Faith on the Margins: Catholics and Catholicism in the Dutch Golden Age 9780674033719

Citation preview

Faith on the Margins

Faith on the Margins catholics and catholicism in the dutch golden age

Charles H. Parker

h a rva r d u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England

2008

Copyright © 2008 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Parker, Charles H., 1958– Faith on the margins: Catholics and Catholicism in the Dutch Golden Age / Charles H. Parker. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-674-02662-9 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-674-02662-4 (alk. paper) 1. Catholic Church—Netherlands—History—17th century. 2. Netherlands—Church history—17th century. I. Title. BX1550.P28 2008 282'.49209032—dc22 2007023457

To my parents

Acknowledgments

It is a genuine pleasure to thank many people who have assisted in the production of this book. I should begin by thanking James Tracy, whose expertise, creativity, and generosity continue to amaze me. His essay in the Catholic Historical Review (volume 85) first piqued my interest in the priests of the Holland Mission and the laypeople who supported them. Jim read the manuscript several times at different stages, shared his own material with me, and provided numerous useful comments. I am also very grateful to Brad Gregory, Ben Kaplan, Jo Spaans, and an anonymous reader for Harvard University Press, all of whom read the entire manuscript carefully and thoughtfully. They pointed out errors, raised poignant questions, and offered valuable suggestions; Ben and Jo also shared portions of their research with me before publication. A much larger body of scholars and friends on two continents have either offered advice or commented on various sections of the book. These colleagues include Gian Ackermans, Christine Ames, Paul Beghyn, SJ, Toby Benis, John Carroll, Theo Clemens, Willem Frijhoff, Philip Gavitt, Georgia Johnston, Craig Harline, Christine Kooi, Sherry Lindquist, Michael Maher, SJ, Colleen McCluskey, Ray Mentzer, Marit Monteiro, Henk van Nierop, Patrick O’Banion, Judith Pollmann, Paul Shore, Annie Smart, Anne Thayer, and J. J. Woltjer. I am indebted to them for making this a better book than it otherwise would have been. John Doyle, Clarence Miller, and Claude Pavur, SJ, helped me make sense of more than a few dense Latin passages.

viii

Acknowledgments

The generous financial support of several institutions made this book possible, and I am pleased to recognize them. Research grants from the Spencer Foundation and Saint Louis University (SLU2000 Faculty Research Leave) enabled me to conduct the research and complete much of the writing from January 2002 to August 2003. Subsequent grants provided by Saint Louis University from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (2003) and the Graduate School (2004) provided me two summers to finish the book. I am very thankful to the Press Syndicate at Harvard University Press for agreeing to publish Faith on the Margins, especially to senior editor Kathleen McDermott for her interest in the project and her sagacity in shepherding it through the long and winding process. The University of Hawaii Press kindly gave me permission to reprint material (in “Paying for the Privilege: The Management of Public Order and Religious Pluralism in Two Early Modern Societies,” Journal of World History 17 [2006]: 267–296) in Chapter 2, and Koninklijke Brill N.V. permitted me to reprint a portion of an essay (“Obedience with an Attitude: Laity and Clergy in the Dutch Catholic Church of the Seventeenth Century,” in The Low Countries as the Crossroads of Religious Belief, ed. Arie van Gelderbloom, Jan L. de Jong, and Mark van Vaeck [Leiden: Brill, 2004], 177–196) in Chapter 5. Various librarians and archivists have provided valuable assistance in giving me access to sources. Among the many supportive professionals I encountered, Wiebe Bouwsma and Beatrix Martinez in the Special Collections Reading Room at the University of Utrecht proved exceptionally kind and helpful. Most importantly, I would like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt appreciation for my family’s encouragement and patience during my work on this project. Jean and Drew give me perspective on my work and great joy in my life. My parents, Charles and Dolores Parker, have been an unending source of love and support throughout my life. This book is dedicated to them.

Contents

Preface Map Introduction 1 2 3 4 5

xi xiv 1

Caught between Reformations: Catholics in the Holland Mission

24

Training the Laborers: Formation of the Dutch Clergy

69

Laboring in the Vineyard: Priests and Pastoral Care

112

Restoring a Catholic Presence: Lay Attitudes and Initiatives

149

Paying the Priest, Feeding the Poor: Patronage and Poor Relief

190

Conclusion

237

Appendix: Endowments to Collegium Pulcheria from the Liber Fundationum

243

Contents

x

Abbreviations

247

Notes

249

Bibliography

299

Index

319

Preface

The focus of this study is the collaboration between the laity and the secular clergy in the missionary organization known as the Holland Mission (Missio Hollandica). Though a handful of priests began to organize earlier, the rudimentary outlines of any concerted effort did not emerge until 1583, when Sasbout Vosmeer was appointed vicar general. The Dutch clergy did not refer to this missionary organization as the Holland Mission until the mid-seventeenth century, though I use the term throughout the book for the entire period. The anachronistic use of “Holland Mission” is simply for the sake of descriptive expedience, since the ambiguous status of church districts in the Northern Netherlands does not lend itself to a manageable linguistic handle. The special attention given to lay-clerical interaction has obliged me to make certain choices of concentration, the most significant of which is a diminished consideration of the activity of religious orders in Dutch Catholic communities. Jesuits, as well as Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians, do appear in this book from beginning to end in persistent conflicts with secular priests over ecclesiastical jurisdiction, pastoral care, and competition for patronage. But this study does not give sustained attention to Jesuits from their sources, because they could not support an extensive analysis of lay experience. While I have incorporated much material from the Dutch Jesuit archives in Nijmegen, these sources ultimately proved to be too thin for a study of lay-clerical inter-

xii

Preface

action. The Jesuit archives contain two basic sources for this region and period, catalogs and annual letters. The former are not much more than lists of priests; sometimes they yield information about the movement of priests. The annual letters were also quite meager for the purposes of this study, largely providing numbers and general descriptions of conversions, baptisms, etc., and the movement of priests. The letters sometimes complain about harassment from the secular clergy and always comment about persecution from political authorities, but they provide nothing really tangible about lay Catholics. The archives of the apostolic vicars and the Old Catholic Church in Utrecht, however, contain voluminous correspondence of the secular clergy for this period, a sizable portion of which is to, from, and about lay congregations. In addition, the archives of the Haarlem Cathedral Chapter in the National Archives of North Holland (in Haarlem) also include a variety of manuscript sources that deal with lay issues. The systematic integration of the Jesuit sources, therefore, would have resulted in a book essentially about the clergy in the Netherlands. As important as this topic is, the guiding agenda of this study was interaction among laity and clergy, a focus that drew me to the archives in Utrecht and Haarlem. The archives of the apostolic vicars in Utrecht and the Haarlem Cathedral Chapter also include a vast number of other sources used in this study as well, such as visitation reports, seminary and educational records, devotional materials, statutes, actions of corporate bodies, dispensations, and testaments. (See J. Bruggeman and Y. E. Kortlever, eds., Inventaris van de archieven van de apostolische vicarissen van de Hollandse Zending en hun secretarissen, 1579–1728 [Utrecht: Het Utrechts Archief, 2001]; P. M. Verhoofstad, Inventaris der archieven gevormed door de besturen van het Bisdom van Haarlem, 1559–1853 [IJmuiden: Drukkerij “Nijk,” 1959]; J. R. Persman, ed., Archieven van het Bisdom Haarlem van de Oud-Katholieke Kerk [Haarlem: Rijksarchief in Noord-Holland, 1985].) I have supplemented these sources with published devotional, historical, and polemical sources from various research libraries, namely the Special Collections Library at the University of Utrecht, the Special Collections Library at the Museum Catharijneconvent (in Utrecht), the Newberry Library in Chicago, the St. Louis Room of Pius XII Memorial Library and Institute of Jesuit Sources at Saint Louis University, the Divinity Library of Harvard University, and the Special

Preface

xiii

Collections Library at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Based on centralized archival and published primary materials, this book necessarily provides general interpretations of Dutch Catholicism of interest to a broad range of scholars and students interested in early modern religious culture. As a consequence, the study does not, as a matter of course, highlight all the local variations in religious practice across the northern provinces. The territories served by the Holland Mission corresponded to the lands that made up the Dutch Republic, with the notable exception of the Generality Lands. These regions included the States Brabant, States Flanders, and States Limburg. Politically, the Generality Lands came under the authority of the States General, but the territories did not constitute separate provinces. (For a discussion of the political geography of these lands, see Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477–1806 [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995], 387–388, 599–601, 658–660.) Catholicism continued to be very strong in the Generality Lands, owing to the successes of the Counter-Reformation before Dutch military conquest at the end of the sixteenth century. These lands remained under the authority of the Bishops of ’s-Hertogenbosch and Antwerp and, consequently, did not fall within the jurisdiction of the Holland Mission. Finally, a number of writers whose correspondence is located in the Utrecht archives employed the old dating system of the Julian calendar. The Bruggeman and Kortlever inventory of these archives, referred to above, lists the new style (Gregorian) date, along with the old style date. I have followed the inventory’s format for these sources by recording the old and new style dates, separated by a hyphen.

en

e

Ze

Groningen

Groningen

Friesland

Wa

dd

The Netherlands and the Holland Mission in the Seventeenth Century

Drenthe

t

S

e

a

h l l a n d

r

Haarlem

Zuider Zee

Overijssel

Amsterdam

Zutphen

Utrecht

Gelderland

Utrecht

H

Leiden

Ems

o

o

N

Rotterdam Waal Maas

Generality

Antwerp

a r

S

A

Borders, 1648 25

50

se eu M

C

United Netherlands, 1609

Aisne

Luxembourg

E Reims

75 miles

e

Luxembourg

CharlevilleMézières

N

Holland Mission

0

B

Oise

th

r Ou

R Amiens

h is

o

Kyll

ri c

Ou r

p

Arras

H a i n a u t

r Ru

of

Namur

A r t o i s

F

Aachen

Liège Limburg

Tournai

Lille

Cologne

Maastrict

Brussels

B

Boulogne

Meu

Liège

Ghent

F l a n d e r s Lys

Ruhr

se

b

Bruges

ch eld t

Dunkirk Calais

Upper Gelders

a

Sluis Ostend

t

n

The

Mörs

Zeeland

Rh in e

Verdun

Metz

Trier

Introduction

Michael Paludanus, Augustinian prefect for the Northern Netherlands, boasted in 1628 that a “countless number” of people in Calvinist Holland were leaving their Protestant churches and turning to the Roman faith; he in fact believed that the Catholic Church there had grown by four to five times its previous size in past years. Several years later, in 1635, Phillip Rovenius, apostolic vicar of the Holland Mission (the Catholic missionary organization for the Northern Netherlands), reported that in the preceding year alone, 2,500 heretics had returned to the Catholic Church throughout the Dutch Republic.1 But these and the many other rosy reports of heretics and lapsed Catholics returning to the Roman fold were tempered by regular complaints from local Catholic communities. In 1611, for example, lay leaders from the small town of Goes in Zeeland grumbled that Catholics were leaving for Calvinist churches because of infighting among priests and lack of support for the poor.2 As late as 1700, sixteen lay Catholics from Amersfoort, near Utrecht, wrote to warn that the lack of a priest was causing “great difficulty and decline in religion”: “All the time many young people are going to other churches to marry, baptize their children, and receive other sacraments.”3 These optimistic accounts and dour warnings point to a remarkable feature of the Golden Age Netherlands: the exercise of religious choice. Dutch men and women in the post-Reformation period could

2

Fa i t h o n t h e M a r g i n s

choose between an assortment of denominations, Catholic, Calvinist, Mennonite, or Lutheran, all of which had significant followings in the Republic. What is more, they could even choose nothing at all.4 This was the golden period of Dutch history, when intellectuals, such as Dirck Volkertszoon Coornhert, Johannes Uytenbogaert, C. P. Hooft, and Gerard Brandt openly touted the virtues of religious tolerance. On a less lofty plane, ordinary Dutch people crossed back and forth over confessional boundaries, whether out of a search for salvation, a sense of social decorum, a drive for economic gain, an ambition for public office, or the demand of familial affiliation. Even for those who remained loyal to their own faith tradition, staying faithful often entailed constant negotiation during a period of important religious innovation.5 Confessional alternatives were not necessarily unique to the Dutch, for the Reformation spawned confessional choices in all European lands, though choosing a denomination could carry stiff legal, economic, and social repercussions. Those who embraced an outlawed denomination faced the prospect of fines, expulsion, imprisonment, and, in some cases, death. After a lull of more than a millennium, martyrdom reemerged as a possibility for lay Christians, not just for missionaries outside Europe.6 Vigorous, systematic persecution and martyrdom, however, were not the rule in most places at most times. Given the potential for persecution, most dissidents still thought it made sense to keep a low profile and make accommodations within a hostile society. Perez Zagorin’s study of dissimulation has demonstrated that prevarication in religious matters became an art form by the seventeenth century.7 Nowhere else in post-Reformation Europe, however, did people have a greater range of confessional choices with fewer threats than did the Dutch in the United Provinces. Although the States General did ban all activities associated with Catholicism by the early 1580s, enforcement of anti-Catholic edicts was very much a local issue. And many authorities in Dutch towns and villages took the opportunity to line their pockets because of their willingness to look the other way.8 Contemporaries both inside and outside the Republic talked a great deal about this pragmatic type of accommodation, though they did so from very different perspectives. Foreign travelers marveled at the diversity that tolerance fostered, merchants extolled the profits that it paid, Calvinists railed against the sacrileges that it perpetrated, and Mennonites lamented the moral laxity that it wrought.9 Even Catholics,

Introduction

3

who often complained that the tolerance accorded them was in short supply, nonetheless acknowledged that on many occasions they too enjoyed liberality. Historians since the seventeenth century have heard these voices and have heaped praise on the degree of religious plurality in the Republic. The reputation of the Dutch for religious toleration grew from the nineteenth century onward, as Protestant and liberal historians identified tolerance as a central component of Netherlandish society, and religious liberality as innate to the national character. Over the course of several generations of uncritical examination and expansive treatment, Dutch tolerance in the seventeenth century, until very recently, was taken for granted, overgeneralized, and treated as iconic.10 The overdrawing of religious choice in the seventeenth century, along with anachronistic suppositions about Dutch national identity, has led all but Catholic historians to overlook the regular episodes of religious violence that plagued those loyal to Rome. In addition, Benjamin Kaplan has suggested that the failure to contextualize toleration within contemporary norms has allowed modern notions to seep into our assumptions about the seventeenth-century Dutch experience. That is, tolerance in the early modern period had nothing to do with our concept of “religious freedom, which we define as a basic human right.”11 As it related to Catholicism in the Republic, toleration denoted only a respite from prosecution, a respite that authorities were willing to concede at a given time and place. All but the most radical free thinkers (most of whom were persecuted) accepted the legitimacy of state violence against religious heterodoxy, especially when it spilled over into public consciousness. Toleration, therefore, implied a condition of religious coexistence characterized by both antagonism and concord, along with the power of the state to manage public space.12 Even in the most favorable circumstances for Catholics, worship took place in private homes, often under the cover of night, and only after the bribery of local officials. Furthermore, Catholics forfeited eligibility to hold any public offices, from lucrative positions, such as those of a master of the harbor or measurer of weights and standards, to modest posts, such as those of a street sweeper or grave digger. Catholics also lost all rights to display their religious allegiance in any public forum. So for the Dutch who chose to become or remain Catholic, religious loyalty came at a price, even in the relatively moderate setting of the

4

Fa i t h o n t h e M a r g i n s

seventeenth-century Netherlands.13 With all the ambivalence about Catholic worship and the availability of denominational alternatives, the Dutch Republic provides a unique opportunity to explore the religious identity of a confessional minority in the post-Reformation period. This present study is both a synthetic treatment of Dutch Catholicism and a historical analysis of Catholic religious identity in a Protestant republic from the Revolt against Spain in 1572 to the beginning of the Jansenist schism in 1702, a critical transition in the religious history of the Netherlands.14 During this period, the Dutch Catholic Church went from the sole public faith in 1572 to a largely defunct sect by 1600 to a reinvigorated confessional body by 1650, to a conflicted but permanent religious subculture by 1700. The particular structure of confessional coexistence in the Republic and an energetic program of religious education fostered a Catholic identity crucial to church growth and necessary for the long-term survival of Catholicism in a Protestant land. In provinces where Catholicism flourished most, such as Holland and Utrecht, the combination of Catholic educational formation and moderate hardship, which on occasion involved violence, cultivated a sense of confessional uniqueness. Catholics who chose to stay Catholic made a definite commitment to the Roman faith and acquired a fairly sophisticated understanding of doctrine. Further, in this antagonistic environment, Catholic communities developed a collective self-awareness as an embattled minority of true believers, which enabled them to identify with the central narratives of suffering in biblical and Christian history. In contrast, in provinces such as Gelderland and Zeeland, rigid enforcement of anti-Catholic edicts greatly limited the appeal of the Roman faith and prevented priests from establishing a sustained ministry. Therefore, moderate persecution and religious education were factors of growth, whereas severe persecution kept Catholic communities small and underdeveloped.15 Along with external persecution and internal education, the secularization of church property was a major influence on Catholic fortunes in the Netherlands. The secularization of benefices and parish revenues created a crisis in patronage and a shortage of priests that hampered pastoral ministry throughout this period. Yet in terms of renewing Catholic piety, the loss of revenues also had benefits for reform-minded Dutch Catholic leaders. It gave them opportunity to rebuild the church

Introduction

5

from scratch and to retrain the clergy without all the obstructions from institutional patrons and entrenched interests in the ecclesiastical hierarchy common in other areas.16 In this regard, Catholic leaders in the Northern Netherlands possessed a freer hand in implementing Tridentine reforms than many bishops across Europe. The search for new sources of patronage also gave lay elites much more leverage in church affairs than their counterparts in Catholic lands had. Lay members, consequently, played a central role in managing parish affairs and collaborated closely, though often facing strong disagreement from local priests. Consequently, the experience of Dutch Catholics bears witness to the complexity of Catholic religious identity in the Reformation period and can inform our understanding of confessional choice and religious toleration across Baroque Europe.

Religious Choice and Confessional Difference in Reformation Europe In all European lands the tumultuous religious changes of the sixteenth century fundamentally altered the ways in which people understood, experienced, and expressed faith. Not only did the Reformation introduce new confessional alternatives, but the breakup of Latin Christendom actually created the possibility of confessional choice in the Western world. Certainly Europeans had always exerted religious agency, manifested most dramatically in outward displays of piety or in outright rejections of church teachings or practices. On a less conspicuous level, ordinary women and men formed their own cosmologies, used magic to reorder their worlds, and chose their own ways of complying with, assimilating, or defying church teachings.17 From the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries, inquisitors and authorities had their hands full trying to suppress powerful heretical movements in southern France, northern Italy, England, and Bohemia. These choices, however, always took place within the framework of a universal church whose center in the Latin West was Rome. By contrast, the choices created by the Reformation, at least by the end of the sixteenth century, were categorical in nature, comprehensive in scope, and permanent in legacy. Denominations constructed their own traditions, developed their own institutions, and codified their own doc-

6

Fa i t h o n t h e M a r g i n s

trines. As Ernst Troeltsch would describe it, denominations in the sixteenth century developed into institutionalized churches rather than simply lingering as sectarian groups.18 As a result, when people chose to affiliate with a confessional body, regardless of whether they did so for religious reasons, they identified themselves with a supralocal community of believers bound together by uniform standards of doctrine, institutions for moral discipline, agencies for poor relief, and a fully articulated vision of their place in church history. Confessional choices in the Reformation also connoted religious differences, which have important implications for the study of a religious minority in this period. Though contemporaries made religious choices, they did not conceive of these decisions as choices, at least not as we do today. The notion of religious choice presumes a secular society of individuals with equal religious rights. Men and women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did not regard heresy, idolatry, or apostasy as religious choices; rather they understood them as plagues of the soul, seductions of the devil, and portals to hell. Paradoxically, they believed that the religious choices they did make would free them from these terrors. Since all confessional groups regarded themselves as the one true body of Christ, each denomination necessarily considered all others as sectarian, schismatic, heretical, or idolatrous. On this point, theologians as diverse as John Calvin, Robert Bellarmine, Menno Simons, and Flacius Illyricus could agree. The principled condemnation of all other confessions was critical to maintaining confessional exclusivity. In fact, the mission of an exclusive faith community in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries demanded that theologians and pastors denounce other confessions, not merely as inferior, defective systems of salvation, but as the antithesis and enemy of truth. Or, as Caesar Baronius, the renowned Catholic historian of the Counter-Reformation, argued throughout his Annales Ecclesiastici, the presence of heresy proved the existence of truth, just as the persistence of heretics throughout history confirmed the veracity of the Roman Catholic Church.19 Religious difference, depicted as heretical, idolatrous, or apostate, played an important part in structuring confessional communities. A study of religious experiences in the Reformation and CounterReformation period, then, calls for a dialectical approach to interconfessional relations. The perception of confessional difference was a central force behind the movements for reform and reformation among

Introduction

7

all denominations in all lands in the early modern period. Men and women made no distinction between sincere loyalty to their own beliefs and the vigorous condemnation of false beliefs held by heretics, idolaters, or apostates. A commitment to a particular faith necessitated the rejection of all other faiths. The presence of opposing belief systems provided an impetus for confessional reform, and thus religious violence proved essential to the emergence of religious toleration. For the theologians, pastors, priests, and missionaries of the Reformation era, the task at hand was converting nonbelievers while retaining the faithful. The work of conversion and retention unleashed a torrent of polemical and devotional literature by all confessional groups, from Luther’s break with Rome to the advent of the Enlightenment. Even a cursory examination of this extensive literature makes clear that there often was no distinction between devotional admonition and polemical attack.20 Confessional writers of all stripes, as a matter of course, integrated attacks on religious error and heretics into their exhortations to believers. For Catholic writers of the late sixteenth century, heresy possessed a tangible, physical pathology. Observing that many Protestant leaders were moved to leave the Roman Church, the Jesuit Francis Coster theorized that heretics were physically corrupt: Gradually, seduced by their senses, though they had previously been members, they were transformed (how sad!) into phlegm and into a deadly abundance of humors that usually afflict the stomach and since the stomach is not a place of filth, but naturally desires wholesome food, these are people who have too little waste, too much juice, and are able to collect blood too easily. Finally, like the filthy dregs that flowed out through the outhouse, they also flow along, one sullied with a harlot, one sullied with thieving, and another with crimes. Because this is what ordinarily happens to those who are overcome with phlegm, they are certainly expelled from the heavenly body of saints as dangerous phlegm and excessive pituita, just as if religion became sick and vomited them out.21 While few polemicists and preachers possessed Coster’s proclivity for sordid humoral detail, they relentlessly pressed the palpable reality of heresy in treatises, tracts, and sermons. Most lay Catholics were well

8

Fa i t h o n t h e M a r g i n s

acquainted with the ubiquity of heresy, an awareness that confirmed the truth of their faith. The oppositional dialectic between the internal affirmation of faith and the external threat of perfidy shaped confessional identity in this era of religious conflict. As such, heresy was an integral component of Catholic community formation in the seventeenth-century Netherlands. The confessional choices and differences brought about by the Reformation created new religious identities, shaped by notions of both truth and heresy. These identities carried with them labels, such as Protestant, Catholic, Calvinist, Lutheran, and Anabaptist. Because religious labeling usually derived originally from insults by adversaries, groups adopted and embraced such designations because they identified their group as distinct in relation to others. Baronius explained that it became necessary for Christians to adopt the name Catholic in the early church to distinguish themselves from sectarian groups who called themselves Christians but who were in fact trying to split the church.22 And in Baronius’s own day, it became obligatory to emphasize the Roman nature of the Catholic Church against heretics laying claim to catholicity. Jesuit writer Leonard Lessius created logic from word play: “Again the Religion that should be judged as the true Religion of Christ is the one which was always customarily called Catholic . . . But only the Roman has been called Catholic and only its worshippers Catholics: therefore only the Roman Religion is the true Religion of Christ.”23 Christian gave way to Catholic, which ultimately became Roman Catholic. These snapshots here and there from Catholic partisans justify the central premise running through this book: confessional choice and perceptions of confessional difference informed the religious identity of men and women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This assumption is born out, not simply from a few pieces of evidence here and there, but rather from extensive research on Catholic communities and clergy in the Netherlands from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries. The conditions that enveloped Catholicism created a particular framework for the development of a Catholic subculture in the Dutch Republic of the seventeenth century. The story of the laity and clergy that made up the clandestine networks which crisscrossed the Netherlands is important for our understanding of how religious minorities sustain their identity in a hostile environment. To appreciate

Introduction

9

the historical contexts of these men and women, as well as the historiographical import of this study, we must place Dutch Catholicism within the context of the powerful religious movements that shook Europe and the Low Countries at the end of the sixteenth century and throughout the seventeenth.

Catholicism and Confessional Coexistence in the Netherlands To create a new public religious order, the Dutch government had to dismantle the old one. An important part of that process was secularizing church property, an intricate legal and financial undertaking made all the more urgent by the needs of the war against Spain and the plunder by soldiers. This project got under way in the 1570s and proceeded steadily over the course of the decade. In principle, commissioners attempted to retain funds that supported pious functions for their former purposes. These revenues continued, for example, to support the poor, the church fabric, and Reformed ministers as the clergy of the parish. Revenues that were not designated for a traditional function, as well as some monastic property, were redirected for the war. Under the care of lay churchwardens and sextons, the parish itself continued to operate as it had before the Reformation.24 The loss of church buildings, monastic properties, and parish revenues marked a dramatic break with the past for the institutional Roman Church in the Northern Netherlands as well as for lay Catholic worship. Catholics felt a keen attachment to the massive church buildings that towered against the skyline of Dutch towns, physical monuments to the rich historical legacy of Catholicism in the Netherlands. Many Catholics held out hope well into the eighteenth century that church property would eventually be restored to the Roman Church.25 The secularization of ecclesiastical property ran a parallel course with the proscription of all activities pertaining to the exercise of the Catholic faith. In 1573 the States General prohibited the public celebration of the Mass and in the following years passed new ordinances, outlawing priests, processions, catechetical instruction, religious orders, vestments, and images. Other edicts proscribing expressions of “papist superstition” reappeared periodically throughout the seventeenth century. In a spate of fifteen ordinances from 1580 to 1582, the

10

Fa i t h o n t h e M a r g i n s

States General abolished most every aspect of Catholic worship, even the right to assemble privately.26 The liberty of conscience proviso in the Union of Utrecht did provide Catholics with a significant degree of civil protection that confessional minorities elsewhere in Europe lacked.27 This stipulation, along with the voluntary nature of membership in the public church, meant that it was not illegal to be Roman Catholic. For a conscientious Catholic, however, the bitter irony was that though it might not be against the law to be Catholic, it was nevertheless quite illegal to live and worship as one. A. Th. van Deursen has pointed out that this freedom would only have satisfied a Libertine Protestant, since Catholicism was more than “a way of thinking.”28 Indeed, for practicing Catholics, freedom of conscience as a nascent principle of religious toleration fell far short of meeting their most elementary spiritual needs. Leaders of the Holland Mission even contended that this concession was meaningless for Catholics, because the Dutch clergy taught that freedom of conscience referred to the internal process of freeing an individual’s conscience from sin in the sacrament of confession and penance.29 An anonymous treatise argued in 1640 that Dutch Catholics were confronted with two contradictory principles of religious governance. Political authorities exercised an external jurisdiction governing the public practice of religion in the state, whereas priests exercised an internal jurisdiction directing the individual conscience to salvation. Since the government (the external authority) outlawed priests (the internal authority), as well as altars, chalices, and holy oil, Catholics had no legal means to absolve their consciences from sin. Furthermore, the fate of Catholic consciences was directly tied to the fate of ecclesiastical property. The Dutch government had confiscated benefices, which eliminated the financial means to support priests. Because priests and bishops were necessary for Dutch Catholics truly to possess freedom of conscience, the expropriation of property led to the loss of clergy that in turn resulted in the deprivation of spiritual freedom. Therefore, the confiscation of church property left Catholics guilty in their consciences before God, and their souls were in peril of damnation.30 It is tempting to dismiss this argument as excessive hand-wringing or post hoc polemics, especially in light of all the connivance that went on between local authorities and Catholic communities. The Catholic

Introduction

11

purchase of official tolerance was one of the most poorly kept secrets of the time, and historical scholarship has made much of the practical toleration for sale in the Golden Age.31 Writing in the late nineteenth century, William Knuttel, for example, contended that actual conditions for Catholics were never as bad as the edicts would lead one to believe. The policies against Catholics, according to Knuttel, did not really rise out of any antipathy for Catholicism but rather were shortterm political measures for wartime realities. Knuttel went on to argue that when authorities did apprehend a priest, they treated him “softly,” especially in relation to religious violence elsewhere in Europe. This view became a staple of the leading nineteenth-century liberal Dutch historians, John Motley, Robert Fruin, and Bakhuizen van den Brink. While Pieter Geyl and L. J. Rogier called attention to persecution of Catholics, the standard historical treatments of the Republic for most of the twentieth century have emphasized religious toleration and minimized violence against Catholics.32 In this view, the rationale for antiCatholicism was largely political, and despite these proscriptions, wealthy patrons could persuade local authorities to carry out a policy of practical toleration. Recent scholarship has demonstrated the localized and complicated state of affairs for Catholics, which makes a systemic interpretation for the Republic as a whole difficult.33 At various times and in some circumstances, Catholics were beneficiaries of either benign neglect or intentional tolerance. Yet at other times and in other circumstances, Catholics suffered relentless harassment. Willem Frijhoff has suggested that an uneasy confessional coexistence characterized the religious environment more aptly than tolerance did, since the second description imputes a static condition to the period.34 David Nirenberg, in his study of Christian-Muslim-Jewish relations in medieval Spain, has pointed out that violence was an inherent aspect of coexistence between religious majorities and minorities. Nirenberg argues that claims to religious difference “were subject to barter and negotiation, not about the creation of a ‘persecuting discourse.’ ”35 To the extent that tolerance is still a useful concept for attitudes toward Catholics in the Netherlands, Christine Kooi, like Nirenberg, has observed that “tolerance was a process rather than a condition . . . continually subject to disruption, change, or evolution.”36 Kooi has also noted that Catholics employed various strategies to procure toleration, such as paying

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recognition money, seeking the protection of a powerful family, or practicing subterfuge. While contemporaries and historians have recognized the Dutch Republic as the most pluralistic society in the early modern period, recent studies have pointed to the informal patterns of confessional coexistence throughout Europe. Gregory Hanlon has demonstrated, for example, that an unofficial attitude of tolerance characterized relations among Huguenot and Catholic families in Aquitaine. Likewise, despite legal sanctions against nonconformity, authorities in other territories proved reluctant to press the matter too closely or very consistently. Most ordinary folk rubbed shoulders with those of different religious persuasions at the normal intersections of life: the marketplace, the tavern, and the neighborhood.37 These fine studies have taken as their focal point the interaction between Catholics and the dominant Protestant culture, to gauge the degree of religious liberty, the circumstances of tolerance, and the level of confessional relations in the Dutch Republic and across Europe. A quite different vocabulary and mode of analysis, however, emerge from the contemporary Catholic point of view. For what historians have seen as practical tolerance or informal coexistence and what local authorities saw as connivance, Dutch Catholics saw as persecution. This does not mean that Catholics failed to realize that often they experienced the liberty to worship privately or that they often gained access to the sacraments by paying for tolerance. Yet Dutch Catholics—the laity, the clergy, and the hierarchy—evaluated their conditions as points of reference within a spectrum of persecution. Not only does this sense of persecution pervade polemical and devotional sources, but it runs through visitation reports, exchanges between clergy, and correspondence from the laity.38 What was persecution, according to Dutch Catholics? Laity and clergy in the post-Reformation period consistently recounted several types of hostile interactions experienced by Dutch Catholics. These included the destruction of sacred property; the disruption and prohibition of sacramental services; the apprehension, incarceration, ransom, and deportment of priests; the financial extortion practiced against the laity; the fear of harassment; the exclusion from public office; as well as the necessity of having to travel in disguise and worship in secret, often at night. While these afflictions obviously constitute repressive actions,

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what Catholics had in mind was a more fundamental state of existence that intermittently manifested itself in violence against the faith. This paradigm of persecution was a condition in which hostile authorities employed external and intentional means to deny believers access to the sacraments, the means of salvation for Catholics. Johannes van Neercassel, apostolic vicar of the Holland Mission in the second half of the seventeenth century, articulated this usually implicit understanding in a bitter disagreement with the Count of Warfuse, a Catholic noble, over patronage rights. As a tangled dispute over Warfuse’s patronage rights reached an impasse, the count halted all services and closed down the local Catholic place of worship. Van Neercassel dashed off an angry missive, charging the Catholic Warfuse with an action that “constituted external persecution of the Catholic Church.”39 Thus, to deny access to the sacraments was to persecute Catholics. As many scholars have shown, it was possible for Catholics to coexist in relative peace with non-Catholic neighbors in this Calvinist Republic, just as it was possible for dissidents across Europe to interact with townsfolk outside their faith. By no means, however, did Dutch Catholics equate this condition with liberty of conscience. Local authorities resorted to violence and obstructed access to the sacraments, so Catholics believed that they lived under a state of persecution, just as the early Christians did, a parallel that writers and polemicists wasted no opportunity to draw.40 Thus one of the intriguing paradoxes of Dutch society is that it was multiconfessional and, from the point of view of Catholics, a persecuting society at the same time. In a society of confessional choices, a sense of persecution—reinforced by hearing Mass in an attic in the middle of the night, coughing up large sums of money to pay the sheriff, helping to conceal a priest, and witnessing vandalism against sacred property—was central to the identity and experience of Catholics. This persecution confirmed the Catholic claim to be the real church of Jesus Christ and affirmed that heretics were evil enemies of religious truth. A study of the marginal position of Catholics in Dutch society is highly suggestive for the history of religious toleration in Western Europe. Their experiences call into question the commonly held assumption that toleration proceeded along an inevitable and linear trajectory in the early modern period, with the Dutch at the forefront of change. Rather, confessional coexistence in the sixteenth and seventeenth

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centuries implied a reciprocity between tolerance and persecution, concord and violence. Dutch Catholic communities in the Golden Age, therefore, provide the opportunity to examine these essential features of early modern confessional coexistence and their influence on religious identity. Furthermore, a dialectical approach to interconfessional relations—that is, an analysis of religious identity within the framework of choice and difference—enables us to contextualize Dutch experiences within both the pluralistic environment of the Republic and the Counter-Reformation movement across Europe.

Dutch Catholics and the Counter-Reformation At the same time as Calvinism was constraining Catholic religious life, the revival of Roman Catholicism across Europe imposed new demands on Catholics to observe their rites all the more scrupulously. In short, Catholics in the Dutch Republic were caught at the intersection between the prohibitions of the Calvinist Reformation and the mandates of the Counter-Reformation. Dutch historians have devoted much attention to Catholicism in the Netherlands in relation to its struggles in a Calvinist society, but heretofore scholarship has left Catholic communities too detached from the international revival of the Roman Church. The modern historian most responsible for shaping the historiography of Dutch Catholicism, L. J. Rogier framed his analysis within the context of the slow and uneven growth of Calvinism across the seventeenth century. Drawing from the work of Pieter Geyl, Rogier argued that Calvinists applied social and economic pressure to compel conversion to or compliance with Calvinism. Thus, the Dutch Republic became “protestantized” by compulsion rather than by any free religious choice. This thesis has been challenged by local studies.41 Rogier directed his research at the long-standing debates among Dutch historians about the character of post-Reformation society and the confessional outcomes in the seventeenth-century Netherlands. Rogier himself lived and worked during two world wars, a time when the Dutch felt a strong attachment to the idea of the “Vaderland.” Just as Protestant writers had fashioned a national Reformed Church early in the twentieth century, Rogier sought to illustrate the compatibility between Roman Catholicism and the Dutch heritage. To that end he and his brother published

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15

Vaderlandsche Kerkgeschiedenis (Church History of the Fatherland) for use in Catholic secondary schools.42 His magnum opus, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme in Noord-Nederland (History of Catholicism in the North Netherlands) points out the importance of national saints in Dutch Catholic piety, the contributions of Catholic writers and artists in the Republic, and the incompatibility between Calvinism and the Dutch character.43 Staunchly loyal to Rome, Rogier attempted to integrate Catholicism into Dutch society more fully by showing that the Roman Church was central to the history of the fatherland. Scholarship since Rogier has provided valuable insight into aspects of Catholic religious culture, though most research has focused on the place of Catholicism in Dutch society. Furthermore, since all historical work on Dutch Catholicism, save a few articles, has been written in the Dutch language, the story of Dutch Catholics has not been widely accessible. For these reasons, the history of Dutch Catholicism has not yet really informed the study of early modern Catholicism as it should. What have gone largely unnoticed are the international dimensions of the missionary enterprise in the northern provinces. The Holland Mission was linked to a matrix of exiles in northern Europe, to nuncios, prelates, and superiors in Brussels, Louvain, and Cologne, and to the Propaganda Fide in Rome, all of which were at war with Protestantism. Dutch Catholic seminaries also grew out of a pan-European movement that began to form the secular clergy into a universal mold. And the Jansenist-Jesuit controversy represented a heightened conflict between two strains of Catholic piety that competed with one another across Europe. The failure to consider the Dutch Catholic experience within the Counter-Reformation has led to the assumption that the Dutch church was a unique, homegrown, nationalist offshoot of Roman Catholicism. Studies of Catholic identity in the Dutch Republic, beginning with the work of Rogier, have emphasized this national Catholic tradition.44 Studies have maintained that priests deliberately attempted to promote a nationalist spirit in the seventeenth century and contrasted the nationalistic church of the apostolic vicars against the international, ultramontane outlook of the Jesuits and the papacy. The stress on the national features of the church resemble the arguments from Old Catholic partisans, who recognize an older indigenous Catholic tradition that stood opposed to the “totalitarian system of Roman Catholicism,” as one

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zealous writer put it.45 In a discussion of Dutch Catholic historiography, James Tracy observed that the northern provinces were without a Counter-Reformation.46 It is the intent of this study to give the Counter-Reformation its due by placing Dutch Catholicism within the context of the post-Tridentine church.47 These connections will show the international scope of the Dutch experience, just as the Dutch experience reveals the diversity of Catholic religious expression in the Counter-Reformation. Further, the Dutch case shows quite clearly that it was possible to have a CounterReformation without an imperious state power imposing Catholicism within its boundaries. According to the standard view of Catholic reform across Europe, the key agents of change were clerical and institutional: the papacy, the episcopacy, the Council of Trent, and the new missionary orders, above all the Society of Jesus.48 Trent clarified the church’s position on the primary issues of doctrine and laid out the bases for reform. The papacy and missionary orders, supported by Catholic princes, rigorously backed the implementation of Trent. Popes and kings cooperated to select reform-minded and loyal bishops, who in turn provided for an educated and disciplined clergy in their dioceses by establishing seminaries and conducting regular visitations. The final stage in this chain of implementation, and ultimately the most elusive, was a renewed attempt to exercise pastoral discipline over the laity, given force through the rigid administration of the sacramental system at the parish level.49 The reform agenda did not get under way in many places until well into the seventeenth century and did not produce results in central Europe until the eighteenth century.50 Nevertheless, a reinvigorated religious identity, aided and abetted by a strident papacy and the heavy hand of the early modern state, took hold in Catholic lands from Castile in Iberia to Lyon in France to Milan in Italy and to Bavaria in the Empire. This exploration of Dutch Catholic identity from the Calvinist takeover in 1572 to the Jansenist schism in 1702 reveals the rich complexity and diversity of post-Tridentine Catholicism. Dutch Catholics collectively redefined themselves in relation to the dominant Protestant majority in the Republic and to the international confessionalism of the Roman communion. They drew from the standard institutions and accepted practices of an earlier era and adapted them to quite different circumstances. Dutch Catholicism of the seventeenth century

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17

shared an essential continuity with the past yet marked a pivotal point of discontinuity as well. In this distinctive period, the salient characteristics of Tridentine Catholicism reshaped the Dutch church in fundamental ways, from implementing a revived clericalism to introducing a sharpened confessional awareness to incorporating the energy of the Jesuits and other religious to producing intramural rancor over doctrine and jurisdiction, to imposing a new sense of discipline on the laity. If the state of lay devotion and pastoral care was just beginning to rebound in the late sixteenth century in some areas of Catholic Europe, Roman piety in the Netherlands was in free fall. During the swift political changes of the 1570s, many priests and all the bishops fled, while other Dutch clergy went into hiding or took up a new line of work. One early organizer of Catholic missionary efforts after the Revolt claimed around 1600 that there were only seventy priests in all of the northern provinces.51 Two areas emerged as centers of Catholic activity in the northern provinces: Utrecht, which had been the site of the archbishopric, and Haarlem, where the cathedral chapter of the Haarlem diocese continued to operate, despite the expropriation of its property and revenues. During this time, Sasbout Vosmeer, a priest from a patrician family in Delft, came forward as an early organizer, and the papacy named him vicar general in 1583. Nine years later, Rome appointed Vosmeer to be the first apostolic vicar of the Holland Mission, giving him the authority of a nonresident bishop. He served in this capacity until his death in 1614. Five successive apostolic vicars followed in Vosmeer’s wake until the removal of Pieter Codde in 1702 and the subsequent schism in the Dutch Catholic Church.52 Almost completely overcome by the swift political changes at the end of the sixteenth century, the Dutch Catholic Church experienced remarkable vitality and growth under the apostolic vicars. At the end of Vosmeer’s tenure, the church claimed 200 secular priests and 15 religious, 300 seculars and 121 religious by 1635, and 360 seculars and 140 religious by 1642.53 In the lands served by the Holland Mission, the number of Catholics increased to 450,000, roughly one-third of the total adult population in 1656, a number that fell to around 280,000 (or almost one-half ) by century’s end.54 Thus, ironically, the CounterReformation made substantial inroads into Catholic communities in a republic that was heavily influenced by an uncompromising brand of

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Calvinism earlier than the Counter-Reformation affected many Catholic territories in Europe. This resurgence is all the more remarkable when one considers that in Catholic lands, the Roman Church monopolized public space, creating the presumption that the state church was the legitimate faith. Unlike the prevailing pattern in Catholic lands, this revival came without state power, an abundant clerical corps, resident bishops, or a substantial financial infrastructure. Not only did extensive growth take place without the elements essential to Catholic growth in other areas of Europe, but Dutch Catholics also had to endure the consequences of proscription and the divisive quarrels between secular priests and religious orders. Nevertheless, the Catholic Church in the United Provinces grew sufficiently to rival the size of the Dutch Reformed Church by the second half of the seventeenth century. If the story of Catholicism in the Netherlands expands our understanding of the Counter-Reformation in surprising ways, an examination of how Catholic communities functioned in a hostile political environment also informs our understanding about broad questions at the intersection of early modern religious and social history. One major line of investigation has centered on the extent and manner by which laypeople appropriated the moral standards and doctrinal programs pushed by both Catholic and Protestant clergy. Originating in French historiography in the 1970s, the examination of church reform in relation to the laity launched a new research agenda that interpreted the Reformation as a renewed effort to Christianize local religious cultures that were still largely pagan.55 This general scenario introduced an important new line of inquiry into the religious history of the postReformation period, leading to extensive research into the interplay between church reform programs and popular religious culture. Out of this “acculturation theory” a confessionalization thesis emerged in the 1980s, arguing that church and state in each European territory joined forces to compel obedience to the political and ecclesiastical establishment.56 These lines of scholarship have transformed the field of Reformation and Counter-Reformation studies from the fairly narrow domain of ecclesiastical reform to wide-ranging comparisons of religious experience among Protestants and Catholics. Yet subsequent scholarship has exposed three of the basic weaknesses in acculturation theory. First, acculturation has evaluated popular expressions of medieval Christianity

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by a static and modern standard.57 Second, acculturation posits a false dichotomy between popular and elite religion.58 Finally, the theory underestimates the resilience of local traditions and popular practices.59 Likewise, recent research has cast doubt on a universal application of the confessionalization thesis. Catholic laity in at least some parts of the Empire internalized a deep, heartfelt confessional identity without the compulsion of state or ecclesiastical power. Lay initiative and local custom blended with a revived clericalism to shape the development of confessional identity.60 The close collaboration between laity and clergy within the moderately hostile political milieu in the Republic enabled Dutch Catholicism not simply to survive, but to revive itself in the seventeenth century. Given the political climate, the church hierarchy had to balance carefully the disciplinary directives of Trent with the wishes of the laity. Since Netherlanders had religious alternatives, clergy could ill afford to be heavy-handed with a laity that remained loyal out of choice. Rather it became necessary for priests to demonstrate the singular truth of the Catholic faith and the dangers of heresy in order to reconcile men and women to Holy Mother Church and to keep them steadfast in the Roman way. The secular and regular priests who served in the mission field of the Northern Netherlands by the early seventeenth century were among the best-educated clergy in Europe. Their most important function for the long-term expansion and stability of Dutch Catholicism was the priests’ role as educators. The leaders of the Holland Mission and the laity placed a high value on the preaching and teaching quality of priests. By word and by example, the priests instilled a reverence for the sacramental system, inculcated respect for the venerable tradition of the Roman Church, and constructed a compelling identity of suffering and hardship for the faithful in a land full of heretics. While the clerical corps became a catalyst for growth, it was the leadership and community-building activity of lay Catholics that proved to be essential for the revival of Dutch Catholicism. Laymen and -women from regent circles in the cities and from noble families in the countryside directed local Catholic congregations in many vital ways. Lay elites formed the most substantial source of patronage to finance seminary education and pastoral labor in the Netherlands. After control of parishes fell into the hands of city governments, lay Catholics used the model of

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the parish, replete with churchwardens and poor relief officers, to maintain missionary “stations” and to support the poor. After the number of priests fell to all-time lows at the end of the sixteenth century, many young laymen chose to enter the priesthood and laywomen opted to become “spiritual virgins” to continue the work of the church.61 The work of laypeople in the seventeenth-century Dutch Catholic Church has been neglected, in part because of the direction of scholarship on Dutch Catholicism. For example, in spite of all the valuable contributions of Rogier’s scholarship, one of its significant limitations is that it completely attributed all successes and failures of Dutch Catholicism to the clergy. One of the primary tasks of this book, then, is to reconstruct a lay identity, to provide a more balanced view of Dutch Catholic communities in Counter-Reformation Europe.

Catholic Identity in the Dutch Republic and Beyond A more complete understanding of Catholicism in the Dutch Republic has broad ramifications for our understanding of religious culture throughout early modern Europe in five key areas. First, the Dutch case provides a clear example of how a dialectical approach to interconfessional relations allows us to penetrate contemporary religious identity and to avoid teleological assumptions about the rise of religious toleration. The study of religious toleration has traditionally been the preserve of intellectual historians tracing the development of the concept to its full expression in the Enlightenment. Because of this intellectualist approach and the pervasive influence of the Enlightenment, religious toleration is generally understood to have advanced in a linear, progressive fashion and to embody the inevitable triumph of a modern Western rationality.62 A dialectical perspective emphasizes the reciprocity between tolerance and violence and thus grounds religious identity in the management of confessional conflicts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Confessional groups throughout Europe opposed one another and called for political authorities to promote good moral order by suppressing heresy or idolatry. The fact that authorities enforced religious uniformity unevenly does not necessarily signal a growing acceptance of toleration but rather suggests a management of religious plurality in an age of strongly divided confessional

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loyalties. For laywomen and -men in this particular culture of confessional coexistence, an awareness of the teachings and practices of other groups, whether Protestant or Catholic, played a critical role in shaping religious allegiances. Second, an examination of Dutch Catholic communities addresses the evolution of a religious minority through various stages: growth, decline, and stabilized marginalization. Nowhere else in early modern Europe was a proscribed religious minority so successful in achieving church growth. A vigorous program of religious education and the resilience of the laity who chose to remain Catholic and regarded themselves as belonging to a persecuted body of Christians made Catholicism a permanent feature of Dutch society after the Reformation. Dutch Catholicism bore no marks of enforced acculturation, but correspondence and testaments of lay Catholics provide abundant evidence of a sophisticated understanding of the sacraments, church history, and contested doctrinal issues. Laypeople read devotional and polemical literature, cultivated their own opinions about religious matters, held clergy to high standards, participated in bitter struggles between the religious orders and secular priests, and remonstrated with the clerical hierarchy when lay needs were ignored. These Catholics in the Netherlands provide us a new perspective on lay piety in early modern Europe. Third, the formation of the Dutch clergy in the early seventeenth century offers the chance to analyze a first generation of secular priests trained in the spirit of Trent. It is well known that long-standing criticisms of the illiteracy and irreligion of the clergy played no small role in the advent and success of Protestantism. In 1563 the Council of Trent required every diocese to establish a seminary for the training of priests, though the actual execution of this mandate was slow and spotty across Europe.63 Leaders in the Holland Mission established the Collegium Alticollense in Cologne (1602) and the Collegium Pulcheriae Mariae Virginis (1617) for the former diocese of Haarlem.64 An examination of the educational formation of the diocesan priests, along with the formation process of Jesuits, reveals how the spirit and ideals of the Counter-Reformation were translated into pastoral practice. Fourth, the interaction between clergy and laity over the administration of the sacraments and the chief concerns of parish life will reveal the

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negotiated process of developing a confessional Catholic community in the Counter-Reformation. Unlike the “top-down” viewpoint within confessionalization and acculturation theories, the present study approaches pastoral care and discipline as a dialogue between clergy and laity, who often had divergent expectations about the appropriate norms of behavior and beliefs for Catholics in a land dominated by Calvinism.65 Obedience to church standards was not simply an agenda pushed by the clergy, for often the laity demanded their priests and the clerical hierarchy follow more stringent guidelines in pastoral practice. Moreover, in this transitional period and in this precarious environment, the interpretation and application of church norms was not a transparent, straightforward process. As a result, an inquiry into pastoral care in the Dutch Catholic Church lends a nuanced and localized dimension to the scholarship on social discipline in early modern Europe. Fifth, the rancorous conflicts between the religious orders and the secular clergy that ultimately played into the Jansenist controversy brings to the fore the implicit tensions within Catholic ecclesiology and Tridentine spirituality. Historians have taken as a given the squabbles among bishops, religious superiors, and temporal authorities over privileges and jurisdictional matters throughout church history. The emergence of the Society of Jesus as the most powerful Catholic missionary force elevated these disputes to a new level in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As Jesuit fathers joined the cause in the northern provinces, conflict with the secular clergy also quickly followed. Apostolic vicars operated on the premise that they alone authorized the administration of pastoral authority after the change in government. Consequently, as the archbishop, the apostolic vicar reserved the right to appoint all pastors and approve all priests who administered the sacraments. The fathers of the Society of Jesus, however, regarded the United Provinces as a mission field under the power of a heretical government and believed they owed obedience only to their Jesuit superiors and the pope.66 Behind these ecclesiological arguments lay a concern on the part of the apostolic vicars to protect lay patronage for secular priests and to establish their claim over church property in the event the Northern Netherlands returned to the Roman fold. Thus, the story of Catholics in the Golden Age Netherlands is not the idiosyncratic account of an obscure band of loyalists but a history

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that reaches into many corners of the momentous religious movements of the sixteenth and seventeenth century across Europe. Yet unlike most other European peoples, Dutch Catholics encountered the religious complexities of the period in a strange new world that lay at the intersection of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations.



1 Caught between Reformations catholics in the holland mission

As the Dutch Revolt ushered in a new regime and a new religion in the Northern Netherlands, the social place of the Roman Catholic faith moved from the center of the public order to its periphery. In the course of fifteen turbulent years, from iconoclastic fury in 1566 to complete proscription in 1581, the status of the church underwent a radical transformation. The Catholic Church in the Netherlands changed from an organization that gave legitimacy to the public moral order to an outlawed religion pushed to the margins of society.1 Despite what Willem Frijhoff has aptly termed “the ecumenicity of everyday life”—namely the regular interaction between people of different faiths—a structure of intolerance, harassment, and exclusion emerged, which kept Catholicism out of the public sphere and demonstrated its subordination in the new Protestant political order.2 City governments found ways to manage religious pluralism and maintain public order with a minimum of violent force. Political authorities negotiated the place of Catholicism on the margins in a Protestant society through a policy of financial extraction and violence whenever the Roman religion intruded upon public space. It was within this odd condition of confessional coexistence that a reformation took place in the Dutch Catholic Church. Coming on the heels of sweeping episcopal reorganization in 1559, the political instability of the early Revolt prevented the Reformation

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from getting under way until right at the end of the sixteenth century. Consequently, as clergy and laity reconstructed a Catholic presence in the Northern Netherlands, they did so in the ubiquitous company of the public Calvinist Church. For Dutch Catholic leaders, Reformed Protestantism was not some “other” they had to imagine. Rather, the Reformed Church was a well-known reality with which they had to contend. This proximity to Calvinism, coupled with political subordination in a Protestant regime, produced a dialectical environment that shaped Catholic efforts at reform in the early seventeenth century. In other words, Protestant heresy became the backdrop against which clerical leaders and priests constructed a confessional identity. The public Protestant order directly affected the distinct structure of ecclesiastical institutions and led to a sharpened sense of confessional identity among the laity. Not only did those remaining faithful to Rome have to navigate around the adversities presented by the Protestant Reformation, but loyalists also had to manage new demands from the Counter-Reformation. The clerical leadership of the Holland Mission regarded the church districts in the Netherlands as the continuation of dioceses created in 1559. Consequently, the secular clergy attempted to make the Tridentine canons as pertinent for Dutch Catholics as they were for Catholics throughout the lands loyal to Rome. Trent offered no compromises with Protestantism and rejected most aspects of popular religious practice that fell outside the confines of the institutional church. The postTridentine church emphatically reaffirmed that the locus of salvation was the priesthood under the discipline of the bishop in a well-ordered diocese. The Society of Jesus, the religious order most closely identified with the Counter-Reformation, also went to work in the northern provinces, bringing thousands back to the Roman fold. The church vision of the Jesuits, as well as other religious orders, collided with the diocesan model of the secular clergy, as the Society of Jesus contended that the Netherlands was simply mission territory outside the jurisdiction of an ordinary. The Jesuits recognized the authority only of their superiors and the pope. These forces of the Counter-Reformation—diocesan discipline and missionary endeavour—ultimately came into conflict in the Northern Netherlands and rent the church in two by the early eighteenth century.

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The Holland Mission under the Apostolic Vicars The Revolt against Spain marked an important turning point in the religious history of the Northern Netherlands and in the politicized religious conflicts of the Late Reformation period. In other lands that became Protestant, a confession of faith replaced its Catholic predecessor and the government enforced, more or less vigorously, outward conformity. This was not the case in the Dutch Republic. The Dutch governments, national, provincial, and municipal, supported the Reformed faith as the public church, but political authorities at the end of the sixteenth century also made sure it did not take control of civic institutions, such as parish endowments and poor relief agencies, or discipline the morals of nonmembers.3 City governments regulated marriage, and the Reformed Church was to baptize children regardless of their parents’ confessional affiliation. Confessionalization in the Netherlands had definite limits. Political authorities also refused to demand conformity to the public church, as all other European governments did. The lack of a policy to enforce uniformity produced a large body of people who did not belong officially to any church or who deferred decisions about formal church membership. While the religious persuasions of this “middle group” have proven obscure, many appear to have attended various churches now and then, while others went not at all. Furthermore, a significant number of men and women, known as “sympathizers” (liefhebbers) involved themselves in the Dutch Reformed Church without becoming members and, as a result, avoided what many regarded as the intrusions of church discipline. Perhaps because of a general antipathy for discipline, most Dutch people did not seem particularly interested in joining the Reformed Church, at least not for its first seventy years in the Republic. By 1620, roughly sixty years since the introduction of Calvinism in the northern provinces, only 20 percent of the population had actually joined, and as late as 1650 roughly 50 percent were church members. Not until the last quarter of the seventeenth century did the Reformed Church claim a large majority of the population.4 Throughout the seventeenth century, the Dutch Republic was a multiconfessional society in which Calvinists, Catholics, Mennonites, and Lutherans competed for a rather sizable pool of souls. For the Catholic Church, this multiconfessional arrangement gave the clerical

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hierarchy an opportunity to reassert the Roman faith, reclaim a membership, and reestablish its importance in Dutch society. The long-standing view of the Catholic Church in the Netherlands has placed emphasis on corruption and decline in the sixteenth century. Arie van Deursen even asserted, “Catholicism would [not] have been maintained in Holland if it had been left completely to its own devices.” Much earlier, L. J. Rogier and others argued that pastoral work had deteriorated over the course of the sixteenth century.5 Further, membership in religious orders dwindled, lay pilgrimages to local religious shrines reached a low point, and contemporaries reported increasingly fewer miracles over the course of the sixteenth century.6 Yet it is not clear if these changes really reflect decline or if they mark a movement away from traditional religious sensibilities. Recent scholarship has called into question whether the condition of the church was actually as bad as historians have claimed. One study has shown that pastors in north Brabant possessed a far better education and moral deportment than historians traditionally ascribe to pre-Reformation clergy.7 Philip II initiated a reform effort in 1559 by expanding the number of bishops in the Low Countries from four to eighteen, though it met with stiff clerical resistance and came to nought with the Revolt in 1572.8 The political troubles of the 1560s and 1570s stifled any attempt at reform and made matters worse for the Catholic Church in the Netherlands. An intense hatred for the inquisition and for the absolutist inclinations of the Spanish regime gave rise to extensive iconoclasm and plunder of church property. As Protestant Beggar armies moved across parts of Holland, soldiers unleashed their murderous fury on any unfortunate cleric who happened along their path. The most famous incident transpired in July 1572, as Count Lumey’s troops hanged nineteen Catholics from the town of Gorcum and mutilated their bodies. Similar atrocities followed a short time later in Roermond and Oudenaarde; by 1591 Protestant soldiers had executed around 130 Dutch Catholics, almost all of whom were clerics.9 Catholic accounts of the violence described the situation in Holland in the most catastrophic imagery. Wouter Jacobszoon, a prior of a convent near Gouda, likened the new society to Sodom and Gomorrah.10 The religious conflagrations across Europe created international refugee centers, where exiles congregated, formed communities, and worked to support their confessional cause back home. Reformed

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Protestants migrated to Geneva, London, Emden, and towns in the Palatinate where they established “mother churches” that supported coreligionists “under the cross” in their native lands with money, missionaries, and religious literature. Geneva represented the clearest example of a missionary metropole, as refugees provided substantial support to Calvinists in France and England, while Emden and the Palatinate served in a similar capacity for Reformed churches in the Netherlands.11 Just as persecution produced international refugee communities of Reformed Protestants, religious violence also drove Dutch Catholics into exile centers in Cologne and Antwerp. In the first half of the seventeenth century, Cologne and Antwerp emerged as the primary Roman Catholic metropoles for Catholic communities in the Dutch Republic, and both became critical to the revival of Roman fortunes in the north. Dutch exiles joined an international network of Catholics from England and Germany committed to combating Protestantism in their home countries. Geographically situated to the southeast and southwest of the northern provinces, Antwerp and Cologne respectively formed a Catholic beachhead along the confessional fault line of northwestern Europe. All but a handful of priests in the north converted, abandoned their vocation, or went into exile in northwestern Germany or the Southern Low Countries.12 The home of an activist Dutch Catholic community centered around the Carthusian St. Barbara Monastery, Cologne was the most important exile center for Northern Netherlands at the end of the sixteenth century. Over the course of the seventeenth century, Cologne developed, along with Antwerp, into the chief publication centers of the Dutch Counter-Reformation.13 Under the spiritual guidance of Carthusians Lawrence Surius and Johannes Rethius, the community in Cologne actively engaged itself in the struggle against Calvinism in the Netherlands. In the 1570s the Jesuits, first under Francis Coster, came to provide the leading spiritual guidance to the Dutch community. In the aftermath of Beggar successes in Holland, a number of notable activists fled to Cologne, including Johan Gerrit Stempelse, a former burgomaster in Gouda, and Christian van Adrichem, a priest from a regent family in Delft. Stempelse composed accounts of Calvinist violence and sent them to Rome to stir up support for a crusade by Catholic princes to crush the Revolt. Van Adrichem served as rector of St. Barbara. Other polemicists, history writers, and militants operated

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out of Cologne from the end of the sixteenth through the seventeenth century, such as Micheal ab Isselt, Francis Dusseldorp, Balthasar Gerards (assassin of William of Orange), Michael Aitsinger, Francis Verhaer, and Tilman Vosmeer.14 In 1578 Willem Lindan, the wellrespected bishop of Roermond, came to Cologne to teach among the exiles and to advocate the Dutch cause to Rome. When the States General banned Albert Eggius, dean of the Haarlem Chapter, (in 1604) and Sasbout Vosmeer (in 1603) from the provinces, they also made their way to Cologne.15 It was certainly no accident that Vosmeer located the first Dutch Catholic seminary, the Collegium Alticollense, in Cologne, for priestly formation grew out of the activist clerical community there at the end of the sixteenth century. In concert with Cologne, Antwerp formed a second Catholic front, to the southwest of the United Provinces. Strong connections existed between exiles from the Netherlands, England, and Germany in Cologne, Antwerp, Douai, and Louvain. Many Catholics in Antwerp found shelter in Cologne in the early 1580s, when the Calvinists held power in the south. The Society of Jesus was the most important driving force behind Catholic renewal in Antwerp, just as it was in Cologne. Jesuits founded Marian sodalities, established schools, wrote catechisms, and produced fiery polemical tracts. The international character of the Society placed Antwerp and Cologne within a vast communication network of Catholic exiles in northern Europe. Exiles and activists in Antwerp, such as Richard Verstegen, Pieter Opmeer, Lawrence Beyerlink, Adrian van Meerbeck, Charles Scribani, and Henry Adriani turned out volumes of devotional and polemical material aimed at a Dutch market. Antwerp publishing houses made the city conspicuous as a center for Counter-Reformation propaganda in northern Europe. In addition to textual materials, publishers produced small, inexpensive devotional prints of saints and martyrs for export into the northern provinces.16 Thus, situated at opposite poles on the southern border of the Republic, Antwerp and Cologne served as the major points of entry for Catholic materials into the Northern Netherlands. Within the borders of the Northern Netherlands, what little pastoral ministry that remained at the end of the sixteenth century was concentrated in south Holland near Delft, in the former diocese of Haarlem. Most of the priests who stayed and continued to work lived in this area, though we know almost nothing about them due to the scarcity of

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source material.17 It is likely that there were other priests who floated around the northern provinces outside the control of Vosmeer and religious superiors. Vosmeer and the apostolic vicar Phillip Rovenius alluded here and there to such shadowy figures and complained about “false brothers,” “vagabonds,” and “apostates” who sought charity and administered sacraments for cash.18 One can imagine that a number of priests who decided to conceal their religious vocation found opportunities to provide sacramental services to supplement their income. The priests who did persevere in licit pastoral work in the face of all the dangers also labored without any supervision from a bishop, for by 1578 all five bishoprics had fallen vacant. And at the death of Frederik Schenck van Toutenburg in 1580, the archbishopric of Utrecht became unoccupied until the restoration of Catholicism in 1853.19 It is difficult to imagine any real pastoral labor beyond a small network of priests traveling circuits to administer sacraments to clandestine congregations largely in Holland. A report by Sasbout Vosmeer in 1602 noted that very little organized religious practice occurred outside the concentrations of Catholics in Haarlem and Utrecht.20 He remarked, though, that there were “in many places . . . lay readers, caretakers, and messengers.” He noted, “In the absence of a priest, they read homilies, litanies, and prayers to the people and they give notice to preserve fasts and feasts.”21 Thus, in those areas where a Catholic presence and identity endured at the end of the sixteenth century, it did so largely under lay leadership. From a regent family in Delft, Vosmeer was one of the early organizers, along with Willem Coopal, vicar general of the Haarlem Chapter, of priestly activity in the area around Delft and Haarlem. Vosmeer received a Master of Arts from the University of Louvain, studied theology under Robert Bellarmine at the Jesuit College there, and was ordained in the fateful year of 1572. In the stormy 1570s and 1580s, Vosmeer remained in the area around Delft, working out of his parents’ home. Because of his zeal, Vosmeer attracted the recognition of prelates in Cologne and the Southern Netherlands who were trying to figure out how to provide pastoral care in the rebellious provinces.22 As it became increasingly clear that the rebellion against Spain would lead to more than a temporary disruption of Catholic worship, Pope Gregory XIII attempted to establish centralized organs for clerical leadership. He appointed Vosmeer in 1583 as vicar general for the diocese of Utrecht and established in 1584 a nunciature in Cologne, with the pur-

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pose of providing support to Catholic congregations in Protestant lands in the Netherlands and Germany. Ottavio Mirto Frangipani, the nuncio from 1587 to 1605, realized the need for a stronger pastoral presence in the Netherlands and repeatedly pushed for filling the vacant Dutch bishoprics. Since the episcopal reorganization of 1559, however, the king of Spain possessed patronage rights over all bishoprics in the Netherlands, and he refused to appoint replacements for the heretical provinces. As an intermediate measure until Spanish armies could bring the rebels to obedience, Frangipani proposed the creation of an apostolic vicariate with broad authority over the entire archdiocese. This compromise danced around the prerogatives of an uncooperative Spanish crown, to give new life to pastoral ministry for a region badly in need of clerical organization. Consequently, upon the recommendation of Frangipani, Pope Clement VIII appointed Vosmeer as apostolic vicar in 1592 with jurisdiction over all of the northern provinces. Finally, in 1602 Clement, over the disapproval of Archduke Albrecht of the Southern Netherlands, conferred the dignity of archbishop of Philippi in partibus infidelium on Vosmeer, giving him “delegated authority” from the papacy rather than the “ordinary authority” of a resident bishop. The appointment of the apostolic vicar marked the beginning of the missionary organization that contemporaries outside the Netherlands later referred to as the Holland Mission.23 Vosmeer’s elevation marked the first appointment of an apostolic vicar since the early history of the Catholic Church. As missionaries spread the Roman faith throughout the world, the office became a permanent fixture in non-Catholic lands. To clarify the scope of the office, Clement gave Vosmeer this commission: “Do in this territory what I would do if I were there.”24 Vosmeer and his successors, however, not only claimed to possess authority as nonresident bishops over mission territory but also believed that they represented the unbroken continuity of the bishops and archbishops of Utrecht. This distinction carried important ramifications for pastoral authority, relations with religious orders, church property, and patronage. The apostolic vicar and secular clergy regarded the office and church structure that ensued as the continuation of the pre-1572 archdiocese. Yet the hierarchy in Brussels and Rome as well as the religious orders considered the church structure to be a missionary organization. Nevertheless, at the time of its creation, the apostolic vicariate pos-

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sessed an ad hoc quality, as a stopgap measure for pastoral care until Catholicism could be restored in the northern provinces. In terms of its place in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the apostolic vicar came initially under the jurisdiction of the papal nuncio in Cologne. Then in 1596, when the nunciature was divided, it fell under the authority of the nuncio (later internuncio) for Flanders, who resided in Brussels. This arrangement lasted until 1622, when the nuncio and the apostolic vicar came under the purview of the newly created Propaganda Fide in Rome. Since neither Spain nor any other country restored Catholicism to the public realm in the Netherlands, the apostolic vicariate became a permanent office until the internuncio in Brussels took over responsibility for the mission in 1727. Six churchmen served as apostolic vicar from the initial appointment in 1592 until the split between what became known as the Old Catholic episcopacy and the Roman hierarchy in 1702. These men were Sasbout Vosmeer (1592–1614), Phillip Rovenius (1614–1651), Jacob de la Torre (1651–1661), Balduin Cats (1662–1663), Johannes van Neercassel (1663–1686), and Pieter Codde (1688–1702).25 Through conflict and compromise, the organizational structure of the Holland Mission became clarified over the course of the early seventeenth century. The apostolic vicar exercised ultimate pastoral oversight for the former archdiocese, and underneath him a provicaris acted as the vicar general, in lieu of a bishop, for each diocese: Utrecht, Haarlem, Middelburg, Leeuwarden, and Groningen. In addition, the apostolic vicar served himself as provicaris for one of the dioceses. In 1633 Rovenius established an informal advisory college for the diocese of Utrecht, which later became recognized as a vicariate and then even later, under van Neercassel, as a cathedral chapter, parallel to the one in Haarlem. Each diocese was divided into districts, known as deaneries, supervised by an archpriest, accountable to the provicaris for the pastors and priests in the district. Over time, deaneries grew through further division, but nevertheless this basic ecclesiastical organization endured well into the eighteenth century.26 The apostolic vicars were clerics shaped in the mold of the northern European Counter-Reformation. Each certainly brought his own personality to bear on the Holland Mission, but all of them displayed an extraordinary concern with pastoral issues and devoted enormous energy (with the possible exception of de la Torre) to delivering pastoral care to lay Catholics. They shared several common features often asso-

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ciated with post-Tridentine clerical piety: rigorous views about discipline, uncompromising attitudes about heresy, and a keen consciousness of diocesan authority.27 Vosmeer and Rovenius categorically rejected the legitimacy of the Dutch government and wanted Catholics to have nothing to do with it. Vosmeer prohibited Catholics from attending heretical universities, serving in the Dutch government or army, and participating in the Dutch East India Company.28 Vosmeer even secured the skull of Balthasar Gerards, who assassinated William of Orange, and displayed it as a relic at the seminary in Cologne.29 While van Neercassel and Codde took a more pragmatic approach to Catholic interaction in Dutch government and society, they nevertheless continued to hope and pray for the overthrow of the Protestant regime. No doubt the common elements of the vicars’ outlook derived from their similar religious training in the neo-Augustinian currents of the Southern Low Countries and northern France in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. All of the apostolic vicars spent a significant portion of their formation in theological study at the University of Louvain, famous as a center of Augustinianism; de la Torre, van Neercassel, and Codde were also affiliated with French Oratorian communities.30 The Augustinian tendencies of van Neercassel and Codde made them vulnerable to the charge of Jansenism. Though all of the apostolic vicars were engaged in the theological issues of the day, Rovenius and van Neercassel were the most capable theologians among them. The most striking expression of their theological training as a whole was their rigorist approach to confession, penance, and absolution. All of the apostolic vicars believed that priests should not offer absolution without clear evidence of penitence, repentance, and renewed moral comportment. In many ways, the leadership in the Dutch Catholic Church viewed penitence as the highest expression of the Christian life.31 Each apostolic vicar placed his own stamp on the Holland Mission and influenced the course of Dutch Catholicism. Though their efforts are discussed in various contexts throughout this book, it is worthwhile to summarize some of their individual contributions in this sketch of ecclesiastical organization in the seventeenth century. Vosmeer initiated the restoration of the hierarchy and the extension of pastoral care in the aftermath of the Revolt. In the 1570s he organized priests around his hometown of Delft, and he started the project of training Dutch priests by establishing the Alticollense seminary, along with Haarlem

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canons Albert Eggius and Leonard Marius. Residing in Cologne from his banishment in 1603 to his death in 1614, Vosmeer participated directly in the earliest organization of the seminary.32 He also attempted to mitigate the shortage of priests by soliciting Clement VIII in 1592 for assistance from the Society of Jesus, yet shortly thereafter Vosmeer began to complain persistently that the order violated his diocesan authority and disrupted the work of the secular priests. Similar disputes over organizational structure plagued the clergy in England. An association of secular priests known as Appellants (because of their appeals to Rome) argued for the need to establish an episcopacy to oversee pastoral care. Jesuits, however, supported the appointment of an archpriest who would exercise no authority over their work, an arrangement adopted by the papacy. The Roman See appointed George Blackwell as archpriest for England in 1598. The Appellants’ complaints were remarkably parallel to those of the apostolic vicars: Jesuits disdained and interfered with the work of the secular clergy.33 Nonetheless, in the Netherlands there were 165 priests working in the mission by 1614, fifteen of whom were Jesuit. If Vosmeer was the early trailblazer, Rovenius was the meticulous organizer, overseeing the most rapid growth in lay membership and clerical recruitment. Under his leadership, the number of secular priests doubled, from 150 in 1614 to 300 near the end of his tenure.34 Born in Deventer, Rovenius built on Vosmeer’s pioneering work by systematizing clerical training and organizing pastoral labor within a more refined hierarchy. Like Vosmeer, Rovenius undertook his theological training at the University of Louvain; he was ordained in 1599. He became the first president of the Alticollense where he also taught theology for several years. From 1606 until his appointment as apostolic vicar, Rovenius served as vicar general of the former bishopric of Deventer and dean of a chapter in Oldenzaal. During his long tenure as apostolic vicar, Rovenius also standardized the liturgy and introduced a uniform catechism. Though banned from the Republic, Rovenius resided secretly in Oldenzaal and Utrecht during his vicariate. Rovenius’s organizational work grew out of a deep commitment to a Tridentine vision of order and discipline. For Rovenius, the good work of converting heretics and shepherding the faithful could only take place in a well-ordered diocese, where well-trained priests administered the sacraments under the supervision and in obedience to their

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bishop. For this reason, Rovenius, like the other apostolic vicars, vigorously opposed priests from religious orders who administered the sacraments without his permission and outside his control. Disputes and conflicts before the papal nuncio ultimately led to the Concordia of 1624, which reaffirmed the authority of the apostolic vicar over the mission and stipulated where and how many regulars could serve.35 This concordat, like all others during this period, did not, however, recognize the apostolic vicar as a resident archbishop or bishop. The Concordia really solved nothing but served as a flawed point of negotiation between seculars and regulars for several decades. Succeeding Rovenius, Jacob de la Torre, then briefly Balduin Cats, served from 1651 to 1663. From The Hague and of noble parentage, de la Torre’s tenure was spectacularly undistinguished. The States General banished him from the country in 1649, and he fled to Brussels. He devoted most of his time seeking more abundant sources of income, such as a bishopric in the Southern Low Countries. During his last few years in office, he suffered from a mental illness, probably a malady akin to Alzheimer’s. Cats’s very short-lived terms were equally unremarkable; mental incapacitation afflicted him as well. The two apostolic vicars in the second half of the seventeenth century, Johannes van Neercassel and Pieter Codde, were two forceful clerics, devoted to an austere Augustinian piety and a diocesan vision of the mission. They presided over the mission during a time of important changes for Catholics. The Eighty Years’ War with Spain at long last came to a conclusion in 1648, lifting the clouds of suspicion surrounding clerics. Thus violence became less frequent, though financial extraction eased not at all. Reformed churches began regarding the “sympathizers” as members. Consequently, the Reformed Church finally lay claim to a percentage of society commensurate with the church’s public status. Division leading to schism between Jansenists, anti-Jansenists, rigorists, laxists, seculars, and regulars plagued Catholic church life. Internal conflict, as well as persistent political disability and economic disadvantage, led many Catholics to opt for other churches or simply forego any denominational affiliation. Van Neercassel was born in Gorcum (Gorinchem), studied at Louvain and Oratorian colleges in Paris and Saumur, and was ordained in 1650. He brought Rovenius’s organizational initiatives to completion by setting forth a professional standard (in the 1668 Constitutiones) for the

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secular clergy and by closely monitoring the training, placement, and conduct of priests in their communities. He moved the Alticollense seminary to Louvain in 1683, bringing it under greater Augustinian influence. An ardent proponent of rigorous discipline, van Neercassel wrote Amor Poenitens in 1683 as a guide for priests in carrying out the constituent steps in the sacrament of penance. Exuding the penitential piety of the French Oratorians, Amor reflected van Neercassel’s Augustinian sympathies, reinforced by his close friendship with Antoine Arnauld. Van Neercassel also reversed a seventy-year policy of hostility to the Dutch government by cultivating good relations with political authorities; he was the first apostolic vicar to receive recognition by the States General, a far cry from 1603 when the same body charged Sasbout Vosmeer with treason. Yet van Neercassel also tried secretly to persuade Louis XIV to invade the Republic to restore Catholicism to public prominence.36 During the French occupation of Utrecht from 1672 to 1673, van Neercassel conducted public services in the Dom Church and conducted the first open Catholic procession in a hundred years. The struggle with the regular clergy intensified mightily under van Neercassel’s rule, as the Jesuits pressed the charge of Jansenism against many secular clergy. A series of popes, Urban VIII, Innocent X, and Alexander VII, had condemned Jansenism since the 1650s; van Neercassel publicly declared his assent to these condemnations and his obedience to Rome. These affirmations protected him from any serious attempts at removal, a fate that did not escape his successor, Pieter Codde, who also studied at Oratorian colleges in Louvain and Mechelen. Throughout his entire vicariate, Codde was embroiled in a bitter struggle with the Society of Jesus and the papacy. After he refused to abjure Jansen’s Augustinus, Codde spent the better part of two years, from 1700 to 1702, defending himself from charges of Jansenism, ultimately to no avail. In 1702 Clement XI stripped Codde of the vicariate and in his place appointed Theodore de Cock, a Leiden priest and outspoken anti-Jansenist. Codde’s ouster did little to heal the division; rather the expulsion led to twenty years of disputes, pitting the secular clergy that supported Codde, the States of Holland, and the Haarlem Chapter against the remaining secular clergy, religious orders, and the papacy. By 1723 the split was permanent, giving birth to the Old Catholic Episcopacy, an independent conciliar denomination separate from the Roman Church.37

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In addition to the apostolic vicariate, an ecclesiastical institution critical to the development of Catholicism was the Haarlem Cathedral Chapter. Though the government confiscated its property and the bishop fled, canons stayed behind, held the chapter together, and kept pastoral care functioning in the old diocese of Haarlem, which extended from just south of Delft in southern Holland (including Amsterdam) all the way through the north quarter of the province to the North Sea. By virtue of its survival, the chapter formed the longest-standing institutionalized effort to keep local Catholic communities going. After the bishop of Haarlem (Godfried van Mierlo) drowned in 1578, Pope Gregory XIII named Willem Coopal as the dean of the Cathedral Chapter and vicar general of the former diocese. Since the pope could not appoint a bishop to succeed van Mierlo because of the patronage rights of the Spanish king, the dean operated as the ordinary and, along with the canons, coordinated priestly movements in the diocese. The canons maintained contact with local congregations, supervised priests, conducted visitations, and coordinated pastoral efforts for the old diocese. Over the course of the seventeenth century, the chapter operated as a partner with the apostolic vicar (and Utrecht chapter) so that Holland and Utrecht persevered as the pillars of Catholicism in the Republic outside the Generality Lands. Working under the leadership of a dean, the canons of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, including Willem Coopal, Albert Eggius, Leonard Marius, and Sibrand Sixtius, were among the most capable Catholic leaders in all of the United Provinces. They provided the most coordinated missionary effort in the early, murky days of post-Reformation Dutch Catholicism.38 The chapter encountered less controversy with political authorities, in this case the city government of Haarlem and the Provincial States of Holland, than the apostolic vicariate. The leadership of the Haarlem Chapter cultivated a collaborative relationship with the city government. After the city of Haarlem went over to the side of the new Republic permanently in 1578, city authorities moved to take possession of all church property. This included all stationary property, portable goods, and endowments of the college chapter. The canons were divided among themselves about their relationship to the new regime. Coopal, Willem van Assendelft, and Alsten Bloemaert accepted the legitimacy of the government, but another party, led by Albert Eggius,

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fell in line with the strict stance of Vosmeer. Ultimately, the accommodationist party prevailed, for in August 1579 the canons, albeit with some reluctance, cooperated by drawing up an inventory of their assets and eventually turning over the property to the city, much to the fury of Sasbout Vosmeer.39 In return for the canons’ assistance, though, the city government took a more lenient approach to the chapter than did authorities to the apostolic vicariate. Despite the deprivation of all possessions, the cathedral canons remained in the city and carried out pastoral work in the diocese of Haarlem. To address the shortage of qualified priests, the Haarlem Chapter tried various experiments in clerical training, from giving informal “inhouse” instruction to enrolling students in the Alticollense in Cologne. This arrangement proved dissatisfactory, and in 1613 the chapter received permission from Vosmeer to open in Louvain a seminary that would serve the diocese of Haarlem, as well as the dioceses of Groningen and Leeuwarden. Known as the Collegium Pulcheriae Mariae Virginis, the seminary began operation in February 1617. Its first president was none other than Cornelis Jansen.40 Because of the permanence of pastoral care, the Haarlem vicars recognized a seamless continuity in the offices and responsibilities of the chapter before and after the Reformation. Further, they regarded the apostolic vicar as parallel in office and dignity to the dean of the chapter, with the apostolic vicar possessing jurisdiction only over the Utrecht diocese.41 Vosmeer and Rovenius, however, took a different view, considering the apostolic vicariate, as the functioning archbishopric of Utrecht, to hold authority over Haarlem. This jurisdictional conflict perpetuated tension between the chapter and the apostolic vicar until Rovenius and Nicolas Nomius, dean of the chapter, negotiated a concordat in 1616. According to that agreement, the chapter would recognize the apostolic vicar as the de facto archbishop, while the chapter would retain the responsibility for placing priests and supervising affairs in the Haarlem diocese. This institutional settlement lasted throughout the period until 1703, when Pope Clement XI disbanded the chapter for Jansenism and turned the administration of the diocese over to the internuncio in Brussels.42 Religious orders, beginning with the Society of Jesus, undertook a papal assignment to the mission field in the Dutch provinces right at the end of the sixteenth century. According to reports by Jesuits, Francis-

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cans, Dominicans, and Augustinians, regular priests converted thousands to the Roman faith and administered the sacraments to an untold number during the seventeenth century.43 Laymen and -women in general held the religious in as high esteem as they did the secular clergy. The overwhelming majority of the laity chose the Roman Church in the schism, suggesting that the influence of the regular priests, as well as lay commitment to Rome, was considerable. During a period of critical priestly shortage, religious orders played a major role in pastoral ministry in the Dutch Republic. In terms of numbers, by 1629 there were 321 total priests in the Holland Mission of which 71 belonged to religious orders, with the Society of Jesus claiming half (34) of that number. And, at midcentury 142 out of 442 priests were regulars, 62 of whom were Jesuit.44 The first Jesuits entered the Dutch mission field in response to Sasbout Vosmeer’s request to Pope Clement VIII in 1592 for Jesuits to offset the scarcity of priests. The general of the Society, Claudio Aquaviva, agreed, so two years later four Jesuits—Willem Leonis, George Verburcht, Joannes Bargius and Cornelis Duyst—arrived in Holland. Leonis went on to Utrecht, Verburcht and Duyst to Delft, and Bargius to Amsterdam.45 In time, more Jesuits, as well as Franciscans, Dominicans, a few Augustinians, and Carthusians, would follow. Shortly after the Jesuit entrance into the Netherlands, conflicts between the religious and Vosmeer revealed a fundamental disagreement about authority that framed clerical relations and affected lay Catholics throughout the seventeenth century. As did subsequent apostolic vicars, cathedral deans in Haarlem, provicares, and archpriests, Vosmeer regarded the mission as the revived church province in the northern provinces. This vision becomes evident in several contexts. When the secular hierarchy described or discussed the mission, they used the language of normative church districts and offices, namely, dioceses, parishes, archbishops, bishops, and pastors, rather than terms associated with a mission field to depict the organization of the Dutch Catholic Church. For example, in Tractatus de Missionibus (1626) Phillip Rovenius held up the episcopacy as the apostolic means by which the church carries out its mission to convert heretics, and in the Netherlands, he added, the secular clergy shouldered that mandate. Rovenius reiterated this view in his wide-ranging treatise on church government, Reipublicae Christianae (1648). Taking aim at Jesuit incursions into local communities, Rovenius set forth the traditional prerogatives of ordinaries

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and attributed them to the apostolic vicar. For Rovenius, the secular clergy and its hierarchy in the northern provinces endured as the direct descendants of the old Utrecht episcopacy. Similarly, Rovenius’s successor, Jacob de la Torre, stated in his 1656 report to Pope Alexander VII that the apostolic vicars inherited the dignity and authority of the Utrecht metropolitan.46 Just as the apostolic vicars were the archbishops of Utrecht, the Catholic districts throughout the Northern Netherlands persisted as the parishes of the archdiocese. Visitation reports consistently refer to local Catholic congregations as parishes and the priests in charge as the pastors. To give just two examples, Rovenius’s report of 1622 named four parishes in the city of Utrecht, two in Leiden, two in Delft, and so forth.47 The most detailed visitation report in the seventeenth century, Jacob de la Torre’s 1656 account, is but one of many other examples, listing all the “pastors” and “parishes” throughout the United Provinces. The 1701 report of Pieter Codde did refer to the church districts as stations but noted that these were “pastorates or the flock of the faithful in which a sole [priest] or one with an associate missionary [was] in command.”48 Correspondence of the secular clergy confirms the same understanding. Rovenius in 1607 wrote to Catholics in Twente that only he had the authority to appoint someone to a “pastorate, vicariate, or benefice.” Forty years later, he complained that the Cologne seminary was dispatching unprepared priests to “parishes.”49 The communities in which the secular clergy served were not called stations or outposts, and the seculars were not missionaries, but rather they were parishes with pastors, thus rhetorically giving the laity the semblance of a diocese. When mission leaders did mention “missionaries,” they were usually referring to religious. In the year after de la Torre’s visitation report, he issued an “instruction” to the missionaries in order to avoid “further disturbances in the mission field.” These “missionaries” were none other than the regulars whom de la Torre sternly reminded could not serve without the written permission of the apostolic vicar, or in de la Torre’s terminology, the “ordinary.”50 The Catholic hierarchy outside the Republic, however, did not share the same view of the Dutch Church. In a resolution on how to treat interfaith marriages in 1623, the nuncio concluded that there were no true parishes in the Dutch Republic, and so the Tridentine canons did not apply. The

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College of Cardinals and Pope Urban VIII did not take a position on this issue.51 The use of this terminology was not simply ecclesiastical semantics, for it had broad implications in three areas: a lay understanding of the post-Reformation church, the claims to former church property, and the moral demands on laymen and -women. At the local level, lay leaders adopted the model of the parish for managing their communities. Each congregation selected church wardens, who took charge over the fabric of the church and poor relief, traditional roles for lay parish officers. Lay leaders also labored to create an endowment for parishes that would operate as a benefice to support a pastor. Catholic identity for laity as well as for clergy, then, became connected to a parish within a diocese, though canonically no parishes or dioceses existed in the Netherlands after the secularization of church property in the 1570s. This understanding affected claims to former church property. Hope kindled among Dutch Catholics in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries that a sympathetic military force would overthrow the heretical government and restore the Roman faith to its former status as the official church of the United Provinces.52 Should the Catholic Church return to power, the question of former church property and the fate of the apostolic vicariate no doubt would be hotly contested. If the apostolic vicars had already established the principle of continuity in office and in pastoral care, they could lay a more legitimate claim to former church property and to the archbishopric of Utrecht. All of the apostolic vicars assumed an episcopal prerogative over church property. In 1607, for example, Sasbout Vosmeer, in a dispute with the bishop of Roermond over compensation for secularized lands around Zutphen (in Gelderland), argued forcefully that all such ecclesiastical revenues reverted to the apostolic vicar, who was entitled, as archbishop, to the revenues of the archdiocese. Similarly, Phillip Rovenius maintained in Reipublicae Christianae that bishops had charge over all ecclesiastical property within the diocese.53 For Vosmeer and Rovenius, as well as for other secular leaders, this could only mean one thing: the apostolic vicars possessed all rights to administer church property now and, come what may, in the future. The makeup of the Dutch Catholic Church carried with it far-reaching implications for pastoral care and lay Catholic identity. The Tridentine

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program of religious reform reasserted the diocese as the fundamental framework for Catholic belief and practice. The canons of Trent aimed at purging the abuses in the bishop’s office and putting in place churchmen who would whip the clergy into shape and enforce a regimen of discipline in lay parish life. Thus, Trent staked the fortunes of church reform to the model of the resident bishop shepherding the flock in his diocese. If the United Provinces were simply a mission field, as the Jesuits claimed, and if the apostolic vicars were no more than ad hoc directors of a missionary organization, then strict enforcement of the Tridentine canons was in jeopardy.54 Trent had binding disciplinary force only in lands comprised of parishes within a Roman episcopal structure. Throughout the seventeenth century, the secular clergy attempted to follow the Tridentine canons, and the apostolic vicars appealed to Trent as the rationale for their confessional practices against Jesuit confessors, who maintained that Trent did not apply in the mission field.55 As a result, the nature of the Dutch Catholic Church had profound implications for the disciplining of laypeople. For instance, in a missionary environment, Catholics who married outside the faith (or in a heretical church), baptized a child with a Protestant minister, attended a Protestant service, and interacted in other ways with nonCatholics were not subject to the minor ban of excommunication. Thus, the adoption of a diocesan vision affected a wide range of critical issues, from lay management of local affairs to claims on property and patronage to religious discipline. As a result, the leaders of the Holland Mission acted forcefully against Jesuits for ignoring the diocesan hierarchy, especially the apostolic vicar, who possessed the prerogative to authorize priests to administer the sacraments. The unremitting hostility of the Dutch government, which regarded Jesuits as agents of the Spanish crown, only aggravated relations among the priests. The Jesuits took an accommodationist approach, refusing to condemn Catholics for attending the University of Leiden and for investing in the VOC (Dutch East India Company). The Society even created a sodality for Catholic students at Leiden. From the point of view of the religious, the jurisdictional fussiness of the apostolic vicar impeded pastoral care and the salvation of souls.56 The philosophical dispute played itself out in a variety of issues over the seventeenth century. Leaders of the secular clergy made numerous complaints against the Jesuits. In the discussion leading to the 1624

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Concordia, Rovenius summarized the secular clergy’s usual grievances to the Propaganda Fide: the Jesuits did not obtain licenses to preach or hear confessions, they exhibited indiscreet zeal, they attracted attention from the heretical magistrate, they administered the sacraments independent of the apostolic vicar, they led parishioners away from their secular pastors, and they abandoned poor stations for areas richer in patronage, where it was not necessary for them to serve, all of which had violated Trent.57 The Jesuits, on their end, regarded secular priests as ill equipped for pastoral ministry and repeatedly complained about obstructionism. The Imago primi saeculi (the seventeenth-century Jesuit history of the order) hardly even mentioned the secular clergy in the United Provinces in its description of the Holland Mission. According to the Imago, the few seculars present in the Netherlands realized that they were incapable to the task of reconversion and so appealed to Rome for the Society of Jesus to do this for them. Nuncios and the cardinals of the Propaganda Fide attempted to mediate the dispute between the Jesuits and apostolic vicars, periodically leading to agreements, such as the Forma (1598), Articuli (1610), and the Concordia (1624), though the nuncios and cardinals failed to end disputes over violations of the secular clergy’s prerogatives. The Concessiones Ephesinae issued by de la Torre in 1652 doubled the number of Jesuit stations, but because of their unpopularity among the secular clergy, the Concessiones were repealed (returning the number to those of the 1624 concordat) in 1656.58 Conceptual conflicts gave way to theological disputes in the second half of the seventeenth century. The apostolic vicars had always promoted a rigorist policy in pastoral discipline, which stood at odds with the Jesuits, who took a more conciliatory approach with men and women who lived under the yoke of heresy.59 The Augustinianism of van Neercassel, Codde, and a number of the secular clergy became a source of controversy that engulfed the Dutch Catholic Church at the end of the century. While the clergy made up an obvious component of Catholic identity, it was the laity, female as well as male, who enabled pastoral ministry to function. The laity educated the young, funded and managed the congregation, and saw to it that priests met local needs as local people understood them. While the laity’s agency forms a central theme throughout this study, it is important in this general sketch of the mission to outline some of the primary ways laymen and -women contributed to the development of Catholicism in the Republic.

