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e Conrad Grebel Review 35, no. 2 (Spring 2017): 114-150.
e Bottle, the Dagger, and the Ring: Church Discipline and
Dutch Mennonite Identity in the Seventeenth Century
Troy Osborne
On August 1, 1680, Mary Jans van de Heule and Pieter Melisz appeared
before the elders of the Amsterdam Lamist Mennonite1 congregation to
address reports about their discordant and bad domestic life [oneenig en
slegt huishouden], especially the rumors that the husband stayed out late on
several nights. e couple did not deny the rumors, but promised that they
would improve aer the elders threatened to tell the rest of the brethren of
their actions.2 Less than two months later, Melisz appeared again and was
earnestly admonished about his drunkenness and conict with his wife,
whom he had threatened with a knife and chased out of the house. e elders
decided to cut o his charitable support and kicked him out of his church
housing. Despite warnings they would oust him from the congregation, his
behavior continued to deteriorate.3 In 1684, the board summoned him for
smashing Michel Symons’s head with a mug.4 In 1687, the elders informed the
congregation that, despite previous warnings and promises of improvement,
Melisz continued frequenting taverns and wasting his time.5 e next year,
1 In this article, ‘Mennonite’ translates the Dutch word Doopsgezind. Following the
Waterlander division of 1557, more moderate Dutch Anabaptist groups called themselves
Doopsgezinden. In the 17th century, the stricter confessional groups who sought to remain
true to the teachings of Menno Simons, like the Hard Frisians, referred to themselves as
Mennonites. For more on the distinction, see Piet Visser, “Mennonites and Doopsgezinden
in the Netherlands, 1535-1700,” in A Companion to Anabaptism and Spiritualism, 1521-1700,
ed. John D. Roth and James M. Stayer (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 313-14. When corresponding
with outsiders, even Doopsgezinden oen referred to themselves as Mennonites. See Troy
Osborne, “e Development of a Transnational ‘Mennonite’ Identity Among Swiss Brethren
and Dutch Doopsgezinden in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Mennonite Quarterly
Review 88, no. 2 (2014): 195-218.
2 Stadsarchief Amsterdam (Amsterdam City Archives, hereaer SAA) inventory 1120, item
number (nr.) 174, page 193 [August 1, 1680].
3 SAA 1120 nr. 174, 231 [October 2, 1681].
4 SAA 1120 nr. 175, 18 [September 14, 1684]. His case went in front of the brothers, and he
was cleared because of his admission of guilt.
5 SAA 1120 nr. 175, 51 [December 14, 1687]. Melisz denied everything.
Bottle, Dagger, Ring: Dutch Mennonite Identity 115
the board learned that he had threatened to cut his wife’s throat.6 So, when
he petitioned to rejoin the congregation in 1695, a skeptical board of elders
decided that the testimonies of his improved behavior were not strong
enough to re-admit him.7
Church Discipline and Confessional Identity
Cases like those of Pieter and Mary Jans are invaluable windows into the
study of social discipline and confessionalization in the 16th and 17th
centuries. During Europe’s confessional age (1550-1700), Catholic and
Protestant churches created institutions and programs to clarify the external
boundaries between groups and to strengthen internally the Christian
formation of their members. Some scholars have labeled Anabaptists as
fundamentally “non-confessional,”8 but as they grew more enmeshed into
the surrounding society, Mennonites in the Dutch Republic and northern
Germany, like their Protestant and Catholic neighbors, used tools such as
confessions, martyrologies, hymns, catechisms, and church discipline to
instill greater devotion in members and to dierentiate themselves from
other denominations and other groups of Mennonites.9
Historians are attracted to the sources of church discipline for the
access they provide into the lives of ordinary men and women. ose who
were disciplined did not leave diaries or many letters, but their cases, which
oen include their own defenses, open a window on the majority who were
the “copper coins of the Golden Age.”10 In particular, disciplinary sources
reveal how people lived out their reformation ideals in their daily lives. By
looking at long-term patterns, historians can trace the successes and failures
of reformers, Protestant, Anabaptist, and Catholic, in imposing Christian
6 SAA 1120 nr. 175, 53 [February 19, 1688].
7 SAA 1120 nr. 175, 118 [December 15, 1695].
8 Heinz Schilling, “Confessional Europe,” in Handbook of European History: 1400-1600, ed.
omas A. Brady, Jr., Heiko A. Oberman, and James D. Tracy (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
1996), 2: 641.
9 For the confessional process among Hamburg’s Mennonites, see Michael D. Driedger,
Obedient Heretics: Mennonite Identities in Lutheran Hamburg and Altona during the
Confessional Age (Aldershot, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002).
10 A. . van Deursen, Het kopergeld van de Gouden Eeuw (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1978).
e Conrad Grebel Review116
values on their members and the wider world.11
Although it is never a straightforward route between ocial mandates
and changes in identity and behavior, church discipline lay at the heart
of religious reform in the 16th and 17th centuries. Changing practices
in discipline inform us about changes in Mennonite identity and grant a
sense of what it meant to be a Mennonite in Amsterdam.12 By outlining
how, when, and why congregations disciplined their members for drinking,
sex, and violence, I will track in this essay the quantitative and qualitative
changes to Mennonite discipline as their members grew more enmeshed
into the surrounding culture. Comparisons with other churches’ discipline
will illustrate the ways that Mennonite eorts to eradicate sin in their
congregations mirrored those of other Amsterdam faiths, and highlight the
areas where they diered. I will also oer some initial explanations for the
decline in discipline.
Amsterdam’s Anabaptists
Anabaptists had gathered in Amsterdam since the 1530s. By the 17th century,
there was a range of Mennonite and Anabaptist groups. The conservative
Old Flemish met at the Nieuwe Zijd Achterburgwal in a building known
as the “6 Kruijkes” (6 Jars). ere were also two branches of Frisians: e
conservative Jan Jacobsz group met on the Bloemstraat, and the Young
Frisians met at “Noah’s Ark” on the Heerengracht, one of the city’s principal
canals. e High German congregation also met in Amsterdam, but the
location is still unknown.
11 Two earlier studies of church discipline among Dutch Mennonites are A.M.L. Hajenius,
“‘Quaet Comportement’. De Tucht in de Doopsgezinde Gemeente Utrecht in de Zeventiende
Eeuw,” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen Nieuwe Reeks 23 (1997): 72-73; S. Zijlstra, Om de ware
gemeente en de oude gronden: Geschiedenis van de Dopersen in de Nederlanden 1531-1675
(Hilversum and Leeuwarden: Uitgeverij Verloren and Fryske Akademy, 2000), 448-54; For
Mennonite discipline in German lands, see Hans-Jürgen Goertz, “Kleruskritik, Kirchenzucht
und Sozialdisziplinierung in den Täuferischen Bewegungen der Frühen Neuzeit,” in
Kirchenzucht und Sozialdisziplinierung im Fruehneuzeilichen Europa, ed. Heinz Schilling, vol.
16 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1994), 183-98; Driedger, Obedient Heretics, 75-82.
12 For discipline among Amsterdam’s Reformed congregations, see Herman Roodenburg,
Onder censuur: de kerkelijke tucht in de gereformeerde gemeente van Amsterdam, 1578-1700
(Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Verloren, 1990).
Bottle, Dagger, Ring: Dutch Mennonite Identity 117
is present study draws from 150 years of records from the
three largest Amsterdam congregations. e oldest and most moderate
congregation were the Waterlanders (known as the Toren, or tower) of around
1,000 members, the rst to record their congregational discipline in 1615.13
In 1668, the Waterlanders merged with the Flemish congregation (known
as the church “bij ‘t Lam” (by the lamb) but continued to meet in separate
buildings. In 1678, the two Lamist congregations totaled 2,639 members.14
In 1664, a dispute about the role of written confessions split the Flemish
congregation, with 500 members leaving to worship at the warehouse called
“e Sun” (Zon).15 Together, the Waterlander, Lamist, and Zonist archives
contain the fullest (and essentially only) records of church life in 17th- and
18th-century Amsterdam.16
Amsterdam had a variety of Mennonite-related groups because of
splits around the practice of discipline that had divided the Anabaptist
movement at the end of the 16th century. It is perhaps ironic that, at the
same time that Mennonites grew more intolerant of each other, they
gained a degree of religious freedom and toleration in the Dutch Republic.
e founding document of the Republic, the Union of Utrecht (1579),
guaranteed all subjects freedom of conscience, stating that “nobody shall
13 W. J. (Wilhelmus Johannes) Kühler, Geschiedenis van de Doopsgezinden in Nederland:
tweede deel, 1600-1735, eerste hel (Haarlem, 1940), 66. e Waterlander records are in
two ‘Memorial’ books started by Reynier Wybrants, found in Mennonite archives at the
Stadsarchief Amsterdam: SAA 1120 nr. 116, ‘Memoriael B’ and SAA 1120, nr. 117, ‘Memoriael
B.’ e Waterlander records continue in SAA 1120 nr. 125, ‘Notitie van gebreckelijke
litmaeten der gemeente’ and SAA 1120 nr. 123, ‘Register met verzoeken om de doop, tevens
attestatieregister.’ e Lamist records are in the church board’s notes SAA 1120 nr. 173-176.
14 J. ten Doornkaat Koolman and Frits Kuiper, “Amsterdam,” Global Anabaptist Mennonite
Encyclopedia Online (GAMEO) http://gameo.org/index.php?title=Amsterdam_(Noord-
Holland,_Netherlands), accessed April 15, 2015. e Lamist discipline records are found in
SAA 1120 nr. 174 and 1120 nr. 175, “Notulen.”
15 Nanne van der Zijpp, “Lamists,” GAMEO http://gameo.org/index.php?title=LAMISTS,
accessed April 15, 2015. e Zonist discipline records are housed in SAA 877 nr. 1, 2, 3, 4,
and 5, “Notulen.”
16 Although discipline records give us a glimpse into discipline practices, scholars use them
cautiously. Record keepers may not have registered all oences, and informal discipline may
have occurred without being brought to the full board of elders. Judith Pollmann, “O the
Record: Problems in the Quantication of Calvinist Church Discipline,” Sixteenth Century
Journal 33, no. 2 (2002): 423-26, 438.
e Conrad Grebel Review118
be persecuted or examined for religious reasons.”17 e Reformed Church
became the publicly recognized church (publieke kerk) of the young nation,
but the authorities would tolerate the existence of other confessions for the
sake of public concord.18
Aer suering decades of persecution, Mennonites willingly accepted
their secondary status in the Republic and the accommodations they
received. e authorities did not force them to marry in Reformed churches
but allowed them to marry in front of magistrates. Instead of serving in the
military, Mennonites could perform watch duty or help build city defenses.
