Cover Page The handle http://hdl.handle.net/1887/38762 holds various files of this Leiden University dissertation. Author: Gottschalk, Linda Stuckrath Title: Pleading for diversity : the church Caspar Coolhaes wanted Issue Date: 2016-04-06 Part I: The life Coolhaes led Chapter 1: From silent monk to preacher of reform In this biographical sketch, the research of H. C. Rogge,1 C. P. Burger,2 W. Nijenhuis,3 and others, who have done so much to verify the basics of Coolhaes’ life story, will be used as the foundation, although not unquestioningly. Facts which have come to light since they wrote will be added, some contributed by other secondary writers and some emerging from archival research. Coolhaes’ writings and the writings of others in his time will be mentioned along the way, but in-depth discussions of most of these will come the second part of this book. Caspar Janszoon Coolhaes was born in Cologne on January 24, 1534 or 1536.4 Unfortunately, inquiry at the Cologne city archives gives no definitive birth date, or further information about his father or his father’s occupation, since there existed no birth-registers in sixteenth-century Cologne, and since Coolhaes was a common name in that area.5 His family was apparently Roman Catholic,6 devout, and educated, since Coolhaes testified that 1. Rogge, Caspar Janszoon Coolhaes. 2. Moes and Burger, De Amsterdamsche boekdrukkers. 3. Nijenhuis, “Coolhaes,” BLGNP, 100-102. 4. Most, including de Chalmot, Rogge, Burger, and Molhuysen andBlok say 1536. In this they are following the date in Meursius, Illustrium Hollandiae et West-frisiae ordinum alma academiae Leidensis, 3-5. On the other hand, the argument of the BWPGN for 1534 is that in 1614, when honored by the burgemeesters of Leiden for his service to the city, he was said to be “over 80 years old” which he would have been if he were born in 1534, BWPGN, 172; see also Nav. X, 279-80. Nijenhuis in BLGNP also lists 1534 as Coolhaes’ birth year: Nijenhuis, “Coolhaes, Caspar Janszoon,” 100. 5. Dr. Max Plassmann, Historisches Archiv der Stad Köln, confirms that the question cannot be resolved based on birth registers. He has been kind enough to write, “The finding aids of the City Archives of Cologne contain no hint on Caspar Coolhaes. There are no birth-registers or registers of inhabitants for the sixteenth century, so it is not possible to find traces of him or his family in the sources without further information (where he lived etc.). I also cannot find traces of his father. The name Coolhaes (Kohlhaas etc.) is to be found, but it is a frequent name, so it cannot be proven, that its bearers are relatives to Caspar Coolhaes without further evidence.” E-mail to the author, March 11, 2014. 6. Dr. Josef van Elten, Historisches Archiv des Erzbistums Köln, has kindly let me know that regretfully no baptismal record exists for Coolhaes. He writes, “Unfortunately I have to inform you that church registers on baptism, weddings and mortality had been introduced in our church administration on demand of the Trent Council (1545 to 1563). Then it took some time, about one hundred years, until those registers were established in all churches of our diocese. So, I'm afraid to tell you, there will be no chance of getting a testimony of baptism.” Dr. Josef van Elten, Historisches Archiv des Erzbistums Köln. E-mail to the author, May 11, 2015. 20 he had “from childhood (not to boast) known the Bible, and had seen and read much.”7 It is striking that he was born in Cologne, a city which features in the story of several well-known Spiritualists in the sixteenth century. Caspar Schwenckfeld had been a student at the University of Cologne, before 1510 or 1511.8 Much later, in 1565, Dirck Volkertszoon Coornhert stayed in Cologne and became friends with jurist Aggaeus van Albada, who introduced him to Schwenckfeld’s works, and may have met Hendrik Niclaes there also.9 Surely young Caspar must have received a certain amount of education, since his later life shows him with at least some knowledge of Latin, a wide knowledge of the works of various authors, the ability to write theological prose, poetry, and fiction, and even the breadth of knowledge to understand and write about the chemical principles of distilling, which he would carry on as a successful trade. As will be shown, he had been a schoolmaster, and also lectured at the University of Leiden, albeit very briefly. Some believe that he may have been more or less self-schooled.10 However, it has been more generally thought that he studied in Düsseldorf and perhaps in Cologne,11 a view which will now be examined in light of some context and archival evidence. Coolhaes does not write anything about his education himself. First, it is possible that he studied in Cologne at the cathedral school, or in