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Women were extremely important to the maintenance of Dutch Catholicism. Laywomen asserted themselves in the life of local Catholic communities by housing priests, funding endowments, supporting the poor, and generally having their say in most church matters. The closing of all monasteries brought an end to the ongoing experience of ordered nuns, though dissolution did not bring a female religious tradition to an end in the Netherlands. Beginning in the 1580s, a significant number of Catholic women chose the life of a “spiritual virgin” (geestelijke maagden) as either a klopje or beguine, roles that became unique to the Low Countries. Both vocations were comprised of single or widowed women who gave themselves over to the religious ideals of poverty, chastity, and obedience without taking formal vows. They were neither lay nor religious, occupying a middle state in service to God and the Catholic Church, yet without the demands of clausura. Beguines tended to live on their own or with their families, while kloppen lived in communal arrangements under the direction of a superior. An active organizer, Nicolas Cousebant established the original kloppen community in Haarlem, a society that grew to around two hundred women in the seventeenth century. Situated in a neighborhood known as den Hoek (meaning “the crooked street”), this community became known as the maagden op den Hoek. Ample congregations appeared in Amsterdam, Delft, Gouda, and other cities. Under the authority of a male confessor, kloppen carried out a great deal of pastoral work that proved critical to a church with a dearth of priests. Wearing simple, dark attire, kloppen assisted in worship (as singers and readers), catechized the young, cared for Catholic orphans, and visited the sick, in addition to their devotional commitments. Laws at the national and provincial level prohibited spiritual virgins from wearing their distinctive garb and from teaching children without permission from the magistrate. The penalty was stiff, a fine of one hundred guilders for each instance, though like most financial exactions, it is likely that local Catholics negotiated arrangements with authorities.60 Most virgins came from elite families, which attracted the interest of secular and regular clergy, who hoped to plumb new sources of patronage. The quest for patronage gave these virgins a great deal of leverage with local clerics, who at times allowed them to assist at the altar.61 While a wide array of men and women with varying levels of commitment identified with Catholicism, the leaders of local communities,

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both urban and rural, came primarily from the elite. Correspondence to the Haarlem chapter and the apostolic vicars identified the lay caretakers (curators) as nobles, lords, or ladies. Visitation reports also occasionally noted the elite status of Catholics in areas that included Utrecht, Haarlem, Amsterdam, Delft, Holland, The Hague, Rotterdam, Leeuwarden, Gouda, Zeeland, Culemborg, and Lingen.62 These and other lay folk demonstrated a profound loyalty to the priesthood and often expressed a need for pastoral leadership, and accordingly, they made it abundantly clear when the clergy, at any level, failed to meet their expectations. To varying degrees, they cooperated with priests, underwrote the costs of worship and parochial activities, attended Mass when possible, read and passed around devotional literature, collected religious imagery, provided for the instruction of children, and followed the theological debates of the day. The Dutch laity were not passive receptacles of acculturation but were active agents in Catholic confessionalization in the Netherlands. Using Tridentine priorities and conventional practices as guidelines, laity and clergy collaborated to reestablish a Catholic presence in a land dominated by heresy. Yet at the end of the sixteenth century, the struggle with Protestant governments in Europe and non-Christian societies around the globe was still a relatively novel experience for the universal church. There was no blueprint for a Catholic Church in a Protestant Republic. What authority should a nonresident archbishop wield in a territory that no longer contained any Catholic parishes? What was the work terrain of the Haarlem Chapter? How were spiritual virgins to live and work? How were seminaries to operate? How were priests to administer sacraments in a society that persecuted Catholics? How was the entire operation to be financed? What were the proper roles of religious orders? And above all, how were laymen and -women to live as good Catholics in a society dominated by heretics? Clergy and laity did not have the luxury to treat these issues in a systematic, reflective manner; priests had to grapple with them as they were trying to provide pastoral care, just as lay folk had to negotiate them in precarious and quickly changing circumstances. Despite the sharp discontinuities in religious practice introduced in the 1570s and 1580s, Dutch Catholic leaders presented the revival of pastoral ministry as an unbroken continuity in ecclesiastical traditions before and

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after the Revolt.63 They also actively promoted this sense of continuity in expository literature, in discussions over property issues, in conflicts with religious orders, and in the cultivation of Catholicity among the laity. Over the course of the seventeenth century, the permanence and continuity of Dutch Catholicism from the distant past to contemporary times became an undisputed assumption among clergy and laity.

Protestantism and Public Order The Dutch Republic was a pluralistic society ruled by pragmatic patricians yet organized around deeply held assumptions about public religious unity. Dutch political authorities placed the highest value on tradition and order, eschewing the confessional wrangling and theocratic aspirations that had bred political instability throughout the Low Countries in the second half of the sixteenth century. After rapid change and uncertainty at the outset of the Revolt, city governments and provincial authorities moved to manage the religious dissent that threatened to undermine the social order. Magistrates demanded the obedience of Calvinist church officers; some cities even ousted ministers who meddled in political affairs.64 The repression of Catholicism in the 1570s and 1580s grew out of the need to create stability during wartime and to placate the Revolt’s most dedicated constituency, namely Calvinists. A commitment to religious order compelled authorities to maintain that subjugation after military danger passed. The suppression of the Catholic faith in the Dutch Republic, then, was a necessary condition in reconstituting public religious unity after 1572. In an age of “one lord, one faith, one church,” Dutch ruling elites in a war with Catholic Spain identified religious unity with the Reformed Church. As the public institution, it provided worship services for all people, performed baptism and marriage rites for nonmembers, and officiated at community observances, such as national days of prayer.65 Believing the public coexistence of religious confessions to be fractious to social stability, city governments proscribed all open manifestations of any other Christian faith. Calvinists considered other Protestant denominations, that is, Lutheranism and Anabaptism, to contain grave errors that obscured true religion, though magistrates considered them to be in keeping with the gospel. Catholicism, however, was categorically different in the eyes of Calvinist church leaders

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and city magistrates. For church leaders, Romanism embodied idolatry, entrapped humans in clerical bondage, and completely perverted religious truth, while for magistrates Catholicism represented a threat to the public religious order. Dutch authorities sought to safeguard this public order based on this spectrum of error. Protestant denominations—namely, Lutherans, Anabaptist groups, and Remonstrants—ultimately gained the unofficial status of “tolerated churches” by the 1630s and were permitted to hold their own religious services without undue fear of harassment. This concession occurred only after a long struggle and over the loud objections of strict Calvinist partisans. The sizable Jewish communities, particularly in Amsterdam, were allowed the right to organize themselves, hold their own worship services, and even construct synagogues. Peter van Rooden has explained that Jews were accorded a public presence in the Dutch Republic because they could not contest the identity of the public church.66 The strictures upholding the new religious order fell hardest on Roman Catholicism. Not only was the Roman Mass prohibited, but Dutch national and provincial governments issued and reissued laws from the 1580s to the 1680s against attending any Catholic gathering, teaching Catholic doctrine, distributing “papist” literature, studying at a Catholic university, and having a priest perform baptism or marriage. Even semiotic reminders of Romanism, such as feast days, religious images, crucifixes, clerical vestments, and the plain clothing of spiritual virgins, were legislated out of existence. Chapels and religious buildings were converted to civic uses, while churches were stripped of the vestiges of “popish idolatry” for proper Reformed worship. Some towns even banned the public sale of cookies fashioned in the image of St. Nicholas, which traditionally came out for sale on his feast day.67 Yet even as Catholics in their own day pointed out, enforcement of these laws varied considerably across the northern provinces and over the course of the seventeenth century.68 In general, central and local governments tended to be more lenient in areas with larger demographic concentrations of Catholics (namely, the provinces of Holland and Utrecht) and at times of international stability with Catholic states. It is also generally agreed among scholars that repression was less intense in the second half of the seventeenth century.69 The disconnection between proscription and unofficial confessional coexistence has led

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most historians to conclude that the Dutch people were essentially a tolerant people and authorities simply found it necessary to ban Catholicism because of the war.70 Local authorities were willing to look the other way because of their practical sense of tolerance as well as their eagerness to make an easy guilder. From this point of view, the Dutch represented the nascent progressive principle of religious toleration that would inevitably triumph in the eighteenth century. While this line of interpretation is compelling, it overlooks the violence against Catholics that took place throughout this period.71 The most prevalent form of aggression was the seizure, incarceration, ransom, and banishment of priests. Lay Catholics, despite informal arrangements, paid enormous amounts to worship in hidden churches, attics, and barns, even in areas of greatest toleration, such as Amsterdam. The periodic payment of “recognition fees” still did not guarantee connivance, as local authorities regularly seized priests, ransacked clandestine churches, and threatened laymen and -women. Episodes of violence and interludes of concord, then, were not haphazard, sporadic occurrences, but they belonged to a way of ordering religious difference and maintaining public unity in a pluralistic environment. As a dramatic show of force and as a way to line their pockets, authorities regularly apprehended, imprisoned, and ransomed priests. Laws prohibited priests from performing religious exercises, so arresting practicing priests actually enforced legal proscriptions. Yet Dutch authorities did so at those moments when Catholicism intruded into the public consciousness, occasions that could involve a priest wearing vestments publicly, or a clerical squabble that attracted attention, or a perceived military threat from a Catholic power.72 Enforcement at these junctures revealed the need to affirm laws against Catholicism and to demonstrate to Catholics their subordination in a Protestant society. Since capture normally involved physical violence, incarceration, extortion, and banishment, the intended effect could only have been to intimidate local Catholics. Targeting priests reinforced the political inferiority of Catholicism and put Catholics on notice to keep their “popery” out of public view. While the particular circumstances of violence against priests differed, each one followed a general pattern, precipitated by Catholic incursion into the public domain. Forbidden to wear vestments, priests frequently noted in correspondence their need to hide, travel secretly,

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and lay low.73 A Catholic writer at midcentury advised priests not to wear a cowl in clandestine churches “because it may aggravate the magistrate and imprudently stir up the common folk.”74 When someone identified Jacob Tiras as a Franciscan as he was crossing a field in 1638, he was captured.75 Encountering the same fate, Christian Vermeulen revealed his priestly identity when he engaged in a public argument with Protestants in Leiden in 1639.76 Furthermore, the language of anti-Catholic edicts intimated an overarching concern to keep Catholicism out of the public sphere. In 1581, for example, the States of North Holland warned their counterparts south of the IJ River about reports of “papists appearing very starkly . . . in secret as in public.” The typical phrases justifying renewed vigilance included “Catholic boldness” (Paepsche stoutigheid), “unrest and uproar (onrust ende oproer), “notorious idolatry” (berucht afgoderije), all of which carry the clear connotation that Catholic activity needed to be purged from the public realm.77 Catholic disturbances or conflicts that spilled into the public sphere formed another type of intrusion that triggered crackdowns on priests. Rovenius complained to Rome that a conspicuous Jesuit presence caused agitation among the laity and attracted the attention of magistrates, who took action against all local Catholics by seizing the priests, secular as well as regular, and sending them into exile.78 Likewise, Joannes Stalpert van der Wiele in Delft warned of destruction that would certainly result from clerical conflicts in the area, just as Henricus Sillingius feared turbulence among Catholics would bring about further molestation.79 Hoping to stave off an assault, van Neercassel informed the lay leaders in Deventer that he was sending them a native priest, Henricus van Deventer, to promote unity, in the hope that the magistrate would impose fewer burdens on the community.80 After authorities identified and apprehended a priest, the next stage involved a period of imprisonment until Catholics came up with a sufficient ransom to free him. Most reports of incarceration indicate this interval was usually brief, lasting from several weeks to a few months. Some form of physical violence often accompanied seizure and incarceration. Rovenius reported in 1616 that the only priest in Kampen (in the province of Overijssel) was seized, dragged through the streets, thrown in jail, and ransomed at great cost. Six years later, Rovenius claimed that priests often had to endure torture during captivity. In 1639 Martin van Velde even died from a head wound he incurred while

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in jail at Zoeterwoude, as did Joannes Steenstra in Friesland later in the century.81 Only rarely did a priest die under these circumstances, which would have worked against the financial interests of authorities, but any violence during incarceration served largely to humiliate the priest and embarrass the congregation. The Dutch government never executed any priests, though Rogier notes that there was some discussion in 1638 about executing five priests, three of whom were Jesuits, before they were spared.82 Even though religious violence was not an altogether unusual occurrence in the seventeenth century, the sight of one’s religious leader being shoved around and thrown in jail and bearing marks of violence served to remind Catholics of their vulnerability. The seizure and incarceration of a priest occasionally occurred as part of a broader attack on the local congregation. For example, two captive priests informed Eggius in 1601 that authorities had burst into a worship service, interrogated everyone about the whereabouts of Sasbout Vosmeer, seized the priests, and taken an iron mallet to the altar and the religious vessels in front of the worshippers.83 In Leeuwarden, authorities taught Catholics a lesson by publicly burning their church furniture and religious images after seizing Paul van den Berghe, a Jesuit, sometime around midcentury.84 Nevertheless, outside of the random aggression of marauding soldiers at the end of the sixteenth century, actions against Catholics were not murderously violent and were not aimed at eliminating the Roman faith but functioned to keep Catholics in their place in the attic, out of sight, and on the margins. In addition to intimidation and threat of physical aggression, the apprehension of priests carried with it a very real financial violence to local Catholics and the Holland Mission. Before releasing a priest, authorities usually posted a ransom or negotiated with local lay leaders for a sum for redeeming their priest.85 The ransoms ranged from 200 florins (in an undisclosed location) in 1622; 1,000 florins (one priest traveling in Holland) in 1630; 1,500 florins (two priests in Groningen) in 1635; 2,000 and 4,000 florins (four priests in Holland) in 1635; 1,400 florins (one priest in Purmerend) in 1650; and 1,200 florins (several priests in North Holland) in 1650. Albert Eggius cost a whopping 3,000 florins in 1604. Perhaps the payment of recognition money (discussed below) slowed the rate of apprehension and ransom, for the issue seems to have cropped up much less after midcentury. Nevertheless, in 1686 van Neercassel praised Catholics in Makkum (in Friesland) for ransoming their priest.86

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The culminating action in the apprehension process was usually the banishment of the priest from either the province or country. An anonymous cleric suggested that exile was almost automatic for an apprehended priest. He wrote, “The laity are punished financially and priests have to endure captivity, not usually for very long, but they often have to be ransomed and then they are sent into exile.”87 Gerrit van Engelsche received a twenty-year exile, and the Dominican Arnold Willemsen Steur a lifetime ban in 1636, as did two other religious from Utrecht in 1636 and Bernard Moldijck also from Utrecht in the 1650s.88 Several factors influenced the length of exile: the immediate national circumstances, the priest’s background, and the particular level of anxiety about Catholicism at the time. The Dutch government took the most severe actions against religious orders, a policy that one Jesuit historian has called a “bloodless martyrdom” for the Society of Jesus.89 Concerns about national security also affected bans for secular priests. Eggius, regarded as a coconspirator with Sasbout Vosmeer to restore Spanish rule, received a lifetime ban at his apprehension in 1604. In a more local context, Rumoldus Medenblick, chief pastor in Leiden, also received a lifetime ban from the city government out of its unease with Catholic efforts to educate children and to raise money.90 Though the practice of seizing priests continued throughout this period, local officials and Catholic leaders regularized other financial exactions by the early seventeenth century. Catholics bought off either the schout (sheriff ) or the baillif, the deputies, and the magistrates with regular payments, known as recognition money. One Catholic writer described the arrangement in Amsterdam the mid-seventeenth century this way: “There is always fear of harassment, except in Amsterdam because of the financial bribery of the officials. They make a pact in every year about what payment to receive in the various stations, based on the enthusiasm or humanity of the official and the wealth or poverty of the station.”91 Thus, a system emerged in which Catholics purchased the privilege to worship in private for a specified time, the sum for which was negotiated, based on the black market value of Catholic services. Catholics paid recognition money from a variety of sources. The apostolic vicars appropriated funds for this purpose, drawn in part from the generosity of lay patrons. The sums could be enormous. Rovenius reported in 1642 that over the previous four years, he had doled out fifty thousand guilders in recognition money. Rogier has estimated that

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this figure steadily increased over the course of the seventeenth century and that by 1725, Catholics were paying sums of 35,000 to 40,000 guilders per year.92 Though Catholics paid dearly for connivance, recognition fees did not guarantee tolerance, even for private worship. Catholics in Gouda paid four hundred guilders annually in the early seventeenth century, yet despite the bribes, the baillif regularly interfered with services and ransomed priests, demanding higher fees all the while. By the 1640s, Gouda Catholics were shelling out seven hundred guilders a year, even though they endured repeated harassment and indignities. In spite of heavy fees that Amsterdam Catholics paid, in 1641 five hundred had to hand over 6,200 guilders more for the opportunity of attending Mass on the feast of Corpus Christi.93 The amounts paid by Catholics demonstrate the great importance laymen and -women attached to the sacraments and to pastoral care. In those places where connivance was for sale, worship was still a clandestine affair that could not intrude upon the Protestant public order. Catholics in Gouda worshipped in eleven places, and there were fifty other houses that served as backup locations in the event of danger. For the sake of safety, Leiden’s eight hidden churches were located on the periphery of the city in the seventeenth century.94 Most hidden churches (schuilkerken) were designed so that they would not look like churches, though most townsfolk understood what took place inside them. Those wishing to attend Mass could not enter from the main street but came in through a side entrance in an alley or in the back of the house. In many other locations across the Netherlands, Catholics worshipped late at night and in small number, so they would not attract attention.95 Benjamin Kaplan has shown that the architectural setting of these hidden churches enabled Catholics to create private sacred space and at the same time maintain the “cultural fiction” of religious unity in a multiconfessional society.96 Catholic worship had to be private and in some sense secret to avoid offending the moral order in a Protestant society. Thus, recognition money could necessarily provide only for clandestine activity and afforded no protection when Catholicism inserted itself into the public consciousness. Provided Catholicism remained on the cultural periphery, the formality and systematization of recognition money negotiated financial exactions and provided some glimmer of local hope against the apprehension of priests. As such, recognition fees functioned as an advance

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on the upcoming year’s fines on behalf of the entire community. Contemporaries regarded it as a down payment for a precarious toleration of private worship, and many Europeans considered the Northern Netherlands to represent the cutting edge of religious pluralism. From this perspective, the measure of private space that Catholics purchased bears less resemblance to the religious toleration championed by postEnlightenment historians than to the management of a pluralistic society by pragmatic, profit-driven elites. What effects did these aggressive steps have on lay Catholics, and how did these conditions influence their religious identity? Financial exactions and apprehension of priests affected Dutch Catholics in two basic ways: by accomplishing the goal of intimidating locals and by nevertheless instilling a sense of communal solidarity among Catholics. In the first half of the seventeenth century, reports by apostolic vicars and prefects, as well as correspondence among laity and clergy, note from time to time a fear of persecution. In 1609, for example, Lambert Egbertszoon, a priest in Schoonhoven (in Holland), asked to leave his post because of violent threats, writing “The children in the street have their mouths full for me.”97 Several years earlier Albert Pethijn requested a transfer out of Enkhuizen if the level of harassment there did not slacken. In 1612 Catholics in Leeuwarden wrote Vosmeer but omitted their names because they stated they feared the letter would fall into the hands of authorities.98 In 1616 Rovenius reported that the apprehension and mistreatment of priests in the previous year led to much fear in Utrecht, a Catholic stronghold, and in 1639 de la Torre contended that the capture of Martin van Velde caused great fear in Zoeterwoude, causing some priests to go into hiding and others to flee. Several years later, a writer observed that there was always a fear of harassment, except in Amsterdam. In 1664 van Neercassel stated that priests feared to travel during the day and that anxiety about the authorities kept the laity from attending services in Zierikzee.99 As late as 1700, Catholics in Amersfoort wrote Codde that they could not attend church, because it would arouse the authorities and bring about danger.100 Vigorous prosecution by the authorities elicited other emotional responses from Catholics, all of which point to a genuine feeling of political intimidation. Gerrit Vermij, in recalling the judgments against two priests and several laity in 1598, could hardly contain his contempt for the schout, whom he described as a braggart who prowled around at

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night snooping on suspected Catholics: “Some have heard the schout say that he expected to find a priest here in Delft, but the bird had flown.”101 Eggius expressed exasperation at the treachery of someone who posed as a Catholic seeking a confessor in order to finger him and have him seized.102 Anger and umbrage, however, were often tinged with despondency, especially for the priests who underwent seizure, mistreatment, and incarceration. Just after his banishment, Eggius wrote to Jacob Zaffius in 1605, “And for all the time of my captivity and after my exile, I realize my own scum, for as the prophet said: just as my brothers and neighbors give me joy, mourning and affliction humble me.”103 Likewise, Lambert Feijt, after his imprisonment in 1598, expressed “the sadness in his soul.”104 The anxiety mentioned in these reports, however, was not a general pervasive anxiety about violence but a specific response to particular acts of repression. The same letters and reports indicate that Catholics at other times enjoyed tranquillity and liberty of private worship, albeit at a price. For example, Rovenius’s report of 1616 remarked that Catholics in Delft and Haarlem enjoyed toleration, and de la Torre’s report made the same observation about Edam (in Holland) and Culemborg (in Gelderland).105 There were many other accounts of liberality throughout this period, lending substantial credibility to the claims of Catholic reports. These descriptions were not simply propaganda pieces or embellished tales of woe but reflected on or described local Catholic experience. Repression made life difficult, though certainly not hopeless, for Catholics who wished to practice their religion, and so deprivation also instilled a sharpened sense of religious identity. The choice to remain or become (and remain) Catholic in such antagonistic circumstances accentuated the perception of confessional difference. To a large extent, living in a Protestant society that was hostile yet not lethal to Catholicism enhanced the appreciation and deepened an understanding for what it meant to be a Roman Catholic. Even subsequent generations of Catholics in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, whose faith would become more habituated, would have been reminded of their religious difference by the ongoing repressive measures against Catholicism. Catholics in the Northern Netherlands, lay and clerical, left evidence of a self-conscious communal identity, which merged together

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national and international themes. It is well known among Dutch historians that the early leaders of the Holland Mission promoted the cult of St. Willibrord and St. Boniface, the first missionaries and martyrs to the Netherlands, as well as other venerable figures from the distant Dutch past. The cultivation of these and other saints aimed at infusing a Dutch character into Catholicism, to recall the endurance of the Roman faith in the Low Countries at a critical time in the formation of a national identity.106 Yet, in calling attention to the national themes in Catholic devotion, historians have overlooked the universal and Roman dimensions within Dutch Catholicism, especially in the first half of the seventeenth century. Inspired by the historical work of Caesar Baronius, Catholic writers in the Low Countries, who were either Dutch exiles or in close contact with refugees, appealed to the past to demonstrate the legitimacy of the Roman faith. Baronius’s sweeping survey, the Annales Ecclesiastici, offered an effective counterargument to Protestant histories, notably the Magdeburg Centuries, and thereby offered a forceful Catholic perspective on church history. Baronius gave Catholics greater confidence in church history, and the Annales led to the emphasis on historical perspective in Catholic polemics at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries. Baronius wielded enormous influence on Catholic writers in the Low Countries. Heribert Rosweijde, a Jesuit from Utrecht who started the critical work on the Acta Sanctorum, translated the Annales into Dutch in 1625. At the same time, other universal church histories in the genre of the Annales, if not of the same quality, began to appear in Dutch. Dionysius Mudzaert, a Norbertine from Tilburg (in Brabant), authored Generale Kerckelicke Historie in 1624, and Adrian van Meerbeeck, a priest in Antwerp, published Chroniicke vande Gantsche Werelt (Chronicle of the Entire World) in 1620. Both of these works claimed to survey church history, Mudzaert’s history from “the beginning of the world” to contemporary times, stressing the international and Roman character of Catholic Christianity in Netherlands.107 In addition to these universal histories, a large number of historical works in the first half of the seventeenth century reminded Netherlanders time and again of their rich religious legacy and placed Catholicism in the Netherlands into a broad historical perspective. Histories, poetry, and accounts related the venerable stories of the Dutch past, but

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they encased the Dutch narrative within the framework of the universal and Roman Church. As Mudzaert argued, “The Dutch people have always been highly renowned because they have taken the Holy Apostle Peter as their Bishop, the father of their faith.”108 According to Dutch writers, catholicity and apostolicity emanated from the papacy and gave the Roman Church in the Netherlands legitimacy. Consequently, writers recounted the heroism of Willibrord and Boniface in fighting heresy and in carrying out the mission of the Roman See. It was only later, at the end of the seventeenth century, that Dutch writers, arguing for an unbroken episcopal continuity in their struggles against the Jesuits, placed emphasis on Willibrord as the first archbishop of Utrecht.109 Joannes Stalpert van der Wiele, a priest and poet, reminded Catholics that the father of Dutch Christianity was a Roman Catholic, whereas the father of Dutch Calvinism was a heretic. He wrote, “Though I want to ask of you, from where and from whom did he [Willibrordus] come? From Rome was his start. From there he did come. Look now at this line: Willibrordus came from Rome, and Calvin came from Geneva.”110 Francis Coster pointed out that St. Willibrord’s mission to the Netherlands was part of the spread of the gospel throughout the entire world, an effort directed for centuries by the Holy See in Rome. He went on to note the centrality of the papacy in the Catholic Church, calling St. Peter and his successors “stadthouders” of Christ for over 1,500 years.111 Other writers and printers saturated the Netherlands with accounts of Dutch Catholic martyrs in Gorcum, Alkmaar, and Roermond; the accounts appeared alongside catechisms, devotional prints, and prayer books.112 Church leaders and writers also drew from the rich stories of God’s people suffering through the ages to give meaning to the hardships of Dutch Catholics and to connect their afflictions to the faithful within the universal church throughout history. Narratives of triumphant suffering by national saints intermingled with descriptive accounts of supranational saints to form an integral part of Dutch Catholic identity. These stories helped clergy and laity to make sense of a world ruled by heretics and convinced Catholics to look for miracles, preserve religious images, commission artwork for their often ornately decorated hidden churches, and bequeath money for priests, the poor, and missionary work.113 There are a number of indications that laity, as well as clergy, ab-

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sorbed these narratives and that they formed an integral part of Dutch Catholic identity. An active book trade from Antwerp and Cologne to Amsterdam developed in the early seventeenth century and spread these works throughout the Netherlands. Between 1619 and 1650 one Amsterdam bookseller imported fifty thousand guilders’ worth of Catholic books from publishers in Antwerp. Publishers and booksellers pushed Catholic books in Gouda, Utrecht, Haarlem, Leiden, and above all in Amsterdam, which contained twenty-eight Catholic distributors in the second half of the seventeenth century.114 Correspondence among Catholics also occasionally mentions that books were changing hands; when authorities in Haarlem apprehended Eggius, for example, they found him with sermon books by Francis Coster. When asked to explain why he had these books in his possession, Eggius answered, “Since the books are well known in public, one concludes that they can be carried around.”115 Calvinist ministers were certainly aware of this literature, often warning their congregations to avoid the “papist” books circulating in their towns.116 Lay folk participated in the theological debates between secular and regular priests, sometimes to the chagrin of the clerical hierarchy. This lay activism grew out of a communal identity born of adversity. Protestant persecution was not so severe or sustained that it threatened to destroy Catholicism in the Republic, but it was serious enough to inspire commitment among Catholics. From the point of view of city magistrates, the strategic punishment of priests and the collection of recognition fees formed an effective means for managing religious conflict in a multiconfessional society. Because of the large enclaves of Catholics in various areas such as Holland, a systematic repression of Catholicism would have led only to severe political instability and civil war. Beyond the impracticality of such an approach, Dutch regents had already demonstrated an abiding antipathy for inquisitions and resented the absolutist tendencies of Spanish rule, a resentment that contributed to the rebellion against Hapsburg authority. After 1572 magistrates in many cities exerted almost as much energy in checking the theocratic ambitions of the more uncompromising Calvinist leaders as they spent in keeping Catholicism out of the public sphere. Even contemporary Catholics recognized that political authorities brooked no challenges to their supremacy from any confession. As one Catholic writer put it, “It has been declared that liberty of

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conscience is thriving in the United Provinces, though it should be understood in the sense that no one is forced to adopt the pretended Reformed Religion; as long as he does not blaspheme the chief dogmas of the Christian religion and duly venerates the supreme magistrate, he is permitted to have no religion at all or to hold a private belief. Nevertheless, the public exercise of any sect whatsoever is not permitted.”117 Indeed, the ruling elite of Dutch towns increased their authority over the civic corporation over the course of the late sixteenth century and through the seventeenth. From the standpoint of magistrates and regents, a Catholic presence contested the Protestant order and had necessarily to be excluded from the public domain. Though the public church was indisputably Reformed, governing authorities ensured that its public function was nonconfessional. Political authorities, therefore, obstructed the theocratic aspirations of Calvinism because it threatened the nonconfessional nature of the Protestant public order.118 The multiconfessional character of Dutch cities did not emerge out of an indigenous affinity for toleration. Rather, the deliberate policies of city magistrates managed a public sphere that accorded a hierarchy of privileges to the major confessional groups: Reformed, Protestant dissenter, and Catholic. The Revolt ushered in a new public civic sphere in Dutch cities, whose space was meticulously mapped by cartographers and whose distant histories were written by chroniclers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Dutch Catholic location in this social order was on the periphery, and the actions of city governments functioned to keep it there. Catholics were permitted to build their own religious communities along the margins of society but were fiercely rebuffed when they impinged on the public consciousness. From a magisterial point of view, financial exaction and sporadic seizure of priests was a means to manage the threat of social conflict that Catholicism posed in a pluralistic society dominated by Calvinism. Within what one recent scholar has called a “culture of mediation,” city governments negotiated the place of Catholicism in a Protestant society, and they maintained that location on the margins through recognition fees and the threat of violence.119 Thus, what Catholics regarded as persecution and staunch Calvinists as decadent compromise, city authorities considered effective social management.

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Catholic Marriage in a Protestant Society In May 1602, the Court of Holland accused Sasbout Vosmeer of lèsemajesté for conspiring with foreign prelates and potentates to “bring these lands back under the Archduke and the Spaniards.” The court condemned Vosmeer for many things: “[He is] teaching and maintaining that the laws of this land are invalid, so that all marriages are invalid, still the children from them illegitimate . . . [he] labor[s] secretly in these lands to introduce the Council of Trent . . . [and he] burdens the consciences of those who work in the East and West Indies.”120 Albeit with some exaggeration, the court pegged Vosmeer’s hostile attitude toward life in a Protestant Republic. Vosmeer fully supported prohibitions against participating in the chief institutions of the Republic, including the East and West Indies companies, the governments, the universities, and the army. And, as the judgment declares, Vosmeer directed Catholics to violate civil marriage regulations when they contradicted canon law.121 As the clergy began to reorganize itself in the late sixteenth century, it became necessary to chart how faithful Catholics ought to navigate the hazards of functioning in a heretical land. Though Catholics in the Low Countries expected, hoped, and prayed for a Roman restoration, the church realized, at the creation of the mission, the pressing need to give guidance to the steadfast for the duration of Protestant rule. Developing a regimen for living in enemy territory was by no means a simple, straightforward, or quick process, as churchmen deliberated problematic issues across the seventeenth century. Vosmeer, the Haarlem canons, and other leading secular priests adopted right away the canons of Trent as the standard for Catholic Netherlanders. The application of Trent to the wide range of problems that emerged in a Protestant country would remain an ordeal throughout this period, as Trent assumed residence in a traditional Catholic diocese. Throughout Catholic Europe, the Council of Trent revitalized the Roman Church’s commitment to moral discipline and to clerical supervision over lay spirituality. Trent gave unbending clarity to the church’s demands. Through the rhythm of examining one’s conscience, confessing sins, and undergoing penance, Catholics received consolation for their consciences and the clergy maintained firm pastoral control over the

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sacramental order. The post-Tridentine Chuch emphasized penance and the Eucharist as the preeminent pastoral sacraments. Since penance conferred absolution for sin, the sacrament became the linchpin for Catholics who wished to live in harmony with the commands of the church, as men and women negotiated temptations and compromises in a sinful world. The process of obtaining forgiveness and renewal assumed but did not require the ecclesiastical infrastructure of a parish within a diocese under the pastoral supervision of a resident bishop. The question facing the Catholic Church was how to apply these standards in the Northern Netherlands, a territory that was bereft of parishes, that lacked priests, and whose government was hostile to the Catholic sacramental order. The remaining section of this chapter will illustrate the challenges that the Counter-Reformation posed for Catholics who wished to live in some degree of conformity with the Roman Church yet who also faced pressures to conform to a Protestant society. To a large extent, issues of this type confronted all religious minorities in the post-Reformation period. English historians have emphasized the dilemmas for Catholics in England’s harsher political climate. Catholics faced the civil injunction to conform to the Church of England on the one hand and the ecclesiastical demand to recuse themselves on the other.122 While Dutch Catholics did not have to negotiate such a stark, antithetical choice, they did encounter a host of issues that pitted civic life against religious obligation. The thorny question of canonical marriage formed one of the most problematic issues and thus serves to illuminate the difficulties for Catholics standing at the intersection of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations. The Council of Trent’s canons on marriage were straightforward and clear. Upholding the sacramental nature of marriage, Trent required that candidates for marriage be baptized Catholic Christians and that the vows take place under the auspices of a parish priest and before two or three witnesses. The tametsi clause rejected “clandestine marriage” because of the possibilities it gave for adultery, avoidance of parental oversight, abandonment, and bigamy.123 The concern to counter abuses from clandestine marriage, that is, the practice of making informal private arrangements between partners, cut across denominational lines. One of the major developments in the post-Reformation era was the campaign by secular and ecclesiastical authorities against these independent liaisons. The Roman Catholic remedy reasserted the public and sacramental nature of mar-

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riage. In addition to the presence of a priest and witnesses, a canonical marriage, according to Trent, required mutual consent of the partners and publication of the banns for three consecutive Sundays. The Reformed Church, like all other Protestant denominations (except the Church of England), rejected marriage as a sacrament, a position that introduced significant differences in the initiation of a marital union. As the northern provinces threw off Hapsburg authority and rejected the Catholic faith, it became necessary for national and provincial bodies to establish new ordinances regulating marriage. Across the United Provinces, marriage became a public affair governed by civil authorities, requiring a binding public betrothal and declaration of the banns in three successive weeks. The involvement of ecclesiastical officers, Reformed or otherwise, was regulated according to each province. Holland, Utrecht, and Friesland offered couples a choice: they could make their betrothal and later exchange their vows either before municipal officers or in the presence of a Reformed minister. A number of the larger cities in Holland created a “Committee for Marriage Affairs” that recorded bethrothals and marriages and enforced marriage regulations. In other cities and towns, aldermen performed these tasks. Couples who chose to forgo the Reformed Church could opt for a private, non-Reformed private religious ceremony after the public civil marriage. The ordinances in these provinces, therefore, gave Catholics room to maneuver around civil requirements by choosing private church options. Yet Catholics in Zeeland, Groningen, Overijssel, and Gelderland enjoyed no such latitude, for in these provinces all couples had to contract marriages within the Reformed Church. Thus, these provincial states presented Catholics with a marriage requirement that ran directly counter to Tridentine canons. As a result, the Holland Mission had to find a pastoral answer to the contradictions between civil and canon law.124 Another important point of discontinuity between Dutch law and Catholic teaching involved interfaith marriages. Dutch civil regulations contained no prohibitions against interfaith marriages, though both the Reformed and Catholic churches found common ground in their opposition to men and women yoking themselves with a partner of a different faith. In Catholic sources, the problem of these unions and the practice of contracting matrimony in a Reformed Church received a great deal of attention from mission leaders.125 The synods of the Reformed Church also took the position that local

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church officers should admonish members not to marry outside the faith. If they went ahead with the marriage, their union was still legitimate, though they faced ecclesiastical punishments.126 Reformed ministers would have been hard pressed not to recognize a mixed marriage, since the civil authority gave it legitimacy. But church officers also went beyond giving members who married Catholics a simple admonition. The Delft consistory, for instance, suspended a member from communion (the minor ban of excommunication) for wedding an “enemy of the truth” when he married a Catholic in 1586.127 Studies of Calvinist church discipline in Rotterdam, Delft, and Amsterdam have shown that consistories routinely denied communion to members who married Catholics until the members promised to remain faithful to the Reformed community and repented publicly, which was perhaps not an ideal way to begin a happy marriage.128 These Reformed prescriptions bear a striking similarity to the Tridentine canons, which also recognized the validity of interfaith unions once they had been contracted. Trent in fact anathematized the refusal to recognize interfaith marriages. Yet the council also left no room for marrying a heretic, as the canons enjoined both partners to undergo examination by their parish priest, to confess their sins to him, and to receive the Eucharist three days before the marriage.129 The Tridentine canons, however, assumed the presence of a normative diocesan structure in governing marriage, a condition quite far removed from a territory where Catholicism was illegal. What were Catholic couples to do if there was no priest or if civil law required them to solemnize their marriage before a Protestant minister? What was a priest to do if a Catholic married outside the faith? What if irregularities occurred in an area under persecution or if local Catholics had no knowledge of the Tridentine canons? Catholic leaders in the Netherlands groped for several years toward a general pastoral approach to the problems that marriage posed for the laity. At Vosmeer’s appointment in 1592, he obtained the authority to grant dispensations for marriage impediments, and it appears that in the earliest days of the mission, he simply tried to apply canon law on a case-by-case basis. Yet at this early stage there was no widely understood, let alone uniformly accepted, policy. In 1595 the papal nuncio Frangipani observed that no general rule for matrimony could be set forth, because conditions (presence of a priest, publication of Trent,

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etc.) varied widely across the Netherlands. The provincials of the Society of Jesus held the same view and became the strongest critics of adopting Tridentine standards in the Netherlands. For them, such rigorism damaged consciences and did not allow Catholics to function in Dutch society.130 A 1592 Jesuit report from the Netherlands indicates that the fathers were simply allowing Catholics who did not marry according to the Tridentine canons to undergo a “general confession.”131 If prelates could not come to consensus on a policy, then it is no wonder that confusion reigned out in the provinces. Clemens van Spuelde, a priest in Amersfoort, wrote to Vosmeer in 1594 that all sorts of marriage irregularities were occurring and no one was quite certain what constituted prohibited degrees of consanguinity. Four years later Eggius pointed out that Calvinists were pressuring Catholics to comply with Calvinist marriage ordinances in order to promote the Reformed religion. The same Jesuit report of 1592 claimed that large numbers of Catholics were seeking to reconcile themselves to church prescriptions after having violated Trent’s guidelines.132 At least by the end of the sixteenth century, it seems that Vosmeer had determined to follow to a strict line against Catholics who married non-Catholics or who married in the presence of a Reformed minister. In a document treating cases of conscience, dated around 1600, Vosmeer maintained that it was scandalous for Catholics to marry in the presence of heretics and that the practice should be avoided as far as possible. He concluded that Catholics, provided they had knowledge of the pertinent canons, were not to marry without a priest, because “marriage was not absolutely necessary”; that they were not to be united before a heretical minister; and that they were not to marry a non-Catholic. The clergy did allow Catholics to take civil oaths before municipal officers to comply with provincial regulations in Holland, Utrecht, and Friesland, as long as they also later appeared before their parish priest and two witnesses.133 For those Catholics who did marry outside their faith or before a Reformed minister, as was legally required in Gelderland, Overijssel, Zeeland, and Groningen, mission leaders did allow for reconciliation with the church. Perhaps with these provincial requirements in mind, Vosmeer conceded that marriage before a heretical minister could be permitted in special circumstances, though he made no such allowances for wedding a non-Catholic.134 Citing a 1628 pastoral mandate of

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Rovenius, the Haarlem Chapter stated in the 1630s that its practice for those who married heretics was to allow the Catholic partner to reconcile with the church and bless the marriage after a period of penitence.135 Thus, it appears that in the early years of the Holland Mission, Vosmeer, Rovenius, and the Haarlem deans attempted to follow Tridentine canons for marriage yet held out the possibility of reconciliation. Within these guidelines, if a man or woman violated the ordinances, only the apostolic vicar or the pastors he designated could give absolution. Identical to Reformed practice, Dutch Catholic policy stipulated that culpable Catholics fell under a minor ban of excommunication and thus could not take communion until they received absolution.136 In this way, mission leaders balanced Tridentine demands with local circumstances. The Tridentine policy, with its inherent assumptions about the nature of Dutch church districts, did not go undisputed. The challenge came from several powerful corners: the bishops of Roermond and the Jesuit provincials, both of whom argued that Trent could not be applied with any binding obligation on Catholics where no parishes or dioceses existed. Discussions among apostolic vicars, provincials, bishops, and papal nuncios continued into the early seventeenth century, as Vosmeer and Rovenius continued to maintain their position that Catholics must not marry heretics nor wed before a heretical minister but must marry before the parish priest.137 Represented by Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, the Society, along with the bishops, held that there were “no parishes,” so “the decrees of the Council of Trent [could not] be observed in such a manner in these locations.”138 Eventually, they took their case all the way to Rome, where Pope Urban VIII advised “in 1623 the apostolic vicar to consult with the bishops of Brabant and Flanders and to devise an acceptable policy.” The pope also upheld the apostolic vicar’s authority to determine pastoral guidelines for canonical marriage in lands under his jurisdiction. At the same time, Rovenius was upholding a strict Tridentine policy in his Constitutiones (1628), the basis for church practices among the secular clergy. In the Constitutiones, Rovenius ordered clergy not to absolve a Catholic wedded to a heretic, until either the heretic displayed a genuine willingness to convert or until the Catholic showed true signs of penitence. For those who “presumed” to marry in a Protestant church, Rovenius urged priests not to absolve them until they underwent a period of genuine penitence.139 Throughout this period a number of difficult questions arose that

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bedeviled local Catholics and their priests. For example, in 1636 the Catholic female partner of an interfaith couple in the Haarlem district sought to legitimize the marriage in the eyes of the church. Her nonCatholic husband agreed to go along, as long as they could keep the solemnities secret, because his sister had already gone to the local consistory to report that he had married a Catholic. The priest, Cornelis Benthem, went ahead and married them, though he did not seek permission to give them a dispensation. After this service, Benthem wrote the Haarlem dean, Judocus Cats, asking whether the couple should be remarried so that Cats could provide the dispensation. If this case was not already tangled enough with a very confused priest, Benthem reported that the wife had been pregnant for some time, and she was not sure if she had ever been baptized! A recent study by Benjamin Kaplan has shown that a wide variety of problematic cases flooded the Netherlands, and it is ultimately unclear how uniformly the canons were enforced out in the provinces.140 In 1650 Rovenius complained that despite all the admonitions over the years, some Catholics were still emboldened to marry before a heretical minister. Furthermore, priests overlooked the seriousness of the marriage “under the pretext that the marriage was already completed by a magistrate or beggar [Calvinist] preacher.” According to Rovenius, “The dissimilarity of religion in marriage threatens the peace, the proper training of children in the true faith and turns the Catholic religion over to the beggars [Calvinists].” To combat the erosion of Catholic faith through mixed marriages, the apostolic vicar urged the priests to renewed vigor in forbidding them, and he threatened a three-month suspension for any unauthorized priest who offered absolution.141 Subsequent apostolic vicars maintained this basic stance, though de la Torre sought to give priests some latitude in applying the Tridentine decrees. In a long letter to the Propaganda Fide in 1657, he cataloged a number of problems that continued to plague the laity on this issue. He observed that lay Catholics were in an impossible situation, which threatened the future of the Catholic community: “Since teaching our Catholic faith is most bitterly persecuted, it is harmful to the peace of marriages.”142 In this situation, many weak Catholics, filled with “carnal lust or the hope of riches,” followed the laws of the land by getting married before heretical ministers. Other problems arose as a policy of strict adherence drove Catholics into Protestant churches, as non-

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Catholics “pretend[ed] to be Catholic or promise[d] to convert,” as one partner of a Protestant couple converted to Catholicism and as the laity fell into despair about their salvation. To keep Catholics from despondency, de la Torre asked permission to relax the condemnations in three cases. In the event a Catholic was at the point of death, or the spouse died, or the spouse converted, the ban of excommunication would automatically be removed.143 A recurring theme in the effort to formulate and implement a policy faithful to Trent was the complaint that the regular orders sowed confusion in the field of the Lord. A typical problem emerging in Dutch Catholic sources involved a mixed marriage in which a Jesuit absolved a couple, producing consternation among archpriests, canons, and apostolic vicars over how to proceed with the couple and the priest.144 Vosmeer and Rovenius faced Jesuit challenges about the applicability of Trent, Rovenius complained about the laxity of the religious, and again in November 1657 de la Torre wrote to the Propaganda Fide, accusing regular priests of offering easy absolution to Catholics who violated the marriage canons. Once again, the Propaganda Fide backed the authority of the apostolic vicar, for three weeks later de la Torre issued a pastoral mandate claiming that the Congregatio Cardinalis had declared that no missionary (meaning regular priest) could offer a dispensation of marriage without the approval of the apostolic vicar.145 Nevertheless, the persistent complaints suggest that even though the leaders of the Holland Mission set standards for canonical marriages, they encountered great difficulty in enforcing them. The apostolic vicars in the second half of the seventeenth century maintained the basic Tridentine position yet also continued to struggle with irregularities in practice.146 Van Neercassel’s basic statement of church discipline and organization, the Constitutiones (1668), stipulated a six-month ban from communion for any Catholic who married before a Protestant minister and the suspension of any priest who united a mixed couple. At the end of his tenure, van Neercassel reaffirmed this policy to the internuncio in Brussels, Sebastiano Antonio Tanara, declaring that the mission’s policy was fully consistent with Trent.147 Questions surrounding marriage continued to be contested at the time of the schism in the eighteenth century. The Dutch clergy waged the battle against interfaith marriages out of religious principle, but church leaders also were concerned about the practical consequences of these unions for church growth. The surest

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retention and growth strategy was for Catholics to marry Catholics and raise Catholics, who would one day marry Catholics to raise another generation of Catholics. Statements about the importance of marrying within the faith, by both Catholics and Protestants, however, did not use the language of growth but betrayed an overriding abhorrence of confessional difference and fear of demographic erosion. Time and again priests expressed anxiety that marriage to a heretic would lead the Catholic partner away from the Roman faith. Van Neercassel remarked to the Brussels internuncio in 1682, “Never do non-Catholic spouses convert to our faith.”148 Ironically, Reformed consistories worried about the opposite outcome, fearing especially that male Catholics would exert pressure on female Calvinists to convert to Rome.149 On some occasions, consistories appealed to municipal authorities to intervene, which usually involved no more than the schout warning the husband that he could not stop his wife from attending Reformed services.150 Ministers and elders in Delft summoned Filip de Cuijper before their meeting, to admonish him for marrying a Catholic in city hall and to pressure him to promise to “uphold his religion.” Eventually, the ministers’ fears were realized, as de Cuijper did follow his new wife to her Catholic community.151 On another occasion, a very sick Catholic man, who was married to a Protestant, asked his wife to summon a priest for him, but she first sought permission from her minister. The Protestant minister would not allow her to carry out her husband’s request, fearing the wife’s exposure to a Catholic priest.152 To what extent did the teachings of Catholics and Calvinists affect marriage patterns in the post-Reformation Netherlands? Anything more than a tentative answer to this important question is beyond the scope of this present study. Nevertheless, there are suggestions here and there that intimate that marriages became much more intrafaith in the second half of the seventeenth century. Jesuit annual reports in 1678, 1679, and 1685 claimed that the Fathers married 253, 270, and 334 couples respectively, according to the canons of Trent.153 Unfortunately, these numbers give us no real understanding of the percentage of Catholics who were attempting to follow church teachings. Nonetheless, studies of discipline in the Reformed Church during this period point to a declining rate of censure for marrying a Catholic in relation to other offenses. In the city and the area around Delft (Delfland), between 1573 and 1621, there were only thirteen cases of Reformed

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members involved in interfaith marriages, which includes all denominations. This is a very small number, yet the congregation in Delft was also quite meager during this period, for by 1622 there were only 3,500 church members. In the second half of the seventeenth century, there were only forty-eight cases for both Delft and Rotterdam during a period of significant growth in church membership.154 In Amsterdam, home to both a very large Reformed Church and a large population of Catholics, only 118 cases of interfaith marriages occurred between Calvinists and Catholics from 1578 to 1700. The bulk of the cases, fifty-four (46 percent) took place between 1640 and 1660, and only four cases appeared from 1680 to 1700.155 Nevertheless, discipline procedures did not apply to non–church members, even if they were fairly visible in church activities. Since the Reformed Church allowed people to join the church without any consideration for the denominational affiliation of their spouses, people could have avoided church censure by delaying church membership until after marriage.156 Though the patterns in three cities cannot be directly extrapolated for all of the Netherlands, they do hint at trends that warrant further investigation. This region of Holland contained a higher density of Catholics, giving them more opportunities to marry in the faith. At the same time, the concentration of Catholics and Calvinists in the same area would also have increased the likelihood of a higher percentage of interfaith marriages. Donald Haks has shown that by the eighteenth century marriages across denominational lines in Holland were rare, leading one to predict that church sanction and indoctrination proved effective over the course of the seventeenth century.157 This hypothesis, however, is quite preliminary; the question of interfaith marriage across the Netherlands needs more research. Catholics in the Netherlands from the end of the sixteenth to the beginning of the eighteenth century resided along the fault lines of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations. The oppositional dialectic between Cavinist hegemony and Tridentine reform created the external framework for the expression of Catholic identity. The confluence of the Reformations in the Netherlands shaped the institutional features of Catholicism, produced an environment for confessional pluralism managed by urban elites, and accentuated the boundaries of religious community.



2 Training the Laborers formation of the dutch clergy

“The state of religion in these territories could not be worse,” observed a Catholic prelate in Brussels in August 1566, just before the onset of religious and political upheaval throughout the Netherlands.1 The anonymous correspondent, after reciting the usual litany of grievances, including the immoral clergy, the wayward laity, and the uncooperative government, lashed out at the Dutch bishops. He declared, “The bishops carry out their duties with great zeal when they think they will receive some compensation . . . Indeed, the archbishop of Utrecht does not even fulfill his vocation; for six months at a time, he settles into a castle, amusing himself with studies or other things; he does not allow anyone to meet with him, so he does not watch over his flock as his vocation demands.”2 The criticisms about church affairs across the Low Countries were not uncommon in the 1560s. Andreas Fabritius, a Flemish prelate, grumbled several months later, “Laws and law books there [the Netherlands] serve iniquity rather than justice . . . Clerics handle secular affairs, just as politicians make their claims on sacred matters; in this place, confusion reigns in all things.”3 At about the same time, Maximilian van Bergen, archbishop of Cambrai, proclaimed that religion in the Low Countries had collapsed and could not be saved without “learned men who by work and preaching would bring back the wandering sheep to the flock.”4 Thus, a number of reform-minded Roman ecclesiastics in

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northern Europe felt dissatisfied that religious renewal had not taken firmer root in the Netherlands. Yet, almost a century later, after some pretty difficult times—including armed insurrection against Hapsburg authority, legal interdiction against all Catholic activity, and loss of church property—Jacob de la Torre reported to Pope Alexander VII, “Zeal for religion and for the salvation of souls takes place in various places, many meet together day and night in the cities, towns, countryside, and in more and more locations.”5 Twenty years earlier, Phillip Rovenius had claimed, “The people have rallied in large numbers with special fervor and piety to merit the most recent jubilee, such that many who had scarcely ever confessed were reconciled and many who before were lukewarm converted to an earnest faith.”6 Certainly the clerics who reported in the mid-seventeenth century labored under very different expectations about the state of Catholicism in the Netherlands than those writing in the 1560s. Nevertheless, despite severe hardship, periodic persecution, and internecine conflict, even allowing for some embellishment, it was still clear that Catholicism had experienced new growth under a Protestant regime. How did this happen? The dynamic collaboration between clergy and laity within an antagonistic environment led to a revived sense of Catholic identity in the seventeenth-century Netherlands. Premised on choice and characterized by the interplay of violence and concord, the structure of confessional coexistence provided the external framework for a renewed awareness of Dutch traditions and Roman universalism. A broad educational program, extending first to the clergy and then to the laity, formed the internal means of inculcating religious identity. A keen perception of persecution and a strident opposition to heresy gave shape to clerical and lay formation, just as a renewed religious identity gave meaning to life in a Protestant republic. At the heart of Catholic revival in the Netherlands lay an extensive educational endeavor for both clergy and laity that got under way in the early 1600s and had, by all indices, brought forth abundant fruit. Not only had the numbers risen, but the Dutch clergy, both religious and secular, were acquitting themselves as well-trained priests at the same time that lay leaders were highly active and informed Catholics. The mission placed professionally qualified priests in church districts throughout the Netherlands, and the laity worked energetically, though

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certainly not always in concert, with those priests to foster a strong sense of communal religious identity. The Northern Netherlands, therefore, provides an excellent opportunity to examine religious and educational formation of clergy in post-Tridentine Europe.

Clerical Formation in Catholic Europe Criticism about the clergy at all levels, from the most lofty prelate in Rome to the most obscure parish priest, was a staple of Western literary and religious culture in the late Middle Ages and the sixteenth century. The clergy attracted critics of all stripes from writers, such as Geoffrey Chaucer and François Rabelais, who were trying to get a sure laugh, to humanists like Erasmus and Thomas More, who were advocating serious educational reform, to Protestants of every variety, who were calling into question the essence of a mediatorial priesthood. Anticlericalism was a well-established genre, just as the incompetence of parish priests and the worldliness of prelates were truisms in the sixteenth century.7 Historians have found, however, that it is very difficult to determine the truth behind the truisms. There is little doubt that educational opportunities or professional training was quite uneven for diocesan priests across Europe (with the exception of Spain) until after the Council of Trent. Even after more opportunities arose, Kathleen Comerford has contended that training made little impact on pastoral practices in northern Italy until the late seventeenth century. Before that time, a minority of candidates for the priesthood attended a university, a slightly larger number probably received some instruction at a cathedral, monastic, or midlevel Latin school, while many others simply trained on the job as an apprentice under an experienced priest. A. J. Bijsterveld has shown that an increasing number of pastors in the diaconates of Hilvarenbeek, Cuijk, and Woensel in north Brabant undertook a university education from the fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth century. He calculated that by the latter period, half of all the priests in this region had a university education.8 Even the lack of a university education does not mean that priests were as incompetent as critics have portrayed them. Larissa Taylor has argued that contemporaries and historians have greatly exaggerated the extent of clerical abuse and ineptitude. According to Taylor, the rising

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chorus of clerical criticism is a better barometer of reform efforts than it is of actual conditions. Other studies have illustrated that many laymen and -women actually felt a great deal of respect and affection for their priests. In his work on the rural parishes around Lyon, Philip Hoffman concluded that pre-Tridentine priests “enjoyed a close relationship with the laity. . . . Even their priestly functions drew them closer to the life of the community.” Along the same lines, Andrew Barnes found that the “strength of the pre-Tridentine parish clergy was its awareness of local religious culture.”9 This recent scholarship reveals, perhaps even more than a range of attitudes, the rising expectations of the laity for stronger clerical leadership in the sixteenth century. Taylor, for example, concluded that complaints were a function of greater lay demands, and Hoffman showed that urban elites in Lyon considered education and moral rectitude to be necessary attributes in the clergy. Likewise, Marc Forster has established that the laity in rural areas of southwest Germany insisted upon educated and morally scrupulous priests.10 The Catholic hierarchy also betrayed an increasing concern about clerical morality over the course of the sixteenth century. Stories about clerical avarice and sexual activity abound, not just in literary works or polemical tracts, but in visitation reports, conciliar resolutions, and other church sources. Paul III’s papal commission found in 1537 that the weak moral character and the poor education of the clergy was a leading cause of the spread of Protestantism and called for a general church council, which eventually met at Trent, to address these shortcomings.11 In the Northern Netherlands, the general quality of parish clergy and the call for clerical reform reflected the pattern throughout Europe. As was customary in most areas, candidates for the priesthood in the Low Countries had to pass an examination administered by the diocesan office to ensure some basic knowledge of doctrine. A 1549 synod in Cologne called for more rigorous examinations of the Dutch clergy, implying the need for closer diocesan scrutiny. A small minority of clergy received a university education, but most attended a parish school, known as a great school or a writing school, which came increasingly under the control of city governments in the sixteenth century and thus became known as city schools. These schools provided no theological education, teaching only the rudiments of reading and writing with minor instruction in Latin and logic. The Brethren of Com-

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mon Life had established colleges for priestly study in the fifteenth century in Zwolle, Deventer, Delft, Gouda, Utrecht, Doesburg, and Nijmegen, though these colleges generally remained small. Regardless, in the first half of the 1500s, 20 percent of the Dutch clergy studied two to three years in a university, a figure that dropped to between 2 and 8 percent by midcentury. Most clergy, then, possessed a city school education. Recognizing that clerical education in the Netherlands needed to be augmented, the 1549 Synod of Cologne called for more stringent examinations for priestly candidates.12 The same synod at Cologne drew attention to clerical moral failings as well. It singled out clerical sexual activity as a pressing problem and called for a crackdown on concubinage. The synod apparently did not make much tangible progress since the bishop of Utrecht initiated a similar campaign from 1565 to 1567. R. R. Post has estimated that the rate of concubinage among Dutch priests from the mid to late sixteenth century hovered around 25 percent, which was actually low compared to concubinage among pastors in North Brabant.13 Yet again, complaints about the clergy need not be necessarily understood as an accurate index of the state of the clergy, as much as a reflection of rising demands for a better qualified pastorate. The Roman Catholic Church also experienced a shortage of priests in various areas in the sixteenth century. The spread of Protestantism in northern Europe and the loss of church lands greatly diminished the number of priests. Not only did priests in Protestant areas either convert or flee, but the levels of men entering the priesthood across Europe also fell significantly in the first half of the century. According to complaints at Trent, the shortage was acute in England and in the German territories, where vast tracts of church land had been secularized. The number of priests in the Northern Netherlands declined slightly over the course of the 1500s and then, as in England and Germany, fell sharply with the Revolt in the 1570s. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the bishopric of Utrecht, which encompassed all of the northern provinces, contained 5,000 to 5,200 secular priests out of a population of 600,000 (including children), though only 1,500 of these priests actually carried out pastoral work. In addition, there were approximately four thousand to five thousand regular priests. The average number of secular priests ordained per year declined from 213 from 1500 to 1518 to around 180 at midcentury. It is not clear how many

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priests the Dutch Catholic Church contained on the eve of the Revolt, though the best estimates suggest a small decline since the early sixteenth century.14 The number of priests, however, did fall dramatically after Beggar troops captured areas in the northern provinces. Right around 1600, Sasbout Vosmeer claimed that there were only about seventy priests in the Northern Netherlands. This number only reflects his knowledge of the province of Holland and represents those whom he regarded as qualified. Nevertheless, priests were few and far between in the early years of the Republic.15 For the Catholic Church as a whole, the reforms issued by the Council of Trent and the emergence of the Society of Jesus as the preeminent missionary and teaching order created a watershed in the educational formation and moral discipline of the clergy. The Tridentine canons provided for the professionalization of a Roman clergy, which would gradually transform pastoral care for Catholics in early modern Europe. Over time, the model for a priest became a combination of literate preacher, paternal pastor, and strict confessor. The most far-reaching provision for the training of the clergy that came out of Trent was canon XVIII of the twenty-third session, which met in the third segment between 1562 and 1563. It called for the creation of seminaries under the authority of local bishops in every diocese. After receiving tonsure and clerical vestments, students were to comply with house disciplinary rules; follow an exacting devotional program; undertake an academic course of study that included grammar, humanistic studies, and the church fathers; and receive instruction in the administration of sacraments.16 In the shadow of the ongoing Jesuit experiment with colleges, the Tridentine provision for seminary education grew out of various recommendations and local initiatives from churchmen throughout Europe from the 1530s to 1563. In Trent’s first period, from 1545 to 1547, the delegates publicly acknowledged the crisis, discussed the possibility of reviving episcopal schools, and stipulated the need for greater episcopal control over certifying the qualifications of candidates for ordination. Before the council’s third period two critical events took place that shaped its final resolution: the establishment of the German College in 1552 and the publication of Reginald Pole’s treatise Schola puerorum tamquam seminarium ministrorum ecclesiae in 1556.17 In 1542 Pope Paul III dispatched Claude Le Jay, a Jesuit, to conduct

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a general visitation to assess the state of the German clergy. Discovering a critical deficiency of priests, especially quality priests, Le Jay and Alfonso Salmeron proposed that bishops should send (and support) students to universities for clerical training. Out of that original proposal, Loyola and Cardinal Giovanni Morone established in 1552 the German College, staffed by Jesuits, to train clergy for the Empire. The German College offered a working model of what a seminary could be, while Reginald Pole’s proposal for clerical reform in England made a compelling case for the importance of seminary education for all priests. At the final period of Trent, Pole provided the impetus for the establishment of diocesan seminaries, and his Schola puerorum became the first draft of Tridentine seminary legislation.18 Though it took a good thirty years for the Catholic leadership to settle on an institutional plan for addressing the systemic weaknesses of clerical formation, it would prove far more difficult to put the schema into practice. The Tridentine canon itself did not require that candidates attend a seminary, only that each diocese would provide one, and Trent did not offer a curriculum, only broad guidelines. Bishops so inclined to undertake reform faced major obstacles over clerical appointments in the nominating rights enjoyed by the lay patrons and a variety of ecclesiastical foundations, such as cathedral chapters, abbeys, or college churches. These entrenched patrons frequently did not have the overarching reform interests of Trent at heart. Perhaps most importantly, the establishment and maintenance of a diocesan seminary required strong episcopal initiation and a steadfast source of income, at a time when most bishops were a pale imitation of Carlo Borromeo. Many seminaries founded right after Trent went under after a few years, and implementation did not even get started in many areas, such as France and Tuscany, until the 1630s or 1650s.19 The archbishop of Utrecht, Frederik Schenk van Toutenberg, attempted to erect seminaries for the church province of Utrecht in the 1570s, but these efforts met all sorts of resistance, and no seminary of any duration was established until the period of the apostolic vicars.20 Throughout Europe the success of the diocesan seminary was spotty until the eighteenth century, when the church made attendance mandatory. The earliest seminaries appeared in Spain, as prelates established twenty seminaries between 1564 and 1600 and eight more during the seventeenth century. The reform of the Spanish clergy varied significantly

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by region. Central Castile and the archdiocese of Toledo contained very high rates of professionally trained clergy, but in outlying areas, such as Oviedo, Asturias, and rural Catalonia, many priests were still illiterate in the late seventeenth century. As regards Tuscany, Kathleen Comerford has astutely pointed out that the new breed of priest in the Tridentine period eventually made the seminary an important part of clerical formation and not the other way around.21 If the Council of Trent produced the guidelines that would ultimately reshape clerical formation, the most immediate changes occurred as a result of the Jesuits. The Society of Jesus established the model for the new brand of rigorously educated and morally disciplined priest, and, with this model, the order became a powerful force in the revitalization and spread of Catholicism in the early modern world. Growing out of the experience of Loyola at the University of Paris, the Jesuit emphasis on education reflected his early commitment to learning and his effort to find an institutional means to “help souls.” With stress on mental discipline, a prescribed curriculum, and colleges (residential houses), the “Parisian method” made a deep impression on Loyola and quickly became central features of all Jesuit schools. John O’Malley has noted that the Thomist tradition at Paris instilled in Loyola a confidence in social institutions to carry out his missionary agenda.22 Teaching became a means to “help souls”; thus Loyola and his early colleagues began teaching boys inclined to the priesthood and scholastics in a variety of settings that developed into colleges, of which the most influential early ones were in Messina (1548) and Ghent (1546).23 Out of these colleges came what amounted to the first drafts of the Jesuit Constitutiones and Ratio Studiorum, which would ultimately transform clerical formation and define Jesuit education. The overwhelming popularity of the colleges and the shortage of priests, especially in the Empire, generated interest in an institution to train German priests. Five years after creating the German College, Loyola and Jeronimo Nadal founded the Roman College, hailed as the “mother school” of all Jesuit colleges. It was largely in these institutions—part university, part seminary—that the new priest of the Counter-Reformation, Jesuit as well as diocesan, would undertake educational and spiritual formation. In most respects, then, the state of the Dutch clergy mirrored the primary attributes of the pre-Tridentine priesthood in Europe. Urban-

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ization in the late Middle Ages led to increasing rates of literacy, and consequently, the prevailing trends in lay piety (at least in urban settings) placed emphasis on effective preaching and teaching, as well as on providing moral leadership. Though the church hierarchy was behind the curve, the innovations made by the Society of Jesus and the directives of the Council of Trent charted a new era of clerical reform, which would not be fully realized until the eighteenth century. These international movements did not really make themselves felt in the Netherlands until after the Dutch Beggar troops had wrested the northern provinces from the hands of the Hapsburgs in the 1570s and established a Calvinist public order.

The Educational Formation of the Dutch Clergy Though the formation of a seminary-trained clergy proceeded haltingly across Europe, the transition to a professionally educated pastorate marked one of the most important turning points not only in the Catholic Church but also in the history of Western Christianity. This movement went beyond the Roman Church, for all Protestant denominations (with the exception of some Anabaptist groups) made clerical formation the cornerstone of reforming religion.24 The training of clergy in the Reformation and Counter-Reformation reaffirmed a male clericalism and confessionalism, which at various turns were embraced, accommodated, ignored, and opposed by laymen and -women. Even priests trained in the spirit and swagger of the Counter-Reformation could ill afford to override lay concerns, as some acculturational interpretations would have us believe. Rather, priests and lay folk needed one another to meet religious needs, and they had to live and work together for common ends. The most pressing need confronting the first generation of Catholic leaders in the Holland Mission was to provide a trained clerical corps in a land largely void of priests. Since seminary education was not the norm for priests before the change in the Dutch government, Vosmeer and his cohorts had to start from scratch. Building a training program with little resources and in the face of urgent pastoral needs took considerable time: Alticollense in Cologne was not established until 1602, and Pulcheria in Louvain not until 1617. Most secular clergy in the mission received their training in these two colleges, though in the

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second half of the century several dozen studied at the Paus College (Papal College, also College of Adrian VI) in Louvain, the Collegio Urbano (1627) in Rome, Oratorian colleges in France and the Southern Netherlands, and seminaries in Germany.25 Even though mission leaders labored to put a new pastoral corps in place, it took thirty years from the invasion of Den Briel in 1572 for the early leaders of the mission to set up the first bona fide seminary in Cologne. This interlude in pastoral care carried deleterious consequences for the Roman faith in the Dutch Republic. Rogier was the first historian to draw the connection between the disruption of pastoral ministry and the success of Calvinism in particular areas. Despite Rogier’s own Catholic bias, it is beyond dispute that regrowth in any location depended on the presence of a priest, preferably a competent one. It is no surprise that the largest growth in church membership occurred simultaneously with the greatest increase in the number of priests working in the mission. Christopher Haigh, in a similar vein, has shown for Lancashire in Tudor England that an active recusancy among priests preceded the growth of a recusant laity.26 The correspondence between pastoral care and church growth, then, raises the question, why did it take the mission so long to establish these seminaries? The apostolic vicars and Haarlem canons placed their highest priority on fielding well-trained pastors rather than simply turning out priests. Yet early on the leaders of the mission turned their attention to pastoral training. Vosmeer, Eggius, and others were actually attempting to recruit and train new priests well before the erection of the seminaries. In the desperate circumstances of the times, active priests did undertake some type of supervised training of at least several dozen students. In at least two locations, students lived in a residence and trained with a senior priest, though very little is known about the operations. In 1592 Eggius took in students in Amsterdam at the home of his uncle, Jan Duivenzoon on Warmoesstraat. A handful of students lived in this residence, receiving instruction in preparation for vocation in the Haarlem diocese. After Eggius became vicar general, he relocated this shoestring seminary to Haarlem. In addition, Nicolas Cousebant, a banished priest from Haarlem, opened a school in his domicile in Cologne, to train priests for service in the old Haarlem diocese; a handful of young men lived and studied under his supervision from 1579 to 1584. In 1593 Cousebant listed fourteen priests he had supervised in

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Cologne, including Sibrand Sixtius, an archpriest in Amsterdam and a leading figure in the mission. All except two or three students, Cousebant noted, received financial support from charitable donations.27 It is unclear what happened to this operation after Cousebant’s departure in 1584. Undoubtedly, other priests underwent training in institutions outside the Republic. Without question, the complete reversal of fortunes for Catholicism in the Netherlands delayed the establishment of a formalized process of producing educated priests. War and rumor of war engulfed large tracts of the northern provinces until the mid-1580s, when fighting became centered in the south. By that time, the States General had moved to outlaw the Roman Church and confiscate all of its assets. Even if the church had possessed the resources to jump-start a clerical education program, no one could have seen through the uncertainty that had settled over the Low Countries. Bishops had fled and priests had disappeared. Further, many of the stalwarts in the mission believed that disenfranchisement was only temporary, as they looked to Spanish armies to restore Catholicism to its former state. It seems likely, therefore, that only by the turn of the century did Dutch Catholic leaders actually have any realistic prospects for dealing with the religious maladies that plagued the Netherlands. Consequently, in the 1590s Vosmeer began to take steps to reorganize the Utrecht church district and to reestablish the priesthood. He eventually settled on Cologne over Louvain as the site for a seminary to train all secular clergy working in lands served by the Holland Mission, including the Haarlem diocese. On a couple of occasions, preparations commenced for a seminary in Louvain, but Vosmeer finally chose Cologne because of the strong Dutch Catholic presence there and the historically close connections between it and Utrecht.28 Furthermore, since Louvain remained under Spanish control, Vosmeer feared the political fallout from Dutch authorities. Consecrated to its patron saints, Willibrord and Boniface, Alticollense opened its doors in 1602 and operated in Cologne until the vicariate of Johannes van Neercassel in 1663. Upon his accession, van Neercassel set in motion the process for relocating the Cologne operation to Louvain. In 1670, on van Neercassel’s recommendation, the Utrecht vicariate transferred all the Cologne seminarians to institutions in Louvain.29 Vosmeer, along with Stephen Cracht and Judocus Cats, both from

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the Haarlem diocese, directed the seminary in its first two years. Eggius and Rovenius alternated as presidents from 1602 to 1610, at which time Vosmeer took the position over again until shortly before his death in 1614. Later presidents during the Cologne phase of Alticollense were Leonard Marius (1613–1626), Steven Sueck (1626–1654), and Hendrik Velthoen (1654–1670).30 Conflicts among leaders of the old archdiocese of Utrecht and the former Haarlem diocese eventually led to the creation of the second seminary in 1616–1617, Pulcheria.31 Tension had arisen over a range of issues even before Alticollense opened its doors, stemming from jurisdictional disputes between the apostolic vicar and the Haarlem Chapter, as the canons did not recognize the vicar’s authority over Haarlem. With regard to the seminary, they contended that the directors were generally prejudicial towards the Utrecht church district and so gave less financial consideration to students from Haarlem. As part of the 1616 concordat between the chapter dean, Nicolas Nomius, and Rovenius, both parties agreed to the establishment of a separate seminary for Haarlem, in Louvain. The seminary began taking in students in 1617. Thus, Pulcheria became the diocesan seminary for Haarlem (as well as for the former dioceses of Groningen and Leeuwarden), and Alticollense remained the seminary for the rest of the archdiocese of Utrecht, which included the former dioceses of Deventer and Middelburg.32 Despite the early conflict, apostolic vicars and the vicariate in Utrecht enjoyed a fairly cooperative relationship with the leadership of Pulcheria throughout the seventeenth century, as is attested in their extensive correspondence in the archives of the apostolic vicars in Utrecht. Two significant structural changes took place in the second half of the seventeenth century, during the tenure of van Neercassel. First, a minority of students took different institutional paths for their formation. At least seventeen underwent training in Oratorian colleges in the Southern Low Countries and France, while dozens attended the Collegio Urbano in Rome. Second, the most important trend was the concentration of clerical education in colleges in Louvain after the dissolution of Alticollense in Cologne. Visiting Cologne in 1662, van Neercassel found Alticollense wanting in several key areas and instigated its move. He maintained that the theological training was inferior and determined to relocate Alticollense to Louvain, where students would benefit from Pulcheria, other colleges, and the university there.

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It seems clear that van Neercassel’s overriding pastoral concern was that Alticollense in Cologne lacked a robust Augustinian emphasis to train priests as effective pastors and confessors. The apostolic vicar felt a strong spiritual kinship with theologians in Louvain, who were known for their Augustininian bent, such as Francis van Vianen and Gommarus Huygens, while the faculty in Cologne had a reputation for anti-Augustinian and pro-Jesuit views. Van Neercassel also cited a number of logistical problems with Cologne: lack of sufficient Dutch language material, expensive cost of living, poor communications network with Holland, and burdensome municipal taxes. Finally, he claimed that discipline suffered because of the availability of cheap German wine in Cologne.33 As a result, by the end of 1670 the Alticollense students transferred to either Pulcheria or the Papal College at the University of Louvain. Van Neercassel originally intended for these two Louvain colleges to absorb the students from Cologne, but conflicts arose that eventually led the apostolic vicar in 1683 to open in Louvain a new Alticollense, which commonly went by its Dutch translation, Hogenheuvel. The Haarlem Chapter had never been very keen on the influx of students, because of additional financial burdens, and later van Neercassel concluded that van Vianen, the president of the Papal College, was actually steering seminarians away from service in the Holland Mission. Thus, in 1683, the two primary seminaries of the mission were located in Louvain: Pulcheria, serving Haarlem, Groningen, and Leeuwarden; and Hogenheuvel, serving Utrecht, Deventer, and Middelburg.34 The formation of the Dutch secular clergy bore the distinct imprints of the Counter-Reformation: Tridentine universalism, Jesuit educational reform, and, in the second half of the seventeenth century, Augustinian theology. When the international Catholic educational movement was still at a very young stage, Vosmeer, Eggius, Cats, Rovenius, and Cousebant were experimenting with plans to train Dutch clergy. In 1616 Rovenius claimed that most of the Dutch clergy had a university education.35 The aims, structure, and content of that education brought the international currents of reform and Baroque piety to Catholic congregations in the Dutch Republic. The apostolic vicars and deans of the Haarlem Chapter always took care to follow the Tridentine canons and to marshal them as justification for their policies, particularly in their campaign against the regular

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orders. For a clerical leadership emphasizing continuity of pastoral care and attempting to standardize Dutch practice along the lines of the universal church, adhering to Trent lent support to the image of the Holland Mission as a normative church province and provided a means of integration into Catholic Europe. Clerical formation reflected a deep commitment to Trent, as the protocols of Alticollense and Pulcheria corresponded to the council’s guidelines for diocesan seminaries and set forth the canons as the unqualified standard for church life. In 1603 Rovenius required all students in Cologne to subscribe to Trent’s profession of faith, and he made the Tridentine canons an integral component of the curriculum. This meant that all priests in the Holland Mission had to master the prescriptions of the council. Both Pulcheria and Alticollense specifically cited Trent in setting forth entrance requirements that students had to be at least twelve years of age, to come from a legitimate marriage, to be literate, and to demonstrate an inclination to piety. Likewise, the general course of study adopted Trent’s provisions for instruction in grammar, music, calendrical reckoning, good letters, church books, sermons of the fathers, and practice of the sacraments.36 Despite changing intellectual emphases, Tridentine influence endured, in no small part because of the mission’s diocesan vision of clerical formation. In 1678, for example, van Neercassel reminded Theodore van Blockhoven, president of Pulcheria, that Trent accorded the apostolic vicar, as ordinary, the responsibility for approving and ordaining seminary priests. The Jesuits seem to have recognized this as well, for in a 1623 description of the Holland Mission, a Jesuit writer unflatteringly dubbed Alticollense the “Sasboutian Seminary.”37 The Council of Trent clearly was a guidepost for Dutch Catholic leaders in refashioning a clergy for the Holland Mission throughout the course of the seventeenth century. The inexorable Jesuit educational endeavor also provided a model for religious instruction that could not have gone unnoticed by the early leaders of the mission. Admittedly much of the evidence is circumstantial, but there are hints here and there that suggest Jesuit influence. Vosmeer himself studied for several years at the Jesuit college in Louvain under the direction of Robert Bellarmine. Further, the proximity of Jesuit colleges along the outskirts and borders of the Republic, especially those in Cologne, Nijmegen, and Roermond, would

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have provided working models for mission leaders trying to establish their own diocesan colleges. There were other colleges in Maastricht, Breda, and ’s Hertogenbosch.38 The hostility between the apostolic vicars and religious orders did not really emerge until the late 1590s, after the first Jesuits began to work in the northern provinces. Before then— and during the earliest years, in which Vosmeer, Eggius, and Cousebant were trying to set up a permanent training center—the seculars enjoyed a fairly collaborative relationship with the Jesuits. As Dutch Catholics gathered in Cologne in the 1570s, they formed a close-knit community, and there they looked to the Jesuits, who enjoyed prominence in the city, for leadership and inspiration. It was Vosmeer, after all, along with Cousebant, and Eggius, who appealed to Pope Clement VIII in 1592 for Jesuit assistance.39 At the same time, Cousebant entered into discussions with the Jesuit provincial in Cologne about the possibility of having seculars trained at the new Jesuit gymnasium in Emmerik.40 Even after the recriminations started, Francis Dusseldorp and Tilman Vosmeer demonstrated a thorough knowledge of Jesuit practices and a willingness to consider them in the statutes of Alticollense. Vosmeer’s secretary and nephew, Pieter Michelszoon Vosmeer, kept in his possession a copy of the admission examination used by the Jesuit rectors of the German College.41 Finally, with the Society’s reputation for religious training, it would have been quite difficult to establish an educational institution of any significance that would have escaped the orbit of Jesuit influence. A third influence on Dutch seminaries was a neo-Augustinian rigorism, which emanated from reformist impulses in northern Europe in the sixteenth century. Shortly after van Neercassel came into office in 1663, he concentrated priestly training in Louvain, the bastion of Catholic neo-Augustinianism in this period. A large portion of Dutch priests who trained outside Louvain studied in Oratorian congregations, also known for their Augustinian views on grace. This theological outlook regarded human nature as utterly depraved and placed complete reliance on divine grace to bring a believer through the journey of sanctification to salvation. As pastoral theologians, neo-Augustinians stressed the reformation of the interior Christian as both the fruit of grace and the means for living righteously. Pastors encouraged their flocks to examine their consciences thoroughly and to develop genuine contrition for their sins. Penitence and prayer led to salvation. Though

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neo-Augustinianism and rigorism were not coextensive with Jansenism, some neo-Augustinians later became associated with it. Dutch religious historians have thoroughly documented the Augustinian proclivities of van Neercassel and Codde. The papacy even dismissed Codde as apostolic vicar, for Jansenism. But long before charges of Jansenism or crypto-Calvinism, a reformist religious culture had penetrated theological faculties in the Southern Netherlands, a culture that drank deeply from St. Augustine and stressed penitential devotion. Many of the early leaders of the Holland Mission, as well as the Dutch exiles in Antwerp and other cities in the Southern Netherlands, absorbed this austere piety. For example, Pieter Opmeer, theologian at Douai, wrote devotional literature advocating the interior discipline of penitence as the true path to Christian virtue, especially for those living under persecution. Best known for his martyrology of Dutch Catholics, Opmeer sought to demonstrate how the interior devotion of Catholic martyrs in the Netherlands gave them strength to hold up under persecution. A product of this Catholic religious culture, Cornelis Jansen promoted interiority as the means for living a righteous life.42 This Augustinian spirit heavily influenced Vosmeer and Rovenius. Vosmeer condemned the Jesuits because of what he regarded as their willingness to accommodate Catholics who integrated themselves into a Protestant society. The Oratorians in Samur and Paris inspired the vision of clerical training for Rovenius, as he compelled priests to read works in the spirit of Pierre de Bérulle.43 In his own writings, Rovenius reflected a well-established genre of penitential literature grounded in Augustine. For example, his commitment to interiority and penitence appeared in a series of daily devotions that he crafted for the laity, Het Gulden Wieroock-Vat (The Golden Incense-Burner). He described his motivation for developing the devotions so that lay Catholics might cultivate “a deeper internal love for God.” Drawing from Augustine, Thomas à Kempis, and scripture, these exercises took the laity through a cycle of prayers, meditations, and readings, to rekindle a spiritual desire for piety and love of God.44 The structure and process of education in Dutch seminaries paralleled that of the Jesuit colleges. Students who matriculated at Pulcheria and Alticollense began their training in rhetoric or arts, progressed to philosophy, and then studied theology. Likewise, the model of the Jesuit college, a common residence of students under the supervision of a

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rector (seminary president in the Dutch case), bears a striking resemblance to the operations at Alticollense and Pulcheria. Just as in Jesuit colleges, the faculty exercised a strong influence over student and educational affairs, in no small part because teachers shared administrative duties in the seminary, especially in the early years. Nevertheless, the apostolic vicars possessed the greatest control over the training of priests in these two seminaries throughout the seventeenth century. Like the Jesuit structure, governance in the Dutch seminaries throughout this period followed an extremely “hands-on” approach to religious formation, which incorporated students within the closely knit network of priests in the Holland Mission. The statutes of Alticollense and Pulcheria called for a president, selected by a board of provisores, to manage the daily operations of the seminary, with charge over all student affairs and financial matters.45 The president was required to possess a licentiate in theology and to be native to and an active priest in the former archdiocese of Utrecht or the diocese of Haarlem (in the case of Pulcheria). As the chief officer, the president possessed the most direct immediate influence over academic and spiritual formation. These responsibilities included evaluating the seminarians, overseeing their course of study and devotional exercises, and maintaining discipline within the college.46 Beyond the tangible tasks of supervising students and administering the seminary, the president was to embody the ideals of the priesthood to the students in order to “direct students in the work of the gospel, the contempt of the world, and in gratefulness to the benevolence of God.”47 The presidents were subject to the apostolic vicar as the ordinary and were to keep him abreast of all matters pertaining to the college. Both Vosmeer and Rovenius were the only apostolic vicars to serve as presidents of Alticollense, though all of the vicars, as the ordinaries for the archdiocese, held ultimate authority over both seminaries.48 Of all the apostolic vicars, van Neercassel exercised the strongest direct control over the seminaries. Underneath the president, a college of provisores, ranging in number from two to five, served as the governing board of each seminary. The initial statutes of Pulcheria stated that there were two provisores, though a notarized document in 1681 refers to three “lord provisores.” All the provisores at Pulcheria belonged to the Haarlem Chapter, and for Alticollense provisores came primarily from the ranks of senior pastors in the mission.49 Alticollense seems to have had at least four to five provisores

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in the first half of the seventeenth century. In 1611–1612 a document describing the tasks of the Alticollense provisores noted that one would come from the theological faculty at Cologne, and three from local areas in lands served by the mission. These officials executed a wide range of responsibilities, including visiting the school every year to inspect the financial accounts, selecting new presidents and bursars, raising money, and superintending the academic and religious affairs of the college.50 What all of this suggests is that the secular clergy, working in the field as pastors, had a considerable amount of influence in the training of new priests. The compact size of the Holland Mission during most of the seventeenth century and the contact between seasoned pastors and scholastics created a tight network of clerical relations. The clergy did not isolate themselves in their communities but participated actively in the academic culture of the seminaries. In 1644, for example, Rovenius wrote de la Torre, his coadjutor, complaining about the gossip going around about the turnover of the president in Cologne. And late in the seventeenth century, van Blockhoven came under fire from the Haarlem canons for the lack of discipline and morale among students at Pulcheria, producing all sorts of discussion and hearsay among clergy.51 The theology faculty at the universities of Cologne and Louvain also exerted substantial influence, not just over theological education, but also over the evaluation of seminary students for a priestly vocation. Statutes for both Pulcheria and Alticollense in the early seventeenth century established that the president would make decisions about students’ promotion only with the assent of the philosophy and theology faculty.52 At the other end of the century, van Neercassel’s correspondence points out here and there the active involvement of the theological faculty in the evaluation of students preparing for ordination. In a letter in 1678, for example, van Neercassel praised the faculty at Pulcheria for its diligent examination of students and brushed off a proposal to bring in external examiners. And on various occasions, van Neercassel sought the advice of the faculty before assigning priests to a parish.53 Thus, seminary training in Cologne and Louvain was not detached from the ongoing pastoral care of the former archdiocese but was integral to the ongoing development of Catholic identity in the Netherlands.

