A Sun that Lost its Shine: The Reformation in Dutch Protestant Memory Culture, 1817-1917

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2008 DOI: 10.1163/187124108X316459

Church History and Religious Culture 88 (2008) 35-62 www.brill.nl/chrc

CHRC

A Sun that Lost its Shine: Th e Reformation in Dutch Protestant Memory Culture, 1817-1917

Herman Paul and Bart Wallet

Abstract Th is essay is a first exploration of nineteenth-century Dutch Protestant memory culture. Using Reformation commemorations as our case study, we show that the appropriation of Luther and Calvin for group identity purposes underwent a twofold transition in the century between 1817 and 1917. Whereas the unity of Dutch Protestantism was a dominant theme during the first decades of the nineteenth century, the Reformation became increasingly used as an instrument for justifying subgroup identities. Simultaneously, a past-oriented discourse (the Reformation as “origin”) was gradually abandoned in favour of a future-oriented discourse (Reformation “prin-ciples” that ought to be obeyed and applied). Th is, we argue, distinguished Dutch Protestant memory culture both from national commemorative discourse and from Protestant memory cultures abroad.

Keywords Protestantism, the Netherlands, collective memory, Reformation, Luther, Calvin, sermons.

“Memory cultures” were not the exclusive property of nineteenth-century nation-states.1 Although the production and circulation of collective memo-ries have so far been studied most thoroughly in the context of European nationalism, students of women and working-class memories have convinc-ingly argued that such appeals to memory also helped establish other groups than nineteenth-century nation-states.2

1 Th e authors would like to thank Joris van Eijnatten for his comments on a draft of this paper, presented to the European Social Science History Conference, Amsterdam, 24 March 2006. Part of the research was funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

2 Th e term ‘memory culture’ is helpfully defined in Christoph Cornelißen, ‘Was heißt Erin-nerungskultur? Begriff, Methoden, Perspektiven,’ Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 54 (2003), 548-63. Two classic studies of national memory cultures are Les lieux de mémoire, ed. Pierre Nora, 7 vols. (Paris, 1984-92) and Deutsche Erinnerungsorte, ed. Etienne François and Hagen Schulze, 3 vols. (Munich, 2001). On women and working-class memories, see James Fentress and Chris Wickham, Social Memory (Oxford, 1992), pp. 87-143.

36 H.J. Paul, B.T. Wallet / Church History and Religious Culture 88 (2008) 35-62

Continuing this line of argument, this essay aims to show how important the creation of collective memories was for religious communities in the nine-teenth-century Netherlands. We take these communities to include both vis-ible institutions like the Roman Catholic Church and imagined communities such as “Protestant orthodoxy.” Th e significance of collective memories for these religious groups becomes particularly clear if their “historical identity politics” are analysed over a longer span of time, as we will do in this article. Using Dutch Protestant memories of the sixteenth-century (Protestant) Refor-mation as our case, we will try to demonstrate that nineteenth-century Dutch Protestantism had a lively contested “memory culture” — distinct from, though overlapping with, both nationalist discourses in the Netherlands and Protestant memory cultures abroad.3 Although other lieux de mémoire, includ-ing the Synod of Dordt, eighteenth-century Pietist authors, and the French Revolution, also figured prominently in this memory culture, the Reforma-tion was arguably the most important lieu and therefore is a most appropriate case for analysis.4

As collective memories of the Reformation have hitherto been studied mainly in German-speaking contexts,5 the German situation may serve as our point of departure and standard of comparison. According to Johannes Bur-khardt, most characteristic of the German Reformationsgedächtnis was its late-eighteenth-century transition from a theological-doctrinal context to a festive bourgeois setting. In the decades prior to 1817, German Reformation com-memorations increasingly became celebrations of civic freedom and Enlight-enment rationality. “Forgetting” the confessional purity that their forefathers had insisted upon, German middle-classes transformed their annual Reforma-tion anniversaries into occasions for celebrating civic virtues. As illustrated by the exuberant festivities that marked the third centenary in 1817, glorifications

3 Although early modern historians nowadays speak about “the Reformations” (in the plural) of the sixteenth century, the term ‘Reformation’ in this essay exclusively refers to the institution-alised Protestant Reformation associated with Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin. Furthermore, when we speak about “identity,” we refer to what Manuel Castells calls “the process by which a social actor recognizes itself ” or the elements that this actor considers crucial to its self-image: Th e Rise of the Network Society (Cambridge, MA, 1996), p. 22.

4 On the relative importance of the Reformation, compared to other Protestant lieux de mémoire, see Het gereformeerde geheugen: protestantse herinneringsculturen in Nederland, 1850-2000, ed. George Harinck, Herman Paul, and Bart Wallet (Amsterdam, forthcoming).

5 Apart from Hartmut Lehmann’s studies, brought together in his Martin Luther in the Ameri-can Imagination (Munich, 1988), the only exception is a Dutch volume on the 1917 commemo-ration, which, in a sense, served as a preliminary study for this article: De Reformatie-herdenking van 1917: historische beeldvorming en religieuze identiteitspolitiek in Nederland, ed. Herman Paul, Bart Wallet, and George Harinck [Jaarboek voor de geschiedenis van het Nederlands protestan-tisme na 1800, 12] (Zoetermeer, 2004).

H.J. Paul, B.T. Wallet / Church History and Religious Culture 88 (2008) 35-62 37

of liberty and fraternity came to replace the anti-Catholic polemics that had characterised 31 October commemorations before.6 Identified by G.W.F. Hegel as the main inheritance of the Reformation, civic freedom, defined in opposition to religious coercion and intellectual bondage, became the main subject of commemoration. Additionally, Burkhardt observes, during the sec-ond half of the nineteenth century, Luther was metamorphosed into a bour-geois family father with increasingly “German” qualities — or even into “the most German of all Germans,” as was said in 1883, in what can hardly not be called an anticipation of the war rhetoric that would depict Luther as a Ger-man hero at the time of the fourth centenary in 1917.7

Although this process of Verbürgerlichung, as Burkhardt calls it, had some counterparts in other European countries, this paper aims to show that in the Netherlands, the Reformation was used for other purposes. Most characteris-tic of Dutch Reformation anniversaries between 1817 and 1917 was not the increasingly bourgeois nature of their Luther representations, but a double movement from what we will call (1) an emphasis on the unity of all Protes-tants and (2) an attempt to locate the common origins of these united Protes-tants in the sixteenth-century Reformation toward (1) a concern for subgroup identities and (2) a focus on theological or moral principles that were to sustain these group identities. Besides, we will challenge the view, held by some histo-rians, that Reformation commemorations mainly served as impetuses for strengthening anti-Catholic conceptions of Dutch nationhood. Although 31 October sermons frequently warned against Roman Catholicism in one form or another, we shall argue that, during the course of the century, church doctrine, religious practice, and denominational identity became increasingly

6 On German Reformation jubilees in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, see Hans-Jürgen Schönstädt, Antichrist, Weltheilsgeschehen und Gottes Werkzeug: römische Kirche, Re-formation und Luther im Spiegel des Reformationsjubiläums 1617 (Wiesbaden, 1978); idem, ‘Das Reformationsjubiläum 1617: geschichtliche Herkunft und geistliche Prägung,’ Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 93 (1982), 5-57; idem, ‘Das Reformationsjubiläum 1717: Beiträge zur Geschichte seiner Entstehung im Spiegel landesherrlicher Verordnungen,’ ibid., 58-118; Ruth Kastner, Geistliche Rauffhandel: Form und Funktion der illustrierten Flugblätter zum Reformations-jubiläum 1617 in ihrem historischen und publizistischen Kontext (Frankfort on the Main, 1982); Charles Zika, ‘Th e Reformation Jubilee of 1617: Appropriating the Past in European Centenary Celebrations,’ in Exorcising our Demons: Magic, Witchcraft and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe (Leiden, 2003), pp. 197-236.

7 Johannes Burkhardt, ‘Reformations- und Lutherfeiern: die Verbürgerlichung der reformato-rischen Jubiläumskultur,’ in Öffentliche Festkultur: politische Feste in Deutschland von der Aufklä-rung bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg, ed. Dieter Düding, Peter Friedemann, and Paul Münch (Reinbek, 1988), pp. 212-36. On the Germanification of Luther, see esp. Hans Düfel, ‘Das Lutherjubi-läum 1883: ein Beitrag zum Luther- und Reformationsverständnis des 19. Jahrhunderts, seiner geistesgeschichtlichen, theologischen und politischen Voraussetzungen, unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Nationalismus,’ Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 33 (1984), 1-94.


more important than issues of nationhood. Using sermons, hymns, festival programs, and children’s books as our principal sources, we will focus on the construction of “collective memories” and accordingly pay little attention to how the Reformation was appropriated by academic theologians and (church) historians — even though we will argue that some transitions in Dutch Prot-estant memory culture were initiated by them.

I

When, in 1817, the General Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church called for a festive celebration of the Reformation’s tercentenary, most Dutch Protestants had never participated in any Reformation commemoration. With a few exceptions, gatherings in memory of Luther’s Reformation had only been held by Lutheran minorities in the Dutch Republic. Regularly led by ministers of German descent, these Lutheran commemorations, even in centenary years, had been convened only after exhortations from abroad. In 1617, a letter from elector Johann Georg of Saxony had been the stimulus for a ceremonious cel-ebration, whereas in 1717, a Lutheran request from Gotha had inspired Dutch commemorations.8 Judged by a collection of printed sermons from Amster-dam, the dominant message delivered during the second centenary had been the need of faithfulness to the Confession of Augsburg.9 Because of this con-cern with Lutheran church identity, participation of other Protestants denom-inations — the Dutch Reformed Church, the Mennonite churches, and, after 1625, a number of clandestine but tacitly condoned Remonstrant congrega-tions — had been difficult. In the midst of the early-seventeenth-century dis-putes between Calvinists and Remonstrants, only the Amsterdam schoolmaster, Reinier Telle, had taken an irenic stance by highlighting what the reformers

8 J.C. Schultz Jacobi, ‘Het eerste eeuwgetij der Kerkhervorming,’ in Oud en nieuw uit de geschiedenis der Nederlandsch-Luthersche Kerk, 5 vols. (Rotterdam, 1862-66), 2: 145-53; Amster-dam, Municipal Archive, archive Evangelical Lutheran congregation Amsterdam, inv. no. 24, records ordinary consistorial meeting, 20 Jan., 3 Feb., 20 Oct., and 3 Nov. 1717. According to the Europische Mercurius 34 no. 1 (1723), 93-4, J.E. Scholtz from Rijswijk had attended both the first and the second centenary celebrations in the Lutheran church of Th e Hague before he had died at age 114. Wolfgang Flügel reads such messages as evidence of an “internal structuring” of Protestant commemorative discourse: ‘Zeitkonstrukte im Reformationsjubiläum,’ in Das histo-rische Jubiläum: Genese, Ordnungsleistung und Inszenierungsgeschichte eines institutionellen Mecha-nismus, ed. Winfried Müller (Münster, 2004), pp. 77-99, there pp. 92-7.

