The Modern Devotion

Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism

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Chapter Fourteen
The Brethren of the Common Life After c. 1485

Confrontation with Humanism and the Reformation

During this period the Devotionalists, and notably the Brethren, were confronted with new and considerable problems. In the first place there was the effect of the art of printing, invented and practised by John Gutenberg in Mainz, between 1450 and 1465. Printing works sprang up in various towns, principally those in which there was a flourishing school, and thus logically, where the Brethren had their houses and hostels. In the early days these printers, who were at the same time publishers, concentrated on school books and religious literature, for which there was evidently considerable demand. It is unlikely that the Brethren and canons were immediately aware of the possible threat to their own work of copying. In the first place they usually worked to order, their main output being fine editions. Moreover, the demand for books probably kept pace with production. But competition did exist and increase and it must soon have been obvious to the Brethren that they stood to lose a great deal of their income from the copying of books. Specialization and change were indicated, not only in order to maintain their income level, but also in order to find suitable hand work for the Brethren, for this was considered essential if the balance of their religious life was to be preserved. It is therefore not surprising that they too set up printing works and began to print books. They were, in this, merely continuing their original work in a new form. Their activity in this field, however, was not impressive. So far as I can judge, only the Brothers of Brussels, Gouda, and 's-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands, and Marienthal and Rostock in Germany, seized upon this method of circulating books. The most important printing office set up by the Brothers was undoubtedly the Brotherhouse of Brussels, which began in 1475 already with a small work in the Dutch language and in 1476 produced a legend of Henry II and Kunigund. They also published breviaries, letters of indulgence, homilies and exegetic and apologetic works, besides the letters and sermons of St. Bernard, the collationes of Cassian,

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and the Vitae Patrum.¹ This printing office, however, seems only to have survived for about ten years.

The presses of the Brothers in Gouda were kept fairly busy from 1496, when the first book (a book of hours) was printed. They too showed a preference for pious works such as the life of St. Lebuinus (1496), hours of the life and passion of Our Lord (1496), and a Utrecht breviary (beginning of the sixteenth century). These Brothers persevered into the 16th century, producing hours of the seven joys ‘blitscappen’, of Our Lady (1504) and a Cantuale of Utrecht (1505), a Boeksken van de Missen (1506), a Utrecht Breviary (1508), another explanation of the Mass (1510), a book of prayers (1512), hours of the seven joys of Mary (1521) and two editions of the Donatus.²

The Brothers in 's-Hertogenbosch also printed a few books in the 16th century, mentioned by Nijhoff-Kronenberg.³ In addition to a number of Fathers of the Church they also undertook some Renaissance works: Martial, epigrammata selecta (No. 3501), works of Faustus Andrelini, Jac. Faber Stapulensis and Marcus Ant. Sabelius (No. 3501, 3014, 1075).

Most active in this enterprise were the Canons Regular of the monastery of Hem near Schoonhoven, which has not been dealt with here because it was not associated with Windesheim. In Germany printing offices were mentioned in Marienthal, especially in the years 1474,/1475 and 1478. Here too the emphasis was on pious works and books for the Church; a Mainz breviary, a work by J. Gerson and a ceremonial and ordinarium of Bursveld.⁴ The Brethren of Rostock (Domus Horti Viridis) also commenced this work in 1476 and continued it into the sixteenth century. They printed, among other things, sermons by Herolt (1476), a few classical works, and books by two Humanists, Jac. Poggius (Poggio) and Leonard Aretinus (Historia Sigismundi); a letter of indulgence, and De liberali ingenuarum institu-

1 Catalogue of books, printed in the XVth century now in the British Museum, Part. II London 1912, 170-175. M.F.A.G. Campbell, Annales de la typografie neerlandaise XV^e siècle, La Haye, 1874 (avec supplement) I 544-546.
A list of printed books, M.A. Vincent, le livre de Brabant (Catalogue de l'exposition ouverts à la Bibliothèque Royal du 26 juillet au 15 sept. 1935), 163-64.
Short-title catalogue of books printed in the Netherlands and Belgium and of Dutch and Flemish books printed in other countries from 1470 to 1600 now in the British Museum 1960, 230.

2 Catalogue IX. 40. Campbell I 543; Nijhoff, Kronenberg, Nederlandsche Bibliografie 1500-1540 III 260.

3 Ibid., III p. 263.

4 Catalogue of books etc. II, London 1912, 547.

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tione et educatione,¹ by Vincentius Bellovacensis. These titles already show a remarkable variety, and it is known that in the sixteenth century, after Luther had started to act openly, they printed the Bible of Emser in the vernacular. The great reformer was not impressed, and tried in vain to prevent the publication.²

From the scarce data available, which might perhaps be supplemented by experts, it appears that the Brothers laboured modestly, but to good purpose, in this new branch, which may be considered as a continuation of their copying work. However, in comparison with the extensive production of the great printing works in Deventer, Antwerp, Louvain, Zwolle and Gouda, which were in lay hands, the production of the Brethren appears quite insignificant. These lay printers also published ecclesiastical, pious, theological and patristic works but in addition produced numerous classics, school books, commentaries on the classics and humanistica.

In this field too, the fraters revealed themselves as anything but pioneers, and remained far behind the lay printers. The old and famous houses of Deventer and Zwolle and very many others did not venture into printing at all. Another remarkable fact is that the Brothers printed nothing of the authors of the Modern Devotion. Two works by the Zwolle rector Dirk of Herxen appeared very early, but not with the Brothers. The Devota exercitia was published by Richard Paffroet in Deventer and the Speculum juvenum by John Vollenhove in Zwolle.³ The sermons of Thomas a Kempis were printed by Nicolas Ketelaar in Utrecht.⁴ On the other hand, the printing of the Bible of Emser at Rostock showed courage, conviction and a spirit of enterprise.

A more important enterprise, from our point of view, was the Brothers' attempt to extend their teaching activities among the schoolboys either by setting up schools themselves, replacing the purely supervisory work in their hostels by formal school teaching, or by allowing the Brethren to teach in the city schools. Their good relations with various rectors seemed to offer them fair prospects. However, they already knew from experience that those who held the

1 Catalogue II 566, 567; Elisabeth Soltész in Gutenberg Jahrbuch 1963.

2 See p. 628.

3 Campbell I no. 1652.

4 Ibid., 1657.

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school rights, usually the city magistrate but sometimes the scholaster, clung firmly to these rights, mostly on behalf of the city school and for the benefit of the school rector. They were above all anxious that the school fees should be reserved for the rector and teachers. There were already some indications that the Brothers wished to branch out in this direction. We shall now attempt to discover in how far they succeeded. The sporadic activities of the fraters in the preceding period, up to around 1485, were without significance.

Now too the Modern Devotionalists and in particular the fraters were confronted with the new cultural trend, Humanism, which towards the end of the preceding period, around 1480, reached those places in which the Brothers had their houses, both in the Netherlands and in the towns situated deeper within the German Empire. Although this new culture manifested itself in various fields, political, ecclesiastical and religious, during this first period it was chiefly active in the domain of the school, advocating better teaching and education in the city and parochial schools as well as in the universities. I have already explained in the Introduction that various present day authors consider the Modern Devotion and Humanism to have been closely connected. They argue that several of the first Humanists in Germany and the Netherlands attended schools run by the Brethren of the Common Life where they acquired the first principles of this new way of thinking. It is hence of considerable interest to determine the position of the Brethren in the culture of the time, especially with regard to teaching.

Finally, in the 16th century, the Devotionalists were also faced with the Reformation, which from 1517 onwards spread over the entire region where they had their houses and monasteries. The Reformation period was virtually the end of the Modern Devotion, although a few monasteries and some of the Brotherhouses survived this difficult time. They lost their driving force, their desire for expansion, their propagandist spirit, and, to a certain extent, their original character. Did they, or many of them, adopt the ideas of the Reformation? Were they obliged to bow to superior forces? Or were their ideals no longer suited to the changing state of affairs. An answer to these questions must be sought in the facts which will be dealt with in this chapter.

One of the main difficulties, however, is the absence of the house chronicles which provided some insight into the life of the Brothers during the preceding period. Those of the Brotherhouses at Zwolle, Deventer, Gouda, Emmerich and Hildesheim covered the period up

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to about 1485, 1490. The Hildesheim annals went a little further, but the reports of the years 1493 to 1505 are very brief. Only 1546 is covered in detail. Fortunately, the still unpublished chronicle of Doesburg covers the middle of the 16th century and provides important information concerning the attitude of the Brethren towards the Reformation. This loss of documentation on the abovementioned houses, however, is counterbalanced by the gain of certain annalistic notes from the house of Wolf on the Moselle, which, as we saw, was founded at the end of the preceding period. Valuable documents, such as charters, have been preserved from other houses, and these inform us whether any change took place in the aims and methods of the Brethren, and if so, what these changes were. None the less there remain several Brotherhouses of which we know little or nothing. The religious, usually ascetic, treatises of the fraters came to an end even earlier than the historical works, with the exception of the sermons of people like John Veghe. In their place we have a number of 16th century publications of a completely different nature, and characteristic of the change, in two houses at least. Before going any deeper into the history of the Brethren and the Brotherhouses in the sixteenth century, we must bear in mind that several of the Brotherhouses had developed into canon-chapters, in other words, colleges which served a so-called collegiate or chapter church. In consequence the Brothers of these houses had become canons with communal possession. So far as we can judge, this transformation took place in the majority of the houses, not perhaps the house at Amersfoort, but probably in those of 's-Hertogenbosch, Brussels, Ghent, Geraardsbergen, Cassel and Magdeburg, and certainly in Hildesheim, Münster, Cologne, Herford, Wesel, Marienthal, Königstein, Butzbach, Wolf, Urach, Herrenberg, Dettingen, Einsiedel and Marburg. Yet if, as we saw, the results of this change were chiefly juridical, it cannot be denied that the choir prayers which the Brothers already had, now received particular emphasis. This facilitated any future transformation of such canons into secular vicars or canons enjoying their own income. And, although men like Gabriel Biel praised such foundations and recommended them, from the Brothers' point of view this change appeared to signal a decline of the old spirit, a fading of the old ideal.

One sign of this weakening towards the beginning of this period is that there was no longer such an urge to expand. During this time only two new houses were founded, and one of these, that of Liège, really belonged to the transitional period. The second house, in

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Trèves, also displayed a distinctive character. The foundation in Liège, however, was a great success, and showed signs of being in tune with the times. The plan to found the house was conceived by bishop John of Hoorn and the city magistrate. They contacted the Brothers in 's-Hertogenbosch and invited them to begin a new Brotherhouse in Liège. It was an attractive offer, since the fraters were able to find immediate lodgings in the existing priory of Mary Magdalen, while the magistrate proposed to build the Brothers a church with hostel on the island in the Maas. Since this was situated in the middle of the city, the Brothers could use it as a centre to practise their normal pastoral duties. The fraters from 's-Hertogenbosch accordingly sent four of their Brothers to Liège and these took up residence in the priory of Mary Magdalen on June 26th 1496.¹ The first stone for the church was laid on May 27th, 1497, but it was not consecrated until January 21st 1509. The new house was ready for occupation by rector and fraters in 1497. They began by taking the boys into their own house, but later placed them in a separate hostel which is mentioned in 1501. It was intended for the poor boys who attended the school. They had already received permission for this from the chapter in 1499.² The school situation in Liège, where not only the parish, but also the chapter churches, had their own school, allowed more instruction to be given in this hostel than in those of other cities. Elsewhere, the one school enjoyed sole rights in teaching Latin, and this privilege was jealously preserved by the municipality, by force of law where necessary. Private schools were sometimes tolerated on condition that the pupils also paid school fees to the rector of the big school. In towns like Utrecht, Maastricht, and even Amsterdam and Groningen, where there was more than one parish church, the suppression of the private schools was rendered more difficult, or even impossible. It was thus easier for the Liège fraters, like those in Utrecht and Groningen, to give more instruction in their hostels than in Deventer or Zwolle, where the one old city school (or chapter school) carefully preserved its ancient rights. However, the fact that several Latin schools existed in one city, as for example in Utrecht and Liège, had the fatal effect of limiting the development of

1 L. Halkin, Le collège liègeois des Frères de la vie commune, Namur 1940, 6-7; Les frères de la vie commune de la maison saint Jérome de Liège (1464-1545), Bulletin de l'Institut archéologique Liègeois 65 (1945) 5-70.

2 L. Halkin, Le collège Liègeois etc. 305-310; Les frères de la vie commune, Bulletin de l'Institute archéologique liègeois, 65 (1945) 20. A. Miraeus. Opera Diplomatica IV 451

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all the schools equally. The number of pupils was too small to attract several teachers, so that one man was usually responsible for the entire educational programme. This seems to have been tolerated in the Middle Ages, but it was scarcely feasible in the sixteenth century when the Humanists were advocating better and broader education. In actual fact the city authorities did take steps to achieve one large Latin school, either by amalgamating the existing schools or by forbidding the other schools to take Latin any further than the first principles and exercises. The real teaching of the classical language was to be reserved for one particular school.

To illustrate this situation, I refer here to a contemporary event in Maastricht in which no Brothers were implicated and in which Liège itself was expressly proposed as model. Here, on August 18th, 1516, a priest called Abraham, rector of the Franciscan nuns of the Nieuwerhof, received the municipality's permission to found a general school (Gemeyne school). It was intended for the children of the middle class citizens of Maastricht, and for those from outside the town. This one school would be the Latin school in Maastricht. The city would grant privileges for the children from other places, and be responsible for the school building. The school would be for the use and advantage of our town and the citizens sons, ‘tonnser stadt ende burgerskynderen.’ The city would defend this new venture against all opponents. The aim of this plan was clearly twofold: to increase the municipality's powers in matters of education, and to bring about the necessary concentration of teaching.¹ This measure threatened the existence of the two chapter schools (St. Servas and Our Lady) since they would scarcely be able to compete in the future with the new school, which might justifiably be called the city school. In order to quash any expected opposition well in advance, the city sought and obtained the support of the highest church authority in Rome, on April 20th 1517. However, by this time an agreement had already been reached with the chapter of St. Servas on September 9th 1516, whereby it was laid down that the rector and pupils of the new school had to pay a certain sum to the school of St. Servas, but at the same time the St. Servas school should be restrained in attracting pupils. Nevertheless, although the city supported this new school for a long time, and when appointing a rector mentioned a possible roll of four hundred boys, the attempt ended in failure. In 1554 the school was obliged to close.

1 M. Schoengen, Geschiedenis van het onderwijs in Nederland 1912, 196, n. 2.

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The municipality then made the school of St. Servas the privileged school of Maastricht, by allocating a subsidy to this chapter school.

This episode may serve to throw light upon the situation in Liège¹ to which we now return. Here, around 1500, the fratres began a school, probably in the hostel. In describing the history of the Brethren in Liège one must always take into account the three foundations for which they were responsible: their own dwelling house and chapel under the direction of the pater, also known as the rector; the domus pauperum under its own rector, sometimes called procurator, and on occasion also coming directly under the jurisdiction of the rector of the dwelling house; and finally the school, run by another person who also bore the title of rector. Naturally enough this school took time to gain a reputation. It had to compete against the various chapter and parish schools, and was of no great significance before 1515. In 1515, however, this school possessed a brilliant teacher in the secular priest Nicolas Nickman. Through his influence perhaps, and in any case before September 9th, 1515, an important change must have taken place. This is revealed by a decree of this date, whereby Liège was proposed as model for the suggested plans of Maastricht described above.² This change amounted to the fraters' school being recognized henceforth as the one main school in Liège, and as such being supported by the municipality. This meant that the Latin schools of the Liège chapters and parishes were curtailed in some way or another, as would happen in Maastricht. This is made clear by John Sturm, who went to school in Liège from 1521 to 1524. When, twenty years later, he was called upon to organize the educational system in Strasburg, he took as his model the school position in Liège as he had known it in his youth. This we know from a document dated February 24th 1538.³ It was necessary, in his opinion, to decide on having only one Latin school in the city. He based his opinion on the experiences in Liège, Deventer, Zwolle and Wesel. As he remarked in a marginal note this should succeed well in Strasbourg, since the city was smaller than Liège.⁴ This limiting of the number of schools to one must have been introduced before Sturm's arrival in Liège since, as he says, a

1 R.R. Post, Scholen en onderwijs in Nederland gedurende de Middeleeuwen, Utrecht 1954, 57-59.

2 Regest in: Publications ... de Limbourg 69 (1933) 173.

3 Ed. G. Bonet Maury, De opera scholastica fratrum vitae communis in Nederlandia 1889, 89-95.

4 Ibid., 95.

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reaction began during his stay there. Some of the teachers of the school began to give lessons on their own account. If this initiative had succeeded, it would have meant the end of the ‘Hieronymitanum Gymnasium’. ‘For if each teacher attempts to acquire pupils, they learn not what is useful but what is pleasant, and adapt themselves more to the demand than to the understanding of their audience.’¹ This statement is also important since it makes clear that not all the teachers of this one new school were members of the Fraternity. No one frater could have started a school entirely at this own risk. Fortunately, this difference of opinion was settled so that the school was able to go forward. Sturm reviews the subjects taught in the eight classes. These do not differ essentially from what we know of other schools. With a few exceptions the curriculum is the same as in the medieval schools. The most important difference is that the boys learn reading and writing in the lowest class, with the declension of nouns and the conjugation of verbs. There were several other places in which the boys could learn these subjects at school - the so-called writing schools - so that the gymnasium really began with the seventh class and then consisted of five classes, like the five which Erasmus completed in Deventer. Then came the two top classes, which were rare, but which did exist in Zwolle and Deventer. As we shall see, these classes offered different subjects. Two new subjects - Greek and rhetoric - were added to the normal curriculum of the medieval school. The Humanists were responsible for this innovation. The introduction of these new subjects meant that the teaching of dialectic suffered - it was relegated from the fifth to the fourth class - but Sturm adds that this subject and rhetoric were only touched upon in the fifth class (indicabantur). Greek and rhetoric continue to form part of the curriculum up to and including the second class (the first of the two top classes) together with philosophy (Aristotle, Plato), Geometry (Euclid) and even law. Some theology was given in Liège in the first (or highest) class, but this is found nowhere else. Each class has a separate teacher, who sometimes has to cope with 200 pupils, but this is not uncommon in the Middle Ages. What is new is that the second and first classes were required to have more than one teacher - the introduction of specialization. The pupils of the two classes were combined for some subjects - which again promoted specialization.²

1 Bonet Maury, 90.

2 Ibid., 90-92. R.R. Post, Scholen en onderwijs in de Middeleeuwen, Utrecht 1954, 97-106.

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Sturm included this programme in his proposal to the curators of the Strasburg school, letting it appear that all this was already well established in Liège. But fourteen years had elapsed since his departure and on certain points the wish may well have been father to the thought. We catch a glimpse of this from time to time when he lapses from the usual imperfect tense into the present. In No. 5, for example, where he is speaking of the fourth class: ‘the method to be followed here must be established separately’¹ and in No. 6 about the third class: ‘here the method of imitation (of the style of Latin and Greek authors) must be indicated, and a certain form of exercises prescribed.’² The same is true of the specialization in the second and first class.³ It is difficult to accept his statement concerning theology as a subject for the first or highest class in Liège in the years 1521-24. In any case this subject is not found in the 15th century curriculum of the school at Zwolle, as given by J. Busch,⁴ nor in the 16th century programme of the Hieronymus-school in Utrecht,⁵ whereas J. Sturm seems to consider it normal for Strasburg in 1538. Besides, the subject in this period was called Old and New Testament.

Two questions arise in this connection. Were the fratres themselves responsible for enlarging the curriculum by the addition of Greek and rhetoric, for cutting down on dialectics, for the reading of certain classical authors and for the introduction of the two top classes? Or was the influence of the Humanist school requirements already so great around 1515 that the Brothers simply adopted what had already been introduced in several places? Sturm unfortunately only mentions those authors read in the two top classes, and these were either philosophers or mathematicians, who offer little material for comparison. Nor do we know anything about the kind of Latin taught, about the grammars and other school books or even about the method of teaching.

The second question is: Did the fraters take the classes, or at least the majority of them, in their own school themselves, or did they leave the teaching to assistants from outside, while continuing to run the school as their fellow Brethren in Brussels⁶ had done, and as the Brothers in Utrecht later did with the Hieronymus-school.⁷ Did they

1 Bonet Maury 91.

2 Ibid., 92.

3 Ibid., 92.

4 Busch 206.

5 Ekker I 57. R.R. Post, Scholen etc. 101, 102, 106.

6 See below p. 614.

7 See below p. 570.

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find their rector and teachers inside or outside their community? If they taught themselves, had they received the necessary training? Had they received their Master's degree from the Arts faculty of a university, as had most of the other teachers, at least those of the top classes?