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The sources for the content of seminary education are somewhat thin for the first half of the seventeenth century yet are much more substantial in the later period. Records in the early 1600s do indicate that students could progress through four graduated theological degrees, ranging in duration from three to seven years. Most priests in the mission graduated with a Baccalaureate in Sacred Theology (STB), a fouryear course of study, while a smaller number finished with a Licentiate in Sacred Theology (STL). The baccalaureate theology program consisted of two years in scholastic theology and two years in controversial theology. Some of the primary theological texts in Alticollense and Pulcheria included Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, the Old and New Testaments, the catechism, the canons of Trent, and the early church fathers. Gian Ackermans has noted that van Neercassel complained about students at Urbano receiving an inordinate exposure to Aristotelian logic and an insufficient exposure to scripture, which left them ill prepared for doing battle with Protestants.54 After Alticollense moved to Louvain in 1670, the Augustinian and biblicist directions in the clerical formation of the Dutch secular clergy became more complete. Van Neercassel required students to read French Oratorians, such as Nicolas le Tourneux, for instruction in the sacraments and liturgy, and the apostolic vicar regularly consulted with Pasquier Quesnel on pedagogical matters. Students continued to study Aquinas, scripture, the Tridentine canons, the Roman catechism, and other foundational writers, such as St. Bernard and St. Gregory the Great, but they also came to focus increasingly on Augustine and his later interpreters. Fred Smit and Jan Jacobs have concluded that the French Oratorians wielded the most influence over the training of the Dutch clergy from the 1660s until the end of the century. Thus, the neo-Agustinianism of Louvain, blended with the biblicist and rigorist theocentricism of the French Oratorian movement, were the primary theological currents in the training of Dutch Catholic clergy over the course of the seventeenth century.55 Beyond a grounding in Catholic theology, seminary education for the Dutch secular clergy aimed at preparing priests for a specific ministry in a specific place, namely, service as pastors to embattled congregations in a Protestant society. Consequently, clerical formation bore three characteristics that reflected the particular conditions for Dutch

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priests in the seventeenth century. Seminary training concentrated on anti-Protestant controversy, emphasized practical pastoral ministry, and inculcated an internal spiritual discipline. The leaders of the Holland Mission recognized the need to defend the Roman faith and to give Catholics protections against the onslaught of Protestant heresy in the Dutch Republic. While priests had to contend with Protestantism throughout this period, the study of scripture assumed greater weight as seminarians trained much more assiduously to refute heresy in the second half of the seventeenth century. Beginning in the 1630s, Dutch Catholic writers set out to counter Calvinist attacks by Counter-Remonstrant theologians such as Jacob Trigland and Gisbert Voetius. Cornelis Jansen, former president of Pulcheria and Regius Professor of Theology at Louvain, led the Catholic attack by championing the apologetic use of scripture within an Augustinian interpretive framework.56 This approach became the primary means for equipping priests to defend Catholicism and to attack Calvinism. In the second half of the century, the two major champions of this method were the brothers Pieter and Adrian Walenburch, whose most influential work was De Controversiis Tractatus Generales (General Treatise on Controversies). The theological emphasis in Pulcheria and Hogenheuvel reflected these trends, for the Walenburchs established the basis for controversial theology in these seminaries.57 At least from midcentury on, scripture, interpreted from an Augustinian viewpoint and taught from a scholastic approach, served as the foundation for theological study in Pulcheria and Hogenheuvel. During weekday mornings, students in the baccalaureate program generally worked on the New Testament, with some days allotted for study of the Old Testament and Psalms. Contested soteriological and ecclesiological questions were focal points in the morning lessons. In the late morning and early afternoon periods, attention shifted to moral and philosophical issues in the study of Augustine and scholastic theologians, primarily Aquinas. Saturdays were given to disputations among students and faculty, and Sunday to teaching the catechism and carrying out pastoral duties.58 This anti-Protestant polemical emphasis runs counter to two common misperceptions about Dutch Catholicism. One mistaken assumption is that Protestants and Catholics in the Netherlands had found a rapprochement in the second half of the seventeenth century. That the

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States General recognized van Neercassel as the apostolic vicar and that the persecution of Catholics was less intense after 1650 did not mean that Catholicism and Calvinism in the Republic had found any common ground. Rather, Dutch secular priests were trained to use scripture against the foundations of Protestant theology. In fact, P. Polman has argued that Jansen’s polemical disputes with Calvinists led him to develop an obsession for scripture and the doctrine of the early church, which ultimately caused him to lose sight of the ecclesiastical development of dogma. The second misperception is that those Catholic leaders with Augustinian sympathies who later were regarded as Jansenists were crypto-Calvinists. At least in the Netherlands, Jansenists were among the fiercest polemical opponents of Protestantism. Dutch seminary students in the second half of the seventeenth century turned increasingly to scripture in the campaign against Protestants.59 Despite its focus on refuting heretics, instruction in the Dutch seminaries was not directed at producing learned theologians or publishing scholars, for the emphasis was on training priests in practical pastoral ministry. The mission statement of Pulcheria in its early years declared its goal was to train able pastors for the flock of God, to resist heretics, confirm Catholics, and lead the faithful away from those who introduce errors.60 The preface of the 1603 statutes at Alticollense held before its students the ideal of the pious pastor serving as a living example of piety and mercy: Mindful of his function, he will attempt to set an example of zealous piety to those whom he directs, enticing them to obedience by kindness rather than by strictness. Above all, he will pay attention to genuine piety, and he will protect their innocence insofar as it is possible, and he will take care to inflame them with the love of God and, at the same time, he will encourage them in all difficult matters in so that they might persevere in decency in clothing and habits.61 In a discussion in 1606 with Jacob Jansson, president of Pulcheria, Vosmeer even shared his misgivings about the value of “subtle disputations.” Arranged disputations were a staple of theological education in the seventeenth century, and Jansson upheld the practice, noting that such exercises were practical for teaching students to dispute heresies.

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Jansson did agree with the apostolic vicar on the larger point that faculty should first teach to “move them [students] in their spirits.”62 A couple of years later, Jansson distinguished between the ministry of action, carried out by vicars and their priests, and the ministry of “study and reflection,” pursued by doctors. Each ministry edified the other, to the benefit of the church.63 Other leaders in the Holland Mission shared the same priorities. Rovenius and van Neercassel eschewed academic theology and placed emphasis on the study of scripture and the church fathers. They believed that the abstraction of theological debate undermined the creation of able pastors and confessors who could lead their congregations to salvation.64 Faced with enormous pastoral needs, Dutch seminaries laid stress on functional training for priests in the field. The overriding objective of seminary presidents, as well as leaders in Utrecht and Haarlem, was to produce pastors who would confirm the faithful and convert the lost. To this end, productive pastoral care entailed living piously, preaching effectively, and administering the sacraments, especially penance, carefully. In so doing, the clerical hierarchy believed that priests would bring piety to the laity, just as seminary discipline sought to inculcate spiritual discipline among priests. A regular routine of study, prayer, collective worship, and private meditation in the colleges endeavored to produce a company of disciplined priests and dedicated pastors. The earliest provisions for the daily regimen of students at Pulcheria and Alticollense interspersed devotional exercises with theological study. The daily schedule at Pulcheria seems to have followed along the general lines of Alticollense, though the 1603 rule for the latter is much more detailed. This required all students to rise at 4:30 in the morning (5:30 at Pulcheria) and take thirty minutes to pray and prepare themselves for study through pious meditation. At 5:00, the students assembled for corporate matins, consisting of penitential prayers and praise based on several psalms, and for the celebration of the Mass. After two hours of corporate prayer and worship, the president prescribed readings and “other exercises.” The mornings and afternoons were devoted to study, broken by meals and a period of recreation; at lunch students listened to readings from scripture and “holy authors.” Other activities involved a review of the day’s lessons, dinner, and a vespers service. Within this framework, students were to confess their sins and take communion at least three times

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every two weeks. On feast days and other special occasions, certain prayers and exercises were offered for benefactors.65 The mixture of prayer, worship, and study seems to have remained fairly consistent throughout most of the seventeenth century.66 Leaders in the mission, from provisores, faculty, and presidents to Haarlem Chapter deans and apostolic vicars, devoted a large amount of attention to enforcing spiritual discipline and moral order in the seminaries. The early foundational documents of both Pulcheria and Alticollense demanded compliance with house rules and thwarted opportunities for vice and moral indiscretion. The Pulcheria statutes prohibited female visitors (without the consent of the president), drinking parties, inebriation, overnight stays in another’s room, theft, and murmuring. They also required strict adherence to regulations about clothing, communal dining, and silence.67 Alticollense statutes focused more on comportment within communal settings: no one was to absent himself from corporate prayer, lectures, or Mass without good reason. Nor were students to cause disturbances or sleep on these occasions, but they were to conduct themselves with industry, modesty, and silence. Furthermore, seminarians were to avoid contentiousness and to maintain a clean and decorous appearance, because “external comportment reveals the disposition of the soul.”68 Those who violated these statutes faced a range of punishments, increasing in severity for those who consistently failed to comply. These punishments included deprivation of food, private and public confessions, isolation, and flogging. If these remedies failed, the recalcitrant student was to be expelled. Students in these colleges could leave the premises of the university or the college with the permission of the president, but students at the Urbano were sequestered from outside contacts.69 The leaders of the mission demonstrated an extraordinary concern for the state of discipline, and so they put in place a number of enforcement mechanisms to ensure that good order reigned in the colleges. Presidents and other ecclesiastical officers interacted closely with students, enabling these officers to monitor all activity directly and apply any necessary corrective measures immediately. From time to time, provisores and pastors called on the colleges and reported their observations to the chapter in Haarlem or the vicariate in Utrecht. The apsotolic vicars themselves or delegated commissioners conducted inspections with some regularity, taking note of a range of matters, from the quality of

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corporate worship to the upkeep of the house to the deportment, interaction, and diligence of the students.70 Correspondence among Catholics frequently included comments on the state of affairs in the colleges, betraying a concern for the future priesthood. The ongoing dialogue about the seminaries crisscrossed the northern provinces and circulated around, from the laity and clergy in local communities to apostolic vicars to seminary presidents to provisores and back again. This extensive discussion, with all its moments of joy and disappointment, bears witness to the broad collaboration among clergy and laity in the Catholic communities of the Netherlands. Some reports of the goings-on in the seminaries made their way to the chancery offices of the apostolic vicars and canons in Haarlem, since they bore ultimate responsibility for the quality of the clergy. The surviving correspondence, preserved in the archives of the apostolic vicars and the Haarlem Chapter, represents what must been a very broad conversation about the training and condition of the priesthood. Descriptions of the seminarians and discipline in the colleges range widely, from praise for the zeal of the students on one end to condemnation for their laxity on the other.71 The extremes suggest the variety one would expect in this environment, namely, that some students displayed great devotion, many others proved less devout, and a few were difficult. In a statement of approbation, Jansson, for example, wrote to Eggius in 1609 that the theology students from ’s Hertogenbosch were showing “great piety and zeal.” Likewise, apostolic vicars occasionally complimented seminary presidents on the erudition, modesty, discipline, and devotion of their students.72 At the same time, however, officials expressed frustration and anger at what they alleged to be immature and immoral behavior. In 1609, for example, a baffled Francis Ronssaeuls asked Eggius the eternal question of how to deal with the insolence of adolescent boys at college. In 1646 Rovenius advocated expelling and excommunicating a group of students for fighting unless they confessed and showed dramatic improvement. Filled with outrage, van Neercassel complained loudly to van Blockhoven in 1663 about drinking and “concupiscence” in Pulcheria and vowed that no undisciplined priest would be ordained in the Holland Mission. Ten years later, he warned van Blockhoven that if the students did not stop serving their bellies with wine, God would rain calamity down upon them.73 The remedy for all of these ills, according to van Neercassel, was for the pro-

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visores to undertake more visitations and to assert themselves all the more closely in the life of the colleges.74 These remarks indicate that the leadership in the Holland Mission paid close attention to the quality of clerical formation. Further, faculty, presidents, and vicars kept their eyes on individual students and frankly discussed their potential as priests. Francis Dusseldorp reported to Sasbout in 1613 that they should be pleased that several students withdrew from Alticollense, because their loss would add to the quality of the student body and remedy discipline problems.75 Van Neercassel complained in 1665 that a student did not exhibit the “fruit of discipline” but proved envious, petulant, and immodest, though van Neercassel held out that this student could be fit for ordination one day. Pieter Melis, president of Pulcheria, noted that a student was “mediocre in natural ability, not studious, flaccid by nature, and had difficulty speaking in public.”76 Formal evaluation of students became more urgent as they neared the end of their studies. To be accepted for holy orders, candidates for the priesthood had to undergo a comprehensive examination and evaluation as well as gain the approval of the seminary president and the apostolic vicar. If they cleared these hurdles, then the apostolic vicar (in conjunction with the Haarlem Chapter for this former diocese) would assign the new priest to a congregation. Normally, new priests served initially under experienced pastors, who served as mentors to the newly ordained cleric.77 Consequently, there was much consultation about the quality of the advanced students and whether they should proceed to the examination or to ordination.78 Faculty made recommendations to the president, who added his comments and forwarded them onto the apostolic vicar. Henricus Rampen, theologian in Louvain, for example, praised Hendrik Velthoen, later priest in Leiden and president of Pulcheria, as a “venerable man, devoted to theological study . . . and with irreproachable integrity.”79 Once a student passed exams, the decision to ordain still rested with the apostolic vicar, who notified the seminary president and the Haarlem Chapter (if the student was a Pulcheria resident) whether the candidate warranted ordination.80 The leadership of the Holland Mission placed its highest priority on establishing a well-trained body of pastors to expand church membership and to direct the faithful in spiritual growth. Yet the effort to build

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and maintain a qualified cadre of pastors in the Northern Netherlands came from the Catholic community as a whole, both clergy and laity. To abstract clerical formation from the parishes that generated, supported, and then were served by the priests would overlook the importance of the local community in the reconstitution of the Dutch priesthood. It was a cooperative endeavor first of all to identify prospective candidates for the priesthood. Lay participation proved important because of the acute shortage of priests in the first half of the seventeenth century and in areas distant from large concentrations of Catholics in places such as Haarlem, Amsterdam, and Utrecht. Unforeseen circumstances, such as outbreaks of the plague, which often hit the priesthood hard because of priests’ contact with many people, could make matters even worse. In 1610, for example, Henricus Ludolphi (Craenenburg), a priest in Alkmaar noted to Albert Eggius the trouble of finding sufficient laborers to replace priests dying of sickness and disease. More important than the basic need to find a priest for the congregation, other motives drove locals to keep an eye out for budding priests. Devout parents sometimes encouraged a son toward the priesthood and attempted to make connections with ecclesiastical officials. Local communities also simply preferred priests native to the area and, when it was possible, promised support for a seminarian on condition that he return one day as a pastor. The widow of Johan van Lichtenhorst, for example, wrote to Vosmeer, recommending a young man for study as a priest and offering to support him financially, in her words, “so that our children might be educated as Catholics.”81 Congregations displayed a sense of pride about their native sons going off to seminary and followed their progress through formation. The pastor at Gorcum, Balthasar van Wevelinchoven, protested to Codde in 1690 that a local young man studying at Hogenheuvel was not being promoted, despite his ability.82 In one instance in 1606, a seminarian opted for the cloister over pastoral work, but leaders from his hometown of Oldenzaal (in the contemporary diocese of Deventer), petitioned Vosmeer to assign this “youth of good hope from this city and zealous for good works in the monastery” to a local abbey rather than the distant one in Lingen.83 In some circumstances, local patrons would sponsor a youth based on the understanding that, after ordination, the ordinary would assign the youth as a pastor of his home com-

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munity. In the second half of the seventeenth century, benefactors or congregations established permanent stipends for locals intent on going to seminary and returning to serve in their home parish. The starting point, then, for identifying a prospective seminarian was usually in the local community, where a priest, relative, or interested layperson noticed conspicuous piety in a young man and approached him about the possibility of a religious vocation. If he did express interest, the local party made contacts until news about the prospect traveled up the hierarchy to the apostolic vicar, chapter dean, or seminary president. “A young man with great promise has come to our attention” was a typical linguistic turn clerics used to send a positive preliminary appraisal through the institutional channels.84 Van Neercassel and Codde even complained about parents soliciting recommendations to get their sons accepted with funding into one of the colleges. In spite of their complaints, solicitation often paid off for young men from prominent families who enjoyed social connections with the apostolic vicar.85 Gaining admission for seminary training, however, required more than a personal acquaintance with a priest, even an influential one, for apostolic vicars, Haarlem canons, and seminary presidents carefully scrutinized applicants. For applicants to gain admission to a seminary, they first needed a recommendation from a local person, especially a priest, and also sometimes a family member or well-connected acquaintance. Van Neercassel pointed out to van Blockhoven in November 1671 that before an applicant could be accepted, he needed the testimony of his local pastor.86 Aiming to preserve their own credibility, priests generally would not offer references for weak applicants. Local pastors directed their recommendations up the ecclesiastical hierarchy, to archpriests, canons at Haarlem, seminary presidents, or apostolic vicars. After the initial recommendation, the leaders of the mission consulted with one another before admitting a student, or they forwarded their own approval to the seminary president. To gain admission, an applicant needed the approval of the seminary president, the Haarlem Chapter (for Pulcheria), and the apostolic vicar.87 For example, Sibrand Sixtius, archpriest for Amsterdam, recommended to Vosmeer a sixteen-year-old who had studied previously at a Jesuit college in Antwerp. In September 1684, van Neercassel passed on the recommendation of Benthema van der Meulen to the president of Pulcheria

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and proposed to the provisores that the prospective student deserved a stipend. Pieter Codde gave approval for Petrus Maes as a result of his strong support from the priests Joannes Hooft and Hugo Francis van Heussen. Successful applicants often worked the closely knit Catholic network in the Dutch Republic. Joannes Been, for instance, wrote on behalf of his “modest and quiet son” to Balduin Cats in 1647 and referred him to the van der Dussens, well-connected patrons in Delft.88 In this process, the local sponsor was usually careful to note the external signs of a vocation, which included not only piety or zeal for religious life but also a commitment to the Dutch Catholic Church. For example, Eggius approved the admission of a priest in 1609, because of his piety, devotion, and desire to serve the church. Johannes van Neercassel recommended to Theodore van Blockhoven that he admit a certain applicant because he had turned away from heresy and began to “do holy things in the church.” Twenty-year-old Godfried Arnold wrote to Eggius in 1609 that he wished to enter seminary in order “to help his country which is under persecution.”89 As these examples imply, admission to a Dutch seminary was certainly not automatic, and there is plenty of evidence that some applicants were turned away. For example, van Neercassel turned down an applicant, declaring, “I do not expect anything good from those who enter the college without a legitimate vocation, but these types are growing who have less intent [for study] than a door keep.” A general wariness about applicants surfaced regularly in the correspondence between clerics. One priest reported to Eggius that Alticollense was not going to accept a Mr. Richardo but decided to only after interviewing the applicant.90 So what should we make of clerical formation in the Holland Mission in the seventeenth century? The training of priests during the tenure of Sasbout Vosmeer—a time in which a handful of priests in Holland began reorganizing pastoral care in the Northern Netherlands against all odds and with little money—functioned as a shoestring operation. The earliest instruction took place in private households in Amsterdam, Cologne, and perhaps elsewhere until the founding of Alticollense (1602), Pulcheria (1617), and the Collegio Urbano (1627). Though the source material for the initial period is scarce, the house rules, charters, and correspondence reveal that a network of Catholic leadership in the Holland Mission poured a great deal of energy into

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the training of priests. Influenced by Tridentine guidelines and Jesuit models, the statutes of Alticollense and Pulcheria prescribed a highly structured regimen of prayer, worship, and academic study, in an attempt to produce disciplined and competent priests. The Catholic community as a whole, laity included, invested itself in clerical formation, as local congregations sent their sons, donated their money, and in return expected competent pastors. Though the Dutch Catholic seminary experiment began modestly, leaders emphasized the formation of quality priests for the long-term recovery of the church, rather than the turning out of a high quantity of priests in the short term. Nevertheless, the number of secular priests grew fairly rapidly, to 250 by 1617, 300 by 1635, and 360 by 1642.91 As Pulcheria and Alticollense developed after the pioneering generation of leaders, van Neercassel, Codde, de Swaen, van Blockhoven, Melis, and others invested enormous energy in supervising formation and procuring funding in support of seminary education. In a spirit of consultation, the clerical hierarchy collectively monitored student progress, in an attempt to hold students to high moral standards and to make sure all candidates for the priesthood were intellectually competent. The design of seminary education throughout the seventeenth century corresponded to the needs of the Holland Mission in the spirit of post-Tridentine Catholicism: to establish a body of pastors to deepen the religious devotion of the laity, to win back lapsed or marginal Catholics, and to present a credible defense against heresy. Seminaries placed a high value on preaching, teaching, and developing confessors who would take sin and penitence seriously. Shaped by the broader academic culture of northern Catholicism, the theological content of clerical formation pressed relentlessly toward a robust neo-Augustinian, Oratorian, and biblicist orientation. Until the widespread establishment of seminaries, diocesan priests who received a more formal clerical education did so in a variety of institutions, including secondary schools, cathedral schools, and universities. The most common means, at least for clergy in Italy and the German Empire, was through Jesuit colleges in Rome and across Europe, though it is not clear how many secular priests trained in these settings. Nevertheless, formation for diocesan priests remained fragmented and chaotic in France and the Empire until the eighteenth century.92 By comparison, the training of the secular clergy in the Holland

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Mission was highly standardized and streamlined. Ironically, given the authority of the apostolic vicar over seminary education, clerical formation in the mission was much more diocesan than many dioceses in seventeenth-century Europe. No secular clergy, however, compared very well to the Society of Jesus. It is well known that the Jesuits were the best pedagogues and the most highly educated priests in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The earliest successes of Catholic revival in Europe—in Italy, the Empire, and the Southern Netherlands—resulted largely from Jesuit labor. Indeed, the Society of Jesus was the most important driving force behind Catholic renewal and the spread of Roman Christianity around the world in the early modern period. Most of the fathers who worked in the Holland Mission came from the Jesuit province of FlandersBelgium, which, despite their pastoral apostolate, left an impressive track record of publication in the seventeenth century. The number of Jesuits in the Republic grew from the first four in 1592 to fifteen by 1616 to sixty-five by 1635 and to a high of somewhere between seventyfour and ninety by 1650. These Jesuits were scattered across sixty-three stations in the northern provinces and operated colleges on the borders of the Republic, in Cologne, Nijmegen, Maastricht, ’s Hertogenbosch, Roermond, and Breda.93 Neither Jesuits nor secular clerics in the Holland Mission thought very highly of one another. The Jesuit Imago claimed that the secular priests who remained after the Revolt were barely capable and that Clement VIII believed that the Jesuits were the solution for the Northern Netherlands.94 Also, from a Jesuit perspective, the quality of secular priests did not vastly improve after the establishment of Alticollense and Pulcheria. A report in 1623 made this declaration about the seminary in Cologne: Its graduates dispersed for the most part into the districts of Holland, for there they bring up many young men who are supported by the peasants. Likewise, they are said only to have undergone private study until they are old enough to become priests, so that there are many among them who have never seen any other university. Young men are assigned into this seminary who have come almost out of sordid poverty and off the street corner, having no decent education or morals; although they have dipped very lightly

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into letters by perhaps reading a Summa once, they are ordained as priests and immediately sent out as pastors in Holland. There are indeed among them some learned men and licentiates in sacred theology; but generally the case is as I have described.95 For their part, secular priests maintained that the Jesuits betrayed more concern about patronage than about the salvation of souls, indiscreetly stirred up the laity, and ignored the Council of Trent. The leaders of the mission chalked these improprieties up not only to arrogance but also to a basic lack of competence. Rovenius wrote in 1624 that Jesuit failure to recognize the authority of the apostolic vicar was a “facile pretext” that enabled “apostates” and religious with “small qualifications” to enter the provinces and administer sacraments to unsuspecting Catholics.96 If religious orders and secular priests took a dim view of the other’s qualifications, the laity by and large were much more appreciative of the pastoral abilities of all clergy in the mission. Catholic men and women held the clergy to high standards, and consequently, lay perspectives provide some insight into the quality of the Dutch clergy. In 1613 Gerard Coopmans, a layman, expressed his sorrow at the death of his pastor and good friend, Wouter Dirxszoon, and requested that Sasbout send another priest from the college at Cologne to, in Coopman’s words, “help us live lives of penitence and to assist us in our salvation.” In 1654 Catholics in Arnhem wrote to Hendrik Velthoen, president of Alticollense, thanking him for his custodial care of the church and for his work in restoring the Catholic Church in the Netherlands. Complaining about the removal of their priest (Anthonij Vooren Beeck), Catholics in Schagen (in the north quarter of Holland), described him as an edifying man and stated that their “souls were in a state of unrest without him.” The Catholics at Zwolle wrote van Neercassel in 1682, declaring that their pastor Joannes Dobbius was “serving to [their] spiritual contentment” and had “conducted himself as a virtuous pastor.”97 By no means did Dutch Catholics find just any priest sent to them acceptable. Rather, they had a keen eye for quality in preaching, administering the sacraments, and modeling personal virtue. When priests failed in these categories, locals did not hesitate to let the apostolic vicar know about it. The Harlingen (Friesland) congregation, for instance, wrote van Neercassel in 1682, requesting another priest for the

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“salvation of their souls” because the present one refused to visit the sick and denied charity to a poor widow.98 Thus, lay Catholics were quite discriminating about clerical quality and on most occasions expressed warm enthusiasm for their priests.

Placement and Ordering of the Dutch Clergy Clerical formation was a critical step in the overall pastoral mission of bringing salvation and sanctity to the Catholics of the Dutch Republic. Once educated and ordained, priests received their pastoral assignments from the apostolic vicar or Haarlem Chapter, by virtue of the their authority as ordinary. Once placed in a community, a priest usually worked under the guidance of a senior priest or pastor in one or more congregations that formed part of a broader church district, supervised by an archpriest, who reported directly to the ordinary. For the leaders of the mission, this ecclesiastical structure represented the continuity of the archdiocese in the post-Reformation era. Along with the political circumstances for Catholics in the Republic, this diocesan paradigm helps to account for the deployment pattern of priests and the management of pastoral care in the mission. The mission’s placement of priests raises an important question about pastoral care in the Netherlands. Rogier argued that the poor quality of the clergy before the Reformation, combined with the disruption of Catholic ministry after the Revolt, led to success for Calvinist churches. Conversely, in the States of Brabant, which did not come under Dutch control until 1629–1632, bishops had ample opportunity to reform the clergy; consequently, the populace remained largely Catholic.99 According to Rogier, for Calvinism to thrive, Catholicism first had to fail through the malpractice of corrupt priests before the Reformation and the absence of competent priests thereafter. Thus, the confessional fate of areas throughout the Netherlands depended on the continued presence of capable priests. Yet the questionable quality of the preReformation clergy has been more assumed than proven. In addition, apostolic vicars could have utilized scores more priests, but the vicars worked relentlessly to keep these priests out because they belonged to religious orders. Why did the apostolic vicars not import these missionaries? What was the agenda of the mission? The chief ambition of apostolic vicars and other top officers in the Holland Mission was to refashion the church districts in the Northern

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Netherlands in the diocesan cast of Trent. This aspiration gave utmost priority to the formation of a pastoral body scrupulously obedient to canons and ordinaries, who would then lead lay congregations into deeper devotion and faithful compliance with church norms. Growth in church membership would flow from a well-ordered diocese, so for the apostolic vicars and their associates, it made no sense to pursue church growth outside of this framework. Rovenius argued to the Propaganda Fide in 1626 that well-trained priests who followed the mandates of Trent under the authority of their bishop formed the primary agents in converting heretics or lapsed Catholics. Diocesan priests yielded fruit by leading exemplary lives, explaining doctrine forcefully, and administering sacraments faithfully.100 The secular clergy, therefore, did not take as its primary mission the reconversion of the Netherlands but rather the reestablishment of the archdiocese. As a result, apostolic vicars did not concern themselves as much about the numbers of priests in the mission as about their pastoral quality. For this reason, the deployment of priests assumed great importance. When assigning priests to posts across the Netherlands, apostolic vicars and Haarlem deans weighed several interrelated considerations: population density of practicing Catholics, risk of persecution, and compatibility of priest to congregation. Apostolic vicars and Haarlem deans gave priority to serving areas with higher concentration of Catholics and branching out from the heavier enclaves into less dense areas. As Rovenius explained in a 1622 report, he could not supply every district with a priest because there were not enough Catholics in many locations to justify one. Six years earlier, he decided not to send more priests into Zeeland because there were so few Catholics there. Conversely, he judged that the Catholic communities in Montfort and Culemborg had grown to such an extent that they merited one or two additional priests.101 In England too, church leaders sent new priests into areas with sizable populations of Catholics. Christopher Haigh has noted that “priests were sent not to create a new Catholicism, but to provide pastoral care for a pre-existing Catholicism . . . The task was preservation rather than conversion.”102 Thus, in both lands a congregation had to achieve a critical mass before warranting a priest, and the policy of the mission aimed at serving existing communities rather than establishing a Catholic presence in undeveloped areas. High confessional density also meant that a lay community would be able to support a priest financially. Financial support of the clergy came

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from a priest’s own patrimony, from benefices funded by patrons, or from collections taken in the community. It is no coincidence that priests were sent into the areas with the greatest concentration of Catholic wealth. All priests in the mission, secular and regular, continually courted sources of patronage for their own maintenance and for the mission (or their order). Rovenius’s mission reports of 1616 and 1622 point out that many Catholics from the “most honorable” families lived in Utrecht, Haarlem, and Amsterdam, cities that contained the largest numbers of priests. A report by the States of Holland in 1582, for example, noted that two thousand Catholics had appeared at a gathering in Lambertschagen in North Holland.103 At the baseline level, communities had to possess the wherewithal to maintain a priest or make do without one.104 Even after Dutch seminaries started churning out priests in the 1610s and 1620s, Vosmeer and Rovenius did not, by and large, change the focus to underserved areas outside Holland and Utrecht, which is perhaps what led Willem Frijhoff to label Vosmeer as “Hollandocentric.”105 But the pattern of deployment was not mere myopia on the part of the apostolic vicars but, as Rovenius noted, a deliberate policy that gave priority to pastoral care over large-scale attempts at reconversion; otherwise mission leaders would have sent priests in far greater numbers in areas of less Catholic density. Rather, the apostolic vicars approached the reform of Catholic life from the mental framework of the old archbishopric of Utrecht, with emphasis on pastoral care to the faithful. An unintended consequence of this deployment policy was to perpetuate the highly uneven distribution of Catholics throughout the Northern Netherlands. According to Rovenius’s report of 1629, the provinces of Holland and Utrecht contained 150 out of the 222 resident pastors (67 percent) in the mission. Of the remaining third, Friesland had nineteen pastors, Twenthe twenty-five, Gelderland ten, Overijssel ten, Groningen four, Zeeland four, and Drenthe none. This pattern remained consistent throughout the seventeenth century. Pieter Codd’s 1701 report listed 316 pastors, 220 (70 percent) of which resided in Holland and Utrecht, thirty-one in Friesland, fifteen in Twenthe, seventeen in Gelderland, sixteen in Overijssel, twelve in Groningen, five in Zeeland, and zero in Drenthe.106 Consequently, the pastoral geography for the northern provinces resembled a core-periphery configura-

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tion. Supported with literature and priests trained just across the border in the Southern Netherlands and northwest Germany, the nodal points were located in Holland around the Haarlem-Amsterdam-Delft region and in Utrecht. Extending out from the core areas, Zeeland, Groningen, Overijssel, and Drenthe functioned as the most peripheral districts. The level of persecution also had an important bearing on the number of priests working in a certain area. Priests were subject to persecution everywhere, and there were reports of imprisonment, beatings, and ransoming of clerics in areas that had a reputation for liberality, such as Haarlem and Utrecht.107 Nevertheless, provinces outside Holland, particularly Groningen, Zeeland, and Gelderland, were widely regarded in Catholic circles as the most dangerous for priests. In addition, the ordinaries proved reluctant to send priests into these environments. Rovenius stated in 1616 that it was too dangerous for priests to work in Middelburg and in 1622 that every parish in the archdiocese of Utrecht could not receive a pastor because of persecution.108 To a certain degree, the apprehension about persecution stemmed from financial anxieties. Without a noble patron and protector, very small congregations of Catholics were not financially capable of generating the patronage to pay fines. The typical case of persecution involved the ransom and banishment of a priest, which struck hard at the financial reserves of lay Catholics and the clerical hierarchy. In this way, levels of persecution correlated to the financial strength of local Catholic communities. It was still the density of lay Catholic population that drove concerns about both patronage and persecution. The allocation of Catholic wealth was, for the most part, simply an extension of the lay population’s distribution throughout the northern provinces. Though it is almost impossible to sort out cause from effect, certainly persecution and low Catholic density reinforced one another. That is, persecution kept the numbers of Catholics low, just as the low numbers made persecution less politically risky. In short, the priority placed on pastoral care and the commitment to the institutional continuity in the revival of Dutch Catholicism meant that priest placement would correspond to the pattern of lay activity. As seminary presidents, Haarlem deans, and apostolic vicars worked together to assign priests to particular posts, the mission leaders considered

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a range of issues to ensure that the priest was compatible with the community.109 Though there is evidence across this entire period, these concerns come to light most often during the long tenure of Johannes van Neercassel, in part because his extensive correspondence survives. Throughout the seventeenth century, a new priest typically worked under a pastor or more senior priest who functioned as a mentor. If the new priest performed well, it became possible for him to receive broader pastoral competence as opportunities unfolded. In 1608 Jacob Zaffius of the Haarlem Chapter granted authority to Henricus Sillingius to conduct pastoral work, observing that he had a “good character since his youth,” was “known as a man of integrity,” and possessed “good abilities.”110 Seminary presidents and vicars were cautious in sending new priests out, trying to make sure that they would work under someone and that they were prepared for pastoral work. Van Neercassel delayed sending out a newly ordained priest, Laurence van Schaick, because of his lack of maturity and experience.111 A year earlier, van Neercassel seemed reluctant to send Jacob Vincent to Wieringen, calling it a “most miserable and harsh station,” but the apostolic vicar approved the assignment because the Haarlem Chapter recommended Vincent for the position. Van Neercassel did forewarn Father Vincent about the congregation’s sense of independence and urged him to impose serious penitence on it.112 On many occasions, the apostolic vicar reminded all new priests of their duties, regardless of the post, emphasizing the need to set a moral example and their duty to preach the word of God. Van Neercassel exhorted Thomas Neijs as a new pastor in Schagen, for example, to meet local needs by exhibiting the utmost sobriety, delivering learned sermons, and promoting penitence.113 Because of changing circumstances—such as deaths, vacancies, shifting demographics, intractable pastoral conflicts, and other reasons—it was not unusual for mission leaders to reassign priests. When priests were reassigned, it often became necessary to explain the change to an unhappy local community. Van Neercassel advised the Catholics in Nieuwendam that he had never appointed Joannes Scheuring as their permanent pastor and now dismissed him to bring in Michiel Deckers to their community.114 In 1671 van Neercassel had to explain to members of the small community of Kuinre that he had not intended to deny them their priest, Father Hanian, but that his provincial reassigned him elsewhere. Because the community wanted Hanian to re-

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main, however, van Neercassel arranged to have him return to Kuinre. Announcing the arrival of a new priest, van Neercassel reported to the Catholics in Krommenie that because of financial constraints they would have to share this priest with the community of Wormer.115 The mission continued to monitor the deportment and work of priests, to maintain fairly high standards in pastoral ministry to lay communities. Laboring under the direction of an ordinary, an archpriest, and a senior pastor (in large congregations), priests rarely lived and worked in isolation from other clergy. These supervisors regularly issued pastoral directives and routinely conducted visitations to inquire among the leading parishioners about the quality of their priest’s life and work.116 Discipline was not simply a moral code clerics imposed on the laity but discipline was a common set of expectations about human interaction and religious belief upheld and enforced by both clergy and laity. Lay folk kept tabs on their priests in the daily course of affairs. When priests gave occasion for suspicion or when they departed from the accepted standards of the priesthood, laymen and -women resisted their priest and often complained to his supervisors. By the tenure of Rovenius, the leaders of the Holland Mission had established a program of regular visitations. In 1620 Rovenius declared that delegates would conduct frequent visitations “to preserve order and discipline” and to oversee the churches. The dean of the Haarlem Chapter was responsible for visitations in the Haarlem diocese. Visitors would be responsible for ensuring that priests who had been approved by the mission administered the sacraments in a pious and faithful manner. The dean enumerated the detailed prescriptions for pastoral care that shortly thereafter formed the basis of his Constitutiones and the subsequent pastoral dictates of van Neercassel.117 Visitations and reports from pastors and archpriests to the Haarlem Chapter and the apostolic vicars became an important means to supervise the pastoral work of the secular clergy. A visitation conducted by anonymous Haarlem canons in the north quarter of Holland in 1631 illustrates the level of scrutiny that ecclesiastical authorities attempted to maintain over local areas. The canons visited the district of Grootebroeck and reported that Father Meijnanden, having served now eight years, conducted services well and was able to deal with all disputes. They also noted that the congregation of about five hundred people possessed a monstrance of great value. The

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canons continued on to about thirteen other locations, primarily in rural areas, to talk with the pastor, perhaps attend a service, and hold conversations with the lay leaders or curators. The local priests had to answer for any dissension in the community and provide the vital statistics for it (communicants, baptisms, marriages, deaths, and conversions). For their part, the lay leaders responded to inquiries about the quality of the priest’s work and gave a financial accounting, focusing on the level at which they were supporting the priests and the poor.118 Four years later, the chapter drew up a list of questions that archpriests were to put before the pastors about their districts. Beyond the numbers that indexed growth, these questions concerned the identity of patrons and their level of patronage; the presence of any other priests in the area and the patrons’ relationship to them; any reported miracles, fires, plunders, persecution, and martyrs; and the degree to which any laypeople gave support to regular priests.119 The seventeenth century was an age preoccupied with discipline and order; these values were idiomatic for moral stability in the Dutch Republic. Calvinists in the Netherlands enshrined discipline as one of the three marks of the true church, while pragmatic urban regents endorsed Houses of Discipline for the social maladies in a mercantile economy. In the religious world of the Dutch Catholic community, the priest under the authority of an ordinary was the icon of discipline. The postTridentine church vigorously reasserted clerical authority, in the belief that the renewal of lay Catholicism hinged on a disciplined clergy that disciplined its flock. Discussion of sin and penitence pervaded clerical writing in the Netherlands; these themes were included in almost every text, if not explicitly then in the background. By the end of the sixteenth century, the standard Catholic view in Europe held that heresy plagued the contemporary world as divine punishment for immorality, especially the moral failures of the clergy. To turn back God’s wrath, the church had to repent and to reform itself according to God’s word. To that end, Trent located the nucleus for discipline in the office of the bishop. In the Holland Mission, Haarlem deans and apostolic vicars, acting as ordinaries for the church districts of Haarlem and Utrecht, embraced Tridentine reform, so clerical discipline started at the top. According to the leaders of the Holland Mission, discipline was the establishment and maintenance of a universal moral order. The moral

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character and competence of the clergy on the parish or communal level depended completely upon a well-ordered diocese. An important early figure in promoting the cause of moral reform in the Low Countries and northwestern Germany was Ottavio Frangipani, papal nuncio. Frangipani was responsible for obtaining permission from Pope Clement VIII to organize pastoral care in the Northern Netherlands after the Revolt and to appoint Sasbout Vosmeer as the vicar general of Utrecht. In a treatise on church discipline written for the Holland Mission, Frangipani maintained that it was the special vocation of the ordinary to maintain moral order for the purity of the church as the body of Christ. As guardians of the church, bishops were to carry out this mission with constancy in the monasteries, universities, and dioceses throughout Christendom. As a result, a divine moral order would ensure salvation for the people of God, and heretics would return to the fold, as priests administered the sacraments, according to the stipulations of the sacred canons.120 Vosmeer, Rovenius, van Neercassel, and other apostolic vicars endorsed Frangipani’s Tridentine spirit, regarding the bishop as the embodiment of the unity and order of the Roman Catholic Church. Rovenius contended, “There is no unity in the church without bishops.” Citing Cyprian and other church fathers, he declared that the bishop’s office gave the church its “wholeness.”121 From this point of view, a disciplined clergy could not exist without the clear articulation of and obedience to the bishop’s pastoral authority. By extension, the bishop’s apostolic competence enveloped the administration of the sacraments to be carried out by pastors in their parishes. Rovenius and van Neercassel insisted repeatedly that priests could not administer the sacraments in the mission without the bishop’s authority. In a pastoral mandate from 1680, van Neercassel ordered that priests were to wait ten days after their arrival in a community before celebrating Mass, to allow sufficient time for the congregation to receive written authorization from his office.122 The pastoral work of correcting sin and bringing salvation could only take place within the framework of a bishop’s authority. In other words, the bishop was the locus of discipline. To a large degree, this conception of discipline framed within the pastoral authority of the bishop underlay the intractable conflict with the regular orders. Religious did not recognize the apostolic vicar as a bishop or archbishop, since the archdiocese of Utrecht fell vacant with

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the death of Frederik Schenk van Toutenberg in 1580. Furthermore, the Jesuits’ special vow to the pope exempted the fathers from diocesan authority, so Jesuits carried out their mission work under direction of their provincials. Such disregard for diocesan authority, from the secular clergy’s perspective, sowed nothing but confusion, disorder, and unruliness in the vineyard of the Lord.123 While the conflict between Jesuits and secular clergy was fought out over a range of charges and countercharges, the critical impasse was over pastoral authority to administer the sacraments.124 The mission hierarchy—that is, the apostolic vicar in consultation with the seminary president, the provicaris for the former diocese, and the Haarlem Chapter (for Haarlem)—reserved the exclusive right to assign a priest to a specific location and give him approval to administer the sacraments.125 This policy grew out of the mission’s view on the continuity of pastoral ministry in the archdiocese. Since the mission carefully screened its priests and demanded complete obedience, approval was never a foregone conclusion. Even when the apostolic vicar gave permission for a religious to serve, the approval did not transfer beyond the specified district nor to a successor or a colleague.126 At the death or relocation of the religious, the apostolic vicar insisted upon approving the succeeding priest. Only in this way did apostolic vicars believe they could ensure good discipline and the proper administration of the sacraments in the diocese. For the religious orders, which operated from a missionary perspective, this type of control smacked of ecclesiastical tyranny in a land desperately needing priests. Jesuits rightly pointed out that lay Catholics with no priest and no access to the sacraments were asking religious to serve them. Father Willem Bauters put it this way in 1628: “Beyond all the accusations . . . there are several examples that have been shown to me of Catholic communities who are seeking bread who are weakened and many die without the sacrament. They [apostolic vicars] obstruct and refuse to permit them visitations.”127 In this situation, the religious argued that it was better to bring the sacraments to the needy rather than obey the officious demands of an ad hoc vicar. From 1598 to 1671, apostolic vicars and Jesuit provincials reached at least five agreements on the number and location of Jesuit stations in the northern Netherlands, though the settlements merely served as the basis for complaints and accusations.128 Tension between diocesan clerics and religious orders was nothing

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new, for distrust and dispute had characterized relations for hundreds of years. Bishops had made similar complaints against Benedictines, Franciscans, and Dominicans throughout the Middle Ages. For their part, Jesuits encountered the same hostility and suspicion from ordinaries throughout Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Though many other factors were involved, the distrust from ordinaries contributed to the suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773. The discord, nevertheless, struck a different tenor in the Northern Netherlands because the fundamental identity of Dutch Catholicism was at stake after the public repression of the Roman faith in 1581. The struggle had wide-ranging implications for relations with the government, patronage, property, pastoral practice, and discipline. For the secular clergy, the leaders of the mission followed traditional diocesan measures to ensure discipline among priests. Under the apostolic vicar and dean of the Haarlem Chapter, canons in Haarlem and archpriests across the mission bore responsibility for areas. They or their representatives conducted visitations and issued directives to address problems. In the early years, visitations in local areas seem to have had an extemporaneous character. For example, in a June 1594 letter from Eggius to Sasbout, Eggius mentioned that he and Sibrand Sixtius, a fellow canon at Haarlem, were going to travel around in North Holland. Likewise, Victor Scorel described a similar kind of trip to the small Catholic communities in Rhenen and Arnhem in 1596. He provided only the barest of details about the priests and the lay folk in these areas. Over the next ten to fifteen years, visitations assumed a more official quality, as visitors produced a formal report, such as the one of the St. Agnieten Convent in Emmerik by Gerhard Rhodianus and Joannes Otten in 1607, and Leonard Marius’s account of the diocese of Haarlem in 1614.129 Later in the second half of the seventeenth century, Balduin Cats, Johannes van Neercassel, and Pieter Codde conducted extensive visitations across the archdiocese, giving expansive accounts of local conditions. Similarly, various Haarlem canons regularly conducted visitations throughout their diocese.130 In 1632 the Haarlem Chapter decided to require pastors to meet twice a year or to host a visit from a canon so that everyone would be aware of all the statutes that had been issued.131 According to a 1660 printed questionnaire for visitations in Haarlem, the chapter held clear expectations of its priests. For visitations in

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the diocese, the Brevis Informatio contained thirty-two questions in four basic areas for investigators to answer. The first area concerned the moral character of the priest and asked questions ranging from whether he possessed a good reputation in the community to whether he obeyed the teachings of the church. The second major area pertained to the priest’s management of sacred objects, covering the consecration and upkeep of the altar and sacred vessels. The third focused on the financial affairs of the parish, such as care of the poor, the priest’s quarters, and extent of the local ecclesiastical property. Finally, the fourth area explored the quality of pastoral care, asking how frequently and diligently the priest preached and taught the catechism, whether he kept accurate records of marriages and baptisms, whether he possessed a library, how many heretics he had converted, and how extensively the congregation was growing. In addition, the diocesan inquisitors were to remind the clergy to avoid prolonged confessions with women, motivate people to correct vices, give absolution only after sincere penitence, shun heretics, and steer clear of theological subtleties with common folk. These questions and directives entailed a wide range of responsibilities that accentuated moral character, pastoral assiduity, confessional rigor, and proprietary competence.132 The priorities for a well-ordered clergy embedded in this visitation guide extended to the entire archdiocese. The author of the Brevis Informatio was Zacharias de Metz, coadjutor to de la Torre at the time of publication. Several years later, shortly after the accession of van Neercassel, a far more extensive examination instrument appeared, the Formula et Modus in 1663. The content of the questions overlapped the Brevis Informatio considerably, though the Formula et Modus raised at least 120 questions, according to my unofficial count, extending from whether the priest could answer questions from “rude and simple people” to whether he venerated false gods and worshiped the devil. It seems rather unlikely that examiners put the entire list of questions to priests, because of its sheer volume. The slant of many questions also intimate that Formula et Modus was a means to weed out potential troublemakers among regulars assigned to the Holland Mission. The Formula et Modus asked if the priest promised to obey the apostolic vicar in most every sacerdotal function, including the use of educational and liturgical materials, the absolution of controversial cases, the execution of pious legacies, and the assignment to a location. And the For-

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mula et Modus required the priest to submit to any visitation by the apostolic vicar without citing any laws or privileges.133 Most information relating to clerical discipline went up the ecclesiastical hierarchy from lay folk, priests, and archpriests ultimately to the chapter in Haarlem or to the apostolic vicar. For example, a letter from a priest in Amsterdam (possibly Leonard Marius) complained that some clergy there were frequently found in a state of drunkenness in public so that even heretics ridiculed them in their sermons. Having failed with fraternal correction, he requested that the Haarlem Chapter intervene.134 David van Mauden, a priest in Lochem and Groenlo, reported that a nearby priest still lived with his concubine. Often charges of priestly misconduct came from the laity and went all the way to the top of the hierarchy, just as Elizabeth van Eijckel notified van Neercassel that the pastor Cornelius Duc, interacted too intimately with a woman, holding her hand in public and spending the night with her in the same room.135 Influenced by the Council of Trent and the Society of Jesus, the Dutch Catholic seminaries concentrated on practical pastoral care: preaching, teaching, and administering the sacraments, especially penance. The theological curricula in the second half of the seventeenth century drew heavily from the neo-Augustinian currents at the University of Louvain. Coupled with an Augustinian emphasis, seminary education became increasingly biblicist and rigorist, leaving secular clergy in the second half of the seventeenth century open to the charge of Jansenism by their Jesuit opponents. The apostolic vicars and deans of the Haarlem Chapter gave priority in priest placement to the church districts with the most heavily concentrated number of Catholics, with coverage going into less dense areas only as the general level of priests allowed. This pattern reflected a deliberate policy, rooted in a diocesan approach to reform, which prioritized pastoral care of the faithful over conversion of the lapsed. Thus, leaders in the Holland Mission did not regard the lack of aggregate levels of priests to be the most critical difficulty plaguing the revival of Catholicism. The leadership emphasized pastoral care by a well-trained priest in a well-ordered diocese.



3 Laboring in the Vineyard priests and pastoral care

Less than a year before his death, while suffering from an agonizing kidney disease, Sasbout Vosmeer wrote Catholics in Schagen, in the far north quarter of Holland, to announce that he was finally sending them the pastor they had requested time and again.1 Perhaps over the course of their exchanges, the laity there had grown a bit testy, because Vosmeer took the opportunity in his notice to expand on the proper relationship between a priest and a congregation: We have appreciated your affection for your shepherd, all the more since love and reverence for one’s superior is a means and a good means to upright obedience, which is the path to salvation. For the obedience we owe to God is no less equal to the obedience that someone owes his master, lord, or parents. Just as Christ stated, whoever hears you, hears me and whoever spurns you, spurns me. Further, consider that some esteemed people have more knowledge of general matters due to the responsibilities of their office and the grace they have received from God . . . Petitioners may not judge or reprimand the works or ordinances of their superiors.2 Essentially, Vosmeer reminded lay leaders in Schagen of their duty to trust and obey. The admonition to obey clergy was a universal one that

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rang from pulpits, consistory chambers, and confessional booths across seventeenth-century Europe. From Edinburgh to Budapest and everywhere in between, obedience, discipline, and order were common idioms of the day. For both Catholics and Protestants, obedience to clergy and compliance with church standards produced the disciplined life that was necessary for salvation. More than simply inculcating in Catholics a pattern of conduct, the process included developing the theological awareness to distinguish truth from heresy. Consequently, as Protestant and Catholic clergy promoted a manner of living that was remarkably similar, ministers and priests were also instilling a sense of confessional difference from other denominations. The catechism of the Holland Mission declared, “Just as there is but one Lord, one baptism, and one God, there is also but one faith through which one may please him, which is the holy Catholic Roman faith.”3 Vosmeer’s admonition to Catholics in Schagen grew out of this worldview as he sought to guide them along the Roman path to salvation. The analysis of churches’ efforts to enjoin lay folk to comply with the demand of obedience has occupied a central place in the historiography of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. The attention given to discipline since the 1970s has broadened traditional religious and political narratives into a study of the social history of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Historians interested in the influence of religious devotion on the structures of everyday life have examined the ways in which clerical elites attempted to implement reform and have assessed the extent to which a broad spectrum of the population interiorized the new moral program. This direction in early modern scholarship has also provided a comparative framework for analyzing the development of different confessional movements in various parts of Europe. The research on religious discipline has shown that in lands where ruling elites identified closely with the dominant creed and backed it with the force of state power, such as in Castile, Scotland, Geneva, Paris, and Lyon, confessionalization proceeded in a heavy-handed fashion.4 In one extreme example, the Count of Bavaria sent out troops to take note of who did and did not make confession during Holy Week. In other territories where the state was unable or unwilling to support the church’s reform agenda, however, confessionalization from the top down proved problematic. Marc Forster has shown that local lay initiative in

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southwestern Germany provided the impetus for Catholic resurgence, while Allyson Poska has illustrated the failure of church programs for reform in outlying areas in northwestern Spain. Reformed consistories carrying out discipline in the Dutch Republic had to navigate carefully around the cool skepticism of city magistrates and negotiate the sharp sense of honor among lay men and women. Recent scholarship in these very different areas has drawn attention to the agency of the laity rather than institutional mechanisms, in both advancing and thwarting reform.5 The interaction between Catholic clergy and laity in the pluralistic environment of the Dutch Republic provides a useful point of comparison with reform efforts in other areas of Europe. Two basic conditions in the Netherlands influenced the expectations that clergy and laity harbored about the other: the oppositional presence of Protestantism and the absence of state support for Catholic reform. The presence of Protestantism led the clergy to stress the confessional distinctions of Roman Catholicism in its preaching and teaching, while the absence of state support forced the clergy to rely heavily on the laity. The Catholic clergy in the Republic certainly did not enjoy the backing of the state but were in fact at the mercy of political officials at all levels. In this situation, priests held no political leverage over lay folk; on the contrary, Dutch priests depended on the laity for protection, patronage, and management of communal affairs. Catholics, like all other Dutch people, possessed the right to leave their denomination for another or for none at all. Unlike their fellow citizens, however, Catholics faced political and financial liabilities if they continued to choose to practice the Roman faith. So it became incumbent on priests to ground their congregations in the theological justifications for perseverance and to show appreciation to lay folk for their participation. How did the clergy of a religious minority in a hostile environment attract and retain followers while attempting to instill greater religious devotion and moral discipline? Dutch liberality does not provide a plausible explanation for Catholic church growth in the early seventeenth century. An active collaboration of clergy and laity in a program of religious education generated a revival of Catholic devotion in the Dutch Republic. Only in the second half of the seventeenth century, when Calvinism was becoming widely accepted as a public church, did Catholicism begin to lose ground against its chief Protestant competitor.

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Religious education for the purposes of this study should be understood in the broad sense of indoctrination in the teachings and expectations of the Tridentine church through proselytizing, preaching, catechizing, directing confessions and penance, and distributing devotional literature. While clergy directed most of these activities, laymen and -women involved themselves enthusiastically in them by cooperating yet struggling with priests, accepting yet challenging clerical leadership, and holding clergy to high intellectual and moral standards. At all points, laymen and -women actively engaged themselves in the work of education and renewal. Lay engagement was predicated on the notion that missionary priests were the key to salvation and to Catholic religious growth in the Dutch Golden Age.

For the Salvation of Souls: A Pastoral Ethos The leaders of the Holland Mission made the reestablishment of the Dutch priesthood a priority at the end of the sixteenth century, just as they maintained a commitment to a well-trained clerical corps throughout the period under study. The reformation of the Dutch priesthood manifested itself primarily in the promotion of the priest as pastor, an agenda carefully monitored by the ecclesiastical leadership. The Holland Mission conceived of the pastor as a good shepherd who, under the authority of the ordinary, guided the laity to salvation by carefully administering the sacraments and preaching the word of God. This pastoral model and its implementation in the early seventeenth century signified a major turning point in the Dutch priesthood, reaffirming clerical institutions in the spirit of the Council of Trent. Trent left little room for lay initiative or popular religious culture but rather reasserted the institutional church as the locus of the sacred. The twenty-third session of Trent reaffirmed the singular competence of the ordained priesthood to carry out the central responsibilities of pastoral care, such as conferring sacraments, hearing confessions, preaching, and teaching. There was no salvation outside the institutional church.6 Likewise, Pulcheria, Alticollense, and Hogenheuvel emphasized that the institutions, offices, and rites of the church—that is, the priesthood, the diocese, the sacraments, and the canons—encased the sacred. The concept of the pastorate that emerged in the course of the seventeenth century, therefore, called on the priest to shepherd

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souls through the institutional rites that would lead the faithful to salvation. This directing of souls required priests to educate lay folk in the methods of examining the conscience, freeing the conscience through confession, cultivating an attitude of penance, and taking communion, all on a regular, cyclical basis. Sanctification was an ongoing rhythm of life; the church was its home, the priest its guide, salvation its end. In keeping with their commitment to Trent, apostolic vicars, Haarlem deans, provicares, and archpriests believed that the legitimacy of the sacraments, the integrity of pastoral ministry, and ultimately the salvation of souls hinged upon a well-ordered diocese.7 Based on this diocesan vision, apostolic vicars regularly set forth the pastoral image of the good shepherd in personal letters and pastoral mandates. Rovenius, for example, delivered in September 1618 a series of directives to Nicolas Nomius, the chapter dean, for the priests in the Haarlem diocese. Rovenius reminded him that priests should administer the sacraments “faithfully and dutifully,” compelling communicants to adopt an attitude of penitence. Rovenius urged priests to administer the sacrament with a pure conscience, not accept payment for services, not relax standards for pious legacies (except with permission), consult with their superiors before absolving grave sins such as heresy, take a severe attitude against violations of baptismal or marriage canons, and collect charity only with approval from supervisors. As in most directives, this statement reiterated that only priests with the approbation of the apostolic vicar could carry out pastoral work.8 Rovenius reaffirmed these standards in the 1628 Constitutiones, which set forth the basic pastoral policy of the mission. The promotion of pastoral ideals remained consistent over the course of the seventeenth century, as the apostolic vicars feared that the growing presence of religious orders would undermine pastoral care in the well-ordered diocese. Subsequent apostolic vicars further refined Rovenius’s Constitutiones and attempted to put it into practice. Zacharias de Metz coadjutor for de la Torre issued the Brevis Informatio (1660), and van Neercassel set forth the Formula et Modus (1663) to reinforce these pastoral values in the second half of the seventeenth century. As such, these texts represented the values and expectations that mission leaders had promoted throughout this period. These values demanded obedience to the mission hierarchy and specified strict adherence to pastoral guidelines.9 The leaders of the mission, then, worked to instill

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within the clergy a fundamental image of the good pastor as obedient to the ordinary, learned in doctrine, committed to the community, and exemplary in conduct. If affirmative pastoral models were important in cultivating a clerical ethos, they were critical to winning over or placating the laity. Apostolic vicars and Haarlem canons constantly stressed their pastoral roles and concerns to local congregations. Mission leaders presented themselves to lay leaders as benevolent pastors showing the utmost interest in the quality of pastoral care in their community. For example, in 1611, Jan Visscher from the Haarlem Chapter wrote local Catholics to make them aware that he understood their troubles and to urge them to stand firm until he could send a priest to pacify local disturbances. Years later, the chapter billed a visitation as an opportunity to gauge the “edification of our subjects.” At the other end of the century, Pieter Codde in one instance detailed to patrons the functions of their new priest and in another explained that because of the great affection Codde felt, he was taking great care in finding them a suitable priest.10 Mission leaders marshaled the image of the caring pastor on a variety of occasions when congregations expressed a sense of neglect or abandonment. This occurred most often during transitions in pastoral ministry, whether from death, banishment, or reassignment, which could create a sense of urgency in no small part because of the shortage of priests, at least from a lay perspective. Communities tried to secure a timely and acceptable replacement, but at times the mission did not do so to lay satisfaction. Vosmeer urged Catholics in Schagen to “trust and obey” in 1613, just as other church leaders took pains to make known their pastoral concern and to let the laity know that they were taking action. Van Neercassel wrote to Catholics in Deventer that his feeling of responsibility for their souls, in his words, “weighs on me,” and to those in Veld that he cared for them “with a devoted heart,” and to the community in Sloterdijk that their “salvation [was] close to his heart and eyes.” Van Neercassel presented himself to each community as the good shepherd whose overriding interest was for the well-being of his flock, no doubt a message that would resonate with anxious Catholics awaiting a priest in a land dominated by heretics.11 Mission leaders realized that they could not alienate the laity, so they found it necessary to describe their efforts to lay leaders on behalf of their community. Van Neercassel, for example, promised Catholics in

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Groenendijk that he had not neglected them but was working in the best interest of their souls by taking adequate time to find the best pastor for them. Codde also justified sending a certain priest (Father Norman) to Akersloot simply for unspecified “good reasons.” Apostolic vicars thus found it important to assure a community about their good pastoral intentions without compromising their authority and without necessarily giving out specific information. To another Catholic congregation, Codde explained that delays in dispatching a priest were necessary to identify a good match: “Otherwise dangerous things might happen to a community.”12 What did clergy and laity value most in a pastor? Clerical leaders and lay elites lauded a variety of qualities associated with capable priests, such as modesty, industry, faithfulness, and piety, but the two most consistent values in the correspondence stressed the pastor’s role as the instrument of salvation and the exemplar of Christian virtue. The Council of Trent reiterated the teaching that salvation came through the redemptive work of Christ and that priests transmitted redemption on a continuing basis through the sacraments.13 The presence of priests made salvation possible. Van Neercassel notified Catholics in Oudewater that Hugo van Hooff would arrive soon “for the salvation of [their] souls”; he asked those in Veld to receive Gerard Eijlers “as an angel of God . . . sent for [their] salvation”; he depicted another priest as “a fighter in the war for souls.” To Catholics in Lingen, van Neercassel explained that priests “nourish . . . with the food of the sacraments, promoting faith and piety,” and to the leaders in Teckop he asserted that their new priest would “lead [them] to salvation with his work and his words.”14 This discursive comment to Catholics in Teckop hints at the full range of priestly labor that led to salvation, a ministry that encompassed preaching, teaching, leading confession, directing penance, as well as administering sacred rites. As van Neercassel expounded to Catholics in Heerenberg, priests administered the sacraments and God’s word for the sake of the laity.15 For the Dutch secular clergy, education in the life of penitence was inseparable from the sacramental theology affirmed at Trent. Dutch Catholics fully embraced the instrumentality of the priesthood in the sacramental theology of the early modern Roman Catholic Church. The Jesuits adopted a similar view, though their theology was much more Thomistic and thus in

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closer conformity to Trent. They stressed the importance of the priesthood and ritual within the economy of salvation but did not give emphasis to a lifestyle of penitence and internal reflection that the secular clergy did.16 As a guide for local ministry, van Neercassel’s Formula et Modus revealed the emphasis placed on the pastor as teacher, preacher, and confessor. Formula et Modus put forth the expectation that priests should take care in teaching the word of God, explaining all the things necessary for salvation: the Gospels, divine grace, the Ten Commandments, the sacraments, and the creeds and rites of the church. Clergy were to take charge of catechizing the laity, especially those who were “very rude.” In the teaching ministry, priests were to embody the truth by providing a living model of piety, modesty, and virtue to their flocks. The Formula et Modus followed the stipulations for confessors laid down by Rovenius in the 1628 Constitutiones, including the thorough examination of consciences, the referral of all grave sins to the apostolic vicar for absolution, and a demanding stance on heresy, baptism, and marriage. In addition, the Formula et Modus required priests to proclaim “on behalf of [the] bishop, the apostolic vicar,” in the canon of the Mass.17 These expectations about pastoral labor became formalized early in the mission’s history. The secular clergy also considered the physical presence of a priest to be a pedagogical tool that modeled Catholic piety in practice. Balduin Cats remarked to the Hoorn congregation that its new priest, Jacob Spranger, had earned the respect of other priests for his virtue. The term “virtue” recurs quite often in the idealized descriptions of new priests, and the clergy seems to have used it in a fairly expansive manner, embracing both its humanistic meaning of “highly skilled” and its connotations of a conventional Christian notion of piety. Codde likened Father Verschueren’s virtue to his erudition and his being “gifted with many capabilities,” just as van Neercassel defined Father de Bruijn’s virtue as an ability to be an attentive pastor and Father Haskinck’s as “well-founded conversation and gifts.” Yet Gerard van Heussen, in praising the virtue of van Neercassel, called attention to his pious works and spiritual fruit, and van Neercassel himself referred to the virtue of the new priest at Hoorn as having a quality that would inspire the fear of God and create love for the congregation.18 Many Catholics across Europe had called for a higher level of morality

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in the clergy since the late Middle Ages, and by the late seventeenth century clerics and lay folk had come to expect that properly trained priests would exude Christian virtues. At least in the Netherlands, these expectations indicate that the Dutch Catholic Church held high moral standards for its clergy. The secular hierarchy also believed that a virtuous clergy would have a practical pastoral end; that is, a pious clergy would lead to a pious laity. Van Neercassel, for example, advised Catholics at Harderwijk that Father Caster would provide them with a living demonstration of Christian love, which would in turn promote their own holiness and salvation. Similarly, van Neercassel promised the community at Bovenkarspel that its priest would come as a counselor with a liberal soul and thus guide the faithful to holiness.19 The Dutch Catholic hierarchy advocated a thoroughly clerical vision of lay devotion in the Netherlands, as priests were the agents of salvation and the paragons of Christian piety in the local community. The actual conduct of the clergy often fell short of this ideal, and on occasion priests failed to impress the laity with clerical piety. Nevertheless, the fact that the secular hierarchy and the laity shared these expectations indicates that a revived clericalism had taken hold in the Dutch Catholic Church. Accounts of the actual labor of Dutch secular priests provide insight into the expectations of the clergy and into the challenges of pastoral ministry in a marginalized and persecuted confession. One striking aspect of pastoral labor was the rigorous physical burdens involved in pastoral care. Priests, especially those in rural districts and in areas of low Catholic density, had to travel extensively to preach, teach, hear confessions, and administer the sacraments, while sometimes scraping by on a very meager stipend. Not only did parish priests cover a lot of ground, but supervising priests also journeyed long distances in to carry out visitations. To cite but one example, between May 18 and June 18, 1668, van Neercassel conducted a visitation in the region around Cleves and the Veluwe in Gelderland. Over the course of this monthlong circuit, he left his residence in Utrecht and visited congregations and patrons in the Overbetuwe, the region around Cleves and the IJssel valley, including stops in Arnhem, Rhenen, Huissen, Doornenburg, Hulhuizen, Groessen, Zevenaar, Emmerik, Griethuisen (now Griethausen), Wehl, ’s Heerenburg, Cleves, the Veluwe, Doesburg, Deventer, and Zutphen. Often traveling into other areas from the villages,

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van Neercassel preached, taught catechism, heard confessions, administered baptisms and confirmations, adjudicated disputes, upbraided lax clergy, chastised Jesuits, met with patrons, and raised money.20 Even if we assume he used a horse and perhaps occasionally a coach or boat, van Neercassel had to have possessed a vigorous physical constitution. Though no priest had to travel as extensively on a regular basis as van Neercassel did, routine pastoral work nevertheless exacted a physical toll. Catholics in the small town of Goes in Zeeland described their priest, a Jesuit under fire from Vosmeer, as working “without ceasing, despite all the dangers and rigorous edicts; he . . . risked life punishment, worked day in and day out in good and bad weather and despite all the hardship, he administered the sacraments with such industry.” The laity and clergy recognized and appreciated the physical hardiness necessary to save souls, but priests could not always meet those demands. Answering Rovenius’s summons to Utrecht, Leonard Marius, Haarlem canon, answered that the cold weather made it difficult for him to travel. A priest by the name of Groenhout could not even attend a chapter meeting because his legs were in such a painful state that he could not “put a foot on the street.”21 As a result, it often became necessary for the mission to reassign priests based on their health and age. D. van Houten, for example, requested that the Haarlem Chapter relocate him because the weather was too wet in the village of Zijdewind (in North Holland) and his “natural infirmities” were worsening.22 Van Neercassel notified Catholics in Goes that he thought it advisable to send them a “stout” priest, healthy and capable, to replace the sickly Father Kelders. Likewise, Codde replaced Father Marquis because his sickness did not improve but was getting worse, and Father Lemmens because he required a more peaceful life. The inevitable demise of an apostolic vicar necessitated planning, and so Francis Dusseldorp, citing the troubles of Vosmeer’s advanced age and health, conferred with Sasbout about a possible coadjutor who might succeed Vosmeer. The life cycle and health of clergy marked transitions in all congregations, but the political landscape of the Dutch Republic demanded physical vitality in the Catholic priesthood.23 Even the most vigorous of priests, however, encountered and transmitted all sorts of pathogens during their travels across the cool, damp lowlands of the Northern Netherlands. The Dutch clergy compelled

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priests to visit the sick as a work of corporal mercy. Lay Catholics placed great value on priests who faithfully ministered to the sick, and the laity also complained loudly about those who did not.24 Catholics in Oudewater, for example, called several witnesses before a notary to affirm that their priest, Jacob Houtman, a Jesuit, stated he did not wish to visit the sick in the countryside any more. He had served the congregation for eighteen or nineteen years and said and that another priest would need to serve those who were ill. This complaint was a typical one about the Jesuits, though other communities, especially in Zeeland, praised the tireless and dangerous work of the Society of Jesus.25 While it would be almost impossible to trace sickness and disease among Dutch priests, a recurrent occupational hazard was the plague. Leo Noordegraaf and Gerrit Valk, charting references to the plague in Holland from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries, have uncovered several episodes of intense outbreaks in the 1600s.26 The church leadership in the Netherlands required priests to stay on the job in areas hit by the plague and to minister to plague victims. It is possible that not all priests followed this injunction scrupulously, for apostolic vicars and congregations lauded priests who visited those who had contracted the plague. Regardless, the plague was a recurring risk for priests, and many threw themselves into this dangerous work. In 1656 de la Torre reported that forty priests had perished from the plague in the past twenty years, all of whom had contracted it from parishioners. Because these priests paid the ultimate price for ministering to their congregation, de la Torre likened them to martyrs.27 Van Neercassel went beyond de la Torre and actually labeled a priest in Emmerik a martyr for serving his congregation during the plague and then dying from it himself. The Catholics in Emmeloord did not quite label the Franciscan Dominicus van Nes a martyr, but his service during plague outbreaks (during which he contracted the disease himself on two different occasions) impressed them so much that after his death they petitioned van Neercassel for another Franciscan. Cornelius Fabritius, a priest in Groenlo, asked Eggius for additional clerical help because of concerns that the plague was about to strike this village. In the acts of the Haarlem chapter, the secretary recorded that Joannes Bugge, erstwhile secretary, died on September 9, 1636, while providing ministerial support during a plague epidemic in Holland.28 In sum, pastoral ministry among the secular clergy in the Dutch

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Catholic Church acquired legitimacy from the pastoral authority of the apostolic vicar, and this office heavily scrutinized priestly activity through the institutional network of archpriests. Pastoral care among the Dutch clergy laid stress on teaching, preaching, and guiding confessions, all of which were aimed at leading penitent Catholics to salvation. In a land that criminalized Catholic worship, this ministry entailed physical toil, especially in rural areas, as priests journeyed across the districts that made up the Dutch Catholic Church.

Freeing Consciences Catholic piety in the Netherlands under the Holland Mission placed strong emphasis on the spiritual welfare of the individual conscience. An incident in the late seventeenth century shows that the state of the conscience, however, went far beyond the individual penitent. In November 1671, the Catholic pastor at Voorburg, Joannes Verhorst, went to the home of Dirrickie Pieter Corsen, a widow who was gravely ill, in order to provide her with an opportunity for “freedom of conscience.” She refused his service, however, on the grounds that she could not compel her conscience to confess to someone other than her usual confessor, presumably a Jesuit. Verhorst felt “injured” and “defamed” at her rejection, anxious that his honor in the small community where he had served for nine years had been compromised. So he asked two Catholics to go to Corsen’s bedside and take testimony that her refusal to confess to him reflected in no way on his virtue. The sick widow managed to hack out such testimony, stating she did so of her own volition without any compulsion from Verhorst. The pastor then gave her permission to speak with her regular confessor.29 This odd little moment in a small village in southern Holland reveals several connections between the interior process of maintaining a healthy conscience and pastoral practice in the Dutch Catholic Church. First, Dutch Catholics considered confession to a priest as the essential means to free the conscience from the state of sinfulness that alienated one from God.30 From the Catholic sacramental perspective, freedom of conscience had little to do with religious tolerance but rather represented the ongoing internal work of sanctification. Second, inculcating spiritual discipline within a congregation was inseparably linked to the pastoral ethos of the priesthood. One of Verhorst’s chief concerns was

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that Corsen’s preference for another confessor reflected poorly on his own pastoral reputation and threatened his sense of honor in the lay community. Finally, the secular clergy maintained a keen awareness of the boundaries of pastoral authority for the laity. Corsen apparently confessed on a somewhat regular basis to a Jesuit who was not her rightful pastor, at least according to the stipulations of the Holland Mission. Although Verhorst proved cooperative to a very sick woman, he still had to release her from his authority before she could see her confessor. A devotion that stressed freeing the conscience from sin through the sacramental process of confession and penance greatly informed Catholic piety in the Northern Netherlands. As in the case of Corsen and Verhorst, the internal spiritual life of lay Catholics was closely linked to the operational structure of the mission. Both constituted a fundamental way of ordering religious life that protected the church from corruption and led individuals to salvation. A rhythm of prayer, examination, contrition, confession, absolution, and communion conferred grace to the individual, just as the structure of the diocese, with priests working under the supervision of the bishop, established the proper framework for the sacraments. This penchant for order manifested itself in two prevalent themes in the devotional literature aimed at Dutch Catholics: the necessary yet sometimes tense collaboration among pastor and penitent and the damaging effects of heresy. The interiority of the spiritual life represented a prevailing theme among Catholic devotional writers in the Low Countries. Many authors, Dutch, Flemish, and German, wrote for a Dutch audience indirectly by providing resources for pastors and directly by offering devotional guides for the laity. Antwerp and Cologne were two of the most prolific publication centers of the Counter-Reformation; in these areas a lively clandestine trade of materials developed with the northern provinces. Catholic printers operated, albeit with some difficulties, in the Republic. At least a dozen held shop in Amsterdam in the first half of the seventeenth century, and twenty-eight in the second half. Non-Catholic printers, eager for profit, also occasionally produced Catholic literature, though many presses found it necessary to use an Antwerp address to avoid trouble with the authorities.31 Now and then, correspondence from the Haarlem Chapter or from the apostolic

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vicar’s chancery made mention of devotional literature in circulation.32 An examination of this literature provides hints at the pastoral approach to lay devotion and offers a sense of the religious culture that shaped the experience of laymen and laywomen. Writings on conscience and confession stressed both the priest’s role as confessor and individuals’ responsibility to reflect on the state of their souls. The themes in this literature in the Low Countries closely corresponds to the post-Tridentine emphasis across Europe on the centrality of the priest in confession, the interiority of spiritual devotion, and the scrupulous examination of the conscience. Yet these writings, whether formal treatises setting forth the proper sacramental order or handbooks for practical use, also underscore the gender hierarchy of the day and the confessional difference with Protestantism. In asserting the primacy of the clergy, writers presented the priest as the wise spiritual counselor who knew best how to give penitents direction based on their particular spiritual conditions. Rovenius likened the confessor to a physician, teacher, and judge: a priest comforted the anxious penitent, healed the wounds of sin, and roared against the lax backslider. The confessor was to use whatever means and play whatever role necessary to move a wide range of sinners, from the meek to the defiant, to a more holy life. Rovenius’s vision reflected a prevailing emphasis in the genre on conscience and confession.33 This focus on the priest’s role as the spiritual guide for the laity in freeing consciences became even more pronounced in the second half of the seventeenth century. The French Oratorian influence during the tenures of van Neercassel and Codde idealized the priest as the embodiment of Christ; in this role, priests were to instruct ordinary Catholics in the examination of conscience, cultivation of penitence, and renunciation of evil.34 Van Neercassel called on lay folk to entrust their souls to their pastor rather than relying on their corrupt natural understanding. The heavy emphasis on the necessity of contrition in the second half of the seventeenth century made the priest the arbiter of a penitent’s spiritual condition. Van Neercassel ordered, warned, and threatened priests repeatedly not to absolve anyone who failed to convince them that he or she was deeply remorseful and truly repentant. Further, he demanded confessors to judge repentance by the deeds of the penitents and not simply to believe their claims of remorse.35 Thus, over the course of the

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seventeenth century the priest as confessor took on a much more punctilious quality. The role of clergy in confession was also prominent in Jesuit devotional writings, which formed a large component of the devotional literature in the Low Countries. Jesuit writers, such as Johannes Petri, Louis Makeblijde, Martin Boxtel, Jeremias Drexel, Pieter Canisius, and Thomas Villacastin, portrayed the priest as the physician of souls. Boxtel wrote that just as doctors use medical remedies for physical maladies, so confessors dispense spiritual medicine for the conscience. Boxtel, as well as Villacastin, Canisius, and Francis Coster, even suggested that regular confession and spiritual discipline brought about physical benefits.36 Whether the priest was doctor, judge, counselor, or the keeper of the keys, the literature on confession in the Netherlands placed him squarely at the center of Catholic spiritual life. Though the pastor served as the essential guide in lay devotion, individuals bore primary responsibility for cultivating an interior life and turning from the distractions of external things. The preoccupation with an internal, spiritualized piety was not simply a manifestation of the shift from the social character of medieval religious experience to a more modern, private, individualized faith. Lay Catholic piety in the Netherlands was bound up in the corporate body of the local community and possessed a strong appreciation for the universal communion of the Roman Church. Reflecting a Baroque piety common throughout Europe, devotion in the Southern and Northern Netherlands emphasized the bifurcation of the individual, privileging spirituality and rejecting physicality. Devotional guides of every variety called on the faithful to cultivate an internal, mystical devotion and to eschew the pleasures of the body and temptations of the world.37 Rovenius typified this pattern in a set of “spiritual exercises,” The Golden Incense-Burner, which he composed so that Catholics might move toward a deeper love for God. This work offered a daily cycle of meditations around the Nicene Creed, the Ten Commandments, the prayers of the rosary, and other objects of devotion so that Catholics would be able to contemplate spiritual realities more readily throughout their day. Rovenius dedicated almost a fifth of the book to promoting meditation on religious devotion by walking readers through the life and passion of Christ, the virtues of the Virgin Mary, and penitential psalms.38 Writing about the same time, Charles Scribani, the Jesuit

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provincial in Antwerp, produced a set of Christelijcke Oeffeninghe ende Meditatien (Christian Exercises and Meditations) for “internal reflection, the search for understanding, and the movement of the heart to Godly and virtuous things.” According to Scribani, the goal of internal meditation was “to purify the soul from all sins, vices, evil inclinations, and affection for the world and worldly things, such as wealth, honor, and power.” Scribani modeled these meditations after Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, to provide Dutch-speaking Catholics with a series of regular devotions that would cultivate an awareness of sin and a desire for union with God.39 That two writers with two such different perspectives on pastoral ministry promoted a very similar approach to lay piety suggests a broad commitment to interiority in religious devotion. Written about the same time as the guides of Rovenius and Scribani, De interioris hominis reformatione (The Reformation of the Interior Man) by Cornelis Jansen advanced similar themes. In comparison to the exercises of Rovenius and Scribani, the language of Jansen’s work suggests that his audience was much narrower, most likely priests, and his goal more distinct: to inject prayers from the teachings of St. Augustine into clerical devotion. Despite these distinctions in audience and purpose, The Reformation of the Interior Man also stressed the supreme value of nourishing an internal spiritual life in overcoming the corruptions of external temptations. Jansen promoted prayer and devotion to supplant the natural human tendency to concupiscence with an invigorated love for spiritual things.40 That three such different clerics championed regular private devotion bears witness to the ubiquity of spiritual interiority in northern Baroque literature, which cut across Thomistic and Augustinian emphases in theology. A central exercise in the cultivation of the interior life—and an exercise that prepared the penitent for confession—was the examination of conscience. According to devotional writers, a thorough examination of the conscience was necessary for a quality confession, since internal scrutiny revealed sins that might otherwise be overlooked. To obtain absolution for sins and not have them weigh on or endanger the soul after death, one needed to call them to mind and to acknowledge them to a confessor. A regular process of self-examination also served to make one more aware of moral shortcomings, which represented the first step to leading a more virtuous life on earth. Writers often provided categories of sins, such as those forbidden in the Ten Commandments,

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to prompt the mind of a penitent. Rovenius listed a range of categories from the serious (disobeying authorities and engaging in improper discourse) to the trifling (falling asleep in sermons and failing to observe fasts).41 Not only were Catholic laity and clergy to recall their sins, but they also had to develop a heartfelt contrition for them and a genuine resolution to avoid the particular moral failing in the future.42 The call to contrition assumed a central place in sacramental penance during the vicariates of van Neercassel and Codde. Van Neercassel warned priests that absolution given to someone who was not genuinely contrite “would not lead to salvation, but to danger.” For him, as for most Catholic leaders in post-Tridentine Europe, it was critical to the salvation of the laity that priests instill true penitence in their flocks. Remission of sin could not be given unless the priest was convinced that penitents had turned away not only from sinful acts but also from the evil affections that caused the misdeeds. The contrition necessary for absolution came from the rational mind and not the senses. Contrition and penitence were functions of the will, leading to “a hatred, displeasure, detestation, and abomination for sin.” Though remorse was certainly one sign of penitence, sorrow had to be accompanied by a genuine love for God that manifested itself in repentance. True penitents, according to van Neercassel, rejoiced in the exercise of discipline. Consequently, he charged priests to judge for themselves whether someone was truly contrite and willing to turn from his or her sins, even as they recognized that it often took time for a sinner to cultivate true penitence.43 This demand is not unlike that of Dutch Calvinist consistories, which, from the late sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries, routinely suspended sinners from communion and would not permit them to return until they confessed their sins publicly, made restitution, demonstrated remorse, and turned away from the offense.44 Jesuits also emphasized the importance of daily self-examination for a proper confession and healthy spiritual life. Drexel suggested that penitents begin by asking for divine guidance and then offered a list of questions to stimulate memory. Likewise, Petri offered “confession points” as a checklist during confession, but he also offered practical advice, such as speaking clearly and enumerating specific sins. Jesuits, however, did not oblige confessors to be as stringent in policing the demeanor of penitents as the secular clergy were.45 The Jesuit pastoral

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approach should not be understood, as it often has been, as simply confession and penance without contrition or, as contemporary critics charged, easy absolution. Rather, the Society worked at developing the moral conscience of the laity, so individuals would identify sin more readily in their own lives. Accordingly, the Jesuits placed great emphasis on the efficacy of the sacraments in reconciling the soul to God.46 Catholic writers warned that a preoccupation with the body and its pleasures threatened one’s salvation and could even lead to heresy. In deriding female vanity, Drexel repeated the story that in ancient times “women adorned their faces with crocodile excrement” to enhance their beauty. He also contended that a fixation on the body gives the devil the opportunity to snare the soul.47 According to Robert Bellarmine, the stimulation of the lower regions in carnal temptations corrupted the rational capacities of the mind so that carnality would lead to heresy. Likewise, Cornelis Jansen acknowledged the power of the nether regions, contending that the “body’s shameful acts contaminate the human soul” and that sexual desire causes internal tumult, which leads to moral destruction. Rovenius encouraged laypeople to avoid indulging the body with food and drink, which he believed would distract one from a devoted spiritual life.48 Francis Coster applied this view historically to the appearance of the first generation of Protestant leaders. He maintained that Luther, Bucer, Calvin, Beza, and others were led away by their “senses” (meaning sexual desires) from their priestly calling and the holy church, giving themselves over to a life of debauchery. This sensual abduction made them helpless against irrepressible anger and a raging libido, which led them into adulterous relations with female penitents and sodomy with young men.49 Writing from Antwerp, Adrian van Meerbeck attributed a quotation to Luther in which he confessed, “I am of flesh and bone and can no less endure without women as without wine.”50 For van Meerbeck and many Catholic writers, this example only confirmed what they already knew: heretics were people whose “loins” and “belly” completely ruled them. This understanding of the relationship between physicality and spirituality in explanations of heresy also gave rise to all sort of bodily analogies comparing false belief to lethal illnesses, such as leprosy, cancer, and the plague.51 Leaders in the Holland Mission harbored concerns like these about the practical application of ministry, as priests carried out a number of

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pastoral duties to women. Apostolic vicars and Haarlem deans believed that women posed spiritual dangers for priests and stipulated that priests were to avoid prolonged and unnecessary contact with women, especially in the confessional. Priests were to hear confessions of women quickly, avoid being overly familiar with them, and forbid them from handling the body of Christ. These prescriptions had been inscribed into the pastoral ministry of the Dutch clergy since the earliest days of Sasbout Vosmeer. Throughout the seventeenth century, leaders of the mission, from the apostolic vicar to senior pastors, would reiterate these injunctions in letters, admonitions, formal pastoral statements, and treatises on confession.52 Ironically, this mandate came in a period in which church leaders in the Holland Mission were stressing the importance of a thorough, scrupulous confession for a sanctified life and for salvation.53 Nevertheless, women did play an important role in the development of the Dutch Catholic Church, as elite laywomen became important sources of patronage and as spiritual maidens educated children, visited the sick, and sometimes assisted at the altar. Apostolic vicars reached out to laywomen, particularly when the possibility of patronage loomed. Vosmeer and van Neercassel seemed especially adept at offering counsel and comfort to elite women. Van Neercassel assured Neeltje Ariens, a spiritual maiden who suffered from unrest about her salvation, that this uneasiness was the work of Satan. Van Neercassel urged her to see her confessor right away. Later van Neercassel offered comfort to Madame van Bronchorst, who had lost her son, by reminding her he had exchanged this miserable temporal existence for eternal salvation.54 Most of the devotional literature written for Dutch Catholic women was directed to the spiritual maidens. Written largely by male religious, these devotional books prescribed a spiritual regimen under the direction of a confessor for the maidens, whose state was not recognized in canon law. The prohibitions against monasticism in the Netherlands gave rise to this new semireligious state, and so it became necessary, especially in post-Tridentine Catholic culture, to order the lives of the virgins. No formal rule or universal order appeared during this time; instead a significant body of literature appeared that generally sought to establish a specific identity for the virgins by balancing their obligations to family and community with their spiritual disciplines. The priorities that emerged from this literature demanded a strict discipline of prayer,

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self-examination, and meditation under the spiritual direction of male confessors. One female religious described priests as “angels” who “protect them [virgins] from the dread of living Godless lives.” Yet virgins were also granted opportunities for active pastoral service as catechism instructors, visitors of the sick, and special assistants to priests. In this way, spiritual virgins could give themselves wholly to God.55 The close proximity between male priests and female virgins ran counter to the pastoral mandates established for confessors and laywomen. Virgins had intimate spiritual relationships with their confessors. Assisting priests sometimes required travel to congregations in the countryside, and sometimes a virgin served as a resident housekeeper to a priest. This close contact produced all sorts of rumors and accusations; secular and religious clergy regularly charged the other with improper conduct toward the women. The leaders of the mission certainly paid attention to the activities of the virgins and took care to protect priests and the women themselves from the omnipresent perils of female sexuality. For example, Cornelius Arnoldi, a priest in Haarlem, wrote to Eggius in 1594, complaining about Anna, a virgin in Utrecht, who was avoiding contact with her confessor and was susceptible to men who would “lead her in the way of the flesh.”56 The virgins themselves also expressed concerns about their sexual honor, though they tended to identify sexual danger from bad priests and wayward women rather than any natural female penchant for carnal relations. Margareta van Velsen and Elsie Claes, virgins in Leiden, wrote van Neercassel in 1685 to protest the assignment of a Father Verschueren, because he preyed on young spiritual virgins. These religious women had a keen sensitivity for their reputation and were quick to denounce those among them who transgressed norms. Josijna van der Bouchorst in Leiden, for example, declared her outrage at a fellow virgin, Beatris Cornelis, who “proclaimed herself a married daughter, which means she is a bastard sister and has made us bastards.”57 Though spiritual virgins often were wary of certain priests, they generally held their confessors, and priests in general, in high esteem. The Haarlem virgins wrote Rovenius in 1643, lauding two confessors who had served the community since the early seventeenth century, Cornelis Arentszoon and Judocus Cats. They described Arentszoon as “wise and experienced in the spiritual life.” The death of Cats as well as Arentszoon had “filled their hearts with sadness” because the virgins

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had become “the spiritual children” of these priests as a result of their holy work in preaching, directing the spiritual lives of the women, and embodying piety and devotion. Joke Spaans’s recent study of over two hundred obituaries written by Catharina (Trijn) Jans Oly, who belonged to the large Haarlem community of spiritual virgins, reveals the abiding affection the virgins had for their confessors and the deep respect they had for the priesthood. According to Spaans, the virgins regarded the priests of the mission as models of Counter-Reformation piety and faithful guides to salvation.58 Finally, the writing on confession and conscience also sought to create a clear sense of Catholic identity by stressing the theological differences between Protestantism and the Roman faith. Because losing members to—or winning them back from—heretical churches formed the most daunting obstacle to Catholic church growth, it made sense for Catholic writers to engage priests and laity on the dangers that heresy presented. This preoccupation with heresy, especially in the heightened polemical atmosphere of confessional Europe and the pluralistic Dutch environment, introduced a sharpened awareness of religious difference, which in turn made Catholics more informed about their own belief system. The vast religious literature incessantly warned Catholics about the dangers of heresy and the theological blasphemies in Protestant denominations. Heresy’s primary menace, according to almost all Catholic writers, was its power to transform individuals, blinding them to the truth and leading them away from God to hell. Robert Bellarmine, for example, maintained that heresy was far more serious than all other offenses because it extinguished the light of faith and caused a person to walk in darkness. Bellarmine’s position was a standard one in the Catholic Church and shared by theologians, polemicists, and priests in the Northern Netherlands. Though expressing themselves in a variety of ways, other Catholic writers depicted the transforming effects of heresy in stark terms for laypeople, stressing that it deformed body and soul; gave victims over to illicit sexuality; induced bitter cruelty against God’s people (especially priests); and fomented diabolical falsehood, sedition, and hatred of truth. As Bellarmine put it, “heresy is to the soul what the plague is to the body.”59 The usual advice from polemicists to the laity was to avoid talking with heretics about religion because of their deceitful nature, though

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leaders of the Roman Church wanted to inoculate Catholics against the principal arguments of heretics. The battle against Protestants had raged across Europe since the early sixteenth century, but it was not until the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries that the arsenal of Catholic polemics started to fire against Protestantism with full force. By the mid-seventeenth century, handbooks that reiterated many of the chief condemnations of Protestantism began to appear in Dutch. The most prevalent critiques disputed Protestant claims to tradition and authority. With regard to tradition, Caesar Baronius’s multivolume church history answered the historical challenges set forth by Protestants, such as the collaborators of the Magdeburg Centuries, Johannes Sleidan, John Foxe, and Jean Crespin. Baronius attempted to refute the notion that the church had become corrupted or changed drastically over the course of the Middle Ages, by arguing in painstaking detail that the Roman Catholic Church of the sixteenth century was identical to the Christian church of the first century. Baronius pressed the case that Protestants, in contrast, were reckless innovators who had no claim to catholicity or apostolicity. Several Dutch writers, including Dionysius Mudzaert and Adrian van Meerbeeck, followed Baronius’s method as they attempted to stress the historical continuity of the Catholic tradition in the Low Countries and the novelty of Protestantism.60 In this vein, Catholic apologists never missed an opportunity to brand Protestant denominations as innovations and to question where their churches had been for 1,600 years. A second line of attack targeted the basic Protestant position on religious authority, sola scriptura, which recognized scripture as the sole source of doctrine. In the Northern Netherlands, Adrian and Pieter Walenburch became the leading controversialists in the second half of the seventeenth century on this issue. The Walenburchs, along with Hugo Francis van Heussen, argued extensively that Protestants derived their doctrine not from scripture but from their own confessional creeds. For example, in Den Eenvoudigen Catholyck (the Simple Catholic), Adrian and Pieter Walenburch devised a dialogue between a Calvinist (Cornelius) and a Catholic (Thomas) on the relationship between doctrine and scripture. In a typical case, Cornelius objects to the Mass not because there is any scriptural teaching forbidding it but because his minister tells him it is not in the Heidelberg catechism.61 Eventually, Cornelius admits that scripture does not openly condemn the Mass.

