5 The Dutch form “Guinee” eventually came

5 A detailed survey of this region in: John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the making of the Atlantic world, 1400 –1800 (2d ed., Cambridge 1998), map 1–3, and pp. xix–xxiv, 63–71; R.A. Kea, Settlements, trade and politics in the seventeenth-century Gold Coast (Baltimore & London 1982); A. van Dantzig, Forts and castles of Ghana (Accra 1980). On the WIC and Guinea: Charles R. Boxer, The Dutch seaborne empire, 1600 –1800 (New York 1965),

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Fig. 20. Warehouses of the West India Company on the corner of Oudeschans and ’s-Gravenhekje in Amsterdam, built in 1641–42. [Photograph by the author].

to be used for the only area where the Dutch managed to gain a real foothold, namely the Gold Coast. Not until 1872 was this region, present-day Ghana, handed over to the English. The Coast of Guinea had been colonized by the Portuguese already in the fteenth century. A long line of coastal settlements (known as “lodges” or “factories”) supported the trade of the Portuguese with the countless “kingdoms” of the African coast and interior. The trade was protected by a few forts, of which São Jorge da Mina—bastardized to (St. George d’) Elmina, or Delmina—became the most well known, rst as the main settlement

21–29; S.P. L’Honoré Naber, De Nederlanders in Guinee en Brazilië (The Hague 1931) [Geschiedkundige Atlas van Nederland]; J.G. Doorman, ‘Die Niederländisch-WestIndische Compagnie an der Goldküste’, in: Tijdschrift voor Indische taal-, land- en volkenkunde 40 (1898), 389–496; K. Ratelband (ed.), Vijf dagregisters van het kasteel Sao Jorge da Mina (Elmina) aan de Goudkust (1645–1647) (The Hague 1953). From an African point of view: Walter Rodney, ‘The Guinea Coast’, in: Richard Gray (ed.), The Cambridge history of Africa, vol. IV (Cambridge 1975), 223–324.

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of the Portuguese and later as the seat of Dutch rule.6 From their outpost in Brazil the Dutch conquered this fort only in 1637, after a failed attempt in 1625 resulted in the death of some 400 soldiers and sailors.7 From the end of the sixteenth century onward Dutch trade on the Coast of Guinea expanded rapidly, and when two envoys of the king of Sabu (the shing village Asebu or Sabeu, east of São Jorge da Mina) requested that the States General protect them from the Portuguese and build a fort for that purpose in Mouri, just three hours walk from São Jorge, the States immediately agreed. Fort Nassau was constructed in 1612, with a garrison authorized by the state. In March 1624 it was transferred by the States General to the WIC.8 In 1625 Arent Jacobsz van Amersfoort was appointed commander of Fort Nassau and “General” of the Gold Coast. He was a capable administrator, who managed to benet from indigenous rivalries without becoming entangled in them. He was succeeded by Jan Jochemsz Sticker, who sailed from Texel on The White Lion early in November 1630 and reached Guinea almost four months later, on February 23, 1631. In the report that Sticker submitted to the States General after his term of ofce, he emphasized the good relations with the indigenous people. He points out that their love for the Dutch was not purely altruistic, when he describes “the slaves and blacks serving at the fort, 110 strong, under two [native] captains, who prefer to associate with us rather than any other nation, as they are better treated and now and then have occasion to earn a penny.”9 The contacts with the local blacks were therefore frequent and relatively close, even inside the fort. 6 J.B. Ballong-Wen-Menuda, São Jorge da Mina 1482–1637: la vie d’un comptoir portugais en Afrique occidentale (2 vol., Lisbon & Paris 1993). 7 In 1624, a huge eet under Admiral Jan Dircksz Lam had been equipped to conquer Elmina and bring the whole Gold Coast under Dutch command (the so-called “Grand design” of the WIC). But in the autumn of 1625 the Dutch were defeated by the Portuguese and their indigenous allies. Hundreds of ofcers, soldiers, and sailors were massacred with machetes. During Evert’s stay in Mouri, the memory of this disaster was still fresh and must have colored the relations between the Dutch and the surrounding tribes, not to speak of the Portuguese enemies close by. See the contemporary account: Henk den Heijer (ed.), Expeditie naar de Goudkust. Het journaal van Jan Dircksz Lam over de Nederlandse aanval op Elmina, 1624–1626 (Zutphen 2006). 8 Johan de Laet, Historie ofte Iaerlijck verhael van de verrichtinghen der Geoctroyeerde WestIndische Compagnie (Leiden 1644) [new ed. by S.P. L’Honoré Naber & J.C.M. Warnsinck, 4 vols., The Hague 1931–1937], I, 106–111, documents the early history of the WIC settlements. Impressions of life in Fort Nassau can be found in the diaries of Samuel Brun, Schiffarten (Basel 1624, repr. Graz 1969) [new ed. by S.P. L’Honoré Naber, The Hague 1913], who served as Company surgeon on the Gold Coast until 1620. 9 NAN, States General, 5754–II, exh. June 23, 1635.

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Evert Willemsz very likely had a part in this as well during the period he served under Sticker. He must have experienced it as culture shock and on-site training for mission work. The colony on the Coast of Guinea was a typical trading settlement. The Dutch lived on a small patch of ground inside the fort, in a precarious balance with the native coastal tribes who competed for as much of the trade as possible but also found clever ways to prot from the naiveté often shown by the Europeans. The Dutch settlement was never very large. Rarely were there more than a few hundred Europeans stationed there (merchants, soldiers, and sailors combined). Their numbers uctuated greatly, owing to the extremely high mortality rate. In some cases the dreaded Guinea fevers, malaria, and dysentery claimed one-third of all new arrivals within their rst year.10 When Bogardus was serving as comforter of the sick in Guinea, the WIC owned no more than Fort Nassau. It was the residence of the Dutch colony and thus also of the comforter of the sick. The walled fort stood on a high hill, protected by three bulwarks and a demilune, with an interior building made of brick. There was no well, but the fort had a cistern with a capacity of 400,000 liters of rainwater, enough for a long siege; it was also a breeding ground for bacterial infections. Nothing is known of a church in the fort. In 1618 the population of Mouri comprised—besides a few commercial and administrative ofcials and the WIC garrison—300 indigenous soldiers and 500 slaves in the service of the Company, as well as craftsmen, retail merchants, shermen, and proa sailors.11 Some 1500 inhabitants all told. Nevertheless, a comforter of the sick who was serious about his tasks of catechizing, proselytizing the natives, and comforting the many sick Europeans in that devastating climate would have had almost more work than he could handle. To judge from the references that Evert took back with him, he had performed his community-forming task to the full satisfaction of the commander and the minister.

In search of adventure? The time Evert Willemsz spent on the Gold Coast is the most obscure phase of his life. We actually know something only of the beginning

10 11

Cf. the numbers of deaths in Brun, Schiffarten, 46–47 (on the years 1616–1617). Kea, Settlements, 38, citing Brun, Schiffarten.

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Fig. 21. Map of the Coast of Guinea showing the indigenous tribes and kingdoms, signed and dated at Mouri, December 25, 1629 (detail). [National Archive of the Netherlands, Section Maps and drawings, VEL 743]. Mouri (Mouree) is in the middle of the coastline.

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and end point; the rest is deduction. But that is often the case with historiography. We make links between persons and events on the basis of the unity of time, place, and—if possible—action, creating an image that to us seems plausible, and then hope for the best. The dates marking the length of his stay are denite in any case. On September 9, 1630 the Amsterdam consistory gave Bogardus his instructions as comforter of the sick for Guinea.12 But not until October 14 did “Everardus Bogardus student,” obtain from the Leiden consistory his nal recommendation for service in “West India.”13 This means it was sometime after mid-October that he left his lodgings on Leiden’s Hooglandse Kerkgracht (Highland Church Canal) for his mission overseas. On Monday, June 7, 1632, he was back in the Netherlands and presented to the Amsterdam classis his testimonia, “which were very good.”14 If we deduct from this at least twice ten weeks for the voyages out and back, not including possible delays owing to lack of wind, he spent at most sixteen months in Mouri. His stay there was in fact even shorter. He must have sailed from Texel with the autumn eet of November 1, 1630 and arrived together with the new commander on February 23, 1631. In the spring of the next year he sailed back with a return eet. It was usually soon after the arrival of ships from the mother country that a return eet departed. All this means that Evert must have spent a maximum of one year in Guinea and almost half a year at sea. In the bustling fort the conditions were no more conducive to privacy and study than on the overcrowded ships. But a fervent believer would certainly have found time and opportunity wherever he was for meditation on God’s word. Evert’s departure for Guinea leaves us with several concrete questions. Why did a young man of 22 or 23 undertake such a long and adventurous journey in the explosive rst half of the seventeenth century? Why did he decide on Guinea, assuming that he had a choice? And what are we to think of his ofce of comforter of the sick, since he had expressly aimed at the higher function of minister? Why this detour? Why did he not simply nish his studies at the university? Were the Leiden professors not orthodox enough in his view? If we pursue the analogy with the life of Christ, of which we have already seen evidence

12

GAA, ACA, 19, f. 30v° (not found in the Acta of the Amsterdam consistory). GAL, Dutch Reformed Consistory, Testimonies Sint-Pieterskerk, October 14, 1630. 14 GAA, ACA, 4, f. 22r°; A. Eekhof, Bastiaen Jansz. Krol, krankenbezoeker, kommies en commandeur van Nieuw-Nederland (1595–1645) (The Hague 1910), pp. XXIV–XXV. 13

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in Woerden, the episode in Mouri closely resembles the forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness preparing for his public ministry (Luke 4:2), the time when he was baptized by John and lled with the Holy Spirit. But what motivated a young adult in 1630 to enter the employment of the West India Company? As J.W. Schulte Nordholt has pointed out, the myth of the West as the land of the future has centuries-old roots.15 It is one of the main axes of our orientation in the world: the world began in the East, where the sun rises, and it will come to fulllment—and its end—in the West. Wise men traditionally came, and still come, from the East, but the future of humankind lies in the West. The decline rst of Asia, then of Europe can only be reversed by the young, uncorrupted resilience of more western empires. The last monarchy will therefore also be located in the West. This orientation towards a promised land that keeps moving further and further west is not only a fundamental characteristic of the American dream, as Frederick Jackson Turner analyzed it already a century ago; it was also a key feature of the European worldview. We certainly nd here one of the reasons why the West India Company, despite its meager economic successes, evoked so much more passion than the East India Company, and why the Calvinists saw more of a future for Christianity in Brazil than in the Indonesian archipelago. We have no way of knowing Evert Willemsz’s thoughts on these matters. It is clear, however, that his choice was not inuenced by the legend of Brazil, even though that colony must have presented itself as a possibility. Following the successful expedition of 1630 to Olinda, there were desperate appeals for ministers and comforters of the sick in Dutch Brazil. Not for former peat-cutters or other “Dutch clerks” but for gens de science et de conscience, as the Walloon minister of Recife formulated it in 1639.16 Brazil’s coastal area was no wilderness but a land Christianized and civilized by the Portuguese for more than a century.17 It could have been Evert’s nal destination. He did opt for the West, but within that framework for Guinea, and subsequently for

15 J.W. Schulte Nordholt, The myth of the West: America as the last empire (Grand Rapids, Mich. 1995). 16 Hans Bots & Pierre Leroy, ‘Le Brésil sous la colonisation néerlandaise: douze lettres de Vincent-Joachim Soler, pasteur à Recife, à André Rivet’, in: Bulletin de la Société d’histoire du protestantisme français 130:4 (1984), 556–594, quotation 575. 17 On Brazil: C.R. Boxer, The Dutch in Brazil 1624–1654 (Oxford 1957); E.van den Boogaart, H.R. Hoetink & P.J. Whitehead (eds.), Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen 1604–1674: A humanist prince in Europe and Brazil (The Hague 1979); F.L. Schalkwijk, Igreja e estado no Brasil Holandês 1630 –1634 (Sâo Paolo 1986).

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Manhattan—two relatively isolated posts at the edge of the great hinterland peopled by unfamiliar, and in part also fearsome, native tribes. Rather than the security of an ordered society he chose the challenge of a land in the making. He would himself introduce order. Evert’s choice therefore certainly testies to a craving for adventure—which is not surprising, considering all the stimuli around him. Collections of curiosities could already be found in the homes of some wealthy burghers in the province, and countless seafarers must have brought back from their travels unpretentious but intriguing objects.18 Medicinal products from the colonies were believed to possess almost miraculous qualities, in keeping with the Utopian image of distant lands like India and Brazil. In the years preceding Evert’s voyage, stories of amazing adventures in faraway places and of contacts with strange peoples stirred everyone’s imagination.19 Such stories may have been read or heard—the distinction was of little importance in a society where the written word was passed on mainly by word of mouth and the acquisition of knowledge was not yet conceived of as a personal process of appropriation. Some of the best-known adventure stories, like that of Willem Ysbrantsz Bontekoe about the voyage of the New Horn between 1618 and 1625, and François Pelsaert’s report of the reign of terror on board the ship Batavia in 1628–1629, were actually printed later, in 1646–1647, but the adventures themselves took place before Evert embarked for Guinea. It is important to mention this here, not because we have any proof that these stories were already circulating, but as examples of the many other tales which were being told and of which we know only fragments. Such adventures soon became part of the oral narrative repertoire. Other stories about overseas travel, although less famous, had already found an eager readership some years earlier. Bontekoe’s Hoorn publisher Jan Jansz Deutel mentions in his preface the travel accounts of Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, Jacob van Heemskerck (who traveled with Willem Barentsz), Olivier van Noort, Joris van Spilbergen, and Willem Schouten (with Jacob Le Maire), all published before 1620. And

18 Ellinoor Bergvelt & Renée Kistemaker (eds.), De wereld binnen handbereik: Nederlandse kunst- en rariteitenverzamelingen, 1585–1735 (Zwolle & Amsterdam 1992). 19 D.F. Scheurleer, Van varen en vechten (3 vols., The Hague 1914); G. Kalff, Van zeevarende luyden en zee-poeten (The Hague 1915); J.W. Buisman, Populaire prozaschrijvers van 1600 –1815: romans, novellen, verhalen, levensbeschrijvingen, arcadia’s, sprookjes (Amsterdam, s.a. [1960]), 45–51.

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there was of course the sensational capture of the Silver Fleet in 1628. On September 8 of that year General Pieter Pietersz Heyn, together with Admiral Hendrick Cornelisz Lonck, both in the service of the WIC, seized the Spanish eet in the Bay of Matanzas north of Cuba. Two-thirds of the value of the booty, almost twelve million guilders, consisted of silver.20 And to think that in 1623 the total shares of the WIC were worth only seven million guilders! Piet Heyn’s triumphant return reverberated throughout the Republic—in Woerden as well, where the sexton Gijsbert Aelbertsz received two guilders tip from the town council “for ringing the bells for the victory of Piet Heyn.”21 WIC shares doubled in value, rising to unprecedented heights.22 The Dutch historian P.J. van Winter has pointed out the “Silver Fleet effect” among orphans in Groningen, many of whom abandoned their apprenticeships in order to enter the service of the WIC.23 A craving for adventure and the prospect of well-paid work went hand in hand here. The strongest selling point at that moment, however, was the theocratic ideal, as we have seen above in the images associated with the WIC and in the text of the Amsterdam pamphlet from 1628. Evert, in other words, had every reason to opt for the West Indies. For enterprising persons with a dash of daring it offered a formidable challenge. Nevertheless, it does seem strange that Evert chose Guinea in the year that the successes in Brazil were the talk of every town. But did he really have a choice? All we know about Evert’s departure is a name and a date on a list, and they reveal little about options and motives. The records of the Leiden consistory do indicate that the theology student Everhardus Bogardus was given a rst “attestation” already on June 28, 1630, enabling him “to apply for the ofce of visitor of the sick to West India.”24 This recommendation, granted a good two months prior to and independent of the charge he received from the Amsterdam consistory, and three months before his second, denitive recommendation by the Leiden consistory, shows that his decision to go

20

S.P. L’Honoré Naber & I.A. Wright (eds.), Piet Heyn en de Zilvervloot: bescheiden uit Nederlandsche en Spaansche archieven (Utrecht 1928); Arne Zuydhoek, Piet Heyn en de Zilvervloot (Bussum 1978). 21 SAW, VI, 9 (town accounts 1628/29), f. 30v°. 22 Simon Hart, ‘The Dutch and North America, 1600 –1650’, in: De Halve Maen 46:3 (1971), 7. 23 P.J. van Winter, De West-Indische Compagnie ter Kamer van Stad en lande (The Hague 1978), 230. 24 GAL, Dutch Reformed Consistory, 3 ( June 28, 1630).

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abroad was taken in two steps: a general resolve in the summer, and a concrete decision to leave in the autumn. We can conclude from this that both the task of comforter of the sick and the WIC were Evert’s own choice. So was this, too, an instance of the Silver Fleet effect? On that point we can only speculate. A person seeking a specic destination had to rst nd employment. Ambrosius Richshoffer, a Company employee of German origin who sailed for Brazil in 1629, tells in his travel account that he actually wanted to go to the East but no opportunity offered itself there at the time, and that the WIC was just then engaged in a major recruiting campaign.25 The resolutions of the Amsterdam consistory and the classis regarding missions to the colonies also make it clear that a person who felt called to a church ofce could make himself available for the position of comforter of the sick overseas but had little to say about where he would be posted—unless he had a preference for a thoroughly unattractive place. In times of oversupply the church authorities kept a list of available comforters of the sick who had passed their reading and singing test, and from that list they lled whatever vacancies arose. A candidate could, of course, voice objections, and as long as they seemed reasonable they would be taken into account, but the nal posting seems to have been mainly a matter of chance. What, for example, can we make of the career of Evert’s immediate successor in Fort Nassau, the Elburg comforter of the sick Jacob Dinclagen? In June 1632 he signed up with the Zeeland chamber of the WIC and was sent rst to the sweltering heat of the Gold Coast, then to the arctic cold of Spitsbergen.26 A greater contrast is hardly imaginable. He then applied in Amsterdam, where he made a good impression, and was sent for three years to the West Indies, after which—in 1644—he requested a post in the East Indies.27 Jacob Dinclagen crisscrossed all the oceans of the world and worked at the four corners of the then-known earth: north, south, east, and west. His own preference seems to have played a role in his later assignments, but probably had little inuence on the rst one. 25 Ambrosius Richshoffer, ‘Reise nach Brasilien 1629–1632’, in: S.P. L’Honoré Naber (ed.), Reisebeschreibungen von deutschen Beamten und Kriegsleuten im Dienst der niederländischen West- und Ost-Indischen Compagnien 1602–1797, vol. I (The Hague 1930), 5. 26 NAN. OWIC, 21, f. 108v° ( June 14, 1632); GAA, ACA, 4, p. 202 (May 7, 1640). 27 GAA, ACA, 157, p. 34 (May 28, 1640); 135 (November 11, 1644). See also chapter 12.

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The work in the colonies in any case brought a person in contact with other, non-white peoples. In Guinea Evert came to know Africans at close range, especially since the success of the trading enterprise depended on a good understanding between the indigenous tribes and the Europeans. Was his perception of non-whites inuenced by that intermezzo? Later, in New Amsterdam, he would have to deal with both blacks and American Indians. For the situation in Guinea Evert could consult one of the earliest ethnographic descriptions of the African coast, written by Pieter de Marees, who had served there as a commissioner.28 His account was published in 1602 and reprinted in 1617. In chapter 16 De Marees describes the religion of the Africans, their “superstitions” and love of ritual. He points out the success of the mission work carried out by the Catholic Portuguese, and cautiously predicts that the Calvinists will encounter more difculties—which later did prove to be the case.

Comforter of the sick Evert may not have explicitly opted for Guinea, but he did choose the function of comforter of the sick.29 For him this was certainly a logical choice. He had intimate experience with physical ailments and dysfunction. He, if anyone, knew what illness was, what recovery could mean, how sickness could be interpreted as a God-given mission, and how such an interpretation could reunite the ill person with the community, even secure for him a place of privilege. His choice therefore anticipates the requirement for a comforter of the sick formulated ten years later by the pietistic Godfried Udemans: a good comforter of the sick had to be “not only experienced in godliness but also in bearing

28 Pieter de Marees, Beschryvinge ende historische verhael vant Gout Koninckryck van Gunea, anders de Gout-custe de Mina genaemt, liggende in het deel van Africa (Amsterdam 1602) [new. ed. The Hague 1912]. 29 On the comforters of the sick in the Netherlands little systematic research has been done, but the research program “The pastoral market in the Netherlands” under the direction of Fred A. van Lieburg (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam) is currently lling this gap. See: Gerald F. de Jong, ‘The “ziekentroosters” or comforters of the sick in New Netherland’, in: New York Historical Society Quarterly 54 (1970), 339–359; J.P. Claasen, Die sieketroosters in Suid-Afrika 1652–1866 (Pretoria 1977); Johan de Niet, Ziekentroosters op de pastorale markt, 1550 –1880 (Rotterdam 2006).

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the cross.”30 He should know rst-hand the physical and mental misery of the ill person. Nevertheless, considering Evert’s insistence that the angel of God had singled him out for the ministry, there is something paradoxical about his decision to leave the university prematurely and seek a position as comforter of the sick. Both socially and ecclesiastically that was a considerable step backwards. Did he make that step intentionally? Could the sensitive, idealistic young adult from the artisan milieu perhaps not cope with the culture shock of cerebral theology? Did he leave out of dissatisfaction with university teaching, which could well have struck the pietistic young man as too bookish, too little concerned with the experience of faith in everyday life? There may be a small hint of Evert’s image of the minister in one of his texts from 1623, where he asks God to send him the Holy Spirit “so that I will be given a strong memory” (b9). A good, infallible memory that enables a preacher to memorize large portions of the Bible formed a biographical topos among God-fearing Protestants. It created space for inspiration by the Holy Spirit and gave ministers the freedom, unhampered by a xed text, to touch the believer directly in his or her heart out of his intimate meditation on the biblical word.31 Or did Evert interrupt his studies because he did not want to identify too closely with the institutional church, as he had already made clear to Reverend Alutarius in January 1623? The Leiden theology professors of those years—Polyander, Walaeus, Thysius, Rivet, and L’Empereur—were without exception great scholars and beyond reproach as Counter-Remonstrants who kept the faculty rmly within the bounds set by the synod of Dort.32 Rivet, Thysius, and Walaeus were in fact explicitly appointed in 1618/19 to replace the professors dismissed for their Remonstrant convictions. But they were certainly not oriented towards everyday practice. They even expressly opposed too great an infringement of the pastoral on their ideal of learned faith. Had something perhaps happened in Leiden that prompted Evert to leave the States College? If he had broken one or the other rule, the 30 Godfried Udemans, ’t Geestelyck roer van ’t coopmans schip (2d ed., Dordrecht 1640), f. 156v°–159v°. 31 F.A. van Lieburg, ‘Uit het hoofd, uit het hart: lezend preken in de piëtistische traditie’, in: Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse kerkgeschiedenis 2 (1999), 99–111. 32 A. Eekhof, De theologische faculteit te Leiden in de 17de eeuw (Utrecht 1921); Willem Otterspeer, Groepsportret met dame, vol. I: Het bolwerk van de vrijheid. De Leidse universiteit, 1575–1672 (Amsterdam 2000), 281–293.

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Leiden consistory at the Pieterskerk (St. Peter’s Church) would never have given him a recommendation. The resolutions of the Leiden consistory, which occasionally include a reprimand for a drunken theology student, contain nothing about Evert Willemsz. Nor do we nd any mention of him in the surviving documents relating to the States College. There were complaints, however, about the ungodly atmosphere in the college. Is it possible that Evert, too, soon had enough of those surroundings? His religion was a practical form of godliness, far removed from theological hairsplitting. He most likely viewed the work of comforting the sick as a preeminently practical training for the ministry and made it his conscious choice. Although discharged from the orphanage, Evert was legally still a minor in 1630. Did he need the permission of his guardians (a Woerden orphan master, or his brother Cornelis) to sign up with the WIC? On this point we know nothing either. Nor are there any indications in the resolutions of the Woerden town council that Evert’s scholarship was terminated. In 1630 the young man certainly would not yet have met all the requirements set by the South Holland synod in 1626 for all candidates for the preparatory examination: recommendations from the congregation and the academic senate as well as references from the professors of theology, Greek, and Hebrew.33 For those last items in particular Evert had too few years of study behind him. But he continued educating himself in the colonies, like so many other comforters of the sick. In a sense this was completely consistent with the Calvinist attitude towards sickness and health. As we have seen above, illness for the orthodox Calvinists stood in a causal relation to sin, and no recovery was possible without moral purication. Comforting the sick thus led more or less naturally to preaching and community building. Comforters of the sick who had a Latin education, as Evert did, formed a category of their own—perhaps more or less that of theology dropouts. According to church order, the difference between a comforter of the sick and a minister, at least in theory, was that the latter could interpret God’s word with authority while the former transmitted it only passively or applied it in concrete situations. The comforter of the sick was supposed to limit himself to consoling and admonishing those who were ill. His manual was Den Siecken Troost (Comfort for the Sick, 1571) by Cornelis van Hille, which contained appropriate texts

33

See chapter 10.

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and proverbs.34 This booklet was occasionally printed as an appendix to a Psalter or a catechism, as for example in the Amsterdam edition of Dathenus’s Psalms published by Hendrick Laurensz in 1629. For the church, a comforter of the sick was on the same level as a schoolmaster, but a step lower than a minister. The difference between the two was reected in the academic training and level of knowledge required for each, and even in the formal status of the two ofces. When the classis examined a prospective minister, he had to deliver a sample sermon and answer questions on a wide variety of issues relating to faith and church order. Initially the only requirement for the comforter of the sick was to show skill at reading aloud and singing, and consoling the sick with an edifying word; for catechization he in addition needed a thorough knowledge of sound Christian doctrine. The formal status of comforter of the sick was for many years unclear. The classis Amsterdam in particular soon had to combat the proliferation of candidates appointed comforter of the sick by the VOC or WIC without consultation with the classis. In 1630 the North Holland synod in Enkhuizen therefore declared that the ofce of comforter of the sick was a purely ecclesiastical ofce, which a member could accept only on the condition of a prior call by the church (art. 28).35 It was then no longer possible for just anyone to call himself a comforter of the sick, with an appeal to the ofce of all believers. Nor could the trading companies bypass the judgment of the church in making their appointments. Comforters of the sick destined for the East or West Indies or Guinea had to sign the Belgic Confession of 1561, the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), and the Canons of Dort (art. 26). From this time on they were treated similarly to ministers and schoolmasters. These decisions were very likely prompted by the highhanded mission policy of the Admiralties, the VOC, and the WIC, which for reasons of protection or nance were in the habit of recruiting enthusiastic candidates for the position of comforter of the sick before the classis had made a pronouncement about their suitability and orthodoxy. The aspiring comforter of the sick rst applied to the WIC, as his future employer, and only then was sent to be examined by the consistory and the classis. But in the meantime the candidate had in some cases already been hired by the WIC. Is this also how it went with Evert Willemsz, who

34 35

On Van Hille: BLGNP, IV, 196–197. GAA, ACA, 3, f. 118v° ( July 9, 1630).

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presented himself to the classis as a candidate for Guinea two months after that synodical decision was formulated? In the widely read handbook ’t Geestelyck roer van ’t coopmans schip mentioned earlier, Godfried Udemans describes in detail the task of the comforter of the sick on the ships.36 According to Udemans, he is much more than a lowly assistant to the minister. As the counterpart to the “medicine master of the body” he must understand the “anatomy of the soul” in order to properly diagnose the many kinds of sins. He must be a God-fearing person with a heart for the sick; he must know how to chastise, admonish, and console; he is friendly and openhearted but also prudent; he has the gift of the Spirit in prayer, and studies diligently. This prole of the comforter of the sick comes close to that of the minister, and thus leads us back to Evert Willemsz. Udemans concludes that the comforter of the sick is like an angel of the Lord who proclaims to the patient reconciliation with God. With this formulation the only difference left between a comforter of the sick and a minister is that a minister interprets God’s word publicly in the church service, with the authority of the church, and administers the sacraments. In the entire broad area of interpersonal relations and pastoral care, the terrain where the reformatio vitae came to ower, the comforter of the sick and the minister were virtually interchangeable. In contrast to their colleagues in the towns of Holland, comforters of the sick on ships in fact served as substitute ministers, and often as auxiliary medical staff as well.37 The majority of comforters of the sick did not come from the Latin school but from the artisan milieu, at most from the circles trained as lower-level clerks and schoolmasters. This was certainly true of the ones sent to the colonies. In the sources these overseas territories appear as a separate, alternative eld of work for which candidates initially had to meet fewer requirements. “Coarse, uncivilized numbskulls,” Jan Pietersz Coen had once called them.38 A striking detail here is that most of the

36

Udemans, ’t Geestelyck roer (2d ed., 1640), f. 156v°–159v°; (3d ed., 1655), 272–

276. 37 One diary of a ship’s comforter of the sick has survived, covering the years 1628–1633: Seyger van Rechteren, Journael gehouden op de reyse ende wederkomste van Oost-Indien [1635] (2d ed. Zwolle 1639). It supplies only few details, however, on the professional work of the comforter aboard ship. 38 L.J. Joosse, ‘Scoone dingen sijn swaere dingen’. Een onderzoek naar de motieven en activiteiten in de Nederlanden tot verbreiding van de gereformeerde religie gedurende de eerste helft van de zeventiende eeuw (Leiden 1992), 335.

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artisans who applied for the ofce of comforter of the sick came from the quieter, “sedentary” trades of the clothing sector, such as tailoring or shoemaking: crafts that allowed for conversation.39 The workshop thus became a breeding ground for callings. We have already seen that Evert developed his knowledge of the Bible under his master in the tailoring trade and tested it against the reality around him. Nor should we forget the most famous shoemaker of that century, the German mystic Jacob Böhme (1575–1624). In spite of everything, the comforters of the sick formed an odd middle group among ecclesiastical functionaries. Formally the function had a prole of its own, but in the early seventeenth century it was in fact used as a backdoor to the ministry. For underprivileged boys it could be a handy stepping-stone, a way of bridging the time while waiting for a call as a minister. From the viewpoint of the congregation, the comforter of the sick was an inexpensive substitute if the congregation was too small to warrant a minister or if none was available. For some less privileged candidates it was a step up to higher things. Bastiaen Jansz Crol (1595–1674), for example, started out as an uneducated Amsterdam caffawerker (velour worker), and was probably a former Mennonite.40 In 1623 he was appointed comforter of the sick in the “Virginias” (New Netherland), two years later commissioner and interim director of Fort Orange (Albany), and in 1632–33 director-general of all of New Netherland. Orphans were relatively underprivileged children, including those from reasonably well-off circles. Even if orphan masters were alert to the intellectual capacities of the children and did not indiscriminately make all of them learn a trade, they steered them away from the university. They could set up their own school or surgical practice, but not become a university-educated physician or minister. They simply lacked parents who not only felt enough love for their children to inculcate social ambitions in them but also were prepared to come up with the nancial surplus required for academic studies. Especially in overseas trading settlements the less expensive comforter of the sick was for the directors of the VOC and WIC at times

39

See the candidates reviewed by the classis in: GAA, ACA, 157, pp. 47–60. A. Eekhof, Bastiaen Jansz. Krol, krankenbezoeker, kommies en commandeur van NieuwNederland (1595–1645) (The Hague 1910); Charles E. Corwin, A Manual of the Reformed Church in America (Formerly Reformed Protestant Dutch Church) 1628–1922 (5th ed., New York 1922), 3–5. 40

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a preferred alternative to a minister: his salary came to only 30 to 36 guilders per month, while a minister would earn two or three times that amount. The comforter of the sick was often addressed, like the minister, as “Domine.” That, at least, was the custom in 1645 at Fort Nassau in Guinea, where Reverend Bogardus had served as a comforter of the sick fteen years earlier.41 Small wonder then that a good many comforters of the sick from the colonies almost automatically slid into the ministry. Even if they had not aimed at such a career from the beginning, their practical experience made it a likely prospect. The colonies offer countless examples of men who made the transition from comforter of the sick to minister, suggesting that—at least in the rst half of the seventeenth century—this was widely viewed as an alternative training circuit for persons who aspired to the ministry but because of family background or occupation, lack of protection or money, had no access to the Latin school and the university. At the same time the church establishment at home developed an aversion to this unclear ecclesiastical structure. It began to set conditions for making such a transition: study, practice sermons, and the possession of a good voice were required. And it was not uncommon to allow a candidate who had passed his examination to be a minister exclusively on the high seas or in the colonies, as if he was only good enough for sailors and heathens. The instructions issued by the Amsterdam classis on December 7, 1623 for comforters of the sick destined for the East and West Indies required them to offer prayers every morning and evening, to diligently instruct and console the sick, to “particularly exhort with God’s word those who desire or need it,” and at suitable times to read aloud either from God’s word or “a few chapters or a sermon” from the books of learned Reformed authors. To allow no room for doubt, the consistory again expressly forbade the comforter of the sick “regular preaching and the administration of the Lord’s Supper.”42 Permission to baptize was more the exception than the rule. It was not included in the instructions given to Bastiaen Jansz Crol, the rst comforter of the sick in New Netherland, on January 25, 1624. Upon his arrival in Manhattan Crol immediately discovered how unrealistic that was, since no minister was sent out with him. Were the children to remain 41 42

Ratelband, Vijf dagregisters, LVI, 357. GAA, ACA, 19, f. 29v°–30r°.

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unbaptized? Were men and women supposed to live together without being married? He soon requested and obtained from the Amsterdam consistory exceptional permission to baptize and read the form for marriage.43 The liturgical functions of the comforter of the sick were thus in principle restricted to the absolute minimum. In everyday life, however, he was omnipresent as an admonisher and consoler. He had nothing of a scholar about him. He was expected to surround himself with books, but those were the pious works of the learned Calvinist writers, and his task was to read aloud and to edify, not to offer commentary. Foremost in the instructions for ministers, on the other hand, were preaching and the administration of the sacraments. In addition to his task of leading the congregation, the preacher was also expressly charged to carry out mission work among the heathen. Yet the border between the ofce of comforter of the sick and minister was probably much more uid than the classis imagined, especially when no minister was present for a longer period of time. In the absence of a minister the comforter of the sick actually presided over the church service in a more or less basic way. Instead of reprimanding him for his pretensions, the few confessing members in the small trading settlements probably encouraged the comforter of the sick to overstep the limits of his instructions in order to give some ceremonial color to the life of the congregation. Certainly in the microcosm of life on board ship, where there was often no contact with the mainland for months at a time and tensions could run high, the comforter of the sick was literally a moderator, and a moral authority. But not only on the high seas, in colonial society as well the comforter of the sick did much more than the minister at home. He provided the religious context for all ofcial transactions and guided the colonial community in every step of its daily life, from early morning till late evening. The comforter of the sick was present everywhere and had no day of rest. As the guardian of God’s word he could easily come to consider himself the moral conscience of the colony. If there was no minister in the settlement, and no established congregation with a formally installed consistory, the comforter of the sick was the person who exercised power in ecclesiastical matters, despite the narrow limits his instructions placed on the administration of the sacraments.

43

GAA, ARCA, 5, pp. 142, 144, 155, 157, 231; Eekhof, Krol, X–XI, 32.

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The church in Guinea What was the situation in Guinea?44 The pivotal role of the minister in this colony becomes clear from the account that the Nuremberg gold worker Michael Hemmersam wrote about his years of service with the WIC in Elmina, from 1639 to 1645. Hemmersam was a Lutheran. The Germans and Dutch who made up the garrison were in no way—according to Hemmersam—harassed or disparaged if they were not Calvinists. He does, however, deplore the fact that as a Lutheran he could not take part in the Lord’s Supper “because the Reformed did not permit us to receive it.” He states that this was “the greatest loss, and dissatisfaction, that he and others devoted to the Lutheran religion, experienced.”45 We see clearly how much more important the Lord’s Supper was as a bonding ritual in the small, closed community of the colony than in the fatherland. Those not allowed to take part were left with the feeling that they did not really belong. Not everyone would have subscribed to the pious picture Hemmersam sketched of the confessing Lutheran. When surgeon Samuel Brun sailed for Guinea a second time in 1617, there was on the same ship a “minister from Holland, named Herman Janson, who admonished our people to modesty and moderation in eating and drinking. But because they only ridiculed him, he set out again for Holland in the discharged ship.”46 The person referred to here was Jan Hermansz, who was sent out as a minister for three years but returned within a year. He could not put up with the heavy drinking on board, and when a contemptuous governor assigned him lodgings above the Fort Nassau jail, where drunken ranting and “lthy songs” went on late into the night and made it impossible for him to study the Bible, he could take

44 On the Church representatives on the Gold Coast: Wegen, 527–533; Hans W. Debrunner, ‘Sieckentroesters, Predikants and Chaplains: A documentation of the history of Dutch and English chaplains to the Guinea Coast before 1750’, in: The Bulletin of the Society for African Church History (Nsukka) 1 (1964), 73–89 (rather incomplete for the rst decades); Benoît Girardin, ‘Christianisme et territoire: le cas des aumôniers de la Westindische Compagnie en Guinée aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles’, in: Neue Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft 38 (1982), 12–39 (incomplete); R.P. Zijp, ‘Predikanten in Guinea, 1600–1800’, in: De heiden moest eraan geloven: geschiedenis van zending, missie en ontwikkelingssamenwerking (Utrecht 1983), 30–37 (very brief and unsatisfactory). 45 Michael Hemmersam, ‘Reise nach Guinea und Brasilien 1639–1645’, in: L’Honoré Naber, Reisebeschreibungen, 80–81. 46 Brun, Schiffarten, 47

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no more. Serving there amounted to casting pearls before swine.47 He packed up and left, because study was for him an essential part of his overseas experience, as it would later be for Evert Willemsz. We should note here that in 1619, soon after Jan Hermansz’s unexpected return home, he was asked by the orthodox ministers of Woerden to ll in there as a candidate because of the acute shortage of qualied, orthodox people.48 He may well have been Evert Willemsz’s rst contact with the overseas missions. Reverend Laurentius Benderius, employed by the WIC in Mouri from 1630 to 1633, was the minister under whom Evert served in that settlement and who gave him such a glowing reference that the classis, without much ado, declared Evert suited for the ofce of minister. We happen to know something of Benderius’s activities in Mouri. He is mentioned in the instructions that the WIC sent to Commander Sticker on July 7, 1633 for the governing of the colony.49 In a letter to the Heren XIX Benderius had complained that the lack of language instruction and literacy was hampering mission work among the blacks. By return ship the Amsterdam chamber sent him the schoolmaster he had requested. Once the school was opened free of charge for the children of Mouri, ve or six children of Company slaves enrolled, but very few others. After four months the schoolmaster still saw no “probability of results” or the least “tendency to such” and gave up. For his teaching to be effective, he declared, books would rst have to be printed in the indigenous languages. We can assume that Benderius initiated Evert Willemsz into mission work, and that both of them experienced how hopeless an undertaking that could be in the absence of a Bible, a New Testament, or a catechism in the language of the native people. This undoubtedly inuenced his attitude towards the Indians of New Netherland. In view of his physical ordeal in Woerden and the murderous climate of the Gold Coast, Evert must have had a strong constitution. Yet he did not stay much longer than a year in Guinea, only a good year and a half including the voyage out and back. Was that his contracted term

47 GAA, ARCA, 4, p. 284–285 ( June 21, 1618); ACA, 2, f. 124 (October 17 and 22, 1618), 126v° (February 18, 1619); Joosse, ‘Scoone dingen’, 258–261. 48 GAA, ARCA, 4, p. 205, 312, 314 ( January 17 and 31, 1619); ACA, 2, f. 125r° (February 4, 1619). 49 NAN, OWIC, 8, f. 128v°–136v° (correspondence between General Sticker and the Heren XIX, 1633); 11, f. 7v°–8r° (Sticker to WIC, February 3, 1634).

Fig. 22. Fort Nassau and the village at Mouri on the Coast of Guinea. Drawing by Hans Propheet, July 17, 1629. [National Archive of the Netherlands, Section Maps and drawings, VEL 782].

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of service? Once again, we simply do not know. The Zeeland chamber required comforters of the sick to serve for three years, including the two voyages.50 There is no reason to assume that this would have been different for the Amsterdam chamber. Did restless Evert here, too, simply decide to shorten his stay? That is unlikely, for such a self-willed move would certainly have left some trace in the archives, which for those years are reasonably well preserved. Perhaps after a year of hard study at the fort he simply felt ready for the ministry. In any case, on June 7, 1632 he presented himself to classis Amsterdam with the request to be examined for the ministry.51 He was hoping, no doubt, to secure a position as a minister as soon as possible. Did Evert take leave of Guinea with as many mixed feelings as Jacob Steendam (1616–1672/73), who succeeded him there as comforter of the sick ten years later?52 The poem Steendam wrote upon returning home in the summer of 1649 conveys something of the difculties of life in the colony: the constant threat of the sea, ravaging diseases, sexual deprivation, a tyrannical director, the tensions in the small, isolated, and at times strife-ridden Company environment, thick-witted and stubborn sailors, the powerlessness and frustrations of the servant of the church, who was hated and persecuted when he denounced the policy of the authorities, the greed of the merchants, and the coarse behavior of the sailors and soldiers:53 In the midst of grief and dire distress in wrestling with unmerciful death, in trials grim, too harsh to tell, yea, in the very jaws of hell, in re, in waters rising high my God looked down with loving eye so that no billow of the sea or ame could bring me injury. . . .

50 NAN, States General, 5755–I (copy of the instruction for ministers and comforters of the sick by the Zeeland chamber of the WIC, December 12, 1635). 51 GAA, ACA, 4, f. 22r°. 52 On Steendam: NNBW, X, 964–966; Henry C. Murphy, Jacob Steendam, Noch vaster. A memoir of the rst poet in New Netherland, with his poems descriptive of the colony (The Hague 1861); E.L. Raesly, Portrait of New Netherland (New York 1945), 269–290; Christine van Boheemen, ‘Dutch-American poets of the seventeenth century’, in: Rob Kroes & Henk-Otto Neuschäfer (eds.), The Dutch in North-America: Their immigration and cultural continuity (Amsterdam 1991), 114–130. 53 Jacob Steendam, Den distelvink (3 parts in 1 vol., Amsterdam 1649–1650), III, 85–86.

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Fig. 23. Jacob Steendam, comforter of the sick on the Coast of Guinea. Engraving after a portrait by J.M. Quinkhard in the Panpoëticon Batavum. [Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam].

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chapter nine The venom, doubly poisonous, of tongues both false and furious, the many fevers raging hot, bringing health and strength to naught, the peevishness of earthly gods who liked to think (against God’s laws) that bad is good and good is bad,54 and hated my sound reprimand…. From worm-infested old Guinea Axim, Elmina, and Mouri, from Sao Tomé (reconquered now), from Annobón and Cape de Lopo we sailed, O Lord, led on by thee, across the Ethiopian Sea, th’Atlantic, Spanish, North Sea, too, To Texel, where we’re safely moored.

The Lord had guided him through it all, the Lord had made all things work together for good. Remarkable here is Steendam’s description of Guinea as an old, worm-infested land. Aside from the pun on the terrible Guinea worms, responsible for a large part of the high death rate, Guinea was indeed not virgin territory where Europeans could simply do as they pleased, ignoring the local population. Guinea had an old civilization. Steendam was well aware that, despite appearances, the Company was only a guest among the indigenous peoples and its power was marginal. In reality it was the native tribes that had the last say. With their subtle power play they determined how much room to maneuver Company employees would have. Was New Netherland for this reason more attractive to adventurers? After a short stay in Amsterdam Steendam left for New Netherland and was soon extolling it as a land of unlimited possibilities: “This is the land owing with milk and honey . . . This is EDEN.”55 Seventeen years earlier Evert Willemsz had preceded him to that earthly paradise.

54

In the margin: Isaiah 5:20. Elisabeth Paling Funk, ‘De literatuur van Nieuw-Nederland’, in: De Nieuwe Taalgids 85 (1992), 383–395, quotation 391. 55

PART TWO

MISSIONS

CHAPTER TEN

A MINISTER IN MANHATTAN

Entering the ministry Among the writings of William Perkins translated by Vincent Meusevoet is an outstanding exposé of the ideology of the ministry.1 The minister is above all the angel—the envoy or messenger, that is—of God and the church (after Job 33:23–24). It is God’s message he brings, and that of the church, not ideas of his own. But he is at the same time an “interpreter” of God’s word, “who is capable of properly conveying the reconciliation made between God and man.” This requires the “tongue of the scholar” (Isa. 50:4): the minister must have a rich store of human learning, but also a good understanding of divine doctrine and an open heart for the teaching of God’s Spirit (Acts 2). Persons who wish to interpret God’s word must rst, however, be “interpreters in themselves”: sanctied men who lead a godly life. Through his work, his learning, and his piety the minister can even save the repentant sinner from hell. This theological and emotional investment soon made the ministry a profession of its own. It allowed for no more activities on the side, because the minister had to devote himself entirely to the instruction of God’s word and the sanctication of his life. An anonymous pamphlet of 1648 expresses this pointedly: ministers, who have an “extremely difcult, burdensome, and care-laden profession” should not concern themselves “with worldly matters of new tidings, or spend time at the courts of princes or nobles, writing about their

1 William Perkins, Of the calling of the ministrie (London 1605); transl. by Vincent Meusevoet: Twee tractaten vande ampten ende waerdicheden des heylighen diensts (Amsterdam 1610), quotations on p. 20 and 61. On the minister’s ofce, duties and image, see John Morgan, Godly learning. Puritan attitudes towards reason, learning and education (Cambridge 1986); G. Groenhuis, De predikanten (Groningen 1977); A.Th. van Deursen, Bavianen en slijkgeuzen. Kerk en kerkvolk ten tijde van Maurits en Oldenbarnevelt (Assen 1974; 2d ed. Franeker 1991), 69–82; the same, ‘De dominee’, in: H.M. Beliën, A.Th. van Deursen & G.J. van Setten (eds.), Gestalten van de Gouden Eeuw. Een Hollands groepsportret (Amsterdam 1995), 131–155.

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life and death, engage in commerce or retail trade, practice medicine, or exercise any such burdensome and worldly avocations.”2 This exalted ideal of the minister was of course not widely realized. Ministers also drank too much, committed adultery, behaved as if they had a monopoly on the gospel, and could at times be stupid, naïve, spiteful, or narrow-minded. Nevertheless, the mechanism of the calling procedure channeled notoriously incompetent candidates away from the larger village congregations and the cities. More important than the criticism of unseemly behavior, however, was the ambiguous status of the ofce in the early seventeenth century. On the one hand the ideology of the ofce ranked ministers among the top intellectuals of society, but on the other hand they were unable to realize that ambition in their local communities owing to inadequate family background (and therefore social status), income, and in some cases education as well. Income and property were the pillars of the upper classes in a society where manual labor was looked down upon and a labor-free income formed the basis of social honor, respect, and dignity. Perkins says this as well: the ofce of minister is disdained because it is poorly paid. In one of the few personal glosses in the margin of his translation, Meusevoet adds indignantly that the annual expenses of a student equal the annual salary of a minister.3 How could any minister then afford to nance a higher education for his children? Vincent Meusevoet, son of a simple shoemaker, and a refugee besides, knew what he was talking about, even though he was certainly not the lowest paid minister. When he presented his son Daniel to the classis for the candidate’s examination in 1615, he boasted that he had “borne the cost of the young man’s studies himself from his early youth until now.”4 The inadequate remuneration, certainly of village ministers, was a constant stumbling block for the ecclesiastical authorities. A person like Evert Willemsz, who began his career with nothing, would have been doubly sensitive to the social consequences of nancial problems resulting from too low a salary or unexpected household expenses. If such a minister considered himself the intellectual equal of at least children of retail merchants or the patriciate, he would not resign

2 Consideratien van een vreemdeling, gelaten aen de Staten van Hollandt (s.l. 1648) [Knuttel 5774]. 3 Perkins, Twee tractaten, 31–32. On ministers’ salaries: Van Deursen, Bavianen, 72–73. 4 Rijksarchief Noord-Holland, Classis Alkmaar, n° 1 ( June 2, 1615).

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himself to the lack of learning to which an underprivileged orphan of the early seventeenth century seemed fated. Study and godliness then acquired even more weight. In June 1632 Evert felt ready for the ministry. “Everardus Bogardus, who was previously a comforter of the sick in Guinea, has presented his testimonials to the classis, which are very good, and thereby requests of the classis to be examined for the ministry, which request has been granted, and will be examined this coming Monday by D. Praeside, together with Conrado Clevio, who has also presented good references.”5 This rst report of Evert’s return dates from the classis meeting in Amsterdam of Monday, June 7, 1632. One week later Bogardus and Clevius stood before the classis a second time. The text assigned to them was from Paul’s epistle to the Galatians: “This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulll the lust of the esh” (Gal. 5:16). After they had both been examined, “the brothers judged that there was a great difference between the two, yet both may be admitted to the Holy Service.”6 The resolutions of the classis do not state explicitly which of the young men was superior, but considering the tenor of the text and Clevius’s request for a short postponement, Bogardus must have been by far the better of the two candidates. One month later, on July 15, Bogardus appeared before the Amsterdam consistory, which at that moment was still responsible for the churches overseas. Because Bogardus had complied with the request of the WIC directors “to go to New Netherland, known as the Virginias,” and had passed his examination for candidacy, he was ordained a minister in that meeting. The consistory resolved to recommend Evert, with a testimonial from the classis, to the Amsterdam chamber of the WIC.7 In the same meeting “Everhardus Boghaerdus, sent by the classis and church to New Netherland” signed with his own hand the formula book, as required of all new ministers.8 Did he receive the same instructions as those for West Indies ministers given along with Reverend Hendrick Lonck three years earlier? His name does not appear in the register of instructions of the classis, but those

5 GAA, ACA, n° 4, f. 22; A. Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk in Noord-Amerika 1624–1664 (2 vols., The Hague 1913), I, 51–52; ER, I, 81. 6 GAA, ACA, n° 4, f. 22v° ( June 14, 1632); ER, I, 82 (partial quotation). 7 GAA, ARCA, n° 6, p. 327. 8 GAA, ACA, n° 32 (Formulierboek), Oaths of the ministers, n° 66, two autograph signatures, the rst as Boghaerdus, the second as Boghardus.

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Fig. 24. Autograph signature of Everhardus Boghaerdus in the Formula book of the classis Amsterdam, July 15, 1632 [Gemeentearchief Amsterdam, Archive of the Classis Amsterdam, n° 32].

of two others who must have sailed with him are found there: Clevius (September 9) and Abraham Ruyteau, as a comforter of the sick destined for the Caribbean island of St. Martin, which was still to be settled (September 25).9 That Evert’s name was left out can perhaps be explained by his over-hasty appointment (we will come back to this later). One month after that meeting his dispatch was reported in the North Holland synod.10 Various passages from the archives of the classis and the consistory together give a detailed picture of how the procedure worked before the classis assumed the tasks of the consistory in 1636. The rst step of the candidate was not to the consistory but to the WIC. For it was the Company that would employ him, and virtually no minister could live without a salary. If the directors wanted to hire him, he would then have to be examined by the classis. The examination took place only after the classis had reviewed the references—by professors, previous employers, or other reliable persons—submitted by the candidate. The Amsterdam consistory then ordained him and provided him with the necessary testimonials, so that the directors of the WIC could formally employ him. The responsibility for the professional quality of the minister sent overseas thus lay with the classis, his normal contact point was the consistory, and his formal employer the WIC. Striking here is

9 10

GAA, ACA, n° 19; the instructions on f. 32 ( June 9, 1629). GAA, ACA, n° 82 (Synod of Alkmaar, August 17, 1632, art. 38); ER, I, 83.

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the unanimously positive evaluation of Bogardus. His references were excellent, he clearly outperformed his fellow candidate in the examination, and there were no obstacles to a swift appointment. The ideal minister, in other words. Not only good enough for the colonies but good in himself. Evert was fortunate, of course, in again being presented with a question on a text that seemed tailor-made for him: What does it mean, to live according to the Spirit? Almost ten years earlier the Spirit had also been the theme of his rst public performance in the town church of Woerden, where he was allowed to read before the entire congregation the answers to the Heidelberg Catechism question: “What is the meaning of these words ‘He was conceived by the Holy Ghost . . .’?” Every step in his public life bore the mark of the Spirit. Did he recognize its symbolic meaning? During his stay in Guinea Evert Willemsz must have prepared himself intensively for the ministry. That could not have been easy, considering the scarcity of books in the overseas colonies. According to his instructions, the comforter of the sick was expected to take with him not only a Bible, a catechism, and a hymnbook, but also a number of works by authoritative Calvinist authors. The Amsterdam consistory had drawn up a list of titles and usually had a chest of books packed and ready to be taken on board. Besides a Bible, a catechism, and a Psalter it contained Johann Heinrich Bullinger’s Huys-boeck (House Book, 1563), a classic volume of fty sermons for reading aloud at home, Jean Tafn’s Boetveerdicheyt des levens (Penitence of Life, 1597), Rudolphus Petri’s Lof Jesu Christi (Praise of Jesus Christ, 1624), Lewis Bayly’s Practijcke der Godsalicheydt (Practice of Godliness, 1620), the Huys-Postille (Postil) of Justus Bulaeus († 1611), and Simon Goulart’s Veertig tafereelen des doods (Forty Pictures of Death, 1602).11 The classis of Walcheren (Zeeland) was slightly more generous with comforters of the sick bound for the West Indies.12 Goulart’s art of dying was replaced by Christelycke overdenckinge des doots (Christian Reections on Death, 1604) by the Rotterdam minister Franciscus Lansbergen, which, together with the Siecken-troost boecxkens (Little Book of Consolation for

11 C.A.L. van Troostenburg de Bruyn, De Hervormde Kerk in Nederlandsch Oost-Indië onder de Oost-Indische Compagnie (Arnhem 1884), 349–352; cf. Van Deursen, Bavianen, 16, footnote 22. Bayly’s Practice of piety, rst translated in 1620, and reprinted dozens of times, may well have been the most popular spiritual treatise of the seventeenthcentury Dutch Republic. 12 Rijksarchief in Zeeland, Classis Walcheren, n° 73.

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the Sick; probably the treatise by Eduardus Poppius, 1625), was denitely required reading for a comforter of the sick in the tropics. But in addition he was given Calvin’s Institutie (Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1536), the Loci communes (in the revised 1605 edition: Institutiones theologicae, sive Analysis locorum communium Christianae religionis; Dutch version 1611) of William Bucanus, two theological treatises by William Perkins, Een ghereformeert catholijck (A Reformed Catholic, 1605) and Een tractaet van de ghevallen der conscientie (A Treatise on Cases of Conscience, 1608), and a few prayer books. The person stationed abroad was actually supposed to leave the books for his successor, but that rule was often disregarded. In 1640 the minister Jonas Acrist lodged a complaint with the classis upon his arrival in Curaçao: according to WIC regulations an assortment of books for study would be waiting for him there, but all he found was an empty chest.13 In December 1645, thirteen years after Evert’s return from Guinea, the minister’s library in the castle of Elmina contained 31 titles, a collection that corresponds closely to the lists mentioned above.14 What stands out once again is the large proportion of works by William Perkins: seven titles, almost one-fourth of the total, all translated by Vincent Meusevoet—among them Verscheyden theologische wercken (a collection of ve theological treatises, 1614) in two copies, his commentaries on Hebrews 11 and the epistle of Jude (1612), and ve other treatises. Also present were works by pietistic authors, such as William Cowper’s Heilig ABC (Holy Alphabet for Sion’s Scholars, 1613), an edifying commentary on the alphabetical Psalm 119; Godfried Udemans’s Practijcke dat is: werckelijcke oeffeninghe van de Christelicke hooft-deuchden (Practice, that is: actual exercise of the cardinal Christian virtues, 1612); and Daniel Souterius’s Nuchteren Loth (Sober Lot, 1623), a volume of re-andbrimstone sermons from 1623 about the disastrous consequences of drunkenness; also as Calvin’s commentary on the gospels; Baudartius’s Apophthegmata christiana (1605, many impressions), a goldmine of exempla for preaching and consoling the sick; the “Treasury” of catechism explanations by Zacharius Ursinus, undoubtedly in the Dutch adaptation by Festus Hommius (1602); and the inevitable Flavius Josephus on the history of the Jews in antiquity. In some cases the books owned by

13

GAA, ACA, n° 224, f. 1v° (August 8, 1640). K. Ratelband, Vijf dagregisters van het kasteel Sao Jorge da Mina (Elmina) aan de Goudkust (1645–1647) (The Hague 1953), 367–369. 14

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departed or deceased comforters of the sick did remain on location, as is evident from the double copies of the Huys-boeck of Bullinger, the Postille of Abraham Schultetus (1621), and the collected theological writings of William Perkins (Opera theologica, in Dutch translation, 1615). It is worth noting here that all these works were published before 1630. Were they perhaps already in Elmina during Evert’s stay there? Also striking is the parallel between the rudimentary colonial library and the bookshelf of an orthodox city minister like Reverend Alutarius.15 Evert could deepen his theological knowledge overseas without making any signicant shifts in orientation. But the intellectual reading level of the congregation itself was not assumed to be high. Most books were collections of sermons to be used in church services or works of practical piety. Apparently the only literature in Fort Elmina intended for persons other than the minister and the comforter of the sick were 72 Psalters with locks and 10 copies of Sermoen over ’t H. Avontmael (Sermon on the Lord’s Supper). The situation was no different in the East Indies. In December 1623 Reverend Sebastiaen Danckaerts had purchased the works of Calvin, Gualterus, Paraeus, and Perkins for the library of Batavia.16 But when in 1646 the consistory of Batavia embarked on a campaign to raise the intellectual level of the congregation, the works it requested, besides 6000 ABC booklets and 25 Portuguese dictionaries, were all light religious fare: 2000 full and abridged catechisms, 50 postils, 100 Bibles in octavo format, 1000 Historien van David en Tobias (Stories of David and Tobias), and 1000 Vraeg-boeckskens (Question Booklets), the popular name for the catechism for the youth by Philip van Marnix van Sint-Aldegonde.17 All simple catechetical and edifying works, no learned theology. That was something the comforter of the sick or the minister would have to provide for himself. If he discovered that he needed more or different books, he could send an order with the return eet in the hope that the ship would arrive home safely and that the order would be given prompt attention. But then it would still take months. The supply

15

See chapter 4. J.R. Callenbach, Justus Heurnius. Eene bijdrage tot de geschiedenis des Christendoms in Nederlandsch Oost-Indië (Nijkerk 1897), 269. 17 GAA, ACA, n° 157, p. 177 (December 20, 1646). Marnix’s catechism Een kort begrijp, inhoudende de voornaemste hooft-stucken der christelijcke religie was rst printed in Leiden 1599. See: Leendert F. Groenendijk, ‘Marnix’ kindercatechismus’, in: Henk Duits & Ton van Strien (eds.), Een intellectuele activist. Studies over leven en werk van Philips van Marnix van Sint Aldegonde (Hilversum 2001), 76–86. 16

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problem and the stereotypical assortment of books sent overseas had the effect that comforters of the sick and ministers in all the colonies were largely on the same religious wavelength, namely that of orthodox biblical interpretation in the spirit of practical piety. Despite the limitations, Evert must have studied hard on the Gold Coast, for he had spent only a short time as a theology student in Leiden. On June 25, 1629 he had been awarded the Woerden scholarship for the States College, founded in 1591 for thirty needy theology students from the province of Holland. The cities of Holland had xed places that they could grant to sons of burghers. One of these places was reserved for natives of the town of Woerden. In principle this was an ideal situation for an underprivileged young man, but less than a year later, on April 10, 1630, the Woerden magistracy awarded the scholarship of that town to Ambrosius Wiltens, who had been studying under a similar grant from Dordrecht.18 This can only mean that Evert had already left the university, freeing the scholarship a few months before he sailed for Guinea. He may have attended theology lectures for less than one year, or at most two if he began his theology studies immediately after the Latin school despite his lack of income. Did he then perhaps remain in Leiden until his departure for Guinea in the autumn, lodging with his brother Cornelis and gaining experience in church-related work as an oefenaar (practitioner)? And did he add to that another half-year of independent study? Possibilities for this were certainly not lacking: in 1622 Perkins’s publisher Jan Evertsz Cloppenburch had brought out Johan van den Broeck’s manual for private study intended for “Dutch clerks.” The authors recommended in it are by now familiar names: Ursinus, Bucanus, Perkins, Brightman, and Tafn among others.19

University-educated minister or “Dutch clerk?” In the strict sense of the word Evert was not a “Dutch clerk.” He had acquired knowledge of Latin and seen the university from the inside. But even for academics a period of private study was certainly not 18

SAW, I, n° 10, f. 97. Joh. P. van den Broeck, Geestelycke spooren, ofte cort en nootwendigh tractaet, voor alle Duytsche klercken, aenwysende den wegh, die sy in haer studie moeten volgen, ende het recht ghebruyck van dien (Amsterdam 1622). 19

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Fig. 25. Title page of a textbook for “Dutch clerks” by Johan P. vanden Broeck (Amsterdam, 1622). [Library of the University of Amsterdam, 1210 F 29].

unusual. Many theology students never completed their formal education, and not only for nancial reasons. Yet it remains puzzling that a highly motivated candidate like Evert Willemsz was registered at the university for so short a time. In principle this would not stand in the way of admission to the ministry. The national synods of Dordrecht (1578), Middelburg (1581), and The Hague (1586) had issued clear guidelines for the training of ministers and the examination of candidates, but a university education had never been made mandatory. Even the second national synod of Dordrecht (1618–19) took no action on the request made by Zeeland delegates that theology students be required to spend four or ve years in university studies. In its 163rd session (May 17, 1619) it merely urged that candidates be repeatedly examined in the presence of synod delegates.20 The South Holland synod that met in Woerden (1626) nally specied that a candidate

20 See H. Kaajan, De Pro-acta der Dordtsche Synode in 1618 (Rotterdam 1914), 369–381. On the ministers’ training: H.H. Kuyper, De opleiding tot den dienst des Woords bij de gereformeerden (The Hague 1891).

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who wished to be examined for the ministry had to submit testimonials from four different sources: his consistory, the university senate, the professor of theology, and the professor of Greek and Hebrew.21 The educational requirements thus became more narrowly dened and also more strictly enforced, but it remained possible—certainly until well into the rst half of the seventeenth century—to admit candidates to the examination who had not completed a course of university study. In 1631 Zeeland was alone in requiring candidates to have studied four full years of theology at the university.22 Initially a second category of ministers was tolerated, namely that of the Duytsche clercken (Dutch clerks), laici or idiotae—here a designation without negative overtones for persons who had no higher education.23 The term Duytsche clercken refers to the fact that they knew no ancient languages, only Dutch (Neder-Duytsch). In some cases they were lowerranking civil servants or schoolmasters who were already fullling a lower function in the congregation, like that of cantor or sexton. Even without being formally dispatched as ministers, oefenaars (practitioners) or voorgangers (lay preachers) whose linguistic prociency was limited to the vernacular were admitted to the position of assistant minister.24 But those designated Duytsche clercken became full-edged ministers in the church. In keeping with older regulations, the church order of Dort stated explicitly in Article 8 that men of “singular gifts,” practitioners and lay preachers with no university education at all and no knowledge of Latin, could in certain cases be admitted to the ofce of minister. They had to excel in “godliness, humility, virtue, sound understanding, and discretion, as well as gifts of eloquence.” But even then the synod had its reservations: after being examined they had to serve for a time as a substitute minister on a private basis, without a congregation of their own. Duytsche clercken included the occasional orphan, such as Cornelis Aertsz, a young man from the island of Texel “raised in the orphanage there.” On September 3, 1641 he appeared before the classis of Amsterdam to be examined for the ministry. The classis found “a few

21 W.P.C. Knuttel (ed.), Acta der particuliere synoden van Zuid-Holland 1621–1700 (6 vols., The Hague 1908–1916), I, 149. 22 Rijksarchief in Zeeland, Classis Walcheren, n° 2, f. 110 (October 13, 1631). 23 Kuyper, De opleiding, 399–422. 24 H.H. Kuyper, De Post-acta of nabehandelingen van de nationale Synode van Dordrecht in 1618 en 1619 gehouden (Amsterdam 1899), 123, 129–131; Van Deursen, Bavianen, 35–36.

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fundamental good points” in him, “yet was unable to identify any particularly outstanding gifts of understanding in him.”25 Because that was the condition set in the church order for admission to the ministry, he was informed that he would have to practice diligently. This was clearly a case of an underprivileged boy who had grown up in an orphanage. But here, too, the classis followed the letter of the law. We might wonder whether such scrupulous adherence to the rules was already known to be a stumbling block for less privileged boys in Evert’s youth, and whether he for that reason chose the most certain route to fullling his calling to the ministry, namely a Latin education. The mechanism for appointments soon worked so much to the advantage of those with a higher education that only a handful of Duytsche clercken were appointed ministers after the synod of Dort.26 In Friesland the proportion of new ministers without academic training dropped from 36% in 1590–1600 to 9% in 1611–1620 and to a mere 3% in 1631–1640.27 In the classis of Schieland (Rotterdam and environs) Duytsche clercken were repeatedly examined for and admitted to the ofce of minister until 1619, but after the synod of Dort this classis apparently became so hesitant that when the Gouda comforter of the sick Abraham Hobos requested admission to the ministry in 1624 he was accepted only under discriminatory conditions: “with the understanding that those who have a higher education will always be given preference.”28 Some candidates, particularly comforters of the sick, may have had at least part of their education at a Latin school or under the supervision of a learned minister. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the Latin school was still the most common institution of secondary education, and the pool from which it recruited pupils was certainly not limited to those who would go on to university.

25

GAA, ACA, n° 157, p. 53, 66, 68, 73, 81. Kuyper, De opleiding, 415–420; Willem Frijhoff, ‘Inspiration, instruction, compétence? Questions autour de la sélection des pasteurs réformés aux Pays-Bas (XVIe – XVIIe siècles), in: Paedagogica Historica 30:1 (1994), 13–38; Fred van Lieburg, ‘Preachers between inspiration and instruction: Dutch Reformed ministers without academic education (sixteenth-eighteenth centuries)’, in: Dutch Review of Church History 83 (2003), 166–190. 27 J.J. Kalma, ‘’s Lands voedsterlingen en de Friese kerk. Het alumniaat in Friesland, studiebeurzen voor predikanten in spe’, in: G.Th. Jensma, F.R.M. Smit & F. Westra (eds.), Universiteit te Franeker 1585–1811: bijdragen tot de geschiedenis van de Friese hogeschool (Leeuwarden 1985), 152. 28 Knuttel, Acta, I, 104 (art. 16) and 115 (art. 37). 26

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Evert Willemsz fell somewhere in between the two categories. Whether there were many more cases like his remains unclear, owing to the lack of precise research. He had nished the Latin school and even studied for a short time at the university, but he certainly had not completed the theological curriculum prescribed as a minimum requirement for those wishing to be examined for the ministry.29 It is not at all certain that he could submit a recommendation from the professor of Greek and Hebrew, as the synod had recently stipulated at their meeting in his hometown of Woerden. Was he too restless for a long course of study? Or did he not feel at home in the boisterous atmosphere of Leiden, even though the orthodox theologian Festus Hommius was then regent of the States College? Did he seek a different, more pious form of religious experience? A third explanation is possible as well, one more related to Evert’s personality than to the situation in Leiden or in the Reformed church. His departure for Guinea can be interpreted as a second, conscious and personal break with the earlier public choices that had been made for him and sanctioned by the authorities. At the age of fteen he had broken off his apprenticeship in a trade and insisted on becoming a minister. Seven years later, after the orphan masters and the town council of Woerden had not only acceded to his wishes but granted him the only scholarship the town had to offer, he again extricated himself from a net of obligations and opted for the relative freedom, but also the uncertainty, of the task of comforter of the sick far from home. From this perspective, Evert’s break with his subsidized life at the university appears as an act of self-assertion bordering on deance. It testies to his unwillingness, if not inability, to accept the straitjacket of an ordered system, and his irrepressible desire to afrm his independence. The break brought about by Evert’s decision to leave the States College was therefore not with his ambition to become a minister, but with the well-trodden path of a university education. Considering that he returned from Guinea fully prepared for the ofce of minister, we can assume that he had planned from the outset to use his term of service there for private study, and that he took with him the necessary books. The colonies, we can conclude, were very likely Evert’s 29 Therefore, I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a university-trained minister, as does Gerald F. de Jong, ‘The education and training of Dutch ministers’, in: Nancy Anne McClure Zeller & Charles T. Gehring (eds.), A beautiful and fruitful place. Selected Rensselaerswijck papers (Albany 1991), 191–204.

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own choice. Otherwise he would have followed the usual course and presented himself to his home classis, which had also granted him the scholarship to Leiden, thanks to the inuence of various prominent members. Orthodox ministers were very welcome in the Woerden classis in the aftermath of the troubles with the numerous Remonstrants in that district. The South Holland synod had decided in 1624 that a minister who wished to go to the colonies fell under the authority of the synod responsible for the region in which the chamber employing him was located.30 In this case it was the Amsterdam chamber, and thus the synod of North Holland, not of South Holland that included Woerden. Between the date on which Evert must have terminated his studies and his dispatch to Guinea the classis of Woerden convened several times, but the resolutions recorded for those dates contain no trace of a request by Evert Willemsz to be admitted to the ofce of either minister or comforter of sick, nor is there any mention of an examination. Between July 1627 and December 1630 the States did confer a grant on another Woerden candidate, Antonius Francisci Clarenburch.31 Evert’s name is also missing from the classes’ lists of examined candidates that appeared each year in the proceedings of the South Holland synod. What can be distilled from all this is the tension between two training circuits. On the one hand there was the prescribed system of professional education and recruitment of the clergy, and on the other hand a multiplicity of back roads used by those who were gifted or pious, but less privileged in terms of family or educational background, to ght their way into the ministry. Especially striking here is the role played by the colonies, as we have already seen in the previous chapter. It was as if going overseas could compensate for a candidate’s lack of social or educational qualications. And for a person without great intellectual gifts, an overseas position as comforter of the sick could yield sufcient knowledge and experience to be appointed minister in the colonies. In the proceedings of the classis of Amsterdam we nd more examples of persons called to the ministry who had to resort to the back roads. Heyndrick Mattheeuwsz, for instance, was examined on the text 1 John 5:7 in March 1626, after completing a term of service as comforter of the sick in the East Indies. The classis found his

30 31

Knuttel, Acta, I, 122 (art. 48). NAN, States of Holland, n° 4399, f. 115.

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performance satisfactory and his beliefs orthodox, but he was told he needed more practice; for a minister’s appointment in the East Indies, however, he was considered good enough.32 But it did not take long before ecclesiastical relations were normalized in the colonies as well. In 1641 the WIC decided “that they would take no more Idioten (Dutch clerks) into their service as ministers.”33

Self-assurance Appointing Duytsche clercken was unavoidable in the early days of the Reformed church, but when the number of university-educated ministers increased they soon acquired a bad name. Not only did they lack knowledge, they also had no ambition to become learned, and their language was abominable. But with the ordinary churchgoers they were popular. In 1612 the Leiden professor Petrus Cunaeus ridiculed the ignorance of many ministers who in their youth had been barbers, carpenters, or shoemakers, or had practiced other “slavish trades.”34 The growing contempt of learned ministers for their uneducated colleagues must of course be seen against the backdrop of their social strategy. But an ambitious young man from the artisan milieu may have reacted to this contempt by consciously identifying with the learned class. We can detect something of this in Evert Willemsz. Despite his training in a trade and his unnished university studies, he carefully avoided everything that would mark him as an uneducated teacher. He did not choose the back road of Article 8. Yet in precisely those decades we nd numerous examples—also in the Woerden classis—of God-fearing laici who gained access to the ministry, like Evert’s relative Cornelis Paludanus. That route was open to Evert, too, but he wanted more: to talk about God, yes, but with authority, both social and cultural, and thus with the knowledge of Scripture required by the church. His aim was to be a full-blooded minister. He made that ambition unmistakably clear by Latinizing his name. This was more than a move dictated by the prevailing trend; it was an eminently symbolic act. The Latinized name testies to Evert’s sense 32

GAA, ACA, n° 3, f. 67 (March 23, 1626). Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, I, 79. 34 Geeraerdt Brandt, Historie der Reformatie, en andere kerkelyke geschiedenissen, in en ontrent de Nederlanden (4 vols., Amsterdam 1671–1704), II, 204. 33

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that he would from then on belong to a different cultural stratum. He deliberately distanced himself from his lower and middle-class relatives who retained the simple name Bogaert. The name change was instrumental: it not only conrmed Evert’s entry into a different social group but also enabled him to see himself with different eyes. The Latin form of the name summoned up a different cultural universe. Was it his own idea to Latinize his name, or did someone persuade him to do so? In the Utrecht pamphlet of 1623 the rector already referred to him one time as “Everardus” (a4), the name form normally used in the Latin school, where students were taught not only a passive knowledge of Latin but were required to speak it as well. We know that in 1627 Evert himself used the Latin form of his name when he matriculated in Leiden, while two years later the municipal secretary of Woerden was still using the Dutch form, which his brother Cornelis would also retain. Nowhere in Woerden, in fact, was the Latinized name used. There Evert remained the God-fearing orphan from a pious family. To become something more he had to leave Woerden. It is a familiar theme: “A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country, and in his own house” (Matt. 13:57). This may be the deepest reason why Evert never returned to his town and his classis. Once he had learned to express himself with scholastic logic and had internalized the patterns of thought and life of the ecclesiastical elite, he shed his sensitivity to the extraordinary, to that other rationality of his youth. An emotional sense of his calling was replaced by a more cerebral sense of mission, with due concern for the demands of status and surroundings. From then on he was no longer a prophet but a minister. That conscious choice did not preclude paradoxes in his later behavior. There was often great disparity between his will and his actions. Temperament, habits, and emotional make-up do not alter at the same pace as intellectual conviction. Adopting a surname testies to a sense of belonging to a specic family, whereas Latinizing a name stands for identication with the milieu of the educated.35 Evert’s case is somewhat ambiguous, since both happened simultaneously. In place of the usual patronymic (Willemsz), we from then on nd the family name (Bogaert), but Evert used it in

35 This onomastic contrast was similarly used by Evert’s nephew Willem Cornelisz Bogaert, who matriculated at Leiden University as Bogardus, living at his father Bogaerdt’s home: Leiden University Library, Archive of the University Senate, n° 10, f. 594v°.

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the literate form (Bogardus), reserved for himself as the only person in his immediate family with a higher education, and as a young man full of ego. He thus made it known that he was leaving the orphanage and the town behind him and entering a higher milieu with a strictly personal identity. From then on his patronymic was seldom used, at least in writing, and then only by others—such as the New Netherland schout and scaal (i.e., sheriff and public prosecutor appointed by the WIC) Dr. Lubbert Dinclagen, who in 1636 refers to him as Everardus Wilhelmi Bogaert, evidence that his patronymic and the Dutch form of his surname were known in the colony, and may have been used routinely in everyday life.36 At Dinclagen’s rst appearance before the Amsterdam consistory near the end of 1635 he had referred to Evert as “Everardus Bog[ardus] van Woerden.”37 Perhaps Evert’s birthplace had initially served as his surname, as happened with so many migrants in New Netherland? With the Latinization of his name the process of Evert’s growing self-assurance was not yet completed. From gradual changes in his signature we can see that around 1640 he became more acutely aware of his unique position as the person morally responsible for the local community in New Netherland. In the sixteenth century signatures came into wide use as a sign of a public, individual identity, as distinct from one’s group identity.38 Unlike a mark—which for the illiterate user remained essentially an image, even though the literate observer thought of it as a sign—a signature, no matter how abbreviated or clumsy, constitutes a confession of faith in literate culture, and a desire to participate in it. Even more than the use of a surname, a rm signature proclaims a highly developed sense of individuality. The large, self-assured letters of Evert’s signature already stand out in the formula book of the Amsterdam classis. He adds to it a clear indication of his function: “Everhardus Boghaerdus sent by the Classis and the Church to New Netherland.”39 This mention of both classis and church as the institutions that commissioned him and legitimized his authority is unique in the register. Evert is well aware that he is not a minister for the Netherlands but for New Netherland. He also knows exactly which authority issued his mandate: not only the consistory but the classis as well—which would prove all too true! 36 37 38 39

GAA, ACA, n° 4, p. 71 (April 7, 1636). GAA, ARCA, n° 168 (November 8, 1635). Cf. Béatrice Fraenkel, La signature: genèse d’un signe (Paris 1992). GAA, ACA, n° 32.

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Fig. 26. Autograph signature of Everardus Boghardus as minister of Manhattan, January 8, 1642. [New York State Archive, Dutch Colonial Manuscripts, 2:5].

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Awareness of his functional identity continues to develop overseas. At rst he signs documents presented to him simply as E. Bogardus, Boghardus, Boghaerdus, or Boghardt.40 But from the beginning of 1640 onward he consistently adds “Eccl[esiastes] Manahat[ensis],” minister of Manhattan.41 We see here a growing awareness of the demands made by his function—also evident from the initiative of 1639 to keep a regular baptismal and marriage register—but in addition a sense of scope that probably exceeded the strict limits of his appointment. As a Company employee he was formally minister of the fort New Amsterdam, in the service of the WIC. At the time of his dispatch he already thought of himself as sent to “New Netherland,” but his assignment certainly did not cover the entire territory of the colony. Van Rensselaer had to ask him explicitly to stop in occasionally at his patroonschap at the upper course of the Hudson. The addition to his signature therefore marks a new step in expanding his mandate. Overstepping the borders of the fort and town, he laid claim to the countryside. Evert’s responsibility as pastor of Manhattan now extended to the Indians inhabiting the island as well. Besides a minister he was also a missionary in the new land. What kind of a land was that?

A land owing with milk and honey “New Netherland is one of the most beautiful lands under the sun, with fruits of all sorts in the soil and on the trees, and various clean rivers. Fish is in abundance and can be caught for all sorts of delightful uses, for salting, drying, frying, cooking, but mainly for eating and selling. There is also already a fair amount of livestock and wild game, more than the inhabitants can consume. There is, in short, no effort needed, of everything there is enough. Birds to be caught by the neck, game and livestock aplenty. The wine grape grows wild there, the onion grows wild there, chestnuts, mulberries, plums, medlars, wild cherries, currants, gooseberries, hazelnuts, apples, strawberries, cranberries, blueberries, 40 NYHM, I, 106, 130, 155, 204, 253 (between March 15, 1639, and January 5, 1640). 41 NYHM, I, 259, 260, 303; II, 9, 61 (between February 7, 1640 and August 14, 1642). A copy of NYHM, I, 259 in: E.B. O’Callaghan, History of New Netherland, or New York under the Dutch (2 vols., New York 1846–1848; repr. 1955, 1966), I, face to p. 25, and in James Grant Wilson, The memorial history of the city of New York (New York 1892), 189.

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groundnuts, underground artichokes, and more such delights all grow wild there. Furthermore, everything one has in Europe grows and thrives there of its own accord.”42 Abundant sh, game, fruits, and eld crops, all simply for the taking! New Netherland as a true land of Cockaigne! So it is described by Captain Bouwen Krijnssen in the ctional shipboard conversation published as a critical dialogue in 1649 under the title Breeden-Raedt, the term used for the council of naval ofcers. The paradisiacal promises of the West-Indies colonies form one of the many topoi of the early seventeenth century. The same was true of New England, where partridges were too heavy to y and turkeys were fat as lambs; Maryland was also depicted as the new earthly paradise and Georgia as the future Eden.43 Even the poet Jacob Steendam did not hesitate to use capital letters when he praised New Netherland as “the new EDEN.”44 The contrast with the fatherland was great—not so much because all those marvelous things were present, but because they were available to everyone without distinction, while delectable foods in Europe were solely for the elite. In America an ordinary laborer could enjoy them as well, without working himself to the bone as he did at home. In that sense it was literally a luilekkerland (lazy-luscious land), the Dutch term for Cockaigne. The dreams of a new paradise, which were rst projected onto newly discovered tropical America and still colored the Brazilian adventure of Governor Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen (1637–1644), shifted to New Netherland after the disillusionment and debacle in Brazil in the

42

Breeden-Raedt aende Vereenichde Nederlandsche Provintien [. . .] gemaeckt ende gestelt uyt diverse ware en waerachtige memorien, door I.A.G.W.C. (Antwerp 1649), f. B2r°; English transl. ‘Broad Advice to the United Netherlands Provinces’, in: H.C. Murphy (transl.), Vertoogh van Nieu Nederland, and Breeden Raedt aende Vereenichde Nederlandsche Provintien (New York 1854), 138. This partisan pamphlet on the WIC administration is generally attributed to Cornelis Melijn, but in my opinion a couple of autobiographical remarks (Breeden-Raedt, f. D1r° and E1r°; ‘Broad Advice’, 157, 167) make the authorship of elder Jochem Pietersz Kuyter probable, even if the erudite lawyer Adriaen van der Donck may have acted as his ghostwriter. 43 C.L. Sanford, The quest for paradise (Urbana, Ill. 1961), 83–85, 111. More generally: Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous possessions: The wonder of the New World (Chicago 1991); Anthony Pagden, European encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Romanticism (New Haven, Conn. 1993); Karen Ordahl Kupperman (ed.), America in European consciousness, 1493–1750 (Chapel Hill 1995); Benjamin Schmidt, Innocence abroad: The Dutch imagination and the New World, 1570–1670 (Cambridge 2001). 44 Elisabeth Paling-Funk, ‘De literatuur van Nieuw-Nederland’, in: De Nieuwe Taalgids 85 (1992), 383–395, here 391.

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1640s. Contemporary authors like David Pietersz de Vries, Adriaen van der Donck, and Jacob Steendam cannot say enough about the profusion of nature, the rich variety of ora and fauna, and the ease of life there. In ’t Lof van Nuw-Nederland (Praise of New Netherland) published in 1661 Steendam sings: New Netherland, thou noblest land of all, which our Almighty Lord has freely lled with his most lordly gifts, unparalleled In every part.45

All the elements were favorable there: water, earth, air, and re. Mineral ores, plants, fruits, sh, animals, and birds—everything could be found in abundance. Adriaen van der Donck also tells of fabulous harvests: farmer Brant Peelen in Rensselaerswijck had harvested wheat eleven times from the same land eleven years in succession! Van der Donck had himself seen a sheaf from the eleventh harvest.46 The colonists therefore could not understand why people in the fatherland showed so little interest in this new Eden. In his Klacht van Nieuw-Amsterdam (Complaint of New Amsterdam) Steendam maintains that the fertility of the land formed a positive counterweight to the shortsighted stinginess of the grand gentlemen in Amsterdam. Shortly after the loss of New Netherland, Pieter de Neyn came with similar statements about the Cape of Good Hope: that was a peaceful land of effortless abundance, far removed from old, sad, worn-out, belligerent Europe.47 In the Breeden-Raedt, however, the image of a land of Cockaigne serves a different purpose. The point there is not the contrast with old Europe but the clash between the fresh, untouched natural state of the new land and the stale, decadent culture of the European colonists. New Netherland is presented as a land that in itself is rich, ripe, and bountiful, but is being destroyed by the greed and mismanagement of the immigrants. The colony was paralyzed by conicts, ravaged by wars, and eventually snapped up by the English. In that razor-sharp pamphlet “on the trade of the West India Company” ten ctional

45 Henry C. Murphy (ed.), Jacob Steendam, Noch Vaster. A memoir of the rst poet in New Netherland, with his poems descriptive of the colony (The Hague 1861), 32. 46 Adriaen van der Donck, Beschryvinge van Nieu-Nederlant (2d ed., Amsterdam 1656), 27. He was bailiff of Rensselaerswyck from 1641 to 1643. 47 Siegfried Huigen, ‘Jarige meisjes, “Hottentotten” en het zand van Robbeneiland: Pieter de Neyn aan de Kaap (1672–1674)’, in: De Zeventiende Eeuw 7 (1991), 149–158.

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characters, all from different countries and with emblematic names, polemicize against the politics of the WIC. Following scornful laughter about the demise of Dutch Brazil, the topic turns to New Netherland, particularly the disastrous, high-handed dealings of the director Pieter Stuyvesant and his predecessor Willem Kieft. Govert, an impoverished English nobleman, introduces that part of the discussion in his garbled Dutch: “It has now two years been since those two brave burgher mans that coming from New Netherland made ship-break passing through the wrong channel England. I have heard not in all my life-days such things as those mans telled us about such directors what they had there.”48 The two citizens who managed to reach the Dutch Republic despite the shipwreck were the two scapegoats of director Kieft: elder of the church Joachim Pietersz Kuyter and patroon Cornelis Melijn. In 1647 Stuyvesant took over Kieft’s job as well as his grudges. He acted, according to the pamphlet, with equal arrogance, believing in his own sovereignty. To a loud cannon salute he sailed into the harbor of New Amsterdam, where he was warmly welcomed by the people. But in return he let them stand a few hours bareheaded, “as if he were the grand duke of Muscovy.”49 On Kieft’s advice he arrested the two ercest opponents of the former director, because they had put their grievances in writing behind Kieft’s back and had berated and threatened him. Instead of keeping wisely silent, Kuyter and especially Melijn only made their case worse. After a short trial they were sentenced to three and seven years of exile respectively for crimen laesae majestatis (lese majesty), lies, slander, and libel. That same day ( July 25, 1647) they were imprisoned on the return ship, De Prinses Amelia (The Princess Amelia). The arrests were meant to make one thing absolutely clear right from the start: anyone who dared to oppose Stuyvestant was opposing the sovereign. Kieft, called back by the WIC, was also on board, as was Bogardus, Kieft’s third scapegoat. The minister was relatively untouchable, however. Although employed by the WIC, he was in the rst place answerable to the Reformed classis of Amsterdam. It was therefore in Amsterdam that he wanted to settle his quarrel with Kieft. Neither of the two arrived there. Through a quirk of fate Kieft’s two imprisoned

48 Breeden-Raedt, f. B1v°–B2r°: “’t Is nou al wel twee jaer geleen dat twee brave burgers-mans met schip-breecking in den verkeerde cannael Engelant passeerden, die komtet uth de Nieue Nierlands. Ey hefnot alle mijne leefdages dergelijcken gehoort als ons die man teldet van haer Directeurs dat se daer hadden” (‘Broad Advice’, 137). 49 Breeden-Raedt, f. D3r° (‘Broad Advice’, 163).

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opponents survived the shipwreck while the free antagonists Kieft and Bogardus drowned.

New Netherland “New Netherland,” the name the land acquired very soon after its discovery, testies clearly to the pretensions of the earliest colonists.50 Here was an alternative to the fatherland. The later development of the colony (and state) New York and the bordering areas in Delaware, New Jersey, and Connecticut that together comprised New Netherland makes it painfully clear how many opportunities were lost there. But in the middle of the seventeenth century that was not yet visible. Images of New Netherland have also been negatively inuenced by the strong prole of emigration to New England, with its religious mythology (the Pilgrim Fathers of 1620, the Puritan social ideal) and its successes. The contrast with the chronic problems of New Netherland has left the Dutch colony looking like an unruly haven for fortune seekers and drifters. The English have also exploited their victory in North America historiographically: in their view, the losers, Indians as well as Dutch, were wrong right from the start. But was that really the case? Meanwhile an entire library has been written in America on the politics of the WIC, the development of the area, and the reasons why the colony never came to full ourish under Dutch rule. Many questions remain open, in part because the American perspective often shows a blind spot for things evident in the Netherlands. It is not my intention here to summarize the literature. A brief sketch of the developments will

50 Reliable general surveys relevant for this period include: Van Cleaf Bachman, Peltries or plantations? The economic policies of the Dutch West India Company in New Netherland, 1623–1639 (Baltimore 1969); Oliver A. Rink, Holland on the Hudson: An economic and social history of Dutch New York (New York 1986); Jaap Jacobs, New Netherland: A Dutch colony in seventeenth-century America [The Atlantic World, 3] (Leiden & Boston 2005); Russell Shorto, The island at the center of the world: The epic story of Dutch Manhattan and the forgotten colony that shaped America (New York etc. 2004). Many histories of early New York work with unreliable second-hand material. Using suggestive narratives, they labour under proEnglish prejudice and remain uncritical towards the still prevailing anti-Dutch imagery developed after Washington Irving’s ironical pictures of the early Dutch colonists. Cf. for instance, Edwin G. Burrows & Mike Wallace, Gotham: A history of New York City to 1898 (Oxford 1999), 14–74. On Irving’s imagery of the Dutch and its close links with nineteenth century New York politics: Andrew B. Myers (ed.), The Knickerbocker tradition: Washington Irving’s New York (Tarrytown & New York 1974).