Düsseldorf at the Hochschule. This study might have been under Johannes Monheim (Monhemius) of Elberfeld (1509-1564). It is a popular idea with scholars that Coolhaes had contact with 7. “... ende van kints beenen aen (sonder roem te spreken) in de heyliger Godlicker Schrifture geoeffent.”Caspar Coolhaes, Een cort, waerachtich verhael van tsorgelicke vyer, der hatelicker, ende van God vervloecter oneenicheyt in religions saken, ontsteecken zijnde in Hollandt anno 1574: door wien het selve ontsteecken ende smoockende gheleghen heeft tot int jaer 1579: door wien, ende wat plaetsen in Hollandt, tselve op gheblasen, dattet brandende gheworden is: Des welcken vlam een weynich gedaelt zijnde, door wien tselve opt nieuwe weder op gheblasen, stercker ende grooter gheworden is, dan het te voren was: des welcken vlam oock metter tijt minerende, nu wederom met veel ende verscheyden, so grooten, als cleynen blaesbalghen, teffens op gheblasen wort om stercker te branden, ten eynde, dat het gheheele landt, door het selve vernielt, ende inden gront soude moghen bedorven worden: door wat mannen tselve vyer by tijts uytgebluscht, ende soo gheheel tot niet soude connen ghedaen worden, dat van tselve gheen coolken meer over blijven, van t’welcke men te besorghen mocht hebben, dat t’eenigher tijt, aen tselve, een nieu vyer soude moghen ontsteecken worden. Tot ghetrouwer waerschouwinghe, ende opwecken van den ghenen, der welcken ampt is, om tselve by tijts te remedieren (Leiden: N.p., 1610), 79. 8. McLaughlin, The Freedom of Spirit, Social Privilege, and Religious Dissent, 70. 9. Hendrik Bonger, Leven en werk van D. V. Coornhert (Amsterdam: G. A. van Oorschot, 1978), 62. 10. This is the view of Van Dooren, De nationale synode te Middelburg, 35. 11. This view is found in many places, including the entry for Coolhaes in the NDB/ADB by Nijenhuis, “Coolhaes (Koolhaes, Coelaas), Caspar Janszoon,” BLGNP, 100, and Kaplan, “Coolhaes,” OER, vol. 1, 423. They are, possibly, using Rogge as their source. 21 Monheim, who admired both Luther and Calvin, as well as Erasmus, and who might have been an influence for humanism and/or Protestantism on the boy. Monheim had finished his M.A. in Cologne in 1530, served as the rector in the seminary in Essen (1532-1536), and then as rector also for the cathedral school in Cologne until 1545. In 1545, he became rector of a new Hochschule in Düsseldorf, which was established by Duke Wilhelm V that same year. Students there were taught Greek, law, catechism and the Bible, and held regular disputations. Monheim also wrote a series of textbooks in 1538-1550, then editions of Erasmus in 1551, and later a catechism, which showed influence of both Luther and Calvin, and which advocated a middle view of the Eucharist between the two.12 This points to a possible evolution of Monheim’s own views. It will be seen that Coolhaes’ own Eucharistic views are hard to fit into either Lutheranism or Calvinism. If Coolhaes studied with Monheim, it would have been in the period between before 1554, and this means that he could have been at the cathedral school in Cologne13 as a very young boy before 1545, and/or at the school in Düsseldorf after that. Did Coolhaes attend one of Monheim’s schools? It is impossible to say for sure, since there is no evidence. The school in Düsseldorf numbered 1,200–2,000 pupils in 1550, but no student lists survive.14 However, Monheim’s eclectic approach to the Reformers does resemble what Coolhaes’ would be in the future. If Monheim’s views were evolving, however, the boy Coolhaes would have been his student at an early stage in that 12. See biographical articles about Johannes Monhein in the NBD/ABD. See also Rogge, Caspar Janszoon Coolhaes, vol. 1, 9-11, about Monheim. Also see Judith Rice Henderson, “Humanism and the Humanities: Erasmus’ Opus de conscribendus epistolis in Sixteenth-Century Schools,” in Carol Poster and Linda C. Mitchell, eds., Letter-Writing Manuals and Instruction from Antiquity to the Present. Historical and Bibliographic Studies (Columbia: The University of South Carolina Press, 2007), 141-77, esp. 156-57, about Monheim’s use of Erasmus in his teaching of writing. Also see: Johannes Monheim, Catechismus, in quo christianae religionis elementa syncere simpliciterque explicantur, ed. Karl Heinrich Sack (Bonnae: Eduardus Weber, 1847); F. Koldewey, “Johannes Monheim und die Kölner Jesuiten,” Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Theologie 42 (1899): 106. 13. In answer to my queries about this, Dr. Stefan Flesch, of the Archiv der Evangelischen Kirche im Rheinland in Düsseldorf, has been kind enough to write: “Unfortunately, there are no records of the students of the [Cologne] cathedral school. So Coolhaes might have studied there – but we cannot prove it.” E-mail to the author, 14 May, 2014.