It is plain that the Liège fraters were not the first or the only ones to aim at an educational reform, employing such means as the addition of Greek and eloquentia to the curriculum. This movement towards reform had been in progress for some time now in the south of Europe, and had already achieved results in certain city schools. From around 1485 onwards some of the Dutch Humanists passed themselves off as reformers in the world of education, or, if they were not actually concerned with teaching, as the champions of new ideas in this field. Even before the Liège school reform, that is, before 1517, Rudolf Agricola, Desiderius Erasmus and Alexander Hegius were writing treatises and schoolbooks, as were others throughout the German Empire. Their main theme was the reform of instruction in the Latin language, by improving and simplifying the grammar and by reading classical authors in order to imitate their style. In addition several advocated the introduction of what they called eloquentia, by which they understood facility of language in conversation, correspondence and delivery. The first Humanists saw in the use of elegant language and a polished style (eloquentia) a means of improving both Church and society.¹ Unfortunately there is nothing to confirm that this eloquentia was introduced as a separate subject in Dutch schools before 1517. Nor does this appear necessary, for as Paulsen says: ‘Eloquenz und zwar zunächst in lateinischer Sprache, ist das erste Ziel der gelehrten Unterrichts, die Nachahnung der alten Schriftsteller das wesentliche Mittel.’² Greek, however, was an entirely new subject in these parts and at the outset a knowledge of this language was not very common among the teaching personnel. Hegius († 1498) had learned the language from Agricola, but his knowledge was not very highly thought of. Greek was offered as a subject at his school during his rectorate in Deventer (1483-1498). Geldenhauer from Nijmegen

1 P.N.M. Bot, Humanisme en onderwijs in Nederland, Utrecht-Antwerpen 1955, 73-101.

2 Fr. Paulsen, Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts. Dritte Auflage v.R. Lehmann I, Leipzig 1919, 347. J. Kuckhoff, Der Sieg des Humanismus in den katholischen gelehrten Schulen des Niederrheins (1525-1557), Münster 1920. R.R. Post, Erasmus en het laat-middeleeuwse onderwijs, Voordrachten gehouden ter herdenking van de sterfdag van Erasmus op 10 en 11 juli 1936 te Rotterdam, 's-Gravenhage 1936, 172-192.

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learned this subject when Hegius was rector of the Deventer school,¹ which seems to have been the first to offer it in the whole of the German Empire above the Alps. Greek was taught in Zwolle in 1516, as rector Listrius boastfully mentions to Erasmus, his former master.² In Alkmaar the subject was introduced by the rector Rutger Rescius, a young Laureate of Louvain who was appointed to this city in 1515.³ On the basis of this information it can be said that the school authorities of Gouda in 1521 had no need to wait for the Liège programme in order to draw up a humanistically orientated roster which included Greek.⁴ The programme with which J. Sturm was personally familiar from his school years 1521-24 is exactly appropriate to the period. It is not an invention on the part of the Brothers but an adaptation of the ideas prevalent at that time in the world of education, which many desired to see put into practice. It was an important step to take and one which did credit to Liège, but it was not the realization of a creative spirit. The fraters were merely practising what the Humanists had been preaching for the past thirty or forty years. Their work may still have been considered progressive around 1520, but they were certainly not pioneers.

The fact of having the two top classes in 1521-24, and the beginnings of specialization among the teachers, gave the Brothers' school in Liège a decided advantage over the schools in the neighbouring cities such as Maastricht and Brussels. However, these things were not entirely unknown. The school in Zwolle certainly had these two top classes under John Cele,⁵ and during the fifteenth century it is repeatedly mentioned in connection with the Deventer school that such and such a pupil had completed the first class on entering the Brotherhood.⁶ The city magistrate often urged the school rector to retain these two classes or, if they had been discontinued, to restore them. But it was difficult to get enough pupils, since this study did not contribute much to entering a university or to success in church or society. We might say that the grammar school course was completed after the third class, or that the leaving certificate was taken at the end of this year.

1 Bot, 182, 184.

2 Ibid., 185.

3 Ibid., 186.

4 L.A. Kesper, Geschiedenis van het gymnasium te Gouda 1897, 84-85. R.R. Post, Scholen en Onderwijs, 104-105.

5 R.R. Post, Scholen en Onderwijs, 100-101.

6 Ibid., 103, 106.

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The subjects taught in these two top classes were indeed entirely different from those which the pupils had had up till then. Deventer and Zwolle gave philosophy; Liège philosophy, law, geometry and theology; Utrecht, as we shall see, offered the mathematical subjects of the quadrivium, and Strasburg followed Liège's example with philosophy, law, geometry and theology. In the first class Capito, Bucer and Hedio taught the Old and New Testament.¹ In other words, the subjects taught in the two top classes were those which belonged to the Arts Faculty of any university. An exception must be made for theology, which may be considered Sturm's own speciality. The specialization which Sturm regarded as necessary in the second and first class did not yet exist in Liège, no more than in Zwolle and Deventer, but it may have been introduced in Strasburg. Bucer (or Buzer † 1541 in Cambridge), Capito († 1541 in Strasburg) and Hedio († 1552 in Strasburg) may have been teachers of theology there.

It is not entirely clear what part the fraters themselves took in teaching, since we know the names of only a few teachers. In a letter from Strasburg, dated May 18th 1563 and addressed to the bishop of Liège, or to the coadjutor with the title of administrator, Gerard of Groesbeek, and to the chapter there, J. Sturm mentions four of the teachers from the period when he attended the Brothers' school in that city. They are dominus Nigmannus, dominus Henricus Bremensis, frater Arnoldus Einatensis and frater Lambertus.² In this connection L. Halkin has written an important commentary, supplemented by a study of the same year, on the first-mentioned Nicolas Nickman.³ Nicolas Nickman is also mentioned in the correspondence of Aleander and Herman of Bremen,⁴ and in a poem by John Fabricius de Bolland celebrating the glorious reception in Liège of Queen Maria of Hungary by Prince-bishop Érard de la Marck which lasted from October 31st to November 5th in 1537.⁵ J. Sturm clearly distinguishes between the first two, N. Nickman and H. of Bremen, to whom he gives the title of dominus, and the remaining pair who are both called frater. This is confirmed from other sources: Arnold Einatensis (from Eynatten, a

1 G. Bonet Maury, 96.

2 Léon Halkin, Une lettre inédite de Jean Sturm au Prince-êvéque Gérard de Groesbeek, Liège 1941, 7.

3 Léon Halkin, Un humaniste liègeois oublié maître Nicolas Nickman, Namur 1941.

4 Ibid., 9-13.

5 Ibid., 6-7.

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place between Aachen and Eupen) is repeatedly mentioned in charters and acts between 1542 and 1558 as a pater of the Brotherhouse;¹ Lambert (i.e. Lambert de Brogne) appears as a cleric on a list of the fraters of the Liège Brotherhouse of April 19th 1508.² Nicolas Nickman, on the contrary, appears to be a secular priest, in the first place because Aleander wished to obtain him as paedagogus for an Antoine de la Marck, a nephew of the bishop, secondly because while a teacher he was also canon of St. Materne in Liège, thirdly because he fulfilled some function in Rome around 1540 and finally because he possessed his own capital, including a hereditary rent on the Brotherhouse which the fraters bought out in 1540.³ He was a Master of Arts, probably of the University of Paris, and is repeatedly given this title. He was already attached to the school in 1515, before it was reformed. Halkin thinks too that Henry of Bremen was not a Brother either. In the first place he is mentioned in Sturm's letter in the same breath as Nickman, and both are referred to as dominus. Moreover, in a marginal note to the poem he is called Master, and he is not found in any of the lists of fraters which have survived.⁴ We can thus take it that around 1520 there were two fraters and two secular priests teaching at the school of Liège. The last two had attained the degree of Master of Arts. The difficult circumstances prevailing at the beginning may have been responsible for this situation, but from what has gone before and from what we know of the Brothers in other cities, it was not entirely unfavourable. The Liège fraters certainly did not occupy a prominent place in education in 1521-24, either as leaders or as pioneers. The foundation of the trilingual college in 1520 gave the University of Louvain the lead in this field. From that time onward, numerous future teachers in Dutch schools began their classical studies here.

Later we find two Brother-teachers in the Liège school - Georg of Langevelt and Libert Houthem of Tongeren.⁵ The first, a frater of the house of 's-Hertogenbosch, was lent to Liège and Utrecht, which indicates that the fraters were poorly supplied with teachers. Of course,

1 L. Halkin, Une lettre inédite etc. 17, 18; Les frères de la vie commune etc. Bulletin de l'Institut archéologique liègeois LXV (1945) 27-30.

2 L. Halkin, Une lettre etc. 18; Les frères, 25-26.

3 L. Halkin, Un humanist liègeois oublié maître Nicolas Nickman, 9, 8, 13, 11 n. 2.

4 Ibid., 7; L. Halkin, Une lettre inédite etc. 18.

5 L. Halkin, Les frères de la vie commune de la maison Saint-Jérome de Liège (1495-1594), Bulletin de l'Institut archéologique liègeois LXV (1945) 30-35. See below p. 565.

[p. 565]

he may also have been in demand for his excellence as a teacher. According to Halkin he most probably worked in Liège from 1525-1529(?), but his real field of activity lay in Utrecht. Frater Libert Houthem taught in Liège from 1570-1577, wrote a couple of school books, a larger paedagogical work (Ethicae vitae ratio seu moralis ... praecepta, Liège 1575), and a few poems and Latin plays. He was elected rector of the fraters in Brussels in 1577, but soon became a victim of the rising. After spending some time imprisoned in Brussels, he fled to Henegouwen and was given a teaching post there.¹ If these four were the only Brothers to teach at the school, this would be a very small percentage of the teaching staff, but this impression may perhaps be attributed to the lack of complete data. Léon Halkin resurrected the members of the Liège Brotherhouse from the 16th century deeds and accounts, since no narrative sources exist. These lists are extremely instructive for the history of this Brotherhouse. None of the fraters is listed as having been rector or teacher in the school, not even Lambert de Brogne and Arnold d'Eynatten.² However, these lists are of no use whatever in deciding whether and to what extent the fraters themselves taught in the school. On the other hand it is mentioned if a particular frater was pater, frater, rector, procurator or liberarius. Since these are mostly legal documents the first terms may have some significance but liberarius, to my mind, has as little meaning as schoolrector or teacher.³

None the less, the lists provide other interesting information. In the first place the old groups are still there: priests, clerics and the occasional lay brother (for example the tailor). From the lists which are considered to be complete it appears that there were in 1508 five priests

1 L. Halkin, 55-60.

2 Georgius Macropedius and Libert Houthem are missing.

3 L. Halkin, Bulletin de l'Institut archéologique liègeois LXV (1945) 10. Since there were probably very few Brothers teaching in the Liège school it is of great importance to determine if the abovementioned teaching Brothers had pursued any academic studies to the degree of magister artium. None of the four brethren are given the title of Master, while the two non-Brethren are. The brothers were self-made men, perhaps of excellent qualities. According to L. Halkin, Henry of Diest, the first rector of the Brotherhouse, was a Master of Arts. If this is so, he may have gained his degree before entering; otherwise he was a rara avis. He was ordained (30th September 1495) by bishop John of Hoorn and was then referred to as presbyter dicte diocesis (L. Halkin in: Bulletin de l'institut archéologique liègeois LXV, 1945, 15 n. 1.) An episcopal official calls him, maistre Henri de Diest, frère de la dicte Vie Commune (19th October 1495) Ibid., p. 15, n. 7. It appears that the episcopal official was mistaken or excessively polite.

[p. 566]

(including the rector) and six clerici.¹ In 1542, the community consisted of twelve members. No distinction is now made between priests and clerics, probably since the matter in question was the election of a procurator and all had the same voting rights.² In 1544 there were five priests and four clerici.³ Six months later, on February 18th 1545, the same nine are again mentioned, with the addition of two others. These may have been two new novices or two members of the community who happened to be away in 1544. In 1558 there were seven priests plus a tailor, but no clerics.⁴ Unfortunately there are no further accounts until 1581 when a new situation had arisen on the transfer of the Brotherhouse and school to the Jesuits. We will come back to this later. From the foregoing data I should be tempted to conclude that the situation in the Brotherhouse was normal up to about the middle of the century. It was not a large house, smaller than that of Zwolle, but roughly the same as that of Deventer with a regular, if small, intake of novices. Towards the middle of the century, the influx of new members fell off, while those who did seek admittance either found the life too hard, and left, or else were sent away. There are eight persons who are only mentioned in the surviving lists of 1540-1545 and never again. This may in part be attributed to the haphazard preservation of the documents, but the fact remains that one frater had to be sent away in 1553 for bad conduct and another in 1554 for disobedience.⁵ Since no clerics are mentioned for 1558 we can reasonably assume that the Liège Brotherhouse, like so many religious institutions of that period, suffered from a lack of vocations.⁶ The house never recovered. There were only seven fraters in 1581, and five in 1587, of whom two had already obtained a place as canon.⁷ By 1596 the numbers had been reduced to four, two canons and two priests.⁸

It is unfortunate that the lists do not offer sufficient data to show that virtually all the clerics finally became priests and could thus be considered as future priests or priests in training; men who received no theological training or schooling other than their own private

1 L. Halkin, Bulletin de l'Institut archéologique liègeois LXV (1945) 10.

2 Ibid., 11.

3 Ibid., 11.

4 Ibid., 13.

5 Ibid., 46-48.

6 R.R. Post, Kerkelijke verhoudingen in Nederland vóór de reformatie van ± 1500 tot ± 1580, Utrecht 1554, 180-181, 37.

7 Ibid., 13. L. Halkin, (see no. 1).

8 Ibid., 14.

[p. 567]

study and conversations with older colleagues. It is noteworthy how the terms for the fraters' institution gradually approach those of the monastery. The house is a conventus,¹ a monastery² monasterium³ belonging to the ‘ordre de saint Jérome’⁴ and the men are called religiosi viri; professi et religiosi; frères et professes; professing brothers, religiosi professi,⁵ all this without having taken any vows. However this may be, the school of the Brothers in Liège flourished. In a letter of August 28th 1530 a Benedictine writing with reference to a search for the forbidden books of Erasmus among the pupils of the Liège school of St. Jerome on the orders of Dirk Hesius remarks in passing: ‘this is the principal school of Liège.’⁶ Such was the success of the Brothers in the field of teaching. Their own boys in the domus pauperum also profited by the school, and their house was moved closer to the school in 1544. However, despite their successes, the Brotherhouse lost ground and the role of the Brothers was soon played out. They belonged to a different period. Teaching was incapable of imparting a different spirit unless the conditions of life were completely transformed. The Brothers' aspirations to simplicity, even simplicity carried to excess, rendered them unsuited to the teaching profession. As Hieronymus Aleander observed to Érard de la Marck in a letter dated October 23rd 1515: ‘fraterculi quibus ut videre videor simplius nec ineptius dicam.’⁷ Other religious orders came forward with ideals more adapted to the times, with a new programme of education and a more thorough grounding. In an act dated 28th September 1580 the fraters transferred their house to the Jesuits, who would also take charge of the school. In return they received a small house.⁸ In 1595 (March 23rd) Pope Clement VIII allocated all property and income of the fraters to the chapter of the collegial church of St. Paul. Each of the four fraters received a benefice and an annuity of a hundred guilders.⁹ One was appointed to St. Paul's, one to St. Denys' and two others received a parish. The end came a hundred years after the beginning.

As the antepenultimate Brotherhouse to be founded, the house of

1 L. Halkin, 10.

2 Ibid., 12.

3 Ibid., 12.

4 Ibid., 11.

5 Ibid., 10, 11, 12.

6 L. Halkin, Un humanist liègeois oublié 13. P.S. Allen, Opus epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami IX no. 2369, 35.

7 L. Halkin, Un humanist liègeois oublié 9.

8 L. Halkin, Bulletin de l'Institut archéologique Liègeois, LXV (1945) 13, 66.

9 L. Halkin, Ibid., 64.

[p. 568]

Liège with the attached city school, can be considered unique. Only the last founded houses of Utrecht and Trèves have a similar history and thus qualify for a place in this chapter. The Brotherhouse in Utrecht, which like that of Gouda was manned by Brothers from Delft (November 1475), soon acquired a school which, unlike the Brothers' small school in Gouda, flourished rapidly in the sixteenth century and even excelled the other schools of the city. As in Liège the cause of this remarkable fact must be sought in the scholastic situation prevailing in Utrecht. Unlike most other Dutch towns, which had only one parish (chapter) or city school protected and favoured by the municipality, Utrecht had long possessed nine similar educational institutions intended for instruction in the Latin language, four parish and five chapter schools. Under these circumstances the municipality had little reason to favour one school more than another, and there could be no question of sole teaching rights. Permission from the cathedral chapter was necessary in order to set up a school, but if the canons were acquainted with the Brothers' primitive little school in Gouda and saw their modest beginnings in Utrecht, they will have had little objection to the Brothers starting a school.¹ However, the activities of the Humanists caused educational standards to rise sharply. Accordingly, when the Brothers' school proved to be making favourable progress, the municipality thought it politic to foster it in preference to the others and to transform it into a model institution, while allowing it to remain in the Brothers' hands. Events in the nearby episcopal city of Liège, or those in Maastricht may have provided an attractive model. In any case the school run by the fratres became to all intents and purposes the city school.

We receive the first reports of this in 1536, but the transformation may have occurred ten years earlier, for in 1536 the city bailiffs were helping to collect the school money (fees) for the school of St. Jerome.² According to a note in the city accounts of August 4th 1536, the civic officials kept this school under supervision. Men were chosen at this time in order to inspect the school and pupils of St. Jerome in this city: ‘omme aldaar 't schoel ende studenten of leerkynders van S. Hieronymous alhier te visiteren.’³ The other Utrecht parish or chapter

1 A. Ekker, De Hieronymusschool te Utrecht, Utrecht 1863, 102.

2 Dodt van Flensburg, Archief voor kerkelijke en wereldlijke geschiedenissen Utrecht, VII 168.

3 Ibid., III, 217, ‘to inspect the school and the students or schoolboys of St. Jerome.’

[p. 569]

schools were not subject to such an inspection. The civic character of the school becomes even more plain from a memorandum of 1580 which states that the municipality had long before granted the school of St. Jerome sole rights to teach Latin to all boys of a certain age. According to this document a rule had formerly been made whereby the magistrate decided that children below the age of twelve might attend one of the nine original schools in the city. Anyone, however, who wished to continue the existing school programme was obliged to go to St. Jerome. This Brother-school thus acquired a position similar to that held later by the city gymnasium. On the other hand - perhaps before this rule was drawn up - the five chapters were involved in the appointment of a rector for the school of St. Jerome. At least, they were called upon to intervene in order to have Henry of Almelo, then rector in Gorinchem and not a Brother of the Common Life, appointed as rector of the Utrecht school, although in fact he had already been engaged by the municipality of Zwolle for the school there.¹ The Brothers' school had evidently relinquished much of its private and independent character. It had become a public city school, the main school, and was no longer a private school. None the less, although it owed its dominant position to the patronage of the city fathers, this need not detract from the fratres merits as educationalists. They were in charge of the school and may have taught in it as well. However, the fact that a non-frater was sought as rector in 1525 is sufficient reason to examine the exact scope of the fratres' scholastic activities.

On this point one must bear in mind that in the Middle Ages a distinction was made between having a school and actually being in charge of it, that is, doing the actual teaching. The former was called the ‘scholastery’, gift, or collation of the school, the latter was the rectorship. These concepts developed analogously with those of the churches, where the patron (or collator) existed alongside the parish priest. The possession of the gift of the school was not without financial advantages, since the possessor could lease the school to a rector. It was for this reason that Count William III of Holland, Zeeland and Henegouwen gave the school of Rotterdam to one of his clerks (17th December 1328, 10th March 1336)², and on 12th Decem-

1 Letter of 3 september 1525, v. Asch van Wyck, Archief voor kerkelijke en wereldlijke geschiedenissen in Nederland, III, 165. M. Schoengen, Geschiedenis van het onderwijs in Nederland, 1912, 379.

2 F. van Mieris, Groot charterboek der graven van Holland, Zeeland, en heeren van Vriesland (Leiden 1753-56) II 477, 575.

[p. 570]

ber 1292 the Council of Dordrecht presented the gift of the city school to the city hospital.¹ This was clearly seen in Gouda where Jan Wilbroot, a singer of the imperial house chapel was rewarded with the gift of the school of that city, and leased the school to a teacher.² It would thus be possible that the fratres possessed the school of St. Jerome in roughly the same manner as the city hospital possessed the school of the oldest city in Holland. By virtue of the gift of the school they could either run it themselves or rent it out. They could even dispose of their right to it, which is exactly what they did in the second half of the sixteenth century. In 1565 the fratres leased their school (the school of St. Jerome) to three lay teachers, for 250 imperial guilders per year for a period of twelve years. The contract was to be reviewed after six years. The three gentlemen received ‘all the buildings of the school of St. Jerome, together with the teaching and administration’.³ The fraters were thus rid of the bother of the school while still continuing to profit by it. They had, however, stipulated that they should continue to be responsible for the pastoral welfare of the pupils, to supervise the use of good books and retain the right to provide these. With these two points they remained within the field of activity indicated by Geert Groote: pastoral care and the distribution of good books.

When the six years had elapsed the lease was not renewed, but in the same year the fraters sold the school, the ‘exercitium et administratio scholae’ as it was called, to an archiepiscopal commission charged with founding a seminary in the spirit of the Council of Trent.⁴ This commission consisted of canons of the five Utrecht chapters, who were from 1571 to 1576 the ‘administrateurs ende recteurs der school’⁵ as the Brothers had been before them. There is no likelihood whatever that they did any teaching themselves. They, in their turn, could appoint a rector and masters or lease the school as the Brothers had done in 1565. They chose the first course and thus continued to direct the

1 G.D.J. Schotel, De illustere school te Dordrecht, 1857, 1.

2 L.A. Kesper, Geschiedenis van het gymnasium te Gouda, Gouda I 1897, 94, cf. 1-19.

3 Dodt van Flensburg, Archief VII, 398. A. Ekker, De Hieronymusschool etc. 54 ‘gehele huysinge der schoele van S. Hieronymus, doctrine ende administratie vandien.’

4 Charter of 1571 July 18th, published in Archief ... aartsb. Utrecht, 26 (1900) 454. L. Miedema, Resolutiën van de vroedschap van Utrecht betreffende de Akademie, Werken Hist. Gen. n.s. 52, 1900, Inleiding LXXXIV.