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sufce to further our understanding of Evert Willemsz’s life story. But there is no question that a revision of the old historical image will have to include a reinterpretation of Dominie Bogardus’s life. In 1609 Henry Hudson set out in his ship De Halve Maen (The Half Moon) on an exploratory journey for the VOC over the rivers of the northeast coastal area of America, in the hope of nding a passage to China. Soon various Dutch travelers and traders followed his example, with the result that the United New Netherland Company, founded by thirteen merchants in October 1614, was granted a charter by the States General for trade in a region already explored. For the next fty years the size of that area remained virtually unchanged: four to ve times larger than the Dutch Republic, it extended from Kaap (Cape) Hinlopen and the Delaware in the south to Staten-Hoeck (Cape Cod) in the east and the St. Lawrence in the north. The main artery was the Mauritius or North (Hudson) River. Living in that area were numerous Indian tribes who raised maize and other crops, but with the rising demand of the white traders for beaver and otter pelts, they turned increasingly to hunting and trapping. The oldest settlement of European immigrants was not New Amsterdam but Fort Nassau (in present-day Albany), built in 1614 on a small island more than 150 miles upriver as a fortied post for fur trade in Mahican territory. This settlement, along with Fort Amsterdam, built on Manhattan in 1625, formed the heart of New Netherland. It was to Fort Nassau that most of the rst 30 colonist families set out shortly after March 30, 1624.51 The settlers, predominantly of Walloon origin, embarked under the command of Cornelis Jacobsz May and under the authority of the WIC, which had been founded three years earlier and was now in charge of that region. Because of ooding a new fort was built on the west bank, Fort Orange. The colonists received from the States General a set of provisional governing

51

J. Peters, ‘Volunteers for the wilderness: The Walloon petitioners of 1621 and the voyage of the Nieu Nederlandt to the Hudson River in 1624’, in: Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London 24:5 (1987), 421–433; F.C. Wieder, De stichting van New York in Juli 1625. Reconstructies en nieuwe gegevens ontleend aan de Van Rappard-documenten (The Hague 1925), 17–25; Rink, Holland, 143–144. On the Walloon mythology with regard to the foundation of New Amsterdam: Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, ‘The Walloon and Huguenot elements in New Netherland and seventeenth-century New York: Identity, history, and memory’, in: Joyce D. Goodfriend (ed.), Revisiting New Netherland: Perspectives on early Dutch America (Leiden & Boston 2005), 41–54.

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Fig. 27. Map of New Netherland with early view of New Amsterdam, 1655. [Appended to: Adriaen van der Donck, Beschryvinge van Nieu-Nederlandt (2nd ed.; Amsterdam, 1656)].

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regulations, the Provisionele Ordre (March 30, 1624).52 All rights to trade in beaver and otter pelts, initially the most important commodity of the area, the Company retained for itself, but it recognized two kinds of colonists: freemen who under certain conditions would work the land for themselves, and farmers who would be employed by the WIC on “Company farms.” Although the rst reports were jubilant, the early days proved difcult, as the colonists spread out over Fort Nassau (Albany), the Southern Colony (Delaware), and Noten Eiland (Nut Island, now Governor’s Island). The trade itself prospered: in 1626 the Company shipped 7,246 beaver pelts and 675 otter pelts to the Netherlands, with an export value of 45,000 guilders; by 1632 the numbers had risen to 13,513 and 1,661 respectively, with a total value of 143,000 guilders. Subsequent years brought a decline, however. The Heren XIX were for a long period unable to choose between two conicting options: to make quick prots through a well-oiled network of otherwise supercial trading contacts; or to consolidate their possession by means of intensive colonization. Not that the second option would entail a neglect of trade—that remained the principal goal of the WIC as a commercial company. But the investments then had to be larger and would bring returns only over the longer term. Colonization also required a different social structure from a trading post. The WIC directors in Amsterdam had conicting interests themselves and were divided into two factions; and the directors of New Netherland often carried out their instructions in ways that they saw t, occasionally even contrary to the goals they were supposed to pursue. Some WIC directors even tried to straddle the two factions, nding ways to benet from each side. The lines of communication were long, and most of the New Netherland directors lacked sufcient administrative insight and decisiveness to deal with the situation. Around 1630, after the Dutch breakthrough in Brazil—which as a land already intensively colonized and Christianized by the Portuguese promised much larger short-term prots—the WIC placed all its stakes on that card. The result for New Netherland was an ambiguous policy that lacked clear priorities and was continually thwarted by the effects of personal vested interests. The patroons, who were allowed to exercise 52 Text in: Wieder, De stichting, 111–118; A.J.F. van Laer (ed.), Documents relating to New Netherland, 1624–1626, in the Henry E. Huntington Library (San Marino, Calif. 1924); Rink, Holland, 76–79, rightly stresses the importance of this somewhat neglected document for shaping colonial society in New Netherland.

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private seigniorial rights over parts of the colony, often made decisions in their capacity as members of the WIC governing board but invested as private persons. By 1626 the colony already had its third director, Peter Minuit (ca. 1580–1638). He moved the administrative center to the southern point of Manhattan, which he “bought” from the indigenous tribes in exchange for goods worth 60 guilders—the famous “24-dollar purchase” (as calculated with a nineteenth-century exchange rate), now a commonplace of American history. The members of the Canarsee tribe who “sold” the island, however, did not view the transaction as a cession of territory but as an agreement for use and management of the land by the “purchasers.” Ownership of the land was a community right connected with the identity of the tribe and could therefore never be abrogated.53 This misunderstanding would determine the relations between Indians and colonists for years to come, and after 1640 would spark off a series of bloody wars. The indigenous people simply continued to live on the land, raise crops, and sell their beaver pelts and corn to the immigrants. For them the Europeans were migrant workers who were allowed to farm their land. One year earlier, in the summer of 1625, construction had begun on a small fort at the southern tip of Manhattan: Fort (New) Amsterdam, the heart of the small settlement of that name which the English would promptly rename New York after taking it over in 1664.54 The purpose was not to protect the colony from the Indians, but from the public enemies of the country, formally the Spaniards, but in fact the English as well. From the outset the WIC promoted peaceful coexistence with the indigenous peoples, if only for reasons of trade. The instructions were explicit: the fort and settlement should be built at a “convenient place . . . abandoned or unoccupied by the Indians.”55 Not competition but cooperation was the watchword of the merchants who themselves determined the policy of the trading companies and the Republic. The population soon concentrated around the fort, where six Company farms were established to support the inhabitants. By 1628 there must 53 Cf. Allan W. Trelease, Indian affairs in colonial New York: The seventeenth century (Ithaca, NY 1960), 12; Rink, Holland, 215–216; Carl Waldmann, Atlas of the North American Indians (New York & Oxford 1985), 95–97. 54 All the documents have been published in: Wieder, De stichting; Victor H. Paltsits, ‘The founding of New Amsterdam in 1626’, in: Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, new series, 34 (1924), 39–65. 55 Wieder, De stichting, 141.

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have been a total of about 270 people living in the fort, in the thirty houses, and on the farms. A short time later the WIC yielded to pressure from the colonial party, which advocated not only immediate commercial prots but also long-term investment in agriculture, and adopted a colonization plan that was approved by the States General. The Vryheden ende Exemptien (Freedoms and Exemptions) issued on June 7, 1629 made it possible to grant concessions outside Manhattan to private owners, called patroons, for arable farming and stockbreeding. Manhattan proper would continue to be reserved for the WIC.56 The tracts of private land, known as patroonschappen (patroonships), had to be located on the coast or along navigable rivers and within four years be settled by 50 persons above the age of fteen. New Amsterdam became the entrepôt for all products the patroons wished to export, and the WIC levied duties on them. Legally the patroonschappen acquired the form of a hereditary ef of the sovereign (the States General), a manor with high jurisdiction. In reality the patroons (initially always WIC directors) tended to view themselves as sovereign because they had purchased their land directly from the Indians. Dutch farmers and artisans at rst showed little interest in settling permanently in New Netherland. Only a few patroonships were realized around 1630, and of those only Rensselaerswijck (opposite Albany) in the north came to ourish. By ts and starts a few more were established later, among them Staten Island (1638, 1641) and Vriesendael (1640). Director Peter Minuit’s lenient approach to trade by the patroons resulted in tension and cost him his position when in 1631 the trade faction, eager to protect the monopoly of the WIC from the patroons, again acquired the upper hand in the Heren XIX. Minuit, together with several other ofcials (including the rst minister Jonas Michaelius), was called back and in March 1632 replaced by the former comforter of the sick and commissioner Bastiaen Jansz Crol. Before the year was out, however, a new director was appointed in the person of Company clerk Wouter van Twiller, who was supposed to enforce respect for the trade monopoly of the WIC. In the early spring of 1633 he arrived at Manhattan together with the new minister, Dominie Bogardus.

56 Vryheden ende exemptien voor de patroonen, meesters ofte particulieren, die op Nieu-Nederlandt eenighe colonien ende vee sullen planten (Amsterdam 1630), several editions with slightly different titles.

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The situation they encountered was not very cheering. Minuit’s administration showed little evidence of insight into genuine priorities. He did initiate grand projects, but as Van der Donck wrote later in his Vertooch (Representation of New Netherland, 1649), it would have been wiser to rst ensure that the colony itself had sufcient inhabitants and livestock.57 Survival was difcult. The fort was still no more than a blockhouse, the settlement a collection of wooden sheds and cabins made of tree bark; and the community of a few hundred colonists hung together like grains of sand. Only the Company had a few stone houses. Although historians have been as little enthusiastic about Van Twiller’s directorship as his contemporaries were, there is no denying that in those years a certain amount of structure, a minimum of stability, and some simple luxuries were introduced into the colony. The WIC also expanded the territory under its authority despite the extremely small number of colonists. At no point were relations with the Indians as good as during the ve years that Van Twiller held ofce. For both parties these were the exhilarating golden years of the beaver trade. Even the troublesome Raritan tribe signed a peace treaty in 1634, along with a trade agreement. But as the volume of trade reached its peak, Van Twiller did nothing to ensure maintenance. He allowed contacts with the fatherland to lapse as management deteriorated, defense was neglected and Company personnel were left unsupervised. Eventually the English showed themselves to be formidable competitors. This soon led to a clash between Van Twiller and his most important rivals in the colony, the schout and scaal Dinclagen and the minister Bogardus. He was no match for either of them—he had too little education and class, was too heavy a drinker, appropriated too much land, and openly juggled trading rights of the WIC. In September 1637 he was called back and succeeded by the Amsterdam merchant’s son Willem Kieft, who arrived at the end of March 1638. The urbanite Kieft was an uncompromising administrator with a bureaucratic bent and a strong sense of duty. He valued order and regularity, and loathed drunkenness. As an educated, well-bred patrician closely related to the best families of Amsterdam (such as Huydecoper and Pauw), Kieft dreamed of transforming his muddy village into a genuine town, a colony governed by Holland-style rules and regulations.

57

321.

NAN, States General, n° 12564.30A (Vertooch, July 28, 1649), pp. 38–39; NNN,

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He made a serious start at establishing an ordered society, issuing rules of conduct and initiating some town planning. But he lacked exibility and gifts of diplomacy. Kieft knew a great deal about the Indians, but that was book learning, not practical experience with nonwhite peoples or insight into their culture. He took his task as director extremely seriously. Although the director-general was a Company employee dispatched with a set of instructions, in the colony he was in fact all-powerful. He was the one who issued decrees and levied tariffs; all transactions crossed the desk of his secretary; and he, together with the colonial council, administered justice in the name of the WIC in both civil and criminal cases. But while Minuit and Van Twiller had made their decisions together with a few council members, Kieft drew all the power to himself. He allowed only one council member besides himself the right to vote, and gave himself two votes. This meant that the council always decided what Kieft wanted. The other members, ofcers of the WIC, were usually no more than spectators. A price would be paid for this later, during the Indian Wars.

The church on Manhattan There was one other power in the colony, however, more difcult to dene but no less real, namely the power of the Reformed church.58 Besides being the only form of public worship permitted in the colony, the dominant church was also the most important institution of culture. It regularly brought the population together, functioned like an information center, safeguarded the language and the cultural heritage, defended European values and promoted community spirit. Much more than in Europe, the church embodied the communitas. It performed its usual delegated task of establishing norms of proper public behavior, but in addition was closely linked to the Company. The WIC forbade all public church services other than the “Reformed religion in the ways

58 Charles E. Corwin, A manual of the Reformed Church in America (formerly Reformed Protestant Dutch Church) 1628–1922 (5th ed., New York 1922), 1–14; Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk; Frederick J. Zwierlein, Religion in New Netherland: A history of the development of religious conditions in the province of New Netherland 1623–1664 (Rochester, NY 1910); George L. Smith, Religion and trade in New Netherland: Dutch origins and American developments (Ithaca, NY 1973); Gerald F. De Jong, The Dutch Reformed Church in the American colonies (Grand Rapids, Mich. 1978); Firth Haring Fabend, Zion on the Hudson: Dutch New York and New Jersey in the age of revivals (New Brunswick, NJ & London 2000), 1–31.

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presently practiced here in this land”—that is, in the manner set forth by the synod of Dort, although with the preservation of freedom of conscience as guaranteed by article 13 of the Union of Utrecht (1579). “Servants of the church” in the colony were in the employ of the Company, ministers and comforters of the sick as well as schoolmasters. That was clearly stipulated from the earliest regulations right down to the revised Vryheden ende Exemptien (Freedoms and Exemptions) of July 19, 1640. But more generally church and state belonged together for the Calvinists. They formed an organic whole. The church taught the civil authorities how to organize the state in keeping with God’s order, while the state had to ensure that God’s commands were obeyed. This also dened the place of the minister: he stood beside the director in order to remind him of his duties, while the director had to do everything in his power to assist the minister in carrying out his duties in the congregation and among the heathen. Bogardus would interpret this literally. There was therefore no clear division of labor: the world for the director, the church for the minister. Each formally enjoyed autonomous authority in his own domain, but a moral authority (and thus also a moral obligation) in the domain of the other. This bipolar nature of moral authority in the colony meant that the director and the minister were forced to cooperate, but at times inevitably found themselves at loggerheads. The minister considered every moral misstep of the director a blot on the name of the church, while the director viewed every public step of the minister as a potential infringement on his authority, certainly if such a step was directed against his own actions. As long as the WIC governed New Netherland there was continual quarreling between the director and the minister. In that respect Bogardus was no different from the ministers before and after him. The authority of the minister derived its legitimacy from two sources: from his commission by the WIC and the classis, on the one hand, complete with written instructions detailing his duties, tasks, and rights; and on the other hand from the writings of church authorities who dened the ofce and spelled out for the minister how to act most wisely. Company ofcers also had to swear an oath to the States General. The version adopted in 1632, which would also have been presented to Van Twiller, read as follows: . . . we promise and swear that we will be loyal and true to the Lofty Members of the States General of the Free United Netherlands, as our highest and Sovereign Authority, His Excellency the Prince of Orange etc., as Governor, Captain, and Admiral General, and the Directors of

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the West India Company in the same lands, and that in all faithfulness and diligence, we will direct and administrate to our utmost ability all affairs and matters of the WIC both in trade and war.59

The Company ofcer also swore that he would accept no bribes or give anyone preferential treatment for reasons of kinship or friendship. He would engage in no private trade but strive for the prot of the WIC and follow his instructions. And if he should be called back, he would return immediately. The basic document for all Company employees was the Articulbrieff (Articles) of the WIC.60 It included a clear paragraph about religion and servants of the church. The rules of conduct were in the rst place intended for ships, but by extension also applied to the colonies. Cursing, swearing, and slander were forbidden on pain of a 10-stiver ne. No one was allowed to “reprimand, scold, or upset the minister or admonisher, or hinder him in any way in the exercise of his ofce or calling” (art. 16). At morning or evening prayers and during Bible readings everyone without exception was required to listen respectfully (art. 17) and no one was allowed to be absent (art. 18). Finally, on pain of being jailed for three days, it was expressly forbidden “to raise any issues or disputed points of religion” (art. 19). The ship was a religiously neutral space, and although religion played a pivotal role there, it was without ecclesiastical ties. The minister or admonisher was ofcially the preacher for the entire group, not the representative of a specic church, even though he used the books and rites of the dominant church. The rules of conduct adhered closely to the freedom of conscience as upheld in the Dutch Republic. As long as the colony of New Netherland had no legislation of its own, it was a similarly neutral space in which the minister was much more the representative of an undivided religious sphere than of a particular church. But the minister did have to restrict himself to the religious sphere! The instructions for ministers that the WIC adopted in Middelburg at the end of 1635 state explicitly that they should occupy themselves exclusively with religion (art. 6). They should express criticism of captains, skippers, commissioners, and other authorities “neither in their

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NAN, States General, n° 5753–I (August 21, 1632). Articulen ende ordonnantien ter vergaderinge vande Negenthiene der Generale Geoctroyeerde WestIndische Compagnie geresumeert ende ghearresteert (Amsterdam 1641) [copy in NAN, States General, n° 5759, f. 209; and in Royal Library, The Hague, shelfmark 1309 A 61], 2d title, art. 15–19 [f. 212]. 60

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preaching nor in public, or with such indication and particularization of the fact, persons, or ofce.” For the authorities may not become objects of “ridicule or disparagement by such rough folk as our sailors and soldiers are” (art. 10–11).61 The classis had its own distinct ideas about overseas assignments. Just as at home, ministers were expected to establish regular congregations among the colonists; but from the beginning we hear a second theme as well, namely that of proselytizing the indigenous peoples. An even clearer message came from the learned Reformed authors, who in the eyes of the classis were as important for the minister as the Bible. Udemans in particular had repeatedly made a powerful plea to send competent teachers to both of the Indies. In his view ministers sent abroad had to be even more capable than those at home, because service overseas was so much more demanding. They had to excel in godliness, be well-versed in matters of doctrine and discipline, and at the same time cautious, in order to earn the respect of rough sailors and self-willed authorities.62 What we now know of the church in New Netherland is based mainly on such normative sources. They tell us how the WIC envisioned the relations on paper and how the ministers or the classis viewed them, not the actual situation. Earlier authors often interpreted those sources literally. Albert Eekhof and Frederick Zwierlein, who wrote their histories of the church in New Netherland almost simultaneously nearly a century ago, offered different perspectives but shared the basic assumption that the Reformed church determined the religious life and the cultural color of the colony. Sixty years later George L. Smith expressly chose a different point of departure for his study of the relation between religion and commercial spirit in New Netherland. While the trading companies were originally founded on a mix of commercial and religious ideas, in the colonies themselves business interests soon gained the upper hand. For Smith the WIC was “rst and foremost a commercial enterprise to which the Reformed faith was appended as a godly afterthought.”63 Although Smith formulates his provocative thesis as a question, he does not doubt that the WIC in fact advocated religious tolerance, with the result that New Netherland, in contrast to New England, was a secular 61

NAN, States General, n° 5755–I (ad 1638, instruction of December 12, 1635). Godfried Udemans, ’t Geestelyck roer van ’t coopmans schip (2d ed., Dordrecht 1640), f. 148v°–156v°. 63 Smith, Religion and trade, 17. 62

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society at a very early point. The church was more peripheral than pivotal. The “Kulturkampf between predikanten [ministers] and merchants for the control of Dutch society,” as Smith pithily sketches the colonial conicts, was settled in favor of the merchants. Although they, too, proceeded from the assumption of a Calvinist state, that ideal was shunted to second place in situations of conicting interests or disputed authority. Prot came rst.64 While this may be true of the directors in the fatherland, it is doubtful that life was run along these lines in the colony itself. The intensity of the conict between Michaelius and Minuit, between Bogardus and both Van Twiller and Kieft, and between Backerus and Stuyvesant only makes sense if we assume that the two parties considered themselves competent in both domains, and that both parties were so convinced of the importance of church and religion as an instrument for ordering the colony that it was worth a frontal clash, despite the risk of splitting the community. Only then does it become clear why Kieft kept attacking his opponent so vehemently and at the same time persisted in seeking a solution to the conict. If Smith’s hypothesis of a pluriform, half-secular society were correct, Kieft could simply have ignored the church and left the minister to tend his ock. Oliver A. Rink used Smith’s thesis as the basis for his survey Holland on the Hudson. Although his study includes the “social” dimension, it lacks a thorough analysis of the religious and cultural factor in the development of New Netherland society. He merely claims that the WIC was actually indifferent towards the church, that it was not forthcoming in dispatching ministers, and that those sent overseas were usually a negative selection.65 That seems to me a hasty conclusion, just as Rink’s account of the ministers’ activities more generally betrays little sympathy for the church. Comforters of the sick were present on the ships at a very early point, and there was a regular minister at Fort Amsterdam when the minimal size of that congregation would hardly have warranted one. Bogardus’s appointment shows that the directors of the WIC realized as early as 1632 the importance of the cultural force that the church was. Is Rink’s image perhaps the result of a misconception about the task of the WIC and a lack of insight into the complex relations in the fatherland? Given the division of labor between

64 65

Ibid., 125. Rink, Holland, 77–78, 229–230.

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church and company, the responsibility for providing good ministers lay squarely with the consistory and the classis. The resolutions of these ecclesiastical bodies show clearly that it was not so much the WIC as the church that initially had great difculty nding suitable volunteers for the American colonies. We can, however, distinguish two phases in the relation between church and state in New Netherland—as nearly all of the authors have pointed out. The rst phase is the settling of the colony itself, the second the struggle for a pluriform, tolerant, but orderly society in the established colony. The turning point came, depending on the authors’ point of departure, somewhere in the period 1645–1655, in any case after Bogardus’s battle with director Kieft. The ministers Michaelius, Bogardus, and the latter’s successor Johannes Backerus belong to the rst phase, when the colony was still being established under the direction of the WIC, which followed the usual practice of trading companies by invoking the aid of the exclusive relation between church and state. According to Smith those attempts were bound to fail because neither the WIC nor the church had clearly articulated its intentions with the colony. The WIC was able but unwilling to do so, while the ministers were willing but unable. After the ministers had nally formulated their colonial project in 1655, they were frustrated once again because the WIC decided to chart a new course.66 As for the rst phase, Smith must have approached the sources with preconceived notions or read them only supercially. Michaelius was absolutely clear about his position. Moreover, as we shall see later, Bogardus’s actions can also be analyzed in a way that yields a coherent picture of his attempts to give the colonial society a specic form—under the pressure of events and in interaction with desires of the colonists, to be sure, but always clearly in line with his own ideas. The main hindrance to evaluating Bogardus’s activities is the disappearance of his own writings and other crucial documents, such as his defense of Marijn Adriaensen (1643) and his written rebuttals to Kieft’s philippic of January 2, 1646. Judgments made solely on the basis of Kieft’s accusation will certainly produce a distorted picture. Many historians have stumbled over that point and reduced Bogardus’s life to a series of disconnected anecdotes. He very likely authored the third and most subversive petition of the

66

Smith, Religion and trade, 131–141.

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Eight Men (the advisory board of Eight Heads of Families through which the free colonists tried to exert inuence on the governing of the colony), the one dated October 28, 1644. But even without that text, we shall see that Bogardus had a clear vision of colonial society that he resolutely tried to realize. His disillusionment on that point was intense, as Smith rightly recognized. The question, however, is whether a new approach to the attempts at community building in the rst phase of New Netherland’s existence does not also oblige us to view the last two decades with new eyes, to say nothing of the period after the takeover by the English in 1664. Kieft’s war crystallized the congregation into a cohesive interest group and made the more bottom-up administrative style fought for by some popular spokesmen in Holland a realistic alternative to Kieft’s top-down, regent-like government.67 This laid the foundations for a political development of which the congregation would reap the benets under Stuyvesant. It is certainly not true that the WIC neglected religious interests, as some have maintained.68 On the contrary, from the moment the WIC established itself on Manhattan the church was formally and prominently present there. After a short period of deliberation the Amsterdam consistory made its rst move on December 1623, dispatching only a comforter of the sick in the person of Bastiaen Jansz Crol (ca. 1595–1674).69 When he returned to Amsterdam almost a year later and reported on his travels, he pointed out that there were “impregnated women” in New Netherland who would soon be giving birth. Their children would have to be baptized. And for that a minister was needed.70 Consistory and classis did not comply immediately, thinking it too early for the colony—consisting of no more than a few dozen Company employees, soldiers and settlers—to have a congregation of its own. On his second trip to Manhattan, however, Crol was authorized to administer baptism, read the form for marriage, and deliver sermons from Bullinger’s Huys-boeck and other Calvinist authors, but without

67

For the Dutch regents and their management style, see J.L. Price, Holland and the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century (Oxford 1994); Maarten Prak, The Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century: The Golden Age (New York 2005). 68 Willem Frijhoff, ‘The West India Company and the Reformed Church: Neglect or concern?’, in: De Halve Maen 70:3 (1997), 59–68. 69 Corwin, Manual (5th ed., 1922), 3–5, 10; A. Eekhof, Bastiaen Jansz. Krol, krankenbezoeker, kommies en commandeur van Nieuw-Nederland (1595–1645) (The Hague 1910); Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, I, 28–32; NNBW, I, 1252–1254. 70 GAA, ARCA, n° 5, p. 231 (November 14, 1624).

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adding any words of his own. Together with a second comforter of the sick, Jan Huygen from Cleves, brother-in-law of the new director Peter Minuit, Crol set out for Manhattan again in the spring of 1625. Both soon gave up their position as comforter of the sick and left for Fort Orange, where Crol was appointed commissioner. In 1628 a fully qualied minister with many years of experience was sent to New Netherland: Jonas Michielsz or Michaelius (1584–after 1638).71 He emerges as the person who made it his task to establish a permanent Reformed congregation that would serve as the xed point of contact for the changing population of Company employees. A consistory was formed consisting of the minister, who acted as chairman, and two or three elders: director Peter Minuit, former comforter of the sick Jan Huygen, now the local storekeeper of the WIC, and his former colleague Bastiaen Crol, now commissioner at Fort Orange. Michaelius also set to work Christianizing the Indians, although he had no illusions about the conversion of adults. Despite the distance he kept between himself and the director, Michaelius soon came into conict with him. It was not long before he had identied the cardinal sin of the colony: the director was pulling the wool over the eyes of the Company by pursuing a policy that chiey beneted his own clan, and was using the laborers to promote his private interests at Company expense. Michaelius stayed one year longer than planned, but returned home in the winter of 1632, probably with the same ship as Peter Minuit. This meant a new minister was needed. And that would be Bogardus.

Contours of the congregation Bogardus’s congregation was not only spread out over a large area, it was also much more varied than those in comparable towns and villages in the fatherland. In rough and increasingly dangerous New Netherland the congregation at rst served as an important social binding agent. This is evident from the relatively large number of Reformed church members among the few thousand colonists, who represented a wide range of denominations. Although the earliest membership list of New

71 Corwin, Manual (5th ed., 1922), 6–9, 419–421; A. Eekhof, Jonas Michaëlius, founder of the Church in New Netherland: His life and work (Leiden 1926); Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, I, 33–49; NNBW, I, 1333–1335.

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Amsterdam dates only from 1649, entire pages of it are lled with names of persons we recognize from the sources as long-time residents of the town. In 1648 Dominie Backerus spoke of 170 members.72 And certainly not all of them could have been drunkards and blockheads, as the rigid minister maintained. It is actually more surprising that after years of war, dissension, and lawlessness, and with so many dissenters in the colony, the core congregation was still that large. In a colony where almost everyone acted out of selsh interests, one could at rst expect only “a few churchwardens” (pious churchgoers), as Van der Donck commented sardonically in 1656.73 This means that Bogardus must have been very active in building up his congregation. He had strong grassroots support. The exact size and character of the congregation cannot be determined without intensive prosopographic research. We would rst have to know who was living in the colony, where they came from, and the nature of their religious and cultural background. We do have a few isolated clues. Certainly from September 25, 1639 onward Bogardus kept a record of baptisms and marriages.74 It is unclear whether older records have disappeared or why he suddenly would have begun registering the names on that date, a good six years after his arrival. Was it perhaps the draft regulation for the West Indies churches of 1636 that prompted him to do so? Was it Kieft who decided to put things in order? Before 1636 the list of all the inhabitants which had to be sent to the fatherland every year might have been considered sufcient, for it could have included mutations.75 None of those lists has survived, but if that is indeed the reason, the institution of a church register of baptisms and marriages indicates a normalization of relations between the WIC and the congregation. The latter was gradually regaining an autonomous position. A striking detail here is that the minister’s wife, Anneke Jans, was the godmother of the rst child listed in the baptismal register, a daughter of Jacob Wolfertsz van Couwenhoven. Did that personal tie perhaps provide the impetus for starting the register?

72

GAA, ACA, n° 157, p. 208 (October 26, 1648). Van der Donck, Beschryvinge (1656), 97. 74 Thomas Grier Evans (ed.), Records of the Reformed Dutch Church in New Amsterdam and New York: Baptisms from 25 December [= September] 1639, to 27 December, 1730 (New York 1901; repr. 1968); Samuel Smith Purple (ed.), Marriages from 1639 to 1801 in the Reformed Dutch Church, New Amsterdam—New York City (New York 1890; repr. 1940). Unfortunately, the originals in Bogardus’s handwriting are lost. 75 Wieder, De stichting, 34, 129. 73

Fig. 28. View of New Amsterdam, before the construction of the church in the fort (1642). From: Beschrijvinghe van Virginia, Niew Nederlandt . . ., published by Joost Hartgers (Amsterdam, 1651). The inscription (“Fort New Amsterdam, on Manhattan”) is reversed.

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During Bogardus’s term of ofce there was an average of 43 baptisms per year, with a decline after the disastrous war of 1643–44 that brought many deaths and departures from the colony. Under normal circumstances this number of baptisms would yield a congregation of at least one thousand persons, old and young, black and white together. But in New Netherland the group must have been somewhat larger, since there were at rst relatively few women and, we can assume, a good many single men. The rst decades must therefore have produced relatively fewer children than in the Old World. And we should not forget that the baptized children came not only from New Amsterdam but—until the arrival of Dominie Johannes Megapolensis in 1642—from all of New Netherland, with its 185-mile perimeter. Although the large majority of the population lived in an area of 10 by 7 miles around Fort Amsterdam, the number of scattered settlements increased as well, at least until 1643.76 Unless the minister made regular rounds to members of his congregation and occasionally administered a home baptism, this undoubtedly means that in most cases the date of baptism is not identical with the date of birth. Living in New Netherland were not only whites but also a great many Indians, while the number of blacks, mostly slaves, increased steadily as well. The minister’s congregation comprised mainly whites and blacks. But even among the whites he could not take his authority for granted. The Jesuit refugee Isaac Jogues noted during his visit to Manhattan that formally only the Reformed religion was practiced in New Netherland, and he thought—mistakenly—that ofcially only Calvinists were admitted to the colony. But in fact, he added, those rules were brushed aside, and there were many religious minorities: Catholics, Lutherans, English Puritans, and Mennonites, among others.77 Kieft had proudly told him that the inhabitants spoke 18 different languages. To what extent was the Company church also a binding agent for dissenters? Did they call on the minister for baptisms and marriages? In many cases they did, that much is clear from the names

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NYHM, IV, 186–188 (February 27, 1643). Isaac Jogues, Novum Belgium: “Il n’y [a] d’exercice de Religion que de la Calviniste, et les ordres portent de n’admettre autre personne que Calvinistes, neanmoins cela ne se garde pas . . .” (NNN, 260). Texts by and on Jogues: Dean R. Snow, Charles T. Gehring & William A. Starna (eds.), In Mohawk country: Early narratives about a native people (Syracuse, NY 1996), 14–37 (quotation 31). 77

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in the baptismal register. But owing to the lack of precise research, full answers to these questions are still pending. The pastoral structure of the scattered congregation was certainly more complicated than the simple title of minister suggests. Brandt van Slichtenhorst, who was appointed director of Rensselaerswijck in 1647, for example, insisted that on Sundays and holidays the leaseholder of Rensselaerswijck at Catskill read to his household and employees from the Bible or a house postil, recite prayers and sing psalms.78 As more land was cleared and more settlements were added, similar practices must have developed elsewhere: prayer services without a minister. But even in New Amsterdam the situation was more complicated. By law, both public worship services and private religious meetings (conventicles) were the exclusive right of the Reformed religion. But the Reformed were not a homogeneous group. The rst group of settlers in 1624, in fact, consisted mainly of Walloons, which makes us wonder whether Dominie Bogardus may have conducted their church services in French, a language he could well have learned from his Woerden teacher Lucas Zas, master of French and Latin. The Presbyterians were much more numerous, however. In 1640 the Presbyterian minister Francis Doughty was already living in New Amsterdam.79 As a non-conformist, Doughty had been forced to ee rst to Massachusetts in 1637, then to Rhode Island because the hard-line Puritans judged his statements about baptism to be less than orthodox, and nally to New Netherland. There he in fact served the growing group of English-speaking colonists. In March 1642 Kieft granted him permission to found, together with the people of his denomination, an English colony, named Newtown, at Mespath on Long Island.80 The very next year during the war with the Indians it was burned to the ground. The English ed to New Amsterdam, where Doughty stayed on, although he did try his luck at Mespath again for a few months. Kieft allowed him to act as minister for the English on Manhattan, without a mandate from the WIC. As a Reformed sister congregation the English were allowed to hold their

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NYHM, III, 212–215 ( January 14, 1650). DRCHNY, I, 305–306, 334–335, 426–427; II, 142 ( June 28, 1640). On Doughty: NNN, 366–368; Jessica Cross, The evolution of an American town: Newtown, New York, 1642–1775 (Philadelphia 1983), 13, 44, 119; Zwierlein, Religion, 148–149, 162–175. 80 DRCHNY, XIV, 36–39 (March 28, 1642, in Latin). 79

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own public services.81 But because the group was too small to support its own minister, collections were taken up among the Hollanders as well. Doughty obtained permission to use the church in the fort, and the Company forwarded him almost 1,100 guilders for the purchase of various goods. Doughty and Bogardus seem to have cooperated closely, for at the communion service held in the summer of 1644, Doughty administered the Lord’s Supper and Bogardus preached the afternoon sermon.82 Doughty enjoyed explicit protection as a minister. When his compatriot Willem Gerritsz composed a satirical song about him and his daughter because of Doughty’s patroon-like behavior at Mespath, the culprit was pilloried at the fort “until the end of the English sermon.”83 Kieft refused to recognize Doughty’s patroon pretensions, however. He conscated his possessions, on which he owed large debts; and when Doughty announced that he would appeal Kieft’s decision, it was interpreted as an attack on Kieft’s sovereign rights. Doughty was imprisoned for 24 hours and given a 25-guilder ne. Not only the English were indignant; Kieft’s enemies also saw this as just one more example of his autocratic dealings. Adriaen van der Donck, who married Doughty’s daughter Mary in 1645, was especially outraged: “This deed we have always viewed as tyrannous, and considered a sign of sovereignty,” the jonker wrote in 1649.84 Stuyvesant eventually appointed Doughty minister of the new village of Vlissingen (Flushing), located beside Newtown. He was not a success there either and in 1655 left permanently for Virginia.85 In any case, Doughty was clearly an ally of Bogardus, not a rival. About the books Bogardus read in New Amsterdam, works that might reveal something of his personal religious development, his sermons, and his congregation, we know nothing denite. Like every minister, he would have taken a number of books with him—of the approved orthodox, pietistic, and practical sort that we have repeatedly encountered in earlier chapters—but no inventory has survived. We have, in fact, only a few inventories from the early years of the colony, and 81 Zwierlein, Religion, 144–147; Herman Harmelink III, ‘The ecumenical relations of the Reformed Church in America’, in: Journal of Presbyterian History 45 (1967), 71–94. 82 Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, pp. XXIII–XXIV. 83 NYHM, IV, 266–267 ( June 10, 1645); Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, 141–142. 84 NAN. States General, n° 12564–30A (Vertooch, July 28, 1649), pp. 56–57 (NNN, 334–335). 85 NNN, 397, 401.

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they contain much more evidence of poverty than of the prosperity that would have allowed for a well-lled bookshelf in a distant colony without book dealers.86 Only one inventory sheds some light on the literature which may have circulated in those early days, that of the estate of Teuntgen Jeuriaens (Slachboom), the young widow of the Danish sea captain Jonas Bronck (who bequeathed his name to the Bronx).87 Bronck came to Manhattan in 1639 from Amsterdam, where he had married Teuntgen the year before. He bought over 500 acres of land from the Indians and built on it the farm Emmaus, but died just a few years later. The estate was inventoried on May 6, 1643 with an eye to Teuntgen’s impending second marriage. Dominie Bogardus served as a witness, together with Jochem Pietersz Kuyter, a compatriot of Bronck and a friend of Bogardus. Both acted in their capacity as guardians of Bronck’s widow—a sign of close personal contact. We see immediately from the inventory that this was a case of a mixed marriage, similar to that of Bogardus. As a Dane, Bronck was undoubtedly raised as a Lutheran, and his Dutch wife as a Calvinist; with Bogardus and his wife the situation was reversed. Bronck’s books included all the basic works for a Lutheran believer (Bible, Psalter, catechism, and church history) and Teuntgen’s the corresponding set for Calvinists, as was also sent along with comforters of the sick. In addition there were a few religious titles without a confessional coloring and the odd item of secular literature, such as a children’s book in Danish and a set of navigation manuals. The books owned by Bronck give us some insight into the religious practice of a couple from different denominations. Husband and wife played equal roles here. Moreover, there were more than enough books for regular religious exercises at home, in both confessions: Bibles, sermons, manuals, ethical handbooks, prayer books, and comforting literature. Under such circumstances the value of attending church services lay less in what one could learn there than in the way the Word was preached and in the people one could meet. The church was perhaps more important as a public meeting place for residents of all denominations than as an institute for the religious instruction of one single confessional group.

86 Cf., for instance, NYHM, I, 320–322 ( Jacob Vernu, November 30, 1640), 323–328 (Vrouwtje Ides, April 15, 1641; inventory made in the presence of Bogardus); II, 358–360 (Aeltjen Jans, November 2, 1646). 87 NYHM, II, 121–125. On Bronck: G.V.C. Young, The founder of the Bronx (Peel, Isle of Man, 1981).

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God’s bulwark The obvious question now is how close did New Netherland stand to nearby New England, the paradise of the pious. In the perception of the English Puritans, the Dutch Republic as a Calvinist nation was a bulwark of true religion besieged by the papists.88 It was God’s own sanctuary, an idealized refuge for all persons persecuted for the true faith: from Bohemia, France, the Palatinate, and occasionally even from England. Just the reverse seems to have been true overseas. For the colonists from Massachusetts and the surrounding area, New Netherland was a den of iniquity, a land without law and order. The English colonists who in 1642 presented the States General with their claim to the territory of Connecticut, formally owned by the Dutch, put forward two decisive arguments: there were too few Dutch colonists to exploit the land; “furthermore they live there without rule, in a godlessness unbetting the Gospel of Christ.”89 Hardly a Puritan Walhalla, in other words. This becomes especially clear from the difference in attitude towards strong drink. In New Netherland all Company employees, including the minister, were avid, even heavy drinkers, while there was a strong taboo on such indulgence in New England. Captain David Pietersz de Vries, himself a sober man, tells with disgust what happened to the English minister’s servant in Hartford (Connecticut) in June 1639. This young man became drunk celebrating a meeting with an Englishman from his hometown on a ship newly arrived with a load of sweet Canary wine. As a punishment he was to be tied to a post and whipped in front of the church. De Vries had to negotiate long and hard in order to have him acquitted, and he remained skeptical about the possibility of enforcing such strict moral standards on the congregation. But the English arrogantly persisted in maintaining “that they were the Israelites, and that we in our colony were Egyptians.”90 It is unnecessary here to summarize the immense literature about group expectations in New England. In ofcial statements there was a perfect marriage between doctrine and life, commerce and religion, God and society. The colony was the new Israel, the prelude to the thousand-year reign of Christ on earth. It was, in short, Utopia. But 88 Marvin Arthur Breslow, A mirror of England: English Puritan views of foreign nations, 1618–1640 (Cambridge, Mass. 1970), 74–99. 89 NAN, States General, n° 5756, exh. August 9, 1642; cf. DRCHNY, I, 127–135. 90 De Vries, Historiael, 150–151 (NNN, 204).

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Utopia had to continually remind itself of its Christian destiny, and jolt the self-awareness of the elect if it showed signs of slumbering. Recent research has shown that the social diversity among the various English colonies was much greater than suggested by the dominant self-image of the past, and that the most homogeneous colonies were the ones most oriented towards the old continent. While the champions of Puritanism (the “speaking Aristocracy”) led God’s chosen nation from England to America and declared the continent sacred ground, the large majority of the population (the “silent Democracy”) lived in an ambiguous symbiosis of the old culture and the new.91 Slowly but surely, however, society there assumed forms of its own that would irrevocably distance the new land from the old. The tension between rhetoric and reality, between pretension and realization, between dogma and daily life was possibly even greater in New England than elsewhere. But that tension was also the attractive force of the Puritan adventure. The attempt to fathom God and to rival his immeasurable promises in an earthly kingdom may be a sign of pride, but it also testies to the conviction that life has a goal, and to the restless unwillingness to acquiesce in what is so disturbingly contingent. According to the Dutch sociologist H.P.M. Adriaansens, the collective coping with that tension, which took the form of a new covenant with God, lies at the basis of the American ethic of voluntarism. An integral element of Puritan thought, voluntarism now took shape in a polity that he labels “democratic theocracy.”92 As far as inspiration and orthodoxy are concerned, Dominie Bogardus was certainly a match for the Puritan ministers of Congregationalist New England. His use of the Lord’s Supper to separate good from evil, his lamentations about the sins of the congregation and the faults of its leaders—these were all formal elements of clerical concern documented time and time again in God-fearing New England as well, although they did not necessarily lead to greater piety in the colony. Bogardus must have found the voluntarism in the English colony and the idea of the covenant especially sympathetic. For those were core concepts in the thought of Willem Teellinck, the leading author of early Dutch pietism. Yet it remains puzzling why the ery theological quarrels in 91 In the words of Reverend Samuel Stone, at Hartford. Cf. Patricia Caldwell, The Puritan conversion narrative: The beginnings of American expression (Cambridge 1983), 79. 92 H.P.M. Adriaansens, ‘De oorsprong van het Amerikaans voluntarisme: The New England Way’, in: Sociale wetenschappen 23 (1981), 357–385.

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New England, in particular the so-called ‘antinomian controversy’ concerning free grace, apparently found no echo whatsoever in New Netherland. In 1642, Anne Hutchinson, the most ardent follower of minister John Cotton and the most famous of New England’s nonconformists, took refuge in the territory of the Weckquasgeeks in New Netherland (at present Westchester County), where she was murdered by the Indians in 1643, together with fteen other refugees settled in that place. There are no indications that any Dutch colonist, including the minister of Manhattan, took much notice.93 There are clear points of contrast with New England as well. In spite of the presence of several groups of refugees from New England, New Netherland was not intended as a refuge for persons persecuted or oppressed for religious reasons in Europe or elsewhere. Besides, the refugees established in the colony could not make the law. They remained marginal with respect to the colony’s civic and religious policy. Enthusiastic religious leaders like Pieter Cornelisz Plockhoy, a Mennonite from Zierikzee (1620–1700), might later nd extra opportunities there for exploiting their talents, but they were in fact strongly opposed to clerical power.94 The colonists of New Netherland were Company employees, traders and adventurers, farmers in search of a better future. The religious ideal came second. Not a motive for emigration, it was at most a model for establishing the new, democratic society—as conceived for New Netherland along secular lines by Dr. Franciscus van den Enden in his revolutionary Vrye Politijke Stellingen en Consideratien van Staat (Free Political Theses and Considerations of State, 1665)—or for a new type of settlement, free of paternalistic interference by the trading companies, with responsibility for its own affairs and with colonial self-government.95 But when it came to realizing that ideal, the colonists of New Netherland could in no way match the zeal of the refugees who shaped New England out of their religious vision.

93

Cf. Michael P. Winship, Making heretics: Militant Protestantism and free grace in Massachusetts, 1636 –1641 (Princeton & Oxford 2002), 243. 94 Leland Harder & Marvin Harder, Plockhoy from Zurik-zee: The study of a Dutch reformer in Puritan England and colonial America (Newton, Kansas 1952); Jean Seguy, Utopie coopérative et oecuménisme: Pieter Cornelisz. Plockhoy van Zurik-zee 1620–1700 (Paris & The Hague 1968). 95 [Fr. van den Enden], Vrye Politijke Stellingen en Consideratien van Staat (Amsterdam 1665), new ed. by W. Klever (Amsterdam 1992); ’t Verheerlickte Nederland door d’Herstelde Zee-vaart (s.l. 1659) [Knuttel 8176].

CHAPTER ELEVEN

A NEW NETHERLAND FAMILY

Marriage Evert Willemsz committed himself permanently to New Netherland when he married a Norwegian colonist there.1 At a rather late point, well over the age of thirty, he chose as his wife the widow Anneke Jans—not a large landholder, as she has often been portrayed, but still one of the few women who owned a farm.2 With ve children from her recently deceased husband, it was reasonable for her to remarry, and perhaps even necessary for the survival of her family. On the other hand, the initial scarcity of women in the colony made every widow highly sought after as a marriage partner. Actually Evert’s choice is more puzzling than hers: a mother of many children, farmer’s widow, Norwegian by birth, with a different mother tongue, and Lutheran besides. For our

1 On Bogardus in America: A. Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk in Noord-Amerika 1624–1664 (2 vols., The Hague 1913), I, 50–67, summarized in NNBW, I, 386–389; Appleton’s Cyclopedia of American Biography, I (New York 1888), 300–301; Charles E. Corwin, A manual of the Reformed Church in America ( formerly Reformed Protestant Dutch Church) 1628–1922 (5th ed., New York 1922), 10–14, 258–259; Dictionary of American Biography, II (1929), 406–407; Quirinus Breen, ‘Domine Everhardus Bogardus’, in: Church History 2 (1933), 78–90; Willem Frijhoff, ‘Dominee Bogardus als Nieuw-Nederlander’, in: Jaarboek van het Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie 50 (1996), 36–68; American National Biography, III (1999), 104–105 (by Samuel Willard Crompton). The rampant Bogardus and Anneke Jans mythology of nineteenth-century New York, summarized by John Reynolds Totten, ‘Anneke Jans (1607–8?–1663) and her two husbands, Roelof Jans (or Jansen) and Rev. (Domine) Everardus Bogardus and their descendants to the third generation inclusive’, in: NYGBR 56:3 (1925), 201–243, has been thoroughly corrected by George Olin Zabriskie, ‘The founding families of New Netherland. Nos. 5 and 6: The Roelefs and Bogardus families’, in: De Halve Maen 47:3 (1972) to 48:3 (1973), passim, also published as ‘Anneke Jans in fact and ction’, in: NYGBR 104 (1973), 65–72, 157–164. Full and reliable genealogical data are supplied by William Brower Bogardus, Dear ‘Cousin’. A charted genealogy of the descendants of Anneke Jans Bogardus (1605–1663) to the 5th generation—and of her sister, Marritje Jans (Wilmington, Ohio 1996). A reference guide to earlier literature: William Brower Bogardus, Anneke Jans-Bogardus and Adam Brouwer research aid bibliography (Wilmington, Ohio, 1989). For the Bogardus family, see the genealogy at the end of this volume. 2 I use in this book the name by which she is currently known in America. In the seventeenth century, her name was spelled Annetgen, Annetie, or in similar forms.

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minister, Anneke certainly had many strikes against her. We are almost forced to conclude that there were very few eligible women to choose from at that moment. The rst decades brought no unmarried women to the colony, certainly none in the service of the WIC, and initially no free colonists either. Women came with their husbands or other family members, or they grew up in the colony. But around 1638 there were still very few girls of marriageable age in New Netherland. Only after the war, when the trading post became a full-edged colony, did the situation change rapidly. For Evert a farmer’s widow was still the only choice. Implicitly he thus also chose for a permanent function overseas. His marriage made him a colonist. Anna Ians, as she signs her name later, had rst immigrated with her mother Tryn (or in the diminutive form customary for women, Tryntgen) Jonas from Norway to Amsterdam and from there she went to the New World.3 Did Tryn cross the ocean together with her daughter? Or was she already living in New Amsterdam, with her other daughter Marritgen, who married the ship’s carpenter Thymen Jansz around 1632? Although Tryn Jonas was present at Anneke’s wedding in Amsterdam in April 1623, she does not appear in the records there as a baptismal witness for her children, not even for the daughter who was named after her in 1629. It is quite possible that Tryn had already left for America with a (second) husband who left no traces in the archives owing to an early death. She certainly could not have lived on the small gratuity she received from the WIC for her services as midwife: that was more likely a supplement to her husband’s income, or to other earnings. This could explain how Anneke Jans and her rst husband, the sailor Roelof Jansz, hit on the idea of seeking a better future with their children in the New World. It would also be in keeping with Oliver Rink’s nding that during the rst three decades there were never three generations immigrating together.4 As a midwife hired by the WIC, Tryn served the families of Company employees. It is possible that she was already dispatched with the rst group of colonists, in or soon after 1624. Her daughter Anneke was married by then, and her other daughter Marritgen may have traveled with her. She must have been forty to fty years old at the time. But 3 On these persons, see also John O. Evjen, Scandinavian immigrants in New York, 1630–1674 (Minneapolis 1916; repr. Baltimore 1972), 89–110. 4 Oliver A. Rink, Holland on the Hudson: An economic and social history of Dutch New York (New York 1986), 139–171.

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Fig. 29. Anonymous portrait, considered by family tradition to represent Anneke Jans. Painting on wood, early 17th century. [Private collection; courtesy of William B. Bogardus, Wilmington, Ohio].

in those rst years there could not have been much work for her in America. She was certainly paid no more than the 100 guilders her successor received in 1650.5 But a small house was built for her, and in February 1644 she acquired the title to her property on Perelstraet (Pearl Street).6 As late as 1644 Tryntgen, who was evidently unable to write, scratched a clumsy X with a quill pen under a declaration in which Hillegont Joris, a single mother, identied rst a steersman and then a skipper as the father of her baby.7 We happen to know that for

5 NYPL, New Netherland Papers: Tractement der Militie en Predicanten, 1650 (Gehring, no 551). 6 Cf. NYHM, I, 109 (March 22, 1639); LP, 26, nr. GG 90. 7 NYHM, II, 234 ( July 7, 1644), for the signature, see the original document in NYSA, DCM, II, 118a (g. 30 hereafter).

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this extremely fast birth Tryntgen had arrived too late. On September 21 of that year she—together with director Kieft, fiscaal Van der Hoykens, her son-in-law Bogardus and daughter Marritgen—served as a witness at the baptism of her rst grandchild, Hans Kierstede Jr. This is the last we hear of her. In April 1645, however, a landowner is identied as her neighbor on Perelstraet, which could mean that she was still alive at the time.8 In the autumn of 1635 Tryntgen submitted a written request to the Amsterdam chamber for “some betterment and a few necessities.”9 The minutes do not reveal a decision on the matter, but we can safely assume that her request for higher remuneration had little effect. The WIC was known to be one of the poorest paying employers of the Republic. We know that she even had to do without a salary for a considerable period, for when Dominie Bogardus left for the Netherlands in the summer of 1647 he took with him an authorization by his sister-in-law Marritgen Jans and her second husband Dirck Cornelisz van Wensveen (who signed with a cross) to claim from the WIC the 245 guilders, 2 stivers and 8 pence which his mother-in-law had earned in her function as midwife, as recorded in the Maentgeltboeck (salary book) nr. F, fol. 17.10 Because Evert died en route, the sisters Anneke and Marritgen Jans, widows of Dominie Bogardus and carpenter Van Wensveen respectively, gave a new power of attorney to Wouter van Twiller on August 4, 1648.11 Apparently to no avail, for one year later Anneke Jans authorized Evert’s brother Cornelis Willemsz Bogaert to claim and collect the back payments that the WIC owed her mother and her second husband, as well as everything that might be due to Evert or herself from inheritances or other sources.12 Cornelis must have been unsuccessful as well, for in March 1650, in Amsterdam, Van Twiller passed his power of attorney on to the surgeon Hans Kierstede, husband of Anneke Jans’s oldest daughter Sara.13 Kierstede, as an educated man and, after the shipwreck of Dominie Bogardus, head of the family, was probably delegated to

8

LP, 121. Bogardus represents her on September 15, 1644: NYHM, IV, 238–

239. 9

NAN, OWIC, 14, f. 96v° (November 26, 1635). NYHM, II, 471–272 (after August 10, 1647), see the original document in NYSA, DCM, II, 163e. 11 On August 29, 1648, Marritje turned the power of attorney over to the merchants Willem Turck and Seth Verbrugge: NYHM, III, 23–24 (August 17, 1649). 12 NYHM, III, 149–150. 13 GAA, NA, 1093, f. 343 (March 25, 1650). 10

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Fig. 30. Declaration by Tryntgen Jonas, as New Amsterdam midwife, on the paternity of Hillegont Joris’s child, July 7, 1644. [New York State Archive, Dutch Colonial Manuscripts, 2:118a].

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go to Amsterdam and clear up once and for all the unresolved nancial issues, the legacies of Tryntgen Jonas and Roelof Jansz as well as that of Dominie Bogardus himself. He very likely paid a visit to his uncle Cornelis Bogaert in Leiden, and was thus the only relative from America who made his personal acquaintance. However it was resolved, no one in this story became rich from the WIC. Anneke, as already mentioned, had been married before. On April 1, 1623, just after young Evert had been delivered from his second trance, “Anna Jans from Vleckere in Norway” and “Roeloff Janssoon of Maesterlant” applied for a marriage license, and on April 18 they were married in the Nieuwe Kerk (New Church).14 Both were living near the St. Anthonispoort (St. Anthony’s Gate), in the sailors’ quarter. Anneke’s mother, who shared her house, was present as well. On this occasion she is referred to as Tryn Roeloffs, but later always went by the name Tryn Jonas. Considering that Anneke named one of her Bogardus sons Jonas, we can assume that Jonas was the name of Anneke’s father, Tryn’s husband, and Roelof the name of Tryn’s father, Anneke’s grandfather. This is also evident from Anneke’s patronymic “Jans[daughter],” the Dutch form of the Scandinavian “Jonas[daughter].” Both Anneke and Roelof Jansz came from Norway and were undoubtedly Lutheran, for their children were given a Lutheran baptism. Their marriage in the Reformed church should not mislead us here. The couple acted in keeping with the custom of Scandinavia, where it was compulsory to marry in the public, Lutheran, church, which also represented the state. Unfortunately the marriage register of the Lutheran congregation for precisely this decade has disappeared, which means there is no way to determine whether the marriage was also solemnized in the Lutheran church. Anneke’s mother Tryn Jonas is later said to have come from Marstrand, the island where her son-in-law was born.15 Was this just a careless mistake of a busy clerk, or does it perhaps explain how Roelof Jansz came to know his future bride—in the circle of his fellow islanders? Anneke, eighteen years old at the time of her marriage, was born around 1605 on the island of Flekkerøy, just outside Kristiansand. Roelof, aged twenty-one and a sailor, had been living in Amsterdam for more than three years, which means that he left home for the big,

14 15

GAA, DTB, 427, p. 477 (marriage license); 989, p. 275 (marriage). NYHM, II, 471 (after August 10, 1647).

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wide world at the age of eighteen. His parents may have already died, at least they were not living in Amsterdam, but he did have relatives there, for he took with him as a witness his neeve (cousin or nephew) Jan Gerritsz—in view of Roelof ’s age probably a full cousin rather than a nephew. Roelof must have been born around 1602 on Marstrand, a small but strategically located island guarding the passage between the Skagerrak and the Kattegat, just north of the city of Gothenburg, which was founded precisely in those years with the help of Dutch architects after the model of Amsterdam. Marstrand, in times past a ourishing shing port, was then Norwegian territory; since the Peace of Roskilde (1658) it has belonged to Sweden. In Amsterdam the name Marstrand was usually bastardized to Masterland. The metropolis of Amsterdam attracted countless foreigners, not only Southern Netherlanders and Germans but also Scandinavians, who had developed close ties with the world-class harbor through centuries of Baltic trade and wood shipping. In the rst quarter of the seventeenth century alone 724 brides and grooms of Scandinavian origin were married in Amsterdam, 36 of whom came from Marstrand.16 The large majority of the men were sailors: 89% of the 376 bridegrooms from Flekkerøy and 92% of the 675 from Marstrand who applied for a marriage license before 1716. The large-scale migration from the two small islands is not surprising. The only employment was at sea, and Amsterdam was for many decades the natural labor market for seamen, certainly for the route to the Baltic. Most of the migrants had little or no schooling; they were either poor farmers or rough sailors who knew the ropes. Roelof Jansz would demonstrate these qualities himself. Following the stream of his fellow-islanders, he soon found himself in Amsterdam. He signed the marriage license form with a clumsy initial R—proof that he was unable to write and at most had some rudimentary reading skill. Anneke Jans signed with a simple X. In Amsterdam Roelof had found a bride in his own Norwegian circles, perhaps through their common Lutheran church, and he stayed on

16 S. Hart, ‘Geschrift en getal. Onderzoek naar de samenstelling van de bevolking van Amsterdam in de 17e en 18e eeuw, op grond van gegevens over migratie, huwelijk, beroep en alfabetisme’, in: S. Hart, Geschrift en getal. Een keuze uit de demograsch-, economisch- en sociaal-historische studiën op grond van Amsterdamse en Zaanse archivalia, 1600–1800 (Dordrecht 1976), 115–181; Erika Kuijpers, Migrantenstad: immigratie en sociale verhoudingen in zeventiende-eeuws Amsterdam (Hilversum 2005); Kariin Sundsback (European University Institute, Florence) is currently preparing a PhD dissertation on the female immigration from Norway to the early modern Northern Netherlands.

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there with her. Their three daughters were born in Amsterdam and baptized as Lutherans: Lijntje in 1624, Sara in 1627, Tryntje in 1629. Lijntje died shortly before the family sailed for New Netherland.17 But there would later be two more daughters (Sytgen and Annetje) and a son ( Jan). Did the growing family bring with it a growing need for permanence? It is unclear whether Roelof Jansz continued going to sea after his marriage. The milieu remains vague as well, because the many homonyms make it impossible to identify individuals with any certainty. The only thing we can say for sure is that the Scandinavian emigrants in Amsterdam could rely on the support of relatives, and that family ties remained intact abroad. Roelof and Anneke had no special ties with Holland, however. They could seek their future elsewhere without many regrets. And that opportunity presented itself in 1630.

Rensselaerswijck When the WIC accepted the principle of intensive colonization on June 7, 1629 and the shareholders gave permission to found settlements in the form of patroonships, with a feudal structure and special liberties for trade and agriculture, the wealthy Amsterdam jeweler Kiliaen van Rensselaer was one of the rst interested parties.18 He was also the driving force behind that decision. A patroon (both owner and director) was required to bring fty colonists aged fteen or older to the settlement within four years, on pain of losing his concession. In

17 Perhaps the six-year-old child of Roeloff Janss, on the Heilige Wegh, that was buried in the Carthusian cemetery on December 16, 1629: GAA, DTB, 1147, p. 31. 18 Among the numerous studies on Rensselaerswyck I mention here: N. de Roever, ‘Kiliaen van Rensselaer en zijne kolonie Rensselaerswyck’, in: Oud-Holland 8 (1890), 29–74, 241–296; J.S.C. Jessurun, Kiliaen van Rensselaer van 1623 tot 1636 (The Hague 1917); Samuel G. Nissenson, The patroon’s domain (New York 1937); Leonie van Nierop, ‘Rensselaerswyck 1629–1704’, in: Tijdschrift voor geschiedenis 60 (1947), 1–39, 187–219; Donna Merwick, Possessing Albany 1630–1710: the Dutch and English experiences (Cambridge 1990); Janny Venema, Beverwijck: A Dutch village on the American frontier, 1652–1664 (Hilversum & Albany 2003). The Dutch archive of the Rensselaer family is now in the Scheepvaartmuseum at Amsterdam (Rensselaer’s Letter Book has been integrally published in VRBM); the archive of the patroonship Rensselaerswyck is in the NYSL. On this family: W. de Vries, ‘De Van Rensselaers in Nederland’, in: De Nederlandsche Leeuw 66 (1949, 150–172; F. Van Rensselaer, The Van Rensselaers in Holland and America (New York 1956). Janny Venema is currently preparing a biographical study on Kiliaen van Rensselaer.

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exchange he acquired a number of seigniorial rights which turned him into a miniature prince in that distant land—that, at least, was how Rensselaer saw it. But as lord of the land the patroon also had obligations. In a letter of May 1635 to his schout (bailiff ) Jacob Albertsz Planck, Kiliaen deftly sketched the difference of opinion between the two most important factions within the WIC: “We seek to populate the land and gradually propagate the teaching of the Holy Gospel by means of a large number of people, they [the other directors] on the contrary, are dazzled by prots from pelts with few people.”19 Intensive cultivation and permanent colonization, with a religious goal in the background, as opposed to extensive trade contacts with immediate prot but without missionary zeal. From the start Rensselaer had been the leading proponent of the patroon system. The son of a military ofcer in the service of the States General, Kiliaen van Rensselaer (1586–1643) hailed from a family of landowners, perhaps landed gentry, near the town of Nijkerk in the Veluwe, the northern district of the province of Gelderland. His activities offer a prime example of the importance of kinship, friendship, patronage, and network formation for a successful life strategy in early modern times. As a jeweler working in Amsterdam rst for his well-to-do uncle Wolfert van Bijler and later in partnership with Van Bijler’s nephew Jan van Wely Jr. (murdered at The Hague in 1616), he always maintained close ties with his home area. His rst wife was the daughter of Van Bijler, his second the daughter of Van Wely. Both the Van Bijlers and the Van Welys came from the village of Barneveld in his native region. Other parts of the Veluwe district, the town of Nijkerk and the surrounding area, were home not only to various tenants and civil servants of Rensselaerswijck, but also to Kiliaen’s nephew Wouter van Twiller, who owed his appointment as director-general of New Netherland in 1632 to the inuence of his uncle. Also, the grandson of the Nijkerk bailiff, Kiliaen’s grandnephew Arent van Corlaer or Curler (1620–1667) served as commissioner in Rensselaerswijck from 1638 to 1645; after his return from the Netherlands in 1647 he became a tenant and in 1661/62 founded the town of Schenectady not far from Fort Orange. The size and cohesion of the Nijkerk group proved one of the most important factors contributing to the permanence and balance of the colony.

19

VRBM, 314 (May 24, 1635).

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Rensselaer had from the outset shown great interest in North America. Although he never visited New Netherland and often underestimated the practical problems, he had a prophetic eye for the potential of the new land. By 1624 he already held WIC shares worth 18,200 guilders, and had persuaded others to invest as well: his housemaid Aeltgen Henricx (50 guilders), business partners Jan and Thomas van Wely and their mother (together 15,400 guilders), relatives and friends, such as the Nijkerk minister Johan Switter[ius] (1,500 guilders), and the local bailiff Goossen van Curler (2,100 guilders).20 In 1630 Kiliaen’s own estate was valued at 50,000 guilders, but his second marriage with the heiress of the immensely wealthy Van Wely had at least quadrupled his available capital.21 Already in 1625 he was appointed a director of the WIC on behalf of the principal investors in the Amsterdam chamber, where he served in the commission for New Netherland. In April 1625 he was one of the three signatories of the instructions for director Willem Verhulst, which provided for the introduction of arable farming and stockbreeding on Manhattan.22 He remained in function until 1631, when his term of ofce expired. Together with the moderately orthodox Albert Coenraetsz Burgh (replaced by the strict Counter-Remonstrant Johan de Laet in 1631), Samuel Godijn, and Samuel Blommaert, he formed the core of the faction in the chamber that favored intensive colonization of New Netherland.23 On November 19, 1629 the four directors entered a partnership for the purpose of founding an agricultural colony on the North (Hudson) River, under the protection of the Company’s Fort Orange (Albany). They were joint owners of the patroonship, but Rensselaer considered himself the only one vested with jurisdiction, and functioned as the actual leader. His share was also the largest and soon increased to a controlling interest of three-fths. Former comforter of the sick Crol, who spent the years 1626 to 1629 as a WIC commissioner at Fort Orange, had probably informed Rensselaer about the possibilities there on one of his return trips to

20

NAN, OWIC, 18*, f. 26, 128–129, 148, 150, 167, 227. J.G. Frederiks and P.J. Frederiks, Kohier van den tweehonderdsten penning voor Amsterdam en onderhorige plaatsen over 1631 (Amsterdam 1890), 22; Rink, Holland, 192–198. 22 Wieder, De stichting, 147. 23 On Burgh and Blommaert: Johan E. Elias, De vroedschap van Amsterdam, 1578–1795 (2 vols., Haarlem 1903), I, 327, 373; Van Cleaf Bachman, Peltries or plantations? The economic policies of the Dutch West India Company in New Netherland, 1623–1639 (Baltimore 1969), 161–166. 21

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the Netherlands. In any case, the jeweler made him his agent at Fort Orange. With Crol’s mediation, he purchased from the Mahicans in August 1630 and May 1631 nearly 6,000 acres of land, most of it uncultivated, around Fort Orange. It was partly through his inuence that Crol was appointed director-general of New Netherland the following year. The colony at Fort Orange had in the meantime been named Rensselaerswijck. Rensselaer considered himself the only legal ruler of the purchased area. As a vassal of the States General he also wanted to exercise all sovereign rights there—a pretension that would repeatedly lead to clashes with the Company ofcials, and from 1648 onward to a sharp conict with director Pieter Stuyvesant. Formally the colony was a ef in perpetuity of the States General, but Rensselaer behaved like a miniature sovereign. Without realizing it, Rensselaer had appropriated the safest part of New Netherland. His patroonship actually functioned as a neutral buffer between two archenemies, the Mohawks (an Iroquois tribe) and the Mahicans (an Algonquin tribe). When settling the area, the Dutch had concluded a general peace treaty. Even during the slaughterous war of Kieft the neutrality of the patroonship was respected by all parties. Rensselaer wasted no time and appointed two tenants, called bouwmeesters (tenant farmers), even before the purchase was made. Wolfert Gerritsz van Couwenhoven, from the village of Hoogland near Amersfoort, was hired on January 16, 1630. He had come to New Netherland already in 1625 and rst leased a Company farm. He had the necessary experience. Couwenhoven became the tenant of the rst farmstead, called Rensselaersburch, and was considered the chief bouwmeester. He would reside there only in the summer and would in addition continue running his Company farm on Manhattan. Roelof Jansz of Masterlandt must have been hired a short time later as bouwmeester of the second farmstead, De Laetsburch (named after the principal shareholder Johan de Laet), on a four-year contract that would expire in 1634. Neither that contract nor that of Roelof ’s farmhand has been found in Rensselaer’s Letter Book, however. Perhaps it was only an exact copy of the rst contract? Or was it drawn up at a different time from that of Wolfert Gerritsz? On March 21, 1630 the rst colonists set sail from the island of Texel on De Eendracht (The Concord) and arrived in New Amsterdam on May 24, 1630.24 It is unclear whether Roelof and his family were 24

VRBM, 805–806.

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Fig. 31. Detail of the oldest map of Rensselaerswyck, showing the site of De Laetsburch (in the center, opposite Fort Orange), about 1632. [After the copy in A.J.F. van Laer, ed., The Van Rensselaer Bowier Manuscripts (Albany, 1908)].

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part of that group. A memo by Rensselaer dated July 20, 1634 indicates that Roelof, his wife Annetgen, two daughters Sara and Tryntgen, and two hired hands arrived in 1630, but there is no mention of the ship.25 Did another ship sail later that year perhaps? Certain in any case is that Rensselaer rst had his eye on Brant Peelen from his hometown of Nijkerk for the position of bouwmeester on the second farmstead, but then changed his mind in favor of Roelof Jansz. This may have been because Roelof and his two Norwegian hired hands, Claes Claessen and Jacob Goyversen, formed a more homogeneous team with a better guarantee for good management. Perhaps also because he felt some obligation to Anneke Jans, as we shall soon see. The two farmhands were later informed that they were also hired for four years, starting from the date of their arrival in the colony, not from that of their contract.26 Otherwise Roelof might end up without farm laborers towards the end of his contractual period. A note in the surviving remnant of the earliest accounts book of Rensselaerswijck suggests that Roelof did sail on a later ship: on May 17, 1630 “Roelof Janss. van Masterlant 2e bou[w]meester,” received an advance on his contracted annual salary of 180 guilders that he “will earn with his family.”27 If his arrival was indeed delayed, that could also explain the slow start of his farm. Roelof took his wife and three children with him. And his wife may have been pregnant, since their daughter Sytgen was born soon after their arrival in New Netherland. That was in itself quite exceptional. Theirs was the rst family to come to Rensselaerswijck, and during Roelof ’s service at De Laetsburch it was the only one with several children.28 The entire rst year Anneke Jans was the only woman of the patroonship, which already comprised ten men. Later, too, she remained one of the very few women. Life could not have been easy for her. At rst there were only two large farmsteads in Rensselaerswijck. They were worked by the tenants and their farmhands. On January 12, 1631 Marijn Adriaensen from Veere (province of Zeeland) was hired as well, specically for the cultivation of tobacco. Roelof ’s farmhouse lay diagonally opposite Fort Orange, on the east side of the North River in the land of Gesmesseeck, which Rensselaer formally purchased on July

25 26 27 28

VRBM, 308. VRBM, 285 ( July 20, 1634). NYSL, Van Rensselaer Manor Papers, box 31. Rink, Holland, 146–147, table 6.1.

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27, 1631 from the Mahican chief Nawanemith.29 With a European-style sovereignty claim in the back of his mind, Rensselaer referred to it as the “free seigniory of Semezeeck” (presently the Rensselaer precinct of Albany). The river was full of sh, especially pike and sturgeon. A wide assortment of birds populated the riverbanks: ducks, geese, swans, cranes, and turkeys. Deer and wolves lived in the forest, and the neighboring Indians were willing to sell them venison. Besides the stone farmhouse with its wooden grain barn and sheepfold, the farm included a haystack, a small sailboat, a watermill, a “crystal mountain” (which must have thrilled the jeweler Rensselaer), and many “beautiful woodlands”—in total almost 200 acres. The farmhouse De Laetsburch was built in 1631, probably of wood, for it burned down almost immediately “through an accident.” Its reconstruction as a “stone house” mobilized almost all the available labor in the small colony until the end of 1631. The nished product was a sizable structure, 80 feet long, with a threshing oor 25 feet wide, and a height of 12 feet under the attic beams.30 Despite all these known facts, one question remains mysteriously unanswered. A careful reading of the few surviving documents leaves one with the distinct impression that Roelof Jansz had some advantage with Rensselaer over other colonists. Although hired at a late point, he was given preference to Rensselaer’s condant Peelen and was immediately appointed bouwmeester. Despite poor business results later, Rensselaer wanted to keep him on, and when Roelof died, his widow had her debts cancelled for a reason Rensselaer did not wish to put in writing. What possessed the orthodox Protestant Kiliaen, a modern-minded agricultural entrepreneur who scrupulously guarded his material interests and looked for employees mainly in his own circle, to hire a foreign sailor for the position of tenant farmer in a distant land? As a resident of Amsterdam, Roelof must have had virtually no experience in agriculture in spite of his rural background in Norway, and he was of the wrong denomination besides. A short time later Rensselaer showed himself to have very high standards when it came to new tenants: they had to be “competent . . . in cultivating the land, have a good understanding of the same” and “themselves also put their

29 30

VRBM, 307; LP, 2–3, no GG 4. VRBM, 309 ( July 20, 1634).

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hand to the plow.”31 How had Roelof Jansz and Anneke Jans come into contact with Kiliaen van Rensselaer? Through Anneke’s mother perhaps, assuming she had already been hired as a midwife for New Netherland? Through advertising the jeweler had undertaken for his settlement? Through the recruitment circuit? Or through chance relations in the neighborhood? Rensselaer recruited more colonists among Scandinavian seamen. And he soon spelled out the concrete advantage of doing so: such men could work their way across the ocean as sailors, saving the cost of their passage, while the patroon had to pay the fare for the farmers.32 But aside from that, Hollanders for decades showed little interest in the New Netherland adventure. Besides a rather shadowy contingent of British subjects, the colony consisted mainly of two ethnic groups: farmers from the Gelderland-Utrecht valley and Scandinavian seamen. The Gelderland-Utrecht group was attracted by the prospects the new land offered to farmers who at home were burdened with extremely heavy taxes and in addition were suffering from the Spanish invasion and enemy occupation of Amersfoort and surroundings under Count Montecuculi in 1629. That misery, at least, explains why ten years later a number of Utrecht farmers, “seeing that the taxes on the land are becoming increasingly heavy, so that a head of a family can hardly earn a living from it,” requested permission from the States General to go to the New World. Roelof Jansz’s farmhands Claes Claessen and Jacob Goyversen, however, both came from Flekkerøy.33 Had their fellow islander Anneke Jansz recruited them herself ? That would be in keeping with Rensselaer’s later requirement that each bouwmeester take with him two hired hands and a boy “who understood farming.”34 But these two men were also sailors without any farming experience to speak of. That was also true of the three illiterate sailors from Flekkerøy, Copenhagen, and Hillesund respectively, “Normans” hired by Rensselaer in July 1631 to build a sawmill and a malt mill at the waterfall on the Tawasentha (Meulenkill, later Red Mill Creek), not far from De Laetsburch.35 Roelof and Anneke lived surrounded by compatriots and could get by with speaking only their mother tongue. For Rensselaer the intention

31 32 33 34 35

VRBM, VRBM, VRBM, VRBM, VRBM,

604 (February 12, 1642). 186–189 ( July 2, 1631). 222 ( July 20, 1632), cf. 805–806. 604 (February 12, 1642). 186–191 ( July 2, 1631).

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to work as a pioneer and to bear the necessary hardship would have been the deciding factor. But in the case of Roelof and Anneke there must have been other considerations as well. Unfortunately we can do no more than speculate here. One plausible explanation is that perhaps Anneke Jans, like so many young Scandinavian immigrants, had worked as a housemaid, and if Rensselaer had been her employer, he may have incurred an obligation to her. That would also explain why he later canceled her debt. Despite Rensselaer’s condence in him, Roelof Jansz soon found himself in difculties. The patroon had provided him with four horses and eleven sheep. And from Gerrit Theunissen de Reus (or De Reux), a young farmer from the Nijkerk area who had managed a Company farm on Manhattan, Rensselaer bought for him a few cows and pigs. The colonists beneted from the work that the previous owners, the Indians, had done on the land. By 1631 Roelof had prepared a good ten acres for sowing winter wheat, but because insufcient seed had been stocked, the land lay fallow for one season, and spring wheat was sowed in March 1632. The patroon regretted this negligence and hoped that now more land would be cultivated.36 One other thing troubled him as well. Rensselaer was taken aback at the invoice sent to him by the Company store. The colonists had bought far too many food items and other goods at his expense, including things they were supposed to pay for themselves. The bill of Roelof Jansz was particularly exorbitant: “I see that Roeloff Janssen has put me to great expense by taking victuals, indeed the full ration that was in stock, [and] think he must have given his wife’s mother [vrouwen moeder] and sister and others more than is allowed, which cannot be permitted.”37 From the transcription of this quotation by De Roever and the translation by Van Laer, American historians have concluded that Roelof ’s wife together with her mother (Tryn Jonas) and sister (Marritgen Jans) had been trading in Company goods. But in the original there is no comma between vrouwen (wife) and moeder (mother), as De Roever and Van Laer claim. An equally likely translation is therefore “. . . [and] think [he] must have given his wife’s mother and sister and others more than is allowed . . .,” which would mean they were eating from Roelof ’s allowance even

36

VRBM, 198 ( June 27, 1632), 219 ( July 20, 1632). VRBM, 281 (April 23, 1634); N. de Roever, ‘Kiliaen van Rensselaer en zijne kolonie Rensselaerswyck’, in: Oud-Holland 8 (1890), 281. 37

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though they were not colonists of the patroonship. In 1634 Marritgen was denitely living in New Amsterdam, where her husband was employed as a ship’s carpenter; undoubtedly Tryn Jonas was there as well, working as the Company midwife. Had a small trading network been set up by Roelof at the expense of the patroon? That, too, would have been in the spirit of the colony, and would be a telling example of ethnic and family solidarity. But for Rensselaer it would have been especially annoying if the WIC openly obstructed the provisioning of the patroonship. Within the small community of Rensselaerswijck—at most twenty adult colonists besides fteen Company soldiers at the fort—little prot could be made from trade. The poor planning in those rst years could hardly be held against the pioneer Roelof Jansz. The person actually responsible was the chief bouwmeester Wolfert van Couwenhoven. Wolfert resigned in 1632 and returned to Manhattan. But Rensselaer himself had much too idyllic an image of his seigniory. Despite his intensive correspondence with his agents he had no idea of the difculties faced by his colonists: Indians, wolves, res, oods, to say nothing of the problem of provisioning and the obstruction of the WIC. Rensselaer’s reproach was, in fact, not directed at Roelof personally. But his dependence on the WIC was a touchy subject for the patroon, concerned as he was about his rights, his autonomy, and his trade monopoly. Wouter van Twiller, who was the new director general of New Netherland as well as an agent of his uncle for the patroonship, thought it advisable to anticipate Rensselaer’s anger. It was probably already in the autumn of 1633 that Van Twiller dismissed Roelof. All too hastily, considering that he soon heard from Rensselaer that the contract with the bouwmeester and the two farmhands of De Laetsburch could best be extended for another year, if necessary with a raise in salary. There was a shortage of colonists, and on the whole Roelof had farmed reasonably well. It was already quite an accomplishment that by April 1633 over twenty acres of land were under cultivation: twelve and a half acres sowed with winter wheat, one with rye, and three with summer grain. Before the Indians killed all the livestock in July 1633, during the siege of Fort Orange undertaken as a reprisal for the cruelty of the WIC commissioner Hans Honthom, Roelof ’s farm had 6 horses (of which 2 were foals), 4 head of cattle (including 1 steer), 5 pigs, and 22 sheep. Rensselaer’s advice naturally placed Van Twiller in a very awkward position, and he pretended that Roelof had resigned. Perhaps Roelof did briey want to leave when the

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Indians made the entire patroonship unsafe, but he must have reconsidered later. In a letter of 1634 to Van Twiller the patroon expresses his surprise that Roelof “complains that Your Honor has removed him from the farm, and Your Honor writes to me that he wanted to be relieved of it.”38 Rensselaer thought that he could still use Roelof and Anneke, along with Marijn Adriaensen and his wife, as night guards for the livestock and the newly planned farm at Fort Orange—not as a tenant but as a wage laborer.39 Roelof sent off a letter of protest, but to no avail. Gerrit de Reus replaced him as tenant at De Laetsburch. He must have taken over well before April 1634. In the register of the colonists’ current accounts, begun on April 17, 1634, Roelof ’s name does not appear on a single page.40 However, he probably postponed moving until May, when his contract expired. Rensselaer took his duties as a feudal lord very seriously. He provided for good order in administration, jurisdiction, and religious life. By notarial deed of July 1, 1632 Roelof Jansz, together with the bouwmeesters Gerrit de Reus (Blommaertsburch), Marijn Adriaensen (Godynsburch), Brant Peelen (Welysburch), and Laurens Laurensen (miller on the Meulenkill near De Laetsburch), was appointed by the patroon to be schepen (magistrate) of Rensselaerswijck, under schout Rutger Hendricksz van Soest (the newly hired rst bouwmeester of Rensselaersburch).41 To provide the new court with a recognizable symbol, Kiliaen sent a black hat with a silver band for each schepen. The court does not seem to have functioned before 1634, however. Two handbooks for administration and management were rst sent along with Jacob Albertsz Planck, the new schout: “Damhouwer on criminal law and Ars notariatus.”42 True to his conviction, Kiliaen soon concerned himself with the religious welfare of the colony as well. Brant Peelen, who was a Reformed church member in Nijkerk already in 1622 and in 1630 became foreman at Rensselaersburch, acquired the function of admonisher on July 20,

38 39 40

VRBM, 281 (April 23, 1634). VRBM, 287 (April 23, 1634). VRBM, 260–262 (April 15, 1634); NYSL, Van Rensselaer Manor Papers, box

14. 41

VRBM, 202–205 ( July 1st and 20, 1632). VRBM, 281 (April 23, 1634). Joost de Damhouder (1507–1581) published in 1554 a much used manual of criminal law. This may have been the edition Practycke in criminele saecken by Jan van Waesberghe de Jonge (Rotterdam 1618, repr. 1628). Ars notariatus probably refers to the manual by Jacques Thuys, Ars notariatus, dat is: Konste en stijl van notarisschap, begrepen in theorijcke en practijcke (1590, enlarged ed. Utrecht 1645). 42

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1632, with the rst set of regulations sent to the colony. Was this perhaps because he was the oldest, with his forty-odd years? On Sundays and holidays he was required to read to the entire community “a few chapters from Holy Scripture, for which purpose a Bible is herewith dispatched, as well as from the House Postil of Schultetus, since it has special teachings and explanations from God’s Holy Word every Sunday the whole year through.”43 When we consider that the UtrechtGelderland group was very likely Reformed while the Scandinavians were certainly Lutheran, it becomes clear that community-building was the prime function of this Sunday ritual. It was also in keeping with the customs of both denominations, and none of the colonists could take offense at the texts that were used. Two years later Brant Peelen was replaced by schout Planck. In other ways, too, there was a high turnover among the colonists, but the community gradually expanded to the point of needing a minister of its own. Rensselaer made plans for an octagonal church building. In May 1638 he asked director Kieft to encourage Dominie Bogardus to visit Rensselaerswijck occasionally, “in order to comfort and admonish it and celebrate the Lord’s Supper.”44 This would benet not only the people of the colony but also the Company employees of Fort Orange. In view of the distance—about 150 miles, three days sailing—the colonists could not reasonably be expected to come in large numbers for church services in New Amsterdam, and given the interests of the WIC at Fort Orange, the Company was justied in asking its employee Bogardus to look after this outpost as well. This proved a boon for the patroonship around the fort. In mid-August Kieft reported that Bogardus had indeed traveled upriver by sloop in order to celebrate the Lord’s Supper at Rensselaerswijck.45 One year later Rensselaer urged that Bogardus continue making “a few journeys each year to hold services in the Colony at Fort Orange.”46 But given the distance, that could of course not be a permanent solution. At the beginning of 1642 Rensselaer found the minister of Schoorl (North Holland), the convert Johannes Megapolensis Jr. (1603–1670),

43 VRBM, 208 ( July 20, 1632). Abraham Scultetus or Schultetus (1566–1624), Kerck-postille, ofte predicatien, waer door dat zeer leerlijck ende troostelijck verclaert worden, alle de sondaeghsche euangelien des gheheelen iaers (Arnhem 1621). 44 VRBM, 404 (May 7, 1638). 45 VRBM, 423 (August 14, 1638). 46 VRBM, 432 (May 12, 1639).

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willing to settle in Rensselaerswijck with his wife and four children for a period of six years. The classis of Amsterdam gave their consent, the WIC insisted on formally approving his call, and on July 14, 1642 he embarked for New Netherland. He arrived after an unusually speedy crossing of only three weeks, and on August 17 conducted his rst worship service in a warehouse near Fort Orange.47 As commissioned by Rensselaer and true to his own conviction, Megapolensis tactfully tried to Christianize the Indians. But at the same time he was not above helping the French Jesuits, who were active as missionaries among the Indians in nearby Quebec, when they were troubled by hostile Iroquois tribes. It is known that Megapolensis had contact with the Jesuit Isaac Jogues (1607–1646), who wrote a report on his stay in New Netherland and was later canonized as a martyr.48 After the arrival of Megapolensis, Bogardus could concentrate all his efforts on New Amsterdam. And it soon became clear that he would have his hands full there.

On the frontier It has been suggested that Roelof Jansz went to New Holland (Brazil) after his dismissal, for on October 29, 1634 a Sara Roeloffs, daughter of Roeloff Jans, was baptized there.49 Brazil was indeed a likely alternative for colonists from New Netherland. But the Sara from this story was then already seven years old, and all the other evidence also contradicts this simple equation of two persons on the basis of their common patronymic. After his dismissal from De Laetsburch, Roeloff in fact moved to Manhattan with his family. There he entered the service of the WIC, on one of the Company farms—probably as a foreman, considering the salary he was earning after just a short time. He could not therefore have been a notorious failure as a farmer. He was probably not hired as a bouwmeester, since the tenants usually received a percentage of the prot instead of a salary. Did Van Twiller, who in his function as director must have hired Roelof himself, feel some responsibility for

47 GAA, ACA, 4, p. 249 (March 17, 1642); VRBM, 611 ( June 3, 1642). On Megapolensis: NNBW, II, 836–839; Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, I, 107–126; Corwin, Manual (5th ed., 1922), 419–421; Gerald F. De Jong, ‘Dominie Johannes Megapolensis: minister to New Netherland’, in: New York Historical Society Quarterly 52 (1968), 7–47. 48 NNN, 235–263; Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, 37–39. 49 Totten, ‘Anneke Jans’, 204–206.

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his dismissal? Or was Roelof Jansz’s situation similar to that of Elbert Elbertsz Stoothof (the future third husband of Roelof ’s daughter Sara) a few years later? Elbert had been hired by the patroon for six years but worked only four years for him, which meant that he owed the WIC the remaining two years of service.50 Whatever the case, in 1636 Roelof obtained the title to 31 morgen (approximately 65 acres) of land on Manhattan, along the North River, directly north of the Company farm.51 Certainly from that moment on he worked his own land as a freeman. But very soon after that he must have died. Roelof ’s surviving relatives tried for years to have his salary paid out. On August 12, 1638, immediately after marrying Anneke Jans, Bogardus authorized ex-director Wouter van Twiller in her name to collect from the WIC in Amsterdam the 217 guilders which Roelof Jans had earned in the employ of the Company and which should have been transferred by the WIC to the orphan masters of the city of Amsterdam in 1635.52 That transaction had apparently never taken place. Roelof ’s term of service with the Company must therefore have ended in 1635, thus allowing the account to be settled. Van Twiller’s mediation proved unsuccessful, for half a year later Hendrick Cornelisz van Vorst was given power of attorney for the same purpose.53 But Hendrick most likely died in Utrecht even before receiving the authorization. A year and a half later a new power of attorney was given to Wouter van Twiller.54 From this document we know that the amount claimed was recorded in the salary register (Maentgeltboeck) of the WIC. That book had been sent to Amsterdam on De Eendracht (The Concord), which probably arrived shortly before December 1635. In theory the transfer of Roelof ’s salary to the orphan masters could be related to the orphaning of his children, which would mean that he died in the summer of 1635. His youngest daughter, who in 1642 is reported to be six years old, would then have been born after her father’s death.

50

Brooklyn, Long Island Historical Society, Stoothof Papers, nr. 20 (Gehring, no

324). 51 Isaac N. Phelps Stokes, The iconography of Manhattan Island 1498–1909 (6 vols., New York 1915–1928), VI, 145–147; E.B. O’Callaghan, History of New Netherland, or New York under the Dutch (2 vols., New York 1846–1848; repr. 1955, 1966), II, 581. The title itself has been lost but its existence is assumed in later patents. 52 NYHM, I, 47–48. 53 NYHM, I, 129–130 (April 16, 1639). 54 NYHM, I, 302–303 (October 11, 1640).