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The critique of the Protestant vision of religious authority, then, charged that sola scriptura was an insufficient basis for religious doctrine and a ruse to justify the dogma in the new Protestant creeds. Thus, the principles that shaped religious devotion in the Dutch Catholic Church conformed closely to the priorities of the Baroque church in northern Europe. Influenced by the Augustinian currents in the Low Countries, Dutch Catholic writers and apostolic vicars promoted the centrality of the clergy in confessional and pastoral ministry, laid stress on the cultivation of an interior spiritual life centered around the scrutiny of the conscience, and inculcated in Catholics a sharpened sense of confessional difference with Calvinism.

Putting Piety into Practice The agents who put the devotional program of the Holland Mission into practice were the priests working in the vineyard of the Lord. Throughout the network of Catholic communities in the Northern Netherlands, priests attempted to do the hard work of correcting the laity, preaching the word of God, and teaching the fundamentals of the Roman faith. The disciplinary agenda of the Counter-Reformation was unabashedly clerical, so one of the critical priorities in implementing reform was to enjoin obedience in a land where laymen and -women could freely choose to walk away from the Roman Church. The hierarchical nature of the Roman Catholic Church made obedience to a mediatorial clergy crucial to the functioning of a well-ordered congregation throughout all Catholic lands. As the Holland Mission began the task of reestablishing a Catholic presence in the northern provinces in the early seventeenth century, Vosmeer remarked to Francis Dusseldorp that prosperity would come to the Dutch Catholic Church only if the people would submit to their priests.62 For the Dutch Catholic laity, obedience to the secular clergy required an ongoing discipline of humility, because priests took a strict approach to confession and penance. There are indications that early on, as Vosmeer, Cousebant, Eggius, and others were reorganizing pastoral care, they intended for priests to take their role as confessor seriously. The Cologne nuncio, Frangipani, pointed out in his Directorium Ecclesiasticae Disciplinae the urgency for resident priests to administer

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the sacraments scrupulously, lest the plague of heresy and superstition continue to ravage the church. Rovenius stipulated in his Constitutiones that “priests should take care to administer the sacraments before all with a pure conscience,” and he urged priests not to absolve penitents rashly but to weigh their sins carefully.63 The stringent disciplinary approach of the secular clergy became increasingly rigorist and identified with Augustinian theology in the second half of the century. Van Neercassel ordered priests to look for signs of sincere contrition and repentance before granting absolution, recommending the canons of Carlo Borromeo for weighing the gravity of sin and meting out penance. Mission leaders commanded priests to instruct people in diligence in confession and communion so that Catholics would take on the spirit of Christ as they partook of the body of Christ.64 Frequently in correspondence, van Neercassel praised St. Augustine’s view of grace, noting to Theodore van Blockhoven in 1685 that this view “harmonize[d] extremely well with the discipline of penitence.”65 Seminaries trained priests—and van Neercassel and Codde constantly reminded them—to inculcate in their congregations a penitential attitude, a revulsion of sin, and a devotion to penitence. Van Neercassel made this case in his Amor Poenitens, which Pieter Melis (president at Pulcheria) claimed would show the “radiant light of discipline in an age of laxity and indulgence.”66 Many priests practicing in the mission field took this hard line toward discipline. In 1691 Justus Modersohn, pastor in Amsterdam, interviewed several boys about Father Steenhoven, who gave sermons and catechisms at an orphanage. Apparently, some individuals sympathetic to religious orders had charged Steenhoven with Jansenism. In answering the accusation that Steenhoven did not teach from the catechism, the boys responded to the contrary that he often appealed to St. Augustine in explaining doctrine and presented the church father in his own words from Epistle 104. They responded to another charge by stating that Steenhoven had declared he would not absolve someone from sin unless that person had genuinely turned away from it. Further, they asserted Steenhoven had not criticized any other priest of the misdeed of going lightly on sin, nor had he ever made mention of a Jesuit or a Franciscan. But the boys did note that Steenhoven warned them that when they left the orphanage, it would be important for them to

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choose an earnest confessor.67 Throughout the second half of the seventeenth century, the severity of secular priests became a standard complaint, and as a result, many congregations declared their preference for a religious to serve as their pastor.68 The attempt to apply discipline in a rigorous manner in the seventeenth century was fraught with difficulties. It attracted criticism from Catholic theologians who advanced a divergent method of confession and penitence, and disciplinary scrupulousness often provoked hostility from the laity. Not only did lay folk often resist their priest, but priests could also compromise themselves in ways that undermined their moral stature. Van Neercassel, for example, removed Father Doornick from his post in the village of Niedorp for concubinage and frequent drunkenness. The congregation strongly protested Doornick’s removal, leading van Neercassel to conclude that the congregation there had become too attached to their priest and too detached from devotion to God. Certainly, not all priests kept the spiritual interests of the laity ahead of their own personal ambitions. Sometimes, in fact, a priest’s attachment or even dependence upon a family influenced him to soften the rigor of discipline. For this reason van Neercassel excoriated Willem de Swaen, pastor in Gouda, for granting absolution to a Catholic who had married a heretic without obtaining permission from the apostolic vicar and for not imposing a period of penitence on the transgressor.69 Inculcating obedience and punishing sin proved frequently to be tricky business, requiring a blend of managerial aplomb and rhetorical obsequiousness. When encountering resistance or division, priests consistently sought to maintain clerical prerogatives and to keep lay influence in ecclesiastical matters to a minimum. Three priests in Dordrecht directed a letter to Vosmeer in 1611, complaining that locals lacked respect for the clergy and the apostolic vicar on an unspecified issue. The Dordrecht priests growled, “The laity ought not entangle themselves in ecclesiastical affairs or controversies.” These priests believed this would only lead to bitterness and turn people away from discipline. Priests were to “instruct in word and deed” and lay folk were to obey. Yet the priests in Dordrecht realized the obvious insecurity of their position in a Protestant society and recognized that some “brayed loudly against church discipline.” Given these limitations, they conceded to Vosmeer that pastors “should not give the appearance of severity” but should judge with grace and forbearance.70

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Inducing the laity to be obedient required more than a compassionate demeanor, for clergy had to take seriously the concerns of local communities. Van Neercassel delegated a commission to look into unspecified complaints about a priest in Leeuwarden in 1665, and after the delegation submitted its report to him, he drafted a pastoral letter to the community. He admitted that the problems raised were “most just,” but the laity “were falling into weakness and giving over to old habits” that would give rise to scandal. Accordingly, van Neercassel asked the laity not to stray from church authorities, because priests only wished to serve them.71 In cases like the one in Leeuwarden, when a local priest and lay parties reached an impasse, the pastor commonly sought assistance outside the community by appealing to the archpriest to intervene or to conduct an investigation.72 If the archpriest was unable to effect reconciliation, the case went up the hierarchy to the provicaris, the Haarlem dean, or apostolic vicar. Earlier in the century, lay leaders in Leeuwarden came into an intractable conflict with their priest, Martin Armandi in 1612. Vosmeer sent a commission, headed by Sibrand Sixtius, archpriest of Amsterdam, to investigate. Sixtius initially threatened the entire congregation with excommunication but later downgraded the warning to several recalcitrant individuals who were accused of “disrupting the peace and order” of the community. By virtue of his position in Amsterdam, Sixtius often chaired investigative delegations. Jacob Zaffius, dean of the Haarlem Chapter, dispatched him to the village of Langestreek in 1616, to negotiate with two priests (perhaps regulars) who had conducted “secret meetings” without ever obtaining permission from the chapter. Zaffius reminded the Catholics in Langestreck that they were not to follow after renegade priests and were to obey the chapter’s judgment.73 The widespread attention given to clerical leadership and lay discipline formed one component of a broad educational campaign to instill piety among Dutch Catholics. In concert with their pastoral work as confessors, priests placed a great deal of emphasis on preaching the word of God and teaching the Roman catechism. A strong preaching tradition had been part of Dutch religious culture since the late Middle Ages. The Brethren of Common Life had attracted large followings throughout the Northern Netherlands, in part because of the brothers’ devotion to preaching. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries,

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Christian humanists promoted learned sermons on practical piety for the laity. Over the course of the Reformation period, emphasis on spreading the word of God accompanied and helped account for the successes of Anabaptism and Calvinism. This Dutch legacy grew out of a general European culture of preaching from friars and humanists in the late Middle Ages to Catholic and Protestant Reformers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.74 Therefore, priests’ efforts at delivering the word of God through sermons in the Netherlands belonged to a deep-seated and abiding medium in Dutch and European religious culture. The work of preaching occupied a large slice of a priest’s pastoral ministry. Under the protection of lay patrons, in churches, attics, and out-of-the-way places, priests gave sermons to communities of Catholics. Because it was imperative for Catholics to remain inconspicuous, their gatherings were necessarily small, requiring priests to travel between locations and to conduct more services than they would have otherwise. According to the reports filed by apostolic vicars, Haarlem deans, and religious prefects, most resident priests preached at least twice on Sundays and feast days. The preparation, delivery, and subsequent explications of the sermons consumed much of a priest’s time and energy. Joke Spaans’s recent study of spiritual virgins in Haarlem points out that they highly valued priests’ sermons. According to Spaans, Oly regarded the sermons of Judocus Cats as “well-prepared, learned homilies, firmly founded on biblical and patristic authority rather than on scholastic theology, which he learned by heart, and delivered apparently with all the rhetorical flourishes and emphatic gesturing required by contemporary notions of effective public oratory, ‘offering up his sweat in the pulpit’. . . sometimes for hours on end, even when in poor health.”75 The emphasis on preaching and the ability of priests to deliver sermons in an effective manner undoubtedly grew over time. At the end of the sixteenth century, the chief organizers of pastoral care in southern Holland scrambled to move priests around just to meet with groups of Catholics and administer the chief rites of the church. In Vosmeer’s report of 1602, he mentioned the movement of priests through the small gatherings of Catholics primarily in Holland and Utrecht. The report by Vosmeer concentrated on the priestly work of dispensing sacraments and recounting the state of local communities in the dangerous

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times of the late sixteenth century. With priests in such short supply, it is hard to imagine that most lay Catholics received any significant exposure to preaching by clergy. Vosmeer’s only references to preaching observed that Catholics “longed for the preaching of the word of God” and noted that the laity met together to read sermons.76 These homilies probably came from published collections imported from the southern Low Countries and Cologne. Henry Adriani, chaplain of an almshouse in Antwerp, published a collection of sermons for each week of the year, basing them on the lectionary. This collection circulated widely in the northern provinces. Congregations could also use the wide variety of sermon collections put together by Francis Coster, which concentrated on the Gospels and the Pauline epistles. As the seminaries in Cologne and Louvain began to turn out priests in the early seventeenth century, clerical preaching warranted a great deal of comment from mission leaders and from the laity. Rovenius’s 1616 description of pastoral care drew attention to the extensive preaching ministry of the clergy and the fruit it was bearing in the number of conversions, renewed members, and communicants and in the fervency of devotion. Van Neercassel claimed in his visitation report of 1664 that the sermons of priests were “of great value to the indoctrination of common folk.” While it is apparent that these reports placed the secular clergy in the best possible light, it is also clear that preaching had become an important engine in pastoral ministry by the mid-1620s.77 All subsequent reports by Rovenius, de la Torre, van Neercassel, and Codde emphasized the preaching ministry of the secular clergy.78 Dutch clergy received frequent reminders from superiors and the laity of the importance of preaching faithfully.79 These directives call attention to the educational function of Dutch Catholic preaching in the seventeenth century. During visitations, delegations, archpriests, and even apostolic vicars examined priests and attended their sermons. In visitations conducted by Haarlem canons, the examiners asked the laity about the quality of priests’ sermons. Throughout the Low Countries, instructions and admonitions to priests on the pedagogical value of preaching were inscribed as a regular matter of course in pastoral letters, injunctions and mandates, ordination documents, and grants of pastoral faculty. One particularly lucid example of the topos of teaching was the 1648 authorization for Hendrik Velthoen (Alticollense president) to hear confessions and preach in the Mechelen diocese. Attached

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to the brief authorization was a printed set of guidelines for hearing confessions and preaching, which stipulated that priests must use their sermons to teach the necessary elements of salvation, such as a proper understanding of the Gospels, religious images, prayers, the Ten Commandments, the sacraments, the doctrine of the church and of Christ, feast days, and the necessity of confession and communion. These detailed instructions reflected the priorities of Rovenius and van Neercassel, as they put forth constitutional statements about the Dutch Catholic Church. Both apostolic vicars urged priests to give special attention to preaching as a means of educating the laity in the habits of deeper faith and piety.80 Preaching thus functioned as a strategy for teaching Catholics about their distinct identity in a society ruled by heretics. Vosmeer claimed in 1602 that lay folk longed for the preaching of the word of God, an assertion one might expect from a cleric hopeful for stronger support from superiors in Rome. No doubt this motive played into his pragmatic interest, but the correspondence from laity later in the seventeenth century lends weight to Sasbout’s claim. Interviews conducted in the 1670s and 1680s by the Holland Mission in the area around Rijswijk, Voorburg, and Wassenaar (in South Holland) reveal that people had clear memories of past priests and regarded sermons as important instruments in spiritual growth. Cornelis Claeren, sixty-eight years old, testified that he moved to Voorburg in 1616 and remembered hearing Fathers Stalpert van der Wiel and van der Uten preach the word of God in houses that he could still identify. Seven others, two of whom were in their seventies, declared they had vivid memories of Father Stalpert van der Wiele’s sermons as well.81 Congregations often specifically requested an effective preacher or one who could educate them in doctrine, as frequently as communities voiced their approval or objection to the sermons of priests to their superiors.82 The laity and clergy expected quality preaching in order to instruct minds and stir souls, a demand that points to a lay-clerical collaboration at a high level of confessionalization in the Holland Mission under the apostolic vicars. The pastoral ministry of the Dutch clergy encompassed a range of work—administering sacraments, hearing confession, directing penance, and preaching—which ultimately constituted a broad educational program. Providing a living example of Christian penitence and virtue, priests prompted Catholics to examine their consciences, compelled

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them to become penitent, and instructed them from the pulpit in the rudiments of the Roman faith. All of these ministries ultimately aimed to teach piety or doctrine. Perhaps the most straightforward means of teaching doctrine, complementing all of the other ministries, was catechetical instruction. Because of political conditions in the Republic, catechetical instruction fell into female hands, especially in the early period, when the shortage of priests was most acute. Teaching Catholics about the basics and rationale of Roman doctrine assumed importance in the Netherlands, since Calvinism held a monopoly on public religious observance. Not only did Catholics come into close everyday contact, or live with, all types of Protestants, but also Dutch law required all public school teachers to belong to the Reformed Church. Since schoolmasters gave instruction in the Dutch (Calvinist) Confession of Faith and Heidelberg Catechism, Catholic children schooled in public institutions would have become quite familiar with Protestant doctrines.83 The exposure of Catholics to steady doses of Calvinism could only have given the Holland Mission a sense of urgency about catechetical instruction. In 1622 Rovenius wrote that “the prosperity of the Republic and the conversion of the Fatherland depends in good measure on the solid instruction of the youth in the basics of the faith.”84 Consequently, as the pastoral corps started to show growth in the 1620s, the leaders of the mission began to list teaching the catechism as a task of local priests. Rovenius’s Constitutiones of 1628 commanded priests to catechize the young, “using the catechism approved and disseminated by us [the mission] in this territory.” In keeping with his strict sense of pastoral authority over the Holland Mission, Rovenius would not permit anyone, “especially priests,” to catechize without his approval.85 Given the difficulty he had in controlling who administered sacraments, this declaration seems to be nothing more than rhetorical wordplay aimed at religious orders rather than any realistic policy. Van Neercassel’s Formula et Modus also drew attention to a priest’s teaching ministry. The document required a priest to detail his experiences in catechism instruction, proficiency in explaining the scripture, ability in imparting knowledge for salvation, skill in handling questions from simple folk, and wisdom in refuting heresies. Similarly, van Neercassel’s Constitutiones directed the clergy to instruct people in the proper practice of confession, penance, and the Eucharist and to institute a regular

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program of catechism lessons.86 Therefore, as Catholic pastoral care reappeared throughout the provinces, the leadership of the Dutch Catholic Church regarded catechetical instruction as a vital pastoral ministry. While catechism instruction fell under the pastoral aegis of the clergy, the actual responsibility for most catechetical education, especially of children, fell to spiritual virgins or laywomen. Visitation reports always described the preaching efforts of priests but rarely mentioned any work in catechizing children. This silence about catechetical instruction by priests, combined with the literature’s emphasis on sermons, suggests that clergy gave much more energy to preaching and less so to teaching. A variety of other sources note that spiritual virgins carried out a significant portion of catechetical instruction in Catholic communities. In some areas where priests were particularly scarce, such as Friesland, Zeeland, and Gelderland, the virgins had the sole responsibility for catechism lessons. Even married women taught in Friesland. In situations with a more prominent priestly presence, namely, in the cities of Holland and in Utrecht, virgins worked in conjunction with or under the direction of priests. These women taught in congregations directed by religious orders as well as by secular priests, serving with Franciscans in Leiden and Jesuits in Utrecht, for example. Throughout the northern provinces, spiritual virgins became associated with catechism instruction, either shouldering the responsibility themselves or working under the direction of regular or secular priests.87 As a result of the shortage of priests, then, teaching Catholic doctrine to children became a primary vocation of the spiritual virgins, a calling that gained the attention of Calvinist ministers and governmental authorities. Three maidens, Margarita Wessels, Jaeingije Middelcoop, and Hendrickje Cnobbaert, testified before a notary in Culemborg in 1685 that they taught the Catholic catechism to children. Throughout the seventeenth century, Reformed ministers complained about the presence and work of the maidens, just as anti-Catholic edicts in the 1630s and 1640s singled the women out for running schools and teaching “papist superstition” to young people.88 Even as opponents of Catholicism recognized the educational function of the virgins, Catholic lay folk also commented on church growth that resulted from the

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women’s work in teaching the catechism to youth and children. Contemporary sources do not divulge the manner in which any Catholic teacher conducted catechism lessons, so pedagogy and interaction between the virgins and the students remain in obscurity. Marit Monteiro does point out that the women taught children songs to help them remember important points of their faith.89 As a result, feminine labor helped fuel the expansion of Catholicism in the seventeenth-century Netherlands. Whether led by male clerics or spiritual virgins, catechism instruction became more regularized in the 1620s under Rovenius’s organizing hand. Before then, it is not clear to what extent catechetical instruction took place, nor even what materials were used. In his Constitutiones, Rovenius declared, “We have published in our language a small catechism for the children, which we command to be the only one used in the future to teach children. Also we will provide a large catechism for youths on Sundays.” The catechism to which Rovenius referred was most likely the one produced by the secretary of the Haarlem Chapter, Joannes Bugge, under the pseudonym Christian van den Berge; it was titled simply Catholyke Catechismus of Kort Onderwys van de Christelyke Leeringe (Catholic Catechism or A Short Instruction in Christian Doctrine).90 The content and the arrangement of the van den Berge catechism was very similar to other Catholic manuals, even Jesuit ones, with the one major exception that the Catholic Catechism contained a much more extensive section on heresy and possessed a sharper polemical tone.91 No doubt this distinction stemmed from the fact that Catholic children received a great deal of exposure to Calvinism. Rovenius stated his preference for the van den Berge catechism over the ( Jesuit) Mechelen Catechism because the van den Berge version enabled “Catholics in these lands to mix more appropriately with nonCatholics.” The van den Berge catechism remained the standard one used by the secular clergy until the end of the seventeenth century.92 Rovenius stipulated that all religious orders and secular priests were to use this catechism, though it appears that the Jesuits employed their own catechisms. The most important Jesuit catechisms circulating in the Netherlands were ones written by Pieter Canisius (1556) and Louis Makeblijde (1607), who served in Delft. It seems likely, therefore, that the catechism in use depended on whether a religious or secular pastor

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operated the station. The spiritual virgins at work in a congregation pastored by a secular priest would have used Rovenius’s catechism, while those serving under a Jesuit would have employed one produced by the order.93 Over the course of the seventeenth century, Catholics supplemented catechisms with a variety of educational materials aimed at teaching basic points of doctrine to nonelite folk. The edict of December 1581 noted the profusion of “scandalous books and songbooks” for Catholics, which were causing “uproar and disruption for the common folk.” This particular injunction, like other anti-Catholic legislation, reappeared periodically from the end of the sixteenth and over the course of the seventeenth centuries.94 Sensitive to all manifestations of Roman devotion, Calvinist consistories frequently complained to city governments from the 1570s to the 1630s about Catholic books and masses.95 Priests and Catholics traveling from the Southern Netherlands often secretly transported these materials into the north. Adrianus Joannis, a priest on his way to Leiden, wrote to Sasbout in 1592 that he would bring with him books for children “so they [could] read of the fundamentals of the Holy Church.”96 Several examples from this educational genre give some indication of how the mission attempted to present the Roman faith and church to children. One type of work was a sermon book written to help parents explain scripture to their children; one such book was Sondaeghs Schole (Sunday School ) by Heyman Jacobszoon. Sunday School provided the gospel reading for one liturgical year, with a commentary or minihomily to explain the passage and its application to contemporary society. The commentaries supply plenty of moral exhortations to adopt the traditional sort of Christian piety common to the seventeenth century. The writer, however, also uses every opportunity to warn children about the evils of this world and the importance of confession. In a passage from Luke 3 in which Jesus preached repentance and forgiveness throughout Galilee, Jacobszoon remarked that true Christians must have heartfelt penitence for salvation and not simply live a better life, as Luther taught. In the parable of the sower, from Matthew 10, the seeds that land on the fertile ground represent martyrs. The seeds yielded grains of wheat “which were ground through the [martyrs’] torments so that they brought forth good bread.”97

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Songs reinforced these messages and implanted the tenets of the Roman religion in the minds of Catholic children. Songbooks proliferated throughout the Netherlands as spiritual maidens taught boys and girls spiritual songs to inculcate in the children good doctrine and to ward off heresy. One song book, Een Gheestelijck Lust Hoofken (A Spiritual Pleasure Garden), attempted to supplant youths’ perennial attraction to worldly songs by offering godly melodies that would return young minds to the paths of their Christian forefathers. The anonymous writer identified these worldly songs with heretics: “Troubadours . . . who are heretics with sweet sounding tunes and confront everybody to the ruin of many.” The songbook contained hundreds of songs in praise of the catechism, God, Mary, Jesus, the sacraments, and the ultimate glory of a penitential life.98 Perhaps written for use by Jesuits, another songbook, Geestelycke Harmonie (Spiritual Harmony), begins with a selection that admonishes the young to absorb the catechism: “I wish to bring / you closer to virtue / and do not avoid me / come to me young youth / come hear the catechism / and come not with jolliness / and if you do not wish to fail / it will bring you profit.” Designed for use in liturgical seasons, the book contains selections for Christmas, Lent, and Easter, as well as songs about the Virgin Mary, St. Ignatius of Loyola, and St. Francis Xavier.99 To gain some understanding of the progress of the Catholic campaign of confessionalization, we should examine the trajectory of growth and decline of Dutch Catholicism in the seventeenth century. In his 1622 general report, Phillip Rovenius reiterated the overarching ambition of the Holland Mission: “to nurture Catholics in their faith and lead the wayward back to the bosom of the church.”100 Faith in diocesan institutions and hope for a political restoration for Catholicism in the Netherlands guided the leadership of the mission in attempting to accomplish these objectives. Eschewing a missionary strategy, apostolic vicars did not make an effort to saturate the provinces with priests, nor did the mission try any sort of mass conversion. Rather, priests reached out to lapsed and former Catholics from the congregational enclaves scattered throughout the Republic. One consequence of this diocesan approach was uneven, gradualist growth, just as one underlying assumption was that public restoration of Catholicism would occur. Peter van Rooden has astutely observed that “Catholics seldom

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held out hope for slow, incremental political change that would eliminate discrimination; rather when they did hope, they hoped for a political revolution.”101 Within this framework, the conversion of heretics or lapsed Catholics meant a great deal to the leadership of the Dutch Catholic Church. Pulcheria, Alticollense, and later Hogenheuvel put stress on disputations and controversial theology. Correspondence among priests indicates that conversions were never far from most clerics’ minds. Joseph Bergaigne, Franciscan prefect, recommended a colleague to the Haarlem Chapter, noting that he labored zealously for the conversion of souls. Complaining about the dissensions brought on by Jesuits, two secular priests in Dordrecht conceded, however, that the “fathers . . . brought forth great fruit in these lands,” results that had roused the fury of heretics.102 News about “fruit” from the missionary work traveled through the networks of prelates throughout Catholic Europe, as apostolic vicars and provincials made periodic reports to nuncios in Brussels and the Propaganda Fide in Rome. To chart growth, both secular and regular priests kept a count of those they had converted and reported the numbers to their superiors on a regular basis. The reports omitted the names of converts, fearing, at least according to priests in Leeuwarden, that such lists would fall into the wrong hands and place Catholics in jeopardy.103 While no names appeared, lists surfaced from all locations, with numbers of conversions, baptisms, confirmations, communicants, and previously “cold” or “lukewarm” Catholics who embraced a more fervent devotion. Indeed, secular and regular priests were preoccupied with quantifying the numbers of souls who had been helped. Reijner de Visscher, pastor in Moordrecht, testified in 1672 that a Jesuit had told de Visser twelve years earlier that the Jesuit station had 1,200 communicants; another secular priest, Theodore Doncker, claimed this Jesuit had embellished his numbers to a total of between 1,200 and 1,400 communicants. The heightened attention to numbers reveals an extraordinary concern with finding an index to measure corporate success. In this way, the Roman Church measured the productivity of its priests and marked the progress of the Catholic faith in the United Provinces. This news traveled throughout the Catholic world. In 1603 none other than Caesar Baronius sent Sasbout a letter of encouragement to let him know that

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the cardinal had heard about the mission’s good work and about the persecution of the “Batavian Christians.”104 The mission not only promoted its successes but also discussed its failures. All apostolic vicars cited persecution as a chief reason why more Dutch did not convert to the Roman faith.105 Beyond the persistent problem that persecution posed, the primary difficulty cited by the laity related to the shortage of priests. Lay members in Weesp explained that to Rovenius in 1638 that their low attendance was due to concerns about traveling.106 Catholics in Amersfoort complained to Codde that the lack of a priest was leading to the “diminishing of [their] religion,” as young people were leaving for other churches. According to the lay leaders, the three stations could not accommodate their 1,000 communicants, since lack of space left congregants standing outside during the service, which was not only inconvenient but dangerous as well.107 The period of greatest numerical growth in Dutch Catholicism occurred in the first half of the seventeenth century. About midcentury, Catholics comprised 47 percent (750,000) out of a population of 1,600,000 for the Northern Netherlands. Roughly 40 percent (300,000) of these Catholics, however, lived in the Generality Lands, outside the jurisdiction of the Holland Mission. Thus, there were approximately 450,000 Catholics in the lands served by the mission. Around the mid1640s, membership rates leveled off and in the 1660s went into a protracted decline that lasted throughout the period under study. By 1726 the numbers of Catholics hovered around 650,000, out of a population of 1.9 million, but only 280,000 of them lived outside the Generality Lands.108 As the Dutch population grew from 1.6 to 1.9 million in seventy years, Catholic membership experienced a loss of 170,000 in mission territory. Although local factors were pivotal to local Catholic fortunes, in general the period of the greatest advances coincided with the reestablishment of the priesthood and sluggish growth in the Reformed Church. Until the middle of the seventeenth century, membership in the Catholic Church kept pace with its Calvinist rival, with a very significant portion of the population formally affiliating with no church at all. Perhaps many of the nonaffiliated belonged to the shadowy amorphous body of liefhebbers who attended Reformed services but chose not to become members and submit themselves to consistorial discipline. Perhaps many others shopped around for a denomination without

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committing themselves to the requirements of membership. Recent scholarship on Dutch Calvinism has pointed to the requirements of membership in a Reformed church—including submission to discipline— as a key factor that kept its membership so low for so long. Reformed churches did not lower their moral norms in the second half of the seventeenth century, but consistories no longer conducted house visitations or convoked suspect members with the intensity of the late sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries. As the Holland Mission was sending a new breed of priests into the vineyard of the Lord in the northern provinces, important religious changes were taking place across Europe. The theological currents spawned by the Reformation solidified into tightly woven confessional traditions, each staking its claim to truth and upholding stringent doctrinal and moral standards. The priests who brought the CounterReformation to the Northern Netherlands were cultivated in a robust pastoral ethos that valued preaching, teaching, and directing souls through the sacrament of penance. The renewed presence of Catholic pastoral ministry—which included priests who preached competently and spiritual virgins who taught the fundamentals of the Roman faith— would have been a strong draw for those who missed the old church and its sacraments. Priests in the first half of the seventeenth century took discipline seriously and worked to promote a penitential lifestyle, yet their pastoral approach was comparably far more moderate and conciliatory than that of the secular priests who served under van Neercassel and Codde. Schooled in a rigorist Augustinian tradition, Dutch priests in the second half of the century demanded that the laity demonstrate contrition before receiving absolution. As a result, many lay folk resisted confessing to secular priests, others opted for confession to members of religious orders, and others turned to the public church of the Dutch Republic. Moderate discipline under the leadership of a conscientious pastor produced growth for the Catholic Church, but its requirements of public penance and demonstrative contrition before reconciliation turned people away.



4 Restoring a Catholic Presence lay attitudes and initiatives

In 1612 not only did a small, embattled congregation of Catholics in Leeuwarden, Friesland, face the usual harassment from the political establishment, but in February their priest, Martin Amandi, also accused them of resisting his ecclesiastical authority. During the ensuing exchanges with the church hierarchy, leaders from the congregation expressed their frustration to Sasbout Vosmeer: “We hope the complaints that we have made will not be considered as socalled dissimulation. As always, our complaints still are that, at best, we are not understood in the least and we are threatened with the most extreme measures. Finally, we are against those who do not heed your admonitions, instructions, warnings, who even through other methods still are not brought into obedience. But they are not among us, so your methods are excessive.”1 In this letter of protest, these Frisian Catholics were affirming allegiance to clerical authority even as they were criticizing clerics for misusing that authority. Their exasperation actually grew out of a commitment to clerical leadership, intimating the central role that the priesthood occupied in lay Catholic identity in the seventeenth century. The topic of lay-clerical relations in Counter-Reformation Europe has provided historians a useful means to examine the practical giveand-take between universal reform programs and local religious traditions. The transformation of the clergy into a corps of professionally

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trained pastors, as incremental and uneven as it was, nevertheless marked an important turning point in the practice of Roman Catholic Christianity. Prescribed by Trent and sparked by new religious orders, clerical reform became essential to the broad effort at lay recatholicization in early modern Europe. Established scholarship on early modern Catholicism has cast the Counter-Reformation as heavily dependent on state power to combat heterodoxy and ferret out traditional pagan practices.2 Prelates throughout many Catholic territories allied with princes to do away with popular “superstition” by condemning such frivolities as carnivals, wakes, Maypoles, and unauthorized relics.3 But the Counter-Reformation should not be seen simply in the monochrome of top-down coercion. In the Netherlands, a reformation of lay religious life took place without the heavy hand of governmental authority. Among Catholic congregations in the Dutch Golden Age, lay aspirations overlapped those of the clergy, local traditions continued to shape religious identity, and revival took place at the grassroots level.4 In the seventeenth-century Netherlands, a lively clericalism went hand in hand with the reassertion of lay activism. During a period of irrepressible growth and irreparable conflict, laymen and -women interacted closely and intensely with priests, both secular and regular. Hostile political conditions and a shortage of priests inculcated in Catholics a strong appreciation for solid pastoral leadership. These circumstances fostered a lay leadership that sought a vigorous clerical presence yet expected the clergy to serve local needs as local people understood them. Lay leaders sought resident priests from the leadership of the mission and routinely asked for pastors who would lead them in the path of salvation. At the same time, the same laity remonstrated with priests who did not fulfill their obligations and who attempted to rule imperiously over a congregation.

Lay Elites and Local Affairs The leaders of the Holland Mission often asserted that the better sort of folk had remained faithful to the Roman Church. Rovenius proclaimed in his general pastoral report of 1622, “In Utrecht, Amsterdam, Haarlem, Leiden, Gouda, and elsewhere almost all of the very old and honorable families are Catholics.”5 By contrast, the ranks of the heretics, again according to Rovenius, came largely from the rabble

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driven out of Brabant, Flanders, Gelderland, and Germany. At least one non-Catholic contemporary corroborated half of Rovenius’s claim. Writing four years earlier, Sir Dudley Carleton, the English ambassador at The Hague, observed that Catholics comprised the “most wealthy and respectable portion of the Dutch nation, especially in Holland.” A mover in prominent Dutch political circles, Carleton no doubt had heard stories about priests and ceremonies in the Netherlands, in addition to rubbing shoulders with Catholic elites during his eight-year residence.6 The research of modern historians has shown, in contrast to the opinions of Rovenius and Carleton, that the Dutch nobility, gentry, and urban patricians in all areas were represented in both Catholic and Reformed churches and that most elites tried above all to protect their properties and positions in times of factional religious divisions. Nevertheless, the claims by the apostolic vicar and the English ambassador about the social makeup of Catholic communities contained important truths. Many among the elite did remain or become Catholic, and they provided the leadership for the local practice of the Roman faith in the Netherlands. The parallel with England is striking. John Bossy and other English historians have stressed the central role that the gentry played in the survival of the Roman faith in England. Indeed, the survival of Catholicism in both lands stemmed in no small part from the steadfast support of former regent and noble families.7 Catholic elites, both urban ex-regents and rural nobles, held a precarious yet important place as mediators between their congregations and political authorities in Dutch Golden-Age society. The delicate position of elite Catholic families derived from the pluralistic religious environment and the war against Spain, both of which defined the Netherlands at the end of the sixteenth century. The rapid turn of events in the 1560s and 1570s—including iconoclastic fury, the Duke of Alva’s bloody reprisals, and Beggar conquests—produced a civil war that forced elites to choose between rebel and loyalist camps. The shifting fortunes of the conflict in the early years compelled regents and nobles to balance their confessional allegiance with their material and social self-interests. Some elites acted almost completely out of religious motivations, such as Hendrik van Brederode, Jacob Oem van Wijngaarden, and Arend van Duvenvoirde, Protestants who spearheaded the rebellion in the 1560s; and Hendrik Laurenszoon Spieghel,

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and Johan Beijeren van Schagen, Catholics who refused to cooperate with the new government. Other prominent Catholic families, especially those in cities that came under the control of Dutch troops in the 1570s, opted for flight to royal-held areas. Known as glippers (those who “slipped” away), a large percentage of these Catholics returned a year or so later, when the danger of reprisal had ebbed. In Gouda, onethird to one-half of the city council fled in 1573, but a year later at least six not only had returned but were reappointed to the magistracy.8 Most elites, regardless of their religious persuasion, negotiated the vicissitudes in such a fashion that would enable them to protect their properties and assets. Many Catholic gentry in Utrecht actually supported the Revolt in order to regain control over the appointment of Dutch bishops, control that had been lost to the Spanish crown in the ecclesiastical reorganization of 1559. Henk van Nierop has in fact argued that almost all Catholic nobles in Holland chose to remain on their properties and live in accordance with the new regime in order to protect their land from confiscation. This was also true in Utrecht, where Catholic gentry managed to retain control over a vast array of prebends and benefices even after they were secularized in 1584. Nobles were allowed to keep these revenue lines in the family, provided they did not use them to support a practicing priest.9 The pragmatism of Catholic regents and nobles ensured their political loyalty to the new Republic and eased religious tensions between all elites in Dutch society. By the early 1580s, then, most Catholic elites throughout the Netherlands had found plenty of reasons to cast their lot with the Revolt; as a result, the civil war between rebels and loyalists turned into a national war of independence against Spain. In return for their loyalty, Catholics were allowed to retain their properties, conduct their business affairs, and live peacefully in their communities. Yet Catholic elites, particularly urban regents in the major cities and towns, ultimately paid a heavy price in lost political influence. In the aftermath of rebel conquests in Holland and Zeeland in the 1570s, William of Orange reshuffled office holders in the most important municipal posts, such as the city council (usually made up of forty members), the board of aldermen (about seven members), the slate of burgomasters (four members), and the sheriff. In almost every city throughout Holland, which contained the largest concentration of Catholics outside Utrecht, a small number of loyal Catholics retained

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positions in the municipal government. For example, out of just over fifty spots in these four offices, seven were held by Catholics in Haarlem, six in Gouda, two in Leiden, and ten in Amsterdam.10 This liberal policy towards Catholics’ holding office, at least in the major cities, proved short lived. In 1583 the States of Holland issued an ordinance prohibiting Catholics from holding political office, and in 1619 the States General of the United Provinces stipulated that all office holders had to be members of the Reformed Church. Over the course of the seventeenth century, the cities of Utrecht, Deventer, Zwolle, Nijmegen, and Arnhem even denied citizenship to Catholic applicants.11 Even before these statutes, cities already began to dismiss Catholic regents from important political positions. In cities outside Holland and Utrecht, which contained far fewer Catholics and took a far less tolerant attitude toward the Roman faith, Catholic regents experienced an immediate loss of political stature after they went over to the Revolt. The city councils of the major cities in Friesland were purged in 1578, and the councils in Gelderland’s cities, Harderwijk, Elburg, Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Zutphen, followed suit in 1579.12 Across the Netherlands, cities in Holland had contained the largest share of Catholics in their governments just after the regime change, yet over the course of the 1570s and 1580s municipal offices throughout the province were purged of Catholics. In 1578 the Amsterdam city council dismissed Reynier Lambertszoon van der Horst and Cornelis Romenijboot from their ranks, and as the other eight Catholic magistrates died or retired, they were not replaced with Catholic family members. Less than ten years after the change in government in Delft, Christian van der Goes lost his position as sheriff because of Reformed influence in the city council. In Utrecht, the city council in the late 1570s and 1580s underwent several transformations that made it increasingly Calvinist and anti-Catholic. Though some Catholics in small outlying towns and villages did continue to hold posts in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, by the 1580s the governments of the most important cities had become fully protestantized.13 It does not appear that Catholic nobles in the countryside fared as badly as their counterparts in the cities. In fact, many continued to wield influence in local towns and villages, which possibly explains why Catholics continued to hold public offices in some rural areas, especially since members of the nobility held powers of appointment for

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some posts. Catholic nobles in Holland also remained in the corporate estate reserved for the nobility in the provincial states. Sherrin Marshall has estimated that out of the fifty-five noble representatives in the states from 1581 to 1619, only fourteen claimed to be Reformed. In addition, known Catholics, such as Johan Beijeren van Schagen, Johan van Mathenesse, and Jacob van Duvenvoirde, served as noble deputies in the states in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Catholic nobles served in similar capacities in Friesland, Overijssel, and Gelderland as well. The province (sticht) of Utrecht had perhaps the heaviest concentration of Catholic nobility after the Revolt, and perhaps because of Calvinist fears about Catholic political power, those loyal to Rome were uniformly excluded from the provincial states by the seventeenth century.14 Ex-regent and noble families who remained loyal to the Roman faith provided continuity between local religious traditions and practices before the Revolt and the emergence of Tridentine Catholicism. Elites throughout the Netherlands obviously made a variety of individual religious choices for a variety of individual reasons during this transitional period. Despite the actual or potential loss of their political influence, many elites chose to remain Catholic or to make a commitment to Catholicism. It was this cadre of lay elites that provided traction for the reestablishment of pastoral ministry and the prospect for the revival of the Roman faith. For example, early prominent lay organizers in Amsterdam included Hendrik Laurenszoon Spieghel, who resigned from office rather than serve a Protestant government, Jan Michielszoon Loeff, son of an ousted magistrate, and Jan Duivenszoon, uncle of the Haarlem dean, Albert Eggius. In Leiden as well, wealthy and well-connected elites, such as Jan Adrianszoon de Milde, Eewout Arent Gerritszoon, and Jan van Mathenesse, formed the basis of the Catholic community at the end of the sixteenth century.15 Subsequent generations of elites, many of whom were descended from the same families, would maintain a corporate Catholic religious life in their local communities. Elite families provided leadership and managed what they regarded as the parish; they worked as churchwardens, maintaining any church fabric and possessions; they organized relief operations for the Catholic poor, keeping them within the community; and they contributed patronage and protection for priests, enabling a Catholic presence to survive the triumph of Calvinism.

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The areas that contained the heaviest pockets of Catholic elites after the Revolt corresponded to the largest concentrations of priests and, consequently, to the districts that experienced the most significant Catholic growth. Priests could not serve in areas without the protection and patronage of patricians and nobles, and without priests a viable Catholic presence could not be sustained over time. In England as well, landed elites loyal to Rome played an identical role, as, in Arnold Pritchard’s words, “missionaries had to depend on the Catholic nobility and gentry not only for their livelihoods but often for their lives.”16 For the Netherlands, Rogier rightly established the importance of uninterrupted pastoral ministry to the survival of Catholicism, but this ministry was contingent upon a committed lay elite after the Revolt. Laity and clergy were mutually dependent. Of the 115 priests living in Dutch cities in 1629, 96 of them lived in three areas: Utrecht (46), Amsterdam (30), and Haarlem (20). These areas also corresponded to the highest concentration of elites in the Netherlands. Outside the cities, Catholic nobles and gentry, especially those in Holland, Utrecht, and Friesland, sometimes housed priests in their castles or estates, which could become the bases for ambulatory ministries to local villages. The Duvenvoirdes of Wassenaar and the Beijerens of Schagen maintained priests, as did the Comminga, Dekema, Herema, Siccama, Tandema, Aylva, Burmania, and Scheltema families outside Leeuwarden in Friesland. In Utrecht, some of the leading families who provided a transitional link by supporting priests during this critical period included the de Wael van Vronesteijns, de Baers, Winssens, and van Rijnevelts. De la Torre also recognized nobles in and around Rotterdam, Leiden, The Hague, Kennemerland, Rhineland, Alkemade, Amsterdam, Alkmaar, Schagen, Gouda, Tholen, Leeuwarden, and Zutphen for their assistance in housing priests and hosting services.17 Conversely, in provinces where Catholicism made little or no headway, namely, Overijssel, Groningen, Zeeland, and Gelderland, the absence of a supportive Catholic nobility was conspicuous by its absence.18 Throughout the century, the Holland Mission depended on lay elites to protect priests. In December 1680, for example, van Neercassel notified nobles in Groningen that two priests were on the way and asked the lords take them in. He expressed gratitude to the Count of Warfuse, near Schagen, for his generous efforts, which were “worthy of a Christian and most illustrious person.”19 Occasionally the efforts of

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noble laywomen surface, hinting at their importance behind the scenes and beneath the documentary record. In 1682 van Neercassel, for example, praised the widow of Lord Kabauw for “her industry in God’s honor, love of his church, promotion of peace for Catholics,” and for the way she insured that he received a warm welcome among other Catholic nobles on his travels near Rijswijk. He went on to thank her for leadership in helping to heal rifts among Catholics in the area and encouraged her to support the construction of a facility for the celebration of Mass.20 John Bossy has suggested that recusant women were the backbone of lay elite efforts in England, while their husbands conformed outwardly. Conformity to a public religion of course was not necessary in the Netherlands, so the practice of Nicodemism would not have been as critical to maintaining loyalty to Catholicism as it was in England. Nevertheless, some Dutch men did conform to protect professional careers, while their wives supported local Catholic activity, though the extent of this practice is not known.21 Regardless of their husbands’ choices, Dutch elite women remained quite important to the workings of the mission. Apostolic vicars courted the support of noble women and, while traveling, often stayed in the homes of widows. Any distinction in roles that laymen and -women played in sustaining Catholicism is not clear from the correspondence. It is the case, however, that women formed an important part of Catholic communities throughout the Netherlands. Lay elites, male and female, not only provided critical support for the reestablishment of pastoral ministry in the period after the Revolt, but also quite literally produced the priests who conducted pastoral care. A significant number of the early organizers of the mission came from exregent or noble families disenfranchised by regime change in the 1570s and 1580s. Sasbout and Tilman Vosmeer offer the most notable example, as these brothers came from a patrician family in Delft, where their maternal grandfather served as burgomaster. They were related to the powerful van der Dussen family and personally connected to a network of Catholic ex-regents, Frans Pieterszoon Beaumont, Adriaen Janszoon van der Burch, Cornelis de Bije, Dirck Bugge, and Joannes Nicolaeszoon van de Aa. One of Sasbout’s successors in Delft, Joannes Stalpert van der Wiele, descended from a local elite family as well. Likewise, Albert Eggius, a leading force behind the reorganization of

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the Haarlem Chapter belonged to patrician stock in Amsterdam, and before his arrest and expulsion in 1602, he trained priests in the house of his uncle, Jan Duivenszoon, on Warmoesstraat. Duivenszoon had served as a city magistrate until 1578, when he and other staunch Catholic partisans were turned out of the city government.22 Other families produced priests who worked in their local congregations. The van Beverwijk family, one of the pillars of the small Catholic community in Dordrecht just after the Revolt, produced a grandson, Cornelis, who served as a priest there in the seventeenth century. The twin brothers Suitbertus and Petrus Purmerent, sons of Hendrik Pieterszoon Purmerent, a Catholic patrician in The Hague, became priests and labored nearby in Delft and Gouda, respectively. Willem de Swaen, a longtime priest in Gouda in the seventeenth century, lived with his elderly uncle, Gerrit Gerritszoon Vermij, who was an organizer of the congregation at the end of the sixteenth century. Gian Ackermans’s prosopography of the Dutch priesthood in the second half of the seventeenth century showed that a significant portion (169 out of 298, or 56.7 percent) of priests came from the highest two levels of Dutch society. Most of these, 159, came from office-holding and professional families.23 In addition to producing priests for the Holland Mission, Catholic elites generated spiritual virgins as well. Over five thousand women became spiritual virgins in the seventeenth century, with the largest concentration of communities in Haarlem, Gouda, Amsterdam, and Utrecht. In 1694 virgins were working in 250 different congregations throughout the Northern Netherlands. These women came almost completely from the ranks of the elite. The necrology of Trijn Oly, a maiden in the very large Haarlem community, reveals the thick network of elite Catholic families who produced virgins and supported religious services in southern Holland. Joke Spaans has shown that Trijn herself belonged to a wealthy family in Amsterdam, which had members who held office in the city government in the early sixteenth century; her grandfather served as burgomaster in the 1560s and 1570s. The Hulst family generated five spiritual virgins and one priest, while the Bugge extended family in Delft turned out nine virgins and two priests. Other such family connections underlay communities of spiritual virgins in The Hague, Goes, Hoorn, and areas in Friesland.24 Continuity in confessional allegiance was certainly not uncommon

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among Catholic nobility and gentry from the time of the Revolt to the mid-seventeenth century. Jacob de la Torre, in his extensive pastoral report of 1656, listed 157 noble dynasties in Holland and Utrecht “who deserved the highest praise” for their support and patronage. Many dynastic names of prominent Catholics from the late sixteenth century appear on this 1656 list: Adrichem, Aijtta, Buijtewech, de Wael van Vronesteijn, Dussen, Duivenvoirde, Renesse de Baer, Siccama, van Mathenesse, Oem van Wijngaarden. Some of the dynasties actually lay outside Holland and Utrecht, but they had family members that married nobility or gentry from these two provinces. De la Torre also noted any family whose marriage was mixed confessionally and any wife or husband who had converted either to or from Protestantism along the way. Out of these 157 families, he listed only twelve that were mixed at the time: nine women were “not Catholic” or “heretical,” while only three men had converted. De la Torre noted two additional dynasties in which the woman had converted to Catholicism. The wife of the Lord of Naaldwijck (Berckel dynasty) came from the Protestant Oldenbarnevelt line but had switched to the Roman faith, and the wife of Lord Beijeren (Schagen) had converted “recently” but was a “neuter catholicus.” De la Torre’s notations suggest that the majority of these nobles could trace their Catholic lineage back to the end of the sixteenth century and had managed to marry in the Roman faith.25 Though the evidence is far from complete, a number of elite Catholic families demonstrated a concern that their children marry Catholic spouses. Catholics requesting dispensations to marry within the four prohibited grades of consanguinity regularly cited the importance of uniting canonically with a Catholic. For example, Jacob Feijt and Wilhelmina van Nivelt, members of the Utrecht gentry, asked Rovenius in 1633 to permit their respective children (in the fourth grade) to marry, noting, “Those who live among heretics cannot easily find Catholic persons from similar social standing and suitable whom they can marry.”26 Likewise, the van Teethlum and Aijta families in Friesland, having “raised their children in the Christian and Roman religion,” made petition to Vosmeer in 1600.27 Finally, Cornelis Drenckwaert, a priest in Utrecht, commended the case of curator Herbert Haeston, who was appealing for dispensation for second-degree consanguinity. Drenckwaert listed Haeston’s commitments to the faith: he was a noble who had lodged priests in his castle, he had suffered attacks, he had one

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brother who went into exile and another brother who fought in an army of a Catholic power.28 A wide body of evidence, therefore, indicates that a significant portion of patricians and nobles remained committed to Catholicism through the tumult and division of the 1570s, especially in Holland, Utrecht, and rural areas outside Leeuwarden. No doubt some families practiced a quasi-Nicodemism, as John Bossy has argued was the case among Catholic gentry in England.29 Nevertheless, many families did continue as Catholics, and these families provided a link with the preRevolt Catholic past and provided continuity for the Holland Mission’s future, as their families, by and large, remained loyal over the course of the seventeenth century. The reemergence of a vigorous Catholic identity in the Northern Netherlands would have been inconceivable without the financial support, protection, and, most fundamentally, the generation of future priests by elite families. Further, the leadership of ex-regents and nobles in local congregations provided some social and religious compensation for the loss of political influence at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries. The leadership of Catholic elites and their roots in the 1570s and 1580s had two far-reaching ramifications for Roman identity in the Dutch Republic. First, lay elites became brokers of interconfessional relations in a pluralistic yet anti-Catholic environment. As elites proved their loyalty to the new government, they became a means by which political authorities could promote political loyalty and social order among a potentially restive population. The most persistent acrimonious religious divisions in the Republic actually occurred between strict Calvinists (precisionists, later Counter-Remonstrants), moremoderate Reformers (Remonstrants) and Libertines, over the soul of the Reformed Church and its place in Dutch society. In those places where internal struggle gave way to public sanction, class as well as religion divided the partisans. The bitterest struggles occurred in Leiden from the 1570s into the 1580s and in Utrecht a decade later, as more moderate-minded city regents were pitted against a precisionist church leadership made up of members from the artisan class. Conversely, in Delft, where both magistracy and consistory came from the regent class, religious tension remained controllable and negotiable. J. J. Woltjer first suggested that class division in Leiden contributed to the level of hostility, whereas class unanimity enabled elites to manage religious

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difference.30 What this suggests for the confessional relations between Catholics and Reformers is that political authorities, who cherished order above all, could use lay elites to keep a steady hand among their coreligionists. The presence of a Catholic elite assured governments of loyalty in local congregations, and in return Catholics received a modicum of tolerance. Second, lay elites established a sense of ownership over local Catholic communities. With deep connections to the past, continuity among elite families kept alive the folklore and images of earlier times. These families procured and protected sacred objects and relics; they commissioned artwork of local religious figures for their hidden churches. This sense of heritage, combined with their deep pockets, entitled elites to manage parish affairs, maintain the church fabric, and represent the congregation’s needs to the leadership of the Holland Mission. Leadership in the religious community became one way to salvage something of the lost political status that came with a new Protestant regime. Catholicism on the local level, therefore, became largely a family affair promoted, protected, and patronized by elites. As we have seen, lay Catholics looked to the priesthood for strong religious direction and placed high expectations on a well-trained and morally disciplined clergy. In a variety of contexts, community leaders wrote to apostolic vicars, expressing a desire for capable preachers, caring pastors, and faithful shepherds so that local Catholics might become more devout. The priest’s function in pastoral ministry formed a central theme in the dispatches between lay organizers and church authorities. Representatives from local congregations wrote periodically, requesting a priest, expressing appreciation or support for their priest, complaining about their priest, protesting the removal of their priest, or decrying the arrival of a new priest. This correspondence indicates that the laity did not seek priests simply to perform ceremonial functions but sought pastors to meet the religious needs of the local congregation. Requests for priests occurred throughout this entire period, though they appeared with increasing frequency in the second half of the century. The growing number of requests likely resulted from more careful attention to preserving correspondence, but it also reflects the improved political conditions for Catholics, a more stable church organization, and an established record of pastoral care in the later 1600s.

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The language of the requests themselves evoked the values of Tridentine spirituality, revealing an abiding concern for the quality of pastoral care. Catholics in Lingen, for example, asked Vosmeer in 1607 to send them Adam Vos because he would help them to keep alive the fervor of “spiritual children.” Likewise, Gerard Coopmans appealed for a priest who would help him live faithfully during times of personal trouble. Later in the century, curators from Culemborg wrote van Neercassel, expressing appreciation for Adrian Hermans because he was “not only worthy and acceptable” but also demonstrated “good affection and fatherly care” for them.31 The fact that lay leaders articulated their requests in the common idioms used by the clergy indicates that the laity had interiorized, to some degree anyway, the values of the Tridentine church. The laity also regularly used the same language to express gratitude to church authorities for assigning them a priest, and a genuine congeniality typified initial contacts between congregations and most new clergy. A 1605 letter thanked Eggius for “the prosperity” that he showed to “poor sinners in recommending . . . the honorable Mr. ‘Hendrick van Sutfien’ [perhaps Zutphen] to be the shepherd of [their] souls.” Winine Pieters from Delft expressed appreciation in 1614 for a priest who brought to the congregation “great profit in God’s grace.” The “entire community” in Deventer thanked van Neercassel for a Father Metelen and held out hope that this new pastor would heal divisions in the congregation.32 The laity wanted a priest who could carry out pastoral duties and preach faithfully. The Harlingen community appealed for a new priest because their current one refused to visit the sick even as they lay at the point of death, failed to encourage charity to a poor widow, and offered “little direction in the Catholic religion for mindful people.” According to the correspondents, the priest charged that they “treated him like a dog,” and so he would not inconvenience himself to visit the sick. The curators of Leiden remonstrated to the apostolic vicar in 1689 that their priests lacked the competence and erudition of their predecessors, writing, “[The current group of priests] are not very industrious in their studies and in their sermons. They go up to the pulpit with little study and they barely discuss or read the scriptures . . . To hear them brings great shame.”33 It was not the preaching competence of Ignatius Walvis, a Jansenist, that grated on lay leaders in Gouda but the

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polemical way in which he preached against religious orders. According to a complaint in January 1697, forty people had witnessed Walvis ridicule Fathers Mallio and de Bont, Franciscans, as well as Jesuits from time to time in sermons. Objecting to his slander and mean-spiritedness, the laity charged Walvis with creating division and uproar. Some even hinted that Walvis preferred Calvinists to Jesuits and that he collaborated with Calvinists against the order.34 Since lay leaders valued the priesthood, they expected priests to live up to the pastoral ethos promoted by the mission. Those priests who proved themselves within the local community gained the laity’s deep affection and loyalty, bonds that were not easily broken. Laywomen and -men cherished the pastoral image of the good shepherd who cared for his flock, leading them in the path of salvation. Van Neercassel reassured the curators of Groningen, commending them for the love they felt for their priest and consoling them at his death.35 When priests filled the role of the good pastor, the laity supported them and rushed to their defense when they were accused by fellow clerics or superiors. The Leiden congregation remonstrated with Vosmeer in 1607 for removing their priest, Alexander van Lamzweerde, who violated Tridentine marriage canons when presiding over the marriage of his nephew (an erstwhile Franciscan). The Leiden curators argued that, regardless of the charges against him, the community was “very inclined toward him with much affection because of the fruit he . . . brought forth” in them. Amersfoort Catholics wrote to support their priest, who was accused of incompetence by “those of the Catholic religion outside [the] community.” The local leaders testified that he had served them ably by preaching and educating the young. Likewise, congregations in Zwolle and Groningen protested when van Neercassel attempted to remove their priests.36 Clergy and laity expressed hints of deep-seated affective relations in correspondence, as individuals passed on news about the principal life events of their family and friends. Van Neercassel rejoiced in the birth of a godson (his nephew) and expressed pleasure that the boy was named after him. Two years later, van Neercassel offered congratulations on the wedding of another nephew, hoping that it “would bear much fruit and help lead him to salvation.” Death occasioned a good deal of writing and comforting. Four days after the death of one of their relatives, A. A. and Claertgen Willems informed Vosmeer of the event

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and indicated their desire to see him. Several years later, Gerard Coopmans described to Vosmeer the sorrow he and his wife felt for their friend and deceased priest, Wouter Dirxszoon, writing that God had repaid them “a thousand times” for the little help they had provided Dirxszoon. Coopmans also asked Vosmeer to pray that their son repent of heresy and to send them devotional material. Later in the century, Anna van den Bossche thanked van Neercassel for all the comfort he gave her when her brother had passed away. This brother had conveyed his fondness for van Neercassel by bequeathing him a gold timepiece.37 The intermingling of family connections and friends revealed itself in other ways. Tilman Vosmeer, brother of and secretary to Sasbout Vosmeer, carried on a regular correspondence with his nephew, Pieter van der Dussen, in Delft, from at least July 1625 to October 1628 and from February 1632 to January 1634. The specific purpose of the exchange was to discuss financial transactions from an endowment the Vosmeer family had bequeathed for a benefice and for poor relief. Personal innuendo and the affairs of relatives actually occupied most of the letters. From Delft, the faithful, cheerful nephew sent greetings from his wife and family, describing the activities of numerous family members. Van der Dussen, for example, reported on a relative who visited a prostitute (to the scandal of everyone) and described the tragic perambulations of Cristaen, a cousin, who apparently suffered from mental dysfunctions. Over the course of three years, Cristaen burned his paintings in a fit of “madness,” acquired a series of jobs only to lose them, brandished a rapier menacingly in public, and routinely threatened to run away or to join an army in Brabant. Van der Dussen reported that the family, at its wits’ end, almost committed Cristaen to the House of Discipline, almost packed him on a ship bound for East India, and almost sent him to live in Cologne with Tilman. Van der Dussen’s terse reports of the financial business to Vosmeer also point to a wide network in Utrecht, Amsterdam, Dordrecht, and Leiden of Catholic friends who funneled money to support pastoral ministry and charity.38 This remarkable stretch of correspondence gives just a glimpse of the fascinating connections and interactions among friends and family in a broad religious community. Other bits and pieces in letters between laity and clergy reveal close personal associations without really providing a window into their worlds. For example, Vosmeer asked Goswin de Kettler, a military officer

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of Archduke Albert, for a testimonial for a friend, Adrian Craenhals, and Kettler complied happily. Arnout Hooft, a prominent Amsterdammer, wrote van Neercassel six times in August and September 1674, desperately pleading for indulgence for his eleven-year-old son’s “scandalous” and “rash,” but unfortunately unspecified, actions. Hooft also had his nephew, Dirk Hooft, a “commisarius,” and his cousin, Cornelis Hop, write on his behalf to persuade van Neercassel to overlook the boy’s “juvenile imprudence” and to comfort the “troubled father.” About the same time, Gerbrand Ornia thanked van Neercassel for interceding on behalf of his servant with the French government, which had taken him for a spy.39 Because of strong personal and religious connections like these between a priest and the local community, the reassignment or departure of a venerable pastor was a bitter pill. Given the chronic shortage of priests, the departure of a priest in rural areas could also mean a disruption in pastoral care. This anxiety, coupled with the emotional ties between an esteemed pastor and his congregation, often led communities to challenge the removal. Jacob de la Torre instigated the removal of a Jesuit from Bodegraven (along the Rhine), but this action upset the congregation. Lamenting the division, de la Torre upbraided the congregation for partisanship and admonished it to obedience. Similarly, the Zwolle community protested the reassignment of their pastor, Father Johannes Dobbius, and sixteen people signed a petition to have him returned. In addition to the anxiety over losing a good priest, congregations often felt slighted when their favorite priest went to another area. Fifty Catholics in Schagen signed a letter to Vosmeer in 1611 that protested the reassignment of their priest, Joost van Cathden, to Hoorn. They felt insulted that they had worked to make a place for van Cathden and support him financially, but now the Mission showed favor to a smaller number of Catholics in Hoorn to the disadvantage of the larger number in the north quarter. Because other communities were receiving greater attention, the letter grumbled, “There is no love for us.” The community at Westerblocker (province of Holland) professed astonishment that van Neercassel “would turn down 170 people, who would no longer have a pastor.”40 Lay commitment to clericalism did not mean, however, that men and women always took clerical instruction quietly. On the contrary, laypeople asserted their prerogatives, expressed their views, and held the

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clergy accountable to church standards. After the Dutch government took possession of all ecclesiastical benefices, priests were supported largely through the contributions, gifts, and collections taken from local congregations, with elites assuming a substantial burden of the financial support. In addition, lay elites often played a large role in protecting congregations by providing recognition payments to the local bailiff or sheriff. Corresponding to their financial commitment, lay elites advocated for local communities that were attempting to procure and retain acceptable priests. For example, at the death of their priest, lay leaders from Amersfoort declared in 1674 their preference for a Recollect father, since members of the order had “comforted” the congregation and “stood by” them “in difficult times.” When the apostolic vicar sent them a secular priest instead, the Amersfoort leadership “protest[ed] before God and the world” because the apostolic vicar had not “spoken to or written” the community leaders for their “opinion before changing pastors and taking the fathers.” Complaining to van Neercassel about a switch in their priests, Catholics in Schagen made a similar assertion, proclaiming that a change could not take place without their “voluntary permission, which was clearly known by the elders [of the community].” Likewise, lay leaders in Zutphen petitioned for a replacement for their priest (Father Verhaelen) because the only other resident priest was a Jesuit whom the curators feared was too busy directing a school to serve their pastoral needs. They requested a “truly good and capable pastor” who would also meet with the approval of the local authority.41 Lay communities thus possessed their own ideas about the qualities needed in a priest, and they expected the members of the church hierarchy take note of them. In one small rural district, church members voted on whether to advise the appointment of a priest. In early 1699, in Langeraar and Korteraar (province of Holland), 602 Catholic men and women listed by name or family recommended to the apostolic vicar the appointment of Nicolaas de Reeder, who had served them previously as a chaplain, as their pastor.42 Unfortunately, it is not possible to determine the extent to which other Catholic communities (if any) took such collective action, though other letters indicate that a broad spectrum of the community participated in these decisions. For example, a number of letters begin with “we the undersigned,

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representing the Catholic community” or “on behalf of the Catholic community.”43 Even though elites customarily acted on behalf of corporate bodies without consulting the members, the clandestine character of Catholicism would necessarily have compelled members of a congregation to cooperate. It is clear that the lay leadership took an active role in seeking capable pastors for their communities.44 Church authorities in the Netherlands sought out local opinion in the placement and evaluation of priests. When church authorities commissioned or undertook visitations, they questioned curators and local elites about the quality of pastoral care. In 1633 and 1634, for example, J. A. Ban, Haarlem canon, conducted several visitations in rural districts in North Holland. He met with lay curators from various congregations, including Hoorn, Spierdijk, Hoogwoud, Hensbroek, Spanbroek, and Opmeer to discuss with them the state of affairs in their communities. From talking with these leaders, he learned that the priests serving Spierdijk were pious and diligent, yet the priest in another area had neglected hearing confessions, another was not ready for parish service, and yet another needed to be transferred to another area.45 The hierarchy of the Holland Mission took the views of lay leaders seriously. On a number of occasions, the apostolic vicars revealed that a community’s petition influenced them to make a certain decision. Van Neercassel sought to “avoid schism” and “promote unity” among the laity in Deventer by allowing a religious, Father van Someren, to serve them until Easter, but then van Neercassel would send a secular priest. The “powerful request” from Vlissingen spurred van Neercassel to send them Amandus van Nispen in July 1678. Likewise, in response to another “powerful request” in Polsbroek, van Neercassel granted them their choice, Father Straffintveld. And because congregations in Hoogwoud and Opmeer joined together in “Christian unity” to seek a pastor, Codde agreed to place Arnoldus Weijer among them.46 Balancing the competing needs of laity and clergy sometimes proved to be a chore for church leaders, even in the second half of the seventeenth century, when ecclesiatical organization had stabilized. In 1669, writing about Bovenkarspel in North Holland, van Neercassel stated, “In this district by far the greater part is Catholic; they are zealous and fervent in religion, but often obstinate and often inflexible; there will be peace and tranquility among them if they accept and choose their own missionaries from the vicar general.”47 Twenty years later, Pieter

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Codde complained to Martin de Swaen that openings for priests were slowing noticeably, and as soon as vacancies did emerge, the priests were “being claimed by their native communities who maintain a right to them.”48 Though apostolic vicars and other Dutch church authorities sometimes took actions that were at odds with local wishes, ecclesiastical leaders attempted to find areas of common ground. Since local contentment depended upon a compatible match between priest and lay community, it only made good sense for apostolic vicars to extend as much latitude as possible to local leaders in the placement of priests. Usually the correspondence only gives brief glimpses into these dynamics, but a series of letters that van Neercassel sent to the Count of Warfuse in the 1670s and 1680s provides a clearer sense of the importance of noble patrons to local Catholic fortunes, the tensions that arose from patrons’ influence, and the precarious relationship between the church hierarchy and Catholic nobility. As patron and protector, Warfuse exercised considerable influence in the Catholic community and the appointment of priests in the area around Schagen. In fact, his family had possessed patronage rights for the pastorate in Schagen before the Calvinist takeover, and a hundred years later, the Warfuse clan functioned as the protector of Catholicism in the region. In October 1676, van Neercassel asked for the count’s consent before appointing Father Stephan van Ommeren as pastor and expressed appreciation for Warfuse’s protection. Several months later, after the unexplained replacement of Father van Ommeren, van Neercassel again asked for Warfuse’s approval for the appointment of Father Temming. At this time, the apostolic vicar also requested that the count keep local officers from harassing the local priests and entreated him to “provide a sum of gold” to secure “the free exercise of the Religion.” Van Neercassel again asked for Warfuse’s approval several months later, before he transferred another priest from the region in early 1677. Finally, in July 1682, van Neercassel sought to gain the count’s support in another shuffling of priests.49 In a later round of exchanges, however, a disagreement emerged between the prelate and the patron over the issue of patronage rights and influence. In July 1682, Warfuse raised concerns that the appointment of the most recent pastor, Father Pieter Pelt, had “damaged” the ancient patronage rights of his family. Van Neercassel responded that as long as those from the “pretended reformed religion” occupied the

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church in Schagen, any patronage rights that might accrue to him had been abrogated. But van Neercassel promised that should God permit the reestablishment of the Catholic religion in the Netherlands, the church would certainly recognize Warfuse’s prerogative. Apparently, Warfuse had appropriated his family’s ancient rights in order to lay claim to the powers of clerical appointment in Schagen. Bucking the count’s claim over the current congregation, van Neercassel argued that Warfuse’s patronage rights did not extend to chapels or oratories that acquired their funding from alms and oblations rather than benefices. In a letter three weeks later, the apostolic vicar reiterated this position, pointing out that the right of patronage derived legally from a benefice. Further, he explained that he did not have the legal power to give the right of patronage to someone who had not endowed a benefice. In the same letter, however, van Neercassel declared his sincere hope for Warfuse’s continued generosity and protection.50 Over the course of several more months, with some coaxing and cajoling that involved gifts of devotional books to Warfuse and his wife, the count and the apostolic vicar came to a temporary rapprochement. In January 1683, van Neercassel, no doubt pleased that they had found a way to resolve the dispute, gave his word that the church would guarantee in writing the ancient patronage rights of his family if Catholicism became a public religion once again in the Netherlands.51 This accord, however, proved to last less than a year, largely as a result of Warfuse’s attempt to control the appointment and activity of priests in Schagen. In January 1684, van Neercassel fired off an angry missive because Warfuse had sent officers to prevent a priest, Father Alkemade, from saying Mass. An oblique passage in this letter implies that van Neercassel had intended to relocate Alkemade but that Warfuse objected, arguing that his claim to a patronage right was in jeopardy. An incredulous apostolic vicar charged Warfuse with persecuting the Catholic Church in Schagen. Van Neercassel contended that Warfuse possessed no legitimate patronage rights and that the mission could not recognize such privileges for churches that held services “in particular houses”: “Priests who serve them have no benefices as priests in Catholic countries, but properly speaking, they are missionaries which serve parishes whose parish churches are occupied by the Reformed, as they call themselves.” Van Neercassel reiterated that since the missionaries ob-

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tained their support through alms and not benefices, no right of patronage legally existed. Therefore, according to the apostolic vicar, Warfuse could not invalidate or remove priests. Apparently, Warfuse appealed to Rome, for a week and a half later, van Neercassel wrote to thank the count for his financial generosity to Father Alkemade but warned him that his munificence would “give him no advantage to Rome” about his “pretensions.” The decision on the matter came back several days later. In order not to “hinder religion” in Schagen, the papacy allowed Warfuse to retain Alkemade as long as the Holy See saw fit, a period that lasted an additional three months.52 In this manner, the papacy tap-danced around an insistent patron asserting his prerogatives and a unbending apostolic vicar defending ecclesiastical entitlements. This episode provides a useful glimpse into the interactions between a powerful noble patron and the church leadership in the Netherlands. As patron and protector, Warfuse drew upon the traditional privileges that his family had lost over a hundred years earlier. Yet he presented himself (or at least as van Neercassel presented the count in the churchman’s letters) as a patron in the old-fashioned sense, not only because of his family’s status, but also because of his ongoing financial support and his political protection. Van Neercassel obviously wanted to avoid alienating an important ally and creating a political enemy. Yet at the same time, he could not allow a lay noble to call and dismiss priests at his pleasure. Van Neercassel sought to elude conflict with Warfuse by seeking a middle ground through a mixture of mild deference, effusive praise, and careful consultation. This strategy is suggestive for understanding the relationship between lay elites and church leaders. Apostolic vicars and Haarlem deans did allow local communities, especially the elite leaders, to have an important voice in the assignment of priests because their continued support was critical to the success of Catholic church growth. Ecclesiastical leaders accepted lay involvement yet attempted to maintain church authority in the traditional areas of clerical formation, assignments, and administration of the sacraments. In this way, the Holland Mission simultaneously promoted clerical authority in local Catholic communities yet relied heavily on lay support. In other cases as well, it became necessary for apostolic vicars to mollify local lay Catholics. Van Neercassel, for instance, had to assure leaders

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in Leeuwarden in 1685 that their priest would comport himself in humility, and the apostolic vicar further guaranteed that his priests would not behave as rulers. On other occasions, van Neercassel coaxed lay Catholics into cooperating with priests who had upset them. In 1680 he mediated a dispute between lay members and Father Johannes Tinga in Groningen over unspecified claims that the priest was not quite competent and should be relieved of his office. Reminding lay leaders that Father Tinga had served as a priest for forty years, the apostolic vicar pleaded with them not to cast off the old priest and urged them to make peace with him.53 Though Dutch Catholic men and women held clergy in high esteem, their loyalty and affection for individual priests were not unconditional. In fact, the laity held definite attitudes about the moral character and pastoral ability of clergy. If clergy did not meet these expectations, lay folk displayed no reticence in sharing their dissatisfaction with the ecclesiastical hierarchy. C. Dircxzoon Groenhout, requesting a priest for Rotterdam, mentioned that Catholics in the area would continue to have little regard for Alexander Lamzweerde (dismissed from and well liked in Leiden), for they wished to have a priest “of greater learning and a better life.” Louis van der Putten found it offensive that two priests in Dordrecht, Father Halling and Father van Gestel, expressed joy at the death of another priest, Father Verrijn. For this offense, van der Putten reported that the lay leaders had determined that Halling should no longer celebrate Mass there, because they regarded his presence at the altar as sacrilege. Further, they suspected Halling of gambling, feared indiscretion among him and his housekeeper, and heard the lies he spread about other priests. Because of these offenses, they claimed that no one had gone to confession for six months.54 Lay expectations of clerical conduct were not rigidly puritanical but rather focused on pastoral competence. The moral comportment of the clergy came into play when laymen and -women feared it would undermine effective pastoral ministry. Catholics in Schagen, for example, voiced their disapproval in 1680 that van Neercassel was sending a Father Akerboom back to their district. During a previous tenure there, Father Akerboom had outraged the congregation by failing to conduct services, acting dishonorably with a maidservant, and going about drunk in public. A number of people reported seeing him on more than one occasion so inebriated that he could not stay on a horse; on one

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evening, while riding to a churchwarden’s house, he fell out of a wagon in a drunken state. Consequently, no one wanted to confess to him, and the leaders “prayed that God almighty . . . endow his excellency [van Neercassel] with understanding to make other arrangements for them to the greater praise, honor, and glory of God and to the salvation of their souls.”55 Secular and regular clergy routinely traded recriminations about sexual impropriety, especially with the spiritual virgins. But surviving sources suggest only a few instances in which the laymen or -women accused a priest of sexual impropriety. Two spiritual virgins in Leiden protested the appointment of Father Verschuren to Leiden in 1685, because of his reputation for sexual aggression toward the women. They cited instances in which he touched a maiden inappropriately, and neighbors in the vicinity of his residence had alleged that he ran a brothel, since many young women went in and out at night.56 A number of Catholic families in Utrecht took umbrage with Sasbout Vosmeer and defended their daughters, who were spiritual virgins, from rumors circulated by Jesuits that secular priests were seducing them.57 This event proved to be nothing more than a Jesuit subterfuge in the fierce competition with the secular priests to become confessors to the maidens, whose families were important sources of patronage. Most complaints from the laity had little to do with illicit sexuality but concerned issues of pastoral responsibility, such as visiting the sick, preaching, and promoting charity for the poor. One of the most extreme charges of financial high-handedness by a priest occurred in the village of Maassluis in the late 1680s. Leaders in Maassluis charged that their pastor, Father Gerard Scheerder, treated the parish and its assets as if they were his private fiefdom. Declaring freedom from a bishop or archpriest, Scheerder told them that no one could take the community away from him; Catholics there had to submit to him and no one else. At one point, he told his congregation to kick the poor out of his church, and in a rage he tore down an alms box because, he claimed, “such contributions were against his interest.” While the poor were getting poorer, he pretended poverty to take collections for himself, charged fees for celebrating Mass and hearing confession, and spent his bounty on himself, his friends, and his family. When the congregation was about to purchase a house to turn into a church, Scheerder prohibited the transaction, since the adjacent

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orchard would be too small for him to lease out. Because of his imperiousness, people were growing increasingly reluctant to make contributions. The leaders charged that Scheerder was not fit to be a pastor of souls and warned that many Catholics were changing religion.58 These examples suggest that the laity felt a sense of proprietorship over the local community, distinct from the clergy and the church hierarchy. Laymen and -women also exercised choice, for as we saw above, Catholics in Dordrecht and Schagen refused to go to confession with their priests, and in Maassluis they were leaving the Roman Church. Thus, while lay Catholics valued pastoral leadership, they did not readily accept overbearing treatment from the clergy. Many conflicts and disputes with clergy grew out of the laity’s abiding allegiance to Catholic church life and to clerical pastoral ministry. In Enkhuizen in the 1630s, a triangular struggle among the laity, a Jesuit, Theodore de Jonge, and a secular priest, Augustin de Wolff, illustrates how a commitment to clerical ministry could pit lay members against the mission. The difficulty originated in the early 1630s, when one of the lay curators, Martin van Zel, worked behind the scenes to bring to the town a Jesuit, de Jonge, a relative by marriage and a native of Enkhuizen. De Wolff, the pastor at the time, had approached the curators about the need for another priest, but they turned him down, citing the expense and the political danger.59 Without de Wolff’s knowledge, van Zel persuaded the curators that the community actually did need a second priest and that de Jonge would be an ideal choice, since he was from a local family. When de Wolff learned of these negotiations, he informed Leonard Marius, dean of the Haarlem Chapter, who intended to enforce the 1628 concordat that prohibited any new Jesuit stations.60 Apparently some of the locals, who had unsuccessfully petitioned the chapter for permission to bring in a Jesuit for years, seized this opportunity and persuaded de Jonge to come and serve as their pastor. The fathers of the Society responded to the invitation, made a favorable impression with a number of people, and gained quite a following. De Wolff, the mission leaders, and some of the curators, however, opposed the coming of a Jesuit and waged a rancorous three-year campaign to oust him, which split the community into de Wolff and de Jonge factions. Local, Jesuit, and secular accounts agree that the partisanship bred bitter divisiveness that led to turmoil among Catholics and even to public disorder. The city government conducted an investigation in

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1634, and at some point, both de Jonge and de Wolff were seized, incarcerated, and banished. De Jonge died at Nijmegen in 1636 at thirtytwo years of age; it is unclear what happened to de Wolff.61 Rovenius believed that all of this was a Jesuit plot. According to a visitation report, written sometime between 1635 and 1645, Rovenius claimed that Jesuits had no other wish than to violate the 1628 concordat and take over the ministry of Enkhuizen. They fomented instability to provoke the heretical magistrate into seizing and deporting the pastor. Rovenius concluded that only the papal nuncio in Brussels could stop Jesuit intrigue, through the rigid enforcement of the concordat.62 For their part, the Jesuits contended that the Haarlem Chapter and apostolic vicar had conspired themselves to monopolize pastoral ministry and thwart the wishes of the Catholic laity. Three years before this conflict, a 1628 Jesuit visitation maintained that Catholics in Enkhuizen had requested a Jesuit for many years, but the apostolic vicars had used the excuse of the concordat to turn them down.63 Therefore, the apostolic vicars placed their cherished pastoral authority and diocesan vision of the Dutch Catholic Church above the spiritual needs of the laity. After the expulsion of de Jonge, many Catholics in Enkhuizen remained quite bitter toward the secular hierarchy. Leaders of the proJesuit faction sent a long letter of complaint to Rovenius in 1637, describing their version of events and articulating their view of the best interests for Enkhuizen Catholics. In this illuminating letter, the curators noted that, at one point in the controversy, two hundred of the laity, many of whom came from the “best” families, had sent a dispatch to Rovenius pleading for the two priests, the ordinary and the Jesuit, to reside in the city. The pro-Jesuit leaders also pointed out that while they had appreciated de Wolff’s service, “he did not always satisfy them nor his office,” as Rovenius knew all too well. For the lay leadership, distant church leaders forgot that ordinary Catholics lived and had to get along in a local setting with neighbors, townsfolk, and political authorities who harbored (sometimes strong) anti-Roman sentiments. Not only did de Wolff’s slanderous accusations against de Jonge and the Jesuit fathers, foster division among Catholics, but the rancor brought dishonor on the entire community, from heretics and magistrates. Turning to ecclesiastical politics, the curators criticized Rovenius for what they regarded as his excessively rigid control over priestly service,

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and they called into question the requirement that lay congregations had to obtain special permission to call a Jesuit. “Are we then outcasts and bastards of the Holy Church?” they asked. Finally, they echoed the Jesuit argument that the Haarlem Chapter and the apostolic vicar in Utrecht held on so tightly to the reins of pastoral authority that they compromised pastoral ministry and neglected the needs of lay Catholics.64 The Catholics of Enkhuizen participated and, to a certain degree, initiated this pastoral conflict by inviting in de Jonge and defending him. They did this to achieve their own agenda: to acquire adequate pastoral care from the priest of their choice. In so doing, they reveal to us their devotion to Catholic clericalism and yet their independence from church authorities.