5 ‘administrators and rectors of the school.’

[p. 571]

school for five years in the absence of any move to start the seminary. However, the war situation caused the school to lose a great deal of ground in these years and the canons also complained of the emergence of private schools which detracted from this general school. Nevertheless, the fact that the fraters leased the entire building and administration in 1565 and disposed of all their rights in the institution in 1571, proves that they did not consider education as their principal task. It is therefore important to discover whether they personally taught before 1565, or relinquished this task, wholly or in part, to hired assistants as did the Brethren in Liège.

A. Ekker, the historiographer of the Utrecht St. Jerome school, names various persons who are supposed to have taught at the school before 1565, but it is already obvious at first glance that he has not sufficiently distinguished between being a Brother and teaching. Of the ten ‘teachers’ he names, only three are fratres, and one of these three, John Hinne Rode, the famous supporter of the Reformation, was, according to the chronicle of the Doesburg Brotherhouse, not rector of the St. Jerome school, but of the Utrecht Brotherhouse.¹ His two successors, rectors of the Utrecht Brotherhouse, Otto of Beek and John Huls, had no connection with the St. Jerome school.

Ekker names Peter of 's-Gravenland, Cornelius of Driel, Henry of Bommel, John Hinne Rode, Lambert Hortensius, George Macropedius, Cornelius Valerius, Arnold of Tricht, Cornelius Lauerman and Peter Memmius as Brothers and teachers. He has simply copied the first two from Delprat, who, however, by no means says that these men were connected with the school. Henry of Bommel is the well-known author of the Bellum Trajectinum and of several religious treatises. He was rector of the Magdalena convent in Utrecht and went over to Lutheranism around 1525.² Modern researchers have been able to find no evidence of scholastic activities, which in any case would be in conflict with the rectorate. The two last are two of the teachers who leased the school from the Brothers in 1565, which proves that they themselves can not have been fratres. Enough is known of the life and works of the priest Lambert Hortensius to rule out the possibility that he was a member of the congregation. He had his own house in which he received friends, he carried on an unlawful association with a woman, and was taken up with his activities in

1 The relevant section of this chronicle is published in: Kerkhistorisch Archief, 3 (1862) 109.

2 Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek I, 397.

[p. 572]

Naarden. He was indeed a teacher at the St. Jerome school, but not a frater.¹ The same can be said of Cornelius Valerius, who after his post in Utrecht between 1538 and 1542 became a tutor to the children of notable families. His work as a tutor even took him to France, which was naturally impossible for a frater². There now remain only Arnold of Tricht and George Macropedius. The first was a native of Nijmegen, later wrote a history of Gelderland³ and is probably the brother Arnold referred to in the foreword to Macropedius' Hecastos. There are admittedly no data to prove that this frater Arnold was attached to the Utrecht Brotherschool as a teacher, but on the other hand there is nothing to prove the contrary.

Arnold of Tricht and George Macropedius are the only two of the above-mentioned gentlemen who were really fratres. George Macropedius or Van Langevelt already shows by the name he assumed that he was a supporter of the new culture. Although we have already met him in Liège, he was the celebrity of the Utrecht school and the glory of the Brotherhood there. In actual fact, however, he was a frater from 's-Hertogenbosch, admitted to the Brotherhouse of that city in 1502. It is here that he was buried and he may also have taught there. But one thing is certain. He was head of the Utrecht school of St. Jerome from 1537 to 1552. He was a dedicated teacher who took pride in his pupils' successes in the Latin and Greek languages and expounded on the utility of practising letter-writing in school and of putting on Latin plays. He wrote several school books (Latin and Greek grammars, a prosody, a book of dialectic and a book of letters) and was the author of twelve Latin plays which he had acted by his pupils. As a schoolmaster he placed great faith in the rod and cane as aids to learning and twice derived from them subjects for comedy (Rebelles and Petriscus). He was in truth a Humanist. This was practically inevitable for a school rector of the second quarter of the 16th century. He was a Humanist, however, who for all his knowledge of Latin, had absorbed little of the educational principles of Erasmus, Vives and others. To judge from the punishment scenes he had performed in order to frighten young people onto the strait and narrow path, he might have been one of the bullies who made life so difficult for Erasmus. A deed dated May 25th 1553 would seem to indicate that he was also head of the domus pauperum of the Utrecht fratres and thus

1 Nieuw Ned. Biog. Woordenboek, I, 1158.

2 H. de Vocht, Cornelii Valerii ab Auwater Epistolae et carmina, Louvain 1956.

3 Foppens, Bibliotheca Belgica I, 105.

[p. 573]

fulfilled the task to which he alludes in the foreword to Josephus.¹

The conclusion that only two of the people named by Ekker were both frater and teacher renders more understandable the appointment of Henry of Almelo, who was not of the Brotherhood, as rector of the school of St. Jerome in 1525. It is clear that in the main the Brothers employed outside teachers, not belonging to the congregation, to run their school. For their part, in Utrecht as elsewhere, they devoted their own energies to the pastoral care of the schoolboys. They had received privileges for this work from Bishop David of Burgundy (5th June 1476) and Bishop Frederick of Baden (14th January 1498). The domus pauperum which they also ran, had room for sixteen poor schoolboys ‘scamelijke clercken’,² had its own financial resources and received the charitable support of the citizens of Utrecht. The organization and rule of the house were similar to those of the St. Willibrord college in Utrecht. In fact these two institutions were amalgamated for a time following the Reformation. The domus pauperum served as a training house for priests. The pupils received a few lessons at home, but further attended the St. Jerome school.³ In all probability these poor scholars were not expected to pay any fees to the school rector, but had, in return for their schooling, to perform various little services in the St. Jerome school. These included opening the building and locking up, cleaning it on Saturdays and, according to the play Petriscus, handing the master the rod and holding the culprit while chastisement was being administered.⁴

To sum up, it may be said that despite possessing a school in Utrecht the Brothers considered that their first duty was to care for the spiritual and temporal welfare of the schoolgoing youth. For the most part they confided the task of teaching in their own school to others. Macropedius was an exception. He was a successful autodidact, and there is no indication that the fraters frequented the universities in this Humanistic period. Macropedius' departure was a blow to the Brothers' school, and shortly afterwards they suffered another great loss. The rector of the house, Master Otto, left in 1556 and became rector and pastor to the Sisters in Weesp. His successor did not come

1 J. Hartelust, De dictione Georgii Macropedii, diss. Utrecht 1902. Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek VII 822. F. van der Haeghen, Bibliotheca Belgica, 2e serie V.A. Ekker, De Hieronymusschool etc. I, 43. Bibliothèque national XIII, 10-22.

2 Ekker, 45. S. Muller Fz., Oud-Utrechtsche Vertellingen, 1904, 93.

3 This seems to have been a general custom which was, for example also applied in the Protestant Seminary in Utrecht; Archief ... aartsb. Utrecht 26 (1900) 463.

4 E. Miedema, Resolutiën van de vroedschap van Utrecht etc., XLIX-LIV.

[p. 574]

from the Utrecht house. John Huls from the Doesburg Brotherhouse was appointed.¹

The Brothers' days were numbered. The sale of the school to the bishop's commissioners around May 1571 was also occasioned by the losses they had suffered, almost all were dead ‘bijnaest alle verstorven zijn’ and by the fact that no novices had come forward to replace them.² The Brethren here died, in fact, a natural death. By September 23rd 1578 the city council (vroedschap) had decided to take over the St. Jerome school, but it was not until 1585 that this decision was carried out. The property of the Brothers' house passed entirely into the council hands in 1589.³

The reputation which the schools of Liège and Utrecht enjoyed among the Humanists lends support to the idea that the Brothers promoted Humanism. However, the attitude of the fraters of these two houses is no indication of what the remaining Brethren thought. Moreover, although we shall have to go more deeply into this question, it must already be stated here that neither the Liège nor the Utrecht Brothers were pioneers. They did no more than what was being done in city schools everywhere, for the heads of these schools had been Humanists since 1520. Even then, the couple of Brotherteachers who gained some renown did not belong to the leaders, men like Agricola, Erasmus, Murmellius and Buschius.

In Liège we detected no sign of sympathy at all among the Brothers for the new religious ideas. This was perhaps difficult under the prince-bishops. In Utrecht too, it cannot have been easy up to around 1566. None the less, one of the priests of the St. Jerome house made a name for himself in the first days of the Reformation. This was Hinne Rode. It was he who personally conveyed to Zwingli in 1523⁴ a treatise of the advocate at the court of Holland, Cornelius Hoen, on the Eucharist, compiled with reference to the famous dissertation on the same subject by Wessel Gansfort and found among the papers of the

1 Kroniek van Doesburg, Archief Arnhem Handschrift D. 216.

2 Thus in a document from the cathedral scholaster (1576) to the commissioners who wished to assume the school rights from possession of the building, whereas the cathedral chapter was of the opinion that they had been given to the religious on the implied condition that they retained the religio, disciplina and the habit.

3 L. Miedema, Pogingen van katholieke en protestantsche zijde aangewend tot oprichting van een seminarie te Utrecht, Archief ... aartsb. Utrecht 26 (1900) 451. Resolutiën van de vroedschap van Utrecht. Werken Hist. Gen. n.g. 52, 1900 LIV.c.

4 This is based on information obtained from Hardenberg's Vita Wesseli, which is not considered entirely reliable. L. Knappert, Het ontstaan en de vestiging van het protestantisme in de Nederlanden, Utrecht 1924, 138-139.

[p. 575]

Naaldwyk deacon James Hoeck (died November 11th 1509). This was the so-called ‘Avondmaalsbrief van Cornelis Hoen’¹. Hinne Rode hereby showed himself to be a supporter of the new theology which was being openly proclaimed in Wittenberg, Basle, Zürich and many other places, and which was strictly forbidden by the temporal authorities in the Netherlands. He must accordingly have been known to other supporters. His precise views on the disputed point of the Eucharist are of little import here. Zwingli agreed with the contents of the letter, unlike Luther, to whom it had probably been shown earlier. Hoen, and after him Zwingli and Oecolampadius, went further than Wessel in rejecting the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. In assessing Hinne Rode's influence, it is not without significance to know that he was most probably not rector of the St. Jerome school, but of the Brotherhouse in Utrecht.² He had thus more contact with the fratres of his house, who formed only a small group, than with the more receptive schoolboys. Hinne Rode was either expelled from the congregation or left of his own accord. In 1524 he stayed with Bucer in Strasburg and visited Deventer in 1525. In 1527 he was a preacher in Norden, but was relieved of his function in 1530 because of his Zwinglianism. After this it is impossible to trace his movements with any certainty.³ There is no evidence that he had any disciples among the Brothers. The Utrecht Brotherhouse must have flourished during the first 25 years after Rode's departure, otherwise they would not have been allowed to take charge of the school. The lease of the school in 1565, however, was a bad sign. The Brothers were probably victims of the prevailing spirit of the times, which led to a decline in vocations to the priesthood. By 1571 they had almost vanished.⁴

The comparatively recent foundations in Utrecht and Liège were

1 Facsimile edition by Eeckhof, 1917; after the model of 1525 in the Royal Library in the Hague.

2 The chronicler of the Brotherhouse of Doesburg calls him the rector domus clericorum, i.e. of the Brotherhouse This function would virtually exclude the possibility that he might be at the same time rector of the school Handschrift D, Rijksarchief Arnhem, 84.
Nederl. Historiebladen 2 (1939) 142. Kroniek van het fraterhuis te Doesburg. Grapheus calls him the teacher of John de Bakker and ‘Hieronymianni collegii praefectus.’ Although it is not so clear, the word collegium in this period refers more to a communal dwelling-house than to a school.

3 J. Lindeboom, Het Bijbelsch Humanisme in Nederland, Leiden 1913, 161.

4 On the house of Sankt German in Trier, the history of which resembles that of the houses of Utrecht and Liège, see p. 621.

[p. 576]

the places in which the Brothers' schools developed most favourably. One must, however, bear in mind that this new development began more than a hundred years after the founding of the fraternity. We must now examine what progress was made in the remaining houses.

At the end of the last period and the beginning of this, from c. 1480 to c. 1499, the Deventer congregation showed a symptom of the new age in that one of the Brothers was a well-known teacher in their own school. This was John Xinthen or Synthen († before 1493),¹ who was thus teaching in the ‘domus pauperum’ during Erasmus' school years in Deventer. He was also a famous commentator on the grammar by Alexander de Villa Dei.² In 1484, shortly after Erasmus' parture from Deventer, he produced, with Alexander Hegius, a commentary on this well-known and widely used grammar. According to D. Reichling the work met the requirements of the Humanists. No longer were the grammatical rules logically reasoned; the linguistic usage was elucidated, and compared with reference to texts by Latin authors and established in accordance with the writer's findings. This commentary, which will have been mostly the work of the Brother, enjoyed a certain authority in educational circles. It was reprinted 15 times before 1500 in Deventer alone. This fact is certainly not unconnected with the great influx of pupils to Hegius' school.³ For the Brothers this school function signified a new office and a fresh departure. John Synthen was evidently a professional teacher. None of the Deventer Brothers before or after him published a school book. The fratres' publishing or writing activities were confined to pious books or chronicles of their house of equally pious intent. John Synthen's position and work as a grammarian are symptomatic of an enormous change of mentality among the Brothers. This change will have been partly brought about by the necessity of finding suitable work now that copying had been rendered pointless by the development of the art of printing. Here the old foundation in Deventer set the example which was followed later on a larger scale in Liège and Utrecht.

Was this merely an isolated case in Deventer? Indeed it must once

1 J. Butzbach, Auctarium, ed. Krafft u. Crecelius, Zeitschrift des Bergischen Geschichtsverein, VII (1871) 242.

2 D. Reichling, Das Doctrinale des Alexanders de Villa Dei, Berlin 1893, LXIII-LXIX.

3 Ibid., LXIX.

[p. 577]

again be emphasised that the Brothers held themselves aloof from the school. They had no influence on the appointment of the rector or teachers, no share in the government of the school, no influence on the educational methods applied, and they did not cooperate in the work of teaching. The Brothers' task was, as it had always been, to exercise pastoral care among the students, to preach for them and to provide lodgings for a small group of 50 to 75 boys in their hostel, where they were prepared for the monastic life or for the priesthood. The traditional friendship of the Brothers with the school rector was also continued. They were on good terms with Alexander Hegius who was appointed rector of the chapter school in 1483. This man was a native of Heek in Westphalia, a pupil of the school of Zwolle, a teacher in Emmerich and for a time rector of the great school of Wesel. As a rector he proved himself both pious and zealous in his task, capable and devoted, and under his guidance the school reached its highest peak. Not only did the number of pupils increase, but the entire teaching system was gradually adapted to the requirements of the Humanists, by the introduction of better teaching methods, by the teaching of Greek and a more classical Latin, by the reading of Latin authors, and perhaps too by allowing more time for rhetoric. Alexander was held in high esteem by the later Humanists, even by Erasmus, although the latter admits that he seldom heard him. This concurs with what we know of the general set-up in the schools. Erasmus did not attain the secunda in Deventer, whereas the rector only taught in the secunda and prima. The school's success must be attributed to Alexander Hegius and to the favourable circumstances. To attribute its progress to the Brothers is not only historically inaccurate, but would detract from Hegius' personal merit. His friendship for the Brothers, his own devout nature which eventually led him to the priesthood, must not delude us into giving the Brothers the credit for his work. A devout way of life is not sufficient to make a Brother of the school rector.

During Hegius' rectorship John Synthen set up the fraters' own teaching establishment. According to John Butzbach, who attended school in Deventer towards the end of the century and wrote down his findings in 1508, John Synthen was for years head of a school in the clerics' house, i.e., the pupils' house, the domus pauperum or hostel¹:

1 J. Butzbach, Auctarium, ed. by K. Krafft and W. Crecelius, Zeitschrift des Bergischen Geschichtsverein, VII (1871), 242.

[p. 578]

vir utriusque lingue predoctus qui solario publico domus clericorum ibidem multis annis prefuit, ubi tam in virtutibus quam in bonarum litterarum scientiis claros discipulos ... erudivit. The words solarium publicum, an easily accessible attic, or one with windows, make it difficult to interpret this statement, but in the rest of the statement Butzbach makes it clear that the pupils were instructed in virtue and Latin (bonae litterae). This may of course refer only to the supervising of the homework in the hostel, to which Brother Synthen devoted his powers. But still there seems to be more than this, the beginnings of a complete school curriculum which would rival that of the main school. For Synthen also appointed his successor to the teaching post in the clerics' house: first James of Gouda and afterwards Henry of Amersfoort who died in 1503.¹ Although it is not entirely clear what significance must be attributed to the school in the hostel, it seems reasonable to accept, on Butzbach's authority, that these two Brothers were not, as Delprat assumes, teachers in the big school,² an assumption which Hyma elaborates into the conclusion that: ‘the Brethren of the Common Life were at that time in nearly sole charge of the school.’³ This institution in the solarium publicum may be the same school which functioned for a time in the Bursa cusana and was later transferred to the fraters' hostel. It even obtained the municipality's approval, but was later a cause of anxiety to the chapter of St. Lebuin which stood out for the rights of its own big school. In this they followed the traditional educational policy. The chapter will first have made its objections known to the administration of the Brotherhouse. When the Brothers, however, quoted the approval they had obtained from the municipality, a conflict broke out between the city and the chapter. This must have reached its peak around 1530 and the years immediately following. In 1534 a court of arbitration gave a decision which is of particular importance for our purpose. The arbitrator restored the original situation, which meant that the chapter school retained the sole right to teach Latin. The fraters' school was forced to close, but in such a way that Master Lutger may continue as rector in the hostel, provided that he does not maintain or attract any other schools, pupils or students. The pupils of these hostels will attend the old school as has been customary from the beginning. This restoration of the status quo therefore, as we have described it here and in other cities, implied that the

1 Butzbach, 243, 244.

2 G.H.M. Delprat, Verhandeling etc. 1850, 72.

3 A. Hyma, The christian Renaissance, 1924, 289.

[p. 579]

pupils should live in the bursae or hostels and attend the city school with supplementary lessons from one teacher.¹

This attempt, even though it failed, shows that a fresh idea of their position with regard to education can be detected among the Deventer Brothers towards the end of the fifteenth and in the sixteenth century, that is, in the period under discussion here. And yet for them teaching remained something entirely incidental, of little interest to the majority. For neither the privileges, nor the other documents, nor the biographers, not even the necrology which, with a few gaps, covers the years from 1384 to 1568, make any mention of or allusion to the fraters' task in education. As elsewhere, the necrology mentions that the deceased frater was a cook, tailor, brewer, baker, rector and confessor of Sisters, but never that he gave lessons as a teacher. The deaths of John Synthen and James of Gouda fall precisely in that period in which the gaps occur in the necrology. Of Henry of Amersfoort the necrology states only that he was a priest.²

The old glory of the Brotherhouse in Deventer faded. Despite the short-lived school, the number of vocations fell off. In 1526 the fratres of Doesburg sent Henry of Meppen to Deventer because there were too few priests in the Brotherhouse.³ It is improbable that the house ever made a recovery. The number of priests was decreasing everywhere, and here too it may be assumed that some of the Brothers deserted. According to the Doesburg annalist in 1522, the Florenshouse experienced many internal difficulties on account of Luther.⁴ Rector continued to succeed rector, but Lindeborn's account of the situation makes it plain that all was not well shortly after 1560. In 1561 Simon of Doesburg was deposed as rector⁵ and succeeded by Arnold Heutemius, who remained until 1569. The next rector, Andreas N., whose name is withheld, was relieved of his office in the very first year and forbidden contact with the community (familia) on account of his misbehaviour (demerita). A successor was found from the house

1 J. de Hullu, Bescheiden betreffende de Hervorming in Overijssel I, 1899, 93. Archief Deventer no. 1201. ‘meyster Lutger rectoer in de vursz burse sal moegen bliven, maar dair sich geener ander schoelen, clercken off studenten onderwinden offte tot hem trecken. Oeck sullen de clercken van deze beurzen in de olde schoele gaen als van olds guwoenlicken is.’

2 G. Dumbar, Het kerkelijk en wereldlijk Deventer, I 64

3 Kroniek van Doesburg, Handschrift D. Rijksarchief Arnhem 144.

4 Ibid., 129.

5 This may be connected with the attempts at reform made by the parish priest Carolus Gallus in 1560. L.J. Rogier, Geschiedenis van het katholicisme in Noord-Nederland in de 16e en 17e eeuw I, Amsterdam 1945, 543.

