The prosecution of Anabaptists in Holland, 1530-1566 Burning of the Anabaptist Jan Bosch van Berg Etching from Thieleman van Braght’s Martyrs’ Mirror (1685) MA-thesis: Jaap Geraerts 3006360 6 July 2010 Dr. J.W. Spaans Prof. B.J. Kaplan The prosecution of Anabaptists in Holland, 1530-1566 MA-thesis, RMA History: Cities, states, and citizenship Utrecht University, History department Jaap Geraerts 3006360 06-07-2010 2 Contents List of tables 4 List of scheme and figures 5 Introduction 6 The development of Dutch Anabaptism 12 Sources and methodology 16 1. The case against Anabaptism 19 The logic behind religious persecution 23 The “errors” of Anabaptism 26 2. The prosecution of Anabaptists in Amsterdam, Delft, and Leiden 31 The judicial infrastructure of the northern Netherlands 32 Prosecution – an overview 35 The advent of tolerance? 41 3. Citizenship, communal autonomy, and the prosecution of Anabaptists 46 Privileges and conflicts 52 A battle over privileges? 55 4. Taking the sting out of Anabaptism: the prosecution of the principaelen 60 Punishing female Anabaptists 65 5. Other variables: “weak” magistrates and status 69 The magistracies and their anti-heresy policy 69 Erasmianism? 75 The importance of status 80 Letters of remission 86 6. Prosecution of Anabaptists by the Hof van Holland 91 Prosecution of Anabaptists in the southern Netherlands 99 Critique on the heresy proceedings of the Hof 102 Conclusion 105 Bibliography 110 Primary sources 110 Printed works 111 Published sources 111 Secondary sources 111 Online sources 117 3 List of tables Table 2.1: Percentage of executed Anabaptists per decade 39 Table 2.2: Percentage of executed Anabaptists per decade related to the total of Amsterdam, Delft, and Leiden 40 Table 2.3: Percentage of executed Anabaptists in relation to percentage of Anabaptists on whom non-capital punishments were inflicted 44 Table 3.1: Punishments imposed on Anabaptist citizens and strangers 48 Table 3.2: Number and percentage of men and women among Anabaptist citizens and strangers 50 Table 3.3: Verdicts of Anabaptists in Amsterdam in 1535 58 Table 4.1: Penalties imposed on principaelen and non-principaelen 61 Table 4.2: Numbers and percentage of Anabaptists principaelen and non-prinicipaelen who received capital and non-capital punishments 62 Table 4.3: Non-capital punishments imposed on Anabaptists in Amsterdam and Leiden 65 Table 4.4: Percentage of non-capital punishments related to total number of Anabaptist men/women convicted 65 Table 5.1: New burgomasters and aldermen in Amsterdam, Delft, and Leiden, 1532-40 73 Table 5.2: Occupation of convicted Anabaptists in Holland 82 Table 6.1: Prosecution of Anabaptists by the Hof 92 Table 6.2: Punishments imposed on principaelen and non-principaelen 96 Table 6.3: Number and percentage of male and female Anabaptists sentenced, further divided into capital and non-capital punishments 99 Table 6.4: Number of executed Anabaptists in Amsterdam, Delft, Leiden, Antwerp, Burges, Ghent, and by the Hof 100 4 List of scheme and figures Scheme 6.1: Punishment of Anabaptists who benefited from the period of grace by the Hof 94 Figure 2.1: Number of capital punishments imposed on Anabaptists 40 Figure 2.2: Number of non-capital punishments imposed on Anabaptists 41 Figure 6.1: Executions of Anabaptists by the three local courts and the Hof 97 Figure 6.2: Cumulated number of executed Anabaptists in Amsterdam, Delft, and Leiden; Antwerp, Bruges, and Ghent; and by the Hof 101 5 Introduction Jan van Schellincwoude was considered to be one of the leaders of the Anabaptists by Amsterdam’s sheriff (schout) and aldermen (schepenen). Not only did he deceive innocent people and lured them into this false sect, but also caused commotion by stirring up people, eventually leading to a “great upheaval” (grooten oploop). Because Jan was not captured and did not come to Amsterdam’s local court by himself, Amsterdam’s Gerecht (the sheriff and aldermen) banished him from Amsterdam for the rest of his life in November 1534.1 Unfortunately for Jan he was captured and he appeared before the Court of Holland (Hof van Holland) in 1535. After he was banished from Amsterdam he continued to hold meetings (vergaderinge), in which books about the ‘errors and life of those who lived in Münster were read and discussed’, just outside Amsterdam’s city gates. In the end the Hof banished Jan from Amsterdam for the period of five years, risking his life if he would not comply.2 After being interrogated several times Jacob van Campen, another Anabaptist leader, was sentenced to death by the sheriff and aldermen of Amsterdam on 10 July 1535. He had to be placed on a scaffold in front of his house, seated on a chair with a mitre on his head for an hour at least - or longer, if the sheriff thought that was appropriate. After that, his tongue, with which Jacob spread his “false doctrine” (valssche leeringhe), his right hand, used by Jacob to baptize people, and finally his head were to be cut off. Then his body had to be cut in four pieces and burned, while his head, hand and mitre