Tradition and Innovation in Lay Piety Though all historians recognize that Catholic reform brought about important changes in lay religious life, research in the past ten years has placed more emphasis on the continuity of popular practices within post-Tridentine Catholicism. The standard interpretations, whether of John Bossy’s England, Jean Delumeau’s France, or Henry Kamen’s Spain, had traditionally stressed the overpowering effects of Tridentine piety on local lay customs. Over the past few years, however, historians have attempted to compensate for what was perhaps an overemphasis on change, by uncovering linkages between popular practices and clerical programs of reform.65 Unfortunately, Dutch Catholics have been left out of these broad considerations of lay religious piety after Trent. Among Dutch scholars, the prevailing view of Catholic piety has focused on the Catholic faith as a distinctly indigenous tradition— stressing an austere interior spirituality—distant from the ultramontane character of the Roman Church. A variety of sources, from correspondence among laity and clergy to devotional and polemical treatises and to unpublished narratives, argue forcefully for placing Dutch Catholicism into an international context and within the ongoing discussion of lay piety in post-Tridentine Catholicism. The cultivated remembrance of an idyllic past, the collective narrative about signs and wonders, and the Catholic struggle with Protestantism blended the old and the local with the new and the international Baroque spirit of the seventeenth century. The prominent

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sources of lay piety drew from the Dutch past, but they were recast in a Tridentine mold to give Catholics a stronger sense of their connection to a universal Roman body. Like laypeople in all lands and in all confessions, Catholics in the Netherlands expressed their devotion in a multiplicity of ways and along a wide spectrum of commitment, in accordance with local customs and mental habits. Just as in Catholic Europe, Dutch people went on pilgrimages, joined confraternities, talked about miracles, made charitable contributions, and took part in the cyclical features of Catholic worship. In the Netherlands, the expression of religious values was closely interconnected with locality, family, and memory. Catholics repeated stories and passed around legends about the lost glory of their religious buildings and images, the miraculous wonders of saints and sacred spaces, and the extraordinary heroism of Dutch martyrs. Retelling these tales and transcribing them into written narratives kept them alive for future generations and forged an allegiance between the universal Roman Church and a local identity. Shaped and transmitted by these narratives, the universal and local formed the bases of lay Catholic piety in the Netherlands. One of the intriguing features about Dutch Catholics is that they continued to live, work, and play in the same spaces that they had occupied before the coming of Calvinism and the advent of a Protestant public order. In the course of their daily perambulations, Catholics walked in the shadows of the very old, massive stone churches where they had once worshipped, past parish chapels where priests once prayed, and even past former monasteries where religious once sang the opus dei. The buildings had been desacralized (or profaned, according to Catholics) and converted for more suitable uses in a Protestant society, such as Calvinist churches, orphanages, hospitals, armories, and slaughterhouses. We can only imagine the mixture of emotions— perhaps a sense of yearning, nostalgia, and outrage—that ran through Catholics as they walked past these buildings, which now served as monuments to what was lost. We do know, however, how communities cherished sacred ornaments and vessels that local Catholics had managed to save from confiscation or destruction. In 1654, for example, Catholics in Arnhem insisted that Hendrik Velthoen, a member of the theology faculty in Cologne, take care to return sacred ornaments that they had taken to Cologne and deposited in 1611 and 1620 for safe-

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keeping from nearby soldiers. The curators listed 120 pounds worth of sacred ornaments, such as cups, altar linens, chalices, candlesticks, and monstrances, that the congregation now demanded back.66 A cultivated remembrance marked the piety of lay Catholics across the Golden Age, providing continuity with the past and legitimacy for the present as men and women recalled the traditions of their forbears. Remembering manifested itself in a variety of ways. The most elusive form, at least from the standpoint of modern historians, is oral tradition. There were several instances in the seventeenth century when leaders from the Holland Mission conducted oral history interviews, which give us some idea about the depth of memory of laymen and -women. These interviews were not part of any effort to preserve the past but were aimed at resolving practical pastoral issues. At various times clerical commissions went into certain districts to interview elderly people about pastoral service in years past. The purpose of these inquests was to untangle disputed questions of pastoral authority and jurisdiction, either between seculars and regulars or between the church districts of Utrecht and those of Haarlem. To this end, commissioners sought to establish what priests had worked where and under whose authority they had served. These interviews give us a brief glimpse into the vitality of oral tradition within Dutch Catholic communities. In a quarrel between the former dioceses of Haarlem and Utrecht over jurisdiction in the rural area around Langeraar (near Amsterdam), Phillip Rovenius dispatched Theodore de Witt in the summer of 1619 to interview locals from the region. Wilhelm Petri, seventy-eight years old, remembered that priests from Leiden (under Utrecht’s jurisdiction) traveled to Langeraar and that villagers went to Leiden for confirmation when he was a boy. Pieter Adriani, seventy-five, related that every year on the fourth Sunday after Easter the dean of the area went to Leiden to replenish his store of holy oil used in baptisms and last rites. Adriani also recounted an examination of two sacristans on the observation of feasts and communion, as well as the furnishings and fabric of the church. Furthermore, he listed three successive pastors, related what happened to them, and recalled an incident in which several vagrants posed as priests. Three other witnesses from nearby regions, ranging in age from seventy to eighty-eight years, described their pastors, and noted from where they came (Leiden) and under whose jurisdiction (Utrecht) they served.67

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While direct evidence of an oral tradition is in all-too-short supply, it is quite likely that the remembrance of local tradition formed an important source for detailed, written descriptions of dioceses and parishes in the Netherlands. One of the more remarkable, and certainly the more lengthy, depictions of the Dutch Catholic community in the seventeenth century was Jacob de la Torre’s 1656 pastoral report to the Propaganda Fide, the Relatio seu descriptio status religionis catholicae in Hollandia ( Relation or Description of the Condition of the Catholic Religion in Holland). Published in three installments in 1883 and 1884 in the journal Archief voor de geschiedenis van de Aartsbisdom Utrecht, the report sprawls across 318 pages. It provides a rather full assessment of the state of affairs for all congregations throughout the lands served by the Holland Mission, describing the noteworthy events, the violent episodes, the local Catholic strength, the clerical presence, and the number of baptisms, communicants, and conversions. More importantly for this study, the Relatio interweaves extensive historical descriptions into contemporary accounts of church life. The report follows a general format for each church district: an introduction detailing the history of the local church and its parochial institutions, followed by a listing of priests since the time of Sasbout Vosmeer, a qualitative evaluation of the levels of persecution and religious devotion, and a quantitative summary of the community. For example, de la Torre’s description of the Catholic community in the city of Utrecht (twenty-four pages in the Relatio) begins with a historical treatment that goes all the way back to Willibrord and Boniface in the late seventh century and takes fourteen pages to narrate the stories of the metropolitan and its parishes, monasteries, important noble families, and spiritual virgins down to the present. After discussing the contemporary deprivations of Catholics and the divisions over the Jansenist controversy, de la Torre’s report includes a four-page list, with annotations, of the secular priests who had served in the city since the days of Sasbout Vosmeer. The Relatio offers a quantitative summary of communicants, baptisms, and conversions and then concludes the section on Utrecht with a description of contemporary pastoral ministry and the mistreatment of priests.68 Though there is greater detail in some areas than others, in general the report follows a similar format and treats similar issues, namely, the historical landmarks of the churches, the level of clerical support, and the status of the contemporary community. Thus,

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the Relatio interlaces past and present, both reflecting and perpetuating a deeply held notion that Catholics in the Netherlands belonged to a rich religious tradition. While the historical descriptions in the Relatio might represent a certain nostalgic yearning, Catholics promoted remembrance chiefly to sustain their community in the present and to give hope for the future. Writers kept alive the memories of local religious life and passed them on to subsequent generations, to authenticate Catholic identity in a Calvinist regime. The most momentous story in Dutch medieval lore was the “Miracle of Amsterdam,” which centers around a dying man and the divine power of a consecrated Host in 1345.69 After the ailing patient received the Host, his fever subsided, he vomited, and a nurse noticed that the Host remained intact in the disgorged matter. She removed the Host and flung it into a fireplace, where it produced a fire that burned throughout the evening, though the Host was not consumed. After hearing of this miracle, Amsterdammers were so inspired at this manifestation of divine favor that they constructed a chapel, the Heilige Stede (Holy Place), on the site where the miracle took place. The miracle of Amsterdam motivated writers and artists, whose works publicized the story throughout the Netherlands. The Heilige Stede became a major pilgrimage site in Holland; its visitors included Charles the Bold, Maximilian I, and Charles V.70 Priests in the seventeenth century exploited this story to remind Catholics of God’s activity in the natural world, the divine presence in the Eucharist, and Christian unity in past times. Leonard Marius, veteran pastor in Amsterdam, published in 1639 a commentary on the miracle, providing Catholics with a rationale for believing that the miracle actually did occur. Marius pointed out that supernatural events appeared throughout scripture and that contemporaries in Amsterdam and later chroniclers verified the miracle. The marvelous event revealed God’s favor on the city and reflected the unity of faith in Holland before the rule of heretics. He wrote, “Now is a time in which Christians are in very sad division; on this and that point a man hears too much abuse whether from one or from others; nevertheless it is certain that this division was not always present either in Holland or throughout Christendom, being even less in Amsterdam. But there once was unity in belief and uniformity in worship just as the first teachers and founders of Christian belief in our land have taught us.”71

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Thus, in a period when Catholics might be tempted to affiliate with the public church, Marius marshaled the miracle to defend the veracity of the Roman faith. This story and the miracle resonated deeply with the laity; every year on the anniversary of the miracle, Catholics commemorated the procession that had celebrated the miracle. At night, participants walked the same procession route at night but did so individually and quietly. In the nineteenth century, Catholics revived the medieval practice of processions by holding what was known as the silent procession, which is still held to this day. While the Miracle of Amsterdam was the bestknown story of divine wonder, Catholics not only circulated many others but also commemorated them with silent processions. Such observances occurred around former shrines and chapels in Hasselt (Overijssel), Wilsveen (Holland), Amersfoort (Utrecht), Eiteren (Utrecht), Eikenduinen (outside The Hague), Heiloo (Holland), Kralingen (near Rotterdam), Laren (Holland), as well as other places.72 Stories and images from the past continued to be relevant for Catholics in the seventeenth century, a period characterized by a growing commitment to a Tridentine piety. The leaders of the mission publicized past (and present) miracles and promoted their sacred sites, in part to emphasize the continuity of the miraculous from the late Middle Ages to contemporary times. For example, Tilman Vosmeer drafted a narrative of miracles that occurred in association with the muchheralded image of Maria Jesse in the Old Church in Delft, Vosmeer’s hometown. He retold the stories that he no doubt had heard since his youth, to remind Catholics of their celebrated legacy.73 His brother, Michael Vosmeer, published a short description of all the miracles attributed to images in Delft’s Old Church.74 In addition, the archives of the apostolic vicars contain a register of miracles that took place in the Old Church from the early fourteenth century to 1583. Though Calvinists had taken over the Old Church in the 1570s and had removed the image, the register still referred to several healings through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, as a reward for devotion to her image. The statue continued to live on in the minds of devotees, just as the Virgin continued to work wonders because of their devotion.75 Just as recalling miracles from a previous era helped to sustain the faith of Catholics, celebrating new signs and wonders in the present gave laity and clergy hope for the future. Ongoing enthusiasm for the

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intervention of saints represented continuity in belief and expectation from pre-Reformation times to the period of the Holland Mission. One famous story that circulated among the spiritual virgins in Haarlem and then among Catholics across the Netherlands involved a vision of St. Bernard and the Virgin Mary experienced by Cornelis Arentszoon in 1593. Serving as confessor to the Haarlem virgins, Arentszoon had been a venerable figure among the virgins and remained so after his death.76 In 1613 one of the virgins, Maria van Graeve, related to Nicolas Nomius, dean of the Haarlem Chapter, that “around twenty years ago” Arentszoon summoned from his deathbed Joost Janssen to hear the dying man’s last confession. Before Arentszoon passed into the next life, he had a vision of his patron saint, St. Bernard, and the Virgin Mary, who beckoned the priest to end his labor and to enter eternal rest.77 Wonders continued to occur among Dutch Catholics over the course of the seventeenth century, especially around the popular pilgrimage sites at Scherpenheuvel, Boxtel, Handel, Uden, and Kevelaer, just across the border in the Southern Netherlands and Germany. There were 253 recorded miracles at the shrine of the Blessed Virgin of Scherpenheuvel from 1603 to 1664 and 100 wonders at the Blessed Virgin of Kevelaer between 1642 and 1675. Various writers during the period wrote short descriptions of these supernatural events in “miracle books,” which circulated widely across the Low Countries.78 Owing to the their emphasis on the interiority of religious experience, van Neercassel and Codde took a more guarded attitude toward external thaumaturgic events.79 Nevertheless, in 1688 Codde passed along an episode that had animated Catholics in Utrecht. Five years earlier, a young woman, Joanna Tibbel, had contracted a serious respiratory illness, manifested by a cough so severe that people on the street thought it was an animal making a dreadful, perhaps barking, noise. A friend or family member brought her a chalice from the relics of St. Bernulphus, patron saint of St. Peter’s Church in Utrecht, and after Joanna drank from the chalice, her cough subsided and she recovered. Codde approved the story and circulated it “to instill belief in the saints and in catholic beliefs.” Jesuit annual reports typically included a story or two involving miracles that had occurred in the past year. The typical episode concerned a faithful person who recovered from a serious illness after a prayer to the Virgin, St. Francis Xavier, or St. Ignatius of Loyola for intercession.80

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Often an agent for the miraculous, relics—those physical remains and effects of the saints—continued to play an important role in Catholic spirituality throughout the seventeenth century. Despite the extensive destruction and evacuation of Catholic sacred property, clergy and laity in the Netherlands managed to preserve significant collections of relics. Sasbout Vosmeer endowed Alticollense with his own sizable collection, which he had accumulated after the outbreak of the Revolt in Holland. The Haarlem Chapter retained the relics of St. Bavo, patron saint of the city and its cathedral, promoting the relics as objects of veneration. Nicolas Nomius developed his own stockpile, as did the Haarlem Franciscan Arnold de Witte; their collections included a piece of the cross and fragments of bones and teeth from over a dozen saints.81 Though clergy mediated access to these relics, it was not at all unusual for lay folk or congregations to possess their own relics. The remains of St. Bernulphus that proved so salutary for Joanna Tibbel belonged to the St. Peter’s parish collection in Utrecht. Three Jesuit reports from 1677 to 1679 listed thirty healing miracles that benefited laypeople in the Netherlands after they had touched or venerated relics; most of these cases, perhaps not so coincidentally, were from Jesuit figures.82 The nineteen Catholics murdered by Lumey’s Beggar troops in July 1572, known as the Gorcum martyrs, developed into the most noteworthy emblems of Christian heroism and Protestant cruelty for Dutch Catholics. The priests, eleven of whom were Franciscans, withstood insults by jeering crowds and interrogations by Calvinist ministers, were hanged, and had their bodies mutilated by bloodthirsty soldiers. The murdered Catholics became icons of the suffering, tragedy, and ultimately the triumphant hope of the Dutch Catholic community. Many stories, anecdotes, and legends made the rounds through congregations in the Netherlands, and indeed throughout Europe, about the signs and wonders that occurred after the execution and about the martyrs’ ongoing intercession for Catholics under persecution.83 Various deans from the Haarlem Chapter and apostolic vicars took up the cause of the martyrs’ canonization, a campaign that bore fruit in the late seventeenth century with their beatification; they were not canonized, however, until 1867.84 From the late sixteenth through the seventeenth centuries, a cult of veneration of the martyrs spread across the Netherlands and numerous

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stories of miracles associated with their relics continued throughout this period.85 In addition, an extensive martyrological literary tradition developed around the Gorcum martyrs, led initially by the works of Willem Hessels van Est and Pieter Opmeer, which circulated widely in Latin and later in Dutch.86 Catholics looked to the martyrs as the epitome of bravery in the face of Protestant barbarism and appealed to them for protection and aid. As a result of their beatification in 1675, the martyrs’ importance lived on in the Dutch Catholic community. Late in the seventeenth century, Pieter Codde took a special interest in their relics and hoped to make them available for veneration by Dutch Catholics.87 Yet the Holland Mission recast traditional forms of devotion in keeping with the internalized spiritual strains of the Counter-Reformation and with the needs of an embattled religious minority. The reframing of lay piety in this period was manifested in the increasing spiritualization of pilgrimages, in the propagation of new sodalities, and in the anti-Protestant media within Catholic devotion across the Netherlands. In the 1580s, all of the seven northern provinces passed laws eliminating Catholic shrines and sacred places, such as those in Wilsveen and Eikenduinen (Holland), Renkum (Gelderland), and Hasselt (Overijssel), as well as prohibiting the devotions linked to them. These sanctions helped to increase the popularity of shrines to the Virgin Mary along and across the border in the Southern Netherlands and the Generality Lands. Until the mid-seventeenth century, shrines in the Southern Netherlands, most notably the Blessed Virgin Chapel in Scherpenheuvel, attracted the most interest from pilgrims out of the northern provinces. After 1650, as religious tensions eased somewhat for Catholics, Marian shrines at Handel, Kevelaer, and Uden in the bishoprics of ’s Hertogenbosch, Roermond, and Luik (respectively) became the most popular sites among Dutch Catholics. Leaders in the mission throughout the seventeenth century encouraged laymen and -women to undertake pilgrimages to these areas, promoted the cults as a means of strengthening devotion, and marshaled all the accompanying miracles in their anti-Protestant arsenal. Despite continuity of practice, Marc Wingens has shown in his study of these sacred sites that important changes in pilgrimage devotion took place toward the end of the seventeenth century. According to

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Wingens, local bishops, Catholic writers, and the apostolic vicars placed less emphasis on the wonder-working power of the sacred places and stressed the experience of pilgrimage as a means of self-examination and repentance. A clear example of this spiritualized approach appears in Bernard Surius’s Pious Pilgrim (1665), a devotional work reflecting the prominence of internal experience in pilgrimage. Surius attempted to take Catholics on a mental pilgrimage to the Holy Land, to “rouse them to a love of holy penitence,” writing, “Go, go in peace you pure soul because your sins will be forgiven.”88 The prevailing pastoral themes of interiority and perpetual penitence attempted to reconfigure the meaning and purpose of pilgrimages in the second half of the seventeenth century. The fact, however, that lay Catholics continued to lay claim to miracles at shrines such as Scherpenheuvel and Kevelaer or on pilgrimages indicates that the distinct devotional emphases of internal spirituality and external thaumaturgic agency continued to coexist in the late seventeenth century.89 Sweeping across Catholic Europe, sodalities represented a new form of religious devotion, which became firmly established in the seventeenthcentury Netherlands. One of the two most prevalent sodalities was the Marian congregation that the Society of Jesus introduced in the Southern Netherlands at the end of the sixteenth century. The formation of Marian congregations developed as a pastoral strategy to inculcate a more intense emotional piety among men and women; Jesuits counted the spreading of sodalities as one of their most important labors in the Netherlands. Sizable congregations operated in cities with significant Catholic populations, especially in Utrecht, Amsterdam, Gouda, Rotterdam, Nijmegen, Delft, Alkmaar, and Maastricht and also in Kuilenburg, Warmond, Sluis, and Kampen.90 Flemish and Dutch Jesuits, namely, Joannes Leunis, Francis Coster, and Pieter Canisius, were the progenitors and most ardent promoters of the Marian sodality movement in northern Europe in the second half of the sixteenth century, establishing the first organizations in the 1560s. Coster composed the earliest devotional manuals, commending the rosary and meditations on the Virgin for members of the congregations. At the end of the sixteenth century, he produced a meditational guide for each day of the week, basing his work on an eleventh-century hymn praising the Virgin; the guide offers us a glimpse into the Marian strains of lay piety in the Netherlands. Coster’s Seven Meditations on the

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Hymn Salve Regina presented the Virgin as the queen of the world, the mother of mercy, and the protector of exiles. The first meditation stressed the Virgin’s royalty; the second, the sweetness of her consolation; the third, her concern for spiritual exiles; the fourth, her comfort to the brokenhearted; the fifth, her mediation for sinners; the sixth, Jesus as the fruit of her body; and the seventh, her gentleness and goodness.91 Thus, on a daily basis Catholics who participated in these sodalities immersed themselves in the basic representations of the Virgin Mary in the Counter-Reformation, in her roles as a ruler, comforter, mediator, and protector. Jesuit sodalities met with little enthusiasm among the secular clergy, and in lieu of an associative devotion that gave preeminence to the Virgin, the Holland Mission offered its own version of the Marian congregation. In 1603 Sasbout Vosmeer received permission from Pope Clement VIII to establish the “Fraternity of the Grace of God under the Protection of St. Willibrord and St. Boniface.” Vosmeer and associates organized the founding chapter in association with Alticollense in Cologne, as a means of uniting laity and clergy in a devotional setting. He believed this sodality would promote an apostolate committed to reestablishing Catholicism in the Netherlands.92 The patronage of Saints Willibrord and Boniface, the first missionaries to plant the Roman faith in the Low Countries at the end of the seventh century, underscored the missionary purpose of the sodality. Actively supported by Rovenius and the deans of the Haarlem Chapter, the fraternity spread beyond Cologne and counted laity and clergy among its members in most areas that contained a vital Catholic presence. It is unclear how many people participated in these congregations and with what degree of commitment, though it is generally thought that the association was fairly extensive.93 The leaders of the mission in the second half of the seventeenth century did not actively promote Willibrord and Boniface confraternities, because of the mission’s preference for the Port-Royale piety of the Oratorians.94 As a result, de la Torre, van Neercassel, and Codde placed much more emphasis on an internal and individualistic lay spirituality guided by the local pastor. The distinguishing features of pious devotion in the Willibrord and Boniface congregations reflected the general characteristics of religiosity in Tridentine Catholicism throughout seventeenth-century Europe. Open to all clergy and laity, female as well as male, above the age of

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fourteen, the congregation movement aimed at instilling a unity among Roman believers in the Netherlands and a renewed sense of allegiance to the papacy. The organizational charter, in fact, recognized the pope as the head of the congregation and the resident pastor as his deputy in each local chapter. This connection between pope and pastor not only placed the association under the control of the secular clergy but also gave local members a greater sense of their unity with an international confessional body, represented by the Roman papacy. In terms of devotional practice, members were to observe faithfully the sacramental and liturgical practices common to Catholics in the seventeenth century. Members were required to hear Mass daily (if possible, given the legal circumstances), examine their consciences, and conduct individual and family devotions; every month they were to make a confession and take communion; and on an unspecified, ongoing basis they were to perform works of mercy and provide alms for the poor. As one would expect, members were to offer particular veneration to Sts. Willibrord and Boniface and to follow their example in working for the conversion of Dutch men and women.95 Yet the consideration given to these national saints did not overshadow the attention devoted to other objects of veneration in the Catholic tradition. Members were to observe all feast and fast days and venerate the cross, St. Michael the Archangel, St. John the Evangelist, and St. Mary Magdalene. The congregation awarded a special place of honor to the Virgin Mary, as all of the laity were to read daily devotions dedicated to the Virgin, to pray the rosary, or to read the Seven Penitential Psalms, at the discretion of his or her confessor. Further, congregants were to cultivate a “great love and affection” for the “most holy virgin and mother of God” through prayers, readings, and good works.96 Thus, the spirituality promoted by the congregation of Willibrord and Boniface paralleled the piety of the international Tridentine church, stressing the Roman, papal, and clerical character of Catholicism and encouraging devotion to a variety of saints, with special emphasis on the Virgin. The Willibrord and Boniface congregations differed from the Jesuit sodalities in several respects: the Jesuit sodalities centered devotional life around the cult of the Virgin and called attention to Jesuit saints whereas the secular clergy highlighted their own patron saints. Aside from these distinctions, both organizations

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shared many devotional features, including the veneration of the Virgin, attention to papal authority, and a regular cycle of reading, prayer, self-examination, confession, and communion. Dutch historians, however, have tended to stress divergence between an ultramontane and Marian Jesuit spirituality and an anti-Marian, nationalistic, and introspective devotion of the secular clergy. Writing in the early twentieth century and focusing on the end of the seventeenth century, J. A. F. Kronenburg argued that a crypto-Protestantism within the Jansenist secular clergy led mission leaders to become heavily critical of Marian veneration. The heterodoxy of secular priests moved them to join with Protestants and rationalists as the great enemies of a long-established devotional theme in the Netherlands. Other historians, writing more recently, have identified an anti-Marian strain within the secular clergy and have argued that the Holland Mission deliberately pushed a nationalistic church tradition in the Netherlands. According to Rogier, the leaders of the Holland Mission combined a “historical sense, a national feeling, and a Catholic piety” that formed a distinctly Dutch devotion, which he contrasted with the Marian and international tendencies of the Jesuits. As a result, the enduring image of Dutch Catholicism is a church absorbed by its own national traditions, shaped by the devotio moderna and an abiding Erasmianism.97 The Dutch Catholic Church in the seventeenth century, according to this view, formed an idiosyncratic religious entity detached from the prevalent religious features of the Counter-Reformation. The vast body of evidence used in this study, however, shows that the Catholic revival in the seventeenth-century Netherlands stood squarely within the Baroque piety of post-Tridentine Catholicism. Laymen and -women continued to hope for miracles, go on pilgrimages, and venerate relics, just as Catholics did in Italy, France, Spain, and Germany. Elements in devotion in the Willibrord and Boniface congregation corresponded to many of those in the Jesuit sodalities, namely, the veneration of the Virgin, the allegiance to the papacy, and a devotion rooted in the sacraments of confession and communion. Like the secular clergy, Jesuits attempted to instill in the laity a rhythm of self-examination. National traditions were important to Dutch Catholic identity, just as they were to Catholics elsewhere. Ordinary folk remembered the past, and writers kept alive the dramatic stories of earlier times, to sus-

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tain fellow believers in the present and to accentuate their connection to a universal Roman tradition. Mission organizers certainly championed famous figures from the fatherland, notably, Willibrord, Boniface, and the Gorcum martyrs, but clerical leaders did not do so to the exclusion of other Catholic saints or even the Virgin Mary. Further, most depictions of Willibrord and Boniface (until the Jansenist schism in the early eighteenth century) called attention to their roles as fighters of heresy and ambassadors of Rome. It was not until the appearance of Hugo Francis van Heussen’s Batavia Sacra in the early eighteenth century that the singular images of Willibrord and Boniface came to be associated with the bishopric of Utrecht, which was quasi-independent of Rome. Van Heussen’s Batavia Sacra has cast a long shadow across the historiography of Dutch Catholicism. Van Heussen set out to defend the tradition and character of the “old Catholic belief ” through a sweeping historical survey of the bishops of Utrecht from distant times to his present day. He described in some detail the miraculous deeds and heroic spirituality of the early missionaries and bishops, giving particular attention to that most distinguished icon of the medieval Dutch church, St. Willibrord. Van Heussen also called attention to “all the benefactors who demonstrated their piety and charity through foundations and holy places” so that their “descendants might not show themselves unworthy of such zealous and peaceful forefathers.” The example of the forefathers for contemporary Catholics was especially important to van Heussen. In the opening pages, he declared that the purpose of his history was “to serve my Fatherland and my faith.”98 As the title of the work implies, Batavia Sacra extolled the venerable Dutch character of the Catholic Church in the Netherlands. His argument for a national church struggling against the international forces of the Jesuits and the papacy has shaped the way scholars have viewed Dutch Catholic identity across the entire post-Reformation period. Historians have tended to impute nationalistic sentiments to Dutch Catholicism and even to identify an independent streak in the hierarchy long before the threat of schism at the end of the seventeenth century.99 One of the most influential factors in shaping the Tridentine quality and universal orientation of Catholicism in the Netherlands was the public hegemony of Calvinism. We have seen that a Protestant presence bred a strong sense of confessional distinctiveness among

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Catholics, and Chapter 2 examined the importance of martyrologies, histories, and devotional works in infusing this religious identity into Dutch Catholics. It is worth reiterating in the context of lay piety that a strong opposition to Protestantism characterized Catholic identity throughout the period under study. The Holland Mission in the second half of the seventeenth century is often regarded as “soft” on Protestantism because of the Jansenist sympathies among many of the secular clergy. Actually, Jansenist controversialists proved to be fierce and able opponents of Protestantism. Influenced by the renowned French writer François Véron, Pieter and Adrian Walenburch appealed to scripture and the church fathers against Protestant apologists.100 The Walenburchs pressed Reformers to show that all of their teachings derived from scripture. More importantly, for this study, the Walenburchs and van Heussen attempted to train lay Catholics in this method of attack. The Simple Catholic, by the Walenburch brothers, provided lay folk with a line of interrogation designed to prove to Protestants that their attacks on Catholic teachings could not be found in scripture but grew out of Reformed or Lutheran confessional statements. Taking a similar approach, van Heussen’s Hand and Housebook for Catholics instructed lay readers that Protestants did not really follow scripture, as they claimed, but relied on denominational creeds. After undermining the Protestant basis of attack, Catholics could then point to the continuing tradition of interpretation in the Roman Church, from the apostles to the present.101 So even though the violence of the Reformation era had played itself out by the beginning of the eighteenth century, Catholics in the Netherlands still harbored a keen sense of their own confessional distance from their Protestant neighbors. The revival of Catholicism in the Northern Netherlands depended heavily on the survival of a lay elite that remained loyal to Rome after the Revolt. Urban ex-regents and nobles in the countryside provided the financial wherewithal and the political protection for priests. In a literal sense, Catholicism grew around the presence of lay elites, who actively collaborated with clergy to maintain a pastoral ministry. Because of the shortage of priests, men and women placed a high priority on securing and retaining a priest for their communities. Nevertheless, lay leaders insisted that clergy serve their needs as laypeople comprehended them. Dutch laymen and -women expressed their devotion in many activi-

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ties and organizations similar to those of their counterparts in southern Europe. Catholics went on pilgrimages, venerated relics, prayed to saints, and repeated stories of the supernatural. Initiated by the laity, local traditions and a familiar landscape connected Dutch Catholics in the seventeenth century to their past. Yet the promotion of local traditions and national saints also united Dutch Catholics to the international Roman communion. The spiritual regimens in sodalities promoted by the Jesuits and apostolic vicars, though distinct in some respects, were similar in their emphasis on the sacraments, the primacy of Rome, and the veneration of saints, particularly the Virgin Mary. In these ways, Catholic men and women participated fully in the revival of Catholicism in the Netherlands, just as they absorbed the Baroque piety of the Counter-Reformation.



5 Paying the Priest, Feeding the Poor patronage and poor relief

Catholic ecclesiastical leaders in the Northern Netherlands had a strong appreciation for the relationship between the church’s possession of property and the administration of divine grace. A treatise from 1640 argued that freedom of conscience for practicing Catholics had little to do with the much ballyhooed proviso in the 1579 Union of Utrecht but had everything to do with the fate of church land. According to the argument, freedom of conscience was not a political privilege but rather a sacramental state, freeing the conscience from sin. Since the government had appropriated benefices for new purposes in a Calvinist republic, the financial basis for the Dutch priesthood evaporated. Because priests were essential to the process of acquiring a free conscience, the deprivation of property led to the deprivation of clergy, which in turn led to the deprivation of grace. Therefore, the loss of church property jeopardized the freedom of conscience for Catholics.1 The logic of this position might have been ecclesiastically correct, but it also masked a complex reality. Priests did continue to ply their trade in the Dutch Republic, despite all the edicts against them. In some places, at some times, and for a fee, local authorities overlooked priests and their Masses, provided the priests kept a low profile. Yet in other places, at other times, and despite the fee, local authorities seized priests and intimidated lay folk. Despite the complex reality, the confiscation of all the Catholic Church’s financial resources—the fabric of

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the church monastic properties, parish revenues, benefices, and movable goods—created a financial crisis in Catholic pastoral care throughout the seventeenth century. Landed endowments had formed the basis for all European Catholic religious establishments before and after the Reformation, and Dutch Catholics now had to find new resources to establish seminaries, train the clergy, support priests, pay bribes, and fund poor relief. The frustrations voiced by local Catholics highlight the onerous financial obligations for congregations. Curators frequently complained that they lacked adequate resources to help the Catholic poor. In some congregations, such as one in Leiden in 1613, accusations surfaced that the priests were pilfering the collections taken for the poor. In the early 1630s, a priest in Dordrecht left his post because the community failed to pay him a wage that could sustain him. Later, in the second half of the century, Johannes van Neercassel expressed his aggravation that the seminaries were having trouble feeding students, priests lacked subsidies for obtaining the basic necessities of life, and Catholics everywhere were falling into poverty.2 These vignettes across the seventeenth century point to one of the major challenges facing the Holland Mission and local congregations: financing pastoral ministry and carrying out poor relief without landed endowments. An examination of how the mission dealt with these challenges reveals the priorities that influenced the character of the Dutch Catholic Church and illustrates the community-building work that shaped Catholic identity in the seventeenth century.

Complications of Confiscation Over the course of the 1570s and early 1580s, Dutch authorities dismantled in piecemeal fashion the financial edifice that had supported Catholic worship for several centuries and appropriated it for different uses in the new Protestant republic. The process of reallocating these resources took place in several stages. In the initial step, the provincial states altered the legal jurisdiction of the properties from canon to civil law so that civil authorities could officially administer the revenues. In 1572 the States of Holland and the States of Zeeland became the first provincial bodies to begin appropriating the assets of the Catholic Church; other provinces followed suit soon thereafter. From 1572 to

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1577, the States of Holland made available the various revenue lines, benefices, vicariates, and monastic properties for local uses. After clearing the legal hurdle, officials then inventoried all movable goods, such as altars, images, and candles, as well as real estate on ecclesiastical sites, and submitted a statement of all assets, rents, and debts. Holding to the principle that these revenues would still be reserved “for pious uses,” provincial states allocated these incomes either to city governments or to regional bureaus, known as spiritual offices, for rural areas. Civic officers or regional comptrollers then administered the dispersal of revenue for such purposes as paying the salaries of Reformed ministers, supporting charitable foundations, and funding schools, universities, and student scholarships. Revenues for the upkeep of the church fabric and poor relief had always belonged to the parish, under the control of civil officers, and not to the Catholic Church. These revenues retained their previous functions: to pay for the maintenance of the parish fabric, provide for the expenses of religious services, and support poorrelief agencies.3 The secularization of ecclesiastical property had far-reaching ramifications for the development of Catholic communities in post-Reformation Dutch society. Not only did Catholics have to raise large sums of money to reconstruct their church, but the leaders of the Holland Mission also had to negotiate a range of issues, as the Catholic Church underwent a transformation from the public religious institution to an outlawed, semiclandestine confessional body. To what extent could Catholics cooperate with civil authorities in the transfer of church assets? What provisions should civil and ecclesiastical authorities make for the wishes of patrons who had bequeathed goods and revenues to church endowments? What stipulations should the mission put in place regarding properties in the event that Catholicism was restored to its former position? What rights should new patrons exercise in the formation and distribution of priests? Leaders in the Holland Mission struggled with these questions, and their approach to them in the aftermath of the Revolt contributed to the direction staked out by the Catholic Church in the early modern Netherlands. The tumultuous changes in the wake of the Revolt gave rise to all sorts of complications about the status of church property, especially during the tenure of the first two apostolic vicars, Vosmeer and Rovenius. In principle, political and religious conquest necessarily

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produces an internal debate among the subjugated party over its relationship to the new regime. In the Reformation period in Europe, those advocating no compromise—through resistance, recusancy, or even martyrdom—formed one extreme, and those acknowledging a need for accommodation by conformity, Nicodemism, or conversion represented the other extreme for minority confessional groups. Because the Dutch espoused the principle of freedom of conscience and because church membership was not compulsory in the Netherlands, Dutch Catholics did not have to make such drastic choices about how they would relate to the new Calvinist regime. Nevertheless, as we have seen, Catholics in the Netherlands had to make all sorts of choices about the practice of their religion in a Protestant society. The process of secularizing church property underscored the choice between principled resistance and pragmatic accommodation for the leaders of the Holland Mission. In the early years of the Republic, the movement to appropriate ecclesiastical resources created tension over the extent to which laity and clergy could cooperate with governmental officials. These conflicts point to the different approaches of various clerical authorities toward the new Protestant regime. The first two apostolic vicars, operating initially in exile and then from Utrecht, adopted a staunch nonaccommodationist policy toward the new government, whereas the Haarlem Chapter took a much more pragmatic stance in dealing with local authorities. Both parties lost and gained in the respective choices they made. The apostolic vicars preserved their sense of confessional purity, while incurring the enmity of political authorities; the Haarlem Chapter established with local authorities a working relationship that allowed for a great deal of latitude yet exposed itself to the charge of collaboration with heretics. The point of controversy concerned the Haarlem canons’ cooperation in the transfer of the chapter’s assets, which pitted most of the canons against Sasbout Vosmeer, Albert Eggius (chapter dean from 1599 to 1602), and later Phillip Rovenius. The city did not go over to the side of the rebellion permanently until 1577, and then William of Orange and the city government agreed to a religious peace that would allow the public exercise of both the Reformed and Roman religions. Peace proved precarious, as outbreaks of violence against Catholics persisted; only seven of the twenty canons from the chapter remained in the city after 1578.4 Because of continued religious tension, the city

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government, along with the provincial states, repealed the peace in 1581 and prohibited the practice of the Roman faith. Even before the revocation of the peace, the city government and the Haarlem Chapter had gone back and forth over the control of this property. In four years, from 1573 to 1577, the city had undergone two sieges, one by a Spanish force and one by Dutch troops; a destructive fire; and an economic blockade. The effects of war had taken a severe toll on municipal revenues, making Catholic property quite attractive to city patricians. As a result, the magistrates began to appropriate incomes from several ecclesiastical endowments for various purposes. It was at this time that the city government began to lay claim to the assets of the chapter. The canons protested, resisted, stalled, and delayed until 1581, when apparently most of them (led by Willem Coopal, Jacob Zaffius, Alsten Bloemaert, and Willem van Assendelft) concluded that it was in their best long-term interest to cooperate with the magistracy. Ultimately, the chapter cooperated by conducting an inventory of all its assets and delivering it to the civil government in 1581.5 The chapter’s cooperation with the city government caused conflict among the canons and also with Vosmeer and Rovenius. In 1578 Pope Gregory XIII threatened with excommunication all Catholics who assisted the Dutch Republic, a ban strongly supported by Vosmeer and Eggius. Vosmeer interpreted this ban to mean that Catholics could not participate in the government, invest or work in the Dutch East India Company, study at the University of Leiden, or serve in the army or navy. Priests were to refuse absolution to those who engaged in these activities.6 Both of these church leaders, as well as Rovenius, took a strict line against accommodation with a heretical government. An additional source of tension arose in 1599 when Vosmeer appointed Eggius dean of the chapter after the death of Willem Coopal. Zaffius, van Assendelft, Bloemaert, and other canons did not recognize Vosmeer’s jurisdiction over the chapter, so his presumption in appointing Eggius grated on their sense of privilege. According to Eggius, his fellow canons had collaborated with the enemy, violated a papal injunction, and contributed to the profanation of sacred property. Eggius’s recalcitrance contributed to his imprisonment and exile in 1602, just as Zaffius’s cooperation fostered fairly stable relations between the chapter and the city, ultimately enabling the chapter to continue a clandestine ministry under a fairly tolerant city government.7 An uneasy friction be-

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tween the chapter and the apostolic vicariate lasted until a 1616 concordat brought a clear definition to their respective jurisdictions. A very different type of resolution to conflicting interests over church assets took place in Utrecht. The city and outlying vicinity of Utrecht, as the seat of the bishop for centuries, represented the Roman Catholic center of the Northern Netherlands both before and after the Revolt. The city claimed five collegiate churches with 140 canons on the eve of the Reformation, and many of the Catholic nobility in and around the city remained loyal to both Rome and the Republic. Unlike the case in Haarlem, the Utrecht city government, appropriating church property in the early 1580s, took a much more gradual approach to secularizing prebends, because local noble families held them as benefices for their sons. Because of the influence of these elites, the canons actually retained possession of the benefices until death, as long as they did not continue to practice their clerical vocation. As prebends came open, the States of Utrecht and the canons alternated in selecting successors from candidates nominated by the city government. The succeeding generations of canons no longer came from the Roman clergy or presumably from the Catholic laity, because they had to past muster as patriots and upholders of the Reformed religion.8 Thus, the prebends in Utrecht became secularized with the Revolt but only became protestantized in the subsequent generation. Whether they took a principled or pragmatic approach, the secularization of church property introduced all sorts of complications for benefactors and their descendants. Dutch authorities generally took a keen interest in monies given for Catholic causes. In 1607, for example, Melchior Elreborn, a priest hoping for a prebend, complained bitterly that heretical officers regularly violated Catholic legacies. He attributed his poverty and hence his need for a benefice to the confiscation of his mother’s will by the heretics.9 Though it is risky to generalize without a broad base of evidence, there are indications that government authorities in at least some cases attempted to balance the rights of testators’ descendants with the secularization of ecclesiastical revenue. In 1597, for example, a widow claimed that authorities in 1581 had secularized a benefice established seven years earlier by her late husband’s family. Vicariates of this type had generally functioned primarily as stipends for relatives of the patron, with a smaller portion of the revenue, usually one-third, dedicated to a

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needy cleric who worked in the local parish. According to the regular provisions for secularized vicariates, the authorities reappropriated the smaller portion that went to support clergy and allowed the family to retain the portion reserved for the support of family clients. She sent Vosmeer a letter twenty-six years later, asking him to remit the amount of interest the secularized portion of the benefice had accrued from 1574 to 1581, as well as the interest of the sum that would have accumulated from 1581 to 1597. She was asking not only for the interest from the benefice for the seven-year period but also for the interest that the sum (that is, interest from the seven-year period) accumulated from 1574 to 1597.10 When the property of the Knights of St. John came into the possession of the government in 1625, the question arose whether public authorities should return a portion of the endowment to the descendants of a Lord Marquette, who had given it to the Knights of St. John in Haarlem for the purpose of establishing a chapel. Clerics in Utrecht argued that the income should revert to the descendants, because the government had dissolved the order and with it the purpose of the endowment. The city government of Haarlem apparently disagreed, for the magistrates reallocated the revenues for other purposes, part of which was to support diaconal poor relief in the Reformed Church.11 Other financial arrangements established contingency clauses should Catholicism be restored in the Netherlands. For instance, in an endowment Jacob Zaffius established in 1588 for Geert Jansdochter (the likely head of a community of spiritual virgins in Velsen), he specified that in the event the prohibitions against Catholicism were repealed, the endowment would transfer to the parish church of Velsen and to the poor there. Annetgen Ariensdochter van Smalevelt, a widow, treated former ecclesiastical property that came into her possession as if the church still owned it. In October 1611 she wrote to Vosmeer, explaining that her father had once purchased a small tract of land from the States of Holland that had formerly belonged to an Ursuline convent. She now possessed the land but requested that Vosmeer permit her to “possess and lease out” the property in return for a rental payment to the church. Van Smalevelt remarked that her proposal for leasing church property was just like such a request in Catholic lands, and she wished to continue this arrangement “until the time in which the Roman Catholic religion is practiced again here.”12

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The hope and even expectation for the restoration of Catholicism and the church’s property contributed to the ecclesiastical leadership’s emphasis on continuity in the Netherlands. The Haarlem Chapter, caught in the tug-of-war between Dutch and Spanish forces between 1572 and 1577, drafted a statement on the status of the church’s ministry and property. The Institutio Capituli stated that in those areas within the diocese where churches, chapels, hospitals, and monasteries had been seized, Catholics were still obliged to recognize the jurisdiction of the chapter. According to the canons, the chapter now functioned in the place of the ordinary, with authority over preaching and the administration of the sacraments.13 The argument for continuity of ecclesiastical office and pastoral ministry would also enable secular church leaders of the Holland Mission to stake their claim to control church property should Catholicism return to its former public status. The ramifications for the status of church property were never far from the mind of Sasbout Vosmeer in political or ecclesiastical disputes. In 1607, for example, Vosmeer asserted the rights of the apostolic vicars to receive compensation from the city government of Zutphen and the bishop of Roermond in their handling of church property around Arnhem and Nijmegen. A complicated situation arose after a fierce but ultimately unsuccessful Spanish offensive in the southeastern region of the United Provinces in 1605–1606. City governments and nobles paid tribute money to Spanish officers, whose troops quartered just to the east, to keep them from foraging and pillaging.14 Zutphen magistrates struck an alliance of convenience with the nearby bishop of Roermond to use the revenues from church property in the area around the city (in the former bishopric of Deventer) to make the protection payments to the Spanish, not only for Zutphen, but for the security of the Roermond diocese as well. Vosmeer became upset with the bishop of Roermond for diverting revenues that, according to Vosmeer, ought to have accrued to the apostolic vicar as the functioning archbishop. Vosmeer argued that since the troops had withdrawn and the payments were no longer necessary, the city and perhaps the bishop as well ought to compensate the apostolic vicar the same amount that they had been giving to the Spanish.15 Thus, the apostolic vicars’ interest in church property in the Netherlands was inextricably linked to their claim to pastoral authority, their vision of the Dutch Catholic Church, and their hope for restoration.16

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For the time being, it became important for lay elites, in conjunction with mission leaders, to use their influence and wealth to mask or safeguard ongoing Catholic agencies. As civil authorities proceeded to secularize church properties and assets, laity and clergy worked to protect what resources they could. Many Catholics hid relics and sacred objects, sometimes spiriting them out the country to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands.17 After the secularization of church property in the 1570s and 1580s, it became difficult to endow any Catholic agency without danger of having the assets confiscated. If authorities could confiscate resources dedicated to Catholic institutions based on the anti-Catholic legislation at the end of the sixteenth century, provincial states made it even more problematic in the mid-seventeenth century. In 1655 the States of Holland, for example, issued an edict prohibiting testators from making bequests or gifts to any Roman cleric, religious person, spiritual virgin, or Catholic foundation.18 An episode in the early history of a Catholic school for girls in Amsterdam, known as the Maagdenhuis, illustrates the machinations that laity went through to retain property with a religious function. At the end of the sixteenth century, lay Catholic women began establishing these institutions for girls in areas throughout the Netherlands. The schools took in orphans and had a special concern for those girls whose relatives might compel them to convert to Protestantism. Because of the religious nature of the enterprise, it became necessary to keep the schools and their monies out of public view.19 Several years before the city surrendered to Dutch forces in 1578, Aeltge Pieters Fopsdochter and her sister, Meijnu Fopsdochter, began to take in orphaned girls and then later established a home for them. Unmarried and devoted Catholics, the Fopsdochter sisters intended to offer a haven for girls and to educate them to become faithful Catholic women. To finance this operation, they raised capital: their father’s testament provided them with one hundred guilders annually, and other gifts came from generous benefactors.20 Shortly after the fall of Amsterdam to the rebels, the Fopsdochter sisters purchased the St. Margaretha Convent, which had been closed and was under interdict by the new government. In 1582 they contributed their own gift of 2,700 guilders to capitalize the house under two conditions: the house would be governed according to the Catholic religion, and the Fopsdochters would serve as its administrators. In the

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event of the obstruction of these provisos, the sisters declared that their capital should be withdrawn from the institution and redirected to support two relatives in order that they could attend a Catholic university and study theology “in the service of Holy Mother Church.”21 In the coming years, the operation got under way: Eggius, an Amsterdammer, served as confessor, as did Arnold ab Ischa, a Franciscan, who composed a rule for the devotional life of the girls.22 Perhaps the Maagdenhuis managed to survive without interference because of the unsettled nature of affairs just after the change in government. But by 1584 the city council decided to appropriate the St. Margaretha Convent and sell off the property. After learning of the agreement between Aeltge Fopsdochter and the convent, the city council nullified the previous contract and expelled the girls from the house. The orphanage eventually relocated to what became its permanent location on the Nieuwezijdes Voorburgwal and carried out its work beneath the radar of the municipal government.23 Jan Michielszoon Loeff, a lay patron of the orphanage and confidant of the Fopsdochters, became concerned that the magistracy would uncover the Catholic identity of the house in its new location, which would have spelled the end of the orphanage under its current arrangement and the capital of its Catholic patrons. Consequently, Loeff approached the brothers Jan and Hendrik Laurenszoon Spieghel, both prominent, politically connected, and faithful Catholics, to discuss the situation of the Maagdenhuis. These laymen decided that it was necessary to take over the governance of the orphanage, apparently thinking they could operate it more discreetly and charging that Aeltge and Meijnu had badly managed the house. Coopal, dean of the Haarlem Chapter, consulted with several Catholic leaders in Amsterdam, and in October 1590 he met with Loeff, Hendrik Laurenszoon Spieghel, and Aeltge Fopsdochter. After some discussion, Coopal proposed, and the Fopsdochters seemed to agree, that the capital from the house would be transferred into church hands, and Loeff, along with Jan Duivenszoon (Eggius’s uncle), would serve as regents, since both were well respected, experienced with financial administration, and not suspected to be Catholics.24 But several months later, in December 1590, Aeltge wrote Coopal that she had decided to withdraw her capital because the new arrangement precluded her and Meijnu’s governance of the orphanage’s financial

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affairs. Later, in May 1591, Fopsdochter wrote Coopal that “Jan Laurijs [Laurenszoon Spieghel] and Hendrik Laurijs [Laurenzsoon Spieghel], brothers, came into the house with great clamor against my will and took the keys.” Further, Aeltge continued, they had threatened her twice “with this contemporary magistrate,” suggesting that Jan and Hendrik had warned her that they needed to take action so that the “contemporary” Protestant government would not crack down. The Fopsdochter sisters, however, refused to concede management of the house or of the capital. For their part, the new regents complained that the sisters still ran the house and refused to give Loeff and Duivenszoon access to the orphanage’s accounts. Aeltge, for all practical purposes, still functioned as regent; and, from Loeff’s point of view, she was running the orphanage into the ground. He complained that Aeltge was overspending, not attending to the financial accounts, and refusing to allow anyone near the financial records.25 Subsequently, Coopal notified the Fopsdochters that the house and its capital was now in the hands of the chapter and that the papal legate in Cologne had denied her request for a dispensation to change her endowment. Finally, he dismissed her as governess of the Maagdenhuis. It is unclear whether Aeltge conceded to Coopal at this time, though she did remain at the Maagedenhuis until her death in 1614. According to one modern treatment of the orphanage, Aeltge went blind in her later years, so the administration of financial affairs would have gone out of her hands, if not in 1591, then shortly thereafter.26 In terms of the management of Catholic property in a Protestant environment, one primary issue stands out in this story. Well-connected and wealthy laymen in Amsterdam worked with the Haarlem Chapter to protect a Catholic institution and its capital from the city government because of their sagacity and their political influence. Such shielding of property for Catholic religious purposes by discreet and respected members of the community became necessary in a Protestant regime. While it is possible that tacit gender considerations came into play in the conflict, the evidence does not indicate that concerns about female governance of the Maagdenhuis guided Coopal, Loeff, Duivenszoon, or the Laurenszoon Spieghels. It was not uncommon for lay women to found and manage institutions such as this girls’ home, and the Fopsdochters had directed the house at least since 1574, a period of sixteen years, weathering some significant storms. It seems that Loeff

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and the Laurenszoons simply feared that the Fopsdochters no longer possessed the capability to protect the assets from heretics. It is also important to consider the opportunities that financial dearth offered the mission that were not open to bishops throughout Catholic Europe. Even though finding a stable means to support pastoral care and parish life proved an arduous and consuming task for the Holland Mission, the confiscation of church benefices actually facilitated the cause of Catholic reform in the northern provinces. The deprivation of property and the various lines of revenue also wiped away the identification of church office with property, since beneficium could no longer mean both in the Netherlands. The conflation of office and income-bearing endowment had contributed to corruption in the sixteenth century and remained an obstacle to producing a well-trained clergy in Catholic Europe. While we still have much to learn about the structure of patronage in the pre-Reformation Catholic Church in the Netherlands, most indications suggest that much of what contemporaries complained about in the clergy can be traced back to the self-interests promoted by patronage. As elsewhere in Europe, patrons in the Netherlands endowed pastorates with benefices to support the maintenance of a priest. In return, for the favor of an endowment, the patron possessed the right to nominate the pastor to the ordinary, who invested the pastor with the authority of his office. In many cases, at least in the Netherlands, princes, nobles, urban elites—and more commonly religious institutions, namely, abbeys, convents, collegiate churches, or chapters—exercised patronage. In the early sixteenth century, for example, the counts of Holland possessed patronage rights over the New Church in Delft and St. Bavo Church in Haarlem; a chapter in The Hague held rights over both parish churches in Amsterdam; the Teutonic Knights had the rights for parish churches in Leiden. The power of nomination gave patrons considerable influence over these offices, because in the Netherlands the bishop or archdeacon could reject a candidate for benefice only on limited canonical grounds. For all practical purposes, the bishop actually would have held very little control over the clergy even if he had possessed the necessary ambition, which was in short supply among Dutch bishops in the sixteenth century. The power of appointment lay largely in the hands of patrons, most of whom held ambitions far removed from faithful pastoral care.27

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By the early sixteenth century, this patronage system, just as in many other areas of Europe, had produced at the highest levels a bloated clerical structure of handsomely salaried absentee priests. The bishopric of Utrecht contained between 5,000 and 5,200 priests, but only between 1,500 and 1,700 actually had responsibilities for pastoral ministry. Pastoral benefices benefited from munificent endowments, attracting noble sons who, though well educated, rarely resided in their parishes and remained quite distant from pastoral care. Parish churches appointed, in the name of the pastor and with the approval of the ordinary, the large number of vicars and paid them either from the benefice or from a separate revenue line, the vicariate. In any event, vicars’ wages were minimal. To supplement their meager incomes, vicars resorted to charging for services, a strategy that earned them notoriety for avarice.28 The preponderance of priests in the bishopric had no pastoral responsibilities at all. They held positions as canons or prebends in collegiate churches, and their spiritual work consisted of occasionally celebrating Mass. Beyond the diocesan priests, members of religious orders in the Netherlands numbered around four thousand.29 Thus, the structure of patronage led to a surfeit of higher clergy detached from the laity and uninvolved in pastoral ministry. If this pattern of patronage contributed to serious weaknesses in pastoral care, in most areas of Europe the private interests of patrons slowed and in some areas thwarted the cause of diocesan reform. The seminary movement that ultimately gained sanction at Trent developed originally as an attempt to bypass traditional patronage systems. Diocesan seminaries were designed to bring clerical formation under the authority of the bishop once again and instill a greater commitment to a morally disciplined clergy. Reform of the clergy encountered major obstacles because seminaries fell outside the established sources of patronage and consequently suffered from inadequate funding for generations. Seminaries also ran counter to patrons’ self-interest, thereby drawing opposition from a powerful segment of the laity and clergy.30 Long after Trent, patrons continued to insist on candidates who served these families’ own dynastic ambitions. These priests usually had little or no seminary training, since seminary education did not become mandatory until the eighteenth century. Because contemporary church reformers envisioned diocesan seminaries as a critical component to a more clerical, orthodox piety, the progress of the Tridentine

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program in each diocese was directly proportional to the number of priests who undertook a seminary education. Kathleen Comerford has recently shown that in the diocese of Fiesole in Tuscany, only 41 percent (416 out of 1,013) of ordinands from 1635 to 1675 received any seminary training at all. Scholarship throughout Catholic lands indicates that the profile Fiesole represented was not uncommon for seventeenth-century Europe, outside of Spain, where almost all priests held university degrees after 1565.31 The financial structure of most dioceses meant that the initial and most powerful impetus for clerical education would come from the new religious orders, especially the Society of Jesus. Thanks to the confiscation of church property in the Netherlands, the impediments of largesse did not plague the leaders of the Holland Mission. The apostolic vicars had to begin anew in the ongoing quest for revenues, and local communities had to assume much of the financial burden for supporting a priesthood and providing for the poor. Though local elites who helped endow pastorates in the seventeenth century held a certain amount of leverage, apostolic vicars exerted much more control over the formation, placement, and regulation of secular priests than bishops did in Catholic territories.32 By the 1620s, the secular priests of the Holland Mission were seminary trained and thoroughly imbued with the clerical and institutional ethos of the Council of Trent. Given the slow pace of reform throughout most of Catholic Europe, it seems unlikely that the comparatively quick reform of the clergy in the Northern Netherlands would have been possible with the old structure of patronage in place. In this way, the Calvinist Reformation inadvertently contributed to the progress of the CounterReformation in the northern provinces. The preoccupation with lost properties also underscored the strong sense of continuity in the pastorate as church leaders hoped for the restoration of the Roman religion. As the situation with monastic lands in England suggests, once church properties were sold or reallocated, it became politically very difficult to return them, even if Catholicism had been restored to the Netherlands. Further, by the 1580s the bishops in exile had died, so if ecclesiastical authorities had regained control over particular lands and revenues, their administration would have been a matter of some dispute. As a result, it made sense for the apostolic vicars and deans of the Haarlem Chapter to press their case as succes-

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sors to the apostolic tradition. Thus, the confiscation of church properties in the Netherlands reinforced a commitment to confessional difference and diocesan vision within the Holland Mission.

Equipping the Church In August 1683, over eighty years after the establishment of Alticollense in Cologne Johannes van Neercassel issued a general pastoral letter urging financial support for the seminary. Appealing to an indigenous generosity and lauding the frugality of Dutch priests, van Neercassel wrote, Since a seminary is to be considered a nurse for priests, I doubt no one with your zeal for the church would be more willing to cooperate in its restoration. I refer not even to the collection taken by the Jews for the restoration of the temple under Nehemiah as the best example of devotion and liberality. For there are those among our clergy who demonstrate the most incredible frugality for themselves as well as pious motivation in liberality towards others. Dedicated to me, you who are endowed with this native spirit will even surpass their deeds.33 It is impossible to determine who received van Neercassel’s letter, though by the 1680s the Holland Mission had a well-developed network of generous families. Since professionally trained clergy represented the principal means to renewed growth, the financing of seminary education by the laity was indeed a critical task for the mission long before this appeal. The mission depended completely on that liberality to fund clerical formation in the Netherlands. Apostolic vicars, Haarlem deans and canons, presidents, and provisores of both Alticollense and Pulcheria courted lay patrons, solicited from wealthy clerics, and raised funds throughout congregations during the seventeenth century. As early as 1609, just as Sasbout Vosmeer, Nicolas Cousebant, and Albert Eggius were forming Alticollense in Cologne, Eggius persuaded several laymen to pledge sums of three hundred and seven hundred guilders from their testaments to the fledging seminary. The fund-raising effort continued throughout this period. In 1679, for example, van Neercassel

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thanked Madame Boetgreve, a widow, for a gift that would fund two “capable” seminary students, assuring her that her benevolence would “lead to the salvation of others.” Even later in the seventeenth century, as the seminaries had had seven to eight decades to build endowments for student burses, fund-raising still proved to be an ongoing affair. Pieter Melis, president of Pulcheria, notified van Neercassel in 1685 that the failure of a recent collection campaign had led to great anxiety among the faculty and students.34 Apostolic vicars and Haarlem canons worked closely with presidents and provisores of the seminaries in securing patronage, since these institutional officers devoted much of their time to raising and managing money. Whenever patrons contributed endowments, they presented them to the seminary president or provisores, who served as chief financial officers and who often solicited funds personally. Provisores kept their own registers of the endowments they had collected.35 On a couple of occasions in the 1670s, van Neercassel applauded Theodore van Blockhoven, president of Pulcheria (from 1657 to 1680), for bringing in revenue to the seminary.36 Yet in the same period, the apostolic vicar grumbled to van Blockhoven that the provisores ought to be doing more to assist the seminary and warned that they would be replaced if they did not raise their level of support.37 Clearly presidents and provisores labored under the expectation that they should be about the work of raising money. While church authorities in Haarlem and Utrecht generally worked together cooperatively on most matters, one episode from the early seventeenth century hints at the tension that could arise over sources of seminary funding. In 1618 Judocus Cats, dean of the chapter, complained angrily that a burse given to Pulcheria somehow had ended up funding students at Alticollense. According to Cats, Agatha Bugge, presumably from Amsterdam and related to Joannes Bugge, the secretary of the Haarlem Chapter from 1621 to 1635, had bequethed one thousand guilders in 1603 to her brother Theodore, then a seminarian in Cologne. After the chapter established Pulcheria as the seminary for its church district in 1616–1617, Theodore contributed the legacy to the seminary in Louvain for a student burse. Yet to Cats’s dismay, Alticollense was still using it two years later to support seminary students in Cologne. The Haarlem dean protested that church leaders in Utrecht were a little too interested in patronage from Amsterdam, noting, “The

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governors in Utrecht are always coveting the wealth of Amsterdammers.”38 Cats’s icy tone probably stemmed from the jurisdictional disputes that pitted the chapter against Vosmeer in the early days of the mission. Later, as the prerogatives of the chapter and apostolic vicar became clarified, a more generous spirit seemed to reign, since both Rovenius and van Neercassel made sizable contributions to the student endowment of Pulcheria. Nevertheless, this incident reveals the potential for conflict among seminaries in the hunt for resources. The fund-raising efforts of the mission yielded three basic types of revenues that supported the seminary education of Dutch priests. A number of patrons established endowments contracted for individual student burses, other benefactors made unrestricted financial contributions, and still others transferred rentes (incomes from bonds secured against the value of property) to the seminaries. The endowments for student burses formed a substantial source of capital in support of seminary education. Most of these funds came from bequests made by testators who usually stipulated that the gift should be transferred after their spouses or any dependent family members died. These benefactors appointed executors to carry out the transfer of the capital and specified any criteria for selecting the seminarians who would receive the burse.39 Provisores had the responsibility for managing the endowments and releasing the interest annually as a stipend for a particular student. Officials at Pulcheria developed a standard contract for these endowments, dating from the 1610s, which outlined the responsibilities and privileges of all parties: We the provisores and president of the College of the Blessed Virgin in Louvain declare and make known the receipt from N. of the sum of [blank] guilders to the endowment of a burse of the aforementioned College. To that end we promise the aforementioned sum to meet the expenses of a student, who will study philosophy and theology in the aforementioned College, according to the laws and statutes of the College. Further, the expenses will be met, as those of other stipend recipients, until the candidate has completed his formation in the baccalaureate of theology, or otherwise is judged capable of serving the holy church in the Bishopric of Haarlem, which will continue according to the order, arrange-

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ment, and discretion of our descendants in office. And it is stipulated that the College will not be burdened with any students for the first two years [so as to increase the principal sum] and also that the aforementioned N. will have the authority, as long as he lives, to present a person who will be capable of studying philosophy and theology. After the death of the benefactor, someone appointed by him [the benefactor] during his lifetime to replace him, will have the same authority [i.e., to present beneficiaries] and will nominate his own successor and so forth in continual succession. Blood relatives will have preference. We offer the effects of the College as security for the execution of this agreement, and we affirm this with our signatures and the seal of the aforementioned College.40 This contract points to several features of seminary patronage that are important for an understanding about the revival of the Roman Church. First, the fact that a standard protocol even existed at this time indicates that a program of patronage was well under way soon after Pulcheria opened its doors. The survival of the chapter’s account book for endowments at Pulcheria, the Liber Fundationum (Book of Endowments, discussed below), confirms the early standardization of seminary patronage. Unfortunately, no such records have survived for Alticollense in this period, though anecdotal evidence suggests that a parallel structure of patronage was in place there as well.41 Second, the privileges in the endowment contract accorded lay and clerical benefactors an important place in developing a trained cadre of pastors. Patrons enjoyed the right to select the candidates they funded and to stipulate criteria for identifying candidates in perpetuity. Further, the testator named a replacement within the contract to carry out the patronage rights after the testator’s death. These powers reinforced the local character of Roman Catholicism in the Netherlands, solidified the familial connections between laity and clergy, and provided elite women an opportunity to influence the direction of the Dutch Church. Third, though benefactors possessed significant privileges of appointment, the mission did not cede any substantive influence over the formation of the clergy, as was often the case in Catholic lands. The seminary was not merely an option for priests in the Holland Mission,

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but rather leaders made the seminary the point of entrance for all new priests in the seventeenth century. The mission’s control over seminary education, at least in Pulcheria and Alticollense, ensured that apostolic vicars and Haarlem deans, acting as the ordinaries, held authority over the formation of priests. The endowment contract specified that the candidates presented had to be “capable of studying philosophy and theology,” a determination made by the seminary president and the apostolic vicar, as well as by the Haarlem dean in the case of Pulcheria. The contract for endowments enabled benefactors to exert a significant influence in the recruitment of priests but left authority over their formation in the hands of the mission leadership. The Liber Fundationum provides a wealth of information about patronage at Pulcheria, including the patrons, the number of burses they endowed, the dates of the foundations, the amount of capital patrons contributed, as well as any particular requirements that lay beyond the protocol in the general contract. The Appendix (pages 243–245) summarizes this information. Over the course of the seventeenth century, Pulcheria officials administered at least sixty-two individual endowment accounts with amounts that ranged generally from one thousand to three thousand guilders. The temporal pattern of giving indicated in the Appendix indicates that the seminary raised substantial revenues early, for by the end of 1620, less than four years after Pulcheria had opened its doors, it already possessed thirteen endowment accounts.42 The growth rate slowed but remained steady during the seventeenth century, demonstrating the strongest increases in the 1670s and 1680s. The number of burses generated is quite remarkable, considering that Catholics also had to bribe local officials, pay their priests, and provide poor relief. And considerably more endowments were established for Pulcheria students than those recorded in the Liber Fundationum. Though its origins are unclear, the Liber was the Haarlem Chapter’s copy of financial contributions for students at Pulcheria. Each endowment record in the Liber included the patron contract (based on the standard contract discussed above), the names of those who held rights of appointment, special provisions made by the patron, and the names of students awarded the burse. In a number of the records, the scribe also noted the source of this information, which always came from the account books of the provisores at Pulcheria.43 Thus, it appears that canons from the chapter periodically updated the

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Liber from the account books of individual provisores, who were also canons at the chapter. But not all of the accounts from the provisores’ books made it into the Liber. A set of miscellaneous records pertaining to the acquisition and transfer of endowments contains a register from Willem Scheppius, provisor and Haarlem canon, of approximately ten burse endowments not listed in the Liber. The sum of these foundations totaled 20,980 guilders.44 In addition, Theodore van Blockhoven, Johannes van Neercassel, and Cornelis Hofland (a priest from Haarlem) established in the mid-seventeenth century three or four endowments worth 7,278 guilders.45 These instances suggest the likelihood that many other foundations for student burses that were not represented in the Liber existed as well. It seems safe to conclude, therefore, that there were significantly more student burses than the sixty-two listed in the Liber Fundationum. Beyond these endowments, substantial capital sums and financial contributions that were not set up as individual burse accounts formed another important source of revenue. Since there were no patronage contracts for these donations, they functioned as unrestricted funds that college administrators could distribute freely to seminarians. The ten-thousand-guilder gift by Cats, for example, noted simply that the money, “was expended for use by the College in Holland.” Canons recorded seventeen such donations in the Liber, producing a sum of 27,829 guilders out of the total 134,539 guilders (20 percent) raised for student support. The amounts in these gifts varied widely from the meager sixty guilders given by Cornelis Gouda and his wife Anna Nicolai in the 1610s or 1620s to the whopping ten thousand guilders contributed by Cats in midcentury.46 College officials could use this unrestricted type of contribution to assist students who possessed no burse or to supplement the stipends from smaller endowments, such the one given by Simon Duijtis in the 1620s (no. 10 in the Appendix) or Father Herman Jagt in 1664 (no. 47). Just as a significant number of endowment accounts remained off the record in the Liber Fundationum, unrestricted contributions would have been even less likely to appear in this source, since binding obligations to patrons were not involved. Indeed, account books of receipts and expenses from Pulcheria from 1662 to 1671 list many sources of income for students that bore no relation to endowment accounts.47 A third source of seminary patronage came from rentes (likely

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private) purchased by the provisores from individuals and held by the city government in Louvain. Since the early sixteenth century, the sale of rentes by provincial governments and the States General had become a highly effective way of raising large sums without resorting to taxation. In times of need, states would issue the sale of these bonds and guarantee repayment of the loan on the states’ ability to raise revenue through excise taxes and other fiscal instruments. Selling rentes enabled the provincial states and the central government to finance public debt on a long-term basis and at low interest rates. The advantage for those who purchased a rente was that it held a very secure longterm investment at a guaranteed rate, generally between four and six percent. Owners of rentes often sold their investments to third parties, particularly to institutions such as charitable agencies, which found secure revenue-producing investments attractive.48 As soon as the seminary was founded, the Pulcheria administration developed an interest in procuring rentes from those holders willing to sell. The first rente purchase recorded in the Liber Fundationum occurred in April 1617, only two months after the seminary’s opening. In this transaction, Anna Bophoren sold Pulcheria a rente she had purchased from Hothaert van Merode and his wife Virginea Theraets, the annual income from which was just over eighty-seven guilders.49 Thus, in return for the purchase price (which was not given), Pulcheria would receive eighty-seven guilders a year for the life of the rente. All of the thirty-two rentes listed in the Liber were acquired between 1617 and 1623, and they produced a total annual income of 1,317 guilders.50 Since the interest rate on rentes in this period averaged around 8 percent, the total equity in the bonds would have amounted to just over 16,462 guilders.51 Unfortunately, the Liber leaves many questions unanswered: How much did the seminary pay for the rentes? What profit did the seminary realize? At what level did Pulcheria continue to purchase bonds over the course of the seventeenth century? Further, as was the case with endowment accounts and unrestricted contributions, we cannot know the extent to which the seminary held rentes outside those listed in the Liber Fundationum. This source does suggest that long-term interest-bearing bonds provided an important source of income for seminary education in the Holland Mission. To what extent did these revenues pay the expenses of priests in training? The financial records of Pulcheria provide little guidance, making any assessment of student stipends very risky. For example,

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there are no records indicating where provisores invested their capital or what return they received on their investment. The interest on public bonds in the Republic varied from 8.3 percent in 1600 to 5 percent in 1647, but again we do not know if the provisores invested in public debt, other than entering the secondary market for rentes.52 Even in the latter case, it is not clear if the provisores purchased rentes at their face value. If financial officers at Pulcheria did invest in public debt (or a private capital market of equivalent value), it would be reasonable, given contemporary interest rates, to assume an annual return between 50 and 83 guilders on a burse endowment of 1,000 guilders, 100 and 166 guilders on an endowment of 2,000 guilders, and 150 and 249 guilders on an endowment of 3,000 guilders.53 The real wage value of sinecures in the Republic hovered around 110 guilders in 1590, 130 guilders in 1640, and 180 guilders in the late seventeenth century.54 Even if these figures represent a rough framework for measuring the financial maintenance of students, it is still not clear what expenses a burse covered. Moreover, we cannot know the extent to which families and friends privately supplemented a burse. Despite all of these qualifications, it seems likely that even with the most sanguine assessment, endowments just barely covered the expenses of seminarians. Even though the financial records for Pulcheria maintained by the Haarlem Chapter do not allow for a complete economic reconstruction of seminary education in the Holland Mission, the sources do enable us to reach several important conclusions. The rebuilding of a financial infrastructure for clerical formation got under way very quickly as the Mission began to reorganize Catholic pastoral care after the Revolt. Believing that a trained clergy provided the key to revival, mission leaders made the establishment of seminaries a priority, as evidenced by the money they raised for Pulcheria. The hierarchy devised a successful strategy for constructing the financial basis of priestly formation. Senior clerics appealed to the liberality of Catholic elites, who endowed numerous burses in Pulcheria and undoubtedly Alticollense as well. Seminary presidents and provisores also tapped into the financial mechanisms that had produced substantial revenues for provincial states in the sixteenth century. The seminaries were sophisticated and wellendowed institutions, especially in light of the political circumstances that engulfed Catholics in the seventeenth century. Those conditions— legal proscription, political marginalization, and economic deprivation— created a sense of urgency among mission leaders and Catholic elites to

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train a pastoral corps, an urgency that was unknown in most parts of Catholic Europe. The financial records for Pulcheria also tell us a great deal about the social basis of patronage in the Holland Mission. One of the striking characteristics about patronage for seminary training at Pulcheria was the high percentage of clerical patrons. Out of the eighty-eight benefactors (whose vocation is known) mentioned in the Liber Fundationum, forty-six or 52 percent were priests. These patrons included highranking clerics in the mission, such as Phillip Rovenius, Judocus Cats, Willem Scheppius, Johannes Wandelman, David vander Mij, Hendrik Vordenus, Theodore Silvolt, Lambert Feijt, and Joseph Cousebant. Johannes van Neercassel and Theodore van Blockhoven also numbered among the patrons but were off the record of the Liber. Further, this list of contributors does not include those who made donations to Alticollense, such as Albert Eggius, Sasbout and Tilman Vosmeer, as well as many others. The sums donated to Pulcheria by clerics were fairly substantial, as high as Judocus Cats’s 10,000 guilders, and ranging roughly between 1,600 and 5,000 guilders. The concentration of substantial clerical patrons no doubt reflected the social background of the Dutch priesthood. Almost 60 percent of the clergy in the second half of the seventeenth century descended from very prosperous families, and all but a small minority (less than 8 percent) came at least from the middling ranks of society.55 The patronage of both clergy and laity signified a profound commitment to the Roman Church in the Netherlands and a deep sense of religious and national identity among Catholic elites. Without a doubt, these were the patrons whom van Neercassel addressed in his 1683 pastoral letter and whose values he extolled. Another interesting social feature of seminary patronage was the gender ratio of lay benefactors. Out of the thirty-six lay benefactors, eighteen (50 percent) were women, who gave at rates somewhat lower than their male counterparts. Five additional entries indicate that female patrons were spiritual virgins, though it is quite possible that more virgins contributed but that the canons simply neglected to note their status in the Liber. Nevertheless, as an alternative to practicing the vocation of a spiritual virgin, patronage formed an important outlet for an elite woman to demonstrate her commitment to Catholicism. The Appendix shows that women were as likely to contribute to Pulcheria as

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laymen. Whether spiritual virgins, wives, or widows, elite women represented valuable sources of revenue, and, consequently, apostolic vicars and other church officials courted their favor, often writing, sending devotional materials, and visiting active and potential female patrons.56 The privileges of benefaction gave women an influence with the church hierarchy and a voice in selecting future priests. Taken together with the catechizing and organizing activities of spiritual virgins, as well as lay women’s work in running orphanages and helping the poor, patronage underscored the significance of women’s contributions to the revival of Catholicism in the Netherlands, a reality often shrouded by contemporary sources. Patronage for seminary education also draws attention to the familial interconnections that bound clergy and laity together in the seventeenthcentury Netherlands. Elite families literally generated most of the priests and spiritual virgins who worked in the mission; endowed sons, daughters, cousins, nephews, and nieces with burses; and supported their pastoral work. The most standard provision in endowment contracts for Pulcheria stipulated the preference for a blood relative to benefit from the burse. Not only did this proviso appear in the standard contract, but many entries also reiterated the predilection for a blood relative. The priority of kinship was not confined to endowments for specific burses, but the preference for a blood relative also served as the most frequently mentioned condition in all financial contributions to Pulcheria. For example, Francis van Duijssel left a capital sum in May 1661 that would provide four hundred guilders annually to assist three students: a seminarian at Trinity College (at the University of Louvain), a seminarian at Pulcheria, and a medical or law student at Louvain. In return for annual masses for his soul, van Duijssel gave first priority in all three stipends to blood relatives or descendents. Likewise, in another typical case, Theodore Silvolt, theology professor at Louvain, left an endowment for Pulcheria that provided a stipend strictly for a blood relative.57 For many elite Catholics, then, supporting the clergy was part of taking care of family, a trend that remained consistent across the seventeenth century. Gian Ackermans has shown that a third of the clergy had at least one other family member who took a religious vocation.58 An extensive network of elite families undergirded the Dutch clergy, and many priests obtained support from their patrimony. Thus, family

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solidarity, the great wealth of the Netherlands, and the religious identity of Catholic elites reinforced one another in the effort to renew the Roman faith in the post-Reformation period. After family, patrons prioritized the local community. It was common for benefactors to specify that recipients should originate from a certain location, usually the diocese of Haarlem or, in some cases, the patron’s own native province, town, or village. The bequest of Francis van Duijssel provided that if no blood relative emerged as a beneficiary, the award should go to young men from Montfort, van Duijssel’s hometown. In the event that no relatives or locals emerged, van Duijssel stipulated that recipients should come from the province of Utrecht, which, given its sizable Catholic community, ensured that the van Duijssel endowment would not go unspent. Over the years, seminary recipients included Anthonij van Hoven (1674) from Montfort and Cornelis van Duijssel (1689), a nephew.59 Theodore Silvolt specified in his endowment that if no relative came forward after twenty-five years, the burse could go to someone from Zutphen or Oldenzaal.60 At least fifteen out of the sixty-two endowments for burses stipulated that the recipient should come from or serve in a particular location.61 In several cases, communities provided for the education of their own priest. Nicholas Wijes, a priest in Edam, endowed a scholarship for a “poor person, over 30 years of age either related to him by blood or from [in descending order] Edam, Middelie, Kwadijk, Zeevang, Waterland, Monnikendam, Amsterdam, or from anywhere in Holland.” Even if the recipient was not a native of Edam, he had to agree to serve as a priest there, if the post lay vacant. Father Wijes thereby assured that his flock and its descendents would have a shepherd in years to come.62 In at least two other congregations, Schagen and Alkmaar, contributors came together to establish endowments to provide for burses, provided the recipients returned to serve their communities.63 The priorities of kin and place point to the fact that family and community were integral to the religious identity of Dutch Catholic elites. Provisions in endowment contracts enabled benefactors not only to preserve control over their money but more importantly to perpetuate the priesthood in their families and their communities over generations and to establish a personal connection to real people carrying out pastoral ministry. Patrons privileged kinship and community, pointing out

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the importance of the familial and the familiar in Catholic identity in this period of Dutch history.