9 Jacobus Velten, Het heuchelyk nieuws, wegens het groote werk der Reformatie, begonnen in den jaare 1517 (Amsterdam, [1717]).


had in common.10 Reportedly, a handful of Reformed congregations had joined the Luther celebrations in 1717, but without leaving any traces of a distinct view of the reformer or adopting the German tradition (documented in Saxony from 1668 onward) of commemorating the Reformation annually on 31 October.11

Th e German example became more important, though, when the third cen-tenary, in 1817, promised to become a massive celebration of liberty, concord, and religious tolerance — virtues that had become increasingly important in the late-eighteenth-century Netherlands, too.12 As late as summer 1817, “cel-ebration of the centenary in (. . .) other countries” led the Provincial Church Council (Provinciaal Kerkbestuur) of Zeeland to ask for similar commemora-tive festivities in the Netherlands.13 Typically, this request was addressed to the General Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church, which since 1816 was the church’s highest administrative body. Stimulated by the state-employed “secre-tary of ecclesiastical affairs,” Jacobus D. Janssen, this General Synod saw “the maintenance of order and harmony and the cultivation [aankweeking] of love of King and Fatherland” as important objectives.14 As evident in Germany, few things could contribute more to such goals than a large-scale, festive celebra-tion of Protestant origins.15 Not surprisingly, therefore, the synod unanimously

10 Reinier Telle, Vrede-zangh ofte jaer-liedt: op de voleyndinge van de eerste hondert jaren, na de aengevangene Reformatie der kercken 1617 (Amsterdam, [1617]).

11 P. Chevallier, ‘Leerrede over Psalm II: vs. 11b,’ in Leerredenen ter viering van het derde eeuwfeest der Hervorming, gehouden te Amsterdam, op den 2 november 1817 (Amsterdam, 1817), pp. 51-100, there pp. 70-1; Schönstädt, ‘Reformationsjubiläum 1717’ (see above, n. 6), 60-1, 86.

12 Joris van Eijnatten, Liberty and Concord in the United Provinces: Religious Toleration and the Public in the Eighteenth-Century Netherlands (Leiden, 2003).

13 Th e Hague, National Archive, archive ‘departement hervormde en andere erediensten behalve de rooms-katholieke,’ inv. no. 1966, records general synodal committee, 4 July 1817 (all translations are ours). A similar argument, again, induced Lutheran commemoration in Amster-dam: Municipal Archive Amsterdam, archive Evangelical Lutheran congregation, inv. no. 24, records ordinary consistorial meeting, 14 May 1817.

14 ‘Algemeen reglement voor het bestuur der Hervormde Kerk in het Koningrijk der Neder-landen,’ in Reglementen, vervaardigd door het Algemeen Christelijk Synode der Nederlandsche Her-vormde Kerk, en goedgekeurd door Zijne Majesteit den Koning (’s-Gravenhage, 1816), p. 8.

15 Hans Wolter, ‘Das Reformations-Jubiläum von 1817 in der freien Stadt Frankfurt am Main,’ Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 93 (1982), 161-76; Rainer Fuhrmann, Das Reformations-jubiläum 1817: Martin Luther und die Reformation im Urteil der protestantischen Festpredigt des Jahres 1817 (Tübingen, 1973); Lutz Winckler, Martin Luther als Bürger und Patriot: das Reforma-tionsjubiläum von 1817 und der politische Protestantismus des Wartburgfestes (Lübeck, 1969), pp. 44-72. On the coerced nature of this Protestant unity: Wichmann von Meding, ‘Jubel ohne Glauben? Das Reformationsjubiläum 1817 in Württemberg,’ Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 93 (1982), 119-60; Andreas Lindt, ‘Das Reformationsjubiläum 1817 und das Ende des “Tauwet-ters” zwischen Protestanten und Katholiken im frühen 19. Jahrhundert,’ in Traditio, Krisis, Renovatio aus theologischer Sicht: Festschrift Winfried Zeller zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Bernd Jaspert and Rudolf Mohr (Marburg, 1976), pp. 347-56, there pp. 350, 355.


endorsed the proposal from Zeeland and ordered local congregations to cele-brate the Reformation on Sunday, 2 November 1817, “as festive and solemn as our way of worshipping God permits and local circumstances tolerate.” Pas-tors were requested to preach about the history of the Reformation. To enhance Protestant unity, the synod furthermore invited Lutherans, Remonstrants, and Mennonites to join the festivities.16

Although, at local and regional levels, dissatisfaction with the centralisation of the church’s administration still existed, the synod’s instructions were imple-mented everywhere. Like in Germany, where the commemoration became a major public festival, festive styles developed during the Patriotic and Batavian periods were employed for the Reformation centenary. Church interiors were decorated with flowers, festoons, and pictures of the reformers; children were treated to booklets with “Reformation songs” and the poor received an extra gift.17 Th e Provincial Church Council in Groningen reported

Th at on Saturday evening, the congregations in very many villages have been reminded of the celebration by the ringing of the [church] bell, which has been repeated Sunday early in the morning and at several hours of that day. (. . .) Th at at some places the Tower has been illuminated with Lanterns, the Parsonage, the School building, the house of the Sheriff of the Municipality [den heer Schout der Gemeente] as well as that of some private persons have been illuminated.18

In accordance with synodal wishes (and, sometimes, in clear attempts to please the church administration), Protestant unity became a central theme in many sermons.19 Instead of defending theological orthodoxy, as Lutheran preachers had done in 1617 and 1717, these sermons explained that Protestantism could not be confined within denominational boundaries. Rather, the Reformation had to remind Protestants of their common history and shared responsibility

16 Th e Hague, National Archive, archive ‘departement hervormde en andere erediensten,’ inv. no. 1966, records general synodal committee, 4 July 1817; Leerredenen ter viering van het derde eeuwfeest (see above, n. 11), pp. ix-xi; Bernardus Verwey, Derde eeuwgetijde der Kerkhervorming of bijdragen tot deszelfs plegtige viering in october en november 1817 (’s-Gravenhage, 1817).

17 E.g., Amsterdam, Municipal Archive, archive Restored Evangelical Lutheran congegration, inv. nos. 620 and 905, records 31 October 1817; Viering van het derde eeuwfeest der Kerkhervor-ming, op den 2 november 1817, door de hervormde en luthersche gemeenten te Culenborg (Culen-borg, 1817) pp. 7-8, 33; H. Wester, Gezangen bij de viering van het derde eeuwfeest der Kerkhervorming: met de noodige ophelderingen (Groningen, 1817).

18 Quoted in ‘Vóór honderd jaren: de viering van den 300sten gedenkdag der Kerkhervor-ming III,’ Weekblad der Nederlandsche Hervormde Kerk 1 (1917), 169.

19 Great numbers of Reformation sermons and poems were sent to Janssen, the secretary of ecclesiastical affairs, not seldom accompanied by amicable letters angling for the secretary’s favour. Th e Hague, National Archive, archive ‘departement hervormde en andere erediensten,’ inv. no. 1529 sub 722, 825, 868, 874, 951, 958.


for living out this “essential” unity. Glorified in hundreds of hymns, specially written for the occasion, the appreciation of unity was symbolised by joint services of Reformed and Lutherans and by agreements among Protestant ministers to preach from the same texts (e.g., Phil. 1,3-11).20 Some pastors applauded the unification of Lutherans and Calvinists in Prussia, while others welcomed the synod’s resolution to permit participation of other Protestants in the Lord’s Supper (a resolution intended to serve the same purpose as the commemoration was meant to do).21 Describing the sixteenth-century debates over the Eucharistic presence of Christ as “unholy quarrels,” the Reformed pastor from Wilsum assumed that nineteenth-century Christians had left such times of strife and division behind them. Others projected harmony and unity backward to the time of the reformers and urged their audiences to become as kindred and like-minded as they asserted that Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin had been. From their marginal positions, especially Lutherans, Mennonites, and Remonstrants contributed to this unity discourse.22

With few exceptions, Roman Catholics were included in this unity, too. Although the Catholic convert, J.G. le Sage ten Broek, called the festivities an “insult” to non-Protestants, André de Bruin incorrectly concludes from this that the 1817 commemoration had an anti-Catholic agenda.23 In fact, as Le

20 Viering van het derde eeuwfeest (see above, n. 17), pp. 6, 30-32, 46-47; W.F. Visch, Leerrede over Ephes. V:8, gehouden op het derde eeuwfeest der Hervorming, den 31 october 1817 (Coevorden, 1817), pp. iii-iv. Th e abundant publication of occasional songs can be explained from the absence of Reformation hymns in the Evangelische gezangen.

21 Visch, Leerrede (see above, n. 20), p. 29; J. Teissèdre l’Ange, ‘Leerrede over de beginselen en den voortgang der verbastering en der Hervorming in de Christen-kerk, Handelingen V: vs. 38b en 39a,’ in Leerredenen ter viering van het derde eeuwfeest (see above, n. 11), pp. 1-48, there p. 47; Vervolg op de reglementen, vervaardigd door het Algemeen Christelijk Synode der Nederlandsche Hervormde Kerk, en goedgekeurd door Zijne Majesteit den Koning (Groningen, 1820), p. 29. A Catholic response: ‘Nog eene vrucht van het eeuwfeest,’ De Godsdienstvriend 2 (1819), 257.

22 Visch, Leerrede (see above, n. 20), p. 28; Jacobus Johannes le Roy, De oorspronkelijke inrigting, het diep bederf en de hervorming der christen-kerk, de uitnemende voordeelen en nog over-geblevene gebreken dier hervorming, benevens de vooruitzigten op eene nog toekomstige veel voorkomener herstelling (Dordrecht, 1818), pp. 163-4; J.H. Floh, Kerkelijke redevoering ter gele-genheid der godsdienstige viering van het derde eeuwfeest der Kerkhervorming, uitgesproken op den 2 november 1817, te Enschede, in de kerk der doopsgezinden (Zwolle, 1818), pp. 5-12; J. van Geuns, ‘Leerrede over Galaten V. vs. 13,’ in Leerredenen ter viering van het derde eeuwfeest (see above, n. 11), pp. 1-56, there pp. 3, 50, 54. Van Eijnatten traces the eighteenth-century origins of this irenicism in his Liberty and Concord (see above, n. 12), pp. 127-40.

