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Honor, Gender and Discipline in Dutch Reformed Churches1

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Honor, Gender and Discipline in Dutch Reformed Churches1 CHAPTER TWO HONOR, GENDER AND DISCIPLINE IN DUTCH REFORMED CHURCHES1 Judith Pollmann Summary Discipline has widely been seen as a deterrent to join Reformed communities. By contrast, this essay argues that the existence of church discipline was a key attraction of the Reformed Churches in the Dutch Republic. Th is applied especially to women. For unmarried women, who had little opportunity to manifest themselves in the cor- porate mainstays of urban life, church membership off ered a rare chance to engage in a form of sociability that conferred honor to them. Th e existence of church discipline guaranteed that honor. La discipline a été généralement perçue comme un élément dissuasif de rejoindre les communautés réformées. Cet article affi rme au contraire que l’existence de la dis- cipline ecclésiastique est un élément clé de l’attraction des Églises réformées de la République hollandaise. Cela vaut en particulier pour les femmes. Pour les femmes non mariées, qui ont peu de chances de se manifester dans les principales instances de la vie urbaine, l’appartenance à l’Église a off ert une des rares occasions d’exercer une forme de sociabilité honorable pour elles. L’existence de la discipline ecclésiastique a été la garantie de cet honneur. On 22 January 1628, the Utrecht consistory discussed a request by a woman called Maria Smeets, who had asked the elders and the min- isters for permission to attend the Lord’s Supper in the Reformed Church. About fi ft een years earlier, she had deserted that Church, and it must have been obvious to her that she had some explaining to do before she would be allowed to rejoin. Fortunately for us, one of the elders recorded her tale in his journal. Like so many children in the fi rst generations aft er the Revolt, Maria had been born into a family that was not confessionally united. She was the child of a Catholic mother and a Reformed father, and had had to make up her own mind whose religious example she would 1 Parts of this article appeared earlier in Judith Pollmann, ‘Women and Religion in the Dutch Golden Age,’ Dutch Crossing 24 (2000), 162–182. I am grateful to the editors of Dutch Crossing for their permission to rework the material. 30 judith pollmann follow. Initially, she had chosen to join her father and had become a member of the Reformed Church. And she had been perfectly satisfi ed there until, sometime during the 1610s, she received a visit from her cousin, a Catholic priest called Pauli, who brought a deeply disturb- ing message. Th e ghost of Maria’s deceased mother had appeared to him to complain that her daughter had not fulfi lled her wish to have an altar erected in her memory. Struck by guilt, Maria had become an easy prey to her cousin. She agreed to return to the Catholic Church and even became a klop—a lay sister. She had, however, set two condi- tions. She demanded that she not be asked to worship the Saints or to believe that the Pope was the head of the Church. Her cousin initially agreed to these demands, but eventually began to build up the pres- sure, and had ultimately “damned” Maria. Hence, according to Maria, her desire to return to the Reformed Church. Aft er some more ques- tioning, the consistory granted her request.2 Th is tale is interesting for a variety of reasons. First, it reminds us that the Reformation process did not necessarily divide the world into clear confessional categories. Well into the seventeenth century, peo- ple like Maria, born of mixed marriages, had to negotiate religious division and confl icting loyalties. Yet it is another aspect of Maria’s tale that will concern us here; while Maria seems to have been both willing and capable of defi ning her own religious priorities, she nev- ertheless wanted to submit to Reformed church discipline. Th ere was no legal reason why she had to do so. Just as in France, Calvinism in the Dutch Republic was a voluntary religion. However privileged the Reformed Church had become aft er the Dutch Revolt, no one was forced to attend it. Many only attended sermons but never became communicant members of the Church. To become a member one had to make a confession of faith before the consistory, which would also examine one’s reputation and one’s knowledge of the faith. Unlike in France, Reformed men and women in the Netherlands only made their confessions of faith when they were eighteen years of age or even very much older.3 As a consequence, few people were members of the church simply because of parental pres- 2 Utrecht, University Library, MS 1053, Arnoldus Buchelius, Ecclesiastica Ultraiectina, 1626–1638, fols. 58r, 22 January 1628; 69r–v, 2 April 1628. 3 Judith Pollmann, ‘From Freedom of Conscience to Confessional Segregation? Religious Choice and Toleration in the Dutch Republic,’ in Persecution and Pluralism. Calvinists and Religious Minorities in Early Modern Europe, 1550–1700, ed. Richard Bonney and D.J.B. Trim (Bern, 2006), pp. 123–48, there 142–3. .
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