Paying the Priest Despite the economic burdens involved in training priests, the investment required to maintain a resident pastor represented the heaviest expense for Dutch Catholic communities. In fact, the geography of Catholic wealth functioned as a primary determinant in the distribution pattern of priests. Outside areas that contained heavy concentrations of Catholics, many congregations struggled mightily, going through all sorts of financial contortions to raise revenue for a priest. Leaders from Schagen voiced their frustration to Sasbout Vosmeer in 1611 that they had only recently been able to raise funds for a decent maintenance for their priest, Joost van Cathden, but after all that effort, he had been reassigned to Hoorn. A. A. and Claertgen Willems wrote from Dordrecht in 1609 that they had made a couple of payments to their priest and would try to make another at “an opportune time.” Francis Dusseldorp recounted that, while he was traveling a circuit in rural Holland, a grateful miller’s wife gave him “three pounds of Flemish wheat” that she had obtained from the sale of some garments.64 Clearly, financial support for clergy was anything but automatic, especially in the early seventeenth century. How then did Catholic communities pay their priests? Pastoral maintenance both drew from the model of the preReformation parish and paralleled the financial mechanisms that supported seminary study. The sources for apprehending the financial infrastructure of the pastorate, namely, correspondence, bequests, and consecration records in the archives of the apostolic vicars and Haarlem Chapter, are far more fragmented and meager than the records for seminary funding, making it very difficult to determine the amounts that priests in various areas were compensated. Nonetheless, scattered references in the correspondence allow us to piece together a general outline of the basic means by which Catholic communities supported their priests. As was the case in the funding of seminary education, most priests counted on family patrimony for a significant amount of financial

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support. Most of the Dutch clergy in the second half of the seventeenth century belonged to well-to-do families who supported the priestly careers of their sons, nephews, and cousins. According to Gian Ackermans, matriculation registers for Dutch seminarians studying at the University of Louvain signified whether an incoming student would need financial support, by noting ‘dives’ or ‘pauper’ by each name. Out of sixty-seven priests that Ackermans identified, only seven were listed as being poor and needing institutional assistance. Consecration lists from the same period confirm that family patrimony was a central source of financial support for the priesthood. These records denoted whether a priest would receive the consecration title of either “under the title of patrimony” or “under the title of the mission,” depending on whether the priest would be supported by his own patrimony or by patronage supplied by the mission. Records for only fifty-three titles have survived, but of that number, the records list eighteen as under the title of patrimony and thirty-four as under the title of mission. Consequently, the extensive family network that undergirded seminary education also functioned as a significant basis of funding for the pastorate, as many priests obtained support from their patrimony. In their wills, these priests also proved quite generous to the priesthood in the Holland Mission.65 A second source of pastoral maintenance came from endowments or benefices established in areas that contained a critical mass of substantial Catholic families. Wealthy patrons, as well as benefactors of more modest means, founded or contributed to endowments that would produce an annual salary for priests. Establishing or donating to a benefice for a priest provided the most valuable and perpetual service to a congregation, since the foundation would ensure continuous pastoral ministry in a community. The wealthiest congregations, those in the cities of Holland and Utrecht, possessed the most endowed benefices for pastors, and they became the choice assignments for priests in the mission. What was the standard annual wage for parish clergy? Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude have stated that priests in the mid-eighteenth century received salaries as high as three thousand guilders in Amsterdam, and more routinely around one thousand guilders in other areas. Despite these rather well-appointed salary figures, in 1692 a priest in Dordrecht threatened to leave his congregation because he could not make ends meet on his salary of 130 guilders a year.66 Certainly wages

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did not rise tenfold from the 1690s to 1740s, so how do we account for these differences? Unfortunately, too many unknown variables confound any precise estimate of the wage scale for priests in the seventeenth century. In the case of the Dordrecht priest, as with all other Catholic clergy, we do not know whether he had access to other sources of support or whether the local church assumed certain expenses, such as lodging and food. Undoubtedly, priests who came from prosperous and even respectable families would at least live comfortably, and in the case of Amsterdam and Utrecht families, they would live at some financial ease, as de Vries and van der Woude indicate. The annual income for unskilled workers averaged around three hundred guilders per year from 1638 to 1709; it seems safe to assume that even the lowliest paid priest would have lived at that level.67 As was the case in funding for seminary eduction, bequests formed an important source of revenue for pastoral endowments, such as the one given by Margariet d’ Edell. In 1624 she willed a portion of her estate to establish a benefice “to the honor of God and memory of Mary, the mother of our Lord, and Saints Willibrord and Boniface, my patrons in the Church of our Blessed Lady, commonly known as the ‘Buurkerk.’ ” In addition to designating three hundred guilders annually for poor relief and a sum to support any of her blood relatives who might become priests, Edell provided for “an eternal benefice or vicariate of 200 guilders annually, more or less, as will be received from the capital which I hereafter will name.”68 Though it is not clear how quickly or how extensively benefices reemerged in the Northern Netherlands, scattered sources provide ample evidence that endowments became a fundamental mechanism for supporting the pastorate.69 As a result, bequests were never far from the mind of the Dutch clergy. Church leaders actively solicited pious bequests for pastoral endowments. Apostolic vicars in particular worked to develop congenial relationships with noblemen and -women, in no small part to court critical sources of revenue. Van Neercassel, for example, wrote Madame van Kabauw from Rijswijk (in South Holland) upon the death of her husband, to remind her of the “great opportunity” she had to promote the salvation of common Netherlanders. He closed with a request for any charitable sacrifice she could muster to enable priests to carry the gospel to the poor. Later he visited her and continued to maintain contact with her, never failing to praise her for her zeal on behalf of God

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and the church. Likewise, when the Lord of Boetgreve died in 1678, van Neercassel sent his condolences and lauded Madame Boetgreve for her “outstanding virtue . . . [in having] comforted him [that is, her husband] in his sickness.” Van Neercassel concluded with a gentle admonition for her to seek out ways to promote the kingdom of God that would honor the memory of Lord Boetgreve. Van Neercassel also made sure the local priest paid attention to the death of potential patrons. In 1684, for example, he notified the pastor in Goes that Juffrouw Sara Griffinus had died and that two surviving nephews figured into the estate, but it lacked an executor. Van Neercassel encouraged the priest to consider the best course of action. As these examples indicate, women played an important role as purveyors of pious bequests. Many of these women were either religious themselves or were closely related to religious men or women. In May 1610, Jacob Jansson went to the Ursuline monastery in Louvain, to take up a collection among the sisters for Pulcheria.70 Bequests for pastoral endowments empowered patrons, as they possessed the right to appoint the holder of a benefice. In her will, Margariet d’ Edell reserved the right to name not only her sister, Paschina d’ Edell, as the executor of the endowment’s patronage right but also, after her death, nephews Jacob Feijt and Jacob van Hoove and, after their passing, the bishop of Utrecht or his equivalent. This right had been a staple of lay patronage throughout Europe for hundreds of years. Yet in the post-Reformation Netherlands, church jurisdiction and the application of canon law often proved less than straightforward. It is clear, however, that apostolic vicars endeavored to respect the wishes of patrons and customarily consulted lay curators in assigning priests to an area. In some instances, apostolic vicars acquired patronage rights over benefices or made the appointment in the name of the patron. In 1617, for example, Rovenius announced that he was appointing Michael Vosmeer to the benefice of St. Eligius in the St. Hippolytus Church in Delft on behalf of the patron, Catharina Ghijsbrechts van Holy, “an honest matron.”71 A generally cooperative, though sometimes tense, give-and-take characterized the appointment of priests to particular congregations. Apostolic vicars conferred with and attempted to satisfy local wishes, yet church leaders also insisted upon their own pastoral prerogatives in assigning priests.72 Communities that could not endow or fully endow a pastoral en-

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dowment relied on collections, sometimes from several congregations who shared clergy, to pay a priest. Van Neercassel explained to lay leaders in Krommenie that they were going to have to share their pastor with the community at Wormer, because neither could not afford a full-time priest. He also refused to reassign a seventy-year-old priest from Groningen, in part because he needed the income, and it would not be financially feasible to send in an additional, younger priest. In areas with smaller concentrations of Catholics and without a generous patron, priests who did not possess independent means struggled financially. Needs were acute, especially during times of economic contraction. Van Neercassel exclaimed to van Blockhoven in 1676 that financial troubles throughout the mission were disrupting pastoral care, as priests sought subsidies for essential needs while common Catholics were falling into poverty. Throughout the correspondence between laity and clergy, communities complained about the dearth of resources. Priests in Lingen complained to Vosmeer in 1606 about their desperate poverty and their need for basic resources.73 A major item always on the agenda of Haarlem Chapter meetings was the financial struggles of rural congregations to support priests, help needy Catholics, and pay fines. Likewise, apostolic vicars entertained a wide variety of requests from laypeople and clerics alike for help in increasing subsidies for priests.74 In these situations, priests sometimes became embroiled in conflicts with their communities over salary disputes. Leaders of the secular hierarchy usually depended on local communities to support their priests and so attempted to motivate community members to greater generosity. J. A. Ban, Haarlem canon, visited two small areas in North Holland, to try to resolve a dispute between Jan Simonszoon and local leaders over his income. Urging them to raise funds to support the priest that brought salvation to their community, Ban asked the leaders to remember that they served Christ by serving his ministers. In 1692 the desperate priest in Dordrecht mentioned earlier, Father van Heijningen, had lodged numerous complaints that the congregation in Dordrecht failed over the previous two years to pay him the two hundred guilders annually that it had promised. According to van Heijningen, he had only received 130 guilders per year, despite an oral agreement for the higher sum, and he simply could not live on that amount.75 These financial difficulties led priests to work earnestly at raising

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revenue, sometimes a bit too enthusiastically, in the eyes of some of the laity. A regular criticism lodged against both secular and regular clergy was that priests solicited contributions just before or after administering the sacraments. It was not considered improper for priests to accept a gratuity at a wedding or funeral, and perhaps many priests often expected this gift. Nevertheless, soliciting for a gratuity would have constituted simony. The difference between custom and canon was probably quite fluid, leading to lay complaints about priests charging fees for services.76 The mission leadership and religious superiors attempted to root out abuses, though the quest to finance pastoral ministry brought religious orders and the secular clergy into bitter competition for resources throughout the seventeenth century. As we have seen, the conflict between secular priests and the regular orders extended to most facets of pastoral ministry. In light of these disputes, it is not surprising that seculars and regulars collided on matters of money. They competed for similar sources of patronage, and they regarded the other, sometimes even more than they did heretical officials, as the most pernicious obstacle to procuring adequate financial support and to converting souls.77 Employing the mission’s typical, atavistic discourse about Jesuits, Rovenius protested in 1623 that they siphoned away money needed to sustain “domestic priests” in Holland and diverted it to “foreign monasteries.”78 The competition for patronage was not simply another point of conflict between rival ecclesiastical organizations. Rather, all of these clashes were expressions of two fundamentally antithetical approaches to directing and supporting Catholic communities after Calvinism came to power in the Netherlands. In no aspect of church governance did secular leaders assert their diocesan view of pastoral ministry more forcefully than in the administration of church property and patronage. In fact, the association of the Holland Mission with the ancient Utrecht archbishopric squared with the need to procure new sources of patronage and to claim properties should the Catholic Church be restored.79 The apostolic vicars laid claim to any remnants of the church properties or revenues left intact after the Revolt. A widespread hope, even expectation, existed among Catholics for the restoration of the Roman Church in the Northern Netherlands well into the seventeenth century.80 Vosmeer and Rovenius presented themselves as archbishops, which would enable them to assert their prerogatives over property,

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though their claims were never recognized by the church hierarchy or by the religious orders. Nonetheless, in 1607 Vosmeer, in a property dispute with the bishop of Roermond, argued that the apostolic vicar was, as acting archbishop, entitled to administer the revenues of the archdiocese.81 This authority extended to all revenues accrued or collected in the territory under the jurisdiction of the Holland Mission, unless a benefactor specified otherwise. Following Vosmeer, Rovenius adopted the principle that the apostolic vicars possessed the authority to administer benefices and that religious orders could utilize these resources only with their explicit approval. Rovenius provided the clearest and most forceful statement of the intrinsic interconnection between pastoral ministry and ecclesiastical patronage in his Reipublicae Christianae. After a continuous struggle for over twenty years to establish pastoral control over the religious orders in the Holland Mission, Rovenius’s Reipublicae appeared three years before his death in 1648. The Reipublicae was essentially a work of ecclesiology, detailing, in Rovenius’s words, “the many gradations and offices, by rank, which are filled in the church as in the state, having been arranged according to their order, as is customary.”82 It represented the mature vision of the apostolic vicar most responsible for reorganizing the church at a time of external danger and for reconstructing the clergy in a period of internal strife.83 Reipublicae Christianae presented an overpowering diocesan view of the church, placing a strong emphasis on the authority of the ordinary. Throughout the work, Rovenius drove home the point that the bishop and his clergy occupied the central place of pastoral care. Religious orders were, at best, auxiliaries to the secular clergy and should have submitted themselves to the authority of the bishop. Rovenius wrote, “The church is not one body without a bishop.”84 Because the bishop directed pastoral ministry, he also administered the benefices and other revenues of the diocese. Rovenius expressed this opinion: “A benefice is established by the authority of the pope or the bishop, otherwise it is not regarded as an ecclesiastical benefice or of a perpetual nature.”85 He went on to argue that all temporal goods acquired by bishops pertain not to their personal estate but rather to holdings of the church, for the right to order temporal goods belongs only to bishops.86 For regulars who worked within any diocese, Rovenius contended that their vow of poverty precluded them from having

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any legitimate claim to benefices or ecclesiastical revenues in a diocese. Though he conceded that benefactors could endow a benefice for regular priests, he maintained that diocesan clergy held presumptive claim, unless stipulated by the pope, to carry out pastoral care. Rovenius no doubt was responding to claims made by regular missionaries on local revenues to fund their stations. Further, since a benefice and a pastor were indivisible, Rovenius reasoned that a regular priest, who by definition lacked a benefice, could not hold a pastoral position without special permission from the ordinary. Rovenius’s argument was a tautology, since he also maintained that religious could not receive benefices because they were not pastors. But the tautology points to the indissoluble connections between the secular clergy, pastoral ministry, and church property.87 The basic position of Vosmeer and Rovenius on apostolic control of church patronage remained unchanged throughout the rest of the seventeenth century, though it was not enforced with the same rigor under de la Torre nor under the fleeting tenure of Balduin Cats. It was van Neercassel who regained greater control over the religious orders and who attempted to maintain stronger command over patronage.88 Van Neercassel claimed that his Constitutiones were simply an extension of the constitutions set forth by Rovenius because of the rebellions taking place in the Holland Mission. With regard to regulars and patronage, van Neercassel also echoed the common complaint that regular priests were more interested in money than ministry. He warned, “Regulars who enjoy their special privilege should take care, lest the sheep are deserted, [and] they [religious] should show themselves to care for and nourish [the flock] with the charity of shepherds rather than with the greed of hirelings.”89 Van Neercassel here reiterated a standard objection of the Dutch secular clergy in the seventeenth century to the Jesuit missionaries: namely, the fathers primarily concerned themselves with financial resources and abandoned their posts for more lucrative pastures. In 1622 Rovenius complained to the Propaganda Fide that pastorates were “invaded by religious orders” who pulled people and charity away from secular priests and then left stations when they so choose.90 This metaphor of invasion underscores the secular clergy’s view of religious orders as foreign intruders plundering resources from domestic priests. In the second half of the seventeenth century, Ludolphus van Heuman claimed, after his visitation to Zeeland, that the sec-

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ular priests had made great strides in this difficult province until the Jesuits came on the scene, turned faithful Catholics from their priests, and then left once the resources dried up. Van Heuman provided several anecdotes to this effect, one accusing a Jesuit father of moving on after he “drank up their [the faithful’s] milk and worked their plates.” Further, van Heuman claimed that the Society of Jesus sent out priests to scout a region, and if they discovered any wealth among local Catholics, they would insinuate themselves into the community and then prevent legitimate pastors under obedience to the apostolic vicar from working there.91 Because leaders in the Holland Mission regarded the pastorate as inseparable from a benefice under the authority of a bishop, their objection to the violation of pastoral authority was an inherent rejection of patronage for a regular priest. The reverse was also the case: the rejection of patronage implied a denial of pastoral status. In a letter to the Haarlem Chapter, Rovenius cataloged a number of “disturbances” caused by the illicit pastoral work of regular priests, chief of which was that local financial maintenance dedicated to support secular priests would be diverted to religious orders. Hence, the corruption of pastoral authority by regular priests led to the loss of pastoral revenue for secular priests. Likewise, as early as 1590, Vosmeer suggested to Willem Coopal that the Haarlem Chapter should conduct a visitation in Holland’s north quarter because Jesuits were administering sacraments and soliciting contributions there, implying that the two activities necessarily accompanied each other.92 Even when the secular hierarchy permitted a regular to do priestly work, the concession did not confer pastoral authority or a benefice, unless specifically stipulated. In a 1631 letter of explanation to Quirinius Coster, the Haarlem Chapter dean, Leonard Marius maintained that he gave two Jesuits approval to work in Alkmaar, but he granted them neither pastoral authority nor the right to collect revenues. Further, a priest or seminarian was not allowed to retain a burse if he joined an order. In fact, Zacharias de Metz claimed that diocesan priests, having received a stipend for seminary training at Alticollense or Pulcheria, were defrauding patrons when they left the secular clergy for a religious order. Because orders attracted many seminarians and new priests, de Metz proposed to Pope Alexander VII in 1659 that anyone who accepted a burse to train at the colleges in the archdiocese of Utrecht or

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diocese of Haarlem could not join a religious order until eight years after their graduation, upon pain of excommunication.93 As one might expect, Jesuit provincials and prefects of other religious orders held a completely different view about the allocation of church revenues. Religious orders recognized the heretical lands of the northern provinces as mission territory, much like lands in Asia and in North America. Not only did religious orders conduct their own operations from this missionary perspective, but they also regarded the Dutch secular clergy as a type of missionary order that made specious claims to diocesan privilege. As explained in 1628 by the Jesuit Willem Bauters, the apostolic vicar sowed unending discord through his efforts to subject Jesuits in the mission to his authority. As numerous Jesuits contended they already had a superior and, thus, did not fall under the jurisdiction of the secular clergy’s superior.94 Further, the apostolic vicar’s authority derived from the exigencies of a missionary setting and bore no parallel to the fixed authority of an archbishop or bishop. Consequently, the secular priests were not pastors joined to parishes with benefices as diocesan priests in Catholic lands were. From this point of view, the secular clergy more closely resembled an ad hoc missionary order under the authority of a superior designated as apostolic vicar. Regular priests and their superiors certainly believed that they were to cooperate with their ordained colleagues, but they did not consider church revenues to be the presumptive right of the secular clergy. In short, church property was fair game. For the Jesuits, of all the religious orders, missionary service was their special vocation: to “act thus everywhere by the grace of God and patronage of St. Ignatius so that they can be said to be free to act rightly for themselves and others (which is the goal of both the Society and the mission).”95 From this missionary perspective, it was altogether appropriate for the priests who went into these areas to secure an adequate means of support. That is just what the regulars in the Holland Mission attempted to do. Jacob de Brouwer, Dominican prefect, wrote in 1633 that the secular priests had caused all the trouble, since they possessed an inordinate attachment to worldly goods and for that reason sought to keep regulars out of their districts.96 A proposal by Dominicans in Amsterdam to the Propaganda Fide in 1633, designed to address their pastoral concerns and financial needs, provides insight into regular priests’ perspective on patronage in the

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mission. Rather than relying on local financing or on developing funding lines for benefices, the Dominicans proposed that the Propaganda should centralize and control revenues for the entire mission. The Dominicans floated this idea in several recommendations. First, they petitioned for a financial trust to be held by the order, “for the necessity and the various opportunities for the good of the Mission,” to be funded from the labor of the missionaries and the charity of local Catholics. Second, the Dominicans urged that all of the church revenues in mission territory, outside that of the order, be placed under the authority of the Propaganda Fide and distributed for the needs of all the missionaries. Third, the proposal specified that at least part of the estate of any missionary priest should be bequeathed to the mission, “just as when one dies in a convent.”97 Thus the convent or the religious order served as the model upon which these Dominicans and other regular priests based their views of patronage and property in the Holland Mission. Numerous local disputes over rights to funding plagued relations between secular and regular priests throughout this period. Some of the conflicts were quite nasty. In 1641, for example, canons in the Haarlem Chapter brought before a notary witnesses who testified that several Dominicans and Franciscans had circulated a forged papal bull among the laity “in the German language,” that purported to excommunicate Nicolas Nomius, the chapter dean. Witnesses stated that the mendicants warned them “to have no community” with Nomius, attempting to discredit seculars and divert contributions.98 The most widespread and contentious conflict, however, involved charges between seculars and regulars of attempting to manipulate spiritual virgins for patronage. Because spiritual virgins came from elite Catholic families who served as important patrons, secular priests and Jesuits competed vigorously for access to and influence with spiritual virgins. Seculars and Jesuits both charged that the other sought to establish their priests as confessors to the virgins in order to gain access to the wealth of their families. To secure this source of patronage, according to the allegations, confessors tried to prohibit virgins from seeking out other confessors. This path to patronage, therefore, went through women and through the confessional.99 In this competitive atmosphere, the Jesuits began to charge in 1608 that secular priests throughout the Netherlands were using their

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authority as confessors to impose themselves sexually on the virgins.100 In January 1609, the nuncio in Brussels, Gui Bentivoglio, sent a letter to Vosmeer and Eggius, detailing complaints of “much indecency and scandal carried out by priests, regulars as well as seculars” with the spiritual virgins. Ticking off a number of offenses, the nuncio expressed a palpable fear about sexual scandal, female influence on the secular priests, and deliberate exclusion of Jesuits from sources of revenue. According to stories that the Jesuits told Bentivoglio, secular priests were monopolizing clerical influence over virgins by prohibiting them from confessing to regulars in order to prevent religious orders from making connections with lay elites. Not only did this quest for patronage compromise discipline for the virgins, but the priestly pursuit of “collections” and control over the virgins also had fostered “great danger” in their relationships, leading to sexual liaisons, to the “great scandal” of the church. Bentivoglio observed that anecdotes abounded about seculars and virgins cohabitating and arranging private colloquies in secret places. According to the nuncio, parents were complaining that priests were taking virgins with them, unchaperoned, on their trips to rural congregations, often for two or three days at a time. While away on these trips, priests did not wear vestments to identify themselves as clergy, and thus they harbored “no fear of being restrained by the presence of their superiors” with “the young and attractive daughters.”101 Bentivoglio’s concerns about illicit sexuality were no doubt genuine, yet they also betrayed a broader anxiety about distorted relationships between secular confessors and spiritual virgins. The nuncio objected that confessors were allowing these women to assist at the altar and sing during Mass. A feminine presence in the celebration of Mass, especially by women who had taken no formal vows, was expressly forbidden by the church. Bentivoglio also believed that secular priests, in order to court a source of patronage, were granting virgins liturgical prerogatives and a presence within sacred space at the holiest moment of Catholic worship. In so doing, priests violated the natural gender hierarchy. They conceded a measure of spiritual power to women, who, as sources of patronage, held significant leverage over their confessors. Since sexual sin was widely regarded as a snare of the devil to entrap those who had forsaken God, illicit sexuality only confirmed the disordered and unhealthy relations between seculars and spiritual virgins. Though admitting the possibility that some priests had fallen into

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error and perhaps even into sin, Sasbout Vosmeer and the secular leadership categorically denied the charges of rampant sexuality and rigid clerical control over the virgins. Vosmeer inquired among the various archpriests about priestly conduct, and in the spring of 1609, priests from Holland and Utrecht responded, with testimonials, affirming their chastity and the virgins’ freedom to choose their own confessors. Eggius did acknowledge in March that virgins had traveled with priests, lived in their residences, and sung during the Mass, but these indiscretions established no case for sexual, financial, or sacramental scandal. Eggius argued that the accusations were based on old rumors circulated by Jesuit superiors and would not withstand impartial scrutiny. In addition, Eggius reiterated equally old complaints that regular priests traveled into areas primarily to obtain revenues and then took one collection after another, draining resources away from residential pastors and their pastoral ministry.102 Ultimately, Vosmeer and his associates were able to show Bentivoglio and the Progaganda Fide that the accusations stemmed from rumors spread by the Jesuit superior of the mission, Adrian Boom. In August 1610, several of the secular clergy met with Boom and fellow Jesuit Willem de Leeuw in Utrecht and came to a settlement known as Articuli ( The Articles). The agreement represented a vindication and triumph for the secular priests, for Articuli established that in a location served by a secular priest, a Jesuit must obtain permission from the apostolic vicar for a limited range of pastoral functions: performing baptisms, marriages, and last rites. Ultimately, however, Articuli settled nothing, for Jesuits and seculars continued to clash over patronage and pastoral rights until the schism in the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, the Jesuit plan for discrediting the secular clergy ultimately backfired.103 If the charges of illicit sexuality were largely a Jesuit subterfuge that tapped into deep-seated concerns about sacerdotal carnality and female power, the real concern for Boom and Vosmeer was access to patronage.

Feeding the Poor Competition for revenue to support priests also came from another source: the effort to relieve poverty within Catholic congregations. Providing for the needy of the religious community occupied a central

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place for lay leaders, spiritual virgins, priests, and clerical authorities in the mission. Yet outside of high-density Catholic enclaves, communities struggled to balance the demands of paying their priests and feeding their poor, especially since local political authorities took a keen interest in any Catholic money that changed hands. In 1611 leaders from a small congregation in Zeeland sent a letter to Sasbout Vosmeer: “Because of diminished resources, paupers abound who are pressed ever more into poverty so that they are gladdened by the charity of the heretics, but are then coerced to attend their meetings.”104 Inside the Catholic community, collections to pay the priest competed with and often overrode financial efforts to feed the poor, creating a hierarchy of funding that brought much consternation to many congregations. Outside the community, the attractions of well-funded Calvinist diaconates tugged at the confessional allegiances of poor Catholics. These internal and external tensions call attention to the fundamental importance of poor relief to community formation among wellentrenched constituencies in the Golden Age Netherlands. Economic turmoil made it necessary for magistrates to transform parish foundations into comprehensive poor relief institutions at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries. Also, as denominations of all stripes were establishing new confessional boundaries, church officers developed their own networks of provision for those on the social margins.105 Thus, poor relief provides a useful venue from which to examine community building among Catholic congregations in the pluralistic religious environment of the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. Despite the spectacular commercial prosperity of the Golden Age, Dutch local and provincial authorities rediscovered the ancient truth that the poor abided with them always. Institutions dedicated to the amelioration of poverty and its social problems proliferated in the United Provinces from the last quarter of the sixteenth century across the ups and downs of the seventeenth century. Battered by economic contraction and war, city governments took advantage of the secularization of ecclesiastical property to overhaul the fragmented network of religious and parochial foundations that had provided charity for centuries. Most cities created centralized programs that provided outdoor relief to the domiciled poor; housed the disabled, orphaned, and infirm; and put incorrigible beggars and petty criminals to work in Houses of

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Discipline. These institutions, particularly the Houses of Discipline, attracted a great deal of attention from contemporaries inside and outside the Republic. In addition to municipal programs of relief, most confessional groups in the Republic—namely, Catholic, Mennonite, Walloon Reformed, and Lutheran—developed their own agencies or informal networks to support the needy in their own religious communities. We should not be surprised, given its public character, that the Reformed diaconate formed the most extensive system of charity of any denomination. In some cities, such as Amsterdam and Haarlem, the diaconate actually rivaled or surpassed municipal systems, and in other cities, like Delft and Dordrecht, deacons took over most responsibility for social provision. The scope of diaconal charity and the confessionalizing ambitions of Calvinist ministers and lay leaders made all but the most thoroughly Reformed city magistrate wary of diaconal influence in the city.106 Catholic leaders, such as those from Zeeland, also consistently complained about the powerful pull of Reformed charity on the Catholic poor.107 Contemporary disquiet over the potential instrumentality of Calvinist poor relief led Rogier to argue that the Reformed Church used charity to recruit church members among the poor. This contention formed an important element of Rogier’s “protestantization thesis,” which maintained that Calvinists exerted social, economic, and political pressure to coerce Netherlanders into becoming Reformed. In the first phase of “protestantization,” which extended from 1572 until the early seventeenth century, Reformed deacons, according to Rogier, dangled the prospect of obtaining alms to attract poor people to their churches.108 Using archival sources, a number of studies on Calvinist congregations in the past twenty years, however, have disputed this component of Rogier’s thesis, though it still has some resonance in the historiography of the Dutch Reformation. Though needy folks no doubt would have been drawn to seek alms from deacons, church officers, preoccupied with establishing a well-disciplined church, had little inclination and all-too-meager resources to use alms to recruit at any level, especially among the poor.109 Beginning in the 1650s and continuing throughout the second half of the seventeenth century, local governments placed increasing demands on all confessional communities to care for their own poor, as a

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way of unburdening municipal poor-relief institutions. According to Joke Spaans, this shift in the burden for the poor actually provided all churches with an incentive to discourage poor people from joining their congregations. As a result, the poor, many of whom were recent immigrants and regarded as less than respectable, would have found it difficult to find compassion from the community. Catholic communities expressed concerns throughout the second half of the seventeenth century about losing poor members to Calvinist churches. It is conclusive that, according to Spaans, “the suggestion that the public Church used its welfare funds to lure the poor into its fold will not stand close scrutiny.”110 Providing for the poor within the faith community became a central concern for local congregations and for the leaders of the Holland Mission. As soon as Sasbout Vosmeer and his early band of fellow priests set about the task of reorganizing pastoral ministry, they began to work with the laity to provide for the poor. In a description of the work of Willem Coopal, dean of the Haarlem Chapter from 1587 to 1591, Vosmeer lauded him for his work “helping the poor in their needs,” whereby Coopal attracted a large following wherever he went.111 Joannes Paludanus likewise noted in the late 1610s the “pious fruit of spiritual virgins in their indefatigable service to God and especially to the poor.”112 These were not simply images of piety abstracted from the regular workings of Catholic communities, for as early as 1600 Vosmeer stipulated that all congregations were to appoint lay churchwardens for the poor.113 The overriding purpose of Catholic charity was to serve the faithful within the body of Christ.114 For well over a millennium, the Roman Church had enshrined charitable service to others as a binding obligation on all Christians and the highest expression of religious devotion. Since the Middle Ages, parishes and religious orders carried out the seven corporal works of mercy within the rhythms of the annual liturgical cycle. The scholarly attention given to the disciplinary and regulatory mechanisms in poor relief has often obscured the fundamental impulses driving social provision in the medieval and early modern periods. Recent work on Protestant and Catholic lands has rediscovered the abiding religious motivations that continued to inform approaches to poverty in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Simply put, charity was a basic obligation of any Christian community, and it would

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have been inconceivable for Catholics not to attempt to reach out to their needy coreligionists. Van Neercassel, in announcing a jubilee indulgence for charity, instructed Dutch Catholics, “Consider the cruelty of the needy receiving aid, but the Catholic poor going hungry.”115 The sources for reconstructing Catholic poor relief are piecemeal and varied. Sources include not only correspondence but also acts from the Haarlem Chapter, municipal ordinances, devotional material used by spiritual virgins, and records from a few institutions, such as orphanages. From this diverse body of material, it appears that by the early seventeenth century, roughly from 1600 to 1630, all Catholic congregations engaged in some form of poor relief for their members. The parish functioned as the model for the organization, collection, and distribution of assistance. As a result, the parish structure for poor relief continued to function as the guiding form of collective association for Catholic congregations stripped of their parishes in the Reformation. Before the reorganization of charitable agencies in the late sixteenth century, lay wardens or other lay officials, known as Holy Ghost Masters, oversaw the entire range of parish charity. After the Catholic Church became a clandestine body in the Netherlands, Catholics continued to appropriate these terms to identify the lay persons who directed poor relief in their local congregations, though other titles, such as “curators of the poor” and “Catholic almoners,” circulated as well.116 In some congregations, curators—the recognized and authorized lay leaders of the congregation—took responsibility for organizing poor relief. The structure of relief that emerged in Catholic congregations in the seventeenth century corresponded to the outlines of the traditional parish. As was the case in urban parishes before the Reformation, male lay elites took the leadership roles in organizing relief efforts, while women, especially spiritual virgins, visited and gave comfort to the infirm. In 1628 Rovenius wrote to Catholics in Rotterdam, urging them to appoint three of the “most principal burghers” to serve as the administrators for the poor. Judocus Cats’s 1635 report on his visit to Schagen described a similar arrangement. Cats noted that lay curators cared for the poor with diligence, “listing their names and conditions”; he noticed also how “the poor communicate their needs to them [curators] in regular meetings.” Cats commented on the effect of this diligence: “There are no divisions among the people and the people do not

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leave [the Catholic Church] on account of poverty.117 Apparently, priests in Rotterdam had worked in this capacity for some time, as Rovenius described the advantages of a lay-led program, which would free the priest for pastoral work and would allow priests to reside and move about discreetly without attracting too much attention from the poor and the authorities. The scope of operations could be quite significant. An annual report in 1653 from the Jesuit station in Rotterdam stated that a donation of twelve thousand florins had been given to support poor Catholics there. Another Jesuit station in Delft supported sixty Catholic families in 1656.118 Elsewhere, too, the preferred choices to administer charity were well-to-do laymen, since most references to the post in the various sources denote prosperous Catholic laymen. Except in cases of very small and rural districts, laymen played the leading role in collecting and distributing alms, which also reflected the practice in the pre-Reformation period.119 Aside from keeping the priest free from entanglements and unwanted attention, local lay leaders bestowed an important measure of integrity to the management of finances dedicated to charity. A laydirected program allowed communities to avoid many financial conflicts of interest, since the same local resources devoted to poor relief were often used to support priests, who sometimes lived not far from poverty themselves. In fact, the Holland Mission made no clear delineation between helping the poor, paying off the sheriff, ransoming a cleric, and maintaining the priest; all of these financial acts constituted charity. Rovenius, for example, charged poor relief administrators in Rotterdam in 1628 to “first employ [themselves] with sustaining the priests and with procuring liberty for Catholic worship.” Jacob de la Torre issued a general call in 1648 “for charity” among priests in Utrecht, to help pay the recognition fee for two priests in the small Holland town of Voorburg.120 Judocus Cats in 1635 recommended that the Schagen congregation give greater consideration to priests in its efforts on behalf of the poor. Much later in the century, van Neercassel commented that raising money for the poor often meant diverting resources from priests.121 The tension between paying the priest and helping the poor could erupt in outright conflict, especially in times of economic distress, as it did in Groningen in 1685. In June, lay leaders drafted a long letter to van Neercassel, lamenting the bleak situation for impoverished people

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and accusing the priests of self-interest. To deal with a chronic shortage in charitable funds that too often led to acute crises, they proposed creating a common chest for social provision, according to the “praiseworthy example” in Friesland. This laudable Frisian program was a centralized fund to support several Catholic congregations within one town and was under the control of lay administrators.122 Subsequent correspondence between Groningen and van Neercassel suggests that the laity had in mind either reallocating endowments given to establish benefices for priests or redirecting revenues earmarked for priests. In July 1685, lay leaders expressed resentment that priests (especially Jesuits and spiritual virgins) lived well from endowments, while the poor had inadequate means of support. Later, van Neercassel instructed the laity that the intent of the endowments was to support the priests, who would in turn comfort the poor. Van Neercassel’s defense of endowments for priests implied a lay proposal to centralize local revenues for the payment of priests and the relief of the poor.123 The dual concerns for priests and poor lay folk, along with quite divergent views on social provision, brought leaders in Groningen into further discord with van Neercassel. Charging the priests with obstructing efforts to develop a viable poor relief program, the laity appealed to the apostolic vicar for support in creating a centralized fund, in appointing permanent caretakers of the poor, and in authorizing collections to support this organization. Van Neercassel’s response two weeks later is curious, and it seems likely that he imputed an unintended meaning to the lay proposition. He answered firmly that the community should not, under any circumstances, mimic the heretics in establishing a lay board of deacons, supervised by a lay archdeacon, to care for the poor. Further, he explained in a somewhat condescending tone that, in terms of Catholic understanding, the diaconal office was clerical, as deacons served on the altar, preached, and trained in the priesthood. Finally, van Neercassel urged them to follow the example of Holland’s churches rather than Friesland’s by taking collections every quarter and to continue to place a priority on maintaining priests.124 Thus, against the centralized prototype for poor relief put forward by the laity, van Neercassel upheld the traditional parish model, financed by voluntary collections. The dispute continued at least until the early spring of 1686. The leaders took exception to van Neercassel’s lecture on the diaconate and

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reiterated their need for both a “caretaker of the poor” who would supervise relief efforts and a capital sum of two thousand guilders to get a program under way. They also stressed that having to pay priests, in addition to any benefice, and having to pay recognition money seriously undermined their efforts to fashion a stable program of provision, with the result that the poor were tempted by alms from the Reformed Church. According to the last surviving missive, February 29–March 10, it seems that the laity had proceeded ahead with lay “superintendents of the poor” and a common chest, but no permanent arrangement had yet emerged. The laity complained about the lack of financial support from van Neercassel, threatened to go to the political authorities for subsidies, and predicted the ultimate ruin of Catholicism in Groningen.125 The divergent aims of Catholic charity and the poverty of priests, then, sometimes pitted laity against clergy and raised the possibility of clerical misuse of funds or at least the perception of wrongdoing. Lay members could be quite sensitive to the uses for which priests appropriated communal resources. Periodically, lay members lodged protests to apostolic vicars that priests were misusing revenue intended for the poor. In the Groningen example, parish representatives in June 1685 criticized the Jesuits for taking money from the poor burse and employing it for their own purposes. Three years later, as we saw in Chapter 4, the congregation in Maassluis reported that a Father Scheerder took collections for himself at the expense of the needy and actually ripped a collection box off the wall.126 In addition to allegations from laity, the intense competition between secular clergy and religious orders spawned regular accusations of financial fraud and corruption.127 Thus, as a result of the potential for scandal among the laity and the frequent acrimonious competition among priests, church leaders worked with local lay leaders to establish a system of financial accountability, largely under lay control. In a conflict at Leiden, Joannes Wachtelaer and Francis Dusseldorp appointed two lay executors, “men free from all suspicion and of upright reputation,” to receive and administer assets dedicated to charity, including priests’ salaries. To remedy other potential clerical problems, the curators were empowered to collaborate with the chief pastor in regulating arrangements for worship and for collections. Likewise, in the 1628 provision for relief in Rotterdam, Rovenius authorized three laymen, Jacob Cannius, Jan Swaets, and Peter Pelt, to collect and distribute alms, in consultation

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235

with their pastor. In order to maintain the integrity of Catholic poor relief, to free clergy from the consuming labor of relieving the needy, and to protect the priesthood from suspicion of corruption, lay leaders organized and administered local charity.128 If lay leaders hearkened back to a parish model of poor relief for Catholic congregations, raising revenue for charity also relied on traditional methods and sources, with one major exception. After the Reformation, the Catholic Church lost control of all parish property, a portion of which had been devoted to charity, usually in the form of outdoor relief. Before the changes of the late sixteenth century, the diverse almshouses and hospitals were usually funded by private testators and often administered by executors appointed by the deceased or by parish officials, such as Holy Ghost Masters or wardens. In the case of the almshouses, regents worked in cooperation with the parish so that almshouses became a part of the provisionary network of the parish. When the Dutch States General secularized church property and city governments subsequently reorganized parish charitable institutions, these revenues obviously fell outside the purview of the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, other regular financial sources of pre-Reformation parish charity, namely, collections, direct appeals to benefactors, and charitable bequests, continued to form the bases of Catholic poor relief in the seventeenth century. Many communities put out alms boxes for voluntary contributions at Mass, funerals, weddings, and other occasions when church members assembled. Rovenius recommended that the curators in Rotterdam set out boxes at such gatherings and advised the priests to remind congregants to place their contributions in them. Afterwards, lay curators were to open the boxes in the presence of the pastor, account for the funds, and distribute them after consulting with the priest. Rovenius seemed confident that this method of collection would prove sufficient, but if not, he advised, “We will find another method of taking collections.” All Catholic communities relied on collections, taken in some form, to support the poor. The congregation in Schagen in the 1630s passed a collection plate at services for the poor, because the archpriest for North Holland stipulated that the offertory should be used to support charity, but the pastor’s stipend should come from voluntary contributions garnered outside the worship service. Even in the Zutphen quarter of Gelderland that Spain retook from the Dutch in 1607, the

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rentmeester of ecclesiastical property there, Wessel van Arnhem, repeatedly resorted to collections to support almshouses, hospitals, and outdoor relief.129 On some occasions, the apostolic vicars made general appeals to raise money in special circumstances or times of economic distress. De la Torre appealed to priests in Utrecht to help fund recognition payments in Voorburg. Apostolic vicars also offered indulgences for those who contributed to a campaign to raise money for poor relief. In 1683 van Neercassel announced a jubilee indulgence to benefactors of the Catholic poor and urged the faithful not to give alms to beggars “unless they [were] true priests or religious.”130 Finally, the clergy depended on the munificence of Catholic elites, many of whom served as curators, for the capital to maintain relief programs. In bemoaning the poverty in Groningen, leaders there noted that the Catholic elites who provided most of the support for the poor were also undergoing economic distress. There are a number of letters from apostolic vicars soliciting support from elites, as well as correspondence from elites offering sums, some of them substantial, for relief.131 The practice of Roman Catholic Christianity depended upon a high level of material outfitting to create the appropriate space for worship, procure sacred objects, provide mediating clergy, and relieve the poor. For hundreds of years, Catholic churches throughout Europe had supplied those needs from various endowments, lands, and church buildings. During the Catholic Reformation, these revenues often inhibited change, as patrons retained powers of appointment that could be at odds with a reform-minded bishop. The secularization of church property in the Netherlands thus presented the leaders of the Holland Mission not only with an overwhelming obstacle but also an unprecedented opportunity for church growth. As the church leadership went about the task of training a new cadre of clergy from the ground up, apostolic vicars, Haarlem canons, seminary presidents, archpriests, and pastors devoted enormous effort to raise financial support for the priesthood. Elite Catholic families responded and created the financial infrastructure for the revival of the Roman Church in the United Provinces.

Conclusion

Despite all the economic prosperity and religious pluralism in Golden-Age Amsterdam, life could be unpredictable for an earnest priest. Michael Paludanus, the Augustinian prefect whose sanguine assessment of religious revival helped introduce this book, wrote in 1639, [Father Joannes Brantius] has spent some very difficult years in Amsterdam both because of the virulent persecution against Catholics and because of the ravages of the plague. In no case did he allow his efforts to be wanting, but rather during times of persecution he exposed himself to the danger of imprisonment and, at the same time, he made himself vulnerable to the obvious danger of infection, while he was administering the sacraments and other spiritual remedies most readily to anyone who was sick. However, now by the grace of God, these difficulties have been lessened, so he devotes himself very diligently to preaching sermons on Sundays and feast days— and not uncommonly on other days during in the week—in his chapel at home where three hundred and sometimes more people gather and also sing Masses and vespers in that place.1 Paludanus’s superlative characterization of Father Brantius’s ministry points to the range of political and social circumstances that Dutch

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priests encountered in the course of their work: from impending inprisonment and death in periods of persecution and pestilence to celebrating Mass with three hundred singing Catholics in times of toleration and well-being. The intermittent phases of violence and tolerance that engulfed priests like Father Brantius reveal a strategy for managing religious pluralism by political authorities in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. Recently, Benjamin Kaplan has shown that distinctions between public and private space enabled magistrates to uphold the integrity of a Protestant political order while avoiding the social turmoil of rigorous religious violence. Kaplan has laid bare this distinction by drawing attention to the cultural utility of the hidden house churches; according to Kaplan, they provided “a crucial detour, as it were, around one of the chief obstacles to religious pluralism: the central role of religion in defining communal identity.”2 Just as private spaces afforded Catholics a sacred refuge, the threat of legal and extralegal violence against congregations compelled them to keep their religion out of public view. In those instances when Catholicism inserted itself into the public sphere—when perhaps a priest wore vestments openly or perhaps when a spiritual virgin indiscreetly summoned a child to catechism or perhaps when lay folk drew too much attention to themselves on their way to Mass—authorities cracked down on such “papist audacity” by seizing a priest, levying a fine, or sometimes by ransacking a chapel. In so doing, magistrates upheld the Reformed moral order, kept the peace, and even allowed a private place for Catholic religious observance in a Protestant society. The latitudes and limitations of confessional coexistence, along with the ready availability of religious choices, created the framework for the emergence of a revived Catholic identity in the early seventeenth century. Netherlanders had a variety of religious denominations from which to choose, and they did choose over the course of the seventeenth century. Those who chose to remain or become Catholic assumed an assortment of real and potential hardships, which included paying fines, bribes, and ransoms to local officials; worshipping in sequestered locations at odd hours; losing opportunities for political office; experiencing the seizure, imprisonment, and banishment of priests; and lacking ready access to priests and the sacraments, the lifeblood of Catholic religious life.

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For magistrates, such sanctions proved rather effective at managing Roman observances in a Protestant society, but for Catholics, these difficulties constituted persecution at the hands of heretics. A sense of persecution in turn enabled Catholics to identify themselves with Christians in times past who had suffered for the “sake of righteousness,” which both validated the veracity of the Roman faith and confirmed the treachery of Calvinist heresy. The conceptual distance between the two belief systems, combined with their spatial proximity in the Netherlands, fostered a well-defined awareness of confessional difference for Catholics. Clerical writers, church officials, and local priests emphasized the dangers of heresy and the universal character of the Roman communion. In sum, the dialectical nature of the religious reformations in the Netherlands had a profound influence on the religious identity of the Catholic minority. The intersection of Calvinism and Catholicism shaped the development of Catholic identity in at least four other fundamental ways as well. First, the collapse of the diocesan structure at the end of the sixteenth century gave apostolic vicars, deans of the Haarlem Cathedral Chapter, and seminary officials unprecedented control over clerical formation. Emerging out of the crisis caused by the Calvinist Reformation, the office of apostolic vicar was filled by clerics thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the Counter-Reformation. These vicars compelled prospective priests to undergo seminary training, a requirement not mandated in most Catholic territories in Europe until the eighteenth century. The education in the seminaries of the Holland Mission— Alticollense (Hogenheuvel after 1683) and Pulcheria—emphasized the international dimensions of Roman Catholicism; a neo-Augustinian rigorism in sacramental confession and penance; the Tridentine canons as an uncompromising rule of pastoral practice; the institutional, clerical features of Baroque piety; and the pastoral ethos of the priest as good shepherd. Thus, the Catholic revival in the Netherlands came on the cutting edges of the Counter-Reformation. Second, the structural ambiguities of the Holland Mission bred pernicious conflicts with religious orders (namely, Jesuits, Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians), ultimately contributing to decline in church membership in the second half of the seventeenth century and schism at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Since the northern provinces fell under the control of Protestants, provincials and prefects

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of religious orders conceived of the post-Reformation Netherlands as a mission field. Therefore, regular priests, under the direction of their superiors, moved about the territories with the aim of converting the lost and nourishing the faithful. To outfit this missionary operation, regular priests sought patrons and financial resources from the faithful. Orders regarded secular priests as sacerdotal colleagues who had their own superior, whether a Haarlem dean or apostolic vicar. From this perspective, the secular priests resembled a religious order rather than a diocesan clergy. This missionary paradigm stood at odds with the diocesan vision of the leaders of the Holland Mission. These leaders saw their task as reviving pastoral care in the five dioceses and archdiocese of Utrecht. Restoring church districts, not converting the lost, was their primary goal. Consequently, the dean of the Haarlem Chapter and the provicaris of each former diocese functioned as the ordinary, while the apostolic vicar served as the archbishop. Down the rungs of the hierarchy, secular priests were regarded as beneficed pastors, and the local congregations were their parishes. These lay-led communities carried out their ministries, especially poor relief, using the traditional model of the parish. As a result of these two divergent visions of the Dutch Catholic Church, two of the primary agents of Counter-Reformation, diocesan reform and the missionary enterprise of religious orders, came into fierce conflict over jurisdiction, pastoral ministry, and patronage in the Netherlands. The third way the intersection of Calvinism and Catholicism shaped Catholic identity is that the secularization of church assets at the end of the sixteenth century necessitated the active leadership of lay elites, female and male, in reestablishing a Catholic presence in the northern provinces. After the change in government, elite families served as patrons and protectors for priests and organizers of local congregations. No doubt some prominent Catholic families practiced a form of the Nicodemism that John Bossy uncovered in England, where husbands conformed to the demands of a Protestant society while wives continued to promote devotion to the Roman faith in the home.3 But, for most elite Dutch Catholic families who continued to identify with Catholicism, leadership in their religious communities offered them some compensation for the loss of political status. Underwriting the costs of pastoral training and ministry, these families proved critical to the early success of restoring the priesthood to the Northern Nether-

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lands. The geography of Catholic growth resulted primarily from the location of loyal elites in the early seventeenth century, as the mission dispatched priests into those areas, especially Holland and Utrecht, that contained a critical mass of substantial families who would provide financial support and political cover. From leading Catholic families, also, came a majority of the priests and spiritual virgins who worked in the Holland Mission. These families supported their children and other relatives who took up a religious vocation, and thus the economic commitments to kin underlay the financial provision of the clergy. Clerics from elite circles also passed on portions of their patrimony to fund seminary and pastoral positions for relatives. Patrons, whether cleric or lay, always privileged blood relations when endowing seminary burses or pastoral benefices. If no blood relatives were available to accept patronage, benefactors stipulated that endowments should be reserved for clergy from the patron’s native region or town. Not only did the circumstances of the Dutch Revolt accord laity opportunities unknown in most areas of Catholic Europe, but in this context kinship and locality reinforced the bonds among laity and clergy in communities across the Netherlands. Fourth, these political and economic conditions allowed for a significant female presence in the seventeenth-century Dutch Catholic Church. Elite laywomen provided patronage, housed priests, and generally worked behind the scenes in ways that often remain hidden from the historical record. Fortunately, the activities of spiritual virgins did generate historical sources, which make it possible for us to reconstruct their place in their communities. The shortage of priests gave devout women in the Netherlands the opportunity to choose what one historian has called a “middle way” between a cloistered and a married life.4 Spiritual virgins opted for an active and visible apostolate, assisting priests, organizing observances, catechizing children, serving the poor, and caring for orphans. Like their lay counterparts, the virgins became important sources of patronage, and as a result, they attracted much attention from secular and regular priests. Highly regarded for their piety and service, these women embodied a vigorous and palpable femininity as they worked in local community-building. Yet, at the same time, the virgins placed themselves under the authority of a male confessor. The necrology of Trijn Oly lauded the piety and devotion of the virgins’ confessors and expressed considerable affection for many of them. The revival of a Roman Catholic identity in the Golden-Age Nether-

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lands draws attention to the complexity and diversity of Catholicism in early modern Europe. In contrast to the traditional depictions of the Counter-Reformation, the Dutch experience in the seventeenth century shows that thoroughgoing Catholic reform occurred sometimes without state and ecclesiastical mechanisms of compulsion. In the Netherlands, a Catholic confessionalization came out of the active collaboration of laity and clergy, solidifying matrices of kin and community across the northern provinces. In certain circumstances, women assumed vital roles in the Counter-Reformation, a movement commonly regarded as reasserting the importance of masculine religious prerogatives. Finally, the uneven regional pattern of Catholic advance in the first half of the seventeenth century suggests that degrees of deprivation could make or break religious minorities. The absolute deprivation, via consistently aggressive persecution, kept priests out of many regions outside Holland and Utrecht and thus kept Catholic communities small. Yet relative forms of deprivation, such as the more moderate and intermittent violence in Holland and Utrecht, allowed for a commitment among Catholics that promoted growth in periods of stability. Despite regional differences, Catholics throughout the Netherlands showed that faith could flourish at the margins of society in early modern Europe.

Appendix endowments to COLLEGIUM PULCHERIA

from the

Names Burses 1. M Bickers 6 2. E. Alcmade 2 3. Buijck 1 4. illegible 1 5. C. Stickers 1 6. L. Feijt 3 7. Latanius 1 8. A./ T. Bugge 1 9. C. Nicolai Mol 1 10. S. Duijtis 1 11. M./A. Rauwarden 1 12. C. Gouda/ A. Nicolai 0 13. C./G. Engelmondi 1 14. Schagiana 1 15. T. Jacobi/ F./R. Theijng 1 16. H. Vordenus 1

LIBER FUNDATIONUM

Amount ? ? ? ? 2,900 1,600 1,400 1,000

Date 1618 1618 1617 1618 ? 1617–18 1618 1619

Location Haarlem unknown unknown Haarlem A’dam Utrecht ? Amsterdam

Gender F F M M F M M F/M

C/L SV L C L L C C 2L

2,000 100

1623–14 ?

Haarlem A’dam

F M

L L

2,100

?

?

2F

2L

60

?

?

M/F

2L

2,000 1,500

1626 ?

Haarlem Schagen

2M —

2L —

2,400 1,600

? ?

? Oldenzaal

1F/2M 3L M C

Appendix

244 Names Burses 17. J. Cernius 1 18. C. Nobelaer 1 19. J. Benthenius/ unnamed sister 1 20. H. Cornelius 0 21. J. Joannis 0 22. J. Caterus 0 23. Paulus 0 24. illegible 0 25. J. Clesius 0 26. H. Ludolphi 0 27. C. vander Mij 0 28. H. van Veen 0 29. J. Cornelius 0 30. J. Catzius 0 31. Nobel 1 32. Vitum 1 33. P. Rovenius 1 34. C. Cornelius 0 35. C. Matthei 1 36. J. Lambertus 1 37. T. van Doorn 0 38. A. Vorenbeeck 0 39. F. van Brugge 1 40. T. Silvolt 1 41. Alkmariana 1 42. M. vd. Sluis 0 43. Two males 0 44. A. Albada 1 45. J. Joannis 1 46. F. Duijselius 2 47. H. Jagt 1 48. P. Cornelius 1 49. D. vander Meij/ J. Wandelman/ W. Scheppius 1 50. N. Stenius 1 51. J. Cromhout 1 52. J. Rosendael 1 53. R. van Zeller 1 54. E. Arents/ J. Pies 1 55. D. vander Meij M. Reijke 1 56. J./C./M. Ooms 1 57. J. Wandelman 2 58. Edamsium 2

Amount 2,000 2,000

Date 1630 1632

Location Haarlem The Hague

Gender C/L M C M L

3,000 140 1,000 2,000 600 554 800 25 100 400 500 10,000 3,000 1,290 3,300 5,000 ? ? 3,000 6,500 3,000 ? 1,000 500 150 2,100 3,300 ?a 500 3,000

1638 ? ? ? ? 1645 1639 ? 1637 1640 1651 ? 1640 1642–43 1647–55 1652 ? ? ? 1653–76 1668 ? 1659 1660 1659 1619–23 1663 1663 1664 1664

Enkhuizen A’dam ? Alkmaar ? ? ? Cranenburg ? ? Alkmaar Haarlem ? Leeuwarden Oldenzaal ? Schorel Purmerend ? Hoorn Schagen Louvain Alkmaar Louvain A’dam Leeuwarden Nieuwdorp Montfort A’dam Wogenum

M/F M M M M ? M M F F F M M M M F F M M M M M _ F 2M M M M M M

C/L C C C C ? L C L L SV C C C C SV L C C C C C _ SV 2L L L C C C

3,000 3,000 3,000 3,600 1,000

1669 1670 1670 1671 1672

A’dam Haarlem ? Hoogwoud ?

3M M M M M

3C C C C L

750

1680

?

F/M

SV/C

2,000 1,000 5,000 1,270

1680 1680 1680–81 1681

? ? A’dam Edam

M/F M/2F M _

C/L C/2 C _

Appendix

245

Names Burses 59. J. Wijters 2 60. C. Keesman 0 61. 12 Clergy 4 62. E. Brand 1 63. A. Egbertswaert/ M. Pellenkops 1 64. H. van Eck 2

Amount 6,000 1,000 12,000 2,000

Date 1674 1680 1680 1680

Location ? Alkmaar ? Kampen

Gender M M 12M F

C/L L C 12C L

2,250* 10,000

1673–81 1697

Groningen A’dam

M/F M

2L C

Key M=Male F=Female C=Clergy L=Laity SV=Spiritual Virgin Revenue expressed in guilders

Summary People 88 Patronsb

64 M (46 C, 18 L)

23 F (5 SV, 18 L)

1 Unclear

Revenue 82 Contributions

62 Burses

134,289 Guilders

Note: The appendix is summarized from Kapittel #225, no. 572. Liber Fundationum, folios 2–69. a. The capital sum of the endowment was not listed, but the contract specified that the patron would endow a burse worth 300 guilders a year. b. The figures in this summary do not include the patrons for the burses from Schagen, Alkmaar, and Edam because the Liber implied a plurality of patrons but did not specify otherwise.

Abbreviations

AAU GAD. Kerkeraad

Kapittel #225 Kapittel #275 OBC OKN OKN.CPU OKN. VS SJ. LA.

Archief voor de geschiedenis van het Aartsbisdom Utrecht Gemeente Archief te Delft. Archief van de Kerkeraad van de Nederlands Hervormde Gemeente, Handelingen van de Algemene Kerkeraad Rijksarchief van Noord Holland. No. 225, Archief van het Kapittel Rijskarchief van Noord Holland. No. 275, Archief van het Kapittel Het Utrechts Archief. Apostolische Vicarissen Hollandse Zending en hun Secretarissen, 1579–1728 Het Utrechts Archief. Oud-Katholiek Kerk in Nederland Het Utrechts Archief. Oud-Katholiek Kerk in Nederland: Collegium Pastorum Ultrajectensium Oud-Katholiek Kerk in Nederland. Verzamelde Stukken, 1384–1699 Archief van de Nederlandse Provincie der Jezuiten. Litterae Annuae Missionis Bataviae

Notes

Introduction 1. Kapittel #225, no. 358, Cats to Rovenius, August 17, 1628, in Copia litterarum admodum reverendissimus D Decani Harlemensis ad illustrissimum ac reverendissimum D Archepiscopum Phillippensem ac Vicarium Apostolicum per Unitas Provincias; G. Brom, “Vier missie-verslagen, van 1635 tot 1645 door Rovenius te Rome ingediend,” AAU 18 (1890): 2. 2. OBC, no. 12, Goes to Vosmeer, July 21, 1611. 3. OBC, no. 344, Amersfoort to Codde, January 11–1, 1700. 4. See Judith Pollmann, Religious Choice in the Dutch Republic: The Reformation of Arnoldus Buchelius (1565–1641) (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999). 5. Craig Harline and Eddy Put make this point for Catholics in the Southern Netherlands. See Craig E. Harline and Eddy Put, A Bishop’s Tale: Mathias Hovius among his Flock in Seventeenth-Century Flanders (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000). Some of the most important recent works on the intellectual history of Dutch toleration include C. Berkvens-Stevelinck, J. Israel, and G. H. M. Postumus Meyjes, eds., The Emergence of Tolerance in the Dutch Republic (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997); H. Bots, “Tolerantie of gecultiveerde tweedracht: Het beeld van de Nederlandse tolerantie bij buitenlanders en de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw,” Bijdragen en mededelingen betreffende de geschiedenis der Nederlanden 107 (1992): 657–669; W. T. M. Frijhoff, “Le seuil de tolérance en Hollande au XVIIe siècle,” in Homo religiosus: Autour de Jean Delumeau (Paris: Fayard, 1997), 650–657; J. I. Israel, “Toleration in Seventeenth-Century Dutch and English Thought,” in S. Groenveld and M. Wintle, eds., Britain and the Netherlands (Zutphen: De Walburg Pers, 1994), 11:25–27; Andrew Pettegree, “The Politics of Toleration in the Free Netherlands, 1572–1620,” in Ole Peter Grell and Bob Scribner, eds., Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 182–198; Martin van Gelderen, Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-

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Notes to Pages 2–5

sity Press, 1992); Gerrit Voogt, Constraint on Trial: Dirck Volckertszoon and Religious Freedom (Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 2000). 6. See Brad Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999); James D. Ryan, “Missionary Saints of the High Middle Ages: Martyrdom, Popular Veneration, and Canonization,” Catholic Historical Review 90 (2004): 1–28. 7. See Perez Zagorin, Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution, and Conformity in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990). 8. Joke Spaans, Haarlem na de reformatie: Stedelijke cultuur en kerkelijke leven, 1577–1620 (The Hague: Stichting Hollandse Historische Reeks, 1989), 55–68; Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 377–381. 9. Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, “Introduction,” in R. Po-Chia Hsia and H. F. K van Nierop, eds., Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 1–2. 10. Benjamin J. Kaplan, “ ‘Dutch’ Religious Tolerance: Celebration and Revision,” in Hsia and van Nierop, Calvinism and Religious Toleration, 9, 18–19. For examples, see John Lothrop Motley, The Rise of the Dutch Republic: A History (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1883); Robert Fruin, “De wederopluiking van het Katholicisme in Noord-Nederland omstreeks den aanvang der XVIIe Eeuw,” in P. J. Blok, ed., Verspreide geschriften (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1901), 3:260–265; J. N. Bakhuizen van den Brink, J. Lindeboom, Cebus Cornelius de Bruin, et al., Handboek der kerkgeschiedenis (The Hague: B. Bakker, 1965); J. N. Bakhuizen van den Brink, Protestantse pleidooien uit de zestiende eeuw (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1962). 11. Kaplan, “ ‘Dutch’ Religious Tolerance,” 22–26 (quote 25). 12. Willem Frijhoff, Embodied Belief: Ten Essays on Religious Culture in Dutch History (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 2002), 57–60. 13. On the ambiguities and limits of tolerance for Catholics during the Golden Age, see Hsia and van Nierop, Calvinism and Religious Toleration; Joke Spaans, “Violent Dreams, Peaceful Coexistence: On the Absence of Religious Violence in the Dutch Republic,” De Zeventiende Eeuw 18 (2003): 149–166. 14. The use of “religious identity” in this study is conceptually very loose, referring simply to the ways in which Catholics—clerical and lay, male and female— expressed what living as a Catholic minority in a Calvinist society meant to them. 15. For a few reports of persecution in Friesland and Zeeland, see A. van Lommel, SJ, ed., “Descriptio status in quo nunc est religio Catholica in confoederatis Belgii-Provincii anno 1622,” AAU 20 (1893): 373–374; A. van Lommel, SJ, ed., “Brevis descriptio status, in quo est ecclesia Catholica in partibus Belgii ab haereticus occupatis anno 1616,” AAU 3 (1874–1875): 220; OBC. no. 222, Descriptio visitationis episcopi Castoriensis per Zelandiam 1664. Though the numbers of Catholics varied considerably across Friesland, they numbered only around 10 percent of the total population in the province in 1663. Wiebe Bergsma, Tussen Gideonsbende en publieke kerk: Een studie over het gereformeerd Protestantisme in Friesland, 1580–1650 (Hilversum: Verloren, 1999), 137–142. 16. R. Po-Chia Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540–1770 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 43, 56–57, 116–117. 17. A few noteworthy examples of the literature on popular religion include Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century

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Miller, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980); Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Food and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). 18. Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, trans. Olive Wyon, introduction by Charles Gore (New York: Macmillan, 1949), 1:331–343. 19. Cesarius Baronius, Annales Ecclesiastici (Antwerp: Plantin, 1589), 2:66–9, 535, 698. 20. A few examples include Henricus Adriani, Catholijcke sermoenen (Antwerp: n.p., 1593), 12–13; Ludovicus Makeblyde, SJ, Den schat der Christlijcker leeringhe tot verclaringhe van den catechismus uyt ghegheven voor de Catholijcke ionckheijdt van de provincie des aarts-bischdoms van Mechelen (Antwerp: Jacobus Woons, 1684), 45–59; Martinus Bresserus Boxtellanus, SJ, De conscientia libri sex (Antwerp: Apud Viduam Ioannis Cnobbari, 1638), 114–119; Petrus Opmeer, Dat schip van patientie met die tafel des poenitentie (Antwerp: n.p., 1593), 153–154; M. Sionem Verepaeus, Catholicum precationum selectissimarum enchiridion ex sanctorum patrum (Antwerp: Gasparem Bellerem, 1614), 223. See also Luc Racaut, Hatred in Print: Catholic Propaganda and Protestant Identity during the French Wars of Religion (Aldershot: St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History, 2002). 21. Francis Coster, SJ Sica tragica comiti Mavrito a Iesuitis ut aiunt Calvinistae Leijdae intentata (Antwerp: Ioachim Trognesium, 1599), 48–49. 22. Baronius, Annales, 2:128; 3:142. 23. Leonardus Lessius, SJ, Quae fides et religio sit capessenda consultatio (Antwerp: Plantin, 1610), 47. 24. Jan Frederick van Beeck Calkoen, Onderzoek naar den rechtstoestand der geestelijke en kerkelijke goederen in Holland na de reformatie, (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1910), 48–67, 279–283; A. Th. van Deursen, “Kerk of parochie? De kerkmeesters en de dood tijdens de Republiek,” Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 89 (1976): 531–535. 25. Willem Frijhoff, Embodied Belief, 157–158. 26. Groot Placaet-Boek, inhoudende de placaten ende ordonnantien van de HooghMog. Heeren Staten Generael der Vereenighde Nederlanden ende vande Ed. Groot Mog: Heeren Staten van Hollandt ende West-Vrieslandt, mitsgaders van Ed. Mog. Heeren Staten van Zeelandt, (The Hague: Weduwe ende erfgenamen van wijlen Hillebrandt Iacobsz. van Wouw, 1658), 1:193–194, 199–200, 203–204, 211–213, 219–220, 223–224, 217–218, 227–228; Nederlandtsche Placcaet-Boeck: Waerinne alle voornaemste placcaten, ordonnatien, accorden ende andere acten ende monumenten, uijt-ghgeven bij EE Hoog-Mogende Heeren Staten Generael der Vereenigde Nederlantsche Provintien, (Amsterdam: Jan Janssen, 1644), 1:179–182, 344–348, 435–438; Henk van Nierop, “Sewing the Bailiff in a Blanket: Catholics and the Law in Holland,” in Hsia and van Nierop, Calvinism and Religious Toleration, 105–106. 27. M. E. H. N. Mout, “Limits and Debates: A Comparative View of Dutch Toleration in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Berkvens-Stevelinck, Israel, and Meyjes, Emergence of Tolerance, 41. 28. A. Th. van Deursen, Plain Lives in a Golden Age: Popular Culture, Religion, and Society in Seventeenth-Century Holland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 290.

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29. Kapittel #275, no. 92, De Persecutione quam in Foederato Belgio suberint Catholica, 5–6; see also Boxtellanus, De conscientia, 114–120. 30. OBC, no. 168, Cort onderrecht vande heijmelijcke exercitie der Catholijcke Religie inde vereenighde nederlantsche provintien [1640]. 31. For examples, see van Lommel, “Descriptio status [1622],” 357, 362–363, 367; Brom, “Vier missie-verslagen,” 8; van Lommel, “Brevis descriptio [1616],” 211. See also Willem Pieter Cornelis Knuttel, De toestand der Nederlandse Katholieken (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1892), microfiche, 160. 32. Knuttel, Toestand, 14, 23, 34–38. John P. Elliott, “Protestantization in the Northern Netherlands, a Case Study: The Classis of Dordrecht, 1572–1640,” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1990), 6–32. For standard views, see Hsia, World of Catholic Renewal, 80; J. L. Price, Holland and the Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century: The Politics of Particularism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 191. See also J. A. de Kok, Nederland op de breuklijn Rome-Reformatie: Numerieke aspecten van protestantisering en katholieke herleving in de noordelijke Nederlanden, 1580–1880 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1964), 251. 33. See Hsia and van Nierop, Calvinism and Religious Toleration. 34. Frijhoff, Embodied Belief, 39-41. 35. David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), 7; quotation, 9. 36. Christine Kooi, “Paying Off the Sheriff: Strategies of Catholic Toleration in Golden Age Holland,” in Hsia and van Nierop, Calvinism and Religious Toleration, 87–101; quotation on 88. 37. Gregory Hanlon, Confession and Community in Seventeenth-Century France: Catholic and Protestant Coexistence in Aquitaine (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 267–280. He also points to other evidence in the Empire in R. Po-Chia Hsia ed., The German People and the Reformation (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988) and R. J. W. Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1550–1700: An Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979). 38. For a few examples in correspondence by Dutch Catholics, see OBC, no. 3, Vermij to Vosmeer, March 30, 1598; no. 11, Boucquet to Vosmeer, February 12, 1610; no. 18, Vosmeer to Vosmeer, July 17, 1610; no. 20, Stalpert van der Wiele to Vosmeer, July 2, 1613; no. 242, van Neercassel to de Swaen, January 26, 1664; no. 229, Walvis to van Neercassel, March 26, 1680; Kapittel #225, no. 355, Eggius to Duijness 1603; no. 354, David [no surname given] to Eggius, March 10, 1605; no. 354, Egbertszoon to Eggius, June 9, 1609. 39. OBC, no. 253, van Neercassel to Warfuse [F. C. van Beyeren van Schagen], January 18, 1684. 40. For a few examples, see A. van Lommel, SJ, ed., “Relatio seu descriptio status religionis Catholicae in Hollandia etc. Quam Romae collegit et exhibuit Alexandro septimo et cardinalibus congregationis de propaganda fide, Jacobus de la Torre, Kal. Septembris Anno 1656,” AAU 11 (1883): 58; Jean-Baptist Besard, Mercurii Gallobelgici sive, rerum in Gallia et Belgio potissimum: Ungaria, quoque Germania, Polonia, Hispania, Italia, alijsq: Christianioribus regnis et provincijs, vol. 5: 1598–1600 (Cologne: Gerhardum Grevenbruch, 1614), 2 of unpaginated preface; Laurentius Torrentius, untitled preface in Francis Coster, SJ, Schildt der Catholijcken teghen de ketterijen (Antwerp: C. Plantin, 1591), 2–6; Thomas Stapleton, SJ, Promptuarium morale super evangelia dominicalia totius anni ad instructionem concionatorum Reformationem peccatorum, consolatione piorum

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(Antwerp: C. Plantin, 1613), 1:663–667; Petrus Opmeer, Historia martyrum Batavicorum sive defectionis fide maiorem Hollandiae initia (Cologne: Bernardi Gualtueri et Petri Henningii, 1625), 1–2, 35–66; Carolus Scribani, SJ, Antverpia (Antwerp: Plantin, 1610), 128. 41. For an excellent discussion of Rogier’s contributions, see James D. Tracy, “With and Without the Counter-Reformation: The Catholic Church in the Spanish Netherlands and the Dutch Republic, 1580–1650,” Catholic Historical Review 71 (1985): 547–575. 42. J. A. Bornewasser, “De katholieke historicus L. J. Rogier (1894–1974) en zijn ‘trouw aan het Vaderland,’” Trajecta 4 (1995): 242–245. For an example of a nationalistic Protestant church history of the Netherlands, see A. Ypey and I. J. Dermout, Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Hervormde Kerk (Breda: W. van Bergen, 1819–1827); see also Peter T. van Rooden, Religieuze regimes: Over godsdienst en maatschappij in Nederland, 1570–1990 (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 1996), chapter 5. 43. L. J. Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme in Noord-Nederland in de 16e en de 17e eeuw (Amsterdam: Urbi et Orbi, 1947–1948), 2:691–756, 760–770, 786–796. 44. L. J. Rogier, “De cultus van sint Willibrord bij de Apostolische Vicarissen der Hollandse Zending in de zeventiende eeuw,” Historisch Tijdschrift 18 (1939): 253–254. 45. B. A. van Kleef, Geschiedenis van de Oud-Katholicke Kerk van Nederland (Assen: Van Gorcum en Comp. N.V., 1953), 57–70ff. 46. Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 2:760–770; P. P. V. van Moorsel, “De devotie tot st. Willibrord in Nederland van ongeveer 1580 tot ongeveer 1750,” Ons Geestelijk Erf (1958): 137–138; Marc Wingens, Over de grens: De bedevaart van Katholieke Nederlanders in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw (Nijmegen: SUN, 1994), 24–25; Tracy, “With and Without the Counter-Reformation,” 547–575. 47. Please note that I generally use the term “Counter-Reformation” when referring to the Catholic reform effort in Europe and the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century. Despite the excellent arguments for other descriptors, including “Catholic Reformation,” “Tridentine Catholicism,” “Baroque Catholicism,” and “early modern Catholicism,” I have opted for “Counter-Reformation” because of my contention that the oppositional force of Protestantism became a critical element in the renewal of the Roman Church in the Northern Netherlands. For very useful discussions on the significance of the general terminology, see Hubert Jedin, Katholische Reformation oder Gegenreformation? Ein Versuch zur Klärung der Begriffe nebst einer Jubiläumsbetrachtung über das Trienter Konzil (Lucerne: Josef Stocker, 1946) and John W. O’Malley, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000). 48. See, for example, De Lamar Jensen, Reformation Europe: Age of Reform and Revolution (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1992), 191–224. 49. The basic one-volume surveys of the period generally follow this schema. See Michael A. Mullett, The Catholic Reformation (New York: Routledge, 1999); H. Outram Evennett, The Spirit of the Counter-Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968); A. G. Dickens, The Counter-Reformation (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1969); Hsia, World of Catholic Renewal. 50. Hsia, World of Catholic Renewal, 74–75.

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51. P. W. F. M. Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk in Nederland (Bruges: Uitgeverij Tabor, 1992), 257–258. This number was a low estimate; nevertheless it was true that priests were quite scarce in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. 52. Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke kerk, 251–257. 53. Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke kerk, 251–257. 54. If one includes the Generality Lands, the number of Catholics rises to 750,000 in 1656, about one-half of the population, and to 650,000 at the end of the century. Knuttel, Toestand, 61, 117; Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke kerk, 269; de Kok, Nederland op de breuklijn, 246–248. 55. Jean Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire: A New View of the Counter-Reformation (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977), 43–59; Robert Muchembled, Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France, 1400–1750, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985), 173–193. For recent studies on religious discipline, see Wietse de Boer, The Conquest of the Soul: Confession, Discipline, and Public Order in Counter-Reformation Milan (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2001); Margo Todd, The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002); Philip S. Gorski, The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). 56. D. Jonathan Grieser, “Confessionalization and Polemic: Catholics and Anabaptists in Moravia,” in Kathleen M. Comerford and Hilmar M. Pabel, eds., Early Modern Catholicism: Essays in Honour of John W. O’Malley, SJ (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 131–132; Heinz Schilling, “Confessional Europe,” in Thomas A. Brady Jr., Heiko Oberman, and James D. Tracy, eds., Handbook of European History, 1400–1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 2:652. Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire, 224–231; Heinz Schilling, “Calvinism and the Making of the Modern Mind: Ecclesiastical Discipline of Public and Private Sin from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries,” in Civic Calvinism in Northwestern Germany and the Netherlands, Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries (Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Studies and Monographs, 1991) 41–68. 57. Philip T. Hoffman, Church and Community in the Diocese of Lyon, 1500–1789 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1984), 2–3. 58. See Ginzburg, Cheese and the Worms; Robert W. Scribner, “Elements of Popular Belief,” in Brady, Oberman, Tracy, Handbook of European History, 1:238–242; Larissa Taylor, Soldiers of Christ: Preaching in Late Medieval and Reformation France (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 10, 226–228. 59. See William A. Christian, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981); Allyson M. Poska, Regulating the People: The Catholic Reformation in Seventeenth-Century Spain (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998); Jodi Bilinkoff, The Avila of St. Theresa: Religious Reform in a SixteenthCentury City (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989); Marc R. Forster, The Counter-Reformation in the Villages: Religion and Reform in the Bishopric of Speyer, 1560–1720 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992). 60. Marc R. Forster, Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque: Religious Identity in Southwest Germany, 1550–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 152–207.

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61. See Marit Monteiro, Geestelijke maagden: Leven tussen klooster en wereld in Noord-Nederland gedurende de zeventiende eeuw (Hilversum: Verloren, 1996). 62. Two standard treatments on the intellectual history of religious toleration are Joseph Lecler, SJ, Toleration and the Reformation, trans. T. L. Westow (New York: Association Press, 1960); W. K. Jordan, The Development of Religious Toleration in England from the beginning of the English Reformation to the Death of Queen Elizabeth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1932). See also Henry Kamen, The Rise of Religious Toleration (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967); Grell and Scribner, Tolerance and Intolerance ; Ole Peter Grell and Roy Porter, eds., Toleration in Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Cary J. Nederman and John Christian Laursen, eds., Difference and Dissent: Theories of Toleration in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1996); John Christian Laursen and Cary J. Nederman, eds., Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration before the Enlightenment (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998). 63. Kathleen M. Comerford, “Clerical Education, Catechesis, and Catholic Confessionalism: Teaching Religion in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Comerford and Pabel, Early Modern Catholicism, 248–253. 64. The name Alticollense, meaning “high or noble hill,” derived from its location, the Grosse Bottengasse in Cologne. E. Reusens, Documents relatifs a l’histoire de l’université de Louvain, (1425–1795), vol. 3: Collèges et Pédagogues (Louvain: n.p., 1881–1885), 450–451; Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 2:45. 65. Forster, Catholic Revival, 206–207. 66. F. van Hoeck, SJ, Schets van de geschiedenis der Jezuieten in Nederland (Nijmegen: Dekker en van de Vegt, 1940), 128–129. 1. Caught between Reformations 1. Peter T. van Rooden, Religieuze regimes: Over godsdienst en maatschappij in Nederland, 1570–1990 (Amterdam: Bert Bakker, 1996), 20–26. 2. Willem Frijhoff, “La coexistence confessionelle: Complicités, méfiances et ruptures aux Provinces-Unies,” in J. Delumeau, ed., Histoire vécue du peuple chrétien (Toulouse: Privat, 1979), 2:229–257. 3. For the struggle between city governments on these issues, see Benjamin J. Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines: Confession and Community in Utrecht, 1578–1620 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Christine Kooi, Liberty and Religion: Church and State in Leiden’s Reformation, 1572–1620 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000). 4. J. J. Woltjer, Friesland in hervormingstijd (Leiden: Universitaire Pers, 1962), 292–313. A. Th. van Deursen, Bavianen en slijkgeuzen: Kerk en kerkvolk ten tijde van Maurits en Oldenbarnevelt (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1974), 128–134, 170, 184, 196, 199, 205, 312, 416; Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 639–645. 5. A. Th. van Deursen, Plain Lives in a Golden Age: Popular Culture, Religion, and Society in Seventeenth-Century Holland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 283; L. J. Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme in Noord-Nederland in de 16e en de 17e eeuw (Amsterdam: Urbi et Orbi, 1947–1948), 2:21–39, 439, 486–487; R. R. Post, Kerkelijke verhoudingen in Nederland vóór de reformatie van ± 1500 tot ± 1580 (Utrecht: Spectrum, 1954), 40–41.

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6. Post, Kerkelijke verhoudingen, 12, 151; Alastair Duke, “The Origins of Evangelical Dissent in the Low Countries,” in Reformation and Revolt in the Low Countries (London: Hambledon Press, 1990), 8–11; G. Verhoeven, Devotie en negotie: Delft als bedevaartplaats in de late middeleeuwen (Amsterdam: VU, 1992), 4–5. 7. A. J. Bijsterveld, Laverende tussen kerk en wereld: De pastoors in NoordBrabant, 1400–1750 (Amsterdam: VU Uitgeverij, 1993), 360–364, 377. 8. Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines, 8–10. 9. Édouard de Moreau, Histoire de l’église en Belgique (Bruxelles: L’Édition universelle, 1945–52), 5:172–206; Gijsbertus Hesse, “De martelaren van Roermond,” Limburg Jaarboek 1 (1911): 172–7; W. Nolet, “De historische waarheid aangaande de Alkmaarsche martelaren,” Studia Catholica 5 (1928–29): 171–199; Gijsbertus Hesse, “De oudere historiografie der hh martelaren van Gorcum,” Collectanea Franciscana Neerlandica 2 (1931): 447–498. 10. I. H. van Eeghen, ed., Dagboek van Broeder Wouter Jacobsz. (Gualtherus Jacobi Masius) Prior van Stein. Amsterdam 1572–1578, en Montfoort 1578–1579 (Groningen: J. B. Wolters, 1959—1960): 47. 11. See Robert M. Kingdon, Geneva and the Coming of the Wars of Religion in France, 1555–1563 (Geneva: Librairie E. Droz, 1956); Andrew Pettegree, Foreign Protestant Communities in Sixteenth-Century London (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Andrew Pettegree, Emden and the Dutch Revolt: Exile and the Development of Reformed Protestantism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). 12. Alfons K. L. Thijs, Van geuzenstad tot Katholiek bolwerk: Maatschappelijke betekenis van de kerk in contrareformatorisch Antwerpen (Turnhout: Brepols, 1990), 98–105; Marie Juliette Marinus, De contrareformatie te Antwerpen (1585–1676): Kerkelijk leven in een grootstadt (Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, 1995), 255, 288; Pierre Brachin and L. J. Rogier, Histoire du Catholicisme Hollandais depuis le XVIé siècle (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1974), 26–29; P. W. F. M. Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk in Nederland (Bruges: Uitgeverij Tabor, 1992), 248. 13. Johannes Arndt, Das Heilige Römische Reich und die Niederlande 1566 bis 1648; Politisch-konfessinelle Verflechtung und Publizistik in Achtzigjährigen Krieg (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1998), 217–219. 14. B. A. Vermaseren, De Katholieke Nederlandse geschiedschrijving in de 16e en 17e eeuw over de opstand (Leeuwarden: G. Dykstra, 1981), 19–23, 27–28, 69–70, 91–92, 226; A. Ph. F. Wouters and P. H. A. M. Abels, Nieuw en ongezien: Kerk en samenleving in de classis Delft en Delfland, 1572–1621 (Delft: Eburon,1994), 2:280. 15. Joke Spaans, Haarlem na de reformatie: Stedelijke cultuur en kerkelijke leven, 1577–1620 (The Hague: Stichting Hollandse Historische Reeks, 1989), 76–78; Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk, 246; Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 2:9. 16. Alfons K. L. Thijs, Antwerpen internationaal uitgeverscentrum van devotieprenten 17de–18de eeuw (Louvain: Peeters, 1993), 41. 17. Van Deursen, Plain Lives, 283. 18. See A. van Lommel, SJ, “Descriptio status in quo nunc est religio Catholica in confoederatis Belgii-Provincii anno 1622,” AAU 20 (1893): 354–355; Kapittel #225, no. 351, Statuta Rovenii per clerum Harlemensi, September 27, 1618. 19. Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk, 245. 20. G. Brom, ed., “De Insinuatio Status Provinciarum, in quibus haeretici dominantur,” AAU 17 (1889): 156.

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21. Brom, “Insinuatio,” 156. 22. Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk, 245–248; Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 2:23–114. 23. Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk, 245–248; Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 2:23–114; Gian Ackermans, Herders en huurlingen: Bisschoppen en priesters in de Republiek (1663–1705) (Amsterdam: Prometheus/Bert Bakker, 2003), 14–15. 24. Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk, 247. 25. Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk, 245–253. 26. Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk, 245–252. 27. See Philippus Rovenius, Reipublicae Christianae Libri Duo, Tractantes de variis Hominum status, Gradibus, Officiis, et functionibus in Ecclesia Christi et quae in singulis amplectenda, quae fugienda sint (Antwerp: Arnoldum a’ Brakel, 1648), 142–155; Johannes [van Neercassel] Episcopus Castoriensi, Amor Poenitens, sive de Divini Amoris ad Poenitentiam Necessitate, et Recto Clavium Usu, Libri Duo (Emmerik: Joannem Arnoldi et Socios, 1683), 303–323. 28. For a list of suspect activities submitted to the Holy Office for clarification, see OBC, no. 16, Quaestiones exhibitae sanctissimo die undecima Maii 1602, et commissae congregationi sancti officii. 29. Vermaseren, Katholieke Nederlandse geschiedschrijving, 50. 30. Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk, 245–256. 31. See OBC, no. 78, Gebeden en meditaties [Sasbout Vosmeer], 1–3 (unpaginated); Philippus Rovenius, Het Gulden Wieroock-Vat Eenen Ieghelycken Nut ende Oorbaer syn Gebeden God op te dragen (Antwerp: Jeronimus en Johan Babtista Verdusen inde Camer-straet, 1670), 75–80; [van Neercassel], Amor Poenitens. 32. OBC, no. 5, Bevel van het hof van Holland tot apprehensie van Sasbout Vosmeer, May 30, 1602. 33. Arnold Pritchard, Catholic Loyalism in Elizabethan England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 102–103, 120–123, 135. 34. Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 2:114. 35. Rovenius, Reipublicae Christianae, 70–74; Philippus Rovenius, Tractatus de missionibus ad propagandam fidem et conversionem infidelium et haereticorum instituendis (Louvain: Henrici Hasteni, 1626), 27–35; Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk, 262–263. 36. M. G. Spiertz, L’Église catholique des Provinces-Unies et le Saint-Siège pendant le deuxième moitié du XVIIe siècle (Louvain: Bureaux de la R.H.E., Bibliothèque de l’Université, 1975), 115–121. See also, M. G. Spiertz, “De Katholieke geestelijke leiders en de wereldlijke overheid in de Republiek der Zeven Provinciven,” Trajecta 2 (1993): 6–7. 37. This extended section on the apostolic vicars is drawn from Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 2: 23–84, 100–340; Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk, 245–289; B. A. van Kleef, Geschiedenis van de Oud-Katholicke Kerk van Nederland (Assen: Van Gorcum en Comp. N.V., 1953), 45–63, 91–103; P. Polman, OFM, Katholiek Nederland in de achttiende eeuw (Hilversum: Paul Brand, 1968), 1:1–15. 38. Spaans, Haarlem, 71–79; Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 2: 356–360. 39. Spaans, Haarlem, 76–79; Kapittel #225, no. 353, Registrum confratrum meo rum canonicorum Harlemensis, 1579 and 1580; see also no. 57 Acta, June 1580 to November 1581.

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40. Fred Smit and Jan Jacobs, Vanden Hogenheuvel gekomen: Bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van de priesteropleiding in de kerk van Utrecht, 1683–1723 (Nijmegen: Valkof Pers, 1994), 35–39. 41. Kapittel #225, no. 351, Institutio Capituli Harlemensis, n.d. [late 1570s to early 1580s]. 42. Kapittel #225, no. 351, Capita concordia inita inter R.D. Philippum Rovenium V.A. confoederalis Belgij provincias ex una et R.D. decanum et capitum cathedralis ecclesiae Harlemensis vacante sede ex alia capita super iurisdictione et administratione ecclesia et diocesus, July 14, 1616; Spaans, Haarlem, 75–79; Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk, 249–250. 43. For Jesuit activities, see SJ. LA., A.C. 2, A.C. 4, 1592–1614, 1616, 1617, 1657, 1672, 1673, 1675, 1676, 1678. 44. Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk, 258. 45. [ Johannes Bolland, SJ], Imago primi saeculi societatis Iesu a provincia FlandroBelgica eiusdem societatis repraesentata (Antwerp: Plantin, 1640), 797–799; Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 2:52–53. 46. Rovenius, Tractatus, 14–20, 42–47; Rovenius, Reipublicae Christianae, esp. 74–77; A. van Lommel, SJ, ed., “Relatio seu descriptio status religionis catholicae in Hollandia etc. Quam Romae collegit et exhibuit Alexandro septimo et cardinalibus congregationis de propaganda fide, Jacobus de la Torre, Kal. Septembris Anno 1656,” AAU 10 (1882): 96–97. 47. OBC, no. 190, Descriptio ordinis hierarchici cleri Hollandiae, May 15–16, 1623; no. 385, Summarium relationis missionis Hollandiae, 1701. 48. Van Lommel, “Relatio seu descriptio 1656,” AAU 10, 95–240; ibid., AAU 11, 57–211. 49. OBC, no. 90, Rovenius to Twente, August 28 [1607]; OBC, no. 89, van Schoonhoven to Rovenius, March 11 [1647]. 50. OKN, no. 868, “Instructie van de la Torre,” February 9, 1657. 51. OBC, no. 172, De matrimoniis mixtis partum resolutio nuntii et Bellarmini, October 16, 1623. 52. Van Lommel, “Insinuatio,” 157; van Lommel, “Relatio seu descriptio 1656,” AAU 10, 95–96. 53. OBC, no. 8, Apologia, 1607; Rovenius, Reipublicae Christianae, 77. 54. Michael A. Mullett, The Catholic Reformation (New York: Routledge, 1999), 133; for an examination of how these different views played into the schism in the early eighteenth century, see A. G. Weiler, “Hollandse missie of Hollandse kerk? Een onderzoek naar de ideologische achtergronden van de strijde tussen de cleresie en de Romeinse cure (1702–1703),” Archief voor de Geschiedenis der Kerk in Nederland 4 (1962): 185–232. 55. A. van Lommel, SJ, ed., “Relatio visitationis missionis S. J. in Hollandia a Patre Guilielmo Bauters,” AAU 6 (1879): 236–240. 56. F. van Hoeck, SJ, Schets van de geschiedenis der Jezuieten in Nederland (Nijmegen: Dekker and van de Vegt, 1940), 118–126, 397–401; Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 2:60. 57. OBC, no. 200, “Memorie van Rovenius aan de Propaganda tegen de Jezuieten” [after May 9, 1624]. 58. SJ. LA., A.C. 2, 1660 (Utrecht), 1682; [Bolland], Imago, 797–799; van Hoeck, Schets van de geschiedenis der Jezuiten, 129–144; 59. Rogier, Geschiedenis van net Katholicisme 2: 156–157.