23 [J.G. le Sage ten Broek], ‘Iets over het derde eeuwfeest der Hervorming, en de redevoerin-gen, bij die gelegenheid, gehouden,’ De Godsdienstvriend 1 (1818), 33; A.A. de Bruin, Het ontstaan van de schoolstrijd: onderzoek naar de wortels van de schoolstrijd in de noordelijke Nederlanden gedurende de eerste helft van de 19de eeuw: een cultuurhistorische studie (Barneveld, 1985), pp. 140-1; idem, ‘Antipapisme bij protestanten in de negentiende eeuw: een proeve,’ in De zachte kant van de politiek: opstellen over politieke cultuur, ed. Hans Righart (’s-Gravenhage, 1990), pp. 68-87,


Sage ten Broek himself admitted, most Protestant speakers were reluctant to polemicize with “Rome.” If they mentioned Roman Catholics at all (many did not), they described them as fellow-Christians, in need of love and under-standing. Th e Reformed minister, Jan Scharp, for example, declared his soli-darity with the “godly and humbly in the current Catholic Church” and hoped for a rapprochement between Catholics and Protestants “on the basis of merely evangelical truth and love.”24 Others distinguished Dutch “purified Catholi-cism” from Roman “popery” and saw no harm in close cooperation with the former. Th e only Catholics who deserve outright disapproval, added a Franeker theology professor, are converts from Protestantism — a barely veiled allusion to Le Sage ten Broek’s then much-discussed conversion.25 Prayer for Roman Catholics and expressions of hope for unification “in Doctrine and Church administration”26 could be heard from numerous Protestant pulpits — espe-cially in predominantly Catholic areas such as Limburg, where Reformed Protestants were expressly instructed to make “most appropriate attempts” to “advance, preserve, and re-establish the good harmony of Ministers and Con-gregations with the numerous Roman Catholics.”27 Th ese attempts to prevent religious tension clearly reflect the ambition to integrate Southern Catholics in the newly established Kingdom of the Netherlands.

In addition to emphasising unity, many pastors echoed German thinkers such as Herder, Möser, and Mosheim in asserting that the Reformation had stimulated, or even created, the modern sciences, the liberal arts, liberty of

there p. 76. Unlike Le Sage ten Broek, liberal Dutch Catholics welcomed the concord advocated by Protestant leaders: De Herkaauwer 1 (1815), 401-402; 2 (1816), 274; 3 (1817), 289.

24 J. Scharp, Avond-godsdienst op den driehonderdjarigen feestdag der Hervorming, den tweeden van slagtmaand MDCCCXVII in de Groote Kerk der hervormden te Rotterdam (Rotterdam, 1817), pp. viii-ix.

25 Jan van Eyk, Het derde eeuwfeest van de kerkhervorming, gevierd in kerk der hervormden te Loosduinen, op den 2den november 1817 (’s-Gravenhage, 1817); W.A. van Hengel, Opwekking der protestantsche christenheid tot eene regte gedachtenis aan de hervorming van den godsdienst, in eene leerrede naar aanleiding van Joann. X.22a (Franeker, 1817), pp. ii-iv. Van Hengel’s plea for a Protestant All Souls’ Day, devoted “to the memory of the great and noble souls” of the reformers, matched with the General Synod’s consideration, in July 1817, of an “annual Reformation feast.” In 1819, the synod decided that the Reformation ought “from time to time” to be commemo-rated.

26 Le Roy, Oorspronkelijke inrigting (see above, n. 22), p. 196. 27 Quoted in ‘Vóór honderd jaren: de viering van den 300sten gedenkdag der Kerkhervor-

ming II,’ Weekblad der Nederlandsche Hervormde Kerk 1 (1917), 165. Nonetheless, the Reformed pastor of Gent wondered whether Roman Catholic musicians in his city would be so ecumeni-cally-minded as to accompany A.N. van Pellecom’s “Reformation cantata” — which was one specimen of a genre that in particular gave voice to the Protestant triumphalism that irritated Le Sage ten Broek. Th e Hague, National Archive, archive ‘departement hervormde en andere eredi-ensten,’ inv. no. 1529 sub 792, S. Goedkoop to J.D. Janssen, 20 Oct. 1817.


thought, and the bourgeois emancipation that was so important for early-nineteenth-century middle classes.28 Accordingly, in Amsterdam, as in other places, Dutch and Walloon Reformed congregations argued, teleologically, that their everyday enjoyment of the “fruits” yielded by the Reformation deserved a moment of festive reflection.29 As in Mosheim’s historiography and German Protestant memory culture more generally, this portrayal of the Ref-ormation in terms of origins was metaphorically depicted in terms of light and darkness.30 Whereas later generations would interpret this metaphor in spatial terms — identifying the edge between light and darkness with the boundaries of the subgroup that kept faithful to Reformation principles — a temporal version, often suffused with Bible verses like Genesis 1,3 (“Let there be light”) and Ephesians 5,8 (“For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord”), dominated the 1817 sermons.31 In a period of rising historicism, this temporal metaphor, unlike the spatial one, allowed for temporal distance between 1517 and 1817 as long as its teleological design remained unchal-lenged. Few feared that “the sun of truth” and the “light of the Reformation” could possibly hide again behind “the dark clouds that [had] covered it for centuries.”32

28 Th e Hague, National Archive, archive ‘departement hervormde en andere erediensten behalve de rooms-katholieke,’ inv. no. 1529 sub 719, Provincial Church Council of Northern Brabant to klassikale besturen and local congregations, 22 Sept. 1817; A.N. van Pellecom, Leerrede op het derde eeuwfeest der Kerkhervorming, den 2 november 1817, uitgesproken te Prinsenhage (Breda, 1817), p. 9; Chevallier, ‘Leerrede’ (see above, n. 11), pp. 66, 69; Le Roy, Oorspronkelijke inrigting (see above, n. 22), pp. 179-93.

29 Amsterdam, Municipal Archive, archive Dutch Reformed congregation Amsterdam, inv. no. 129, records church council, 25 Sept. 1817; Leerredenen ter viering van het derde eeuwfeest (see above, n. 11), pp. ix-x; Teissèdre l’Ange, ‘Leerrede’ (see above, n. 21), pp. 26, 43; Chevallier, ‘Leerrede’ (see above, n. 11), pp. 86-7.

30 A.G. Dickens and John Tonkin, Th e Reformation in Historical Th ought (Cambridge, MA, 1985), pp. 131-4; Burkhardt, ‘Reformations- und Lutherfeiern’ (see above, n. 7), pp. 223-4.

31 E.g., W.H. Warnsinck, Bz., De Kerkhervorming (s.l., [1817]); Visch, Leerrede (see above, n. 20), pp. 1-2;Herrinnering, ter gelegenheid van het derde eeuwfeest der Kerkhervorming, gevierd door de protestantsche gemeenten, den 2de november, 1817 (Amsterdam, [1817]), pp. 2-3. Cf. G. Groen van Prinsterer, Ongeloof en revolutie: eene reeks van historische voorlezingen (Leiden, 1847), p. 170. (All Bible quotations are taken from the KJV.).

32 G.H. Lagers, ‘Leerrede over 1 Corinthen III. vs. 10 tot 15,’ in Leerredenen ter viering van het derde eeuwfeest (see above, n. 11), pp. 1-54, there p. 6; S. Muller, ‘Leerrede over Galaten V. vs. 1a,’ ibid., pp. 1-46, there p. 8. In ‘History, the Nation and Religion: the Transformations of the Dutch Religious Past,’ in Nation and Religion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia, ed. Hartmut Lehmann and Peter van de Veer (Princeton, 1999), pp. 96-111, Peter van Rooden dates the shift from “origins” to “historical development” as primary modes of representation in Dutch ecclesi-astical historiography around the third centenary of the Reformation.


Finally, it has been argued that the third centenary “identified the Enlight-enment with the Protestant, liberal spirit of the Dutch nation.”33 However, not a single one of our sources restricted the “general enlightenment” brought about by Luther’s Reformation to one particular nation. Although some noted that Protestant parts of Europe had reaped the Reformation’s fruits earlier and with more profit than Catholic areas, Dutch commemorative discourse, in comparison to Germany, was remarkably transnational in its orientation. “Shout with joy, Christians, for the glow of the salvation brought to Europe!,” so the poet W.H. Warnsinck exclaimed. Others gratefully noted that the ter-centenary was celebrated together with “the other Protestant countries” (Ger-many, Switzerland, Scotland) and even with Protestant congregations in Russia and the Habsburg Empire, whose permission to join the European-wide fes-tivities was welcomed as a blessing in itself.34 Although both the subject of commemoration (the “German” Luther) and the commemoration itself (organised after foreign examples) lend themselves to efforts in favour of unity, the celebrated unity did apparently not coincide with national unity.

Only the church historian, Annaeus Ypey, gave a truly national focus to the commemoration by moving Erasmus out of the shadows of Luther and Calvin. Locating religion in the inner self, rather than in church institutions, Ypey attributed to Erasmus a religion of tolerance and moderation that had older roots in the Netherlands than the Calvinist branch that had triumphed at the Synod of Dordrecht (1618-1619).35 Counting Mennonites and Remonstrants among the chief inheritors of Erasmus’s Christian-humanistic tradition, Ypey’s book received acclaim particularly from these old dissenters. Th e Mennonite pastor, Jan van Geuns, for example, applauded the author’s “just, loving, and amicable thoughts.”36 Because of their still marginal positions, however, these former dissenters were less attracted to Protestant nationalism than to “the

33 Rob van der Laarse, ‘De deugd en het kwaad: liberalisme, conservatisme en de erfenis van de Verlichting,’ in De verzuiling voorbij: godsdienst, stand en natie in de lange negentiende eeuw, ed. J.C.H. Blom and J. Talsma (Amsterdam, 2000), pp. 2-45, there p. 9.

34 Warnsinck, Kerkhervorming (see above, n. 31), p. 3; Le Roy, Oorspronkelijke inrigting (see above, n. 22), pp. 3, 180; Visch, Leerrede (see above, n. 20), p. 1; Floh, Kerkelijke redevoering (see above, n. 22), pp. 5, 41; Chevallier, ‘Leerrede’ (see above, n. 11), p. 56; Herrinnering (see above, n. 31), pp. 2-3.

35 A. Ypey, Beknopte geschiedenis van de Hervorming der christelijke kerk in de zestiende eeuw: een leesboek voor belangstellenden in de viering van het derde eeuwfeest der Kerkhervorming (Gro-ningen, 1817); idem, Leerrede ter gedachtenis van de groote verdiensten der Nederlandsche vaderen, betrekkelijk het werk der Kerkhervorming: uitgesproken den 9 van slagtmaand 1817, des avonds, in de Groote Kerk te Groningen (Groningen, 1817); Van Rooden, ‘History, the Nation and Religion’ (see above, n. 32), pp. 99-103.

36 Van Geuns, ‘Leerrede’ (see above, n. 22), p. 54.


right to use [one’s] own judgment in matters of religion.”37 Only after the 1830s, a distinct form of anti-Catholic, Protestant nationalism would emerge in Dutch commemorative discourse.