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That does not seem very likely. The Amsterdam orphan chamber more generally channeled monies earned in the colonies to legal heirs, and in effect functioned as a collecting agency for the emigrants.55 At the latest Roelof Jansz must have died in the summer of 1637. On September 21, 1637 Rensselaer mentions in a letter to Wouter van Twiller that he received his recommendation for the widow of Roelof Jansz, “written to me with few words and in haste.”56 Unfortunately we know nothing about the content of that note. She probably wanted to resettle in Rensselaerswijck. It is unlikely that she wished to return to the Netherlands. It was not her native country, and she no longer had any ties there, as her mother and sister were also living in America. What the recommendation does make clear is that there was still no question of a marriage with Dominie Bogardus, otherwise she would not have needed Rensselaer’s assistance. That marriage must have taken place in 1638, between the spring of that year, when Anneke secured the inheritance of her children in view of her second marriage, and August, when Bogardus acted in his capacity as husband and guardian of Anneke Jans. Although Anneke had followed her husband to New Netherland, she displayed an enterprising spirit of her own. Women in the early modern colonies—but in European societies as well—were certainly not models of bourgeois domesticity, an image often projected in the nineteenth century under the inuence of Washington Irving. There was as yet no typically female domain, even though the wife had specic responsibilities in the household and in raising the children. She shared in the many tasks and activities that the male colonist had to perform in order to survive. Anneke lived on the frontier, the border region between a predominantly European culture and a civilization still mainly indigenous—a border that for the colonists kept receding, thanks to their pioneering work. The frontier was a contact zone that participated in both civilizations, with hunters and trappers serving as mediators of goods and culture. We have seen above that Roelof Jansz’s dismissal as tenant of Rensselaerswijck was attributed partly to a misappropriation of Company goods. Did Anneke perhaps also barter them with the surrounding Indians for beaver pelts? Although the colonists 55 N. de Roever Az., De Amsterdamsche Weeskamer (Amsterdam 1878). Most of its archives were lost in the re of the Amsterdam City Hall in 1652. None of the persons in this story has been traced back in the remaining documents until now. 56 VRBM, 352.

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were initially strictly forbidden to trade directly with the Indians, they could hardly avoid doing so. Not only were they surrounded by white and Indian traders, the reality of the survival chances in Rensselaer’s paradise was also quite different from the idyllic situation he imagined in his mansion on Amsterdam’s Keizersgracht (Emperor’s Canal). Fur trade was a necessary supplement to the often meager returns from agriculture and made it possible to endure setbacks. It also contributed to the pacication of the Indians. Every farmer is a fur trader, David de Vries declared in 1639, when the trade was nally legalized.57 Those contacts, which were extremely frequent in the trading season from May to October, help explain how Anneke’s oldest daughter Sara came by her knowledge of Indian languages. The language of the Mohawks, who lived to the west and north of Rensselaerswijck, was considered especially difcult. Dominie Megapolensis believed that no Christian had a thorough knowledge of it.58 Commissioner Crol even thought the Indians intentionally changed their language every two or three years! Mohawk, an Iroquois dialect, belonged to a different language group from the Algonquin dialects of the Mahicans and the tribes downriver. Sara was so procient in the Algonquin languages that she was able to act as interpreter for Stuyvesant in May 1664 at the peace negotiations with the Esopus Indians, who the year before (on June 7, 1663) had massacred colonists in Wiltwyck. She was in fact on such good terms with them that Oratamin, the old chief of the Hackensacks, gave her a large tract of land west of the Hudson. As a mature spokeswoman and negotiator, she most likely enjoyed the respect of the Indians, accustomed as they were to matrilineal structures.59 As early as 1643 Oratamin was conducting peace talks in New 57 Cf. Alan W. Trelease, Indian affairs in colonial New York: The seventeenth century (Ithaca, NY 1960), 112–118; Merwick, Possessing Albany, 77–103; Venema, Beverwijck, 175–206. 58 Joh. Megapolensis Jr., Een kort ontwerp, vande Mahakvase Indianen, haer Landt, Tale, Statuere, Dracht, Godes-Dienst ende Magistrature. Aldus beschreven ende nu kortelijck den 26. Augusti 1644. opgesonden uyt Nieuwe Neder-lant (Alkmaar [1644?]); reprinted in [ Joost Hartgers (ed.)], Beschryvinge van Virginia, Nieuw Nederlandt, Nieuw Engelandt en d’Eylanden Bermudes, Berbados en S. Christoffel (Amsterdam 1651), 42–49; transl. in NNN, 163–180. Cf. Lois M. Feister, ‘Linguistic communication between the Dutch and Indians in New Netherland, 1609–1664’, in: Ethnohistory 20 (1973), 25–38; Daniel Richter, ‘Cultural brokers and intercultural politics: New York-Iroquois relations, 1664–1701), in: Journal of American History 75:1 (1988), 40–67; Anthony Buccini, ‘“Swannekens Ende Wilden”: Linguistic attitudes and communication strategies among the Dutch and Indians in New Netherland’, in: Johanna Prins et al. (eds.), The Low Countries and the New World(s): Travel, Discovery, Early Relations (Lanham etc. 2000), 11–28. 59 NYSA, DCM, XV, 125 (May 15/16, 1664); DRCHNY, XIII, 375–377.

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Amsterdam in the name of ve tribes. Did he then already have the support of Dominie Bogardus, Sara’s stepfather and Kieft’s opponent?60 The friendly relations between father Bogardus and Cornelis van Vorst, manager of Pavonia in Hackensack territory, may also have contributed to Sara’s knowledge of languages. Born in April 1627, Sara lived in Rensselaerswijck, in the region between the Mohawks and the Mahicans, between her fourth and seventh year, the most receptive age for playful language learning. Besides her two younger sisters there were no white children for her to play with. Megapolensis’s description of the life of the Indian tribes around him, edited ten years later, reveals how intimate the contact between whites and Indians could be in daily life. In times of peace the Mohawks simply walked in and out of the colonists’ houses and slept—sometimes to the great frustration of the whites—wherever it suited them: “in our rooms, in front of our beds, they just lie down on the bare earth, a stone or piece of wood under their head.”61 Among the children in particular little distinction was made between white and Indian. Young Sara certainly played with Indian children, which gave her linguistic skills that she would eventually put to good use as a cultural mediator between Indians and Europeans—as the half-breed Hilletje did in Albany a short time later. Back in New Amsterdam, Anneke Jans continued her trading activities, certainly after the death of Roelof. The penniless sailor and dismissed farmer had left a farm from which his widow could promise her children a capital of 1000 guilders, but for the time being those assets existed only on paper. This may explain the generous gesture of Rensselaer, who in September 1637 wrote to Van Twiller: “The debts owed by ditto widow [Anneke Jans] I cancelled long ago. My reason for doing so will be conveyed in greater detail orally”—at his next personal meeting with Van Twiller.62 Did Rensselaer, pious man that he was, consider it his biblical duty towards a widow with children to cancel the debts that Anneke must have incurred during the lease of the farm? Did it have something to do with earlier employment of Anneke by Rensselaer, or with her possible switch to the Reformed denomination? Or did Rensselaer feel compunction about his nephew and agent’s overhasty dismissal of Anneke’s husband? She must have

60 61 62

NYHM, IV, 192 (April 22, 1643); Trelease, Indian affairs, 75. Megapolensis, Kort ontwerp, in: Beschryvinge (1651), 47–48; NNN, 175. VRBM, 352 (September 21, 1637).

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felt more at home in Rensselaerswijck than in New Amsterdam, for when Bogardus’s shipwreck became known at the beginning of 1648, she immediately resettled in the patroonship. Her farm on Manhattan, which in November 1651 was worked by Egbert Woutersen, she leased in May 1652, complete with its two mares, a foal, a stallion, two milch cows, a heifer, and two plows, to Evert Pels for a period of six years. He agreed to pay her 225 guilders plus thirty pounds of butter per year, from which he could deduct the cost of a new roof on the house. The hay from the other land she owned, Dominee’s Hoeck (Minister’s Corner) on Long Island, he was allowed to use for his cows.63 Was there some sentiment hidden in this contract? Evert Pels, an immigrant from the German town of Stettin (then a Swedish possession, presently the Polish city of Szczecin) who started out as a brewer, had in February 1647 been appointed bouwmeester at De Laetsburch, the farm from which Anneke had been expelled fourteen years earlier.64 Or was this an instance of elementary solidarity? Even more than at home, the colonists in New Amsterdam had to rely on a support network. In a multinational society, ethnic solidarity was a matter of course, the surest form of support in times of adversity. We have already seen how Roelof Jansz surrounded himself with fellow Norwegians. After his death, Anneke, as the minister’s wife, must have remained a central gure in the Scandinavian network. We see evidence of this in 1646, when Bogardus acted as condant of Laurens Laurensen, from Anneke’s home island of Flekkerøy—likely the same person as the miller of that name who had lived just a stone’s throw from Anneke’s farm in Rensselaerswijck fteen years earlier. Laurens had entrusted the minister with a bill of exchange for 2,050 guilders that he had received—according to Kieft illegally—from trade with the governor of the Swedish colony on the South River (the Delaware). Bogardus was supposed to take it with him to the Netherlands.65 Group solidarity of this kind came dangerously close to betrayal of the WIC, the minister’s employer—at least that was Kieft’s opinion. Occasionally Evert Willemsz came across persons from his hometown. In March 1643 Warner Francken of Woerden sailed to New

63

NYHM, III, 313–316 (November 1, 1651). NYSL, Van Rensselaer Manor Papers, box 21 (Accounts 1647–50), f. 6A-17 (account of Evert Pels); box 31 (Memorandum Anthony de Hooges: lease of the farm, February 28, 1647). 65 NYHM, IV, 340–341 (September 21, 1646). 64

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Netherland as supercargo on De Swarte Raven (The Black Raven), where he stayed at least until April 1644; by the end of June he was back in Amsterdam. He spoke English as well as Dutch, and acted as an interpreter. In 1644 he was 37 years old, the same age as Evert. They may have known each other from their school days.66 And from nearby Wensveen (now Waddinxveen) there was Dirck Cornelisz, the carpenter who made Evert’s widowed sister-in-law, Marritgen Jans, pregnant and married her at the end of August 1646. It is not surprising that three witnesses at the baptism of their son Cornelis, on March 17, 1647, belonged to the Bogardus clan: the child’s aunt Anneke Jans and her two sons-in-law Hans Kierstede and Willem de Key. Lion Gardiner, the commander of the English fort on the Fresh River (New Haven, Connecticut), who had been an engineer and foreman in Holland, also married a Woerden native: Marichgen Dircxdr Duercant was the daughter of a Woerden magistrate, and her brother Willem Dircksz had been sent to the East Indies as a comforter of the sick.67 David Pietersz de Vries met Marichgen in 1639 and probably talked about her later with his friend Bogardus.68 Nothing is known, however, about personal contacts with Bogardus. The family—including a wide circle of relatives—formed a similar support network. It is revealing that Marritgen Jans, Anneke’s sister, remembered in her will not only her children and grandchildren from three marriages but also Anna Bogardus, daughter of her nephew Willem Bogardus, and that she named Johannes van Brugh, third husband of her niece Tryntje Roelofs, executor.69 It is primarily the baptismal documents that shed light on the network Dominie Bogardus relied on to give his children footholds in life. At the baptism of Evert’s second and third sons, on September 9, 1640 and January 4, 1643, the only witnesses besides grandmother Tryn Jonas, uncle Thymen Jansz, and half-sister Sara Roelofs were Company ofcials and their wives: scaal Van der Hoykens, Master Ludolf (probably the former scaal Master Uldrick Lupoldts), commissioner Olof Stevensz van Cortlandt, commissioner Gijsbert Opdijck, and nally Catharina Trasele, wife of

66 GAA, NA, 1289, f. 101v°–102r° ( July 20, 1644); 1792, f. 230 (March 21, 1643). 67 NNBW, VI, 456. 68 NNN, 202. 69 Zabriskie, ‘The founding families’, in: De Halve Maen 48:3 (1973), 13.

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Jan Jansz van Ilpendam, commissioner of Fort Nassau on the South River. When Evert’s fourth son was baptized on April 2, 1645 the minister was so at odds with the Company authorities that only friends and relatives served as witnesses: the baby’s aunt Marritje Thijmens (Marritgen Jans), his half-sister Sara Roelofs, her husband, master surgeon Hans Kierstede, and—a more than symbolic choice—Jochem Pietersz Kuyter, a Danish subject like Anneke Jans (her native Norway pertained to the Danish crown), friend of the minister’s family and leader of the rebellious Eight Men. Until the end of 1642 the minister himself, together with the director, the secretary, the commissioner, or the scaal, acted as a baptismal witness ve times for children of persons more or less distantly involved with the governing of the colony, such as council member Dr. Jean Mousnier de La Montagne, former secretary and former commissioner Andries Hudde, and miller Abraham Pietersz. But after 1642, when the community was split over the issue of the Indian war, he withdrew from these circles. Together with three black colonists he still served as a witness at the baptism of the black child Anna (May 8, 1644); and the last time we nd the minister in this role was for the rst child of his stepdaughter Sara Roelofs, on September 21, 1644. Anneke Jans, on the other hand, acted as a witness mainly for parents who belonged to the community of colonists: Scandinavians (Hans Hansz de Noorman, manager of Hudde’s tobacco plantation), merchants (Martijn Cregier), farmers or family members of colonists from Rensselaerswijck ( Jacob van Couwenhoven, Aert Willemsz, Hans Nicolaesz, Abraham Planck), and for the children of her sister Marritgen and her daughter Sara. As late as October 13, 1647 Stuyvesant asked Anneke Bogardus to serve as godmother at the baptism of his son Balthasar, together with four male witnesses, all Company ofcials (deputy director, two council members, quartermaster, secretary, and commissioner). Was this a token of respect for the former rst lady of the colony? Was it Stuyvesant’s way of saying that he still considered Bogardus the legitimate minister? Or was it no more than a salve on the wound? A short time later Anneke left New Amsterdam for good.70

70 On Anneke’s life in Beverwijck and her death in February 1663, see Wegen, 630–634; Frijhoff, ‘Dominee Bogardus’, 63–64; Venema, Beverwijck, 472, and index.

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Survival The salary for which Bogardus was hired by the WIC is not known for sure. In 1642 Megapolensis received from the patroon 1,000 guilders per year (1,200 guilders from his fourth year onward) plus certain bonuses in kind. Half of it would be paid out in the Netherlands, the rest in the colony, in cash or in kind. In return for that salary the patroon expected the minister to devote himself fulltime to serving the colonists and proselytizing the Indians, without engaging in agriculture, stock breeding, or trade on the side.71 The salary conditions of the WIC must have been quite similar. A budget proposal submitted by the commissioners of New Netherland to the Heren XIX at the end of 1644 provided for 69 Company employees for the colony, including 40 soldiers. The annual salary of the director was set at 3,000 guilders, that of the minister and the secunde, or merchant, at 1,440 guilders; the scaal, the secretary, and the commissioner received half that amount (720), and the schoolmaster a quarter (360). In addition there were usually free meals in the Company quarters, but married persons with a household of their own received a food allowance instead. Bogardus’s temporary successor Backerus was promised 100 guilders per month in 1647, plus 200 guilders food allowance per year and free rewood, a total annual income of 1,400 guilders.72 He was promised a higher food allowance if a substitute did not arrive soon, for Backerus had intended his stay in New Amsterdam to be no more than a stopover, and made every effort to leave as soon as possible. The food allowance was certainly not generous when stretched over a family and possible hired hands. In 1650 the minister of New Amsterdam was listed as receiving a salary of 100 guilders plus 40 guilders food allowance per month, in other words 1,680 guilders annually. Considering that the average Company salary was 170 guilders, this can certainly be called a top income. After director Stuyvesant (3,900 guilders) the minister was by far the best paid ofcial, even better than deputy director Dr. Lubbert Dinclagen (1,200) and councilor La Montagne (900), and far better than scaal Hendrick van Dijck (720), secretary Van Tienhoven (632), and the schoolmaster (520).73 The salary level of the minister 71

Van Nierop, ‘Rensselaerswyck’, 206; Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, I, 110–111. NYHM, IV, 412–413 ( July 22, 1647). On Backerus: NNBW, III, 49–51; Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, I, 77–90; Corwin, Manual (5th ed., 1922), 241–242. 73 NYPL, New Netherlands Papers: Tractement der Militie en Predicanten, 650 (Gehring, no 551). 72

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Fig. 32. Reputed portrait of Dominie Everardus Bogardus (probably representing Dominie Gualterus Du Bois, a close relative in the second generation). Reverse painting on glass, early 18th century. [Courtesy of The New York State Ofce of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, Senate House State Historic Site at Kingston, New York].

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was a precise reection of his social position: below that of the director but—as a second pole of authority in the colony—above all the other ofcials. Compared to standards in the fatherland, the minister was extremely well paid. Only ministers in the large cities received an annual salary of more than 1,000 guilders.74 Until well into the eighteenth century village ministers had to make do with half that amount, and the average daily wage of a laborer uctuated around one guilder. But was Bogardus actually paid what was owed him? Later ministers in New Netherland, in any case after the takeover by the English, were expected to receive their salary from the congregation.75 That was probably not yet true in Bogardus’s time, if for no other reason because the WIC then kept a tighter rein on the colony and there was still no structure for civil government. But we know for sure that he never saw his entire salary. Only the food allowance for his running expenses was paid out immediately, but no doubt largely in kind or in sewant (shell money) and after deduction of goods already purchased. The salary itself was treated as a payable account of the Company to its employee, which could be canceled to cover debts. The months of work performed were recorded in the salary registers (Maentgeltboecken) of the colony and sent to the Netherlands, where they were audited by the bookkeepers of the WIC. The earnings were then added to the account of the functionary, but with deductions for goods purchased from the Company store. Only on express request was the net amount paid out—at least if sufcient funds were available. But after the golden years between 1620 and 1630 that became increasingly rare. The minister therefore had much less cash on hand than his salary suggests, but he did have a large outstanding claim on the WIC. Life in the colony was expensive, however. Although salaries were two to three times as high as at home, the same was true of prices. Products from Europe—and until a wide range of artisans came as settlers that meant almost everything—were nearly unaffordable owing to the cost of transportation. Livestock was almost twice as expensive as in the 74 Willem Frijhoff & Marijke Spies, 1650: Hard-won unity (Assen & Basingstoke, 2004), 22–24. On income and salaries in the Netherlands: A.Th. van Deursen, Plain lives in a Golden Age: Popular culture, religion and society in seventeenth-century Holland (Cambridge 1991), 4–12; Jan de Vries & Ad van der Woude, The rst modern economy: Success, failure, and perseverance of the Dutch economy, 1500–1814 (Cambridge 1997), 565–567, 614–615, 635–664. 75 Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, 121–123.

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fatherland, even when bred in New Netherland. If everyday needs were not supplied in kind, a high salary did not necessarily mean luxury. Only the patroons could afford to keep wages and prices at a European level, and then only as long as the patroonship operated as a closed economic system. Rensselaer accordingly suggested to Jacob Planck in 1636 that a system of double pricing be introduced: residents of the patroonship would be charged approximately one and a half times the Dutch price, while others would have to pay a free—and in any case much higher—market price.76 This may have been the real source of Roelof Jansz’s problems. Did his wife perhaps try to let her relatives prot from the low tariff for patroon goods? For Bogardus the matter was even more complicated than for other Company employees. As he told Dominie Megapolensis in 1646, under pressure of the classis he had left for New Netherland in great haste in 1632, without having his salary formally settled.77 He had set out with nothing more than an oral assurance of the classis delegates, who promised to arrange the matter with the WIC in such a way that he would enjoy the same salary as other ministers employed by the WIC. Of those delegates only Reverend Otto Badius was still alive in 1646. By then Bogardus was impatient to have his contract settled, since for many years he had received barely 700 guilders annually, less than half of what was due him. He not only had four children of his own to raise but ve from his wife’s rst marriage as well. Small wonder that the daughters were married off at the young ages of 15, 16, or 17. The denitive settlement of his salary and the back payments accumulated over fourteen years formed one of his most important reasons for returning to the Netherlands in 1647. Was Bogardus really so needy? In American historiography the idea has taken root that he married a large landowner and, like the ministers who succeeded him, was out to enrich himself.78 Unfortunately the entire bookkeeping of the old WIC has disappeared. But from the surviving New Netherland documents we can construct a plausible picture of the minister’s circumstances. Despite his disappointing income, Bogardus

76

VRBM, 325–326 (October 3, 1636); Rink, Holland, 197–198. New Brunswick Theological Seminary, Gardner A. Sage Library, Amsterdam Correspondence, box I, no 3 (Megapolensis to Classis Amsterdam, August 15, 1648); ER, I, 237–239. 78 As, for example, in Randall H. Balmer, A perfect Bable of confusion: Dutch religion and English culture in the Middle Colonies (New York & Oxford 1989), 7. 77

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at rst had no nancial worries. Nor do we nd any evidence that he traded with the Indians. But in his early years as a minister he must have lived soberly and, thanks to the free meals at the fort, built up considerable savings—like his predecessor Michaelius, who after just one year thought he would be able to transfer “a small sum of money” to his brother in the Netherlands.79 By March 1636 Bogardus could already afford to have 600 guilders made over to his brother Cornelis, who was opening a shop in Leiden.80 A good year later, on July 1, 1637, he gave Andries Hudde, former commissioner of store goods, an under-the-table loan of 600 guilders to start a plantation. The loan agreement was not ofcially drawn up until the following year, when Hudde obtained the title to the 200–acre tobacco plantation Vredendael (in Harlem, between 109th and 124th Streets).81 That plantation, the rst of its kind on Manhattan, had probably been owned ever since 1632 by Hendrick de Forest, a Leiden Walloon merchant who came to Manhattan for the second time in March 1637, accompanied by his younger brother Isaac and his 45-year-old brotherin-law, the physician Jean Mousnier de La Montagne. Did Bogardus perhaps know De Forest from Leiden? The two men were the same age and equally fervent Calvinists. When Hendrick died on July 26 of that same year, his widow authorized Bogardus to manage her property. La Montagne had been acting as manager of Vredendael ever since his arrival.82 The widow, who had stayed in the Netherlands, soon asked Bogardus to liquidate her property.83 The university-trained but poor La Montagne, who had probably hoped to be the new owner, saw that position go instead to the shrewd Company employee Andries Hudde. Bogardus was denitely in favor of the solvent candidate Hudde, who had preceded La Montagne as councilor of the colony and in that capacity must have become a close acquaintance of Dominie Bogardus. This proved a signicant source of conict for the future: not Hudde but La Montagne came to enjoy the condence of the director, but Hudde

79

Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, p. XI. NAN, OWIC, 14, f. 124r° (March 13 and 17, 1636). 81 NYHM, I, 41–42 ( July 22, 1638). 82 NAN, OWIC, 14, f. 177v° (September 11, 1636); J.W. de Forest, The De Forests of Avesnes (and of New Netherland): A Huguenot thread in American colonial history, 1494 to the Present Time (New Haven 1900), 92–97, 197–200. Hendrick and Isaac’s father Jesse de Forest had been the leader of the rst group of Walloons who wanted to settle in America in 1621–1623; Rink, Holland, 75. 83 GAA, NA, 316, f. 385 (December 12, 1637). 80

Fig. 33. Detail of the so-called Manatus map, showing the boweries in New Netherland in 1639. [After an 18th-century copy in I.N. Phelps Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island 1498–1909 (6 vols.; New York, 1915–1928), vol. II, p. 196, plate 41–42]. Bowery n° 21 pertained to the minister, n° 22 to Antoni den Turck.

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was a friend of the minister. When Hudde hired the Norwegian Hans Hansen as the new manager, La Montagne demanded of Bogardus immediate payment of his outstanding salary and the expenses incurred, a total of 680 guilders. In October 1638 the plantation was sold to Hudde for 1,800 guilders, minus La Montagne’s claim to the proceeds. Hudde returned to Amsterdam and for good measure married the widow De Forest there at the beginning of January 1639. When she subsequently came to New Netherland, everything was settled amicably. As collateral for the mortgage Bogardus was given Hudde’s farm Achtervelt, over 140 acres of land, in Keskachauge (Brooklyn) on Long Island.84 Hudde obviously soon managed to pay off the mortgage, for in August 1639 he transferred ownership of Achtervelt to Wolfert Gerritsz van Couwenhoven.85 Despite this sizable drain on his resources, Bogardus was soon able to lend 360 guilders to commissioner Jacob van Curler, who in turn gave it to Hendrick van Domseler. The sum was claimed back in September 1639, but by January 1642 had not yet been repaid.86 In January 1640 Bogardus and Captain David Pietersz de Vries together acted as guarantors for the new commissioner of store goods, David Provoost: De Vries for 3,500 guilders, Bogardus for 1,500.87 One month later he did the same for Claes Jansen Ruyter, for the value of three milch cows.88 In June of that year he stood surety with the deaconry for the 50 carolus guilders that Peter van de Linde had borrowed nine months earlier at 5% interest, a sum which had to be paid back after one year.89 It seems that this was another of Bogardus’s under-the-table transactions and that it earned him a reprimand when the deacons audited the accounts and found that he was himself responsible for the loan. In 1643 Bogardus was also paid back the 300 guilders he had lent to Jan Laurensen.90 In the following years Abraham Jacobsz van Steenwyck named him

84 NYHM, I, 28, 30–32, 41–42, 203–204; II, 317; IV, 23–25; DRCHNY, XIV, 12; LP, 5–6, no GG 14 ( July 16, 1636); Frederick van Wyck, Keskachauge, or, the rst white settlement on Long Island (New York & London 1924). Cf. GAA, NA, 1065, f. 186v°–187v°: power of attorney given to Bogardus by Jacob van Curler at Amsterdam for the transfer of a plain on Long Island called Kaskuten to Wouter van Twiller; probably the same plot. 85 NYPL, Couwenhoven Land Papers, August 12, 1639 (Gehring, no 546). 86 NYHM, I, 238–239 (September 30, 1639); II, 8–9 ( January 8, 1642). 87 NYHM, I, 253 ( January 5, 1640). 88 NYHM, I, 259–260 (February 13, 1640). 89 NYHM, I, 285–286 ( June 20, 1640). 90 NYHM, II, 167 (October 14, 1643).

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to serve in his absence as the executor of the property of his deceased wife Geertruyt Willems, a role he had previously played for the widows of Cornelis van Vorst (1641) and Jonas Bronck (1643).91 We notice here that the transactions at rst involved mainly Company employees and that after 1638 no more loans were made. From then on Bogardus functioned only as a guarantor. His marriage in 1638 with Anneke Jans, the mother of a growing number of children, brought a sudden end to his nancial leverage. Considering the terms of the 1,000-guilder inheritance for her ve children, Anneke was not completely without means, but that was a largely ctitious estimate of capital invested in land. A large family was also expensive, and the ensuing years brought four more children. In the end the minister had one of the largest households in the colony. Saving money was no longer possible. Unlike some ministers who succeeded him, Bogardus never really became a true entrepreneur. For that he lacked the starting capital and perhaps the business acumen as well. He did, as we know, let the settlement of his contract drag on for fourteen years. Although he lent out money and made good use of his possessions, he invested almost nothing in land or in business ventures. All of what he owned came from the Company. Anneke Jans must have had a better head for business than her second husband. Like many other colonists she continued her trading activities in New Amsterdam. We catch a glimpse of that in the court case of October 1645 in which Jan Jansz of Ilpendam, commissioner on the South River, was charged with fraud.92 The commissioner had sold duffel from Haarlem for both Anneke Jans and her sister Marritgen, but had tried to embezzle the prots. He must have been a close friend of the family, for his wife had acted as a baptismal witness for Bogardus’s second son ve years earlier. Anneke’s fabrics had been entrusted to him by Jochem Kierstede (brother of her son-in-law Hans, the surgeon), and were sold by Egbert van Borsum in the sloop Prins Willem for 2 beaver pelts (about 16 guilders)—most likely to an Indian, in view of the location. As a medium of exchange for beaver pelts, blue or red duffel was in great demand among the Indians, who used it for blankets and burial shrouds.93

91

NYHM, II, 256 (September 29, 1644). NYHM, IV, 285–286 (October 12, 1645). For a later period, see Martha D. Shattuck, ‘Women and trade in New Netherland’, in: Itinerario 18:2 (1994), 40–49. 93 On duffel as a New Netherland commodity: Jan Baart, ‘Ho-de-no-sau-nee en de 92

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Anneke in any case brought into her marriage a tract of land on Manhattan that her rst husband had received from the WIC in 1636. On the surviving copy of the “Manatus map” of 1639 this land is labeled the bouwery van Senikant, clearly a bastardization of predikant (minister).94 The farm was not worked by the minister himself. By August 1638 Bogardus had already taken the hired hand Jan Loosrecht to court for neglecting his duties on the farm.95 A short time before that Loosrecht was still working for Jan Evertsen Bout. He must therefore have been hired by Bogardus for the farm that came with his marriage. Three years later we nd Lucas Smit, a young man from Courland, working for Bogardus. Smit had actually crossed the ocean for Rensselaerswijck, but stayed on in New Amsterdam with Bogardus. That is not at all surprising: assistant Anthony de Hooges called him “an honest and pious young man… of whom nothing can be said but honor and virtue,” and he certainly had some schooling.96 Bogardus recognized those qualities and was willing pay compensation to Rensselaer for the deserter in order to keep such a kindred spirit for himself. But Rensselaer would not agree. He had enough trouble nding people for his patroonship. Through the newly dispatched minister Megapolensis he convinced Smit to go to Rensselaerswijck after all and accept a position there as farmhand and clerk, for 200 guilders per year.97 A short time later Bogardus leased his farm on the North River with immediate effect to the Englishman Richard Fowles for a period of four years. The minister provided two milch cows, two heifers (2½ and 1½ years old respectively), a bull and a bullock, a pair of oxen 4½ years old, a young stallion, and the farm implements. Owner and leaseholder would each have half ownership of the animals and share the risks. The rent agreed on was one-third of the harvest plus 25 pounds of butter for the cows and the same for the heifers. Finally, Bogardus was allowed to keep a mare on the farm for his exclusive use; the tenant would care for it in the winter. That was of course the horse the minister needed in order to visit members of his congregation

Nederlanders’, in: Bulletin van de Koninklijke Nederlandse Oudheidkundige Bond 84:2–3 (1985), 89–99, in particular 95–96. 94 Stokes, Iconography, II, 196, plates 41–42. This cannot be the Company farm no 3, initially meant for the minister, since this farm later pertained to ordinary citizens; Wieder, De stichting, 63, 153–154. 95 NYHM, IV, 19–20 (August 19, 1638). 96 VRBM, 615, footnote 60. 97 VRBM, 615, 648, 826: he arrived on November 29, 1641 and left on August 13, 1642 for Rensselaerswyck.

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outside the fort.98 The farm was a mere fteen minutes’ walk from Fort Amsterdam. Initially called Dominee’s Bouwery (Minister’s Farm), it later became famous as Anneke Jans Farm.99 Its borders ran more or less along present-day Warren Street, West Broadway, Canal Street (according to some Christopher Street), and the Hudson—roughly the area of Tribeca, plus fringes of Greenwich Village and SoHo. This 65-acre tract, consisting partly of marshland and rocky ground, was certainly not a “sizable estate,” as later authors have claimed. Located immediately north of the Company farm with its surrounding stockade, it bordered in the northeast on Out Jans Land (Old Jan’s Land) and in the east on Kalckshoeck (Limestone Corner). In June 1654 it was formally placed on the name of Anneke Jans, as the widow of Dominie Bogardus, but it must have been the land given to her rst husband, Roelof Jansz, already in 1636.100 Bogardus rented out another plantation with a tobacco barn to Richard Brudnell in May 1639. He lent the renter a dog and a gun for six months, and supplied him with the necessary gunpowder.101 This land was on Long Island, north of where the Mespath Kill joins the East River, just south of Hellegat (Hell Gate). In 1642 it was already called Dominies Hoeck (Minister’s Corner). It would keep that name until well into the nineteenth century, when it came to be known as Hunter’s Point. That site today is directly opposite the United Nations headquarters, just before the entrance to the tunnel connecting Queens with Midtown New York—despite the stunning panorama, it was until recently one of the dreariest spots in the Big Apple, but like other areas with derelict industrial buildings is presently being upgraded into a neighborhood with luxury lofts. The minister was probably given this land to compensate for the free meals he would no longer enjoy after his marriage.102 When formally placed on his wife’s name in March 1654, it measured 42 morgen and 45 roeden (about 90 acres).103

98

NYHM, II, 85–87 (November 12, 1642). See the Epilogue. 100 LP, 70, no HH 14 (between June 18 and 28, 1654). 101 NYHM, I, 154–155 (May 1, 1639). 102 The same measure applied to his predecessor Michaelius: Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, p. VII. 103 LP, 67, no HH 4; O’Callaghan, History, II, 587–588, suggests there were nally two Long Island plots in Anneke Jans’s possession: Dominie’s Hoeck at Mespath (patent of November 26, 1652 for 65 morgen) and a property of 42 morgen for which she obtained the title on March 7, 1654. 99

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Tenant Brudnell was one of the pioneers. The land had been cultivated and temporarily fenced, and a barn had been built on it, but the soil still had to be prepared for tobacco. Bogardus agreed to supply his tenant with two loaves of bread each week, the same size as those he provided for his hired hands, and advance the money for farm implements. In return 350 pounds of good tobacco at 8 stivers a pound (i.e., 140 guilders’ worth) would be delivered to him in the summer, plus a third of all the game that Brudnell would shoot with his gunpowder. By this time there was such a boom in tobacco farming that the colony’s council had been trying to place some restrictions on it.104 Was the minister’s plantation a failure? Brudnell was soon replaced by another Englishman, Thomas Hall, who had previously worked on a plantation on the South River. Englishmen were in demand because of their experience with tobacco farming in Virginia. In 1643 Brudnell acquired a plantation of his own, a half mile away. Hall did not stay long either. In June 1641 he took Bogardus to court for accusing him of allowing his tobacco to spoil. Hall pleaded innocent, but Bogardus persisted with his damage claim, and experts were appointed to investigate the matter.105 A short time later Hall obtained the title to former director Van Twiller’s tobacco plantation with two black slaves on the other side of the East River, in the middle of Manhattan (between East 47th and 52nd Streets). The active colonization of Mespath really began only in March 1642, when the Presbyterian minister Francis Doughty was allotted a large tract of land there for the new colony of Newtown.106 Soon after that Bogardus also made another attempt to exploit his land. Robert Bello and Marck Menloff were solicited as tenants for what was then called a tobacco and grain plantation.107 They were to build a wooden house of 20 by 15 feet, for which Bogardus would supply 1500 nails and pay them 80 guilders. They would also construct a solid fence, for which the minister would compensate them after four years. Bogardus agreed to provide six goats, two sows, and a boar. Half of the proceeds would be for him. He was also allowed to graze his own livestock on the fertile salt marsh, but the hay that he did not need would be for the tenants.

104

NYHM, IV, 20–21 (proclamation of August 19, 1638). NYHM, IV, 113 ( June 13, 1641). 106 O’Callaghan, History, II, 582 (March 28, 1642); Jessica Kross, The evolution of an American town: Newtown, New York 1642–1775 (Philadelphia 1983). 107 NYHM, II, 37–38 (no date, probably May 1642). 105

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Fig. 34. Lease contract of Bogardus’s tobacco farm with Rufus Barton, August 14, 1642. [New York State Archive, Dutch Colonial Manuscripts, 2:26b].

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The contract did not go through, but the minister soon found a new candidate on almost the same conditions. It was again an Englishman, Rufus Barton. On September 1642 Barton signed a ve-year lease on the land.108 The minister emerges from these lease contracts as an active participant in the development of Manhattan and Long Island, a man who in the very early days of tobacco cultivation believed in its future as a commercial crop. Although the minister of a Company-run church and an employee of the WIC, Bogardus found that his interests as a landowner and head of a family increasingly came to coincide with those of the free colonists. We are gradually gaining a clearer picture of how the minister organized his life. The bookkeeping between New Netherland and the fatherland was complex and salary payment uncertain, but the economy of the colony stayed aoat thanks to other principles of survival: a high value was placed on self-sufciency. The returns from land ownership, payment in kind, and cultivation of one’s own crops guaranteed a reasonable existence for Company employees as well as colonists. Butter came from the farm, the horse was stabled with the tenant, and game was supplied by the tenant of another farm, where the minister could graze his livestock on the most fertile land. And there was a family pig, at least until that fatal day in May 1642, when the neighbor Jan Celis, known as Out Jan (Old Jan) in a mad frenzy began shooting the pigs in New Amsterdam, including the minister’s.109 Bogardus also had a house in the settlement at the fort. The buildings constructed in New Amsterdam by carpenter Gillis Pietersen van der Gouw during the directorship of Wouter van Twiller (1633–1638) included a new “church with a house and stable behind it” as well as a private house for Dominie Bogardus paid for by Van Twiller.110 Bogardus probably rst lived behind the old church, built in 1633, but certainly after his marriage in 1638 moved into a separate house (presently Whitehall Street 23). The old church stood on Perelstraat (Pearl Street 39), the quay of New Amsterdam before silting altered the coastline. Old drawings show clearly that David Pietersz de Vries was right in calling it a simple church-barn. After a new church was built inside the fort in 1642, the old one was rented to Captain Nutton. In

108 109 110

NYHM, II, 60–61 (August 14, 1642). NYHM, IV, 145 (May 15, 1642); cf. LP, 58, no GG 208. NYHM, I, 109–110 (March 22, 1639); Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, I, 92.

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1656 the dilapidated structure was sold and most likely demolished. In 1933 the Daughters of Holland Dames placed a memorial plaque on the building occupying that site today. The presence of that building, however, has proved an obstacle to excavation. The minister’s new house was just a block away, in the Brugsteeg (Bridge Lane, presently behind Pearl Street 45), opposite the ve stone houses of the WIC.111

Children Bogardus did not live long enough to see his own children grow up, but his widow made sure that they would not enter the world emptyhanded. When Evert’s second son Cornelis, a gunstock maker, died at the young age of 25, he left an estate worth more than 2,015 guilders.112 In the colony of New Netherland, where social climbing was initially less hindered by closed coteries than at home, but where there were also fewer external factors to stimulate such ambition, Anneke Jans’s sons followed a classic pattern: trade, land ownership, a civil ofce, status in the town, but without the ambition to amass a fortune. They were solid citizens, not adventurers. Anneke’s daughters showed more ambition. After her early marriage to surgeon Hans Kierstede, Anneke’s oldest daughter Sara soon emerged as a well-to-do resident of New Amsterdam with a large house in the best neighborhood, on The Water (Pearl Street).113 Her younger sister Tryntje married young as well and by the age of 27 had her third husband, the New Amsterdam schepen Johannes van Brugh or Verbrugge, a member of the Amsterdam business rm of that name, which by then had gained control over a large portion of the trade with New Netherland.114 Sytgen Roelofs, the third daughter, married Pieter Hartgers, a freeman from Haarlem who, alongside some unclear 111

LP, 44, no GG 155 (August 22, 1646). Municipal Archives Albany, Notarial Records, vol. I (Dirck van Schelluyne), pp. 214–217 (September 4/14, 1666), published by Frijhoff, ‘Dominee Bogardus’, 64–66; Jonathan Pearson (transl. and ed.), Early records of the City and County of Albany and Colony of Rensselaerswijck (Albany 1869), I, 84; Janny Venema (ed.), Deacons’ accounts 1652–1674. First Dutch Reformed Church of Beverwyck/Albany, New York (Rockport, Maine 1998), 165 (Keman=Cornelis). 113 Evjen, Scandinavian immigrants, 105–108; Howard S.F. Randolph, ‘The Kierstede family’, in: NYGBR 65 (1934), 224–233, 329–338; David M. Ryker, ‘Surgeon Hans Kierstede of New Amsterdam’, in: De Halve Maen 57:3 (1983), 11–13, 24. 114 Rink, Holland, 177–182. 112

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pioneer activities, was a successful brewer, fur trader and farmer in Beverwijck, a town magistrate, as well as a deacon and elder of the church; he also held the commission of sewant inspector.115 The only son from Anneke’s rst marriage, Jan Roelofs, became a carpenter and a surveyor in Beverwijck.116 By the time the four sons of Dominie Bogardus himself had to choose an occupation the minister had been dead for many years. Their choices also show no inuence from his side. Willem, the oldest, who in 1657 at the age of eighteen became one of the twenty “great burghers” of New Amsterdam (who enjoyed more privileges than the “small burghers”), was just eight years old when his father died.117 In addition to his appointment as a notary for the Dutch-speaking part of the population of New York, he pursued an honorable career as a provincial ofcial: clerk of the secretary, inspector of windmills, rst clerk, treasurer, and tax inspector before becoming postmaster for the province of New York in 1687.118 His second marriage, in 1669, with the oldest daughter of the former councilor and scaal, the jurist and poet Dr. Nicasius de Sille, son of a prominent Dutch regent family, proved a windfall.119 His surviving son Evert became a silversmith. Although Pieter Bogardus, as the youngest son of the minister, hardly knew his father, he was the one who followed most closely in his religious footsteps. To at least three of his children he gave Old Testament names: Shibboleth, Rachel, and Ephraim. Pieter was a pillar of the Reformed congregation of Beverwijck, in which he fullled

115 VRBM, 834; Venema, Beverwijck, 244–249, and index. His elder brother Joost Hartgers (active as publisher in Amsterdam from 1637), the printer of the early descriptions of New Netherland, lent him 260 guilders for his passage: GAA, NA, 491, f. 357 (August 24, 1647). 116 Totten, ‘Anneke Jans’, 208; Venema, Beverwijck, 245, 248–249, 474, and index. 117 Edward F. de Lancey (ed.), The burgher right of New Amsterdam (New York 1886), 19. 118 E.B. O’Callaghan, The register of New Netherland 1626 to 1674 (Albany 1865) 25, 29; J.A. Schiltkamp, De geschiedenis van het notariaat in het octrooigebied van de West-Indische Compagnie (The Hague 1964), 135, 323; E.B. O’Callaghan, Lists of inhabitants of colonial New York (repr. Baltimore 1979), 55, no 61 (his commission by Jacob Leisler, December 17, 1689). His registers seem lost but some deeds survive. On the notary’s ofce, see the perceptive study on Bogardus’s Albany colleague Adriaen Jansz van Ilpendam by Donna Merwick, Death of a notary: Conquest and change in colonial New York (Ithaca, NY & London 1999). 119 W.M.C. Regt, ‘Het geslacht De Sille’, in: De Nederlandsche Leeuw 40 (1922), 267–271; Henry C. Murphy, An anthology of New Netherland (New York 1865; repr. Port Washington 1969), 187–195; A.J.F. van Laer (ed.), ‘Letters of Nicasius de Sille, 1654’, in: Quarterly Journal of the New York State Historical Association 1 (1919–20), 98–108.

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various functions until 1684. It is not entirely clear how he earned a living. He owned land, and was a glazier. And he was in any case one of the river skippers of the town—like his son Evert, the rst known owner of the surviving family Bible—and was repeatedly elected into the town council of Beverwijck.120 Oddly enough, none of Bogardus’s sons or grandsons became a minister—a marked contrast to the offspring of his brother Cornelis in Holland. Ministers’ dynasties were a common phenomenon in the Netherlands of that time. Among Evert’s descendants we nd the rst minister only after three generations, by which time the great-grandfather was no more than a legend.121 Was that perhaps because Evert himself was unable to actively contribute to the upbringing of his children and stepchildren, and because Anneke Jans was less religiously inclined? From the marriage partners chosen by Bogardus’s children and stepchildren we see something of the expectations of the family. They were not farmers but artisans, merchants, and civil servants. Although landowners, they were townsfolk—no matter how insignicant those little towns may have been. And the rare one among them acquired real wealth.

Which fatherland? According to a letter by Van Twiller of August 20, 1635, a disillusioned Bogardus was at that point already wondering if he could not better return to the fatherland, and soon he prepared himself for the journey.122 The existing literature often creates the impression that he was

120 Pearson, Early records, I, 97; Jonathan Pearson, Contributions for the genealogy of the rst settlers of the ancient County of Albany from 1630 to 1800 (Albany 1872), 20; Merwick, Possessing Albany, 110, 196, 210; Janny Venema, “For the benet of the poor”: Poor relief in Albany/Beverwijck, 1652–1700 (MA thesis, SUNY at Albany, 1990), 214–215, 233; Venema, Deacons’ accounts, index; Venema, Beverwijck, 472, 474. 121 Cornelius Bogardus, minister at Schenectady from 1808 until his death in December 1812: William B. Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit (repr. New York 1969), IX, 187. 122 The wording of Bogardus’s wish to return to patria conveys deep disappointment: “versoeckt met het eerstcomende schip naert vaderlandt te vertrecken also gants niet van meninge is om geenderhande consideratien te continueren”; NAN, OWIC, 50. On this letter: Jaap Jacobs, ‘A troubled man: Director Wouter van Twiller and the affairs of New Netherland in 1635’, in: New York History 85 (2004), 213–232. See also: GAA, ACA, 4, p. 68 (December 3, 1635). On Bogardus’s loyalty to both countries: Frijhoff, ‘Dominee Bogardus’.

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from the start a colonist in New Netherland. But Bogardus was merely a Company employee, dispatched by the classis of Amsterdam for a specic length of time and for a salary paid by the WIC. A term of service was usually three to ve years. Bogardus’s predecessor Michaelius had been sent out for three years, but actually stayed one year longer. His successor Backerus had committed himself for a period of four years, which turned out to be eight. The instructions for ministers of the WIC from 1635 also mention a three-year term of service.123 At the end of that period the functionary could request permission to return or to have his appointment extended. Settling everything through correspondence with the Netherlands took so long that in some cases the situation had changed by the time a reply arrived. Many of the people we encounter around Dominie Bogardus in New Netherland were there for only a short time as Company employees. Some came back later to settle as free colonists, such as the former tobacco planter Marijn Adriaensen from Veere. There was also a very concrete reason for Bogardus to consider returning. The problems with director Van Twiller and the aftermath of the Dinclagen affair made it desirable for him to give account of himself in person to his employers in the Netherlands. That will be the subject of the next chapter. In the summer of 1637, Bogardus again considered returning for good, for it was then that the Heren XIX asked the classis for a new minister for New Netherland.124 The response came in September 1637, when the classis tried to again dispatch Bogardus’s predecessor Dominie Jonas Michaelius, who was “without a position.” But Michaelius no longer enjoyed the trust of the Heren XIX, probably owing to his quarrels with Peter Minuit. The directors replied on October 5 “that if they should need him, they would call on him.” The classis was “extremely displeased” with this response. From the resolutions of the classis it is not clear whether that dissatisfaction had something to do with the way Bogardus was functioning. Michaelius’s rigid religiosity was certainly a perfect match for the strictness of the classis, but the same could be said of Bogardus. Within a year the classis made two new attempts to have Michaelius sent to New Netherland, but both requests were turned down.125 In the end Bogardus was kept on. Does this mean 123

NAN, States General, 5755–I (December 12, 1635, articles 15–16). GA, ACA, 4, pp. 103, 107; 163, pp. 33–34 (September 9 and October 5, 1637); Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, I, 48. 125 GA, ACA, 4, pp. 113, 125, 129; 163, pp. 37, 41 (November 16, 1637; June 7 and July 5, 1638). 124

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he had a better press among the directors? It would not have been difcult for them to dismiss him once his term of ofce had expired. That would have been in 1636 or 1637, but it seems that between the moment his position opened up and the last recommendation was made by the classis, in 1638, something happened that made it clear to the Heren XIX that Bogardus wished to remain in New Netherland, and that this was also best for the colony—at least better than reappointing Michaelius. In the spring of 1638 Bogardus must have made the decision to request an extension of his term of ofce, assuming it had not already been tacitly granted. When Van Twiller wrote his recommendation for Anneke Jans in the summer of 1637, Bogardus did not yet have a compelling reason for choosing New Netherland as his new fatherland. That had changed by the spring of 1638: he was planning to marry in New Amsterdam a Norwegian woman who had no further ties with Holland, and who needed to care for her ve small children. The choice Evert made then never really came up for discussion, for nowhere in the resolutions of the classis do we nd a request for a denitive return, transfer, or extension. In July 1638, however, Bogardus did feel the need to visit the fatherland because of the uproar created about him by former scaal Dinclagen. He asked the colonial council for a leave of absence “in order to give account of himself with regard to Lubbert van Dincklagen,” but the council forbade him to leave “in order that the church of God may grow more and more from day to day.”126 By then he must have been married, and his formulation indicates a temporary leave, not a denitive departure. Exactly when Dominie Bogardus and Anneke Jans decided to marry is not clear. In any case, a declaration about the rights of Anneke’s children to the inheritance of their deceased father was drawn up in March 1638, with an eye to the impending marriage.127 Their portion—half ownership of the farm on the North River and its furnishings—was assessed at 1,000 carolus guilders, to be divided in equal portions of 200 guilders among the four surviving daughters of Roelof Jansz (Sara, Tryntjen, Sytjen, and Annitjen) and his son Jan Roelofs. On reaching the age of majority the children could claim the money, which the

126

NYHM, IV, 17 ( July 8, 1638). As appears from NYHM, II, 42–44 ( June 21, 1642); Frijhoff, ‘Dominee Bogardus’, 53, and footnote 24. 127

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newly married couple would hold in usufruct. Anneke Jans and Dominie Bogardus in turn pledged to raise the children “as honestly as possibly, to provide them with the necessary clothing and food, to give them schooling, have them learn reading, writing, and a good trade.” When Anneke’s oldest daughter Sara, barely fteen years old, married the surgeon Hans Kierstede in 1642 and demanded her portion, the original document could not be found. One week before Sara’s marriage a new deed to the same effect was drawn up in the fort by the new secretary Cornelis van Tienhoven. Anneke Jans chose director Kieft and councilor La Montagne, the two highest authorities in the colony, as guardians and witnesses. Everyone signed the document, including Bogardus and Anneke. With clumsily scrawled letters Anneke wrote her name as “Anna Ians.”128 Since her rst wedding day, when she could only make an X, she had apparently learned to write her name. That, no doubt, she owed to the minister. But her writing skills were limited. The power of attorney she gave to Evert’s brother in 1649 is signed with only a mark: a St. Andrew’s cross with small ags attached to the upper two arms.129 The signature on her will of January 1663 is a simple Latin cross, followed by the initials AB (Anna Bogardus).130 Bogardus’s marriage presents us with another intriguing question, one that has so far received no attention in the literature. Was this not a confessionally mixed marriage? Bogardus was a Reformed minister, Anneke Jans was of Lutheran origin and the children from her rst marriage had received a Lutheran baptism. Although mixed marriages were not uncommon, the Amsterdam consistory declared as late as 1656 that marriage with a Lutheran was “a misdeed.”131 And for an orthodox minister it must have been an especially serious breach of conduct. Anneke naturally joined the Reformed church in New Amsterdam after marrying Dominie Bogardus, and later became an active member of the congregation. We have already seen that the Sunday service was mandatory for all the colonists of Rensselaerswijck, Reformed and Lutheran alike. The young children were therefore brought up in the Reformed confession, however weak their instruction may have been 128

See the original document in NYSA, DCM, II, 20a–b (NYHM, II, 42–44). NYSA, DCM, III, 55 (NYHM, III, 149–150: August 17, 1649). 130 Municipal Archives Albany, Notarial Records, vol. I (Dirck van Schelluyne), pp. 296–300 ( January 29, 1663); published in Frijhoff, ‘Dominee Bogardus’, 62–63; transl. in Pearson, Early Records, III, 204–206; J. Munsell (ed.), An account of Anneke Janse, and her family. Also the will of Anneke Janse in Dutch and English (Albany 1870). 131 GAA, ARCA, 9, p. 165 (April 27, 1656). 129

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Fig. 35. Signatures of Anna Ians and her second husband E. Boghardus under a settlement in favor of her daughter Sara, June 21, 1642. [New York State Archive, Dutch Colonial Manuscripts, 2:20b].

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in dogmatic content. Roelof Jansz and his wife undoubtedly continued that practice in New Amsterdam and attended Bogardus’s church with their children, as was customary among the Lutheran colonists before 1649, when a rst attempt was made at forming a congregation of their own.132 But when Anneke married the minister more was expected. Unity of confession was supposed to reign in ministers’ households, if only for the sake of setting a good example. The children of Anneke and Evert were of course baptized in the Reformed church. Did the children from Anneke’s rst marriage attend Bogardus’s church later as well? We can assume that they did, because several years after Evert’s death there was still no Lutheran minister in New Amsterdam; and perhaps because in the multicolored and multiconfessional community formal membership in a specic congregation was less important than the public practice of church attendance. On the oldest membership roll of the Reformed church of New Amsterdam—from 1649, when Anneke Jans and her small children were already living in Rensselaerswijck—we do in fact nd Anneke’s sister Marritgen Jans with her husband Govert Loockermans, as well as Anneke’s daughter Sara Roelofs, but not Sara’s husband, surgeon Hans Kierstede.133 Kierstede was a refugee from the Lutheran town of Magdeburg, which was destroyed by General Tilly in 1631. As an established surgeon he was a man of some importance in New Amsterdam. But his name is also missing from the petitions signed by Lutherans in 1657 and 1659 for freedom of worship.134 Was he one of the confessionally indifferent colonists, or did he perhaps consider his social position more important than involvement in a particular denomination? Historians of the Lutheran church in North America have taken no notice of Anneke Jans, or of all the other early Lutheran immigrants from Scandinavian countries.135 For them the rst Lutheran shows up on 132

Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, 1–36; W.J. Kooiman, De Nederlandsche Luthersche Gemeente in Noord-Amerika 1649–1772 (Amsterdam 1946); Harry J. Kreider, The beginnings of Lutheranism in New York (New York 1949); Theodore G. Tappert, ‘The Church’s infancy, 1650–1790’, in: E. Clifford Nelson (ed.), The Lutherans in North America (Philadelphia 1975), 3–77; Ruth Piwonka, ‘The Lutheran presence in New Netherland’, in: De Halve Maen 60:1 (1987), 1–5. 133 ‘’tLedematen boeck oft register der ledematen alhier ’t sedert de jare 1649’, in: NYGBR 9 (1878), 38–45. 134 Karl A. Luria, ‘The Lutheran struggle for toleration in New Amsterdam’, in: De Halve Maen 62:1 (1989), 1–7; 62:2 (1989), 1–5. 135 Except Evjen, Scandinavian Immigrants, who was however not interested in church history.

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Manhattan only in 1637, while the mention of Lutherans in the short description of New Netherland by the French Jesuit Isaac Jogues (1643) is viewed as the rst formal evidence. By that time Anneke Jans was certainly considered a Reformed minister’s wife. There is nevertheless something plainly incongruous about the choice made by her second husband, the minister who in Woerden had experienced the conict between Lutherans and Calvinists at close range, who must have been familiar with Alutarius’s anti-Lutheran writings, and who never strayed from the path of orthodoxy. His successors on Manhattan, Johannes Megapolensis and Samuel Drisius, together with the director, the rigid minister’s son Pieter Stuyvesant, expressly resisted any concession to the Lutherans from the side of the Heren XIX and adhered strictly to the Articulbrieff of March 28, 1624, which gave the true Reformed religion the exclusive right to public worship, even though freedom of conscience was guaranteed. All Company employees had been required to swear an oath on that document. But in Bogardus’s time the process of confessionalization had not yet reached that point. A certain ecumenicity of everyday life was still the rule, even in the church.136 Perhaps the pietistic Bogardus recognized something of his own religiosity in Lutheran pietism? As late as 1653 Megapolensis and Drisius wrote that the substantial number of Lutherans had until then attended the Reformed worship service and had even partaken of the sacraments.137 Participation of the Lutherans as Lutherans in the life of the Reformed congregation was then still considered normal by all, on the condition that the community ritual was recognized as a community ritual, not as a denominational confession of the Reformed faith. Dominie Bogardus was still the minister for all of the colonists, not only the Calvinists. All the more reason for him to insist on high standards for the Reformed members of his congregation and to demand clarication of his authority—as the good Calvinist scaal Dr. Lubbert Dinclagen would soon nd out.

136 137

On this notion, see Frijhoff & Spies, 1650: Hard-won unity, 50, and index. Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, 2.

CHAPTER TWELVE

CONFRONTATIONS

Challenges At the end of June 1632 De Soutbergh (The Salt Mountain) was ready to sail. But the ship did not set out from the roadstead at Texel until mid-August, and only on September 3 did it leave the Isle of Wight.1 It was a large vessel of 120 lasts (240 tons’ burden) with 20 guns, manned by more than 50 sailors and 100 soldiers. A few farm laborers sailed with them as well. Among the cabin guests were Bogardus and Van Twiller, and the merchant Hans Jorisz Honthom.2 As usual, the rst port of call was the Antilles. On November 25 the military transport reached St. Martin, which was still uninhabited but the site of a small fort built by the Dutch after their conquest of the island from the Spaniards two years earlier. The ship must have lain at anchor there for some time, long enough to capture a Spanish ship with a cargo of sugar—a reminder that the war was not yet over. But the rest of the voyage proved difcult. Only in February or March did Manhattan appear on the horizon. It had been a dangerous journey. For more than ve months Dominie Bogardus had found himself in the inescapable company of the new commander Wouter van Twiller.3 He must therefore have come to know him well through the many ups and down of the voyage. They were about the same age—Bogardus 25 or 26, and Van Twiller 26—hardly older than Arent van Curler was on becoming commissioner of Rensselaerswijck (age 18), or Adriaen van der Donck on his appointment as schout there (age 21). These were

1

VRBM, 266 (April 23, 1634). On the date of arrival and the passengers: J. de Laet, Iaerlyck Verhael van de verrichtingen der Geoctroyeerde West-Indische Compagnie [1644] (4 vols., The Hague 1931–1937), III, 136; Van Cleaf Bachman, Peltries or plantations? The economic policies of the Dutch West India Company in New Netherland, 1623–1639 (Baltimore 1969), 130–131; H. van Schaick, ‘Showdown at Fort Orange’, in: De Halve Maen 65:3 (1992), 37–45, here 39. 3 On Van Twiller: Dictionary of American Biography XIX, 216; Jaap Jacobs, ‘A troubled man: Director Wouter van Twiller and the affairs of New Netherland in 1635’, in: New York History 85 (2004), 213–232. 2

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young men without leadership experience, and the people in their charge were for months left to fend for themselves. Evert had been only a comforter of the sick, Wouter a lieutenant bailiff in Nijkerk and subsequently a clerk, a simple administrative ofcial, in the West India House in Amsterdam. His appointment in New Netherland he owed to the WIC director Kiliaen van Rensselaer, his uncle. Van Twiller had already acquired a bad reputation on St. Martin. Troubles were soon brewing in New Amsterdam as well. Captain David de Vries, royally welcomed by Van Twiller as the patroon of Swanendael when he sailed into the harbor of New Amsterdam in the afternoon of April 16, had a low opinion of him right from the start, describing him in his journal as “this commander, a clerk whom they made a commander, a gure in their comedy.”4 When Van Twiller, his schout Notelman, and secretary Van Remundt appealed to the trade monopoly of the WIC in order to play cat and mouse with the patroon and his cargo, De Vries snapped at Van Remundt that he did not understand how the WIC could appoint men who had no administrative experience whatsoever, “such fools . . . who knew nothing but how to get drunk.”5 In his rst letter to his nephew as the new director, dated April 23, 1634, Rensselaer wrote at length about the problems and opportunities in New Netherland.6 The troubles in the colony he attributed to the secretary Jan van Remundt, who had the ear of De Vogelaer and the trade party in the WIC. Van Remundt had written to his wife that Van Twiller was not to be trusted; she had passed that on to De Vogelaer, and he in turn told Reverend Badius, delegate for Indies Affairs. It was therefore of utmost importance that the new director immediately make an ally of the minister, the moral authority in the colony. “If Your Honor could win over the minister [Bogardus], I believe that he has credit with Vogelaer and his group, and if he could understand that the secretary [Van Remundt] acted disloyally, the situation would be placed on a completely new footing.” Was Rensselaer perhaps overestimating the power of the minister here? It would soon become evident which alliances really counted. Rensselaer’s letter in any case reveals the network around Bogardus. Under separate cover Badius sent a letter with instructions for Bogardus. Rensselaer from his side

4 5 6

De Vries, Historiael, 113 (NNN, 187). De Vries, Historiael, 116 (NNN, 191). VRBM, 269 (April 23, 1634).

Fig. 36. View of New Amsterdam, about 1650 (the “Montanus View”). [After I.N. Phelps Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island 1498–1909 (6 vols.; New York, 1915–1928), vol. I, plate 6].

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wrote that Bogardus had the necessary credit with De Vogelaer and his faction. Van Twiller had to use that for his advantage. Reverend Otto Badius (1594–1664) played a key role in the relations between New Netherland and the fatherland. Originally from Aachen, he rst served as the High German minister in Amsterdam for refugees from Aachen, Cologne, and Hamburg, and in February 1626 became a minister in the Dutch Reformed church.7 As an orthodox member of the consistory he had less charisma than the notorious rebrand Adriaen Smout, Reverend Michaelius’s friend, but proved an equally zealous opponent of theater, dancing, and banquets, also of Samuel Coster’s Dutch Academy—an early form of adult education in the humanities—and the Peace of Westphalia. In 1630 Badius married a daughter of the alderman and elder Jan Willemsz Bogaert, whom we have already come to know as an implacable foe of Remonstrants and other libertines.8 That marriage inspired Joost van den Vondel to write his satirical poem Een otter in’t bolwerck (An Otter in the Bulwark). Badius was for many years a delegate for Indies Affairs and as such served as the contact person between the WIC and the consistory. He must also have had personal contact with the colonists. We know, for example, that in 1639 he was a witness at the Amsterdam wedding of the colony’s former secretary, Andries Hudde.9 For Bogardus he was the perfect intermediary. In fact, Badius must have been the man who lured him to New Netherland. In August 1648, after Bogardus’s death, Dominie Megapolensis wrote a letter to the classis from Rensselaerswijck in the name of the widow in order to claim the outstanding salary. The problem was that no one knew exactly what he had earned, for the good reason that “while he was promised a salary equal to that of other ministers in the service of the Company, yet this promise was not made by the Honorable Directors, but by the Honorable Classis, at least by the Reverend Delegates, among whom he also named (unless I am mistaken) D. Badius, who had kept pressing him to go to New Netherland; [Badius promised] that he would effectuate for him with the Company that a salary would follow, equal to that of other ministers in the service of the Company.”10 7

GAA, ACA, 3, f. 65v°. On Badius: NNBW, II, 63–65. See chapter 1. 9 GAA, DTB, 450, p. 33 ( January 6, 1639). 10 New Brunswick Theological Seminary, Gardner A. Sage Library, Amsterdam Correspondence, box I, no 3 (Megapolensis to classis Amsterdam, August 15, 1648); ER, I, 237–239. 8

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If we add to this Rensselaer’s remark about Bogardus’s credit with De Vogelaer, it is not difcult to reconstruct the sequence of events and the circles in which we should look for his protectors. When candidate Bogardus presented himself to the Amsterdam consistory on July 15, 1632 to have his appointment conrmed, he wrote that he had been “requested by the Directors of the West India Company to go to New Netherland.”11 The vacancy resulting from the return of Dominie Michaelius in March 1632 was known to the consistory, the classis, and the WIC. For several months New Netherland had been without a minister, and time was pressing: De Soutbergh had been ready to sail for a few weeks already. It was apparently difcult to nd candidates for the little known settlement of New Netherland; everyone wanted to go to Brazil. When Bogardus, upon his return from Guinea, reported to the classis and the WIC and showed them his testimonials, Badius seized his chance. Here was a young man with higher education plus experience in a colony, a candidate of proven orthodoxy, eager to become a minister but without the ambition to stay in the fatherland. He urged him to leave on the ship that was ready to weigh anchor. This explains the haste connected with his examination and why the promise of the usual salary was made provisionally, without having it formalized in writing. The matter was handled just as hurriedly by the WIC. There was no time to waste, and Bogardus seemed a good candidate for the new tandem of director and minister, given his own attitude towards the director and the minister in Guinea. As a comforter of the sick he had proved cooperative with Reverend Benderius and shown respect for director Sticker, both pious Calvinists, and it was precisely this frame of mind that the trading companies required of their employees. The young minister Justus Heurnius had found that out in 1619 when, after publishing his book on missions, he wanted to go to the Indies himself “in order to teach the people there the Word of God, and to convert them to the right faith.” Arent van Buchell, who attended the meeting of the Heren XVII as a director, noted that the VOC rejected him “as he wanted to use his own imagination in this matter and not subject himself to the authorities there, and did not understand the language.”12 Heurnius’s “imagination” was closely akin to the religious

11

GAA, ARCA, 6, p. 327. L.A. van Langeraad, ‘Eenige mededeelingen van Arent van Buchel betreffende zijn bewindhebberschap in de Amsterdamsche kamer der VOC 1619–1621’, in: De Navorscher 47 (1897), 609–650. 12

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ideas of Willem Usselincx, persona non grata with the VOC and failed founder of the WIC, and to those of Dominie Bogardus. According to Rensselaer, the director of the WIC most supportive of Bogardus was De Vogelaer. Was it actually De Vogelaer who selected him to be the minister, or the church? The merchant Marcus de Vogelaer Jr. (1589–1663/64) had accumulated considerable wealth through trade with Russia, Italy, and the Levant.13 In 1631 Marcus’s fortune was estimated at 40,000 guilders, but in that same year his mother, Margriet van Valckenburg, was good for 300,000. Together they bought shares worth 12,000 guilders in the WIC.14 Margriet was the widow of Marcus Sr., who had also traded with Italy and the Levant, founded the Brabant Company together with Isaac Le Maire and others, and later become a director of the VOC. After the death of his rst wife Geertruid van Collen (or Ceulen), Marcus Jr. married Catharina de Velaer, daughter of Jacques de Velaer, who traded on the coast of Guinea before becoming a co-founder the Brabant Company for East Indies trade and nally a director of the VOC. He was one of largest shareholders in that company. These extremely wealthy merchants, all born in Antwerp, formed an important nucleus of the South Netherland lobby.15 In ecclesiastical or political matters they usually kept a low prole, but there was no doubt about their religious orientation: although they did not shun the things of the world, they were staunch Calvinists. Like Rensselaer, Marcus de Vogelaer Jr.’s cousin Marcus van Valckenburg Jr. had been a member of the Reformed consistory, and his mother Margriet van Valckenburg donated one hundred dukatons (315 guilders) every year for the Protestant refugees from the Palatinate, more than two and a half times the amount contributed by the entire congregation of Woerden (125 guilders).16 They also moved in good circles: men and women

13 Johan E. Elias, De vroedschap van Amsterdam, 1578–1795 (2 vols., Haarlem 1903), II, 644–645; Oliver A. Rink, Holland on the Hudson: An economic and social history of Dutch New York (New York 1986), 109–111. On De Vogelaer as a Russian trader: Jan Willem Veluwenkamp, Archangel. Nederlandse ondernemers in Rusland 1550–1785 (s.l. 2000), 55–90, 125–128. 14 J.G. van Dillen, Het oudste aandeelhoudersregister van de Kamer Amsterdam der Oost-Indische Compagnie (The Hague 1958), 110; Kees Zandvliet, De 250 rijksten van de Gouden eeuw. Kapitaal, macht, familie en levensstijl (Amsterdam 2006), 247–248, no 140. 15 On these merchant families: Oscar Gelderblom, Zuid-Nederlandse kooplieden en de opkomst van de Amsterdamse stapelmarkt (1578–1630) (Hilversum 2000). 16 GAA, ARCA, 168 ( January 1 and February 3, 1637); 149, f. 105, 113, 117, 120. On this family: C.C. van Valkenburg, ‘Van Valkenburg, 1501–1700’, in: De Nederlandsche Leeuw 62 (1944), 45–57.

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of high cultural standing such as the writers Constantijn Huygens (a cousin of De Vogelaer Sr.), Pieter Cornelisz Hooft, and Anna Roemers Visscher were present at the rst wedding of the younger Vogelaer in 1619, and the popular poet Jacob Cats, who would become grand pensionary of Holland in 1636, was married to Margriet’s sister Elisabeth van Valckenburg.17 Within the WIC they represented the trade faction, whose main goal was to maximize prots in New Netherland by promoting the trade in beaver and otter pelts.18 They viewed the Company as a exible instrument of commerce and resisted taking on the burden of permanent colonies. But that instrument of commerce had to have the right religious hue: God would support the trade as long as the WIC stayed on His side. Opposing the trade faction in the WIC was a group of major shareholders inspired by the ideals of Usselincx.19 Their aim was to provide structural support for the commerce through intensive colonization of the acquired territories. Instead of a trade monopoly of the WIC they advocated a limited freedom of private enterprise. In a series of three steps the colonial faction managed to assert the importance of private initiative. A rst concession for exploitation was granted to a group of mainly Walloon Calvinists, by the Provisionele Ordre of March 30, 1624. They were also given permission to trade with the Indians, but beaver and otter furs were to be sold on to the WIC.20 This allowed the WIC to maintain its monopoly towards the outside world. The settlers were given no political say—the orders of the WIC were the law of the land, although the administration of justice had to conform to that in Holland. While freedom of conscience was recognized, the Reformed faith was the only public religion. The second step was taken on March 10, 1628, when the Company granted individual colonists “liberties” for agriculture, while always insisting on the WIC’s monopoly on the fur trade. Two years later the WIC decided to lease out its own farms on Manhattan instead of exploiting them directly, and to sell the livestock.

17 W.W. van Valkenburg, ‘De nakomelingen van Mr. Jacob Cats’, in: Liber amicorum Jhr. Mr. C.C. van Valkenburg (The Hague 1985), 385–418; Zandvliet, De 250 rijksten, 187–188, no 103. 18 On these factions within the WIC: Bachman, Peltries, 44–87, 120–139; Rink, Holland, 94–116. 19 See chapter 9. 20 F.C. Wieder, De stichting van New York in Juli 1625. Reconstructies en nieuwe gegevens ontleend aan de Van Rappard-documenten (The Hague 1925), 111–118.

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The arrival of the captured Spanish Silver Fleet at the end of 1628, which yielded 12 million guilders, brought a short period of nancial stability to the WIC, making a third step possible. On June 7, 1629 permission was granted for the founding of patroonships in New Netherland. The export of all products from the entire region remained the exclusive right of the WIC, which levied an export tax on them. New Amsterdam acquired the function of staple market and transshipment port. In June 1631, however, WIC policy changed again. The statutes of the Company required that Rensselaer step down as a director, and De Vogelaer became not only a director but also commissioner for New Netherland. This meant that the anticolonial faction, interested only in the fur trade, had gained the upper hand. Until the end of 1633 they waged a erce campaign against the liberties of the patroons—who, it must be said, proted shamelessly from the Company. From Rensselaer’s correspondence it is clear how the directors were divided between the two parties.21 De Vogelaer was supported by his uncle Marcus van Valckenburg, also by Cornelis Bicker (political commissioner in the Amsterdam consistory and brother of the powerful burgomaster Andries Bicker), merchant and banker Guillielmo Bartholotti, Hendrick Broen, Simon van der Does, and Abraham Oyens. Daniel van Liebergen, who became a director a short time later, belonged to this group as well. He was the man whom Cornelis Bogaert approached in March 1636 to have 600 guilders of Evert’s salary paid out, and who four days later saw to it that the absence of Van Twiller’s signature formed no obstacle.22 The Gentlemen knew how things stood in New Netherland. Six months later they had an “order of redress” drawn up for the colony.23 Leadership of the colonial faction was in the hands of Kiliaen van Rensselaer. His partner in the Amsterdam jewelry shop, Willem van Wely, was married to Maria van Valckenburg, which made him an uncle by marriage of Marcus de Vogelaer Jr. Rensselaer could rely on the backing of the three co-owners of his colony Rensselaerswijck, Samuel Blommaert, Samuel Godijn (Godin), and the orthodox Calvinist and Leiden scholar Johan de Laet. Other loyal supporters were Michiel Pauw, patroon of the colony of Pavonia opposite New Amsterdam

21 22 23

VRBM, 58–59, 268–270, 282, 463–465. NAN, OWIC, 14, f. 124r° (March 13 and 17, 1636). NAN, OWIC, 14, f. 173r° (September 1, 1636).

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and son of the vehemently Calvinist burgomaster Reinier Pauw, the merchant Albert Coenraetsz Burgh, Hendrick Hamel, co-patroon of the colony Swanendael on the South River, the merchant and ship owner Jonas Witsen, and nally the brewer Pieter Evertsz Hulft. In 1625 Hulft himself nanced the shipment of one hundred head of livestock to New Netherland. Although all persons afliated with the WIC professed the Reformed religion, the colonial faction was apparently somewhat stricter in matters of doctrine, and denitely more militant. There were supporters of the colonial party in the States General as well, particularly the Gelderland representative jonker Gerrit van Arnhem, who from 1631 onward was delegated to attend meetings of the Heren XIX, and who came from the same district as the Rensselaer clan. Given this context, and Rensselaer’s express reference to De Vogelaer’s protection, the dispatch of Bogardus was certainly not a matter of chance. In 1632, after the anti-colonial faction had regained control, it renewed the entire staff of New Netherland. Wouter van Twiller, clerk in the Amsterdam Company ofce, replaced the newly appointed director Crol; the rowdy Hans Jorisz Honthom, a declared enemy of the patroons and a shrewd fur trader, took Dirck Cornelisz Duyster’s place as commissioner at Fort Orange in order to keep an eye on Rensselaerswijck; schout-scaal Jan Lampo was replaced by Coenraet Notelman (another cousin of Rensselaer); and Bogardus took over the position of Michaelius. During the interim directorship of Crol, secretary Van Remundt had also disappeared from the scene, but he returned with the arrival of Van Twiller. Cornelis van Tienhoven, who had stepped in for him temporarily, served for a time as commissioner of store goods but was soon restored to the ofce of secretary. Finally, a new scaal, Lubbert Dinclagen, arrived with the next ship to replace Coenraet Notelman. Rensselaer had informed Dinclagen in detail about the situation and believed that Van Twiller could trust him because he had been recommended by the Gelderland deputy Dr. Henrick Feith, a former WIC director and a friend of the colonial faction.24 Rensselaer even hoped that Dinclagen, like Notelman, would be willing to manage one of the Company farms that he rented. But Van Twiller had to be cautious: “Test him thoroughly rst, and since he has been a student, he can give you advice, since such persons have

24 On Feith: NNBW, I, 850–851. He came from the Veluwe district, like Rensselaer and Van Arnhem.

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greater insight than those who have not been students.”25 Dinclagen would nevertheless soon clash with the two authorities of the colony: Van Twiller and Bogardus.

Bogardus versus Van Twiller Bogardus was not hand in glove with Van Twiller, however. They in fact had little respect for each other. Barely installed in Fort Amsterdam, Van Twiller misbehaved so badly that Rensselaer at the rst opportunity wrote to him that members of the Amsterdam chamber were “talking openly of looking for another director”. The new candidate was Isaac de Rasière, who had preceded Jan Remundt as secretary of New Netherland and on December 3, 1633 married a niece of the WIC director Jan Raye.26 Rensselaer, concerned about his nephew and protégé, but powerless because he was no longer a director, soon identied the person responsible for the change in policy as Marcus de Vogelaer: “whereupon I so reprimanded Vogelaer, on the crowded Dam Square, that he won’t soon forget it.” The directors Albert Burgh and Jean Gras had indiscreetly informed Rensselaer of the rumors about Van Twiller, “among other things that Your Honor, being drunk, had run down the street with a drawn sword after the minister [Bogardus], that Your Honor had given someone else a beating,” and so forth. Moreover, Van Twiller had seized a Spanish ship on St. Martin without immediately reporting it to the WIC. For Vogelaer in particular, always the rst to insist on prots, that was a serious offense. The directors Albert Burgh, Reinier Reael, and Jacques de La Myne were fortunately still favorably inclined towards Van Twiller, and it was important to cultivate that support. Van Twiller was advised to discreetly request their protection “against all insults and slander that is spread with insults.” This was indeed one of the chief problems of governing overseas territory. Employees could spread as much gossip and slander as they wished after returning home. The victims would hear it only months later, at the earliest. In the meantime others had to make decisions and, in good faith or otherwise, take into account the damaging news. One of those rumors De Vogelaer had also passed on to Rensselaer, namely

25 26

For this quotation and the following, see VRBM, 267–269 (April 23, 1634). On De Rasière: NNBW, V, 564.

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“that when you attended the sermon with the minister [Bogardus] on St. Martin, it would have been better if you had stayed away, indicating that you had had too much to drink.” In this case Rensselaer singled out the guilty party: Jan van Remundt. He had already been secretary under Peter Minuit and then, too, had pitted the minister against the director. Now he was up to his old tricks, inciting others, especially the new minister, both orally and in writing against Van Twiller. Directors like De Vogelaer were only too ready to give him credence, even though they declared otherwise. “The enemies of Minuit are now yours. That scoundrel [Van Remundt] has riled up this minister [Bogardus] against you, just as he did the previous one against Minuit.” Bogardus had written to Reverend Badius, the classis delegate for Indies Affairs, undoubtedly in order to complain about Van Twiller. But the reply he received was much different from what he had expected. It was not his fault, Rensselaer maintained; he had simply been misled. This explains the advice he gave his nephew to remain on friendly terms with the minister. Was Van Remundt really such a devilish intriguer? Councilor Simon Dircksz had a different view of the matter: “The minister Jonas Michelsz [Michaelius] is fomenting discord between the two [the director and the secretary Van Remundt],” he had written to Rensselaer already in 1630: “he ought to be a mediator in God’s church and congregation, but he seems to me to be quite the contrary.”27 And the dissension, he protested, would be ruinous for trade! But director Minuit was in favor of colonization, while Michaelius and Van Remundt followed the line of the trade faction. Van Remundt was therefore Vogelaer’s man. Small wonder that Bogardus approved of the commotion caused by Van Remundt. He initially conceived of New Netherland along the same lines as Michaelius, while Van Twiller set his compass largely by Minuit. Problems were therefore unavoidable. Relations between the new minister and the director had been endangered even before their arrival in New Netherland by the irresponsible behavior of Van Twiller during the church service on St. Martin. In the difcult context of the colony such conduct was absolutely unacceptable for Bogardus. The congregation had to be built up from scratch, and the problematic legacy of the previous directorship resolved. Given the authority structure of the colony, the director was also by denition a member

27

VRBM, 169–170 (September 16, 1630); cf. GAA, NA, 943 ( July 17, 1632).

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of the congregation—and usually an elder. He had no choice but to set the best possible example. “Be religious with respect to God and an example for the people,” Rensselaer admonished him. But that was a far cry from how he actually behaved. The man had neither style nor manners. When Van Remundt’s son wanted to board the ship with his friend Willem van Wouw on the island of St. Martin, a drunken Van Twiller had shouted arrogantly at them: “Let the dogs swim on board.” By April 1634, scarcely a year after Van Twiller’s arrival, Rensselaer could sum up a good many grievances against him. Van Twiller was said to be proud and “puffed up,” also “always drunken if there is wine, hostile to the minister, and no supporter of religion.”28 Others who returned to the Netherlands also made a point of Van Twiller’s drinking problem.29 On June 17, 1634 Bogardus wrote a letter to the director in which— according to Kieft’s summary of 1646—he took Van Twiller to task in biblical style.30 He was “a child of the devil, a rogue through and through.” The minister exclaimed angrily “that his goats were better than he was,” and promised that the next Sunday he would “so collar you in the pulpit that both you and his birch [rod] would crack, and many more such insults.” Were these merely crude vituperations, unbetting a minister, a claim made by Kieft and simply reiterated by most modern authors? Bogardus’s biblical parallels suggest that more was at stake. The goats recall the New Testament passage about the Last Judgment (Matt. 25:32–33), when the (good) sheep will be separated from the (evil) goats. When Bogardus threatens to publicly admonish the director from the pulpit, he is undoubtedly alluding to the second step of church discipline—just as three months later he would apply the third step, that of excommunication, to the scaal Dinclagen. In both cases the consistory must have been informed, and at least a majority of the members—the director himself was normally a member too—must have approved the measure. It is also unlikely that the minister would have thoughtlessly put accusations against the director in writing, knowing that the letter could be used against him in the colony or at home. Not only Van Twiller’s drinking habits bothered Bogardus. The vehemence of the minister’s language indicates more 28

VRBM, 271 (April 23, 1634). GAA, NA, 856, p. 174 (December 18, 1635). 30 NYHM, IV, 291 ( January 2, 1646); A. Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk in Noord-Amerika 1624–1664 (2 vols., The Hague 1913), II, p. XXII. 29

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serious problems: the director was smuggling, lling his own pockets, and treating a man like Cornelis van Vorst, the tenant-farmer of Pavonia and a close friend of Bogardus, in a high-handed manner. In every respect he was a bad example for the congregation, even his language was crude. Marritgen Thomas brought charges against him on November 18 of that year for addressing her dishonorably, and Van Twiller responded by berating her.31 In brief, his behavior was the exact opposite of what was expected of a conscientious Company ofcial at a trading post. This was especially galling for Bogardus because Van Twiller came from a good Calvinist family—in 1642 he would marry the daughter of an Amsterdam elder. We do not know for sure if Bogardus actively helped bring about Van Twiller’s departure, as some historians have claimed. The conicts with Van Twiller and Dinclagen took place in the rst two years following Bogardus’s dispatch to New Amsterdam. After that relations seem to have stabilized. Van Twiller rebuilt the fort and ordered the construction of a new church. He also had very few problems with the Indians—for decades, in fact, “Wouter” remained for them the prototype of the good white ruler. It was the Company directors who found his mix of interests in the colony and the patroonship increasingly unacceptable. They saw to their dismay how the trading post was becoming more and more subordinate to the colony. And how Van Twiller took for himself a farm and bought a strategic island (Governor’s Island). There was also, of course, the campaign against Van Twiller by David Pietersz de Vries, himself a convinced colonist. His ship had arrived in Hoorn from New Netherland at the end of September 1636, and he appeared before the directors in Amsterdam at the beginning of December to explain the situation in the colony. It soon became clear why De Vries had come: he asked permission to go to New Netherland as the new director (thus to replace Van Twiller), or otherwise to found a new patroonship there. The director should in any case be “a more capable person.”32 Nine months later the directors believed they had found that “more capable” director in 31 GAA, NA, 1283, f. 114 ( July 3, 1641): declaration by the former commissioners Dirck Corssen Stam and Claes van Elslandt. 32 NAN, OWIC, 14, f. 215v°, 216v° (December 4 and 8, 1636). On Van Vorst: De Vries, Historiael, 115, 145 (NNN, 190, 197–198); Aernout van Buchell, Notae quotidianae (Utrecht 1940), 52–53, 68–69; A.J.F. van Laer, ‘Some early Dutch manuscripts’, in: New York State Historical Association Quarterly Journal 3 (1922), 230. On the relations between Van Vorst and Bogardus: Wegen, 666–671.

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the person of Willem Kieft. Van Twiller was recalled to give account of his administration and was not reinstated in his ofce. On March 28, 1638 Kieft arrived in New Netherland.

Fiscaal Dinclagen and the minister The sharp conict with Dinclagen must have made Bogardus’s life even more miserable than his quarrels with Van Twiller. The issue here was not one of agrant misconduct. Lubbert Dinclagen was not a scoundrel, but a man of as much integrity as Bogardus. His father, the somewhat capricious teacher Thomas (van Dinxlaken), had been ordained to the priesthood in Zwolle (province of Overijssel) and served as a parish priest in nearby Hasselt, but then felt so attracted to the Reformation that he went to study theology at the Calvinist University of Heidelberg in 1576, and later continued his studies in Leiden.33 After receiving his doctorate he became rector of various Latin schools and eventually married Elsebe, daughter of the Deventer alderman Lubbert van Winshem. The future scaal was named after this grandfather, and followed in his footsteps by earning a degree in civil and canon law in Orleans during his grand tour in 1621.34 Very few gures from the history of New Netherland have received so unanimous a judgment from historians: Lubbert Dinclagen was a rigid, but honorable man of unimpeachable integrity. How was it possible that his intentions clashed so violently with those of Dominie Bogardus, also a man of principle and as ercely opposed to misgovernment as Dinclagen? Lubbert Dinclagen did have a ery temperament: he was frank, straightforward, and inexible in matters of doctrine. His personality combined his father’s Calvinist convictions, erudition, and craving for status with his mother’s patrician background, all with a slight tinge of the radical Reformation for which his great-grandparents had fought and suffered in Deventer. In 1535 Johan van Winshem, a great-uncle of his mother, had been beheaded as an Anabaptist in Deventer—an event that must have reverberated in the family for generations.35 Lubbert was a self-condent and opinionated academic, intent on winning argu33

On Dinclagen’s origins and family: Wegen, 672–675. Orléans, Archives départementales du Loiret, D 218, f. 338. 35 B. Rademaker-Helfferich, Een wit vaantje op de Brink. De geschiedenis van de Doopsgezinde gemeente te Deventer (Deventer 1988), 27–34. 34

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Fig. 37. View of New Amsterdam, shortly after 1664. Color drawing by Johannes Vingboons. [National Archive of the Netherlands, Section Maps and drawings, Atlas Vingboons, VELH 619–14].

ments even if the situation did not lend itself to academic syllogisms. What he lacked was not knowledge or assertiveness but the exibility of attitude and action needed to lead a satisfactory life in the hornets’ nest of New Netherland. In that respect he resembled Bogardus. As one of the very few people in the colony with a higher education, Lubbert—like Evert Willemsz—must have felt a strong urge to assert his intellectual superiority among all the less educated (and in many cases even illiterate) folk: lower-level ofcials, itinerant traders, artisans, farmers, and soldiers. But he would soon nd out that class-consciousness as yet had no place in the young colony. After receiving his law degree, he was matriculated as a lawyer by the Court of Holland and Zeeland on January 17, 1625.36 In April 1634 he gave a power of attorney to his wife’s niece Wijngaertgen Aertsbrugh, married to the Haarlem silversmith Jan Joosten, because he was about to sail with De Eendracht to New Netherland as the new scaal.37 He must have been 37 or 38 years old at the time. He was an 36 R. Huijbrecht, S. Scheffers & J. Scheffers-Hofman, Album advocatorum. De advocaten van het Hof van Holland 1560–1811 (The Hague 1996), 111. 37 GAA, NA, 916, f. 118v° (April 21, 1634).

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experienced lawyer and by far the senior member of the leadership trio director-minister-scaal. In the Dutch Republic an advocaat-scaal, or simply scaal, was a judiciary ofcial who represented the interests of the sovereign, in this case the States General. In the small colonial societies during the time of the Republic a scaal was in fact invested with a variety of powers that were normally spread over several specialized ofcials. He had to uphold the rights of the WIC, acted as police chief (schout), as public prosecutor, and as customs inspector who made sure that the proper tariffs were paid. As such he had the right to visit all arriving and departing ships. The documents of the States General therefore refer to Dinclagen as “advocaat-scaal and schout.”38 Hardly a year after his departure for New Netherland Lubbert van Dinclagen was back in Amsterdam. Bogardus had then won his rst large skirmish. On November 8, 1635 Lubbert “Dinslaken,” former scaal in New Netherland, appeared before the Amsterdam consistory, chaired by Reverend Rudolphus Petri, with the complaint that “the proceedings instituted against his person by the consistory of that locality [New Amsterdam], and particularly by Reverend Bogardus, minister there, were unlawful and unjust measures.”39 Dinclagen appealed to the testimony of “certain reliable persons” who had come from New Netherland and whom he wished to summon as witnesses. He had a list of names with him. Later, when Bogardus would return to Holland himself and appear before the consistory, the gentlemen could act “with more knowledge.” The political commissioner representing the Amsterdam city council in the consistory, the powerful regent and former WIC director Cornelis Bicker van Swieten, also mentioned the appearance of the scaal in his notes. According to Bicker, Dinclagen had complained that he had been excommunicated by “Everardus Bogarman of Woerden, minister there” and had expressed his consternation about “the wicked life there.”40 The slip of the pen here is

38 NAN, States General, 4845, f. 108v° (December 11, 1643). For these titles and ofces, see Jaap Jacobs, New Netherland: A Dutch colony in seventeenth-century America (Leiden & Boston 2005), 104–106; the same, ‘ “To favour this new and growing city of New Amsterdam with a court of justice.” Relations between rulers and ruled in New Amsterdam’, in: De Halve Maen 76:4 (2003), 65–72; also in: George Harinck & Hans Krabbendam (eds.), Amsterdam-New York: Transatlantic relations and urban identities since 1653 (Amsterdam 2005), 17–29. 39 GAA, ARCA, 7, p. 123 (November 8, 1635). For what follows: Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, I, 55–61. 40 GAA, ARCA, 168 (November 8, 1635).