Rather than swearing oaths, they could make a simple armation that
suced as a legally acceptable alternative. While forbidden from erecting
churches that might tempt the curiosity of passers-by, they could build their
concealed churches (schuilkerken) behind the facades of warehouses or
homes.19
Mennonite Identity
In her study of the socio-economic background of the Waterlander
congregation, Mary Sprunger concluded that ten percent (y households)
of the congregation would have been considered wealthy by contemporary
17 M.E.H.N. Mout, “A Comparative View of Dutch Toleration in the Sixteenth and Early
Seventeenth Centuries,” in e Emergence of Tolerance in the Dutch Republic, ed. C. Berkvens-
Stevelinck, J. Israel, and G.H.M. Posthumus Meyjes (Leiden, New York; Köln: Brill, 1997),
41; Willem Frijho and Marijke Spies, 1650: Bevochten eendracht (Den Haag: Sdu Uitgevers,
1999), 181.
18 Willem Frijho, “Religious toleration in the United Provinces: from ‘case’ to ‘model,’” in
Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age, ed. R. Po-Chia Hsia and Henk van
Nierop (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002), 31-37; Jonathan Israel, e Dutch Republic:
Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477-1806 (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1995), 361-67.
19 Samme Zijlstra, “Anabaptism and Tolerance: Possibilities and Limitations,” in Calvinism
and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age, ed. R. Po-Chia Hsia and Henk van Nierop
(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002), 113-114. On the cultural and social functions
of concealed churches, see Benjamin J. Kaplan, “Fictions of Privacy: House Chapels and
the Spatial Accommodation of: Religious Dissent in Early Modern Europe,” e American
Historical Review 107, no. 4 (2002): 1031-64. For the oath, see H. W. Meihuizen, “De oude
dopersen en de eed,” in Vooruitzien en terugzien. Feestbundel ter gelegenheid van de zeventigste
verjaardag van H. W. Meihuizen, ed. S. L. Verheus, D. Visser, and R. de Zeeuw (Amsterdam:
Algemene Doopsgezinde Sociëteit, 1976), 54-59, and Driedger, Obedient Heretics, 145-47.
Bottle, Dagger, Ring: Dutch Mennonite Identity 119
standards. At the other end of the scale, een to eighteen percent of the
members (365 men, women, and children), the majority of whom lived in
the Jordaan and Haarlemmerdijk sections of the city, partook of the church’s
poor relief in 1658.20
At the other end of the economic spectrum, elites within the
congregation actively participated in the commerce and trade of the
Republic. e Waterlanders active in foreign trade focused their investment
in the nation’s “mother trade” (moeder handel) in Baltic grain, as well as
in shing, shipping, and industry. In addition to commercial enterprises,
Mennonites were also active in the cultural world of the Republic’s Golden
Age. For example, Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679), the greatest poet of
the period, began his literary career while a member and deacon of the
Waterlander congregation. Other Mennonites became doctors, professors,
artists, and patrons.21 It was the staggering wealth that the richest families
had concentrated among themselves through inter-marriage that supplied
funds for the church’s active poor relief, which fed, housed, and clothed
20 Mary Sprunger, “Rich Mennonites, Poor Mennonites: Economics and eology in the
Amsterdam Waterlander Congregation During the Golden Age” (Ph.D. diss., University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1993), 36-42, 133; Mary Sprunger, “Waterlanders and the
Dutch Golden Age: A case study on Mennonite involvement in seventeenth-century Dutch
trade and industry as one of the earliest examples of socio-economic assimilation,” in From
Martyr to Muppy [Mennonite Urban Professional]: A Historical Introduction to Cultural
Assimilation Processes of a Religious Minority in the Netherlands: the Mennonites, ed. Alastair
Hamilton, Sjouke Voolstra, and Piet Visser (Amsterdam: Amsterdam Univ. Press, 1994), 135-
37.
21 S. Zijlstra, Om de ware gemeente en de oude gronden, 484-89; Piet Visser, “Aspects of Social
Criticism and Cultural Assimilation: e Mennonite Image in Literature and Self-Criticism of
Literary Mennonites,” in From Martyr to Muppy, 10-12. For biographies of several Mennonite
painters, writers, and poets, see Piet Visser and Mary S. Sprunger, Menno Simons: Places,
Portraits and Progeny (Altona, MB: Friesens, 1996); Marijke Spies, “Mennonites and literature
in the seventeenth century,” in From Martyr to Muppy, 83-98; S.B.J. Zilverberg, “Met pen,
passer en penseel: Doopsgezinde en cultuur,” in Wederdopers, Menisten, Doopsgezinden: in
Nederland 1530-1980, ed. S. Groenveld, J.P. Jacobszoon, and S.L. Verheus (Zutphen: Walburg
Pers, 1981), 180-94; A.L. Broer, “Doopsgezinde schilders van vroeger en nu,” Doopsgezinde
Jaarboekje 74 (1980): 70-80; S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, “Doopsgezinden en schilderkunst in
de 17e eeuw—Leerlingen, opdrachtgevers en verzamelaars van Rembradt,” Doopsgezinde
Bijdragen, Nieuwe Reeks 6 (1980): 105-23, and Piet Visser, Broeders in de Geest:de doopsgezinde
bijdragen van Dierick en Jan Philipsz (Deventer: Uitgeverij Sub Rosa, 1988): 22-81.
e Conrad Grebel Review120
the congregation’s neediest members.22 However, despite members with
remarkable wealth, Sprunger’s careful work is a reminder that “a large
majority of Amsterdam Waterlander Doopsgezinden were from the bottom
half of occupational levels.”23
Mennonite Discipline
In the multi-confessional Dutch Republic, individuals could choose which
confession to join and even whether to join any congregation at all. Like
Catholics, Lutherans, and Reformed groups, Mennonites used sermons,
printed confessions, songs, and martyrologies to shape and maintain their
denominational identity and loyalty. At the end of the 16th century, most
Mennonite congregations held that they had to be cleansed from any “spot
or wrinkle” by disciplining oending members. e early Anabaptist desire
for a visible, pure church of regenerated believers led to an emphasis on
discipline as the primary mechanism of maintaining the integrity of the
congregation. For Menno Simons’s followers, the question was not whether
to discipline members, but who should do the disciplining and how strict
it should be.24 Even the Waterlanders, who consistently called for a milder
position on disciplinary issues than their co-religionists, disciplined their
members.
In an undated and unpublished treatise on church discipline,
Reynier Wybrandtz (1573-1645), an elder in the Amsterdam Waterlander
congregation, composed a practice so that the “congregation would remain
at peace and everyone’s conscience could remain free and unconstrained.”25
22 Sprunger, “Waterlanders and the Dutch Golden Age,” 138-40; Zijlstra, Om de ware gemeente
en de oude gronden, 465-74. For the ‘mother trade,’ see Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude,
e First Modern Economy: Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500-
1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997), 366-76.
23 Mary S. Sprunger, “Being Mennonite: Neighborhood, Family, and Confessional Choice in
Golden Age Amsterdam,” in Religious Minorities and Cultural Diversity in the Dutch Republic,
ed. August den Hollander et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 154-55.
24 Zijlstra, Om de ware gemeente en de oude gronden, 448.
25 “… op dat de Gemeinte in rust, ende ijders gemoet vrij en[de] ongeperst mocht blijuen.”
Amsterdam, (n.d.), SAA 1120 nr. 131, 1, “Reynier Wybrantsz, “‘Wat reden datmen can by
brengen, daer van datmen yemandt, die beispelyck is, vermaent dat hy vande tafel des heren
voor een tyt sal blijuen.’” For a brief biography of Wybrantsz, see N. van der Zijpp, “Wybma,
Reynier Wybrands,” in e Mennonite Encyclopedia 4: 998.
Bottle, Dagger, Ring: Dutch Mennonite Identity 121
At the heart of discipline, Wybrantdtz understood there to be two types of
ban, the greater and lesser ban.26 With the greater ban, or excommunication,
members “were not so much pronouncing their judgment, but God’s”27
on oenders, whose actions had already separated them from God and
the congregation. Excommunications occurred only for serious oenses.
Among conservative Old Flemish or Hard Frisian congregations, shunning
(mijding) was the social avoidance of excommunicated members. Other than
greetings required by common courtesy, all social interaction with oenders
was forbidden.28 Shunning does not seem to have been practiced by any of
the three large Amsterdam congregations. e social pressures of shunning
would have worked more easily in the close relations of smaller villages than
in the anonymity provided by the city.
Instead of shunning, Amsterdam congregations pronounced the
lesser ban, which temporarily denied a person access to the communion
table while maintaining membership in the congregation. e ban’s primary
goal, Wybrantsz wrote, was to bring forth the shame and repentance of the
oender, although the punishment might also serve as an example to warn
others against sinning. Discipline, he concluded, should be administered
with care in order that the sinner might repent and reconcile with the
congregation.
Before communion, the ministers visited with members in their homes
and the congregation heard a special preparation sermon (proefpredicatie).
If a member’s oense was not publicly known, the elders would admonish
the person privately about the need for improvement during the visitation.
If the sin was publicly known, the oender had to appear in front of the
church board (collegie or kerkeraad). A recalcitrant member who continued
in a sinful walk would be admonished by the council to abstain from taking
26 e idea of the greater and lesser ban has a longer tradition in Christian discipline.
Catholic, Reformed, and Lutheran doctrines dened two dierent categories of major or
minor excommunications or greater or lesser bans. For a brief discussion of the tradition
of discipline with a focus on the Reformation debates, see Amy Nelson Burnett, e Yoke
of Christ: Martin Bucer and Christian Discipline (Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal
Publishers, 1994), 9-25.
27 “Wij niet so seer onse, als wel Godts oordeel wtspraecken”: Wybrantsz, 1.
28 Karl Koop, Anabaptist-Mennonite Confessions of Faith: e Development of a Tradition
(Kitchener, ON: Pandora Press, 2004), 127.
e Conrad Grebel Review122
communion; if he or she continued leading a wayward life regardless of
continued admonition, the church council would require an appearance
before the congregation (broederschap). At that point the oending member
would be cut o completely from the congregation if the entire membership
agreed.29
As a correction to earlier historians of social control who emphasized a
top-down structure of church discipline, historians now stress the importance
of the horizontal forces of honor and shame in the discipline of the public
church. In addition to the state, there were other forces for conformity, such
as family, neighbors, and communion participants.30 One could even go to a
small claims court to defend one’s honor. Dutch men protected their honor
regarding nancial aairs, while women guarded their sexual reputation.
Lysbet Scheltes defended her honor from gossip oating about the city’s
crowded alleyways and chided the board of elders for believing every rumor
they heard.31 Others risked aggravating their oense and refused to appear
before the congregation because the public shame was too overwhelming.32
In a pluralistic context, honor and shame were critical to the functioning of
29 SAA 565 nr. 779. is 1666 document of the Waterlander congregation bij den Toren records
their church order as practiced from 1568 to 1651. e practice at the Flemish congregation
bij‘t Lam was to proceed straight to the congregation with the announcement of censure.