II

Indeed, as tensions between Catholics and Protestants arose during the second and third quarters of the century, the Reformation became a rhetorical weapon in what is best be called a battle over the proper place of religion in the public domain. When Catholic leaders, supported by post-revolutionary legislation, institutionalised their church and re-emerged into the public realm with pro-cessions and new church buildings, increasing numbers of Protestants came to speak about a “threat of Rome.” F.H.G. van Iterson’s Reformation sermon of 1841 was perhaps the first in its genre to warn against “the warlords of the Roman Catholic Church — the Jesuits — [who,] with a steady firm step, as impertinent as insidious, continue to harass our church denomination!”38 Indebted to a mythic anti-Jesuitism, other pastors depicted the guiles of Jesuit missionaries in the southern provinces in even more vibrant colours.39 Dichot-omies between “Rome” and “Reformation” were, however, most strongly rein-forced after Pius IX’s re-establishment of the Dutch hierarchy in 1853. Th is event not only caused anti-Catholic protests known as the April Movement, but also furthered the establishment of the Evangelische Maatschappij and the Nederlandsche Gustaaf-Adolf-Vereniging — two popular associations that aimed at strengthening Protestant self-confidence. Typically, 31 October services became occasions to raise support and money for these organisations.40

37 Ibid., 30; Simon Vuyk, Uitdovende Verlichting: remonstranten als deftige vaderlanders (1800-1860) (Amsterdam, 1998), pp. 27-33, 45-50.

38 F.H.G. van Iterson, Leerrede ter gedachtenis van de kerkhervorming, als eene heugelijke verlos-sing door God geschonken (Arnhem, 1841), p. 2. Cf. B. Moorrees, Tweetal leerredenen, ter gedachtenis aan het groot, heerlijk en gezegend werk Gods der kerkhervorming in de 16 eeuw (Amsterdam, 1843), p. 40 and the anonymous, Catholic retort to Van Iterson: Een woord over kerk en Kerk-hervorming: of de Katholijke Kerk, gezuiverd van den blaam, haar aangewreven, door den predikant F.H.G. van Iterson, in zijne leerrede ter gedachtenis van de Kerkhervorming (Arnhem, 1842).

39 Moorrees, Tweetal leerredenen (see above, n. 38), p. 40; J. Buddingh, De toestand der protes-tantse tegenover de roomsche kerk in Nederland, 2nd ed. (’s-Hertogenbosch, 1845); Peter Jan Mar-gry, ‘“Jezuïetenstreken”: de attributie van bedrog en de constructie van mythen in het Nederland van de negentiende eeuw,’ De Negentiende Eeuw 28 (2004), 39-64.

40 Van Iterson, Leerrede (see above, n. 38), p. 32; J. van Zuthem, ‘Tegen de teloorgang van de protestantse natie: enkele opmerkingen over de relatie tussen Groen van Prinsterer en de antipa-pistische stromingen en netwerken rond het midden van de negentiende eeuw,’ in Om de toe-komst van het protestantse Nederland: de gevolgen van de grondwetsherziening van 1848 voor kerk, staat en maatschappij, ed. G.J. Schutte and J. Vree (Zoetermeer, 1998), pp. 128-51.


While this rising anti-Catholicism marked the growing importance that became attached to Reformation principles, it is worth observing that not all anti-Catholic rhetoric employed the notion of a “Protestant nation.”41 It is true that the attribution of “stupidity” and “obscurantism” to Catholic believ-ers (a topos throughout the century) could be understood to imply second-rate citizenship for Catholics.42 During the 1840s, Reformed pastors such as Bernardus Moorrees and Johannes Buddingh mourned in their 31 October sermons over the loss of what the former, in an untranslatable expression, called the “Christelijk hervormd Gereformeerd vaderland.”43 Also, when, in 1867, nineteen Catholics from Gorcum, hanged by Calvinists in 1572, were canonized in Rome, several Reformation sermons, particularly in circles of Groninger theologians, complained that “the honour of the Reformation in the Netherlands was assaulted.” By urging their audiences to “consider your church, your nation, your freedom as God’s work,” they blew up a smouldering fire of Protestant nationalism.44 Yet, those who like to see this contested notion of “Protestant nationalism” as a common factor behind all anti-Catholic rhetoric obscure two features of mid-nineteenth-century com-memorative discourse.

First, if the example of the Evangelische Bund (Protestant League) in Ger-many is somehow representative, it illustrates that Protestant nationalists in the mid-nineteenth century typically worried about national character, cul-tural vitality, and “the inner life of the nation.” However, Dutch Reformation

41 On the emergence of this idea: Joris van Eijnatten, God, Nederland en Oranje: Dutch Cal-vinism and the Search for the Social Centre (Kampen, 1993); Pasi Ihalainen, Protestant Nations Redefined: Changing Perceptions of National Identity in the Rhetoric of the English, Dutch, and Swedish Public Churches, 1685-1772 (Leiden, 2005), pp. 209-24, 412-26.

42 Peter Jan Margry, ‘Imago en identiteit: de problematische manifestatie van “het katholieke” in de Nederlandse samenleving rond het midden van de negentiende eeuw,’ in Staf en storm: het herstel van de bisschoppelijke hiërarchie in Nederland in 1853: actie en reactie, ed. Jurjen Vis and Wim Janse (Hilversum, 2002), pp. 64-86, there p. 65.

43 Moorrees, Tweetal leerredenen (see above, n. 38), p. 39; Buddingh, Toestand (see above, n. 39), p. 15.

44 R. Bennink Janssonius, De driehonderdvijftigste gedenkdag der kerkhervorming, gevierd in de Kloosterkerk te ’s Gravenhage, den 31 october 1867 (’s-Gravenhage, 1867), pp. 17-8, 22; Jasper Vree, De Groninger godgeleerden: de oorsprongen en de eerste periode van hun optreden (1820-1843) (Kampen, 1984), pp. 271-80; J.A. Bornewasser, ‘Mythical Aspects of Dutch Anti-Catholicism in the Nineteenth Century,’ in Kerkelijk verleden in een wereldlijke context: historische opstellen (Amsterdam, 1989), pp. 362-75; Peter van Rooden, Religieuze regimes: over godsdienst en maat-schappij in Nederland, 1570-1990 (Amsterdam, 1996), pp. 29-31, 115-20. On the martyrs of Gorcum as a Catholic lieu de mémoire: J.P. de Valk, Roomser dan de paus? Studies over de betrek-kingen tussen de Heilige Stoel en het Nederlandse katholicisme, 1815-1940 (Nijmegen, 1998), pp. 157-72; Wim Vroom, ‘De martelaren van Gorcum,’ in Waar de blanke top der duinen en andere vaderlandse herinneringen, ed. N.C.F. van Sas (Amsterdam, 1995), pp. 106-17.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270417524_Protestant_Nations_Redefined_Changing_Perceptions_of_National_Identity_in_the_Rhetoric_of_the_English_Dutch_and_Swedish_Public_Churches_1685-1772?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-309fe2f2d2b648ffad1d4453fd67eddf-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIzMzU1MzMwNTtBUzo5ODUzOTcyNDA4MzIxM0AxNDAwNTA1MTA5Njkz




sermons from this period had a different focus: they paid considerably more attention to potential Catholic influence on Protestant doctrine, worship, and practice. Even though at some occasions — for example, in a debate over the Heiligerlee monument unveiled in 1868 — attention shifted to nationalist concerns, prayer for individual conversions and Bible distribution among Catholics were far more dominant themes in Protestant commemorative dis-course.45 Different political contexts may account for this difference. Without a Kulturkampf or a Sammlungspolitik that (ineffectively) attempted to com-plete political integration with religious unification, the Netherlands after 1853 witnessed a differentiation of the public sphere that assured Dutch Roman Catholics a comparibly smooth inclusion in the nation-state.46 Although politically, this differentiation took shape only during the third quarter of the century, loyalties to religious or ecclesiastic subgroups took precedence over “Protestant unity” already from the 1830s onward. After the Secession of 1834, the abandonment of early-nineteenth-century unity ideals by the Remonstrant leader, Abraham des Amorie van der Hoeven, and the increase of public polarisation between Groninger and Réveil theologians, a well-informed observer concluded as early as 1846 that a “battle” between what used to be “movements” (rigtingen) but had become “parties” (partijën) could no longer be avoided. When, during the 1860s, these “parties” founded their own associations and became more visible locally, Reformation com-memorations transformed into ritual moments for defining and defending subgroup identities.47

Secondly, related to this emerging concentration on subgroup identities was a semantic proliferation of the term “Rome.” No longer exclusively referring to either the entire Catholic Church or the “Papal See and Church administra-tion,” as distinguished from “noble men and sincere Christians” among Dutch

45 E.g., Buddingh, ‘Weder-woord aan een’ katholijk priester,’ in Toestand (see above, n. 39), pp. 3-4, 7; T. Modderman, De belangstelling van protestanten in roomsch-katholieken: leerrede over Romeinen X:1-4: uitgesproken op den gedenkdag der Kerkhervorming (Rotterdam, 1854), pp. 4, 15, 18.

46 Helmut Walser Smith, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict: Culture, Ideology, Poli-tics, 1870-1914 (Princeton, 1995), pp. 50-78, 117-40; Frans Groot, ‘Papists and Beggars: National Festivals and Nation Building in the Netherlands during the Nineteenth Century,’ in Lehmann and Van der Veer, Nation and Religion (see above, n. 32), pp. 161-77, there pp. 173-6.

47 Vuyk, Uitdovende Verlichting (see above, n. 37), p. 49; [Chr.] S[epp?], review of Eenige opmerkingen omtrent het onderscheidend karakter der Groningsche godgeleerde school by I. da Costa and De berigten omtrent het onderscheidend karakter der Groningsche godgeleerde school van Mr. I. da Costa toegelicht by P. Hofstede de Groot, Godgeleerde Bijdragen 22 (1848), 256-95, there 256. Cf. Van Rooden, Religieuze regimes (see above, n. 44), pp. 174, 185-99; Joris van Eijnatten and Fred van Lieburg, Nederlandse religiegeschiedenis (Hilversum, 2005), pp. 271-8.


Catholics,48 the term generally became identical with “intolerance.” Like in Germany, liberal Protestants understood “Rome” as everything opposed to the “freedom of conscience” that they considered essential to Luther’s Reforma-tion — sometimes invoking Paul’s criticism of Jewish law-observance as an additional, freedom-affirming metaphor.49 Conservative Protestants intro-duced the “Rome of modern unbelief,” while they themselves were charged by modernists like Johannes Henricus Scholten for transforming the reformers and the church’s confessions into “new” or “paper” popes. Th is semantic pro-liferation would reach a climax in the early twentieth century, when Hendrik Anthonie van Bakel defined “Rome” as “the embodiment of all devotion that has nothing in common with faith, love, and freedom as we have come to understand these things.”50

Combined with a continuing interest in Protestant “family ties” across Europe,51 these two mid-century developments indicate the inadequacy of equating anti-Catholicism with Protestant nationalism as well as the rise of significant alternatives to the early-nineteenth-century themes of unity and

48 Isaäc Prins, De Kerkhervorming een zegen van God: leerrede over Psalm CXVIII:27a, gehouden op den 31sten oct. 1841 in de Wester Kerk (Amsterdam, 1841), p. 40. Cf. N.C. Kist, Hervormings-leerrede: uitgesproken te Leiden, den 30sten october 1836 (Leiden, 1836), pp. 24-5; J.J. van Oosterzee, Bedreigd, maar veilig: leerrede op den gedenkdag der Kerkhervorming, 6 november 1853 (Rotterdam, 1853), p. 12; Modderman, Belangstelling (see above, n. 45), p. 9.