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revealing: Bicker confuses Bogardus with the renowned Bogerman, the militant Counter-Remonstrant chairman of the synod of Dort. But the consistory was unwilling to commit itself before consulting with the minister himself. Bicker agreed. Bogardus was given the benet of the doubt, perhaps simply out of collegiality. Dinclagen was told that he would have to wait until Bogardus came, and if he did not have the patience for that, he should turn to the classis, “where this matter belongs.” Chairman Petri was a friend of Van Twiller, and would not have been in any hurry to attack him publicly.41 The issue then disappears from the resolutions of the consistory. What was the background of this conict? Almost all the minutes of the Amsterdam chamber of the old WIC have disappeared, but fortunately a record for precisely the years 1635–1636 has survived.42 From a letter by Van Twiller dated August 20, 1635 it appears that already on October 29, 1634, a few months after his arrival, Lubbert Dinclagen presented to the council of New Netherland a “protestation” which all the council members felt to be “insulting.”43 When asked who he was referring to, he replied: “the whole body present here,” mentioning each person by name. He was then interrogated by the council, and the report was sent to the Netherlands. From that moment on relations were seriously strained. Dinclagen had his declaration and those of his witnesses notarized, and a short time later Van Twiller did the same. These facts can serve as the basis for a fairly reliable reconstruction, but we rst have to go back two months. On September 3, 1635 “Daniel” (!) Dinclagen, the scaal of New Netherland who had returned to the fatherland via England, appeared before the Amsterdam chamber of the WIC and handed over his journal to the commissioners of New Netherland. It was decided that director Albert Burgh, one of the commissioners for New Netherland in the WIC and a moderate man, would read the document.44 Two weeks later Dinclagen asked the directors for a copy of the bill he had brought with him for store and cellar goods of New Netherland, as well as some “food allowance.”45 The man was clearly in nancial straits. The decision was left to the 41

Cf. VRBM, 268 (April 23, 1634). NAN, OWIC, 14; minutes partially translated in A.J.F. van Laer, ‘Minutes of the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch West India Company’, in: NYGBR 49 (1918), 217–228. 43 NAN, OWIC, 50; Jacobs, ‘A troubled man’. 44 NAN, OWIC, 14, f. 61v°. 45 NAN, OWIC, 14, f. 66v°. 42

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commissioners. After a few more weeks, on October 29, Dinclagen again asked for money, and for “some medicines from the apothecary to cure his dropsy and poor health contracted on the voyage.”46 He was apparently penniless. Once again the decision was left to the commissioners. Meanwhile the return ship De Eendracht under captain Michiel Simonsen had arrived from New Netherland at the end of October or the beginning of November, with a cargo that included 65 rolls of tobacco from the plantation of David Pietersz de Vries and a shipment of beaver pelts.47 Shortly thereafter Dinclagen asked the directors “that in keeping with the documented interrogations, the people who had come from New Amsterdam might be examined.”48 Those “people” very likely included the Company ofcials who had returned with De Eendracht and to their surprise found that Dinclagen had ordered a deferment of their salary payment. On November 11 they sent the gold-wire drawer Jacob Hanssen and the seaman Barent Jacobsz Cool to Dinclagen to request an explanation. He replied that he rst wanted to hear what testimony they had brought against him in New Netherland or receive a copy of their declaration.49 Did the ofcers comply? Dinclagen was in any case now denitely taking the initiative. He had three witnesses successively make declarations in the presence of a notary about what had happened to him in New Netherland. On December 1, 1635 the 33-year-old Ghijs Jansz, who had returned from New Netherland on De Eendracht as a steward in the employ of the WIC, testied that on April 15 of that year he had seen how scaal Dinclagen, on orders of the commander (Van Twiller) and “the entire council” to the extent that it was present, had been abducted from the ship De Eendracht by a few soldiers, blacks, and other persons, and taken into custody. All “letters and papers” that he had intended to take with him to the fatherland were then conscated. Finally, he was sent away “with serious threats.” The steward then testi-

46

NAN, OWIC, 14, f. 83v° (October 29, 1635). NAN, OWIC, 14, f. 86r°–107v° (passim). On November 3, 1635, a letter from director Van Twiller dated August 28, 1635, was read in the Amsterdam Chamber (f. 86r°). This must be the letter of 20 August quoted above. 48 NAN, OWIC, 14, f. 92r° (November 19, 1635). 49 GAA, NA, 520, f. 235r° (November 16, 1635); cf. NAN, OWIC, 14, f. 93v° (November 19, 1635: ve ‘blacks’ having come from New Netherland ask for the settlement of their wages amounting to eight guilders a month) and f. 95r° (November 21, 1635: the ofcers and mates of the ship De Eendracht ask for payment of two years’ wages). 47

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ed to Dinclagen’s good conduct, while “the commander and council were hateful towards him and did not leave him unmolested,” making it necessary for him “to ee through foreign lands in order to reach the fatherland.” Various ofcers and other persons were said to have received “gifts” from the commander.50 Hush money or bribes, in other words. A few weeks later Claes Cornelisz Rademaker, aged 50, declared that on New Year’s Day 1635 he had heard in New Netherland from various people that commander Wouter van Twiller and his councilor had “hit and kicked [Dinclagen] and called him a scoundrel and threatened to strip him of his sword and imprison him.” And that was all because the scaal scrupulously defended the interests of the WIC. After having his sense of duty rewarded by the commander with persecution and dismissal from his ofce, Dinclagen wanted to return to the Netherlands with De Eendracht. The soldiers and blacks had then not only taken his letters, they had even undressed him and nally held him hostage in his own house. In the end he managed to escape, but “with various perils from the savages [Indians] and the wilderness.” After he had left, the commander opened his trunk and conscated his papers.51 Even more than the rst testimony, this declaration emphasizes Dinclagen’s integrity as a Company ofcial. Rademaker was no friend of Van Twiller. On that same day, December 18, 1635, a third testimony was given in the presence of a different notary.52 The witness, Salomon van Solderbeeck, was 45 years old and living in Delft at the time. He had recently returned to the Netherlands with De Eendracht after serving as a surgeon in Fort Amsterdam—which meant that he had experienced Dinclagen on a daily basis for some time. In this case Dinclagen, who had a doctorate in law and knew the procedure, drew up a list of questions himself, as was customary in litigation. The witness needed to answer only with yes or no and could offer comments if he saw t. Those questions therefore reveal Dinclagen’s own view of the matter. It was pessimistic in the extreme. In 1634–35 the people in New Netherland “were leading wicked lives.” The commander and the council despised and damaged the Company. The interests of the patroons had highest priority for them. Dinclagen had repeatedly pointed out to the commander that radical change was needed: rst general faults should be

50 51 52

GAA, NA, 917, f. 309v°–310r° (December 1, 1635). GAA, NA, 856, f. 174r° (December 12, 1635). GAA, NA, 917, f. 331r°–334r° (December 19, 1635).

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remedied, then specic problems. It was necessary, for example, to guard the South River more effectively against the English. But Van Twiller had replied “that the Company did not pay and maintain its loyal servants well and therefore [they] had no obligation to serve it loyally, but that the patroons should have the land so that things would prosper.” That was of course not only a vote of no-condence in the WIC, which had called this upon itself with its notorious payment practices; the statement also reects a fundamental difference of opinion regarding the nature of the colony. For the WIC (and for Dinclagen) it was a trading post with rotating ofcials, whose fatherland was the Dutch Republic. For the patroons—and apparently also for commander Van Twiller, who was a nephew of patroon Kiliaen van Rensselaer—it was an agricultural colony with a permanent population that was creating for itself a new fatherland in New Netherland. Their new fatherland obviously needed a sovereign authority. And that was how Van Twiller saw himself: as a miniature prince. The entire land “stood or fell” with the commander who was “like the prince,” and the directors of the WIC had no say there. The picture that Dinclagen draws here is supported by David Pietersz de Vries’s report of an incident in the fort on April 24, 1633. At a confrontation between Jacob Eelkens, a Dutch merchant employed by the English, and the new director, the latter “ordered all his people in the fort to assemble at his door, had a vat of wine brought in and a glass lled for himself, and exclaimed that those who loved the Prince of Orange and himself should follow suit.”53 The people, however, had come to Dinclagen to complain that they were completely “drained” by the corrupt ofcials in the fort who were lling their own pockets; and they were fed up with the mismanagement. When Dinclagen had asked to see the invoices for Company goods in order to determine if a better distribution might be possible to increase prots, he was not only refused, but his own account books were conscated as well. The commander called him a traitor. He was denied access to the storage loft of the Company store, which meant that he was no longer guaranteed his share of provisions, and he went hungry. The commander had even ordered the boatmen of the sloops to break Dinclagen’s arms and legs if he dared to visit the boats. He then received orders to return to the fatherland. He was called a scoundrel and beaten and deprived of his

53

De Vries, Historiael, 116 (NNN, 188).

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sword. Ofcer Notelman threatened to throw him in prison and have his leg chained to a block. Dominie Bogardus also played a part in this small drama—as we shall see below. Dinclagen then tried to escape with the ship De Eendracht, with the result that the unfortunate scaal was disarmed, undressed, robbed and forced to ee “through the wild islands to the fatherland.” Van Twiller had even hired soldiers to kill him with a pistol. Finally, his family was humiliated as well. For not only had the commander deprived him of his “goods” for four weeks, forcing him to borrow money to provide for himself, his wife, and his child; after the police ofcer Jacus Bontaij had taken his keys and the commander had removed the account books taken from his trunk, his wife was ordered to clear out the house and board ship before dawn—otherwise Van Twiller would put her “in the clink.” The witness had been present on this occasion and actually seen letters that he had written himself being removed from that trunk. When the captain of De Eendracht offered Mrs. Dinclagen a place in the cabin, the commander had had her baggage dragged out and thrown into the hold, where she was forced to make the voyage with the common sailors—and with the rats and lice. It was a supreme humiliation for the woman who had enjoyed the position of rst lady of the colony, as Van Twiller and Bogardus were both still single. Van Twiller had then bribed the ship’s ofcers with “various gifts” of beaver pelts. He seems to have tried the same with the Company directors, for the cargo of De Eendracht included a gift package of beaver pelts for the gentlemen of the Amsterdam chamber. They wisely refused the tainted offering.54 It is not difcult to imagine why this conict reached such a pitch. As the highest legal ofcial in the colony, Dinclagen had real power. Driven by his unbending sense of duty, he also wanted to exercise that power—in the service of the Company of course, but also for the good of the local community. A well-documented complaint by his hand could easily have led to the dismissal, if not worse, not only of the commander but all his henchmen as well. Before long all his agitation in the fatherland did have exactly that effect. But even if Dinclagen had done no more than strictly enforce the regulations in the colony itself, life for Van Twiller and his friends would soon have become impossible. Their version of what had happened was of course somewhat different. But it conrms the main outlines of the story and shows that the real

54

NAN, OWIC, 14, f. 100v°, 107v° (December 10 and 27, 1635).

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issue was how the local society should be structured. A few years later, in 1639, with the conict at home entering a new phase, a declaration in support of Van Twiller was signed by two of his councilors, the 46-year-old ex-scaal Coenraet Notelman (Dinclagen’s predecessor and temporary successor, whom he had already identied as one of his persecutors), and former commissioner Dirck Corssen Stam, aged 29.55 This document clearly reveals that the stakes in this conict were power and authority in the colony. The men accuse Dinclagen of rebellious and recalcitrant behavior. Despite his dismissal “for good reasons” by the director and the council, he had continued to act as the scaal, visiting the incoming ships and—as a supreme symbol of his moral authority—occupying the church pew reserved for the scaal. He recognized “no authority or public power except the Gentlemen who had appointed him, showing great disrespect and disdain for the Director and Councilors and their public authority there” and setting a bad example for others, who felt encouraged by him in their rebellion. Without taking proper leave of the director—another highly symbolic ritual—he had nally on his own authority boarded De Eendracht. The captain had gone to the director to complain of the commotion he was causing there, whereupon Van Twiller had rst “amicably” asked him to disembark and, when that proved ineffective, was forced to take harsher measures. That was their explanation for the director’s show of force. There is good reason to mistrust this testimony, for Dinclagen had succeeded Notelman after the latter’s dismissal in 1634 for notorious mismanagement. Notelman was getting even.

Authority models Despite the conicting testimony, we here see two diametrically opposed conceptions of the colony: that of a trading post under the supreme authority of the Company, and that of an autonomous colony with its own, indigenous authority structure. Even though Van Twiller was merely a Company employee like Dinclagen, he considered himself sovereign in the colony. That feeling not only had a formal basis in law, it was also rooted in the reality of everyday life. The lines of communication with the fatherland were so long (with the voyage there and

55

GAA, NA, 1280, f. 142v°–143r° (October 1, 1639).

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back taking three months at the very least) that in matters essential to the order and peace of the colony the director of the colony on his own, or together with his advisors, had to make decisions that would not be challenged later. A real problem arose, of course, if the director tried to give a formal, or even structural character to this de facto power, and especially if he used it to cover up more or less corrupt practices damaging to his employer. It is doubtful, however, that the source of this conict was simply the bipolar authority structure. Dinclagen felt he had been left in the lurch not only by commander Van Twiller but, worse, by the minister Bogardus as well. In the list of questions that he presented to Salomon van Solderbeeck, Dinclagen sketched the minister’s role as follows: Whether it is not true “that the commander by means of the minister asked the plaintiff [Dinclagen] to desist from his plan [i.e., to expose the abuses in the colony at home] and that he [the minister] told him that the Gentlemen Directors would not retain him but that they were in part scoundrels, tricksters, and rogues. Whether it is not also true that the minister, after seeing that he could not dissuade the plaintiff from his intention, therefore wanted to draw the political issues into the church and to that end summoned him to appear before the consistory in order to reveal what he had agreed on with Andries Hudde [secretary] and Marten Gerritsz [commissioner of Fort Orange and council member]. Whether the plaintiff, because he was unwilling to do this, was not publicly banned by the minister from the congregation to which the plaintiff had belonged?”56

Witness Van Solderbeeck answered these three questions with an unconditional “Yes.” The reading of Van Twiller’s consorts diverges slightly here as well. They maintained that almost six months after his formal dismissal by the director, and without being in the least hindered by the director or the councilors, Dinclagen, “out of fear of the accusations brought against him by the minister to the director and the councilors,” had left quietly and gone to the English without properly defending himself against the accusation of the minister.”57 In view of the relation between Van Twiller and Dinclagen, it is unlikely that the director was waiting for a sign from the minister in order to give the scaal a piece of his mind. We begin to see here,

56 57

GAA, NA, 917, f. 333r° (December 18, 1635). GAA, NA, 1280, f. 143r° (October 1, 1639).

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however, that there were actually three competing ideas of authority. The minister—as will later become clear—may not have been happy with the way the colony was governed, but he had even less condence in the Heren XIX in Amsterdam, whom he qualied as tricksters and scoundrels. At a very early point Evert Willemsz came to detest the way the WIC conducted trade. But this does not mean that he supported the self-appointed sovereign of the colony, Van Twiller. On the contrary, Bogardus, too, was opposed to Van Twiller. But he tried to create a second, or rather, higher source of authority in the colony by situating the church as the judge over politics. In doing so he cared little about what the directors might think– but he must have realized that he could count on the support of the Heren XIX as long as God’s word remained in the service of the WIC. Only then is it understandable that Bogardus never lost the trust of the Amsterdam chamber, despite the apparent lack of understanding at home for this strange triangular conict. Because Bogardus thus “wanted to draw the political issues into the church,” he summoned Dinclagen to give an account of himself before the consistory. And because Dinclagen failed to comply, he was publicly excommunicated. At that moment the issue at hand was all but irrelevant. The real question was how power should be structured in the colony. In Bogardus’s eyes, Dinclagen had sinned not by showing recalcitrant integrity, but by locating the source of that virtue in the Company rather than in the church of God. What the colony needed was not the judgment of distant gentlemen, but the moral example of the congregation of God Himself, sanctied in head and members. Where else should the reformation begin in that den of iniquity but at the top? Bogardus’s decision to apply the most radical form of church discipline and expel Dinclagen from the congregation must have had farreaching effects in the local community. This was the highest judicial ofcial of the colony, the man who in normal circumstances did not receive verdicts but pronounced them himself, and an active member of the congregation besides. The young minister—in the documents always used pars pro toto for the consistory, and undoubtedly the instigator of that decision—won the rst showdown between the very young church of New Netherland and the civil authorities. It was the rst step, so to speak, in making Evert Willemsz a captain beside God. Bogardus despised the grand gentlemen of the Company for their greed, their corruption, and their narrow-minded politics. But he also showed his disdain for the conduct of the director by placing himself at the moral

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helm of the colony and repeating Van Twiller’s political condemnation of the scaal in the context of the church, and in a much more radical way. Dinclagen would soon come to tell the classis just how radically Bogardus had treated him. The Heren XIX were clearly unimpressed by the indictment Dinclagen had drawn up. Or perhaps a majority of them were allies of director Van Twiller and managed to block any further decisions in favor of Dinclagen. Kiliaen van Rensselaer, as Wouter van Twiller’s uncle, denitely belonged to that group. The surviving correspondence shows that they informed each other in detail about developments on both sides of the ocean. On December 6, 1635 Dinclagen requested that the Heren XIX reimburse all his expenses.58 But a month and half later, on January 28, 1636, when the directors would have had more than enough time to read his documents, the response to his renewed request was again disappointing.59 Dinclagen had asked for an integral payment of three years’ salary, in other words for the entire duration of his contract, which—he claimed—through no fault of his own he was unable to fulll. The directors decided that he would have to be satised with what the commissioners had granted him as “earned salary,” that is, payment only for the months he had actually worked, “leaving him free to pursue wherever he sees t the compensation for the wrong that he claims to have unlawfully suffered at the hands of some persons in New Netherland, without any further involvement of the Meeting [the WIC].” The Company, in other words, refused to make any statement on the essence of the conict that Dinclagen had himself triggered in the conviction that the Heren XIX would be pleased with his disclosures. The Heren XIX were very likely hesitant to place two directly interested parties at loggerheads: Kiliaen van Rensselaer as uncle of Van Twiller and Dr. Hendrick Feith as patron of Dinclagen. For Lubbert that decision must have felt like a slap in the face. He did not let the matter rest there, however. On July 14, 1636 Kiliaen van Rensselaer asked the commissioners of New Netherland for a copy of the complaints scaal Dinclagen had lodged against his nephew Van Twiller and himself.60 Van Twiller was probably preparing a counteroffensive through the mediation of Van Rensselaer. The

58 59 60

NAN, OWIC, 14, f. 99v° (December 6, 1635). NAN, OWIC, 14, f. 114 ( January 28, 1636). NAN, OWIC, 14, f. 158v° ( July 14, 1636).

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WIC considered the quarrel with Bogardus outside its competence, but it did insist on its authority over the administration of goods and the governing of the colony. With the statement quoted above it believed the matter settled. That was denitely not true of Dinclagen. For him the ecclesiastical issue could not be disentangled from the civil one. Seeking redress higher up, he presented the case to his patron, the States General, in a memorandum castigating Van Twiller and the policy of the WIC.61 And on May 19, 1636 the WIC received a letter of recommendation for Dinclagen written by Hendrick Feith the day before. Dinclagen wanted to have his case placed on the agenda again, but the gentlemen “understand, because this matter has been settled in the [Heren] XIX, that no further case will be made here.”62 The directors were once again protecting each other. But they were not to get off that easily. Dinclagen’s complaints about the corrupt administration of the colony so closely resembled those made by others, and so clearly explained the constant decit of New Netherland, that an unbiased government could not afford to ignore them. On August 30, 1636 the States General, probably on the instigation of deputy Feith, sent a letter to the Heren XIX formally recommending that the demands of the ex-scaal be met. When no response was forthcoming, they demanded in a new letter of October 6 that a reply be sent within fourteen days.63 Two weeks later the States General were nally able to hand over the reply of the WIC to Dinclagen. But the matter was far from settled, for in April 1637 the States General received another remonstrance from Dinclagen, and on May 18, 1639 a third one, in which he again requested payment of his integral salary.64 Like the previous ones, this letter was sent on to the Heren XIX, who were then meeting in Middelburg. They again took no action. Besides, Dinclagen had sent his wife to the meeting instead of appearing there himself.65 In the meantime, however, the States General had taken Dinclagen’s criticism to heart. After the failures of Minuit, Crol, and Van Twiller, and the successes of Van Rensselaer,

61 O. van Rees, Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche volksplantingen in Noord-Amerika, beschouwd uit het oogpunt der koloniale politiek (Tiel 1855), 35–37. 62 NAN, OWIC, 14 f. 137v° (May 19, 1636). 63 NAN, OWIC, 14, f. 181r°, 191r° (September 18 and October 8, 1636); DRCHNY, I, 100–102. 64 NAN, States General, 4845, f. 28r° (May 18, 1639); DRCHNY, I, 103 (April 30, 1637), 117 (May 18, 1639). 65 VRBM, 465 (October 29, 1639).

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they could only conclude that giving the trade monopoly to the WIC had been a mistake. In July 1640 the limitations on colonization were abolished. From then on anyone could settle freely in the colony and conduct trade there, on the condition that the WIC be paid a 10% export tariff on pelts and 5% on other goods.66 Meanwhile Dinclagen had also taken a new step to resolve the ecclesiastical issue, this time with the classis of Amsterdam, which earlier that year had taken over responsibility for the Indies churches from the Amsterdam consistory. He had waited ve months to do so, however. Perhaps he was hoping to rst hear the decision of the Heren XIX, or did he nd it difcult to formulate his case properly in writing? Only on April 7, 1636 did he submit to the delegates of the Amsterdam classis “a long written statement containing an accusation against Everardum Wilhelmi Bogaert, minister there, concerning his bad governing of the church, as well as his doings and dealings.”67 The delegates placed the document in the hands of the “brothers commissioned for Indies Affairs,” the small committee of delegates who dealt specically with colonial matters. They were asked to read it immediately and summarize it for the classis. And so they did. The content could hardly have seemed spectacular to the delegates, who were quite accustomed to problems with the civil government and its ofcials. Once again it was decided to table the matter until the return of Bogardus. All things considered, there is little to justify the assumption, common in the American literature, that Dinclagen was here referring to moral missteps of the minister. The classis, which kept a sharp eye out for drunken or adulterous servants of the church, would otherwise have reacted immediately. The conict was clearly one of power. Although Dinclagen had no choice but to accept that postponement, he continued to insist loudly and publicly that he was in the right, and his wife kept agitating. In September 1637 Rensselaer advised Van Twiller to return to Holland as soon as possible in order to clear his name of the “unbearable slander” about him that Dinclagen was spreading everywhere; he also informed him that Dinclagen’s wife was casting aspersions on him and Bogardus to the consistory, calling them “scoundrels and godless people.” Van Twiller did leave then, but 66 DRCHNY, I, 118–124; E.B. O’Callaghan, History of New Netherland, or New York under the Dutch (2 vols., New York 1846–1848; repr. 1955, 1966), I, 173–179. 67 Mentioned in GAA, ACA, 4, pp. 71; 174, p. 58. The memorandum itself is lost.

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would not be restored to his ofce. Bogardus, Rensselaer believed, was the main target of Dinclagen’s wife, who had so defamed him to the consistory that “it was of the greatest importance that he [Bogardus] come here and not be persuaded to stay there [in New Netherland] before he has answered for and justied himself.” The country seems to be full of lunatics and heathens, the patroon sighed.68 Bogardus also took Rensselaer’s advice to heart. On July 1638 he requested permission of the council of New Netherland to go to the fatherland “in order to give account of himself in the matter of Lubbert van Dincklagen,” but the council declared that the colony could not really do without him.69 He had to stay. This was before he came into conict with Kieft. Not until March 19, 1640 did Dr. Lubbert Dinclagen, “who was formerly scaal in the Virginias,” make another appearance before the classis.70 He complained once again “about the procedures, both ecclesiastical and secular,” but this time gave a clearer picture of the motivation behind his grievances. He claimed “that he had been innocently excommunicated there by the policy of Reverend Everardus Boogaert, and that soon thereafter, in order to escape such procedures as were instituted against him, he had been forced to hide in the wilderness, where, from lack of necessary food, he had to live for twelve days on the grass of the eld.” In view of an Old Testament parallel, there is good reason to doubt that this should be taken literally. When the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar was deprived of his throne and banned from human society, he “did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven” (Daniel 4:33). What we have here is a metaphor for expulsion from the land of the living, a measure that in effect deprives a person of his humanity and his honor. Lubbert Dinclagen, pillar of the New Amsterdam congregation, would no doubt have remembered this text and identied with the banished king. For his listeners, steeped as they were in the Bible, this would have been a highly charged allusion, one that conveyed the severity of his excommunication. Anyone who has read The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne can imagine the social consequences when such a ban was pronounced in the small communities of the American colonies. The grass Dinclagen had to eat was not that of present-day Central Park,

68 69 70

VRBM, 352 (September 21, 1637). NYHM, IV, 17 ( July 8, 1638). GAA, ACA, 4, pp. 193–194 (March 19, 1640); copy in 163, p. 69.

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but the vegetation of the rough wilderness on islands not yet inhabited by whites. All along this northeastern route—the one Dinclagen most likely took in order to reach the English in Massachusetts—he must have felt acute uncertainty about the attitude of one Indian tribe after another whose language he did not speak. In the spring of 1640 he asked the classis to investigate the matter in order to conrm—as he was condent they would—that he was in the right and to revoke the excommunication. This time the classis was taken aback at Dinclagen’s disclosures. Had Bogardus not gone too far? “Because to many the matter appears to have been inadequately studied,” the classis decided to postpone deliberation until the next session, but in the meantime to take the necessary steps. The delegates for Indies Affairs were instructed to draw up a report. The ministers Rudolphus Petri and Johannes Bontius would pay a visit to the directors of the WIC, the Heren XIX, or otherwise to jonker Gerrit van Arnhem, the Gelderland representative in the States General who served as a delegate to the Heren XIX, and request them neither to dismiss the pitiable former scaal nor to withhold his salary pending the outcome of the procedure. It is unclear whether this was a reference to back payments for his time in New Netherland, or to his current salary. In the meantime Dinclagen had of course been forced to nd new employment. He probably served briey as rector of the Latin school (with a staff of one) in Wijk bij Duurstede, near Utrecht: when he wished to become a member of the Reformed congregation of the Matena church in Wesel (Rhineland) on December 24, 1636—after his appointment as provost there, in the employ of the States army—he submitted a testimonial as former rector in that town.71 Even more clearly than before, Dinclagen now came to realize that a minister was not to be toyed with. In early modern society, where the church was delegated by the state to exercise moral authority, ecclesiastical excommunication had secular consequences. A person banned by the church was also in danger of losing his job. That this was a very real threat Dinclagen found out one and a half months later, on May 7, 1640, when he again appeared before the classis.72 This time he humbly asked the delegates for a written declaration

71

Hermann Kleinholz, Abendmahlsregister der reformierten Kirchen zu Wesel (Wesel 1987),

175. 72

GAA, ACA, 4, p. 201 (May 7, 1640); copy in 163, p. 75.

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requesting the municipal court not to use the excommunication he had incurred in New Netherland as an aggravating factor in his trial, and above all not to withhold his salary. The classis found this reasonable and sent the secretary to the aldermen with a message to that effect.73 Lubbert’s half-brother Jacob Dinclagen, who apparently had been Bogardus’s immediate successor as comforter of the sick on the Guinea coast, appeared in the same meeting. He presented his testimonials and asked to be dispatched for the same function to the island of Spitsbergen, then the main center of Dutch whaling.74 The classis approved his request and recommended him to the directors. However, success seems to have eluded this Dinclagen as well. After some years of service with the WIC he went to the East Indies, arriving there in November 1645, but a short time later the church council of Batavia dismissed him and in December 1646 sent him back to the fatherland.75 By Tuesday, September 2, 1647 Jacob’s situation had already come up for discussion in the Amsterdam classis. He was accused “besides other faults, of having taken communion without the knowledge of the church council.”76 The classis may have worked slowly, but it was not completely inactive. In the end a letter was sent to New Amsterdam itself, to Dominie Bogardus in person. A few more ships sailed back and forth, but nally, a year and a half later, a missive plus enclosures from New Netherland appeared on the agenda of the November 29, 1641 meeting of the committee for Indies Affairs. In this letter the elders and deacons of the colonial congregation “recount and justify the ecclesiastical procedures taken against the person of Lubbert van Dincklagen, scaal there in the year 1637 [actually 1634].”77 The document is signed by all concerned. They sent the classis an extract of the case from the church records as well as “two testimonials extolling their minister, one written by the consistory and the other by the director there,” at that moment Willem Kieft. Did Bogardus still have Kieft on his side? Had Dinclagen’s action caused so much unrest in the colony that Kieft entered an unlikely alliance with the minister? Or is it rather that Kieft, 73 Since this message was to remain “verbal,” no trace of it has been found in the archive of the magistrate. 74 GAA, ACA, 4, p. 202 (May 7, 1640). See also chapter 9. 75 J. Mooij, Bouwstoffen voor de geschiedenis der Protestantsche Kerk in Nederlandsch-Indië (Weltevreden 1927–1929), I, 784 (November 20, 1645); II, 31 (December 17, 1646). 76 GAA, ACA, 5, p. 46 (September 2, 1647). 77 GAA, ACA, 157, p. 64 (November 19, 1641).

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like Van Twiller, had had little choice but to endorse the principled position of the minister? The New Amsterdam congregation was certainly unanimous in its complaint that the classis had up to that point acted in much too lax a fashion. The elders and deacons “wish and request that we now do more than has been done for some time to maintain good correspondence by reciprocal letters.” They point out “that they had also sent over the procedures against Lubbert Dincklagen and were very surprised that they had not received a reply.”78 They therefore ask the classis “seriously and iteratively” to duly look after its affairs by bringing charges against Lubbert Dinclagen and defending its worthy minister Reverend Eduardus [sic] Bogardus. For the minister it had clearly become a matter of honor, just as it had been from the outset for the scaal. This explains why not only Dinclagen but also his opponents in New Netherland were impatient to have the long-festering conict settled without further delay. Casting doubt on a person’s honor was tantamount to undermining his position in early modern society. In the same missive the overseas congregation—Bogardus, in other words—reported on the ecclesiastical situation in New Netherland. It mentioned the “good state” and “daily growth” of the congregation, the gradual steps taken in the direction of the blacks, and the unwillingness of the “[Native] Americans to come to the right knowledge of God.” Just how little respect the Indians had for the colonists’ way of life would soon become evident. The delegates for Indies Affairs ignored the urgent request for more regular correspondence. In those years many complaints came in from Batavia as well about the “extremely sketchy content” of letters sent by the church delegates.79 They could not have been very interested in the problem of missions. Four and a half months later, on April 1, 1642, they nally decided to write up a report on the letters from New Netherland, also to submit to the classis the extracts from the records of that congregation’s consistory, and to request a verdict on the Dinclagen case.80 On April 7 the correspondence did indeed appear on the agenda of the classis.81 Finally, almost seven years after Dinclagen’s return, the classis began to show concern about the reproaches coming from New

78

GAA, ACA, 4, p. 252 (April 7, 1642) and 157, p. 64; copy in 163, pp. 102–103. C.W.Th. van Boetzelaer van Asperen en Dubbeldam, De Protestantsche kerk in Nederlandsch-Indië. Haar ontwikkeling van 1620 –1639 (The Hague 1947), 103–104. 80 GAA, ACA, 157, p. 71 (April 1, 1642). 81 GAA, ACA, 4, p. 252 (April 7, 1642); copy in 163, pp. 152–153. 79

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Amsterdam. Something had to be done. It decided—once again—“to postpone the matter pending further examination of the records we have received of the aforesaid consistory” and in the meantime to summon Dinclagen for further questioning. The delegates for Indies Affairs were instructed to inform the New Netherland congregation of this decision, also to reconstruct the entire matter “ab ovo” (i.e., from its inception) in order to give another thorough report on it to the classis. The letters were sent four weeks later and the matter was studied anew.82 Then, instead of making a decision, the classis tabled the issue again “until the arrival of aforesaid Dincklagen,” who was then no longer living in Amsterdam but in the distant town of Wesel. The classis promised, however, that it would not fail “to defend the honor of Your Honor the minister, our worthy brother Reverend E. Bogardus.”83 That probably explains why almost two years passed before Dinclagen was located and sent a letter. Yet he continued to ght tirelessly for his rights. In May 1642 the States General received a fourth petition and a good year later a fth.84 The commissioners for the WIC in the States General were by then convinced in principle of the legitimacy of Dinclagen’s claim, and of the obstinacy of the Heren XIX. They sent Dinclagen on to the judiciary and decided to study the matter again, from the beginning. After the documents were located, the Gelderland delegate Casijn van Bemmel was rst assigned to the case, and subsequently Gerrit van Arnhem, who came with a report on December 11, 1643. The conclusion: it was indeed a matter for the courts.85 But then came a sudden turnaround. Five days later the referral to the courts was nullied and the documents were passed on to the Heren XIX so that the former scaal Dinclagen “may have his complaint honored.”86 Had someone intervened in the affair? Did Dinclagen himself acquiesce in this verdict? Or had the gentlemen by this time heard all the bad news about the war in New Netherland and decided that Dinclagen was now the right man for the colony, and that it would therefore be unwise to rub him the wrong way? In any case, no further steps were taken for the time being. 82

GAA, ACA, 157, p. 42 (April 24, 1642: letter sent to New Netherland). GAA, ACA, 4, pp. 253–254 (April 22, 1642); copy in 163, p. 104; Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, p. XX. 84 NAN, States General, 4845, f. 70v° (May 21, 1642) and 99r° ( July 28, 1643); DRCHNY, I, 126–136. 85 NAN, States General, 4845, f. 106v°, 107v°, 108v° (November 7 and 24, and December 11, 1643); DRCHNY, I, 137–139. 86 NAN, States General, 4845, f. 109v° (December 16, 1643). 83

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But Dinclagen had not closed the book on the ecclesiastical aspect of the affair—and with good reason. This was not just about money, but also about his reputation, and more specically about the ignominious measure of excommunication. Another letter from him was therefore read in the classis meeting of April 4, 164487—coincidentally one day before the States General took action against the WIC in response to the heartrending protest by the commonalty of New Netherland, dated November 3, 1643, exposing the disastrous consequences of director Kieft’s war against the Indians.88 A tragicomic misunderstanding followed. In view of the long delay, Dinclagen assumed that the consistory of Amsterdam had lodged new complaints against him. He therefore asked to be informed of them and to have Reverend Bogardus summoned. The classis decided otherwise. It would wait until Bogardus chose to return to the fatherland, and only then would it summon Lubbert Dinclagen and arrange a confrontation between the two. This was duly noted down by the secretary, as he reported on May 2.89

Rehabilitation Dinclagen then disappears from the attention of the classis. Perhaps because he was rehabilitated a short time later? He did return to New Netherland in the new, higher function, of deputy director and rst councilor of the colony. Was that part of the agreement reached with the WIC to restore his reputation? From the archives of the States General it appears that there was more behind this appointment. For that we have to go back to the letter of protest mentioned above. When the States General had been informed of the misery into which the inhabitants of New Netherland had been plunged by the war with the “wicked heathens and barbaric savages,” the Indians in other words, and had understood the veiled criticism of the WIC for its lack of support, they on that same day (April 5, 1644) red off an angry letter to the Heren XIX.90 The WIC was told “to promptly take measures to

87

GAA, ACA, 4, p. 304 (April 4, 1644); copy in 163, p. 120. NAN, States General, 5757–II, exh. April 5, 1644. 89 GAA, ACA, 4, p. 307 (May 2, 1644). 90 NAN, States General, 4845, f. 116v° (April 5, 1644); a copy by secretary Van Tienhoven of the letter from New Netherland (November 3, 1643) and the minute of the States General’s answer to the WIC in NAN, States General, 5757–II, exh. April 4, 1644. 88

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eliminate the aforesaid irregularities.” The Heren XIX gave the problem wide berth. In their reply of April 27 the directors Marcus de Vogelaer and Jacob Hamel thanked the lofty members of the States General for their “paternal compassionate concern for the miserable settlement in New Netherland.”91 They shed crocodile tears about the suffering of the colonists and deeply regretted that the WIC did not have the means to offer support to such a “remote place” and not even to pay the current salaries of the ordinary Company employees. But it was, of course, a matter of national interest—“sizable subsidies from the country” could therefore resolve the problem. If the States General, in view of their statutory share in the Company, would see t to put one million guilders on the table, “good, clear, and protable order” could be restored. Such insolence did not go down well with the worthy gentlemen. They collected more information that revealed the true state of affairs. The whites were denitely not without blame. The war had begun as revenge for blood shed by the whites, a matter in which the director had played a dubious role. The States General had some understanding for the attitude of the Indians. On October 22 it was decided to put things right in New Netherland. The deputies jonker Hendrick van der Capellen tot Rijsselt and Gerrit van Santen were delegated to attend the meeting of the Heren XIX that convened three days later in Amsterdam.92 They minced no words. While the colonists, and with them the directors of the WIC, called for military support against the Indians, the States General insisted that the only solution to the problem with the Indians was peace, not war. As Van der Capellen and Van Santen wrote in their report, they “at various times in that

91

NAN, States General, 4845, f. 116v°; 5757–II, exh. April 27, 1644. Hendrick van der Capellen (ca. 1591–1659), lord of Rijsselt (a manor just outside Zutphen) and Esselt, was a member of the nobility of the county of Zutphen and the duchy of Cleves. Since 1620 burgomaster of Zutphen, he in 1641 became a representative of the Gelderland nobility in the States General. He died unmarried. His father Gerlach was chancelor of Gelderland. His brother Alexander (ca. 1592–1656), lord of Aartsbergen and Boedelhof, was the ambitious councilor of stadholder William II, also deputy, who chaired a States General committee for the reform of the West India Company. Donna Merwick, The shame and the sorrow: Dutch-Amerindian encounters in New Netherland (Philadelphia 2006), 214–215, wrongly interprets Hendrick’s title and position and erroneously puts Zutphen in Overijssel. On these brothers, see NNBW, I, 568–569 (Alexander), and VII, 251 (Hendrick), with wrong birth dates. On Alexander’s WIC committee: Jaap Jacobs, ‘A hitherto unknown letter of Adriaen van den Donck’, in: De Halve Maen 71:1 (1998), 1–6. 92

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meeting [of the WIC] proposed that measures be taken to bring this about, and to keep the colony safe from such punishment for—possibly unlawful—bloodshed.”93 It was decided that the WIC auditors should come with a concrete solution based on the documents before the next meeting. Meanwhile the States General should recall director Kieft “to give account of himself.” And Lubbert van Dinslaken (Dinclagen), “who was previously scaal there, and who enjoys the favor of the savages,” would be dispatched to New Netherland as interim director. Is it possible that Dinclagen, who for so long had been seeking redress in The Hague, proposed this solution himself ? Where did the States General get the idea that Dinclagen had a good reputation with the Indians? He had been back in the Netherlands for almost nine years and had spent less than one year in New Netherland. But as scaal he certainly had some rsthand experience with friction between Europeans and Indians, and his whole reputation for honesty and integrity indicates that he was the kind of person the Indians could trust. Dinclagen understood honor codes, kept his word, and was not given to bending the law. The experience of the Indian War had proven that his approach was the right one. The Heren XIX kept dragging their feet. Not until November 10 did they appoint a committee to come with recommendations on “how the events there should be addressed, the population supported, culture advanced, and at the same time how that region should be made entirely protable for the Company.”94 They wanted to know which persons besides the director should come and give account of themselves—certainly the colonial rebrands responsible for stirring the people up against the Company. Were they perhaps thinking of Bogardus as well? As far as Dinclagen was concerned, it was now clear where the opposition lay. The delegates from Amsterdam promised merely that they would “try to present him to their chamber in a favorable light,” while the other representatives gave the proposal their forthright support. It was the Amsterdam chamber that looked askance at Dinclagen’s rigid ideas about the exercise of authority and administration of justice, preferring a more exible jurist who would make the law serve the interests of the Company.

93

NAN, States General, 4845, f. 131v° (October 22, 1644). NAN, States General, 5757–II, extract from the resolutions of the Heren XIX, December 15, 1644; DRCHNY, I, 148–149. 94

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Meanwhile, the director of Curaçao, Pieter Stuyvesant, had returned to the fatherland to recover from the loss of his right leg during the siege of the island of St. Martin. A compromise now seemed within reach. Stuyvesant could become director not only of Curaçao but of New Netherland as well, with Dinclagen deputy director and rst councilor of New Netherland—less than the States General had proposed, but more than his old ofce of scaal. On May 5, 1645 he received his commission.95 When the Heren XIX on July 13, 1646 requested a denitive commission for Pieter Stuyvesant as the new director of New Netherland, the States General were inclined to give their assent on the condition that the directors rst give an account of how they had dealt with the protest of the colonists.96 But Stuyvesant was in a hurry. His ship was about to sail. A mere fourteen days later his instructions as director on the coast of New Netherland and on Curaçao had already been approved, and the same day he swore an oath to the States General.97 Clearly, little would come of the demand that the WIC answer for its policy. The resolutions of the States General show, however, that the growing tension between various clusters of conicting interests in New Netherland was known at home, and deplored by the highest authorities. Although Dinclagen had received his instructions and sworn his oath already on July 7, 1645, his departure was delayed for another year.98 The Amsterdam chamber was in no hurry to dispatch a person who was sure to stir up more trouble. Only at the end of July 1646, after the new director Stuyvesant had taken his oath, could he embark.99 He and his former enemy Bogardus would cross paths daily for a few more months, but we hear nothing more about quarrels between them. Director Stuyvesant soon became the new target. When Stuyvesant tried to bypass the citizens’ representative body (the college of gemeenslieden or commonalty), for which the colonists had fought so hard, it was too much for the jurist Dinclagen. The quarrel reached such a pitch that the director reviled him as a “mutineer” and a “tramp.”100 History 95

NAN, States General, 4845, f. 208r°; O’Callaghan, History, II, 561. NAN, States General, 4845, f. 207r°; DRCHNY, I, 175. 97 NAN, States General, 4845, f. 208r° ( July 28, 1646); 12272, f. 201r° (his oath); DRCHNY, I, 179. 98 NAN, States General, 12272, f. 202v°. 99 On July 28, 1646, Dinclagen received power of attorney to claim certain papers from Willem Kieft: GAA, NA, 1505, f. 112–113. 100 NAN, States General, 12564.25, extract from a letter of Janneken Melijn to Cornelis Melijn, December 17, [1649]. 96

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began to repeat itself for Dinclagen. Stuyvesant threatened to “repay him worse than Wouter van Twiller had ever done,” if he did not let him have his way.101 Dinclagen then appealed to the States General, rst declaring that he had been misled by Stuyvesant and subsequently, in December 1650, lodging a complaint against him.102 A few months later Stuyvesant retaliated by having him removed from the council by armed guards and imprisoned.103 After his release Dinclagen repeated what he had done fteen years earlier: he ed, this time to Staten Island, where Stuyvesant’s scapegoat Cornelis Melijn was living as well. He continued to agitate against the director and the ofcers of the WIC and died there, probably in 1657 or 1658.104 If the Dinclagen affair had not brought so many years of tragedy, we might nd it almost comical. But it does make two things clear. The whole endless procedure reveals in the rst place a painful uncertainty about the status of truth, and its establishment, in early modern society. What was true and what was not? Who and what were to be believed, and on what grounds? With communication so slow, and with reports so unreliable and often contradictory as well, how could a person prove his credibility, justify himself, or win a dubious case? Patronage and solidarity of ofce were no guarantee. This explains why the type of evidence adduced was often different from that to which we are accustomed. Networks of rumors began to lead a life of their own. Protection by family and friends formed a powerful argument. Also, every story told by a person accused or otherwise involved had to contain a recognizable element, something that could make a priori claim to probability, given the listeners’ state of knowledge and previous reports from overseas. Finally, sheer endurance played a crucial but discreetly tested role in determining truth: a person who persevered for years simply had to be right, otherwise he would not have had the energy to see it through. In the second place the affair gives a rather unedifying picture of how unresponsive the classis could be when a complicated case might 101 NAN, States General, 12564.30A (Vertooch van Nieu Nederlandt, July 28, 1649, pp. 61–62); NNN, 338. 102 NAN, States General, 12564.25, exh. February 7, 1650; 12564.36, petition of December 19, 1650. 103 NAN, States General, 12564.36, memorandum by Adriaen van der Donck c.s. (1651), exh. February 2, 1652. 104 DRCHNY, XIII, 27–30 (March 21, 1651, and February 13, 1652); a claim for 600 guilders on his heritage by master tailor Henrick Henricksz [Kip] from New Amsterdam in GAA, NA, 1363, f. 1 ( January 1, 1661).

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require a verdict against a fellow minister and in favor of a secular ofcial. The tactic of delay, motivated step by step with arguments reasonable in themselves but in their totality ruinous for the social climate of the colony, certainly contributed to the deterioration of relations, not only between the congregation of New Amsterdam and Lubbert Dinclagen, but also within that congregation itself. The total absence of commitment on the side of the classis, the lack of guidelines for organizing the new colonial society, and the chronic procrastination in correspondence gave Dominie Bogardus de facto license to decide for himself what was best for his ock. The unavoidably slow exchange of letters between the colony and the fatherland was greatly exacerbated by the attitude of the classis. We might wonder if the classis was perhaps acting in bad faith. After 1642, when the regional synod of Enkhuizen—under pressure of the other regions, which were demanding more say—decided that from then on a yearly report would be made on East and West Indies Affairs, we would expect to nd at least some mention of the quarrels in the colony.105 But not a word. From 1643 onward detailed extracts of letters from the East Indies and Brazil were included in the acts of synod, but no trace of anything from New Netherland—even though the classis records indicate that a good many memoranda had arrived from New Netherland. In the end there was no longer any control whatsoever over the ecclesiastical policy of New Amsterdam, despite the fact that it evidently—in view of the consequences of Dinclagen’s excommunication—fell under the authority of the classis, if not of the synod. Bogardus became a veritable pope in his congregation. As a minister beside God he could, with the assent of his loyal elders, imagine himself infallible. The result was a social powder keg, and the conict with Kieft would be the fatal spark. It is not certain that Bogardus had been aiming at all this from the start. The report on the special classis meeting of December 3, 1635 includes under the heading “Church in Virginias” a short passage about the reading of “a letter from the church council in Virginia, requesting that the congregation there (whose minister is preparing to travel to the fatherland) be provided with another godly person.”106 The

105

GAA, ACA, 83 (Acta of the synod of Enkhuizen, 1642, art. 34). GAA, ACA, 4, p. 68 (December 3, 1635); cf. 174, p. 58 (mention of a letter, now lost). 106

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reference here can only be to the church of New Netherland, initially also known as Virginia. Although the minister is not mentioned by name, it is without any doubt Bogardus. There was simply no other congregation or minister in New Netherland. Since Dinclagen had by then been back for just three months and had informed the Amsterdam church council of the problems only a month before, the initiative for the trip came from Bogardus himself, or from his own consistory. Bogardus certainly felt called to justify his conduct to the classis and was condent of their support. At the same time he expressly submitted himself to its authority. Had he had enough of New Netherland after the usual term of three years and decided to come home for good, or did he plan a round trip with the return eet, staying only long enough to clear his name? In view of the request for a replacement the rst option seems likely. We have already seen that he was still unmarried and had no permanent tie with the colony. But according to the decision of the classis “the delegates for Indies Affairs will advise the directors of the West India Company on the matter.” By now we know what that meant: a decision was postponed. The directors did not want to let him leave his post. This set in motion a mechanism that would eventually place Bogardus in a radically different situation. The lack of urgency to answer for his activities led him to feel that in the nal analysis he alone was in charge and that the course he charted was the only right one; at the same time his emotional tie with the colony was growing. The initially foreign land of New Netherland became his own country. He was at home there, with nancial interests, a large family, and a small circle of like-minded people around him who held the minister in great esteem and saw in him the moral authority of that new fatherland.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

WAR

Director Willem Kieft By 1644, when the classis decided yet again to postpone a verdict in the Dinclagen case until Bogardus came to Holland, a new conict had arisen that made it desirable for the minister to report in person. He now had serious problems with the director himself. After the dismissal of Wouter van Twiller in 1637, Willem Kieft had been appointed director of New Netherland. Few men in history have made such a bad name for themselves as Kieft, the “William the Testy” of Washington Irving’s History of New York (1809), stigmatized as the author of “Kieft’s War.” Born in Amsterdam in August 1602, Willem Kieft was the youngest son of Gerrit Willemsz, merchant in the Baltic area who lived on the Oudeschans (Old Sconce), and Machteld Huydecoper, daughter of the councilor and alderman Jan Jacobsz Bal, alias Huydecoper.1 Machteld’s younger half-brother Joan Huydecoper (1599–1661) would later become one of the richest and most prominent burgomasters of Amsterdam’s Golden Age. On his father’s side Willem was closely related to the Pauw family, another powerful clan of merchants, councilors, and burgomasters of old Amsterdam.2 Adriaen Pauw (1585–1653), an ambitious and versatile politician who served as grand pensionary of Holland in 1631–1636 and again in 1651–1653, was his second cousin.

1 All the archival sources on Kieft’s origin and background have been processed, und current errors have been corrected in Willem Frijhoff, ‘Neglected networks: Director Willem Kieft (1602–1647) and his Dutch relatives’, in: Joyce D. Goodfriend (ed.), Revisiting New Netherland: Perspectives on early Dutch America [The Atlantic World: Europe, Africa and the Americas, 1500–1830] (Leiden & Boston 2005), 147–204. It should be observed that he was much younger than is often thought. Cf. Dictionary of American Biography, X (New York 1933; 2d ed. 1961), 370–371 (by A. Hyma); Johan E. Elias, De vroedschap van Amsterdam, 1578–1795 (2 vols., Haarlem 1903), I, 187–188; American National Biography, XII (1999), 657–658 (by Samuel Willard Crompton). 2 On the Pauw family and their wealth: Kees Zandvliet, De 250 rijksten van de Gouden eeuw. Kapitaal, macht, familie en levensstijl (Amsterdam 2006), 117–119, n° 57 (Adriaen); 190, n° 105 (Michiel); Elias, De Vroedschap, I, 185–186, 192–193.

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And Adriaen’s younger brother Michiel Pauw (1590–1640), merchant and ambassador, was a director of the WIC until 1636 and founder of the patroonship Pavonia in New Netherland, which he sold to the WIC in 1637, the year of Kieft’s appointment. Willem clearly did not lack social status and could enjoy protection in high places. In 1649 the anonymous author of the pamphlet Breeden-Raedt, a declared enemy of Kieft, simply summed up the gossip about him in order to discredit his directorship.3 The accusations were especially devastating because they touched his honor—and without honor it was impossible to hold a position of authority in public life. After nishing school Kieft had apprenticed himself to a merchant in La Rochelle, then struck out on his own in the wine trade. Like so many other Dutchmen in those years, however, he went bankrupt there—“for which, in keeping with the local custom, his portrait was nailed to the gallows,” according to a rumor in the Breeden-Raedt that was already circulating in 1644.4 It was also whispered that Kieft had dipped his ngers into the funds collected to free Christian slaves in the Mediterranean area. The cheapest prisoners he ransomed immediately in order to give his activities a semblance of selessness, but when it came to the more expensive ones, he allegedly asked their parents and friends for extra money, which he pocketed himself. Biographical dictionaries of the Netherlands have not deemed Kieft worthy of an article, but the Dutch writer Ewald Vanvugt has given him a place of honor in his gallery of colonial arch villains.5 That black legend is actually based solely on the testimony of his enemies: captain David Pietersz de Vries, jonker Adriaen van der Donck, the colonists Jochem Kuyter and Cornelis

3

Breeden-Raedt, f. B2v° (‘Broad Advice’, 139). NYHM, II, 233–234 ( July 7, 1644). There is no trace of such a sentence concerning Kieft in La Rochelle, Archives départementales de la Charente-Maritime, série B, but there are some gaps in these sources. 5 For a Dutch version of Kieft’s black legend: Pieter Geyl, Geschiedenis van de Nederlandsche stam (paperback ed., Amsterdam 1961), II, 576–579; Ewald Vanvugt, Bloed aan de klomp. De eerste vaderlandse schandaalkroniek: Nederlandse schurken in het buitenland (Hilversum 1989), 67–70; W.J. van Balen, Holland aan de Hudson. Een verhaal van Nieuw Nederland [1943] (2d ed. Amsterdam, 1947), 106–112. In America, his reputation has been equally bad ever since Diedrich Knickerbocker [pseudonym of Washington Irving], A history of New York, from the beginning of the world to the end of the Dutch dynasty [1809], book IV. Recent evaluations include Benjamin Schmidt, Innocence abroad: The Dutch imagination and the new world, 1570–1670 (Cambridge & New York 2001), 249, 276–280; Russell Shorto, The island at the center of the world: The epic story of Dutch Manhattan and the forgotten colony that shaped America (New York 2004), 112–128, 170–180. 4

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Melijn, and last but not least Dominie Bogardus. But Bogardus’s voice we hear mainly as an echo in Kieft’s counterattack—a clear sign that scholarly caution is advised. Ellis Raesly and after him J.W. Schulte Nordholt have criticized this negative image and attempted to portray Kieft in a somewhat more humane light.6 Rereading the sources, they looked for evidence to rehabilitate Kieft as a director—and possibly as a human being as well. Kieft was not the leader gure that the frontier needed, according to Raesly. He did not pursue a clear line, stayed safely in the fort during the war and gradually left policy decisions to others. But he was an intelligent and literate man with some erudition. His French was excellent; the Jesuit Isaac Jogues had good memories of his hospitable reception; with colleagues in New England he corresponded in Latin; with Roger Williams he exchanged ideas about the origin of Indian names; and he collected minerals and plants to send home.7 The man he chose to be politique raad (political councilor), an appointment made soon after his arrival, testies to the circles in which he felt at home: not a Company ofcial, commissioner, or sergeant, like those who served under his predecessors, but the only person in the colony with a doctorate, the Huguenot physician and planter Jean Mousnier de La Montagne, an educated and university-trained man from the better classes who spoke French and hailed from the area where Kieft had spent his apprenticeship.8 When the Twelve Men—an advisory body set up in 1641—requested that the council be supplemented with new members, Kieft replied that he was waiting for the arrival of men of rank from the fatherland. Farmers, shopkeepers, and artisans were not, in his view, good enough for that position.

6

Ellis L. Raesly, Portrait of New Netherland (New York 1945), 75; J.W. Schulte Nordholt, ‘Nederlanders in Nieuw Nederland: de oorlog van Kieft’, in: Bijdragen en mededelingen van het Historisch Genootschap 80 (1966), 38–94, here 58–59. Recently, a more positive reevaluation of Kieft’s administration has been initiated by Evan Haefeli, The origins of American religious freedom: Reformation politics in the Middle Colonies, 1628–1720 (unpublished PhD Diss. Princeton University, 2000), and Christopher Pierce, ‘Resuscitating Willem Kieft: Utopian alternatives to dystopian traditions’, in: Jaap Verheul (ed.), Dreams of paradise, visions of Apocalypse: Utopia and dystopia in American culture (Amsterdam 2004), 111–121, who proposes a reevaluation of Kieft as an urban planner. 7 NAN, States General, 12564.30A (Adriaen van der Donck c.s., Naerdere Aenwijsinghe ende Observatie op het Requeste, July 26, 1649); Adriaen van der Donck, Beschryvinge van Nieu-Nederlant (2d ed., Amsterdam 1656), 29–30, 39. 8 NYHM, IV, 3 (April 8, 1638).

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Does all this really plead in Kieft’s favor? Perhaps we should simply acknowledge that he was out of place in New Netherland. Kieft was a born regent, which for many was synonymous with an arrogant autocrat who knew his rights and forced through his will. Moreover, he had little or no understanding for the culture and desires of the indigenous population. New Netherland was for him simply an extension of the fatherland. The land was under his authority, and that was that. Formally speaking, he was right on that point. The delegated sovereignty of the WIC, plus the majority of votes that he initially granted himself in the council, made him the de facto sovereign of the colony. When he did invite other parties to the council meetings, they were not given a formal vote.9 But De Vries was certainly right when he noted already after rst meeting him that Kieft lacked the administrative experience necessary for the difcult circumstances of the colony. What New Netherland needed at that moment was not a regent who was sure he knew better than everyone else but a exible, tactful, simple leader, a man who stood close to the soldiers and close to the people. In that respect Kieft can—despite his redeeming qualities—be considered one of the chief culprits of the escalation. Yet grounds can also be found for some rehabilitation. Kieft has almost always been personally branded a scoundrel. But his appointment already shows how thoroughly entangled he was in a web of factional interests, protection, and patronage. Moreover, changing relations between colonists and Indians during Kieft’s directorship were largely beyond the scope of his inuence. Van Twiller’s conciliatory policy could not be maintained as more and more colonists streamed in to work the land and cultivate tobacco. Sooner or later that had to lead to a conict with the original occupants, the Indians. The WIC’s decision of 1639 to allow free trade saddled Kieft with an additional law enforcement problem. And the Algonquin tribes in a wide area around New Amsterdam (Mahicans, Hackensacks, Raritans, and Weckquasgeeks) came under increasing pressure from their old enemies, the Mohawks, who were encroaching from the north. The bankruptcy of the WIC precipitated by the Brazilian adventure and the stubbornness of the Heren XIX left Kieft no leeway at all to invest in the security of New Netherland—unfortunately, as he stands out as the rst director 9 On the political council under Kieft: NAN, States General, 12564.30A (Vertooch van Nieu Nederlandt, July 28, 1649, pp. 54–55); NNN, 332–333.

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who showed concern about town planning and the establishment of an orderly society.

The church in the fort Although the charges that Kieft led against Bogardus early in 1646 make it clear that the relation between the two men was by then beyond repair, the director and the minister had cooperated reasonably well in the rst years. After Van Twiller, the cultivated and order-loving Kieft must have been a breath of fresh air for Bogardus. They also represented similar interests. In keeping with early modern ideas of government, the two men together constituted authority in the colony: Kieft as the head of civil government and maintainer of public order, and Bogardus as the protector of morals and ethics, the man delegated to provide moral legitimacy for the exercise of authority and to educate the community in civic virtues. This explains the symbiosis, under normal circumstances, of fort and church: the director was automatically a member of the consistory, and for important decisions of the political council the minister was requested at least to provide moral support, if not to offer an opinion, and he was indeed often present at their meetings. But when war broke out and the director ignored the minister’s moral assessment of his policy, things were bound to go radically wrong. Kieft’s misconduct towards the Indians was unacceptable for Bogardus. It was a breach of the moral order, which—given the symbiosis between church and fort—was also the order of the WIC. When the director failed in his function, the minister had to step in as the protector of public order and public morals. This explains Bogardus’s strong conviction that he would eventually be declared the winner of this conict, not only by the classis, but by the Heren XIX as well. In New Amsterdam that symbiosis came to expression in a highly concrete way. In 1642 the church barn was replaced by a proper church building. But while Van Twiller had built the church barn among the people, at the harbor, Kieft now placed the church inside the fort, at the heart of the Company’s symbol of power. Ostensibly this was nothing more than a practical measure; as captain De Vries explained, the old church was vulnerable to the increasing threat from the Indians. Marriages were already being performed “in the hall of the commander,” in the fort in other words, possibly for reasons of decorum, or because the

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church barn was falling into disrepair.10 Moreover, the church was not only the meeting place of the faithful but, as the largest public space, also the hall where the director assembled the colonists for important decisions. The move to the fort did make it more difcult for the citizens to hold meetings without the director. And considering that Kieft a short time earlier had dissolved the Twelve Men as a “bunch of destructive busybodies,” there was an odor of politics about the new location. Formally little objection could be made to the move to the fort, because the church and the minister were maintained by the WIC (the fort) and were placed by the Company in the service of the free colonists. If we can believe captain De Vries, he was himself the one who came up with the idea of a new church.11 At the beginning of 1642, when he was meeting with the director on an almost daily basis, he heard Kieft boast about the new stone inn he had built for passing English merchants. De Vries, a confessing member of the church, replied “that it was a disgrace for us when the English who passed through the colony saw such a poor barn in which we do our preaching.” The rst thing the English settlers in New England built after their own houses was a church, not an inn. And was it not the explicit intention of the WIC “to promote the Reformed religion against the tyranny of Spain?” There was plenty of oak wood, quarried stone, and mortar in stock. When Kieft asked who would take responsibility for the construction, De Vries retorted “those devoted to the Reformed religion, such as there were.”12 This is the rst time we hear the impending split rendered in religious language. For De Vries, Kieft was a weakling who lacked insight into the two political aims of the WIC: the opposition of Spanish tyranny, and the promotion of Reformed orthodoxy. What these texts do not mention, although it probably played a role, is Kieft’s position on the religious map. Unlike De Vries and Bogardus, he did not come from a strict

10

GAA, NA, 1287, f. 97v° ( January 19, 1643). De Vries, Historiael, 163–164 (NNN, 212–213); A. Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk in Noord-Amerika 1624–1664 (2 vols., The Hague 1913), I, 93–98. 12 Ibid. The Dutch term ‘liefhebbers (lovers, devotees) of the Reformed religion’ includes not only the full members of the Reformed denomination but also those sympathizing or simply practicing in the public church without being subject to its discipline. For this gradation, see Willem Frijhoff, ‘The state, the churches, sociability, and folk belief in the seventeenth-century Dutch republic’, in: James D. Tracy & Marguerite Ragnow (eds.), Religion and the early modern state: Views from China, Russia, and the West (Cambridge 2004), 80–97 (here 86–88). 11

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Reformed background but from one inclined to liberal Remonstrant ideas. In 1631 his mother Machteld Huydecoper was one of the rst members of the Remonstrant congregation in Amsterdam, and both his brother Jan Gerritsz, merchant of French wines, and his brother-in-law Jan Schaep were sympathetic to that movement as well.13 Kieft seized the opportunity to appoint De Vries deputy churchwarden and talked him into giving one hundred guilders for the church building. The director himself would be chief churchwarden, which meant that he remained in charge. Two more members, both colonists, were then added to the board: Jochem Pietersz Kuyter, “a pious Reformed person,” who could also at short notice have his hired hands saw a set of beams, and Jan Jansz Damen, who lived near the fort. This was a clever move by Kieft, for De Vries, Damen, and Kuyter all belonged to the recently abolished Twelve Men. They could now devote their energies to building the church. Kieft could not have suspected that he was at the same time laying the foundation for an organized opposition party centered in the consistory. The commander promised to give “a few thousand guilders on behalf of the Company.” The congregation had to guarantee the rest. The construction proceeded at a good pace, although it would be several years before the church was completely nished. In May 1642, Kieft, in his capacity of churchwarden, signed a contract with the English carpenters John and Richard Ogden for the construction of “a stone church 72 feet long, 54 feet wide, and 16 feet high above the earth.”14 In 1643 the church was covered with a roof of oak shingles. From the rain and wind they turned a bluish shade, creating the impression of slate. The steep blue roof of the church with its small tower—without a clock but with a sundial on three sides and a bell inside—dominated the skyline of New Amsterdam for decades. On the harbor side the church was given a characteristic double gable, suggesting an interior with two naves. On the other side, past the tower, the “Castello map” shows a structure beside the church with a single rooftree, probably the building of the guard (corps de garde) with its large hall. As with everything the WIC touched, maintenance of the church left a good deal to be desired. Fourteen years after the founding, Govert Loockermans and Nicasius de Sille were appointed churchwardens with the task of restoring the church. Not until 1693 was a new Reformed

13 14

Frijhoff, ‘Neglected networks’, 186–189. NYHM, II, 35–36.

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church built on Garden Street. The old one in the fort was then assigned to the English garrison. It burned down in 1741. Seven years after the church was completed Adriaen van der Donck, speaking for Kieft’s opponents, told a slightly different story about the founding of the church.15 When it was known that Rensselaer intended to build a church in his colony and appoint a minister, Kieft suddenly came into action. New Amsterdam also needed a real church building, immediately! The other churchwardens agreed, but objected to having it built inside the fort. The congregation grumbled as well: there was too little room in the fort; the roof of the church would obstruct the southwest wind for the grain mill; it would be better to build something else on that strategic corner of the island; and—most importantly—the church ought to be located among the settlers who made up the congregation and who were also footing the bill. But Kieft insisted on having it his way. The church was already under construction when the ideal opportunity for fundraising presented itself. On June 29, 1642 Dominie Bogardus’s oldest stepdaughter, Sara Roelofs, married the surgeon Hans Kierstede. As could be expected, the entire congregation attended the wedding. Wine owed freely. “After the fourth or fth drink,” when the guests were already slightly inebriated, Kieft stood up and asked everyone present to pledge money for the church building. He set an example by doing so himself, cleverly exploiting the all-too-human circumstances. “Then everyone with a light head pledged generously, the one competing with the other. And although some regretted it when they came to their senses at home, they had to pay, there was no way out.” The church was soon nished, and Kieft commissioned the following inscription in its stone: “Ao. Di. MDCXLII W. Kieft D[irecteu]r G[ene]r[ael] Heeft de Gemeente dese Tempel doen bouwen,” (literally: In the year 1642 Director General W. Kieft had the Congregation this Temple built). Despite the classical form, the grammar here is rather ambiguous. “Willem Kieft” was of course intended to stand in apposition to the date, with “the congregation” the subject of the sentence: In 1642, during the directorship of Willem Kieft, the

15 NAN, States General, 12564.30A (Vertooch van Nieu Nederlandt, July 28, 1649, pp. 44–46); NNN, 325–326; printed as Adriaen van der Donck, Vertoogh van Nieu-Neder-Land, Weghens de Gheleghentheydt, Vruchtbaerheydt, en Soberen Staet desselfs (The Hague 1650), 28–29; ER, I, 85, 163–166; DRCHNY, I, 299–300. On the Vertoogh and its author: A.L. van Gastel, ‘Adriaen van der Donck als woordvoerder van de Nieuw-Nederlandse bevolking’, in: Jaarboek van het Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie 50 (1996), 89–107.

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congregation had this temple built. But it is also possible to read the sentence with Kieft as the subject and the congregation as the indirect object: Kieft had this temple built for the congregation. Or: Kieft had the congregation build this temple, i.e., he ordered them to build it. This explains why Kieft’s opponents soon interpreted the inscription as Kieft’s homage to himself, even though most of the funding had come from the congregation. Secretary Van Tienhoven replied later that although the collection for the church had yielded 1,800 guilders, which was supposed to be deducted from the current accounts of the colonists, many had not paid up, so that in the end the WIC had to cover the costs.16 According to the directors, the congregation in fact donated only 800 guilders, barely one-tenth of the 8,000 that the church had eventually cost, as the accounts of churchwarden Jacob van Couwenhoven testify.17 Kieft’s sudden haste is understandable. In the spring of 1642 at the latest it became known that Rensselaer had the rm intention of providing his patroonship with a church and a minister. In the summer of 1641 he had sent instructions to Arent van Curler, secretary and bookkeeper of Rensselaerswijck, for the construction of an octagonal church with a maximum diameter of 48 feet; and he was looking for a good minister.18 The old rivalry between Company and patroon thus gained a new dimension. The church building was the clear symbol of spiritual power—just as the inn stood for civic hospitality (later this building would also be used as the town hall). The prime mandate of the WIC in New Netherland was now at stake, its supreme responsibility for ecclesiastical affairs, and ultimately the authority of Kieft himself. He thus quickly took an initiative to which he would never have been spurred by piety alone. Did Bogardus give his consent? Despite his almost permanent friction with the director we hear of no conict arising over this matter. He was still the WIC’s man. Yet the relocation of the church in the fort was a highly charged symbol, certainly in the context of the threat of war. The grumblings of the settlers show that ideas about the exercise of power in the colony were changing. Many no longer viewed the church as a provision of the Company

16 NAN, States General, 12564.30A (Van Tienhoven’s response to the Deduction of Adriaen van der Donck c.s., November 29, 1650, pp. 3–4); NNN, 361–362, 374. 17 NAN, States General, 12564.30A (Response to the Vertooch, January 31, 1650, art. 13). 18 VRBM, 561 ( July 18, 1641).

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but as the independent center of the civil community. Because they contributed substantially to the costs of the church, they also considered themselves responsible for it. Signicantly, the criticism of Kieft that Adriaen van der Donck presented to the States General in 1649 in the name of the Eleven Men (the board of Nine council members plus Jan Evertsen Bout and Thomas Hall) opened with an exposé of Kieft’s role in the construction of the church. Kieft not only aspired to be equal to the prince, he also wanted to take personal credit for the church, the Eleven maintained. He viewed himself, in other words, as embodying the two poles of authority in the colony. Already in 1642 such an attitude was no longer viable. A few years earlier, in the conict involving Van Twiller, Bogardus, and Dinclagen, the issue was still one of loyalty to the Company; now the congregation presented itself as an autonomous body. The controversy over the church building was one of the rst symbolic acts of resistance to Company rule. Others would soon follow—with the church and the minister predictably forming the nerve center of the opposition.

The mulatto and the strumpet Bogardus’s rst skirmish under Kieft’s rule involved a colorful young couple, Anthony Jansen van Salee, a colonist on the Walesteyn farm, and Grietje Reiniers.19 Anthony is generally considered the son of a pirate from Haarlem, Jan Jansz, who in 1618 became a Muslim under the name Murad Ra’is (Moerat Reys) in order to qualify for service as

19 For the sources quoted hereafter: NYHM, I, 65–71 (October 4 to 14, 1638), 105–107 (March 15 and 21, 1639); IV, 13, 26–29, 46–47 (October 3 to 21, 1638, and April 7, 1639). For the interpretation, cf. Leo Hershkowitz, ‘The troublesome Turk: An illustration of judicial process at New Amsterdam’, in: New York History 46:4 (1965), 299–310. Though certainly linked to Salee, Anthony’s origin is not certain. On December 15, 1629, two days before the sailing-day, Anthonis Jansz, a seaman from Cartagena (Spain) living at the Herinckpackerij (a small alley quite near the IJ harbour), 22 years old, no parents present, obtained at Amsterdam license to marry on board ship Grietje Reijniers, from Wesel in Germany (GAA, DTB, 435, p. 8). She was 27 years old, and widow of the tailor Albert Egbertsz, with whom she had been married in September 1626. I owe this reference to their descendant Van Cleaf Bachman, who told me that Anthony’s descendants had owned a Koran from his possessions, until it was destroyed in a re about 1925. Was Cartagena perhaps Anthony’s most recent place of settlement? The outspoken personality of Grietje Reiniers has become the subject of much speculation, lately as the main character of a historical novel by Michael Pye, The drowning room: The story of the rst whore of New York (London 1995).

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a commanding ofcer in the Algerian eet.20 Two years later he was appointed admiral by the sultan of Morocco. As late as 1665 a comrade recalled with disgust how the godless pirate had triumphantly showed him the dried-up remains of his circumcised foreskin hanging from a wreath in his bedroom—his way, perhaps, of forestalling any doubts about his conversion that might arise with the suspicious Islamic authorities.21 In the pirates’ nest Salee, the harbor of Rabat, he had married a Muslim woman. Apparently Anthony was a child of this union, and usually went by the name of his birthplace, Van Salee or Van Ves, Vees or Fees (Fez), as did his brother Abram.22 Owing to his origin, and perhaps his religion, but most probably because of the Arabic features he had inherited from his mother, he was commonly known as “the Turk.”23 It goes without saying that this son of a Moroccan woman and an apostate pirate, actually the commander of the powerful eet of Salee, cared little about the authority of a minister. And he soon made that clear. On June 3, 1638 the council sentenced Anthony Jansen to pay to Dominie Bogardus within three months the 319 guilders that Anthony himself had admitted to owe him. Just how he had incurred the debt is not clear. Had the minister lent him that sum for his farm? Was it money from the church or the deaconry? Anthony had no intention to pay up. When the three months had passed he launched a counterattack, maintaining that Bogardus owed him 74 guilders. Under oath Bogardus acknowledged a debt of no more than 7 guilders. Since the oath of a minister was quite naturally given credence, the claim of the Turk was denied, and he was ordered to pay the court costs. Anthony was unimpressed. He categorically refused to pay his debt to the minister. A few days later Bogardus therefore sent to his door the

20 Arne Zuidhoek, Zeerovers van de Gouden Eeuw (Bussum 1977), 65–76; B. and L. Bennassar, Les Chrétiens d’Allah: L’histoire extraordinaire des renégats, XVI e–XVII e siècles (Paris 1989), 397–400. 21 Gemeentearchief Haarlem, NA, 369, f. 216 (October 9, 1665), facsimile in Zuidhoek, Zeerovers, 138–140. 22 As in NYHM, IV, 13 ( June 3, 1638). 23 Cf. Henry B. Hoff, ‘A colonial black family in New York and New Jersey: Pieter Santomee and his descendants’, in: Journal of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society 9 (1988), 101–134; Robert J. Swan, ‘The black presence in seventeenth-century Brooklyn’, in: De Halve Maen 63:4 (1990), 1–6, here 2–3. Anthony will have shown Mediterranean-colored features but it is probably exaggerated to consider him “black.” It is unclear whether in his time the qualication “Turk” referred to ethnic origin, skin color, or religion.

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court usher Philippe du Trieux and a second witness, Wolfert Gerritsz (van Couwenhoven). In their presence Anthony exclaimed that he would rather lose his head than give the minister his money. Bogardus should rst declare to the director and the council that he, Anthony Jansen, and his wife Grietje Reiniers were honorable people, for if he gave the minister his due but remained in dishonor himself, what would he have gained? The minister had apparently spoken out earlier about the couple’s behavior. And Grietje was quite a woman herself ! She was ve years older than her husband. and was soon the talk of the town. First she repeatedly accused Dominie Bogardus of committing perjury in the case against her husband. The conict escalated when the couple started spreading an even more malicious rumor: Bogardus was heard to have said himself that Anneke Jans, “before he [Bogardus] married her, had earned a skirt costing 40 guilders.”24 A minister who speaks ill of his own wife? This was an unmistakable insinuation of sex for money, prostitution in other words—a story that would surface again a few months later.25 Bogardus retaliated by publicly impugning the honor of Anthony and Grietje, and thus their credibility, before the council. At the request of the minister, the midwife Lysbeth Dircks declared two days later that Grietje, after giving birth, had asked who her baby resembled: (the former secretary and commissioner) Andries Hudde or her husband Anthony Jansen? “How should I know that if you don’t know yourself,” she had replied, “but the child is rather brown!”—like the Turk.26 Had Grietje wanted to make trouble for Andries Hudde, who belonged to Bogardus’s circle of friends? By casting doubt on his fatherhood, Anthony’s own wife had declared him a cuckold. Court usher Du Trieux appeared as a witness himself the following day, again at the request of Bogardus. With great feeling for detail he told how ve years earlier, at the departure of De Soutbergh, he had gone to the beach to fetch water. There he found Grietje Reiniers in a heated exchange with the sailors. “Whore! Whore! Two pounds of butter whore!” the sailors called to her from the ship. To which Grietje replied by “lifting her skirt, showing that folk her bare behind.”27 Schoolmaster Adam Roelants, who was standing with Grietje at the 24 25 26 27

NYHM, IV, 26 (October 7, 1638). See chapter 14. NYHM, I, 66–67 (October 6, 1638). NYHM, IV, 26 (October 7, 1638).

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Fig. 38. Gossip about Anneke Jans in New Amsterdam, 1638. Lithography by J. Scott Williams, 1920. [Private collection].

former freight warehouse on the beach, conrmed this: she had lifted her skirt, slapped her buttocks, and shouted: “You can blow into that!” And worse, two Company carpenters declared—again at the request of Bogardus—that Grietje a short time before had shouted in Fort Amsterdam: “I’ve had enough of being nobility’s whore, from now on I want to be the whore of Jack-tar.” She had with her two of her illegitimate children and exclaimed: “I’ll soon take these bastards and ing them against the wall so that their brains run out of their heads.”28 However dubious Grietje’s reputation, the Turk could not ignore this frontal attack on the honor of his lawful spouse. He struck back immediately. Had he not just a few days earlier seen the wife of the minister herself raising her skirt as she passed the smithy—a place where two or three men would usually be waiting around for a repair or the shoeing of a horse? But Anneke Jans was not Grietje Reiniers. Locksmith Hendrick Jansen had seen the gesture as well, but gave it a different interpretation. The minister’s wife had indeed passed by the smithy on September 30; but because the street was rough and dirty, she had placed one hand on her side and with the other lifted her skirt to 28

NYHM, I, 69–70 (October 15, 1638): Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, 140.

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keep it from getting soiled. Even when described in this way, however, the gesture was ambiguous. A person who places his hand on his hip extends his elbow.29 It was not so much the raised skirt in itself that could give offense as in combination with the protruding elbow. While in a man that gesture was seen as a sign of sturdy self-condence, it was considered thoroughly inappropriate for a woman—in paintings of the time it is an attribute of loose women. As Grietje would have known! Commissioner Jacob van Curler therefore immediately placed it in the proper perspective. Anneke had intended to come to his house but did not go inside when she thought she saw Grietje Reiniers there. The ladies were of course not on speaking terms. When Van Curler followed her to invite her in for supper, he witnessed how Anneke lifted up her skirt to avoid the muddy spot in front of the smithy. That context defused the gesture. Anneke did not send an ambiguous signal to unidentied spectators; she simply made a natural movement that no one could hold against her. The council endorsed this explanation. On October 14 Grietje was ordered “to appear in Fort Amsterdam this coming Saturday the 16th of this month in order to publicly and ofcially acknowledge that the minister is a pious and honest man, and to confess to having lied deceitfully.” As for Anthony Jansen, he was “not to offend [Bogardus] in the least way, either with words or with deeds,” on pain of corporal punishment. Grietje had to pay the court costs plus alms for the poor; Anthony lost another 12 guilders to the scaal Ulrich Lupoldt. Two days later Grietje humbly confessed her error in public. She begged forgiveness of God and Bogardus for having called the latter “a perjurer.” One week later the Turk also withdrew his accusations: Anneke Jans was truly “a pious and virtuous woman.”30 But when usher Philippe du Trieux came to collect the court costs from Grietje a few months later, she insisted that she had already paid them and called him a liar. If you can call me a liar, he retorted, I can prove that you are a whore! This exchange took place after a public meeting, and later it was said that both Anthony and Grietje were more

29 On the meaning of this gesture in seventeenth-century Holland: Joaneath Spicer, ‘The Renaissance elbow’, in: Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg (eds.), A cultural history of gesture from Antiquity to the present day (Cambridge 1991), 84–128. More generally: Herman W. Roodenburg, The eloquence of the body: Perspectives on gesture in the Dutch Republic (Zwolle 2004). 30 NYHM, IV, 27–29 (October 14 and 21, 1638).

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than a little tipsy. At least four witnesses were present, among them Dominie Bogardus himself, who conrmed Philippe’s account in a separate declaration. The court usher, a Walloon Calvinist and one of the very rst settlers of the colony, undoubtedly attended the minister’s church. But he was also a neighbor of the Turk, who must have had an old feud to settle with him. Once again the Turk publicly took the side of his wife. Five days later, when leaving the director’s house, he happened to encounter the usher, and the two men, predictably, started quarreling. Anthony snapped at him: “Your wife was a whore herself, and you are a scoundrel.” Again there were at least three witnesses, including the overseer Jacob Stoffelsen—whom the Turk had threatened with a loaded pistol a short time before—and the mason Hendrick Pietersen. The usher was honor-bound not to let that insult pass and immediately had a declaration about the incident drawn up.31 Others now became involved in the squabble as well. All the pent-up annoyance at the conduct of the Turk and his wife now came to the surface. Commissioner Wybrant Pietersen, accused by the Turk of having ddled his books, even produced a witness who showed how long Grietje had been leading a dissolute life. In company of Claes Cornelissen Swits, later a wheelwright just outside New Amsterdam, Cornelis Lambersen Cool had years earlier been at the inn of Pieter de Winter in Amsterdam, where Grietje Reiniers was working as a waitress. On that day she was serving a few German soldiers in a separate upstairs room. When she did not come down fast enough her mistress went up and peered through the keyhole. Grietje, half undressed, was sitting there with the soldiers with her skirt raised to her knees. The indignant innkeeper’s wife had then remarked to Cool and his companion that she had thought she had an honorable woman in her house but realized now that Grietje was no more than a whore. The following morning she was sent away from the inn.32 The council now judged that Anthony and Grietje had not kept the promises they had made to Bogardus six months earlier about living a better life and behaving like good Christians. As a punishment for constantly causing trouble they were ordered to leave New Netherland for good within six months. There was no getting around that sentence, and a month later the Turk sold his farm. He did not go far, however. He moved to Long Island,

31 32

NYHM, I, 106 (March 15, 1639). NYHM, I, 107 (March 21, 1639).

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and within a few years became an established and respected citizen.33 But he waited with the baptism of his daughter Eva until 1647, when the minister was safely gone and the girl was already six years old. How should we interpret this incident? Some have suspected underlying jealousy. The marriage of the poor Norwegian farmer’s widow, mother of many children, with the inuential minister, second man in the colony, might have made other women envious.34 Others have placed it in a political context. Leo Hershkowitz believes that Anthony Jansen and his wife were given such harsh treatment because they were relative outsiders: a mulatto and a strumpet, neither of them churchgoers. Moreover, the attack on Bogardus threatened to undermine the authority of the church and the established order.35 This was undoubtedly the crux of the matter. Scholars have trained the spotlight on the colorful characters of the Turk and his wife, while the role of the minister has remained in the shadows. Yet he gured prominently in the case, from beginning to end. There is a remarkable symmetry in the honor feud. Anthony may have accused Anneke Jans rashly, but he was in turn the minister’s favorite target. Bogardus had called Grietje’s conduct debauched, possibly barred the couple from communion, and in any case branded them as dishonorable in the eye of the community. He was not satised until they had been exiled. But was the issue solely one of public morals? A comparison with the neighboring colonies is unavoidable here. The oppressive atmosphere that Nathaniel Hawthorne evoked so convincingly for New England in The Scarlet Letter was certainly not characteristic of New Netherland. Grietje Reiniers was not Hester Prynne; nor did this story involve an amorous clergyman. It is true that in those years the Puritans in New England were also searching for an effective policy in the area of public morals, and that initially it was not so much women who were punished as the men who committed adultery. In this connection Carol Karlsen has pointed out the “female recalcitrance” in the English colonies: Puritan women were used to resisting established authority, as Puritans and as women.36 Only in the 1640s did that begin

33

LP, 18, nr. GG 61 (August 1, 1639). J.W. Gerard, ‘Anneke Jans Bogardus and her farm’, in: Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 70 (1885), 836–849, here 838. 35 Hershkowitz, ‘The troublesome Turk’, 307. 36 Carol F. Karlsen, The devil in the shape of a woman: Witchcraft in colonial New England (New York & London 1987), 182–221. 34

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to change: women then came to be viewed as more responsible for sexual misconduct than men, and female sexuality was more frequently blamed for male offences. But that development had more to do with the colonial situation than with Puritanism. In Catholic New France (Quebec) similar changes took place in the position of women. Increasing colonization and the conversion of the Hurons and the Montagnais upset the traditional balance between men and women in these tribes, a balance that had crept into Christian society as well, as a result of intensive contacts with the Indians. On all sides the second quarter of the seventeenth century brought a clear subordination of women to men, legitimized with Christian motives.37 It is quite possible that the court case involving Anthony the Turk and Grietje Reiniers, for which the council of New Netherland summoned all its resources and exiled the couple on the basis of corroborative testimony by no fewer than sixteen witnesses, was the Dutch version of this development. Because women were scarce, they could easily acquire a position of power in the colony, and libertines weakened the cohesion of the Christian community. In this light, the lawsuit was a successful attempt by the minister to serve as the mouthpiece of the WIC—whose civil authority extended to sins against religion, morality, and the use of God’s name—and to clarify once and for all the limits of moral behavior, the locus of authority in the colony, and the place assigned to conduct that deviated from the norm. The point was not to completely ban the Turk from the colony, but to demonstrate that he should be considered a marginal gure because his norms were not those of the core community on Manhattan. Exile to Long Island was sufcient for this purpose. The fate of the Turk was intended as a signal to blacks, Indians, and other “uncivilized” outsiders, who with their un-European way of life threatened to undermine Christian morality. Integration by means of marginalization, but without ostracism. This undoubtedly explains why Bogardus attacked with such force, seeking at any cost to triumph over a couple who, from the outset, were no real match for him. He must have sensed that new steps were being taken in the formation of an authentic community. And he would either have to claim leadership or end up permanently on the sidelines. The excommunication three years earlier of the pious scaal Dinclagen had

37 Karen Anderson, Chain her by one foot: The subjugation of women in seventeenth-century New France (London 1991).

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eloquently demonstrated the locus of moral authority in the colony: it was not the WIC but the congregation, represented by the minister. Now lines of demarcation were being drawn around the community itself: outsiders, non-Christians or colonists leading unchristian lives, like the mulatto and the strumpet, had been served notice. They were banned not only from the church but from the civil community as well. The symmetrical accusations of Anneke Jans and Grietje Reiniers in the lawsuit established the public code of honor and conduct: it would now rest securely on the twin pillars of Christian piety and orthodox morality. From that moment on the limits were clear. A skirt could be raised to avoid mud puddles, but not for indecent reasons. The old opposition between Company employees and free colonists may have played a role here as well. Dominie Bogardus, court usher Du Trieux, the commissioners Van Curler and Pietersen, schoolmaster Roelants, overseer Stoffelsen, mason Pietersen, the midwife, the carpenters—nearly all the accusers and witnesses were on the payroll of the WIC.38 In 1638 they still represented the established categories in which the community could take shape. But that would soon change. Less than ve years later a third test case, the Indian War, would disclose a split in the community itself and, more clearly than ever before, raise the question of the identity of New Netherland. Was it a trading post or a colony? An extension of the fatherland or a community in its own right? A motley group of pioneers governed from the outside or an ordered civil society with laws of its own? During the war the colonists lost all faith in the WIC’s claim to moral authority, leaving the community as the only alternative. Thanks to his feud with the director, the way was then open for Bogardus to play a role that was both pivotal and exemplary.

Moving towards war Political developments can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Wars have traditionally been viewed as conicts of interests between parties. Recently, however, new approaches have brought additional layers of interpretation. Some highlight the role of conicts in processes larger than those subsumed by the collective will (societal evolutions, state

38

Cf. the new appointments as of June 24, 1638: NYHM, IV, 13–15.

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formation, acculturation processes); others proceed from the assumption that each conict has its own dynamic (psychological models, catastrophe theories); yet others analyze cultural factors (enemy images, communication forms, trade patterns). The attitude of the Europeans towards the Indians in the war of the 1640s, for example, shows unmistakable features of a black legend. That war was also the moment of Paradise Lost for the Europeans. The Eden-like innocence initially attributed to the land and its inhabitants disappeared from the picture for good. In that sense the war formed a transition to normalcy: the colony woke up to its own identity, and little by little spokesmen like Van der Donck and Bogardus found the words to express it. Another interpretation of the war is possible as well.39 Conicts are fought out by people whose ideas and actions draw largely on mental blueprints, models, and images supplied by various groups in the society and internalized by the combatants. Such readymade frameworks need not be a perfect match for the aim and course of the conict. The participants also retain a certain freedom to make decisions of their own, a margin of choice—but here, too, there is no guarantee that this will result in “rational” conict resolution. Some decisions made on grounds that to the participants appear thoroughly rational have in retrospect produced the greatest debacles or an effect diametrically opposed to their intent. All this must be kept in mind if we wish to understand the causes, course, and outcome of the Indian War. Bogardus’s major conict with director Kieft grew out of the war and intensied as the war progressed. Although it contained recognizable elements of the old opposition between “politics of prayer” and “politics of interest,” it cannot be totally reduced to those terms. Over time Bogardus’s own stake in the feud actually shifted from prayer to interest, although not in the rather cynical form that Kieft advocated with regard to the Indians. The last word on the feud will certainly not be spoken until some document either by Bogardus himself or with his version of the story is available for study. No such document has been found to date. It is to be feared that they were all lost in the shipwreck

39 For such an approach, see also Evan Haefeli, ‘Kieft’s war and the cultures of violence in colonial America’, in: Michael Belleisles (ed.), Lethal imagination: Violence and brutality in American history (New York & London 1999), 17–40. For a moral interpretation of the Indian War, see Donna Merwick, The shame and the sorrow: Dutch-Amerindian encounters in New Netherland (Philadelphia 2006), especially 99–179, and ‘Extortion’, in: De Halve Maen 78:3 (2005), 43–48.