had to be put on a stake above the Haerlemmer gate, so that it would serve as an example for the rest of the population.3 The shared aspect of these two men is that they were suspected and found guilty of belonging to the Anabaptists, a Reformation movement that aroused the fury of profane and ecclesiastical authorities and were feared and hated by many of their contemporaries. According to the placards of Charles V both of them should have been killed. However, the sentences imposed on Anabaptists when tried before local and provincial courts varied heavily, as the two cases mentioned above show. Both disseminated Anabaptist ideas, and Jan van Scellincwoude even caused unrest, yet he came away with his life, whereas the bishop Jan van Campen was made an example of and elaborately executed. If the ‘Anabaptists’ willingness to die’ had always met the ‘authorities’ willingness to kill’, Thieleman van Braght’s Martyrs’ Mirror would have been even longer and, more 1 A.F. Mellink, Documenta Anabaptistica Neerlandica (hereafter cited as DAN) V (Leiden, 1985) 72. 2 DAN V, 239-242. 3 DAN V, 217. The Haarlemmer Gate was one of the main gates (principale poerte). DAN V, 24. 6 importantly, all the punishments inflicted would more or less be the same, all eventually leading to the death of the Anabaptists.4 This did not happen because a number of variables influenced the penalties inflicted on Anabaptists. This is generally acknowledged by most historians, but the question to what extent these variables really mattered and influenced the prosecution of Anabaptists is not thoroughly studied. This state of affairs bears some resemblance to the remark by William Monter, according to whom a lot of sources speak about the (severe) religious persecution in early modern Europe, but in the end no attempt has been made to ‘measure overall religious persecution in Reformation Europe’.5 Monter and others have attempted to determine the scope of religious persecution, but studies that go beyond a mere counting of the people executed are generally lacking.6 In the end, questions about the “nature” of prosecution (why were different punishments meted out, why were people prosecuted, what was the goal of prosectution, et cetera), remain unanswered. The tendency to look only to those executed and, even more exclusively, to focus on the Anabaptist martyrs is the result of the specific historiography of Anabaptism. Most of the scholars who studied early modern Anabaptism were Mennonites themselves. These confessional historians - starting with Harold S. Bender - have attempted to reach the essence of Anabaptism. According to Bender true Anabaptists were non-violent, bible-oriented and strove to restore the apostolic church.7 This immediately excluded violent, eschatological and apocalyptical Anabaptist groups such as the Münsterites and the Batenburgers. The first took control of Münster in 1534-35, introduced radical social experiments, and offered armed resistance against attempts of its bishop to retake his city. The second were followers of the Dutch nobleman Jan van Batenburg, who specialized in robbing churches and monasteries. Following Bender, a historian like William R. Estep nearly excluded spiritualist tendencies within Anabaptism from his survey, paying almost no attention to David Jorisz. for 4 Brad S. Gregory, ‘Anabaptist Martyrdom’, in: John D. Roth and James Stayer eds, A companion to Anabaptism and Spiritualism, 1521-1700 (Leiden and Boston, 2007) 469. See also his Salvation at Stake. Christian martyrdom in early modern Europe (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1999) esp. 74-139. Only the gender difference would lead to a different punishment. In general women were killed by drowning while men were put to the sword or were burned. 5 William Monter, ‘Heresy executions in Reformation Europe’, in: Ole Peter Grell and Bob Scribner eds, Tolerance and intolerance in the European Reformation (paperback edn, Cambridge, 2002) 49. 6 This is not to say that this area is wholly unexploited, nor that ‘mere counting’ can not be interesting or is not useful as well. See, for instance, Gary K. Waite, Eradicating the Devil’s minions. Anabaptists and witches in Reformation Europe (Toronto, Buffalo and London, 2009) and Raymond A. Mentzer, Heresy proceedings in Languedoc, 1500-1560 (Philadelphia, 1984). 7 J. D. Roth, 'Recent currents in the historiography of the Radical Reformation', Church History 71/3 (2002) 523- 535. For another example of a comparable vision, see W.J. Kühler, Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche doopsgezinden in de zestiende eeuw (2nd edn, Haarlem, 1961) esp. 245 and passim. 7 instance, because this ‘extreme inspirationist’ who ‘claimed that the Scriptures were inadequate’ certainly was not one of the “true Anabaptists” who ‘took the principle of sola Scriptura in matters of doctrine and discipline more serious than any other Reformation group’.8 Possibly these historians are following a tradition of exclusion within Anabaptism rooted in the beginning of seventeenth century.