49 Ibid., pp. 5-6; J.H. Scholten, De onverdraagzaamheid in de godsdienst: leerrede over Hand. IX. 1a (Leiden, 1851), pp. 15, 17, 20; idem, De Hervorming en haar regt: leerrede over Joh. II: 18, 19, gehouden te Leiden op den gedenkdag der Kerkhervorming, den 2 november 1862 (Leiden, 1862), p. 15; S. de Waard, Een stem van den Th abor: toespraak op den hervormingsdag (’s-Graven-hage, 1897), p. 11; Smith, German Nationalism (see above, n. 46), p. 57. Similarly, in response to the 1853 April Movement, the Dutch Reformed General Synod recommended an annual celebration of the Reformation because of Rome’s “unchangeable intention (. . .) to deprive us from the good for which our fathers have endured an eighty-year war, our freedom of religion”: ‘Synodale brief van opwekking van 22 julij 1853, om jaarlijks den gedenkdag der Hervorming openbaar godsdienstig in de gemeente te vieren,’ in Kerkelijk wetboek: de reglementen en verorde-ningen der Nederlandsche Hervormde Kerk, ed. J. Douwes and H.O. Feith (Groningen, 1879), p. 76. Th is had earlier been suggested in J. Herman de Ridder, De kerkelijke viering van een’ gedenkwaardigen dag aangeprezen (Amsterdam, 1847), pp. 6-8.

50 Moorrees, Tweetal leerredenen (see above, n. 38), p. iii; P. Boeles, Jr., Het tweehonderd vijftig jarig bestaan der hervormde gemeente te Noorddijk, gevierd op den gedenkdag der Hervorming, 2 november 1845 (Groningen, 1846), p. 17; Scholten, Onverdraagzaamheid (see above, n. 49), p. 21; J. Decker Zimmerman, Maarten Luther: een woord, tot de gemeente gesproken op den jong-sten gedenkdag der Hervorming, 1 november 1857 (Amsterdam, 1857), p. 16; H.A. van Bakel, ‘Luther’s getuigenis,’ Vrijzinnige Godsdienstprediking (1 Nov. 1917), p. 12. Strong links between anti-modernism and anti-Catholicism were developed by J.H. Gunning, Jr., in his Anti-modern, daarom anti-roomsch: antwoord op ‘Wat nu te doen?’ (’s-Gravenhage, 1868) and Ter nabetrachting van 31 october en ter voorbereiding op 17 november: een woord tot de gemeente gesproken (’s-Graven-hage, 1869).

51 E.g., Van Oosterzee, Bedreigd (see above, n. 48), p. 4.


origins. Apart from reflecting increasing religious differentiation, these alter-natives turned to a more imperative mode not by emphasising thankfulness, but the lessons to be learned, conclusions to be drawn, and principles to be derived from sixteenth-century history (“What do we, children of the nine-teenth century, have to do?”).52 Th eir orientation was not primarily backward-looking, but forward-oriented. Rather than contemplating historical blessings, they called for application and continuation. Th is imperative mode can be illustrated with the “unfinished Reformation” — a theme that, near the time of the 350th anniversary in 1867, became a topos among modernist theolo-gians throughout the country. Whereas these modernists promoted continua-tion of the Reformation’s campaign for freedom of conscience,53 others, in an equally normative mode, advocated “practical continuation” of the Reforma-tion in philanthropic outreach or “inner reformation” in the sphere of per-sonal devotion.54

Arguably, such normative standards deducted from the Reformation found their most rigorous employment in the battles between the Protestant sub-groups. For example, both proponents and opponents of the Doleantie (a major church split in 1886) articulated their visions in terms of Reformation “principles” — a notion that had been used incidentally throughout the cen-tury, but that had only found wide application after Scholten’s De leer der Hervormde Kerk in hare grondbeginselen [Th e Doctrine of the (Dutch) Reformed Church in Its Basic Principles], 1848-52. Observing significant differences between these principles and everyday reality, Abraham Kuyper, a student of Scholten, had initially proposed to transform the annual 31 October service

52 Scholten, Hervorming (see above, n. 49), p. 9. 53 E.J.P. Jorissen, Roomsch-katholiek, oud-protestantsch of modern? Bij gelegenheid van den her-

vormingsdag (Groningen, 1865), p. 28; W. Muurling, Ontwikkeling en vooruitgang des geestes op het gebied der godsdienst: academische leerrede, gehouden bij den aanvang der lessen, den 25 septem-ber, 1864 (Groningen, 1864), p. 22; A.L. Poelman, Het nieuwe en het oude in de kerk van Chris-tus: een woord tot de gemeente op het feest der Kerkhervorming, naar aanleiding van Hand. VIII:26-40 (Groningen, 1862). Although unimportant before the 1860s, the “unfinished Refor-mation” theme had been raised by N.C. Kist in 1836 and had received attention as early as 1817: Le Roy, Oorspronkelijke inrigting (see above, n. 22), pp. 200-11; Floh, Kerkelijke redevoering (see above, n. 22), p. 38; N.C. Kist, Hervormings-leerrede: uitgesproken te Leiden, den 30sten october 1836 (Leiden, 1836), p. 20; J.I. Doedes, 1517-1867: onze voortzetting van de Kerkhervorming na drie honderd en vijftig jaren (Utrecht, 1867), pp. 6-7.

54 S.K. Th oden van Velzen, Oberlin, de voorlooper eener nieuwe en aanstaande hervorming der kerk van Christus (Leeuwarden, 1856); Poelman, Nieuwe en oude (see above, n. 53); E.B. Swalue, Leerrede, over de aanbidding Gods in geest en waarheid, naar aanleiding van Johannes IV:23 en 24 (Amsterdam, 1853), pp. 19-21; D.H. Meijer, Luther aan de slotkapel te Wittenberg (31 october 1517): ter herinnering op den gedenkdag der Hervorming (Utrecht, 1855), p. 31; F.L. Rutgers, Hervorming: leerrede naar Rom. 12:2b (Delft, 1868), pp. 237-40.


into an hour of penance and grief.55 But later, in the 1880s, “adherence to Reformation principles” had in Kuyper’s hands become an argument for dis-sociation from the former public church. Just as Luther had broken away from an unfaithful Catholic Church, so we are called, wrote Kuyper on the occasion of Luther’s four hundredth birthday, to leave a church based not on sound Calvinistic doctrine, but on “the regulations of 1816.” Shortly after, Kuyper indeed left the Dutch Reformed Church and created a new church denomina-tion (the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands). Kuyper’s colleague, W. Geesink, called this Doleantie a “Reformation act” and compared his con-gregation’s obedience to “the basic principle of Calvinistic church order” to the Dutch break with Rome in 1572 (painfully noting, though, that his congregation, unlike the sixteenth-century examples, still worshipped in an auction-room).56

Opposed to Kuyper in matters of politics and church order, Ph.J. Hoede-maker expressed his worries in a strikingly identical vocabulary. In 1878 already, he had argued that “Reformation principles” had not to be celebrated, but obeyed. For Hoedemaker, the romantic nationalist, however, this obedi-ence had to be practiced within the “national church” that God had blessed so richly throughout the ages. His hope to see obedience return, not only in the former public church, but in state and society as well, was frustrated by both the Doleantie and Kuyper’s strategic acceptance of a liberal political order. Hence, in 1896, Hoedemaker did not know better than to follow Kuyper’s earlier example, characterising Reformation day as a day of fasting instead of feasting and telling his congregation how difficult it was not to ascend the pulpit as a penitential preacher: “We no longer jubilate; we cannot exult . . .” Together with secessionists such as Anthony Brummelkamp and groups of liberal anti-Catholics, Hoedemaker evinced a strong nostalgia for the former “Protestant nation.” Unlike some anti-Catholic organisations, however, he limited his audience to a conservative wing of the Dutch Reformed Church and called for obedience and loyalty in distinctly defensive terms: “Hold that

55 A. Kuyper, Zestal leerredenen (Amsterdam, 1869), pp. 34, 44. Other critics of liberal ten-dencies in the Dutch Reformed Church, such as J.J. van Oosterzee, modelled their commemora-tive attitudes after this example: Het ideaal der gemeente: leerrede, uitgesproken 31 october 1875 (Utrecht, 1875), p. 5. Th e secessionist leader, Simon van Velzen, expressed similar concerns in his Wittenberg-Wesel-Dordrecht: leerrede ter gedachtenis aan de kerkhervorming, de synode van Wesel, en de synode van Dordrecht van 1618 en 1619 (Kampen, 1868).

56 A. Kuyper, Tractaat van de reformatie der kerken: aan de zonen der Reformatie hier te lande op Luthers vierde eeuwfeest aangeboden (Amsterdam, 1884); W. Geesink, Gideons hervormingsdaad: rede naar aanleiding van Richteren 6:25-32 (Rotterdam, 1887), pp. 3, 8, 15; Justus Simpel (pseud. of D.M. Boonstra), Reformeeren, niet separeeren: een woord aan de voorstanders der Reformatie (Zwolle, [1889]).


fast which thou hast” (Rev. 3,11). By the fourth quarter of the century, the ideal of unity was maintained only by anti-Catholic liberals, who, ironically, challenged this same unity by blaming other Protestants for giving priority to subgroup interests.57

Th ese transitions in Protestant memory culture (periodic revivals of Protes-tant nationalism, “Rome” denoting liberalism and literalism, a turn toward principles, and increasing insistence on freedom of conscience versus growing worries by conservative Protestants) gradually relegated the once-powerful unity and origins discourses to the past. Th is enabled the festive celebration of 1817, like the Wartburg festival in Germany, to enter collective memory as a little lieu itself, remembered more intensely as it became less possible to echo Warnsinck’s “Shout with joy.”58 Yet, in a time that saw the establishment of some festive national holidays, it proved difficult to separate the notion of “commemoration” from joy and thankfulness. Referring to the 1717 and 1817 festivities, Van Oosterzee observed in 1875 that it was “no time to celebrate church feasts.” For many, he asserted, the Reformation anniversary had become “like a sun that lost its shining halo.”59

Indeed, long before World War I would produce a rhetoric of clouds, eclipses, and sunsets, leaders from all over the Protestant spectrum felt a need to revise their light metaphors. Just as Reformation commemorations lost their splendour, so the Reformation itself ceased to be the sun that has risen over all Europe. Th is metaphor, after all, fitted badly with “completion,” “continua-tion,” and “application” of the Reformation. Besides, deepening disagreements over the meaning of the reformers’ work implied that not all Protestants could be said to “walk as children of light.” In the mid-century, already, conservative Protestant pastors had warned that God could “remove thy candlestick out of its place” (Rev. 2,5).60 But in subsequent decades, spatial metaphors came into

57 Ph.J. Hoedemaker, De Reformatie en de Gereformeerde Kerk: rede gehouden op den gedenkdag der Hervorming, 3 november 1978, des avonds in de Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam (Amsterdam, 1878), pp. 14, 17, 22, 31-2; idem, Tegen Rome, Gods Woord! Op den gedenkdag der Hervorming: predicatie over Rom. 10:17 (Sneek, [1896]), pp. 3-5; A. Brummelkamp, 1517 en 1867: de roeping der Th eologische School te Kampen, in het zevende halve eeuwgetijde der Hervorming (Kampen, 1867), 15; E.C. Jungius, Het beginsel van den strijd onzer vaderen tegen Spanje in toepassing op onze dagen (Leeuwarden, [1889]), pp. 5, 23.