30 Lotte C. van de Pol, “Prostitutie en de Amsterdamse Burgerij: Eerbegrippen in een
vroegmoderne stedelijke samenleving,” in Cultuur en maatschappij in Nederland 1500-1850:
Een historische-antropologisch perspectief, ed. Peter te Boekhorst, Peter Burke, and Willem
Frijho (Meppel and Amsterdam; Heerlen: Boom; Open Universiteit, 1992), 180-81; Herman
Roodenburg, Onder Censuur: De kerkelijke tucht in de gereformeerde gemeente van Amsterdam,
1578-1700 (Hilversum: Verloren, 1990), 244-54, and “Reformierte Kirchenzucht und
Ehrenhandel: Das Amsterdamer Nachbarschasleben in 17. Jahrhundert,” in Kirchenzucht
und Sozialdisziplinierung im frühneuzeitlichen Europa (mit einer Auswahlbibliographie), ed.
Heinz Schilling (Berlin: Dunker & Humblot, 1994), 134-37. In addition to church discipline,
Amsterdam residents wishing to defend their honor or to settle disagreements with neighbors
could appeal to the Banken van kleine zaken (Small Claims Court), which worked to settle
disputes between parties, the buurtmeesters, who supervised streets or neighborhoods, and
the notaries, who also worked as middlemen in settling disputes. For a summary of the
functioning of honor in the cities of the Republic, see Frijho and Spies, 1650: Bevochten
eendracht, 185-88.
31 SAA 1120 nr. 116, 46R and nr. 125, 12R [October 17, 1658].
32 Hans Houdtwercker, for example, claimed he was unable to face the board because of the
great shame of his oense: SAA 1120 nr. 117, 47R [August 27, 1623].
Bottle, Dagger, Ring: Dutch Mennonite Identity 123
discipline. Without them, the spiritual care of the church would have had no
teeth.
e church board believed it was especially important to reprimand
dishonorable behavior done in public, lest it tarnish the reputation and
honor of the entire congregation. Just as individuals could lose their honor
in the eyes of their neighbors, ministers and elders were convinced they had
to monitor the behavior of their members, lest notorious sins ruin the honor
of the congregation in the eyes of the city. For example, the church had to
step in when Gerret Fuikes and his wife Lysbet Scheltes grew so scandalously
unpeaceful that the neighbors complained. Lysbet’s struggle to control
her temper threatened the congregation’s collective honor, and she was
commanded to refrain from communion because of the public shame.33 In
the Dutch Golden Age, one’s moral reputation was valued almost the same as
one’s nancial credit. e board maintained the solvency of the Waterlander
congregation’s honor by disciplining its members.
e wording of discipline records reinforces the importance of the
concept of honor. In addition to transgressing against Christian notions of
sin, many of the spots and blemishes for which the board disciplined members
would have been oensive to nearly all upright Amsterdammers concerned
with protecting their honor. Because the board was charged with overseeing
the body of Christ on earth, it is not surprising that it objected to members
behaving in a manner that was unchristian (onchristelyck). In addition, the
board accused members of behavior that was improper (onbetamelyk) or
unedifying (onstichtelyck). Ministers and elders chastised Isaak Vlaming,
an elderly man who had dishonored a widow, for behavior that fell into all
three categories.34 Members were also commonly brought before the church
for dishonorable (oneerlyk) behavior, like that of Annetie, who had an aair
with another woman’s husband;35 using dishonorable words, such as those
Arien Keescoper spoke to a deaconess who found him vomiting drunkenly
on a Sunday; 36 or, like Jan Jacobsen Metselaer, for visiting dishonorable
33 SAA 1120 nr. 116, 46R and nr. 125: 122 [October 17, 1658].
34 SAA 1120 nr. 125, 14V [August 8, 1661].
35 SAA 1120 nr. 117, 21R-V [July 31, 1616].
36 SAA 1120 nr. 117, 47V and 50R [August 27, 1623 and September 8, 1624].
e Conrad Grebel Review124
places (i.e., taverns or brothels).37 Overall, ministers disciplined members
for oenses that combined notions of sin with societal norms of honor and
shame.
Whether the sinners appeared before t he ministers or were admonished
in private, they were confronted with their reported transgression and
given an opportunity to respond to the admonition. ey oen attempted
to clear themselves of the charge by denying it outright, or by oering
explanations to mitigate the oense.38 If the accused showed great remorse,
usually accompanied by tears and great sorrow, the church dealt more gently
with them. For example, when the ministers admonished Jacob Jansen
Modderman for an extramarital aair leading to a pregnancy, “e sorrow
and grief that he showed there on his knees and with tears was great. He
humbly begged God and the brethren for forgiveness and promised whole-
hearted improvement.”39 His penitence convinced the elders that God had
already received him into his mercy. ey pronounced the lesser ban, barring
him from communion and reducing his nancial support. In many other
instances, the board apparently decided that the admonition and repentance
suced. ey allowed the individual to proceed without either the greater
or lesser ban, but warned that they would closely watch the course of that
person’s life in future.
Aer a sucient length of time, separated members could appeal
to the board (ideally with tears as a sign of truly repentant heart) to rejoin
the congregation, and if their remorse appeared genuine, they could once
again approach the communion table. Four years aer her exclusion from
the table for her extra-marital pregnancy, Anneke Wouters was admitted to
the table, since nothing negative regarding her life had arisen during that
period and she had demonstrated her repentance with many tears. Like
all censured members, the nal step to her admittance was her own self-
examination (eigen proeve); if her conscience was clear, she could rejoin the
congregation.40
37 SAA 1120 nr. 117, 16V [August 30, 1615].
38 See the case of Jan de Jager and his wife at SAA 1120 nr. 116, 42R [December 9, 1654].
39 SAA 1120 nr. 117, 36R [November 17, 1619].
40 SAA 1120 nr. 123, 15R [1644]; nr. 116, 32V; nr. 125, 3V [November 19, 1648]. For signs of
repentance in Reformed discipline, see Roodenburg, Onder Censuur, 126-28. While tears and
heartfelt repentance were originally the necessary signs of a converted heart, by the 1650s and
Bottle, Dagger, Ring: Dutch Mennonite Identity 125
Given the multi-confessional nature of the Dutch Republic, one
might ask whether the threat of discipline would have had any teeth,
given that an exiled member could simply have joined another church.41
However, members usually wanted to have access to communion, both for
its importance as a religious symbol and to have their honor reinstated. As
Charles Parker describes it, a person’s “right to take communion established
their innocence, and hence their moral honor.”42 Since so much business in
Amsterdam happened on a personal, face-to-face basis, public loss of honor
had drastic economic consequences. One’s honor was his or her credit, and
Amsterdammers needed credit to survive.43
For the poor of the congregation, it was particularly important to be
in good favor with the church; falling under censure could result in the loss
of alms or a room in one of the hoes (small residential courtyards) run by
the church.44 In Amsterdam, care of the poor was divided along confessional
lines, with each community caring for their own.45 In addition to suering
the shame of censure, poor members had to nd a new source of nancial
support or residence.46 For example, when Hendrick Burgers and Maritge
Speldesteeckster committed adultery, they had to leave the church housing
1660s, the records mention less frequently whether admittance was accompanied by these
outward indications. is change suggests either a dierent recording secretary or a more
pragmatic approach to disciplining, one that was less interested in the inner transformation
of the heart than in eliciting new outward patterns of behavior.
41 Benjamin J. Kaplan, “Confessionalism and Its Limits: Religion in Utrecht, 1600-1650,” in
Masters of Light: Dutch Painters in Utrecht during the Golden Age, ed. Joaneath A. Spicer and
Lynn Federle Orr (New Haven; London: Yale Univ. Press, 1997), 60-71.
42 Charles H. Parker, e Reformation of Community: Social Welfare and Calvinist Charity in
Holland, 1572-1620 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998), 132.
43 Roodenburg, “Reformierte Kirchenzucht und Ehrenhandel,” 144-46; Frijho and Spies,
1650: Bevochten eendrtacht, 178.
44 Martin Dinges, “Frühneuzeitliche Armenfürsorge als Sozialdisziplinierung? Probleme mit
einem Konzept,” Geschichte und Gesellscha 17, vol. 1 (1991): 5-29. Dinges argues against
poor relief as social discipline since authorities were never able to implement the policy and
Early Modern Europe was a self-help society. But since his conclusions are based upon his
study of one city, Bordeaux, they are likely too broad. For one critique of Dinges’s conclusions,
see Robert Jütte, “Prolegomen zu einer Sozialgeschichte der Armenfürsorge,” Geschichte und
Gesellscha 17, vol.1 (1991): 94-95.
45 Parker, e Reformation of Community, 156-57, 174-75.
46 Sprunger, “Rich Mennonites, Poor Mennonites,” 230-31.
e Conrad Grebel Review126
and lost their congregational charity until their deeds matched their promises
of repentance.47 While discipline was an especially high stakes matter for the
poor, the church disciplined members from all social strata.
M B
For many Dutch moralists, drinking was the “mother sin” (moedersonde),
because alcohol abuse led to many more grievous sins, such as violence,
stealing, or bankruptcy. At the same time, alcohol was an essential element of
Dutch culture. Drinking was a sign of friendship—a toast celebrated the birth
of a child, and merchants oen sealed a deal with a drink.48 To demonstrate
their masculinity, men were expected to consume large amounts of alcohol
without overindulging and losing control. Although men had a duty to
drink, women protected their honor by maintaining their sobriety.49 Despite
constant moralizing against the danger of immoderate drinking, the 17th-
century cliché of the drunken Dutchman likely contained more than a drop
of truth.50
In a city known for the stench of its canals, people drank water only
when beer and wine ran out. By 1613, a thirsty Amsterdammer could choose
to slake his thirst in 513 tap-rooms (1 for every 200 residents) ranging
from inns and taverns to side rooms in cellars and apothecaries.51 Beer, the
47 SAA 1120 nr. 117, 53V [February 8, 1626]. Deacons were not heartless in the removal of
charity from censured members. ey oen made sure that the children of oenders did not
suer because of parental misdeeds. For example, deacons continued to support the children
of Rebecca Nitters, daughter of Waterlander elder Nittert Obbes, even though her husband
had died aer sailing to the East Indies, and she had repeatedly appeared before the collegie
for drunkenness. SAA 1120 nr. 123, 17R [December 17, 1645]; nr. 116, 31V and nr. 125, 3
[December 12, 1647 and December 3, 1648].
48 B. Ann Tlusty, Bacchus and Civic Order: e Culture of Drink in Early Modern Germany
(Charlottesville, VA: Univ. of Virginia Press, 2001), 103-14; Benjamin B. Roberts, Sex and
Drugs before Rock ’n’ Roll: Youth Culture and Masculinity during Holland’s Golden Age
(Amsterdam: Amsterdam Univ. Press, 2012), 93.2001
49 Roberts, Sex and Drugs before Rock ’n’ Roll, 76; Benjamin Roberts, “Drinking Like a Man:
e Paradox of Excessive Drinking for Seventeenth-Century Dutch Youths,” Journal of
Family History 29, no. 3 (2004): 237-52; A. Lynn Martin, Alcohol, Violence, and Disorder in
Traditional Europe (Kirksville, MO: Truman State Univ. Press, 2009), 134.