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60. Groot Placaet-Boek, inhoudende de placaten ende ordonnantien van de HooghMog. Heeren Staten Generael der Vereenighde Nederlanden ende vande Ed. Groot Mog: Heeren Staten van Hollandt ende West-Vrieslandt, mitsgaders van Ed. Mog: Heeren Staten van Zeelandt (The Hague: Weduwe ende erfgenamen van wijlen Hillebrandt Iacobsz. van Wouw, 1658), 1:212–213; OBC, no. 50, “van Nicolaas Ruychaver, schout van Haarlem, tegen Machtelt Bickers, wegens klopperij” [1593]. 61. This section on the virgins is indebted to Marit Monteiro, Geestelijke maagden: Leven tussen klooster en wereld in Noord-Nederland gedurende de zeventiende eeuw (Hilversum: Verloren, 1996), 49–109; Joke Spaans, “Paragons of Piety: Representations of Priesthood in the Lives of the Haarlem Virgins,” Dutch Review of Church History 83 (2003): 235–246; Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 2:367–372; Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk, 267–268. 62. See A. van Lommel, SJ, ed., “Brevis descriptio status, in quo est ecclesia Catholica in partibus Belgii ab haereticus occupatis anno 1616,” AAU 3 (1874–1875): 219, 224; van Lommel, “Descriptio status [1622],” 358, 366, 368; A. van Lommel, SJ, ed., “Relatio seu descriptio religionis Catholicae in Hollandia etc. Quam Romae collegit et exhibuit Alexandro septimo et cardinalibus congregationis de propaganda fide, Jacobus de la Torre, Kal. Septembris Anno 1656,” AAU 11 (1883): 99, 126, 132, 172, 179–189, 191, 198; van Lommel, “Descriptio 1656,” AAU 10, 202, 226, 233; SJ. LA., A.C. 2, 1659. 63. Willem Frijhoff, “De Noordnederlandse Oratorianen en de Katholieke identiteit: Rond een stelling,” in Marit Monteiro, Gerard Rooijakkers, and Joost Rosendaal, eds., De dynamiek van religie en cultuur: Geschiedenis van het Nederlands Katholicisme (Kampen: Kok, 1993), 210–211. 64. Israel, Dutch Republic, 374–377; Kooi, Liberty and Religion, 67–68. 65. A few examples of proclamations for days of prayer can be found in Gemeente Archief te Delft. Archief van de Vroedschap, #1 Keurboek, folios 159v, July 23, 1573, 182r, November 28, 1573, 229v, August 1574, 241v October 31, 1574, 256r, May 8, 1575. 66. Israel, Dutch Republic, 374–377, 391–392. Peter van Rooden, “Jews and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Republic,” in R. Po-Chia Hsia and H. F. K van Nierop, eds., Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002): 141–142. 67. Jan Frederick van Beeck Calkoen, Onderzoek naar den rechtstoestand der geestelijke en kerkelijke goederen in Holland na de reformatie, (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1910), 39–67; Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 2:428–473; Henk van Nierop, “Sewing the Bailiff in a Blanket: Catholics and the Law in Holland,” in Hsia and van Nierop, Calvinism and Religious Toleration, 106; OBC, no. 158, Keur van Leiden tegen de papisten, February 10, 1640; GAD. Kerkeraad, #1 Keurboek, folio 166r, September 6, 1573; Groot Placaet-Boeck, 1:193–4, 199–200, 203–204, 211–213, 217–218, 219–220, 223–224, 227–228. 68. Van Lommel, “Relatio 1656,” AAU 11, 57–211; van Lommel, “Descriptio status [1622],” 349–381. 69. Joke Spaans, “Het Katholieken in de Republiek na de vrede van Munster,” De zeventiende eeuw 13 (1997): 253. 70. Benjamin J. Kaplan, “ ‘Dutch’ Religious Tolerance: Celebration and Revision,” in Hsia and van Nierop, Calvinism and Religious Toleration, 9. 71. Joke Spaans has argued that city governments worked to downplay de-

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nominational distinctions and to create a broad public religious culture, minimizing confessional violence. This study finds basic agreement with her conclusions, though my research leads me to place more emphasis on the official and unofficial threat of violence to manage confessional coexistence. See Joke Spaans, “Violent Dreams, Peaceful Coexistence: On the Absence of Religious Violence in the Dutch Republic,” De Zeventiende Eeuw 18 (2003): 149–166. 72. A. van Lommel, SJ, ed., “Labores exant lati et fructus collecti a RRPP minoribus Recollectis Ordinis Sancti Francisci, provinciae inferioris Germaniae, in foederati Belgio, Annis 1684–85,” AAU 8 (1880): 436, 440, 441, 444; R. R. Post, ed., Romeinse bronnen voor den kerkelijken toestand der Nederlanden onder de Apostolische Vicarissen, 1592–1727, vol. 2: 1651–86 (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1941), 322–324, (November 10, 1665), 780 ( January 30, 1686); OBC, no. 239, Copiae litterarum missarum Romam, nuntios et episcopos vicinos, August 28–29, 1675. 73. OBC, no. 444, Pethijnus to Vosmeer, Janauary 2, 1603; Kapittel #225, no. 354, Anonymous to Eggius, April 26, 1610. See also OBC, no. 227, Deventer to van Neercassel, March 24, 1669; Kapittel #225, no. 354, Petri to Eggius, April 26, 1610. 74. Kapittel #275, no. 92, De Persecutione. 75. Kapittel #225, no. 359, Tiras to Hoorn, January 23, 1638. 76. Van Lommel, “Relatio seu descriptio 1656,” AAU 11, 92. See also Kapittel #225, no. 351, Capitum Harlemensis exponit Nuncio Apostolico causam sacerdotam Strekanorum et religiosum sui laborantem in quibus componendum petit Vicario Harlemensis et Reverendissimo Vicario Apostolico fidem haberi quos commendat, 1617; Kapittel #225, no. 353, Sillingius to Zaffius, August 9, December 4, 1608, no. 354, Petri to Eggius, January 27 [1609]; Kapittel #275, no. 92, De Persecutione; Kapittel # 225, no. 359, Tiras to Hoorn, January 23, 1638; G. Brom, ed., “Vier missie-verslagen, van 1635 tot 1645 door Rovenius te Rome ingedienel,” 9–10; OBC, no. 20, Vosmeer to Stalpert van der Wiele, July 2, 1613, no. 243, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, August 6, 1669, no. 252, van Neercassel to Zeeland, September 16, 1682. 77. Rijksarchief van Noord-Holland, no. 239, Resolutien van de Staten van NoordHolland, February, 28, 1581. See Kapittel #225, no. 359, Tiras to Hoorn, January 23, 1638; OBC, no. 158, Keur van Leiden, February 10, 1640, no. 155, “Brief van het Hof van Holland aan de Staten van Holland tegen de pausgezinden,” December 18, 1635. 78. Brom, “Vier missie-verslagen,” 9–10. Note also that this complaint was common among secular priests. See Kapittel #225, no. 351, Capitum; OBC, no. 243, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, August 6, 1669. 79. OBC, no. 20, Vosmeer to Stalpert van der Wiele, July 2, 1613; Kapittel #225, no. 353, Sillingius to Zaffius, December 4, 1608. For similar warnings, see Kapittel #225, no. 354, Petri to Eggius, January 27 [no year]. 80. OBC, no. 252, van Neercassel to Deventer, September 16, 1682. 81. Van Lommel, “Brevis descriptio [1616],” 225; van Lommel “Descriptio status [1622],” 356 ; van Lommel, “Relatio seu descriptio 1656,” AAU 11,78; OBC, no. 343, Priesterlijst Leeuwarden, April 17–27, 1699. 82. Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 2:448–449. For other examples of violence to priests and persecution, see OBC, no. 5, Junius to Vosmeer, June 9, 1601, no. 8, Elreborn to Vosmeer, May 18, 1607, no. 9, Boucquet to Vosmeer, February 12, 1610, no. 18, Vosmeer to Vosmeer, July 17, 1610, no. 20, Vosmeer

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to Stalpert van der Wiele, July 2, 1613, no. 249, van Neercassel to de Vanger, March 15, 1679, no. 253, van Neercassel to Deventer, May 4, 1684, no. 336, Spectantia ad archpresbijteratum Zwollensem post commotiones et tumultus harum confoederatum provinciarum, no. 444, Pethijnus to Vosmeer, January 2, 1603, no. 343, Petrus Codde, “Priesterlijsten Leeuwarden,” April 27, 1699; van Lommel, “Descriptio status [1622],” 356; G. A. Meijer, ed., “Missie-verslagen der Dominicanen ingediend bij de Propaganda Fide,” AAU 49 (1929): 149; van Lommel, “Relatio seu descriptio 1656,” AAU 10, 119, 181, 187, 191, 209; van Lommel, “Relatio seu descriptio 1656,” AAU 11, 44, 151; A. van Lommel, SJ, ed., “Kort verslag van den toestand der R.C. godsdienst der voormalige Hollendsche Zending 1629,” AAU 13 (1885): 252–253; R. Fruin, ed., Uittreksel uit Francisci Dusseldorpii Annales, 1566–1616 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1893), xxvii, 100; Kapittel #225, no. 354, Anthonij to Eggius, July 29, 1601, Egbertszoon to Eggius, June 9, 1609, no. 355, Eggius to Duijvenszoon, 1603, no. 363, Catalogus defunctorem ac succedentium canonicorum graduatorum Cathedralis ecclesiis Harlemensis ab anno 1579 usque ad anno 1629, no. 367, Cousebant to Codde, July 25, 1686, no. 367, Petrus Dei et Apostolicae sedis gratia Archepiscopus Sebastenus et per Unitas Belgii Provincias Vicarius Apostolicus admodum Reverendo et Amplissimo Domino Josepho Cousebant per dioceses Harlemensem, Leovardiensem, et Groningensem Provicario ac salutem in Domino, May 3, 1689. 83. Kapittel #225, no. 354, Anthonij to Eggius, July 19–29, 1601. 84. Van Lommel, “Relatio seu escriptio 1656,” AAU 11, 191. For other reports of vandalism, see van Lommel, “Descriptio status [1622],” 356; van Lommel, “Kort verslag 1629,” 252. 85. For examples of the ransom of Dutch priests, see OBC, no. 3, Vermij to Vosmeer, April 11, 1598, no. 230, van Blockhoven to van Neercassel, June 2, 1681, no. 249, van Neercassel to de Vanger, March 15, 1679, no. 254, van Neercassel to Makkum, April 20, 1686; Kapittel #225, no. 354, anonymous to Eggius, March 27, 1607, no. 353, Sillingius to Zaffius, December 4, 1608, Kapittel #275, no. 70, Beier to Cats, November 7, 1630, no. 66, Rovenius to Chapter, December 20, 1634, no. 69, de Jonge to Chapter, April 28, 1637, Kapittel #225, no. 359, Tiras to Hoorn, January 23, 1638, Kapittel #275, no. 60, Acta, January 15, 1647, January 19, 1649, February 8, 1650, October 11, 1650, no. 85, “Copiebook”: Register, houdende afschriften van de statuten van ’t bisdom Utrecht en van stukken betreffende de oprichting der bisdommen: Onderhandelingen door de apostolische vicaris te Rome gevoerd, 42, no. 92, Persecutione; van Lommel, “Descriptio status [1622],” 356; Brom, “Vier missie-verslagen,” 16. 86. Van Lommel, “Descriptio status [1622],” 356; Kapittel #275, no. 70, Beier to Cats, November 7, 1630, no. 60, Acta, February 8, 1650, no. 85, “Copiebook,” 42; Brom, “Vier missie-verslagen,” 16; OBC, no. 254, van Neercassel to Makkum, April 20, 1686. 87. Kapittel #275, no. 92, Persecutione. 88. OBC, no. 3, Vermij to Vosmeer, April 11, 1598; Meijer, “Missie verslagen Dominicanen,” 148; van Lommel, “Relatio seu descriptio 1656,” AAU 10, 181. For other bans, see van Lommel, “Descriptio status [1622],” 356; Kapittel #225, no. 354, “Copie” (otherwise untitled condemnation of Albert Gerbrantszoon [Albert Eggius]), September 3, 1604; Kapittel #275, no. 60, Acta, February 8, 1650. 89. Van Hoeck, Schets van de geschiedenis der Jezuieten, 118. For examples, see

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Notes to Pages 51–54

SJ. LA., A.C. 2, 1653 (Enkhuizen), 1654 (Delft), 1658 (Leiden), 1659 (The Hague), 1660 (Leeuwarden, Gouda), 1671 (Nieuwkerk, Zutphen), 1677 (Delft, Zutphen, Arnhem, Oudewater), 1683 (Utrecht), 1685 (Groningen), 1686 (Amsterdam, Leeuwarden), 1687 (Leeuwarden); SJ. LA., A.C. 3, 1616 (Frisia); SJ. LA., A.C. 4, 1677 (Gelderland), 1678 (Zwolle), 1681 (Nieuwkerk, Oudewater, Leeuwarden, Middelburg). 90. Kapittel #275, no. 85, “Copiebook,” 21–43; OBC, no. 157, “Sententie van schepenen van Leiden namens de centrale overheid tegen Rombout Medenblick,” January 30, 1640, no. 158, Keur van Leiden, February 10, 1640. 91. Kapittel #275, no. 92, Persecutione. 92. Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 2:466–467. For other reports of the apostolic vicar promising financial assistance for recognition money, see OBC, no. 189, de la Torre to Bodegraven, January 8, 1649. For several examples of these payments, see van Lommel, “Descriptio status [1622],” 101; OBC, no. 189, “Aan de geestelijkheid om geldelijke bijdragen voor de Katholieken van Voorburg,” September 21, 1648, no. 229, Vlissingen to van Neercassel, March 30, 1679, no. 232, Deventer to van Neercassel, August 26–September 5, 1685; Kapittel #275, no. 60, Acta, October 3, 1645, January 16, 1646. 93. Christine Kooi, “Paying Off the Sheriff: Strategies of Catholic Toleration in Golden Age Holland,” in Hsia and van Nierop, Calvinism and Regligious Toleration, 87; Knuttel, Toestand, 168–170. 94. Knuttel, Toestand, 151–152; M. A. Haitsma, De Rooms-Katholieken te Leiden van ongeveer 1650 tot de tweede helft van de achttiende eeuw (Amersfoort: Stichting Oud-Katholieke Seminarie, 1977), 6. 95. Haitsma, Rooms-Katholieken te Leiden, 5; S. Muller, “Raadsbesluiten van Utrecht betreffende geheime godsdienst-oefeningen der Roomsch-Katholieken in 1652–1655,” AAU 14 (1886): 237–240; Meijer, “Missie-verslagen Dominicanen,” 145, 154. 96. Benjamin J. Kaplan, “Fictions of Privacy: House Chapels and the Spatial Accommodation of Religious Dissent in Early Modern Europe,” American Historical Review 107 (2002): 1036. 97. Kapittel #225, no. 354, Egbertszoon to Eggius, June 9, 1609. 98. OBC, no. 444, Pethijnus to Vosmeer, January 2, 1603, no. 13, Leeuwarden to Vosmeer, March 23, 1612. For similar concerns, see OBC, no. 12, Boucquet to Vosmeer, November 19, 1611, no. 444, van Musenbroeck [Moeusyenbrouck] to Vosmeer, May 4, 1602. 99. Van Lommel, “Brevis descriptio [1616],” 216; van Lommel, “Relatio seu descriptio 1656,” AAU 11, 87; Kapittel #275, no. 92, Persecutione; OBC, no. 238, Copiae litterarum missarum Romam, nuncios et episcopos vicinos, June 8, 1664. 100. OBC, no. 344, Amersfoort to Codde, January 11–1, 1700. For other examples of fear among Catholics, see OBC, no. 3, Vermij to Vosmeer, March 30, 1598, no. 1, Obijn to Vosmeer, May 5, 1583, no. 10, Dordrecht to Vosmeer, March 22, 1609, no. 10, Goes to Vosmeer, September 15, 1609, no. 252, van Neercassel to Zeeland, September 16, 1682, no. 231, van Neercassel (untitled status report, 1683); van Lommel, “Relatio seu descriptio 1656,” AAU 10, 114–117, 181, 209; Kapittel #275, no. 206, Hagius to unknown, July 3, 160, no. 354, Egbertszoon to Eggius, June 9, 1609, no. 354, anonymous to Eggius, April 26, 1610; OKN, no. 803, February 15, 1696. 101. OBC, no. 3, Vermij to Vosmeer, April 11, 1598.

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102. Kapittel #275, no. 85, “Copieboek.” See also Kapittel #225, no. 355, Eggius to Duijvenszoon, 1603. 103. Kapittel #275, no. 68, Eggius to Zaffius, February 4, 1605. 104. Kapittel #225, no. 354, Feijt to Eggius, December 4, 1598. 105. Van Lommel, “Brevis descriptio [1616],” 219; van Lommel, “Relatio seu descriptio 1656,” AAU 10, 195, 203, and AAU 11, 144, 151. 106. P. P. V. van Moorsel, “De devotie tot St. Willibrord in Nederland van ongeveer 1580 tot ongeveer 1750,” Ons Geestelijk Erf (1958): 129–134; L. J. Rogier, “De cultus van sint Willibrord bij de Apostolische Vicarissen der Hollandse Zending in de zeventiende eeuw,” Historisch Tijdschrift 18 (1939): 248–249; Rogier, Katholicisme, 2:762–765; Marc Wingens, Over de grens: De bedevaart van Katholieke Nederlanders in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw (Nijmegen: SUN, 1994), 24–25; Willem Frijhoff, “Noordnederlandse Oratorianen,” 210–211. 107. Eric W. Cochrane, Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 462; Cyriac K. Pullapilly, Caesar Baronius, Counter-Reformation Historian (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), 49–66; Dionysius Mudzaert, Generale Kerckelicke Historie van het begin der Werelt tot het iaer onses heeren Iesu Christi 1624 (Antwerp: Hieronymus Verdussen, 1624), 2:3–218; Adrianus van Meerbeeck, Chroniicke vande Gantsche Werelt ende sonderlinghe vande Seventhien Nederlanden (Antwerp: Hieronymus Verdussen, 1620), 202, 316–324, 485. 108. Mudzaert, Genevale Kerckelicke Historie, 4. 109. Hugo Franciscus van Heussen, Batavia Sacra of kerkelyke historie en oudheden van Batavia (Antwerp: Christianus Vermeij, 1715), 1:4–9. 110. Jan Baptist Stalpart van der Wiele, Gulde-Jaer Ons Heeren Iesu Christi, ed. B. A. Mensinck and J. A. Bömer (Zwolle: W. E. J. Tjeenk Willink, 1968), 116–120; quotation on 119. For other examples of the connection between Willibrord and the Netherlands, see Stalpert van der Wiele, Poëzie (Haarlem: H. D. Tjeenk en Zoon, 1954), 42, 117–118; Richard Verstegan, Nederlantsche antiquiteijten met de bekeeringhe van eenighe der selve landen tot het kersten gheloove deur S. Willibrordus, apostel van Hollant, Zeelant, Sticht van Utrecht, Over-ÿsel, ende Vrieslant, met oock eenighe deelen van Gelderlant, Cleve, Gulick, Brabant, ende Vlaenderen (Antwerp: Gaspar Bellerus, 1613), 35–89; Chronijck ofte beschrijvinge behelsende de generale concilien mitsgaders den voortganck der beldt-stormierijen (n.p.: J.P. Robijns weduwe, 1728), 2 (unpaginated); Mudzaert, Generale Kerckelicke Historie, 59–75. 111. Francis Coster, SJ, Schildt der Catholijcken teghen de ketterijen (Antwerp: C. Plantin, 1591), 73, 101ff.; Francis Coster, SJ, Catholicke Sermoonen opde evangelien van de sondaghen naar sinxen tot den advent (Antwerp: Ioachim Trognesius, 1598), 38–42. 112. Thijs, Van geuzen stat tot Katholiek bolwerk, 97–108; F. J. M. Hoppenbrouwers, Oefening in volmaaktheid: De zeventiende-eeuwse Rooms-Katholieke spiritualiteit in de Republiek (The Hague Sdu Uitgevers, 1996), 61, 183; see also Vermaseren, Katholieke Nederlandse geschiedschrijving, 40–264; Thijs, Antwerpen, 41; L. Marius, Amstelredams eer ende opcomen door de denckwaerdighe miraklen aldaer geschied aen ende door h. sacrament des altaers anno 1345 (Antwerp: Hendrick Aertssens, 1639); Petrus Opmeer, Het Nederlands Catholijk martelaars boek (Antwerp: n.p., 1700). 113. Kapittel #275, no. 263, Visitantes reliquas sub custodia r.p. Arnoldi de Witte ord. S. Francsci de reg. observ. in cathedrali civitate Harlemensi, June 25,

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1631, no. 262, Rovenius to Chapter, May 25, 1651; OBC, no. 342, van de Perre to Codde, September 7, 1695; Xander van Eck, Kunst, twist, en devotie: Goudse Katholieke schuilkerken, 1572–1795, (Delft: Eburon, 1994), 171–173; SJ. LA., A.C. 2, 1655 (The Hague); Willem Frijhoff, “La fonction du miracle dans une minorité catholique: Les Provinces-Unies au XVIIe siècle,” Revue Histoire Spiritualité 48 (1972): 151–178. 114. Hoppenbrouwers, Oefening in volmaaktheid, 43; Lienke Paulina Leuven, De boekhandel te Amsterdam door Katholieken gedreven tijdens de Republiek (Epe: N. Drukkerij Hooiberg, 1951), 10–11. 115. Kapittel #225, no. 355, Eggius to unknown, July 1, 1601. 116. See, for example, Wouters and Abels, Nieuw en ongezien, 2:60–61; Herman Roodenburg, Onder censuur: De kerkelijke tucht in de gereformeerde gemeente van Amsterdam, 1578–1700 (Hilversum: Verloren, 1990), 149–165. 117. Kapittel #275, no. 92, Persecutione. 118. Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines, 266–270; Kooi, Liberty and Religion, 55–118; Spaans, Haarlem, 228–236. 119. Douglas Catterall, Community without Borders: Scots Migrants and the Changing Face of Power in the Dutch Republic, C. 1600–1700 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2002), 295–316. 120. OBC, no. 5, May 30, 1602. 121. Kapittel #225, no. 351, Vosmeer to Chapter, September 8, 1609. 122. H. J. C. Aveling, Catholic Recusancy in the City of York, 1558–1791 (London: Catholic Record Society, 1970), 27–28, 48–49. 123. H. J. Schroeder, OP, ed., Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent (Saint Louis, Mo.: B. Herder Book Co., 1941), 183. 124. Manon van der Heijden, Huwelijk in Holland: stedelijke rechtspraak en kerkelijke tucht, 1550–1750 (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Bert Bakker, 1998), 36–38; Joris van Eijnatten and Fred van Lieburg, Nederlandse religiegeschiedenis (Hilversum: Verloren, 2005), 196; Benjamin J. Kaplan, “ ‘For They Will Turn Away Thy Sons’: The Practice and Perils of Mixed Marriage in the Dutch Golden Age,” in a forthcoming edited collection, 7–8. 125. H. F. W. D. Fischer, “De gemengde huwelijken tussen Katholieken en Protestanten in de Nederlanden van de XVIe tot de XVIIIe eeuw,” Tijdschrift voor rechtsgeschiedenis 31 (1963): 464; R. Po-Chia Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540–1770 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 22–3; Mullet, Catholic Reformation, 65; Kaplan, “For They Will Turn Away thy Sons.” 126. Fischer, “Gemengde huwelijcken,” 465–466. 127. GAD. Kerkeraad, November 3, 1586. 128. Van der Heijden, Huwelijk in Holland, 235–237. 129. Schroeder, Canons and Decrees, 183–185. 130. Ottavio Mirto Frangipani to Henricus Cuyckius (Bishop of Roermond), July 13, 1595, in J. D. M. Cornelissen, ed., Romeinsche bronnen voor den kerkelijke toestand der Nederlanden onder de Apsotolische Vicarissen, 1592–1727, vol. 1: 1592–1651 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1932), 40–2; see also Ottavio Mirto Frangipani to Giulio Antonio Santorio, July 29, 1593 in Cornelissen, Romeinsche bronnen, 1:22–23. 131. SJ. LA., A.C. 2, 1592. 132. OBC, no. 2, van Spuelde to Vosmeer, September 21, 1594; Kapittel #225, no. 355, Eggius to anonymous, 1598; SJ. LA., A.C. 2, 1592.

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133. OBC, no. 15, Quaestiones aliquot tempore invalescentis haeresis et oppressae ecclesiae [1600]. 134. OBC, no. 15, Quaestiones haeresis. 135. Kapittel #225, no. 351, Casus in Capito aut resoluti aut saltem ventilati [after 1632]. 136. G. Brom, ed., “Briefwisseling der Vicarii Apostolici met den H. Stoel,” AAU 34 (1908): 39–40. 137. OBC, no. 170, An liceat matrimoniam contrahere coram ministro haeretico, [after May 5, 1626]. 138. OBC, no. 172, De matrimoniis mixtis, October 16, 1623; see also Secretarius der Congregatie van het Concilie to Ottavio Mirto Frangipani, November 30, 1600, in Cornelissen, Romeinsche bronnen, 80. 139. OBC, no. 172, De matrimoniis mixtis, October 16, 1623; Kapittel #225, no. 351, Constitutio Illustrissimi ac Reverendissimi Domini Archepiscopi Philippensis et Vicari Apostolici per Unitas Belgii Provincias, June 30, 1628. 140. Kapittel #275, no. 256, Benthemius to Cats, July 9, 1636; Kaplan, “For They Will Turn Away Thy Sons,” 5, 9. 141. OBC, no. 90, De geestelijkheid over het uitlopen van religieuzen en gemengde huwelijken, September 15, 1650. 142. J. de la Torre aan de Propaganda, August 31, 1675, in Brom, “Briefwisseling,” 37. 143. J. de la Torre aan Propaganda, August 31, 1657, in Brom, “Briefwisseling,” 35–41. 144. For examples, see Kapittel #275, no. 58, Acta, October 14, 1631, no. 256, Zaffius to Cats, December 19, 1598, Vosmeer to Cats, March 7, 1600, February 8, 1611, Marius to Cats, January 17, 1635, Cornelius to Cats, August 9, 1633, Willem to Rovenius, December 29, 1631; Kapittel #225, no. 352, Frangipani to Coopal, June 21, 1589; OBC, no. 211, Formulierboek, September 28, 1663. 145. J. de la Torre aan Propaganda, November 12, 1657, in Brom, “Briefwisseling,” 43–44; OBC, no. 189, Tegen de missionarissen over het verlenen van huwelijksdispensatie, November 30, 1657. 146. For examples, see Kapittel #275, no. 256, Exemplar epistola; OBC, no. 209, Cousebant to Metz, April 9, 1660 (Sententia facultatis Theologiae in matrimonii casibus), no. 242, van Neercassel to de Swaen, December 24, 1664. 147. Johannes van Neercassel, Constitutiones servandae a Presbyteris in Foederato Belgio Laborantibus (Louvain: Guilielmi Stryckwant, 1688), 25–26; Kapittel #275, no. 256, Exemplar epistola, July 12, 1682. 148. Kapittel #275, no. 256, Exemplar epistola. See Kaplan, “For They Will Turn Away Thy Sons,” 9–15. 149. Roodenburg, Onder censuur, 149–151; Wouters and Abels, Nieuw en ongezien, 2:60–62. 150. Van der Heijden, Huwelijk in Holland, 235–237. 151. GAD. Kerkeraad, June 5, 1595, April 24, 1598. For several of the other cases in the Delft consistory, see GAD. Kerkeraad, July 1, 1579, August 5, 1579, October 19, 1587. 152. SJ. LA., A.C. 3, 1613 (Leeuwarden). 153. SJ. LA., A.C. 4, 1678, 1679, 1685. 154. Wouters and Abels, Nieuw en ongezien, 1:239, 2:61; van der Heijden, Huwelijk in Holland, 235–237, 275.

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155. Roodenburg, Onder censuur, 151. 156. Kaplan, “For They Will Turn Away Thy Sons,” n12. 157. Donald Haks, Huwelijk en gezin in Holland in de 17de en 18de eeuw: Processtukken en moralisten over aspecten van het laat 17de- en 18de-eeuwse gezinsleven (Utrecht: HES Publishers, 1985), 298. 2. Training the Laborers 1. Anonymous to Rome, before August 10, 1566, in Gisb. Brom and A. H. L. Hensen, eds., Romeinsche bronnen voor den kerkelijke-staatkundigen toestand der Nederlanden in de 16de eeuw (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1922), 180. 2. Anonymous to Rome, before August 10, 1566, in Brom and Hensen, Romeinsche bronnen, 183. 3. Andreas Fabritius to Pope Pius V, December 25, 1566, in Brom and Hensen, Romeinsche bronnen, 187. 4. Maximilius a Bergis, July 9, 1566, in Brom and Hensen, Romeinsche bronnen, 180. 5. A. van Lommel, SJ, ed., “Relatio seu descriptio status religionis Catholicae in Hollandia etc. Quam Romae collegit et exhibuit Alexandro septimo et cardinalibus congregationis de propaganda fide, Jacobus de la Torre, Kal. Septembris Anno 1656,” AAU 10 (1882): 121. 6. G. Brom, “Vier missie-verslagen, van 1635 tot 1645 door Rovenius te Rome ingediend,” AAU 18 (1890): 3; See also G. A. Meijer, ed., “Missie-verslagen der Dominicanen, ingediend bij de Propaganda Fide,” AAU 49 (1929): 147. 7. See Peter A. Dykema and Heiko A. Oberman eds, Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993). 8. Kathleen M. Comerford, Ordaining the Catholic Reformation: Priests and Seminary Pedagogy in Fiesole, 1575–1675 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2001), 108–109; A. J. Bijsterveld, Laverende tussen kerk en wereld: De pastoors in NoordBrabant, 1400–1750 (Amsterdam: VU Uitgeverij, 1993), 377; P. Declerck, “Het seminarie decreet na Trent,” Collationes Brugenses et Gandavenses 11 (1965): 13; James A. O’Donohoe, A.B., J.C.D., Tridentine Seminary Legislation: Its Sources and Its Formation (Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain, 1957), 6–12; R. Po-Chia Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540–1770 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 115. 9. Larissa Taylor, Soldiers of Christ: Preaching in Late Medieval and Reformation France (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 141–143; Philip T. Hoffman, Church and Community in the Diocese of Lyon, 1500–1789 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1984), 7–44; quotation on 167; Andrew Barnes, “The Social Transformation of the French Parish Clergy, 1500–1800,” in Barbara Diefendorf and Carla Hesse, eds., Culture and Identity in Early Modern Europe (1500–1800): Essays in Honor of Natalie Zemon Davis (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 141; see also Bijsterveld, Laverende tussen kerk en wereld, 377–378. 10. Taylor, Soldiers of Christ, 142; Hoffman, Church and Community, 7–44; Marc R. Forster, Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque: Religious Identity in Southwest Germany, 1550–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 155–168. 11. Michael A. Mullett, The Catholic Reformation (New York: Routledge, 1999), 34. 12. R. R. Post, Kerkelijke verhoudingen in Nederland vóór de reformatie van ± 1500

Notes to Pages 73–78

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tot ± 1580 (Utrecht: Spectrum, 1954), 33, 50–58; P. W. F. M. Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk in Nederland (Bruges: Uitgeverij Tabor, 1992), 164. 13. Post, Kerkelijke verhoudingen, 33–35, 119–25; Bijsterveld, Laverende tussen kerk en wereld, 341–343. 14. L. J. Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme in Noord-Nederland in de 16e en de 17e eeuw (Amsterdam: Urbi et Orbi, 1947–1948), 1:15–17, 279; Declerck, “Seminarie decreet,” 6–8; Post, Kerkelijke verhoudingen, 36–47, 165; Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk, 164–166; Post, Kerkelijke verhoudingen, 39–41. 15. A. Th. van Deursen, Plain Lives in a Golden Age: Popular Culture, Religion, and Society in Seventeenth-Century Holland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 283; Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke kerk, 248. 16. Hieronymo de Andrea, ed., Canones et decreta concilii Tridentii (Naples: Sacerdos Ioseph Pelella, 1859), 209–211; Declerck, “Het seminarie decreet,” 32–34. See also Paul F. Grendler, “Schools, Seminaries, and Catechetical Instruction,” in John W. O’Malley, SJ, ed., Catholicism in Early Modern History: A Guide to Research (St. Louis, Mo.: Center for Reformation Research, 1988), 315–30; P. Declerck, “De diocesane priesteropleiding na Trent (1563–1789),” Collationes Brugenses et Gandavenses 13 (1967): 373–389. 17. O’Donohoe, Tridentine Seminary Legislation, 61; Declerck, “Het seminarie decreet,” 13–19; Hsia, World of Catholic Renewal, 116. 18. Declerck, “Het seminarie decreet,” 16, 23–24; O’Donohoe, Tridentine Seminary Legislation, 36, 63–74, 89–93; Peter Schmidt, Das Collegium Germanicum in Rom und die Germaniker: Zur Funktion eines römischen Ausländerseminars (1552–1914) (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1984), 12–14. 19. Hsia, World of Catholic Renewal, 116–117; Comerford, Ordaining the Catholic Reformation, 24–37. 20. Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 1: 278–279. 21. Helen Rawlings, Church, Religion, and Society in Early Modern Spain (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 72–73; Kathleen M. Comerford, “Clerical Education, Catechesis, and Catholic Confessionalism: Teaching Religion in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Kathleen M. Comerford and Hilmar M. Pabel, eds., Early Modern Catholicism: Essays in Honour of John W. O’Malley, SJ (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 248–255; Hsia, World of Catholic Renewal, 116–117. 22. John W. Padberg, SJ, “The Development of the Ratio Studiorum,” in Vincent J. Duminuco, SJ, ed., The Jesuit Ratio Studorium: 400th Anniversary Perspectives (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), 82; John O’Malley, SJ, “How the First Jesuits Became Involved in Education,” in Duminuco, Jesuit Ratio Studiorum, 62–63. 23. O’Malley, “How the First Jesuits,” 56; Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk, 209; Ladislaus Lukács, Monumenta Paedagogica Societatis Iesu. vol. 5 Ratio atque Institutio Studiorum Societatis (1580, 1591, 1599) (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1986), 4–5. 24. Heinz Schilling, “Confessional Europe,” in Thomas A. Brady Jr., Heiko Oberman, and James D. Tracy, eds., Handbook of European History, 1400–1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 2:653–655. 25. Founded by the Propaganda Fide in 1627, the Collegio Urbano was estab-

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lished to train priests for overseas missions. Gian Ackermans, Herders en huurlingen: Bisschoppen en priesters in de Republiek (1663–1705) (Amsterdam: Prometheus/Bert Bakker, 2003), 72–76. 26. Christopher Haigh, Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 248; Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 2:37–39. 27. P. Gerlach, “Stukken betreffende de opleiding der geestelijkheid in de Hollandsche Missie,” AAU 67 (1948): 15–133 17–20; Fred Smit and Jan Jacobs, Van den Hogenheuvel gekomen: Bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van de priesteropleiding in de kerk van Utrecht, 1683–1723 (Nijmegen: Valkof Pers, 1994), 31–32; H. Keussen, “Das Collegium Hollandicum in Köln,” Internationale Kirchliche Zeitschrift 22 (1932): 123–126. 28. “Notarieel contract tussen Sasbout Vosmeer, Apostolisch Vicaris der Hollandse Missie, en Nicolaas Zoes, priester, kanunnik en officiaal van Doornik over de oprichting van het College van de H.H. Willibrordus en Bonifacius te Leuven,” January 9, 1602, in Gerlach, “Stukken betreffende,” 21–22. 29. Ackermans, Herders en huurlingen, 72. 30. G. Brom, ed., “De Insinuatio Status Provinciarum, in quibus haeretici dominantur,” AAU 17 (1889): 158; Smit and Jacobs, Van den Hogenheuvel, 33–36. 31. Smit and Jacobs, Van den Hogenheuvel, 38–39. 32. Kapittel #225, no. 351, Capita Concordia inita inter R.D. Philippus Rovenius V.A. per confederatas Belgii provincias ex una et R.D. Decanus et capitum cathedralis ecclesiae Harlemensis vacante sede ex alia parte super iurisdictione et administratione ecclesiae et diocesis Harlemensis, July 14, 1616; Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholiek Kerk, 259; Ackermans, Herders and huurlingen, 71. 33. Ackermans, Herders en huurlingen, 73–75,105; Smit and Jacobs, Van den Hogenheuvel, 43–45. 34. Smit and Jacobs, Van den Hogenheuvel, 43–69. 35. A. van Lommel, SJ, ed., “Brevis descriptio status, in quo est ecclesia Catholica in partibus Belgii ab haereticus occupatis anno 1616,” AAU 3 (1874–1875): 209. 36. “Rectori collegii Sanctorum Willibrordi et Bonifacii multae gratiae et post hanc vitam magna gloria (1603)” in Gerlach, “Stukken betreffende,” 58–62; Philippus Rovenius, Tractatus de missionibus ad propagandam fidem et conversionem infidelium et haereticorum instituendis (Louvain: Henrici Hasteni,1626), 26–27; “Notarieel contract,” in Gerlach, “Stukken betreffende,” 21–23; Kapittel #225, no. 551, Statuta Pulcheria; Declerck, “Het seminarie decreet,” 32–3; H. J. Schroeder, OP, ed., Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent (St. Louis, Mo.: B. Herder Book Co., 1941), 175–179. 37. OBC, no. 248, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, September 7, 1678; OBC, no. 243, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, June 4, 1669; “Uittreksel uit het 3e exemplar van de Historia Missionis Hollandicae Societatis Jesu sub Sasboldo Archepisc. Philippensi” in Gerlach, “Stukken betreffende,” 122. 38. F. van Hoeck, SJ, Schets van de geschiedenis der Jezuieten in Nederland (Nijmegen: Dekker en van de Vegt, 1940), 187–233; Paul Beghyn, SJ, “Uitgaven van Jezuïten in de Noordelijke Nederlanden 1601–1650,” Zeventiende Eeuw 13 (1997): 294.

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39. B. A. Vermaseren, De Katholieke Nederlandse geschiedschrijving in de 16e en 17e eeuw over de opstand (Leeuwarden: G. Dykstra, 1981), 19–37; Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk, 261; Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 2:51–53. 40. Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicism, 2:44; Hoeck, Schets van de geschiedenis der Jezuieten, 201. 41. “Nadere aantekeningen op de statuten van het Keulse college, 1611–1612,” in Gerlach, “Stukken betreffende,” 94; OBC, no. 482, Erectio Collegii Germanici et leges [early seventeenth century]. 42. Petrus Opmeer, Dat schip van patientie met die tafel des poenitentie (Antwerp: n.p., 1593), 11, 44, 100; Petrus Opmeer, Historia martyrum Batavicorum sive defectionis fide maiorem Hollandiae initia (Cologne: Bernardi Gualthueri en Petri Henningii, 1625), 16, 35–36; Cornelius Jansenius, De Interioris hominis reformatione. Oratio in qua vera virtutum Christianarum fundamenta ex D. Augustini doctrina jaciuntur (Louvain: Martini Hullegaerde, 1675), 10–41. 43. Smit and Jacobs, Van den Hogenheuvel, 75. 44. Philippus Rovenius, Het Gulden Wieroock-Vat Eenen Ieghelycken Nut ende Oorbaer syn Gebeden God op te dragen (Antwerp: Jeronimus en Johan Babtista Verdusen inde Camer-straet, 1670), unpaginated preface, quotation, 11; 104–106, 305. 45. Kapittel #225, no. 551, Statuta Pulcheria. 46. OBC, no. 223, Summarium visitationis collegii S.S. Willibrordi et Bonifacii, July 31, 1668; “Huisregels voor de Hollandse studenten te Keulen,” “Besluit aangaande de provisoren, president, procurator of econoom, leerlingen, beurzen en het archief van het Keulse College” July 1612; “Bepalingen van Sasbout Vosmeer, aangaande de taak van de provisoren en de prefect der studies of regens van het Keulse College,” in Gerlach, “Stukken betreffende,” 33, 68–71, 77. 47. “Nadere omschrijving van de taak van de president en de vice-president van het Keulse College, 1611–1612,” in Gerlach, “Stukken betreffende,” 71–74, quotation, 72–73; “Notarieel contract,” January 9, 1602, in Gerlach, “Stukken betreffende,” 20–24; Kapittel #225, no. 551, Statuta Pulcheria. 48. “Bepalingen van Sasbout,” in Gerlach, “Stukken betreffende,” 75–77; Kapittel #225, no. 553, Le Massart, July 16, 1681. 49. Kapittel #225, no. 551, Statuta Pulcheria, no. 553, Le Massart, July 16, 1681; “Notarieel contract,” in Gerlach, “Stukken betreffende,” 21–22. 50. “Bepalingen van Sasbout,” in Gerlach, “Stukken betreffende,” 75–77. For examples, see Kapittel #225, no. 551, Statuta Pulcheria, no. 553, Le Massart, July 16, 1681; OBC, no. 230, Melis to van Neercassel, October 25 1682, no. 231, Melis to van Neercassel, October 10, 1683, no. 245, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, April 1, 1672. 51. OKN, no. 867, Wijnhovius [Rovenius] to de la Torre, May 20, 1644; OBC, no. 230, van Blockhoven to van Neercassel, June 2, July 3, 1681, no. 229, van Blockhoven to van Neercassel, November 25, 1680, no. 232, van Blockhoven to van Neercassel, February 26, 1685, Daniels to van Neercassel, March 20–30, 1686. 52. Kapittel #225, no. 551, Statuta Pulcheria. 53. OBC, no. 247, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, March 7, 1676, no. 248, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, February 3, 1679. For other examples, see

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OBC, no. 229, van Blockhoven to van Neercassel, February 16, August 7, 1679, no. 242, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, March 11, 1666. 54. This paragraph is drawn from Ackermans, Herders en huurlingen, 82–85; Kapittel #225, no. 551, Statuta Pulcheria; “Huisregels,” in Gerlach, “Stukken betreffende,” 31. 55. Smit and Jacobs, Van den Hogenheuvel, 77–78. Throughout the correspondence between van Neercassel and van Blockhoven, from the late 1660s to the early 1680s they applied St. Augustine to a variety of issues. See OBC, no. 223, van Heuman, Vercranius, and Rosa to van Neercassel, July 31, 1668, no. 248, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, July 28, 1677, no. 229, van Blockhoven to van Neercassel, April 23, 1679, no. 245, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, June 16, 1671, no. 247, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, September 27, 1675, November 28, 1676, no. 248. February 3, 1679. 56. See Cornelius Jansenius, Notarum spongia quibus Alexipharmacum civibus Sylvae-ducensibus nuper propinatum aspersit Gisbertus Voetius (Louvain: Apud Viduam H. Hastenii et I. Zegers, 1631). 57. Adr. and Petr. De Walenburch, De Controversiis tractatus generales contracti (Brussels: Henricum Fricx, 1682); Smit and Jacobs, Vanden Hogenheuvel, 78, 80. See Adr. and Petr. Walenburch, Den eenvoudigen Catholijck, in Tractatus XI: Tractatis speciales de controversis fidei (Cologne: Agrippinae, 1665). 58. Smit and Jacobs, Van den Hogenheuvel, 80–81. 59. P. Polman, “Jansenius als polemist tegen de Calvinisten,” Historisch Tijdschrift 8 (1929): 149–166. 60. Kapittel #225, no. 551, Statuta Pulcheria; “Nadere omschrijving,” in Gerlach, “Stukken betreffende,” 71–74. 61. “Rectorii collegii,” in Gerlach, “Stukken betreffende,” 57. 62. OBC, no. 7, Jansson to Vosmeer, June 14, 1606. See Kapittel #225, no. 354, Boniface [Vosmeer] to Eggius [circa 1610]. 63. Kapittel #225, no. 354, Jansson to Eggius, May 8, 1608. 64. Ackermans, Herders en huurlingen, 105–106. 65. “Huisregels”; “Sasbout Vosmeer geeft aan M. Stephanus Cracht voorlopige statuten en een dagorde voorde priester studenten en hun rector en professoren te Keulen,” July 27, 1603 in Gerlach, “Stukken betreffende,” 30–35, 49–52; See Kapittel #225, no. 551, Statuta Pulcheria. 66. Smit and Jacobs describe a similar schedule in Hogenheuvel. Smit and Jacobs, Van den Hogenheuvel, 80–81. 67. Kapittel #225, no. 551, Statuta Pulcheria. 68. “Huisregels”; Statute en dagorde,” in Gerlach, “Stukken betreffende,” 33, 53–55, quotation on 53; OBC, no. 451, Statuut van het Collegium Alticollense te Keulen, August 13, 1618. 69. “Statute en dagorde” in Gerlach, “Stukken betreffende,” 55–57: Ackermans, Herders en huurlingen, 93. 70. Ackermans, Herders en huurlingen, 87–95; OBC, no. 223, July 31, 1668, Visitatierapporten, May 18, June 18, July 31, 1668, no. 242, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, March 17–27, 1665, no. 359, Codde to Alticollense, December 11, 1692. 71. OKN, no. 868, Mandement van Neercassel over visitatie van het college, July 18, 1668; OBC, no. 223, van Heumann, Vercranius, and Rosa to van Neer-

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cassel, July 31, 1668; Kapittel #225, no. 354, Ronssaels to Eggius, November 8, 1609, Jansson to Eggius, November 17, 1609; OBC, no. 14, Dusseldorpius to Vosmeer, February 9–January 30, 1613, no. 229, van Blockhoven to van Neercassel, January 16, 1679, no. 242, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, April 15, August 1, 1664, March 17–27, 1665, March 11, 1666, no. 358, Codde to de Swaen, June 4, 1689. 72. Kapittel #225, no. 354, Jansson to Eggius, November 17, 1609. See also OBC, no. 242, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, April 15, 1664, no. 245, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, April 1, 1672, no. 246, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, October 10, 1674, no. 247, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, December 16, 1675, no. 248, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, January 12, August 23, 1678, no. 358, Codde to de Swaen, June 4, 1689, no. 359, Codde to Alticollense, December 11, 1692. 73. Kapittel #335, no. 354, Ronssaels to Eggius, November 8, 1609; OKN, no. 867, Rovenius to Sueck, December 1, 1646, no. 867, Purmerent to Sueck, October 24 and November 8, 1647; OBC, no. 242, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, April 20, 1663, no. 246, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, December 18, 1673. 74. OBC, no. 242, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, March 17–27, 1665, no. 243, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, June 19, 1670, no. 246, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, May 24, 1675. 75. OBC, no. 14, Dusseldorpius to Vosmeer, February 9–January 30, 1613. For reports of other students who left seminary, see Kapittel #225, no. 354, Machario to Eggius, March 7, 1605; OBC, no. 213, Eenhusen to Cats, August 18, 1642. 76. OBC, no. 242, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, January 23–13, 1665; OBC, no. 232, Melis to van Neercassel, February 26, 1685. 77. Ackermans, Herders en huurlingen, 98–99. 78. For examples, see OBC, no. 229, van Blockhoven to van Neercassel, January 16, February 16, 1679, no. 248, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, December 13, 1678, January 18, 1679. 79. OBC, no. 134, Testimonium voor Henricus Velthoen, March 24, 1638. For other examples, see OBC, no. 3, Jansson to Vosmeer, December 12, 23, 1598, no. 5, Jansson to Vosmeer, August 26, 1603. 80. For examples, see Kapittel #275, no. 66, Rovenius to Haarlem Chapter, August 1, 1630. 81. Kapittel #225, no. 354, Ludolphi to Eggius, March 28, 1610; Ackermans, Herders en huurlingen, 79; OBC, no. 7, van Lichtenhorst to Vosmeer, October 1606. 82. OBC, no. 338, van Wevelinchoven to Codde, October 22, 1690. 83. OBC, no. 7, Oldenzaal to Vosmeer, February 6, 1606. 84. Kapittel #225, no. 354, Vogelius to Eggius, May 11, 1610. For other examples, see Kapittel #225, no. 549, Rovenius to Silvolt, March 3, 1650; OBC, no. 242, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, December 13, 1667. 85. Ackermans, Herders en huurlingen, 79–80. 86. OBC, no. 245, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, November 2, 1671. 87. OKN, no. 867, Overzendius [de la Torre] to Seuck, April 22, 1647. 88. OBC, no. 14, Bugge to Vosmeer, July 30, 1613, no. 213, Been to Cats,

272

Notes to Pages 96–103

June 5, 1647, no. 253, van Neercassel to van Meulen, September 8, 1684, no. 358, Codde to de Swaen, March 24, 1690. For other examples, see OBC, no. 246, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, January 2, 30, February 13, 1675, no. 358, Codde to de Swaen, April 5, May 12, 1689. 89. Kapittel #225, no. 354 [illegible name] to Eggius, March 26, 1609, Arnoldi to Eggius, May 10, 1609; OBC, no. 246, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, December 27, 1674. 90. OBC, no. 249, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, July 14, 1679; Kapittel #225, no. 354, Crucius to Eggius, April 15, 1610. 91. Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk, 258. 92. Forster, Catholic Revival, 177. 93. Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke kerk, 258; Begheyn,” Uitgaven van Jezuiten,” 293–295. 94. [ Johannes Bolland, SJ], Imago primi saeculi societatis Iesu a provincia FlandroBelgica eiusdem societatis repraesentata (Antwerp: Plantin, 1640), 798. 95. “Historia Missionis Hollandicae,” in Gerlach, “Stukken betreffende,”122. 96. OBC, no. 200, Memorie von Rovenius aan de Propaganda tegen de Jezuieten, May 9, 1624. 97. OBC, no. 4, Coopmans to Vosmeer, March 4, 1599, no. 229, Schagen to van Neercassel, 1680; OBC, no. 230, Zwolle to van Neercassel, February 21–March 3, 1682; OKN, no. 868, Arnhem to Velthoen, September 1, 1654. 98. OBC, no. 230, Harlingen to van Neercassel, August 2–12, 1682; 99. Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 1:486–487, 2:39–41; Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) 506–515. 100. Rovenius, Tractatus de missionibus, 26–27, 42, 44, 47. 101. A. van Lommel, SJ, ed. “Descriptio status in quo nunc est religio Catholica in confoederatis Belgii-Provincii anno 1622,” AAU 20 (1893): 360; van Lommel,“Brevis descriptio [1616],” 211, 220. 102. Christopher Haigh, “The Continuity of Catholicism in the English Reformation,” in Christopher Haigh, ed., The English Reformation Revised (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 196. 103. Van Lommel, “Descriptio status [1622],” 358, 366; van Lommel, “Brevis descriptio [1616],” 209, 219, 221; Rijksarchief van Noord-Holland, Resolutien van de Staten van Noord-Holland, no. 239, May 28, 1582. 104. OBC, no. 12, Schagen to Vosmeer, April 30, 1611, no. 340, van Slingelant to Codde, February 9, 1692. 105. Willem Frijhoff, “De Noordnederlandse Oratorianen en de Katholieke identiteit: Rond een stelling,” in Marit Monteiro, Gerard Rooijakkers, and Joost Rosendaal, eds., De dynamiek van religie en cultuur: Geschiedenis van het Nederlands Katholicisme (Kampen: Kok, 1993), 210. 106. Israel, Dutch Republic, 389. This list does not account for religious orders or for itinerant priests who were not residents but represents the pattern of placement for resident pastors. 107. Van Lommel, “Relatio seu descriptio 1656,” AAU 10, 181. 108. Van Lommel, “Descriptio status [1622],” 360, 364, 372–373; van Lommel, “Brevis descriptio 1616,” 220.

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109. For examples, see OBC, no. 249, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, July 25, 1679, no. 251, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, February 7, 1681. 110. Kapittel #225, no. 353, Zaffius to Sillingius, April 22, 1608. See also OBC, no. 246, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, July 31, 1675. 111. OBC, no. 250, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, October 22, 1680. 112. OBC, no. 249, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, March 7, 1679. 113. OBC, no. 248, van Neercassel to Nijs, March 3, 1677. 114. OBC, no. 246, van Neercassel to Nieuwendam, April 17, 1675. For other examples, see OBC, no. 248, van Neercassel to Middelburg, December 10, 1682, no. 252, van Neercassel to Zwolle, June 30, 1682. 115. OBC, no. 245, van Neercassel to Kuinre, August 16, 1671, no. 251, van Neercassel to Krommenie, February 20, 1683. See also OBC, no. 254, van Neercassel to Makkum, April 9, 1686. 116. See visitation reports conducted by the Haarlem Chapter in Kapittel #275, no. 129, Sijbrand Sixtius: Haarlem, Leeuwarden, Groningen, 1628, no. 130, Noordkwartier, 1631, no. 131, J. A. Ban, Kanunnik: Spierdijk, Hoogwoud, 1633, no. 132, J. A. Ban, N. Holland, 1634. 117. Kapittel, no. 195, Statuten door de apostolische vicaris voor de geestelijkheid vastgesteld, 1620. 118. Kapittel, no. 130, Noordkwartier. 119. Kapittel, no. 133, Listje van vragen door de aartspriesters aan de pastors te stellen, betreffende hun statie, September 14, 1635. 120. OBC, no. 447, Ottavio Mirto Frangipani, Directorum ecclesiasticae disciplinae, 1596; Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk, 246. 121. Rovenius, Tractatus de missionibus, 20; Rovenius, Reipublicae Christianae, 70; quotation, 74. 122. OBC, no. 249, Joannes door de genade Gods en der Apostolycken Stoel, bisschop ende vicarius apostolicus in de Vereenigde Nederlanden wenscht aen alle pastoren onderpastoren en zo kerkelyke als kloosterlyke priesters onze broeders en medehulpers, vreede en zaligheid, 1680. 123. OBC, no. 200, Memorie van Rovenius. For additional concerns, see OBC, no. 190, Philippus Rovenius, Descriptio ordinis hierarchici cleri Hollandiae, May 15–16, 1623; G. Brom ed., “Vier missie-verslagen,” 9; Rovenius, Reipublicae Christianae, 157–172. 124. Johannes van Neercassel, Constitutiones servandae a Presbyteris in Foederato Belgio Laborantibus (Louvain: Guilielmi Stryckwant, 1688), 3. For a sampling of the range of complaints against the regulars, see OBC, no. 199, Memorie van Sasbout Vosmeer inzake de jezuïeten, 1609, met toevoegsel van 1610. For examples of the vicars’ defense of their pastoral authority against regulars in various locales, see Kapittel #275, no. 60, Acta, July 9, 1658, no. 69, Arboreus to Assendelft, October 7, 1611, #225, no. 351, Vosmeer to Chapter, September 8, 1609, no. 353, Vosmeer to Zaffius, February 16, 1609, no. 360, Rovenius to Coster, January 29, 1632; OBC, no. 89, Enkhuizen to Rovenius, February 28, 1637, no. 89, Ban to Rovenius, June 1, 1633, no. 100, Cats to Rovenius, October 15, 1633, no. 187, Ebbius to de la Torre, March 30, 1642, no. 224, Arnhem to van Neercassel, April 23/13, 1670, no. 226, Straffintvelt to van Neercassel, January 4–12, 1674 , no. 229, Arnoldy and de Bruijn to van Neercassel, March 24–April 3, 1679, no. 232, Keyser to van Neercassel, March 1, 1686.

274

Notes to Pages 108–114

125. Rovenius, Reipublicae Christianae, 77; van Neercassel, Constitutiones, 21. 126. OBC, no. 189. Aan de geestelijkheid tot afkondiging van een decreet van de Propaganda, February 9, 1657. 127. A. van Lommel, SJ, ed., “Relatio visitationis missionis S. J. in Hollandia a Patre Guilielmo Bauters,” AAU 6 (1879): 239. 128. Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk, 261–264. 129. OBC, no. 2, Eggius to Vosmeer, June 1, 1594, Scorel to Vosmeer, August 4–14, 1596, no. 8, Rhodianus and Otten to Vosmeer, March 19, 1607, no. 14, Marius to Vosmeer, January 4, 1614. 130. See OBC, no. 216, Visitatierapport van het bisdom Haarlem [November 28, 1662], no. 224, Visitatierapport van Noord-Holland, January 24, 1669, no. 378, Visitatierapporten, 1691–1695; Kapittel #275, no. 5, Acta., January 22, 1630. For visitation reports, see Kapittel #275, no. 129, Haarlem, Leeuwarden, en Groningen,1628, no. 130, Noordkwartier. 131. Kapittel #275, no. 58, Acta, 1617–1636. 132. Kapittel #275, no. 65, Zacharias de Metz, Brevis Informatio. 133. OBC, no. 235, Formula et modus instruendi examinandi et acceptandi missionarios tam seculares quam regulares per confederatas Belgii provincias [1663]. 134. Kapittel #225, no. 359, unsigned copy [Marius?] to Cats, September 1633. 135. OBC, no. 7, van Mauden to Vosmeer, December 29, 1606; Duc claimed that she was his sister. OBC, no. 223, van Eijckel to van Neercassel, June 3–13, 1667. 3. Laboring in the Vineyard 1. L. J. Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme in Noord-Nederland in de 16e en de 17e eeuw (Amsterdam: Urbi et Orbi, 1947–1948), 2:66. 2. OBC, no. 20, Vosmeer to Schagen, July 30, 1613. 3. Christiaan van den Berge, Catholyke catechismus of kort onderwys van de Christelyke leeringe (Louvain: van de Wed. C. Stichter, n.d., [approbation of the church, 1633]), 14. 4. Philip T. Hoffman, Church and Community in the Diocese of Lyon, 1500–1789 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1984); Robert Muchembled, Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France, 1400–1750, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985); E. William Monter, Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisition from the Basque Lands to Sicily (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Barbara Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-Century Paris (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Margo Todd, The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002); Robert M. Kingdon, “The Control of Morals in Calvin’s Geneva,” in L. P. Buck and J. W. Zophy, eds., The Social History of the Reformation (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1972), 3–16. 5. W. David Myers, “Poor Sinning Folk”: Confession and Conscience in CounterReformation Germany (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996), 116–121; Marc R. Forster, Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque: Religious Identity in Southwest Germany, 1550–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Allyson M. Poska, Regulating the People: The Catholic Reformation in SeventeenthCentury Spain (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998); Charles H. Parker, “The Moral Agency and Moral Autonomy of Church Folk in Post-Reformation Delft, 1572–1620,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 48 (1997): 44–70.

Notes to Pages 115–121

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6. H. J. Schroeder, OP, ed., Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent (St. Louis, Mo: B. Herder Book Co., 1941), 161–162. 7. Kapittel #225, no. 351, Statuta Rovenii per clerum Harlemensis, September 27, 1618; OBC, no. 248, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, September 7, 1678, no. 247, van Neercassel to Nijenbeek, Grotenhues, and Duistervoorde, October 22, 1676, no. 250, van Neercassel to Veluwe, October 13 and 27, November 22, 1680. 8. Kapittel #225, no. 351, Statuta Rovenii, September 27, 1618. 9. OBC, no. 235, Formula et modus instruendi examinandi et receptandi missionarios seculares et regulares, 1663. 10. For other examples, see Kapittel #275, no. 68, Visscher to Chapter, February 1, 1611, #225, no. 351, Facultes visitandi capiti Harlemensis, April 28, 1631; OBC. no. 360, Codde to Moersbergen and Neeerlangbroek, April 3, 1694, Codde to Goes, November 9, 1694. See also OBC, no. 360, Codde to Hoorn, February 22, 1695. 11. OBC, no. 242, van Neercassel to Deventer, January 10–20, 1667, no. 251, van Neercassel to Veld, February 1, 1681, no. 252, van Neercassel to Sloterdijk, October 7, 1683. For other expressions of pastoral affection, see OBC, no. 248, van Neercassel to Randenburg, November 6, 1678, van Neercassel to Oudewater, November 25, 1677, no. 252, van Neercassel to Schagen, July 17, 1682, no. 254, van Neercassel to ’s-Heerenberg, December 18, 1685. 12. OBC, no. 248, van Neercassel to Groenendijck, October 28, 1678, no. 358, Codde to Akersloot, July 11, 1689, Codde to Cijnsmeer, October 6, 1689. See also OBC, no. 360, Codde to Tessel, May 9, 1694, no. 361, Codde to Deventer, April 9, 1696. 13. Schroeder, Canons and Decrees, 30–36, 51–55. 14. OBC, no. 248, van Neercassel to Oudewater, November 25, 1677, no. 251, van Neercassel to Veld, February 1, 1681, no. 250, van Neercassel to Keesman, November 26, 1680, no. 252, van Neercassel to Teckop, March 30, 1682. For similar expressions, see OBC, no. 248, van Neercassel to Emmeloord, Urk, and Ens, April 6, 1677, no. 254, van Neercassel to Medemblik, October 12, 1685. 15. OBC, no. 254, van Neercassel to ’s Heerenberg, December 18, 1685. 16. Michael W. Maher, “Jesuits and Ritual in Early Modern Europe,” in Joëlle Rollo-Koster, ed., Medieval and Early Modern Ritual: Formalized Behavior in Europe, China, and Japan (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2002), 193–220. 17. OBC, no. 235, Formula et Modus. 18. OBC, no. 221, van Heussen to van Neercassel, March 15, 1662, no. 242, van Neercassel to Deventer, January 10–20, 1667, no. 248, van Neercassel to Hoorn, September 10, 1678, no. 248, van Neercassel to Groenendijck, October 28, 1678, no. 360, Codde to Tessel, May 9, 1694. See also OBC, no. 250, van Neercassel to Alkmaar, October 4, 1680, no. 361, Codde to Westeinde, January 28, 1697. 19. OBC, no. 242, van Neercassel to Bovenkarspel, August 23, 1667, no. 253, van Neercassel to Harderwijk, October 7, 1684. 20. OBC, no. 223, Visitatierapport, 1668. 21. OBC, no. 10, Goes to Vosmeer, September 15, 1609; Kapittel #275, no. 68, Marius to Rovenius, January 15, 1638, Groenhout to Chapter, October 2, 1710. 22. Kapittel #275, no. 60, Acta, October 9, 1657. 23. OBC, no. 14, Dusseldorpius to Vosmeer, January 30–February 9, 1613, no. 254, van Neercassel to Goes, February 23, 1686, no. 359, Codde to Enkhuizen,

276

Notes to Pages 122–125

December 4, 1692, no. 361, Codde to Wognum, January 22, 1697 See also OBC, no. 337, Hallincq to Codde, November 21, 1689, no. 345, Codde to Cousebant, September 21, 1689. For discussions about priests’ health, see A. van Lommel, SJ, ed. “Brevis descriptio status in quo est ecclesia Catholica in partibus Belgii ab haereticus occupatis anno 1616,” AAU 3 (1874–75): 218, 225; A. van Lommel, SJ, ed. “Descriptio status in quo nunc est religio Catholica in confoederatis Belgii-Provincii anno 1622,” AAU 20 (1893): 373; OBC, no. 90, Relatio ad Congregationem de Propaganda Fide 1631, folio 115r; G. A. Meijer, ed., “Missie-verslagen der Dominicanen ingediend bij de Propaganda Fide,” AAU 49 (1929): 150; A. van Lommel, SJ, ed., “Relatio seu descriptio status religionis catholicae in Hollandia etc. Quam Romae collegit et exhibuit Alexandro septimo et cardinalibus congregationis de propaganda fide, Jacobus de la Torre, Kal. Septembris Anno 1656,” AAU 11 (1883): 85–86. 24. Kapittel #225, no. 351, Rovenius, Constitutiones. 25. OBC, no. 339, Oudewater to Codde, July 1, 1691. For other examples, see OBC, no. 225, van Nieuwenhoove, Feije, van Vermeulen to van Neercassel, October 23, 1671, no. 229, de Bruyn to van Neercassel, April 3, 1679, no. 339, Stalpart van der Wielen to Codde, March 17, 1691. 26. See Leo Noordegraaf and Gerrit Valk, De gave Gods: De pest in Holland vanaf de late middeleeuwen (Bergen, N.H.: Octavo, 1988). 27. De la Torre, “Relatio seu descriptio 1656,” AAU 11 (1883): 85–86. For other accounts, see Meijer, “Missie-verslagen Dominicanen,” 138, 140–141, 161, 168–169. 28. Kapittel #225, no. 354, Fabritius to Eggius, March 12, 1609, #275, no. 59, Acta, September 19, 1636; OBC, no. 242, van Neercassel to Emmerik, July 27, 1664, no. 231, Emmeloord to van Neercassel, April 10–20, 1684. 29. OBC, no. 225, Voorburg to van Neercassel, November 27, 1671. 30. See OBC, no. 4, Francisci to Vosmeer, September 17, 1600. 31. Alfons K. L. Thijs, Van geuzenstad tot Katholiek bolwerk: Maatschappelijke betekenis van de kerk in contrareformatorisch Antwerpen (Turnhout: Brepols, 1990), 100–108; Alfons K. L. Thijs, Antwerpen internationaal uitgeverscentrum van devotieprenten 17de–18de eeuw (Louvain: Peeters, 1993), 41–42, 64; Lienke Paulina Leuven, De boekhandel te Amsterdam door Katholieken gedreven tijdens de Republiek (Epe: Drukkerij Hooiberg, 1951), 10–11, 23–31; I. H. van Eeghen, De Amsterdamse boekhandel, 1680–1727 (Amsterdam: N. Israel, 1978), vol. 5, pt. 1: 1, 77; Hans Storme, “Gedrukte preekboeken: Een verwaarloosde bron voor de geschiedenis van godsdienst, mentaliteit en dagelijks leven,” in M. Cloet and F. Daelemens, eds., Godsdienst, mentaliteit en dagelijks leven in België sinds 1970 (Brussels: Archief- en Bibliotheekwezen in België, 1988), 105–106. 32. Kapittel #275, no. 58, Acta, October 12, 1632; Kapittel #225, no. 358, Teus to Cats, September 21, 1615. 33. Philippus Rovenius, Reipublicae Christianae Libri Duo, Tractantes de variis Hominum status, Gradibus, Officiis, et functionibus in Ecclesia Christi et quae in singulis amplectenda, quae fugienda sint (Antwerp: Arnoldum a’ Brakel, 1648), 142; Myers, “Poor Sinning Folk,” 172–181; Wietse de Boer, The Conquest of the Soul: Confession, Discipline, and Public Order in Counter-Reformation Milan (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2001); 77–79. 34. Gian Ackermans, Herders en huurlingen: Bisschoppen en priesters in de Republiek (1663–1705) (Amsterdam: Prometheus/Bert Bakker, 2003), 130–131.

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35. Johannaes Baptist van Neercassel, Bevestigingh in’t geloof, en troost vervolgingh (Brussels: Francoys Foppens, 1670), 1; Johannes van Neercassel, Amor poenitens, sive de divini amoris ad poenitentiam necessitate, et recto clavium usu, libri duo (Emmerik: Joannem Arnoldi et Socios, 1683), 1: 3. 36. Johannes Petri, Biecht-Boecken ofte een kort onderwijse voor de ghene die dickwils biechten om het selvige profijtelijck ende sonder moeyelickheyt te doen (Antwerp: Arnout van Brakel, 1651), 7–27; Ludovicus Makeblijde, SJ, Den schat der Christlijcker leeringhe: Tot verclaringhe van den catechismus uyt ghegheven voor de Catholijcke jonckheijdt van de provincie des aarts-bischdoms van Mechelen (Antwerp: Jacobus Woons, 1684) 358–363; Martinus Bresserus Boxtellanus, SJ, De conscientia libri sex (Antwerp: Apud Viduam Ioannis Cnobbari, 1638), 203–206, 601, 663–665; Petrus Canisius, Authoritatum sacrae scripturae, et sanctorum patrum, quae in summa doctrinae Christinae (Venice: Aldina, 1571), 2:102, 3:33; Jeremias Drexel, SJ, Trismegistus Christianus seu triplex cultus conscientiae caelitum corporis (Cologne: Cornel. ab Egmond, 1634), unpaginated preface; Thomas de Villacastin, SJ, Onder-wiis der Godt-vruchtighe ziele tot het innigh ghebedt, trans. Jacobus Zusius (Antwerp: de weduwe van Jan Cnobbaert, 1658), 448–449, 453; Francis Coster, SJ, Sica tragica comiti Mauritio a Iesuitis ut aiunt Calvinistae Leijdae intentata (Antwerp: Ioachimum Trognaesium, 1599), 48–49. 37. For a comprehensive list of this literature, see Bibliotheca Catholica Neerlandica impressa, 1500–1727 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1954). 38. Philippus Rovenius, Het Gulden Wieroock-Vat Eenen Ieghelycken Nut ende Oorbaer syn Gebeden God op te dragen (Antwerp: Jeronimus en Johan Babtista Verdusen inde Camer-straet, 1670), unpaginated preface, 11–74, 300–389. 39. Carolus Scribani, SJ, Christelycke Oeffeninghe ende Meditatien (Antwerp: Martini Nutij, 1625), unpaginated preface–1. 40. Cornelius Jansenius, De Interioris Hominis Reformatione: Oratio in qua vera virtutum Christianarum fundamenta ex D. Augustini doctrina jaciuntur (Louvain: Martini Hullegaerde, 1675), 10–14, 40–41. 41. Drexel even offered zodiac signs as a device for daily examination. Jeremias Drexel, SJ, Zodiacus Christianus locupletatus seu signa xii divinae praedestinationis totidem symbolis explicata (Cologne: Cornel. ab Egmond, 1634); Rovenius, Gulden wieroock-vat, 75–81. 42. Rovenius, Gulden wieroock-vat, 75. 43. Van Neercassel, Amor poenitens, 51–88; 92–93; 269; quotation, 309, 310, 316–319. 44. Charles H. Parker, “The Rituals of Reconciliation: Admonition, Confession, and Community in the Dutch Reformed Church,” in Katherine Lualdi and Anne Thayer, eds., Penitence in the Age of Reformations (Aldershot: St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History, 2000), 101–115. 45. Drexel, Trismegistus Christianus, 75–88; Petri, Biecht-Boeken, 8–15. 46. David Coleman, “Moral Formation and Social Control in the Catholic Reformation: The Case of San Juan de Avila,” Sixteenth Century Journal 26 (1995): 30. 47. Drexel, Trismegistus Christianus, 342; quotation, 279–280, 283, 295. 48. Robertus Bellarminus, De controversiis Christianae fidei adversus hujus temporis haereticos (Naples: Josephum Giuliano, 1856), 4:198; Jansenius, Interioris Reformatione, 13, quotation; 15; Rovenius, Gulden Wieroock-Vat, unpaginated initial section on the liturgical calendar.

278

Notes to Pages 129–132

49. Coster, Sica tragica, 48–49; Francis Coster, SJ, Bewiis der ouder Catholiicker leeringhe, met antwoorde op sommighe tegenstellinghen (Antwerp: Ioachim Troegnaesius, 1595), unpaginated preface, 82, 196–197. For similar expressions, see Thomas Stapleton, Promptuarium morale super evangelia dominicalia totius anni ad instructionem concionatorum Reformationem peccatorum, consolationem piorum (Antwerp: C. Plantin, 1593), 2:49; Drexel, Trismegistus Christianus, 286, 295; [ Johannes Bolland, SJ] Imago primi saeculi societatis Iesu a provincia Flandro-Belgica eiusdem societatis repraesentata (Antwerp: Plantin, 1640), 20, 751. 50. Adrianus van Meerbeeck, Chroniicke vande Gantsche Werelt ende sonderlinghe vande Seventhien Nederlanden (Antwerp: Hieronymus Verdussen, 1620), 24. 51. Petrus Canisius, Authoritatem, 3:81; [Bolland], Imago, 344, 751; Heyman Jacobszoon, Sondaeghs schole, ofte korte uytlegginghe op de evangelien van de sondagen (Louvain: Christoffel Fabri, 1621), 70; Laurentius Surius, Histoire ou commentaires de toutes choses mémorables, 2nd ed. (Paris: Guillaume Chaudière, 1572), 306. 52. Drexel, Trismegistus Christianus, 268, 279, 297; Johannes van Neercassel, Constitutiones servandae a Presbyteris in Foederato Belgio Laborantibus (Louvain: Guilielmi Stryckwant, 1688), 24; Kapittel #225, no. 354, Arnoldi to Eggius, March 16, 1594, Servus to Eggius, July 7, 1607, 351, Statuta Rovenii, September 27, 1618, #275, no. 195, Statuten door de Apostolische Vicaris voor de geestelijckheid vastgesteld, 1620, no. 63, Philippus Rovenius, Constitutiones Illustrissimi ac Reverendissimi Domini D. Archepiscopi Philippensis et Vicarii Apostolici per Unitas Belgii Provincias, 8. 53. Hugo Franciscus van Heussen, Batavia Sacra of kerkelyke historie en oudheden van Batavia (Antwerp: Christianus Vermeij, 1715), 3:218; Kapittel #275, no. 63, Rovenius, Constitutiones, 12–5; van Neercassel, Constitutiones, 3, 23–4; Kapittel, no. 202, Akte houdende goedkeuring van bovengenoemde constituties door de Congregatio de Propagandae Fide, 1669. 54. OBC, no. 248, van Neercassel to Ariens, December 28, 1677, van Neercassel to van Bronchorst, October 6, 1678. 55. OBC, no. 16, Vosmeer to Moeys (ienbroeck), September 13, 1604; Marit Monteiro, Geestelijke maagden: Leven tussen klooster en wereld in Noord-Nederland gedurende zeventiende eeuw (Hilversum: Verloren, 1996), 123–204. 56. Kapittel #225, no. 354, Arnoldi to Eggius, March 16, 1594. 57. OBC, no. 232, van Velsen and Claes to van Neercassel, October 16, [1685], no. 12, van der Bouchorst to Vosmeer, June 6, 1611. 58. OBC, no. 89, Maagden van het Begijnhof [Haarlem] to Rovenius [1643]; Joke Spaans, “Paragons of Piety: Representations of Priesthood in the Lives of the Haarlem Virgins,” Dutch Review of Church History 83 (2003): 235–246. 59. Bellarminus, De controversiis Christianae fidei 1:18–19; quote on 18. For examples, see Heriberti Rosweydi, SJ, De fide haereticis servanda ex decreto concilij Constantiensis dissertatio (Antwerp: Plantin, 1610), 161–223; R. Fruin, ed., Uittreksel uit Francisci Dusseldorpii Annales, 1566–1616 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1893), 5, 12, 20, 180, 196; [Bolland] Imago, 18, 344, 751, 770, 830; Thomas Stapleton, Antidota apostolica contra nostri temporis haereses, (Antwerp: Ioannem Keerbergium, 1598), 1:67, 73, 318, 335, 425, 451; Richard Verstegan, Theatrum crudelitatum haereticorum nostri temporis (Antwerp: Adrianum Huberti, 1587), 32–67; Francis Coster, SJ, Schildt der Catholijcken teghen de ketterijen (Antwerp: C. Plantin, 1591), 3–30; Coster, Sica tragica, 48–9; Simon Fontaine, Histoire Catholique de nostre temps touchant l’estat de la religion Chrestienne (Paris: Claude Fremy, 1560), 4–10, 51, 91.

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279

60. Dionysius Mudzaert, Generale Kerckelicke historie van het begin der werelt tot het iaer onses heeren Iesu Christi 1624 (Antwerpe: Hieronymus Verdussen, 1624) 1:3–215; van Meerbeeck, Chroniicke vande werelt, 316–485. 61. Adr. and Petr. Walenburch, Den eenvoudigen Catholijck in Tractatus XI., Tractatis speciales de controversis fidei (Cologne: Agrippinae, 1665). See also Hugo Franciscus van Heussen, Hand-en huys-boek der Katholijken, waar in de voornaamste geloof-stukken klaar voorgesteld, bondig bewezen, en kragtig verdedigd worden: (Antwerp: P. vander Meersche, 1705). 62. OBC, no. 20, Vosmeer to Dusselorpius, June 30, 1613. 63. OBC, no. 447, Frangipani, Directorium, 1596; Kapittel #275, no. 63; Rovenius, Constitutiones, 5, quotation; 8. 64. Kapittel #275, no. 202, Goedkeuring van bovengenoemde constituties, 1669. Neercassel claimed he was following in the tradition set forth in Rovenius’s Constitutiones. 65. OBC, no. 254, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, March 5, 1685. For other examples, see OBC, no. 229, van Blockhoven to van Neercassel, February 16, 1679, no. 247, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, September 27, 1675, no. 248, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, February 3, 1679, no. 249, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, March 7, 1679, no. 252, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, December 29, 1682. 66. Neercassel, Amor Poenitens, 1–2; OBC, no. 232, Melis to van Neercassel, May 24, 1685. 67. OBC, no. 339, Modersohn to Codde, Janaury 16, 1691. 68. OBC, no. 89, Enkhuizen to Rovenius, February 28, 1637, no. 189, de la Torre to Bodegraven, January 8, 1649, no. 224, Arnhem to van Neercassel, July 29, 1670, no. 229, van Rhijn to van Neercassel, May 1, 1679, no. 246, van Neercassel to Deventer, March 29, 1675, no. 342, Gouda to Codde, January 1697, no. 338, van Wevelinchoven to Codde, October 22, 1690. 69. OBC, no. 242, van Neercassel to Niedorp, March 30, 1668; Ackermans, Herders en huurlingen, 351–352; OBC, no. 242, van Neercassel to de Swaen, December 24, 1664. 70. OBC, no. 12, Moeusyenbrouck, van Gouthouve, and Boucquet to Vosmeer, June 23, 1611. 71. OBC, no. 242, van Neercassel to Leeuwarden, August 19, 1665. 72. For other examples, see OBC, no. 247, van Neercassel to Deventer, September 22, 1675, no. 254, van Neercassel to Zierikzee, January 29, 1686, no. 342, Utrecht to Codde [1697], no. 358, Codde to it Veld, April 30, 1689, no. 361, Codde to Deventer, October 18, 1696; Kapittel #225, no. 354, Engelbert to Eggius, May 2, 1608. 73. OBC, no. 13, Leeuwarden to Vosmeer, March 14–24, 1612; Kapittel #225, no. 353, Zaffius to Langestreek, September 13, 1616. 74. Larissa Taylor, Soldiers of Christ: Preaching in Late Medieval and Reformation France (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 43, 61–69, 227–229; Jelle Bosma, “Preaching in the Low Countries, 1450–1650,” in Larissa Taylor, ed., Preachers and People in the Reformations and Early Modern Period (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2001), 331–352. 75. Spaans, “Paragons of Piety,” 235–246. 76. G. Brom, ed., “De Insinuatio Status Provinciarum, in quibus haeretici dominantur,” AAU 17 (1889): 156–159; quotation, 157.

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Notes to Pages 139–144

77. Van Lommel, “Brevis descriptio [1616],” 225; OBC, no. 238, Visitatierapporten [Zeeland], August 8, 1664. 78. OBC, no. 190, Descriptio ordinis hierarchici cleri Hollandiae, May 15–16, 1623; A. van Lommel, SJ, ed., “Labores exant lati et fructus collecti a RRPP minoribus Recollectis Ordinis Sancti Francisci, provinciae inferioris Germaniae, in foederatio Belgio, 1684–85,” AAU 8 (1880): 435–437, 440–441; Brom, “Missieverslagen Dominicanen,” 140–141, 145, 164; A. van Lommel, SJ, ed., “Relatio visitationis missionis S. J. in Hollandia a Patre Guilielmo Bauters 1628,” AAU 6 (1879): 241; van Lommel, “Descriptio status [1622],” 353–354. 79. See, for example, Kapittel #225, no. 351, Statuta Rovenii, September 27, 1618. 80. OKN, no. 868, Consent van de aartsbisschop van Mechelen voor preken en biechthoren, met instructie, August 4, 1648; Kapittel #225, no. 351, Rovenius, Constitutiones, #275, no. 202, Goedkeuring van bovengenoemde constituties, 1669. 81. OBC, no. 229, Verklaringen over de bediening to Rijswijck, Voorburg, en Wassenaar, March 13, 14, 15, 26, 1680; Voorburg to van Neercassel, March 15, 1680. 82. For examples, see Kapittel #225, no. 353, Aalsmeer to Zaffius, 1615; OBC, no. 229, Elst to van Neercassel, March 24–April 3, 1679, no. 230, Gramaye to van Neercassel, September 14–24, 1682, no. 338, Amersfoort to Codde, June 19–29, 1690, no. 342, Gouda to Codde [ January 1697]. 83. Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 2:738–740. 84. OBC, no. 90, De geestelijkheid over het gebruik van het Rituale Romanum, en van een nieuwe catechismus, March 15, 1622. 85. Kapittel #275, no. 351, Rovenius, Constitutiones. See also Rovenius, Reipublicae Christianae, 142; van Neercassel, Constitutiones, 9–10, 13. 86. OBC, no. 235, Formula et Modus; van Neercassel, Constitutiones, 9–10, 13. 87. Monteiro, Geestelijke maagden, 88–98. This section on the educational work of the spiritual maidens is indebted to Monteiro’s study. 88. OBC, no. 232, Culemborg to van Neercassel, April 21–May 1, 1685, no. 155, Staten van Holland tegen de pausgezinden, December 18, 1635, no. 158, Keur van Leiden, February 10, 1640; Monteiro, Geestelijke maagden, 89. 89. Monteiro, Geestelijke maagden, 91–92. 90. Philippus Rovenius, Constitutiones Illmi ac Rmi Domini D. Archepiscopi Philippensis et Vicarii Apostolici per Unitas Belgii Provincias (Louvain: Apud Bernardium Masium, 1628), 4–5; J. F. Vregt, “Over de katechismussen vroeger op de Hollandsche Missie in gebruik,” Bijdragen voor de geschiedenis van het Bisdom van Haarlem 6 (1878): 359. 91. See van den Berge, Catholyke catechismus, 14–23. 92. Philippus Rovenius, Ordonnantie, March 15, 1622 in van Heussen, Batavia Sacra, 3:284; Vregt, “Over katechismussen,” 357–365. 93. See Petrus Canisius, A Summe of Christian doctrine (1592; repr., Menston: Scolar Press, 1971). Makeblijde’s catechism was also known as the Mechelen catechism. F. van Hoeck, SJ, Schets van de geschiedenis der Jezuieten in Nederland (Nijmegen: Dekker et van de Vegt, 1940), 165–166; Monteiro, Geestelijke Maagden, 94–95. 94. Groot Placaet-Boek, inhoudende placaten ende ordonnantien van de Hoogh-Mog. Heeren Staten Generael der Vereenighde Nederlanden ende vande Ed. Groot Mog:

Notes to Pages 144–150

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Heeren Staten van Hollandt ende West-Vrieslandt, mitsgaders van Ed. Mog. Heeren Staten van Zeelandt (The Hague: Weduwe ende erfgenamen van wijlen Hillebrandt Iacobsz. van Wouw, 1658), 1:211, 213. 95. Herman Roodenburg, Onder censuur: De kerkelijke tucht in de gereformeerde gemeente van Amsterdam, 1578–1700 (Hilversum: Verloren, 1990), 149, 182; Christine Kooi, Liberty and Religion: Church and State in Leiden’s Reformation, 1572–1620 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000), 190–191; A. Ph. F. Wouters and P. H. A. M. Abels, Nieuw en ongezien: Kerk en samenleving in de classis Delft en Delfland, 1572–1621 (Delft: Eburon,1994), 2:133. 96. OBC, no. 1, Joannis to Sasbout Vosmeer, December 13, 1592. 97. Jacobszoon, Sondaeghs schole, 24–25, 79–81; quotation, 81. 98. Een gheestelijck lust hoofken: Met schoone lieffelijcke geestelijcke ghesangen beplant door eenen Catholijcken pastoor (Antwerp: Henricus van Soest, n.d., [approbation of the church, 1683]); quotation, 4; 5–277. 99. Geestelycke harmonie, van veel-der leye en uyt-gelesen soo oude als nieuwe Catholijcke kerckelijcke lof-sanghen leysenen ende liedekens op de principaelste feesten ende getyden des jaers die men in ’t vorstendom cleven by den catechismus singht (Antwerp: Henricus van Soest, 1762 [approbation of the church, 1685]), quotation, 3; 5–65, Christmas section; 65–107, Lent; 107–149, Easter; 149–167, Virgin Mary; 175, Loyola; 177, Xavier. 100. OBC, no. 90, Descriptio status in quo nunc est Religio Catholica in Hollandia et confoederatis Belgii Provincii anno 1622; Willem Frijhoff, Embodied Belief: Ten Essays on Religious Culture in Dutch History (Hilversum: Verloren, 2002), 153–160. 101. Peter T. van Rooden, Religieuze regimes: Over godsdienst en maatschappij in Nederland 1570–1990 (Amterdam: Bert Bakker, 1996), 26. 102. Kapittel #225, no. 357, Bergaigne to Osterius, May 10, 1627; OBC, no. 10, Dordrecht to Vosmeer, March 22, 1609. 103. OBC, no. 13, Leeuwarden to Vosmeer, March 23–April 2, 1612. 104. OBC, no. 226, de Visser, Donckers to van Neercassel, March 9, 1672, no. 5, Baronius to Vosmeer, August 2, 1603. 105. Kapittel #275, no. 92, De Catholicorum diminutione atq: Eorum accretione in missione Hollandica, 181–187. 106. OBC, no. 90, Rovenius to Weesp, June 10, 1638; OBC, no. 252, van Neercassel to Middelburg, August 26, 1682; Kapittel #275, no. 58, Acta, March 1631. 107. OBC, no. 344, Amersfoort to Codde, January 11–1, 1700. 108. J. A. de Kok, Nederland op de breuklijn Rome-Reformatie: Numerieke aspecten van protestantisering en katholieke herleving in de noordelijke Nederlanden, 1580–1880 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1964), 246–248. 4. Restoring a Catholic Presence 1. OBC, no. 13, Leeuwarden to Vosmeer, July 9–19, 1612. 2. For example, Jean Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire: A New View of the Counter-Reformation (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977), 1–46; Robert Muchembled, Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France, 1400–1750, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985), 183–186; Philip T. Hoffman, Church and Community in the Diocese of Lyon, 1500–1789 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1984), 98–138; Andrew Barnes, “The Social Transformation of the French Parish Clergy, 1500–1800,” in Barbara Diefendorf and Carla Hesse, eds., Culture and Identity in

282

Notes to Pages 150–153

Early Modern Europe (1500–1800): Essays in Honor of Natalie Zemon Davis (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 139–158; Allyson M. Poska, Regulating the People: The Catholic Reformation in Seventeenth-Century Spain (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998), 1–10; R. Po-Chia Hsia, Society and Religion in Münster, 1535–1618 (New Haven: 1984) 150–176; Wietse de Boer, The Conquest of the Soul: Confession, Discipline, and Public Order in Counter-Reformation Milan (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2001), 327–30. 3. R. Po-Chia Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540–1770 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 42–79; Michael A. Mullett, The Catholic Reformation (New York: Routledge, 1999), 142–168, 197–205. 4. For similar arguments in Spain and Germany, see William A. Christian, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981), 148–180; Marc R. Forster, Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque: Religious Identity in Southwest Germany, 1550–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 152–183. 5. A. Van Lommel, SJ, ed., “Brevis descriptio status, in quo est ecclesia Catholica in partibus Belgii ab haereticus occupatis anno 1616,” AAU 3 (1874–75): 209, 219, 221, 224; A. van Lommel, SJ, ed., “Descriptio status in quo nunc est religio Catholica in confoederatis Belgii-Provincii anno 1622,” AAU 20 (1893): 357, quotation; 358, 366, 368. 6. Willem Pieter Cornelis Knuttel, De Toestand der Nederlandse Katholieken (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1892), microfiche, 8. 7. Sherrin Marshall, The Dutch Gentry, 1500–1650: Family, Faith, and Fortune (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987), 77–78; Henk F. K. van Nierop, The Nobility of Holland: From Knights to Regents, 1500–1650, trans. Maarten Ultee (New York: Cambridge Univesity Press, 1993), 196; John Bossy, “The Character of Elizabethan Catholicism,” Past and Present 21 (1962): 41. 8. Van Nierop, Nobility, 162, 183, 189; C. C. Hibben, Gouda in Revolt: Particularism and Pacificism in the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1572–1588 (Utrecht: HES Publishers, 1983), 70–75. 9. Van Nierop, Nobility, 196; Marshall, Dutch Gentry, 81–84; Benjamin J. Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines: Confession and Community in Utrecht, 1578–1620 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 274. 10. Joke Spaans, Haarlem na de reformatie: Stedelijke cultuur en kerkelijke leven, 1577–1620 (The Hague: Stichting Hollandse Historische Reeks, 1989), 52–55; Hibben, Gouda in Revolt, 22; Johan E. Elias, Geschiedenis van het Amsterdamsche regentenpatriciaat (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1923) 18; Christine Kooi, Liberty and Religion: Church and State in Leiden’s Reformation, 1572–1620 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000), 38. 11. Elias, Geschiedenis van het Amsterclamsche regentenpatriciaat, 21; L. J. Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme in Noord-Nederland in de 16e en de 17e eeuw (Amsterdam: Urbi et Orbi, 1947–1948), 1:480; Maarten Prak, “The Politics of Intolerance: Citizenship and Religion in the Dutch Republic (Seventeenth to Eighteenth Centuries),” in R. Po-Chia Hsia and H. F. K van Nierop, eds., Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 162–163. 12. Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 190–191. 13. Elias, Geschiedenis van het Amsterdamsche regentenpatriciaat, 22; A. Ph. F.