58 E.g., Buddingh, Toestand (see above, n. 39), p. 1; Jorissen, Roomsch-katholiek (see above, n. 53), p. 11; Geesink, Gideons hervormingsdaad (see above, n. 56), p. 3; Hoedemaker, Tegen Rome (see above, n. 57), p. 3; Etienne François, ‘Die Wartburg,’ in François and Schulze, Deut-sche Erinnerungsorte (see above, n. 2), 2:154-70, there 165-6.

59 Van Oosterzee, Ideaal (see above, n. 55), p. 4. 60 S. Hoogerzeil, Mz., De Kerkhervorming niet strijdig met Gods Woord: leerrede over 1 Tim.

IV:1-5 (Amsterdam, 1842), p. 23; Moorrees, Tweetal leerredenen (see above, n. 38), pp. 67-70; Van Oosterzee, Bedreigd (see above, n. 48), p. 29.


vogue, identifying “light” with faithfulness to Reformation principles. Just as “Rome” could denote all error, heresy, and apostasy, so “darkness” could label all deviation from “the principles of Luther and Zwingli” (or Calvin, as Reformed Protestants would add).61 As these principles were defined differently in each of the religious subgroups, Luther (more than Calvin and Zwingli, who were claimed by Reformed and liberal Protestants, respectively) became a heavily contested lieu de mémoire:

While some place Luther at the apostles’ feet, others depict him as the father of Voltaire, whose statue together with his one they like to see enveloped in the same cloud of incense and praise. While the one shouts: back to the reformers! the voice of the other sounds: Great was 1517, but not less great was 1789; liberty, equality, and fraternity — such is the watchword of the Reformation!62

So, unlike in Germany, where Luther was used for nationalist purposes more than for denominational identity politics,63 Dutch Protestants employed their memories of the reformers for articulating and justifying (if not creating) doc-trinal, moral, and political differences between their respective Protestant subgroups. In this polarised context, celebrations of Protestant unity and his-torical origins gave way to care for subgroup identities and Reformation princi-ples. Whether loyalty to the Reformation was said to consist in unprejudiced study of the Bible, “more rational devotion,” rejection of all authority, obedi-ence to the Word of God, personal conversion, or acknowledging God’s sov-ereignty “in the whole domain of our human existence,” in all these cases the Reformation had come to embody a principle or served as expression of an (abstract) ideal cherished by one or more Protestant subgroups.64 Although

61 Prins, Kerkhervorming (see above, n. 48), p. 45; P.J.R. Laan, Een niet beginselloos overlooper tot de tegenpartij: waarschuwend tijdswoord tegen de volken- en godsdiensthaat, uitgesproken op den gedenkdag der Hervorming (Maassluis, 1871), p. 6; Jungius, Beginsel (see above, n. 57), p. 6; J.J.A. Fernantzen, Toespraak op den gedenkdag der Kerkhervorming van het jaar onzes Heeren 1909 (Amsterdam, [1909]), p. 7; Scholten, Hervorming (see above, n. 49), p. 14.

62 A.W. Bronsveld, ‘31 october 1517-1867,’ Stemmen voor Waarheid en Vrede 4 (1867), 735-43, there 736. Cf. Van Oosterzee, Ideaal (see above, n. 55), p. 21.

63 Burkhardt, ‘Reformations- und Lutherfeiern’ (see above, n. 7), p. 226. Burckhardt’s analy-sis, however, is fairly general. One wonders whether future research at more detailed levels will find patterns of subgroup-based identity politics comparable to those observed in the Nether-lands. Still, Luther’s national hero image marked a major difference between the two countries.

64 Jorissen, Roomsch-katholiek (see above, n. 53), p. 28; Van Velzen, Wittenberg (see above, n. 55), p. 29; D. Chantepie de la Saussaye, Acht jaartallen herdacht bij gelegenheid van het zevende halve-eeuwfeest der Hervorming: rede uitgesproken in de Zuiderkerk te Rotterdam, den 3en november 1867, des voormiddags (Rotterdam, [1867]), p. 26; A. Kuyper, Souvereiniteit in eigen kring: rede ter inwijding van de Vrije Universiteit, den 20sten october 1880 gehouden, in het koor der Nieuwe Kerk te Amsterdam (Amsterdam, 1880), p. 35.


these subgroups not seldom engaged in mutual polemics, either on Luther or Calvin or about the lessons to be drawn from Reformation history,65 the nor-mative mode and identity-maintaining purposes of their commemorative dis-course flourished best within the confines of their respective communities. Accordingly, incompatible memories of the Reformation in late-nineteenth-century Dutch Protestantism were not constantly debated over the entire Protestant spectrum, but “peacefully though unfriendly” (Hugh McLeod) divided over subgroups that articulated them primarily within their own con-texts — as was noted by a Mennonite minister who told his audience, on 31 October 1897, that, “on this day, we do not have to deal with our attitude to others, but with ourselves.”66

Together with an increasing interest in the reformers personal lives,67 this emerging principle discourse and emphasis on subgroup identities reflected a growing differentiation of the Reformation legacy. Headed in several direc-tions — from Pietist-inspired “internalisation” to philanthropic “externalisa-tion” of Protestant faith — this process of differentiation adjusted collective memories of the Reformation to the new reality of institutionalised religious diversity. Th is differentiation also helps explain why, in sharp contrast to the German situation, statues, and other materialisations of Protestant memory played no role at all in the late-nineteenth-century Netherlands. (Listing hun-dreds of Luther monuments in Germany, a recent inventory mentions only two nineteenth-century statues in the Netherlands, neither of which was argu-ably a Reformation monument.) If you want to see a monument, look at the church, said Johannes Petrus Hasebroek, a well-known Reformed minister, in 1871:

Th e whole Church of the Reformation stands here as a large monument to the powerful and well-blessed effect of the Gospel of justification by faith through the blood of the cross, brought to light again by Luther, and every living stone in this building, every living Christian raising a voice, becomes another witness in that cloud of witnesses.68

65 E.g., Doedes, 1517-1867 (see above, n. 53), pp. 36-9; Kuyper, Tractaat (see above, n. 56), pp. xii-xiv.

66 Hugh McLeod, Religion and the People of Western Europe, 1789-1989 (Oxford/New York, 1997), p. 19 (speaking about Dutch pillarisation); De Waard, Stem (see above, n. 49), p. 17.

67 E.g., R. Koopmans van Boekeren, Luther en Zwingli: toespraak, gehouden den 11den novem-ber 1883, des voormiddags in de Pieterskerk te Leiden (Leiden, 1883), esp. p. 12. Popular biogra-phies and children’s books were written and translated in particular on the occasion of Luther’s 300th birthday in 1883 as well as in 1917.

68 Otto Kammer, Reformationsdenkmäler des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts: eine Bestandsaufnahme (Leipzig, 2004); J.P. Hasebroek, Des evangeliedienaars hoogste roem: feestrede op den gedenkdag der Kerkhervorming en dien ener vervulde vijfentwintigjarige evangeliebediening (Amsterdam, 1861),


While the tercentenary had been celebrated in the public sphere, with church bells ringing and lanterns illuminating the bailiff’s house, the differentiation of late-nineteenth-century Protestant memory culture caused a return to the pri-vate domain of churches and Christian organisations. Especially from the last quarter of the century onward, preachers in the pulpit spoke to specific reli-gious subgroups as much as Protestant periodicals addressed well-defined and neatly-separated audiences. Although “Reformation cantatas” and organ pieces written for the occasion could remind someone of the festive style of 1817, these compositions — often varying on “A Mighty Fortress is our God,” which had become the Reformation hymn par excellence — were seldom per-formed outside a church building.69 Public exhibitions, showing old prints, Luther images and medals, would enter commemorative repertoires only dur-ing the centenary of 1917.70 In short, late-nineteenth-century Dutch Protes-tant memory culture, in spite of occasional reminiscences of earlier commemorative styles, no longer employed the Reformation for nationalist purposes, no longer shouted for joy or in hope of unity, but used images of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin as means for teaching Protestants what it meant to be “sons of the Reformation” in a polarised religious setting.71

p. 17. Cf., however, Decker Zimmerman, Maarten Luther (see above, n. 50), pp. 7-8, and Ter herinnering aan Calvijn’s driehonderdjarigen sterfdag: toespraken, gehouden door de leeraars Schwartz, Hasebroek, Vinke, Jamieson, Gagnebin en den heer J.W. van Loon (Amsterdam, 1864), pp. 4, 15, 36-7. On the relation between religious differentiation and the contested realms of public space, see P.J. Margry, Teedere quaesties: religieuze rituelen in conflict: confrontaties tussen katholieken en protestanten rond de processiecultuur in 19e-eeuws Nederland (Hilversum, 2000).

69 Some even considered Luther’s hymn as of greater worth than his translation of the New Testament: Johan de Niet, ‘“Met gloed en kleur te verhalen”: kinderliteratuur rond de Reforma-tie-herdenking van 1917,’ in Paul, Wallet, and Harinck, Reformatie-herdenking (see above, n. 5), pp. 103-19, there p. 106.

70 Catalogus der tentoonstelling van geschriften, platen en gedenkpenningen: gehouden in de trou-wzaal der Evangelisch-Luthersche Oude Kerk, Spui te Amsterdam, van 28 october tot 5 november 1917 (Amsterdam, [1917]); J.C. van Slee, Luther-tentoonstelling ter gelegenheid van het vierde eeuwfeest der Kerkhervorming op de Athenaeum-bibliotheek te Deventer (Deventer, 1917); idem, ‘Maarten Luthers gedachtenis, door gouden en zilveren eere-penningen gehuldigd,’ Stemmen voor Waarheid en Vrede 55 (1918), 625-40; W.K.F. Zwierzina, ‘Nederlandsche penningen bij het vierde eeuwfeest der Hervorming,’ Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Nederlandsch Genootschap voor Munt- en Penningkunde 5 (1918), 82-5. Advertisements for Luther portraits, Reformation calen-dars, commemorative coins, and “Reformation picture post cards” — “silent preachers,” aiming for a place on the mantelpiece — can be read as late signs of a Verbürgerlichung of Reformation memories.

71 Th is self-conscious term, coined by Friedrich Schleiermacher, was adopted by Kuyper in his Tractaat and subsequently picked up by orthodox Protestants from Klaas Schilder to Gerrit H. Kersten. Cf. B.A. Gerrish, ‘Schleiermacher and the Reformation: A Question of Doctrinal Development,’ Church History 49 (1980), 147-59, there 159.


