(for those who don’t know their way around in sixteenth-century Netherlands)
In 1566, Breda (pronounced braid AH) was one of the oldest and foremost cities of the Dutch province of Brabant. The city sat on a slight rise in the ground, nestled in the arms of two ancient rivers—the Mark and the Aa. She took her name from the broad (breed) place in the Aa created by its juncture with the Mark.
“A good and pleasant garrison town,” wrote sixteenth-century cartographer Ludovicco Guicciardini, “home of a sumptuous castle with a double ditch full of water.”
In 1538, the popular German-born nobleman William of Orange inherited the castle of the House of Orange-Nassau from a cousin who died in battle without an heir. William brought his new bride to Breda to live in 1551. A handsome man with winsome wit and social charms, he transformed the old castle into a center of extravagant hospitality to rival that of the royal court of his former guardian, Emperor Charles V in Brussels.
But while their “Prince” William’s popularity brought a train of prestigious people into the little city, Bredenaars had reasons more accessible to the common citizens and street folk to lift their heads high above the neighboring villages spread out in the fields and marshes around her. Located ten hours’ journey north of Antwerp, golden capital of the commercial activity of Northern Europe, Breda’s burgeoning economic status was a justifiable source of civic pride. And not to be overlooked by even the most casual visitor, on the market square stood her grand old Gothic “Great” Church with its wealth of paintings, statuary, wood carvings, and a coronet-spired tower that glimmered like a crown jewel. For centuries, townsfolk had gathered beneath her finely painted vaulted arches to worship, while pilgrims from faraway places had enriched her coffers with their gifts.
Most important of all, Breda cherished the quiet, peaceful atmosphere that pervaded her streets, homes, shops, and churches. These were precarious times when, all over Europe, like weathered marble icons, some of the traditionally recognized controlling forces in society were beginning to crumble. To an increasing number of people, the church, represented by pope and prelate, no longer held absolute authority to dictate what men and women were to believe and how they were to pray. The government, represented by king and nobles, met with increasing challenges when it gave orders and wielded a sword in an attempt to make submission the preferred response. Even the weather, mostly dreary, wet and hovering, was forced to yield to the pressure of human ingenuity. While for the most part it persisted in creating an atmosphere that made all else in life either more pleasant or more miserable, men and women and children of this century were beginning to find some shelter in windows and fireproof roof tiles.
In previous centuries, few men had tampered successfully with the established order of things. Everyone knew that all three forces had been set in place by a sovereign God. With the emergence of the printing press in the fifteenth century, these conceptions began to be challenged as never before. Increasingly, the explosion of scientific knowledge, a humanistic approach to the arts, and new ideas about God and faith found fertile ground in more and more hearts and minds. This was especially true in the Netherlands,[1] where almost everyone learned to read and printers and bookshops sprouted like mushrooms. To the native-born Lowlander, ideas of iconoclasm and revolution had always held a fascination. But never before had these ideas offered themselves so plausibly.
One man held the key to peace and security in the whole Netherlands. He seemed, however, unable to grasp the fact that times were changing and his power was eroding. Philip II had inherited from his father, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, the thrones of Spain, Naples, Milan, Spanish America—and the Netherlands.
To the great distress of his Netherlands’ subjects, he had inherited neither his father’s Lowlands birth and culture nor his diplomatic style. Born of a Spanish mother and reared in a Spanish court, Philip held Dutch culture in low esteem and would not stoop even to learn their “boorish” language. A devout Roman Catholic, he considered it his divine mission to purge the Netherlands of every taint of Protestant heresy and to rule as an absolute, though absentee, monarch. “…His Majesty would rather the whole land should become an uninhabited wilderness than that a single Dissenter should exist within its territory.”[2] His violent methods rooted him in a previous century when kings had still enjoyed recognition as indisputable icons and emissaries of an equally indisputable Church.
Philip’s attitudes made him less than popular in the sixteenth century, which spawned a proliferation of seditious groups all over Europe. Most notably, dozens of “new faiths” arose. They ranged all the way from conservative, state-connected magisterial reform movements such as Lutheranism and Calvinism to the more radical churches of Sebastian Francke’s wild spiritualists and Jan van Leyden and his ill-fated messianic experiment in Munster. In between lay the more moderate pacifistic Anabaptist groups led by men like Menno Simons who emphasized practical purity of life and social concern for those in need.
In the Lowlands, the magisterial “new faith” that attracted most of her noblemen was Calvinism. Always somewhat militant in nature, here it served as a rallying point for a wide assortment of zealous religious and political dissidents and individualistic rebels who challenged the old order with strong voices and powerful arms. All who would fight in protest against what they perceived as the tyrannies of an admittedly “Most Catholic Monarch” must join with the churches that were in revolt against Rome. Regardless of their motives—religious, political, or personal—the Lowland rebels fought side by side in the religious arena.
The most radical of all Lowland Calvinists called themselves Beggars. Defying the Inquisition, they deserted churches and attended secret religious meetings in private homes and open fields. Through the influence of their noble leaders, they urged William of Orange, who could never sympathize with the rigorous application of the Inquisition, to marshal the Lowlands into a massive revolt against their foreign monarch and to open the doors and windows to fresh new ideas.
Nowhere was the battle more unexpected than in the city of Breda. As everywhere else, her churches all belonged to Rome. Her kings—Hapsburgs and staunch Catholics for many generations—had never allowed any other. Worshipers had no choice, and even well into the sixteenth century, few had access to Scriptures to enlighten them. But church attendance was no indicator of heart allegiance. Every parish had its true believers who had managed to push beyond traditions to the reality of simple, godlike faith and holy living.
While other cities in the Lowlands were caught up in the throes of political and religious chaos, with blood flowing in their streets and canals, the citizens of Breda enjoyed a remarkable commitment to keeping peace. They were confident that the unrest stirring in other cities would not enter their gates.
Most recognized that these were crucial times of transition from a black-and-white world ruled by a single religious tradition to a black-and-white-and-gray world filled with a plethora of Bible-based doctrinal creeds and codes of conduct. To talk about it openly, however, invited trouble. So citizens developed their own responses, practiced in private. One thing they agreed on. This model city, home of the peace-loving William of Orange, would show the world beyond her sturdy walls how to treat its new thinkers without inciting them to throw stones at time-honored traditions and hallowed treasures. None but the occasional foreign rabble and fanatical riffraff would ever feel the rod in Breda.
Most Bredenaars didn’t even notice when a pack of Beggar leaders rode their horses to the castle across the moat from the market square. Almost unseen to the public eye, these militant nobles wormed their way, under cloak of the prince’s dashing younger brother, Ludwig van Nassau, into the stately halls and shoved their feet under William’s table. Only a few ever took notice, and they tried to disbelieve.
Breda felt secure in the knowledge that she had no cause to fear conflict.
1 Also called the Lowlands or Low Countries. This was territory consisting of the present-day countries of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxemborg.
2 Motley, John Lothrop, The Rise of the Dutch Republic. David McKay, Publisher (Philadelphia), Volume II, Page 169.