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of 1647, as Bogardus would undoubtedly have taken his papers with him to the fatherland, where he intended to plead his case. Much has already been written about the political signicance and the economic consequences of the Indian War. Here we will focus mainly on the social and cultural, religious and ritual elements, for it was in this sphere that Bogardus challenged Kieft. Was the war in that respect perhaps more a trigger than the cause of the conict? There were many old wounds, some of them dating from before Kieft’s directorship. As late as 1646 Kieft did not hesitate use them himself in his philippic against Bogardus—a clear indication that this was more than just a personality conict, and that Kieft was documenting his case as thoroughly as possible. Ultimately, the organization of the colony itself was at stake. It would therefore be shortsighted to limit our analysis to a few anecdotes or a personality sketch of the main characters. We will instead explore the relation between Bogardus’s role in this conict and the goal he had set for his life, the maturation of his ideas and ideals in the context of a developing colonial community. People do not act in isolation, however. The violence of the war cannot be understood without insight into the tensions between whites and Indians that had been mounting since Kieft’s rst years in ofce.40 By 1638 the WIC had resigned itself to the impossibility of recouping its investments in New Netherland solely from the fur trade and agreed to abolish the trade monopoly. In 1640 the possibilities for colonization were expanded as well. Alongside the large patroonships, small-scale colonists were also given the right to settle independently in New Netherland. Both measures gave rise to new frictions. The opening of the fur trade lured adventurers eager for quick prots from direct trade with the Indians; in the end they damaged both the WIC and the colonists. The expansion of settlement possibilities soon brought about a shift in the structure of the colony. New Amsterdam now became the center of a densely built-up area. Colonists were attracted from a variety of countries—in 1643 Kieft proudly informed the French Jesuit Isaac Jogues that 18 languages were spoken in his town.41 In fact, Cornelis van Vorst, director of the patroonship Pavonia, spoke

40 A summary in Allan W. Trelease, Indian affairs in colonial New York: The seventeenth century (Ithaca, NY 1960), 60–84. See also Clark Wissler, The Indians of greater New York and the Lower Hudson (New York 1909), 32–36. 41 NNN, 259. This number certainly includes various dialects spoken in the North and South Netherlands.

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French or Italian with Hans Jorisz Honthom, the WIC commissioner at Fort Orange.42 If we can believe the pamphlet Breeden-Raedt, the colonization policy was supported by the new commissioners for New Netherland in the Amsterdam chamber, Isaac van Beeck, Jacob Pergens, and Eduard Man.43 Van Beeck, an Amsterdam elder, is there maligned as “one of the Heaven-thieves who under the guise of piety are worse than venom.” But it is quite possible that he was the one who hoped to revive the old ideal of a truly Reformed colony.44 That would also go a long way in explaining the endless credit Bogardus enjoyed with the commissioners. With the rapid decimation of the beaver and otter populations, the center of the fur trade shifted from Manhattan to the vicinity of Rensselaerswijck. In the north the trade contacts with the Indians continued on their old footing, but in and around southern Manhattan the indigenous people had little more to offer and were only in the way of the whites. Although Staten Island was purchased from the Indians already in 1630, they could at rst continue living there in peace because few colonists came to settle—so few, in fact, that a short time later the island had to be “bought” two more times. In 1639/40 the entire western part of Long Island was purchased and parceled out among the Dutch and English colonists, one of the rst being Dominie Bogardus. Within a few years all the Indian land within a wide radius of New Amsterdam had not only become Dutch property but was in the possession of colonists. The Indians did not simply disappear, however. Two ethnic groups actually lived side by side, in some cases on the same land. They regularly contested each other’s right of ownership, the dogs of Indians ate the chickens of the whites, and the colonists’ livestock trampled the Indians’ corn—which was certainly not in the interest of the whites, considering their dependence on Indian harvests and how easily unrest among the indigenous people could prove fatal for them. The council of New Netherland was in principle aware of this and repeatedly took measures against colonists who brought harm to the Indians. But Kieft wanted too much at once. Whether blame should fall on him for lack of insight or on the fatal spiral of fear, lack of funds,

42

GAA, NA, 843, p. 1107 (February 25, 1636). Breeden-Raedt, f. B3v°–B4r° (‘Broad Advice’, 142). 44 Jacob Pergens, lord of Vosbergen, married to Leonora Bartholotti, heiress to one of the biggest fortunes of the city, and kin to the Huygens and Hooft families, may have been a less strict Calvinist; Elias, De vroedschap, I, 388. 43

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and the need for defense—for which the Heren XIX showed so little understanding—is hardly important here. The fact is that the director took measures which led to a dramatic increase in tensions between colonists and Indians. In September 1639 the council (except for La Montagne, who opposed the measure) decided to impose on the Indians around Manhattan a tax payable in beavers, corn, or sewant for the defense of the land and the maintenance of troops. The Indians grumbled: it was their own land, they paid for everything they bought, and they had even fed the Dutch for the two years when no ships came in.45 Large-scale resistance was looming. The white population was therefore advised in May 1640 to arm itself for all eventualities. The Raritans lit the fuse when they attacked a sloop of the WIC. Word went around that they had also killed livestock of David Pietersz de Vries on Staten Island and butchered Company pigs in the care of a black slave there. The accusation was probably false—according to the Indians the culprits were Company soldiers en route to the South River. Whatever the case, Kieft undertook excessively punitive measures. On July 16 he dispatched to the island fty armed soldiers led by secretary Cornelis van Tienhoven and sergeant Rodolff, and twenty sailors under Hendrick Gerritsz, captain of the Neptunus.46 The Raritans promised to punish the guilty parties, and Van Tienhoven was satised. But his troops were not so easily dissuaded from their mission. They demanded immediate satisfaction and “were eager to kill and plunder,” as De Vries wrote. Van Tienhoven was no friend of the Indians but as a civil servant knew where insubordination could lead. He saw no alternative but to withdraw and leave the rebellious soldiers behind, “under protest of all the havoc that would result from their disobedience and deance of orders.” Before he had gone a quarter of a mile several Indians had been killed. Govert Loockermans, at that time still in the employ of the WIC, had captured a brother of the sachem “and greatly mistreated his male member with a split piece of wood while he was tied to the mast.” Van Tienhoven had to promise his rebellious troops 80 fathom of sewant (or wampum, worth about 320 guilders) to save the Indian from a horrible death.47 When captain De Vries sailed to the Tappans

45 Breeden-Raedt, f. B4r°–C1r°. The same version of the facts, very damaging for Kieft, was recorded in a notarial statement by former commissioner Ulrich Lupoldt c.s. at the demand of Marijn Adriaensen: GAA, NA, 1628–B, July 28, 1643. 46 NYHM, IV, 87 ( July 16, 1640). 47 De Vries, Historiael, 161 (NNN, 208–209).

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a few months later to barter dufe for corn, the tension was palpable. What makes the sachem in the fort (Kieft) think he can force us to give him our corn, the Indians protested, when we never even asked him to come to our land? The revenge of the Raritans was not long in coming. In June 1641 they attacked the property of De Vries on Staten Island, killed four colonists, and set re to his farm. Did they perhaps think that the soldiers had been called in by the fearful farmers? It was a strange choice of tactic, for De Vries had been a moderate colonist, an acknowledged friend and defender of the Indians. But from a strategic point of view it made sense: the island lay within view of the fort. The plume of smoke rising from the smoldering ruins was a sign of imminent danger. Kieft now tried to outwit the Indians by playing them off against each other: a bounty of ten fathom of sewant (about 40 guilders) was promised to anyone who killed a Raritan, and double that amount for killing one who had taken part in the raid on Staten Island.48 Early in November, Pacham, sachem of the Tankitekes and an ally of Kieft, “came with great triumph and brought the hand of dead person hanging on a stick”—the hand of the leader of the punitive expedition.49 Meanwhile colonization continued. On August 20 of that year the ship De Eyckeboom (The Oak Tree) arrived in New Netherland bringing the Amsterdam chamois producer Cornelis Melijn, accompanied by forty colonists. With them came the message that the Heren XIX had granted Staten Island to Melijn as a patroonship—much to the surprise of De Vries, who refused to relinquish the rights he had acquired in 1638, although he had been wise enough to leave Staten Island as it was. At Kieft’s request, however, he reached a modus vivendi with Melijn, who began distilling brandy and tanning chamois leather on the tip of Staten Island.50 Hostilities escalated with the murder of Claes Cornelissen Swits, also known as Rademaker (Wheelwright).51 Less than a mile outside

48

NYHM, IV, 115–116 ( July 4, 1641). This is the origin of Kieft’s notoriety as the rst American to have promised a bounty for an Indian scalp. Cf. James Axtell, ‘The unkindest cut, or: Who invented scalping? A case study’, in: James Axtell, The European and the Indian: Essays in the ethnohistory of colonial North America (New York 1981), 16–35. 49 De Vries, Historiael, 163 (NNN, 211). 50 De Vries, Historiael, 162–163 (NNN, 211–212); DRCHNY, XIII, 6–7. 51 De Vries, Historiael, 164–165 (NNN, 213–215); Journael van Nieu-Nederlandt, in: Schulte Nordholt, ‘Nederlanders’, 85 (NNN, 274–275). In GAA, NA, 1628–B ( July 28, 1643), the date given is August 10, 1641.

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New Amsterdam, on the road used daily by Weckquasgeeks coming to New Amsterdam from the north, Claes had built a workshop on his farm where he practiced the trade of wheelwright. It was there that a Weckquasgeek came with the intention of trading beaver pelts for dufe. When Claes bent over his storage chest to get the fabric, the Indian smashed his skull with the victim’s own axe and made off with his merchandise. Kieft naturally demanded satisfaction of the tribe’s sachem, but received the arrogant reply that the Indian in question had seized his chance to avenge the murder of his uncle by the “Swannekens” (the Dutch) a good fteen years earlier, when he had accompanied his uncle to the Fresh River (the Connecticut) to barter beaver pelts. As far as the sachem was concerned, twenty Swannekens could be murdered. This message set off alarm bells in those who heard it, and Kieft found himself in a difcult position. The murder of the wheelwright, almost within view of the fort, left the inhabitants of Manhattan feeling permanently insecure. As a result, the hotheads who would have liked to annihilate all the Indians were able to exert more inuence—but the Indians became more belligerent as well. Quick action was needed to keep the situation under control. Kieft now made an unprecedented move. Instead of leaving a decision to the judgment of his mini-council, he called together on August 28, 1641 “the entire municipality,” that is, all heads of families of the free citizens of New Amsterdam, and asked them—in the words of De Vries, who attended the meeting—“to help direct the affairs of the land together with him.”52 This in fact meant the beginning of colonial self-government, outside the structures of the WIC. “Direct” was a big word. What Kieft actually meant was that they should provide advice and ensure him of a good alibi in case of failure, for he certainly did not intend to give up his right to govern. In fact, as soon as the political structure of the colony itself was placed on the agenda, he sent the “municipality” home for an unspecied length of time. A council of Twelve Men was chosen, of which De Vries as patroon became the natural spokesman. Kieft asked them “whether the blood of aforesaid Wheelwright should be avenged.”53 Although the Twelve do not appear to have been opposed in principle to requiting Rademaker’s murder, 52 De Vries, Historiael, 165 (NNN, 214); NAN, States General, 12564.25 (Kopieboek of Willem Kieft). 53 As stated in the petition of October 28, 1644: NAN, States General, 12564.25; and in GAA, NA, 1628–B ( July 28, 1643).

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they thought it advisable to wait until the corn harvest was in and winter had come, because the Indians would then be out hunting. Meanwhile they should rst be asked to hand over the murderer peacefully. Kieft himself, it was decided, should accompany the expedition as a way to guarantee order. Not only had he been faulted for never spending even one night outside the fort; the citizens also remembered only too well the havoc that undisciplined soldiers could wreak. Although eager for revenge, the Twelve Men were sensible enough to realize that hasty action would only bring disaster. Livestock in the elds, settlers scattered over the colony—all would prove easy prey for the many tribes in the area. When winter came the Twelve were still cautious, but in January 1642 they decided that the moment had come “to kill the savages.” For both parties, it seems, the watchword was revenge. The colonists adopted Indian ghting tactics: surprise attacks, preferably at night, in order to kill as many people as possible while incurring as few casualties as possible themselves. On two different nights ensign Hendrick van Dijck was sent with his 80 men on a punitive expedition, but both times—intentionally or not—they were misled by the Indian guide and lost their way in the dark. They reached their destination at daybreak, which spoiled the surprise effect. They returned with their mission unaccomplished. People now began losing condence in the troops as well. Panic was spreading. Kieft saw the colony hurtling towards war. Meanwhile, however, the Weckquasgeeks realized that for the moment it would be wiser to make peace. On March 28, 1642 the negotiations were held in Jonas Bronck’s house Emmaus, in Weckquasgeek territory, with secretary Van Tienhoven, ensign Van Dijck, and Dominie Bogardus representing the WIC. Sachem Kieft did not attend. Before long the whites were again feeling intensely insecure. Less than half a mile from the new colony founded by Godard van Reede, lord of Nederhorst, at Achter Col—on the far side of the North River past Pavonia—a young Hackensack drunk on brandy he had bought from the whites shot and killed the colonist Gerrit Jansz van Vorst while he was roong his barn.54 Although the Hackensacks had always resisted the founding of the colony on their land, they realized that a brutal murder within a bowshot of the fort could easily prove fatal for them. The terried sachem, escorted by captain De Vries, went to

54

Breeden-Raedt, f. C1r°–v° (‘Broad Advice’, 147).

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director Kieft and promised the widow the impressive sum of 100 to 200 fathom of sewant (400 to 800 guilders) in damages. He added that such accidents would not occur if the whites refrained from selling brandy to the young Indians. But when Kieft, in keeping with Dutch law, requested that the offender be handed over, he was nowhere to be found. It was, after all, the son of a sachem.55 Unrest kept brewing during a year of armed peace. Then, in February 1643, the Weckquasgeeks, the Hackensacks, and the Tappans were all attacked from the north by the Mohawks—according to some sources the Mahicans—who lived around Fort Orange.56 At least 70 men were killed, and many women and children taken prisoner. Several hundred Indians ed in groups to Vriesendael and crossed the river to New Amsterdam, where they begged for protection. There are two versions of what happened next.57 According to the story sympathetic to Kieft, the refugees were at rst received hospitably and on the director’s own orders supplied with corn. Two weeks after returning home they were attacked once again and the drama repeated itself. One group ed across the North River to Jan de Lacher’s Hoeck in Pavonia, behind the farm of Jan Evertsen Bout. Another group set up camp on Manhattan behind Jacob van Curler’s plantation on the East River (Corlaer’s Hoeck). A council resolution of February 27 and the report of De Vries give a different version, however.58 In reality everything happened in just a few days. Seeing Indians encroaching from all sides in groups of fty to a hundred, the whites panicked. They thought a massacre was imminent, like the one perpetrated in Virginia twenty years earlier. Kieft immediately proposed a drastic solution, without any pious show of the Christian charity ascribed to him in the other version. When Dominie Bogardus and secretary Van Tienhoven later read Kieft’s own version in his “booklet of the war,” given to them for editorial corrections, they “threw the book from the table” because every sentence 55

De Vries, Historiael, 165–166 (NNN, 215–216). Journael van Nieu-Nederlandt, in: Schulte Nordholt, ‘Nederlanders’, 87 (NNN, 276–277). 57 Cf. for the two versions Schulte Nordholt, ‘Nederlanders’, 65–67, who suggests that the version in favor of Kieft stems from councilor La Montagne. In my opinion the Journael van Nieu-Nederlandt might as well be the ‘boeckien’ (booklet of the war) by director Kieft against which Van Tienhoven and Bogardus protested and that Kieft intended to send to the Netherlands. 58 NYHM, IV, 186–188 (February 27, 1643); De Vries, Historiael, 176–178 (NNN, 225–228). 56

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contained a lie.59 Indeed, only the second version, describing the panic, can explain why all the colonists without exception—even De Vries, Bogardus, and Kuyter—eventually accepted Kieft’s decision, and why there was massive participation in the expedition. A few colonists soon realized that this was an ideal opportunity to make quick work of the Indians, avenge past wrongs, and denitively establish white authority. They wanted to “attack the savages like enemies, while God has all but placed them in our hand.”60 Kieft made eager use of this vengefulness. On Shrove Tuesday, February 24, he mentioned at table in the presence of De Vries “that he intended to sock the savages in the jaw.” Two days earlier he had attended a carnival celebration at the home of Jan Jansz Damen. Three colonists who belonged to the Twelve Men had then presented him with a petition to avenge blood that had been shed. According to Kieft’s opponents, he had actually “announced in a cryptic toast to three unwitting farmers the attack on the savages (that he was planning).”61 But the testimony recorded on Kieft’s request one month later presents the petition as a citizens’ initiative.62 A short list of questions drawn up for Dominie Bogardus even suggests that the three men ofcially presented it to him in his ofce. The minister was the only other person present. The ve men subsequently discussed the matter at length. We know nothing of Bogardus’s response to those questions, and consequently nothing about the import of that discussion either. The petition was signed by farmer Damen, Marijn Adriaensen and Abraham Planck—although it was later suggested that the person behind it was secretary Van Tienhoven, Kieft’s evil genius in Indian affairs, who spoke the language of the local tribes.63 This is not unlikely, for the secretary more often wrote documents in the name of illiterate farmers, and three of the four men were related: Van Tienhoven and Planck were both married to stepdaughters of Damen. The petition

59 NAN, States General, 12564.25 (petition of October 28, 1644, and apology of Kuyter and Melijn, June 22, 1647, art. 7). 60 NAN, States General, 12564.25 (petition of Marijn Adriaensen c.s., s.d. [February 22, 1643]). 61 Breeden-Raedt, f. C1r° (‘Broad Advice’, 146, where the events of 22 and 24 February coincide). The petition of October 28, 1644 speaks of the ‘Carnival happening’ (het Vastelavont spul ). 62 NAN, States General, 12564.25 ( June 18, 1647); DRCHNY, I, 194–201. 63 Breeden-Raedt, f. C1r° (‘Broad Advice’, 148); De Vries, Historiael, 178 (NNN, 226).

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creates the impression that these three men were acting in the name of the Twelve Men, but that does not seem to have been the case. Van Tienhoven is said to have added that phrase while making a nal draft of the petition. However, the situation must have been discussed and opinions given by everyone present at the carnival party. On that occasion Bogardus was also a guest of Damen—his need for socializing had obviously won out against his Calvinist aversion to papist festivals. Was it on his advice that Kieft postponed the decision until councilor La Montagne, a more cautious man than the director, had come from his farm and given his personal opinion?

Ritual cruelty? De Vries, also present at that decisive meeting, was from the outset vehemently opposed to every form of war. If we can believe him, Kieft had talked up the extermination of the Indians as a “Roman exploit,” a heroic deed of Roman caliber, to be carried out in the same spirit as the destruction of Carthage.64 He warned Kieft that his murderous plans were unwise in the extreme, because they would certainly lead to war with the Indians. With their small numbers and scattered settlements the colonists would then be easy prey. De Vries spoke from experience. In 1631 he had lost 32 men in an Indian raid on Swanendael, and as recently as 1641 four farmers on Staten Island. Kieft’s superiors were also intent on keeping peace with the Indians. That much became clear after the massacre in Swanendael, when the directors refused to consider retaliatory measures. “No trade without peace”—on that axiom the Company had operated right from the start.65 Finally, such an attack was not permitted without the consent of the Twelve Men. Although sent home by Kieft, they in principle remained the representative body of the colonists, and very likely also behaved as such. In any case their leader De Vries, the largest investor in the colony, believed that he should be the rst to be informed. He already had visions of his house, his people, his animals, his grain and tobacco going up in ames. Dominie Bogardus, councilor La Montagne and

64

De Vries, Historiael, 178 (NNN, 227). Wieder, De stichting, 117, 122, 141–142; De Vries expressed a similar opinion in a discussion with Kieft early in 1642: Historiael, 165 (NNN, 214–215). 65

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scaal Van der Hoykens had supported De Vries in his appeal for caution. They too had something to lose. La Montagne made a plea for careful deliberations: the colonists would rst have to be evacuated to Manhattan, and the stock of ammunition had to be sufcient for a long war.66 But Kieft had already made his decision. He cut the discussion short: “The word is out, and it has to stay out.” Later it was claimed that “the war was decided in the council chamber (with Dominie Bogardus present).”67 But that is a tendentious representation of the facts. Kieft had actually made the decision on his own. Van Tienhoven had voiced his agreement, but he had no vote, and the others were opposed. The director, who otherwise made such a point of Company regulations, here bowed to the opinion of a few persons from the community and ignored the Company ofcials. He took De Vries to see his new corps de garde, showing him that his soldiers were already prepared to cross over to Pavonia. Meanwhile secretary Van Tienhoven and corporal Hans Steen went to investigate the situation in Pavonia. Twenty-four hours later, in the evening of February 25, 1643, a double attack was launched. A troop of 80 colonists led by Marijn Adriaensen and assisted by Govert Loockermans went after the Weckquasgeeks who had sought refuge behind Curler’s plantation. Forty were killed in their sleep.68 That same night sergeant Jurriaen Rodolff and his soldiers attacked the Hackensacks and Tappans in Pavonia, behind Jan Evertsen Bout’s land. The Indians, who believed they were under the protection of the whites, were so surprised that they thought the attackers were Mohawks. More than eighty were killed. Kieft, it was reported, gave his blessing to the massacre by publicly thanking and shaking hands with the returning soldiers. One day later, on February 27, the council expressly rejected the possibility of an attack on the Indians of Long Island, in view of the total absence of provocation. Present at this meeting besides director Kieft, scaal Van der Hoykens, and ensign Hendrick van Dijck were the commissioners Gijsbert Opdijck and Oloff Stevensz van Cortlandt, as well as Dominie Bogardus.69

66 NAN, States General, 12564.25 (Questionnaire for Damen c.s., June 18, 1647); cf. 12564.30A (Vertooch, July 28, 1649, p. 54–56 [NNN, 333]). 67 NAN, States General, 12564.30A (Answer of the Amsterdam Chamber, exh. January 27, 1650, art. 64); DRCHNY, I, 345. 68 Breeden-Raedt, f. C2r° (‘Broad Advice’, 149); De Vries, Historiael, 178–180 (NNN, 227–229); DRCHNY, I, 194, 345, 416. 69 NAN, States General, 12564.25 (Extract from Kieft’s correspondence, February 27, 1643); DRCHNY, I, 417.

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The complete top echelon of the Company, in other words. Are there undertones here of an incipient quarrel between Bogardus and Kieft about the director’s policy? The point is made in the text that such an attack would lead to “an unjust war”—a scruple that had not occurred to Kieft three days earlier but which could well have been an argument put forward by Bogardus. Meanwhile there were ample grounds for the council’s hesitation. Kieft’s opponents later spread gruesome stories about the cruelties perpetrated by the soldiers in the night February 25. They had received explicit orders to kill only the men and spare the women and small children, as the Indians themselves did.70 Murdering women and children was prohibited by every indigenous law of war: they could be abducted for ransom, adopted or taken into slavery, but not killed. The soldiers paid little heed to their orders. Babies were “snatched from their mother’s breast, hacked to pieces in front of their parents, and the pieces thrown into the re and the water.” Other infants “tied to wooden boards [in keeping with Indian custom] were thoroughly hacked, stabbed, bayoneted and miserably massacred.” Some were hurled into the river, and if the parents tried to rescue them they were forced back into the ice-cold water to drown with them. The very young and the elderly who managed to escape and hide in the wilderness or in the reed were “murdered in cold blood and kicked into the re or into the water” the next morning when they came to beg for a piece of bread or to warm themselves by the re. Escapees showed up with hands or legs chopped off, “some carried their intestines in their arms, others had been hacked, slashed, and mutilated so horribly that worse things of this kind could never have happened.”71 No wonder this massacre has gone down in history as the “slaughter of the innocents.”72 From that moment on all the Indians on and around Manhattan were at war with the whites. The whites had broken all the rules of warfare, not so much by employing cruelty as such, but by directing it against women and children. The violation of traditional war practices brought with it a change in mentality. War was now no longer a ritual

70 NYHM, IV, 185–186 (February 25, 1643). Cf. De Vries, Historiael, 157, 180 (NNN, 229), for the customs of Indian warfare. 71 Breeden-Raedt, f. C2r° (‘Broad Advice’, 149); copied by De Vries, Historiael, 179 (NNN, 228). 72 Carl Waldmann, Atlas of the North American Indians (New York & Oxford 1985), 95–97.

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but a spectacle, a theatrical display of cruelty. The embittered victims now thought only of merciless revenge. The whites turned panicky at the thought of “the host of savages who burn and kill everything they can get their hands on in the forest, on the water, or elsewhere,” as Pieter Cock and Roelof Jansen Haes later explained.73 Houses and barns, haystacks, grain elds and plantations, were set ablaze and destroyed. All the men the Indians encountered were killed, the women and children abducted, the small children “were smashed to death in their parents’ arms and in front of their doors with axes and hammers or dragged away as prisoners.”74 Wednesday, March 4 was declared a day of fasting and prayer, to beg for God’s mercy, and ask Him not to allow his name to be profaned by the heathen because of the sins of the whites.75 But before long the Indians requested peace talks. The sowing season was approaching, and a burnt corneld would mean famine a few months later. At the end of March the negotiators appeared with a white ag within view of the fort. David de Vries and Jacob Olfertsz, men agreeable to the Indians, were delegated to go to the camp of the assembled chiefs on Long Island. Thanks to their mediation, peace was concluded the next day. A short time later hostilities ended on the mainland as well: on April 22 Kieft made peace with Oratamin, sachem of the Hackensacks.76 However, the Hackensack and Tappan braves found the director too tight-sted. Kieft failed to realize that even for the most extreme injury and dishonor it was possible to make material reparation, provided the gifts were in proportion to the harm done. Nor did he realize that the authority of a white chief like himself was measured by the size of his gifts and the degree of his generosity.77 The peace therefore remained precarious. Already in July 1643 De Vries was warned by an Indian chief friend of his that the young braves were grumbling. The director had provided inadequate compensation, and they wanted revenge. When De Vries took the chief to Kieft, it became clear just how ignorant the director was of Indian ways. Kieft offered the chief 200 fathom of sewant (ca. 800 guilders) if he would kill the rebellious young men. He failed to 73

NYHM, II, 174–175 (November 3, 1643). NAN, States General, 5757–II, lectum April 5, 1644 (petition of the Eight Men to the States General, November 3, 1643). 75 NYHM, IV, 188 (March 25, 1643). 76 NYHM, IV, 192 (April 22, 1643); De Vries, Historiael, 180–182 (NNN, 229–232). 77 Cf. Van der Donck, Beschryvinge (1656), 74–75; De Vries, Historiael, 182 (NNN. 232–233). 74

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understand that the Indians only attacked one another if they were enemies, “not for the sake of foreign nations”—as De Vries explained to him. The chief promised to do his best with that money to silence the call for revenge. But Kieft was stubborn.78 Now even his allies began to desert him. Pacham, the sly sachem of the Tankitekes, crisscrossed the country urging the Indians to begin a “general massacre” of the whites.79 Here and there during that summer more colonists were killed and farms burned down. Famine threatened, as farmers no longer dared to sow their crops. Even the property of whites who had befriended the Indians was no longer spared. On October 1 nine Indians burned Pavonia to the ground and abducted young Ide van Vorst for ransom. De Vries managed to ransom the boy but had a hard time preventing the negotiators from being lynched. This was his last public act. He left the colony for the fatherland one week later, disillusioned.80 All his work had been for nothing. Kieft was now forced to consult the municipality again. At the suggestion of the Twelve Men he instituted a council of Eight Men who better represented the various groups. The rst meeting was held on September 15, 1643.81 Three of the members, Jan Jansz Damen, Jochem Pietersz Kuyter, and miller Abraham Pietersz (Molenaer), had belonged to the Twelve Men two years earlier. Three other Dutchmen were newcomers: baker Barent Dircksen, farmer Gerrit Wolfertsz (van Couwenhoven), and patroon Cornelis Melijn. The growing interest of the English in the colony was recognized by appointing the merchant Isaac Allerton and the tobacco planter Thomas Hall (the former tenant of Bogardus’s farm) to the Eight Men. Allerton was a Pilgrim Father who had rst lived in Leiden as a tailor, then sailed to New England with the Mayower in 1620, but in 1638 opted for New Netherland. Kieft’s candidate, Damen, signer of the disastrous petition of February 22 and loyal supporter of the director (as late as 1649 he accompanied Van Tienhoven to Holland to defend Kieft’s policy), was immediately rejected by the Eight Men. In his place they appointed Jan Evertsen Bout, the tenant of Achter Col, a typical frontiersman with a great deal of pluck and bravura but little respect for the WIC. Later they would

78

De Vries, Historiael, 182 (NNN, 232–233). Journael van Nieu-Nederlandt, in: Schulte Nordholt, ‘Nederlanders’, 89, cf. 92 (NNN, 279, 282). 80 Ibid., 90 (NNN, 279); De Vries, Historiael, 183 (NNN, 233–234). 81 NYHM, IV, 176 (September 15, 1643). 79

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again be replaced by others. At the peace settlement of August 1645 Gijsbert Opdijck and Oloff Stevensz van Cortlandt joined Stoffelsen and Bout on the advisory council, while the English were represented by no less than four members: Underhill and Baxter, Reverend Doughty and Richard Smith. This group was much less to Dominie Bogardus’s liking. He could count on only half of them (Stoffelsen, Bout, Opdijck, and Doughty) for support. Cortland, Underhill, and Baxter were denitely hostile to him. The colonists now congregated in the immediate vicinity of Fort Amsterdam, and many decided to return to the fatherland. In the end the colony was defended by no more than 60 soldiers and 250 able men. Meanwhile the war had spread from Manhattan and the mainland to Long Island. There English as well as Dutch settlements came under attack. Because the English had expressly placed themselves under Dutch protection in 1641, the Dutch authorities were now obliged to take action. Led by council member La Montagne, 120 men set out from Fort Amsterdam in February 1644 for the new village of Heemstede (Hempstead) on Long Island and launched a surprise attack on the Canarsies, encamped at Mespath.82 At least 120 Indians were killed. The grounds for the attack were trivial, as always—but passions ran high and the least provocation could have fatal consequences. In this case the Indians were said to have killed a few pigs of the English colonists. Their leader, the Presbyterian minister Robert Fordham, had informed Kieft, who immediately sent reinforcements.83 Meanwhile Kieft had called in the assistance of the hardened English captain John Underhill and a company of English soldiers. Underhill had earned his stripes seven years earlier in the cruel war against the Pequots of New England. At that time fortied villages were surrounded and set on re, the braves killed and the women and children driven into the ames; no one escaped. Hundreds of Indians died in such a raid. He now implemented the same tactic of annihilation. No mercy for the savages! In March 1644 Underhill went on the attack. At night, by the light of a full moon, after a blizzard that forced his troops to climb over rocks on their hands and knees, he led an assault on an Indian

82 Journael van Nieu-Nederlandt, in: Schulte Nordholt, ‘Nederlanders’, 91–94 (NNN, 280–284). 83 On this group, see Frederick J. Zwierlein, Religion in New Netherland: A history of the development of religious conditions in the province of New Netherland 1623–1664 (Rochester, NY 1910), 154–162.

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Fig. 39. Captain John Underhill’s attack on the Pequot village, 1637. [Engraving in John Underhill, News from America (1638)].

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stronghold in Connecticut (probably near Poundridge, Westchester County), where Indians of various tribes had gathered for festivities. Underhill’s company killed more than ve hundred, possibly seven hundred Indians, mainly Tankitekes, but 25 Wappingers as well. First the braves were killed with sabers, then the wigwams were set ablaze, and those who tried to ee were driven back with musket re. The entire village was ruthlessly wiped out, women and children included. Only eight Indians managed to escape, three of whom were seriously injured. On the white side, one soldier died and fteen were wounded, among them Underhill himself. A day of thanksgiving was declared when the company returned to New Amsterdam.84 On April 6 the decimated tribes led by sachem Mamarannack came to a provisional peace agreement with Kieft.85 From that moment the tide turned in favor of the colonists. But at what price! During the surprise attack on Heemstede in February 1644, a group of fty soldiers led by captain Underhill and ensign Hendrick van Dijck had undertaken a separate foray against a smaller Indian settlement. Kieft’s opponents drew up an outraged report on this expedition.86 Three Indians were stabbed to death on the spot, two others drowned en route, and the last two were handed over to the soldiers in New Amsterdam so that they could “cool their malice on them.” According to the report, Kieft had ordered special knives to be made, a kind of cleaver or machete 45 to 50 centimeters long—a weapon guaranteed to kill the Indians in a raid on their huts. Now a knife of this sort was used in front of the guardhouse to give one of the two surviving Indians a “horrible wound.” Knowing it was fatal, he wanted to die according to the custom of his tribe, a wish an enemy tribe would certainly have granted. He asked “to rst be allowed to kinte kaeien, which was a dance performed as religious observance.” An agonizing ritual dance was indeed the way captured Indian warriors died, either voluntarily or compelled by their captors.87 Instead of granting his wish, the soldiers

84

Yet Bogardus probably remained reluctant, for some days later, on 15 March, during a meal with some friends in the public tavern, he was violently attacked by captain Underhill and treated as “a foul person” for his opposition to the director’s policy. For this episode, see Wegen, 747–748; Henry C. Shelley, John Underhill, captain of New England and New Netherland (New York & London 1932), 325–330. 85 NYHM, IV, 216–217 (April 6, 1644). 86 Breeden-Raedt, f. C3v°; cf. Journael van Nieu-Nederlandt, in: Schulte Nordholt, ‘Nederlanders’, 92 (NNN, 282). 87 Cf. De Vries, Historiael, 153–154.

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Fig. 40. Ritual dance of the Native Americans. [Engraving in David Pietersz de Vries, Korte Historiael ende Journaels aenteyckeninge (Hoorn, 1655), p. 177].

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inicted so many more wounds on the prisoner that he fell down dead. The other Indian died a much more gruesome death. “The soldiers cut strips of skin from his body, from his calves along his legs, across his back, shoulders, all the way to his knees, and while this aying was taking place, director Kieft stood in the presence of his councilor Jan de La Montaigne Frenchman, laughed heartily, rubbing his right arm, and shouted with pleasure, so much he enjoyed that work. He then ordered that the man who had been thus cut up be dragged outside the fort, where that [other] poor naked innocent man went while doing his kinte kaeien. The soldiers brought him out into the Beaver Path, threw him underfoot there, and stuffed his severed male member into his mouth; they then placed him on a millstone and chopped off his head.” From the northwest corner of the fort 25 female Indian prisoners watched, wailing with grief. Both the text about the massacre of February 25/26, 1643 and the one about the cruel death of the two prisoners are taken from Breeden-Raedt, the pamphlet of Kieft’s opponents that was printed ve years later. In 1650 the scenario was again presented to secretary Van Tienhoven for conrmation. His mother-in-law Damen, also present on that occasion, was said to have kicked triumphantly at the head of the dead Indian.88 Whether everything took place exactly as described here remains a question, of course. The texts breathe the rhetoric of cruelty for a specic purpose, namely the unmasking of Kieft and his supporters. It should be noted, however, that the whites to a large extent imitated Indian customs. The Indians themselves were probably much less outraged by the cruelties the whites perpetrated against their warriors than by the way they violated the immunity of their women and children and refused to let the prisoner perform his death ritual. For our story it is not essential to know whether everything was reported with mathematical precision. The important question is how the war and the atrocities perpetrated near Pavonia and at the fort were perceived. When pouring their perceptions into a literary mold, the writers would have used narrative and formal traditions that were familiar to the public and guaranteed an efcient transfer of emotion. We recognize here the theatrical form of lynching, so common in biblical narratives, books of martyrs, sermons about the St. Bartholomew’s Night, and stories of murderous tyrants—to say nothing of the precedents in earlier

88

NAN, States General, 12564.25, exh. July 21, 1650, art. 38–40.

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indictments of European cruelty (such as Las Casas’s black legend of the Spanish conquest). Also familiar is the ritualized castration, which underscores the sacricial nature of the deed and brings about a transference of masculinity, giving the victors the illusion of invincibility. Finally, there is the perversion of the Indian rite of the death dance into a mock ritual, and the barbaric slaughter that is explicitly denied any religious signicance.89 These texts contain not only testimony of cruelty, but also echoes of the desperation and terror that overcame the colonists at the outbreak of war. All norms of behavior were thrown overboard. The catastrophe of the war, in which both sides ruthlessly murdered and burned, revealed an even greater catastrophe: the whites also showed themselves as thoroughly uncivilized and immoral. Their cruel mockery of Indian religion suddenly made it clear how little religion they possessed themselves. Five years later we can still feel the horror of this discovery reverberating in Breeden-Raedt: the whites are worse scoundrels than the savages, because they attack not only warriors but women and children as well. Dutch directors who allow such behavior “deserve to wear the crown of the Duke of Alva.”90 Twenty years later Spinoza’s teacher Dr. Franciscus van den Enden, who had read the reports of Van der Donck and De Vries, wrote a treatise describing an ideal state in New Netherland. Is it any wonder that he painted a pitch-black picture of the religion of the whites and praised to the skies the customs of the Indians?91

89

Cf. Orest Ranum, ‘The French ritual of tyrannicide in the late sixteenth century’, in: Sixteenth-Century Journal 11 (1980), 63–81; Philippe Joutard, et alii. La Saint-Barthélemy (Paris 1976); R. Jacob, ‘Le meurtre du seigneur dans la société féodale: la mémoire, le rite, la fonction’, in: Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations 45:2 (1990), 247–263; Sergio Bertelli, Il corpo del re. Sacralità del potere nell’ Europa medievale e moderna (Florence 1990). 90 Breeden-Raedt, f. C2v° (‘Broad Advice’, 149); cf. De Vries, Historiael, 180 (NNN, 228–229). 91 [Franciscus van den Enden], Vrye politijke stellingen en consideratien van staat (Amsterdam 1665 [new ed. by Wim Klever (Amsterdam 1992)]), 36–37.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

RESPONSIBILITIES

The opposition The motives for the resistance to Kieft’s war fall into two main categories: the desire for economic stability on the one hand, and moral and Christian scruples on the other. In writing the history of this period it has long been bon ton to disparage religious motives and focus only on economic issues. But did the seventeenth-century colonist also think in such one-sided terms? Without neglecting his material interest he was able to acknowledge a hierarchy of motives in which Christian convictions carried no less weight than economic considerations. Although not of the same order, they were certainly not mutually exclusive. For a number of colonists the cruel behavior of the soldiers towards the Indians called up painful memories. Just twenty years earlier the Spanish soldatesca and the States’ mercenaries had similarly terrorized the inland provinces, the home area of the majority of the colonists. Books of martyrs and popular prints portrayed exactly the same atrocities against Protestants as were now being committed against the Indians. The comparison of Kieft with Alva in both the Breeden-Raedt and in De Vries’s journal was far from arbitrary. Should not the Dutch, of all people, know better? Despite De Vries’s black legend of Kieft, all the sources indicate that in 1641–1643 the Twelve Men had in principle supported Kieft’s reprisals. They did, however, advocate a more cautious tactic: retaliation, not annihilation—undoubtedly because as private persons in a new fatherland they had more to lose than did ofcials with a temporary appointment. Kieft’s conict with the commonalty was not in the rst place about the Indians but about the future of the colony itself, about governing structures and decision making. Who would really decide what was good for the colony? Only when Kieft categorically refused to give the citizens even a formal voice and dissolved the Twelve Men did a split become inevitable. A second dividing line manifested itself a short time later, one less political than moral in nature. Although we cannot be sure that the three men who presented Kieft with the petition of February 22, 1643 represented the entire group of the Twelve Men,

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it appears that in the end the more cautious citizens also gave it their support. Even the wary colonist Jochem Pietersz Kuyter, in his capacity of civilian captain, led a group of forty citizens to Staten Island.1 Despite the basic agreement with Kieft, the end was not perceived as justifying the means. In the ordinance of April 28, 1648, which rehabilitated Kuyter and Melijn and incorporated most of the formulations of the petition, the States General clearly depicted the war from the perspective of the victims. The catastrophe resulted from the “murders, massacres, and other horrors” that Kieft “had his men carry out among the unwitting and innocent savages.” Besides leaving the country in ruins, these actions caused “the name of the Dutch nation to be greatly abhorred among the heathen in that country.”2 It was no longer merely a question of administrative policy, of political order and disorder, but of values, of honor and reputation. “You brought this about,” Jacob Stoffelsen shouted furiously already on the morning after the bloodbath of Pavonia. “It’s the fault of the freemen that the savages have been thrashed,” Kieft replied, fully aware of his guilt, even before eruption of Indian revenge.3 At this moment the minister entered the stage. The atrocities committed in the night of February 25, 1643 had opened his eyes. The cover-up attempt of Kieft, and the way he shifted the blame to the commonalty, transformed his latent conict with the director into a permanent feud. For moral reasons Bogardus no longer considered Kieft worthy of governing the colony.4 The corrupt, indecisive, and characterless patrician that he saw in Kieft was the opposite of the active, experienced, resolute but sensible men he chose as his friends: Van Vorst, De Vries, Kuyter. The author of Breeden-Raedt stated it clearly: Kieft had instituted procedures “so antithetical to religion” because Dominie Bogardus had “repeatedly and passionately in his sermons proclaimed God’s judgment against the gruesome killings, greed, and other gross excesses.”5

1 Journael van Nieu-Nederlandt, in: J.W. Schulte Nordholt, ‘Nederlanders in Nieuw Nederland: de oorlog van Kieft’, in: Bijdragen en mededelingen van het Historisch Genootschap 80 (1966), 91 (NNN, 280). 2 NYHS, Misc. Mss., Meleyn Papers (Gehring, n° 514). 3 NAN, States General, 12564.25 (declarations by Jacob Stoffelsen, Cornelis Arissen and Gerrit Dircksen Blauw, March 27, 1643). 4 On Calvinist moral attitudes towards warfare: Joris van Eijnatten, ‘Religionis causa: Moral theology and the concept of holy war in the Dutch Republic’, in: Journal of Religious Ethics 34:4 (2006), 609–635. 5 Breeden-Raedt, f. D1r° (‘Broad Advice’, 157).

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Fig. 41. Captain David Pietersz de Vries. Engraving by Cornelis Visscher, 1653, in: David Pietersz de Vries, Korte Historiael ende Journaels aenteyckeninge (Hoorn, 1655). [Photograph by Iconographic Bureau, The Hague].

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Bogardus thus made himself the spokesman of the opposition, a role previously lled by David Pietersz de Vries, leader of the Twelve Men. De Vries, a Dutchman born in La Rochelle (France) in 1593/94 into a Hoorn family of sea captains and merchants, was a passionate Counter-Remonstrant and a loyal supporter of the prince.6 William the Silent was for him “like a Moses for these lands.” De Vries took to free enterprise like a sh to water; the less government interference the better, in his opinion. He grumbled continually about the WIC, about the directors who got drunk in the Kloveniersdoelen (the shooting range of the Amsterdam crossbow militia) instead of administrating their domain, and about its employees who were undisciplined and lacked the experience needed to run a colony. As a captain or merchant De Vries had sailed the seven seas. He was one of the rst to explore New Netherland, returning from there to Amsterdam already in July 1613, at the age of twenty. He made several attempts to found colonies himself. The rst two, at Swanendael on the South River (the Delaware) and on the Wild Coast (Cayenne), were commissioned by others, but the ones on Staten Island (in partnership with director Frederick de Vries) and at Vriesendael were his own initiative. Kieft was no match for this seasoned pioneer with his straight-from-the-shoulder orthodoxy. Although De Vries himself had an excellent reputation with the Indians, one after the other of his projects went up in ames. On October 8, 1643 he left New Netherland, disillusioned, and predicted to Kieft “that the killing he had brought upon so much innocent blood would be avenged on him.”7 He returned to Hoorn where he died in 1655. The secret of De Vries’s reputation with the Indians he repeatedly hints at himself: he was a reliable person, a man of his word, not given to lying. This explains why De Vries was acceptable to the Indians as a peace negotiator at the beginning of March 1643, while Kieft was not. As the de facto leader of the community De Vries was succeeded by Jochem Pietersz Kuyter. After De Vries’s departure Kuyter had a seat in all the representative bodies. Kieft and Stuyvesant consequently considered him the chief troublemaker among the citizens. In June

6 On De Vries, see the introduction to M. Visser (ed.), Staat- en bochtvaarders, zijnde het Korte Historiael ende Journaels Aenteyckeninge van Drie Voyagiens door David Pietersz. de Vries (Utrecht 1943); Ch. McKew Parr, The voyages of David de Vries, navigator and adventurer (New York 1969); Jaap Jacobs, New Netherland: A Dutch colony in seventeenth-century America (Leiden & Boston 2005), 60–61. 7 De Vries, Historiael, 183 (NNN, 234).

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1639, at the age of 42, Kuyter had arrived from Hoorn on the ship De Brand van Troyen (The Fire of Troy) in order to start a farm.8 He was born in Ditmarschen, a coastal area of the duchy of Holstein, which was German-speaking and predominantly Calvinist but belonged to the Danish crown. Kuyter was indeed a Calvinist, although a Lutheran Dane, Jonas Bronck, arrived on the same ship. Kuyter had previously served as commander for the King of Denmark in the East Indies. His resolute character immediately impressed De Vries, and he later became a close ally of Bogardus, who was ten years his junior.9 A confessing Calvinist, Kuyter was elected elder of the congregation.10 As an intimate friend of the minister—whose wife, like himself, had been born under the Danish crown—he served as a baptismal witness for Bogardus’s fourth son, Pieter, on April 2, 1645. That friendship must have developed over time, for rumor had it that after the communion service of September 25, 1639, when Kuyter had been living on Manhattan only a few months, Bogardus, in a drunken state in the house of Jacob van Curler, had fulminated against both Jochem Pietersz and the director because Kieft had asked him to do a favor for Jochem. Bogardus had refused in writing.11 Had Kieft at that early point proposed Jochem for the ofce of elder or deacon? There could hardly have been any other reason for a formal repudiation by the minister. In any case, the relationship between Bogardus and Kuyter sustained no permanent damage. Their alliance was in many ways a logical one. As a colonist Kuyter could speak freely, while Bogardus, as a Company employee, had to guard his tongue. But Bogardus had the pulpit at his disposal and could defend himself in writing much better than Kuyter, who was not illiterate but had no great skill with the pen. The two men formed the hard, critical core of the consistory. With his resistance to the director and his appeal to the authorities at home Kuyter also made himself thoroughly disliked by Kieft. Kuyter had a large plantation in the northern part of Manhattan (present-day Harlem), with the optimistic name Zegendael (Blessed Valley). On March 5, 1644 his farmhouse was struck by a ery arrow and went up in ames. Kuyter’s ve hired hands declared

8

GAA, NA, 1555, f. 587–595 (April 26, 1639). De Vries, Historiael, 151 ( June 16, 1639; NNN, 205). 10 Breeden-Raedt, f. D1r° (‘Broad Advice’, 157). 11 NYHM, IV, 292 ( January 2, 1646); A. Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk in Noord-Amerika 1624–1664 (2 vols., The Hague 1913), II, p. XXIII. 9

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that the four English soldiers standing guard there had done nothing as the house burned to the ground. It was soon rumored that Kuyter’s opponents were using the war to strike at him and blame the Indians. Eleven months later an Indian named Ponkes insisted that the Indians were not responsible for the re, and that they knew the culprits were whites. Even Van Tienhoven, who was no friend of Kuyter, admitted to having heard this from the Indians.12 No wonder that Kuyter’s hatred for the director’s faction was now rmly entrenched. He found an ally in Cornelis Melijn, and the two men have gone down in history as an inseparable pair. Melijn’s life was marked by tragedy. Again and again he lost everything, including some of his children, and was forced to start from scratch. Born in Antwerp around 1602, he rst worked as a tanner in Amsterdam. In 1638, as a supercargo in the employ of the WIC, he had his rst glimpse of New Netherland and was so enthralled that on returning home did everything possible to acquire a patroonship on Staten Island. He succeeded, but when he set out to claim his new property in August 1640, the Dunkirk privateers seized all his possessions. Jonker Godard van Reede, lord of Nederhorst, helped him start over, and in August 1641 Melijn nally arrived in New Netherland with 41 colonists.13 A conict with David de Vries about the patroonship was settled amicably, and the Staten Island farms showed signs of growth.14 Fortune had just started smiling on Melijn when the Indians burned everything to the ground and killed some of the farmhands. From that moment on he had no choice but to remain on Manhattan. He was elected a member of the Eight Men and signed the three petitions. Kieft promptly prosecuted him for illegal trade. Melijn was said to have protested against his sentence on May 2, 1645, threatening Kieft “with gallows and wheel” and calling him a “devil’s head” and “the biggest liar in the country.”15 Stuyvesant took over Kieft’s hatred of the troublemakers. He summoned Kuyter and Melijn to appear before the council to answer for the petition they had sent to the fatherland in October 1644 in the name of the Eight

12

NYHM, II, 200–202 (March 9, 1644), 297–298 (March 8/9, 1645). GAA, NA, 1334, f. 2 ( July 3, 1640); 1621 (May 6, 1641). 14 NYHS, Misc. Mss., Meleyn Papers: letter by Cornelis Melijn to the Heren XIX, s.d. [1659] (Gehring, n° 514), and statement by notary Willem Bogardus on the huntingrights bought by Melijn from the Sackimaes tribe thirty years ago, June 27, 1672. Cf. Charles W. Leng & William T. Davis, Staten Island and its people: A history 1609–1929 (New York 1930), I, 85–110. 15 NYHM, IV, 419–421 ( July 23, 1647); copy in NAN, States General, 12564.25. 13

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Men—without informing the director. Addressed to the States General, it called for an investigation into the responsibility for the Indian War. Although the colonists formally possessed the right of appeal, Stuyvesant considered this bypassing of his authority a crimen laesae majestatis, a form of high treason. On July 25, 1647 the two men were given a summary trial and banned from New Netherland, Melijn for seven years and Kuyter for six. They were sent back to the Netherlands on De Prinses Amelia (The Princess Amelia).16 Although Melijn was rehabilitated by the States General, misfortune kept dogging his steps. Stuyvesant, who made him a scapegoat, thwarted the partnership he had formed in 1650 with the Zutphen deputy to the States General jonker Hendrick van der Capellen tot Rijsselt for a colonization project with Gelderland farmers.17 And in 1655, in a new war, the Indians once again burned down everything that Melijn had built up.18 In the end he had to ee to the English to escape Stuyvesant’s malice. After De Vries’s departure, Kuyter and Melijn emerged as the two leading gures of the community. However, Kieft’s opponents needed not only resolute farmers but also a literate and eloquent spokesman, fearless in his commitment to truth. It was certainly no coincidence that soon after De Vries left the colony Kieft assumed a harsher tone toward Bogardus and left the church. In point of fact the minister had taken the place of the captain as mouthpiece of the opposition in the community. Few men in New Amsterdam were capable of assuming that function and articulating the views of Kieft’s opponents both orally and in writing. No more than a handful of colonists had a higher education or were accustomed to wielding the pen in a creative fashion. As a council member Doctor La Montagne had little room to maneuver, and his debts to the Company were so large that he preferred to hold his tongue; secretary Van Tienhoven was Kieft’s right-hand man; scaal Van der Hoykens was a drunkard who lacked authority and charisma; the jurist Adriaen van der Donck was at that moment still an ofcial of Rensselaer far from New Amsterdam. None of the Eight Men stands out as a gifted writer. Melijn and Kuyter had a ready tongue, but could they also draw up a document? Melijn was a tanner by trade, Kuyter a

16 Copy of the sentence in NAN, States General, 12564.25. See also Breeden-Raedt, f. D3v°–D4v° (‘Broad Advice’, 163–166). 17 On Hendrick van der Capellen, see chapter 12. 18 NYPL, Hans Bontemantel Collection, New Netherland Papers: letter by Hans Bontemantel to Nicasius de Sille, October 27, 1655 (Gehring, n° 565).

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farmer—reason enough to doubt that they authored any of the ofcial documents. In the years 1643–44 the Eight Men, among them Kuyter and Melijn, sent to the fatherland three petitions with an urgent request for help. On October 24, 1643 a letter was written to the Heren XIX and ten days later (November 3) another was addressed to the States General. Both were dispatched with Den Blaeuwen Haen (The Blue Rooster) at the beginning of 1644.19 Almost a year later (October 28, 1644) a third petition was addressed to the directors of the Amsterdam chamber. In the rst two cases we can be sure that Kieft gave his consent: explicit reference is made to the director’s recognition of the Eight Men, and the documents were copied by secretary Van Tienhoven. The style is not typically bureaucratic, however, and suggests an author familiar with the fervor of rhetoric. The third petition was sent behind Kieft’s back, and for good reason. It asked for his dismissal! It was dispatched “undercover,” with the private commercial agent Govert Loockermans. Kieft heard of it only when the Amsterdam chamber demanded an explanation. Although ve of the Eight Men were able to place their signature under the document (Melijn, Kuyter, Bout, Hall, and Allerton), while three signed with a mark or a cross ( Jacob Stoffelsen, Gerrit Wolfertsz, and Barent Dircksen), none of them would have been capable of composing the text. In the defense against Kieft’s indictment ( June 22, 1647), Kuyter and Melijn stated that Andries Hudde, former secretary and surveyor of the colony, “drafted this letter and also signed it with his own hand”; they did not know whether he had saved either the rough draft or the rst version.20 This was a clever move, for at that moment Hudde was far away, at the South River.21 Hudde may have been involved, but there is no evidence of this in the surviving copy, which is signed only by the Eight Men. Was he, as the ex-secretary, the one who wrote out the denitive version? Or is the reference to Hudde’s copy work a smokescreen to conceal the real author? The question then is who actually composed the petition. And—a related question—who authored the defense? Who in New Amsterdam in 1647 was capable of producing 19 Petition of October 24, 1643: original in NAN, States General, 12564.25, transl. in DRCHNY, I, 190–191; petition of November 3, 1643: original in NAN, States General, 5757–II (lectum on April 5, 1644), transl. in DRCHNY, I, 139–140; petition of October 28, 1644: original in NAN, States General, 12564.25, transl. in DRCHNY, I, 209–213. 20 NAN, States General, 12564.25 ( June 22, 1647); DRCHNY, I, 208. 21 NYHM, IV, 285–286, 436 (October 12, 1645, and September 20, 1647).

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within two days a long defense in Dutch with quotations from Livy, Propertius, Ambrose, Aristides, and Xenophon, and with references to “the ancient sage” Diogenes and the English King James? Who would have had that much culture at his ngertips or the necessary books on his shelves?22 Besides La Montagne, Kieft, and Van Tienhoven, who belonged to the prosecuting party, and the newly arrived Stuyvesant, Dinclagen, and Backerus, who were insufciently familiar with the history of the conict, only Hudde and two other persons come into consideration here: the jurist Van der Donck and Dominie Bogardus. The extensive reference to “the right of peoples” in connection with war makes Van der Donck the most likely candidate for the defense of June 22, 1647, especially in view of the paucity of biblical allusions and the labeling of Bogardus as “our minister.”23 Van der Donck’s Beschryvinge van Nieu-Nederlant (1655) is similarly sprinkled with classical quotations. It is also logical that a professional lawyer would be approached for this task. But Van der Donck cannot be the author of the petition of October 1644. That document breathes a completely different spirit: no academic display of learning, but an appeal to God’s power to soften even the hardest hearts. Two quotations in verse form merely allude to “the ancients” and to an apparently well-known saying. The author betrays his identity in the passage that calls the prohibition of Sunday tavern visits and the institution of a weekly sermon the most important decisions of the Eight Men. There can be little doubt that Kuyter’s and Melijn’s judges were right in stating that the petition was drafted and given its denitive form by Dominie Bogardus.24 Even if they “conceived, planned, and wrote” the letter, Bogardus had guided

22 We should keep in mind, however, that quite often such quotations are taken from the quotation collections printed in the early modern Netherlands, such as Guldene annotation by Frans Heerman (Amsterdam 1634) or the popular Apophthegmata christiana by Reverend Willem Baudartius (1605, many impressions), a quotation treasury particularly useful for ministers, that may well have been in possession of Dominie Bogardus. 23 Since I formulated this hypothesis on Van der Donck in Wegen, 736–737, Russell Shorto has taken it as one of the central arguments in The island at the center of the world: The epic story of Dutch Manhattan and the forgotten colony that shaped America (New York etc. 2004), 142–143, referring to my previous work. On Van der Donck as spokesman of the Dutch community, see also A.L. van Gastel, ‘Adriaen van der Donck als woordvoerder van de Nieuw-Nederlandse bevolking’, in: Jaarboek van het Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie 50 (1996), 89–107, whose argument however remains limited to the wellknown attributions of authorship. 24 NYHM, IV, 414 ( July 22, 1647).

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their pen. The petition addressed to the States General by the community one year earlier gives the distinct impression that Bogardus was guiding that pen, too. “As there are no sacrices more pleasing to our God than a broken spirit and a contrite heart, there should be nothing that all Christian princes and magistrates desire more than to lend an ear to their oppressed subjects”—these were the pious opening words, with an implicit jab at Kieft.25 It was very likely elder Kuyter who enlisted the minister for this task. In 1643–44 it was reasonable for critics of Kieft’s rule to group themselves around the minister. Besides being a man of high standards and a ready tongue—and with an unmistakable popularity because of his love of the bottle—Bogardus was relatively untouchable. As a Company employee he had to remain outside the factions, but his tie with the classis gave him an exceptional position among the WIC personnel, one that allowed him to adopt a critical stance towards the director. His conict with Kieft must have been simmering for years, but it did not escalate signicantly until the land lay in ruins and the atrocities against the Indians could no longer be ignored. Initially Bogardus, like everyone else, must not have objected to a vigorous reaction to the Indian resistance. But after the massacres of February 25/26, 1643 he took a clear stand: what had happened there was so unchristian that the minister had to rebel. Some of the crimes had been committed inside the fort itself, that is, under the jurisdiction of the WIC, and specically of Kieft. And, worse, the guardhouse where the Indians were tortured stood right in front of the church.

Factionalist, mentor, spokesman Now and then the documents give us a glimpse of Bogardus’s home as the meeting place of the opposition. In a declaration about an incident in the autumn of 1644, for example, Arent van Curler tells how captain Jan de Vries, merchant Willem de Key, farmer Jan Jansz Damen, and a few other unnamed persons were at Bogardus’s house when the conversation turned to Kieft. Curler said that in the tavern of Martijn Cregier he had heard councilor La Montagne “claim that

25 Petition of November 3, 1643: DRCHNY, I, 139–140. A quotation from Ezek. 6:12 in the petition of October 24, 1643, may also point to Bogardus’s help.

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Mr. Kieft had more and greater power in this land with regard to Their Excellencies’ commission than His Highness of Orange in the Netherlands.”26 Soon thereafter the petition of the Eight Men stated: “Here all the talk is about princely power and sovereignty.” The most important argument it offered for the dismissal of Kieft was that he “has disposed so absolutely, at his wish and pleasure, over our lives and possessions.”27 Kieft viewed his function as that of an absolute ruler—at least that was how his opponents perceived his actions. Kieft’s arrogant attitude and the way he wielded power in what amounted to little more than a large farming village became proverbial in writings of the time. Based on the commission he had received from the States General he considered himself sovereign. “I have more power here than the Company, which means I can do as I please,” he allegedly shouted during a council meeting in June 1644, when the Eight Men objected to his taxation plans.28 In his own eyes he did not represent the WIC, which would have allowed for an appeal to the States, but the States General itself. As such he claimed sovereignty in decision making. The very fact that Reverend Doughty and merchant Arnold van Hardenberg dared to appeal Kieft’s verdict in Holland promptly landed them in prison and burdened them with a ne.29 But right to the end Kieft seems to have conceived of power along organic, institutional lines, while the municipality—under the pressure of events—evolved in the direction of a more personal, individual idea of political power. No wonder that under these circumstances confessing Calvinists like De Vries, Kuyter, and Van der Donck, with their belief in personal responsibility, played a pioneering role in formulating ideas about the political structure of the colony. Bogardus came to adopt a similar position. That became evident in March 1643, following Marijn Adriaensen’s attempt to assassinate Kieft. The minister stepped forward to defend Marijn against arbitrary action by Kieft. By doing so he in fact opted against the Company and declared himself in favor of a trial by free citizens. The political implications of that choice may not have been immediately clear to

26 NAN, States General, 12564.25 (apology by Melijn and Kuyter, June 22, 1647, art. 4). 27 NAN, States General, 12564.25 (petition of October 28, 1644); DRCHNY, I, 209–213. 28 Ibid. 29 Breeden-Raedt, f. D1v°–D2v° (‘Broad Advice’, 159–160); NNN, 334–336.

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him, but from that moment on he acted consistently. It was not without some justication that Kieft later remarked ironically about Bogardus’s “affection for the Company (who pays you) and the welfare of the land” and his “favoring of those who have signicantly defrauded and harmed the Company.”30 Here was a conict of loyalties that Bogardus never really managed to resolve. His mediation in 1643 infuriated Kieft—understandably, for by then all the criticism was aimed at the director. The minister for the rst time openly sided with Kieft’s opponents. And there were many of them. According to the testimony of Samuel Chandelaer (Chandler), tailor Hendrick Jansen had come up with a telling pun on March 20, 1643, one day before the attack by Marijn Andriaensen: “the lapwing [kievit = Kieft] should be sent to Holland with the ship De Pauwe [The Peacock], and a letter of recommendation be given along to Master Gerrit [the executioner], saying he would like to send him a pound of silver so that he could let him die like a nobleman.”31 In the end Hendrick Jansen was also banned from New Netherland as a rabble-rouser and sailed for home with Bogardus on De Prinses. Like the minister, he died in the shipwreck.32 However, it was not Hendrick Jansen who became Kieft’s scapegoat but Marijn Adriaensen, tobacco planter and member of the Twelve Men. When the victims of Indian violence turned against Kieft in March 1643 and blamed him for their misfortune, he pointed his nger at the freemen who had presented him with the petition: they were the real culprits, and foremost among them Marijn, one of the three persons responsible for the petition of February 22, 1643 and captain of the civic guard in the raid on Curler’s plantation. Marijn was maligned by the colonists as a murderer, while he had only intended to avenge Christian blood. Hot-tempered as he was, Marijn could not stomach such injustice, especially since the worst atrocities were not perpetrated by the citizens’ militia but by Kieft’s soldiers in Pavonia. In fact, his farm was one of the rst to be set ablaze by the Indians. He, if anyone, was a victim! On Saturday, March 21 he forced his way into the director’s house, “being armed with a loaded and cocked pistol and a saber at his side, coming unexpectedly into the director’s

30 31 32

NYHM, IV, 295 ( January 2, 1646); Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, p. XXV. NYHM, II, 120–121 (May 6, 1643). NNN, 367–368.

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room, [he] aimed his pistol at him saying, “What devilish lies will you tell about me.”33 Meanwhile Marijn’s wife Lysbeth Thyssen was in the inn, crying with fear. The soldier Robert Pennoyer asked her twice what was the matter, “Robbert, my husband wants to kill Commander Kieft, go and run after him,” she sobbed. Pennoyer raced to the director’s house, arriving just in time to seize the saber from Marijn and throw it on the bed.34 At the last moment La Montagne managed to deect the pistol shot—the hammer was already in fully cocked position and sprung onto his nger. It was something he would not soon forget. Marijn was caught immediately. His hired man Jacob Stangh then came running up with Jan Hermensen van Lemmer, “having with them a loaded relock and pistol.” The hired man red at the director, but because Kieft had been warned, he was able to dodge the shot. Two bullets ew through the door into the wall. Stangh was then shot dead by the guard, and his head was displayed on a pike as a warning. Kieft realized that he was both judge and plaintiff, and probably feared an outright rebellion. He therefore placed the verdict in the hands of the citizens. A jury of eight men was chosen, and with great haste they pronounced judgment: Marijn was ned 500 guilders and banned from Manhattan for three months—a more than clement sentence in view of the circumstances and customary punishments. Kieft tried to add two councilors to the jury in order to make it a legitimate criminal trial, but his request was denied. Kieft’s council had lost all credit. But he did not give an inch: “because of the consequence of the case and certain considerations it was thought right to send the criminal with his trial to Holland.” According to the indictment Kieft drew up against Bogardus in January 1646, the minister immediately took the side of Marijn Adriaensen, “preparing the documents in his defense.” This must refer to Kieft’s attempt to bring Marijn to trial a second time. Bogardus, who had taken it upon himself to act as a full-edged attorney in Marijn’s defense, vehemently opposed having him sent as a prisoner to Holland, “about which you (Kieft complained later) fulminated in a bizarre manner for two weeks, even infecting the pulpit with your passion.”35 The question

33 NYHM, IV, 189–192 (March 28, 1643); Journael van Nieu-Nederlandt, in: Schulte Nordholt, ‘Nederlanders’, 88–89 (NNN, 278). 34 NYHM, II, 46 (March 22, 1643). 35 NYHM, IV, 292 ( January 2, 1646); Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, p. XXIII; cf. I, p. 66.

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whether Marijn was guilty of attempted homicide was hardly relevant for Bogardus. Every verdict was unjust because the real guilty party was the judge himself. He here emphathically placed himself on the side of the congregation and the citizenry. “The people who lived near your house know what a state you were in every evening at that time,” Kieft declared. But beside this portrait of a fuming, out-of-control Bogardus we can place the very different picture of a community deprived of its voice, victimized by the misrule of the director, and helpless in the face of the Indians. For the colonists only Bogardus could still shout to high heaven in protest. That was literally how he must have conceived of his task. Others, including a minister like Doughty, were arrested and ned for making such a forthright attack on the authority of the director. With Bogardus such a reaction was not possible: he answered to a different authority and was in any case too central a gure in the community. Only after some time, “as you came to live in peace with the director, did the matter come somewhat to rest.” Meanwhile, Adriaensen was acquitted in the fatherland and returned to New Netherland.36 There is also a piquant side to the story of Bogardus’s mediation for Marijn Adriaensen. Marijn had moved to Rensselaerswijck in 1631 and spent a few years there as a tobacco planter. He was a close acquaintance of Anneke Jans; his family, in fact, must have sailed to Manhattan together with hers. He arrived in New Netherland as a married man, and in 1643 his wife Lysbeth Thyssen was still very much alive—but that, of course, would not rule out a brief adventure. Whatever the case, in 1639, a few months after Anneke’s marriage with Bogardus, Marijn pressed rather bizarre charges against both of them. Anneke’s compatriot Jacob Goyversen, a hired hand on their farm at De Laetsburch, had at one time given her “a piece of clothing” as a “a gift.”37 That may have been prior to Anneke’s second marriage. There is at least no mention of inheritance, although Goyversen had died in the meantime. Goyversen could well have been angling for marriage with the widow. Had Anneke perhaps even had an affair with him, and

36 In May 1647 he settled in Awiehaken (Weehawken, New Jersey): LP, 61, nr. GG 217a (May 11, 1647). 37 This skirt (“een pack cleer”), interpreted as a gift of Bogardus to his bride, is one of the key elements of the popular novel Anneke Jans. Een roman uit de jaren toen New York nog Nieuw Amsterdam was (Kampen 1958; 5th ed. 1965) by P.J. Risseeuw (1901–1968), a Dutch author from Zeeland with a pietistic background, whose historical novels always revolve around a Christian love story. In this case, not the minister is the Christian hero but his bride. On this novel and its author: Wegen, 858–862.

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was this piece of clothing from Goyversen the forty-guilder skirt that Grietje Reiniers had alluded to so disparagingly during her trial a few months earlier?38 Was that affair possibly also behind the accusation of prostitution that Kieft (according to Bogardus) had hurled at Anneke, and the names that Bogardus (according to Kieft) in a drunken t of rage had called his own wife?39 In any case Goyversen still owed money to Marijn, who now seized on this as a pretext for putting the minister and his wife on the spot. No one may give goods away as long as he owes money to a third party, he maintained. The upshot was that Anneke had to pay up for Jacob Goyversen. Was this perhaps the subtle revenge of a rejected suitor or jilted lover? The court, obviously at a loss with this case, came up with a Solomonic verdict. When Anneke testied under oath that it had really been a present, it was decided that “the aforesaid clothing was given her as a gift and belongs to her.” However, Marijn would be reimbursed from the salary that the WIC still owed Goyversen.40 The minister bore no grudge. Marijn was probably a loyal member of his congregation. In July 1644 Bogardus mediated in the lawsuit against Laurens Cornelissen van der Wel, captain of De Maecht van Enckhuijsen (The Virgin of Enkhuizen), who was accused of pearl smuggling, perjury, and adultery with Hillegont Joris.41 But Laurens had also gossiped about Kieft’s dubious past in France. And that rubbed Kieft the wrong way. The captain was furious about Kieft’s verdict and wanted to lodge an appeal in the fatherland. He was promptly exiled from New Netherland. As in the case of Marijn Adriaensen, Bogardus now chose the side of the accused. He may have had several reasons for doing so, but one stands out clearly: Kieft’s refusal to allow any form of appeal was at odds with the governing model that Bogardus envisioned for the colony—one in which politics and morality would be intertwined. The voice of the minister had to be heard. He should at least be able to correct the political errors of the Company, but by rights also have a say in the affairs of the colony. Kieft’s reaction reveals a fundamental difference of opinion between the director and 38 See chapter 13. On gift-giving in the Dutch Republic and its meanings, see Irma Thoen, Strategic affection? Gift exchange in seventeenth-century Holland (Amsterdam 2007). 39 NYHM, IV, 291–292, 294 ( January 2, 1646); Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, pp. XXII, XXV. 40 NYHM, IV, 36 ( January 20, 1639). 41 NYHM, IV, 227–231 ( July 14 to 28, 1644); Breeden-Readt, f. D1v° (‘Broad Advice’, 158).

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the minister on this point. It of course deeply annoyed the director that Bogardus immediately gave his support to the man who had openly slandered him. “And you were having a good time with him every day,” Kieft reproached him two years later, obviously still feeling the sting.42 But in that same document a passage from a sermon preached by Bogardus in January 1645 highlights the real issue. In the pulpit the minister had exclaimed: “What are the highest people in the land but an abode of wrath, fountains of evil, etc.; all they seek to do is to rob others of their possessions, dismiss them, exile them, and send them across the ocean.” To which Kieft replied: “[As for] the people whom he [Kieft] dismissed, he had the power to do so and will answer for it in the proper place, and it is no affair of yours.”43 Slowly but surely Bogardus assumed a different position in the colony. In the petition of October 1644 we no longer hear him speak with the voice of a Company employee, but as a colonist. Against the arbitrariness of the WIC he now opts for a regulated society in which justice is administered in an orderly fashion and citizens have the right of appeal. The petition accordingly pleads for a civil government in villages and towns, for a say in the governing of the land, and for representatives alongside the director with the right to vote. Bogardus’s point of reference shifts from the Company to his congregation. He now assumes his full responsibility as pastor of his ock. He presents its troubles to the highest authorities, if necessary in deance of the director. The farms are destroyed, he says, no one is sowing seed, crops are rotting in the elds, and there is no money left to support a wife and children. We “are sitting here among thousands of wild and barbaric people, with whom no comfort or mercy can be found; we left our dear fatherland, and if God the Lord had not been our comfort, we would have perished in our misery.”44 He identies with the various groups of colonists who want to turn that country into a new fatherland: There are among us people who for many years, in the sweat and labor of their hands, have sought at great cost to develop their land and gardens; others with sufcient capital equipped their own ships with all necessities,

42

NYHM, IV, 293 ( January 2, 1646); Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, p. XXIII; NNN,

368. 43

NYHM, IV, 293–294 ( January 2, 1646); Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, p. XXIV. NAN, States General, 12564.25 (petition of October 28, 1644); DRCHNY, I, 209–213. 44

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chapter fourteen which during their voyage here were seized by the enemy, although they undertook their travels with great effort and at extreme expense; again others who, with ships no smaller than those of the Company, brought over a large number of animals and came to this land with a big family, and on the places assigned to those people handsome buildings were constructed, the trees and wilderness were cleared, sowed, plowed, and made into a jewel of the land and a joy to the owners for their long labors. All of this has been reduced to ashes by rash belligerence. For all the fair-minded here know that a few years ago these savages lived like lambs among us, harmed no one, gave all help to our nation in the time of Director Vant t’Wilder [Van Twiller] and, when for a few months no shipments came in, supplied many of the Company servants with food until help arrived. These people say: how has the director from time to time with various improper procedures so alienated their hearts and embittered them towards the Dutch nation that we do not believe they can again be calmed unless God the Lord, who softens the hearts of all men as he will, appeases those people, as the ancients rightly said: Anyone can stir unrest, Spread venom round at every door, But only at our Lord’s behest Can peace and concord be restored.

A divided community The peace with the Indians certainly did not solve all the problems of New Netherland. The intervening years brought growing dissension in the colony, and in the end feelings ran so high that when Bogardus was preaching “none of the ofcers there wanted to enter the church,” his successor Dominie Johannes Backerus wrote in August 1648.45 The two factions thoroughly detested each other. Kieft was so deeply offended by Bogardus’s frontal attack on his authority that instead of promoting the unity of state and church, as his ofce required, he instituted a complete separation between the two and stopped attending church services. Backerus was not exaggerating. The author of Breeden-Raedt, apparently an insider, dates the split in the community very precisely. From January 3, 1644 until May 11, 1647 (the arrival of Stuyvesant and Dominie Backerus) Kieft “no longer wanted to hear God’s Word or partake of the Christian sacraments, making every effort to draw all 45 New Brunswick Theological Seminary, Gardner A. Sage Library, Amsterdam Correspondence, box I, n° 23 (Backerus to classis Amsterdam, September 2, 1648); ER, I, 233–237; Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, I, 73.

Fig. 42. The ruinous state of New Amsterdam after the Indian War, about 1648. [Drawing in the Austrian National Library, Map Department].

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who depended on him away from the church.”46 In his indictment of Bogardus, Kieft himself states that it was only after an insulting sermon preached on January 22, 1645 that he stopped going to church “in order to avoid a greater scandal.”47 That later date is more likely, because the opposition broke denitively with Kieft only with the petition of October 1644. Kieft dragged a good many people into his feud with the minister: scaal Van der Hoykens, elder and councilor La Montagne, ensign Gijsbert de Leeuw, secretary Van Tienhoven, commissioner and deacon Olof Stevensz van Cortlandt and Gijsbrecht (Hendrick) van Dijck, as well as the lower Company employees and the soldiers—“all of whom no longer frequented the Lord’s Supper, or even the gathering to hear God’s Word.”48 Construction on the church also came to a halt. One of Stuyvesant’s rst acts was therefore to appoint new churchwardens for the purpose of completing the building.49 During the sermon people outside the church intentionally made as much noise as possible, playing ninepins, stomping, dancing, singing, jumping, “and all other frivolous exercises” in order to make it difcult for those inside to hear. Now the price had to be paid for having the church so near the guardhouse. Church members who came to the fort to celebrate the Lord’s Supper were mocked by the soldiers, and during the introductory sermon Kieft more than once ordered a drum to be beaten or a canon red. When Bogardus then asked to have the drumming done a little further away from the church, the director replied that the drummer had to give a roll at the spot where the director had ordered him to stand. Besides irritating for the churchgoers, the noise must have been extra offensive for Bogardus, for as a thinly disguised form of “kettle music,” or charivari, it implied an attack on his honor. When another communion service was approaching, the director told his loyal followers: “Only one and half men and horse’s head will show up, eventually they will all follow us and the whole crowd will stay outside.”50

46

Breeden-Raedt, f. C4v° (‘Broad Advice’, 155). NYHM, IV, 293–294 ( January 2, 1646); Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, p. XXIV. 48 In January 1646 deacon Olof Stevensz van Cortlandt summoned Bogardus to prove an accusation of robbery. The procedures lasted ve months, until a committee of mediators settled the case on June 11, 1646: NYHM, IV, 298–310, 318–320. For the interpretation, see: Wegen, 756–759. 49 NYHM, IV, 412 ( July 22, 1647). 50 Breeden-Raedt, f. D1r° (‘Broad Advice’, 155–156). 47

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Backerus vividly described how untenable the situation had become: “because such great issues and bitterness had arisen there between our aforesaid brother [Bogardus] on the one hand and General Willem Kieft and other ofcers on the other that they detested each other, and because this distasteful beast of bitterness had grown so large that it even stretched to the borders of Holland, it was impossible for us to vanquish or kill it, for this reason (and perhaps for others as well) our brother E. Bogardus wished to come to Holland together with director Willem Kieft, which request . . . was all the more readily granted him by General Stuyvesant because he (so I believe) was not very favorably disposed towards him.”51 Kieft actively tried to isolate Bogardus, rst of all within the group of Company employees to which he belonged and over which Kieft wielded power, but also in the congregation itself. Bogardus could not accept such a show of force, but there was little he could do about it. He watched helplessly as his congregation was sabotaged. La Montagne, a council member who also owed a large sum of money to the WIC, did not dare to contradict Kieft.52 Like deacon Van Cortlandt, he boycotted consistory meetings. Of the elders only Jochem Pietersz Kuyter remained loyal to Bogardus. Kuyter was jeered as a “fanatic and quibbler” but did not give an inch. Nevertheless, for two or three years running Bogardus and Kuyter held no consistory meetings for fear that the director would accuse them of leading the congregation “out of private authority.” Such an indictment Bogardus wanted to avoid at all costs, especially since the consistory meetings were held in his home.53 His authority was a public authority. That was the sole basis for his right to act as he saw t. Kieft’s criticism was precisely that Bogardus’s attitude was leading to “a general ruin of the country, both ecclesiastically and politically,” because it showed contempt for the government, fomented unrest and encouraged factionalism. In his own eyes, however, Bogardus was not the leader of a faction but the only lawful authority for church affairs in the indivisible public order, which encompassed both civil and ecclesiastical life. Kieft was the one who had wrongfully declared himself the locus of public authority. In a penitential sermon, preached three days before the communion service on Christmas Day 1645, Bogardus exclaimed from the pulpit that he 51 New Brunswick Theological Seminary, Gardner A. Sage Library, Amsterdam Correspondence, box I, n° 2 (September 2, 1648); ER, I, 233–237. 52 NNN, 332–333, 338. 53 Breeden-Raedt, f. D1r° (‘Broad Advice’, 157).

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wished that the persons who had caused the “issue” could be cut off from the congregation. When visiting families in his ofcial pastoral capacity, he would ask why this or that person was staying away from the Lord’s Supper, but no answer was forthcoming.54 However, in contrast to the conict with Dinclagen ten years earlier, Bogardus did not dare to pursue measures for excommunication. For that the consistory was too incomplete. If we can believe the author of Breeden-Raedt, the effect of the split in the congregation was not only negative. Before the war the congregation had comprised only 70 members; after Kieft’s resignation more than half that number were added, and the “members are through God’s direction so restrained that there have been fewer scandals than ever before.”55 Progress in quantity and quality of the Ecclesia purior, in other words. Bogardus attracted a following. That positive assessment was not shared by Bogardus’s successor, however, who saw the 170 members of his congregation as no more than a collection of unruly individuals. But the one description does not cancel out the other: the author of the Breeden-Raedt viewed the situation with the eyes of a factionalist, Backerus with those of a minister. None of the sources present a very uplifting picture of Kieft’s counteroffensive. His main charge against Bogardus was that he stood in the pulpit in a drunken state. Kieft’s allegation lived on after him and has been repeated in all its colorful detail by later historians—who failed to report that the author of the Breeden-Raedt stated explicitly that this was “slander,” and that it compelled the minister to “collect contradictory attestations for use at the proper time and place.”56 Since no minutes of consistory meetings have survived and Bogardus’s attestations most likely perished with him in the shipwreck, we hear only the voice of the prosecutor on this point as well. We can be fairly sure, however, that Bogardus liked his drink. We have already seen evidence of that on other occasions, and he seems at times to have behaved like an illtempered drunk. Kieft added, according to the same source, that “the minister only rattles off some tales spun by old wives; he is a great babbler, who holds forth in monologues and will not tolerate contradiction.” On that point, too, there was probably some truth to Kieft’s

54 55 56

NYHM, IV, 295 ( January 2, 1646); Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, p. XXVI. Breeden-Raedt, f. D1r°–v° (‘Broad Advice’, 158). Breeden-Raedt, f. D1r° (‘Broad Advice’, 157).

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claim. But was the minister really “a seditious man . . . who only tried to stir up the congregation and Company employees against him, their sovereign leader?”57

Minister versus director In the detailed indictment that Kieft dispatched to Bogardus on January 2, 1646 two different charges are intertwined.58 One concerns the character and actions of the minister, the other his stand in affairs of the colony. Kieft’s reproaches about the moral aspects of Bogardus’s conduct (his immoderate language, his drunkenness) appear to go further back in time than his criticism of the minister’s political views. The picture drawn by Kieft reinforces my conclusion that Bogardus made a clear choice for the opposition party only after the attack by Marijn Adriaensen. The real escalation of the conict came when the war was over and a treaty had been signed. The minister’s refusal to celebrate the peace in Kieft’s manner certainly played a role. After peace was concluded on August 30, 1645, a day of thanksgiving was proclaimed for Wednesday, September 6. The council expressly instructed ministers to choose a suitable text and preach a tting sermon.59 Kieft acknowledges that Bogardus did preach that day, “and made a good sermon, but uttered not a single word about the peace, nor did he give thanks to God for the reason we had instituted that day, as the other ministers living within our borders did with great fervor.”60 Now it was Bogardus’s turn to ignore the other party. Was there any reason to thank God? The triumphant party should really do penance, and such a victory was not his idea of peace. He thus deprived Kieft of all sense of triumph. And that was intolerable for the director. The immediate cause of Kieft’s indictment was Bogardus’s Christmas sermon of December 24, 1645, in which he implicitly compared Kieft with a monster. Bogardus had said—according to Kieft—“that in Africa, owing to the extreme heat, diverse animals interbreed with others and

57

Ibid. NYHM, IV, 291–296; DRCHNY, XIV, 69–71; Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, pp. XXII–XXVII. The original text has disappeared from the le in NYSA, DCM, IV, 242–244. 59 NYHM, IV, 280–281 (August 31, 1645). 60 NYHM, IV, 295 ( January 2, 1646); Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, p. XXV. 58

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thus engender many monsters, but here, where the climate is temperate, you do not know (you say) where these monsters of human beings come from; they are the powerful ones, but should have no power, those persons who have many fathers and trust in the arm of the esh and not in the Lord.”61 Everyone understood at the time that Bogardus was alluding to Kieft. This testimony also gives us an unexpected glimpse into Bogardus’s mental world. Thirteen years after his stay in Mouri, images of Africa were still vivid in his mind. The description of the Gold Coast published in 1602 by commissioner Pieter de Marees, who had spent years collecting impressions there, included four chapters on West African fauna.62 He was fascinated by the animals on the mainland and discussed in detail the elephant, fox, and guenon, leopard and tiger, snake and crocodile, lizard and chameleon, giant spider, civet, and tortoise. But his curiosity was especially sparked by animals that exhibited hybrid traits and were difcult for Europeans to identify: the dragon and the “languado.” The latter was a kind of crocodile that did not live in water (an iguana?), while a dragon was a snake with a tail, wings, and teeth (an agama?). In the European order of normality, every hybrid was a monster, and it may be in that sense that Evert Willemsz remembered the animals of Guinea. The veiled sexual connotations of a hybrid gave his comparison an extra sting.63 Should we perhaps go a step further and venture into Bogardus’s subconscious? Ever since Pliny the human monster had loomed large in the western image of non-western regions, dominating expectations of Europeans traveling to far corners of the inhabited world. It conrmed the perception of otherness, and thus of European identity. Precisely as an element of disorder it created an orderly view of the world. Readers of travel accounts chuckled about the monsters that for centuries had been a regular feature in descriptions of the Orient, and more recently in those of America as well. But the monster gured most prominently in the European image of Africa. One text in particular should be mentioned here. Descriptions of the kingdom of

61 NYHM, IV, 295–296 ( January 2, 1646); Eekhof, De Hervor mde Kerk, II, p. XXVI. 62 Pieter de Marees, Beschryvinge van de Goudt-Kust Guinea [1602] (3d ed.; Amsterdam 1650), 78–92, chapters 30–33. 63 Cf. Jean Céard, La nature et les prodiges. L’insolite au XVI e siècle en France (Genève 1977); Katharina Park & Lorraine Daston, ‘Unnatural conceptions: The study of monsters in sixteenth and seventeenth-century France and England’, in: Past & Present 92 (1981), 20–54; Lorraine Daston, Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150–1750 (New York 2001).

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Prester John, originally situated in Asia but at the end of the Middle Ages in “Ethiopa” (therefore Africa), present two groups of inhabitants as polar opposites.64 The Christians there are pious and virtuous; they represent “culture.” The non-Christians, by contrast, appear as heathen tribes of monsters, who not only lead a rough and morally reprehensible life but whose very anatomy reveals the monstrous nature of their mentality. The examples of “non-culture” are hybrid or otherwise grotesque creatures: men with dogs’ heads, giants, Cyclopes, wild men, Amazons, etc. The hybrids in these accounts were by denition monsters. All that and much more colored Bogardus’s perception of Kieft’s person and politics. We see here just how deep and unbridgeable the gulf was between the two men, the extent to which the director and the minister had ended up in different worlds. We can also better understand Kieft’s decision to leave the church for a time. Did he still have anything at all in common with the minister? Now Kieft, too, resorted to heavy ammunition. In the indictment of January 1646 he dredged up every misstep of Bogardus in New Netherland. According to Kieft, “[you] spread so much verbal abuse during our government that hardly anyone in the whole country was exempt, sparing neither your own wife nor her sister, particularly when you were in good company and enjoying yourself, from time to time even mixing your human passion in the pulpit, associating with the worst criminals in the land, taking their side and defending them, [you] refused to execute orders, to celebrate the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and even to partake of it.”65 These general formulations are followed by a series of concrete examples. As an instance of Bogardus’s passion Kieft mentions his written fulminations of June 1634 against Van Twiller. The director had that document in his archive. The other examples pertain to Kieft’s own administration, but the indictment is actually as interesting for what it does not contain as for what it does. Not a word about the war itself or the treatment of the Indians, only about the aftermath and the effects on the congregation. He explicitly reproaches Bogardus for his loudly proclaimed partisanship: as a minister, Kieft believed, it

64 Cf. István P. Bejczy, La Lettre du Prêtre Jean: une utopie médiévale (Paris 2001). More generally, see Joan-Pau Rubiés, ‘New worlds and Renaissance ethnology’, in: Anthony Pagden (ed.), Facing each other: The world’s perception of Europe and Europe’s perception of the world (2 vols., Aldershot 2000), I, 81–121. 65 NYHM, IV, 291–292 ( January 2, 1646); Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, p. XXII.