III

If solemn commemoration services had lost their “shining halo” as early as 1875, the fourth centenary in 1917, though perhaps more widely celebrated than any other Protestant jubilee in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, exchanged the language of light for that of shadows. Th ree years of bitter war had elicited other emotions than joy or thankfulness and toned down, if not openly questioned, earlier assumptions about “Reformation fruits” ripened on European soil. Reformation principles, whether defined in terms of piety, moral improvement, church reform, or maintenance of divine ordinances, seemed to be trampled under foot. Th ose who treasured Protestant “family ties” across Europe were dismayed by the British-German hostilities. “By their descent and culture, by virtue of Christian and Protestant confession, because of their common work for the kingdom of God, England, and Germany belong together,” said Herman Bavinck. “And now this miserable war digs a chasm between both nations . . .”72 An international Reformation conference, suggested in 1914 in circles of the Nederlandsch Bijbelgenootschap (Dutch Bible Society), had no chance of being realised. When this intended conference was scaled down to a national gathering in Th e Hague, the organising committee considered “any thought of festivity” at odds with “the gravity of the times.” Local congregations, especially Dutch Reformed ones, announced “remem-brance services,” “grievous commemorations,” and “days of penance and prayer” instead of feastings and celebrations.73

Induced by these circumstances, the fourth centenary completed both the differentiation and the turn toward “principles” and “subgroup identities” observed in late-nineteenth-century memory culture. Concerns over the future of religious faith and church life in Europe prompted local congregations to make 31 October 1917 a day of instruction on the proper application of Ref-ormation principles — although some, out of similar concerns and equally indebted to a modern principle discourse, advocated a less inward-looking approach by calling for ecumenical responses to the threats of war and unbe-lief. Since the subgroup orientation far outweighed the ecumenical voice,

72 H. Bavinck, Het probleem van den oorlog (Kampen, 1915), p. 29. Cf. ‘Verootmoediging,’ Het Centrum (23 Oct. 1917).

73 Paul van Trigt, ‘Een nationaal getuigenis van de Hervorming: het Haagse hervormingscon-gres in 1917,’ in Paul, Wallet, and Harinck, Reformatie-herdenking (see above, n. 5), pp. 40-59, there p. 42; Bart Wallet, ‘Gescheiden gedenken: het vierde eeuwfeest van de Reformatie in Amsterdam,’ ibid., pp. 82-101, there pp. 92-3; Weekblad der Nederlandsche Hervormde Kerk 1 (1917), 165. In Germany, too, international commemorative initiatives were frustrated by the war: Gottfried Maron, ‘Luther 1917: Beobachtungen zur Literatur des 400. Reformationsjubi-läum,’ Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 93 (1982), 177-221, there 177.


almost every Protestant congregation in the Netherlands organised its own commemorative celebration. Typically, in Amsterdam, a proposal for joint-services issued by the Algemeene Protestanten Vereeniging (an anti-Catholic organisation not unlike the Evangelische Maatschappij, mentioned above) was rejected by Reformed and Lutherans alike, not only because of its “enmity (. . .) against Rome,” but also “because we wish to celebrate the 400th Refor-mation day congregationally,” as the Dutch Reformed church council explained. Joint-celebrations of Reformed, Lutheran, and (in some cases) Mennonite congregations mainly took place in villages without a dominating church. In most cases, they were organised with considerable difficulty — as was experi-enced in Veendam and Wildervank, where the sensitivity and resolve of three local pastors were needed to realise a carefully-balanced form of cooperation (no ecumenical services; only non-official joint-gatherings with invited speak-ers from neighbouring congregations).74

Th is preference for congregational commemoration notwithstanding, the most significant interpretational differences did not exist between church denominations, but between various “orthodox,” “confessional,” and “liberal” movements within the Protestant churches, each of which embodied not so much a form of theological agreement between members of different denom-inations as well as a mutual understanding on how the confessional heritage of the churches, including in particular the so-called “forms of unity” (the Hei-delberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession, and the Canons of Dordrecht), was to be assessed vis-à-vis the challenges of modern science, politics, and culture. Although these movements showed different degrees of institutionalisation, the nineteenth century had witnessed the rise of many non-church-related organisations such as the Algemeene Protestanten Vereeniging, which in spite of their strongly divergent (philanthropic, missionary, apologetic) aims often considered themselves to belong to one of those “movements” that had been transformed into “parties.”75 Th e Reformation commemorations convened by these organisations brought Protestants within these “movements” together and showed that the greatest disagreement in Dutch commemorative dis-course arose over the question whether faithfulness was due to the material

74 Amsterdam, Municipal Archive, archive Dutch Reformed congregation Amsterdam, inv. no. 756, minutes extraordinary church council, 21 June 1917; Wallet, ‘Gescheiden herdenken’ (see above, n. 73), pp. 83-4; Herman Paul, ‘ “Als blijk van eenheid, trots alle verschil”: hervor-mingsdag 1917 in Veendam en Wildervank,’ in Paul, Wallet, and Harinck, Reformatie-herdenk-ing (see above, n. 5), pp. 61-80; ‘1517 Hervormingsdag 1917,’ Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant (31 Oct. 1917).

75 Herman Paul, ‘Religious Discourse Communities: Confessional Differentiation in Nine-teenth-Century Dutch Protestantism,’ Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions- und Kulturge-schichte 101 (2007), 107-22.


teachings of the reformers (as laid down in the Augsburg Confession, in Calvin’s Institutes or in the “forms of unity”) or to the formal freedom of con-science principle that Ypey, in 1817, had defined as characteristic of the Ref-ormation.

A widely-covered National Reformation Congress in Th e Hague, which in spite of its chairman’s ecumenical intentions featured not a single liberal speaker, expressed the former view, upheld in particular by so-called “ethical” and “confessional” theologians in the Dutch Reformed Church, by a “progres-sive” strand in the Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland as well as by “orthodox” Lutherans grouped around the journal De Wartburg. Avoiding doctrinal issues, the congress showed indebtedness both to the “unfinished Reformation” theme, particularly its missionary- and philanthropically-oriented versions, and to Kuyper’s Neo-Calvinism. Organised by the Dutch Bible Society and a number of missionary organisations, the conference first applied Reformation principles to missionary outreach, insisting that twentieth-century Protestants had to continue Luther’s “Reformation labour” among non-Christians abroad and at home.76 Likewise, the “pure Reformed principles” ascribed to Luther and Calvin were applied to the increasingly differentiating domains of “reli-gious life” (J.W. Pont), “social life” (J.R. de Slotemaker Bruïne), and “eco-nomic life” (P.A. Diepenhorst). In order to relate the Reformation to these new social constellations, Diepenhorst employed a characteristically anti-his-toricist mode of thought when he explained that not a sixteenth-century his-torical situation, but “the content of the Reformation principles” was what eventually mattered. For those gathered in Th e Hague, time-transcending Reformation principles such as “justification by faith alone,” “sanctification of everyday-life,” and “a calling in the world” served as bridges between Luther’s historical context and their own and as justifications of the outward-oriented activities characteristic of their religious subgroups.77

Liberal Protestants, excluded from the National Congress, held their own conference in Deventer, where they, again, proclaimed Erasmus their hero and characterised “the true Protestant” as “a personality (. . .) independent in his deliberate conviction, yet respecting those with other opinions; tranquil in his self-acquired faith, above all filled with respect for his own conscience and that

76 Half a year after the United States’ declaration of war against Germany, the “unfinished Reformation” theme provided American Lutherans with a vocabulary for advocating, in the name of Luther, the global spread of liberty: Lehmann, Martin Luther (see above, n. 5), p. 273.

77 P.A. Diepenhorst, ‘De Hervorming en ons economisch leven,’ in: De Hervorming herdacht 1517-1917 (Utrecht, 1917), pp. 115-29; Van Trigt, ‘Nationaal getuigenis’ (see above, n. 73), pp. 48-53. A similar approach was followed in Stemmen des Tijds 6 no. 3 (1917).


of his neighbour.”78 Without deriving any material principles from the Refor-mation, as their conservative counterparts did, these liberals, nonetheless, fiercely insisted on the formal freedom of conscience principle, which illus-trated as clearly as the National Congress that Protestant memory culture in the Netherlands no longer celebrated origins and unity, but principles and group identities. Th is freedom of conscience theme — contested especially by pietist Reformed pastors — also enabled Remonstrants and Mennonites to join more actively in 31 October commemorations than they had previously felt able to.79 Dutch Lutheranism, divided over the amount of loyalty it owed to the Augsburg Confession, did not openly choose between “Th e Hague” and “Deventer,” but mixed elements of both in what became a remarkably festive week of celebration, with music, magic lantern views, and a well-attended exhibition in Amsterdam (“if all this festive joy would translate into religious zeal, then what a beautiful time awaits us,” commented a Lutheran pastor, Johannes Elias Schröder, not without irony).80

Characteristically, an attempt to bridge these internal Protestant divides with nation-wide collections for a “Reformation fund” — a practical alterna-tive to a “memorial of iron or stone,” which was hardly conceivable in the fragmented public sphere — was not particularly successful, raising only 21,952 instead of 500,000 guilders. Th e fund was named Pembaroean (Malay for ‘reformation’ or ‘renovation’) and intended “to support all Christian labour that aims at raising and development of children and youth in our overseas provinces, in particular to protect them from the dangers of intellectualism and rationalism.” Although the “overseas provinces” (Suriname, Netherlands Antilles, Dutch East Indies) were safely far away and moral development a major goal of many Protestant civil society organisations, liberal Protestants felt offended by, among other things, the warning against “rationalism” and concluded that “this foundation does not appreciate cooperation with liberal Protestantism.” Orthodox Reformed Protestants tended to be sufficiently

78 ‘Persoonlijke godsdienst,’ De Hervorming (27 Oct. 1917), 355; Pieter Jan Dijkman, ‘ “Of wij niet moeten komen tot een ziel”: vrijzinnige protestanten en de Reformatie-herdenking van 1917,’ in Paul, Wallet, and Harinck, Reformatie-herdenking (see above, n. 5), pp. 121-39.

79 Amsterdam, Municipal Archive, archive Remonstrant congregation Amsterdam, inv. no. 15, minutes board meetings, 24 Apr. and 25 Sept. 1917; J. W[uite], ‘Aan den vooravond van het feest,’ De Zondagsbode 30 (1917), 201-2; E.M. ten Cate, ‘De doopsgezinden en de Hervorming, 1517-1917,’ in Doopsgezind jaarboekje voor 1918 (Assen, 1917), pp. 47-58.