[p. 580]

of Emmerich, Henry Wachtendonck. Two more rectors followed him but under the second the entire community was dissolved and its possessions transferred to the municipality.¹ This will have been around 1581, when the practice of the Catholic religion was forbidden in Deventer and church property was confiscated.²

The house in Zwolle where the pater omnium devotorum still held sway and where the paters from the various Dutch houses met every year in the colloquium to discuss the situation in the different houses, in order to intervene where necessary, shows few fresh developments in this period. Unfortunately the faithful Narratio of James de Voecht now leaves us in the lurch. It was discontinued in this period, so that we are obliged to fall back on a few documents and other scanty sources of information. From these it can be deduced that the activities of the house were carried on as in the preceding period. The Brothers carried out their pastoral duties in many convents and among the many boys attending school in Zwolle. They provided lodgings and supervised the physical and spiritual welfare of certain groups of boys in their three hostels: for poor boys, for boys of wealthy parents who paid a fairly considerable fee for their board, and for sons of less well-to-do families. John Lindeborn quotes a text of Gerard Listrius, the humanistically-minded rector of the Zwolle school in the years 1516 to 1522, trium linguarum interpres, in which he praises the Zwolle Brethren for building a large hostel, a house which would hold 200 poor schoolboys, and for being useful to the city.³

On July 18th 1514 the Zwolle citizen John Koickman and his wife sold the fraters a building plot in the Sassenstraat for this purpose, knowing that they would build on it a ‘clerckefraterhuis’, in other words a Brotherhouse intended for pupils of the school. One of the conditions of the sale indeed was that the ‘behuisinge’ in which the poor Brothers (the pauperes) were then living, would return to temporal hands. In other words, the new house would replace the old domus pauperum.⁴ Gerard Listrius may already have been able to affirm at his

1 J. Lindeborn, Historia sive notitia episcopatus Daventriensis, Coloniae Agrippinae 1670, 105-106.

2 L.J. Rogier, Geschiedenis van het katholicisme in Noord-Nederland in de 16e en 17e eeuw I, Amsterdam 1945, 546. According to L. Schulze (on the basis of Revius) the house was given to the municipality in 1574 through lack of members. R.E. III 481.

3 J. Lindeborn, Historia sive notitia episcopatus Daventriensis, Col. Agr. 1670, 382.

4 Edited by M. Schoengen, 474-476.

[p. 581]

inauguration (1516), that the house was nearly finished. It signified an important extension of the fraters' activities, but still in the well-worn paths. The same is true of their other work referred to above. This may be deduced from the various letters of confirmation which the fraters received from Church authorities, the main purpose of which was to entrust them with the pastoral care of the schoolboys. It is also evident from the donations to the domus pauperum, for the support of poor scholars was still regarded as a much esteemed form of charity and benevolence.

Yet the Zwolle house also eventually reached the turning point. In 1537 a Brother from Culm again travelled requesting six good, erudite, learned men, fitted to take charge of the Culm fraterhouse and of the gymnasium and suited for every good work. They even threatened, if the Zwolle Brethren did not comply with their request, that the bishop would take steps which they would not like at all. Before replying, the Zwolle Brethren submitted the case to the colloquium, perhaps in 1538, perhaps only in 1539, perhaps twice. The fact remains that they did not give their answer until 1539, and then completely en mineur. They do, however, give us an important insight into the situation in the Brotherhouses and in society as a whole. The administration of the Zwolle house delayed the return of the frater from Culm (John) in order to consult with the colloquium first. There, however, they had been given little hope. All the delegates complained of these sorry times in which monastic life (religio) was nearly everywhere in difficulties. ‘Not only our order and life, but nearly all the orders in our district, have difficulty in finding persons who will leave the world and cling to their community and life.... We are very few; there are scarcely six of us... We do not know thus what we must reply.’ Finally they write that if the bishop perhaps intends to confiscate the property, then ‘we would have him know that we have spent a great deal on this house.’¹ This is a difficult situation such as we also encountered in Liège around this time. Still, it is unpleasant to reflect that in the face of so much spiritual need, the Brethren of Zwolle thought first of the money which they had invested in Culm. In 1544 a lack of members led the Zwolle Brotherhouse to request and obtain a priest from the Doesburg house, Theodoric of Wachtendonck. However, he only stayed until 1546, for Doesburg needed him as a confessor of sisters in Calcar.²

1 M. Schoengen, 497-498.

2 Kroniek van het fraterhuis te Doesburg. Rijksarchief Arnhem 195, 200.

[p. 582]

The celebrated Zwolle house with its once numerous members and flourishing institutions for schoolboys, now led a languishing existence. This was not so much because the members deserted or became Protestants, although this may well have happened, but because of a dearth of new members. The reasons for this lay in the flagging of spiritual sacrifice among the faithful, the decline in religious feeling, and the growth of a bias towards the temporal. Like the monasteries, the Brotherhouses gain too few novices or none at all. Although the Reformation was still suppressed in the Netherlands, there can already be detected among the population an aversion to the monastic life or at least an indifference to it, of which most institutions were already feeling the effects. It may be too, that the Humanists' optimistic esteem for worldly goods, their praise of worldly culture, weakened or even suppressed the very widespread medieval spirit of contempt for the world. The Humanists' reviling of the monasteries may have had the same effect. However, none of the Brothers in Zwolle seems to have gone over to the new way of thinking. M. Schoengen testifies at least that ‘despite a meticulous search I have not been able to discover in the Brotherhouse of Zwolle the name of any Brother suspected of heresy.’¹

Although the spirit of the Reformation may have influenced the decline in the number of Brothers in the Zwolle house, it is quite a different matter to determine whether those fratres who did enter helped to promote the new culture. The fact alone that none of the Zwolle Brothers taught in the main school shows that they held themselves aloof from the intellectual life. There is no historical justification for considering them as pioneers of the Humanistic culture. When the city went over to the Netherlands party (the party of the States) in 1580, the Brotherhouse shared the fate of the other monasteries and churches. On September 26th, 1581, the civic authorities decided to have the monastic property inventorized by a deputation, but this decision was never carried out in full. The magistrate allowed the monastics to continue living in their monasteries and foundations, certainly until 1590. The only exception was the Dominicans who were banished from the city by a decree dated May 13th 1580.² On March 1st 1590 a frater still held the rights of the Brotherhouse property, so that he was able, on that date, to sell a small piece of land through the agency of the mayor and alderman. This was in fact the

1 M. Schoengen, Inleiding CLXIV.

2 L.J. Rogier, Geschiedenis van het katholicisme in Noord-Nederland in de 16e en 17e eeuw, Amsterdam 1945, I 548.

[p. 583]

last. At this time there were only four Brothers left in the Fraterhouse proper, two priests and two lay brothers, namely a brewer and a cook. The magistrate dissolved the community by an act of 3rd January 1592, and the remaining fraters were given an annuity and somewhere to live. The two priests received places in the Zwolle convents (one in the Maatklooster and one in Wittenhuis). They were appointed as paters and had to administer the property under the control of the city. The brewer received a place in the convent of St. Gertrude which ensured him a fairly comfortable living. With regard to the cook - who was evidently still well able to work - the magistrates would deal with his case as they saw fit and proper. There was also a Brother, Sanders Schimmelpenninck, still left in the hostel (domus pauperum). This house would retain its original purpose, and was for the present allowed to remain under the administration of the aforementioned Brother.¹

The Hulsbergen Brotherhouse remained an agrarian house. The proximity of Zwolle and Deventer made the pater of Hulsbergen a well-known and influential figure at the Zwolle colloquium, a person who was consulted from time to time during the periods between the colloquia. No one would attempt to describe the Brothers of this isolated house as pioneers of Humanism, but that some were inclined to favour the Reformation might be deduced from the rather dramatic history of this house in the 16th century. In 1525 some of the Brothers conceived the plan of transforming this rural Brotherhouse into a regular monastery. Duke Charles of Gelre, however, intervened - more or less under pretext of heretical inclinations among the Brothers - and settled Benedictines in Hulsbergen. He banished the Brothers from their house and settled them in convents. Some of them profited by this opportunity to bid the religious life farewell.² The Benedictines remained in Hulsbergen until 1539, that is, until the death of Duke Charles of Gelre. Then they were evicted in their turn and the Brothers came back.³ It is not known how many Brothers returned. They will have hung on until the Reformation and then most probably have been ejected by force.⁴

The house of Doesburg took no part in the dissemination of

1 M. Schoengen, CLXIV-CLXVI.

2 Kroniek van Doesburg. Rijksarchief Arnhem, Handschr. D. 141-142.

3 Ibid., 184.

4 Rogier, Het katholicisme I 538-541.

[p. 584]

Humanistic ideas, although I think it possible to deduce from the terms which he uses for ‘dying’ that the more classical Latin was also employed by the house annalist.¹ The fratres had no influence on the teaching and their only influence on the schoolboys was in the religious sphere. Some instruction was given in the domus pauperum, but it was adapted to that of the school. However, the Reformation did not entirely pass by this house without influencing the Brothers. It even gained some adherents.

Some measure of the spiritual situation of the region from which the house of Doesburg recruited its novices is provided by the list of inmates of the house. The number declined a little at first in the sixteenth century, but recovered somewhat later. In 1501 the house of Doesburg numbered 24 persons, mostly priests, six of whom lived and worked outside.² There were still 21 left in 1523³ and in 1529,⁴ but only 15 in 1535. After this the curve rose again, to 19 in 1540,⁵ 20 in 1546⁶ and 22 in 1553.⁷ The number remained the same in 1558⁸ which placed the Doesburg house in the position of being able to help some of the other Brotherhouses. Henry of Meppen, for example, was sent to Deventer in 1526, because the house there had too few priests. Similarly, Theodoric of Wachtendonk was dispatched to Zwolle⁹ while the Doesburg Brother John Huls was elected rector of the Utrecht house, when the rector Otto left the Fraternity in 1556¹⁰. The decline in membership was thus slight in comparison to the old house which had formerly been extremely flourishing. Information provided by the Annals shows that the intake of novices, both lay and clerical, may be considered normal throughout the entire period. However, although the novices came, they did not persevere. Some of them left before being admitted to the Brotherhood, and some long after, on account of illness, disagreement with fellow Brethren or rector, or because they were able to obtain a freer spiritual function. Others departed because they sympathized with the new religious ideas emerging in Germany, or because they had rendered their position untenable by bad behaviour or evil suspicions and were expelled from the Brotherhood by the rector or the visitatores. Every frater was

1 See p. 384.

2 Kroniek van Doesburg 92.

3 Ibid., 130.

4 Ibid., 161.

5 Ibid., 185-186.

6 Ibid., 196.

7 Ibid., 209.

8 Ibid., 222.

9 Ibid., 144.

10 See 216. The recall of James of Bommel as socius from Elten in 1539 on the grounds of too few priests seems to have been a pretext, p. 185.

[p. 585]

free to leave the Brotherhouse if he so desired, for he took no vows, but in practice to leave was considered as a sort of apostasy, the breaking of a solemn promise. On one occasion the annalist even speaks of such a departure, in 1511, as being contra votum.¹ The case in question was that of a cook who left and took a job in a brewery in Utrecht. Such departures, of which there is little evidence in the chronicles of Zwolle and Deventer, occurred frequently in Doesburg in this period: the cleric Walramus in 1505,² the priest James Beslick in 1504,³ the priest Arnold of Halen in 1507;⁴ ‘Arnold of Deventer shamefully left Wamel, cutting himself off from us.’⁵ James Beslick, who had left already in 1504 and become a vicar, wished to return.⁶ The departure of this man so early in the sixteenth century had naturally no connection with Lutheranism or the Reformation, yet this same James fled again from Doesburg in 1529, when Duke Charles of Gelre began a campaign in that city against the Lutherans.⁷ John Andrea, admitted in 1508, ordained priest in 1518, left, became a chaplain and later a vice-curate.⁸ The tailor Egidius Hendrik began the novitiate in 1508 and departed in 1511.⁹ In the same way William of Utrecht, a novice in 1508, and ordained in 1515, left three years later and returned home.¹⁰ Godfried of Krefeld, the cook who had left some time before, wished to return in 1514 but was not accepted.¹¹ The tailor William of Bommel went away in 1517.¹² In 1519 the Brothers had Gerard of Nijkerk, confessor in Elten, sent home on account of his evil life.¹³ And all this happened before the influence of Lutheranism.

The annalist mentions Luther for the first time in the year 1521. He knows that Luther proclaimed various new theses and that his ideas had gained ground throughout the whole world; that he was in conflict with the Holy See on many points; that he reproached the Church of Rome with avarice and with many matters regarding indulgences and prebends. Luther has brought the whole of Christendom in turmoil. It is said that he has been declared a heretic and condemned-but the writer is not convinced. There are, however, papal Bulls (if at least they are authentic) which forbid Luther's writings.¹⁴ Such is

1 Kroniek, 107.

2 Ibid., 93.

3 Ibid., 95.

4 Ibid., 101.

5 Ibid., 94.

6 Ibid., 95.

7 Ibid., 160.

8 Ibid., 105, 117.

9 Ibid., 105, 107.

10 Ibid., 105, 113, 117.

11 Ibid., 112.

12 Ibid., 115.

13 Ibid., 119.

14 Ibid., 123.

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the view of a contemporary-at-a-distance. A year later (1522) the writer is better informed, and the results of Luther's activities can be observed in the Netherlands! It seems as though Luther is preaching the truth and keeping to the Scriptures! But the fruits of his work prove the contrary and ‘by their fruits you shall know them.’ Hence his writings - perhaps wrongly interpreted - gave rise to rebellion and apostasy on the part of the religious, contempt for the clergy, the desertion of the monasteries and the plundering of Church goods. Many, too, who are less religious support him, attracted by the promised freedom, whereas they perhaps do not rightly understand Luther's intention. But, aspiring to the freedom which is not allowed them, they flee submission and obedience and say that they are called to freedom. The rector of the Brotherhouse in Utrecht, dominus John Roy,¹ was dismissed for his Lutheran sympathies. The Florenshouse in Deventer too has up to now experienced much internal strife on Luther's account. The writer's views have developed somewhat in the course of 1521-22. It seems to him that Luther is right up to a certain point, but that the freedom he proclaims is misunderstood, which leads to the evil ‘fruits.’²

A few of the desertions which follow now might be connected with the prevailing Lutheranism: Zylmann Emmerik leaves and marries.³ William Hecfort, confessor to the Sisters at Wamel, flees, under suspicion of incontinence and becomes a canon in Elten.⁴

In the year 1524-25 the Doesburg annalist has more to say about Luther. Various young scholars are associating themselves with Luther and proclaiming all kinds of new and unusual things in the Church. The pope cannot bind anyone under pain of mortal sin. No one is obliged to confess or to fast, or to keep the feast days or to refrain from eating meat according to the precept of the Church. Furthermore, priests are allowed to marry; they must also work with their hands. Only one Mass per day may be said in any city; anyone may consecrate, if chosen by the community. The Lutherans assert that they have scriptural proof of all these things.⁵

The annalist is evidently well informed. All the matters mentioned here were already proclaimed in 1524-25. The chronicler, however, makes no mention of the principal point - justification by faith alone, with its effect on the value of the sacraments and of good works. One

1 Hinne Rode.

2 Kroniek 129.

3 Ibid., 126.

4 Ibid., 126.

5 Ibid., 137-141.

[p. 587]

might say that he is a warning to us! In examining the influence of Luther and his followers in the Netherlands, we must not keep too strictly to the essential, the dogmatic points, but also have an eye to matters which are at first sight incidental. These may have been for the contemporary the most spectacular, and for many the most attractive aspects of Luther's preaching, namely all that may be comprised in the concept ‘evangelical freedom.’

The annalist goes on to tell of the dispute among the scholars, that the various parties are in opposition. Lutheranism is gaining ground in Saxony, Livonia, Prussia and elsewhere. He finds it most distressing that the religious habit can no longer be worn there, unless one wishes to run the danger of being abused as a wolf, or dog. He knows that several monastics and secular religious there marry and work for their living. He does not wish to take sides yet, and fears that nothing good will come of all this as far as the Church is concerned. He ends his account with a reference to the peasant revolt and Luther's marriage.

Such rumours and snippets of information penetrated to the Doesburg Brethren. They continued to work as before, but some of the fraters were suspected of supporting the new ideas. ‘A complaint has been made about us to the Duke, notably concerning one of our priests at the ducal court.’¹

In the beginning of 1526 there was a considerable upset among the fraters and in the entire house. On the grounds of Luther's writings and in keeping with his teaching the younger Brothers refused to be shorn according to the customs of the congregation. They did not wish to have their heads completely shaved as was the custom up to now. They had only accepted such an unusual procedure out of weakness. They now resisted violently, and as one man, which caused a considerable upset in the house.² After some discussion the fraters decided that this time they would be shaved above the crown and that subsequently they would abide by the decision and advice of the fratres in the colloquium, to whom the matter would be submitted. The fathers however decided not to permit such innovations, to retain the old custom even though some object: ‘Up till now, therefore, the old manner of shaving the hair has been retained,’ remarks the chronicler.

When the time came round again for the Brothers to be shorn, the layman, Gerard, a tailor, left the house (1526)³ and that for the time

1 Kroniek 143.

2 Ibid., 144.

3 Ibid., 145.

[p. 588]

being was that. Speaking of this same year the annalist says that he knew nine religious, trained in the school of Doesburg, who had gone over to the Reformation.¹ It is not possible to make out more accurately in how far the Brothers contributed to the training of these men or to the preparation of a mentality required for such a step. On the 8th of September 1527 the cleric Mathias of Kempen, a pupil of the school of Nijmegen, was accepted as a novice in the place of those who had deserted. Unfortunately, he was already infected with the new doctrine and departed before the year was out, in the octave of Peter and Paul in 1528. He returned after a few days and begged forgiveness, but he was not re-admitted.² A great loss to the house was the departure of the procurator John of Heusden, a man who had served twenty-one years in this function, but was now neglecting his duties on account of his partizanship for the new teaching of Luther which the annalist here calls ‘superstitiones novae Lutheranae.’ Personal warnings were of no avail. He wanted to leave, and according to the annalist he also had other motives.³ He did not chose hi time too well, for on the fourth Sunday after Easter of the year 1529 (April 25th) Charles of Gelre arrived in Doesburg in order to persecute the Lutherans. He took two of them away with him, a Dominican who was a native of Doesburg, and a teacher. They were later put to death in Arnhem together with a Carthusian. John of Heusden and his predecessor James Beslick, who had already lived twenty-five years outside the Fraterhouse, were able to flee the city in time.⁴

The chronicle makes no further mention of Lutheranism, and the account of the Anabaptists at Münster and elsewhere is too general to be recalled here. Meanwhile life continued. Rector John of Krefeld (1494-1534) was a good administrator and disciplinarian. His successor, Egbert of Delden (1534-1542), was confessor to the Sisters in Sion at the time of his election, and these were unwilling to let him go.⁵ They enlisted the help of the Duke in order to retain him, but without success. During his rectorship John Borghaert left the Doesburg house on account of a trivial matter, and returned to his mother.⁶ In 1546 Wessel of Achten left the house; his departure was connected with his sympathies for the sacramentarii. He did, however, wish to live in a Brotherhouse at the outset. He vainly sought admission to that of Utrecht and then applied to the house in Groningen. Here he

1 Kroniek 148.

2 Ibid., 151, 155.

3 Ibid., 152.

4 Ibid., 160.

5 Ibid., 175.

6 Ibid., 179.

[p. 589]

was accepted, but later ran away (apostavit) from this house too.¹

The entire situation does not make such a favourable impression as in the preceding period. The house suffered many losses, and despite the reasonable influx of novices it was difficult to keep up the numbers. Yet the house was still able to come to the assistance of other Brotherhouses. The new ideas of reform found some support among the younger Brothers and three of them left the house on this account. The difference of opinion between younger and older members - so natural in such circumstances - was focussed on the manner of shaving the head. A trivial matter, but one which brought out the conflict between liberty and the old customs. The latter prevailed. There is no need to take refuge in the similarity of religious conviction and practice between the fraters and Luther in order to explain the sympathy which some of the younger members felt for Luther's ideas. Such sympathy and dissent could have arisen without such an analogy, for the young people were by their very nature more predisposed towards what was new. Not being trained in theology they were scarcely in a position to judge the difference between old and new in the domain of doctrine. They had heard talk of liberty, evangelical freedom, and this was why they opposed the tonsure. In any case, their resistance was of short duration.

It is a remarkable fact that neither in Deventer nor in Zwolle, Liège or Utrecht is any mention made of the constitution of pope Pius V dated 17th November 1568, concerning the taking of the three monastic vows by those living in a community under voluntary obedience, and who wore a habit different from that of the secular priests.² This document would have shown that the Brothers had to choose between becoming monks or secular priests. The fact that such a decree emanated from a pope of the Dominican order recalls the actions of some Dominicans against the Brothers at the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century. When, however, L. Metz, bishop of 's-Hertogenbosch, visited the Brotherhouse in his city in 1573, according to the ruling of Trent, and had revealed his proposals for reform, he declared plainly that he did not wish to act against the constitution of pope Pius V who had disbanded and dissolved any congregation living in community without taking vows.³ When the Brethren of Doesburg disbanded the Brotherhood in 1571, they made

1 Kroniek, 197, 200.

2 Edited in Analecta Gijsberti Coeverincx, pars II 's-Hertogenbosch, s.y. 88-89.

3 Ibid., 117.

[p. 590]

reference to this document. According to the constitution of November 17th 1568 it was the will of Pius V ‘that every religious adopting a style of dress different from that of the seculars, should join a stricter order, approved by the Church of Rome, within a certain time, under pain of excommunication, or change his dress (habitus) and join the secular priests.’¹ They complied with this order, but they were the only ones to do so. No house but that of Doesburg disbanded itself on the grounds of the papal decree. Indeed, it seems to me that the canonists of the time could have found sufficient reasons for assuring the fraters that ‘this did not apply to them.’ In the first place, the introduction to the constitution states that the command to choose an order rule applied to those who did not relinquish their property or follow a recognized rule: nec propriis renunciare, nec ullam profitentur (regulam).² The fraters thus could ignore this document since they had renounced all personal possessions. Moreover, it seems that the document was directed against certain institutions and authorized those who, living in such a house, wished to take the vows, to do so, at the same time obliging others in the same house either to follow the example of the first or to adopt the status of secular clergy.³ The pope wished to restore unity to such houses, divided by differences of opinion, and compel all the inmates to follow the one strict rule.⁴ It is a little far-fetched to deduce from the constitution that the pope forbade the institution of the Brethren. It may indeed be regarded as forming part of the attempt to give the houses a stronger legal position. That at least one house and one bishop refer to the document proves that the Brothers had become aware of it. One can imagine that this papal constitution did little to encourage the already languishing houses.

