The New Broom by Jervis Wegg

Philip II was a ‘new broom’ to sweep out heresy and bent on the task but peace with his all enemies was essential before he could do more than take preliminary steps.  Just before his abdication in 1559 Charles V had taken further measures against heretics and in his farewell speech before the States and again in a codicil to his will just before his death, he pointed out the importance of stamping out heresy. Now his son was left to achieve that which his father had desired to accomplish. Philip hastened to reaffirm and reissue his father’s Placards dealing with heresy. But the Magistrates of Antwerp complained that the concessions granted to their town were being violated and pointed out that the Placard of 1550 had not been published in any of the four great towns of Brabant. Again,  however, war came to hamper the  persecution and Philip’s bankrupt condition made him dependent on the goodwill of his subjects.. In August 1556, however, the Placards dealing with the Anabaptists were republished in Antwerp in spite of protests. While Philip was in Antwerp in January 1556 five persons – two old men and three young girls- were arrested for infringing the Placards but obtained pardon on account of the King’s visit.

The religious truce reached at Augsburg in February 1555 was the cause of the  Netherlands being flooded with books on Luther’s doctrines. Many considered that the preaching of the chaplains who came with Lazaraus Swendi’s German mercenaries in 1555 and the liberty to live as Lutherans which was permitted to the German troops themselves, did much to strengthen  the growth of these doctrines in the town Also many Protestants came from England at Queen Mary’s accession and spread them further. It was, no doubt, to stem the wave of heresy that Philip, during his stay at Antwerp in 1556, gave permission to the Jesuit Fathers to establish themselves in the town. But a new teaching had by this time reached Antwerp, though few observedi t. It was one that moved the people  much more than the ‘damned teaching’ of Martin Luther or that of the ‘horrible sect’ of the Anabaptists, as two Catholic contemporaries called them, and was that of Calvin. It entered the Netherlands from France soon after the crushing of Ghent, and Antwerp gradually became its headquarters. Calvinism aimed at reforming the State, and on its appearance in the Netherlands the whole aspect of the Reformation changed, its aim being henceforth revolutionary. Its devotees were found mostly among the poorer class and and they sought political liberty in rebellion. The first Calvinists was put to death in the Netherlands suffered at Tournal in 1545. It was from such places as Tournal that the doctrines were brought by Walloons to Antwerp. Yet those put to death in Antwerp under Philip prior to the treaty of Gateau Cambresis do not seem to have included many Calvinists. In 1556 an Anabaptist named Abraham was sentenced o death and executed at the Market Place  .  .  .

In 1559 about forty Anabaptists were executed in the Netherlands, of whom eighteen suffered at Antwerp. Feelings ran very high among the crowd but nothing happened, though in one instance the Schoul was seen to turn white as a sheet when he saw that his guards had fled. Most of these Antwerp victims appear to have been Anabaptists. They seem to have been inoffensive men and women whose chief sin related to baptism, there being  no suggestion that they inclined towards communism or polygamy. Their heads were full of the Bible story and they regarded themselves as the reincarnation of Bible heroes. They particularly admired the oppressed and likened all oppressors to Egyptians or Babylonians. Usually they refused to abjure their opinions and awaited the extreme penalty attached to such obduracy  even in spite of advice of their counsel to plead guilty and say they were led into heresy  by others.

Certain fact are noticeable about these prosecutions. Lutherans seem no longer to have been hunted down, and Anabaptists seem to have lost the characteristic excesses of those who had held Munster, and to have appealed to a very harmless sort of folk of the artisan class. The Venetian Ambassador, writing in 1557, expressed surprise at the courage displayed by all those who suffered martyrdom in the Netherlands. In truth it was becoming evident that the blood of the many men and women had not been spilt in vain, and the secret drownings and beheadings in the Steen and the gagging of victims on the scaffold show how much the spectators sympathized with the victims.

A French Calvinist Congregation was established in the town in 1554 by the minister Francois Perucel with which Calvin corresponded, and in 1556 he was urging the necessity of assembling together to give each other courage, and was exhorting his followers not to be content with solitary devotion. The advice seems to have been followed, for an Ordinance was issued by the Magistrates on the 1st of March, 1557,  which mentioned evangelical meetings which were being held in and outside the town and forbids them in the future. At the same time a closer inquisition into the character of the newcomers to the town was made, and in 1558 the Duke of Savoy ordered the Magistrates to stop the secret meetings which were being held, especially at night. Preaching both in and outside the town had always been common in Antwerp, but it was the Calvinists who made the practice popular. We find recorded in the accounts of the Scout that Jehan des Champs, school master of Berghen-in- Hainut, was arrested and confessed that he had fallen into evil opinions and had got mixed up with some of the sects, particularly Calvinism.. He persisted in his error and was burnt alive. So during the war that was ended by the Treaty of Cateau Cambresis the burnings and the drownings of heretics were many in Antwerp, and the Calvinism which was to teach men how to make head against Philip’s tyranny was already on foot in the town.

