CHAPTER 6

RELIGIOUS LIFE IN THE NORTHERN BETWEEN THE UNION OF (1579) AND THE PEACE OF MUNSTER (1648)

a. THE NATIONAL CHURCH: MANY-SIDED AND DIVIDED, PRIVILEGED AND IN BONDAGE ( 15 79-1621)

The 'New Geneva' 1579-1584 In 1579 and joined the Union of Utrecht. The former city was one of the most important evangelical centres in the , a 'New Geneva'. After the radicals, Dathenus and Hembyze, had vanished from the scene, the leadership of the city fell to the moderate wing of the Calvinists, to which also belonged Adrian Saravia, a minister who would later play an important role in the Northern Netherlands. Recent historical research has re­ vealed that the number of convinced Calvinists in Ghent at this time hovered round 30% (or about 15,000 people), and that for a period they constituted with their sympathizers the majority of the population. It is apparent in the citizens' watch-rolls of Antwerp that they possessed in that city also a notable following: 51.27% of the population must have remained Roman Catholic, whilst 16.61 % were counted to the Lutherans, approximately 30% to the Calvinists, and about 2% to the Anabaptists. Social and economic factors clearly played their part in the conspicuous growth of Calvinism. How much democratizing strength this tendency had developed is demonstrated by Broeder­ lycke waarschouwingen, (Brotherly Warnings) a pamphlet which appeared in Antwerp, in which the city council was urged to accept 'craftsmen or other traders whether rich or poor ... without regard and indifferently', in order to avoid tyranny and to fulfil the law of the Lord, who 'has created us all equal from one father Adam and mother Eve'. The way things went in the military field brought to an end the Calvinist republic of Ghent in 1584, whilst the freedom of the Reformation in Antwerp also was stifled after the city's fall in 1585. 126 THE NETHERLANDS

Tension between Church and Magistrate Social factors played a part in Utrecht also in the oppos1t10n between the 'parochianen', as the members of the congregation of Sint-Jacob (St James) were called, and the 'consistorialen'. The former were favoured by the higher, Erasmian-minded business circles, to which the city councillors also belonged, supporters of the idea of rulers having authority over the church. The 'consisto­ rialen' stood for a greater independence of the church as regards the authorities, especially as far as the exercise of discipline and the appointment of members of consistories were concerned. The arriv­ al of the Calvinist-minded governor-general Leicester, who chose Utrecht as his residence at the end of April 1586, resulted in 'democrats' taking the place of oligarchs in the city council, and the congregation of Sint-Jacob, now bereft of its patron, was compelled to unite with the consistorial Reformed Church. In Leyden, too, there was tension between magistrate and church. The Arbitration Agreement ('Arbitraal Accoord') made in October 1580 did not grant to the Calvinists the principle of the independence of the church in relation to the state. Caspar Coolhaes kept up his activ­ ity. In 1582 he translated a treatise of Zwingli's son-in-law, Rudolph Gualther, in which he argues for the supremacy of rulers over the church, especially in matters of the exercise of discipline. Coolhaes's supporter, the minister Petrus Hackius, kept on agitat­ ing against what he called the 'new tyranny' of the Reformed, which, in his eyes, was at least as severe as the earlier papal one. With this he delighted the magistrate, who, however liberal and dogmatically tolerant he was, found it difficult to stomach a body such as an independent Reformed consistory with its own rights of discipline and appointment. The Calvinists of Leyden had pinned their hopes on Leicester, too, when in October 1587 they made a violent attempt to trans­ form the city council in a more democratic direction. The amateurishly planned undertaking was abortive. Amongst the three instigators who were brought to trial for implication in the revolt was the elder, Jacob Valmaer. Two other leading members of Reformed Church, the minister Christiaan van de Wouwer and the former minister, at that time a professor at the University of Leyden, Adrian Saravia, were in their absence sentenced to death with confiscation of their property. Even where the authorities were Calvinist-minded, things went badly as regards the independence of the church. John of Nassau, as stadholder of up to 1580, and his son William Louis, stadholder of from 1594, brought in the Reformation on