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was his duty to support the director, and both of them should stand above the factions. In Bogardus’s view, however, it was absurd for the director to claim that he stood above factions. He had turned himself into a faction. The rst three examples thus illustrate situations in which Bogardus expressly resisted the partisan stance of the director: the refusal to grant a favor Kieft had requested for Kuyter, the defense of Marijn Adriaensen, and the defense of Laurens Cornelissen. On March 21, 1645 the entire top echelon of the colony was invited to the wedding of the colonist Adam Brouwer. There was a good deal of drinking, and when the minister was “thoroughly soused,” his tongue loosened. Old grudges against the Company ofcials came to the surface. He rst lambasted the scaal and the secretary, then Kieft himself. Bogardus accused him of having called his wife “a whore.” Had that been simple name-calling by a drunken director, or a reference to Anneke’s ambiguous past? A term like “whore” originally referred not only to sex for money but also to more subtle situations in which a woman lost her honor, such as adultery, broken promises, or—in the heyday of Puritan orthodoxy—words, glances, or gestures that were considered dishonorable. If, as here, the context remains vague, there is no clear border between honorable and dishonorable. In any case, Kieft immediately protested “that it is untrue and had never even entered his thoughts and will never be proved.”66 Kieft certainly realized that to thus accuse the wife of the protector of public morals could have catastrophic consequences for the authority of the church and for discipline in the already unruly colony. In the charge he brought against Bogardus almost a year later Kieft presents himself in an even more positive light. He could have prosecuted the minister for slander but, “being moved by merciful consideration and for the sake of the honor accorded to your ofce,” he had two days later simply “sent him a sealed letter with a Christian admonition.” He tried, in other words, to reverse the roles: the director admonished the minister! Twice Bogardus refused to accept the letter from the messenger, opened or unopened.67 In view of the seriousness of the affront, he can hardly be faulted for doing so. Here he showed himself to be the more sensible of the two men.

66 NYHM, IV, 294 ( January 2, 1646); Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, pp. XXIV– XXV. 67 NYHM, IV, 260 (March 23, 1645).

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Although not one of Bogardus’s letters to the council has survived, it is clear from the proceedings that when the indictment was delivered to Bogardus at the beginning of January 1646 he no longer shirked his responsibility. His reply to Kieft came almost by return mail. But the director dismissed his letter as “useless and pointless,” maintaining that it gave no clear answer to the charges. Such qualications should not mislead us. Two linguistic registers stand side by side here. What Kieft called slander and invective must have been Bogardus’s usual pulpit idiom. Under normal circumstances the members of his congregation had little difculty decoding it, but in this case Kieft played the role of director and judge, and as such he chose not to understand it. Bogardus was therefore summoned to send another, proper, reply.68 Two weeks later a new letter arrived from Bogardus. He must have given free rein to a biblical-style wrath, for the council declared it full of “unnecessary subterfuge, calumny, injury, and profanation of God’s holy Word, in contempt of justice and its lawful authority, which he employs, as is his wont, in his passion and in order to obscure the truth.” Once again he was given two weeks to formulate an adequate reply.69 Here, too, it is important to read Kieft’s evaluation carefully. Bogardus’s biblical language seems to have acquired a new dimension: he used it to contest the authority of the director in his case and refused on principle to subject himself to the jurisdiction of the council—quite aside from the content of the charges. His case, he argued, fell outside the competence of the council of New Netherland. Nevertheless, when the deadline arrived, a letter from Bogardus was waiting. It conrmed some of the accusations and for others demanded sound evidence. Apparently he now used appropriate legal language, for his reply was accepted and the scaal was instructed to send a response.70 That letter has not survived either, but a little more than a month later the council reacted to Bogardus’s rejoinder.71 The minister was now told to formulate within eight days possible objections to the witnesses summoned or to the proposed procedure. The two points of contention were cited trenchantly once again: Bogardus had dared “to calumniate the director and the council on the seat of truth [i.e., in the pulpit], and ignored their orders.” It had clearly become a question 68 69 70 71

NYHM, NYHM, NYHM, NYHM,

IV, IV, IV, IV,

296–297 ( January 4, 1646). 297–298 ( January 18, 1646); Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, I, 69–70. 298 (February 1st, 1646). 301–302 (March 8, 1646).

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of authority, as much a matter of principle for the minister as for the director. Bogardus had “rejected” the competence of the council to judge his case. Details and testimony were therefore hardly relevant anymore. There is no denying that the minister took his stand with unbending consistency. He refused “to engage himself more closely or deeply with the case for now, neither with the witnesses nor with the rest of the proceedings.”72 Otherwise he would have implicitly recognized the authority of the council and placed himself in the wrong. Tirelessly, session after session—on March 8, 15, and 22, on April 12 and 26—he sent letters to that effect.73 Slowly but surely Bogardus’s persistent refusal led to an erosion of Kieft’s authority. The reference to Kieft’s weariness with the lawsuit owing to “the disorder and scandal common until now” points clearly in that direction.74 The council therefore proposed an amicable settlement—apparently as a gesture to Bogardus, who had requested impartial judges. The proposal was that a binding verdict be asked of the other two Reformed ministers in the colony, Francis Doughty and Johannes Megapolensis, and two or three other “impartial members of this province,” i.e., Reformed church members. Meanwhile Bogardus had to desist from all further “calumnies” against the director and the council.75 But there was a catch to it. The proposal was made “on the condition that Bogardus will subject his rights to their judgment.” Bogardus, in other words, was asked to explicitly abandon his claim that his case could only be judged by a higher authority in the fatherland. The only change proposed was in the persons of the judges. In point of fact the verdict would rest with members of his own consistory. For a minister with such a pronounced sense of authority that was of course unacceptable. On April 12, 1646 he therefore appealed Kieft’s charges to the new director and the councilors who were about to take ofce, in the conviction that they would possess a greater sense of justice than Kieft and his clique. That appeal is understandable when we realize that the States General responded to the petition of the Eight Men by recalling Kieft. Bogardus must have felt protected and strengthened by the highest authority. Kieft’s successor would put everything right. But on that point 72 73 74 75

NYHM, NYHM, NYHM, NYHM,

IV, IV, IV, IV,

305–306 301–309 306–307 305–306

(March 22, 1646). (March 8 to April 26, 1646). (April 12, 1646). (March 22, 1646).

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he was mistaken. From a distance Stuyvesant, the highly orthodox son of a Reformed minister, may have seemed well disposed to his case, but once in the colony he proved to be an even less exible autocrat than Kieft. Bogardus would not have to deal with that himself, however. After he had rejected the idea of a mediation committee, the council tried to force through a decision on April 12. If Bogardus did not respond to the council’s last letter by April 26, a verdict would be pronounced, no matter what. The reply arrived in time, but it did not satisfy the council. Once again every effort was made to avoid ultimate measures. On June 11, however, Bogardus was confronted with a fait accompli: the ministers Doughty and Megapolensis were asked to mediate, and in order to put Bogardus under pressure the matter was presented to the congregation. Megapolensis, who was in New Amsterdam at the time, would come to preach in the church on Sunday, June 17 (“as has always been his custom”) in order to prepare the congregation for peace between the minister and the council. To such an arrangement Bogardus could have no objection.76 This is the last we hear of the matter. Both the director and the minister must have considered that conciliatory sermon a temporary but honorable way out of their stalemate. What the proposal does show is the extent to which the feud had become an issue for the entire congregation. Bogardus did not withdraw his appeal, however. He insisted on being exonerated in the fatherland. And that would prove fatal for him. It is important to see the position of the two factions in the proper perspective. The director and the council insisted that the charter of the WIC, as conrmed by the States General, made the director the highest authority in the colony and that no appeal of his verdict was possible. Not that the colony itself was autonomous, but it fell under the special jurisdiction of the trading company, which had delegated its legal authority to the director. Kieft leaves no room for doubt on this point in his reply to Bogardus of March 22. He also concluded his indictment of January 2 by citing the commission he had received “from Their High and Mighty [members of the States General], His Highness [the prince], and the Gentlemen Directors” as authorization for his proceedings against Bogardus. Kieft’s council was therefore the only competent court of justice. Diametrically opposed to the Company position was Bogardus’s insistence that the colony as an ecclesiastical

76

NYHM, IV, 318–320 ( June 11, 1646).

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and civil community fell under the moral and legal responsibility of the authorities in the fatherland. His own commission had come from the classis and consistory of Amsterdam, and in the last analysis it was to them that he was answerable. Moreover, there had to be the possibility of referring verdicts of the council of New Netherland to the Court of Holland and Zeeland, the normal court of appeal for all local and regional jurisdictions. The director was himself responsible for his loss of authority. In the traditional historiography of New Netherland Bogardus’s obstinacy is seen as an expression of personal stubbornness, or even of “disgraceful behavior.”77 Bogardus was certainly stubborn, and passionate. But it would be wrong to interpret the court case along moral lines. Everything, beginning with the obstinacy of the director, the council, and the minister, indicates that this conict was crucial for the future of the colony. Bogardus’s personal behavior simply brought it to a head. In the end the Company directors were also dissatised with the way Kieft had tackled the ecclesiastical problems. They made that point in a letter to his successor, instructing him to draw up a report so that the directors could begin putting things in order.78 That criticism must have referred to the dissension in the citizenry. Despite the verbal violence in the court records, the council actually handled Bogardus with kid gloves, a marked departure from the usual treatment of suspects or convicts. At all costs the council wanted to prevent the minister from bringing his grievances to a civil court or a classis meeting in the fatherland, both of which might decide in his favor. There are three possible reasons for this restraint. In the rst place Bogardus’s legal position must have predisposed the council to caution. The minister was the second man of the colony. Even aside from the protection that he obviously still enjoyed with the Company directors, the council needed exceptionally solid grounds for a guilty verdict if it did not want to gamble away its authority and plunge the community into chaos. A second factor was the minister’s strong personality: he was not a man to be tried with, he had a sharp tongue, and was probably in the right. A third reason might have been the objective interest that united the director and the minister despite their

77 As, for example, Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, I, 71, and virtually all the later historians of early New York. 78 NYSA, DCM, XI (Correspondence 1647–1653), f. 1v° (Heren XIX to the director, Spring 1647, responding to a letter of September 22, 1646).

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differences: Bogardus embodied order and moral authority—and aside from his bouts of drunkenness, which at the time were endemic in all social strata of the Dutch Republic and its colonies, his behavior does seem to have been irreproachable. At long last Kieft tried to put an end to the feud. In the spring of 1645 he at various times sent envoys to Bogardus to sue for peace: jonker Van der Donck, Rensselaerswyck commissioner Anthony de Hooges, midwife Lysbeth Dircks. Later there was a mediation committee. In the end it was Bogardus who remained implacable. In a letter to the classis written one year after Bogardus’s death, Megapolensis made that point very clearly, and there is no reason to doubt his assessment. “It was two years ago,” he wrote in August 1648, “that I was summoned by General Willem Kieft for the purpose of quelling the issue that had arisen between him and Reverend Bogardus; I have therefore attempted at various times to soothe the differences that have arisen here as well; it was all in vain, for Reverend Bogardus insisted that they could not be resolved here but had to be presented to the Gentlemen [Directors], and even assuming that appeasement was possible for those issues here, he would still have to go to the fatherland before he died in order to demand what had been promised him in salary, support, and maintenance of his family.”79 Besides Bogardus’s principled position, then, there was a personal argument—one that likewise reected on the faulty management of the WIC. It was also as a husband and the father of a large family that Bogardus found it necessary to cross the ocean. An early midlife crisis perhaps? A premonition of his fate? Or did he, at barely forty years of age, really live with an ever-present awareness of death? That would not have been unusual for a former comforter of the sick and a pietistic minister. In any case he wanted to ensure that his earnings in the past, present, and future were all properly recorded. The Amsterdam ministers who had promised him his salary were still alive at the time (Badius died only in 1664), and they could be reminded to fulll their commitments. After fourteen years of service there could easily have been a claim to a few thousand guilders in back salary.

79 New Brunswick Theological Seminary, Gardner A. Sage Library, Amsterdam Correspondence, box I, n° 3 (Megapolensis to classis Amsterdam, August 15, 1648); ER, I, 237–239.

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What united Dinclagen and Kieft in Bogardus’s view was that neither deserved to be members of the congregation or to take part in the Lord’s Supper. This was the real import of Dinclagen’s excommunication. We here nd one of the keys to understanding what Bogardus hoped to achieve, namely his idea of a community, a vision that guided his actions as a citizen and a pastor. The second key lies in his refusal to take communion from the moment that Kieft and his group stopped attending church services. He was consistent on this point: because the congregation was no longer complete, it would be hypocritical to celebrate unity with the Lord’s Supper. According to Kieft’s accusation, he did not take part at Easter or at Pentecost or at Christmas in 1645. No consistory meetings were held during this period either, nor did Bogardus serve as godfather at baptisms. He thus made it known in symbolic fashion that the unity had been broken: because it was not possible to excommunicate Kieft on ecclesiastical grounds, Bogardus placed himself outside the community. This symbol was so effective that Kieft felt compelled to take action, rst with a reconciliation attempt and later with a frontal attack. For Calvinists the Lord’s Supper was the prime community ritual. Precisely because the other ecclesiastical rites—with the exception of infant baptism—had been stripped of their sacramental signicance, the symbolic value of the Lord’s Supper as a rite of community building and group recognition had risen exponentially. In contrast to the more liberal Protestants, who advocated the idea of a state church and, with that in mind, had a more lenient attitude towards discipline, the orthodox Calvinists rejected every compromise with the sinfulness of the day, maintaining that the congregation should consist of a core group of pure believers. That group dened itself by means of a double ritual: the ecclesiastical rite of profession of faith and the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. All catechism training was aimed at participation in the Lord’s Supper. In principle only those who had made profession of faith were admitted to the communio of that sacrament; actual admission was at times also limited by the exercise of church discipline. Ministers and elders were obliged to bar all those who refused to “examine themselves,” Reverend Paschasius Baers had declared already in 1600.80

80 W.J. op ’t Hof, Voorbereiding en bestrijding: de oudste gereformeerde piëtistische voorbereidingspreken tot het Avondmaal en de eerste bestrijding van de Nadere Reformatie in druk (Kampen 1991), 19–29.

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Reverend Alutarius, Bogardus’s mentor in Woerden, had also been very clear on this point in his Melck-spijse (Milk Food): the Lord’s Supper is for baptized members who have made profession of faith (Question 99), but they may not approach the table of the Lord unless they rst examine themselves in all seriousness about their sins, contrition, expression of penitence, humility towards God, and rm intention “henceforth to grow in the faith and to walk in all good works” (Question 100–102).81 111. How should one deal with those who conduct themselves in an unworthy manner and fall away as a result of foolhardiness? Towards such persons one must use Christian discipline, of which Christ says, Matt. 18:15, etc.: If thy brother, etc. 112. Why must this church discipline be exercised in the congregation? For three reasons. [1] First, so that the covenant of God may not be deled and the wrath of God may not be kindled over the entire congregation. 113. [2] So that the pious may not be led astray by the bad example of others. 114. [3] So that those who have fallen may be again be converted and helped to stand.

Purication, isolation, conversion: excommunication meant a ban on participation in the Lord’s Supper as the fundamental edifying rite of the congregation of the pure, the order of the God-fearing, the communion of the saints. By means of excommunication a person was excluded from the ritual renewal of the covenant. But it was also intended as a call to purify oneself, as a positive aid in disciplining personal life. Although from the viewpoint of the church the censure was aimed at reconciliation, the person to whom it was applied experienced it as a punishment that also tarnished his honor. It was a blot on his reputation. Given the symbiosis of the dominant church and society, excommunication was a formidable measure with consequences in every area of life. In Amsterdam no excommunication was carried out after 1642, and after 1649 church members were no longer referred to by name as sinful.82 The Reformed church had by then acquired so much internal cohesion that it could tolerate some deviations from the general pattern before disciplinary measures became necessary.

81 Henricus Alutarius, Melck-spijse der kinderen Godes. Dat is: Cort begrijp vande voornaemste fondamenten der Christelijcker Religie (Amsterdam 1621), f. E5r°–v°. 82 Herman W. Roodenburg, Onder censuur. De kerkelijke tucht in de gereformeerde gemeente van Amsterdam 1578–1700 (Hilversum 1990), 138–140.

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In New Netherland things had not yet reached that stage. There the Lord’s Supper was the most important ritual binding agent, one that could turn the loose and oating colonial population into a cohesive community centered around a minimum of agreements relating to conduct, norms, and values. This is why Dominie Michaelius was in such a hurry to celebrate the Lord’s Supper in 1628, immediately after his arrival in Manhattan. He did not even take the time to make strict inquiries about the necessary attestations. But although the church was for many decades the only cultural institution in the colony, its moral authority was less self-evident there than in the fatherland. This explains the need to keep a close watch on the examples set by members of the congregation, and in case of deviation from the norm to employ stern disciplinary measures, with visible social consequences. As a pariah the excommunicated person conrmed the moral authority of the church and, indirectly, the minister. Dinclagen understood this only too well. Kieft, too, would have experienced the measure in all its force if he had not succeeded in gagging the consistory. The split in the congregation prompted Bogardus to absent himself from the Lord’s Supper. If the community did not behave like a community, he did not feel entitled to take part. Although ministers were also subject to discipline and were occasionally censured by a classis, their participation in the Lord’s Supper was essential. How could the minister himself remain aloof from this highest expression of the communion of believers? That would be a denial of the truth of the Word. The synod of Middelburg had decided already in 1581 that the minister was always obliged to join in the sacrament with the other communicants. The enormous emotional and moral investment in participation in the Lord’s Supper—a ritual which not only required purity in the participant but also demonstrated it before the entire community—gave it such momentous signicance that many who took part did so with feelings of hesitation and anxiety. Were they really as God-fearing as they claimed to be? Or was that no more than hypocrisy? Although the Reformed church had no doctrine of the realis praesentia of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, it was nevertheless a rite that strengthened the believers in their assurance of divine grace. The sacrament derived its efcacy from the mystical presence of Christ. It was therefore essential that participation take place in the proper state and under the right conditions. Thorough preparation was needed. The earliest Calvinist literature had already placed great stress on both internal and external purication of the person and his soul in preparing for the Lord’s

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Supper. Believers were particularly encouraged to ask themselves if there was real unity, a true communion. If not, the symbolic value of the sacrament would be nullied and it would be better not to take part. Bogardus took this to heart. With his emphasis on the need for purity he afrmed his view of the Lord’s Supper: this was not a neutral rite but an efcacious sacrament. Finally, Bogardus’s obstinate refusal of the Lord’s Supper offers us a key to understanding the mental development of the colony. He must have sensed that the war functioned not only as a bone of contention in the community but also as a rite of passage. Paradise Lost: the innocence of the Indians had evaporated, but that of the colonists had as well. Things would never be the same. We now know that socio-economic factors also played a role in this transition. Whether the colonists experienced it in those terms remains a question. There is no doubt, however, that they went in search of a new identity, one in which ethnic relations were more clearly dened: Indians had to stay in their place, and as time went on blacks were treated more and more as born slaves. The colonial community set course for a white America.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

MISSION WORK

Missionary zeal For Evert Willemsz, whose conversion had taken place in a state of blindness, mission work among the “blind heathen” must have had an almost physical urgency. More generally, missionary zeal was a logical, even necessary complement of the conversion message and chiliast expectations so typical of pietistic, Puritan, and orthodox Protestantism. Conversion was a sign and a precondition of the Last Days. This was not only a matter of personal conversion. In their commentaries on the book of Revelation, biblical scholars such as Johann Heinrich Alsted, Thomas Brightman, and Joseph Mede maintained that the conversion of the Jews and various heathen peoples would usher in the Day of Judgment—an idea fully endorsed by a Dutch pietist like Godfried Udemans. Didn’t Jesus himself instruct us to make all peoples his disciples (Matt. 28:19–20)? Mission work among the heathen was therefore a Christian duty, one that would also hasten the second coming of Christ.1 Certainly in a colonial community as driven by religious zeal as New England, proselytizing the indigenous tribes of America was closely associated with the desire, as God’s covenant people, to bring the new Israel, His Kingdom, to full fruition in the New World. Given the thorough mingling of politics and religion, spreading God’s message among the heathen served as a standard legitimation of all forms of early modern colonialism, Protestant and Catholic alike. But it was always easier said than done. Three conditions had to be met for effective mission work: persevering missionaries with a strong personal commitment; a local community that they could fall back on;

1 James A. de Jong, As the waters cover the sea: Millennial expectations in the rise of AngloAmerican missions 1640–1810 (Kampen 1970); A.Th. Boone, ‘Zending en gereformeerd piëtisme in Nederland: een historisch overzicht’, in: Documentatieblad Nadere Reformetie 14 (1991), 1–31; L.J. Joosse, ‘Scoone dingen sijn swaere dingen’. Een onderzoek naar de motieven en activiteiten in de Nederlanden tot verbreiding van de gereformeerde religie gedurende de eerste helft van de zeventiende eeuw (Leiden 1992).

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and, most importantly, a government that not only gave them the necessary facilities and freedom of movement but was also willing and able to enforce, among both the colonists and the indigenous peoples, a way of life in keeping with the positive image of a Christian community propagated by the missionaries. This last point usually proved the most problematic. Alexander Whitaker’s early and successful mission work among the Indians of Virginia was rudely disrupted in 1642 by a bloodbath perpetrated against the whites. Even in a colony as aglow with religious zeal as Massachusetts missions remained a matter of just a few individuals until the 1640s. Political events in England (the Civil War, the victory of the Puritans under Cromwell, the execution of Charles I in 1649) then heightened expectations of the Last Days and channeled energies into a new passion for missions.2 Roger Williams established close ties with the Algonquins and in 1643 published a handbook of their language, but he still worked on a strictly individual basis. Thomas Mayhew’s catechetical efforts yielded 22 converts by 1650. And John Eliot, thanks to an Indian interpreter, learned the language so well that by 1646 he was able to conduct services in an Indian village. His mission work became proverbial. Booklets extolling the mission efforts of New England began appearing already in 1643, with optimistic titles like The clear sunshine of the Gospel breaking forth among the Indians.3 In June 1647 the learned Czech exile Jan Amos Comenius, who one year earlier had refused an invitation to come to New England as head of the new Harvard College (1636), wrote lyrically to Samuel Hartlib about mission work in America.4 Considering the contacts between inhabitants of New Netherland and New England, the presence of English Puritans on Manhattan, and their common interests with regard to the Indians, it seems likely that they were informed about each other’s mission efforts. Although evidence is lacking, the booklets from Massachusetts could well have made their way to readers in New Amsterdam. The situation in New Netherland was different, however. The local community had not been founded for religious reasons. The minister dispatched by the WIC was in the rst place responsible for the transient

2 Alden T. Vaughan, New England frontier: Puritans and Indians 1620–1675 (Boston & Toronto 1965). 3 By Thomas Shepard (1648, reprint New York 1865). 4 Robert F. Young, Comenius and the Indians of New England (London 1929). Comenius had read the works of Johan de Laet, whom he quotes in his Novissima linguarum methodus, chapter 28.

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population of Company employees and colonists. His congregation was an extension of the one in the fatherland, not an outpost on the frontier. It was above all a “church of trade.” Mission work was, to be sure, one of the specied tasks of the WIC, but it was derived from its commercial goal. In the instructions of 1635 for ministers of the WIC, teaching the “fundamentals of the Christian Religion” to Portuguese, Spaniards, blacks, and Indians was mentioned at the very end.5 The ministers themselves were hired for a limited time, and they engaged in mission work only for the duration of their appointment. It was not their life-long task. The rst ministers, however, seem to have viewed proselytizing as an integral part of their overseas assignment, in keeping with the theology of church ofce formulated by professor Walaeus—whose lectures Evert Willemsz must have attended in Leiden.6 Michaelius and Bogardus presumably shared the opinion put forward in the treatises of Justus Heurnius and Godfried Udemans, namely that trade was an effective means for converting the heathen. This made them ideal candidates in the eyes of the trade faction within the WIC. The colony was also too small to justify sending a minister for the special purpose of spreading the gospel to the heathen, a measure taken in 1636 for New Holland (Brazil).7 For Megapolensis, sent by the patroon of Rensselaerswijck to serve a permanent agricultural colony, the situation was somewhat different. Rensselaer himself attached great value to mission work and considered harmonious dealings with the Indians in his area of utmost importance.

Indians In the historiography of North America, Michaelius and Megapolensis gure as the rst Dutch missionaries among the Indians, because writings by these two men about their work have been preserved. 8 We have

5

NAN, States General, 5755–I (December 12, 1635). Ant. Walaeus, Het ampt der kerckendienaren (Middelburg 1615) [ Pamphlet Knuttel 2204]. 7 Joosse, ‘Scoone dingen’, 465–466. 8 NNN, 117–133, 163–180. Cf. Charles E. Corwin, ‘Efforts of the Dutch-American colonial pastors for the conversion of the Indians’, in: Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society 12 (1925), 225–246; Frederick J. Zwierlein, Religion in New Netherland. A history of the development of religious conditions in the province of New Netherland 1623–1664 (Rochester, NY 1910), 266–275; Allan W. Trelease, Indian affairs in colonial New York: The seventeenth 6

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no such text by Bogardus himself. Yet he, too, must have made serious efforts to convert the indigenous people. Already in 1641, two years prior to Kieft’s war and well before the arrival of Megapolensis, the classis recorded from a letter by Bogardus (now lost): “[They] tell of the good state and the daily growth of their congregation. The Americans are not yet coming to the proper knowledge of God. The blacks living with them come closer and give more hope.”9 Systematic attempts were therefore being made at proper catechization and mission work among the three large ethnic groups: whites, blacks, and Indians. We would hardly have expected anything different from a man who at the age of 15 wrote the following hymn: All heathens, puried, will come to Thee With praise, because Thy judgment, clear and just, Is spread abroad, is heard, believed, confessed. (b18)

The reply of the Amsterdam classis conrms that Bogardus’s mission work among the blacks offered some prospect of results, but that he was making no progress at all with the Indians. They remained “blind heathen” and left the door to the gospel closed. The classis implored Bogardus to keep in contact with Megapolensis, who was about to leave for his post as the minister of Rensselaerswijck, so that they could together attack the problem of the heathen with the weapon of God’s Word.10 Actually, the ministers made virtually no distinction between blacks and Indians in their mission work.11 How was that possible, when the Indians continued to emphatically manifest themselves as the original, free inhabitants of the land, and most of the blacks had been brought in as slaves? The image of the Indians was determined by their quality as a people. Although mission work among them had from the start been one of the colonists’ priorities, it proved much more difcult than with the blacks. The provisional governing regulations of March 1624

century (Ithaca, NY 1960), 38–40, 169–171; George L. Smith, Religion and trade in New Netherland: Dutch origins and American developments (Ithaca, NY 1973), 174–176; Matthew Dennis, Cultivating a landscape of peace: Iroquois-European encounters in seventeenth-century America (Ithaca, NY 1993); Joosse, ‘Scoone dingen’, 473–476. 9 GAA, ACA, 157, p. 64 (November 19, 1641). 10 GAA, ACA, 163, pp. 103–104 (April 22, 1642); A. Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk in Noord-Amerika 1624–1664 (2 vols., The Hague 1913), II, pp. XIX–XXI. 11 See for a more elaborate treatment of the relations between Europeans and Indians in Bogardus’s time: Wegen, 779–791.

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and the instructions given to director Willem Verhulst in January 1625 had been very clear, however.12 Good teaching and a good example, doctrine and life, were the two pillars of Christianization. The relations between whites and Indians therefore depended largely on the attitude of the whites.13 Lacking in that attitude, however, was an understanding of the beliefs and behavior of the Indians. With their decient knowledge of the indigenous languages, the immigrants were unable to fathom the Indians’ religious system or see that their belief in the Supreme Being was bound up with convictions, rituals, and taboos radically different from those of their own faith, with its emphasis on the Bible, dogma, and ethics. It is also possible that Calvinism, with the distance it placed between rite and dogma, left these Europeans at an extra disadvantage with respect to such insight. By the same token, the Indians must have been bafed by the message of the white missionaries: it is hard to imagine a European confession further removed from their shamanistic religion than the orthodox Reformed religion of the word propagated by the Dutch. The strict rejection of any accommodation of faith and church order to Indian ways of living and thinking made the mission work of Michaelius, Megapolensis, and—undoubtedly—Bogardus a losing battle. The Calvinist view of the Indians, and of what Christianity should be for them, was too incurably European and too exclusively doctrinal. It ruled out any possibility of recognizing that the indigenous people might be right or have rights. The French, by contrast, had understood at an early point that religion was inseparable from culture (and thus

12 Provisionele ordre van de Staten-Generaal (March 30, 1624), art. 2 (Gehring, n° 1); Wieder, De stichting, 112, 122. 13 For what follows, see more generally: Edward P. Johnson, ‘The friendly relations of the Indians and early Dutch settlers of the upper Hudson’, in: Yearbook of the Holland Society of New York (1907), 121–137; Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Settling with the Indians: The meeting of English and Indian cultures in America 1580–1640 (London 1980); James Axtell, After Columbus: Essays in the ethnohistory of colonial North America (New York & Oxford 1988); Peter Mason, Deconstructing America: Representation of the Other (London 1990); William A. Starna, ‘Indian-Dutch frontiers’, in: De Halve Maen 64:2 (1991), 21–25; D.K. Richter, The ordeal of the longhouse: The peoples of the Iroquois League in the era of European colonization (Williamsburg 1992); the same, ‘Brothers, scoundrels, metal makers: Dutch constructions of native American constructions of the Dutch’, in: De Halve Maen 71:3 (1998), 59–64; Donna Merwick, Possessing Albany 1630–1710: The Dutch and English experiences (Cambridge 1990), 45–67; Janny Venema, Beverwijck: A Dutch village on the American frontier, 1652–1664 (Hilversum & Albany 2003), 156–174.

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from the social order).14 The problem of sparsely populated and frugally organized New Netherland was precisely that the minister was not only the person responsible for religious matters but also the chief representative of the culture. As a missionary he could not benet from any acculturation prepared by others; he had to do everything himself. In that situation individual missionary efforts were hopeless, leading only to an impasse between two irreconcilable cultures. The minister’s hesitation to accept imperfect Indians as full-edged Christians and to achieve through cultural accommodation what could not be accomplished through catechization compelled even the semi-converted to fall back into their old religion and traditional customs: there they could at least retain their dignity. Even a person as well-meaning and persevering as Megapolensis found that out, to his bitter disappointment. The ministers were aware of the problem and correctly analyzed it as primarily cultural in nature. In New Netherland, too, attempts were made at linking everyday forms of Christianizing with acculturation, but the missions could not ourish without the active support of a anking political commitment.15 According to the regulations of the WIC, the director was required to do everything in his power to promote mission work—it was not only his moral duty but a formal one as well. We can be quite sure that Kieft would have shown little interest in that task, even if he had not been out to thwart Bogardus. His negligence revealed itself not only in his attitude towards the Indian tribes around Fort Amsterdam. It is also clear from accusations made against director Stuyvesant’s predecessors in the petition of the Eleven Men of July 1649: in contrast to the English and French, they had never attempted “to make the savages Christians.”16 By that time Kieft had drowned, but the WIC answered for him that everyone “who has had dealings with the Indians in and around New Netherland will say that the adults cannot by any human means be brought to the Christian faith,” and that the director was only required to support the mission work of the ministers.17 In other words, the ministers had only themselves to blame. But the reply evaded the issue. By then it was obvious that the Heren

14 Cf. Roger Magnuson, Education in New France (Montréal 1992); Réal Ouellet (ed.), Rhétorique et conquête missionnaire: Le jésuite Paul Lejeune (Sillery, Québec 1993). 15 See for example Van der Donck, Beschryvinge (1656), 77–78. 16 NAN, States General, 12564.30A (Naerdere aenwijsinghe, July 26, 1649). 17 NAN, States General, 12564.30A (Kort begrijp, exh. January 27, 1650, par. 18; Response, January 31, 1650).

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XIX gave no priority to missions. In his Beschryvinge van Nieuw Nederlant (Description of New Netherland), written from the viewpoint of the congregation, Adriaen van der Donck leaves no room for doubt about his own opinion. There are almost no Indians becoming Christians, he wrote, and that will not change as long as “things are left to drag on as they are.” Never have “any special political means been employed or taken in hand for the purpose of bringing that about.”18

Blacks and slaves The image of the blacks was determined primarily by their value as labor. As early as 1628 Michaelius called the few Angolan female slaves he encountered in New Netherland “thieving, lazy, and unwelcome trash.”19 As labor they were good enough, however. In the Vryheden ende Exemptien (Freedoms and Exemptions) which the WIC granted the patroons one year later, the Company promised to supply for each of their farms 12 male and 12 female slaves from slave ships that had been captured and brought to New Amsterdam. Whether that promise was kept remains a question, however.20 Only once in Rensselaer’s correspondence is there mention, in passing, of a “Negro.”21 Information about the presence of black slaves in the early days of New Amsterdam is fragmentary, but there are enough known facts to piece together a coherent picture.22 From almost the rst moment of settlement the Company must have made use of black labor, and the WIC remained the only large slaveholder until the time of Bogardus’s death. In 1644 ten black slaves were freed because they had worked 18 to 19 years for the WIC. Although some of that work may have been performed

18

Van der Donck, Beschryvinge (1656), 77. Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, I, 38; II, 148; NNN, 129. 20 Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, 148–149; cf. Oliver A. Rink, Holland on the Hudson: An economic and social history of Dutch New York (New York 1986), 101. 21 VRBM, 261 (April 15, 1634). 22 For the general picture, see John Thornton, Africa and the Africans in the making of the Atlantic world, 1400–1800 (2nd ed., Cambridge 1998), especially 235–271, on religion and conversion; Edgar J. McManus, A history of negro slavery in New York (Syracuse, N.Y. 1966); Joyce D. Goodfriend, ‘Burghers and blacks: The evolution of a slave society at New Amsterdam’, in: New York History 59 (1989), 125–144; ‘Blacks in New Netherland and colonial New York’, special issue of the Journal of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society 5 (1984); Thelma Wills Foote, Black and white Manhattan: The history of racial formation in colonial New York City (Oxford 2004), 23–52. 19

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elsewhere, they had apparently arrived already in 1625/26.23 Those were the slaves that Michaelius encountered in 1628. The rst blacks, however, were not brought in by the slave trade of Holland but were seized as war booty from Spanish and Portuguese ships. Not until 1630 did a ship full of slaves arrive in New Netherland. Although the Hollanders were at rst not absolutely opposed to slavery, orthodox Calvinists chafed for many years under the unbiblical ramications of an organized slave trade, especially when it involved baptized Christians from African coastal areas formerly occupied by Portugal. One episode, from 1596, is well known: when 130 baptized black slaves from Guinea had disembarked in Middelburg (Zeeland), an outraged burgomaster Adriaen ten Haeff strode shouting into the States of the province, which immediately ordered the slaves—who were Christians, after all—to be freed.24 But the exigencies of trade won out over biblical principles. Labor was needed for the sugar plantations in Brazil. The conquest of Elmina on the coast of Guinea in 1637 gave the starting signal for an organized trade in slaves. One year later Reverend Godfried Udemans dispelled the last qualms with arguments put forward in his book ’t Geestelick roer van ’t coopmans schip (The spiritual rudder of the merchant’s ship). He considered slave trade permissible on the condition that the slaves retained certain rights, particularly the right to humane treatment. Transporting the “unspoiled heathen” to Christian territory actually increased their chance of embracing the true religion, he declared. Seven years after their conversion they could then be freed and end their lives as liberated Christians.25 The ideal situation sketched by Udemans was not a complete fantasy. During the time Evert Willemsz spent on the coast of Guinea and in New Netherland, the blacks were in neither place viewed solely as a cheap commodity. There was still a ne line between slavery and indenture, and the plantation system did not yet operate exclusively on 23 NYHM, IV, 212–213 (February 25, 1644); Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, 159–160; Robert J. Swan, ‘First Africans to New Netherland, 1625 or 1626?’, in: De Halve Maen 66:4 (1993), 75–82. 24 W.S. Unger, ‘Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis van de Nederlandsche slavenhandel’, in: Economisch-historisch Jaarboek 26 (1952–54), 133–174, this episode 136; Joosse, ‘Scoone dingen’, 263. 25 Godfried Udemans, ’t Geestelick roer van ’t coopmans schip (2nd ed., Dordrecht 1640), f. 179–183. Actually, this argument was applied to New Netherland in ’t Verheerlickte Nederland door d’Herstelde Zeevaart (s.l. 1659), 42–45. See also Gerald F. de Jong, ‘The Dutch Reformed Church and negro slavery in colonial America’, in: Church History 40 (1971), 423–436.

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slave labor. Initially colonial society cultivated a paternalistic attitude, legitimized by biblical principles. The blacks were useful as labor, but—as the ministers insisted—they also had to be instructed in the true faith. Splitting up married couples was not permitted; adultery had to be discouraged; and slaves were not to desecrate the Sabbath, which meant they could not be made to work on Sundays.26 As servants, they were members of the household. Thanks to the ideology of the household as the smallest unit of the Christian community, they did enjoy some protection. Such principles were in tune with the pragmatic attitude of the local society: slaves were useful and should therefore be treated as part of the community, without unnecessary discrimination or racial hatred. During Kieft’s war the black slaves were simply mobilized and armed to defend the colony, without fear of a rebellion or a conspiracy against the whites. In subsequent decades those humanitarian feelings deteriorated rapidly and were replaced by a preoccupation with productivity. Blacks had to work, and their work had to yield prots. Church authors justied this notion with the pseudo-biblical ideology of the accursed race of Ham, from whom the blacks had supposedly descended (Gen 9:18–27). The WIC at rst declared that slavery was permissible if it kept the unspoiled heathen out of the clutches of the papist Spaniards and Portuguese and brought them to knowledge of the true religion. Although transparently opportunistic in the conict with the Spanish-Portuguese empire, which was omnipresent in the WIC area, the argument contained echoes of genuine religious concern. It was actually a two-edged sword, for conversion in the long run implied emancipation. In Bogardus’s time the convivial model of a multiracial society had not yet disappeared. We can recognize certain elements of it in the living circumstances of the slaves in New Netherland. Though enslaved, they were certainly not deprived of all rights. Already in 1638 the director and council reached a verdict in favor of Anthony Portugees, a slave from New Amsterdam, in the lawsuit he brought against Anthonie Jansen van Salee—the similarly dark-skinned but free “Turk” from a previous chapter—for the damage caused by his pig.27 Other cases also show that slaves in New Netherland could successfully claim their right

26 Thus in the ordinances of the classis of Brazil, January 5, 1638; ‘Classicale acta van Brazilië’, in: Kronijk van het Historisch Genootschap 29 (1873), 219–220. 27 NYHM, IV, 35 (December 9 and 16, 1638). See chapter 13.

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to wages and some personal property. The testimony of a black slave was at times also given greater credence than that of a free white person. This is not to say that slaves experienced no restrictions, but initially the same laws applied to them as to the Europeans. That much is evident from the prosecution of various capital crimes. In June 1646 the slave Jan Creoly was strangled and his body was burned because he had committed sodomy with the ten-year-old slave Manuel Congo. By way of warning, Manuel was also tied to a stake and forced to watch Jan’s execution. He was beaten as well, but survived the ordeal.28 Did Bogardus have a hand in this, too? The verdict appealed to Genesis 19 and Leviticus 18:22 and 29, and invoked “the name of God” to prove that Jan “is not worthy of consorting with the human race.” God’s wrath had to be appeased with the execution—typical minister’s language. The story of another execution, ve years earlier, had a happier ending. After nine Company slaves killed their fellow slave Jan Premero, Manuel Gerrit de Reus was chosen by lot to be hanged. He was so heavy, however, that he broke the rope. The spectators interpreted this as a trial by ordeal and persuaded the council to release him.29 But slaves remained slaves. An instance of fair treatment did not abrogate the principle of slavery. Although the Dutch were relatively late in joining the organized slave trade, they soon made up for lost time.30 Even in the early days of New Netherland slaves were imported on an incidental basis. A few came with De Eendracht (The Concord) in 1635, and in 1636 Van Twiller bought three slaves from captain Samuel Ax for 40 guilders each.31 Groups of Company slaves from Angola came via Brazil to the farms of New Netherland.32 The Company ship De

28

NYHM, IV, 326–328 ( June 25, 1646); Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, 157–158. NYHM, IV, 97–100 ( January 17 and 24, 1641); Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, 158–159. 30 P.C. Emmer, ‘De slavenhandel van en naar Nieuw-Nederland’, in: Economisch en sociaal-historisch jaarboek 35 (1972), 94–147; E. van den Boogaart & P.C. Emmer, ‘The Dutch participation in the Atlantic slave trade’, in: H.A. Gemery & J.S. Hogendorn (eds.), The uncommon market: Essays in the economic history of the Atlantic slave trade (New York & London, 1979), 353–375; E. van den Boogaart, ‘The servant migration to New Netherland, 1624–1664’, in: P.C. Emmer (ed.), Colonialism and migration: Indentured labour before and after slavery (Dordrecht etc. 1986), 55–81. General surveys in: J.M. Postma, The Dutch in the Atlantic slave trade 1600–1815 (Cambridge 1990); P.C. Emmer, The Dutch slave trade, 1500–1850 (New York 2006). 31 GAA, NA, 917, f. 309v° (December 1, 1635); Rink, Holland, 130; NYHM, I, 115 (inventory of March 22, 1639). 32 On the Portugese and the Dutch in Angola: S.P. L’Honoré Naber, ‘Nota van Pieter Mortamer over het gewest Angola’, in: Bijdragen en mededelingen van het Historisch 29

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Hoop (The Hope) fetched several from Curaçao in 1638. Occasionally private entrepreneurs also delivered groups of captured slaves: the buccaneer La Garce in 1642, for example, who sailed on a pirate ship that capitalized on the war against Spain—a ship in which ten New Netherlanders owned shares. Not until 1645, in the instructions issued by the WIC to director Kieft, was provision made for an organized slave market, primarily for the benet of the patroons.33 In the course of the 1630s and ’40s the price of a healthy black slave rose from roughly 100 to about 300 guilders, but the cost of a contract laborer for one year was approximately the same. In the spring of 1646, a little more than a year before Bogardus’s death, the rst ofcial cargo of some 50 black slaves arrived in New Amsterdam on the ship Tamandare. First boatswain Gerrit Henricksz from Molkwerum and cooper Gerrit Cloot declared in the fatherland at the end of 1647 that they had sailed with that ship laden with blacks from Brazil to the West Indies, and from there to New Netherland. By the time the blacks boarded the ship they had already spent four to six months locked up, rst on the ship De Charitas (The Charity) (!), then on the yacht De Vlucht (The Flight), and nally in the warehouse for blacks in Mauritsstadt (Recife). They had gone for a long period with no refreshment, and were in very poor condition. Most of them died en route, mainly from scurvy.34 Those who survived were sold for “a song,” as Van der Donck later remarked, derisively.35 The directors were nevertheless convinced that slaves were needed in the colony, where agriculture had become more important than the declining fur trade. So the trade in slaves continued.36 In 1648 the economic recovery was denitely linked to the organized slave trade, but only in 1655 did the rst slave ship with a few hundred Africans arrive in New Netherland directly from Guinea. By that time the average sale price per slave had quadrupled. Most of the slaves, however, were immediately sold on to the English colonies, to work on tobacco Genootschap 44 (1933), 1–42; C.R. Boxer, Salvador de Sà and the struggle for Brazil and Angola, 1602–1686 (London 1952); K. Ratelband, Nederlanders in West-Afrika 1600–1650: Angola, Kongo en São Tomé (Zutphen 2000). 33 Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, 149–151. 34 GAA, NA, 1294, f. 183v°–184r° (November 4, 1647). 35 NAN, States General, 12564.30A (Vertooch, July 28, 1649, p. 50: ‘voor speck en erwten’); NNN, 329–330. 36 NYSA, DCM, XI (Correspondence 1647–1653), Heren XIX to the director of New Netherland, Spring 1647, answering his letter of September 22, 1646.

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plantations. Their numbers in New Netherland remained small, with a total of perhaps one hundred on Manhattan in 1639. When the English took over in 1664, the entire colony must have had fewer than 500 black slaves to at most 9,000 Europeans. New Amsterdam was then home to a maximum of 300 blacks and 1,500 whites. Long before that time, however, Bogardus’s life story had come to an end. All things considered, the presence of slaves seems to have been associated much more with the activities of the WIC than with those of the patroons. Not until 1646 do we nd a black person mentioned by name in Rensselaerswijck: Jan de Neger ( John the Negro) appears there as an executioner, a dishonorable occupation usually shunned by whites.37 On Manhattan, however, the Company at an early point assigned the heavy labor to slaves captured from Spain. Already in 1635 Jacob Stoffelsen from Zierikzee served as the overseer of Company slaves who constructed the fort and the Company buildings or worked the land. In 1639, according to the so-called Manatus map, they were still housed far outside the settlement, on the East River (at present-day 75th Street).38 Some time before 1643 a Negerhuis (House for Blacks) was built in New Amsterdam, where the Company slaves lived under the supervision of a black “captain.” Not all blacks were slaves, however. The Company made a clear distinction between free black persons and black slaves. Day laborer Pedro Negretto was one of the former. In 1639 he took Jan Celes to court on the matter of wages he owed him for herding his pigs.39 In November 1635 ve free blacks even appeared before the Amsterdam chamber of the WIC to demand their wages.40 Some slaves were given total or partial freedom as a reward for long years of service. Such was the case with the group of eleven slaves mentioned above, who were freed in 1644 on the condition that they would remain in the employ of the WIC and—a point harder to swallow—that their existing children and those not yet born would be lijffeygenen (serfs) of the WIC.41 This formula was certainly not disadvantageous for the

37

VRBM, 835; Venema, Beverwijck, 114. Isaac N. Phelps Stokes, The iconography of Manhattan Island 1498–1909 (6 vols., New York 1915–1928; repr. 1998), II, 186–187, pl. 41–42a. 39 NYHM, IV, 53 ( July 21, 1639). 40 NAN, OWIC, 14, f. 93v° (November 19, 1635). 41 NYHM, IV, 212–214 (February 25, 1644); Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, 159–160; Peter R. Christoph, ‘The freedmen of New Amsterdam’, in: Nancy Anne McClure 38

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WIC, but apparently not all of the persons in question were old and useless slaves that the WIC was eager to be rid of. Their children were still young. Perhaps they were freed in return for their loyalty in the war against the Indians. There may also be a grain of truth in the old thesis of David Valentine that the new “Negro frontier” could serve as a buffer in the devastated area north of New Amsterdam. In 1650 the States General demanded clarication of that semi-emancipation, which Van der Donck denounced in his Vertooch as unlawful for blacks born from a free Christian mother.42 Secretary Van Tienhoven promptly tried to cover up the implications of the measure: Were the children of slaves treated any differently from those of Christians? Martijn Cregier had even given his slave boy an excellent education!43 Did Bogardus himself hold slaves? Nothing in the sources suggests that he did. His servants and the personnel of his two farms were, as far as we know, paid employees. It is not impossible, of course, that there was a free black among them. Anneke Jans’s will of 1663 makes no mention of slaves either, although the slave trade was then at its height. Thirty years later the situation had changed: her daughter Sara Roelofs owned remarkably many slaves for a New York woman of Dutch extraction.44 Her will, drawn up in 1693 in the presence of her half-brother Willem Bogardus, listed six slaves, each left to a different heir: the black boys Hans and Peter, the black girl Maria, the black women Susanna and Sara, and an Indian named Ande. This Ande had undoubtedly been captured by Indians of another tribe and sold as a slave—but it is surprising to nd him owned by a woman who in her youth had been on familiar terms with the surrounding Indians, spoke their language and had served as an interpreter.45 There were more such Indian slaves. We nd them mentioned already in early household inventories. In 1644 director Kieft granted two German Company soldiers an Indian slave with the name of ’t Jacques (a bastardization of an Indian name?)—perhaps in lieu of their

Zeller & Charles T. Gehring (eds.), A beautiful and fruitful place. Selected Rensselaerswijck seminar papers (Albany 1991), 157–170, here 158–160. 42 NAN, States General, 12564.30A (Vertooch, July 28, 1649, pp. 50–51); NNN, 329–330. 43 NAN, States General, 12564.30A (Response, November 11, 1650); DRCHNY, I, 335, 343, 425; Christoph, ‘The Freedmen’, 167–168, footnote 14. 44 Joyce D. Goodfriend, Before the melting pot: Society and culture in colonial New York City, 1664–1730 (Princeton, NJ 1991), 76–77, 117–118. 45 John O. Evjen, Scandinavian immigrants in New York, 1630–1674 (Minneapolis 1916; repr. Baltimore 1972), 107–108.

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salary payment, since the war had drained the treasury. They took him with them to the fatherland on the ship Graaf Maurits (Count Maurice) and in Amsterdam tried to sign a contract with a certain Harmanus Meijer and his wife to exhibit the savage at markets and fairs. But notary Van Velsen raised a warning nger: It was not permitted to keep slaves or serfs in the Netherlands, he told the contracting parties, only paid servants. “[You should] teach the above-mentioned Indian our language if possible, instruct him in Christianity, also teach him all Christian virtues and decency, and furthermore supply him with proper food and clothing, in such a manner as a servant is kept in this country.” Then there was no longer any objection to using him as a fairground attraction.46 The notary’s warning gives us a clear picture of how the Holland burgher wanted slaves to be treated: as subordinates certainly, but like any other servants, that is, as members of the household. As long as the Dutch domestic ideal of society was upheld in New Netherland—and that was certainly the case during Bogardus’s term of ofce—the same was true there.

Black Christians Blacks appear in Bogardus’s baptismal and marriage registers right from the beginning.47 They can be identied by their country of origin (usually Angola, in some cases places like Cabo Verde, Santo Domingo, or Congo), also by the tag Neger (Negro), Swartinne (black woman or girl), or Negrinne (Negress). Two blacks with the same name and from the same place were distinguished by adding another name, often that of their employer: Emanuel Gerrit de Reus and Emanuel Swager, for example, are both listed as coming from Angola. In rare cases the second name already seems to have assumed the form of a family name, as with two brides of October 1646, Lucretia Albiecke of Angola and Isabel Kisana of Angola (who married Sebastiaen de Britto of Santo Domingo). The rst known black wedding took place on May 5, 1641,

46

GAA, NA, 1781, pp. 166–169 (September 3, 1644). Th.G. Evans and T.A. Wright (ed.), Records of the Reformed Dutch Church in New Amsterdam and New York. Baptisms from 25 December 1639 to 29 December 1800 (Collections of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society 2) (2 vols., New York 1901–1903, reprint Upper Sadle River, N.J. 1968); Samuel Smith Purple (ed.), Marriages from 1639 to 1801 in the Reformed Dutch Church, New Amsterdam—New York City (New York 1890; repr. 1940). 47

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when Anthonij of Angola, widower of Catalina of Angola, married Lucie of Angola, widow of Laurens of Angola. On November 24 of that year a second black marriage was solemnized, between Jan Fort Orangien (a black who had rst worked at Fort Orange), widower of Magdalena of Angola, and Marie Grande, widow of Jan Premier (the Company slave Jan Premero who earlier that year had been killed by nine fellow slaves). In the subsequent years of Bogardus’s ministry we also nd a number of black marriages. As late as April 1647 Jan Augustinus of Cartagena married Susanna of New Netherland, a black woman who was probably born in the New World and therefore a very young bride. Among the persons baptized in the church of New Amsterdam we nd ve or six black children every year. In total 39 such baptisms can be clearly identied for the period between September 1639 and Bogardus’s departure on August 16 or 17, 1647. These include the twins of Anthony Portugies in July 1641 and the triplets of Marcus Emanuel in October 1643, which brings the total number of children to 42. The rst was Barent Jan, baptized on October 2, 1639 as the son of Pieter St. Anthony. Besides the three black persons mentioned in the register—Dominico Anthony, Jan Françoys (or Johan Francisco), and Susanna d’Angola)—Trijntje van Camp also served as a witness. She was probably the wife of drummer Pieter van Camp, who testied on February 18, 1646 and appears in those records as a Neger. He was quite likely a slave from the Company quarters, as many of the baptized blacks undoubtedly were, especially the 26 cases in which only blacks served as witnesses. Three times Bastiaen or Sebastiaen, “captain of the blacks” (the black overseer of the slave quarters), is expressly mentioned as a witness. For several of the baptisms we also nd one or more white witnesses. Six times the witnesses consist exclusively of whites, with the name of the English tobacco planter Thomas Hall—a private entrepreneur who did hold slaves—appearing twice. Were the recipients of those six baptisms perhaps free blacks in paid employment or slaves who belonged to a private household? Another six times we nd a combination of black and white witnesses, although some European-looking names might be bastardizations of black names. Dominicus Theunis, for example, is elsewhere called Dominico or Domingo Anthony. A few cases are beyond doubt, however. On June 25, 1646 baptism was administered to little Dominicus, son of black Paulus of Angola, with both Emanuel Grande Esperance (an unmistakable black name) and Jan de Vries as witnesses. Paulus worked

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on the plantation of captain Jan de Vries, together with the slave Hillary Creole. Later the white captain had a son of his own, Jan, from his relationship with this Swartinne Hillary; he was baptized on August 25, 1647, one week after Bogardus’s departure, by his replacement Backerus.48 Bogardus and his wife probably belonged to the captain’s circle of friends, however, for in a dispute that arose in 1645 they are cited as witnesses because they were chatting with him at the door of his house.49 The mulatto Jan de Vries, Jr., who married Adriaentje Dircks from Albany in 1679 and was a member of the Reformed church, is identied in the register as a black.50 He must have inherited his mother’s features. At the time of his baptism the minister already realized how things stood and, as an exception, added the mother’s name to the baptismal register. Generally, however, miscegenation was taboo. Kieft’s rst decree in New Netherland, which aimed to correct various abuses, forbade Company employees all sexual relations with non-whites, blacks as well as Indians.51 Sergeant Nicolaes Coorn soon found out to his disgrace that Kieft was serious. Because he spent entire nights with Indian women and “negresses,” and in the presence of his soldiers, for whom he was supposed to set an example, he was demoted just a few months after his appointment to the rank of common soldier.52

Motives for Conversion The confessional signicance of these baptisms remains a question, of course. Bogardus was the only minister in New Amsterdam authorized to regularly administer baptism, regardless of the confession of the parents. Almost all the blacks of New Netherland came from Angola, São Tomé, or Cabo Verde, areas already actively Christianized by the Portuguese.53 The many Emanuels (Manuels) and Antonios—named for Anthony of Lisbon alias of Padua, a saint immensely popular in

48

For this De Vries family, see David S. Cohen, The Ramapo Mountain people (New Brunswick, N.J. 1974). Captain Jan de Vries perished together with Bogardus on The Princess. 49 NYHM, IV, 282 (September 7, 1645). 50 Christoph, ‘The freedmen’, 161. 51 NYHM, IV, 3–4 (April 1638). 52 NYHM, IV, 33–34 (December 2, 1638). 53 See the statement by Pieter de Marees, Beschryvinge van de Goudt-Kust Guinea (Amsterdam 1650), 46.

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Portugal—are an unmistakable sign of Portuguese Christianization. Their religious practice was no doubt colored by Portuguese Catholicism, with a great deal of ritual and veneration of saints, a double horror for the orthodox minister. Living together in the Company’s Negerhuis could only have intensied this religious coloring. The Catholic legacy must have had a long-lasting inuence on their faith. The inversion ritual of the Pentecost Carnival that we encounter one and a half centuries later in the group culture of black slaves from the state of New York can very likely be traced to this source.54 One ingredient clearly left out of this mix of African and European cultural elements was Calvinist discipline. Was baptism perhaps perceived by the minister and the black parents as a way out of slavery? The synod of Dort had made a clear plea to this effect. A statement made by Dominie Henricus Selijns in 1664 indicates that black parents did have this in mind. For many years at least part of the white population continued to view baptism as an instrument for emancipation from slavery. Bogardus denitely concurred and may even have made it a conscious policy. But not all the black fathers who had their children baptized in 1640s had the same status. Jan of Fort Oranje (or Fort Orangien, whose child was baptized in 1640), Manuel de Reus (1642), Anthony Fernando Portugees (1642, 1644, 1646), Cleijn Anthony of Angola (Little Anthony, 1643), Groot Emanuel (Big Emanuel, 1645), and Paulus of Angola (1646) belonged to the group of black slaves who had killed their fellow slave Jan Premero in 1641 but were freed in 1644. Catharina of Angola (1643), Manuel Trompetter (1645), and Domingo Anthony (who repeatedly served as a witness from 1639 onward) were granted land beginning already in July1643, evidence that they were then free colonists.55 Antony Portugies and Groot Manuel received a title to land in 1645, Francisco Negro, Antony Congo, and Jan Negro in 1647. The captain of the blacks, Bastiaen (de Britto?) of Santo Domingo was also a free man by March 1647 at the latest.56 The extent to which the church or baptism helped bring this about is difcult to say. The minister, as the moral authority 54 Shane White, ‘Pinkster: Afro-Dutch syncretization in New York City and the Hudson Valley’, in: Journal of American Folklore 102 (1989), 68–75. I cannot agree with the analysis of Renee Newman, ‘Pinkster and slavery in Dutch New York’, in: De Halve Maen 66:1 (1993), 1–8, since Pinkster never has been a formal festival of the Reformed church. This must be a re-appropriation of a Catholic ritual. 55 LP, 24, n° GG 80. 56 LP, 34, 36, 55–56, n° GG 117, 125, 199a–201; Christoph, ‘The freedmen’, 159.

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in the colony, could in any case have been consulted informally about their emancipation. Yet Bogardus was not merely an instrument in the hands of others. He was personally committed to conveying his religious convictions to the blacks. On May 8, 1644 he baptized Anna, the daughter of Philippe Swartinne. Listed as a witness was Dominie Everardus Bogardus himself, along with three blacks: Emanuel Congo, Anthony van Angola, and “the wife of Anthony trompetter [the trumpeter], Negress.” We do not know, and perhaps never will, what motivated Bogardus to serve as godfather of this black girl of an unknown father. Did her mother perhaps work in his home? Two years later, on July 15, 1646, he baptized the woman’s second child, Emanuel, but then the only witness was Lucretie (of Angola) Swartinne. The minister certainly would have realized that as a godfather he would be responsible for the Reformed upbringing of little Anna, who might have been named after his wife. Among the blacks themselves the duties of godparents were also taken very seriously. Louise, the mother of little Anthony of Angola, died on August 3, 1643, one month after the child’s baptism; when father Anthony Sr. followed her to the grave a short time later, the boy was taken in by his godparents Emanuel Pietersen and his wife. Like Anthony’s parents, they were either free or freed blacks from Angola. Eighteen years later they requested the council of New Netherland to expressly recognize Anthony as a free black as well, on the grounds that they had borne the full cost of his upbringing. Anthony signed the petition himself, using the patronymic of his foster father, Anthony Pietersen. He thus made it known that he considered his godparents his true parents.57 We get an even clearer picture of the minister’s role in the baptism of seventeen-year-old Susanna, on April 14, 1647; the blacks Anthony Portugies and Marie of Angola served as godparents, but the names of the parents are not recorded. The circumstances here must have been quite different from those of the usual infant baptism. Had Susanna just arrived in New Netherland? The spring date of the baptism might point in that direction. But then we would have to assume that the minister undertook the necessary catechizing before baptizing her, since a minimum of knowledge about the faith was required for those

57 Herbert Apteker (ed.), A documentary history of the Negro people in the United States (New York 1951), 1–2. However, I have not been able to trace this baptism in Bogardus’s baptismal register.

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seeking baptism at a later age. It is hard to imagine that Bogardus, who otherwise insisted on high standards, would have thrown his own principles overboard here. And what should we make of the young adult “Evert Cornelisz, 21 years of age,” who without any further mention of parentage or witnesses was baptized on March 4, 1646? His rst name is intriguing. Was this perhaps a convert for whom Bogardus had served as a catechist? Was it the Evert Cornelisz (van der Wel) who rst appears in the archives of New Netherland in 1643 and crops up several times in the next few years as the brother of captain Laurens Cornelissen, whom Dominie Bogardus protected against Kieft?58 In that case he may have had a Mennonite background, and his adult baptism would be further evidence that Bogardus also strove for religious orthodoxy in the circle of his loyal followers. Evert van der Wel remained part of that loyal group; half a year later, on September 23, 1646, he is listed as a baptismal witness himself, together with Sara and Trijntje Roelofs and captain Jan de Vries. Even more important than catechism was the moral stability offered by the family. This explains why Bogardus gave high priority—certainly for blacks—to a formal church wedding and a regular baptismal ceremony. The minister was supported in this by the relative ethnic openness of the young colony. Skin color was noted, not only of blacks but also of people like the “Turk” Anthonie Jansen van Salee. It identied a person as belonging to a social group but was not yet an obstacle for human interaction. For blacks in particular the ecclesiastical ritual played a crucial role in child raising, as Bogardus was well aware. Among the baptized children were ve whose father was unknown; only the mother’s name is recorded: Fernande Marie of Angola (1642), Catharina of Angola (1643), Philippe Swartinne (1644, 1646), and Larie (Hillary) Swartinne (1644). In such cases the godparents very clearly served to guarantee a Christian upbringing. Two surviving documents offer evidence of Bogardus’s desire that the blacks receive a Christian education. In a letter to the Amsterdam WIC chamber of August 14, 1636, director Van Twiller passed on Dominie Bogardus’s urgent request to send a schoolmaster/cantor who would instruct both the white and black young people in the knowledge of Jesus Christ.59 The request implies that the two groups would be taught

58 59

NYHM, II, 185 (December 22, 1643); IV, 218 (March 21, 1645). ER, I, 122; A.J.F. van Laer, ‘Letters of Wouter van Twiller and the Director General

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in the same school space. Adam Roelantsz of Dokkum was appointed by the classis for this task. A few years later, in September 1641, the consistory of New Netherland followed their usual custom of reporting on the state of the congregation to the delegates for Indies Affairs of the Amsterdam classis. Bogardus actually wrote that letter, as passages about the Dinclagen affair make clear. The letter itself has been lost, but we have a copy of the Amsterdam delegates’ reply, dated April 22, 1642.60 The classis was pleased to hear about the proclamation of God’s word “in those foreign and distant lands” and about the “good state of affairs” and “reasonable growth of his congregation there.” Bogardus had written about “the hope that there is for the conversion of the Americans [Indians] and the blacks.” The classis wished him well with “good hope” for the “conversion of the blacks,” and prayed God “that He will be pleased to open the door among the Americans as well, so that the holy gospel may also nd its way among them, and deliver the blind heathen from the heavy darkness of idolatry and service of the devil and bring them to the knowledge and fear of the true God and Savior.” The classis gave its missive along with Dominie Megapolensis, who was about to sail for America as the rst minister of the new congregation of Rensselaerswijck, with the request that the consistory, and Dominie Bogardus in particular, “together proclaim the word of the Lord not only among our own nation but also among the blind heathen in America, and work faithfully so that the kingdom of Jesus Christ there may be more and more enlarged.” Dominie Megapolensis, whose remote outpost was much more hedged in by Indian tribes than Bogardus’s New Amsterdam, would take the time to visit the Indians, make an effort to learn their language and try—in vain—to spread the gospel among them. He mentions this repeatedly in his description of the life and culture of the Mohawks, written in 1644.61 This letter offers several clues for a better understanding of Bogardus’s mission work. We should rst note that the Dutch slave trade, both in Guinea and in New Netherland, began to ourish only after Bogardus’s

and Council of New Netherland to the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch West India Company, August 14, 1636’, in: New York State Historical Association Quarterly Journal 1 (1919), 44–50, here 48; reprinted in New York History 50:4 (October 1969), 44–50. 60 GAA, ACA, 163, pp. 103–104; Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, pp. XIX–XXI. 61 Johannes Megapolensis Jr., Een kort ontwerp, vande Mahakvase Indianen, haer Landt, Tale, Statuere, Dracht, Godes-Dienst ende Magistrature (Alkmaar, s.a. [1644]): NNN, 163–180.

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missionary efforts. Bogardus represents an older phase of the colonial society, not necessarily less harsh, but less obsessed by segregation and without the contrived religious legitimation that came with it. Everyone without distinction could still become a full member of the Reformed congregation, on the condition that he or she was baptized. Baptism was administered to everyone who was deemed suitable. On the Guinea coast Bogardus had met Africans who had already been Christianized by the Portuguese. The data in his baptismal and marriage register show that the New Amsterdam Negritanen were not all heathens either. The imperfect Christian state of the blacks may have stimulated his already keen desire to compete with the papists at the borders of the colony. Bogardus’s mission work among the blacks aimed much more at wiping out papist idolatry and educating them in the Reformed faith than at simple conversion from paganism. For him Catholics were not fully Christian—the classis of Amsterdam had no qualms about calling the Indians who had become Catholic “heathen children.” God’s honor required that they swear off their idolatry and make a pure confession of faith.62 Bogardus therefore strove for “conversion” in the sense in which he himself had experienced it at the age of fteen, from impure to pure faith. The long list of marriages and baptisms gives the impression that he achieved a certain degree of success. Around 1645 there was a group of Company slaves and free blacks living in New Amsterdam who supported one another and showed some faithfulness in religious practice. The wording of the letter suggests that this was Bogardus’s impression as well. Even after Bogardus’s death, his stepdaughter Sara Roelofs and other close relatives repeatedly served as baptismal witnesses for blacks. For Bogardus, we can conclude, it was not merely a matter of church policy, but of his vision of a Christian society, which was shared by his entire family. Over time, however, that vision faded as the social climate turned less clement. Although much more comparative research is needed into the attitude of churches and ministers towards blacks or black slaves, the available literature shows beyond doubt that on this point Dominie Bogardus was truly exceptional in North America. Nowhere else, not even in the English colonies, were black slaves so frequently baptized or married by the minister. Nowhere else was the

62

Joosse, ‘Scoone dingen’, 477–478, 534–539.

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baptism and marrying of slaves so taken for granted in the everyday practice of the white congregation. Aside from a note here and there that a spouse was a neger or a swartinne, Bogardus’s baptismal and marriage register makes no distinction between blacks and whites. Does this reveal something of the idea he cherished of the Christian community? He had been dispatched by and for the Company. All those who were under the authority of the Company, free and slave alike, were therefore his responsibility and could be part of his congregation, as one community of believers. Two-thirds of the known black baptisms of New Amsterdam took place during Bogardus’s term of ofce. The same is true of black marriages. After the thirteen marriages during his years as minister we nd one under Backerus and ve at the beginning of Megapolensis’s time in New Amsterdam (1652/53). In the following decades the church restricted itself exclusively to the white population. On the eve of the English takeover Henricus Selijns (1636–1701), minister of Breuckelen (Brooklyn), justied this practice with a double argument: the blacks had too little (knowledge of the) faith and they wanted to secure a non-slave status for their children by means of baptism. That desire was too worldly and constituted a poor start for a Christian life. Selijns had tried to catechize the blacks, but to little effect. The older people in particular understood almost nothing of his teaching. Only for the younger generation was there hope.63 Between 1674 and 1679 no more than ve free blacks were admitted as members, and the membership roll of 1686 shows only six blacks, less than 1% of the total.64 As the amount of prerequisite knowledge of the Reformed faith kept increasing, blacks found themselves automatically excluded from the congregation. Selijns’s colleagues followed the same line. Yet Dominie Megapolensis, who occupied the New Amsterdam pulpit from 1649 to 1670, must have initially been no more rigid in his thinking than Bogardus. In September 1646, for example, he interceded with the director and the council on behalf of the black slave Jan 63 Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, I, 205–224, here 219–220; II, 161–162; NNN, 408– 409 ( June 9, 1664). On Selijns: NNBW, III, 1160–1166; A.P.G. Jos van der Linde, ‘Henricus Selijns (1636–1701), dominee, dichter en historicus in Nieuw-Nederland en de Republiek’, in: J.F. Heijbroek, A. Lammers & A.P.G.Jos van der Linde (eds.), Geen schepsel wordt vergeten. Liber amicorum voor Jan Willem Schulte Nordholt (Amsterdam & Zutphen 1985), 37–60. 64 Goodfriend, Before the melting pot, 116.

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Francisco, Jr., who had been promised freedom almost ten years earlier, under Van Twiller.65 The negative attitude of the ministers probably had much more to do with a growing acculturation problem. The African religiosity of the expanding and largely homogeneous slave population, with its ritualism and its sprinkling of Roman Catholic practices, must have increasingly proled itself as a specic group culture. The ministers’ criticism of what they saw as a rapid rise in unbelief among the blacks went hand in hand with a tightening up of their confessional criteria as such, for the entire society. The church no longer wanted to function rst of all as the moral binding agent of a horde of undisciplined colonists, but primarily as a congregation of established citizens, with a clearly dened morality and a religiosity of its own—both of which, however, were gradually moving away from the norms of the fatherland. This desire of the ministers coincided with a new phase of colonial expansion. Society was closing its doors. Walls went up between various social and cultural, but also ethnic groups. The Dutch Reformed church became more and more Dutch, the exclusive gathering place of inhabitants whose roots were in the Netherlands or who identied with Dutch culture. The restricted administration of baptism, formally justiable in terms of the covenant theology that here, as in New England, functioned as a key instrument of social order, now furthered ethnic discrimination and forced the blacks to fall back on their own religious culture, a feature of their group identity. After 1650 slavery rapidly developed into a large-scale form of forced labor involving the entire colony. For the whites, too, religion became a social instrument—one that justied the use of forced labor and the imposition of social and cultural separation on the blacks.

Back to the fatherland It was the Indian issue, however, that brought relations between the director and minister to the breaking point. When Kieft persisted in his categorical refusal to attend church services in the fort and take his seat in the consistory, Bogardus no longer saw any possibility of settling the

65

NYHM, IV, 342 (September 27, 1646).

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conict in the colony. Bogardus not only found Kieft’s attitude towards the Indians unforgivable; it was now clear that the two men also had diametrically opposed ideas of authority. The split had acquired a structural character, because two irreconcilable forms of society were evolving side by side. The director still believed in his trading post and governed it from above like a manager for the powerful bosses at home, as if nothing had changed since his arrival. But the colony had not stood still. Great strides had been taken in the direction of an ordered, autonomous civil society with a minimum of democratic rule. Bogardus and Kieft were now the exponents of the two extremes. Bogardus must have realized that his congregation was suffering under the tension. A cooling off period in the fatherland would unburden him of the long years of conict, after which he could start afresh with Stuyvesant. His successor Backerus witnessed the consequences of the split. The approximately 170 members that he counted in 1648 were “nearly all . . . very ignorant in the matter of religion and very inclined to drunkenness.” It was undoubtedly the Company employees he had in mind here, who had not been to church for almost three years. The colony therefore needed a minister who “would dare to employ great forthrightness in punishing sins (for which he would already nd the way prepared), and who furthermore would clothe his teaching with a good example and conduct services for the congregation”—a man like Bogardus, in other words, but without his difcult legacy.66 Elders and deacons (including Stuyvesant) painted an even darker picture: an “old, experienced and God-fearing minister must be sent, so that the extremely undisciplined congregation may not go to ruin upon the departure of its present teacher.”67 Undisciplined because of or in spite of Bogardus? I am inclined to read these words as supporting Bogardus, especially since Backerus very soon adopted his style of action. Backerus also used the pulpit to read out “writings or proposals touching law enforcement and common government.”68 He had them read elsewhere as well—to the great annoyance of Stuyvesant, who soon expressly forbade such activities. So Backerus, too, had ideas about

66 New Brunswick Theological Seminary, Gardner A. Sage Library, Amsterdam Correspondence, box I, n° 2 (September 2, 1648); Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, I, 84. 67 GAA, ACA, 157, p. 210 (December 28, 1648). 68 Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, I, 86 (May 8, 1649).

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how the colony should be organized and did not hesitate to make them known. He openly joined the faction of the critics. All this only made him more impatient to leave New Netherland. In the course of 1646, perhaps already at the end of 1645, Bogardus clearly felt an urgent need to return to the fatherland in order to defend himself in front of the proper authorities and clear his name. In June the delegates of the Amsterdam classis discussed the possibility of nding a successor for Bogardus at short notice. Letters were sent to two candidates with the request to reply soon, “as the matter is urgent.”69 Both of them, however, preferred a pulpit in the Republic. Meanwhile Jan Walraven from Oudenaarde (Flanders) was dispatched along with Stuyvesant as comforter of the sick, schoolmaster, and cantor.70 They set out for New Netherland via Curaçao on De Grote Gerrit (The Great Gerrit) in July. When the minister on Curaçao, Dominie Backerus, accompanied Stuyvesant to Amsterdam, Walraven was forced to remain on Curaçao as his replacement.71 At the end of July the directors promised the delegates that they would “inquire of Reverend Bogardus, who is still there, whether he is willing to stay there for now.”72 This temporary solution certainly implies that Bogardus had not made himself impossible to the Heren XIX, as Michaelius had previously. And that as far as the classis was concerned, there was no reason to recall him. The initiative came from him, not from his fellow ministers at home. This is also evident from the formulation in a letter written by his successor Backerus: director Kieft and Dominie Bogardus had left for the fatherland “in order to put an end to their old disagreements in front of the Gentlemen Directors.”73 Because the classis took no action, Bogardus was able to get his way. In mid-September he promised to take a letter of exchange with him to Amsterdam, a sign that he rmly intended to leave.74 It was actually unwise of him to agree to that task. The documents show that the transaction was illegal because it took place outside the channels of the WIC, and that Bogardus was fully aware of this. But by now he had nothing

69

GAA, ACA, 157, p. 153, 155 ( June 12 and 25, 1646). GAA, ACA, 86 (synod at Amsterdam 1646, art. 23); 157, p. 154; Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, I, 83–84. 71 GAA, ACA, 224, f. 8–10 ( July 8, 1649). 72 GAA, ACA, 157, p. 157 ( July 28, 1646). 73 GAA, ACA, 157, p. 200 ( June 29, 1648). 74 NYHM, IV, 340–341 (September 21, 1646). 70

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more to lose. This time support came from an unexpected quarter, the new director Pieter Stuyvesant. Following his arrival in New Amsterdam on May 11, 1647, Stuyvesant almost immediately—probably as an authority reex—chose the side of the deposed director Willem Kieft. But Kieft had been recalled to the fatherland and had to leave. If Kieft went alone, the opposing faction would certainly win the day in New Amsterdam. His opponents should therefore go with him. Bogardus had been pressing for this for years himself; now Stuyvesant would not put the slightest obstacle in his way. The resolutions of the council are suddenly extremely laconic. By July 22 the question had already been settled. Because Dominie Bogardus had “submitted a petition requesting leave and permission to travel to the fatherland” and the director considered it “highly necessary” that a minister be present, Dominie Johannes Backerus was appointed to temporarily replace Bogardus.75 The council resolution does not include a single word about a discussion, nor is there any trace of an attempt to keep Bogardus in New Netherland. In fact, his request is registered as a unanimous council resolution, in the presence of the former director Willem Kieft, and the mention of a successor for Backerus strongly suggests that Bogardus is supposed to leave for good. Stuyvesant never doubted that Bogardus would lose his case in the fatherland and be dismissed. Three days later Melijn and Kuyter were sentenced by the council. It was not only because of Kieft, however, that Bogardus returned to the Netherlands. He had various family matters on his agenda as well. Shortly before he left, his sister-in-law Marritjen Jans and her husband Dirck Cornelisz van Wensveen gave him power of attorney to claim from the WIC the back salary of their deceased mother Tryn Jonas, Evert’s mother-in-law.76 The salary of Roelof Jansz was still outstanding as well, to say nothing of what the WIC owed Bogardus himself. The wording of the power of attorney implies that Bogardus intended to bring the money back with him to New Amsterdam. His stay in the fatherland would therefore be temporary. He did not give up his function. And he left his family behind. New Netherland had clearly become his second fatherland.

75 76

NYHM, IV, 412–413 ( July 22, 1647). NYHM, II, 471–471 (undated, probably on or shortly after August 10, 1647).

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On August 16 (some say 17) the Prinses Amelia sailed from New Amsterdam with 109 men on board, among them Bogardus, Kieft, Kuyter, and Melijn. Six weeks later, on September 27, 1647, the ship entered the wrong channel near the English coast, and towards midnight was wrecked. Of the 107 persons on board (two had died of illness on the way), more than eighty drowned that night, including Dominie Everardus Bogardus, director Willem Kieft, scaal Cornelis van der Hoykens, captain Jan de Vries, and the young son of exiled Cornelis Melijn, who had accompanied his father. It took four weeks before news of the disaster reached the Dutch Republic. On October 23 the survivors nally arrived in Amsterdam, and six days later the rst of them appeared before Amsterdam notaries to have the necessary documents drawn up conrming deaths or loss of goods. Around the same time, on October 26, Hendrick Doedens sent a report about the shipwreck from Amsterdam to the Utrecht secretary Anthonie van Hilten. The compressed style suggests that he had just heard the news: “Of a ship from New Netherland we have sad tidings, namely that it went down near Welsh England more than four weeks ago with 86 souls, 200 thousand pounds of yellowwood, and 14,000 pounds of beaver pelts; only 21 persons were rescued and reached land on pieces of the ship; the director Kieft, the minister, the scaal, and other ofcials are among the dead; the ship belonged to the Company and had sailed from New Netherland in late August. From the survivors who arrived here we have not been able to nd out if anything special has happened in New Netherland.”77 In all its soberness, this report like no other is capable of sparking romantic notions of seafaring. The cargo of wood and beaver furs, the shipwreck off the coast of Wales, drowned ofcials, survivors clinging to bits of wreckage and washing up on shore as trembling castaways to tell their tale in Amsterdam a month later—all exciting ingredients for a boys’ adventure story. A letter from the Amsterdam merchant’s son Seth Verbrugge to his cousin and companion Govert Loockermans relays the news straight

77 ‘Origineele brieven van H. Doedens aan Ant. van Hilten betreffende de WestIndische Compagnie 1641–1648’, in: Kronijk van het Historisch Genootschap 25 (1869), 395–511, quotation 487. Cf. S. Groenveld, ‘New light on a drowned Princess’, in: De Halve Maen 74:2 (2001), 23–28, for what happened to the survivors in England after the shipwreck.

Fig. 43. Map of South-West Wales by Robert Morden, about 1660, showing the Gower Peninsula, Swansea and The Mumbles, where The Princess was shipwrecked on September 27, 1647. [Courtesy of Professor Stuart Clark, Swansea].

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from the mouth of the survivor Jochem Pietersz Kuyter, who had done a great deal of seafaring before going to New Netherland.78 “The accident is attributed to the drunken steersman, because in the afternoon of the previous day he was at the right latitude, and at 49 degrees 16 to 20 minutes would have been in the right water of the right channel. The longitude of the steersman was 30 miles inside the channel and of Joggom [ Jochem] Pieterss 28 miles outside the channel, as later proved to be the case.” Kuyter had therefore tried to correct the course of the drunken steersman, “but the steersman, following his own mind, suddenly set an east-northeast course to swerve around the English coast; having sailed thus for 10 or 12 bells and with no land yet in sight he imagined that they had come rather near the French coast [the peninsula Cotentin] and consequently set course to the northeast, actually straight north-northeast. The rst land they sighted the steersman said had to be Beversier [Cape Béveziers, or Beachy Head near Eastbourne] or Wight, and it was really the coast of Wales England in a thick mist, and then they were in such straits that they had to sail on 7 to 7½ fathom of water. This was in the afternoon of September 27. And in ve or six bells the water fell ve fathom, with the result that the ship soon ran aground. But it did not yet break up. With the water ebbing away completely as the ship stood there, the mates made rafts to save lives. Then, with the tide rising, a strong wind came up in a very dark night, so that the ship—as soon as it came aoat—was struck by three gusts that made it fall apart. And each part went its own way.” The ship had broken up on The Mumbles, the notorious rock mass two miles off the coast of Wales, near Swansea. Swimming was hardly conceivable in that stormy night. Dramatic scenes took place on the wreckage of De Prinses, if we can believe the anonymous pamphlet Breeden-Raedt of 1649, which must have been written by one of the survivors, or at least by some insider.79 When the ship broke into eight parts, Kieft saw that his hour had come. “Faced with death, heaving deep sighs,” he “doubtingly” asked his victims Kuyter and Melijn: “Friends, I have done you wrong, can you forgive me?” The eight pieces of the ship stayed aoat the entire night. One out of ve of the persons on board managed to save himself by clinging to the wreckage. Jochem Pietersz Kuyter, for example,

78 79

NYHS, Stuyvesant-Rutherford papers, 2:6 (November 1, 1647) (Gehring, n° 461). Breeden-Raedt, f. D4v° (‘Broad Advice’, 166–167).

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owed his life to a piece that still held a cannon “standing high above the gun port; seeing it at daybreak, he thought it was a person and spoke to it as such but received no reply. He therefore believed it to be a dead person, and was nally washed ashore with it, to the enormous amazement of the English, who came to the beach by the thousands, and dragged the cannon onto land as an eternal memorial.” Kuyter’s confusion is understandable. Melijn kept a cooler head, even after eighteen hours of bobbing in the waves on a piece of wreckage he shared with a few others.80 It stranded on a sandbank, which at ebb tide fortunately ran dry. From planks and other bits of otsam they then built a raft “and used so many shirts and other pieces of clothing for a sail that they managed to sail from the sandbank through a certain channel to the English mainland.”81 Most of the documents with which the opposition leaders hoped to clear their names in Holland were lost at sea, of course. Plunderers and beachcombers made off with the rest. In keeping with salvage rights they did not even spare the survivors. “Some people and beaver pelts had already washed up there, but the thieving English were too powerful for us and seized and made off with everything,” according to the report of Seth Verbrugge. After two days of searching, however, Jochem Pietersz managed to ll an entire box with the paper he shed out of the washed-up wreckage—enough to swing the verdict in his favor a few months later. From Bristol Kuyter and Melijn immediately wrote to New Amsterdam to report the disaster. The news arrived there in January, “which causes great sorrow because of widows and orphans and the great harm to our country.” The loss, according to Loockermans, was assessed at two tons of gold.82 Two years later the sinking of De Prinses was still cited by the representatives of the people of New Amsterdam as one of the chief causes of their misery.83 The reaction of the directors was predictable. Not until April 7, 1648, when all the ramications were clear, did they compose a tenpage letter informing the colony’s new director of their reactions.84

80 His report to the Heren XIX, undated (1659), in: NYHS, Misc. Mss., Meleyn papers (Gehring, n° 541). 81 Breeden-Raedt, f. E1r° (‘Broad Advice’, 167). 82 Govert Loockermans to Gillis Verbrugge c.s., May 27, 1648; NYHS, StuyvesantRutherford papers, 3:6 (Gehring, n° 368). 83 NAN, States General, 12564.30A (Vertooch, July 28, 1649). 84 NYSA, DCM, XI, 12; DRCHNY, XIV, 82–87; ER, I, 228–229; Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, I, 72–73.

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The WIC especially regretted the loss of the return load, whose value in the fatherland was estimated at no less than four tons of gold. The few beaver pelts that were rescued—probably thanks to the efforts of a crewmember who had lingered on the beach—were sold for 2 stivers and then sold on for a shilling. All the correspondence was said to be lost. In assessing the political situation in the colony, the directors clearly took their lead from Stuyvesant, who had made a special point of the chaos caused by Dominie Bogardus. In Stuyvesant’s view the minister was the person most responsible for the factionalism in the colony. The directors regretted “that the people have degenerated and are without discipline, for which the laxness of the deceased director and the minister’s neglect of his duties appear to be the main cause.” They saw to their regret “the disorder in church affairs, caused mainly by Reverend Bogardus”—applying to it the proverb “if the shepherd strays, the sheep will stray.” But “this person and others have been relieved of their responsibility.” For the directors, the prime duty of the minister was to guarantee, in harmony with the director, the moral and political unity of the colony. John Winthrop, the pious governor of Massachusetts, held a different view. For him the real culprit was not Bogardus but Kieft, and his violent death was the “observable hand of God against the Dutch in New Netherland.”85 The shipwreck was actually a trial by ordeal. When the church building was nally nished, Stuyvesant sent the bill to the WIC. The Gentlemen Directors were taken aback. Such a church was needed, of course, but it was much too costly. The colony could not yet afford such expenditures. Finally, the rescued exiles (Melijn, Kuyter, and others) protested their verdict. The directors assumed that scaal Van Dijck had goaded them into that action, out of the conviction that some of the directors would lend their support, but they considered them simply rebels against the lawful authorities. Isaac van Beeck and Jacob Pergens, who were then commissioners of New Netherland, even tried to prevent Kuyter and Melijn from seeking redress from the States.86 The States General, however, after receiving petitions from Kuyter and Melijn on February 7, April 9, and May 6, not only agreed to 85 John Winthrop, The history of New England from 1630 to 1649, ed. by James Savage (2 vols.; Boston 1825–1826), II, 316; J. Franklin Jameson (ed.), Original narratives of early American history, I (New York 1906), 138–140. 86 Breeden-Raedt, f. E1r° (‘Broad Advice’, 168).

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give the exiles a hearing but also declared their appeal admissible, suspended Stuyvesant’s evidently unjust sentence and gave Cornelis Melijn the necessary authority, plus an escort, to freely administer the property of the appellants in New Netherland and force Stuyvesant to back down.87 Both Kieft and Stuyvesant were censured for having treated Kuyter and Melijn like private rebels, while they had acted as representatives of the people. Meanwhile Stuyvesant was turning New Netherland into his own little kingdom. Like Kieft, he considered himself sovereign in the colony. But more than Kieft, he also claimed authority in ecclesiastical affairs, as if the Reformed church were a state church. He was an elder, but behaved like minister. For Stuyvesant church and state were sister institutions that had to support each other in establishing public order and Christian mores. He showed as much conviction in matters of Christian behavior as he did force in the governing of the state. During the sermon, the author of Breeden-Raedt writes angrily, “this man sighed in a way that could be heard through the whole church. Who would not have thought that this was a true Solomon, Abia, Asa, a desirable ruler?”88 In that respect the minister’s son Stuyvesant was consistent. Twenty years earlier, as a member of the Leeuwarden fraternity at Franeker university, he chose as his motto a quotation from John Chrysostom that conveys his rather haughty faith in God: “Fide Deo, dede tibi, difde patronis, difde patri et regibus. Soli de Deo, qui cum spes decit omnis, hominesque jam te deserunt, tunc tibit des est Domini” [ Trust in God, distrust yourself, distrust your patrons, your father, and the princes. Trust in God alone: when there is no more hope and all men forsake you, there is still faith in God].89 If Bogardus, who was equally uncompromising, had encountered Stuyvesant in New Netherland instead of Van Twiller and Kieft, things might have turned out quite differently. When, “after much trouble,” Melijn set foot in New Netherland again on New Year’s Day 1649, more than a year after the shipwreck, Stuyvesant was ready to arrest him once again. But he had not reckoned

87 NAN, States General, 4845, f. 328r°, 399r°, 401v°–403v° (February 7, April 9, 28 and 30, May 6, 1648); DRCHNY, XIV, 87 (May 19, 1648). The impartiality of the Gelderland representative Hendrick van der Capellen tot Rijsselt, rapporteur of this matter in the States General, may perhaps be questioned, since two years later he became a partner in Melijn’s patroonship. 88 Breeden-Raedt, f. E1v° (‘Broad Advice’, 169). 89 J. Visser (ed.), Album Collegii studiosorum ex Gymnasio Leovardiensi (1626–1668) (Franeker 1985), 27 (December 1629).

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with Lubbert Dinclagen, councilor and deputy director of the colony. In a previous chapter we have already seen that the loyal Company ofcial Dinclagen displayed a moral integrity that was denitely rare in the colony. The long road he had traveled in order to have his name cleared after his rst New Netherland conict had only strengthened that trait. Dinclagen refused to cooperate in such deance of the High and Mighty members of the States General. He managed to talk Stuyvesant out of his disastrous intentions. Two months later, on March 8, 1649, Stuyvesant—on the urging of Melijn, and undoubtedly of Dinclagen as well—called a meeting of the commonalty of New Amsterdam in the church. In front of more than 300 people Dinclagen stood up and reproached the director for settling affairs on his own without consulting his closest colleague. This left Stuyvesant standing alone. He could then no longer refuse to follow the normal procedures. A good week later, on March 16, the persons responsible for the sentence of Kuyter and Melijn were summoned, on order of the States General, to answer for their action. Dinclagen admitted that as a council member he had wrongfully agreed to the sentence but pleaded innocent on the grounds that he had been misled by Kieft: the documents of which Melijn had brought copies from the fatherland had been systematically suppressed by Kieft and his evil genius, secretary Cornelis van Tienhoven. Van Tienhoven himself, summoned a week later, was singled out as “the principal cause of the cruel, harmful, and even intentionally provoked war with the natives of New Netherland.”90 He managed no more in his own defense than a sardonic denial of the charges brought against him. Stuyvesant still tried to gain the support of Bogardus’s successor, Dominie Backerus, but the minister fearlessly followed the example of his predecessor, confronted Stuyvesant with his faults, and spurred him on to live a better life.91 How New Netherland fared from then on falls outside the scope of this book. A newly established advisory board called the Nine Men took part in the weekly council meetings in order to counterbalance the exorbitant power of the director, but Stuyvesant did not manage to rescue the strife-torn colony. On September 8, 1664 it was handed over to the English. New Amsterdam became New York.