The heads of the Doesburg house, whose membership had shrunk considerably during the past years, began discussions with the bishop of Deventer, Aegidius de Monte, with the commanders of the German order, and with the bailiff of Utrecht, who was the official pastor at Doesburg, with a view to secularizing the fratres and transforming them into vicars of the Church. They also touched upon the declaring of the Brotherhouse property to be vicar property, so that the possessors of the new vicarships, in other words, the fratres, might possess it. This discussion led to a decree by the bishop, set down in a letter dated

1 J. Lindeborn, Historia sive notitia episcopatus Daventriensis, Col. Agr. 1670, 470.

2 Analecta G. Coeverincx II 88.

3 Ibid., 89.

4 Ibid., 89-90.

[p. 591]

June 26th 1571.¹ At that time the number of inmates had shrunk to ten, and the disbanding could be proposed as an act of virtue, of obedience to the pope.

In addition to certain financial arrangements which, though interesting, are of no importance for our purpose, the document contains various other regulations defining the new activities of the Brethren turned vicars, whereby their former activities would be maintained as far as possible. These confirm what has already been set out. The Brotherhouse with all its possessions became church property and the profits were to serve for the maintenance of six vicarii. The Brothers were to contribute four hundred guilders to the church coffers, so that the six new vicars might share with the older members in the offerings. These six would serve three altars and also one inside the house in which six dwellings would be made ready for the six vicarii. Every Sunday and feast day they would sing Matins (preces matutinae), High Mass and vespers with the rector of the school, the verger and the school boys. In the afternoon of Sunday and feast days the oldest four of these six would take it in turn to preach for the people. The two youngest would do the same after the schoolboys' vespers. If there was then a vigil it would be sung by seven or eight schoolboys with the vicarii. The domus pauperum would remain in existence and one of the vicars, chosen for this purpose, would administer its property for the benefit of the poor students. One of their number would be rector to the Sisters (domus viduarum), while another (of the three youngest) would be in charge of the domus pauperum. Since there were ten of them, four of the young clerics were not able to become vicarius at once. They would live from the Brotherhouse property like the other six, succeeding the vicars as they died. They would then be ordained priest. When all four had had their turn, any later vacancies would be filled by the bishop of Deventer appointing someone from the Deventer seminary² as vicar. All Brothers would renounce their distinctive dress and clothe themselves fittingly in the manner of the secular clergy.³ Thereupon the bishop secularized the fraters and appointed six of them vicars of the Doesburg church. The number of boys in the domus pauperum would be increased by four, according to certain funds destined for this purpose.⁴

Certain facts stand out in connection with this secularization. To

1 Ed. by J. Lindeborn, Historia sive notitia episcopatus Daventriensis, Col. Agr. 1670, 470-477.

2 Ibid., 471-472.

3 Ibid., 473.

4 Ibid., 475.

[p. 592]

judge from the Sunday preaching and the continuing office of rector to the Sisters, the fraters retained their pastoral functions. They also continued the collations for the schoolboys on Sundays after Vespers and their care for the boys living in their hostel. Another striking point is that the school was not implicated in this transition. It was evidently quite outside the Brothers' sphere of activity, and a non-Brother held the position of rector. Two people were in charge of the hostel, as was seen to be the case elsewhere.

Such was thus the end of the Doesburg Brotherhouse in 1571. It was not exactly brilliant, but typical of the spiritual activities of the Brethren in the later years of the institution. The Brothers, who had probably gained few novices, or maybe none at all, in the last few years, considered that their institution was out of date, but continued with their priestly work as before. It is clear that none of this group actively participated in furthering Humanism in the sixteenth century. The Reformation did indeed attract some, but the fraters never made propaganda for the Reformation as a group. The leaders were not even inclined to meet quite reasonable demands, and despite its losses the house maintained its position rather better than those of Deventer, Zwolle and other places. The secularization, it is true, changed the fraters' position, modified their work to some extent, and certainly increased their liberty, but this transformation did not lead them in the direction of the Reformation.

We have described the relationship of the fraters of the Brotherhouse of 's-Hertogenbosch towards the school and towards their hostel (domus pauperum)¹ and the Brothers' task with regard to the schoolboys up to and including the period spent by Erasmus in their domus pauperum. It had really been intended that he should attend the chapter school or city school, but, probably quite justifiably, he found the idea superfluous. This Brotherhouse and hostel were under two fratres: one in charge of administration and the other to supervise the education of the hostel boys. Such was the pattern of the Brothers' life until their decline, which took place after the taking of the city by Stadhouder Frederik Hendrik in 1629. The fraters seem to have managed to preserve their institution through the great religious upheavals of 1566, 1577 and 1578 and to maintain a reasonable standard. There exists a list of novices who entered between 1496 and 1553.² comprising some

1 The surviving documents make mention of a hostel where the boys paid fees. A. van der Does de Willebois, II, 248-249.

2 Analecia G. Coeverincx II, 115-116.

[p. 593]

thirty names. These were probably sufficient to maintain a community of about twenty persons. In contrast to what we saw in Deventer, Zwolle and Doesburg, the supply of novices if anything exceeded the demand in the middle of the century. Most of the rectors of this period are also known.¹

During his visitation of March 1573, bishop Laurence Metz found that the old regularis disciplina had suffered somewhat and that certain measures were necessary. The office, for example, must be celebrated slowly and devoutly, the rector must say a High Mass at six o'clock according to the Roman rite, he must lead the Collation among the Brothers on Sundays and feastdays from one to two. He had to hold a chapter of faults every two weeks and see to it that the lapsed disciples mended their ways. Anyone who dissented was to be reported to the bishop. He had to ensure that every one rose in good time, refuse to admit more Brothers than finances would allow, and abolish any personal property. No one was allowed to have alcoholic drink in his room, women were not admitted to the house, confessors of Sisters had to remain subject to the rector. These and similar regulations are such as can always be tightened up to some extent. Since there was no change in their position regarding the schoolboys, we shall return to it presently.

The will of James of Ostayen of 1561², which we have already quoted, and a report of a visitation by the chapter of St. John³, show clearly that the school in 's-Hertogenbosch did not belong to the fraters, but was run by the chapter. On Sunday afternoons all the boys went in procession from the school to the house of the Brothers or another suitable place in order to hear a sermon.⁴ Every day a group of boys from the domus pauperum, together with those from the Bonenfanten house had to accompany the chapter choir with song. All pupils of the domus pauperum attended the city school.⁵ The sermon for the schoolboys is not mentioned in the visitation report of the fraters, but the domus pauperum is. It was largely in this house, as elsewhere, that the seminary, founded by the diocese of 's-Hertogenbosch according to the regulations laid down by the Council of Trent, was established. In 1571 money for the seminary was collected from

1 Analecta G. Coeverincx II, 116.

2 v.d. Does de Willebois o.c., II 277.

3 Archief ... katholieke Kerk in Nederland IV (1962) 22.

4 Ibid., 23.

5 Ibid., 24.

[p. 594]

various church institutions, and in 1572 it was functioning apud fratres.¹ After his visitation of March 1573, however, the bishop decreed that the younger fraters should zealously attend a lesson in theology on each day appointed for that purpose.² This is the first mention of any theological instruction for the fraters, an important innovation which unfortunately, so far as is known, found no imitators. Meanwhile the institution of the domus pauperum also continued to exist in its original form. The bishop Laurence Metz spoke of it as a school - schola. Just as in Erasmus' time it was under the direction of two fratres, one in docendo et repetendo and one in observando et corrigendo. To both of these the bishop gave the title of rector. One of them had to say Mass for the boys while the other supervised. This Mass was held at an hour when the boys scholis egressis, i.e. around eight o'clock in the morning when they had already had their first two lessons at school. It is evident from this that they were still attending the city school, as they had done in 1568 and earlier.³

The diocese appears to have bought the entire complex comprising the domus pauperum, for the bishop had to be given a list of all goods and the accounts for the last four years.⁴ And so the fratres carried on. In 1614 their community consisted of ten members⁵ and on September 12th 1615 they agreed with the bishop to make a complete separation between the Brotherhouse and the domus pauperum which, it seems, was mostly a seminary at this time. There would, however, be a gate through which the seminarists could pass on Sundays and feast days to the church of the Brotherhouse: ‘to hear this service of God,’ ‘om deze dienst Goidts te hooren.’⁶ The domus pauperum had certainly its own chapel, but, by going to the fraters' church the seminarists were preserving some of the old custom whereby the Brothers preached for the schoolboys. On the eleventh of March 1623 the Brothers rented their house and appurtenances to the prelate and canons of the Abbey of Berne, on condition that they should continue to live in the cells downstairs and have access to the Church. They could also get their meals from the abbey for a certain sum.⁷ This lease was already supplemented and explained a few months later. Why did the Brothers let their house? They were still a fairly flourishing community of ten

1 Analecta G. Coeverincx, I 223.

2 Ibid I, 119.

3 Ibid., 120.

4 Ibid., 120.

5 Ibid., 132.

6 Ibid., 134.

7 Ibid., 141.

[p. 595]

or eleven persons. Perhaps they had been compelled to face the fact that in the last few years too few novices had come forward to enable them to continue on the old footing. Moreover, part of their original work, the copying of books, was no longer a realistic proposition and their printing work had little success. It was probably poverty which obliged them to adopt radical measures which enabled them, at the same time, to help the Norbertines whose monastic life in their Abbey of Berne was threatened as a result of the upheaval in the north. In January 1624 therefore they once again transferred to the bishop the administration of the domus pauperum, now principally a seminary.¹ Three bursarii, who received their board from the fraters, would henceforth be maintained by the Abbey, which also took over all foundations for Masses and vigils.

This last signifies the dissolution of the Brotherhouse. It is not known what happened to the Brothers after this. Perhaps they were given church functions. In any case it was only five years later that Frederik Hendrik took the city on September 14th 1629, to be followed promptly by a proclamation of the States General, forbidding the practice of the Catholic religion.² This would certainly have put an end to the fraters' activities and religious practices, but the institution scarcely experienced this catastrophe.

There were no signs of any falling off in 's-Hertogenbosch, certainly no mass defection, not even in 1566, and, with the exception of Macropedius, no expression of Humanism. It is doubtful whether Macropedius ever taught in the great school. He must have been an old man when he returned to 's-Hertogenbosch, for it was here that he celebrated his golden jubilee.

It was in this later period that two Brothers became teachers at the chapter school in 's-Hertogenbosch, probably because even then other occupations had to be found. At the beginning of the sixteenth century Peter Vladderacus, son of the famous school rector Christoffel Vladderacus taught there. He was also rector of the Brotherhouse. He called himself: cenobiarcha collegii fratrum Gregorianorum et gymnasiarcha Silviducis.³ Shortly afterwards he became parish priest at Oirschot

1 Analecta G. Goeverincx, I 142-143.

2 Rogier, Het katholicisme, I 605.

3 M.A. Nauwelaerts, Erasmus in de Latijnse school van 's-Hertogenbosch. Miscellanea v. Gils, 455. L.J.W. Smit, Handelingen van het Provinciaal genootschap van Noord-Brabant, 1903-1909, 217.

[p. 596]

(1604), which would have been unheard of before 1570 because the Brothers' task lay in a different domain. The other, Lambert of Berchem, was rector of the domus pauperum while teaching at the school, and in 1602 bore the title of juventutis fraternae rector et primariae classis praelector. The new functions of these two men show that circumstances had changed, but these late teaching posts are of no significance for the problem of the Brothers and Humanism.

In Groningen the relationship between Brotherhouse, hostel and school was essentially the same as in Deventer, Zwolle, Doesburg, 's-Hertogenbosch and elsewhere. Unfortunately what information we do possess on this period, when considerable changes were taking place, is scanty and not always clear. In interpreting the documents the local historians have not taken sufficient account of what is known to have happened elsewhere. Some of them notably have not sufficiently distinguished between the Brotherhouse proper at the Martini cemetery and the domus pauperum, also called clerics' house or cleric-Brotherhouse in the S. Janstraat. They certainly have not made enough distinction between the fratres and the teachers at the two nearby parish schools of the Martini and Onze Lieve Vrouw ter Aa. The first of these may be considered as the city school, since the rector was appointed by the municipality together with the two priests of St. Martin.¹ Both schools were older than the Brotherhouse and the hostel, and both were well equipped. In the sixteenth century the school of St. Martin possessed four teachers besides the rector.²

Our knowledge of the lives of the inmates of the Brotherhouse is of little importance in assessing the problem of their attitude towards the Reformation and Humanism. In this connection the rector Goswin of Halen, who faithfully fulfilled this function from 1507-10 until his death in 1530, is certainly the principal personality. As a boy he had probably been the famulus of Wessel Gansfort from 1481 to 1485 and again from 1488 to 1489 after a short period of study in Deventer. He then entered the Fraternity in Groningen, renouncing all his worldly goods on June 25th 1489.³ This was about four months before Wessel's death in Groningen on October 4th 1489. He soon gained the esteem of his rector John van der Oldekerken, who was head of the Brotherhouse from 1491-95 to around 1507.

1 R. Post, Nederlandse Historiebladen 2 (1939) 147; Scholen en onderwijs 49.

2 Bijdragen ... Groningen IV (1869) 144.

3 R. van Dellen, Van Prefectenhof tot Prinsenhof, Groningen 1947, 105.

[p. 597]

It is only natural that Wessel and his friends, notably Rudolf Agricola and all the Humanists who met together in the monastery of Aduard between 1480 and 1485¹, made a deep impression on this receptive boy, Wessel's famulus. In this way he gained some knowledge, even at second hand, of the ideas of these first Dutch Humanists. These sympathies will have grown during his period of study in Deventer, and he retained and cherished them after entering the Fraternity and being appointed head of the Brotherhouse in Groningen. This can be deduced from his two letters to Albert Hardenberg, from his encouragement of two people to write a Vita Wesseli and from his visit to Erasmus at the request of the Groningen priest William Frederiks.

To commence with this last: in the beginning of the year 1521, when Erasmus was still residing in Louvain, the Groningen priest William Frederik sent him a golden beaker - a chalice, perhaps - as a gift. The bearer of this gift was Goswin of Halen, at that time rector of the Brotherhouse in Groningen. The priest was probably delighted at the prospect of receiving a letter from Erasmus in his old age, and Goswin, who had formerly served as famulus of a Humanist will have wished to see and speak to Erasmus in the flesh. Erasmus sized up the situation very well and replying to the pastor spoke of ‘the welcome gift, offered by such an outstanding man and brought by such an excellent messenger.’²

The first of the two letters referred to above is the celebrated one of November 23rd 1528, in which he reminds Albert Hardenberg of the various important persons who visited the monastery of Aduard, especially under Abbot Henry of Rees. This letter shows that Goswin's respect for the first Dutch Humanists has grown.³ The following

1 The names of these persons and their humanistic activities have been frequently given and described, see M. van Rhijn, Wessel Gansfort, 127-129. According to van Dellen, John van der Oldenkerken, Brother and subsequently rector of the Brotherhouse, 102, 103, 105, should be included, but he offers absolutely no proof for this theory and the others do not mention him. The matter would be of some importance for the problem in question, since we would then have a Brother among the first Dutch Humanists. However, van Dellen's statement seems to me unacceptable, since this van der Oldenkerken would have been too young for such a company in 1480 and subsequent years. For Groningen, therefore, Goswin of Halen remains the first known Humanist among the Brothers, or at least the first man with humanistic leanings.

2 Letter of Erasmus April 30th 1521. See P.S. Allen, Opus epistularum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, V, Oxonii, 1492 no. 1200, p. 483.

3 J. Lindeboom, Het Bijbelsch Humanisme in Nederland, Leiden 1913, 46.

[p. 598]

year, in the second letter to Hardenberg dated 14th May 1529, he lists the books which Hardenberg ought to read: Ovid's Metamorphoses, the works of Virgil, Horace and Terence, also Plutarch, Sallust, Thucidides, Herodotus, Justin, even Aristotle and Plato, but above all Cicero. In addition to the classics Hardenberg should also study the Bible, the work of Josephus, the historia tripartita, and especially the Church Fathers, Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Gregory, and ecclesiastical writers like St. Bernard and Hugo of St. Victor.

Of the Humanists he recommended especially Pico della Mirandola. He suggested that he should divide up his day into mornings spent in the study of philosophy and afternoons passed in the company of friends, looking after his health, and perhaps studying the poets and orators.¹ It is a Humanistic programme, but it must be remembered that he was living at this time in 1529, when Erasmus had done his work and the Humanist culture reigned triumphant in the schools, and among scholars and officials - if, indeed, the Reformation did not prove more attractive. Goswin speaks only of Northern Humanism, which Lindeboom has termed somewhat restrictedly Biblical Humanism, thus relegating the study of the Fathers too much to the background.

Finally Goswin aroused the love for the humanistic culture in at least two boys from the domus pauperum in the St. Janstraat. These were Reinerus Praedinius and the aforementioned Albert Rizaeus Hardenberg. Both of these had lived as schoolboys in the domus pauperum, sharing room and bed. This must have been roughly between 1519 and 1524. Afterwards R. Praedinius probably spent some time as a teacher in the school of St. Martin in Groningen, from 1529 to 1535. He taught elsewhere from 1535 to 1545 and was head of the Groningen school of St. Martin from 1545 until his death in 1559. He was a pious and tolerant man. Like Erasmus he criticized the prevailing church customs, but he had no time for Luther at all.²

Albert Ritzer or Ritzaeus Hardenberg was born in the same year as R. Praedinius in Hardenberg in Overijsel. He remained at school longer than his room-mate and joined the Cistercians as a novice in Aduard in 1528. In 1530 he travelled to Louvain and was enrolled as a student in the Arts Faculty. However, his strongly expressed sympathy

1 J. Lindeboom, Bijbels Humanisme 167-171.

2 v. Dellen, 107-108. v. Rhij,n Wessel Gansfort 251.

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for the Reformation aroused so much opposition that he was compelled to leave the University city. He continued his studies in Mainz where he already gained his doctorate in theology in 1537 and became friendly with John of Lasco who had fled from Poland. Together they tried to gain the abbot of Aduard, Godfried of Arnhem, for the Reformation. Having once again been driven from Louvain, he was admitted as a monk to his monastery of Aduard, despite his activities in support of the Reformation. He left the monastery, however, in 1542, married, and continued to fight for the Reformation in Embden where he died on October 10th 1561. Since Goswin of Halen had already died in 1530 he did not live to see his pupil's defection.

Both these men contributed much to keeping Wessel Gansfort's memory alive. In this they were helped and probably stimulated by Goswin of Halen, rector of the Brotherhouse in Groningen. Of R. Praedinius' work only a few notes on Wessel Gansfort, made between the years 1533 and 1556, have survived,¹ but of Hardenberg we possess a Vita in two versions.² For our purposes it is sufficient to have made clear from this that the frater-rector revealed to these men his liking for Gansfort and in general his humanistic leanings.

The boys' stay in the domus pauperum run by the fratres in the St. Janstraat poses the question of whether they only lived there, attending the school of St. Martin, or whether they followed the complete school curriculum of the time in the house. In other words, did the fratres run a school in their hostel in Groningen in the sixteenth century or did they not? In company with many others it seems to me that, contrary to what we saw in Zwolle, Doesburg, Deventer, etc. the instruction given here had expanded into a complete school programme. I base this assumption on the following grounds: the information contained in an extract from a missive of burgomasters and council of Groningen, dated January 24th 1585, according to which the fratres had a hostel in the 16th century in which three or four masters taught. To this hostel were admitted for preference the sons of rich families from the city and countryside.³ That the education these boys received comprised a complete school programme may be deduced from the number of masters and from the fact that the fratres had to pay compensation for each pupil to the rector of the St. Martin

1 v. Rhijn, Wessel Gansfort, Bijlage XI.

2 Ibid., Bijlage XII.

3 Nederl Historiebladen 2 (1939) 147. Gron. archives. Hs. in fol. 105b, dl. II p. 412 sq. A.T. Schuitema Meyer, Groningse Volksalmanak 1950, 18.

[p. 600]

school up to July 24th 1549,¹ after which date the city assumed responsibility for payment. That there were more teachers than a couple of fratres may also, it seems, be deduced from a pamphlet in which the financial manipulations of the fratres are criticized, with or without justification. This pamphlet was written by someone purporting to be a teacher at the hostel.²

Two more documents subsequently came to light which also seem to offer proof of such a situation. The city's representatives by the governor were instructed to refute a request made by the fratres, and to plead for the transformation of the hostel into a seminary. They had to propose that the poor boys who would go to school in the cleric's house would be taught by three or four good masters.³ Finally, in an ordinance replying to this proposal, and dated February 12th 1566, burgomasters and council speak of certain learned and pious men who were to give lessons in the former hostel.⁴

Although these last two reports refer more to the future than to the past, they none the less lend more credence to the first. We therefore appear justified in assuming that in the 16th century the Groningen hostel made more progress as an educational institution than the similar institutions in Deventer and Zwolle. This development may perhaps be explained by the fact that the school situation to some extent resembled that in Liège and Utrecht. There was no one predominant school which attracted all available pupils, but two perhaps equivalent institutions. This meant that the school of St. Martin, which was certainly the more important, was used to competition. Moreover, if the rector received compensation for the pupils of the hostel school, he will have had nothing to complain of. It must be deduced from all this that the education in the Groningen hostel in the sixteenth century had developed further than elsewhere. One might even speak of a fairly flourishing private school.