Notes to Pages 154–157

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Wouters and P. H. A. M. Abels, Nieuw en ongezien: Kerk en samenleving in de classis Delft en Delfland, 1572–1621 (Delft: Eburon, 1994), 2:129–130; Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines, 136–177, 171–172; Van Nierop, “Catholics and the Law,” in Hsia and van Nierop, Calvinism and Religious Toleration, 108–109. 14. Marshall, Dutch Gentry, 87; van Nierop, Nobility, 196–197; Wiebe Bergsma, Tussen Gideonsbende en publieke kerk: Een studie over het gereformeerd Protestantisme in Friesland, 1580–1650 (Hilversum: Verloren, 1999), 138. 15. H. C. de Wolf, De kerk en het maagdenhuis: Vier episoden uit geschiedenis van Katholiek Amsterdam (Utrecht: Spectrum, 1970), 271–276; Jan Wagenaar, Amsterdam in zyne opkomst, aanwas, geschiedenissen (Amsterdam: Isaak Tirion, 1760–1794), 4:368; van Nierop, Nobility, 162; Kooi, Liberty and Religion, 35; M. A. Haitsma, De Rooms-Katholieken te Leiden van ongeveer 1650 tot de tweede helft van de achttiende eeuw (Amersfoort: Stichting Oud-Katholieke Seminarie, 1977), 5. See Spaans, Haarlem, 91–93. 16. Arnold Pritchard, Catholic Loyalism in Elizabethan England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 38. 17. A. van Lommel, SJ, ed., “Relatio seu descriptio status religionis catholicae in Hollandia etc. Quam Romae collegit et exhibuit Alexandro septimo et cardinalibus congregationis de propaganda fide, Jacobus de la Torre, Kal. Septembris Anno 1656,” AAU 10 (1882): 206, 226, 233; AAU 11 (1883): 81–82, 99, 121–126, 132, 141, 160, 163, 172–176, 179–189, 198, 374–393. 18. Israel, Dutch Republic, 379, 383–384; van Lommel, “Relatio seu descriptio 1656,” AAU 10: 188; Bergsma, Tussen Gideonsbende, 140–141; OBC, no. 10, Foeijt to Vosmeer, March 30–April 9, 1609; Marshall, Dutch Gentry, 88–89. 19. OBC, no. 253, van Neercassel to Warfuse, January 27, 1684. 20. OBC, no. 252, van Neercassel to van Kabauw [van Vrijenhoven], June 26, 1682. For other examples of lay leadership, see OBC, no. 252, van Neercassel to Middelburg, December 10, 1682, no. 338, Heemskerk to Codde [1690], no. 339, Hilversum to Codde, March 16–26, 1691. 21. John Bossy, The English Catholic Community, 1570–1850 (London: Dartan, Longman, and Todd, 1975), 152–160; Joke Spaans, “Faith, Family and Community: The Catholic Community in Early Seventeenth-Century Holland,” (paper, Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, Toronto, Ontario, October 2004), 8. 22. P. W. F. M. Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk in Nederland (Bruges: Uitgeverij Tabor, 1992), 246; Wouters and Abels, Nieuw en ongezien, 2:131–132; F. Smit, De fundaties van Sasbout en Pieter van der Dussen te Delft (1622–1752): Bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van de Katholieke armenzorg in de 17e en de 18e eeuw (Amersfoort: Stichting Oud-Katholiek Seminarie, 1987), 11–13; Frederik F. Barends, Geloven in de schaduw: Schuilkerken in Amsterdam (Ghent: Snoeck-Ducaju en Zoon, 1996), 25–26; Jan Wagenaar, Amsterdam in zyne opkomst), 1:368. 23. John P. Elliott, “Protestantization in the Northern Netherlands, a Case Study: The Classis of Dordrecht, 1572–1640,” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1990), 311–312; Smit, Fundaties, 6; Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 2:42–43; Gian Ackermans, Herders en huurlingen: Bisschoppen en priesters in de Republiek (1663–1705) (Amsterdam: Prometheus/Bert Bakker, 2003), 54–55. 24. Marit Monteiro, Geestelijke maagden: Leven tussen klooster en wereld in NoordNederland gedurende zeventiende eeuw (Hilversum: Verloren, 1996), 54–57. See

284

Notes to Pages 158–163

also E. E. A. J. M. Theissing, Over klopjes en kwezels (Utrecht: Dekker en Van de Vegt N.V., 1935); Elisja Schulte van Kessel, Geest en vlees in godsdienst en wetenschap, vijf opstellen over gezagsconflicten in de zeventiende eeuw (The Hague: Staatsuitgeverij, 1980), 51–115; Spaans, “Faith, family,” 4–7 25. Van Lommel, “Relatio seu descriptio 1656,” AAU 11, 179–189. 26. OBC, no. 90, Feijt and van Nivelt to Rovenius, February 15, 1633. 27. OBC, no. 4, van Teethlum and Aijta to Vosmeer, June 30, 1600. 28. OBC, no. 1, Drenckwaert to Vosmeer, December 7, 1593.For other petitions and examples, see OBC, no. 2, Goudanus to Vosmeer, January 4–14, 1596, no. 8, van der Houve to Vosmeer, May 26, 1607, no. 14, Kuijck to Vosmeer, August 28, 1613, no. 90, Rovenius to Couwael and Versijden, April 1630, Rovenius to Wijfrinck and Aldringe, January 13, 1631, no. 361, Codde to Goes, April 10, 1697; Kapittel #225, no. 354, Cracht to Eggius, January 23, 1610. 29. Bossy, English Catholic Community, 152–160. 30. J. J. Woltjer, “Een niew ende onghesien dingh: Verkenningen naar de positie van de kerkeraad in twee Hollandse steden in de zestiende eeuw,” (Afschiedscollege, Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden, 1985). See also Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines, 111–155. 31. OBC, no. 8, Dronrijp to Vosmeer, May 14, 1607, no. 4, Coopmans to Vosmeer, March 4, 1599, no. 225, van Beeck to van Neercassel, August 11–21, 1671. 32. Kapittel #225, no. 354, Machario to Eggius, March 7, 1605; OBC, no. 14, Pieters to Vosmeer, February 19, 1614, no. 230, Deventer to van Neercassel, August 18, 1682. See also OBC, no. 230, Deventer to van Neercassel, August 8–18, 1682, no. 230, Pieraet to van Neercassel, August 23, 1682, no. 230, Gorinchem to van Neercassel, November 15, 1682, no. 249, van Neercassel to Deventer, March 5, 1680, no. 252, van Neercassel to Krommenie, February 20, 1683, van Neercassel to Schuijt and Bock, December 15, 1683. 33. OBC, no. 230, Harlingen to van Neercassel, August 2–12, 1682, no. 337, Leiden to Codde, May 30, 1689. 34. OBC, no. 342, Gouda to Codde, January 1697. For other complaints about priestly morality or competence, see OBC, no. 19, Vosmeer to Schagen, February 20, 1612, no. 225, Barre to van Neercassel [1671], no. 249, van Neercassel to Groningen, February 9, 1680, no. 252, van Neercassel to Deventer, March 23, May 22, September 16, 1682. 35. OBC, no. 252, van Neercassel to Oosterweer, January 25, 1682. 36. OBC, no. 8, Leiden to Vosmeer, June 8, 1607. See Christine Kooi, “Popish Impudence: The Perseverance of the Roman Catholic Faithful in Calvinist Holland, 1572–1620,” Sixteenth Century Journal 26 (1995): 75–85; OBC, no. 338, Amersfoort to Codde, June 19–29, 1690, OBC, no. 230, Zwolle to van Neercassel, February 21, March 3, 1682, no. 231, Groningen to van Neercassel, May 27, June 6, 1683. For ther examples, see OBC, no. 229, Schagen to van Neercassel [1680], no. 337, Deventer to Codde, December 27, 1688–January 6, 1689. 37. OBC, no. 247, van Neercassel to van Putten, September 4, 1675, no. 248, van Neercassel to van Andel, June 23, 1677, no. 9, Willems to Vosmeer, May 12, 1608, no. 4, Coopmans to Vosmeer, March 4, 1599, no. 229, van den Bossche to van Neercassel, May 30, June 26, 1679. See also OBC, no. 248, van Neercassel to Stalpart, October 28, 1678. 38. For references, see J. Bruggeman and Y. E. Kortlever, eds., Inventaris van

Notes to Pages 164–170

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de archieven van de apostolische vicarissen van de Hollandse Zending en hun secretarissen, 1579–1728 (Utrecht: Het Utrechts Archief, 2001), 367. 39. OBC, no. 8, de Kettler to Vosmeer, November 12, 1607, no. 226, Hooft to van Neercassel, August 9, 13, 20, 30, and September 6, 24, 1674, no. 227, Hooft to van Neercassel, March 31, 1676, March 6, 1678, no. 226, Hop to van Neercassel, August 11, 20, 1674, no. 226, Ornia to van Neercassel, August 7, 1672. 40. OBC, no. 189, de la Torre to Bodegraven, January 8, 1649, no. 230, Zwolle to van Neercassel, July 14–24, 1682, no. 12, Schagen to Vosmeer, April 30, 1611, no. 223, Westerblocker to van Neercassel, August 18, 1668. Similar responses include OBC, no. 223, Heerenveen to van Neercassel, February 17–27, 1667, no. 226, Buitenveldert to van Neercassel, January 17, 1674, no. 229, Vlissingen to van Neercassel, March 30, 1679, no. 232, van Brakel to van Neercassel, February 23, 1686, no. 242, van Neercassel to Alkmaar, December 9, 1667, no. 245, van Neercassel to Temminck, October 30, 1671, no. 247, van Neercassel to Oldenzaal, October 27, 1675, no. 336, Culemborg to Codde, October 26, 1687. 41. OBC, no. 226, Amersfoort to van Neercassel, February 17–27, 1674, no. 229, Schagen to van Neercassel [1680], no. 226, Zutphen to van Neercassel, August 25–September 4, 1673. 42. OBC, no. 343, Langeraar and Korteraar to Codde [February 1699]. 43. Examples include OBC, no. 223, Jisp to van Neercassel, May 14, 1667, no. 229, Randenburg (Raamburg) to van Neercassel, February 5, 1680, no. 230, Deventer to van Neercassel, August 18, 1682. 44. Examples include OBC, no. 11, Dircxzoon Groenhout to Vosmeer, February 20, 1610, no. 223, Jisp to van Neercassel, May 14, 1667, no. 229, Randenburg (Raamburg) to van Neercassel, February 5, 1680, no. 230, Deventer to van Neercassel, August 14, 1682, no. 230, Harlingen to van Neercassel, August 2–12, 1682, no. 230, Middelburg to van Neercassel, September 5, 1682, no. 252, van Neercassel to Oosterweer, January 25, 1682, no. 338, Kampen to Codde, September 16–26, 1690, no. 362, Codde to Goes, October 28, 1699. See also OBC, no. 8, van Mauden to Vosmeer, December 1, 1606, no. 248, van Neercassel to Harderwijck, May 6, 1677, no. 253, van Neercassel to Berkenrode, November 6, 1684. 45. Kapittel #275, no. 131, Aantekeningen van kanunnik J. A. Ban met betrekking tot Spierdijk, Hoogwoud, 1633, no. 132, Aantekeningen van kanunnik J. A. Ban met betrekking tot een visitatie in N. Holland, September 13, 1634. 46. OBC, no. 246, van Neercassel to Deventer, March 29, 1675, no. 248, van Neercassel to Vlissingen, July 9, 1678, no. 250, van Neercassel to Polsbroek, October 30, 1680, no. 362, Codde to Hoogwoud/Opmeer, July 9, 1700. 47. OBC, no. 224, Visitatierapport, Noord-Holland, January 24, 1669. 48. OBC, nr 358. Codde to de Swaen, March 14, 1689. 49. OBC, no. 247, van Neercassel to Warfuse, October 14, 1676, February 26, 1677, no. 248, van Neercassel to Nijs, March 3, 1677, no. 252, van Neercassel to Warfuse, July 6, 1682. 50. OBC, no. 252, van Neercassel to Warfuse, July 30, August 20, 1682. 51. OBC, no. 252, van Neercassel to Warfuse, January 9, 25, February 1, 1683. 52. OBC, no. 253, van Neercassel to Warfuse, January 18, 27, 30, 1684. 53. OBC, no. 254, van Neercassel to Leeuwarden, September 18, 1685, no. 249, van Neercassel to Groningen, February 9, 1680.

286

Notes to Pages 170–179

54. OBC, no. 11, Dircxzoon Groenhout to Vosmeer, February 20, 1610, no. 337, van der Putten to Codde, December 12, 1689. 55. OBC, no. 229, Schagen to van Neercassel [1680]. See also OBC, no. 229, Purmerland to van Neercassel, August 23, 1680. 56. OBC, no. 232, van Velsen and Claes to van Neercassel, October 16 [1685]. See also OBC, no. 223, Eijckel to van Neercassel, June 3–13, 1667. 57. OBC, no. 10, Utrecht to Vosmeer, March 30–April 9, 1609. 58. OBC, no. 336, Maassluis to Codde, March 3, 30, April 12, May 25, 1688. 59. An inquiry by the city government in 1634 noted that the events had occurred three years prior. Kapittel #225, no. 359, Interrogatorium gedaen maecken ende mijn V. Heeren vande gerechte der stede Enchuijsen . . . , 1634. 60. Kapittel #225, no. 359, Relatio originis et progressus causa Enchuisen, 1634. 61. Kapittel #225, no. 359, Interrogatorium, 1634; OBC, no. 89, Enkhuizen to Rovenius, February 28, 1637; Willem Audenaert, SJ, ed., Prosopographia Iesuitica Belgica antiqua (Louvain-Heverlee: Filosofisch en Theologisch College S.J., 2000), 2:21. See also Kapittel #225, no. 359, Copia literarum P. a’ Maria ad P. Rijserium, 1634. 62. G. Brom, “Vier missie-verslagen, van 1635 tot 1645 door Rovenius te Rome ingediend,” AAU 18 (1890): 9. 63. A. van Lommel SJ, ed., “Relatio visitationis missionis S. J. in Hollandia a Patre Guilielmo Bauters,” AAU 6 (1879): 248–249. 64. OBC, no. 89, Enkhuizen to Rovenius, February 28, 1637. 65. See especially Forster, Catholic Revival, 206–207. 66. OKN, no. 868, Arnhem to Velthoen, September 1, 1654, July 29 1655. On the importance of sacred vessels to local congregations, see OBC, no. 224, Heemskerck to van Neercassel, October 13, 1670. 67. OBC, no. 89, de Witte to Rovenius, July 19, 1619. For another inquest, see OBC, no. 229, Voorburg to van Neercassel, March 15, 1680. 68. See van Lommel, “Relatio seu descriptio 1656,” AAU 11, 165–188. 69. G. J. C. Snoek, De eucharistie-en relikvereering in de middeleeuwen: De middeleeuwse eucharistie-devotie en relikvereering in onderlinge samenhang (Amsterdam: VU Uitgeverij, 1989), 298, 336–337, 393. 70. J. F. M. Sterck, De heilige stede in de geschiedenis van Amsterdam (Hilversum: N.V. Gooi en Sticht, 1938), 5–6, 36–38; P. J. Margry, Amsterdam and het mirakel van het heilig sacrament: Van middeleeuwse devotie tot 20-eeuwse stille omgang (Amsterdam: Polis, 1988), 13–18. 71. L. Marius, Amstelredams eer ende opcomen door denckwaerdighe miraklen aldaer geschied aen ende door h. sacrament des altaers anno 1345 (Antwerp: Henrick Aertssens, 1639); 25–44, 63–82, 140–164; quotation, 140. 72. Willem Frijhoff, Embodied Belief: Ten Essays on Religious Culture in Dutch History (Hilversum: Verloren, 2002), 115–116. See also Kapittel #275, no. 58, Acta, April 20, 1632. 73. OKN. VS, no. 283, Memorie van Tilman Vosmeer, secretarie van Sasbout, betreffende mirakelen in de Oude Kerke op Dinsdag voor Maria Lichtmas 1351 en jaarlijke herdenking sinds 1383 in de Nieuwe kerk [late sixteenth, early seventeenth century]. 74. Michael Vosmeer, Diva virgo et crux salutaris Delfica sive de Admirandis, quae Dei genitricis virginis Mariae et cruci salutaris beneficio ad antiquum Delfi Hollandiae templum contigerunt (Cologne: Bernardum Gualtherum, 1629); Smit, Fundaties, 15.

Notes to Pages 179–184

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75. OKN. VS, no. 281, Register van mirakelen ende verering over de period 1327–1583. 76. Joke Spaans, “Paragons of Piety: Representatitons of the Priesthood in the Lives of the Haarlem Virgins,” Dutch Review of Church History 83 (2003): 235–246. 77. OBC, no. 88, Verslag van de vershijning van Maria en S. Bernardus aan mr. Cornelis Arents in 1593 door Maria van Graeve, November 17, 1613. 78. Marc Wingens, Over de grens: De bedevaart van Katholieke Nederlanders in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw (Nijmegen: SUN, 1994), 44–45, 215. See also Frijhoff, Embodied Belief, 111–136. 79. Wingen, Over de grens, 21–27; Willem Frijhoff, “Problèmes spécifiques d’une approche de la ‘religion populaire’ dans un pays de confession mixte: Le cas des Provinces-Unies,” in Guy Duboscq, Bernard Plongeron, Daniel Robert, eds., La religion populaire: Colloques Internationaux du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique nr. 576, (Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1979), 39–42. 80. OBC, no. 345, Over de wonderlijke genezing van Joanna Tibbel in januari 1683 door het drinken uit het kelkje van de H. Bernulphus. February [28], 1688; SJ. LA., A.C. 2, 1665 (Gouda), 1681 (The Hague, Oudewater, Delft), 1688 (Harlingen, Breda), 1682 (Amsterdam, Culemborg, Alkmaar); SJ. LA., A.C. 4, 1673 (Utrecht), 1686 (Delft), 1612 (Delft), 1672 (Leeuwarden), 1677 (Frisia), 1678 (Amersfoort). 81. Kapittel #275, no. 262, Rovenius to Chapter, May 25, 1631, no. 261, Lijstje van relikwëen door kanunnik N. Nomius in een capsula ad formam Agnus Dei gedragen, 1631, no. 262, Bewijse van echtheid van de relikweë van St. Bavo, 1631, no. 263, Lijst van relikweën bewaard door pater Arnoldus de Witte, 1631. 82. OBC, no. 345, Over de wonderlijke genezing van Joanna Tibbel, February [28], 1688; Frijhoff, Embodied Belief, 133. 83. Brad Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 315–341. 84. Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 2:768–769; Hamans, Geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk, 227. 85. Frijhoff, Embodied Belief, 131. 86. Gijsbertus Hesse, “De oudere historiografie der hh martelaren van Gorcum,” Collectanea Franciscana Neerlandica 2 (1931): 447–498. 87. The bodies had been exhumed and removed to a convent in Brussels and then later placed in the Church of St. Nicholas where they remain to the present. OBC, no. 345, Memorialen en nota over the reliquieën van de martelaren van Gorcum [May 1687], no. 335, van Erkel to Codde, May 5, 26, 1687. 88. Benardinus Surius, OFM, De godvruchtighen pelgrim ofte Ierusalemsche reyse (Brussels: Ian Mommaert, 1665), 1:28. 89. The previous two paragraphs follow the insights and arguments of Wingens, Over de grens, 22–26, 58–59, 133–137, 142–143. 90. [ Johannes Bolland, SJ], Imago primi saeculi societatis Iesu a provincia FlandroBelgica eiusdem societatis repraesentata (Antwerp: Plantin, 1640), 769–779; Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 2:772–774. 91. Francis Coster, SJ, Seven meditatien op den lof-sanck salve regina (Antwerp: Plantin, n.d.), 15, 24, 35, 47, 53, 63, 71. 92. OBC, no. 455, Catalogus confratrum sodalitatis gratiae Dei; Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 2:765–766.

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Notes to Pages 184–192

93. A catalog of members who joined from 1629 to 1637 lists 121 male names, including laity and clergy. Unfortunately, it is not clear if this catalog is a complete list of members who joined in these years. See OBC, no. 455, Sodalitatis gratiae Dei. 94. L. J. Rogier, “De cultus van sint Willibrord bij de Apostolische Vicarissen der Hollandse Zending in de zeventiende eeuw,” Historisch Tijdschrift 18 (1939): 261–267. 95. “Regulen ende ordonantien vande broederschap des [sic] gratie Godts, Onder beschermenisse van S. Willibrordus ende S. Bonifacius,” in Rogier, “Cultus sint Willibrord,” 268–273; OBC, no. 455, Sodalitatis gratiae dei. 96. “Regulen ende ordonantien,” 270; OBC. no. 455, Sodalitatis gratiae dei. 97. J. A. F. Kronenburg, Maria’s heerlijkheid in Nederland: Geschiedkundige schets van de vereering der h. maagd in ons vaderland, van de eerste tijden tot op onze dagen (Amsterdam: F. H. J. Bekker, 1904–1931), 7:31–32, 57, 81–86, 94, 110, 127, 136; Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 2:quotation, 769; 762–769. For a similar contrast, see Wingens, Over de grens, 26, 44; Frijhoff, Embodied Belief, 130; D. J. Schoon, De Oud-Katholieke kerk (Kampen: Uitgeverij Kok, 1999), 16–21; B. A. van Kleef, Geschiedenis van de Oud-Katholicke Kerk van Nederland (Assen: Van Gorcum en Comp. N.V., 1953), 56–59; P. P. V. van Moorsel, “De devotie tot st. Willibrord in Nederland van ongeveer 1580 tot ongeveer 1750,” Ons Geestelijk Erf (1958): 337–369; P. Polman, “Het geestelijk leven der katholieken in Nederland onder de Apostolische Vicarissen,” Ons Geestelijk Erf 20 (1946): 219. 98. Hugo Franciscus van Heussen, Batavia Sacra of kerkelyke historie en oudheden van Batavia (Antwerp: Christianus Vermeij, 1715), 1:20 99. Van Heussen, Batavia Sacra, 1:9–50; see Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 2:763; Rogier, “Cultus van sint Willibrord,” 249–54; Marc Wingens, Over de grens, 24–5. 100. P. Polman, OFM, “Jansenius als polemist tegen de Calvinisten,” Historisch Tijdschrift 8 (1929): 249–251. 101. Adr. and Petr. Walenburch, Den eenvoudigen Catholijck in Tractatus XI: Tractatis speciales de controversis fidei (Cologne: Agrippinae, 1665), 11–33; Hugo Francis van Heussen, Hand- en huys-boek der Katholijken, waar in de voornaamste geloof-stukken klaar voorgesteld, bondig bewezen, en kragtig verdedigd worden: (Antwerp: P. vander Meersche, 1705), 3–15. 5. Paying the Priest, Feeding the Poor 1. OBC, no. 168, Cort onderrecht van de heijmelijcke exercitie der Catholijcke Religie inde vereenighde nederlandtsche provintien [1640]. For similar arguments, see Kapittel #275, no. 92, De persecutione, 5–6. 2. OBC, no. 12, Goes to Vosmeer, July 21, 1611; no. 14, J. Vigilius en F. Duijsseldorp over Delft, Leiden, and Rotterdam, September 11–21, 1613, no. 249, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, August 12, 1676, no. 340, van Slingelant to Codde, February 9, 1692. 3. Willem van Beuningen, Het geestelijk kantoor van Delft (Arnhem: D. A. Thieme, 1870), 1–55; Jan Frederick van Beeck Calkoen, Onderzoek naar den rechtstoestand der geestelijke en kerkelijke goederen in Holland na de reformatie (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1910), 37–38, 47–48, 50, 280; I. H. van Eeghen, ed., Dagboek van Broeder Wouter Jacobsz. (Gualtherus Jacobi Masius) Prior van Stein. Amsterdam 1572–1578, en Montfoort 1578–1579 (Groningen: J. B. Wolters,

Notes to Pages 193–198

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1959), 1:xvii; L. J. van Apeldoorn, De financieele verhouding tusschen kerk en staat (The Hague: Js. Bootsma, 1919), 7–9; B. M. de Jonge van Ellemeet, Geschiedkundig onderzoek naar den rechtstoestand der Zeeuwse geestelijke goederen van 1572 tot in het begin der 17e eeuw (Zierikzee: S. Ochtman et Zoon, 1906), 272. 4. Joke Spaans, Haarlem na de reformatie: Stedelijke cultuur en kerkelijke leven, 1577–1620 (The Hague: Stichting Hollandse Historische Reeks, 1989), 91. 5. Kapittel #275, no. 57, Acta, August “circa medium,” October 15, November 14, 1580, May 16, November 4, 1581; Spaans, Haarlem, 60–64, 71–74, 77–78. 6. L. J. Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme in Noord-Nederland in de 16e en de 17e eeuw (Amsterdam: Urbi et Orbi, 1947–1948), 2:31–32. 7. The fact that the canons also came from local elite families eased tensions as well. Spaans, Haarlem, 77, 92; Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 2:88–91. 8. Benjamin J. Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines: Confession and Community in Utrecht, 1578–1620 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 137–38; Sherrin Marshall, The Dutch Gentry, 1500–1650: Family, Faith, and Fortune (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987), 84; Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 1: 530–532. 9. OBC, no. 8, Elreborn to Vosmeer, May 18, 1607. 10. OBC, no. 3, J. weduwe to Vosmeer, December 19, 1597, May 19, 1598. For other problematic cases, see OBC, no. 444, d’Overschije to Vosmeer, March 22, 1605, no. 3, ten Ham to Vosmeer, September 18, 1607, no. 10, van Hoen to Vosmeer, [before August 8, 1609], no. 12, van Smalevelt to Vosmeer, [before October 9, 1611], no. 14, Pieters to Vosmeer, March 1, 1613. 11. OBC, no. 138, Advies door A. de Cock over de mogelijkheid van restitutie van tienden van de commanderij van S. Jan te Haarlem aan de heer van Marquette, wegens het niet nakomen van de voorwaarde van fundatie van een kapelanie op het huis van Marquette, January 18, 1625. Note that according to the city’s pacification treaty, the property remained under the control of the order, but the order could not accept any new members. The last knight died in 1625, and so the property came under the full control of the city at that time. Spaans, Haarlem, 72, 182. 12. Kapittel #225, no. 353, Velsen to Zaffius, November 1, 1603; OBC, no. 12, van Smalevelt to Vosmeer, October 9, 1611. 13. Kapittel, no. 351, Institutio Capituli. 14. Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 261–262. 15. OBC, no. 8, Apologia, 1607. 16. See also OBC, no. 8, Vollenhove to Vosmeer, February 15–25, 1607, no. 10, van Hoen to Vosmeer, [before August 8, 1609]. 17. Joke Spaans, “Faith, Family, and Community: The Catholic Community in Early Seventeenth-Century Holland,” (paper, Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, Toronto, Ontario, Ocotober 2004), 8; OKN, no. 868, Arnhem to Velthoen, September 1, 1654, July 29 1655. 18. C. W. van Voorst van Beest, De Katholieke armenzorg te Rotterdam in de 17e en de 18e eeuw (The Hague: Uitgeverij Excelsior, 1955), 26–27. 19. Spaans, “Faith, Family,” 10; Marit Monteiro, Geestelijke maagden: Leven tussen klooster en wereld in Noord-Nederland gedurende zeventiende eeuw (Hilversum: Verloren, 1996), 95–99. This section follows H. C. de Wolf, De kerk en het

290

Notes to Pages 198–205

maagdenhuis: Vier episoden uit geschiedenis van Katholiek Amsterdam (Utrecht: Spectrum, 1970), 26–78; however, I have examined and utilized the archival manuscripts myself. 20. This included fifty guilders per year from a prosperous soap maker Laurens Hendrikszoon Spieghel, whose daughter, Maria, had initially involved herself in the project. De Wolf, Kerk en maagdenhuis, 268–270. 21. Kapittel #225, no. 352, untitled notarial document, dated 1590. Note that this is a copy of a notarial document dated internally, May 2, 1582. 22. See Kapittel #225, no. 352, Een cleine regule van leven voor die geene die daer woenen int Meechden huis binnen, 1591; de Wolf, Kerk en maagdenhuis, 278. 23. De Woolf, Kerk en maagdenhuis, 271–273. 24. Kapittel #225, no. 352, Inventaire des documents, obligations, et pieces des monnoie trouvezs dans la maison des orfelinnes á Amsterdam, October 4, 1590. 25. Kapittel #225, no. 352, Fopsdochter to Coopal, December 15, 1590, Request aenden eerweerdijgen heer Mr. willem copal aengaende die donacij ende ander saken dat maechdenhuijs aengaende, May 1, 1591, Loefszoon to Coopal, May 25, 1591. 26. Kapittel #225, no. 352, Willem Coopal to Aeltge and Meijnu Pieters, May 1591; de Woolf, Kerk en maagdenhuis, 277. 27. R. R. Post, Kerkelijke verhoudingen in Nederland vóór de reformatie van ± 1500 tot ± 1580 (Utrecht: Spectrum, 1954), 87–96. 28. Post, Kerkelijke verhoudingen, 87–96; Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 1:16. 29. Post, Kerkelijke verhoudingen, 87–96. 30. R. Po-Chia Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540–1770 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 108, 115–119. 31. Kathleen M. Comerford, Ordaining the Catholic Reformation: Priests and Seminary Pedagogy in Fiesole, 1575–1675 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2001), 94–99; Hsia, World of Catholic Renewal, 108–119; Michael A. Mullett, The Catholic Reformation (New York: Routledge, 1999), 144–148; Helen Rawlings, Church, Religion, and Society in Early Modern Spain (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 73. 32. For several examples, see OBC, no. 478, Akte van collatie door Philippus Rovenius van Michiel Cornelisz. Vosmeer met de vicarie van S. Eligius in de Hippolytuskerk te Delft, October 10, 1617, no. 246, van Neercassel to Temminck, June 4, 1674, no. 249, van Neercassel to Everwijn, April 2, 1680. 33. OBC, no. 252, Epistola Pastoralis per Amplissimum D. Erkelium prolegenda, August 26, 1683. 34. Kapittel #225, no. 354, Petri to Eggius, February 14 [no year] (in light of where this letter is located in the bound volume, it is likely that the year is 1609); OBC, no. 249, van Neercassel to Boetgreve, April 14, 1679, no. 232, Melis to van Neercassel, October 29, 1685. 35. See Kapittel #225, no. 573, Akten van transport en andere stukken betreffende de verwerving van beurzen door “Pulcheria,” 1618–1727; Extracta ex registro seu libro fundationum collegii Pulcherae vulgo collegii Hollandii Louvani; Extracta et notitus manu D. G. Scheppio provisoris collegii scriptis et dominus praesidi Melis transmissus in libro fundationum non registratis. 36. OBC, no. 245, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, September 28, 1671, no. 246, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, May 8, 1674. For other funding issues at the seminary, see OBC, no. 249, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, July 25, 1679. 37. OBC, no. 246, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, May 24, 1675.

Notes to Pages 206–210

291

38. Kapittel, no. 573, Akten van Transport. Quod legatum Agathea Buggae ad Collegium Hollandicum Lovanii pertineat nec ad Coloniense post divisionant [1618]. Apparently, the sum was transferred to Pulcheria, because the Liber Fundationum lists the Buggaeus burse. Kapittel #225, no. 572, Liber Fundationum D. Pulcheriae, folio 11r. 39. For other examples, see Kapittel #225, no. 573. Akten van Transport. Conditiones sub quibus Reverendissimus Eruditissimusque Dominus Theodorus van Blockhoven sacra theologiae licentiatus preses collegii Hollandici et executor testamenti R. D. Francisci Dusselii Montfortii pia memoriae praesentat DD: provisoribus et regenti gijmnasii sanctissima Trinitatis Louanii unam bursam quam idem dominus Dusselius suo testamento fundare desiderauit in eodem gijmnasio cuius testamenti clausula talis est ut sequitur, 1662. 40. Kapittel #225, no. 572, Liber Fundationum. Formula secundum quam Bursa Collegii D. Pulcheriae fundatur, exceptus specialibus conditionibus quas fundatores paciscuntur. 41. For discussions of endowments for Alticollense, see OKN, no. 867, Purmerent to Sueck, October 24, 1647, October 19, December 6, 1652, February 6, 1653, no. 868, Purmerent to Velthoen, December 15, 1656, January 4, March 15, 1657, November 28, 1656; OBC, no. 4, Janssonius to Vosmeer, September 5, 1599, no. 246, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, June 1, 7, 1674, no. 358, Codde to de Swaen, March 14, 24, May 12, 1689. 42. Even before Pulcheria opened, at least six endowment accounts were established to support students from the Netherlands in their studies at the College of Adrian VI, or Paus College, in Louvain. Established between 1608 and 1615, the burses were known as the Buijckens, Valerij, Wilgerij, Blijenborg, Schoonhoven, and Hovius endowments. The foundations produced a capital of 15,468 guilders that supported fourteen burses. Kapittel #225, no. 571, Stukken betreffende beschikbaarstelling van beurzen aan het “Pauscollege” te Leuven voor studenten in de godgeleerdheid uit het aartsbisdom Utrecht, 1608–1632. 43. See Kapittel #225, no. 572, Liber Fundationum, folios 26v, 28r, 30r, 48r, 50r, 52r, 53r. 44. Kapittel #225, no. 573, Akten van Transport. Extracta Scheppio. 45. Kapittel #225, no. 573, Akten van Transport. Sequuntur hic illa quos D.D. provisores Collegi diva pulcheria vulgo Hollandia receperunt in Hollandia post annum 1662 et de quibus debent comportum moderno domino praesidi et D.D. provisoribus Ao 1668 N. Van Brugge pastor. For a brief synopsis of Cornelis Hofland, see Gian Ackermans, Herders en huurlingen: Bisschoppen en priesters in de Republiek (1663–1705) (Amsterdam: Prometheus/Bert Bakker, 2003), 378. Other financial records refer to burse endowments not listed in the Liber Fundationum. Kapittel #225, no. 573, Akten van Transport. Beurzen, 1658 (Fundatie Vermellen), 1627 ( Jois Edriij). 46. Kapittel #225, no. 572, Liber Fundationum, folio 29v. These contributions are denoted by the zero in the burse column in the Appendix (pp. 243–245). 47. See Kapittel #275, nos. 390–393, Kasboek van inkomsten, gehouden door provisoren, 1662–1670/71. Reekenboek van den ontfang voor het Collegii van de Schoone Lieve Vrouwe tot Looven. 48. James D. Tracy, A Financial Revolution in the Hapsburg Netherlands: Renten and Renteniers in the County of Holland, 1515–1565 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 9.

292

Notes to Pages 210–217

49. Kapittel #225, no. 572, Liber Fundationum, folio 1r. 50. Kapittel #225, no. 572, Liber Fundationum, folio 92r–92v (unpaginated section). 51. Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude, The First Modern Economy: Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 114–115. 52. De Vries and van der Woude, First Modern Economy, 114–115. 53. Several pieces of correspondence in the mid-seventeenth century list amounts of income directed to students at the Alticollense. OKN, no. 867, Purmerent to Sueck, October 24, 1657, no. 868, Purmerent to Velthoen, November 28, 1656, March 15, 1657. 54. De Vries and van der Woude, First Modern Economy, 618–619. 55. Ackermans, Herders en huurlingen, 54–55. 56. See, for example, OBC, no. 248, van Neercassel to Boetgreve, August 29, 1678, no. 249, van Neercassel to Boetgreve, April 14, August 24, September 6, 1679, no. 251, van Neercassel to van Kabouw [ J. A. Th. van Bam], September 7, 1681, no. 252, van Neercassel to van Kabouw, June 26, 1682, no. 253, van Neercassel to van Kabouw, July 25, 1684. 57. Kapittel #225, no. 573, Akten van Transport. Beurzen, May 17, 1674, September 10–20, 1689, September 1656. 58. Ackermans, Herders en huurlingen, 54–55. 59. Kapittel #225, no. 573, Akten van Transport. Beurzen, May 1, 1661, September 12, 1663, Akten van Transport. Beurzen, May 17, 1674, September 10–20, 1689. 60. Kapittel #225, no. 573, Akten van Transport. Beurzen, September 1656. 61. These included, Stickers (Haarlem); Feijt (Haarlem); Vordenus (Holland); Cernius (Holland); Vitum (Friesland); Duijsselius (Montfort); P. Cornelius (Haarlem diocese); vander Meij, Wandelman, Scheppius (Haarlem diocese); Stenius (Haarlem diocese); Rosendael (Hougwoud); Vorenbeeck (The Hague); Keesman (Haarlem diocese); Brand (Haarlem diocese); Egbertswaert, Pellenkops (Groningen or Ommelanden); Albada (Friesland); Silvolt (Zutphen or Oldenzaal). Kapittel #225, no. 572, Liber Fundationum, folios 7r, 8r, 18r, 23r, 24r, 31r, 42r, 45v, 48r, 50r, 53r, 59r, 62r, 65r, 67v; Kapittel #225, no. 573, Akten van Transport. Beurzen [1629], [1656]. 62. Kapittel #225, no. 573, Akten van Transport. Beurzen [n.d.]. The relationship between this burse and the one listed as Edamsium (the people in Edam), no. 58 in the Appendix, is not clear. Perhaps later contributors augmented the burse of Nicholas Wijes. For the Edamsium burse, see Kapittel #225, no. 572, Liber Fundationum, folio 57r. 63. Kapittel #225, no. 572, Liber Fundationum, folios 21r, 38r. 64. OBC, no. 12, Schagen to Vosmeer, April 30, 1611, no. 10, Willems to Vosmeer, September 30, 1609, no. 11, Dusseldorpius to Vosmeer, June 19, 1610. For several examples from the Haarlem chapter, see Kapittel #225, no. 351, untitled document, April 12, 1624, untitled documents, April 25, 1609, 1633. 65. Ackermans, Herders en huurlingen, 54–55, 58–60, 61. 66. OBC, no. 340, van Slingelant to Codde, February 9, 1692. 67. De Vries and van der Woud, First Modern Economy, 574, 625. 68. OBC, no. 135, Fundatiebrief van Margariet d’Edell van een vicarie in de Buurkerk te Utrecht, December 5, 1624. 69. For examples, see OBC, no. 139, Beneficia quorum collationes pleno jure spec-

Notes to Pages 218–221

293

tant ad Reverendum Dominum Praepositum et Archdiaconum Traiectensis, 1625, no. 1, Joannis to Vosmeer, April 28, 1585; Smit, Fundaties, 12–3. Some bequests provided not for a priest but for parochial institutions based on personal perceptions of local needs in promoting the Catholic faith. See OBC, no. 171, Fundatiebrief van Marinus Vrieszoon te Gouda voor een school in Oude Tong, November 18, 1620. For reference to other bequests, see OBC, no. 1, Mostijn to Vosmeer, August 26, 1593, no. 6, Duijn to Vosmeer, February 27, 1605, no. 6, van Amstelredam to Vosmeer, April 14, 1605, no. 7, Tilman Vosmeer to Sasbout Vosmeer (with a copy of a letter from Tilman to Isbrandt Govertszoon), July 26, 1606, no. 8, ten Ham to Vosmeer, September 18, 1607, no. 14, Peters to Vosmeer, March 1, 1613, no. 14, Dusseldorpius to Vosmeer, July 20, 1613, no. 226, van Brienen and Wevelinchoven to van Neercassel, June 6–16, 1676, no. 229, de Vanger to van Neercassel, March 10, 1679 no. 230, van Blockhoven to van Neercassel, January 19, 1682, no. 248, van Neercassel to Ouwendijck, September 28, 1678, no. 444, d’Overschije to Vosmeer, March 22, 1605; Kapittel #275, no. 206, Utenhagius to Chapter, January 24, February 24, 1608, July 12, 1613. 70. OBC, no. 251, van Neercassel to van Kabauw, September 7, 1681, June 26, 1682, no. 336, Roos to Codde, June 16, 1688, no. 248, van Neercassel to Boetgreve, August 29, 1678, no. 253, van Neercassel to Goes, February 26, April 3, 1684, no. 11, Janssonius to Vosmeer, May 4, 1610. 71. OBC, no. 135, Fundatiebrief van Margariet d’Edell, no. 478, Akte van collatie door Philippus Rovenius, October 10, 1617. 72. A few examples of this negotiated process not cited elsewhere include OBC, no. 1, Joannis to Vosmeer, April 28, 1585, no. 8, van Marsche to Vosmeer, [before December 16, 1607], no. 246, van Neercassel to Temminck, June 4, 1674; Kapittel #275, no. 60, Acta, April 6, 1655. 73. OBC, no. 252, van Neercassel to Krommenie, February 20, 1683, no. 249, van Neercassel to Groningen, February 9, 1680, no. 249, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, August 12, 1676, no. 7, Lingen to Vosmeer [1606]. 74. See for example, Kapittel #275, no. 60, Acta, May 9, 1646, July 3, 1646, June 15, 1647, October 29, 1652, January 16, 1653, September 17, 1654, March 2, 1655; OBC, no. 5, Bannius, Jacopsdochter, and Jansdochter to Sasbout Vosmeer, September 4, 1603, no. 249, van Neercassel to van Blockhoven, August 12, 1676, no. 251, van Neercassel to de Overgeau, August 7, 1681, no. 252, van Neercassel to Krommenie, February 20, 1683; OKN, no. 868, Doncker to Velthoen, April 15, 1657; Kapittel #275, no. 71, Ban and de Wolff to Avenhoorn and Hoorn, July 31, 1631. 75. Kapittel #275, no. 71, Ban and de Wolff to Avenhoorn and Hoorn, July 31, 1631; OBC, no. 340, van Slingelant to Pieter Codde, February 9, 1692. 76. OBC, no. 232, Zierikzee to van Neercassel, December 20, 1685, no. 232, Deventer to van Neercassel, August 26–September 5, 1685, no. 340, Dordrecht to Codde, February 17, 1692; Kapittel #275, no. 60, Acta, April 20, 1632. 77. Kapittel #275, no. 85, Copiebook, 215r–219r, Impedimenta maioris profectus in conversione animarum in Hollandia et confoederatis provinciis fere sunt ista. 78. Kapittel #225, no. 357, Rovenius to Ostervirius, August 19, 1623. 79. See Hugo Franciscus van Heussen, Batavia Sacra of kerkelijke historie en oudheden van Batavia (Leiden: Frans Mieris, 1726), 1:3–22. 80. Willem Frijhoff, Embodied Belief: Ten Essays on Religious Culture in Dutch History (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 2002), 153–214. 81. OBC, no. 8, Apologia, 1607.

294

Notes to Pages 221–227

82. Philippus Rovenius, Reipublicae Christianae Libri Duo, Tractantes de variis Hominum status, Gradibus, Officiis, et functionibus in Ecclesia Christi et quae in singulis amplectenda, quae fugienda sint (Antwerp: Arnoldum a’ Brakel, 1648), 1 of unpaginated preface. 83. The Reipublicae was a more complete expression of the constitutions Rovenius put forth for the mission in 1628. See Philippus Rovenius, Constitutiones Illiimi ac Rmi. Domini D. Archepiscopi Philippensis et Vicarii Apostolici per Unitas Belgii Provincias (Louvain: Apud Bernardium Masium, 1628). 84. Rovenius, Reipublicae Christianae, 70. 85. Ibid., 11. 86. Ibid., 77. 87. Ibid. 88. Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 2:255–260; F. van Hoeck, SJ, Schets van de geschiedenis der Jezuieten in Nederland (Nijmegan: Dekker en van de Vegt, 1940), 142–145. 89. Johannes van Neercassel, Constitutiones servandae a Presbyteris in Foederato Belgio Laborantibus (Louvain: Guilielmi Stryckwant, 1688), 7. 90. A. Van Lommel, SJ, ed., “Descriptio status in quo nunc est religio Catholica in confoederatis Belgii-Provincii anno 1622,” AAU 20 (1893): 355–356; G. Brom, “Vier missie-verslagen, van 1635 tot 1645 door Rovenius te Rome ingediend,” AAU 18 (1890): 3. 91. OBC, no. 222, van Heuman, Descriptio visitationis episcopi Castoriensis per Zelandiam [August 8], 1664. For similar criticisms, see OBC, nr 190, Descriptio ordinis hierarchici cleri Hollandiae, May 15–16, 1623, no. 231, Visitatierapporten (Zeeland) [1683]. 92. Kapittel #275, no. 194, Voorschriften door de apostolische vicaris gegeven betreffende religeuzen en buitenlandse priesters, n.d.; Kapittel #225, no. 352, Vosmeer to Coopal, August 1590. 93. Kapittel #225, no. 360, Marius to Costerus, July 26, August 19, 1631; “Zacharias de Metz to Pope Alexander VII, October 17, 1659,” in G. Brom, ed., “Briefwisseling der Vicarii Apostolici met den H. Stoel,” AAU 34 (1908): 55–56. 94. A. van Lommel, SJ, ed., “Relatio visitationis missionis S. J. in Hollandia a Patre Guilielmo Bauters 1628,” AAU 6 (1879): 237–239. See Hoeck, Schets van de geschiedenis der Jezuieten, 127–146. 95. Van Lommel, “Relatio visitationis,” 241. 96. G. A. Meijer, ed., “Missie-verslagen der Dominicanen ingediend bij de Propaganda Fide,” AAU 49 (1929): 141. 97. Meijer, “Missie-verslagen der Dominicanen,” 142–143, 144. 98. Kapittel #225, no. 356, van Schorel, November 19, 1624. 99. Gerrit vanden Bosch, “Pionnen op een schaakbord? De rol van klopjes in de belangenstrijd tussen jezuieten en seculiere priesters in de Republiek omstreeks 1609–1610,” Trajecta 9 (2000): 252–283. 100. Vanden Bosch, “Pionnen,” 252–83; SJ. LA., A.C. 2, 1659 (Amsterdam). 101. Kapittel #225, no. 355, Copia litterae Illmi. Nuncii Aplici. Belgii, January 3, 1609. 102. OBC, no. 10, Feijt to Vosmeer, March 30–April 9, 1609, no. 10, Dordrecht to Vosmeer, April 5, 15, 1609, no. 10, Gorcum to Vosmeer, May 24, 1609; Kapittel #225, no. 355, Eggius to Vosmeer, March 17–April 1, 1609.

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103. This entire paragraph and section on the conflict over the virgins is indebted to vanden Bosch, “Pionnen,” 252–283. 104. OBC, no. 12, Goes to Vosmeer, July 21, 1611. 105. Charles H. Parker, The Reformation of Community: Social Welfare and Calvinist Charity in Holland, 1572–1620 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 155–190. 106. C. P. Hooft, Memoriën en adviesen (Utrecht: Kemink en zoon, 1871), 54; Johannes Uytenbogaert, Kerckelijcke historie vervatende verscheyden gedenckwaerdige saecken, inde Christenheyt voorgevallen, van het jaer vierhondert af, tot in het jaer sesthienhondert ende negenthien, voornamentlick in dese Geunieerde provintien (Rotterdam: B. Wagens, 1647), 799. 107. Van Lommel, “Descriptio status [1622],” 380; OBC, no. 385, Summarium relationis missionis Hollandiae; A. van Lommel, SJ, ed., “Relatio seu descriptio status religionis catholicae in Hollandia etc. Quam Romae collegit et exhibuit Alexandro septimo et cardinalibus congregationis de propaganda fide, Jacobus de la Torre, Kal. Septembris Anno 1656,” AAU 10 (1882): 124; “P. Michael Paludanus to Propaganda Fide,” August 21, 1639, in J. D. M. Cornelissen, ed., Romeinsche bronnen voor den kerkelijke toestand der Nederlanden onder de Apsotolische Vicarissen, 1592–1727. 1592–1651 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1932), 1:592. 108. Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme, 1:422–433; L. J. Rogier, Eenheid en scheiding: Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 1477–1813 (Utrecht: Het Spectrum, 1968), 107. 109. John P. Elliott, “Protestantization in the Northern Netherlands, a Case Study: The Classis of Dordrecht, 1572–1640,” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1990), 397–401; Christina Ligtenberg, Armezorg te Leiden tot het einde van de 16e eeuw (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1908), 231–233; Spaans, Haarlem, 163–189; H. ten Boom, “De diaconie der gereformeerde kerk te Tiel van 1578–1795,” Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis NS 55 (1975): 32–69; A. Ph. F. Wouters and P. H. A. M. Abels, Nieuw en ongezien: kerk en samenleving in de classis Delft en Delfland, 1572–1621 (Delft: Eburon, 1994), 1:303, 2:239; A. Th. van Deursen, Bavianen en slijkgeuzen: Kerk en kerkvolk ten tijde van Maurits en Oldenbarnevelt (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1974), 102–127; Parker, Reformation of Community, 155–157; Herman Roodenburg, Onder censuur: De kerkelijke tucht in de gereformeerde gemeente van Amsterdam, 1578–1700 (Hilversum: Verloren, 1990), 112. For those who have adopted Rogier’s conclusion, see J. A. de Kok, Nederland op de breuklijn RomeReformatie: Numerieke aspecten van protestantisering en katholieke herleving in de noordelijke Nederlanden, 1580–1880 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1964), 11; J. G. C. A. Briels, Zuid-Nederlanders in de Republiek, 1572–1630: Een demografische en cultuurhistorische studie (St. Niklaas: Danthe, 1985), 276; Hubert Nusteling, Welvaart en werkgelegenheid in Amsterdam, 1540–1860: Een relaas over demographie, economie, en social politiek van een wereldstad (Amsterdam: Bataafsche Leeuw, 1985), 164–165. 110. Joke Spaans, “Religious Policies in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic,” in R. Po-Chia Hsia and H. F. K van Nierop, eds., Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 83–84; quotation, 84. See also Joke Spaans, Armenzorg in Friesland 1500–1800: Publieke zorg en particuliere liefdadigheid in zes Freise steden Leeuwarden, Bolsward, Franeker, Sneek, Dokkum, en Harlingen (Hilversum: Verloren; Leeuwarden, Fryske Akademy, 1997), chapter 4.

296

Notes to Pages 230–236

111. G. Brom, ed., “De Insinuatio Status Provinciarum, in quibus haeretici dominantur,” AAU 17 (1889): 163. 112. Kapittel #225, no. 358, Paludanus to Catz, October 31 [1618]. 113. Joke Spaans, “Katholieken onder curatele: Katholieke armenzorg als ingang voor overheidsbemoeienis in Haarlem in de achttiende eeuw,” Trajecta 3 (1994): 111–112. 114. For concerns about Catholic poor leaving for Reformed churches, see OBC, no. 232, Groningen to van Neercassel [ July] 1685, February 29–March 10, 1686. 115. OBC, no. 237, Over inzameling van aalmoezen door religieuzen tijdens het jubilé, October 8, 1683. 116. OBC, no. 90, Philippus Rovenius to Gemeente Rotterdam tot aanstelling van curateurs van de armen, July 20, 1628, no. 252, van Neercassel to Utrecht, September 22, 1683. 117. Kapittel #225, no. 359, Ordononnces de visite de Judocus Catzius, July 1635. 118. OBC, no. 90, Rovenius to Rotterdam, July 20, 1628; SJ. LA., A.C. 2, 1653 (Rotterdam), 1656 (Delft). 119. Parker, Reformation of Community, 52–54. 120. OBC, no. 90, Rovenius to Rotterdam, July 20, 1628, no. 189, Aan de geestelijkheid om geldelijke bijdragen voor de Katholieken van Voorburg, September 21, 1648. See also OBC, no. 252, van Neercassel to Utrecht, Septbember 22, 1683. 121. Kapittel #225, no. 359, Ordonnances Catzius, July 1635; OBC, no. 237, Inzameling van aalmoezen, October 8, 1683. 122. Spaans, “Katholiken onder curatele,” 110–130. 123. OBC, no. 232, Groningen to van Neercassel [ July] 1685, no. 254, van Neercassel to Groningen, August 4, 1685. 124. OBC, no. 254, van Neercassel to Groningen, June 16–26, 30, 1685. 125. OBC, no. 232, Groningen to van Neercassel [ July], October 6–16, November 21–December 1, 1685, February 29–March 10, 1686. 126. OBC, no. 232, Groningen to van Neercassel, June 16–26, 1685, no. 336, Maassluis to Codde, March 3, 30, April 12, May 25, 1688. 127. For example, see OBC, no. 14, Vigilius and Dusseldorpius to Vosmeer, September 11–21, 1613. 128. OBC, no. 14, Vigilius and Dusseldorpius to Sasbout Vosmeer, September 11–21, 1613, no. 90, Rovenius to Rotterdam, July 20, 1628. Other references to lay leadership in poor relief include OBC, no. 232, Groningen to van Neercasssel, June 16–26, 1685, no. 252, van Neercassel to Utrecht, September 22, 1683; Kapittel #225, no. 359, Ordonnances Catzius, July 1635. 129. OBC, no. 90, Rovenius to Rotterdam, July 20, 1628; Kapittel #225, no. 359, Ordonnances Catzius, July 1635; OBC, no. 7, van Arnhem to Vosmeer, September 8, November 10 and 27, December 29, 1606, no. 8, January 15, 24, 1607, no. 17, Vosmeer to van Arnhem, Feburary 17, 1607. 130. OBC, no. 189, Geestelijkheid Voorburg, no. 237, Inzameling van aalmoezen. See also no. 252, van Neercassel to Utrecht, September 22, 1683. 131. OBC, no. 232, Groningen to van Neercassel, June 16–26 and [ July], 1685, no. 14, Medenblick to Oirschot (forwarded to Sasbout Vosmeer), January 23, 1613, no. 378, Visitatierapporten, 1691–1695.

Notes to Pages 237–241

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Index

Aa, Joannes Nicolaeszoon van de, 156 Acculturation, 18–19, 77; and Dutch Catholics, 21, 45 Ackermans, Gian, 87, 157, 213, 216, 217 Adriani, Henry, 29, 139 Adriani, Pieter, 176 Adrianus, Joannis, 144 Adrichem family, 158 Adrichem, Christian van, 28 Aijtta family, 158 Aitsinger, Michael, 29 Akerboom, Fr., 170–171 Akersloot, 118 Albrecht, Archduke, 31 Alexander VII, 36, 40, 70, 223 Alkemade, 155 Alkemade, Fr., 168, 169 Alkmaar: martyrs in, 56; priests in, 94, 223; Catholic community in, 183; and patronage, 214 Alva, Duke of, 151 Amandi, Martin, 137, 149 Amersfoort, 179; Catholic community in, 1, 53, 162, 165; priests in 63, 147

Amsterdam, 214; spiritual virgins in, 44, 157; Catholic activity in, 45, 51, 52, 78, 103; and tolerance, 53; publishing in, 56, 124; Catholic community in, 94,150, 153, 154, 155, 156, 163, 198–201; priests in, 95, 135, 137, 224; and clerical education, 96; wealth in, 102, 205–206, 217; miracle of, 178–179; poor relief in, 229 Anabaptists, 47, 77, 138 Anti-Catholic edicts, 2, 9–11, 47, 144, 153; enforcement of, 2, 47, 48; language in, 49 Antwerp: exiles in 28, 29; priests in, 55; and publishing, 124, 127, 129, 139 Appellants, 34 Aquaviva, Claudio, 39 Aquinas, Thomas, 87 Arentszoon, Cornelis, 131–132, 180 Ariens, Neeltje, 130 Arnhem, 109, 153; Catholic community in, 99, 175–176 Arnhem, Wessel van, 236 Arnold, Godfried, 96 Arnoldi, Cornelius, 131 Assendelft, Willem van, 37, 194

320 Asturias, 76 Augustinian order, 1, 39, 237, 239–240 Augustinianism (also neo-Augustinianism), 33, 35–36; and apostolic vicars, 43; influence on clerical education, 81, 83–84, 87–88, 97; and confession and penance, 127; and discipline, 136

Baer, de family, 155, 158 Ban, J.A., 166, 219 Baptism, 1 Bargius, Joannes, 39 Barnes, Andrew, 72 Baronius, Caesar, 6, 55, 133, 146–147 Bauters, Willem, 108 Beaumont, Frans Pieterszoon, 156 Been, Joannes, 96 Bellarmine, Robert, 6, 30, 64, 82, 129, 132 Benedictine order, 108 Benthem, Cornelis, 65 Bentivoglio, Gui, 226, 227 Bergaigne, Joseph, 146 Berge, Christian van den, 143 Bergen, Maximilian van, 69 Berghe, Paul van den, 50 Bérulle, Pierre de, 84 Beverwijk, van family, 157 Beyerlink, Lawrence, 29 Beza, Theodore, 129 Bije, Cornelis de, 156 Bijsterveld, A. J., 71 Blackwell, George, 34 Blockhoven, Theodore van: and clerical education, 82, 86, 92, 95, 96, 97; Augustinian views, 135; and patronage, 205, 209, 211, 219 Bloemaert, Alsten, 37, 194 Bodegraven: priests in, 164 Boetgreve, Madame, 205, 217 Bont, de Fr., 161 Boom, Adrian, 227 Bophoren, Anna, 210 Borromeo, Carlo, 75, 135 Bossche, Anna van den, 163 Bossy, John, 151, 156, 158, 240 Bouchorst, Josijna van der, 131 Bovenkarspel, 120, 166

Index Boxtel, 180 Boxtel, Martin, 126 Brabant, bishop of, 64 Brandt, Gerard, 2 Brantius, Joannes, 237–238 Breda, 83, 98 Brederode, Hendrik van, 151 Brethren of Common Life, 73, 137 Brink, Bakhuizen van den, 11 Bronchorst, Madame van, 130 Brouwer, Jacob de, 224 Bruijn, de Fr., 118 Brussels, 15, 31, 69; internuncio of, 32, 226 Bucer, Martin, 129 Budapest, 113 Bugge, Agatha, 205 Bugge, Dirck, 156 Bugge, Joannes, 122, 143, 205 Bugge, Theodore, 205 Burch, Adriaen Janszoon van der, 156

Calvin, John, 6, 129 Cambrai, archbishop of, 69 Canisius, Pieter, 126, 143 Cannius, Jacob, 234 Carleton, Sir Dudley, 151 Carthusian order, 39 Castile, 76, 113 Catechisms, 137–144 Calvinism: attitudes about tolerance, 2; influence on Dutch Catholicism, 18; Catholic struggle against, 28; spread of, 78, 138; and catechism, 141; and discipline, 148. See also Dutch Reformed Church Cathden, Joost van, 164, 215 Cats, Balduin, 32, 35, 96, 109, 119 Cats, Judocus, 65, 131, 205, 206; and clerical education, 79, 81; and spiritual virgins, 138; and patronage, 209, 211; and poor relief, 231 Charles the Bold, 178 Charles V, 178 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 71 Church property, 190; secularization of, 4, 9, 70, 191–203; and patronage, 22

Index Claeren, Cornelis, 140 Claes, Elsie, 131 Clement VIII, 31, 34, 39, 83, 98, 107, 184 Clement XI, 36, 38 Clergy, Catholic, 17; relations with laity, 16, 19, 21–22, 70, 114–115, 149–150; formation of, 69–111; influence on clerical education, 86, 97; pastoral ethos of, 115–122; physical labor, 121; and confession and penance, 123–134; and spiritual virgins, 131; and discipline, 134–148; preaching and teaching ministries, 137–144; as patrons, 212. See also Priests Cnobbaert, Hendrickje, 142 Cock, Theodore de, 36 Codde, Pieter, 32; removal of as apostolic vicar, 17, 36; views on Dutch government, 35, 36; view of Holland Mission, 40; Augustinianism of, 43, 84, 148; and persecution, 53; and clerical education, 95, 96, 97; and Jansenism, 84; and discipline, 109, 135; correspondence with Catholics, 117, 118, 147; promoting a pastoral ethos, 119; assignment of priests, 121, 166, 167; views on confession and penance, 125, 128; and miracles, 180, 181 Collegio Urbano, 80, 87, 91, 96 Collegium Alticollense, 34, 38, 139, 239; founding of, 21, 33, 204; exiles influence on, 29; transfer to Louvain, 36; and clerical formation, 79–82, 84–87, 89, 91, 93, 96–99, 146; in promoting a pastoral ethos, 115; and sodality, 184; and patronage, 205, 208, 223 Collegium Pulcheriae Mariae Virginis, 21, 38, 205, 239; influence on clerical formation, 80, 82, 84–86, 88–89, 91–93, 95, 96, 97, 98, 145; in promoting a pastoral ethos, 115; and patronage, 206–214, 223 Cologne, 32,175: Dutch Catholic exiles in, 15, 28; seminary in 21, 41; and publishing, 57; 124, 139; synod at,

321 72–73; educational formation in, 79–81, 82, 83, 86, 96, 97, 139, 184, 204 Comerford, Kathleen, 71, 76, 203 Confession and penance (see also penance and confession), 123–134, 190, 239–240; gender hierarchy in, 125, 129, 130; and heresy, 129, 132–134 Confessional coexistence (see also religious choice, religious plurality, tolerance), 3, 9, 11, 48; in Reformation Europe, 12 Confessionalization, 18–19 Connivance, 2, 11, 52. See also Tolerance Conscience, liberty of: as Dutch political principle, 10; as a sacramental principle, 10, 12,190; and confession and penance, 123–134 Coopal, Willem, 30, 37, 194, 199–201, 223; and poor relief, 230 Coopmans, Gerard, 99, 161, 163 Coornhert, Dirck Volketszoon, 2 Cornelis, Beatris, 131 Corsen, Dirrickie Pieter, 123–124 Coster, Francis, 7, 28, 56, 57, 120, 126, 129, 139; organizer of sodalities, 183–184 Counter-Reformation: and Dutch Catholicism, 18, 20, 239, 242; demands of, 25, 60; propaganda for, 29; influence on apostolic vicars, 32; and clerical formation, 77, 81, 148; and discipline, 113–114, 134, 150; and devotional literature, 124; and confession and penance, 132; layclerical relations, 149–150; and piety, 184, 189 Cousebant, Joseph, 212 Cousebant, Nicolas, 44, 134; as seminary organizer, 78, 79, 81, 83; and patronage, 204 Cracht, Stephen, 79 Craenhals, Adriaen, 164 Crespin, Jean, 133 Cuijck, 71 Cuijper, Filip de, 67 Culemborg, 101; Catholic community in, 45, 161; tolerance in, 54

322 Curators, 45 Cyprian, 107

Deckers, Michiel, 104 Delft, 28, 29, 33, 161, 179, 201; priests in, 30, 143, 156, 157; Catholic community in, 40, 45, 153, 163, 183; spiritual virgins in, 44; persecution or tolerance in, 54; Brethren of Common Life in, 73; poor relief in, 229, 232 Den Briel, 78 Deursen, A. Th. van (also Arie van Deursen), 10, 27 Deventer, 34, 94, 117, 153, 161; Brethren of Common Life in, 73; and clerical education, 80, 81; Catholic community in, 166 Deventer, Henricus van, 49 Devotio moderna, 186 Discipline, House of, 106, 163, 229 Dirxszoon, Wouter, 99, 163 Dobbius, Joannes, 99, 164 Doesburg: Brethren of Common Life in, 73 Dominican order, 39, 51, 109; and patronage, 224–225 Doncker, Theodore, 146 Doornick, Fr, 136 Dordrecht: Catholic community in, 136, 159, 163; priests in, 146, 170, 216–217, 219; poor relief in, 191, 229 Douai, 29, 84 Drenckwaert, Cornelis, 158–159 Drenthe: priests in, 102–103 Drexel, Jeremias, 126, 129 Duc, Cornelius, 111 Duijssel, Cornelis van, 214 Duijssel, Francis van, 213, 214 Duijtis, Simon, 209 Duivenszoon, Jan, 78, 154, 156, 199 Dusseldorp, Francis, 29, 121, 134, 215, 234; and clerical education, 83, 93 Dussen, van der family, 156, 158 Dussen, Pieter van der, 163 Dutch Catholic religious identity, 8; Calvinist influence on 14, 18, 25,

Index 46–58; national traditions in, 14–15, 175–189; and parishes, 41; and clerical education, 86; and oral tradition, 176–177; and miracles, 178–184 Dutch Reformed Church: and Catholic identity, 25, 46–58; as the public church, 26; and marriage, 61–62, 67–68; and poor relief (also diaconate), 228, 229 Duvenvoirde, Arend van, 151 Duvenvoirde family, 155, 158 Duvenvoirde, Jacob van, 154 Duyst, Cornelis, 39

Edam, 54; priests in, 214 Edell, Margariet d’, 217, 218 Edell, Paschina d’, 218 Edinburgh, 113 Egbertszoon, Lambert, 53 Eggius, Albert, 29, 34, 37, 131, 154; ransom of, 50; banishment of, 54; apprehension of, 57; and clerical education, 78, 80, 81, 83, 92, 94, 96; and discipline, 109, 134; family, 156; assignment of priests, 161; and church property, 194, 199; and patronage, 204, 212; conflict with Jesuits, 226, 227 Eijckel, Elizabeth van, 111 Eikenduinen, 179, 182 Eijlers, Gerard, 118 Eiteren, 179 Elburg, 153 Elreborn, Melchoir, 195 Emden, 28 Emmeloord, 122 Emmerik, 83, 109, 122 Engelsche, Gerrit van, 51 England, 34, 240; priests in, 73, 78, 101; gentry, 153; Catholics in, 155, 156, 158 Enkhuizen, 53; Catholic community in, 172–174 Enlightenment, 20 Erasmus, 71 Est, Willem Hessels van, 182 Exiles, in Reformation, 27–28

Index Fabritius, Andreas, 69 Fabritius, Cornelius, 122 Feijt, Jacob, 158, 218 Feijt, Lambert, 54, 212 Fiesole, 203 Flanders, bishop of, 64 France, 78, 97 Fopsdochter, Aeltge Pieters, 198–201 Fopsdochter, Meijnu, 198–201 Forster, Marc, 72, 113–114 Foxe, John, 133 Franciscan order, 39, 49, 109, 122, 135, 142, 146, 161, 162, 165, 181, 199, 225, 239–240 Frangipani, Ottavio Mirto, 31, 107, 134 Friesland, 50; priests in, 102–103, 142; Catholics in, 154, 158; spiritual virgins in, 157 Frijhoff, Willem, 11, 24, 102 Fruin, Robert, 11

Gelderland, 151, 153, 154, 155, 235; priests in, 102–103, 142 Generality Lands, 147, 182 Geneva, 28, 113 Gerards, Balthasar, 29, 33 German College, 74–75, 76, 83 Germany, 31, 78,151; priests in, 73, 97, 98; Catholic connections, 103, 107; pilgrimage sites in, 180, 182 Gerritszoon, Eewout Arent, 154 Gestel, van Fr., 170 Geyl, Pieter, 14 Ghent, 76 Goes: Catholic community in, 1, 121; spiritual virgins in, 157 Goes, Christian van der, 153 Gorcum, 35; martyrs of, 27, 56, 181–182; priests in, 94 Gouda, 27, 28, 136, 152; spiritual virgins in, 44, 157; Catholic community in, 45, 52, 153, 155, 161–162; publishing in, 57; Brethren of Common Life in, 73; priests in, 157 Gouda, Cornelis, 209 Glippers, 152

323 Graeve, Maria van, 180 Gregory XIII, 30, 194 Griffinus, Sara, 217 Groenendijk, 118 Groenhout, C. Dirxszoon, 170 Groenhout, Fr., 121 Groenlo, 111, 122 Groningen, 155, 219; ecclesiastical organization of, 32; and clerical education, 80, 81; priests in, 102–103; Catholic community in, 162, 170; poor relief in, 232–234, 236 Grootebroeck, 105

Haarlem, 21, 131, 201; site of Catholic activity 17, 30, 33, 36, 45, 94, 103; former diocese of, 29; ecclesiastical organization of, 32, 176; site of Cathedral chapter, 37; tolerance in, 54; publishing in, 57; and clerical education, 81; wealth in, 102; Catholic community in, 153, 155; spiritual virgins in, 157; poor relief in, 229 Haarlem Chapter, 29, 36–38, 137, 143, 146; support for Pieter Codde, 36; conflict with apostolic vicars, 80, 205, 206; influence in clerical education, 81, 85, 90, 91, 92, 93, 95; assignment of priests, 110, 104, 108, 111, 121; and clerical discipline, 105–106, 109, 110, 111; diocesan vision of, 116, 117; and devotional literature, 124–125; and confession and penance, 130; and relics, 181; and sodality, 184; and church property, 193–195, 197, 199, 203–204; and patronage, 208–214, 215, 219; and poor relief, 231 Haeston, Herbert, 158–159 Hague, The, 201; Catholic community in, 45, 151, 157; spiritual virgins in, 157 Haigh, Christopher, 78, 101 Haks, Donald, 68 Halling, Fr., 170

324 Handel, 180, 182 Hanian, Fr., 104–105 Hanlon, Gregory, 12 Harderwijk, 120, 153 Harlingen, 99, 161 Haskinck, Fr., 119 Hasselt, 179, 182 Heerenberg, 118 Heijningen van Fr., 219 Heilige Stede, 178 Heiloo, 179 Hensbroek, 166 Heresy: informing Catholic identity, 8; opposition to 20, Heretics: in medieval Europe, 5; polemics against, 7 Hermens, Adrian, 161 ’s Hertogenbosch, 83, 92, 98; bishopric of, 182 Heuman, Ludolphus van, 222–223 Heussen, Gerard van, 119 Heussen, Hugo Francis van, 96, 133, 187, 188 Hilvarenbeek, 71 Hoffman, Philip, 72 Hofland, Cornelis, 209 Hogenheuvel, 81, 88, 94, 239; in promoting a pastoral ethos, 115; and clerical formation, 145 Holland: Catholics in, 1, 29, 151, 152, 153, 155; seminaries and, 21; priests in, 102–103 Holland Mission, 1; leaders’ views, 10; and exiles, 15; diocesan vision in, 25, 100–101, 115, 116, 145, 240; origins of, 31; organizational structure, 32–33; and apostolic vicars, 33; and national traditions, 55; and marriage, 61–68; and clerical education, 77–98; conflict with religious orders, 83; and clerical discipline, 105–106, 107; assignment of priests, 108, 111; in promoting a pastoral ethos, 115; and confession and penance, 123–125, 129–130; and religious discipline, 134–135; and preaching, ministry, 140; and catechism instruction, 141, 142; view of laity, 150–151, 166, 169;

Index family connections in, 158, and Protestantism, 188; and sodality, 189; and poor relief, 191, 232, 236; and church property, 193, 195–196, 197; and patronage, 204, 215 Holy, Catharina Ghijsbrechts van, 218 Hooff, Hugo van, 118 Hooft, Arnout, 14 Hooft, C. P., 2 Hooft, Dirk, 164 Hooft, Joannes, 96 Hoogwoud, 166 Hoorn, 166; Catholic community in, 119, 164; spiritual virgins in 157 Hoove, Jacob van, 218 Hop, Cornelis, 164 Horst, Reynier Lambertszoon van der, 153 Houten, D. van, 112 Houtman, Jacob, 122 Hoven, Anthonij van, 214 Huygens, Gommarus, 81

Illyricus, Flacius, 6 Innocent X, 36 interconfessional relations, 6–7, 11–14; influence on Dutch Catholicism, 20 Ischa, Arnold ab, 199 Isselt, Michael ab, 29 Italy, 97, 98

Jacobs, Jan, 87 Jacobszoon, Heyman, 144 Jacobszoon, Wouter, 27 Jagt, Herman, 209 Jansdochter, Geert, 196 Jansen, Cornelis, 36, 84, 88; seminary president, 38; polemics against Protestants, 89 Jansenism (also Jansenists), 21, 135–136, 161, 177, 186, 188: conflict with Jesuits, 15, 26; and Augustinianism, 33; and religious division, 35; views on confession and penance, 127, 129 Janssen, Joost, 180

Index Jansson, Jacob, 89–90, 92, 217 Jesuits, 16, 55, 123–124,164, 165, 239–240; conflict with Jansenists, 15, 36; origins in Holland Mission, 39; relations with apostolic vicars, 39, 41–43, 99, 107–109, 171, 172–174; view of Holland Mission, 41; and persecution, 49, 50, 51; conflict with secular priests, 56, 146; and Thomism, 118–119; and Trent, 119; physical labor, 121, 122; views on confession and penance, 126, 128–129; and devotional literature, 145; and catechisms, 144, 145; and miracles, 180, 181; and sodalities, 183–184, 185, 189; and devotion, 186; conflicts over patronage, 222–227; and poor relief, 231, 234. See also Society of Jesus Jews, 47 Jonge, Theodore de, 172

Kabauw, Madame, 156, 217 Kampen, 49, 183 Kaplan, Benjamin, 3, 52, 65, 238 Kelders, Fr., 121 Kempis, Thomas à, 84 Kennemerland, 155 Ketter, Goswin de, 163–164 Kevelaer, 180, 182 Knights of St. John, 196 Knuttel, Willem, 11 Kooi, Christine, 11 Korteraar, 165 Kralingen, 179 Krommenie, 105, 219 Kronenburg, J. A. F., 186 Kuilenburg, 183 Kuinre, 104 Kwadijk, 214

Laity (also curators), 20: role in managing parish, 5, 41, relations with priests, 5, 16, 19, 21–22, 70, 114–115, 147, 150; elite leadership of, 19, 151–174; devotion of, 21;

325 women’s roles, 44–45, 130–131; influence in clerical education, 94, 95, 97; expectations of clergy, 105, 110, 160–162; views on confession and penance, 126; views on discipline, 136; views on preaching, 139–140; loss of political status, 152–155; and relics, 198; and patronage, 204–214, 216–227; involvement in poor relief, 228–236 Lambertschagen, 102 Lamzweerde, Alexander van, 162, 170 Langestreeck, 137 Langeraar, 165, 176 Laren, 179 Le Jay, Claude, 74–75 Leeuw, Willem de, 227 Leeuwarden: ecclesiastical organization of, 32; Catholic community in, 45, 53, 149, 170; persecution in, 50; and clerical education, 80, 81; priests in, 136, 137; elite Catholics in, 155 Leiden, 131, 159; Catholic community in, 40, 49153, 154, 161, 162, 163, 201; priests in 51, 93, 142, 144, 176; publishing in, 57; spiritual virgins in, 170,171; poor relief in, 191 Lemmens, Fr. 121 Leonis, Willem, 39 Lessius, Leonard Leunis, Joannis, 183 Liber Fundationum, 207–214 Lichtenhorst, Johan van, 94 Liefhebbers, 26, 35, 147 Lindan, Willem, 29 Lingen, 94; Catholic community in, 45, 118, 161; priests in, 219 Lochem, 111 Loeff, Jan Michielszoon, 154, 199–201 London, 28 Louis XIV, 36 Louvain, 15, 29; and clerical education, 78–79, 81, 83, 86, 87, 88, 93, 139, 204 Loyola, Ignatius, 75, 76, 127, 145, 180 Ludolphi, Henricus, 94 Luik, bishopric of, 182 Lumey, Count, 27, 181

Index

326 Luther, Martin, 129 Lutherans, 47 Lyon, 113

Maagdenhuis, 198–201 Maassluis, 171–172, 234 Maastricht, 83, 98, 183 Maes, Petrus, 96 Makeblijde, Louis, 126, 143 Makkum, 51 Mallio, Fr., 161 Marriage: sacrament of, 1; Catholics and, 59–68; clandestine, 60–61; interfaith, 61–68,158; and Trent, 162 Marius, Leonard, 34, 37, 80, 109, 111, 178–179; health of, 121; conflict with Jesuits, 223 Marquette, Lord, 196 Marquis, Fr., 121 Martyrdom, 2 Mathenesse, Johan van, 154,158 Mauden, David van, 111 Maximilian I, 178 Medenblick, Rumoldus, 51 Meerbeck, Adrian van, 29, 55, 129, 133 Meijnanden, Fr., 105 Melis, Pieter, 93, 135, 205 Merode, Hothaert van, 210 Messina, 76 Metelen, Fr., 161 Metz, Zacharias de, 110, 116, 223–224 Meulen, Benthema van, 95 Middelburg, ecclesiastical organization of, 32; and clerical education, 80, 81; priests in, 103 Middelcoop, Jaeingije, 142 Middelie, 214 Mierlo, Godfried van, 37 Mij, David vander, 211 Milde, Jan Adrianszoon de, 154 Modersohn, Justus, 135 Moldijck, Bernard, 51 Monnikendam, 214 Montfort, 101, 214 Moordrecht, 146

More, Thomas, 71 Morone, Giovanni, 75 Motley, John, 11 Mudzaert, Dionysius, 55–56, 133

Naaldwijk family, 158 Nadal, Jeronimo, 76 Neercassel, Johannes van, 32, 35; conflict with Count of Warfuse 12, 167–170; view of Dutch government, 33, 36, 89; view of discipline, 36, 105, 107, 109, 135, 136, 137; Augustinianism of, 42, 84, 135, 148; assignment of priests, 49; correspondence with Catholic communities, 51, 99, 104, 118, 121, 155–156, 162; and persecution, 53; and marriage, 66; and clerical education, 79, 81–83, 85–87, 90, 92, 93, 95, 96, 97; and assignment of priests, 104–105, 165, 166, 170–171; in promoting a pastoral ethos, 116, 117, 119, 120, 122; physical labor, 120–121; views on confession and penance, 125, 128, 130; and spiritual virgins, 131; views on preaching, 139, 140; and catechisms, 141; family, 162; relations with Catholics, 163, 164, 170; and sodality, 184; and poor relief, 191, 231, 233–234; and patronage, 204, 205, 206, 209, 211, 217–218, 219; diocesan vision, 222 Neijs, Thomas, 104 Nes, Dominicus van, 122 Nicodemism, 156, 159, 193 Nicolai, Anna, 209 Niedorp, 136 Nierop, Henk van, 152 Nieuwendam, 104 Nijmegen, 82, 98, 153, 183 Nirenberg, David, 11 Nispen, Amandus van, 166 Nivelt, Wilhelmina van, 158 Nomius, Nicolas, 38, 80, 116, 180, 181, 225 Noordegraaf, Leo, 122 Norman, Fr., 118

Index Old Catholic Episcopacy, 36 Oldenbarnevelt family, 158 Oldenzaal, 34, 94, 214 Oly, Catharina Jans, 132, 138, 157, 240 O’Malley, John, 76 Ommeren, Stephan, van, 167 Opmeer, 166 Opmeer, Pieter, 29, 84, 182 Orange, William of, 29, 33, 152, 193 Oratorian: influence on Dutch Catholicism, 36, 184; and clerical education, 78, 80, 83, 84, 87; influence on confession and penance, 125 Ornia, Gerbrand, 164 Otten, Joannes, 109 Oudenaarde, martyrs in, 27 Oudewater, 118 Overijssel, 154, 155; priests in, 102–103 Oviedo, 76

Palatinate, the, 28 Paludanus, Joannes, 230 Paludanus, Michael, 1, 237–238 Paris, 84, 113 Patronage, 204–227; conflicts between secular and regular clergy, 222–227 Paul III, 72, 74 Paus College (Papal College, also College of Adrian VI), 78, 81 Patronage, 191, 201; rights, 167–170 Pelt, Pieter, 234 Pelt, Pieter van, 167 Penance and confession, 123–134, 239; gender hierarchy in, 125, 129, 130; and heresy, 129, 132–134. See also Confession and penance Persecution: in Reformation Europe, 2, 14; of Dutch Catholics, 3–4, 46, 48–58, 238; as factor of growth, 4; in Dutch Catholic historiography, 11; contemporary Catholics view of, 12–13, 53; and public space, 48–50; ransom of priests, 50; banishment of priests, 51 Pethijn, Albert, 53 Petri, Johannes, 126, 128

327 Petri, Wilhelm, 176 Philip II, 27 Pieters, Winine, 161 Plague, 122; as spiritual metaphor, 129, 132 Pole, Reginald, 74, 75 Polemics (also polemicists), 7, 13, 132–134, 188; and clerical formation, 88–89, 97 Polman, P., 89 Polsbroek, 166 Poor relief, 6, 20, 191, 227–236 Poska, Allyson, 114 Post, R. R., 73 Preaching ministry, 137–144 Priests, 35, 43, 49, 99, 172–174, 220 view of apostolic vicariate, 38, 39–40; view of church property, 41, 192–194; and persecution, 51–52, 53; and marriage, 64, 65, 66; and clerical education, 81, 82, 84, 85, 87, 90, 92; Augustinian influence on, 84; diocesan vision, 101, 145, 221–223; and assignment of priests, 101, 102, 103, 172–174, 176, 218; and discipline, 105, 107, 134; in promoting a pastoral ethos, 116, 119; views on confession and penance, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129; and spiritual virgins, 131; views on preaching, 139, 140; and catechisms, 141, 143; relation with laity, 1501–151; and sodality, 184; and patronage, 206, 211; and poor relief, 231, 232, 234–235 Pritchard, Arnold, 155 Propaganda Fide, 101; links to Dutch Catholics, 15; creation of, 32; mediators in clerical conflicts, 43, 146, 222, 224–225, 227; and marriage, 65, 66 Provicaris, 32, 107, 116, 136 Provisores, 85–86, 91, 96; and patronage, 204, 205, 206, 210, 211 Purmerent, Hendrik Pieterszoon, 157 Purmerent, Petrus, 157 Purmerent, Suibertus, 156 Putten, Louis van der, 170

328 Quesnel, Pasquier, 87

Rampen, Henricus, 93 Recognition fees, 52–53, 57 Reeder, Nicolaas de, 165 Religious choice: as a feature of Dutch society, 1–2, 4, 14; in Reformation Europe, 5–6. See also Confessional coexistence Religious discipline, 6, 16, 21, 134–148; and Christianization, 81; lay resistance to, 26; and the Council of Trent, 33, 34, 41; apostolic vicars’ view of, 36; of priests, 74; and clerical education, 86, 90, 91, 92; in Europe, 113; and confession and penance, 128 Religious pluralism, 3, 12, 53; management of, 20, 24, 46, 48, 57, 58, 238. See also Confessional coexistence Remonstrants, 47 Renkum, 182 Rentes, 209–214 Rethius, Johannes, 28 Rhenen, 109 Rhodianus, Gerhard, 109 Rijnevelt family, 155 Rijswijck, 140, 156, 217 Roermond, martyrs in, 27, 56; bishopric of, 29, 41, 64, 182, 197, 221; and clerical education, 82, 98 Rogier, L. J., 11, 27, 50; protestantization thesis, 14, 229–230; influence on historiography, 15, 20, 100, 155 Roman College, 76 Rome, 31, 78; and clerical education, 80, 97 Romenijboot, Cornelis, 152 Ronssaeuls, Francis, 92 Rooden, Peter van, 47, 145–146 Rosweijde, Heribert, 55 Rotterdam: Catholic community in, 155, 170; poor relief in, 232, 234–235 Rovenius, Phillip, 30, 32, 121, 147, 158; assessment of Catholicism, 1, 49, 70; views on Dutch government,

Index 33, 194; organizer of Holland Mission, 34–35; relations with regular

St. Agnieten Convent, 109 St. Augustine, 84, 135 St. Bavo, 181, 201 St. Barbara Monastery (Cologne), 28 St. Boniface, 55–56, 79, 177, 187, 217; sodality of, 184–186 St. Margaretha Convent, 198, 199 St. Willibrord, 55–56, 79, 177, 187, 217; sodality of, 184–186 Samur, 84 Salmeron, Alfonso, 75 Schagen, 104, 117, 155; Catholic community in, 112–113, 164, 165, 167–170; and patronage, 214, 215; poor relief in, 235 Schagen, Johan Beijeren van, 152, 154 Schagen, Beijeren van family, 155, 158. See also Warfuse, Count of Schaick, Laurence van, 104 Scheerder, Fr., 171–172, 234 Scheppius, Willem, 209, 211 Scherpenheuvel, 180 Scheuring, Joannes, 104 Schoonhoven, 53 Scorel, Victor, 109 Scotland, 113 Scribani, Charles, 29, 126–127 Siccama family, 158 Seminaries, 77–99 Sillingius, Henricus, 49, 104 Silvolt, Theodore, 212, 213 Simons, Menno, 6 Simonszoon, Jan, 219 Sixtius, Sibrand, 37, 79, 95, 109, 137 Sleiden, Johannes, 133 Sloterdijk, 117 Sluis, 183 Smalevelt, Annetgen Ariensdochter van, 196 Smit, Fred, 87 Society of Jesus, 123–124, 145; as agent of Catholic reform, 16, 240;

Index disputes with secular clergy, 22, 25, 36, 107–109, 146; in Antwerp, 29; origins in Holland Mission, 34, 38–39; and persecution, 51; and marriage, 63, 64, 66, 67; and clerical formation, 74–77; and clerical education, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 97, 98, 111; and Thomism, 118–119; and Trent, 118, 119; physical labor, 121, 122; views on confession and penance, 126, 128–129; devotional literature, 145; and catechisms, 144, 145; and miracles, 180, 181; and sodalities, 183, 184, 185, 189; conflict over patronage, 222–227; involvement in poor relief, 231. See also Jesuits Sommeren, van Fr., 166 Southern Netherlands, 31, 80, 84, 103, 144; pilgrimage sites in, 180, 182 Spaans, Joke, 132, 138, 157, 230 Spain, 9, 61, 32, 114, 151 Spanbroek, 166 Spieghel, Hendrik Laurenszoon, 151, 154, 199–201 Spieghel, Jan Laurenszoon, 199–201 Spierdijk, 166 Spiritual virgins (also beguines, kloppen), 20, 44–45, 157; as teachers, 44, 142–143; as patrons, 44, 171, 213, 225–226; devotion of, 130–132; and clergy, 131; and preaching, 138 Spranger, Jacob, 119 Spuelde, Clemens van, 63 Stalpert van der Wiele, Joannes, 49, 56, 140, 156 Steenhoven, Fr., 135 Steenstra, Joannes, 50 Steur, Arnold Willemsen, 51 Stempelse, Johan Gerrit, 28 Straffintveld family, 166 Sueck, Steven, 80 Surius, Bernard, 183 Surius, Lawrence, 28 Swaen, Martin de, 97, 167 Swaen, Willem de, 136, 157 Swaets, Jan, 234

329 Tanara, Sebastiano Antonio, 66 Taylor, Larissa, 71–72 Teaching ministry, 137–144 Teckop, 118 Teethlum, van family, 158 Temming, Fr., 167 Teutonic Knights, 201 Theraets, Virginia, 210 Tholen, 155 Thomism, 119–119, 127 Tibbel, Joanna, 180, 181 Tilburg, 55 Tinga, Johannes, 170 Tiras, Jacob, 49 Toledo, 76 Tolerance: Dutch reputation for, 2–3; contemporary and modern notions, 3, 53; in Reformation Europe, 13–14; historiography on, 20, 48; of non–Reformed Protestants, 47; and Catholics, 54. See also Confessional coexistence; Connivance Torre, Jacob de la, 32, 35, 110; view of Holland Mission, 40; and persecution, 53; and marriage, 66; assessment of Catholic Church, 70; and clerical education, 86; 1656 report of, 122, 155, 158, 177–178; views on preaching, 139; assignment of priests, 164; and sodality, 184 Tourneux, Nicolas le, 87 Toutenburg, Schenck van, 30, 75, 107 Tracy, James D., 16 Trent, Council of (): as agent of Catholic reform, 16; and clerical formation, 21, 71–77, 150; edicts on Protestantism, 25; and marriage, 59, 61–68; and clerical education, 81, 82, 86, 97, 111, 202, 203; and clerical discipline, 107; and the priesthood, 115, 118. See also Tridentine reform Tridentine Reform, 5; and Dutch Catholicism, 16–17, 25, 40, 45, 60, 101, 116, 186, 239; and clergy, 33; and discipline, 34, 41; and confession and penance, 125, 128, 130; and laity, 154, 161; and sodalities, 184–185

330 Trigland, Jacob, 88 Troeltsch, Ernest, 6 Tuscany, 76 Twente: Catholic community in, 40; priests in, 102–103

Uden, 180, 182 Urban VIII, 26, 41, 64 Uten, van der Fr., 140 Utrecht, 1, 214; Union of, 10; site of Catholic activity, 17, 36, 79, 94, 138; archbishopric of, 30, 31, 38, 41, 73, 85, 102; ecclesiastical organization of, 32, 80, 176; French occupation of, 36; Catholic community in, 40, 152, 153, 155, 163, 171, 177, 180; priests in, 51,142; publishing in, 57; Brethren of Common Life in, 73; and clerical education, 81, 90, 91; wealth in, 102, 217; priests in 102–103; spiritual virgins in, 157; lay elites in, 158 Uytenbogaert, Johannes, 2

Valk, Gerrit, 122 Veld, 117, 118 Velde, Martin van, 50, 53 Velsen, Margareta van, 131 Velthoen, Hendrik, 80, 93, 99, 139, 175–176 Verburcht, George, 39 Verhaelen, Fr., 165 Verhaer, Francis, 29 Verhorst, Joannes, 123–124 Vermeulen, Christian, 49 Vermij Gerrit, 53, 157 Véron, Francois, 188 Verrijn, Fr., 170 Verschueren, Fr. 119, 131 Verschuren, Fr., 171 Verstegen, Richard, 29 Vianen, Francis van, 81 Villacastin, Thomas, 126 Vincent, Jacob, 104 Visscher, Jan, 117 Visscher, Reijner de, 146

Index Vlissingen, 166 Voetius, Gisbert, 88 Voorburg, 123–124, 140, 232 Vooren Beeck, Anthonij, 99 Vordenus, Hendrik, 211 Vos, Adam, 161 Vosmeer, Michael, 179, 218 Vosmeer, Pieter Michaelszoon, 83 Vosmeer, Sasbout, 32, 146, 158; organizer of Holland Mission, 17, 34, 107, 138; jurisdiction of, 30; appointment as apostolic vicar, 31; views on Dutch government, 33, 36, 38, 194; relations with Jesuits, 39, 84, 226–227; relations with priests, 41, 144; relations with Dutch government, 50, 51, 59; relations with local Catholics, 53, 121, 149, 162–163, 164, 219; and marriage, 62, 63–64, 66–67; views of Holland Mission, 74, 206, 221, 223; and clerical education, 77–81, 83, 85, 89, 93, 94, 96; Augustinian influence on, 84; assignment of priests, 102, 112–113, 161, 164, 215; in promoting a pastoral ethos, 117; health of, 121, 122; views on confession and penance, 130; and discipline, 134, 136; views on preaching,139, 140; family, 156; and sodality, 184; views on church property, 192–194, 196, 197; and patronage, 204, 212; and poor relief, 228, 230 Vosmeer, Tilman, 29, 152, 163, 179; and clerical education, 83; and patronage, 211 Vries, Jan de, 216, 217 Vronesteijn, de Wael van family, 155,158

Wachtelaer, Joannes, 234 Walenburch, Adrian, 88, 133, 188 Walenburch, Pieter, 88, 133, 188 Walvis, Ignatius, 161–162 Wandelman, Johannes, 211 Warfuse, Count of, 155; conflict with van Neercassel, 12, 167–170. See also Beijeren van Schagen

Index Warmond, 183 Wassenaar, 140, 155 Waterland, 214 Weesp, 146 Weijer, Arnoldus, 166 Wessels, Margarita, 142 Westerblocker, 164 Wevelinchoven, Balthasar van, 94 Wieringen, 104 Wijes, Nicholas, 214 Wijngaarden, Jacob Oem van, 151, 158 Willems, A. A., 162–163, 215 Willems, Claertgen, 162–163, 215 Wilsveen, 179, 182 Wingens, Marc, 182–183 Winssen family, 155 Witt, Theodore de, 176 Witte, Arnold de, 181 Woensel, 71 Wolff, Augustin de, 172 Woltjer, J. J., 159–160

331 Woude, Ad van der, 216 Wormer, 105, 219

Xavier, Francis, 145, 180

Zaffius, Jacob, 54, 104, 137, 194 Zagorin, Perez, 2 Zeeland,1, 101, 122, 222, 228; priests in, 102–103; Catholic community in, 152, 155 Zeevang, 214 Zel, Martin van, 172 Zierikzee, 53 Zijdewind, 121 Zoeterwoude, 50, 53 Zutphen, 41, 153, 155, 197, 214, 235–236; Catholic community in, 165 Zwolle, 99, 153; Brethren of Common Life in, 73; Catholic community in, 162, priests in, 164

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