50 Roberts, “Drinking Like a Man,” 238.
51 A. . van Deursen, Plain Lives in a Golden Age: Popular Culture, Religion and Society in
Bottle, Dagger, Ring: Dutch Mennonite Identity 127
standard drink of the lower classes, ranged in quality from watered-down
(low alcohol content) to thick, high-quality brews. Statistics suggest that the
average person drank between 300 and 670 liters of beer in 1625. Although
there were no vineyards in the Republic, Dutch merchants imported large
amounts of wine, the preferred drink of the upper classes. e lower classes
preferred beer, but as brandy, wine, and gin grew more aordable over the
course of the century, the more potent drinks became more popular; the
average drinker of hard liquor consumed 17 to 23 liters of brandy or gin per
ye ar.52
To avoid excessive drinking and the sin of gluttony, an axiom advised
drinking three glasses a day: the rst for health, the second for taste, and
the third for a good night’s rest.53 In a society in which everyone drank,
Reformed and Mennonite discipline records made a distinction between
private drinking and public and continual drunkenness.54 Mennonites who
engaged in obnoxious drunken behavior such as vomiting, breaking glasses,
or urinating in beer mugs landed clearly outside broad social norms.55
Drunkenness resulting from stronger alcohol, such as brandy or “anise-
water,” resulted in the elders banning Hartmen Jansen’s wife in 1618, in 1619,
and again in 1620.56 e board disciplined other members for frequenting
inns, even though one prominent Waterlander owned an inn that was an
Amsterdam tourist attraction famous for its entertaining waterworks.57
Most of the members, however, were confronted simply for rumors that they
drank to the point of drunkenness (dronken drinken).
Seventeenth-Century Holland, trans. Maarten Ultee (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press,
1991), 101-102.
52 Roberts, Sex and Drugs before Rock ’n’ Roll, 79–81.
53 Ibid., 80.
54 Roodenburg, Onder Censuur, 340.
55 Arien Keescoper, SAA 1120, nr. 117, 47V [August 27, 1623]; Aggtes Sjouwer a.k.a. Agge
Eelkes, nr. 116, 41R and nr. 125, 9R [December 12, 1652], and Hans Houdtwercker, nr. 117,
47R [August 27, 1623].
56 Hartmen Jansen and his wife Ottie, SAA 1120 nr. 116, 21V; 23R; 25V [September 13 and 20,
1618; December 12, 1619] nr. 117, 37V-38R [March 1, 1620].
57 H.F. Wijnman, Jan eunisz alias Joannes Antonides (1569-1637) Boekverkooper en waard
in het muziekhuis “D’Os in de Bruylo” te Amsterdam (Amsterdam: J.H. de Bussy, 1928),
30-31, and K.L. Sprunger, “Jan eunisz of Amsterdam (1569-1638): Mennonite Printer,
Pamphleteer, Renaissance Man,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 68 (1994): 439-40 and 443-44.
e Conrad Grebel Review128
In addition to fullling social roles and quenching thirst, there were
socially unacceptable ways to drink. e largest number of cases coming
before the elders dealt with drunkenness, and alcohol played a contributing
role in many other cases. Normally, the ministers passed the lesser ban only
on members who occasionally became drunk. However, if members were
repeatedly found inebriated, especially to the point they became violent or
could no longer keep an orderly house, the board excommunicated them
because of the New Testament’s warning that a drunkard could not inherit
the kingdom of heaven.58 More than a third of all excommunications were
for continual drunkenness, making it the most common oense to merit the
Greater Ban. e Waterlander congregation intensied its struggle against
drunk drinking in the 1640s and 1650s, but does not seem to have been
winning the war by the time it merged with the Flemish congregation.59
In the records of congregations from the second half of the 17th
century, the most common oenses dealt with by the Lamist and Zonnist
boards continued to involve alcohol, similar to the Waterlanders’ pattern
from before. Of a total of 793 cases, 182 (around one-quarter) described in
the combined Waterlander and Lamist records mentioned abusive drinking.
Nineteen of the 117 Zonist cases involved drinking as well.60 In the worst
incidents, the drinking was so severe that one member had sold the feathers
for their bed and the clothing for their children to pay for her alcohol,61
58 Joost Sijbrantsen, SAA 1120 nr. 117, 24V [March 19, 1617]. e entry cites 1 Corinthians 6:10:
“thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of
God,” and Galatians 5:21: “envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning
you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”
to support his excommunication.
59 Emden’s Reformed consistory also failed to curb drunkenness. Schilling attributes this
to the city’s economic decline following the return of the Dutch refugees to the Republic.
Heinz Schilling, Civic Calvinism in Northwestern Germany and the Netherlands: Sixteenth to
Nineteenth Centuries (Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1992), 55-58.
60 e oense is usually called “verloopen in dronkenschap” or “dronken drinken.” See, for
example, the cases of Tonis Albertsz: SAA 1120, nr. 175, 8 [14 October 1683] and Gerrit
Meijnderts the shoemaker, SAA 1120, nr. 174, 123 [August 18, 1678]. ere are many more
cases where alcohol abuse was linked to another oense, such as violent beatings, but I have
classied those under the more serious oense. See, for example, the many appearances of
Pieter Melisz, SAA 1120 nr. 174, 193 [August 1, 1680], 231 [October 2, 1681]; nr. 175, 18
[September 14, 1684], 51 [December 14, 1687], 53 [February 19, 1688].
61 See the case of Marritie Slicher, SAA 1120, nr. 175, 129 [February 21, 1697].
Bottle, Dagger, Ring: Dutch Mennonite Identity 129
while another was so inebriated that they had to be carried home by someone
else.62 As was the case for all Dutchmen, the problem with excessive drinking
was that it was continual, public, and usually led to other types of oenses.63
Perhaps because drinking was an everyday occurrence, it is
understandable that church members called before the board defended their
drinking—the line between acceptable and excessive drinking was unclear.
Little Hansie, for example, argued that he could not have been drunk
because he always drank on a full stomach.64 Similarly, the types of drink
permitted also changed during the 17th century. Anthony Proot protested
that drinking brandy was no longer uncommon or oensive, since many
Waterlanders and Flemish Mennonites did so.65 e records also contain
more accounts and more detailed records of women being drunk. is is
similar to what Herman Roodenburg found in the records of the Reformed
churches. It may be that drinking was less of a masculine domain by that
time. However, Roodenburg suggests that the records simply did not bother
to record all the accounts of drunken men and focused instead on the details
of drunken women, which would have been more scandalous.66
Aer 1730, the Lamist and Zonist records grow silent about alcohol.
Roodenburg found the same pattern in Reformed consistory records.
Perhaps church moralizing and discipline succeeded in shaping a sober
congregation. Alternatively, members whose drinking endangered their
church charity may have just stopped seeking assistance from a congregation
that had become a gathering of middle-class, respectable Amsterdammers.
Perhaps, in light of shrinking membership, elders did not bother disciplining
or recording drunkenness any more, lest they oend remaining members.
Nonetheless, when comparing Waterlander records from the early 1600s,
one might tentatively conclude that drinking patterns among Mennonites
had become more respectable.
62 See the case of Trijntie, the wife of Roelof Soeton, SAA 1120, nr. 175, 188 [February 10,
1701].
63 e oense of drunkenness had the largest number of excommunications (22 out of 72). Of
the 89 cases of drunkenness, the majority (53) were men.
64 SAA 1120 nr. 116, 25V [December 5, 1619].
65 SAA 1120 nr. 116, 31R [December 6, 1647].
66 Roodenburg, Onder censuur, 342-43.
e Conrad Grebel Review130
M D
On September 13, 1618, the Waterlander board summoned Reyer Jansen
and his wife Annetie on account of their recent ght with Marten Joost
and his wife. According to the elders’ records, a quarrel between the two
women escalated to the point that they pulled each other’s caps o and hit
one another. As the ght continued, Joost tried to pull the women apart, but
Jansen encouraged his wife, yelling, “Hit, Annetie, Hit.” When questioned by
the elders, Jansen admitted that he had once struck a baker with tongs until
he bled, and that he and his brother hit each other. He also confessed that
he and his wife fought as well; he once bruised her arms so badly that she
became bedridden. e elders’ examination and admonition appear not to
have succeeded on him. Later, he and his brother armed themselves with a
hammer and went to Joost’s house, where they pounded on the window and
doors, trying to break in. When the brothers came upon Joost’s servant, they
sliced his jerkin and trousers.67 Subsequently, the congregation found Reyer’s
and Annetie’s misdeeds considerable and their contrition unsatisfactory, so
they excommunicated the couple and encouraged them to repent.
Clearly, Jansen’s violent, disruptive lifestyle shocked and oended his
fellow Mennonites. Despite a general acceptance of low-level interpersonal
violence in early modern Amsterdam, both Reformed and Mennonite
churches would have condemned his actions as unchristian. Mennonites
shared a cross-confessional consensus that condemned private violence
while simultaneously respecting, and even endorsing, the state’s monopoly
of violence.68 Mennonite attitudes towards interpersonal violence did not
dier from those of other Dutch Christians, even though defenselessness
was a key emphasis of Anabaptist identity.
Collective Violence—Disciplining a Core Conviction
Mennonites most clearly dierentiated themselves from their Reformed
neighbors in how they handled members who joined the military or militia,
and members who sailed on armed ships. Dutch authorities had granted
67 SAA 1120 nr. 116 [September 13, 1618]; SAA 1120 nr. 117 [September 23, 1618]: “Slae
Annetie, Slae.”
68 Pieter Spierenburg, “Protestant Attitudes to Violence: e Early Dutch Republic,” Crime,
Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies 10 (January 2007), 15-16.
Bottle, Dagger, Ring: Dutch Mennonite Identity 131
Mennonites exemptions from serving in the city guard or military, so there
was no legal requirement for them to seek those roles. It was usually poorer
Mennonite men, desperate for any type of work, who joined the army or
signed up to serve on armed ships, either with the navy, privateers, or the
East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-indische Compagnie, or VOC).69
e elders understood that economic need compelled desperate young
men to take any available job.70 For example, Ide Klaes and Gilles Cornelesz
admitted to sailing to war against the English in 1665, but explained that
they only did so because of their great poverty. e Waterlander ministers
informed Klaes that, if this was actually the case, he could acquire a secret
loan rather than sail to war.71 However, it was more than just poverty that
drove the men to enlist; they were also at the fringes of congregational life
in other areas. Many who were disciplined for sailing to war were also oen
admonished for their drinking and for abandoning their families while they
were away, not simply for going to war.72
Men who returned from war usually received only the lesser ban.73
Although the rejection of the Sword was a core Mennonite tenet, elders
usually preferred to keep members from the fellowship of the communion
table instead of cutting them o entirely from the congregation. Of the 39
69 Mary S. Sprunger, “e Limits of Faith in a Maritime Empire: Mennonites, Trade and
Politics in the Dutch Golden Age,” in e Limits of Empire: European Imperial Formations
in Early Modern World History, ed. Tonio Andrade and William Reger (Burlington, VT:
Ashgate, 2012), 59-77.