The existence of a private school which could hold its own does not mean that it occupied a dominant position in Groningen or enjoyed any special fame. On the contrary, it remained a private concern which evidently disappeared in the second half of the sixteenth century. We can judge that it was of no very great importance from the fact that Abel Eppens tho Equart, who progressed through the eight classes

1 Gron. Archives. 24 juli 1549.

2 van Dellen 113.

3 A.T. Schuitema Meyer, Gron. Volksalmanak 1950 15.

4 van Dellen 121.

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of the school near Our Lady ter Aa from 1547 to 1555¹ and may thus be considered well acquainted with the school situation in the city, always mentions only the two schools of St. Martin and Our Lady,² never that of the fratres. It seems not to exist for him. Under the rectors Reinerus Praedinius and Gerlach Verrutius these two parish schools educated numerous boys from West Friesland, East Friesland and the surrounding country, who then went on to University.³ One may wonder where these boys lived. In the hostel perhaps, in which case they attended one of these two schools. It is obvious that for some the question of whether the fratres had in their hostel in the sixteenth century a school with a normal programme, will remain rather uncertain. Here too the fratres' task continued to be the care of the schoolboys, both spiritual and physical.

Here as elsewhere the number of vocations seems to have declined since the middle of the century, so that the fratres were unable to do their chosen work efficiently. The first attack on the fratres' hostel came in 1565 from the recently appointed pastor of St. Martin, John Eelts. He wanted to turn the house into an orphanage and enlisted the aid of the municipality, reproaching the fratres, justifiably or not, with mismanagement. The city authorities were only too willing to help. In 1565 they attempted to obtain approval for the plan from the rector of the Brotherhouse, and when he refused to give it did not scruple to offer him a good benefice of at least 200 guilders or 2,000 daler cash ‘to persuade him to quit his habit’ ‘ten eynd dat hij sijn habijt solde verlaeten.’ His acceptance would give them sufficient grounds for ‘expelling’ the remaining fratres, and their goods could then be used to further the new plan.⁴

This scandalous proposal on the part of the Groningen municipality can only be understood by assuming that the Brotherhouse was already expiring. The city authorities began by transferring the administration of the fraters' property and incomes to one of their own officials. They had already attempted to do this some years before. As early as November 15th 1565 they appointed a procurator with two assistants from the council to administer the Brotherhouse property,

1 R.R. Post, Scholen en onderwijs 62-81. De kroniek van Abel Eppens tho Equart, ed. J.A. Feith and H. Brugmans, Werken van het Hist. Genootschap, derde serie no. 27, I 172.

2 Eppens, 126, 148, 149, 168.

3 Ibid., 168.

4 A.T. Schuitema Meyer, Groningse Volksalmanak 1950, 11-12.

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‘as had of old been customary’ ‘woe bij olts gewoenlick.’¹ The Brotherhouse had no longer many members, and certainly had no power to resist, but the rector had still sufficient courage and energy to refuse the offer. He asked the colloquium at Zwolle for assistance. The pater of the Brussels Brotherhouse also took stock of the situation and thereupon applied to the government of Brussels with a request in which the hostel is again called a school.² However, the municipality was not deterred. By an ordinance of February 12th 1566 the City Fathers decided that the hostel should be placed under the supervision of three administrators of the city. The fratres would only be permitted to undertake tasks for which they were fitted. It seems at this point that the intention was to retain the institution, but the administrators were virtually given a free hand in determining the suitability of the fratres, which did not hold out much hope for them.³

However, the orphanage was not to be. In 1567 it was proposed instead to set up a seminary for the training of the clergy. Even before bishop John Knijff could get to Groningen, that is, before 1568, the municipality had decided on a seminary after the spirit of Trent and they wished to use the fratres' hostel for this purpose. As early as 1566 the corporation had been attempting to have the property of the dissolved monasteries of Appingedam and Esens diverted to the upkeep of the seminary.⁴

But at the end of 1567 and in 1568, the city took over the hostel to house ‘etlike landsknechten.’⁵ This means that it was virtually lost to the fraters, and later it appeared to be unsuitable even for a seminary. However, to judge from a letter of this date, the bishop was not yet convinced of this on August 12th 1568.⁶ In actual fact nothing was done about founding a seminary during the existence of the diocese of Groningen in the sixteenth century. The actual Brotherhouse at the cemetery of St. Martin was destined to be a dwelling for the bishop. As stated in the letter of exchange of April 4th 1569,⁷ he received it in exchange for the refugium or monastery house of the Abbey of Wittewierum.

The days of the Brotherhouse were numbered. In 1578, deserted by his

1 Diarium van Egbert Alting, ed. W.J. Forsma and R. van Rooyen, R.G.P. 111, 's-Gravenhage 1964, 150.

2 Schuitema Meyer, Gron. Volksalmanak, 1950, 14.

3 Ed. R. van Dellen 121.

4 A.T. Schuitema Meyer, Gron. Volksalmanak, 1950, 14-15.

5 Ibid., 15.

6 Archief ... aartsb. Utrecht 14 (1886) 414.

7 Archief ... aartsb. Utrecht 15 (1887) 110.

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fellow Brethren, the rector, Theodoricus of Zutphen, received an annuity of 200 daler, and some furniture from the aforementioned refugium.¹

If my explanation of the complete school with more than one master within the fraters' hostel corresponds to the actual state of affairs, then this house was of more importance for the cultural life of the sixteenth century than the houses of Deventer, Zwolle, Doesburg and various others. But the school had only a brief existence. By the second half of the sixties it had lost its credit. However, despite the fact that the main educational institutions, the two parish schools, attracted the greatest number of pupils, it was none the less possible that R. Praedinius and Albert Hardenberg - who certainly lived with the fraters around 1520 - also received a Latin education there. It must have been imparted in the humanistic spirit, for this was well established everywhere about this time. It is doubtful, however, whether Praedinius learned his broadminded tolerance from the Brothers, or Hardenberg acquired the seeds of the Reformation, which only emerged with the latter around 1530. One may assume though, that they received the love of Wessel Gansfort from the rector of the Fraterhouse (not of the hostel), Goswin of Halen. On this basis it seems to me excessive to consider the Brothers as pioneers of Humanism and the Reformation. The fraters perished through a lack of vitality within themselves, since vocations declined as elsewhere, and they lost the sympathy of the people.

For a short period there was in Harderwijk a change in the relationship of the fraters to the school.² When, in 1511, the aldermen and city council appointed Mr. John of Wylsinck as rector of the school, he was obliged to promise to employ and pay three lectors (or assistant masters) of his choice. In addition the pater of the Brethren and his fellow Brothers made frater John Hermszoon available as fourth lector and undertook to add four Philips guilders to the rector's salary.³

Two things must be observed in this connection. This seems to have been a temporary measure, and a school fee had to be paid for the young frater-teacher. Concerning the first point, neither he nor a successor was mentioned when the next rector was appointed. On the other hand, the following rector, John Voet, appointed March 5th 1522, had to make provision for four instead of three lectors.⁴ Had

1 A.T. Schuitema Meyer, Gron. Volksalmanak, 1950, 16.

2 See p. 399.

3 Oud-Archief of Harderwijk, 1935, Reg, 521.

4 Reg. 582.

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Brother John Hermszoon, by fulfilling his task well, made it clear that a fourth teacher really was needed? Probably, however, this was no more than a normal growth occasioned by a greater number of students and a tightening up of the programme of studies to meet the requirements of the Humanists.

As regards the payment of a fee for the young frater, who had been appointed as assistant to the teaching staff, this may have seemed useful to the fratres since they were badly in need of such a person in the hostel for the homework supervision and supplementary lessons. It was rather a service which the fratres received from the school than the other way round.

The fact that the city magistrates assembled in the fratres' guest room to appoint a new school rector on March 14th 1548 may have meant nothing more than that the fratres were generous with their assembly hall. It may also be, however, that the magistrates asked the advice of the pater, as happened in Nijmegen. Sufficient explanation for this might be found in the fratres' pastoral activities among the schoolboys.¹

Here too the hostel, also called the little Brotherhouse,² served as a boarding house for the boys. The fact that they lodged there is mentioned in a letter of safe conduct written in the war year of 1528. The pater or the procurator was allowed to accompany the students who lodged in their house to Arnhem or Nijmegen or other places in order to receive money from the parents.³ One must deduce from this that the boys paid something for their board and lodgings. Mean-while, in Harderwyck too, donations were received for the benefit of these poor boys. On February 23rd 1555, Arent to Boecop and his wife Gese gave an annuity to the Brotherhouse, most of which was to be expended on woollen and linen sheets and on books, ink and paper for the poor boys.⁴ This is another indication that these poor scholars lodged and worked in the hostel attached to the Brotherhouse. Anastasius Veluanus or Jan Gerritsz Verstegen, who fell foul of the Inquisition around the middle of the century on account of his preaching, and became a minister in May 1557 at Bacharach on the Rhine, attended school in Harderwijk, but not that of the Brothers.⁵ The house and congregation of the fratres disappeared after Count

1 Reg. 876.

2 Reg. 1406.

3 Reg. 624.

4 Reg. 950.

5 L. Knappert, Het ontstaan en de vestiging van het Protestantisme in de Nederlanden, Utrecht 1924, 242-243.

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John of Nassau seized the Catholic churches and institutions in Harderwijk after 1580 and forbade the practice of the Catholic religion.¹

To turn to the Brotherhouses which were founded either directly or indirectly by the house of Deventer in the Netherlands, we shall deal first with the house of Amersfoort. Here the Brothers could carry out their pastoral duties among the school boys, particularly at the time when the city school (later the city gymnasium) was flourishing in the sixteenth century. It had six teachers, none of whom, however, were fratres.² The rector and the masters had to accompany the boys to church on Sunday and feast days, and repeatedly during the week, for the singing of Benediction.³ There is no mention, however, of any procession to the Brotherhouse in the St. Janscamp, nor of the existence of a domus pauperum. The Brothers possessed thus neither hostel nor school, for the Amersfoort administration kept strictly to the rule forbidding the founding of such so-called ‘private schools.’⁴

The Amersfoort Brethren were to be the first, and only, congregation in the Netherlands to be suspected of heresy as a group. On the basis of this suspicion they were driven from their buildings by a lieutenant of the Stadhouder in Utrecht, Hoogstraten. In the buildings from which the Brothers had been expelled the officer installed the Canons Regular from Vredendaal near Utrecht.⁵ In order to view this report in its proper perspective, two facts must be taken into account. Firstly, during the war the monastery of Vredendaal near Utrecht was burned to the ground during the night of 29-30th April⁶ with the result that the military commander will have felt himself obliged to provide the monks with shelter. Since they had originally come from the St. Janscamp in Amersfoort it will have seemed only natural that they should return there. Secondly, it was most unusual and against every law for a soldier to expel the Brothers on suspicion of heresy alone. Normally there should have been an investigation before

1 L.J. Rogier, Geschiedenis van het katholicisme, I 541.

2 Gedenkboek van het stedelijk gymnasium te Amersfoort, 1376-1926, Amersfoort 1928.

3 Ibid., 116.

4 W.F.N. Rootselaar, Amersfoort II, 98.

5 Anno 1529, 11 Maji, D. Dermontius praefectus Trajectensis fugat ex conventu divi Johannis fratres bonae voluntatis suspectos ob haeresim et introducit Regulares Vredalenses. Chronicum Amersfortium incerti autoris, ed. A. Matthaeus, Rerum Amersfortiarum 1693, 179-80 (communicated to me by J.H.P. Kemperink).

6 Acquoy III 77.

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sentence was passed. Even the fact of expulsion as punishment is strange! Acquoy indeed remarks that nearly all the inmates of the St. Jan's monastery in Amersfoort, in this case the Brothers - had left the house in connection with the Reformation, which was gaining ground.¹ This, however, is contrary to the report. It is thus by no means certain whether we can consider this group as sympathetic to the Reformation. It may be that the unknown author of the chronicle was ill-informed and that the monastery (Brotherhouse) was indeed empty, either as a result of the preceding siege of the city or of the lack of vocations which we have also discerned elsewhere, though usually later. It is therefore dangerous to quote these Brethren of Amersfoort in support of the thesis that the Modern Devotionalists were connected with the Reformation and helped to promote it. There is no mention of any activity which might be interpreted as a sign of their Humanism.²

The Amersfoort foundation appears to have died a natural death. Either the house was empty in 1529 or the few remaining Brothers gave accommodation to the monks.

The house in Delft which had once a small hostel alongside two parish schools was the first of the Dutch houses to disband voluntarily. When the chapel and various buildings were lost in the great fire of Delft in 1536, the Brothers could not summon up the courage to start all over again and continue to live according to their former rules. They were convinced that the religious feelings of the people had changed:³ ‘and that the people's desire to give money to rebuild the Brotherhouse had cooled’. In any case only four Brothers remained, three priests and a deacon. They desired to be released from their obligation to live a communal life, and wished to form henceforth a college of vicars so that each might enjoy a fixed prebend from the sum of the property. They made their desire known to the bishop of Utrecht, Georg of Egmond, whom they considered as their superior, and he granted it on April 6th, 1537. Four chaplaincies would first be set up and what money remained would then be used for the restoration of their buildings. When this was done the number of chaplaincies would be increased by three. The city council also gave its

1 Acquoy III, 77.

2 Rootselaar found no mention of such a fact in the protocol book, II, p. 257.

3 ‘Ook overmerckende, dat die devotie van die menschen van veel aelmissen te geven tot reparatie ende behoudnisse van convent seer vercout is’.

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approval on June 22nd 1538 and made certain stipulations. The chaplains, for example, would not adopt the title of canon.¹

Here too we see a sharp decline in the number of vocations and a deterioration in the spirit of the Brothers. The enthusiasm for all that was distinctive in their institution disappeared. After the fire they seized their opportunity to dispense with communal possessions. They wanted to be able to possess their own incomes, although they wished to continue to live together for the present. Their role was virtually played out and their influence on devotion, culture and religion appears very slight. They certainly exercised no stimulating power in the direction of Humanism or the Reformation. They were men of a bygone age.

In this last period there seems to have been no change in the Brotherhouse in Gouda with the domus pauperum alongside the flourishing city school. The fratres continued to play no part in education, but looked after the spiritual needs of many of the pupils, and in particular of the hostel boys. The surviving documents from the fratres' archives show that their income from houses, lands and rents had continued to grow, while they also derived considerable profit from saying Masses and memoriae. On this point they adapted themselves completely to late medieval church practices. They offered, for example, to take the offices in the Jerusalem chapel, which was still to be founded (1497). This was a pious foundation, which was only realized around 1505 by a priest, Gysbert Raet.²

The house can be said to have experienced the difficulties of the time in that a number of fratres left and, contrary to custom, even contrary to their promise, demanded the return of whatever they had brought on entering. They even went to law on the matter. In 1545 Charles V forbade anyone to assist the ‘apostate religious’ of the Brotherhouses in recovering their property.³ The very term ‘apostate religious’ shows how much the Brothers were regarded as monastics. In actual fact it was not possible for them to be ‘apostatae.’

Their end, however, was not without glory. After the city had been taken by the Gueux (‘sea-beggars’) under van Swieten on June 21st 1572, the clergy were immediately seriously harassed. The pater and the procurator of the Brotherhouse, John Rixtelius and Adrian Texto-

1 D. van Bleyswyck, Beschrijvinge der Stadt Delft, Delft 1667, 322.

2 J. Taal, De archieven van de Goudse kloosters, 's-Gravenhage 1957, 27.

3 J. Taal, De archieven, p. 19, no. 15.

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rius Lambertz, had the courage to approach Lumey on the occasion of his visit to Gouda to ask him to be allowed to live in peace or else to give them a safe conduct so that they might leave the city. They were badly received, however, delivered up to the soldiers and, after being humiliated and tortured, were killed by sabre cuts. Increasing difficulties emptied the house so that the domus pauperum (on October 17th 1573) and the Brotherhouse with its possessions (November 3rd 1573) were handed over to the Masters of S. Spiritus on condition that the remaining Brothers should be fed. The Brotherhouse became an orphanage and the remainder soon collapsed.¹

The main or general school in Nijmegen, i.e. the old Apostolic or parish school, was already completely under the jurisdiction of the city magistrate long before the coming of the fraters. According to the surviving city accounts the rector appointed by the municipality was considered as one of the civic officials.² The municipality accordingly made regulations for the school on August 13th 1567 and formulated the conditions for the rector who was to be appointed, Peter of Zevenaer for example, who was made head of the city school on December 9th 1573.³ It watched over the school and succeeded in providing the general school with an adequate teaching staff. In 1573 this comprised six masters and two singing teachers besides the rector. The municipality also protected the school against any competition from private institutions. In general these were free to teach the children reading and writing and even the first principles of Latin, up to Donatus, but nothing more.

Although these surviving regulations are fairly late, they are based on earlier ones and accord with the rules consistently laid down by the cities early and late. In such circumstances it was difficult, if not impossible, for the fraters to start and run their own school in their buildings in the Boddelstraat, that is, a Latin school with some chance of competing with the well equipped main school. It is obvious that these fraters tried to put into practice what they had seen in 's-Hertogenbosch and elsewhere. There are meanwhile enough texts which clearly define this situation. Others, however, are ambiguous and can

1 J. Taal, De Goudse kloosters in de Middeleeuwen, 189-190.

2 Stadsrekeningen van Nijmegen, ed. H.D.J. van Schevichaven and J.C.J. Kleijntjes, IV, 1919, 78, 140.

3 Stadsrechten van Nijmegen, ed. C.C.N. Krom and M.S. Polz, Werken der vereeniging tot uitgave der bronnen van het Oude Vaderlandsche recht, Eerste reeks 11, 's-Gravenhage 1894, 298 and 305.

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in my opinion only be interpreted with the help of other documents. There is to begin with a report dated 1498 taken from the lost annals of the Nijmegen Brotherhouse. A certain Bartholomew Eck, a warrior who had fought for seven years in the armies of France and Liège, requested admittance to the Brotherhouse in Nijmegen in 1498. His request was duly granted and he astonished the fratres by his severity towards himself and his humble subjection to others. They placed him in charge of the pupils (scholares) in 1507 and he worthily and zealously continued in this function until his death in 1516. Both he and his brother, who entered in 1499, were great benefactors of the house.¹ Who were these pupils, of whom B. Eck was placed in charge? They were certainly not the boys of the city school, for the fratres had no jurisdiction over them. They must have been the scholars who lodged with the Brethren, the hostel boys who resided either in the same house as the fratres, or else in a separate house, a hostel or domus pauperum. It was this group of boys for whom Gertrud Kreyers destined the money which she donated to the Nijmegen Fraterhouse: ‘to allow six poor schoolboys to live with us and under our authority and guidance and to give them food and lodging as we do the other school-boys who live with us, and pay for these things’.² Here we have lodgings for poor and paying students after the Zwolle model. The conditions for admission also agree with what we saw for the Brothers' hostels elsewhere. The candidates must have attained either a certain age or a certain degree of education, i.e. they had to be either fourteen years old or have reached the fifth class. An education which comprised only the first principles of Latin, up to Donatus, was of no use to such boys. Is it not likely therefore that just as in Zwolle, 's-Hertogenbosch, Deventer and so many other places, they followed the lessons at the city school and only received a little supplementary tuition at home from the repetitor? This is fully confirmed by the remaining conditions of the foundation, for it is laid down that the pupil may remain with the fratres so long as he progresses in learning in the opinion of the schoolmaster of the time: ‘in lerynge by ons mach vorderen nae guetduncken onss schoelmeisters in der tijt.’ The one schoolmaster - note the resemblance to 's-Hertogenbosch and the

1 Mentioned by Lindeborn 131.

2 Charter ed. by Guyot, Bijdragen voor de vaderl. geschiedenis en oudheidkunde, 1e reeks (1850) 38: ‘bij ons laeten woenen en onsen bedwangck ende leringe sess aeme schoelieren ende geven dar potsijse vuer ende beddynge gelyck als wij doen onsen anderen schoelieren, die bij ons woenen om hoer gelt in heur kost.’

[p. 610]

contrast to the well-staffed city school - will surely have only been able to give supplementary tuition to these boys who had already done at least three classes. The fact that these boys attended the city school also emerges from a definition of the obligations of the bursarii. They had to pray at the grave of the foundress ‘des avontz na der lester lexen van der scholen’, ‘in the evening after the last lesson of the school.’ When the city school closed for the day the boys were at the cemetery and could fulfil their obligation.¹

The usual situation was that the boys lived in the hostel and had lessons in the school. House and school are indeed contrasted, as for example in a foundation of Henry Denys, canon of St. Stephen's:² a certain quantity of woollen material had to be divided among thirty schoolboys, twenty from the big school and ten from the Brother-house. This formula is repeated in the document in question. It seems to me that this contrast must also be made in the life of the famous parish priest of Amsterdam, Martin Duncanus, first written down in 1590. Duncanus left his birthplace of Kempen to come to Nijmegen in 1527 and: ‘after his arrival in Nijmegen obtained a meagre livelihood teaching children, but after he had been admitted to the Frater-house he completed his school curriculum.’ The contrast here is not stated in so many words, yet nevertheless it exists. Only when Duncanus has found somewhere suitable to stay can he attend school regularly in order to complete the highest classes.