90 NAN, States General, 12564.36, exh. February 10, 1652 (Memorandum of Adriaen van der Donck c.s., 1651). 91 Breeden-Raedt, f. F1r° (‘Broad Advice’, 178).

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The closing sentence of Hendrick Doedens’s report to Anthonie van Hilten about the shipwreck leaves a historian with a few tantalizing questions. People in Amsterdam were apparently surprised that the entire civil and ecclesiastical leadership of the colony was on board the return ship. What could possibly have happened in New Amsterdam? The survivors were asked to explain. Doedens’s informer must have replied that he did not understand the question. There was really nothing wrong in the colony. Had the controversies between the director, the minister, and the colonists become so routine that no one got excited about them anymore? Or had all the disagreements been smoothed over for the outside world? Did Kieft’s friends perhaps manage to isolate Melijn and give a positive slant to the reports about Kieft? It is true that the shipwreck made its victims selectively. Notarized statements made by survivors in Amsterdam to secure the rights of next of kin give us an idea of who managed to save themselves and who did not.92 It was not only the minister and the WIC ofcials who died, but also merchants like Claes Jansz Calff, ship’s ofcers such as captain Jan Claesz Bol and rst boatswain Jochem Jansz van Colbergh, as well as the widow of Dominicus Diaz from Curaçao, Anneken Fransdr with her two children, and a few craftsmen from New Amsterdam—the smith Jan Albertsz van Emden, mason Willem Pietersz of Bolsward, and tailor Hendrick Jansz, for example. Except for Melijn and Kuyter, who were imprisoned in the hold of the ship, all of those who survived were soldiers or passengers of lower social standing. In other words, a number of people were able to save themselves from the hold, but the cabin went down with all its occupants. This would have inuenced the reporting about New Netherland, for the soldiers certainly had nothing to gain from calling attention to the crimes they had committed either on Kieft’s orders or with his connivance. No, nothing special had happened in New Netherland.

92

GAA, NA, 1294, f. 173v°–221 (passim); 1574, f. 577; 1835, f. 527, 529; 2123, f. 425; 2186, f. 208.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

TAKING STOCK

Forty years—a short life by our standards. And yet one that followed its own trajectory, from beginning to end. A nished life? Who can say? It will in any case remain a construct of the biographer. Rembrandt van Rijn, born around the same time as Evert Willemsz, was at the zenith of his fame in 1647, the year of Dominie Bogardus’s death. But that did not prevent him from striking out in new directions in the good twenty years that remained for him. Further sifting of the source material about Bogardus would no doubt yield more evidence of the unity of a person through the years of his life, even in radically changing circumstances. It is neither possible nor necessary here to discuss all of Evert’s virtues and vices. The reader now has enough cards in his hand to arrive at an independent judgment. On two points, however, I wish to make an exception: Bogardus’s wrath and his excessive drinking. Starting with Kieft, and continuing right through his twentieth-century biographers, these two qualities have been so exclusively linked to his unpleasant character and personal failure that they have led to his historical disqualication as a pastor. By way of conclusion I will then draw attention to a thematic thread running through Evert Willemsz’s entire life, namely his pietism. This will give us a fresh perspective on the early history of New Netherland and on Dominie Bogardus’s unique place in its development.

Wrath and drunkenness Wrath is an emotion. How do we deal with an element in history that on rst sight seems so elusive? Evert’s youthful wrath against the sinful inhabitants of Woerden and his mature rage against the authorities of New Netherland, who with their closeness to his own life struck him as even more sinful, have in the rst place a ritual quality. Evert crept into the skin of the Old Testament prophets, and in some cases of Jesus himself, in order to denounce—as a person called by God—the evils that prevailed around him. Evert’s wrath was not merely functional,

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however. All indications are that he was also a short-tempered, choleric person. In the moral idiom of his time his anger was a genuine “passion.” Emotion, a much more analytical concept, is not synonymous with passion. But was his passion of wrath perhaps the culturally determined model of an emotion that Evert found available in his environment, and one that his personal make-up enabled him to use with both ease and skill? Ever since the pioneering work of Johan Huizinga and Lucien Febvre, mentality history has insisted on the importance of emotions as historical categories, but the rst impetus towards a more methodological approach came only in the 1980s from American social psychology. Carol and Peter Stearns in particular advocated a historical theory of emotions that recognizes the emotional economy as an important factor in the historical process.1 Their “emotionology” both identies emotional standards and offers guidelines for a responsible treatment of historical changes in the emotional economy, to the extent that they are expressed in concretely identiable emotions. The insight that such emotions are not universal psychological constants but are instead saturated with culture is gaining ground in psychology as well.2 Culture encroaches deeply on the emotional economy, imprinting the basic program and determining which forms of appraisal, motivation, and behavior are chronically accessible or inaccessible. It thus promotes a specic collective repertoire of options, which is anchored in the emotional disposition of the individual and in the social codes of speech, gesture, facial expression, and physical well-being. William Reddy has called this normative order for emotion the “emotional regime” of a given society in a particular time period.3 Gestures and facial expressions are eeting and leave few traces in history. And whatever we do nd is difcult to interpret, in spite of the visual rhetoric of early modern civility.4 Historians therefore typically take refuge in the verbal repertoire, whose codes they imagine to

1

Carol Z. Stearns & Peter N. Stearns, ‘Emotionology: Clarifying the history of emotions and emotional standards’, in: The American Historical Review 90 (1985), 814–836. 2 See, e.g.: B. Mesquita & N.H. Frijda, ‘Cultural variations in emotions: A review’, in: Psychological Bulletin 112 (1992), 179–204; Agneta H. Fischer, Emotion scripts: A study of the social and cognitive facets of emotions (Leiden 1991). 3 William M. Reddy, The navigation of feeling: A framework for the history of emotions (Cambridge 2001). 4 Herman Roodenburg, The eloquence of the body: Perspectives on gesture in the Dutch Republic (Zwolle 2004).

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be easy to crack. But in some cases sickness and health speak just as clearly, if not more so. The physical ailments that overcame Evert in September 1622 and January 1623 can certainly be viewed as forms of expression, not so much of physiological feelings as of subjective emotions.5 But we have not yet found the key to understanding their signicance. We can read about the physical changes Evert experienced, study elements of his use of language, and take note of his actions, but the social codes in which that repertoire was embedded (and with them our keys for interpretation) remain obscure, at least to the extent that they were not religious group codes. This is much less true of the way Dominie Bogardus expressed his feelings in New Amsterdam. His passion of wrath seems on rst sight to be an instance of uncontrolled emotion. The minister rants and raves and accuses his opponents of everything imaginable just in order to get his way—this message of Kieft’s philippic was taken over at face value by most later historians. Was his behavior also perceived as such in his own circle? Caution is necessary here. It would be naïve to take either Kieft or Bogardus literally. Just as the director was not the African monster to which Bogardus compared him in the pulpit, the minister was not the drunkard and quarrelmonger that Kieft portrayed in his indictment. The language of both men was rooted in a genre and a strategy. When Kieft accuses Bogardus of outbursts of rage, he is using an age-old tactic: he reduces the minister’s use of ofcial language to a personal failing and dismisses his criticism of the functioning of the colony by presenting it as a problem of personal psychology. He thus not only undercuts the minister’s argument but undermines his position of authority as well. It is even possible that Kieft, with his classical education, French past, and literary interest was a step ahead of Bogardus when it came to shaping his emotional life. Inuenced by the nascent classicist movement, he may have interpreted the passions in terms of honor and shame: his own wrath would then have been the answer to an open, undeserved insult by Bogardus, who in Kieft’s eyes had no reason whatsoever to be wrathful.6 For Bogardus the insult went further: it was directed not so much against his own person as against his Father, God himself. 5 For this distinction: H.M. Gardiner, et al., Feelings and emotions: A history of theories (Westport, Conn. 1970). 6 See for this evolution in the early modern Netherlands: J.W.H. Konst, Woedende wraakghierigheidt en vruchtelooze weeklachten: de hartstochten in de Nederlandse tragedie van de zeventiende eeuw (Utrecht 1993).

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Was Bogardus really as uncontrolled as Kieft made him appear? The pamphlet Breeden-Raedt, written by a supporter of Bogardus, gives the impression that he used the passion of wrath only when it was genuinely necessary, but that he then opened all the registers. In the events of 1622/23 Evert already showed himself to be a masterful moderator of his own interests in the public arena. By carefully dosing his expressions of emotion he managed to secure for himself a maximum of support in the various strata of Woerden society. The limits of that support had more to do with substantive issues than with psychological motives, more with confessional standpoints than with personal preferences. This brings us to an alternative hypothesis: rage and wrath were for Bogardus a legitimate instrument of his mission because they were welldened standard elements in the pietistic/Puritan emotional regime.7 Although at an early point this included the strongest possible emphasis on controlling one’s emotions in every sphere of life, wrath—however excessive it might seem—was expressly allowed because it helped preserve the proper relation between the interests of God and of man. It was much less a psychological failing than a social and cultural instrument in the service of orthodoxy.8 Where God had to be served, every measure was enlarged to His dimension. Evert’s wrath took its cue from the degree of divine intervention and was proportional to the punishment at hand. For Evert a cardinal sin thus became a situationbound cardinal virtue. Wrath belonged in the pulpit whenever sins or structural abuses in the colony cried out for God’s vengeance. If the sinners failed to attend church services, the minister felt justied in using wrath outside the pulpit as well. It is no real contradiction that Bogardus as a person evidently enjoyed having a drink with the sinners. It was not a matter of ethics, but of salvation. In the extreme circumstances of the frontier, wrath soon came to occupy a dominant position in the emotional repertoire of the group. It was no mere uke that Dominie Michaelius’s rst letter home was already bursting with rage. In a sense this also helps us unravel the misunderstanding between Dominie Bogardus and his opponents, scaal Dinclagen and director Kieft. Their emotions had a different origin and a different signicance from his. Dinclagen’s anger, however legitimate it may seem to us, was 7 A more sociological explanation of anger, limited to modern America, is given by Carol Z. Stearns & Peter N. Stearns, Anger: The struggle for emotional control in America’s history (Chicago 1986). 8 This interpretation already appears in Maria Sabina Bogardus Gray, A genealogical history of the ancestors and descendants of General Robert Bogardus (Boston 1927), 16–18.

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personal. It could actually take no other form, for the alternative of legal proceedings would have proved unsatisfactory for him as a judicial ofcial. Wrath was simply not a recognized form of expression in the emotional economy of a bailiff or a scaal, and certainly not in court. Similarly, the wrath of Kieft, who essentially appears as an individual without emotional control over himself and unequal to the problems of his function, was ill-suited to a Company director. This was not true of Bogardus, however. Having grown up in an environment that placed great emphasis on self-examination and self-control, he dealt with his emotions in a much more functional way. Although he, too, had little command over his temperament, he managed to use it effectively in his function: as a minister he had the right to personify the wrath of God in his behavior and his language. Did his opponents fail to recognize this? Bogardus in any case gave them a weapon to use against him. Kieft’s accusation that he had once been drunk in the pulpit may have been slander, but there can be little doubt that Bogardus enjoyed drinking, and at times went overboard. It is no simple matter to assess the meaning of excessive drinking in a colony where drunkenness was endemic. Much of the alcohol consumption was certainly a form of “constructive drinking,” a rite of aggregation, a symbolic form of fraternizing, and an effective aid in community formation.9 The sources show that every opportunity was seized for drinking festivities involving the entire community. But here, too, drunkenness in some circumstances, or in some persons, was already considered a sin of immoderation that betrayed a lack of self-control. In the minister it doubled the disgrace of his extreme anger. It acted as an aggravating circumstance. In April 1641 Kieft issued a decree forbidding the tapping of strong drink during the sermon.10 The rst thing that struck Dominie Megapolensis after assuming his new position in Rensselaerswijck was the excessive drinking of the ofcials. Dominie Backerus had a similar rst impression: seventeen taverns in the hamlet of New Amsterdam! Actually there were two community-binding rites in New Amsterdam, church attendance and drinking. They could not be combined, however, as we see from both Bogardus’s criticism of

9 Mary Douglas (ed.), Constructive drinking: Perspectives on drink from anthropology (Cambridge & Paris 1987). 10 NYHM, IV, 106 (April 11, 1641); A. Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk in Noord-Amerika 1624–1664 (2 vols., The Hague 1913), II, 100.

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Van Twiller and Kieft’s accusations against Bogardus. This explains why the rst act of the pious new director Stuyvesant was to forbid drinking during the church service.11 It was either one or the other: that was a matter of order. On this point we nd a clear inconsistency in Bogardus’s personality. His commitment to orderly religion and controlled behavior clashed with his love of the bottle. Actually, his reputation for intemperance was something he shared with many ministers, including some of considerable prominence. The poet Joost van den Vondel’s sharp satire on the red nose of the orthodox hairsplitter Reverend Jacobus Trigland enjoyed long-lasting popularity. A biographer should not smooth over this twist of character. At most he can point out that drunkenness could also have a second, positive signicance. It is the metaphor of euphoria, of rapture, of ecstasy. Evert Willemsz never recovered the ecstatic experience he had on the threshold of adulthood, at a prophetic moment in church history, in the religious ferment of Woerden. Was his drunkenness twenty years later, at a time of mounting conicts, strife, and responsibility, a substitute for that sense of mystical transport? Was he seeking some of the euphoria that had changed his life in September 1622 and January 1623? Given Bogardus’s difculties with his own passions, it is not surprising that his opponents soon came to view his constant buildup of potential wrath, both from the pulpit and in the community, as unworkable, no matter how legitimate his references to God. The emotional regime of the small colony was simply not equipped to deal with it. In this respect Bogardus clearly overplayed his hand. He could have tempered his message—but his personality was ill-suited to such temperance. It was all or nothing. The realization that he fell short in the matter of drinking may also have driven him to compensate on other points, thus creating a vicious circle from which he could not escape without help from his opponents. This would explain the drama of his last years. And perhaps the weariness with life and the preoccupation with death he hinted at in a sigh to Megapolensis.

11

NYHM, IV, 366–367 (May 31, 1647); Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk, II, 101, footnote 1.

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chapter sixteen Pietism

Pietism, the praxis pietatis, is perhaps the strongest thread that unites the adult Bogardus with young Evert Willemsz and, more generally, the colony of New Netherland with late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century Holland. We nd it in his relative Meusevoet, in the ministers of Woerden, and in his Amsterdam publisher. It was pivotal to Evert’s perception of his relationship with God, his task in the world, and the reality around him. But it also explains a great deal about the minister’s actions in New Netherland, his sense of self, and his understanding of his calling. Ultimately, what mattered in his image of the ideal colony was not the type of civil authority; nor was it the legal status, ethnic group, skin color, or even denomination of its inhabitants. There are no signs that Dominie Bogardus considered dissenters heretics. On the contrary, the remarks by the Jesuit Jogues about the climate in the colony indicate a peaceful coexistence, supported by the civil character of the basic rituals (church attendance, baptism, marriage), which were more a form of group conrmation than of confession of faith. Bogardus’s highest priority was a God-fearing life in the spirit of sanctication. And the Reformed church was the community best suited to nurture this ideal because of its position as the dominant church. He took the local community seriously, perhaps even more seriously than ecclesiastical precepts. This explains his struggle about taking communion. It is conceivable that the Reformed church, with its special political status, was for Bogardus more a precondition for a sanctied society than a means of salvation in itself. We would have to know how easily he dealt with the Lutheran background of his wife and stepchildren to get some notion of the relation between orthodoxy and orthopraxis in his religious life, and of the extent to which a basic Protestant ecumenism tempered his orthodox upbringing. There is an intriguing consistency in the way he distanced himself already in Woerden from ecclesiastical pretensions, opted out of academic theology in Leiden to study further on his own in a subordinate function, and, nally, in Manhattan remained loyal to the classis while nevertheless going his own way. Placing his conict with Kieft and his attitude towards the blacks in this perspective suddenly brings to light not only the close mental ties that still existed between New Netherland and the fatherland, but also the potential power of pietism as the binding agent of the Dutch

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population group in the New World—across the boundaries of religious differences. This was at least true before the regained peace (Munster in Westphalia, 1648) awakened new ambitions in the Reformed church and offered it new possibilities to anchor itself in society. Although Evert had grown up in a good Calvinist atmosphere, he strikes us neither in his youth nor during his ministry as a dogmatic quibbler. When he emphasized discipline, or a life pleasing to God, he did so in terms comprehensible to all Christians, and from his semi-civil position of authority as servant and guardian of public godliness, in the name of the WIC, not as the leader of a Reformed faction. In this light it is less surprising to nd Calvinist pietism ourishing a good half a century later in the colony, which had in the meantime come under English rule. Dominie Frelinghuysen, whose Reformed sermons were colored by his pietistic Lutheran background, is the best-known representative of this movement. James Tanis suggested that European pietism must have reached America already with the lay piety of the rst Dutch immigrants, who had been formed by the teachings of Teellinck, and he identied Perkins and Ames as the probable background inuence. That intuition now appears to be correct: Bogardus came from precisely this tradition.12 This means that the rst on Tanis’s list of pietistic ministers, Dominie Guilliam Bertholf (1656–1726) from the town of Sluis in Generality Flanders, who from 1694 onward served among the Hackensacks in New Jersey, had at least one predecessor in Dominie Bogardus. There is reason to assume that Backerus, his rather eccentric short-term successor, was of the same bent. The question can even be raised whether a rereading of the existing documents might lead to at least a partial closing of the gap between Bogardus and Bertholf. The answer to this question must be left to others. What this book does make possible, however, is a sketch of how early pietism developed on two points during Bogardus’s lifetime. The pietistic tradition in which Evert Willemsz found himself in 1622/23 was still largely shaped by lay piety. Although inspired by religious literature, it was not yet dominated by hierarchical relations. During Bogardus’s years in New Netherland those relations gradually became xed, both in the fatherland and in the colony. Bogardus’s part 12 James Tanis, Dutch Calvinistic piety in the Middle Colonies: A study in the life and theology of Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen (The Hague 1967); idem, ‘Reformed pietism in colonial America’, in: F. Ernest Stoefer (ed.), Continental pietism and early American Christianity (Grand Rapids, Mich. 1976), 34–73.

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in this development has emerged from our analyses of his conicts with Dinclagen and Kieft. The Reformed church was clericalizing; the Further Reformation gained an ecclesiastical foothold; a model piety developed in which the balance between lay initiative on the one hand and ecclesiastical articulation, approval, or legitimization on the other, slowly but surely tipped in favor of the latter. In twenty years’ time Bogardus developed from an underprivileged and recalcitrant young layman into a driven leader of a congregation and a pillar of society. His youthful pietism metamorphosed into orthodox re-and-brimstone sermons—still full of fervor and biblical inspiration and without respect of persons, but increasingly entangled in the contradictions that came with the unavoidable compromise between personal conviction, social position, and group interest. To fault Dominie Bogardus for deance of higher church authority—as Kieft hinted between the lines—would be overstating the case. Although contacts with the classis were scarce and slow, they show no sign whatsoever of rebellion, nor of distrust on the part of the classis. My impression is that Bogardus all his life, whether consciously or not, assumed a position at some distance from established authority: in the orphanage of Woerden, as a student in Leiden, as a comforter of the sick in Guinea, as a minister in the neglected colony of New Netherland. This gave him the necessary leeway to shape church discipline in accordance with his own ideas and ideals, as the truly faithful Dinclagen would experience. Even after acquiring a regular ofce, he never renounced his independent personality. When director Kieft plunged New Netherland into the war with the Indians, Bogardus was the right person to take him on: indomitable, headstrong, eloquent, but also gripped by ideals that could not be compromised, and, as God’s elect, never doubting that he was right. Randall Balmer has tried to explain the rapid onset of the Great Awakening, the rst wave of North American pietism at the beginning of the eighteenth century, in terms of class differences: the group conformity, rooted in material interests, of the established ministers’ clique as opposed to the highly personal piety kindled by political dissatisfaction among artisans and farmers after 1664.13 Rich ministers versus poor laypersons. The clergy, in this view, was alienated from

13 Randall H. Balmer, ‘The social roots of Dutch pietism in the Middle Colonies’, in: Church History 53 (1984), 187–199; idem, A perfect Babel of confusion: Dutch religion and English culture in the Middle Colonies (New York & Oxford 1989), 7.

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the people. And hovering in the background was the key question of whether the colony should guard its own ethnic and religious identity or slowly but surely conform to the English, with their different language, institutions, values, religion, and culture. Balmer goes so far as to project this alienation back onto Dominie Bogardus, who in 1638 married a rich widow with a “considerable estate.” Readers of this book will realize that his interpretation is based on fantasy. Even if Balmer’s thesis adequately describes the end of the century, it certainly does not apply to Bogardus’s time. On the other hand, it is possible that interests other than those of a strictly material nature fostered conformity among church leaders. What comes to mind here rst of all is the continued streamlining of the Reformed church itself and its increasingly rm lodging in society. From an assertive, dominant church it became the conservative, established church. This not only worked to the advantage of its religious interests; it also initiated a process of confessionalization in society. The dominant church had to give ground to competing churches. It became one denomination among others, with its own doctrine, ethics, and subculture. In New Amsterdam we see the rst harbingers of this development in the Calvinists’ vehement resistance to Lutheran group formation in the 1650s. In all this it remains extremely difcult to distinguish images from reality and to properly situate causes and effects. The virulent anticlericalism we nd in Francisus van den Enden’s Kort verhael van Nieuw Nederlants gelegentheit (Short account of the situation of New Netherland) of 1662 has very little to do with the actual circumstances and historical background of New Netherland.14 In that semi-utopian sketch for a new democratic society, the eternally quibbling sectarian minister is not the American pioneer but the schismatic, pedantic Dutch churchman. Van den Enden’s knowledge of New Netherland was only hearsay, and rather inaccurate besides. What interested him was the ideal image of an unspoiled indigenous society, as suggestively sketched in the booklets by Adriaen van der Donck and David Pietersz de Vries—an image he reshaped along anticlerical lines.

14 [ Franciscus van den Enden], Kort Verhael van Nieuw Nederlants Gelegentheit, Deughden, Natuerlijcke Voorrechten, en Byzondere bequaemheidt ter bevolkingh (s.l. [= Amsterdam] 1662). On early modern anticlericalism in Dutch Protestantism: Heinz Schilling, ‘Afkeer van domineesheerschappij: Ein neuzeitlicher Typus des Antiklerikalismus’, in: Peter A. Dykema & Heiko A. Oberman (ed.), Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Leiden, New York & Cologne 1993), 655–668.

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Was the orphan Evert Willemsz in Woerden merely a pawn in the religious game of his time? Was Dominie Bogardus in New Amsterdam no more than a pawn in the laborious building of the colony? It is important to realize that the images evoked by such questions are constructs of the spectator, with no more truth-value than images that arise from different perspectives and approaches. It is certainly possible to view Evert’s actions as simply a result of broader processes or as one element in a set of concrete circumstances. That was not the viewpoint adopted in this book, however. The attempt here has been to approach the man in terms of the autonomy of his self-image, his lifestyle, and his life project, and to uncover the motivations that inspired him. In short, to explore what he managed to make of his life, out of the cultural traditions available to him, in interaction with others, and under the pressure of changing circumstances. To follow him in his quest for himself. To discover how he fullled his God-given missions.

EPILOGUE

THE ANNEKE JANS STORY

A Tale of Two Fortunes Most women of the past owe their historical image to the identity of their husbands. Evert Willemsz’s wife Anneke Jans is one of the few exceptions. But her unusual status is of recent date and has little or no basis in the sources about Anneke’s life. As we have seen, those sources are scarce. Almost nothing is known about the life of women in early colonial New Amsterdam outside of economic aspects. Joyce Goodfriend’s exploratory study of the position of women in Reformed life of the colony includes not a single signicant fact from before 1650, and only incidental items that predate the handing over of the colony to the English in 1664.1 The social and cultural history of early New Amsterdam actually still begins with the English takeover. Everything we know of the Reformed church in the time of Bogardus and his successors points to an exclusively male authority structure. Women may of course have enjoyed considerable informal power, also in religious matters, but while the historical sources are mostly silent, the appreciation of their position depends very much on the premises assumed by the historian. In any case, as an unlettered woman Anneke Jans left no traces of possessing books or other reading material. Her rst will mentions only land, the second includes some silver as well, but there is unfortunately no inventory that could tell us if she owned books or prints. Treatises and paintings of the time make it easy to speculate about the specic role of the New Netherland woman as a virtuous mother, enterprising wife, or pious widow, but we have no sources that might even begin to offer verication. Moreover, society in New Netherland was probably quite different from society in the Dutch Republic: a variety of factors may have led to different emphases from those in the fatherland—which for a Norwegian like Anneke Jans was hardly a fatherland. Even her name conspires against her. “Anneke Jans” was one of the most common name combinations of the time.

1 Joyce D. Goodfriend, ‘Recovering the religious history of Dutch Reformed women in colonial New York’, in: De Halve Maen 64 (1991), 53–59.

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On the membership rolls of the Amsterdam Lutheran congregation from before the 1620s alone we nd dozens of women with that name, with only their place of birth and in some cases the name of their husband to distinguish them.2 As a source for historical research this is simply inadequate. Nevertheless, in the nineteenth century Anneke acquired a historical identity of her own, an image that was not totally derived from that of her preacher husband. She was credited not only with myriad descendants but with two tangible fortunes as well: land and money. In later centuries both were stubbornly claimed by her (imagined or real) descendants, and formed the basis of Anneke’s fame. The rst fortune was a farm on Manhattan that had been assigned to Roelof Jansz in 1636 and later became known as Dominee’s Bouwery (Minister’s Farm).3 The land was actually of poor quality, most of it consisting of rocky soil and marshland. The property was also difcult to protect from wild animals and Indian attacks. The information we have does not suggest a successful, permanent exploitation. Its value derived mainly from its close proximity to New York—and that, of course, was only after New York showed signs of becoming a large city, almost a century after Anneke’s death. Anneke left the farm to her joint heirs in 1663, with the obligation that 1000 guilders from it be paid out to the children of her rst marriage.4 The English governor Richard 2

GAA, PA 213 (Archive of the Lutheran Consistory), 507 (Membership book 1626–1659). 3 There exists a huge amount of literature on this issue, most of it of very questionable value from the point of view of historical correctness, but valuable for a cultural analysis of modern American society and its narratives. The following titles aptly summarize (part of ) the story: James W. Gerard, ‘Anneke Jans Bogardus and her farm’, in: Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 70 (1885), 836–849; Ruth Putnam, ‘Anneke Jans’ farm’, in: Historic New York 1:4 (1897), 119–158; George Olin Zabriskie, ‘Anneke Jans in fact and ction’, in: NYGBR 125 (1973), 65–72, 157–164; and William J. Parry, ‘The “Heirs of Anneke Jans Bogardus” versus Trinity Church: A chronicle of New York’s most prolonged legal dispute’, in: NYGBR 125 (1994), 67–73, 161–167, whose analysis I follow. Cf. also: George W. Schuyler, Colonial New York (New York 1885), II, 337–362; Maria Sabina Bogardus Gray, A genealogical history of the ancestors and descendants of General Robert Bogardus (Boston 1927), 59–74; David W. Bennett, ‘The famous Anneke Jans’, in: New York Folklore Society (Spring 1949), 31–51; Mary Lynn Spijkerman Parker, ‘Old myths never die, or: Myths and truths of Anneke Jans Bogardus’, in: Dutch Family Heritage Society Quarterly 7:3 (1994), 50–67. 4 Anneke Jans died in Beverwijck shortly before February 23, 1663, when her eldest son Jan Roelofs paid 8 guilders to the deacons for the pall; A.J.F. van Laer (ed.), ‘Deacons’ account books 1652–1664’, in: The Dutch Settlers Society of Albany Yearbook 8–9 (1932–34), 4; Janny Venema (ed.), Deacons’ accounts 1652–1674. First Dutch Reformed Church of Beverwyck/Albany, New York (Rockport, Maine 1998), 110; Janny Venema, Beverwijck: a Dutch village on the American frontier, 1652–1664 (Hilversum & Albany 2003), 472.

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Nicolls, who took ofce in 1664, conrmed the title of ownership in 1667. But the children preferred money to land. On March 9, 1670 (old style) the heirs sold the farm to Colonel Francis Lovelace, the new governor of New York. He merged it with the old company farm that bordered it on the south. However, Anneke’s heirs forgot to mention in the deed of sale their brother and half-brother Cornelis Bogardus, who had died four years earlier, or to take account of his wife and young son Cornelis Jr. That omission later became the legal grounds for contesting the transfer of the estate. Lovelace’s possessions subsequently came into the hands of the English crown, but in 1705 the double farm, then known as Queen’s Farm, was conveyed by letters patent to (the Anglican) Trinity Church in the name of Queen Ann. But because the deed of gift did not clearly indicate the northern and southern boundaries, doubts arose as to whether it actually included Dominee’s Bouwery, and more generally whether the donation had legal force. According to a more legendary version of the claim, Anneke Jans gave Trinity Church a 99-year lease on the land already before her death, and after the lease expired the church refused to return the property to the legal heirs. The fact that Trinity Church was founded only later is blithely brushed aside: “The Reverend Bogardus died on board ship while enroute to Holland to secure funds for the completion of the First Trinity Church in New Amsterdam, of which he laid the cornerstone when King William died. He [Bogardus] was buried beneath the church over the protest of the trustees.”5 In this version of the story Anneke Jans has become so dominant that Bogardus’s entire life is rewritten to support her claim. It is not clear how the memory of the property, which soon lost the name Dominee’s Bouwery, was handed down in the family. We know that in 1738 the heirs of Cornelis Evertsz Bogardus (1640–1666) lodged a protest against the sale with the wardens of Trinity Church, and that members of the Brouwer family, who traced their ancestry to Anneke Jans via Anna (Willemsdr) Bogardus Brouwer (1665-after 1704), led a rst suit against the leaseholders of the farm in the 1740s.6 Is it a coincidence that at precisely this moment a conict broke out between

5 The Ancient Dutch Sea Chest, in: Albany Institute of History and Art, Bogardus chest le. 6 The heirs of Cornelis Evertsz Bogardus appear in William Brower Bogardus, Dear ‘Cousin’: A charted genealogy of the descendants of Anneke Jans Bogardus (1605–1663) to the 5th generation—and of her sister, Marritje Jans (Wilmington, Ohio 1996), chart no. 8; those of Anna Bogardus Brouwer ibid., chart no. 7A.

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the Dutch and the English? The descendants of the Dutch colonists were beginning to lose their grip on their ethnic identity. Perhaps we can also view this case as a symbolic struggle for the rights of the Dutch faction and its culture. For the clan of heirs, the proceedings would then be an expression of resistance to the loss of their traditional Dutch culture. In any case, this lawsuit initiated 195 years of litigation, the longest court case in the history of the United States—and perhaps in the entire Western world. A decision against the heirs was reached in 1746, but that did not prevent them from starting a new series of legal actions, which in 1762 culminated in a verdict in favor of Trinity Church, declared in a public session of court. The heirs refused to give an inch, however. In 1773 Cornelius Cornelisz Bogardus (1726–1794), Anneke Jans’s great-great-grandson, fenced off a fallow piece of “his” land and began raising vegetables on it.7 Now the two sides resorted to physical violence. Injuries resulted and the budding enterprise was burned to the ground. The arsonists—spurred on by Trinity Church, people said—were punished by the judge with a ne of sixpence each, very likely the only returns the would-be millionaires ever managed to collect from the case. The Bogardus clan, which took the side of the Revolution in the American War of Independence, and thus against the Trinity Church faction with its English sympathies, had to ee from the English in 1776 and were able to return only in 1783. Immediately the skirmishes were resumed with all vehemence until 1786, when the New York State Court of Appeals again ruled against Cornelius C. Bogardus and his family and chased the heirs off the land. Meanwhile the city of New York had expanded right up to the borders of the property, and its value kept rising. No wonder the heirs would not think of relinquishing their claim. New proceedings brought rulings from higher and lower courts, at times even the State Court of Appeals, in 1807, 1830–35, 1831–32, 1833–36, 1845–47, 1852–1859, 1870, 1874–83, 1892. It is an irony of fate that in 1847 Trinity Church obtained permission to have the estate of Nathaniel Bogardus and his family sequestered because they had failed to pay

7

Ibid., chart no. 8B. See the broadsheet: To the public: As the claim of Cornelius C. Bogardus and others to lands at and adjoining to Dominis Hook, in the west ward of the city, has occasioned much speculation . . . (New York, June 12, 1775) [Microform: American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass. Early American imprints, rst series, no. 14510].

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1,104 dollars in court costs. As it turned out, there were no assets to seize, at least not within the borders of the state. More and more heirs became involved in the proceedings. By 1831 more than 140 descendants of Anneke Jans were contributing to the court costs. That number would increase exponentially in later decades. Already in the 1830s the historian Edward Corwin wrote of a full-blown “Anna excitement.”8 Anneke Jans’s Farm was now deliberately made into more than a family affair. It became the binding agent for a social group, the descendants of the “Dutch” founders of New York. One sign of this is the accusation by Reverend David Groesbeck recorded in 1870. With an appeal to the synod of Dort, the Dutch Reformed minister Groesbeck maintained that Trinity’s claim was invalid on theological as well as legal grounds. Trinity, an Anglican church, had paid salaries for the uttering of “blasphemies”; and the churchwardens of Trinity had permitted immoral acts on the territory of the Farm (i.e., reprisals against the Bogardus clan), thus forfeiting the ecclesiastical institution’s right to the legal title.9 Meanwhile the descendants found new ammunition for their cause. The story started circulating that Anneke Jans was of royal blood (more about this later) and that her ancestors had deposited money on various European bank accounts—sums that could be paid out, along with the fabulous accumulated interest, to Anneke’s descendants in the seventh generation. That generation had now appeared, more than two hundred years after Anneke’s death. The rst Anneke Jans association was founded in 1867. Various others followed, some on the initiative of lawyers who promised the heirs immense wealth and may have realized something of the sort for themselves. An Anneke Jans Bogardus Literary Association, founded by the lawyer Clinton Roosevelt in 1892, numbered 640 members who paid $50 each, which created a working capital of $32,000. The Anneke Jans Heirs Association (1896) published its own journal, The Anneke Jans Record, which attempted to unmask false heirs with forged genealogies as fortune hunters.10

8 Charles E. Corwin, A manual of the Reformed Church in America ( formerly Reformed Protestant Dutch Church) 1628–1922 (5th ed., New York 1922), 332. Details in William J. Parry, ‘A family feud: The Anneke Jans claimants in 1831’, in: NYGBR 126 (1995), 105–107. 9 The New York Times, December 21, 1870, pp. 2–3. 10 Parker, ‘Old myths never die’, 51.

Fig. 44. Leaet by Mrs. E. Kepler for the promotion of the interests of the Anneke Jans Heirs, showing the claimed extension of Anneke Jans Estate on Manhattan, late 19th century. [Courtesy of William B. Bogardus of Wilmington, Ohio].

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The claims kept increasing as well. A reading error led to the misconception that the size of the property was 192 acres instead of the 62 acres (31 morgen) reported in Stuyvesant’s debenture of 1654. The northern border of the land thus shifted from Canal Street to Christopher Street, bringing all of Greenwich Village within the boundaries of the original farm. Finally, the 500 acres in Harlem known as the Dutch Farm were claimed as well. The various interest groups now joined forces. The old John H. Fonda, founder of the Union Associates of Heirs of Harlem, Anneke Jans Bogardus, Edwards and Webber Estates (1896), fought tooth and nail for years to acquire the right to the fortune he had dreamed of since childhood. One of his lawyers, Willis T. Gridley, was expelled from the bar in 1917 for milking large sums of money from his clients while he knew there was absolutely no chance of winning the case, could offer no new information, and did not even propose a strategy that might bring some degree of success. Some time before that the judges had in fact declared unanimously that the claim was barred by the statute of limitation, as the Bogardus heirs had waited 75 years to assert their rights. In 1923 Gridley founded a new, national association in Grand Rapids, Michigan that eventually attracted 75,000 members: The Order of the Advocates of Justice for the Descendants of Anneke Jans Bogardus. Members contributed $50 for research and the publication of a book about their rights, plus a monthly membership fee. In 1929 Gridley was found guilty of fraud in this matter and sentenced to ve years in prison. The verdict was upheld in appeal, but in the meantime he had already managed to publish an expensive book under the prophetic title Trinity! Break Ye My Commandments?11 Numerous other associations of heirs were founded all over the United States in those years, always with the hope of cashing in on the land that by then was worth millions. The last verdict was pronounced by the United States Supreme Court on October 21, 1935: it recognized Trinity Church’s right to the land without limitation, leaving no legal grounds for new proceedings. This is not to say that hope is no longer alive in some quarters, or that shrewd lawyers or pseudo-genealogists are not still waiting their chance. A few minutes of Internet surng makes that quite clear.

11 Willis Timothy Gridley, Trinity! Break Ye My Commandments? (Grand Rapids, Mich. 1930).

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In present-day New York it is still possible to daydream briey about Dominee’s Bouwery. The acreage was completely swallowed up in the city expansion of the early nineteenth century, but one small open spot has remained, where the few scraggly trees can, with considerable good will, pass for descendants of Bogaert’s orchard. The triangular patch of green between dreary warehouses at the intersection of Duane Street and Hudson Street bears the pompous name Duane Park. In 1795 the city of New York bought it for ve dollars from Trinity Church for use by the public. “This park is the last remnant of greensward of the Annetje Jans farm,” the detailed text proclaims on the plaque that a few years ago replaced the large stone marker from 1940 inscribed with the history of the property. Was the multitalented descendant James Bogardus (1800–1874)—inventor of the postage stamp engraving machine and the cast iron building frame, and thus forefather of both modern postal communication and skyscrapers—aware of the coincidence when in 1847 he built his famed cast iron works in Duane Street?12 Just a few steps away from the park New York has honored him with a “James Bogardus Triangle.”

Of royal descent Besides the hopeful stories about Anneke’s legacy on Manhattan, a genuine myth was also woven around her person. In all the many versions the basic story line is the same.13 Thomas Wikoff’s version begins very romantically: “Anneke, so tradition tells us, was born in the King’s mansion, surrounded by Royalty, and she grew and was educated amid such surroundings, but being a lover of nature, and all out of doors, she became enamored of an agriculturalist named Jan Roeloff Roeloffson,

12 Dictionary of American Biography, II (1929), 407–408; American National Biography, III (1999), 105–107. 13 John Reynolds Totten, ‘Anneke Jans (1607–8?-1663) and her two husbands, Roelof Jans (or Jansen) and Rev. (Domine) Everardus Bogardus and their descendants to the third generation inclusive’, in: NYGBR 56:3 (1925), 201–243, here 202–203; the same, ‘Anneke Jans-Bogardus (1599–1663) and her possible blood connection with the Sybrant, Selyns and Webber families in New Netherland’, in: NYGBR 57 (1926), 11–54, 119–142. Conclusive refutations of the myth by George Olin Zabriskie, ‘The founding families of New Netherland. Nos. 5 and 6: The Roelefs and Bogardus families’, in: De Halve Maen 47:3 (1972), 7; and by E. Virginia (Webber) Hunt, The Dutch Webbers of Indiana and Illinois (Galena, Ill. 1977; 2d ed. 1986), who quotes the myth in a very charming version of 1938 (p. V).

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Fig. 45. Inscription in memory of Anneke Jans and Everardus Bogardus on the 1940 memorial column in Duane Park, Tribeca, Lower Manhattan (now replaced by a memorial tablet). [Photograph by the author, 1993].

and in due time they were married . . . .”14 According to the standard structure of the story Anneke Jans was born in the royal palace in The Hague in 1605, as the daughter of Wolfert (or Jan) Webber and Anna of Orange. This Anna was the child of a secret marriage of William, ninth (or third, or tenth) Prince of Orange, known as the Silent, “King of Holland.” Opinions differ as to the identity of Anna’s mother. Some versions mention William’s second wife, Anna of Saxony, others a Lady Annetke Wallace of Haarlem. In the palace William’s granddaughter Anneke grew in wisdom and stature under the supervision of her grandfather, the king. But in 1623 she did something that displeased William. She married a person of lower birth, the commoner Roelof Jansz, a Dutch farmer or gardener of good repute (or, in other versions,

14 Thomas Bentley Wikoff, Anneke Jans Bogardus and her New Amsterdam estate, past & present (2 vols., Indianapolis, Ind. 1924–25), I, 35.

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a courageous and renowned army ofcer) but from the wrong social background. Anneke was expelled from the palace by her grandfather. She ed with Roelof to America, where she managed to acquire large tracts of land. Anneke’s progeny were not disinherited, however. King William placed Anneke’s inheritance in a bank or gave it in trust to the Amsterdam Orphan Chamber. Only in the seventh generation could it be paid out to her descendants. Persons who believed they belonged to that group formed associations in order to assert their rights. “Those living heirs are the seventh generation of descendants, also heirs to the estates which Prince Wolfert of Holland, father of Anneke Jans, left to the seventh generation of her descendants. The estate is located in Dutch Borneo and Fiji Islands, and is said to be worth about $10,000,000”—one heiress maintained.15 Besides that amazing property in distant Asia, the Bank of Holland, as the successor to the Amsterdam Orphan Chamber, was said to administer a sum of $80,000,000 for the heirs. Around 1872 Israel Bogardus traveled from New York to Amsterdam to collect the money. He set out completely unprepared and expected the guardians to receive him like a long-lost son. He was deeply disappointed. The Hollanders turned out to be dour, suspicious, and not at all forthcoming; the documents were illegible (at least for him) and the legal system of Holland unfathomable. Israel returned empty-handed and complained bitterly about the mother country.16 The core of this myth goes back at least to the third quarter of the nineteenth century but possibly even further. As early as 1867 it prompted the founding of the Anneke Jans Association in New York, which aimed to nd and/or claim the two inheritances. In 1874 the Ancestral Chart of the Anneke Jans Bogardus and Webber Families was published in Philadelphia, with a stamp of authenticity by notary Chas. H. Steelman. The probability of the story is supported mainly by genealogical arguments, but ones that play creatively with homonymy, naming traditions, and more generally the lacunae and uncertainties in the old sources. There are three main variants of the myth of Anneke’s lineage. In all of them William the Silent is credited with two children from his secret marriage, but their names differ. In the rst version

15 The Ancient Dutch Sea Chest, in: Albany Institute of History and Art, Bogardus chest le. 16 Parker, ‘Old myths never die’, 52.

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they are called Sarah and Wolfert Webber.17 According to The Van Horn Family of Francis Marvin (1929), Wolfert was the fourth king of Holland. He married the midwife Tryntje Jonas, who gave birth to a daughter Anneke; one of the children from Anneke’s second marriage, with Reverend Bogardus, was a son Willem. Sara Webber was wed to a certain Jan Sybrant, and their granddaughter Wyntje Sybrants married this Willem Bogardus, the son of Anneke. This genealogical construction offered room for a new narrative element, one that proved the myth was believed already in the rst generations. Wyntje Sybrants, who was indeed the rst wife of Evert’s oldest son Willem Bogardus, disappeared from the sight of early twentiethcentury historians in 1666. The American fortune hunters concluded that she left for Holland in that year to inquire with the bank or the Orphan Chamber into the Webber inheritance and to collect the money. According to some she died soon after that in the fatherland; others correctly pointed out that Willem Bogardus divorced her on April 5, 1669, shortly before his second marriage.18 In the second version of the lineage, William of Orange’s son was not called Wolfert but Jan (which explains the name Anneke Jans), and Wolfert was not Anneke’s father but her brother. A third version had Wolfert marrying a certain Annetge Coch, daughter of Hendrick Coch and Niesgen Selijns, from Amsterdam, from whom more families of that name descended (including that of Reverend Henricus Selijns, who actually was a minister in Breuckelen and spent the years 1682 to 1701 in New York). In this version, too, Wolfert Webber had both a son Wolfert and a daughter Anneke ( Jans) Webber. Insight into the origin of this myth could only be gained through a reconstruction of all the literature on the subject, but that falls outside the scope of this book. The myth consists of separate components, each of which contains some element of truth. There were, for example, persons by the name of Wolfert Webber and Annetgen Cocks who married in Amsterdam in 1600; the parents of Annetgen Cocks are also reported correctly.19 Wine seller Wolfert must have been well off, for he invested no less than 2,300 guilders in WIC shares.20 His son Wolfert Webber Junior married Annetje Wallis (Lady Annetke Wallace!) 17 18 19 20

Wikoff, Anneke Jans Bogardus, I, 35–36. Totten, ‘Anneke Jans’, 209, 215–216. Zabriskie, ‘The founding families’, in: De Halve Maen 48:1 (1973), 15. NAN, OWIC, 18*, f. 25.

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in 1630 and later settled in New Netherland; descendants with his name can still be found in New York today. And Hendrick Cock was indeed the maternal great-grandfather of Reverend Selijns.21 The name of Wyntje Sybrants’s father, recorded in a baptismal register as Sybrant Jansen, also documents her place in the lineage of a Sara Webber. But a merging of the two lineages in the Webbers remains a speculative construction, while the Webber/Orange connection—if we can believe Wikoff—goes back to an “ages old tradition in the Webber family.” That construction, however, is precisely the intriguing element of the myth. In a sense it came about through the autonomous dynamics of freewheeling genealogical research, which fails to see that the probability of such constructions relies heavily on implicit assumptions with regard to the social backgrounds of the persons and families involved. Such research, suggesting that kings quite naturally marry midwives, in fact shows no awareness whatsoever of the strength of social ties and social hierarchy in a class society. It betrays a need for roots in the Old World, a dream of inherited nobility mixed with moneyed aristocracy. One fortune was simply not enough for the heirs. Besides Anneke’s own property, that of her grandfather could be tracked down as well. And what a grandfather he was! And what property! In 1924 its value was estimated at several million dollars. There are symbolic as well as genealogical elements in the story. Where, for example, does the reference to the seventh generation come from? The opportunism of the late nineteenth-century fortune hunters here made eager use of a religious rationale. Seven, as the number of fullness and perfection, plays a prominent role in many books of the Bible, but especially in Revelation: seven churches, seven spirits, seven stars, seven seals, seven trumpets, etc. The breaking of the seventh seal ushered in the Last Days (Rev. 8:1). And just as the seventh day is the Sabbath, the day of rest, William the Silent’s wrath could be put to rest only in the seventh generation. A myth seldom stands alone. Eventually Anneke Jans’s rst husband also beneted from the steady enhancement of her image. On the map of Nicolaus Jansz Visscher that was appended to Van der Donck’s Beschryvinge van Nieuw-Nederlant in 1656, two-thirds of the way between New Amsterdam and Rensselaerswijck we already nd a small tributary

21 A. Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk in Noord-Amerika 1624–1664 (2 vols., The Hague 1913), I, 206.

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of the Hudson with the name “Roeloff Ianssoons Kill.” That name also appears in documents from 1680 and 1683.22 Even today it is referred to locally as “Roeliff Jansen Kill” (commonly shortened to Roe Jan). The origin of that name was a riddle to the later inhabitants of the area. There is no reason whatsoever to assume that this is a reference to Anneke Jans’s rst husband. There were, in fact, various persons with the name of Roeloff Jansz living in New Netherland after his time. One of them, mentioned in 1654 as a trader in Beverwijck, was perhaps Roelof Jansz Haes, the Norwegian mentioned in an earlier chapter who must have arrived in 1643 at the age of 20.23 It is far from certain that Roelof Jansz of Masterlandt, who had his hands full running De Laetsburch, had anything to do with a creek more than 50 miles downstream. But the historical imagination cannot live with lacunae. The fame that Anneke Jans enjoyed as a founding mother from the nineteenth century onward radiated out onto her husband, and a legend grew up around fragments of historical facts. Roeloff, as an alderman of Rensselaerswijck, had to travel one winter to New Amsterdam. On the return trip his boat became icebound, and help arrived only three weeks later. The crew and passengers passed the time exploring the land and befriending the local Indians. A creek they discovered was given the name of the ofcial on board, alderman Roelof Jansz. An operetta entitled Roeliff’s Dream, performed in the local Roe Jan school in 1933, with libretto and music by Alexander Bloch and his spouse, portrays Roelof as a founding father to whom the entire history of the region was revealed in a dream.24

Property and progeny The myth of Anneke Jans is not unique. Stories about titles cunningly suppressed and fortunes waiting to be claimed by defrauded

22 James Polk, ‘The Life of Rouliff Jansen’, in: A History of the Roeliff Jansen Area [Publication no. 1, The Roeliff Jansen Historical Society] (Lakeville, Conn. 1975), 4–10. 23 NYHM, II, 116, 174–175 (April 16, and November 3, 1643); LP, 23, no. GG 75 ( July 6, 1643); Donna Merwick, Possessing Albany 1630–1710: The Dutch and English experiences (Cambridge 1990), 85. 24 A photo of the cast in seventeenth-century outt in: Polk, ‘The Life of Rouliff Jansen’, 4.

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but undaunted heirs abounded in the nineteenth century.25 The most famous case was that of the Drake Heirs, descendants of the English explorer Sir Francis Drake (ca. 1540–1596), who claimed the entire state of California as their rightful property. Is there perhaps a connection here with the Gothic novel (ca. 1765–1825), where such fantasies commonly appeared as narrative motifs?26 As the shock effect of this literature wore off and its popularity declined, the motifs began to lead a life of their own, shaping countless traditions and legends. Particularly in the second half of the nineteenth century various lawsuits gained wide public attention as heirs, rightful or otherwise, who considered themselves (or rather their ancestors) cheated out of old inheritances, brought more or less reliable genealogies and dubious lawyers to bear on their case. The Netherlands was not exempt from this trend. The Genealogisch Maandblad (Genealogical Monthly), edited by the Hague lawyer H.J. Mosselmans, pointed out in its rst issue, April 1878, no less than 35 interesting inheritances that could be contested by heirs. Although these were all actual inheritances, the claims themselves belong more to the narrative genre. The legal and genealogical arguments generally contain so many misconceptions, misunderstandings, anachronisms, and odd twists of reasoning that we can view them as typical representatives of the genre “family story.” A few of those stories have a structure comparable to that of the Anneke Jans legend. The best-known Dutch story is of the ship owner’s daughter Neeltje Pater of Broek in Waterland (a village north of Amsterdam), who died childless.27 A series of inheritances from branches of her family that had died out left her an immensely wealthy widow, with an estate valued at more than four million guilders at her death in 1789. In that same year the inheritance was settled and paid out to the two rightful heirs, relatives in the eighth degree. However, an estate of that size whets appetites, and three years later, when one of the two heirs died, a few collateral relatives were already ling lawsuits. Inheritance law probably gave them no leg to stand on, but for the sake of peace a settlement

25 For other Dutch fortunes claimed by Americans, see Parker, ‘Old myths never die’, 60–61. 26 Cf. Mario Praz, The romantic agony (2d ed., London & New York 1970). 27 Joch. Westerveld & Carl Pater, De erfenis van vrouwe ‘Neeltje Pater’, Wed. Corn. Corns. Schoon (Amsterdam 1938); E.Th.R. Unger, ‘De vererving van de nalatenschap van Neeltje Pater’, in: Jaarboek van het Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie 40 (1986), 235–256; Japke-D. Bouma, ‘De mythe van de schat van Neeltje Pater. Het geld, de erfgenamen en de fortuinjagers’, in: Jaarboek voor Vrouwengeschiedenis 17 (1997), 51–54.

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was reached granting the plaintiff a share in the inheritance. Before long rumor had it that there were bank accounts in England containing fabulous sums of money which had been kept out of the inventory and the deed of partition, sums which would still have to be paid out to those who could prove that they were lawful heirs. Neeltje did in fact have assets amounting to 58,500 pounds sterling (valued at more than 600,000 guilders) in English stocks and bank accounts, but they had been duly paid out to the two heirs. In the years 1880–1900 supposed heirs led lawsuits for an inheritance that by then would have increased to a few hundred million guilders. In 1935 the Neeltje Pater Association was founded for the purpose of investigating the rights, with a newsletter Ons recht (Our Right). Three years later it came to the conclusion that those rights were nonexistent. Nevertheless, in 1969, and again at a Pater family reunion in March 1985, there was talk of twenty billion guilders. In contrast to her husband, a dreamy poet who sauntered through the village “in felt slippers with silver buckles studded with diamonds,” Neeltje appears in these stories as the strong woman from the Bible (Prov. 31: 10–31). Her ships “sailed the seven seas. She was one of the driving forces behind the East India Company . . . . Her captains brought treasures home with them.” The role reversal is part of a legitimation strategy. Neeltje ruled the roost and laid down the law as she saw t. She was said to have personally dumped tons of gold into the harbor of Broek. It was her doing that only a small part of the inheritance was paid out in 1789: 19 sailing ships and 19 Amsterdam warehouses were not included in the inheritance, and family quarrels led Neeltje to deposit seven (!) million guilders in the Bank of England and decide that the heirs could only be paid out seventy (!) years after her death. Her will would have settled the matter once and for all, but she had taken it with her into her grave. Meanwhile notaries had falsied and embezzled documents, with the connivance of “a number of prominent Dutchmen” who had misappropriated the inheritance. “I know that at court there are various noble families who still aunt the treasures and jewels of Neeltje,” one of the would-be heirs claimed. “Queen Wilhelmina even advised us to let the matter rest. She, too, was afraid of scandal at court.” A competing Paater family (with two a’s) was even said to have replaced Neeltje’s gravestone with one that spelled her family name like their own in order to document their claim. Finally, the Bank of England allegedly appealed to bank secrecy, which meant the existence of the account (and the treasure) could not be proved.

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Despite the striking parallels with the Anneke Jans myth there was one important difference. While Neeltje Pater was truly wealthy, Anneke Jans owned almost nothing. The whole idea of her fortune was itself based on the myth of her royal descent. For decades the double myth around Anneke stimulated a fantastic production of argumentation and “evidence”: pamphlets, family trees, and royal bloodlines—a whole literature of family testimony in which descendants or supposed heirs more or less loudly publicized their rights or at least implicitly made them known. Dozens of associations were founded to identify heirs, prove the justness of their claims or limit their numbers. Countless “non-heirs” descended from “non-children” of Anneke Jans rallied to the cause. Lured by the prospect of inheritance, Blandina Bleecker Dudley, for example, had an Anneke Jans monument erected in the Rural Cemetery of Albany in memory of Charles E. Dudley, mayor of Albany and senator from the state of New York; the inscription falsely states that the family in question descended from Anneke Jans, and even that her remains are buried there.28 Endless numbers of family trees were drawn and claims asserted for other non-children of Anneke Jans or Tryn Roelofs as well. With barely concealed relish a new generation of genealogists has made short shrift of those efforts. All this attention sent the fame of Anneke Jans soaring to unprecedented heights. An important factor here was of course her large progeny from both husbands. A cautious estimate allows for at least 350,000 American descendants of Anneke Jans through either the male or the female line.29 A century ago there was already talk of 9,639,000 descendants—a demographic improbability, for in that case each descendant for eight generations running would have had to produce seven or eight surviving children.30 The gure does, however, give an idea of the immense size of Anneke’s progeny, the power of the lobby, and the ease with which the plea of a family could become the cause of an entire ethnic group. In Pioneer mothers of America (1912) the entire fourth chapter is devoted to Anneke Jans, who certainly deserves the label of a demographic

28 Henry P. Phelps, The Albany Rural Cemetery: Its beauties, its memories (Albany, 1903), 185–186; Zabriskie, ‘The founding families’, in: De Halve Maen 48:1 (1973), 11–12; Bogardus, Dear “Cousin”, 35. 29 Estimate communicated by William B. Bogardus (Anneke Jans and Everardus Bogardus Descendants Association), in Wilmington (Ohio). 30 New York Tribune, March 8, 1896.

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Fig. 46. Memorial tablet on the putative site of the house in which Anneke Jans died, 63 State Street at Albany. [Photograph by the author].

pioneer.31 In a popular collection of silver teaspoons brought on the market around 1890, she shared the honor of a commemorative spoon with only Pieter Stuyvesant, William Penn, and General Sherman of Civil War fame.32 In the Encyclopedia Americana of 1928 Dominie Bogardus is consequently reduced to little more than “the husband of Anneke Jans.” John Evjen made the laconic but pointed comment that Anneke’s reputation rests entirely on “property and progeny.”33 The extent to which she played a role in them herself remains a blend of surmise, sketchy inference, and scant facts, thickened with attribution and interpretation—in short, faction. Consequently, biographical dictionaries of

31 Harry Clinton Green & Mary Walcott Green, The pioneer mothers of America (3 vols.; New York 1912), I, 155–198. 32 Anton Hardt, Souvenir spoons of the 90’s, as pictured and described in ‘The Jeweler’s Circular’ and the James Catalogue in 1891 (New York 1962), 111, 243. 33 John O. Evjen, Scandinavian immigrants in New York, 1630–1674 (Minneapolis 1916; repr. Baltimore 1972), 99.

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postwar American feminists, based entirely on personal achievement, devote no space to her.34 It was no accident that so much emphasis was placed on her motherhood and the treasures she had supposedly accumulated. The myth speaks as clearly about her undeserved success as the legend does about her deserved fortune. In the expansive years following the American Civil War, this immigrant of lowly background and mother of many children, with her pious husband and middleclass values, could serve as the prototype of the successful American woman and the exemplary devout matriarch—two powerful images with which every American woman could identify and for which she would be willing to ght.35

Crazy Annie Anyone today who goes from the nancial district of Manhattan to the historical Museum of the City of New York and has the chance to study the model of New Amsterdam will be overwhelmed by a sense of alienation. A greater contrast is hardly imaginable between the rural town of Pieter Stuyvesant, with its jumble of miniature houses and unpaved roads, and the crowded skyline of present-day Manhattan. Nothing at all is left of seventeenth-century New Amsterdam, except perhaps a few shards in an archeological display case, unsifted refuse under the foundations of skyscrapers, and remnants yet to be discovered in undisturbed patches of ground at the edge of the district. Several large city res destroyed almost everything, and the rest was wiped out by the frenzy of construction that began in the late nineteenth century. The few remaining colonial buildings date from the English period. The American illustrator of children’s books Pieter Spier used this contrast as the point of departure for one of his books. Pieter Edward Spier, born in Amsterdam in 1927 as the son of the Dutch artist Jo Spier (1900–1978), came to the United States in

34 Because of her symbolic capital she still gures in the Dutch Digital Women’s Lexicon, ed. by Els Kloek: www.inghist.nl/Onderzoek/Projecten/DVN/lemmata/data/ jans [22/11/2004]. 35 However, the Anneke Jans story, with its truly American features, does not t well into the Holland Mania, a movement to recover the Dutch heritage for American identity in the late nineteenth century, analyzed by Annette Stott, Holland Mania: The unknown Dutch period in American art and culture (Woodstock, NY 1998).

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1951.36 The highly detailed illustrations in his books for children of various ages include a sprinkling of archaic elements often reminiscent of the seventeenth century—probably allusions he had absorbed in his youth. Spier’s most famous book, the prize-winning Noah’s ark (1977), begins with a poem by the seventeenth-century Dutch minister Jacobus Revius (1586–1658), a contemporary of Bogardus. His books invite leisurely browsing and offer just enough historical otherness to make them exciting while keeping the overall picture recognizable. The story of Hendrika, for example, The Cow Who Fell in the Canal, takes place in an old North Holland landscape and a ctional town full of canals and old Dutch gables—a town that could only be Alkmaar. The Legend of New Amsterdam, a children’s book published in New York in 1979, is a perfect example of Peter Spier’s work and offers an original solution to the problem of continuity between the old and new images of New York City. The story takes place in 1660, thirty-ve years after the founding of New Amsterdam. Following a detailed, panoramic tour of the town, full of visual delights for young readers, the actual plot begins in the second half of the book. Even more fun for the children of New Amsterdam than the weekly market, the annual fair, or the St. Nicholas celebration was their pastime of teasing Crazy Annie. Her real name was Annetje Jans Bogardus, a widow who lived in a small, run-down house surrounded by a neglected garden, close to the water’s edge. Her husband had been killed by the Indians in 1651, and ever since that dreadful day she had not been the same. The Honorable West India Company paid her a small pension . . . . She was rather frightening to look at, with her unkempt hair and tattered, worn-out clothes. Children followed her wherever she went, shouting “Witch! Witch! Witch!” or repeating over and over again in something vaguely resembling a melody, “Cra-zy An-nie, Cra-zy An-nie!”

A little further on in the book we nd half of the gravestone of her husband, William Bogardus, native of Go[uda?], beside her own stone, which tells us she was born in Alkmaar in the louwmaand ( January) 1591 and died in 1668. For years before her death she was pestered by the children of New Amsterdam because she kept staring at the sky. She “would repeat with great insistence ‘People and stone! PEOPLE AND STONE!’, pointing a skinny arm at the empty sky and cry, ‘Look! Can’t 36 Janet D. Chenery, ‘Peter Spier’, in: The Horn Book Magazine 54:4 (1978), 379–381; Anne Commire (ed.), Something about the author: Facts and pictures about authors and illustrators of books for young people, vol. 54 (Detroit 1989), 119–134.

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Fig. 47. Anneke Jans prophesying the future of Manhattan. Drawing by Peter Spier, The Legend of New Amsterdam (New York, 1979). [Courtesy of Peter Spier, Shoreham, New York].

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you see? People and stone!’ ” Was she really as crazy as the children thought? The book ends with a drawing of present-day Manhattan, full of towering skyscrapers, with stones and people higher up than anyone in the seventeenth century could have imagined. For persons acquainted with the early history of Anneke Jans’s second husband, Evert Willemsz Bogardus, the image of Anneke as a prophetess comes as a complete surprise. Did the artist’s research turn up previously unknown material suggesting that Anneke had specic gifts? Or did he perhaps transfer the visionary character of Evert Willemsz—whom he might have known about from a short report in De Halve Maen, the journal of the Holland Society of New York—to the woman who later became Evert’s wife?37 I contacted Pieter Spier about this, who replied by return mail. “The little story about Crazy Annie is 100% a product of my own imagination, although the names in the book really existed.” He added: “When my book came out, I received several angry phone calls from descendants of Anneke Jans who were not amused by the story.” One of them threatened to sue him for damages, but nothing ever came of that—no lawyer would have wanted to take on a case about a children’s book with so little documentary evidence. However, Pieter Spier concluded, “not long after that I received a late-night phone call from a girl in California, another descendant of Anneke Jans. She was planning to get married soon and wanted to know if it would be responsible to have children, knowing that ‘there was a case of insanity in the family.’ I assured her that she had nothing to fear on that point.”38 Meanwhile, Pieter Spier’s version of the Anneke Jans story has itself become a historical source and begun to lead a life of its own. On March 24, 1993, two classes of the Glenmont Elementary School in Albany performed a historical play entitled Crazy Annie . . . .39

37 P.H. Bogaard, ‘Dutch ancestry of Domine Everardus Bogardus’, in: De Halve Maen 46:4 (1971), 14–15. 38 Letter from Peter Spier to the author, Shoreham, NY, January 26, 1990. 39 This play, a form of historical ction, has been honored with the rst Alice Kenney Award; cf. De Nieu Nederlanse Marcurius (New Netherland Project, Albany) 10:3 (August 1994), 3.

APPENDIX

RELATIVES BY BLOOD AND MARRIAGE OF EVERT WILLEMSZ BOGAERT: A RECONSTRUCTION

The genealogy has been worked out through generation III. The information for generation I is largely a matter of reconstruction and should be used with great caution. Unless otherwise indicated the baptisms and marriages were performed in the Dutch Reformed Church (HK = Hooglandse Kerk, PK = Pieterskerk, both in Leiden). *

*

*

I. Willem (?Cornelisz) [? = Willem Cornelisz, cabinetmaker in Woerden, appears as witness there 12 Sept. 1602], d. in or soon aft. 1607? Marr. (?Niesgen Pietersdr), d. bef. Sept. 1622. She remarries (?Jan or ?Huybert Reiniersz) Muysevoet, d. bef. Sept. 1622. From the marriage of (?Niesgen Pietersdr) and Willem (?Cornelisz): 1. Cornelis Willemsz Bogaert, cont. IIa. 2. Pieter (Bogaert), b. ca. 1603, living Jan. 1623 in orphanage in Woerden, d. bef. 1636. 3. Evert Willemsz Bogaert, cont. IIb. From the marriage of (?Niesgen Pietersdr) with (?Jan or ?Huybert Reiniersz) Muysevoet: 4. Pieter (Muysevoet), cont. IIc. (?5. Susanna Hubrechtsdr, bapt. witn. in Leiden on 20 Dec. 1639 and 8 April 1642 [see IIa2 and IIIb]). From the rst or second marriage: 6. N.N., b. aft. 1607 (younger brother of Evert), living Jan. 1623 in the orphanage, d. bef. 1636. IIa. Cornelis Willemsz Bogaert (Bogaerdt), b. in Woerden bef. 1603, res. there Jan. 1623 in Kerksteeg, but then in Leiden (?tailor, 2 Nov. 1635), on 26 March 1636 grocer on Oudevest in Leiden, opposite the Nieuwe Mare; poorter of Leiden 10 April 1637 (vettewariër [fatty goods grocer]); commissioner for ferry services to Zeeland and Flanders, 2 July

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1643 (shopkeeper); buried Leiden (HK), 23 Sept. 1669. Marr. license in Leiden, 26 March 1636 (witn.: Cornelis [ Willemsz] Paludanus, minister in Noorden, future brother-in-law of the bridegroom, and Barber Thijsdr [wife of Isaac Willemsz Paludanus, cooper], sister-in-law of the bride in Leiden) for marr. with Gryetgen Willemsdr Pellidanus or Paludanus, res. Oudevest in Leiden; b. in Woerden (ca. 1605?), buried Leiden (HK), 18 June 1665. In his will (Leiden, 12 Sept. 1636) Cornelis leaves his full brother Evert Bogaert and his half-brother Pieter Muysevoet each 10 Flemish guilders in the event that he should die childless; Evert is also named as guardian of any children that might be born. From this marriage: 1. Willem Bogaert, cont. IIIa. 2. Anneken Bogaert, bapt. Leiden (HK), 20 Dec. 1639 (witn. Sussanneken Huybrechtsdr [= I5?]; buried there (HK), 23 May 1645. 3. Joannes Bogaert, cont. IIIb. 4. Niesje Bogaert, bapt. Leiden (HK), 7 Feb. 1644 (witn. Cornelis Mauringsz van [der] A, Grietje Jans, Aechje Pieters van Meer [aunt]); buried there (HK), 4 Sept. 1646. IIIa. Willem Cornelisz. Bogaert (Boogaert, Bogardus), bapt. Leiden (PK), 2 June 1638 (witn. Pieter Jansen Vermeer, Isaac Willemsz Paludanus [uncle], Cornelia Matthaeus van der Aa [= Hoochboot]). Matric. Leiden University 29 Oct. 1649, age 12 years (Latin school); takes oath for extraordinary position in Statencollege (theological school funded by the States of Holland) 6 Feb. 1655; matric. again 8 Nov. 1660 (theol.); examined as candidate for the ministry by classis Leiden, 3 Jan. 1661. Ordained as minister in Lutjebroek (North Holland), 24 Feb. 1669, with testimony of membership from Leiden (High German Church), 1 March 1669; d. (Enkhuizen?, bef. 12 May) 1680. Marr. license Leiden, 11 Dec. 1670 (he does not appear in person but sends testimony; testimony to Noordwijk (South Holland), 28 Dec. 1670) for marr. with Adryana van Ackeren (Acker), res. Oude Rijn, bapt. Leiden (HK), 25 March 1635 (witn. Joost Looten, Hendrick Floren, Cryntgen Paulus and Susanna Gisbrechts); youngest daughter of Jan, at his marriage (Feb. 1628) seaman res. in Paradijssteeg in Leiden, and Marytgen Pouwelsdr (Paulus). After 1680 Adryana returns from Enkhuizen to Leiden, Bloemmarkt.

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From this marriage: 1. Cornelis Bogaert (Bogaart), bapt. Lutjebroek, 4 March 1672; matric. Leiden University, theol., 10 May 1689, age 20 (“Westfrisius”); candidate in theology; testimony of membership to Enkhuizen for examination for the ministry, 29 Oct. 1694 (HK), res. Houtmarkt; April 1697 in Leiden candidacy examination for the ministry; 18 Sept. 1697 (HK), with testimony as candidate to Utrecht; rector (principal) Latin school Woerden, 1 July 1700; barred from the Lord’s Supper for unedifying living (and his wife for drunkenness), 6 April 1707; left for Enkhuizen, conrector (vice-principal) Latin school there 8 Aug. 1707; tried and dismissed for bad behavior 15 July 1718; d. (Enkhuizen?) shortly bef. 29 Dec. 1718. Marr. license Leiden, 20 April 1697 (separated from bed and board, Woerden, 31 March 1707) Adriana van Staerlingh (Sterling, Steerling), bapt. Leiden (HK) 28 May 1671; daughter of Jacob Jansz, master mason on the Rijn (Rhine) in Leiden, and Elisabeth Smolders. From this marriage two children; the younger one, Johannes (van den) Bogaart, bapt. Woerden, 6 Nov. 1704, also became a minister, ordained in Holysloot (Holland) 1733, Goedereede 1737, last serving in OostSouburg (Walcheren, Zeeland), where he resigned in 1743. 2. Johannes Bogaard (Bogaert, Boogaert), bapt. Lutjebroek, 3 April 1675; matric. Leiden University, humanities, 26 Feb. 1691, age 17 (“Enchusa-Westfrisius”); receives testimony of membership in Leiden for candidacy examination, 29 March 1697 (HK); examined for candidacy by classis Deland 1697; with testimony as candidate to Zuidzande (States Flanders), 27 Nov. 1700; ordained as minister of Waterlandkerkje (States Flanders.), 17 Sept. 1703, of West-Souburg (Walcheren, Zeeland), 9 Nov. 1704, of Brielle (Holland), 13 Oct. 1715; drowned in the Meuse near Maassluis (Holland), 28 Nov. 1718, his body not found. Marr. 1. West-Souburg (marr. license Leiden, 19 March 1705) Cornelia van Acker, bapt. Leiden (HK), 19 Oct. 1683; daughter of Isaac Thomasz, master mason on the Oude Rijn in Leiden, and Sijtje Dircksdr Klock; 2. West-Souburg, 16 Aug. 1712 (testimony from Middelburg) Maria Jacoba Ente, buried Brielle, 24 April 1716; 3. (marr. license Brielle, 20 Nov. 1718, he has a fatal accident before the third of the banns) Adriana Steyaert, buried Brielle, 2 July 1729, widow of Dr. Anthoni de Haes (1673–1710), dr. of med. (Leiden 1696), physician; councilor 1703, alderman

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1703, 1706, 1708, and treasurer of Brielle. She remarr. 3. Brielle, 29 Sept. 1720, Cornelis van Selderen, from Gouda, widower of Clara van Aller. From the marriage Bogaard x Ente a daughter who died young. IIIb. Joannes Bogaert, bapt. Leiden (HK), 8 April 1642 (witn. Pieter Hubrechts and Susanna Hubrechts). Marr. Wassenaar (marr. license Leiden, 27 Nov.) 14 Dec. 1664 Cornelia Hoogerwaert (van Hogewaert), res. Oude Vest; bapt. Leiden (PK), 17 Aug 1644; daughter of Bruyn Jansz, timber merchant, and Ermtgen Jansdr van Setten. In 1665 the couple acquire and in 1668 sell various buildings from the inheritance of Bruyn Jansz. Joannes, res. Oude Vest, receives testimony of membership on 14 Sept. 1671, Cornelia on 8 May 1672 (PK). They may have left Leiden. Is he identical with the cloth manufacturer Jan Bogaert on the Dwarskamp, whose property was taxed for 5–0–0 guilders in the “200th penning” (at the rate of 0.5%)? From this marriage one daughter who died young. IIb. Evert Willemsz Bogaert (Everhardus Wilhelmi Bogardus), b. Woerden, ca. 1607. Placed in orphanage in Woerden bef. Sept. 1622, lives there until July 1627. Apprenticed to tailor Gijsbert Aelbertsz until 1622. Latin school Woerden beginning Sept. 1622. Matric. Leiden University (Latin school) 17 July 1627; Woerden scholarship to Statencollege (theology) from 25 June 1629. As comforter of the sick in service of WIC to Mouri on the Coast of Guinea, 9 Sept. 1630; with testimony from Leiden, 28 June 1630 from consistory and 14 Oct. 1630 from PK. After returning, candidacy examination by classis Amsterdam, 7 June 1632. Sent as minister to Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan, 15 July 1632, arrived on De Soutbergh in New Amsterdam [New York] beginning 1633. Drowned off the coast of Wales, returning to the fatherland, 27/28 Sept. 1647. Marr. in New Amsterdam (in or shortly after March 1638) Anna (Annetgen, Annetie, later known as Anneke) Jans(dr), widow of Roeloff Jansz from Masterland. She was born 1604/05 on the island Flekkerøy (Vest Agder, Norway), buried Beverwijck [Albany], 23 Feb. 1663; daughter of Jan (?Roelofsz) and Trijn Jonas (in 1623 called Trijn Roeloffs), midwife of the WIC in New Amsterdam, still living 21 Sept. 1644, d. bef. 10 Aug. 1647. First marriage of Anneke Jans: marr. Amsterdam (marr. license 1 April) Nieuwe Kerk (New Church), 18 April 1623, age 18, Roeloff Jansz from

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599

Masterland, age 21, b. in 1601/02 on the island Marstrand (Land of Göteborg, then Norway), seaman, res. near Sint-Anthonispoort (St. Anthony’s Gate), also res. of the bride, who is accompanied by her mother, Tryn Roeloffs. Arrived in New Amsterdam on or soon after 24 May 1630, then tenant of De Laetsburch in the patroonship Rensselaerswijck (New Netherland), 1632 appointed alderman of colony; 1634 dismissed; tenant of farm on Manhattan in service of WIC; 1636 free farmer on Manhattan; d. bef. 21 Sept. 1637. From the marriage of Roeloff Jansz and Anneke Jans: 1. Lijntje Roelofs, bapt. Lutheran in Amsterdam, 21 July 1624 (witn. Annetgen Jans and Stijntgen Barents), d. bef. March 1630 (?buried Amsterdam, Karthuizerkerkhof [Carthusian Cemetery], 16 Dec. 1629). 2. Sara Roelofs, bapt. Lutheran in Amsterdam, 5 April 1627 (witn. Assueris [= Asmus?] Jansen and Stijntgen Barents); 1664 acts as interpreter with Indians; will 29 July 1692; d. New York, betw. 7 Aug. and 21 Oct. 1693; marr. 1. New Amsterdam, 29 June 1642, Master Hans Kierstede (Kierstedt), b. Magdeburg (Saxony) ca. 1612, from 1638 in New Netherland, surgeon of WIC, d. bef. 7 Aug. 1666; 2. New York, 1 Sept. 1669, Cornelis van Borsum, bapt. New Amsterdam, 5 Oct. 1642, captain of Breuckelen [ Brooklyn] ferry, son of Egbert, master carpenter, and Annetje Hendricks, d. Sept. 1682; 3. marr. license New York, 21 July 1683, Elbert Elbertsz Stoothof, widower of Aeltien Cornelis Cool [who had been married to Gerrit Wolfertsz van Couwenhoven], farmhand of ex-director Wouter van Twiller, later farmer and shopkeeper in Amersfoort [Flatlands, Long Island], b. Nijkerk, ca. 1620, d. ca. 1688. Descendants. 3. Trijntjen Roelofs, bapt. Lutheran in Amsterdam, 24 June 1629 (witn. Cornelis Sijvertss and Trijntgen Siewerts); marr. 1. New Amsterdam, 24 Feb. 1647, Willem de Key, b. Haarlem, 3 Jan. 1625, merchant in New Amsterdam, son of Abraham Lievensz and Abigael Rijgoots; 2. aft. 16 Sept. 1652, Lucas Rodenburg, 1643 councillor, 1647 vicedirector of WIC on Curaçao, d. betw. 12 June and 24 Dec. 1655; 3. New Amsterdam, 24 April 1658, Johannes Pietersz van Brugge (van Brugh, Verbrugge), b. aft. 1624, merchant, president-alderman of New Amsterdam 1656, burgomaster 1657 and 1673, d. 1699, son of Pieter Jansz, merchant, and Helena Pollai. Descendants. 4. Sijtgen (often erroneously Fijtgen) Roelofs, b. in New Netherland (on De Laetsburch?) ca. 1631, d. in or bef. 1659; marr. (Beverwijck,

600

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1648/49) Pieter Hartgers (also called Van Wee), b. Haarlem ca. 1620, 1644 assistant in Rensselaerswijck, 1646 brewer, 1647 to fatherland, back in New Netherland fur trader in Beverwijck, also farmer or tobacco planter, acquires debenture on property there 1657; deacon 1652–53, elder 1655–57; commissioner 1654–55, alderman 1658–59, controller of wampum 1659, d. in Holland 1670. Returns to Holland in 1659 and for good in Sept. 1661, where he remarries 2. (in 1660?) Eva van Rijswijck (who soon thereafter dies in childbirth, bef. April 1663) and 3. in Jan. 1664 Maria Pels. His property conscated by the English in 1667. Descendants. 5. Jan Roelofsz, b. New Netherland (on De Laetsburch?) in 1633/34, carpenter in Beverwijck (builder of the blockhouse church 1656), chartered as surveyor in Beverwijck on 25 Nov. 1654; later res. in Schenectady, where he dies in a massacre by the French and the Indians, 9 Feb. 1690. Still unmarried in 1663 [acc. to some marr. to Annetje Pieters], no known descendants. 6. Annetgen Roelofs, b. New Amsterdam ca. 1636, alive 21 June 1642. Probably died aft. 15 Aug. 1648. [Dominie Megapolensis mentions in a letter to the classis of that date “9 living children” of Anneke Jans.] Sister of Anneke Jans: Marritgen Jans, b. (on Flekkerøy?) ca. 1608/ 1609?, d. 17 Nov. 1677 (will New York, 7 May 1677); marr. 1. New Amsterdam, ca. 1632, Tijmen Jansz, b. (Monnickendam?) ca. 1603, ship’s carpenter, d. 1644 [from this marriage a daughter Elsie Tymens, who in 1663 marr. Jacob Leisler, captain of citizens’ militia, 1689 rebellious governor of New York, executed by hanging 16 May 1691]; 2. marr. license New Amsterdam, 28 Aug, 1646, Dirck Cornelisz van Wensveen, b. there [Waddinxveen], carpenter, d. shortly bef. 4 Aug. 1648; 3. marr. license New Amsterdam, 11 July 1649, Govert Loockermans, b. Turnhout (Southern Brabant, Spanish Netherlands) 2 July 1612 (son of Jacob Govaertsz, probably peat-digger, res. at Turnhout, and Maria Nicasius), seaman (cook’s mate), 1633 clerk of WIC in New Amsterdam, 1639 free merchant in New Netherland, agent of Amsterdam trading rm Verbrugge, member of the Nine Men 1647, alderman of New Amsterdam 1656, 1660, church warden 1656–1665, orphan master 1663–1665, lieutenant citizens’ militia 1668, d. shortly before 18 May 1671. Loockermans was previously marr. in Amsterdam (license Haarlem, 10) 26 Feb. 1641, to Ariaentje Jans, widow of Jan Hendricksz van de Water, daughter of Jan Philipsz, courier to Zeeland, and Lijsbeth Setten. Ariaentje Jans, together with brother Philip and

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601

sister Hester, had left for New Netherland at the end of 1637 and was still living there in May 1639; however, she returned to Amsterdam and d. there in 1648/49. Descendants. From the marriage of Evert Willemsz Bogaert and Anneke Jans: 7. Willem Bogardus, b. ? New Amsterdam (bef. 25 Sept.) 1639, clerk of secretary of New Netherland 1656 (rst clerk 1663), inspector of windmills 1656, great burgher (grootburger) of New Amsterdam 1657, notary for Dutch-speaking population from 1668, treasurer 1674–1686, collector of taxes 1683, postmaster of the province of New York 1687; d. New York in 1711. Marr. 1. New Amsterdam, 29 Aug. 1659 (divorced New York, 5 April 1669) Wyntje Sybrants, church member 1 Jan 1662, daughter of Sybrant Jansen; 2. (permission to marry granted by governor, New York, 13 May 1669) Walburga de Sille (widow of Frans Martensz Cregier, merchant on the South River [Delaware]), b. Maastricht 20 Nov. 1639, d. aft. 4 Nov. 1739 [sic], daughter of Nicasius Laurensz de Sille, doctor in canon and civil law (Orleans 1634), captain of infantry, scaal and councilor of New Netherland, and Cornelia Pietersdr Meulemans. Of the ten children from the two marriages two were sons. From the rst marriage: Everardus Bogardus, bapt. New Amsterdam, 2 Nov. 1659; died young. From the second marriage: Everardus Bogardus, bapt. New York, 4 Dec. 1675; d. ca. 1725; silversmith, citizen of New York 1698. Marr. New York, 4 June 1704, Anna Dally (or Doughty?). With her a son Willem, bapt. New York, 7 Jan. 1705, probably died young. 8. Cornelis Bogardus, bapt. New Amsterdam, 9 Sept. 1640 (witn. scaal Cornelis van der Oykens [Hoykens], Master Ludolf [commissioner Uldrick Lupoldts?], Thyme Jans [uncle], Catharina Trasele, Tryntje Jonas [grandmother]), gunstock maker in the Berghstraet (Lodge Street) at Beverwijck, d. Beverwijck (shortly bef. 6 May) 1666; marr. New Amsterdam, 24 Aug. 1664, Helena Teller, b. 1645, will 20 Nov. 1706, d. Albany bef. 4 March 1707, daughter of Willem, merchant in Beverwijck, and Margaret Donchesen; she remarr. 2. Jan Hendricksz van Balen, tailor, d. bef. 1 June 1682 [she then resides on Prinsengracht in Amsterdam but returns to New Netherland]; 3. New York, 26 Sept. 1683, François Rombouts, burgomaster of New York. From this marriage, besides a child buried in Beverwijck bef. 13 Aug.

602

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1665, one son: Cornelis, bapt. Beverwijck, 13 Oct. 1665, schoolmaster in Albany 1700, d. Kingston, 13 Oct. 1707; marr. 1691 Rachel Tjerksdr de Witt, with whom 8 children. Numerous descendants. From her other two marriages Helena Teller had nine more children. 9. Jonas Bogardus, bapt. New Amsterdam, 4 Jan. 1643 (witn. Olof Stevensz van Cortlandt, Master Gysbert Optendyck [commissioner], Tryntje Jonas [grandmother], Sara Roelofs [half-sister]). Testies in New York, 24 March 1676, signs petition as inhabitant of Pemaquid (Maine), 11 May 1689. Conducts trade with Indians in Maine. Unmarried, no known descendants. 10. Pieter Bogardus, bapt. New Amsterdam, 2 April 1645 (witn. Jochem Pietersz [Kuyter], Master Hans Kierstede [brother-in-law], Marritie Thymens [aunt], Sara Roelofs [half-sister]), carpenter, makes and repairs windows in Albany 1663–67, ?tavern keeper 1675, skipper, several terms as deacon and elder betw. 1671 and 1684, alderman there 1667, 1673, 1674, 1693, envoy to Five Nations of the Iroquois 1690, then moves to Kingston (New York), will 3 Feb. 1701, d. Kingston, 1 Sept. 1703. Marr. New Amsterdam, 10 Feb. 1665, Wyntie Cornelisse Bosch, buried 28 Jan. 1712, daughter of Cornelis Theunisz and Maritie Thomasdr Mingael. From this marriage six sons and three daughters with a great many descendants. Oldest son: Everdt Bogardus, skipper, rst owner of extant family Bible, b. 1666/67, d. Kingston 14, buried 17 April 1717; marr. there 9 May 1697 Tatie (Tjaatje) Hoffman, daughter of Marten and Emmerentje de Witt. IIc. Pieter Muysevoet, b. ca. 1610/15; living Jan. 1623 in orphanage in Woerden, probably left bef. 1630; at the latest Sept. 1639 schoolmaster, sexton and cantor in the church in Linschoten (near Woerden, province of Utrecht), from Sept. 1644 also in charge of grave-digging and funeral prayers; is church member in 1647; d. 1650/51; marr. (not found in Woerden) Aeltjen Huybertsdr. She is re-admitted to church membership in Linschoten at Easter 1648; later moves with testimony of membership to Woerden; d. bef. 7 June 1656, when two of their orphaned children, age 13 and 14, are admitted to the Municipal Orphanage in Woerden. From this marriage: 1. Huybert Muysevoet, b. Woerden (ca. 1635?), res. 1664 Bodegraven, d. shortly bef. 6 July 1667. Marr. Bodegraven (license to Woerden

relatives of evert willemsz bogaert

2.

3.

4.

5.

603

23 Nov. 1664), 7 Dec. 1664), Ariaantje Theunis, b. Linschoten, res. Woerden on the Rhine, at the Jansbrug. She remains in Bodegraven after the death of her husband and remarr. Gijs Jansz Backer. From this marriage descendants. Cornelis Muysevoet, b. Woerden?, hospital master in Woerden 1690; res. 1665 Pietersstraat (St. Pietersteeg) in Woerden; buried there 25 Feb 1709 (funeral tax 3 guilders); marr. Woerden (license 1 Nov.) 22 Nov. 1665 Cathalijne Willems Meraat, res. Haverstraat, Woerden, daughter of Willem [and Lijsbeth Jansz? As a widow she receives her testimony of membership because of move to Leiden, 16 Dec. 1681]; d. aft. 18 Dec. 1701 [?= Catharina Muysevoet, buried Woerden, 6 Dec. 1723]. Descendants. Pieter Muysevoet, b. Woerden, ca. 1642 (admitted 1656, age 14, to orphanage in Woerden); shoemaker in Leiden, res. 1668 Koppenhinksteeg, 1671 Steen zonder End, 1682 Hooglandse Kerksteeg. Marr. Leiden (license 20 April 1668) Anna (Anneken, Annetie Dircks) Knuystingh, bapt. HK 25 April 1645; buried Leiden (Bolwerk), 11–18 Jan. 1710; res. 1668 Kerksteeg there, 1699 Voldersgracht; daughter of Dirck Pietersz and NN. Marriage witn.: Cornelis Bogaert [IIa], uncle of the bridegroom, res. on the Mare, and Aeltje Knuystingh, sister of the bride, res. Oranjegracht. In 1682 Pieter buys a house in the Hooglandse Kerksteeg for 334 guilders and sells it in 1694. Descendants. Niesgen Pietersdr Muysevoet, b. ca. 1643 [if she is the 13-year-old orphan admitted to the Woerden orphanage in 1656]; res. 1663 at the Snellenbrug outside the Hofpoort in Woerden; marr. 1. Woerden (license 23 Sept.) 9 Oct. 1663 (testimony of membership from Linschoten) Cornelis Thijssen Stichter, res. Oudeland near Woerden; 2. [ca. 1673] Cornelis Vosse(n)schans, son of Cornelis Aertsz (d. 1652), and Aeltgen Gijsberts, who remarr. Dirck Pietersz, shipbuilder in Woerden. Descendants. Evert Muysevoet, bapt. Linschoten, 17 June 1649, in presence of his father; d. bef. 7 June 1656.