70 Not everyone who joined forsook his Mennonite convictions. In 1612, one governor
general of the East Indies complained that the Mennonites did not ght against the Spanish
and Portuguese. A. . van Deursen, Honni soit qui mal y pense? De Republiek Tussen de
Mogendheden (1610-1612), Mededelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van
Wetenschappen 28:1 (Amsterdam: Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers Maatschappij, 1965), 29.
71 SAA 1120 nr. 125, Ide Klaes [December 19, 1665] and Gilles Cornelesz [December 21,
1665]. Klaes sailed on a warship again in 1667.
72 Adriaan Joosten Isol, SAA 1120 nr. 125 [May 6, 1672]; eunes Floresz Turfdrager
[December 4, 1670, May 1673, August 8, 1675]; Ousger Evertsz [June 9, 1675]; and Jan
Sjouckes SAA 1120 nr. 174 [April 27, 1679]. is is also true for the case of Gerrit Keijser,
who had been behaving badly even before sailing to war in 1692: SAA 1120 nr. 175 [March
20, 1692].
73 e greater ban cut the oender entirely out of the congregation. For a Waterlander treatise
about the lesser ban, see SAA 1120 nr.131 by Reynier Wybrantsz, “Wat reden dat men ymandt
vermaent van de tafel des Heeren te blyven.”
e Conrad Grebel Review132
men who sailed on armed ships, there were only six cases when the oender
was excommunicated specically for that oense, as Pieter de Jager was in
1615, when he refused to repent. While in a Turkish prison, he fought and
killed three other prisoners in self-defence. Either before or aer his time
in prison, he had sailed on a ship that had thrown 88 Turkish prisoners
overboard. He explained that he was at the rudder at the time and could
have done nothing to stop the slaughter. Nonetheless, the scale of the killings
and his refusal to repent had moved him beyond Waterlander principles.74
Apart from clear cases like de Jager’s, where military participation was the
primary oense, the elders banned deviant oenders from the communion
table. Violating a core Mennonite tenet did not completely sever the men’s
relationship with the community.
Whereas ministers showed some forbearance with poorer men who
joined the military, they were less sympathetic with respectable members
who armed their ships. e relatively short entries for sailors in the records
contrast noticeably with entries for ship-owners and captains, which are
much more expansive about the violation and the eorts to dissuade the
men from arming their ships. When Anske Fockes was pressed into service
as a captain on an armed ship in 1665, the preacher and elder Denijs van
der Schuere75 recorded his attempts to convince Fockes that sailing to war
was against their religion. Van der Schuere wrote that, because Mennonites
considered themselves defenseless Christians who took the gospel to say that
only God could seek revenge, they were to turn the other cheek to their
enemies. If Fockes understood the faith, the preacher continued, he should
have understood that he could not become a man of war, much less a captain
on a warship. Doing so engendered scandalous talk about the congregation
and disturbed the simpler members. When Fockes, who seemed surprised
74 SAA 1120 nr. 117 [August 30, 1615]; SAA 1120 nr. 116 [June 4, 1615]. e latter states that
de Jager’s shipmate threw only 85 prisoners overboard. De Jager may have been imprisoned by
North African corsairs, who had released Dutch captives following the capitulation of 1612.
Alexander H. de Groot, “Ottoman North Africa and the Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth
and Eighteenth Centuries,” Revue de l’Occident Musulman et de La Méditerranée 39, no. 1
(1985): 131-47.
75 N. van der Zijpp, “Schuere, Denys van der (d. 1673),” Global Anabaptist Mennonite
Encyclopedia Online, 1959, http://gameo.org/index.php?title=Schuere, Denys_van_der (d.
1673), accessed April 21, 2015.
Bottle, Dagger, Ring: Dutch Mennonite Identity 133
to learn of the Waterlander position, asked how he could hold his head up
before other people (outside the Waterlander church), Van der Schuere
retorted that he should be more concerned with how he could hold his head
up before God. Because Fockes planned to continue with his voyage into
war, the ministers banned him from the Lord’s Table until he returned and
the congregation could observe his life much more closely.76
By the end of the century, elders no longer banned or publicly
admonished members who joined the military or navy. In early 1696, the
Lamist church asked Haye Heemstra to refrain from the Lord’s Table because
he had not only armed his ships, he was sailing under commission from the
navy, which, they said, was sure to cause great oense in the congregation.
When Heemstra asked permission to take communion, the board said it
could not tolerate his behavior, especially sailing under commission. ey
did say, however, that it was only a “provisional” separation and that they
would not notify the rest of the brothers, unless he continued.77 e board
appears to have had granted some leniency to members who sailed on
armed ships, if they did not sail under commission. e decision to refrain
from publicly censuring Heemstra also suggests a shi in the congregation’s
attitude.78
Although the ministers took a relatively rm line with Heemstra, they
began to leave decisions about military participation up to the conscience
of individual members. In 1699, when Fredrik Jacobs, a sailor (matroos) on
an admiralty ship (jagt), asked to take communion with the congregation,
76 SAA 1120 nr. 25 [August 7, 1665].
77 SAA 1120 nr. 175 [January 26, 1696, February 2, 1696, February 6, 1698]. In 1698,
Heemstra asked the board for a letter of attestation so that he could take communion with the
Remonstrants. e board said they could not provide such a witness for him. However, if the
Remonstrants asked for a reference, they would say they had nothing negative to oer against
him other than he disagreed with them about defenselessness.
78 Mary Sprunger’s work suggests that the attitude towards arming ships was complicated.
Some Mennonites withdrew from the VOC, but others continued to invest in the company.
She concludes that discipline against sailing armed ships was successful, since Mennonites
avoided trade in regions where one had to arm ships to do business. Although Mennonites
could not own armed ships, it is not clear whether they could charter ships to sail for them.
Others criticized the Mennonite position on arming ships; although Mennonites may not
have had guns on their decks, they stored plenty below. See Mary S. Sprunger, “Waterlanders
and the Dutch Golden Age,” in From Martyr to Muppy, 138-40.
e Conrad Grebel Review134
the board informed him that he could do so upon his self-examination—
in other words, if his conscience allowed him to do so.79 Aer 1695, the
records of all three congregations contain no further accounts of discipline
for joining the military, and the last discipline of a member for sailing with
the VOC occurred in 1712. While the church may have stopped treating
armed service as a sin, it is more likely that the wealthy congregation no
longer had members who were so poor that they joined the military out of
economic necessity.
Interpersonal Violence: e Violence of Daily Life
In addition to enforcing the prohibition on armed service, the church boards
worked to reduce interpersonal violence among members. Between 1612
and 1741, there were 39 cases of interpersonal violence, ranging from street
ghts to domestic violence. Most of these cases involved members living
in church housing or from the lowest classes. e congregations had more
success in disciplining members who relied on the church charity for their
homes and food and, at the other end of the social scale, those whose honor
and standing were important enough that they worked to reconcile with
each other and the community. It was more dicult appealing to members
who were marginal at best. Pieter Evertsz Schrote’s case in 1678 serves as
a typical example: When the board tried to summon him for assaulting
another church member in the street, he refused to appear and indicated
that he was planning to leave the congregation anyway.80
Many of the violent acts occurred between two spouses. Usually,
but not always, men assaulted their wives. While attitudes to war and the
military were gendered exclusively to men, domestic violence or neighbor-
to-neighbor violence involved nearly as many women as men. Like
authorities in the Reformed church, Mennonites generally concentrated on
reconciling quarreling married couples.81 Because one had to be reconciled
79 SA 1120, nr.175 [July 23, 1699]. Perhaps he was not a member of the congregation, and thus
did not need to adhere so strictly to its practices.
80 SAA 1120 nr. 174 [August 18, 1678, September 5, 1678].
81 Manon van der Heijden, “Punishment versus Reconciliation: Marriage Control in Sixteenth-
and Seventeenth-Century Holland,” in Social Control in Europe, Volume 1, 1500–1800, ed.
Herman Roodenburg and Pieter Spierenburg (Columbus, OH: Ohio State Univ. Press, 2004),
69-71.
Bottle, Dagger, Ring: Dutch Mennonite Identity 135
with fellow members in order to take part in the Lord’s Table, elders banned
the quarreling couple or just the oending spouse from communion until
they learned the couple’s domestic life had improved.
Many marital quarrels oen involved heavy drinking by one or
both partners. Records describe numerous cases of individuals summoned
before the board because they were drunk or were rumored to “keep bad
house” ( slecht huishouden).82 Most of the cases concerned members living in
church housing for the poor, where the deacons could keep a close eye on
residents’ behavior. e close quarters of these houses (hoes) made it hard
to keep marital ghting quiet from neighbors’ alert ears.83 In the narrow,
bustling alleys and homes of Dutch cities, a violation of marital tranquility
brought shame on the entire neighborhood, which might have compelled
the Mennonite neighbors to bring the case to the congregation’s attention.84
Typically, ministers tried to reconcile sparring spouses; they never advised
quarreling couples to divorce or temporarily separate in order to diminish the
violence between them. In the Reformed congregation, the only acceptable
reasons for divorce were adultery and malicious abandonment. However,
the Reformed did grant irreconcilable couples an informal separation from
“bed and board.” 85 Mennonites, by contrast, always banned couples who
would not reconcile and never suggested separation.
ere was apparently no xed policy in dealing with men who beat
82 For one interpretation of the importance of an orderly domestic life in the Dutch Republic,
see Simon Schama, e Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in
the Golden Age (New York: Vintage, 1987), 375-480, especially 388-400. For the discipline
of ‘poor housekeeping’ (Übelhausen) in Augsburg neighborhoods, see Carl A. Homann,
“Social Control and the Neighborhood in European Cities,” in Social Control in Europe: 1500-
1800, 317.
83 For an example, see the case of Jan de Jager and his wife, SAA 1120 nr. 117 [December 9,
1654].
84 Manon van der Heijden, Huwelijk in Holland: stedelijke rechtspraak en kerkelijke tucht,
1550-1700 (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Bert Bakker, 1998), 259-60.
85 See Donald Haks, Huwelijk en gezin in Holland in de 17de en 18de eeuw: Processtukken en
moralisten over aspecten van het laat 17de- en 18de-eeuwse gezinsleven (Utrecht: Hes uitgevers,
1985), 196-214. In Rotterdam and Del, the Reformed consistory also preferred to reconcile
the couple rather than punish the oender. See Heijden, “Punishment versus Reconciliation,”
71-72. For a Waterlander example of a couple separating, see the case of Abraham Gerritsz
and his wife Hilletge, SAA 1120 nr. 117 [February 6, 1633].
e Conrad Grebel Review136
their wives. Elders assessed each case independently. Whenever rumors
of married couples arguing came to the board’s attention, they counseled
the couples to strive to live peacefully with one another. Some oenders
repented and received only the lesser ban for their violence. Lourens Pietersz
Keescoper, on the contrary, was told he could not be considered a brother of
the congregation as long as he hit and shoved his wife so hard that he bruised
he r.86 us, the board does seem to have assessed the degree of violence and
public knowledge, and visible bruising crossed a tolerable line. It is unclear
whether the board condemned Pietersz because he violated the specic
Mennonite prohibition against revenge and violence, or violated broader
social disapproval of tyrannical behavior by husbands.