80 Amsterdam, Municipal Archive, archive Evangelical-Lutheran congregation Amsterdam, inv. no. 43, minutes church council, 24 Sept. and 26 Nov. 1917; Het Blaadje 1 (Oct. 1917), 1; De Wartburg (12 Oct., 9 Nov. 1917); J.E. S[chröder], ‘Luthersch?,’ De Wartburg (2 Nov. 1917); ‘Bij het eeuwfeest der Hervorming,’ De Waarheidsvriend (12 Oct. 1917); ‘Luther’s geloofsbe-lijdenis niet meer de onze?,’ De Waarheidsvriend (9 Nov. 1917).


satisfied with segregated infrastructures to prefer their own missionary work, based on “Reformed principles,” over “universal Christian” initiatives.81 Only in the realm of children’s literature, which often left the implications of Refor-mation principles open to broad interpretation, Dutch Protestants proved able to cooperate. A nicely illustrated children’s book by Willem Gerrit van de Hulst, portraying Luther as a man who had learned “not to listen to what peo-ple think, but to listen to God’s own voice, speaking from God’s own book: the Bible,” was recommended and distributed all over the Protestant spectrum.82

Roman Catholics made a point of contrasting these Protestant quarrels, disputes, and disagreements with the institutional unity maintained in the Catholic Church. Whereas Catholics during the nineteenth century had occa-sionally protested against the dark colours in which the Catholic Church had been portrayed, in 1917, their strengthened position in religious and political life allowed them to adopt a more self-conscious tone, expressing concern and dismay over their Protestant brothers and sisters. How could these Protestants, in their “tormented consciousness,” rejoice in being “liberated from Rome,” given the unprecedented scale of rivalry among Protestant churches, doctrinal principles, and moral beliefs? Although polemics against Protestants were far from absent, the prevailing attitude among Dutch Catholics was captured in a so-called “prayer alliance” (gebedenverbond) for the conversion of erring Protestant brethren. Dating back to 1898, this imagined alliance had received special significance when Bishop Henricus van de Wetering, in December 1916, had issued a special prayer (“in order that the scales may fall off their eyes”), good for “100 days of indulgence, to be gained once a day.” In the Catholic press of October 1917, this prayer dominated a majority of edi-torials and commentaries.83 Additionally, like in Germany, “the historical

81 J.W. Pont, ‘De Hervorming en het godsdienstige leven,’ in: De Hervorming herdacht (see above, n. 77), pp. 37-52, there p. 38; Van Trigt, ‘Nationaal getuigenis’ (see above, n. 73), pp. 53-4; Arjan Nobel, ‘“Naar wien wij ons wel niet noemen, maar die toch ook de onze is”: de Reformatie-herdenking van 1917 in de gereformeerde pers,’ in Paul, Wallet, and Harinck, Refor-matie-herdenking (see above, n. 5), pp. 141-61, there pp. 147-8. Conservative Lutherans dis-agreed about Pembaroean: Municipal Archive Amsterdam, archive Evangelical-Lutheran congregation Amsterdam, inv. no. 43, minutes church council, 26 and 28 Jan. 1918; ‘Pem-baroean,’ De Wartburg (5 Oct. 1917).

82 De Niet, ‘Met gloed’ (see above, n. 69), pp. 105-6, 112-6; Jacques Dane, ‘De vrucht van bijbelsche opvoeding’: populaire leescultuur en opvoeding in protestants-christelijke gezinnen, circa 1880-1940 (Hilversum, 1996), pp. 56-7.

83 G. Brom, ‘De toestand der Nederl. Hervormde Kerk,’ De Beiaard 2 (1916), 249-74, there 271; M. Stoks, ‘Bij het vierde eeuwgetij der Hervorming,’ De Maasbode (29 Oct. 1917); K. Nens, ‘Hervormingsviering,’ Het Dompertje 51 (1917), 328-34; ‘Aan den vooravond van een droevigen gedenkdag,’ De Tijd (30 Oct. 1917); M. Th arcisio Horsten, De Fraters van Tilburg van 1844-1944, 3 vols. (Tilburg, 1946-52), 2: 254-75; Paul, ‘Blijk van eenheid’ (see above, n. 74),


Luther,” stripped of Protestant prejudices, kindled considerable interest among Catholic writers.84

Significantly, the Catholic press hardly complained about nostalgia for Protestant conceptions of Dutch nationhood, such as found among followers of Hoedemaker and in periodicals like the Nieuw Evangelisch Tijdschrift (New Protestant Journal). Attended by Queen Wilhelmina, Queen-Mother Emma, and several political leaders, the National Congress, too, suggested intimate relationships between the Reformation and the Netherlands — especially when its participants made a pilgrimage to the tomb of William of Orange, in Delft, where they sang the national anthem and were instructed about the national significance of the “father of the fatherland.” But if such language created outgroups, then, at this occasion, the Catholics were no longer the ones to be excluded. Protestant-Catholic relations had changed significantly during the decades prior to the Reformation’s fourth centenary, resulting into coalitions between Roman Catholics and the (Neo-Calvinist) Anti-Revolu-tionary Party in 1888-91, 1901-05, and 1908-13. Speaking about national Protestant heritages, early-twentieth-century Protestants rather expressed a fear of “advancing godlessness,” as represented in particular by socialism (insti-tutionalised in 1894, in the Social Democratic Labour Party) — even though these socialists held their own Reformation commemorations, most visibly in Amsterdam, where the socialist leader, Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, wel-comed Luther’s subversion of church authority as a first step toward subver-sion of state authority (“If we indeed wish to be Protestants, then we arrive at the conclusion that we have to fight the state . . .”).85

All this not only indicates that, in 1917, Protestant religious practice in the Netherlands had become too diverse to articulate a shared view on the Refor-mation. It also shows that, because of this religious plurality, Protestant sub-groups consciously employed collective memories of the Reformation for justifying freedom of conscience, confessional orthodoxy, Bible-based mis-sionary outreach, and other group-defining characteristics — thereby confirming

pp. 73-4; Mark Wallet, ‘“Heer, maak dat zij zien mogen”: rooms-katholieke reacties op de Refor-matie-herdenking van 1917,’ in: Paul, Wallet, and Harinck, Reformatie-herdenking (see above, n. 5), pp. 163-82.

84 H.J.J. Wachters, Luther: leven, persoon, leer (Bussum, 1917); ‘Een katholieke Lutherbiografie,’ Het Centrum (10 and 15 Nov. 1917); Heinrich Lutz, ‘Zum Wandel der katholischen Luther-interpretation,’ in Objektivität und Parteilichkeit in der Geschichtswissenschaft, ed. Reinhart Kosel-leck, Wolfgang J. Mommsen, and Jörn Rüsen (Munich, 1977), pp. 173-98, there pp. 191-2.

85 R.H. Drijber, ‘De ethischen en de evangelischen,’ Nieuw Evangelisch Tijdschrift 2 (1917), 124-47; idem, ‘Verschijnselen van onzen tijd,’ Nieuw Evangelisch Tijdschrift 3 (1917), 73-112, there 105-12; Van Trigt, ‘Nationaal getuigenis’ (see above, n. 73), p. 42; Algemeen Handelsblad (31 Oct. 1917).


a long-term shift away from Protestant unity and shared historical roots to Reformation principles that had to be upheld against the principles put for-ward by other religious subgroups. Most characteristic of the Reformation as a lieu de mémoire was not its anti-Catholic bent, but the increasingly varied subgroup purposes for which it was used. As instruments of mediation between the demands of a religious past and the challenges of modern politics and sci-ence, ritual references to the Reformation helped Dutch Protestants to articu-late and justify their theological and church political strategies. Mainly for this reason, we suggested in passing, the Dutch Luther was a man of words and images: he was too contested to be represented by statues and processions such as those commemorating the national heroes of the late nineteenth century (William of Orange, Cats, Rembrandt, etc.). For this same reason, by the time of the fourth centenary, collective memories of Luther and the Reformation had lost much of their earlier, joyous gleam. Th e sun that had risen high over Europe hid behind clouds of war and unbelief and grew pale as its blessings were no longer gratefully received, so Dutch preachers metaphorically observed.

If the Reformation was a representative lieu de mémoire, then this study shows, finally, that nineteenth-century Protestant commemorative agendas in the Netherlands were only partially shaped by nationalist concerns. Although issues of Dutch nationhood were raised from the 1830s onward, with explicit political purposes or in simple expressions of nostalgia, the collective memo-ries of Dutch Protestants between 1817 and 1917 so clearly served religious group interests, that they deserve to be well-distinguished from the historical identity politics that were supposed to legitimise the nation-state. Whereas this national commemorative agenda became increasingly inclusive during the nineteenth century — as evidenced by the decline of the Holland-centred “Batavian myth,” the emergence of Franks, Frisians, and Saxons in the national genealogy, and the rising prominence of a “tolerant” William of Orange86 — the Protestant agenda became increasingly exclusive. Besides, unlike the national memory discourse, Protestant commemorative culture could not be confined within a national framework. Luther and his fellow-reformers (Eras-mus excepted) were all “foreigners,” and therefore unlikely candidates for the kind of nationalist exploitation that took place in early-twentieth-century

86 Marnix Beyen, ‘Het vaderland in hoogsteigen persoon: literaire figuren in de nationale herdenkingscultuur van de late negentiende en vroege twintigste eeuw,’ De Negentiende Eeuw 26 (2002), 81-96; idem, ‘A Tribal Trinity: Th e Rise and Fall of the Franks, the Frisians and the Saxons in the Historical Consciousness of the Netherlands since 1850,’ European History Quar-terly 30 (2000), 493-532.


Germany.87 Besides, throughout the century, Dutch Protestants also referred to “other Protestant countries,” to common religious heritages throughout Europe, and to challenges similar to those of like-minded Protestant sub-groups in other countries.88 All this suggests that in the context of nineteenth-century Dutch Protestantism, a collective memory approach as used in this article opens up promising venues for understanding the differentiation within the Protestant world.

Dr. H.J. Paul, Department of History, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9515, NL — 2300 RA Leiden, Th e Netherlands; [email protected]

Drs. B.T. Wallet, Department of Hebrew & Jewish Studies, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Spuistraat 134, NL — 1012 VB Amsterdam, Th e Netherlands; [email protected]

87 Maron, ‘Luther 1917’ (see above, n. 73); Günter Brakelmann, Das deutsche Protestantismus im Epochenjahr 1917 (Witten, 1974), p. 13. “No, no, the prototype of the contemporary Pan-Germanist is least to be found in Luther!,” wrote C.F.M. Deeleman, ‘Verschijnselen des tijds,’ Nieuw Evangelisch Tijdschrift 2 (1917), 181-206, there 196. Neither did the anti-German version (favoured by the American minister, Frank W. Gunsaulus, who compared Luther’s “robust and healthful spirit” to “a sword which shall not return unto its scabbard until democ-racy is safe everywhere in our world”) receive much support. Lehmann, Martin Luther (see above, n. 5), p. 275.

88 For another example, see Hans-Georg Ulrichs, ‘“Der erste Anbruch einer Neuschätzung des reformierten Bekenntnisses und Kirchenwesens”: das Calvin-Jubiläum 1909 und die Reformierten in Deutschland,’ in Harm Klueting and Jan Rohls (eds.), Reformierte Retrospektiven: Vorträge der zweiten Emder Tagung zur Geschichte des reformierten Protestantismus (Wuppertal, 2001), pp. 231-65, there pp. 248-9.

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A Sun that Lost its Shine: The Reformation in Dutch Protestant Memory Culture, 1817-1917

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