On these grounds we must assume that Peter Canisius attended the city school and acquired his Humanism there and not with the fraters.³ The latter had nothing to do with the teaching in the city school. Although it is possible that one or other of them may have taught at the big school for a time, this would be most unusual and must be viewed as a great exception. There is no question of a Brother being rector of the school. Any such assumption is based on the wrong interpretation of an entry in the city's account book for the year 1552.⁴ ‘Our Burgomasters visited the fratres to see the rector of the Frater-house in order to appoint someone as rector of the school.’ This was taken to mean that the gentlemen approached the Brethren in order to appoint one of them, i.e., of the Brethren, as rector of the school. This

1 Nederlandse Historiebladen 2 (1939) 155.

2 Gemeente-archief Nijmegen, Inv. O.R.A. II 80 fol. 31.

3 J.H.M. Tesser S.J., Petrus Canisius als humanistisch geleerde, Diss. Nijmegen 1932, 184 sq.

4 Published in an appendix to Annales en Chronyk van Nijmegen, Nijmegen 1792. 11.

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is not the only possible interpretation, but is almost certainly the wrong one, for according to the same account book these gentlemen also conferred with a number of canons about new rector ‘omne enen nyhen rector’ and in 1553 ‘went to visit the rector of the Fratres with the new school rector.’¹ The school rector thus lived outside the Brotherhouse. In fact none of the school rectors who later became known were fraters, not even after 1550. There is no evidence that a separate building existed as a domus scolarium, alongside that of the fratres, but in 1481 and in 1520 the Brothers bought several houses next to and opposite their own in the Boddelstraat. Gorissen rightly assumes that these were intended as boarding houses for the growing number of pupils. This may also explain the change of patron from St. Gregory to St. Jerome. I assume that the latter was first used for one of the pupils' houses and later came to include the entire complex. Despite the indications discovered by Gorissen it may be that both names already existed for a long time side by side.²

After the failure of their attempt to obtain their own school at the end of the preceding period, the Brothers of Emmerich resigned themselves. They therefore took no part in the school Reformation, which was accomplished in the beginning of the 16th century. They may, however, have contributed to the success of the chapter school in the beginning of the sixteenth century, which reached its peak under rector Matthias Bredenbach (1434-1559; † June 5th 1559). The number of pupils sharply increased, which explains why the deacon of the Emmerich chapter, William Bruins, founded the second hostel for 32 boys in 1514, the domus Hieronymiana, and placed the fratres in charge of it.³

This expansion partly coincided with the Reformation in Germany, but the city of Emmerich did not feel the worst of its effects. The majority of the population retained the old faith and the chapter, the churches and the monasteries remained in existence. The Brothers' institution also survived. But the glory of the chapter school faded rapidly in the second half of the century, and the Jesuits, seeing this and urged on by a number of canons, gained the permission of the

1 Annales en Chronyk van Nijmegen, 11.

2 F. Gorissen, Stede-Atlas van Nijmegen, Arnhem 1956, 119

3 J. Köhler, Nachträge und Berichtungen, Beilage zu dem Osterprogramm der Gymnasium zu Emmerik 1883, Emmerich 1883, 88. E. Genniger, Städtisches Progymnasium zu Stelle, Jabresbericht 1898-99. Steele 1899, 4-13.

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Duke of Cleves in 1592 to found a college in which they would apply their teaching and educational methods.¹ This undoubtedly meant that the fratres' activities among the schoolboys were curtailed, for the Jesuits will naturally enough have striven to fulfil these necessary tasks themselves. The Brothers, however, certainly retained their hostel, for which they compiled and had printed, shortly after the founding of the above-mentioned college, the ‘Leges domus fratrensium Embricae’.² The boys lodged in the hostel and attended the chapter school. The hostel was run by a procurator and the prefect.³

And so the Brothers entered upon this new period. They retained their communal life and community of possessions, and took no vows, but by 1575, with the approval of the Duke of Cleves, they had already exchanged their ‘habit’ for the dress of the secular clergy.⁴ Subsequently the somewhat altered statutes were approved by Duke William of Cleves (July 1st 1575) and later confirmed by Sasbold Vosmeer, apostolic vicar of the Mission to Holland (January 13th 1612) and by pope Clement VIII (July 23rd 1671).⁵

But the number of fraters was small. Three of them left the house in 1594 so that only four remained.⁶ The rectors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are known, but they were not forceful personalities who might have influenced the progress of education, religion or culture.

Together with the city, they were placed under the spiritual direction of the apostolic vicars of the Mission to Holland. These vicars indeed repeatedly mention the state of the fratres in their reports, for these were the sole surviving Brothers in this region of the Mission. Usually they contented themselves with stating that the community of Brothers still existed,⁷ but in 1656 de la Torre reported that the fratres collationarii in Emmerich consisted of six priests, one of whom was a parish priest. He also lists their names.⁸ Five priests were still working in the house at the beginning of the eighteenth century⁹ and it struggled

1 J. Kleyntjens S.J., Stichting van het Gymnasium der Jezuieten te Emmerik, 1592, Archief ... aartsb. Utrecht, 67 (1948) 134.

2 E. Genniger o.c.

3 J. Köhler, Nachträge 99.

4 Ibid., 99.

5 Ibid., 99.

6 Dirks, Geschichte der Jezuieten, I 157.

7 See the record of 1638, Archief ... aartsb. Utrecht 12 (1884) 201, and of Neercassel in 1662. Archief etc. 18 (1840) 198.

8 Archief etc. 10 (1882) 212.

9 Archief etc. 10 (1882) 451.

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on until November 14th 1811, when Napoleon disbanded the foundation by an imperial decree. There were still three priests living in the house at the time. The last of these, Gerard Mulder, (1779-1864) was parish priest in old Zevenaar until 1861, and died in that city, in retirement, on March 15th 1864.¹ He was the last survivor, not only of the Brothers of Emmerich, but of all the fratres collationarii or whatever they were called.

In discussing the houses in the south of the Netherlands, we have begun by giving details of the Liège Brotherhouse, since the fratres there were the first to run a school of any reputation. The problems dealt with in this chapter could best be elucidated with reference to this house, which may serve as a model for the history of the other houses. Here then follow the remaining houses beginning with that of Brussels.

Before 1485 the Brussels Brothers had only a hostel for boys attending the city school, but in 1491 the situation seems suddenly to have changed. By an act dated May 10th 1491 the scholaster of Brussels confided the total direction of the school (scholas majores dicte ecclesie) to the Brethren of the Common Life for a period of nine years.² What was the significance of this?

In the first place there is only one school involved: scholae in the medieval document is a plurale tantum, probably because the word schola originally meant class. The big school (majores scholae) was at this time the only Latin school for boys in Brussels, which according to the decree of October 24th 1320 by Duke John III had the sole right to teach boys Latin, music and logic (dialectics).³ There was also a similar school for girls, the small school, and five lower schools which had to cease their Latin instruction at the Donatus. In the document of May 10th 1491 the big school is called scolae majores dicte ecclesie, that is, therefore, belonging to the church of St. Goedele. It was therefore the chapter school, which does not make it any more important but merely indicates that it came under the direction of the chapter and that its pupils assisted in singing in the choir. In most cities such a school may also be called the city school, since the municipality had usually taken over the administration and management

1 Archief etc. 2 (1875) 306-308.

2 Ed. by Plac. Fern. Lefèvre O. Praem, Bulletin de la Commission Royale d'Histoire, Bruxelles 103 (1938) 96-98.

3 Jac. Müller, Vor- und Frühref. Schulordnungen I, 5.

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of the school. The magistrate in Brussels, however, had not yet succeeded in doing this; he may not even have tried.

The scholaster in this case was Carolus Soillot, canon and scholaster of St. Goedele, but also secretary to the Roman king Maximilian.¹ This person can be compared with J. Willroot, singer at the imperial court in 1521, who received the ‘scholastery’, the school rights, from Emperor Charles V. He was thus entitled either to lease the school annually to a rector, or to transfer his rights for life to the municipality of Gouda, in return for an annuity. In this way the city would be able to appoint the rector. In other words J. Wilbroot could leave others to exploit the school, or run it himself or content himself with an annual fee.² This must have been the position in Brussels. The scholaster cedes to the rector and Brothers, scolas majores dicte ecclesie earumque totale regimen, total charge of the big school of the above-mentioned church. Taking over the school carried with it the obligation of announcing to the scholaster or his representative the names of two suitable persons, one for rector and one for conrector. This had to be done every year before the feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, June 24th. These persons had to swear, on their own behalf and on behalf of the Brothers, that they would recognize and defend the privileges of the scholaster and that, in return for his supervision they would pay one and a half old écus for each pupil attending the big and little school and paying school fees. Half of this was to be paid before Christmas and the remainder before the feast of St. John. In addition they would offer him a banquet. The Brothers had to preserve the school material in good condition and leave it in a good state when the contract expired in nine years' time. They had to pay any charges on the school and supervise the small schools. The scholasticus, however, retained the right to appoint the teachers for the smaller schools. On August 25th 1491, the rector and submonitor (conrector) appointed by the fratres swore under oath to defend the rights of the scholaster and to act accordingly.³

The teachers appointed were James Zaffel, presbiter Tornacensis, rector, and John of Rotterdam, clericus Trajectensis diocesis.⁴ The editor of the deed merely assumes that these two persons were fratres of the

1 Lefèvre 96.

2 L.A. Kesper, Geschiedenis van het gymnasium te Gouda, Gouda s.a. 11-14, Bijl. IX-XII.

3 Thus in a notarial document of 10 May 1491; Ibid., 96-98.

4 Notarial document; Ibid., 99-100.

[p. 615]

Brussels Brotherhouse, which would simplify matters considerably. There are, however, various reasons for doubting this. In the first place, it is not stated that they were Brothers. In the second, they are called magister and up till now we have no example at all of any Brother studying at the university and gaining his master's degree. On the contrary, they repeatedly expressed their aversion to university studies and their fear of the dangers existing at the university. Finally, the diocese of both is given. While admittedly it was not uncommon for the diocese of the frater in question to be mentioned on his entry into the Brotherhouse, or when renouncing his possessions, this was probably done only to indicate his origin¹ without meaning to imply that he belonged to the clergy of the diocese mentioned. The clerici indeed were pupils and had not yet been ordained. Their ordinations were administered, not on the grounds of a benefice belonging to a diocese, but on the basis of the communal possession of the Brother-house.² It is thus difficult to call a frater ordained priest after his diocese of origin. On the basis of these considerations it is my opinion that James Zaffel presbiter Tornacensis and John of Rotterdam, clericus Trajectensis, cannot be considered as fratres, but as members of the secular clergy. Otherwise the notary would quite simply have written frater James Zaffel, or added to the name fratre conventus fratrum domus Annunciacionis beate Marie de Nazareth, as the same Brussels notary, John Pretio, had done in the preceding charter of May 10th 1491. After the names, necnon religiosi viri pater Andreas Villici et Egidius Marie, came the qualification, fratres conventus fratrum. For these four reasons we must assume that the fraters undertook to run the school, but confided the teaching to seculars, a priest and a cleric, both of whom had academic qualifications.

What were their reasons for this? In the first place probably the ideal considerations that by taking over the school they would gain more ease and freedom to carry out their pastoral work among the boys. But they will also have seen a material advantage in the undertaking. They would receive the fees of the pupils of the main school and whatever the pupils of the lesser schools had to pay to this school. On the other hand they were responsible for paying the teachers of the main school, for the upkeep of the building and for the rent to be paid to the scholaster. They may have estimated that they would still make

1 Schoengen 418, 461.

2 See list of ordinands. Archief ... aartsb. Utrecht 24 (1896) 389-471 and of these esp. 416, 418, 426.

[p. 616]

a profit, as had some of those who possessed the scholastery in Gouda and as did the Utrecht fraters later in exploiting the school of St. Jerome.¹ Both the scholaster and the exploiter, in this case the Brotherhouse, stood to profit from the proceeds of the school. Their aim will thus have been as many paying pupils and as few teachers as possible. This situation resembled that of Gouda in the sixteenth century with all the attendant dangers - and also that of Dordrecht, where for a time the scholastery had been given to a hospital. The lessees of the school would be able to oppose the expansion of teaching facilities. It may be that the Brothers wished to seize the opportunity to introduce a complete school educational programme in their hostel, virtually unnoticed. As long as they themselves were running the main school this would harm no one, not even if it should lead to a decline in fees in the main school. Unfortunately their plan miscarried once again. By an act dated July 13th 1495 the princely administration ordered the Brothers to abandon their plan for the hostel.²

There is no evidence to show whether the fratres again took over the running of the school after the nine years had elapsed. However, the magistrate and people of Brussels considered one large school insufficient for the boys of Brussels and urged the chapter to found a second large school for boys in the lower town. This school would give the full educational programme of the time. On June 10th 1504, the magistrate, through the intermediary of the pensionaris, requested the chapter to start una scola (singular now) in the lower town, and by July 18th of the same year the chapter had taken a positive but extremely peculiar decision. The scholaster had suggested two alternatives for founding a new Latin school, and the one which the canons chose was this: the second school was to be started with the fraters, but on condition that there would be only one rector for both schools (i.e. the old school and the projected school). This rector, who would thus be the rector of the old school, would have the right to appoint the teachers in the new school as he had in the old.³ The school would thus be situated on the Brothers' premises, probably in the hostel, but they would have no say in the school at all. They could let their buildings and perhaps manage the school, as they had done with the old school in 1491, but the actual teaching was no concern of theirs. This was done by persons appointed by the rector of the old school.

1 See p. 570 ss.

2 Lefèvre 48-49.

3 Decrees edited by Lefèvre 106.

[p. 617]

At the same time the fraters' hostel was suppressed, for the buildings were occupied by the other schoolboys.

This decision seems to have met with some opposition, but was finally confirmed by a decree of the scholaster Jan Zimmerman and by an ordinance of Charles V dated July 29th 1515.¹ We must therefore assume that the plan was carried out. Meanwhile the life of the fraters continued, one rector succeeding another. After Theodoric de Porta († 1489) came Andreas de Meyer (Villicus) (1489-1506), Matthias of Helden (1506-1508), Roger de Palude († 1508) and Henry Duy († 1554).² But the events of 1565 and 1566 were not without influence on the mentality of the fraters. In 1568 considerable tension and discord arose between the rector and two fraters, Simon de Beer and Cornelius Cuypers. The rector of Ghent - probably one of the visitatores-intervened, while the chapter profited by his authority over the Brotherhouse to demand that the two Brothers should be publicly reconciled with the rector and obey him in future. It is interesting to note that in this decree the terms are entirely changed. The Brothers who took no monastic vows have become monastics: the fraters must obey in all lawful and good matters pertaining ‘ad monasticam disciplinam.’ They must eat in the refectory according to the old ordines and this sub pena carceris.³

At this time too this and other Brotherhouses were already menaced. There is the aforementioned bull of Pope Pius V of 1568,⁴ but also the desire to obtain the hostels, even the houses of the fraters for use as seminaries, as desired by the Council of Trent. Profiting by this situation the vicar-general de Granville, and the provost Morillon, who had jurisdiction over Brussels, could use the debts incurred by the fraters and the house as an excuse to turn their house into a seminary and allocate the fraters an annuity (1570)⁵. This plan, however, was never carried out and the community of the Brethren was able to continue. Once again the rectors succeeded each other: Libert Houthen in 1577; Adrian Ghijselinc in 1579;⁶ Gerard of Berkel in 1585. But the end was near. In 1586 the (Catholic) magistrate gave this Brotherhouse (Nazareth) to the rich Poor Clares.⁷ Such inter-

1 Lefèvre 49.

2 Ibid., 104-108.

3 Ibid., 109.

4 See R.R. Post, De Moderne Devotie, Amsterdam 1950, 108-109.

5 Lefèvre 50.

6 Ibid., 110.

7 Ibid., 51-52.

[p. 618]

vention on the part of the city magistrate was only possible if the Brotherhouse had already lost all viability. In all probability the Brethren had already departed.

In describing the relationship of Brotherhouse, hostel and school in Ghent in the preceding period we have already made use of the 16th century data, so that nothing new can be said on this subject. Here too the decline in the number of Brothers is striking. Whereas in 1523 this house with its eleven priests, four clerics and eight lay brothers was one of the most flourishing of the entire fraternity, rivalling the house of Zwolle,¹ by 1543 there were only nine priests, one cleric and two lay brothers.² And yet this house produced a man of academic stature, Chr. Masseus from Warneton (1469-1546) who gained a reputation in the academic world at the beginning of the sixteenth century by his publications and his teaching. He was responsible for a virtually unknown treatise on the Psalms which was never published and has since been lost; a world chronicle entitled: Chronicorum multiplicis historiae utriusque testamenti ... libri viginti, Antwerpae excudebat Joannes Crinitus Anno MDXL, and a Dialogus in which he attacked the Apologia of Jean Martin, written in 1512, in which the latter had defended Origen against any accusation of heresy. He also wrote a Latin grammar in three volumes which was printed in 1536 and reprinted a few times after that. We are thus confronted with a Brother of the Common Life who was at the same time historian, theologian and grammarian. Was this man, who several times in his Chronica referred to himself as Cameracenatis yet never as Brother, who taught for forty years in the house of the Bons Enfants at Cambrai, really a Brother of the Common Life? His description of the rise of the Modern Devotion, his visits to the Brotherhouses of 's-Hertogenbosch and Brussels and his stay in the house of Ghent all suffice to show that he at least began as a Brother: his post as teacher in Cambrai might indicate that he later changed his way of life. He considered the Brothers most meritorious because they ran schools in which they not only taught the pupils languages but also trained them for life. In my opinion this not infrequently misinterpreted text refers to the Brothers' hostels, although in the sixteenth century the Brothers also possessed schools in the ordinary sense of the word in a number of cities.³

1 Van den Haeghen, Inventaire d' Archives de la Ville a Gand, 1896 X, 92.

2 De Potter IV, 527.

3 Biografie nationale XIII 933-935. P.S. Allen, Opus epistola Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, VI, p. 165, n. 61. Courants religieux et Humanism à la fin du XV et au début du XVI siècle, Colloque de Strasbourg 9-11 mai, 1957. Presses Universitaires de France, 109.

[p. 619]

The lack of clerics, the future priests, shows that new admissions had practically ceased. Not one of the Brothers possessed a Master's degree. For these Brothers too, time was running out. The diocese, set up in 1561, needed a seminary after the Council of Trent. Like several of his colleagues, bishop Jansenius cast a covetous eye on the fraters' buildings and on August 26th 1569 he made a contract with them whereby the house and possessions were transferred to the diocese.¹ The reason or pretext given for this transfer was that the Brothers had fallen badly into debt in the past thirty years; they owed 800 to 900 pounds, which could only be covered by the unconditional sale of the property. The Brothers therefore could no longer live on the income from the property, nor meet their obligations, which included the education (instruction) of the youth (quoad inventutis institutionem). The Brothers, who were now seven in number, namely five priests and two lay brothers, had no prospect of further recruits. It is noteworthy that alongside the pater senior the procurator is mentioned as gubernator scholae, a title which hardly occurs elsewhere in the sources. This title, however, merely refers to the director of the hostel, which may or may not have comprised a complete school. The Brethren relinquished their house, church, school, garden and movable property, and all rents, incomes and other sources of revenue. They also gave up their right to admit any more novices, but determined henceforth to maintain the statutes of their house until they had obtained a benefice with or without pastoral duties. To justify this transaction the bishop referred to the Council of Trent which had decreed that the property intended ad alendos vel instituendos pueros might be used for a seminary.

This was the end of the Brotherhouse in Ghent. To some extent it died a natural death, speeded on by the compulsory acquisition by the bishop. It is in any case clear that it was no longer viable, and that the Brothers raised no objection to possessing a benefice and relinquishing their community of possession.

We have already discussed the house of Geraardsbergen when dealing with the preceding period.²

As we have explained before, the chapters with communal life

1 State Archives Ghent, S. Hieronymus anno 1569, 26 aug. no. 12.

2 See p. 411

[p. 620]

founded by Count Eberhardt in Württemberg were never really successful. As early as 1516-17 they were dissolved by Eberhardt's successor, with the pope's permission, to the extent that the canons were relieved of the obligation to lead a communal life.¹ The related foundations in Rheingau, begun somewhat earlier, managed to hold out longer. They were never in the limelight and made no contribution to education or to the spread of the Humanistic culture. The inmates' dignity and function of canon focussed their attention on the choir service, which they considered as their principal obligation. One after the other these houses fell victim to the Reformation in those regions where it obtained political power. In Marienthal in Rheingau the Brothers only held out until 1540, after their house had suffered considerably. Königstein in Nassau also managed to survive until 1540, when the house was returned to the Count. At that time two of the Brothers, John Bingen and Nicolas Post, had already gone over to Lutheranism. In 1663 the house came into the hands of the Jesuits.² Butzbach in Hessen must also have yielded to the Reformation around 1538, although the last frater only died in 1573. Earlier the Lutheran superintendent had appointed a school head of the new persuasion.³

Only the house of Wolf, whose struggle for life during the first twenty years of its existence has already been described, began in 1499 an important and, for the Brothers, completely new undertaking. With the permission of the general chapter of the Rhine, and at the invitation of the archbishop, John of Baden (1456-1503), the fraters attempted to found in Trèves a new house with a somewhat different destination from the former houses. In Trèves a convent, Sankt German, had become vacant for want of Sisters. The archbishop had first offered this convent to the abbey of St. Matthias of Trèves, who used the buildings as a refugium. However, in October 1499, in spite of having already disposed of it, the archbishop granted the convent to the Brothers of Wolf, for them to found a new house there. The new inmates, canons, would have a provost at their head, and would celebrate the holy Office in a fitting manner. They would work as priests among the students, hearing confessions, administering the sacraments, even Extreme Unction, and ‘preaching as the Dominicans

1 See p. 445.

2 W.M. Landeen, Gabriel Biel and the Devotio Moderna in Germany, Research studies, A quarterly publication of Washington State University 27 (1959). Part I, II, 159.