In some cases, the lack of domestic tranquility and push for
reconciliation seems to have been more important than the fact that the
husband hit his wife, or that the wife hit her husband. In 1646, Lubbert
Pieters’s wife le him because they could not live peacefully together, and
he hit her ‘black and blue.’ Because Pieters was repentant and asked for
forgiveness, the elders decided simply to watch his life a bit more closely.
Aer his wife le him again ve years later and refused to reconcile with
him, the elders asked both of them to refrain from the communion table.
e problem was that they were unreconciled, not that Pieters beat her.87
If domestic discord became notoriously violent, it was publically
known, and therefore a scandal and sin that had to be publicly addressed
and publicly punished. Mennonite records reveal no cases in which
husbands justied their violence as part of their duty to discipline their wife,
children, or servants, examples of which Roodenburg found in Reformed
records.88 e few attempts at justication were similar to Adam Janssen
Verver’s unconvincing defense on October 31, 1675. When admonished for
beating his wife with a stick, he admitted it, but said he was compelled to
do so because she had hit him seven or eight times rst. e elders were
86 SAA 1120 nr. 117 [February 18, 1636]. Other members who did not appear when summoned
were also excommunicated, but it is unclear whether the excommunication resulted from the
abuse or for not heeding the summons.
87 SAA 1120 nr. 123 [September 2, 1646]; SAA 1120 nr. 116 [August 27, 1646, August 23, 1648,
April 15, 1651].
88 Roodenburg, Onder censuur, 366.
Bottle, Dagger, Ring: Dutch Mennonite Identity 137
not moved.89 When Mennonite churches disciplined domestic violence, the
men (and women) who hit their spouses were usually also known for being
notorious drunks, bankrupt, or lazy. is can obscure whether elders were
more concerned about the violence or the other oenses.90
Mennonite and Reformed leaders dealt with violent husbands in
similar ways. Both boards admonished couples to reconcile and live peacefully
together. However, when appearing in front of the board, Mennonite men
never defended their violence with appeals to their patriarchal duty. Also,
Mennonite boards never turned to the secular authorities for help when the
woman feared for her life. But Roodenburg’s study of Reformed discipline
describes several occasions when the consistory advised a family to lock up a
notorious abuser in the public rasp or spinning house because “we live under
a Christian government, who is ordained to bring such people to reason and
order.”91 Mennonite elders, by contrast, preferred to take care of their own
oenders rather than turn them over to secular authorities. e most severe
threat they leveled was to withhold someone’s charity or to evict them from
church housing.
Outside the domestic sphere, episodes of Mennonites physically
assaulting someone reect the same types of incidents as found in Reformed
records. Twenty-three cases concerned men in public places like taverns
and streets, or in workplaces. ere were also twelve reports of Mennonite
women living in church housing who were violent towards neighbors
or co-workers. In at least ve incidents of assault, the members (all men)
threatened someone with a knife, considered a much more serious oense
than simple sticus and punishable in secular courts. At the time, knife
ghting or carrying a dagger for protection was usually associated with the
semi-respectable lower classes, since the respectable lower-middle classes
fought with stas or sts.92 is class division is reinforced by the fact that
Mennonite knife ghters came before the board for multiple oenses, such
89 SAA 1120 nr. 125 [October 31, 1675)]
90 For one example, see the case of Leendert Cornelisss and Mettie Jans, SAA 1120 nr. 175
[July 10, 1687, June 15, 1690, March 1, 1691, June 23, 1695, September 1, 1695].
91 Roodenburg, Onder censuur, 367.
92 Pieter Spierenburg, “Knife Fighting and Popular Codes of Honor in Early Modern
Amsterdam,” in Men and Violence: Gender, Honor, and Rituals in Modern Europe and America,
ed. Pieter Spierenburg (Columbus, OH: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1998), 103-27.
e Conrad Grebel Review138
as fraud, bankruptcy, frequenting dishonorable houses, or drunkenness.
When members fought with each other or with someone outside
the congregation, they had to refrain from the communion table until
they resolved their dierences. In most of these cases, the board’s aim in
enforcing the lesser ban was not to punish the parties for physical violence,
but to enforce the unity of the table and to encourage members to reconcile
with each other. In 1660, Agge Aelkes pulled his knife on someone and was
wounded along with his opponent. e Waterlander board informed him that
he must refrain from the unity of the table, which he agreed to do. Two years
later, aer Aelkes was reconciled with his opponent and people heard that he
behaved himself, he repented of his sins and promised an improvement in
his life. e elders readmitted him to the communion table, if his conscience
allowed it.93 Arming one’s ship was grounds for excommunication; however,
a repeatedly violent personal life did not automatically end one’s membership
in the church.
On August 1, 1680, Mary Jans van de Heule and Pieter Melisz, whom
we have met before, appeared before the Lamist board, which admonished
them for their domestic discord [slechte huishouden], especially Pieter,
who stayed out late at night. A year later, the elders summoned him again
about his drunkenness and domestic disturbances with his wife, whom he
had threatened with a knife and then chased out of the house. He oered
very little in his defense, and the elders asked him to stay away from the
communion table, warning him that his nancial support might stop. If
he did not improve, they threatened to tell the entire congregation about
his behavior and to treat him as unworthy of membership. In 17th-century
Amsterdam, the public shame could have been worse than the removal of
ch a r i t y. 94 ree years later, the board summoned Melisz for smashing Michel
Symons’s head with a mug, an action that he admitted. Because he already
had a bad record, his case went before the brethren. However, following his
confession, he was once again forgiven. In 1687, the elders informed the
93 SAA 1120 nr. 125 [December 14, 1660; May 19, 1662]. In 1652, the board had summoned
Aelkes for smashing glasses in an inn. At that time, they resolved to keep a closer watch on his
behavior. SAA 1120 nr. 116 [December 12, 1652].
94 Herman Roodenburg, “Reformierte Kirchenzucht und Ehrenhandel,” 130-31; Pollmann,
“O the Record,” 432.
Bottle, Dagger, Ring: Dutch Mennonite Identity 139
congregation that Pieter had continued to misbehave, and was repeatedly
warned and punished. e elders had learned that he still frequented taverns
and wasted his time. ey tried to summon him to appear. is time he
denied everything, so they resolved to gather evidence and show it to him
and the congregation. In 1688, records report that he threatened to cut his
wife’s throat. It is likely at this point that the church excommunicated him,
although it is not recorded. Seven years later, he tried joining again, but the
reports of his behavior were still not good enough. So, although the board
eventually excommunicated him, it took him many years and multiple
infractions to use up his second chances.95
e Decline of Violence and End of Church Discipline
Although the elders attempted to adhere to the tradition of Mennonite
defenselessness, it is unclear what Mennonite identity meant for their violent,
marginal members, many of whom lived in church housing. If Mennonites
believed the congregation should be a community of believers who voluntarily
committed themselves to a life of discipleship, what did that commitment
mean to this underclass? Perhaps they were simply legacy members whose
parents had once been devout Mennonites and chose to remain and identify
as Mennonite, even though they could have le the church. Was the nancial
support from the congregation so important that they were glad to assent
to a minimal understanding of Mennonite identity? By the 18th century,
this minimal understanding seems to have taken hold, because the amount
of disciplining declined more signicantly than the simultaneous decline
in church membership.96 is reects Roodenburg’s ndings, and also
conrms Norbert Elias’s and Pieter Spierenburg’s description of a “civilizing
process” to the internalization of restraint and social control among in the
elites, which then trickled down through the manners and morals of lower
social divisions.
95 SAA 1120 nr. 174 [August 1, 1680, October 2, 1681]. SAA 1120 nr. 175 [September 14, 1684,
December 14, 1687, February 19, 1688, December 15, 1695].
96 From 1700, there were 117 discipline cases recorded in the Lam and Toren congregation
and 70 cases in the Zon, mostly for drunkenness and bankruptcy. From 1742 until 1800, there
were only a handful of cases recorded in both churches.
e Conrad Grebel Review140
M R
e discipline of sexuality and marriage likewise reects Mennonites’
integration into broader Dutch society. Secular and religious authorities were
united in restricting sexual activity to marriage. Despite Reformed leaders’
eorts to weed out traditional sexual practices allowing some sexual contact
between betrothal and marriage, there was some confusion among their
members about the relation between engagement, betrothal, consummation,
and marriage. Mennonite discipline cases attempted to control when and
whom members could marry.
While the earlier Waterlander congregation disciplined roughly the
same number of women as men, from 1650 on they handled 24 cases of
women and only four cases of men for pre-marital sex. e disproportionate
number of cases involving women is likely because it was dicult for women
to hide their pregnancies. As was the case in the Reformed consistory,
Mennonite elders dealt with more cases of pre-marital sexual activity during
economic downturns, when there was a surplus of women. Roodenburg
has suggested possible reasons for the rise in cases between 1660 and 1670:
betrothed couples had to put o marriage until they could aord to establish
a home, and women might have been more willing to risk binding themselves
to a husband.97
While there was some leniency in the discipline of pre-marital sex, the
act of adultery was strongly condemned by all Dutch moralists. In addition
to censure and loss of honor, adulterers faced prosecution in either the civil
or the criminal courts, where they could theoretically receive nes or even a
death sentence.98 Given the serious nature of the sin, it is striking that, of the
97 Roodenburg, Onder Censuur, 257-58. In 1683, Amsterdam’s Reformed consistory remarked
that the absence of so many warships resulted in larger numbers of poor, women, and orphans.
98 Veronique Verhaar and Frits van den Brink, “De bemoeienissen van stad en kerk met
overspel in het achttiende-eeuwse Amsterdam,” in Nieuwe Licht op oude justitie: misdaad en
straf ten tijde van de republiek, ed. Harold Faber (Muiderberg: Dick Coutinho, 1989), 65;
Roodenburg, Onder Censuur, 286. For the connection between female honor and adultery
as described by Dutch moralists, see Maria-eresia Leuker and Herman Roodenburg, “‘Die
dan hare wyven laten afweyen’: Overspel, eer en schande in de zeventiende eeuw,” in Soete
minne en helsche boosheit. Seksuele voorstellingen in Nederland, 1300-1850, ed. Gert Hekma
and Herman Roodenburg (Nijmegen: SUN, 1988), 61-84.
Bottle, Dagger, Ring: Dutch Mennonite Identity 141
11 cases of adultery, the board excommunicated only ve of the oenders.99
A woman named Annetie had refused to appear when summoned; Jonas
Gysbertsz had earlier repented in front of the congregation for sailing to
war, thereby already placing him on the margins of the membership, and
Aeltge Scheltes was punished because her adultery had become publicly
known.100 e congregations punished the other six cases, but less harshly:
one couple lost their church housing and food allowance, an elderly man
was banned from the communion table and admonished for not knowing
better, and a woman was banned for being seen out late with a man other
than her husband.101 While the percentage of excommunications is relatively
high compared to those for pre-marital sex, the boards still preferred to
preserve excommunication for individuals who repeatedly sinned or refused
to cooperate with the disciplining process.
