WORDS, SOUNDS, IMAGES Reading in the Early Seventeenth Century the Bible Was Everywhere—In the Spoken Word, in Texts, Songs, A

CHAPTER FOUR WORDS, SOUNDS, IMAGES Reading In the early seventeenth century the Bible was everywhere—in the spoken word, in texts, songs, and images. Evert larded his notes with quotations from the Bible, at times in greatly modi ed form, then again almost verbatim. The historian A.Th. van Deursen, one of the best authorities on seventeenth-century daily life in the Dutch Republic, has pointed out how close the preaching of those years adhered to the biblical word. Bible texts formed the building blocks of the sermon, and the passages linking them were intentionally modeled on biblical language.1 People who often listened to sermons, as the orphans of Woerden were required to, became so familiar with the words of the Bible that they subconsciously assimilated them. Thanks to the active memory of the oral culture, the biblical word could then be ttingly quoted as needed. Evert, given his level of literacy, very likely read the Bible himself as well. Bible texts in any case played a key role in the acquisition of reading skills, whether this took place in the family, at school, in church, or in the orphanage.2 Did he perhaps already have a Bible of his own in the orphanage? This is unlikely. A Bible was a precious family possession that Evert’s father or stepfather would preferably have left to his eldest son.3 The 1 A.Th. van Deursen, Plain lives in a Golden Age: Popular culture, religion and society in seventeenth-century Holland (Cambridge 1991), 265; the same, Bavianen en slijkgeuzen. Kerk en kerkvolk ten tijde van Maurits en Oldenbarnevelt (Assen 1974; 2d ed. Franeker 1991), 181–192. For reading culture in the Dutch Republic: Willem Frijhoff & Marijke Spies, 1650: Hard- won unity (Assen & Basingstoke 2004), 227–279; Paul G. Hoftijzer & Otto S. Lankhorst, Boekverkopers en lezers in Nederland tijdens de Republiek: een historiogra\ sche en bibliogra\ sche handleiding (2d revised ed., The Hague 2000); Willem Frijhoff, ‘Calvinism, literacy, and reading culture in the early modern Northern Netherlands: Towards a reassessment’, in: Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte/Archive for Reformation History 95 (2004), 252–265. 2 Margaret Spufford, ‘First steps in literacy: The reading and writing experiences of the humblest seventeenth-century spiritual autobiographers’, in: Social History 4 (1979), 407–437. 3 The existing Bogardus family Bible (Amsterdam 1663), originally owned by Evert 154 chapter four Fig. 13. Young orphan reading the Bible before dinner. Detail of the Cere- monial meal at the town orphanage of Oudewater, 1651. Oil painting on canvas by H. van Ommen. [Photograph by the author]. complete Bible was in any case associated with adult religious needs, for which the confession of faith—undertaken at a somewhat later age—served as the marker.4 But perhaps Evert could have occasion- ally made use of a Bible there? The master of the orphanage must have had one in order to ful ll the religious duties for which he was Pietersz Bogardus (1672–1717), has wrongly been identi ed as property of his grand- father Dominie Everardus Bogardus. See: Howard S.F. Randolph, ‘The “Domine Bogardus” Bible: The family of Evert Bogardus and his wife Tjaatje Hoffman’, in: NYGBR 59:3 ( July 1928), 255–258; Wegen, 815–816. 4 The Puritan Nehemiah Wallington, for example, acquired a Bible at age 17: Paul S. Seaver, Wallington’s world: A Puritan artisan in seventeenth-century London (London & Stanford 1985), 5..

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