3 Landeen 171.

[p. 621]

do’ (1 October 1499).¹ This gift also envisaged the founding of the Brothers' own school but there is no indication what kind of school was intended. A bursa or boarding school seems already to have existed in 1501. Regulations were laid down in 1501 clarifying the relationship of this bursa and its inmates to the university and its associated colleges, and these regulations were confirmed in the years that followed.² In the bursa of Sankt German a number of lessons might be given as preparation for the Arts Faculty examinations, but not all, except to the Brotherhouse's own novices. These lessons too were only allowed on condition that suitable teachers should be available in the hostel. In the beginning the canons possessed no such teachers, but this stipulation provided an incentive for them to go and study at the university themselves and thus cultivate their own competent teachers. Four of the nine Brothers known to us by name during the first twenty years studied at the university and took the required degrees. This was a thing unheard of in the history of the Brothers. More remarkable still, two of these Brothers were appointed to teach in the Faculty of Arts, where they fulfilled in their turn the alternative function of deacon.

The hostel too progressed favourably for a time. None the less, the Brothers' main task, apart from their pastoral duties, seems to have been in the domain of teaching in the Latin school. They certainly founded such a school, but the fact that it was placed under the supervision of a commission from the Councils of the city and diocese shows that it had become a privileged institution, a school which, like those of Liège and Utrecht, surpassed the parish and chapter schools, and probably attracted all the high classes. In fact, around the middle of the century, this school numbered 400 pupils. Just as they did elsewhere, the Jesuits first set up a rival institution which is mentioned in 1563. In 1569 they took over the Brothers' school, giving, among other reasons, the fact that there was only one Brother working there. Earlier too the Brothers will have freely employed teachers from outside the congregation.

Although Sankt German had adapted itself to the new situation, vocations continued to decline in the second half of the 16th century. The last and sole remaining Brother became parish priest of Echternach in 1569, thus continuing the priestly work.

1 F.J. Heyen, Die Brüder vom gemeinsamen Leben in Sankt German. Neues Trierisches Jahrbuch 1962, 16-127. R.R. Post in Festschrift für Alois Thomas, Trier 1967, 277-283.

2 Landeen 192, translation.

[p. 622]

The Brotherhouse (or canonhouse) of Wolf actually disappeared from history in 1525, but virtually continued a lingering existence until around 1560.¹ At about the time when the fraters of Hildesheim were helping to found the Brotherhouse in Magdeburg (in 1482) the opportunity arose of preparing or beginning a new foundation in Berlicum in Friesland. There was a considerable contrast between these two undertakings. Magdeburg was a large city, the centre of a district containing an archbishop's see and an educational institution and comparatively close to Hildesheim. Berlicum, on the other hand, was an insignificant little village with scarcely any opportunity for pastoral work and no students. It really seemed more suitable for a monastery than for a Brotherhouse. It may indeed be compared with Albergen, where forty years earlier the Brotherhouse had been replaced by a monastery. However, an acceptable offer was made in Hildesheim and when the plague threatened, the fraters of Hildesheim decided to make a sacrifice and start a house in both Magdeburg and Berlicum (1482). It had come about that before September 29th a priest from Bolsward had arrived in Hildesheim as the representative of a hoofdling (capitaneus) named Hetto. He informed them, both orally and in writing that the capitaneus in question, with the agreement of the community, wished to found a monastery or a Brotherhouse with a church. He would prefer to have the fraters of Hildesheim rather than the Crosier Fathers or Franciscans, both of whom had made their interest known. Why did they approach Brothers from so far away, and not those of Groningen, Zwolle or Deventer? Perhaps the capitaneus had already drawn a blank there. In any case the Hildesheimers accepted the proposal and sent one of their priests, Gerwin by name, with a copy of their privileges, to find out whether the situation was as it had been described, and whether the founder and members of the Zwolle colloquium were willing to recognize the privileges of these Hildesheimers and act accordingly. They were willing to contribute a priest, with a cleric or lay brother, in the hope that the new foundation would grow in possessions and numbers. They were also relying on the nearby fraters of Zwolle and Deventer who would be responsible for the official visitations. Gerwin set off after the 29th of September 1482. In the spring of 1483 he visited the colloquium of Zwolle, and remained for a month in order to discuss the matter with the rectors there. After April 13th 1483 he announced that the majority were in favour

1 Landeen 189.

[p. 623]

of the undertaking according to the Hildesheim privileges, but that the pater of Deventer, Egbert ter Beek, objected to the title of college (of canons and provost) and therefore suggested that the matter should be referred to the colloquium of Münster. Egbert ter Beek was thus still opposed to the transformation of a Brotherhouse into a chapter, and the chapel into a collegiate church. He had already revealed this opposition to the cardinal legate Nicolas of Cusa. The Hildesheimers accepted this proposal and in 1483 dispatched the priest Gobelinus to Münster, where the privileges were approved. This Gobelinus was to collect further information on the spot and again speak with the patres of Deventer and Zwolle, notably on the character of the Frisians. His information and that of a colleague on the suitability of the place was not favourable. The Hildesheimers already regretted having agreed but they peopled the place (the house of Berlicum) to some degree. One of the priests, moreover, John of Wesel, died on the 8th of August 1483.¹

Meanwhile the first of May, 1484 had come, and the Hildesheim Brothers sent two priests to Berlicum, Gobelinus and Nicolas Dorsten, with money and various necessities. But Gobelinus, who was acting as rector, died in 1585, on the feast of St. Boniface (5th June). Two persons from Berlicum (Konrad Rad and Konrad Meppis) travelled to Hildesheim to inform the Brothers there of Gobelinus' death and the resulting consternation, whereupon on July 4th 1485 the administrators of Hildesheim sent two priests, John Hinsbergh and Konrad Rad to consult with the paters of Münster, Deventer, Zwolle and Groningen.² These advised that the undertaking should be abandoned. The two priests then proceeded to Berlicum to inform Hetto of this decision, and returned with a number of books. Only Gerwin remained longer at his post to put the affairs of the house in order. By August 27th 1487 the company was back in Hildesheim.³ In 1488 Hetto made an attempt to start up the house anew. Again Hildesheim sent delegates, but to no avail. In 1491 the fraters of Hildesheim wrote to Rome that they despaired of being able to continue the house in Berlicum and requested that, where the documents had domus St. Anthonii to Berlicum, ‘or another place’ should be added.⁴

The house of Hildesheim showed no new aspects during this period. So far as is known none of the fraters played an active role in

1 R. Doebner, 103.

2 Ibid., 103.

3 Ibid., 111.

4 Ibid., 116.

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the Reformation. They only suffered by it. In 1526 already the heavy taxation commenced for Hildesheim and other houses, and when the fraters were unable to pay their taxes they were placed under house arrest.¹ Some feared that this meant the end of the Brethren and monks. On the seventeenth of August 1545 the rector of the house was banished for five years by the consulate on the insistence of the ministers.² In 1546 forceful action was taken against all the monasteries in Hildesheim. All fraters and monastics were summoned to the city hall on February 10th. Two went from every house, and the ‘proconsul’ or Mayor explained the purpose of the meeting. They had to bow to the authority of the municipality. They had to accept the ordinances and renounce all papal and episcopal privileges. Political and church matters were evidently mingled, but the aims of the church, in this case those of the reformed church, were the more important, for the clergy replied that they had obeyed the municipality in the many and heavy contributions, in putting off their habit and in abandoning the office.³ They humbly requested that no further charge should be laid upon their conscience. After three days of reflection the fraters were informed that the corporation wished to turn the Brotherhouse into a college for students, employing for this purpose the incomes of the other monasteries and colleges. On February 16th, 1546, twelve men from the council, accompanied by various other persons, came to the Brothers and read out a letter in which it was made known that two citizens would be placed at the head of every religious institution to administer the property so that nothing should be lost.⁴ They carried out this task for two years, then the register, the copy book of letters and the keys were returned. But on July 29th 1546, religion was forbidden, the churches closed, the chalices and other sacred vessels taken away, the bells destroyed, the Carthusian monastery in Sulta devastated and altar and tombstones thrown into a ditch.⁵

One might think that this must be the end, but no. Even these seem to have been temporary measures in the Schmalkaldic war; at any rate the Brothers continued to pay taxes up to 1568.⁶ In 1611 the house was transferred to the Carthusians. All outside spiritual activity was meanwhile rendered impossible. The Brothers did not promote Humanism, nor did they display any sympathy for the Reformation.

1 Doebner, Annalen 200-201.

2 Ibid., 141.

3 Ibid., 137, see also p. 201.

4 Ibid., 137.

5 Ibid., 141.

6 Ibid., 143.

[p. 625]

Little is known of the other German Brotherhouses of this period. We shall give here what is characteristic for their attitude to Humanism and the Reformation.¹

The house of Herford contained at least one frater who made a name for himself among the Humanists around 1500 as the author of Latin school books and certain other works.² This was James Montanus who entered in 1486, acted as confessor to Sisters and died in the Brotherhouse in 1532. The Herford fraters were unable to weather the storms of the Revolution. During the Reformation they adapted their religious ideas to those of Luther, and saved the life of the institution by accepting Lutheranism and by Luther's personal intercession. They survived the Thirty Years' War and the Enlightenment, but not the rule of Napoleon, under whom their property was transferred to the State. The last Brother died in 1841.³ During the last two centuries of its existence this institution was of very little significance. It is one of the few houses of which the inmates adopted the Reformation as a group.

The fraters made no contribution to the renown achieved by the school of Münster which could already be forecast at the end of the preceding period. Certain leaders of the school, including Rudolf of Langen, Timan Kemner and John Murmellius, have wrongly been considered as Brothers. However, the fact that the Brethren did not participate in the teaching does not exclude the possibility of friendly relations between the fraters and the school masters. This may have led to some of the fraters being influenced by the teachers to show sympathy for the new culture which penetrated the Northern regions around 1480. For it must be remembered that the fraters had learned Latin and could well understand the wishes and ideals of the first Humanists in this. One such Brother was John Veghe, a member of the Münster Brotherhouse, rector there from 1475 to 1481, then rector and confessor of the Sisters in Mesing, who died in 1504.⁴ He made a name for himself as a preacher and his sermons for the Sisters may

1 R.E. III³ 491.

2 D. Reichling, Zeitschr. des Münstersen Altertums, XXXVI. Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, 22 Band 176-180.

3 L. Schulze, R.E. III³, 491.

4 F.B. Jostes, Johannes Veghe, ein deutscher Prediker des XVI. Jahrhunderts zum ersten Malen herausgegeben, Halle 1883, XXIV-XXVIII. Tractate und Predigten, hrsg. v. H. Triloff (1904). H. Rademacher, Mystik u. Humanismus bei Joh. Veghe, Diss. Münster 1936. H.A. Erhard, Münsterisches Gedachtnisbuch, Zeitschrift für vaderländische Geschichte u. Altertumskunde Westfalen, 6 (1843) 89-126, 73. Instituta primaeva fratrum canonicorum seu clericorum ... die nona maii 1741 producta.

[p. 626]

still be appreciated for their lively simplicity and good taste. There is no proof that he was any more educated than the other fraters, but it is striking that, at a time when he had long been a member of the fraternity, he is mentioned in a deed of January 1st as clericus Monasteriensis publicus imperiali auctoritate notarius. This title strikes me as unusual, both on account of his description as a notary and his membership of the clergy of Münster. He was a man who inspired great confidence and verses were made to him by Humanists like John Murmellius and Herman van de Busche.¹

De Veghe gave evidence of possessing a broader outlook than the other Brothers. Around 1480, however, we can detect an interest in Humanism in Brother Friedrich Moorman, teacher in the Münster domus pauperum. Henry Hausman, brother of Rudolf Agricola, was probably a resident there at this time. Towards the end of 1479 and the beginning of 1480 Moorman announced Agricola's return to the fatherland from Italy and sang the praises of this Humanist from the North.² This is certain proof of Moorman's esteem for the new culture, but his teaching abilities were not very highly thought of by his fellow Brethren. Shortly after this utterance he was chosen to begin the new house at Marburg although there could as yet be no question of teaching there. He died at Marburg at an early age in 1482. Agricola praised his Latin and the provost of Münster, Rudolf of Langen, honoured him with an epitaph.³

About ten years later there was another Brother working in the Münster Brotherhouse who was held in particular esteem by the Humanists of the time. This was John Rotgers, to whom Murmellius dedicated his commentary on Prudentius. He for his part praised one of Murmellius' works in his Eligidion in librum Murmelii flores. He had probably acquired this love and esteem for Humanism during his years of study in Deventer. After having taught in Essen he entered the Fraternity where he became first lector (probably in the domus pauperum) and in 1516 even rector of the Brotherhouse.

The Brotherhood suffered considerably in the riots of the Anabaptists, but managed to survive until 1666, when the house was transformed into a seminary.

According to the description of the organization and statutes of the

1 H.E.J.M. van der Velden, R. Agricola. Diss. Leiden 1917, 124-126.

2 J.B. Nordhoff, Denkwürdigkeiten aus dem ministerischen Humanismus, Münster 1874, 84.

3 A. Passner, Rudolf van Langen, Münster 1869, 196.

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house of the Brethren of the Common Life ad Fontem salientem in 1741, drawn up on the occasion of a visitation by the bishop, the institution still retained in that year the traits which characterized such houses in the Middle Ages. They preserved the same ideals of purity, mutual love, renouncing of all personal possessions, devotion to work and the inner religious experience. This latter was nourished by spiritual reading, by meditation and by the praying of the hours. They followed the same daily routine and retained the same offices such as rector and procurator. Just as in former times there is no mention of a school rector, teacher or master. By means of their library they attempted to devote especial care to the young people with the expressed aim of gaining them for their ideal of contempt for the world. The Sunday collation was still continued. The customs however, had evolved in the direction of the monastic life, both in their own house and in the colloquium Monasteriense. They admittedly followed the privilege of Pope Eugenius IV, so that the members were called frater canonicus and formed a chapter, while their chapel was termed a collegiate church. But the powers of the provost had increased. Like the superior of a monastery he had the right to punish, even to imprison or expel any recalcitrant Brothers. He could, however, also dispense from the regulations. The canons of Münster still retained most power in the colloquium, which now bore the significant name of capitulum generale. It could issue regulations which were binding on all members, at least after they had been twice confirmed. In this way all Peter Dieburg's fears of centuries before were realized.

The Brotherhouse in Cologne had no contacts with the first Humanists, but did suffer losses through the Reformation. In 1525 the Brothers were accused as Lutherei and some of them were expelled. According to the proposals for the Cologne reformation in 1543, no changes would be made in the Brothers' way of life since they had lived together freely (without vows), had kept schools and done physical work. It is not clear what schools are referred to here. Later an attempt was made to turn the Brotherhouse into a seminary in the style of Trent, but it was not successful and the house (premaevum institutum) continued to exist until the death of rector Reiner Krott († June 6th 1772). However, it revived in another form, as a chapter with a particular aim. Those who were members of the foundation from 1772 until the time of Napoleon, were not Brothers but canons of one of the old Cologne churches. Of the four mentioned two were doctors of theology and a third became president of the seminary.

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The Brotherhouse of Rostock gained some prominence in the sixteenth century for its activities as a printing house. In the first days of the Reformation the rector took it upon himself to print Emser's (1527) anti-Lutheran New Testament. When Luther came to hear of this he made a complaint in 1529 in a letter to the Duke, whereupon the latter wrote to the city council on December eighteenth 1529 forbidding the fraters to continue printing. By this time, however, the rector had made various contracts and gone to some expense, so that he published the text despite the prohibition by the Council (1532). As a result of this the city confiscated all the Brothers' documents and treasures, but these were returned in 1542. However, their printing activity seems to have ceased. In 1537 part of the house's possessions were ceded to the city and in 1559 the last of the Brothers presented the city with all their property on the condition that, should the religious question take a different turn, the council would help the Brothers to regain this property. When his position became precarious the last rector began to study at the university, gained his Master of Arts degree in 1539, and was subsequently appointed professor at the university. Despite his loyalty to the old religion he was made head of the paedagogium, but in the end religious pressure compelled him to abandon his post. He died as a Catholic priest in 1575 with the title of rector of the Brotherhouse. At this time the house was a dwelling place for students, and later became a paedagogium.¹

One could pass over the fraterhouse of Magdeburg, founded in 1482 from Hildesheim, were it not that, according to tradition, Luther either went to school here or lodged with the Brothers. They might thus be considered to have played some part in the education of the great reformer, which would lend more credence to the idea that they contributed to paving the way for the Reformation. It may be recalled here how difficult it was to start the house in Magdeburg. It was only in 1484 that the emotions of both clergy and citizens had calmed sufficiently to allow the house to start developing slowly. Even then it was not until January 21st 1497 that the decrees of the city council ensured the Brothers of St. Jerome a legal and calm existence.²

In a letter dated 1522 Martin Luther informed the burgomaster of Magdeburg, Claus Storm, that he ‘zu den Nulbrüdern in die Schule

1 Sixty charters in the Rostock State Archives, edited by von Lisch, in Jahrbücher des Vereins für Mecklenb. Gesch. u. Altertumsk. 1839.

2 O. Scheel, Martin Luther I, Tübingen 1917, 82.

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gegangen ist’¹ and this letter appears to have been written in reliable circumstances. Most scholars have taken this information literally and have situated this school episode of the young Martin in the year 1497, when he was a lad of thirteen. Others, convinced that the Brothers had no school in Magdeburg, think that Martin lodged in the Brothers' hostel, or in their house, and received some instruction there. In his biography of Luther, O. Scheel has dealt broadly with this matter and proved that the fraters had indeed no school in Magdeburg, but also that Luther cannot have lodged with them.² I can agree with this first opinion and shall presently give some arguments in support of it. His second opinion he based on a story by Luther himself, maintaining that he had not been properly looked after during an illness. Luther accuses the Brothers of all going to church, leaving him in bed with a high fever. Scheel refuses to believe such a thing of the Brothers and indeed I agree that one can not imagine them as failing in their duty towards the boys entrusted to their care. However, they may not have been convinced of the seriousness of the illness in question and thus left the boy alone without scruples.

Luther's assertion that during this period the Brothers taught in the cathedral school is completely unacceptable, as is the idea that they had their own school, advanced enough for a boy of thirteen. In such a case the curriculum would have had to be that of the city school, with Latin and logic; but the municipality would not have tolerated such competition from these Brothers who were newcomers and none too popular. All the more so since at this time the direction of the house was still entirely in the hands of the fraters from Hildesheim: the rector John of Boekold, and the brothers Gerard Capellis, John Dusseldorp († 1495) and Nicolas Dorsten († 1505).³ The Brethren never had their own school in Hildesheim, not even a domus pauperum, although they constantly aspired to this latter. On the other hand they did have boys to lodge with them in their house. To judge from a letter of Nicolas Dorsten, dated May 2nd 1503, the Brothers in Magdeburg were also willing to take boys: ‘The boys you write about have been admitted to our house and I hope that they will be zealous. But Henricus Pustman, parish priest of the Lambertikirche auf der Neustadt in Hildesheim has also recommended to us the son of the secretary of Hildesheim, Hottelem, and he too has been admitted.’⁴ The

1 O. Scheel, 71.

2 Ibid., 71.

3 Doebner, 301 en 287.

4 Ibid., 193.

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boys mentioned here seem to have been hostel boys and not novices, for at the end of his letter he makes a distinction between ‘tam fratres quam juvenes.’ Finally it is difficult to imagine that the fraters from Hildesheim were competent to teach successfully. The only remaining solution is that the young Martin boarded with the Brothers and went to school elsewhere. His stay was only short and although Luther as a child was able to see something of the Devotion of the Brothers one can scarcely attribute any permanent influence to this brief contact.

The Reformation rapidly swamped the city of Magdeburg. Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenberg (1513-45), the bishop of the city, who lived at a distance, was not the man to take forceful action against it. From 1521 the new party made rapid progress. Several fraters left the house.¹ The rector himself came under its influence. He changed completely and travelled abroad so that the Brothers did not know if he would ever return. This is stated in a letter, undated, but probably addressed to Conrad of Paderborn who died on May 15th 1536 at Hildesheim; a suis expulsus, as it says in the necrologium.² It is assumed that this was the end of the Magdeburg house, which passed in 1562 to the chapter.

So little is known of the fraterhouses in Wesel, Kassel, Marburg and Merseburg in this period, that we need add nothing to what has already been said.³

Such was the actual confrontation of the Brethren of the Common Life with Humanism and with the Reformation. With regard to the first it was important to determine to what extent the Brothers participated in the teaching at the city Latin schools in the very first days of Humanism. It has been established that despite their merits in training and supplementing the education of small groups of students with a particular aim within their hostels, the Brothers were essentially pastors and not teachers in the late medieval and first Humanist schools. Their main task was the pastoral care of schoolboys and nuns. Only in exceptional cases and in a few cities did they introduce their charges to the humanistic culture, and here too they only developed after the new concepts had already gained a hold in the schools. In any case they were not trained to be pioneers in this domain.

Their lack of theological training also prevented them from becoming involved in the late-medieval theological controversies and in the religious conflicts of the sixteenth century. Conservative, retiring

1 E. Schulze, R.E. III³ 495.

2 Doebner, 288.

3 See p. 426 sq.

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and simple, they adopted a defensive attitude to any innovation. Only rare individuals and one or two groups showed sympathy for the ideas of the Reformation. Nevertheless, very many houses succumbed in the century of Reformation, usually as a result of compulsory measures on the part of the civic authorities. Previously, however, or simultaneously, the general religious change had caused the number of vocations to decline, just as in the monasteries. This secularization had already been made easier by an evolution towards the canonicate. On the other hand they tended to draw ever closer to the monastics in their terminology (order, habit).