The Duplex Regnum Christi in Reformed Orthodoxy: Leiden As Representative Center

Chapter 6 The Duplex Regnum Christi in Reformed Orthodoxy: Leiden as Representative Center

6.1 Introduction

The Spanish siege of Leiden during 1573–1574, an immensely formative and leg- endary period within Dutch history, has often been heralded as a time when tyranny was suppressed and freedom victoriously upheld. Geeraerdt Brandt, a historian writing nearly one century after these events, records a curious and telling anecdote from this time: during the siege, the Leiden government was forced to print paper money due to the scarcity of silver, but they included on each of the larger bills the defiant inscription “Haec libertatis ergo.” The Sunday following the release of the paper money, at least one Reformed preacher fulminated from his pulpit, proclaiming that the Leiden magistrates were “Libertines and Free-thinkers” and that the inscription should have read “Haec religionis ergo.”1 The obvious and stark point of contention highlighted in this one scenario centered on how to interpret the suffering that the Leideners endured during the 1570s. Did the Leideners join the Dutch Revolt and conse- quently face the threat of Spanish retaliation—assuredly not an easy decision as it would involve suffering and bloodshed—because of civic pride and fidel- ity to the Dutch Republic, or so they might be free of Spanish-imposed Roman Catholicism? What fueled their fight for survival, and what compelling reason did they have to resist the temptation to open the city walls to their besiegers? Was it patriotism or religion? Or was it perhaps a combination of both? As the above scenario indicates, the answer in the sixteenth-century Leideners’ minds depended largely on whether one associated more with the political or the religious leadership of the city.

1 Geeraerdt Brandt, G. Brandts Histoire der reformatie, en andre kerkelyke geschiedenis- sen in en ontrent de Nederlanden (Amsterdam: Jan Rieuwertsz., Hendrik en Dirk Boom, Boekverkoopers, 1671), I:554. For an English translation see Geeraert Brandt, The history of the Reformation and other ecclesiastical transactions in and about the Low-Countries, from the beginning of the eighth century, down to the famous synod of Dort, inclusive…. 4 Vols. (London: T. Wood, for Timothy Childe, at the White Hart at the West End of St. Paul’s Church-Yard, 1720) I: 310–311. This anecdote is also told by Christine Kooi in her Liberty and Religion: Church and State in Leiden’s Reformation, 1572–1620, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, v. 82 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2000), 29.

This clash of opinions surfaced not only during the immediate crises of Leiden’s siege, but it colored much of the city’s ensuing history. Scholars who have studied the advent of the Reformation in the Netherlands—and especially those who have connected this with the more particular consider- ation of how the Reformation was introduced into varying cities within the Netherlands—have noted the “unusually fractious” relationship of the Leiden magistracy and the city’s religious leaders.2 Christine Kooi has noted that the five decades following the Spanish siege of Leiden amounted to a period of “negotiation” wherein the city’s rulers and church’s leaders had to decide what “it meant for Leiden’s ecclesiastical polity to be ‘Reformed.’”3 It is within this “fractious” environment that the Leiden theological professors developed the doctrine of the duplex regnum Christi. In order to situate their formulation of this doctrine more concretely within its historical context, this chapter is divided into three parts: first, I will provide a brief sketch of Leiden’s sixteenth-century history as it relates to the topic on hand (not- ing in particular the significance of the establishment of Leiden University); second, I will more narrowly focus on Franciscus Junius’s pivotal contribution to the duplex regnum doctrine—Junius being a representative Leiden theo- logian. Following this, I will introduce the nature and use of scholastic disputations held at Leiden University, and then consider especially the relevant disputations of Antonius Walaeus, a second representative figure who taught at Leiden University. This chapter will conclude by connecting the research and findings related to these two Leiden professors to this book’s overarching argument. Before beginning with a sketch of Leiden’s political context, it should be stressed that the intent of this section is not to reproduce the history of Leiden, or to locate its place within the history of the Netherlands; indeed, this sub- ject spans many volumes.4 Rather, my purpose for highlighting brief aspects of Leiden’s history, focusing especially on its political context during the early

2 Kooi, Liberty and Religion, 17. Kooi notes that past scholarship on the Dutch Reformation “painted its portrait in broad strokes, as a national or at least provincial phenomenon.” She argues, however, that political power was decentralized, and therefore reform could vary from city to city in the Netherlands. Kooi writes, “The fact remains that Reformed preachers, returning from exile after 1572, had to introduce reform into Holland and Zeeland one village, one town, one city at a time. Local circumstances were in fact of paramount importance to the success or failure of the establishment of a Calvinist Reformation in the Dutch provinces freed from Spanish rule” (3). 3 Kooi, Liberty and Religion, 197. 4 See, for example, the seventeen-volume work by John Lothrop Motley, The Rise of the Dutch Republic: A History, 17 vols., (New York; London: Harper & Bros, 1900). See also Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness and Fall, 1477–1806, Oxford History