Oenses of marital discord and extramarital sexual activity would have
been frowned upon by moralists from all confessions. In fact, Mennonite
attempts to discipline these oenses illustrate how similar their ideas of
sin were to those of their fellow citizens. e discipline of mixed marriages
shines a light on Mennonite eorts to mark their boundaries o from other
confessions and to preserve a distinct identity. Marriage provided an easier,
subtler route for sin to corrupt the church “without spot or wrinkle” by
conjugally joining the eshly world with the spiritual world.102 Records show
that the even the moderate Waterlanders considered buitentrouw (marriage
to someone from outside the congregation) a serious oence. With 64
occurrences, it was second only to drunkenness in the total number of cases
handled by the board. Mennonites had condemned mixed messages since
at least since the 1550s and had rearmed this view in several confessions
99 Roodenburg found a similarly low number of excommunications in the Reformed records.
Roodenburg, Onder Censuur, 284.
100 Annetie, SAA 1120, nr. 117, 21R-V [July 31, 1616 and August 14, 1616]; Jonas Gysbertsz,
SAA 1120, nr. 116, 40V-41R; 42R- V and nr. 125, 5V [October 24, 1652; May 14, 1653; December
12, 1654]; Aeltge Scheltes, SAA 1120, nr. 116, 38V and nr. 125, 6V [January 23, 1652 and May
12, 1652].
101 Hendrick Burgers and Maritge Speldesteeckster, SAA 1120, nr. 117, 53V [February 8, 1626];
Isaak Vlaming, nr. 125, 14V [August 8, 1661]; Abigael Ariaens, nr. 125, 17R [March 20, 1662
and April 16, 1662].
102 is image is from Visser, Broeders in de Geest, 1: 94-96.
e Conrad Grebel Review142
through the 17th century, including the Dordrecht Confession of 1632.
Although the most conservative groups disciplined every case and even
banned members who married Mennonites outside their particular branch,
the more moderate Amsterdam congregations punished only members who
married non-Mennonites, and reserved the right to judge each case on its
own merits.103
Most of the Mennonite discipline controlled members’ behavior, but
the struggle against buitentrouw focused on maintaining the integrity of the
community’s beliefs.104 In the earliest period, the bans lasted for up to three
years, but over time the discipline seems to have developed into a formality,
especially in cases where a member promised to remain in the church and
“be a good light and example” for their spouse.105 Waterlander Hendrick
Vasters even took it upon himself to refrain from communion; although
he married an honorable woman who did not attend any church, he hoped
eventually to win her over.106
e more dicult cases of mixed marriage occurred when a member
married a partner with a poor public reputation, or when someone married
against the will of their parents or the ministers. Iijbeltien married a scoundrel
against the advice of her mother, and then le the man aer he came aer
the mother with a knife. (e Waterlanders kicked Iijbeltien out, but she
had clearly moved herself outside the boundaries of the congregation. She
had not attended a service for several years and refused to appear when
summoned.)107
Over the course of the century, a growing sense arose among those
who married non-Mennonites that they would have to answer to the church
board for their choice of spouse. But as long as they continued to attend the
congregation, the punishment was temporary and not a signicant loss of
honor. Mary Sprunger has suggested that the church was more willing to
103 Zijlstra, Om de ware gemeente en de oude gronden, 182, 277, 391.
104 Driedger, Obedient Heretics, 161. In a chapter on buitentrouw among Hamburg Mennonites,
Driedger traces the process by which ordinary men and women forced the church board to
moderate its position forbidding marriage outside the community, thus weakening its ability
to enforce its will on the congregation’s identity.
105 Immetie Lamberts, SAA 1120, nr. 116, 21R [October 5, 1617].
106 SAA 1120, nr. 116, 33R [December 3, 1647].
107 See the case of Ijbeltien, SAA 1120, nr. 116, 7V [July 7, 1613].
Bottle, Dagger, Ring: Dutch Mennonite Identity 143
tolerate the mixed marriages of wealthier members. She looked at the example
of Aeltie Pieters Buys, who married merchant Symon Willemsz Nooms. In
addition to serving in the city militia, he was involved in the Atlantic trade,
even arming his ships for defensive purposes. Pieters continued to be well
respected among the Waterlanders, donating 50 guilders a year to the poor
chest.108
Perhaps the fear was justied that marriage to a non-Mennonite
spouse might make it easier for Waterlanders to move away from the beliefs
and practices that distinguished them from their neighbors. When, in 1657,
delegates from the church board confronted Jacob Venkel about his clothing,
he blamed the nery of his dress on his marriage to a Reformed woman.109
He argued that his wife had forced him to conform to a dress code with less
restrictive norms than those of the Waterlanders, thereby likely rearming
the ministers’ misgivings about buitentrouw.11 0
e question of marriage outside the congregation had fractured
Mennonite unity in the previous century, but congregations punished it
less strictly by the middle of the 17th century. Although the Lamists no
longer viewed mixed marriage as a threat to the purity and unity of the
congregation, they continued to discourage the practice, albeit for dierent
reasons. Aer the city magistrates ocially required churches to support
their needy members, the board worried that marriage was a channel for
outsiders to gain access to the poor chest of the wealthy congregation.
In 1690, aer much “heartfelt sorrow,” the board presented a new
regulation regarding buitentrouw to the congregation. ey created the
policy to deal with members whose troublesome spouses were not members
of any Mennonite congregation, drank, did not work or attend church,
and yet lived o the congregation’s charitable gis. From that point on, all
members married to someone whose behavior was a dangerous model for
108 Mary S. Sprunger, “Deaconesses, Fishwives, Crooks and Prophetesses: Mennonite Image
and Reality in Golden Age Amsterdam,” in Sisters: Myth and Reality of Anabaptist, Mennonite,
and Doopsgezind Women Ca. 1525-1900, ed. Mirjam G.K. van Veen et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2014),
175-76.
109 SAA 1120 nr. 125, 32R [December 13, 1657].
110 Benjamin J. Kaplan, “‘For ey Will Turn Away y Sons’: the Practice and Perils of Mixed
Marriage in the Dutch Golden Age,” in Piety and Family in Early Modern Europe, ed. Marc R.
Forster and Benjamin J. Kaplan (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 115-33, especially 119-20.
e Conrad Grebel Review144
the children would receive only one-half their support. Any future marriages
in which members were “shackled to such inappropriate and unchristian”
people would receive no food, money, or shelter.111 By discouraging
members from marrying undisciplined and unchurched outsiders, ministers
found an additional way to make sure only upright Christians joined their
congregation.
When Grietje Bouwer was to marry a Papist (paapsman) with ve
children in 1697, the ministers warned that doing so endangered both
her soul and her body, since her husband was unable to support her. Since
the Lamists could no longer assist her, they asked her to leave the church’s
housing (hoe).112 In the proposal of 1690, ministers added the provision
that, if the buitentrouw was between virtuous people who became unable to
support themselves, a three-quarters vote by the entire board would allow
the member to receive congregational charity.
Records of mixed marriages essentially stop aer 1700. Perhaps, in
order to protect the congregation’s considerable nancial resources and its
respectability, the board made it too nancially risky for members to take
up with marginal members of other congregations. However, historian
Benjamin Kaplan has found that one-third of Mennonite marriages in 1760
were to a spouse of another faith.113 By that time, confessional dierences
were no longer signicant barriers to mixed marriages, a trend that Simon
Rues, a German traveller to Amsterdam, had already noted in 1743.114 In the
mid-19th century, Steven Blaupot ten Cate suggested that mixed marriages
111 e congregation had already expressed concerns about mixed marriages to disruptive
spouses in 1687: SAA 1120 nr. 175, 41, 74-75 [March 13, 1687, January 3, 1690]. e board
resolved to read the resolution to the congregation again in 1710, nr. 175, 284 [February 27,
1710]. In 1720, they also resolved to read the resolution to baptismal candidates along with
a warning that, if members le without an attestation for longer than two years, they would
never receive one from the board, nr. 175, 462 [March 7, 1720].
112 SAA 1120 nr. 175, 131 [August 8, 1697].
113 Benjamin Kaplan, “Integration vs. Segregation: Religiously Mixed Marriage and the
‘verzuiling’ Model of Dutch Society,” in Catholic Communities in Protestant States: Britain
and the Netherlands c. 1570-1720, ed. Benjamin Kaplan et al. (Manchester: Manchester Univ.
Press, 2009), 60–61.
114 Simeon Friedrich Rues, Aufrichtige Nachrichten von dem gegenwärtigen Zustande der
Mennoniten oder Taufgesinnten, wie auch der Collegianten oder Reinsburger (Jena: Joh. Rud.
Crökers Wittwe, 1743), 107.
Bottle, Dagger, Ring: Dutch Mennonite Identity 145
were to blame for the steep drop in Mennonite numbers in the previous
century.115 Perhaps in an eort to climb socially, Mennonites who married
Reformed spouses aliated with their spouse’s churches.116
Protecting the Bottom Line: Charity and Changes in Discipline
For the Lamists, membership in the congregation was based upon adherence
to three core points of the identity of the church: defenselessness, adult
baptism, and avoidance of the oath. Virtuous behavior and armation of
these basic markers of Mennonite identity grew more important to the
Lamists than earlier claims to be the exclusive body of Christ or agreement
with a printed confession of faith. at they could take communion with
those who agreed to the three principles and lived upright lives demonstrates
a greater openness to the surrounding culture and a lack of interest in closely
policing identity markers.117
If they were much more welcoming around the communion table,
the Lamists were at the same time growing more careful about whom they
allowed to become a member. In the second half of the 17th century, city
magistrates reorganized poor relief by requiring each confession to care
for their own needy members. During periods of economic downturn,
the wealth of Amsterdam’s shipyards, warehouses, and markets attracted
men and women from poorer parts of the Republic. erefore, the Lamists
scrutinized potential members more carefully, making it more dicult for
poor or ill-behaved individuals to join—and to burden the congregation
with the responsibility of disciplining and supporting them. In addition
to fullling a Christian and required civic duty, the Lamists’ charity also
functioned to shape the social make-up of the membership. In the process,
115 Steven Blaupot ten Cate, Geschiedenis der Doopsgezinden in Friesland: Van Derzelver
Ontstaan tot dezen Tijd, Uit Oorspronkelijke Stukken en Echte Berigten Opgemaakt
(Leeuwarden: Eekho, 1839), 248-49; Kaplan, “Integration vs. Segregation,” 60.
116 For more on marriages between the elites and the regent class, see Mary Sprunger, “Iemand
Burgemeester Maken. Doopsgezinden en Regenten Geslachten in de Gouden Eeuw Te
Amsterdam,” Doopsgezind Bijdragen 32 (2006): 75-121; Mary Sprunger, “Why the Rich Got
Mennonite: Church Membership, Status and Wealth in Golden Age Amsterdam,” Journal of
Mennonite Studies 27 (2009): 41-59.
