CHAPTER THREE

AN ORPHAN IN WOERDEN

The Poor People’s Orphanage

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

1 There is no general survey of the history of early modern orphanages in Europe. For the Netherlands: Simon Groenveld, J.J.H. Dekker & Th. Willemse, Wezen en boefjes. Zes eeuwen zorg in wees- en kinderhuizen (Hilversum 1997); Ingrid van der Vlis & Thijs Rinsema, Weeshuizen in Nederland. De wisselende gestalten van een weldadig instituut (Zutphen 2002). On Dutch education in the seventeenth century, see the synthesis by Nelleke Bakker, Jan Noordman & Marjoke Rietveld-van Wingerden, Vijf eeuwen opvoeden in Nederland: idee en praktijk 1500–2000 (Assen 2006); and more focused on this period: Jeroen J.H. Dekker, Het verlangen naar opvoeden. Over de groei van de pedagogische ruimte in Nederland sinds de Gouden Eeuw tot omstreeks 1900 (Amsterdam 2006), 30–178, part of which is accessible in English: J.J.H. Dekker & L.F. Groenendijk, ‘The Republic of God or the Republic of Children? Childhood and child-rearing after the Reformation: An appraisal of Simon Schama’s thesis about the uniqueness of the Dutch case’, in: Oxford Review of Education 17 (1991), 317–335; J.J.H. Dekker, ‘A Republic of educators: Educational messages in seventeenth-century Dutch genre painting’, in: History of Education Quarterly 36 (1996), 163–190. 116 chapter three his treatise De subventione pauperum (1526) the humanist Juan Luis Vives, whom we have already met in the preceding chapter, justi ed the social politics of the civil authorities, for which Emperor Charles V had provided the basis in his edict of October 7, 1531 on poor relief.2 But the stream of charitable institutions without church ties had in fact begun before the Reformation. The rise of a secular social politics was certainly related to the fear that the poor could upset the social bal- ance. But equally important was the conviction that the collective had the duty to care for individual persons, children in particular. Every child had to be given the opportunity to learn to support himself. If the family for one reason or another proved inadequate in this respect, the authorities had the right and the duty to intervene. As early as 1491 the canon Evert Zoudenbalch founded in Utrecht the rst hospice in the northern provinces exclusively intended for “poor orphans” rather than an indiscriminate mix of needy persons (orphans, the sick, elderly, or handicapped, also poor students and transients).3 As a result of this specialization the care given in the areas of religion, education, and occupational training could be tailored to the needs of children and young people. From the medieval perspective a town in the rst place felt a responsibility to its own citizens. In the rst half of the seventeenth century almost every town in the Dutch Republic therefore founded a municipal orphanage for children of full citizens, or poorters. Sometime in the second half of the seventeenth or the rst half of the eighteenth century a second orphanage was then added for other townspeople, the poor and the foreigners, alongside whatever institutions may have been founded by confessional minorities such as the Catholics, Lutherans, or Mennonites. That second orphanage was usually administered by the deaconry, and was thus known as either the poor children’s orphanage or the deacons’ orphanage. Nouveau riche Hollanders of the rapidly growing Republic could satisfy their passion for gambling in the countless lotteries held to nance the construction of such charitable institutions.4

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