INDEX

The names from the genealogical appendix (595–603) do not appear in this list. Subjects have been included selectively. References to names that appear on virtually every page of this book or a section of it (such as Evert Willemsz, Dominie Bogardus, Willem Kieft, New Netherland) are not further specied. Aa, Mouring (Maurits) Cornelisz van der 60, 63 Aa, Ter (Utrecht) 73 Aachen (Germany) 416 Aalsmeer (Holland) 50 Abbes, Rincke 223 Abel 173, 180, 182 Abia 555 Abraham 179 Acculturation 470, 528–529, 546 Achter Col (farm) 476, 483 Acrist, Jonas 324 Adam, Old and New 205, 236–237, 242 Adolescence 8 Adriaansens, H.P.M. 362 Adriaensen, Marijn 352, 376, 381, 407, 473 n. 45, 478, 480, 500–504, 511, 514 Aelbertsz, Gijsbert 10, 15–16, 55, 136, 141–142, 157–158, 276, 301 Aertsbrugh, Wijngaertgen 427 Aertsz, Cornelis 120, 328 Aertsz, Jan 132–133 Africa 7, 8, 287, 293, 511–513, 560 Agnes, saint 64 Albany (NY) 74, 308, 341, 343, 345, 373, 377, 387, 405 n. 118, 539 Albany, Glenmont Elementary School 591 Albany, Rural Cemetery 586 Albiecke, Lucretia 537 Aldegonde (child in Delft) 229 Algeria 462 Algonquin tribes 374, 455, 525 Alkmaar (Holland) 86, 95, 127, 129, 133, 204–205, 589 Alkmaar, orphanage 126 Allerton, Isaac 483, 497 Alphen on the Rhine (Holland) 106 Alsted, Johann Heinrich 524 Alutarius, Conradus Johannis 95

Alutarius, Henricus 15, 77, 91, 95–102, 107, 155, 161, 168, 176–177, 186–187, 190–191, 206, 208, 217, 226, 237, 243, 246, 254, 258, 262–263, 266, 275–277, 282, 304, 325, 412, 521 Alva, Duke of 489–490 Amazons 513 Ambrose, saint 498 ‘Americans’, see Indians Amersfoort (Utrecht) 127, 295, 374, 378, 599 Ames, William, Jr. 252 Ames, William, Sr. 186, 252, 565 Amsterdam (Holland) 7, 9, 25, 46, 59–60, 62, 68, 71, 75, 77, 79, 90, 94, 96–97, 124 n. 18, 135–136, 145–148, 178, 221, 223, 247, 252, 264–265, 267–270, 272, 278, 280–281, 288–290, 292, 298, 301–302, 306, 308–310, 312, 314, 321–323, 328, 331, 334, 338–339, 341, 343, 346, 351, 353, 355, 357, 360, 365, 367, 369–373, 377, 383–387, 389, 397, 400, 404, 405 n. 115, 407, 409, 414, 416–417, 420–422, 425, 428, 429, 433, 436, 439, 442, 444–448, 451–452, 458, 461 n. 19, 466, 472, 474, 477, 484, 486, 493, 495, 497, 518–519, 521, 527, 535, 537, 542–544, 548–550, 557, 564, 571–572, 580–581, 584–585, 588 Amsterdam, Bank of Holland 580 Amsterdam, Carthusian cemetery 371 n. 17 Amsterdam, Civic orphanage 124 n. 18, 146 Amsterdam, Classis 298, 306, 309, 314, 331, 334, 339, 394 n. 77, 407, 416 n. 10, 439, 506 n. 45, 518–519, 527, 543, 548 Amsterdam, Dam Square 422

606

index

Amsterdam, Heilige Stede (New Side Chapel) 146 Amsterdam, Heilige Wegh 371 n. 17 Amsterdam, Heringpackerij 461 n. 19 Amsterdam, Keizersgracht 386 Amsterdam, Kloveniersdoelen 493 Amsterdam, Lutheran church 369–370, 411 Amsterdam, New Church 270, 369, 403, 425, 457 Amsterdam, Orphan chamber 54 n. 24, 69, 118, 118 n. 6, 119, 385, 580–581 Amsterdam, Prinseneiland 223 Amsterdam, Reformed consistory 94, 149 n. 78, 298 n. 12, 301 n. 24, 418, 518 Amsterdam, Remonstrant congregation 52, 280 n. 26, 458 Amsterdam, Rokin 146 Amsterdam, St. Anthonispoort 369 Amsterdam, Walloon orphanage 252 Amsterdam, West India House 414 Amsterdam, Westerkerk 221 Amsterdam, WIC chamber, see West India Company Amyraut, Moyse 201 Anabaptists 264, 426 Ande (Indian slave) 536 Anders, Sw 160, 221 Angela of Foligno, saint 209 Angels 3, 11, 91, 142, 157, 172, 182, 194, 204, 211, 218, 222–226, 237, 253, 273, 304, 319 Anglicans 573, 575 Angola 293, 530, 533, 537–542 Angola, Anthony of ( Jr., black child) 541 Angola, Anthony of (Sr., black slave) 538, 541 Angola, Catalina (Catharina) of 538, 540, 542 Angola, Cleijn Anthony of 540 Angola, Dominicus of 538 Angola, Fernande Marie of 542 Angola, Laurens of 538 Angola, Lucie of 538 Angola, Lucretie of 541 Angola, Magdalena of 538 Angola, Marie of 541 Angola, Paulus of 538, 540 Angola, Susanna of 538 Ann, Queen of England 573 Anna (black child) 390, 541

Anna of Orange 579 Anna of Saxony 579 Anneke Jans (Descendants) Associations 574–577, 580–582, 586; see also Jans, Anneke Anneke Jans Farm, see Manhattan Anneke Jans Heirs 575 Anneke Jans Record 575 Annobón (Africa) 316 anorexia nervosa 30, 209 n. 9, 211 Anthony of Lisbon (alias Padua), saint 539 Anthony, Dominico (Domingo) 538, 540 Antichrist 91, 96, 203 Antilles 413 Antinomians 363 Antiochus 196 Anti-Trinitarians 50 Antwerp (Brabant) 48, 269 n. 10, 337 n. 42, 418, 495 Apocalypticism 192–203, 273 Appearances, see Visions Apprenticeship 133–134, 136–137, 301, 330, 454 Arckel, Gijsbert van 54 Aretino, Pietro 139 Aristides 498 Arminians (Remonstrants) 12, 43–46, 51, 58, 95, 108, 272, 279, 288, 458 Arminius, Jacobus 44, 89 n. 29 Arndt, Johann 100 Arnhem (Gelderland) 94, 135, 146, 203 Arnhem, Gerrit van 421, 441, 444 Articulbrieff 349, 412 Asceticism 17, 189, 208–209, 212–213, 215, 236 Asa 555 Asia 299, 513, 580 Atlantic Ocean 288 Augsburg Confession 48, 97 Augustine, saint 261 Authority, moral 310, 348, 414, 434, 441, 451, 469, 519, 522, 540 Autobiography 34 Autodidacts 82–83, 142, 326–332 Ax, Samuel 533 Axim (Coast of Guinea) 316 Baarle (Brabant) 193, 223 Babylon 201 Babylonian captivity 257 Bachman, Van Cleaf 461 n. 19 Backer, Claes Aertsz 199

index Backerus, Johannes 351–352, 355, 407, 498, 506, 509–510, 539, 545, 547–549, 556, 562, 565 Badius, Otto 394, 414–417, 423, 519 Baers, Paschasius 520 Bakker (alias Pistorius), Jan de 47 Bal alias Huydecoper, Jan Jacobsz 452 Balmer, Randall 566–567 Baltic area 452 Bam, Jacobgen 147 Baptism 58, 66, 87, 97, 257, 353, 355, 357–358, 367, 369, 389–390, 409, 467, 520, 538–546, 564 Barentsz, Willem 300 Barneveld (Gelderland) 372 Bartholotti, Guillielmo 420 Bartholotti, Leonora 472 n. 44 Barton, Rufus 402–403 Bastiaen, see Sebastiaen Batavia (East Indies) 203, 300, 325, 442–443 Baudartius, Willem 229–230, 280, 324, 498 n. 22 Baxter, George 484 Bayly, Lewis 323 Beck, David 138, 158, 161, 170–171, 260 Beeck, Isaac van 472, 554 Beeckman, Isaac 192 Beeckman, Levinus 101 Belgic Confession 306 Bell, Rudolph 211–212 Bellarminus, Robertus 91 Bello, Robert 401 Belot, Jean 198 Bemmel, Casijn van 444 Benderius, Laurentius 312, 417 Bentham, Jeremy 220 Benthem, Gillis van 150 Bergen op Zoom (Brabant) 78 Bersingen, Beatrix Jansdr van 122 Bersingen, Cornelis Hendricksz van 48 Bersingen, Matthijs Cornelisz van 93–94 Bertholf, Guilliam 565 Betgen (maidservant) 85 Beverwijck (Albany, NY) 390 n. 70, 405–406, 572 n. 4, 583 Beza, Theodorus 89, 189 Bible 13, 17, 23, 97, 99–100, 110–112, 114, 127, 129, 131, 141–142, 153–162, 164, 166, 170, 174, 176, 189, 196, 198, 201, 215, 219, 225, 239, 257, 259, 273, 304, 308, 311–312, 323, 325, 349–350, 358,

607

360, 382, 406, 440, 528, 582, 585; see also Psalter Bible reading 100, 127, 131, 142, 157–158, 161, 349 Bible, ‘Deux-Aes’ version 2 Bible, ‘States’ version 129, 189 Bible, New Testament 22–23, 51, 158–159, 162, 179–180, 219, 253, 312, 424 Bible, Old Testament 22, 158, 178–179, 216, 219, 259, 405, 440, 558 Bible, family bible 153 n. 3, 406, 602 Bible: Genesis 4:4 180, 182 9:18–27 532 19 533 27 219 41:16 259 Leviticus 18:22 533 18:29 533 Deuteronomy 13:2–4 259 Tobit 11:10–14 219 Maccabees 5:1–4 196 Job 3:3 158 33:23–24 319 Psalms 136 1:1 157 2 170 6 170 8 167, 168, 170, 247, 251 8:2 24, 159, 252 8–9 158 9 167, 247 13 170 16 170 18 170 19 170 23 170, 172–173, 182 34–35 158 42 16 50 170 51 170 57 158 65:4 157 68:6 252 72 325 79 170 80 170

608

index 81 84:1 91 100

100:4 101 103 103:15–16 119 129 130 131 150:1 Proverbs 31:10–31 Song of Songs Isaiah 5:20 9:2 50:4 55 Jeremiah 23:25–32 Ezekiel 6:12 Daniel 2:28 4 4:33 Joel 2:30 Matthew 3:4 10:22 13:57 14:13–21 14:21 15:31 18:15 18:29 23:39 25:1–13 25:32–33 26:40 28:19–20 Luke 1 1:20 1:46–55 2:46–47 4:2 4:16–30

170 157 170 3, 13, 158, 168, 170, 172, 174 157 170 170 157 324 170 170 170 157 585 148, 177 157 316 n. 54 219 319 16 259 499 n. 25 259 259 440 196 212 216 333 216 179 215 521 157 181 157 424 181 524 180 180 241 15 206, 299 15

10:1 22:24 24:13–35 John 4:10–14 14:16 19:28 Acts 2 2:1–13 2:3 2:17 2:19 9:3–19 9:7 9:12 9:18–19 Romans 8:15 8:26 10:13 Galatians 4:4 4:6 5:16 Colossians 3:16 1 Timothy 6:16 Hebrews 5:12–14 11 James 1:17 3:9 5:12 1 Peter 5:8 1 John 5:7 Jude 324

257 181 37, 181

Revelation 1–3 3:12 8:1 10:2 11:2 12:1 12–20 13 14:1–5 14:3

177, 182 91 253 582 142 91 159 203 91 168, 182 181

157 157 208 319 37 196 274 196 219 219 219 220 254 254 254 176 84 254 256, 321 168, 170, 180 219 176 99 324 253 168, 180 113 151 331

index 15:3 181 18:2 201 20:2–7 200 20:4–5 202 Bicker, Andries 420 Bicker, Cornelis 420, 428 Bijler, Wolfert van 372 Biography 34–35 Black legend 453, 470, 489–490 Blacks (Africans) 293–316, 526–527, 530–546 Blankenham (Overijssel) 96 Bleyswijck, Dirck van 149 Blindness 26, 218–219, 230, 232, 249, 524 Bloch, Alexander 583 Blommaert, Samuel 373, 420 Blommaertsburch (farmstead) 381 Bodegraven (Holland) 48, 96, 228–229 Bodin, Jean 144 Body language 29, 204–234, 274 Bogaard, P.H. 71–73 Bogaert (Boogaert, Bogaerdt), see also Bogardus Bogaert, Abraham 75 Bogaert, Cornelis Willemsz (Evert’s brother) 54, 57, 59–70, 72–73, 82, 87, 134 n. 38, 137, 305, 367, 369, 395, 420 Bogaert, Cornelis Willemsz (Utrecht) 72 Bogaert, Cornelis Willemsz (1672–1718) 75 Bogaert, Cornelis Willemsz, Jr. 75 Bogaert, Evert Willemsz passim Bogaert, Frans 72 Bogaert, Harmen Meyndertsz van den 74 Bogaert, Jacob Willemsz 57 n. 30 Bogaert, Jan Willemsz 60, 79, 416 Bogaert, Johan (Utrecht) 72 Bogaert, Niesje (Niesgen) Cornelisdr 64 Bogaert, Pieter (Ter Aa) 73 Bogaert, Pieter Jansz 57 n. 29 Bogaert, Pieter Willemsz 25, 54, 59, 64–65, 67, 73, 160, 250, 262, 275 Bogaert, Willem (Evert’s father) 60, 65–67, 71–72, 251 Bogaert, Willem (Veenendaal) 71–72 Bogaert, Willem Cornelisz 65–67, 333 n. 35 Bogaert, Willem Jansz 60 Bogardt, see Bogaert, Bogardus

609

Bogardus, Anna Willemsdr 389, 573 Bogardus, Anna, see also Jans, Anneke Bogardus, Cornelis ( Jr.) Cornelisz 573 Bogardus, Cornelis (Evertsz) 389, 404, 573 Bogardus, Cornelius (minister) 406 n. 121 Bogardus, Cornelius Cornelisz 574 Bogardus, Ephraim 405 Bogardus, Everardus (Evert Willemsz Bogaert) passim Bogardus, Evert Pietersz 153 n. 3, 406 Bogardus, Evert Willemsz ( Jr.) 405 Bogardus, Israel 580 Bogardus, James 578 Bogardus, Jonas 369 Bogardus, Nathaniel 574 Bogardus, Pieter (Evertsz) 405, 494 Bogardus, Rachel 405 Bogardus, Shibboleth 405 Bogardus, Willem (Evertsz) 405, 495 n. 14, 536, 581 Bogardus, William Brower 364 n. 1, 573 n. 6 Bogerman, Johannes 428–429 Bohemia (Czechia) 78, 202–203, 361, 525 Böhme, Jacob 308 Bol, Jan Claesz 557 Bolsward (Friesland) 197, 557 Bontaij, Jacus 433 Bontekoe, Willem Ysbrantsz 300 Bontius, Johannes 441 Boogaert, see Bogaert Books (printing, publishing) 76–77, 129, 155, 157–158, 175–176, 267, 269, 279, 283, 309–310, 312, 323–326, 330, 349, 359–360, 432–433, 466, 488, 490, 498, 571, 582, 588–589 Borculo, Herman van 37, 53, 110, 151, 268 Borneo (Indonesia) 580 Borsum, Egbert van 398 Bout, Jan Evertsen 399, 461, 477, 480, 483, 497 Bouwensz, Jan 120 bouwmeesters 374, 381 Brabant Company 418 Brabant, province 85, 223 Brandt, Geeraerdt 146 Brandt, Marten Jansz 97 n. 52, 270, 272, 281–282, 288 Brazil 295, 299–302, 337, 343, 383, 417, 450, 531–534

610

index

Brazil, Dutch (New Holland) 299, 339, 383, 526 Breda (Brabant) 85, 193 Breda, Cornelis Willemsz van 92 Bredero, Gerbrand Adriaensz 173 Breeckevelt, Abraham Pietersz 138 Breeden-Raedt (pamphlet) 337–339, 453, 472–473, 476 n. 54, 478 n. 61, 480 n. 68, 481 n. 71, 486 n. 86, 488–491, 494 n. 10, 496 n. 16, 500 n. 29, 504 n. 41, 506, 508–510, 552–556, 561 Brekelenkam, Quiringh Gerritsz van 141 Breuckelen (Brooklyn, NY) 545, 581 Bricquigny, Petrus de 49–51, 92 Brielle (Den Briel, Holland) 210 Brightman, Thomas 90–91, 100, 177, 201, 524 Brigitta of Sweden, saint 21 Brinsley, John 90 Bristol (England) 553 Britto, Sebastiaen de, see Santo Domingo Broeck, Johan van den 326 Broecke, Van den, see Paludanus Broeckhuysen, Jan Pietersz 92 Broek in Waterland (Holland) 584 Broen, Hendrick 420 Bronck, Jonas 360, 398, 476, 494 Brouwer, Adam 514 Brudnell, Richard 400 Bruges (Flanders) 45, 150 Brugh (Verbrugge), Johannes van 389, 404 Brugman, Jan 210 Brun, Samuel 295 n. 8, 311 Brunswick, Duke Eric of 47 Bucanus, William 324 Buchell, Aernout (Arent) van 280, 417 Bulaeus, Justus 323 Bullinger, Johann Heinrich 323, 353 Burgh, Albert Coenraetsz 421–422, 429 Buyck, Cornelis Cornelisz 47, 50, 83–84, 93–94 Bynum, Caroline Walker 209 Cabo Verde 537, 539 Calais (France) 108 Calckmans, Jan 168 Calff, Claes Jansz 557 California 584, 591 Calvin, John 49, 201, 206, 324–325 Calvinism, Calvinists 12, 43, 46, 59, 69, 77, 79, 81, 85, 89, 93–95, 97–98, 128, 131, 133, 146, 147, 155, 159, 166, 171, 179, 199, 235, 268, 293,

299, 303, 305, 311, 348, 357, 360, 395, 411–412, 417–419, 425, 500, 520, 528, 531, 540, 565, 567 Calvinization process, strategy 43, 48, 131–132 Cambridge (England) 89 Camerick, Gijsbert Jansz 94, 138 Camp, Pieter van 538 Camp, Trijntje van 538 Campen, Pieter Jansz and Aechgen van 132 Canarsies (Indian tribe) 484 Cape Beachy Head (Béveziers) 552 Cape Cod 341 Cape de Lopo Gonçalves 316 Cape Hinlopen 341 Cape of Good Hope 338 Capellen, Gerlach van der 446 n. 92 Capellen tot Aartsbergen, Alexander van der 446 n. 92 Capellen tot Rijsselt, Hendrick van der 446, 496, 555 n. 87 Caribbean 287, 322 Carnival 80, 478–479, 540 Cartagena (Spain) 461 n. 19 Cartagena, Jan Augustinus of 538 Carthage 479 Castello map 458 Catechism, see Alutarius, Catholics, Heidelberg, Marnix Catherine of Genoa, saint 209 Catherine of Siena, saint 209 Catholics, Roman 21, 184, 203, 269, 539–540, 544, 546 Cats, Jacob 241 n. 13, 419 Catskill (NY) 358 Celis (Celes), Jan (Out Jan) 403, 535 Certeau, Michel de 12 n. 4, 18 n. 5, 20 n. 11, 30, 143–144, 149–150, 157 n. 8, 166 Ceulen, Pieter van 85 Ceulen, see also Collen Chambers of rhetoric 103–104, 168–170 Chandelaer (Chandler), Samuel 501 Charity 73, 121, 124, 477, 534 Charivari 508 Charles I, King of England 525 Charles V, Emperor 116 Children 5, 23, 43, 50, 54, 58, 62, 64–73, 83, 87, 99, 105, 108, 115–152, 158, 160–161, 163, 166–167, 175, 206, 237, 247, 261, 274, 308–309, 312, 320, 353, 357, 360, 364–365, 369, 376, 383–385, 387, 389–390,

index 394, 398, 404–406, 408–409, 411, 464, 467, 477, 481–482, 484, 486, 488–489, 495, 505, 535–536, 538, 540, 542, 544–545, 557, 572–573, 580–581, 586, 588–589, 591 Chiliasm 91, 201, 203, 524 Christ, Jesus 76, 100, 181, 208, 252, 298, 323, 524, 542–543, 558 Christianization 343, 382, 528–529, 537, 539–540, 544; see also Missions Christmas 227–228, 511, 516, 520 Church, see also Religion Church, Dutch Reformed 2, 8, 12, 184–185, 416, 546 Citizenship ( poorters) 67 Civil War (America) 588 Civil War (England) 212, 525 Civilization 385 Claes, Jetske 223, 234 Claessen, Claes 376, 378 Clarenburch, Antonius Francisci 331 Cleaver, Robert 90 Cleef, Bruyn van 94, 279 n. 21 Cleves (Rhineland) 354, 446 n. 92 Clevius, Conradus 321–322 Cloot, Gerrit 534 Cloppenburch, Jan Evertsz 326 Coast of Guinea 7–8, 283, 293–316, 324, 326, 330–331, 417, 512, 531, 534, 543–544 Coch, Annetgen 581 Coch, Hendrick 581 Cock, Pieter 482 Cockaigne 337–338 Coen, Jan Pietersz 307 Coesfeld (Westphalia) 149 Colbergh, Jochem Jansz van 557 Collen (Ceulen), Geertruid van 418 Cologne (Rhineland) 416 Cologne, Poor Clares convent 149 Colonists 68, 74, 338–354, 358, 361, 363–365, 371, 374, 377–383, 385–388, 390–391, 398, 403, 407, 409, 411–412, 416, 419, 425, 443, 446, 448, 453, 455, 457–458, 460–461, 469, 471–474, 476, 478–480, 483–484, 486, 489– 491, 494–496, 501, 503, 505, 514, 523, 525–527, 540, 546, 557, 574 Comenius, Jan Amos 525 Comets 192, 196, 198, 240–241 Comforters of the sick 8, 83, 191, 287, 290, 296–310, 314, 321–326, 329–331, 345, 348, 351, 353–354, 360, 373, 389, 414, 417, 442, 519, 548, 566

611

Commerce, see Trading Communication 18, 27, 29, 55, 76, 78, 80, 114, 141, 163, 165, 168, 177, 194, 220, 231, 247, 259, 268, 343, 424, 434, 449, 470, 578 communio 520 Communion, Holy, see Supper, the Lord’s Confession, see Augsburg, Belgic, Heidelberg Confessionalization 185 n. 2, 412, 567 Congo 537 Congo, Antony 540 Congo, Manuel (Emanuel) 533, 541 Congregationalists 362 Connecticut 340, 361, 389, 475, 486 Constantine, Roman Emperor 91 Conversion 9–10, 26, 79, 90, 166, 184, 188, 192, 195, 201, 219, 226, 235–243, 249, 251–253, 258, 268, 279, 354, 462, 468, 521, 524, 530–532, 542–545 Cool, Barent Jacobsz 430 Cool, Cornelis Lambersen 466 Coorn, Nicolaes 539 Coornhert, Dirck Volckertsz 109 Copenhagen (Denmark) 378 Coppendraijer, Evert Dircx 131 Cork (Ireland) 197 Corlaer, see Curler Cornelissen, Laurens, see Wel, van der Cornelisz, Dirck 198; see also Wensveen Cornelisz, Evert 542 Cornelisz, Steven 105–106 Cornelisz, Willem, see Bogaert Cortlandt, Olof Stevensz van 389, 480, 484, 508–509 Corwin, Edward 53, 575 Coster, Samuel 416 Cotentin (France) 552 Cotton, John 363 Counter-Reformation, see Reformation, Catholic Counter-Remonstrants (Gomarists) 44–53, 79, 86, 110–114, 429 Courland 399 Couwenhoven, Gerrit Wolfertsz van 483, 497 Couwenhoven, Jacob Wolfertsz van 355, 390, 460, 599 Couwenhoven, Wolfert Gerritsz van 374, 380, 397, 463 Cowper, William 176, 324 Cralingen (Cralingius), Jacobus van 52, 77, 95, 113, 161, 190–191, 243, 276, 279 n. 21

612

index

Crazy Annie 589, 591 Cregier, Martijn 390, 499, 536 Creole, Hillary 539 Creoly, Jan 533 crimen laesae majestatis 339, 496 Crol, Bastiaen Jansz 308–309, 345, 353–354, 373–374, 386, 421, 438 Cromwell, Oliver 525 Croon, Gerrit Dircksz 49–50, 105 Cruelty, atrocities 380, 481–482, 488–489, 491, 499, 501 Cruso, Johannes 86 Cuba 301 Cunaeus, Petrus 332 Cupus, Petrus 46, 49–51, 83 Curaçao (Caribbean island) 324, 448, 534, 548, 557 Curler (Corlaer), Arent van 372, 413, 460, 469, 499 Curler, Goossen van 373 Curler, Jacob van 397, 465, 477, 480, 494, 501 Cusanus, Nicolaus 23 Cuyper, Charles de 62 Cyclopes 513 Czechia, see Bohemia Damen, Jan Jansz 458, 478, 483, 499; his wife 488 Damhouder, Joost de 381 n. 42 Damme, Cornelis van 107 Danckaerts, Sebastiaen 325 Daniel, prophet 5, 158, 179, 216, 259, 440 Dathenus, Petrus 155, 170, 306 Dauphiné (France) 23 David, King 3, 16, 136, 170, 325 Deaf-muteness 12, 26, 160, 164, 180, 230–232, 241, 244, 246, 248, 250, 262, 275 Delaware 340–341, 343, 388, 493 Delfshaven (Holland) 134 Delft (Holland) 289 Delft, orphanage 134, 149 Delft, synod 168 Denmark 494 Descartes, René 260 Deth, Ron van 212–213 Deursen, A.Th. van 45, 153 Deutel, Jan Jansz 300 Deventer (Overijssel) 426 Devil 143–146, 148, 150–151, 183, 194, 205, 226, 262, 424, 495, 543 Diaz, Dominicus 557

Dijck, Hendrick (Gijsbrecht) van 391, 476, 480, 486, 508, 554 Dinclagen (van Dinslaken), Dr. Lubbert 334, 346, 391, 407–408, 412, 421, 424–452, 461, 468, 498, 520, 522, 543, 556, 561, 566 Dinclagen, Jacob 302, 442 Dinxlaken, Thomas van 426 Dinzelbacher, Peter 220 Diogenes 498 Dircks, Adriaentje 539 Dircks, Lysbeth 463, 519 Dircksen, Barent 483, 497 Dircksz, Claes 136 Dircksz, Simon 423 Dircx, Anneken 119 Dircx, Gerrit, see Verhey Disasters 77–78, 193, 202, 214, 236 Discipline, church 80, 82, 131, 350, 424, 436, 514, 520–521, 566 Ditmarschen (Holstein, Germany) 270, 494 Dod, John 90 Doedens, Hendrick 550, 557 Does, Simon van der 420 Dokkum (Friesland) 543 Dominee’s Hoeck, see Long Island Domseler, Hendrick van 397 Donck, Dr. Adriaen van der 337–338, 346, 355, 359, 413, 453–454, 459–461, 470, 489, 496, 498, 500, 530, 534, 536, 567, 582 Dordrecht (Holland) 12, 86, 177, 326, see also Dort Dort (Dordrecht), national synod 12, 31, 51–52, 96, 102, 106, 185, 189, 202, 242, 288, 304, 329, 348, 429, 540, 575 Dort, Canons of 99, 306 Doughty, Francis 358–359, 401, 484, 500–503, 516–517 Doughty, Mary 359 Downame, George 90–91 Drake Heirs 584 Drake, Sir Francis 584 Drama 107, 195, 200, 248, 433, 477, 563 Dreams 128, 149, 259–262, 273, 279, 337 Drinking 208, 311, 424, 510, 514, 519, 558–563 Drisius, Samuel 412 Du Bois, Gualterus 392 Du Bois, Mattheus 90 Du Trieux, Philip 463, 465 , 469

index Dudley, Blandina Bleecker 586 Dudley, Charles E. 586 Duercant, Marichgen Dircxdr 389 Duercant, Willem Dircksz 389 Duijkerius, Johannes 90 Dunkirk (France) 495 Dupront, Alphonse 162 Dutch clerks 83, 191, 299, 326–332 Dutch Israel 190 Duysel, Frans van 234 Duysel, Jonatas van 233 Duysel, Willem van 233–234 Duyster, Dirck Cornelisz 421 Earthquake 199–200 East Friesland 88, 240 East India Company (VOC) 134, 287, 306, 308, 341, 417–418 East India Company, Heren XVII 417 East Indies 202, 302, 325, 331–332, 389, 418, 450, 494 East River 400–401, 477, 535 Easter 63, 208, 520, 602 Ecclesia purior 242–243, 510 Ecstasy 26, 29, 148, 150, 165–167, 204, 207, 215, 218, 221, 225, 232, 238, 244, 246–248, 251, 257–258, 260, 274, 563 Ecumenicity 412, 564 Edam (Holland) 52 Eden, see Paradise Education 15, 72, 94, 103, 105, 115–116, 120, 131, 133–136, 160, 168, 191, 305, 319–320, 327–331, 334, 346, 416–417, 427, 496, 536, 542, 560 Eekhof, Albert 350 Eeklo (Flanders) 85 Eelkens, Jacob 432 Egbertsz, Albert 461 n. 19 Ego documents 34–35 Egypt 196 Eight Men, see New Netherland Eijnden, Jacques van den 48, 99 Elbertsdr, Neel 150 Elbertsz, Claes 93 Elburg (Gelderland) 302 Election, see Predestination Eleven Men, see New Netherland Elijah, prophet 158, 216, 259 Eliot, John 525 Elizabeth, Queen of England 85 Elmina (São Jorge da Mina, Coast of Guinea) 294, 316, 324, 531

613

Elslandt, Claes van 425 n. 31 Emancipation of slaves 535–536, 540 Emanuel (black child) 541 Emanuel (Manuel), Groot 540 Emanuel, Marcus 538 Emden (East Friesland) 88 Emden, Jan Albertsz van 557 Emmaus (farm), see Manhattan Emmaus, disciples of 141, 158, 181 Emotions, emotionology 78, 80, 195, 230, 559–562 Enden, Dr. Franciscus van den 363, 489 n. 91, 567 England, English 84–85, 88–90, 108, 252, 273, 337, 339–350, 361–363, 429, 454, 457, 467, 483–484, 524–525, 546, 550, 552, 585 Enkhuizen (Holland) 150, 306 Enkhuizen, orphanage 148 Enkhuizen, synod 306, 450 Epiphanies, see Visions Erasmus of Rotterdam, Desiderius 57 Esau 253 Esopus (Indian tribe) 386 Ethiopia 316 Eucharist, see Supper, the Lord’s Euripides 219 Europe, Europeans 19, 185, 197, 212, 296, 299, 303, 316, 337–338, 341, 344, 347, 363, 377, 385, 387, 393–394, 447, 470, 489, 512, 528, 533, 535, 538, 540, 565, 575 Evert Willemsz (Everardus Bogardus) passim Everts, Cornelia 213 Evertsz, Jan 213–214, 273–274, 326 Evil 25, 76, 78, 144, 147, 151, 188, 197, 205, 242, 362, 424, 478, 505, 556 Evjen, John O. 587 Excommunication 424, 440–442, 445, 450, 468, 510, 520–521 Executions 47, 261, 525, 533 Family, kinship 70–71, 372 Farming 41, 345, 373, 378, 401, 500 Fasting 15, 22, 30, 79, 124, 150, 179, 204–217, 226, 231–232, 241, 244, 246, 250, 257, 277, 282, 482 Father 16, 64–67, 174, 181, 214–217, 237, 252–254, 256, 560 Father, Heavenly 10, 16, 26, 71, 253 Febvre, Lucien 559 Fees (Fez), see Salee Feith, Hendrick 421, 437–438

614

index

Fifth Monarchy 273 Fiji Islands 580 Finch, Henry 201 scaal, see schout-scaal Fish, S. 156, 184 n. 1 Flekkerøy (Norway) 369–370, 378, 388 Florisz (Flooren), Jan, see Wijngaarden Flushing (Long Island) 359 Flushing (Zeeland) 202 Fonda, John H. 577 Food and drink, see Drinking, Fasting Fordham, Robert 484 Foreest (Forestus), Pieter van 204 Forest, Hendrick de 395; his widow 395, 397 Forest, Isaac de 395 n. 82 Forest, Jesse de 395 n. 82 Fort Orangien, Jan 538, 540 Fortunes 571–578, 583–588 Fowles, Richard 399 France, French 45, 108, 149, 361, 468, 493, 504, 560 Francis of Assisi, saint 213, 249 Francisco, Jan, Jr. (black slave) 545–546 Francisco (Françoys), Johan 538 Francken, Warner 388 Franeker (Friesland) 95, 176, 252, 555 Fransdr, Anneken 557 Frederick of the Palatinate 78, 203 Frederik Hendrik, prince of Orange, stadholder 292 Freedom of conscience 348–349, 412, 419 Freemen 343, 491, 501, 540–541, 544, 546 Frelinghuysen, Theodorus Jacobus 565 Fresh River (Connecticut) 389, 475 Friesland, province 88, 95, 223, 240, 289, 329 Frontier 383, 385, 454, 525–526, 528 n. 13, 536, 561 Fur trade, see Trading Further Reformation 113, 184–192, 201, 239, 566 Gaasp (river) 281 Gardiner, Lion 289 Geertz, Clifford 18–19 Gelder, Cornelis Engelsz van 60 n. 38, 134 n. 38 Gelder, Engel Cornelisz van 62 Gelderland, province 145–146, 289, 372, 378, 382, 421, 441, 444, 446, 496, 555 n. 87

Gender 210; see also Women Geneva 50, 197, 281 Gennep, Arnold Van 164, 248 Georgia 337 Gerbrants, Abigael 239 Germany (Holy Roman Empire), Germans 108, 159 n. 12, 171, 273, 281 Gerritsz, Hendrick 473 Gerritsz, Jan 370, 458 Gerritsz, Marten 435 Gerritsz, Willem 129, 359 Gerson, Jean 21, 262 Gesmesseeck (Semezeeck), land of (Rensselaer, NY) 376 Ghana 8, 293–294 Ghent (Flanders) 85 Ghost, Holy, see Spirit, Holy Gijsbertsz, Cornelis 120 Godijn (Godin), Samuel 373, 420 Godliness 29, 99, 177, 188, 190, 237–238, 265, 277, 303, 305, 321, 323, 328, 350, 565 Godynsburch (farmstead) 381 Goffman, Erving 32 Gold Coast, see Coast of Guinea Goltzius, Hendrick 237 Gomarists, see Counter-Remonstrants Gomarus, Franciscus 45 Good Friday 208 Goodfriend, Joyce D. 571 Gorinchem (Holland) 102 Gorinchem, synod 83, 279 Gothenburg (Sweden) 370 Gouda (Holland) 43, 329, 598 Gouda, Chamber of rhetoric 103–104, 159 Gouda, Lange Geuzenstraat 103 Goulart, Simon 323 Gouw, Gillis Pietersen van der 403 Governor’s Island, see Noten Eiland Goyversen, Jacob 376, 378, 503–504 Grace 22–23, 45, 77, 89, 100, 148, 157, 199, 206, 214, 216, 219, 236, 363, 522 Grand Rapids (Michigan) 577 Grand Tour 108 n. 77, 426 Grande Esperance, Emmanuel 538 Grande, Marie 538 Gras, Jean 422 Great Awakening 566 Gridley, Willis T. 577 Grijp, Louis 172 Groesbeck, David 575

index Groningen (city and province) 289, 301 Gualtherus, Rudolphus 325 Guinea, see Coast of Guinea

94, 202,

Haarlem (Holland) 44, 58, 90, 102, 281, 398, 404, 427, 461, 579 Habakkuk, prophet 5, 158, 216, 259 habitus 157 Hackensacks (Algonquin tribe) 386, 455, 476–477, 480, 482, 565 Hadewych (Dutch mystic) 210 Haecht, Willem van 155 Haeff, Adriaen ten 531 Haes, Roelof Jansen 482, 583 Hague, The, see The Hague Hall, Thomas 401, 461, 483, 497, 538 Ham (biblical gure) 532 Hamburg (Germany) 197, 416 Hamel, Hendrick 421 Hamel, Jacob 446 Hans (black slave) 536 Hansen, Hans, see Noorman, Hans Hansz de Hanssen, Jacob 430 Hardenberg, Arnold van 500 Harderwijk (Gelderland) 135 Harlem, see Manhattan Harmensz, Michiel 92 Hart, Aert Dircksz ’t 92 Hartford (Connecticut) 361 Hartgers, Joost 405 n. 115 Hartgers, Pieter 404–405 Hartlib, Samuel 525 Harvard College (Cambridge, Mass.) 525 Hasselt (Overijssel) 426 Hateld, Martha 212, 215 Hawthorne, Nathaniel 440, 467 Heathen 259, 293, 309, 440, 445, 524–527, 543–544 Heemskerck, Jacob van 300 Heemstede (Hempstead, Long Island) 484, 486 Heidelberg (Germany), University 426 Heidelberg Catechism 24, 306, 323 Heidelberg Confession 97 Hellegat (Hell Gate, NY) 400 Hemmersam, Michael 311 Hempstead, see Heemstede Hendricksz, Ludolf 234 Hendriksdr, Maychgen 73 Henricksz, Gerrit 534 Henricx, Aeltgen 373 Heren XVII, see East India Company

615

Heren XIX, see West India Company Hermans, Geertgen Jan 129 Hermans, Marichge 103 Hermansz, Jan 311 Hermansz, Leen 198 Hershkowitz, Leo 461 n. 19, 467 Heurnius, Johannes 202 Heurnius, Justus 202, 417, 526 Heyn, Pieter Pietersz (Piet Heyn) 301 Heynricx, Geertgen 146 Hille, Cornelis van 305 Hillesund (Norway) 378 Hilletje (half-breed) 387 Hilten, Anthonie van 550, 557 Hobbes, Thomas 88 Hobos, Abraham 329 Holiness, see Saintliness Holland, province 12, 41, 43, 67, 150, 326 Holland, States of 47–48, 94, 97, 119, 121 Holland Mania 588 n. 35 Holstein (Germany) 494 Holy Land 91 Hommius, Festus 57, 101, 324, 330 Honthom, Hans Jorisz 413, 421, 472 Hoochboot, see Mattheusdr, Neeltgen Hooft, Pieter Cornelisz 146–147, 419 Hooges, Anthony de 399, 519 Hoogland (Utrecht) 374 Hoorn (Holland) 230, 247, 425, 493–494 Hoorn, orphanage 148 Horace 167 Hoykens, Cornelis van der 367, 389, 480, 508, 550 Hudde, Andries 390, 395, 416, 435, 463, 497–498 Hudson (Mauritius, North) River 341, 373 Hudson, Henry 341 Huguenots 23, 108, 197, 341 n. 51, 454 Huizinga, Johan 559 Hulft, Pieter Evertsz 421 Humanism, Christian 114, 220, 269, 281 Hurons (Indian tribe) 468 Hutchinson, Anne 363 Huxley, Aldous 143 Huybrechtsdr, Susanneken 87 Huydecoper, Joan, Sr. 452 Huydecoper, Machteld 452, 458 Huygen, Jan 354

616

index

Huygens, Constantijn 168, 419 Hymns, see Singing Hysteria 30, 143–144, 150 Ida of Louvain 210 Identity 7, 32–33, 35 n. 27, 57, 73, 89, 107, 156, 178, 181, 228, 242, 247, 252, 261, 282, 334, 336, 341 n. 51, 344, 469–470, 498, 512, 523, 546, 567, 571–572, 574, 579, 588 n. 35 idiotae (Dutch clerks) 328 IJ (river) 137 Illness 22, 26, 29–30, 132–133, 146, 149, 167, 205, 209–211, 215, 235–238, 303, 305, 550 Ilpendam, Adriaen Jansz van 405 n. 118 Ilpendam, Jan Jansz van 390 India 300 Indian War 390, 447, 469–489, 496 Indians, Native Americans 303, 385–387, 425, 431, 441, 443, 447, 456, 469–506, 523, 524–530, 543–544 Individuality 332–336 Interpretive community 156, 162, 184, 196 Iroquois 374, 383, 386 Irving, Washington 385, 452–453 Isaac 219 Islam 462 Israel, Dutch, see Dutch Israel Israel, new 101 n. 62, 361, 524 Italy 281, 418

Jansz, Anthony, see Salee Jansz, Ariën 199 Jansz, Cornelis 199 Jansz, Dirck 221–222 Jansz, Ghijs 430 Jansz, Heyndrick, see Segveldt Jansz, Jan 281, 398 Jansz, Jan (Murad Ra’is) 461 Jansz, Roelof 365, 369–371, 374, 376–381, 383–385, 388, 394, 400, 408, 411, 549, 572, 579–580, 583 Jansz, Roeloff (Brazil) 383 Jansz, Thymen 365, 389 Jephtha 179 Jerusalem 15, 72, 196, 253 Jesuits 90, 383 Jesus, see Christ Jews 91, 201, 324, 524 Joan of Arc, saint 21 Jogues, Isaac, saint 357, 383, 412, 454, 471, 564 John Chrysostom, saint 555 John the Baptist, saint 180–181, 212 John, Prester 513 Jonas (or Roeloffs), Tryntgen 68, 365–369, 378–380, 389, 549, 581 Jonge, Dirck Gerritsz de 121 Joosten, Jan 427 Joris, Hillegont 366, 504 Jorisz, Geleyn 85 n. 18 Joseph (patriarch) 179, 259 Joseph, saint 252 n. 21 Josephus, Flavius 324 Josepsen, Jan 261 Josselin, Ralph 260

Jacob 179 Jacobsz, Arent 295 Jacques, ’t (Indian slave) 536 Jaffé, Aniela 224 James I (VI), King of England 90–91, 498 Jan, prince of Orange 581 Jan de Lacher’s Hoeck 477 Jans (Bogardus), Anneke (Annetgen) 68, 355, 364–379, 384–412, 463–465, 467, 469, 503, 536, 571–591 Jans, Marritgen 365, 367, 379–380, 389–390, 398, 411, 549 Jansen ( Jansz), Hendrick (tailor) 501 Jansen, Sybrant 582 Janson, Herman, see Hermansz Jansz, Aert 47, 120

Kaeskooper, Adriaen Idsz 213 Kalslagen (Holland) 202–203 Kampen (Overijssel) 203 Karsen, Carol 467 Kawalerowicz, Jerzy 144 Keskachauge (Brooklyn, NY) 397 Key, Willem de 389, 499 Kieft, Jan Gerritsz 458 Kieft, Willem 339, 346–347, 351, 353, 367, 374, 382, 387–388, 424, 426, 440, 442, 447, 450, 452–557 passim, 561–562, 564, 566 Kieft’s War, see Indian War Kierstede, Hans, Jr. 367 Kierstede, Hans, Sr. 367, 389, 390, 398, 404, 408–409, 411, 459 Kierstede, Jochem 398 kinte kaeien (Indian dance) 486, 488

index Kisana, Isabel 537 Knuttel, W.P.C. 282 Koran 461 n. 19 Krijnssen, Bouwen 337 Kristiansand (Norway) 369 Kuyter, Jochem Pietersz 337 n. 42, 339, 360, 390, 453, 458, 483, 491, 493–500, 509, 514, 549–557 L’Empereur, Constantijn 304 La Garce, buccaneer 534 La Montagne, Dr. Jean Mousnier de 390–391, 395, 397, 408, 454, 473, 477 n. 57, 479–480, 484, 488, 496, 498–499, 502, 508–509 La Myne, Jacques de 422 La Rochelle (France) 197, 453, 493 Laet, Dr. Johan de 295 n. 8, 373–374, 420, 525 n. 4 Laetsburch, De (farmstead) 374, 376–378, 380–381, 383, 388, 503, 583 laici (Dutch clerks) 328, 332 Laios 219 Lam, Jan Dircksz 295 n. 7 Lampe, Barent 280 Lampo, Jan 421 Langenberg, Sophia Agnes von 149 Languages 471 Dutch 86, 328 English 86, 389 French 86, 358, 454, 472 Hebrew 328, 330 High German 171, 416 Indian (Algonquin, Iroquois) 386 Italian 472 langue spéciale 164 Latin 57, 74, 83, 86, 103, 135–136, 162, 305, 332–336, 358, 454 Mahican 386 Mohawk 386 Lansbergen, Franciscus 323 Laren (Larenus), Daniel van 202–203, 279 Laren, Joos van 202 Las Casas, Bartolomeo de 489 Last Days, Last Judgment 91, 159, 169, 192, 195–196, 200, 242, 260, 424, 524–525, 582 Laud, William 260 Laurensen, Jan 397 Laurensen, Laurens 381, 388 Laurensz, Hendrick 306 Le Maire, Isaac 418 Le Maire, Jacob 300

617

Leeuw, Gijsbert de 508 Leeuwarden (Friesland) 555 Leeuwen, Pieter Dircksz van 62, 178 Leicester, Count of 85, 155 Leiden (Holland) 59, 83, 203 Leiden, Backerspoort 87 Leiden, Hooglandse Kerkgracht 298 Leiden, Korte Koornbrugsteeg 60 Leiden, Latin School 8, 58 Leiden, Mare 227 Leiden, Nieuwe Mare 60 Leiden, Oude Vest 60 Leiden, Pieterskerk 305 Leiden, Rapenburg 87 Leiden, Reformed consistory 94, 418 Leiden, States College 8, 57, 304 Leiden, University 8, 57, 60 n. 36, 86, 283, 333 n. 35 Lemmer, Jan Hermensen van 502 León, Lucrecia de 262 Levant 418 Levendaal, Janneken op ’t 149 Liduina (Liedewij) of Schiedam, saint 210, 214 Liebergen, Daniel van 420 Lieburg, Fred A. van 190 Liege 104 Light and darkness 217–229 lijffeygenen 535 Linaker, Robert 90 Linde, Peter van de 397 Lindeboom, J. 21 Linden, Henricus Antonisz van der 95 Linschoten (Utrecht) 63–64, 68 Linschoten, Jan Huygen van 300 Literacy 133, 153, 174, 312 Literature, popular 23, 109 n. 78, 139 Liturgy 18, 171 Livy 498 Lonck, Hendrick Cornelisz 301 Lonck, Hendrick, minister 321 London 69, 88, 253 London, Bank of England 585 Long Island (NY) 397 n. 84, 400, 403, 468, 484 Long Island, Achtervelt (farmstead) 397 Long Island, Dominee’s Hoeck (Hunter’s Point) 388, 400 n. 103, 472 Loockermans, Govert 411, 458, 473, 480, 497, 550, 553 Loos, Willem Jansz 178–179

618

index

Loosrecht, Jan 399 Lopikerwaard (Utrecht) 234 Lord’s Supper, the, see Supper, the Lord’s Lot 179, 324 Loudun (France) 149 Louise (black slave) 541 Lovelace, Francis 573 Loyola, Ignatius of, saint 215 Lubbertsdr, Judith 273 Lubbertus, Sibrandus 96 Ludolf, Master, see Lupoldt 389 Lufneu, Herman 213 Lupoldt(s), Uldrick (Ulrich) 465 Luther, Martin 47, 97–98, 171, 178 Lutherans 12, 31, 44, 47–48, 51, 94–99, 113, 116, 142, 155, 199, 228–229, 242, 260, 280, 357, 371, 382, 409, 411–412, 564–565, 567, 572 Lyon (France) 197 Macrobius 259 Magdeburg (Saxony) 599 Magnicat 241 Mahicans (Algonquin tribe) 374 Mamarannack, sachem 486 Man, Eduard 472 Manatus map 396, 399, 535 Manhattan (NY), see also New Amsterdam, New York Manhattan, Anneke Jans Farm 400, 572–578 Manhattan, Beaver Path 488 Manhattan, Corlaer’s Hoeck 477 Manhattan, Dominee’s Bouwery 400, 572–573, 578 Manhattan, Dutch Farm (Harlem) 577 Manhattan, Emmaus farm 360 Manhattan, Harlem 494, 577 Manhattan, Kalckshoeck 400 Manhattan, Negerhuis 535, 540 Manhattan, Out Jans Land 400 Manhattan, Queen’s Farm, see Manhattan, Anneke Jans Farm Manhattan, Vredendael plantation 395 Manhattan, Zegendael plantation 494 Mansfeld, count Ernst of 78 Manuel, see Emanuel Marees, Pieter de 303, 512, 539 n. 53 Maria (black slave) 536 Mariken van Nieumeghen (play) 151 Marnix van Sint-Aldegonde, Philip van 325

Marriage 52, 60, 62, 64–66, 70, 75, 82, 87, 97, 103, 134, 270, 310, 336, 353, 360–361, 364–365, 369–371, 373, 385, 394, 398–401, 403–406, 408–409, 467, 503, 537–538, 544–545, 564, 572, 579–581 Marseille (France) 281 Marstrand (Masterland, Norway) 369–370 Marvin, Francis 581 Mary, Holy Virgin 37, 219, 229, 241, 255, 269 Maryland 337 Massachusetts 69, 358, 361, 363 n. 93, 441, 525, 554 Masterland, see Marstrand Matanzas, Bay of 301 Mattheeuwsz, Heyndrick 331 Mattheusdr, Neeltgen, alias Hoochboot 60 Mauritius river, see Hudson river Maurits of Nassau, prince of Orange, stadholder 338 Mauritsstadt (Recife, Brazil) 534 May, Cornelis Jacobsz 341 Mayhew, Thomas 525 Mede, Joseph 524 Medicine 235 n. 1, 307, 320 Mediterranean 453 Meersevoet, see Meusevoet Megapolensis, Johannes 357, 382–383, 386–387, 391, 394, 412, 416, 516–517, 526–528, 543, 545, 562–563 Meijer, Harmanus 537 Melijn, Cornelis 337 n. 42, 339, 448–449, 454, 474, 483, 491, 495–497, 549–550, 552–557 Menloff, Marck 401 Mennonites 44, 95–96, 102, 116, 155, 171, 273, 357 Merchants 72, 174–175, 287, 296, 314, 320, 341, 344, 351, 367 n. 11, 390, 406, 418, 452, 457, 493, 557 Mérode, noble family de 104 Mespath (Long Island) 358–359, 400–401, 484 Mespath Kill 400 Messianism 201 Meulenkill, see Red Mill Creek Meusevoet, Daniel 320 Meusevoet, Vincent Reiniersz 69, 84–92, 108, 176–177, 189, 201, 235, 319–320, 324, 564

index Mey, Cornelis Gijsbertsz 120 Michael, archangel 218, 256 Michaelius (Michelsz), Jonas 345, 351, 354, 395, 407, 416, 423, 522, 526–528, 530–531, 548, 561 Middelburg (Zeeland) 531 Middelburg, national synod 51, 327, 522 Middelburg, WIC chamber 542 Midwife 68, 71, 365, 367, 378, 380, 463, 469, 519, 581 Mij, Dirck Cornelisz van der 94 Mijl, Adam van der 93–94 Millemonts (France) 198 Mina, São Jorge da, see Elmina Ministry, Reformed 75, 178, 283, 319–336, 409, 517, 575 Minuit, Peter 344, 351, 354, 407, 423, 438 Miracles 20, 23, 77, 169, 232, 263–265, 278, 282 Missions 302, 312, 417, 443, 524–546, 568 Modern Devotion 189, 210 Moenen (devil) 151 Mohawks (Iroquois tribe) 374, 386–387, 455, 477, 480, 543 Molenaer, Abraham Pietersz 390, 483 Molkwerum (Friesland) 534 Monsters 512–513 Montagnais (Indian tribe) 468 Montagne, see La Montagne Montecuculi, count 378 Montfoort (Utrecht) 104 Montfoort, Hofstraat 232 Montfoort, Oude Boomgaardstraat 232 Montias, John Michael 178 Montpellier (France) 197 Morocco 462 Moroni, Giovanni Battista 138 n. 50 Mörs (Rhineland) 281 Moses 164, 179, 181, 259, 493 Mosselmans, H.J. 584 Mother 53, 62, 64–65, 67–68, 70–72, 86–87, 108, 118, 128, 131, 144, 213, 221, 229, 249, 251–25, 264, 298, 364–367, 369, 373, 378, 385, 398, 418, 426, 458, 462, 467, 536, 541, 549, 571, 579–580, 583, 588 Mouri (Mouree, Coast of Guinea), Fort Nassau 8, 295–299, 312, 512

619

Mousnier, see La Montagne, Mousnier de Muesevoet, see Muysevoet, Meusevoet Muller, Frederik 282 Mulock, Willem 57 Mumbles, The (Wales) 552 Munster (Westphalia) 565 Murad Ra’is 461 Muscovy (Russia) 339 Music 167–168, 172, 508, 583 Muysevoet (Muesevoet, Meusevoet) 62–65, 67–70, 84, 87, 92 Muysevoet, Cornelis Pietersz 68 n. 54 Muysevoet, Davidt 87 Muysevoet, Elisabeth 87 Muysevoet, Evert Pietersz 68 Muysevoet, Huybert 87 Muysevoet, Jonatan 87 Muysevoet, Marij 87 Muysevoet, Pieter (Evert’s halfbrother) 62–65, 67–68, 70, 87, 167 n. 24 Muysevoet, Pieter Pietersz 68 n. 54 Muysevoet, Reinier Vincentsz 85 Muysevoet, Sara 87 Muysevoet, Thomas 87 Muysevoet, Vincent 87 Muysevoet, Vincent Reiniersz, see Meusevoet Mystical experience 12, 19, 30, 33, 78, 90, 92, 150, 152, 170, 209, 218, 226, 235, 244, 248, 251–252, 254 Mysticism 17, 21–25, 30, 147–152, 210–211, 235, 254, 276 Myths 571–581 Name giving 178, 230, 353, 463, 489 Nantes, Edict of 23 Napier, John 177 Narratives 222, 235, 239, 340 n. 50, 357 n. 77, 488, 554 n. 85, 571–591 Nassau, Fort (Albany, NY) 341, 343 Nassau, Fort (Coast of Guinea), see Mouri Nassau, Fort (Delaware) 343 Nassau-Siegen, Johan Maurits of 337 Native Americans, see Indians Nawanemith, sachem 377 Nazareth (Holy Land) 15 Nazareth, Beatrice of 210 Nebuchadnezzar 259, 440 Nederhorst, see Reede

620

index

Neger, Jan de 535, 537–538, 545 Negretto, Pedro 535 Negro, Francisco 540 Negro, Jan 535–536, 540 Negroes, see Blacks Neo-Stoicism 111 Netherlands, Southern, see Southern Netherlands Networks 8, 31, 55, 70, 76, 87, 175, 270, 343, 372, 380, 388–389, 414, 449 New Amsterdam 8, 68, 71, 74, 129 n. 28, 192, 287, 303, 336–591 passim; see also Manhattan, New York New Amsterdam, ’t Water 404 New Amsterdam, Brugsteeg 404 New Amsterdam, church buildings 456–461 New Amsterdam, corps de garde 458, 480 New Amsterdam, deaconry 397, 462 New Amsterdam, Fort (New) Amsterdam 8, 344, 456–461 New Amsterdam, Perelstraet 366–367 New Amsterdam, Reformed congregation 63, 354, 405, 412, 441, 544 New England 252, 337, 340, 350, 361–363, 454, 457, 467, 483–486, 524–525, 546, 554 n. 85 New France (Quebec) 468 New Haven (Connecticut) 389 New Holland (Brazil), see Brazil New Jersey 340, 565 New Netherland 27, 64 n. 48, 68, 74, 104, 134 n. 37, 281 n. 27, 289, 303 n. 29, 308–309, 312, 316, 321, 334–593 passim New Netherland, Eight Men 353, 483–484, 495, 497–498, 500 New Netherland, Eleven Men 461, 498, 500, 516, 529 New Netherland, Nine Men 556, 600 New Netherland, Twelve Men 454, 457–458, 475–479, 483, 490, 493, 501 New Netherland, Susanna of 538 New Sweden (Delaware) 388 New York City (NY) 355 n. 74, 537 n. 47, 589; see also Manhattan, New Amsterdam New York City, Broadway 400 New York City, Bronx 360 New York City, Canal Street 400, 577

New York City, Central Park 440 New York City, Christopher Street 400, 577 New York City, Duane Park 578 New York City, Duane Street 578 New York City, Garden Street 578 New York City, Greenwich Village 400, 577 New York City, Hudson Street 578 New York City, James Bogardus Triangle 578 New York City, Museum of the City of New York 578 New York City, Queen’s Farm 573 New York City, Queens 400 New York City, Soho 400 New York City, Tribeca 400 New York City, Trinity Church 572–574, 577–578 New York City, Warren Street 400 New York City, Whitehall Street 403 New York State, Court of Appeals 574 Newtown (Long Island) 358, 401 Neyn, Pieter de 338 Nicholas of Myra, saint 206, 589 Nicolaesz, Hans 390 Nicolai, Adrianus 145–146 Nicolls, Richard 572–573 Nienrode, Petrus 101 Niesgen, widow of Jacob Jansz 198 Nieuw Nederland, Susanna van 538 Nieuwkoop (Holland) 41 Nijkerk (Gelderland) 146, 372–373, 376, 379, 381, 414 Nîmes (France) 197 Nine Men, see New Netherland Noorden (Holland) 66, 69, 84 Noorman, Hans Hansz (Hansen) de 390 Noort, Olivier van 300 Norden (East Friesland) 240 North Holland, province 41, 43, 67, 150, 326 North Holland, synod 84 n. 14, 86, 279, 306, 322, 331 North river, see Hudson river Norway 365, 369–370, 377, 390 Norwich (England) 85–87, 89 Notelman, Coenraet 414, 421, 433–434 Noten Eiland (Governor’s Island) 343 Number symbolism 257–258, 582, 585 Nuremberg (Germany) 311 Nutton, Captain 403

index Odelt, Lijsbeth 87 Oedipus 219 oefenaar (practitioner) 326 Ogden, John 458 Ogden, Richard 458 Oignies, Mary of 209 Oldeboorn (Friesland) 95 Oldenbarnevelt, Johan van 77, 261 Olfertsz, Jacob 355, 482 Olinda (Brazil) 299 Ommeren, Otto van 72 Oosten, Gertrude van 210 Opdijck, Gijsbert 389, 480, 484 oraculum 259–260 Orange, Fort (Albany, NY) 74, 308, 341, 354, 372–374, 376, 380–383, 421, 435, 472, 477, 538 Orange, Prince of 48, 348, 432, 500, 517, 579, 581 Oratamin, sachem 386, 482 Organ play 168 Orleans, University 426 Orphan chambers 54 n. 24, 69, 118–119, 384–385, 580–581 Orphanages 73, 115–152, 247 Orphans 13, 15, 24–25, 29, 54–55, 63–64, 68–70, 72, 115–153, 160–161, 163, 166, 170, 216, 246–247, 250–252, 265, 275, 301, 308, 553 Ottensz, Maerten 125 n. 21 Oudenaarde (Flanders) 548 Oudenrogge, Johan Dircksz 141 Ouderkerk on the Amstel (Holland) 96 Oudewater (Holland) 44, 124, 124–125, 127–128, 132 Out Jan, see Celis, Jan Overbeke, Aernout van 142 Overijssel, province 96, 231, 426, 446 n. 92 Oyens, Abraham 420 Paater, family 585 Pacham, sachem 474, 483 Pacic Ocean 288 Paintings 62 n. 39, 122, 128, 177–178, 465, 571 Palatinate (Germany) 78, 203, 361, 418 Palestine 201 Palingh, Jan 121 Paludanus, Annetgen 134 n. 38 Paludanus, Cornelis Willemsz 62, 66, 82–84, 332

621

Paludanus, Gryetgen Willemsdr 60, 62 Paludanus, Isaac Willemsz 66, 83 Paludanus, Maertgen 66 Paludanus, Petrus 50, 82–83 Paludanus, Willem 66 Pamphlets 7 n. 1, 9, 32–34, 37–38, 53–55, 57, 76, 80, 103–104, 107, 127, 133, 151, 159, 161, 163, 175, 179, 193, 207, 228, 232, 239, 241 n. 13, 252, 258, 263–268, 278, 280–283, 288, 586 Papism, papacy 91, 203 Paraclete 218, 256 Paradise, Eden 316, 336–338, 470, 523 Paraeus, David 325 Pater, Neeltje 584–586 Patronage, protection 31, 115, 301–302, 321–323, 414–422, 437, 439, 455 Patronymics 55, 57, 333–334 Patroonships 345, 371, 420, 471; see also Pavonia, Rensselaerswyck, Staten Island, Swanendael, Vriesendael Paul, saint 180, 219, 321 Pauw, Adriaen 452 Pauw, Michiel 420, 453 Pauw, Reinier 77, 79, 421 Pavonia, patroonship 425, 453, 471, 476–477, 480, 483, 488, 491, 501 Peelen, Brant 338 Pels, Evert 388 Pelsaert, François 300 Penderecki, Krzysztof 144 Penn, William 587 Pennoyer, Robert 502 Pentecost 196, 520, 540 Pequots (Algonquin tribe) 484 Pergens, Jacob 472, 554 Perkins, William 88–89, 91, 108, 151, 176, 186, 192, 235, 237–238, 319–320, 324–326, 565 Peter (black slave) 536 Petitions (to States General) 411, 495, 497, 554 Petraeus, Petrus 92 Petri, Rudolphus 323, 428, 441 Philip II, King of Spain 47 Philopater 90 Philosophia Christi 111 Pieter (orphan) 136 Pieters, Marten 240 Pietersdr, Erckge 131 Pietersdr, Niesgen 65

622

index

Pieterse, Janneke 221 Pietersen, Anthony 541 Pietersen, Emanuel 541 Pietersen, Hendrick 466, 469 Pietersen, Wybrant 466, 469 Pietersz, Abraham, see Molenaer Pietersz, Floris 93 Pietersz, Jan 92, 105, 227, 307 Pietersz, Thonis 119 Pietersz, Willem 557 Pietism 18, 88, 108, 113–114, 164, 176, 186, 188 n. 8, 190–192, 217, 254, 276, 362, 412, 558, 561, 564–566 Pilgrim Fathers 340, 483 Pistorius, Johannes, see Bakker Plague 60, 67, 69, 105, 118, 125, 129, 131, 149, 195 Planck, Abraham 390, 478 Planck, Jacob Albertsz 372, 381, 394 Plato 257 Pliny 512 Plockhoy, Pieter Cornelisz 363 Polyander à Kerckhoven, Johannes 203, 304 Ponkes (Indian) 495 Popkin, Richard H. 201 Poppius, Eduardus 324 Popular literature 23, 109 n. 78, 139 Portents, signs 192–203 Portugal, Portuguese 294–295, 299, 303, 526, 531–532, 539–540, 544 Portugees, Antonio Fernando 540 Portugies (Portugees), Anthony 532, 538, 540–541 Possession, spirit 23, 142–152 Postille 176, 325, 382 Poundridge (NY) 486 Poverty 109, 139, 195, 213, 360 Prague 78, 197 praxis pietatis 184, 188–189, 191, 235, 270, 564 praxis vitae 236 Prayer books 324, 360 Predestination, election 44–47, 181–188, 192, 239 Premero (Premier), Jan 533, 538, 540 Presbyterians 358, 484 Presser, Jacques 34 Probate inventories 175, 177 Propertius 498 Prophecy 589–591 Prostitution 80, 461–469, 503–504, 514 Protection, see Patronage Protestants 21–22, 47, 78, 85, 121, 184, 196, 304, 490, 520

Providence 166, 192, 236, 243 Provisionele Ordre 343, 419, 527–528 Provoost, David 397 Prynne, Hester 467 Psalms, see Bible, Singing Psalter (book) 155, 158–159, 167, 170–171, 176, 251, 269, 306, 323, 325, 360 Public church, see Religion Punishment 23, 77, 80, 134, 193–194, 199, 236, 241, 268, 279, 361, 447, 465–466, 521, 533, 561 Puritanism 69, 88–89, 108, 176, 189–190, 202, 206, 239, 268, 340, 357, 361–362, 467–468, 514, 524–525, 561 Purmerend (Holland) 239, 264 Pythagoras 257 Quebec 383, 468 Quevellerius, Abraham

101

Rabat (Morocco) 462 Rademaker, Claes Cornelisz, see Swits Raesly, Ellis 454 Ramée, Pierre de La (Ramus, Petrus) 186 Ramism 89, 186 Raritans (Indian tribe) 455, 473–474 Rasière, Isaac de 422 Raye, Jan 422 Reading 16, 37, 49, 100, 106–107, 110, 127–128, 131, 133, 142, 153, 155–158, 160, 161–163, 169–170, 174–177, 207, 216, 246–247, 250, 268, 275, 302, 306, 323–325, 370, 377, 409, 435, 450, 571, 577 Reael, Laurens Jacobsz 146 Reael, Reinier 422 Recife (Brazil) 299, 534 Red Mill Creek (Meulenkill) 378 Reddy, William 559 Reede tot Nederhorst, Godard van 476, 495 reformatio vitae 81, 184, 307 Reformation, Catholic (Counter-) 147, 185 n. 2, 220, 324 Reformation, Further, see Further Reformation Reformation, Protestant 220, 230 Refugees 85, 363, 416, 418, 477 Reiniers (Reijniers), Grietje 461–469 Religion 17–21, 44–54, 79, 81, 97, 99, 111, 116, 120, 131, 142, 179, 184–186, 190, 192 n. 13, 195–196,

index 200, 274, 292, 303, 305, 311, 324, 347, 349–361, 412, 419, 421, 424, 457, 462, 468, 489, 491, 524, 526–532, 546–547, 563, 566–567 Religion, public church 21, 43–44, 48, 347, 349, 351, 457 n. 12 Remonstrants, see Arminians Remundt, Jan van 414, 423 Rensselaer, Kiliaen van 371–385, 387, 394, 414, 418, 420–424, 432, 437–440, 459–460, 496, 530 Rensselaerswijck, patroonship 358, 371–390, 382–383, 385–387, 399, 409, 460, 472, 503, 526–527, 535, 543, 562, 582 Representation 18, 32–33, 96, 222, 346, 480 Republic, Dutch 88–89, 128, 153, 184–185, 189, 201, 339, 341, 361, 428, 432, 519, 571 Reus (Reux), Gerrit Theunissen de 379, 381 Reus, Manuel (Emmanuel) Gerrit de 533, 537, 540 Revius, Jacobus 589 Revolt, Dutch 147 Revolution, American 574 Reynier (Muysevoet), Lysbet 87 Rhenen (Utrecht) 95 Rhine (river) 41, 106, 137, 597, 603 Rhode Island 358 Ribera, Francesco 91 Richshoffer, Ambrosius 302 Richter, Jan Jansz 119 Rijck, Claes Jansz 198 Rijck, Mattheus Hugensz van 92 Rijn, Rembrandt van 558 Rijnevelshorn, Aert Jansz van 47, 178–179, 280 Rijswijck, Benjamin van 102, 600 Rink, Oliver A. 351 Risseeuw, P.J. 503 n. 37 Rites of passage 24, 132, 164, 206, 248–249, 523 Rituals 29, 177, 208, 520–522, 528, 540, 546, 562, 564 Rivet, André 203, 304 Rochelle, La, see La Rochelle Rodolff, Jurriaen 473, 480 Roelants(z), Adam 463, 469, 543 Roeliff Jansen (Roeloff Janssoons) Kill 583 Roeloffs, Tryn, see Jonas, Tryntgen Roelofs, Annetje 371, 408

623

Roelofs, Jan 371, 405, 408, 572 n. 4 Roelofs, Lijntje 371 Roelofs, Sara 367, 371, 376, 383–384, 386–387, 389–390, 404, 408–411, 459, 536, 542, 544 Roeloffs, Sara (Brazil) 383 Roelofs, Sytgen 371, 404, 408 Roelofs, Tryntje 371, 376, 389, 404, 408, 542 Rogers, Richard 90 Role models 82–84, 179–180, 251–256 Roman exploit 479 Rome, church of 281 Roosevelt, Clinton 575 Roskilde, Peace of 370 Rotterdam (Holland) 94, 101, 102, 107, 112, 134, 135, 176, 213, 252, 273, 289, 323, 329 Rotterdam, Prinsenkerk 101 Rotterdam, St. Lawrence’s church 102, 107 Rugge, Hugo van 210 Russell, Ken 144 Russia 418 Ruusbroec, Jan van 213 Ruys, Willem 131 Ruyteau, Abraham 322 Ruyter, Claes Jansen 397 Ruyteveld, Susanna Adriaensdr van 71–72 Sabbath, Sunday observance 24, 80, 204, 209, 532, 582 Sabu (Asebu, Sabeu, Coast of Guinea) 295 Sackimaes (Indian tribe) 495 n. 14 Saintliness 22, 29, 31, 80, 144, 213–214, 217, 275, 282 Salaries, income 393, 446, 575 Salee (Morocco) 462 Salee (Van Ves, Vees, Fees), Anthony Jansen van 461–469, 532, 542 Salee, Abram Jansen van 462 Saliger, Johannes 198–199 Santen, Gerrit van 446 Santo Domingo (Caribbean island) 537, 540 Santo Domingo, Bastiaen (Sebastiaen) de Britto of 325, 537–538, 540 São Tomé (Africa) 316, 539 Sara (black slave) 536 Sas, Sasch, see Zas Satan 200 Saul, see Paul, apostle Saumur (France) 45

624

index

Saxony (Germany) 579 Scandinavia 369–371, 382, 388, 390, 411 Schagen (Holland) 86, 88, 92 Schalkwijck, Marichje Gerritsdr 57 n. 29 Schele, Gerhard 231 Schele, Sweder 149, 231 Schenectady (NY) 372, 406 n. 121 schepen (alderman) 381, 404 Schieland, classis 329 Schmitt, Jean-Claude 224 School, schooling 8–11, 15, 58, 75, 104, 133–134, 136, 266, 272, 370, 399, 409, 591 Schoolmasters 64, 95, 105–106, 161, 174, 306–307, 328, 348 Schoonhoven (Holland) 82, 102 Schoonhoven, synod 102 Schoorl (Holland) 382 Schouten, Willem 300 schout-scaal 334, 346, 421, 428 Schrevelius, Theodorus 58 Schulte Nordholt, J.W. 299, 454 Schultetus, Abraham 325, 382 Scorel, Jan van 72 Scotland 90, 108 Sebastiaen (captain), see Santo Domingo Seeing 110, 122, 177–179, 217–229, 259, 378, 435, 477, 553 Segveldt, Heyndrick Jansz van 93 Selijns, Henricus 540, 545, 581–582 Selijns, Niesgen 581 Serfs 535 Sermon books 325 Servet, Miquel 50 Sewant 393, 405, 473–474, 477, 482 Sherman, William T. 587 Ships: Batavia 300 De Brand van Troyen 494 De Charitas 534 De Eendracht 74, 430, 433, 533 De Eyckeboom 474 De Grote Gerrit 548 De Halve Maen 341 De Hoop 533 De Maecht van Enchuijsen 504 De Pauwe 501 De Prinses Amelia (The Princess) 339, 496, 501, 550–553, 557 De Soutbergh 413, 463, 598 De Swarte Raven 389 De Vlucht 534 De Witte Leeuw 295

Den Blaeuwen Haen 497 Graaf Maurits 537 Neptunus 473 Nieuw Hoorn 300 Prins Willem (sloop) 398 Tamandare 534 The Mayower 483 Shopkeepers 93, 134, 175, 191, 454 Shorto, Russell 498 n. 23 Signatures 52, 65, 74, 129, 321–322, 334–336, 370, 409–410, 497 Signs 20–22, 77, 107, 149, 157, 192–198, 216, 226, 234, 240–241, 266, 336, 362, 365, 495, 564, 572 Sille, Dr. Nicasius de 405, 458 Silver Fleet 301–302, 420 Simon, Blind 219 Simonsen, Michiel 430 Simonsz, Claes 199 Sin 5, 11, 16, 24, 76–81, 168, 172, 182–183, 188, 195, 198–199, 208, 226–227, 235–236, 240–242, 249, 260, 268, 305, 307, 354, 362, 468, 482, 521 Singing 24, 141, 155, 160–162, 164, 167–173, 176, 182, 250–251, 260, 275, 302, 306, 508 Skyscapes 196–197, 240 Slachboom, Teuntgen Jeuriaens 360 Slander 199, 339, 349, 422, 439, 510, 514–515, 562 Slavery 151, 183, 293, 453, 481, 530–540, 546 Slichtenhorst, Brandt van 358 Sluis (Flanders) 565 Smacht, Aelbert Gerritsz 233 Smidde (Zwidde), Berent 138 Smit, Lucas 399 Smith, George L. 350 Smith, Richard 484 Smout, Adriaen 416 social drama 248 Sodom and Gomorrah 16, 158, 194–195, 241 Sodomy 533 Solderbeeck, Salomon van 431, 435 Solomon 555 Somnium coeleste 261 Sophocles 219 Sorcery 147, 150–151, 212 n. 17 Souterius, Daniel 324 South America 287 South Holland, synod 46, 48, 51, 97, 200, 203, 279, 305, 327, 331

index South River (Delaware) 388, 493 Southern Netherlands 159, 289 Sovereignty 288, 339, 359, 377, 455, 500 Spain, Spaniards 44, 262, 287, 344, 413, 420, 457, 461 n. 19, 490, 526, 532, 534–535 speech act 163 Speech, speaking 73, 85, 104, 139, 144, 148, 160, 162, 164–166, 168, 208, 226, 229–231, 260, 281, 282, 358, 362, 378, 405, 455, 459, 465, 494 Spier, Jo 588 Spier, Peter Edward 588–589, 591 Spiere, Rijckaert van 159 Spilbergen, Joris van 588 Spinola 78 Spinozism 90 Spirit, Holy (Holy Ghost) 11–13, 16, 21–22, 24, 100, 160, 186–187, 196, 216, 218, 225–226, 230–231, 235–237, 246–248, 250, 253–256, 264, 200, 304 Spirit possession, see Possession Spitsbergen (island) 302, 442 St. Anthony, Barent Jan 538 St. Anthony, Pieter 538 St. Bartholomew’s Night 488 St. Martin (Caribbean island) 322 St. Nicholas’ Eve 589 Stam, Dirck Corssen 425 n. 31, 434 Stangh, Jacob 502 Staten Island 345, 449, 472–474, 479, 491, 493, 495 Staten Island, patroonship 495 Staten-Hoeck (Cape Cod) 341 States General (The Hague) 79, 85, 89, 97, 129 n. 26, 287–290, 295, 341, 345, 348–350, 361, 372, 374, 378, 407, 421, 428, 438, 441, 444–446, 448, 461, 491, 496–497, 499–500, 516–517, 536, 554, 555–556 Stearns, Carol and Peter 559 Steelman, Chas. H. 580 Steen, Hans 480 Steendam, Jacob 314, 337–338 Steenwyck, Abraham Jacobsz van 397 Stephani, Wilhelmus 203 Stettin (Szczecin, Poland) 388 Sticker, Jan Jochemsz 295–296, 312, 417 Stoffelsen, Jacob 466, 469, 484, 491, 497, 535

625

Stoothof, Elbert Elbertsz 384 Strick van Linschoten, Johan 63 n. 42 Stuyvesant, Balthasar 390 Stuyvesant, Pieter 339, 356, 374, 391, 412, 448–449, 496, 498, 506, 508–509, 517, 529, 547–549, 554–556, 577, 587, 588 Sunday observance, see Sabbath Supernatural 18, 78, 100, 148, 150, 192, 196, 220–224, 230, 259–260, 263 Superstitions 260 n. 31, 303 Supper, the Lord’s 50, 102, 217, 309, 311, 325, 359, 362, 382, 508–510, 513, 520–523, 564 Supreme Court of the United States 577 Surgeons 79, 132, 295 n. 8, 311, 367, 390, 398, 404, 409, 411, 431, 459 Susanna (black adolescent) 541 Susanna (black slave) 536 Suso, Heinrich 213 Swager, Emmanuel 537 Swanendael, patroonship 414, 421, 479, 493 Swannekens 386 n. 58, 475 Swansea (Wales) 551–552 Swartinne, Hillary (Larie) 537, 539, 541–542, 545 Swartinne, Philippe 541–542 Sweden 21, 370 Swits (alias Rademaker), Claes Cornelissen 466, 474 Switter(ius), Johan 373 Switzerland 108 Sybrant, Jan 578, 581–582 Sybrants, Wyntje 581–582 Synods, see on the name of the place Tafn, Jean 189, 323 Tailors 136–142 Tanis, James 565 Tankitekes (Indian tribe) 474, 483, 486 Tappans (Indian tribe) 473, 477, 480 Taurinus, Jacobus 103 Taverns, inns 457, 486 n. 84, 498–499, 562 Tawasentha (Meulenkill), see Red Mill Creek Teellinck, Eeuwout 189, 201, 236 Teellinck, Willem 190, 192, 201, 235–236, 238, 362, 565 Teiresias of Thebes 219 Texel (Holland) 295, 298, 316, 328, 374, 413

626

index

The Hague (Holland) 37–38, 41, 43, 47–48, 103, 138, 158, 260, 282, 372, 447, 579 The Hague, Court of Holland and Zeeland 427, 518 The Hague, national synod of 327 The Hague, Royal Library 37–38 The Hague, Royal Palace 579 Theocracy 101, 185, 189 n. 10, 362 Theresa of Avila, saint 148 Thijmens, Marritje, see Jans, Marritgen Thomas à Kempis 210 Thomas, Keith 88 Thomas, Marritgen 425 Thomasdr, Abigael 83 Thysius, Johannes 203, 304 Thyssen, Lysbeth 502–503 Tiele, P.A. 282 Tienhoven, Cornelis van 391, 409, 421, 460, 473, 476–478, 480, 483, 495–498, 508, 536, 556 Tilly ( Johan t’Serclaes, Count), General 411 Tobias 179, 325 Tobit 219 Tocht, Pieter Dircksz van der 228 Tolerance 46, 81 Trading, commerce, fur trade 287–288, 290, 296, 303, 306, 308, 310, 320, 341, 343–343, 346, 350, 352, 363, 365, 379–380, 386–387, 398, 417, 419–420, 425, 432, 434, 469, 471–472, 475, 517, 534, 547 Trapnel, Anna 212, 215 Trasele, Catharina 389, 601 Trent, Council of 184 Trigland, Jacobus 563 Trinity, Holy 51 Trompetter, Anthony 541 Trompetter, Manuel 540 Truce, Twelve Year 44, 197 Tübingen (Germany) 197 Turk, The, see Salee, Anthony Jansen van Turks 91, 201, 281, 461–468, 532, 542 Turner, Frederick Jackson 299 Turner, Victor 248 Twelve Men, see New Netherland Twickel, Susanna (Sannichgen) Gerritsdr van 232 Twiller, Wouter van 345–346, 351, 353, 367, 372, 380–381, 383–385, 397 n. 84, 401, 403, 406–408, 413–416, 421–426, 429–443, 449,

452, 455–456, 461, 506, 513, 533, 542, 546, 555, 563 Twisck, Pieter Jansz 148 Tylor, Edward B. 204–205 Tzum (Friesland) 95, 176 Udemans, Godfried 177, 190, 201, 235–236, 292–293, 303–304, 307, 324, 350, 524, 526, 531 Underhill, John 484–486 unio mystica 248 Ursinus, Zacharias 324, 326 Usselincx, Willem 287, 418–419 Utopia 7, 300, 361–362, 454 n. 6, 567 Utrecht (city and province) 9, 62 Utrecht, Buurkerk 73, 103 Utrecht, Buurkerkhof 103 Utrecht, Jacobikerk 73 Utrecht, orphanage 37 Utrecht, St. Peter’s church 72 Utrecht, Union of (1579) 348 Uytenbogaert, Johannes 73 Valckenburg, Elisabeth van 419–420 Valckenburg, Marcus van, Jr. 418 Valckenburg, Margriet van 418 Valckenburg, Maria van 420 Valentine, David 536 Vandereycken, Walter 209, 211–213 Vanvugt, Ewald 453 Veenendaal (Utrecht) 71–72 Veere (Zeeland) 376, 407 Velaer, Catharina de 418 Velaer, Jacques de 418 Velsen, notary van 537 Veluwe (Gelderland) 236, 372 Verbrugge, see also Brugh Verbrugge, Seth 367, 550, 553 Vergeer, Gerrit Gijsbertz 46, 58, 93–94, 138, 279 Vergeer, Gijsbert Gerritsz 50 Vergote, A. 221 Verhey, Gerrit Dircx 167 Verhulst, Willem 373, 528 Vermij, Gijsbert Aertsz 120 Verschout, Andries 129, 155, 269 n. 10 Versteech, Dirck Stevensz 92 Verwey, Jacob 65 Ves (Vees, Fez), see Salee Vincent, Isabeau 23 Virginia 308, 321, 356, 359, 386, 401, 440, 450–451, 474, 525, 578 Virginias (Virginies), see New Netherland

index Visions, visionaries 9, 11–12, 22, 26, 29, 104, 194, 196–198, 204, 209–210, 216–229, 243, 259–261, 269, 272–273, 276, 279–280, 353, 363, 454, 479, 520, 534, 544 Visscher, Anna Roemers 419 Visscher, Nicolaus Jansz 582 Visual culture 177–179 Visual language 177, 194 Vives, Juan Luis 110–111, 116, 261, 266 Vliegen, Eva 281 Vlissingen, see Flushing VOC, see East India Company Voetians 101 Vogelaer, Marcus de, Jr. 418–423, 446 Vogelaer, Marcus de, Sr. 418 Voluntarism 254, 362 Vondel, Joost van den 416, 563 voorgangers (lay preachers) 328 Vorst, Cornelis van 387, 398, 425, 471, 491 Vorst, Gerrit Jansz van 476 Vorst, Hendrick Cornelisz van 384 Vorst, Ide van 483 Vredelandt, Hendrick 199 Vries, David Pietersz de 338, 361, 397, 403, 425, 430, 432, 453, 455–458, 473–474, 478–480, 482–483, 487, 490–493, 495–496, 500, 567 Vries, Frederick de 493 Vries, Jan de, Jr. 539 Vries, Jan de, Sr. (captain) 499, 538–539, 542, 550 Vriesendael, patroonship 345, 477, 493 Vrij, Frederick de 79 Vryheden en Exemptien 345, 348, 520 Wach, Joachim 19 Waddinxveen (Wensveen, Holland) 389 Waesberghe, Jan van 97 n. 52, 381 n. 42 Walaeus, Antonius 203, 304, 526 Walcheren (Zeeland), classis 323 Walenburg, Reinier 283 Wales, Coast of 7, 461, 550–552 Wallace (Wallis), Annetke 579, 581 Wallington, Nehemiah 69, 253, 268 Walloons 104, 358, 395 n. 82 Walraven, Jan 548 Wappingers (Indian tribe) 486 Wassenaer, Claes Jansz van 280 Wassenaer, Jan Claesz van 281 Waterland (Holland) 273, 584

627

Webber, Anneke Jans 577–581 Webber, Jan 579, 581 Webber, Sarah 581–582 Webber, Wolfert, Jr. 581 Webber, Wolfert, Sr. 581 Weber, Max 276 Weckquasgeeks (Indian tribe) 363, 455, 475–477, 480 Weehawken (NJ) 503 n. 36 Weesp (Holland) 281 Weimar (Saxony) 197–198 Wel, Evert Cornelisz van der 542 Wel, Laurens Cornelissen van der 504, 514, 542 Wely, Jan van, Jr. 372 Wely, Thomas van 373 Wely, Willem van 420 Welysburch (farmstead) 381 Wensveen, Dirck Cornelisz van 367, 389, 549 Wesel (Rhineland) 441, 444 Wesel, Matena church 441 West (myth) 299 West Friesland (Holland) 289 West India Company (WIC) [and Amsterdam chamber] 62, 68, 74, 134, 287–296, 300, 302, 305, 307, 310–312, 321–322, 324, 332, 334, 336–337, 339, 340–341, 343, 345–355, 358, 365–367, 369, 371–373, 380, 382–384, 388, 573, 391, 393–395, 399, 403–404, 414, 46–422, 428–433, 436, 439, 441–442, 444–449, 453, 455–558, 460, 468, 470–471, 473–476, 469, 493, 495, 499, 504–505, 509, 517, 519, 525–526, 529, 530, 532, 534–536, 542, 548–549, 554, 557, 565, 581 West India Company, factions 343, 372, 418–421, 497, 517 West India Company, Heren XIX 289, 290, 312, 343, 436, 439, 441, 444–448, 497, 529–530, 548 West India Company, Zeeland chamber 289, 302, 314 West Indies 287, 289, 301–302, 306, 309, 321, 323, 337, 355, 400, 534 Westchester County (NY) 363, 486 Westphalia, Peace of 149, 416, 565 Westveen, Willem Jacobsz van 50 Weyer, Johan, see Wier Wheelwright (Rademaker), see Swits Whitaker, Alexander 525 White Mountain., battle of the 78

628

index

WIC, see West India Company Wier (Weyer), Johan 9, 145, 150, 205 Wight, Isle of 413 Wight, Sarah 212, 215 Wijk bij Duurstede (Utrecht) 441 Wijngaarden, Jan Florisz van 15, 46, 93 Wikoff, Thomas Bentley 578–582 Wild Coast (Cayenne) 493 Willems, Geertruyt 398 Willemsdr, Grietgen, see Paludanus Willemsz (Kieft), Gerrit 452 Willemsz, Aert 390 Willemsz, Evert (Everardus Bogardus) passim Willemsz, Jacob 57 William the Silent, prince of Orange, 493, 582; ‘King of Holland’ 579–580 Williams, Roger 454, 525 Willige Langerak (Utrecht) 72 Wiltens, Ambrosius 326 Wiltwyck (Esopus, NY) 386 Winchester, bishop of 90 Winshem, Elsebe van 426 Winshem, Johan van 426 Winshem, Lubbert van 426 Winter King, see Frederick of the Palatinate Winter, P.J. van 78, 301 Winter, Pieter de 466 Winthrop, John 554 Witsen, Jonas 421 Woerden (Holland, now province of Utrecht) 7–13, 15, 20, 24, 27, 31, 37, 41, 43–69, 72–76, 81–87, 91–92, 94–101, 103–106, 111–113, 119–120, 125, 128–129, 131–138, 141, 149–151, 153, 155, 166–167, 174–175, 177–179, 183, 186, 191–192, 198–199, 202, 206, 228, 235, 237, 243–244, 246, 262–267, 269–270, 272–283, 299–305, 312–335, 389, 412, 428, 563–564, 566 Woerden, castle 41, 137 Woerden, classis 46, 49, 52, 83–84, 86, 94, 96, 99, 141, 202, 279–280, 331 Woerden, Haverstraat (Havenstraat) 121, 132 Woerden, Honthorst 93 Woerden, Kerksteeg 60 Woerden, Kruisstraat 132 Woerden, Latin School 9, 75 Woerden, Orphan chamber 54

Woerden, Oudeland 57 n. 29 Woerden, Reformed consistory 94 Woerden, Rhine 41, 137 Woerden, Rietvelderstraat 93 Woerden, St. Barbara’s hospice 120 Woerden, Stedesteeg 137 Woerden, synod 52, 94, 327 Woerden, Town Orphanage 115–152 Woerden, Voorstraat 120 Woerden, Water Board 111–112 Woerden, Zandpad 57 Wolfert, prince (of Orange) 580; ‘King of Holland’ 581 Wolfertsz, Gerrit, see Couwenhoven Women 385–388, 398, 404, 467–469, 530, 571–591; see also Gender Wonders, see Miracles Wormer (Holland) 101 Woutersen, Egbert 388 Wouw, Willem van 424 Wrath, anger 277–278, 518, 533, 556–563 Writing 163–164, 167, 409, 494 Wybbelts, Sake 240 Xenophon

498

Yarrow, Robert

90

Zaandam (Holland) 96 Zacharias, prophet 180 Zas (Sasch, Zasch, Zasius), Lucas Henricx 9, 11, 13, 32–34, 37, 53, 55, 58, 65, 95, 97 n. 52, 103–114, 128, 136, 151, 159, 161–170, 205, 207–208, 226, 234, 243, 246, 248, 251–252, 258, 262–270, 272, 275, 277–278, 280, 282, 358 Zas, Henrick Lucasz 103 Zas, Jacob Lucasz 103 Zas, Salomon 58 Zasch, Zasius, see also Zas Zasius, Laurentius 205 Zeeland, States of 202 Zevenhoven (Holland) 69, 86, 88, 91 Zierikzee (Zeeland) 293, 363, 535 Zoetermeer (Holland) 82 Zoudenbalch, Evert 116 Zutphen (Gelderland) 49, 137, 139, 496 Zwammerdam (Holland) 141 Zwierlein, Frederick 350 Zwinglians 108 Zwolle (Overijssel) 426