117 See, for example, Isaak Arondeaux, who came from Rotterdam with proof of his adult
baptism and upright life: SAA 1120, nr. 175, 23 [August 16, 1685].
e Conrad Grebel Review146
however, discipline focused even more on the powerless members while
granting the “better sort” more leeway.118
Prospective members had to present an attestation of good standing
with their previous congregation in order to prevent potentially disreputable
or censured individuals from eeing a shamefully tarnished past for the
anonymity and poor boxes of Amsterdam. As the Republic’s economy
weakened and Mennonites from around the country sought their fortune
in Amsterdam, the congregation added a requirement that residents had to
live in the city for at least a year before they could join. is allowed current
members to observe the behavior of the new residents. ey could thereby
establish whether they were committed to Mennonite principles and were
nancially sound.119 e board also hoped that it would discourage members
from congregations elsewhere who were poor or on the edge of poverty
from “overowing” the wealthy Amsterdam congregation and becoming a
burden.120 In 1709, the board increased the waiting period to three years,
further discouraging marginal Mennonites from coming to the city.121
From 1678 until 1731, the Lamist church board rejected the attestat ions
of at least 66 individuals requesting membership. In several cases, the board
was convinced that the inquirers were interested only in the deacons’ poor
relief.122 Some of the seekers, like Jan Raets and Wilhelm Vos, did not know
enough about church doctrine to justify their inclusion.123 In a dramatic
switch from Mennonite tradition, the board allowed Lijsbets Bongerts to
take communion in 1703 but did not grant her membership, since it was
118 is pattern is a change from that of the Waterlanders in the rst half of the century.
119 e task of observing potential members’ behavior was made easier when they lived in
neighborhoods where many other Mennonites were living. When Dieuwertie Jans asked to
be baptized into the congregation, she had trouble nding two witnesses to vouch for her.
ere had been rumors about bad behavior, but the ministers had diculty locating anyone
who could do so. e collegie told her she had to move to a part of the city where members of
the congregation could have clear proof (klare prevuen) of her betterment. SAA 1120, nr. 174,
239, 247 [January 29, 1682 and August 20, 1682].
120 SAA 1120, nr. 175, 204 [January 3, 1704].
121 SAA 1120, nr. 175, 280-81 [September 23, 1709].
122 See, for example, Jan Jans Roos, SAA 1120, nr. 175, 32 [August 1, 1686] or Aaltie Jacobs,
SAA 1120, nr. 175, 188 [February 17, 1701].
123 SAA 1120, nr. 175, 98, 131 [May 5, 1678, December 1, 1678].
Bottle, Dagger, Ring: Dutch Mennonite Identity 147
not apparent that she had ever been a sister in a Mennonite congregation.124
Gerrit Smit, a member of the Zonist congregation for many years, asked
to add his name to the Lamist membership roles in 1717. Because he was
known to have been a troublesome member for the Zon, the board told
him that they would not take him on as a member. ey would keep his
case in mind, and in the meantime he could enjoy the freedom to take part
in communion.125 By the 1710s, individuals whose pasts had “spots” and
“wrinkles” could take communion more easily than they could be added to
the membership rolls and receive charity.
Lamist leaders grew frustrated when needy members took the money,
food, shelter, or turf of the congregation while remaining on the margins
of congregational life. On March 3, 1687, the ministers admonished the
entire congregation to attend the Sunday services and charged the deacons
of the poor to make sure that needy members also attended. During one
of the services, deacons went the poor neighborhoods (wijks) to see who
was going to church or not. When deacons Arend Bosch and Pieter van
Beek reported that very few of the poor members attended services, either
with their children or alone, the board decided to renew eorts to monitor
attendance.126 On January 22, 1688, they summoned most of the needy
members and their children over eight years old to the church, where they
chastised them for their absences from the sermons. ey admonished them
to make a greater eort to attend the services and sermons.127 If the board
was going to support needy members, they expected them to attend services
and receive the edication of sermons, not just the nourishment of charity.
As the Golden Age lost its luster, marginal men and women may have
needed help more than ever, yet it grew increasingly dicult for Amsterdam’s
down-and-outs to gain access to charity.128 By linking charity with church
124 SAA 1120, nr. 175, 204 [April 5, 1703].
125 SAA 1120, nr. 175, 412 [August 26, 1717]. It is unclear what Gerrit Smit had done in the
Zon congregation, but he had been admonished by their board during a visitation in 1710.
See SAA 877, nr. 3 [September 3, 1710].
126 SAA 1120, nr. 17, 40 [March 6, 1687].
127 SAA 1120, nr. 175, 50 [January 22, 1688].
128 Maarten Prak and Lidewij Hesselink, “Stad van gevestigden 1650-1730,” in Geschiedenis
van Amsterdam: Zelewuste Stadstaat 1650-1813, ed. Willem Frijho, Maarten Prak, and
Marijke Carasso-Kok (Amsterdam: SUN, 2005), II 2: 141.
e Conrad Grebel Review148
membership, discipline, and participation, the Lamists thereby protected
their collective reputation, helped the city nourish its weakest members (or
cut them loose), and contributed to social discipline. Magistrates recognized
the importance of all the city’s churches and their responsibility to care for
their needy, passing a law in 1719 that granted all the Protestant churches
exemptions from new taxes, a privilege that previously only the Reformed
had enjoyed.129 When Dutch Mennonites appealed to authorities on behalf
of Swiss or South German Mennonites, they always drew on their own
reputation as upright, well-behaved subjects.130
e discipline of violence shows how the boards adapted to the
changing nature of their members. From the second half of the 17th century,
there were two tiers of Mennonite members: Mennonites from the middling
and elite classes, who were expected to behave and believe in a certain way;
and members from the very lowest classes or those living in church housing,
who were not held to the same expectations.131 e sources do not allow us
to discern the faith commitments of the violent members, but there are a
few hints. In the cases of the Zon, where 18th-century records list both date
of birth and date of baptism, many marginal members had been baptized at
around 14 years old and committed their infraction only a few years later.
Many of the oenders would have been relatively immature in age and in
their faith.
C
In the rst decades of the 18th century, the number of discipline cases
129 Ibid., 144. e Lamists had enjoyed some tax freedoms since 1676. ey petitioned both
Amsterdam and the States of Holland for the continuation of their freedom from the 100 and
200 penny taxes in the early 18th century. See, for example, SAA 1120 nr. 175, 204 [March 3
and 15, 1703]; 214 [September 20, 1704]; 214-16 [November 20, 1704 and January 1, 15, 22,
1705], 243 [November 18, 1706, June 21, 1714].
130 Troy David Osborne, “Worthy of the Tolerance ey’d Been Given: Dutch Mennonites,
Reputation, and Political Persuasion in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” Archiv
Für Reformationsgeschichte 99 (2008): 256-79.
131 e nature of the sources makes prosopographical work (studies that identify and relate
a group of people within a historical context) in the Amsterdam Mennonites dicult. Mary
Sprunger has found that two-thirds of the Waterlander congregation came from middling
and poorer classes. Sprunger, “Being Mennonite,” 167-68.
Bottle, Dagger, Ring: Dutch Mennonite Identity 149
dropped sharply in all Mennonite congregations. Why did a group for whom
discipline and purity of the gathered congregation had been a mark of the
true church gradually stop disciplining members? e changing discipline
of alcohol, violence, and marriage shows the degree to which Amsterdam
Mennonites were already integrated into Dutch society at the start of the
previous century and how the remaining vestiges of a separate identity
disappeared in the new century. From the perspective of the 21st century,
we think of discipline as a way to mark borders with the outside world. We
instantly think of bishops banning women for wearing jewelry, as was the
case with my Amish grandmother’s sisters. However, with the exception of
sailing in war, Mennonites were concerned about exactly the same things
as the other faiths in Amsterdam. ey disciplined, not because they were
separate from the world but because they were fully part of it.
Although the data shows a clear change in discipline (or at least in
the recording of discipline), we are le with some dicult questions about
what those changes mean. Were the Mennonites assimilated to such a degree
that it had become impossible to enforce an eective discipline? Or, had
the congregation’s discipline actually succeeded in shaping members into
upright Christians, thereby making banning and shunning superuous?
Were Mennonites less willing to discipline or be disciplined?
Records indicate that members grew more willing to challenge the
authority of the ministers to pass judgment over their lives. Jan Pieter
Swaert, in 1677, wrote a letter to the board reminding them that everyone
was a sinner and that only those without sin could cast the rst stone.132
In 1708, Johannes Blauw, a long-term alcoholic, refused to appear in the
chambers unless he learned the names of his accusers.133 Walraven Slicher
appeared in 1699 with two witnesses to make his case for reacceptance into
the congregation aer his excommunication 14 years earlier. e board
decided that his witnesses could only testify to his general behavior, and
that he needed more evidence of true repentance, since his sin had been
so severe. Outraged, Slicher threatened to reveal the name of a minister
132 SAA 1120 nr. 374: Letter dated July 22, 1677.
133 SAA 1120 nr. 374: Letter dated October 28, 1708. Based on the letter and his repeated
drunkenness, Blauw was cut o from the congregation. SAA 1120 nr. 175, 231 [March 18,
1706], 270 [November 29, 1708].
e Conrad Grebel Review150
or deacon present in the room who should also refrain from communion.
When pressed to elaborate, he refused to identify who it was.134 In 1710,
still excommunicated, he threatened to take communion with or without
the ministers’ permission. He was warned that the deacons would pass him
by, 135 thereby publicly reinforcing his exclusion.
Successful social discipline required vertical as well as horizontal
pressure. erefore, the congregations increasingly resisted their leaders’
exposure of their moral failings, and the elders no longer preserved the purity
of the congregation and communion table, which undercut the eectiveness
of discipline. Congregations no longer added marginal individuals to their
membership lists, shaping themselves into respectable gatherings of solid
burghers with a few peculiar beliefs regarding the oath and the sword. As
they gained in wealth and respectability, the Lamists shied the emphasis
of discipline from safeguarding their purity to defending their propriety.
Mennonites raised the bar for admission into their congregations, founded
orphanages, and punished indolence, thereby raising their collective
reputation. e sectarian and ascetic practices of a church discipline intended
to separate believers from the fallen world were no longer necessary to
govern upright burghers used to rubbing shoulders with the economic and
political elites of the Republic.136
Troy Osborne is Associate Professor of History and eological Studies at
Conrad Grebel University College in Waterloo, Ontario.
134 SAA 1120 nr. 175, 25 [November 8, 1685], 174 [August 20, 1699].
135 SAA 1120 nr. 175, 309 [November 19, 1710].
136 is article builds upon material used in Troy Osborne, “Mennonites and Violence in
Early Modern Amsterdam,” Church History and Religious Culture 95, no. 4 (2015): 477-94.
e author delivered a version of this material as the 2016 Benjamin Eby Lecture at Conrad
Grebel University College.