Dutch Bibles

A. A. den Hollander

The first printed editions (1477–1522)

The production of Dutch-language Bibles in the second half of the fifteenth century was largely determined by the book culture of the Low Countries in the late Middle Ages. At that time the handwritten book still held the most important place, and the printed book was only gradually developing into a distinct and independent medium. This development is also evident in the earliest selection of Dutch Bibles that were printed. The texts printed first were the most popular Bible texts: texts for which the demand exceeded the supply. Of the thirty-three Dutch editions of the Bible printed before 1500, the majority (twenty-six) are made up of texts from the Epistles and Gospels, which give the Scripture passages to be used for the readings during the liturgical year. Most of the remaining printed editions are Psalters. In both cases these printed editions are popular works that would have been relatively risk-free for the publisher on account of guaranteed sales in an already existing market. These genres continued to be popular in the first two decades of the sixteenth century, comprising 75 percent of the twenty Dutch Bibles printed in total.

The growing interest in vernacular Bibles is also reflected in the booming production of handwritten Dutch biblical texts in this period, which were not limited only to Psalters and the Epistles and Gospels. The number of hand-written copies produced is naturally significantly lower than the number of printed editions. What is striking is that, during this phase, certain existing types of texts, which used biblical material and had been developed in previous centuries, only finally began to flourish in this period. Thus the genre of the Middle Dutch Life of Jesus, which dates from the last quarter of the thirteenth century, became unprecedentedly popular in the fifteenth century. Furthermore, the fourteenth-century translation of the New Testament by Johan Scutken also grew gradually in popularity, most significantly among lay brothers and sisters from (semi-) religious communities which were influenced by the Devotio Moderna. The vast majority of the manuscripts of this New Testament were produced during the fifteenth century.

The royal collections in England for the Calvinist refugees from the two Palatinates undoubtedly proved the most significant both in terms of scale, duration and sums collected. Together with the collections conducted in Scotland and Ireland, which generated considerably less, they were the only national collections organised for the exiles.

The collections in England struck a chord with English Puritans in particular, as a cause close to their hearts. On its own, the experience of the Marian exile in the mid sixteenth century, which had seen most leading English Protestants seek refuge on the continent, would have guaranteed that this cause would have found resonance among English Protestants, not least because these exiles had returned home on Elizabeth’s accession to play a prominent role in the English Church, giving it a distinctly Reformed flavour in accordance with what they had encountered, not only in Geneva and Zurich, but also in southern Germany.

Lucca

For a story about the Calvinist network in Reformation Europe to take its beginning in Lucca in Tuscany around the middle of the sixteenth century would strike most people interested in the history of early modern Calvinism as distinctly odd. Even if this was a time when the Reformed religion was still very much in its infancy, or formative phase, in geographical terms neither Italy in general nor Lucca in particular proved to be beacons of early modern Calvinism.

After less than a decade in France, and following the Wars of Religion and in particular the St Bartholomew Day Massacre, it finally became clear to the Reformed exiles from Lucca that France was never going to provide them with the safe haven they had hoped for. Consequently, many of them decided to settle in Geneva where some, of course, had intended to go all along, while others sought renewed refuge in some of the major trading centres of Germany and the Netherlands which offered a measure of toleration. Their exodus from France initiated a series of migrations between some of the leading north-western European cities involving a number of family members. Combined with their intermarriage into other refugee Reformed merchant families, primarily from Antwerp, this served to grow and expand a Reformed network built around wealthy merchant families who all shared the experience of persecution and exile. Giuliano Calandrini’s children offer particularly pertinent examples of how this Reformed network grew and consolidated itself.

By the beginning of the seventeenth century the Calvinist network, of which the Calandrinis, Burlamachis and Diodatis formed such a prominent part, was at its most extensive. Wealthy Reformed merchants resided in most of the prominent commercial cities in north-western Europe where foreign Reformed churches were permitted to establish themselves or where Calvinists were offered some degree of toleration. Through a series of individual and mass emigrations often involving two generations of the same families, Calvinism had established itself as a truly ‘transnational’, European faith.

By 1643 the Thirty Years War was gradually winding down. Military activity within the Holy Roman Empire was much reduced while peace negotiations had begun in August 1643 in Westphalia, even if the full meeting of the Westphalian Peace Conference had to wait another two years. By then many of the Reformed refugees from the Palatinate had returned home from their prolonged exile in and around Nuremberg and Hanau, or were in the process of doing so. These events were accompanied by the gradual disappearance of the great charitable endeavour for these refugees which had been the focus for the ‘Brethren in Christ’ across Europe for twenty years. Simultaneously the Calvinist network of merchants and ministers who had sustained this scheme began to falter.