The teaching of Calvin as to man’s relation to the State and the fervor aroused by the palm-singing advocated by the ministers of the meetings opened a new era of the Reformation in the Netherlands, and the peculiar circumstances of unscrupulous aristocracy on the one side and stubborn resistance on the other made the Netherlands the field on which many battles were fought for freedom in the second half of the sixteenth century. The gatherings to hear the preachers grew until in 1566 thousands trooped from the town with arms in their hands. Upon to 1559 the persecution in Antwerp had been of a sort less severe than that carried out in the Netherlands beyond the borders of Brabant. This was due to the anxiety of the Magistrates to judge the town themselves in such affairs to the exclusion of Inquisitors and to the natural fear of upsetting the trade which proved to lucrative to the Government Treasury. The citizens who acted reasonably –reasonably, that is to say, for an age in which most men were bigots- were little interfered with, and those who suffered were such as could not keep their mouths shut and advertised their views on matters, forcing their opinions before the public, and preferring martyrdom to relinquishing the notoriety they had gained by their singularity. The man or woman of mediocre intellect who has picked up ideas from others, which are not shared by and perhaps abhorrent to the rest of the race – too easygoing or too self-conscious to see themselves against their neighbors – has commonly believed his idea to to be mainly of his own coining and has arrogated to himself the right to ridicule the rest of the world or to pay the extreme penalty of martyrdom in the endeavor to prove the superiority of his arguments over all others.

 

The conduct of the Magistrates was remarkably tolerant for the age both in their administrative and their judicial function, and they were reluctant to share with the contemplative  Orders of monks the duty of suppressing heresy. The Carthusians were not allowed to rebuild their cloister after its destruction in 1542, but Dominicans and Franciscans were sometimes empowered to collect evidence, and they worked under the Court and the Inquisitor- General;. Brandt tells how at this time one of the Magistrates named Gaspar de Realme was struck with pity while hearing charges against heretics and was carried home in a fever crying that he was guilty of shedding innocent blood.  We have seen the opposition the Magistrates offered to the Placard of 1550 which mentioned an Inquisitor as if he was a recognized official in the city. Those accused of heresy were brought before the Vierschare  and sentenced by it if found guilty, but the Magistrates were often anxious to set the prisoner free if he would turn over a new leaf. As it was, poorters and foreign merchants were not often arrested; the victims being rather fugitives from infected paces, and the Magistrates had no jurisdiction to inquire into matters of conscience only, so that those who did not publicaly offend against the Placards were left alone.

 

The Treaty of Cateau Cambresis set Philip and the French king free to take repressive measures, against Calvinism and revolution, which go to make up the history of France and the Netherlands during the latter half of the sixteenth century. Persecution in Antwerp became much heavier just before Philip left  the Netherlands . . .

Whatever chagrin Philip may have felt at the loss of Calais by the English was assuaged by his victory at Graveline in late 1558. Negotiations for peace were opened although hostilities did not cease, and Mary was dead before the deliberations were concluded. When the Treaty  of  Cateau Cambresis was published in Antwerp on the 7^th of April, there was great rejoicing, for it was anticipated that a marriage between Philip and one of the French princesses would assure amity between the two nations. The great bell played, the Tower of Our Lady’s was hung with lamps, prizes were put up for competition, arches were set up, bonfires were lighted, wine flowed freely, and among the novelties introduced were greasy poles (the falls of those trying to get the prize at the top provoking much laughter), while blindfolded men  hunted pigs and women ran races. Among the foreign merchants  who took part in these celebrations were the English, but very little reflection shows their joy must have been assumed if they felt their prosperity depended on peace between England and the Netherlands. When the negotiations which led up to the Treaty were opened, Philip had been the husband of the English Queen and the restoration of Calais to the English had been one of the objects  Philip’s commissioners kept in view.. When the Treaty was signed Mary was dead and Elizabeth was on the throne, and all talk of such restoration was forgotten, so that with  the Treaty of Cataeau Cambresis the long amity which had extended between England and the House of Burgundy came to an end.  Her championship of the Protestant cause threw Elizabeth into stronger opposition to Philip, but she became at the same time the idol of the supporters of the new doctrines among the merchants and citizens at Antwerp.

Many in the provinces, like Pontus Payen, hailed the treaty as the harbinger of a Golden Age, and poets sang of the closing of the doors of the Temple of Janus, foretelling that, since Mars was enchained and the Furies put to flight, Rhetoric and Music would join hands for the solace of the Provinces.

The exhausted condition of Philip’s treasury had made him anxious to end war with France and devote himself to combating Islam in the Mediterranean and Protestantism in his own dominions. The crushing of the latter seemed to him vital to the safety of his throne, and in his resolve he had the sympathy of the Pope. He had formed the opinion that the interest of the State  was so bound up with the maintenance of the religion that neither the authority of princes nor concord between subjects, nor the public peace could exist if two religions lived side by side in one country. Both he and Henry II had the crushing of heresy in their minds when they signed the Treaty and both were actuated rather by fear of a revolt than by any anxiety for the souls of their subjects. Neither could contemplate with equanimity a complete alteration in established institutions, knowing well the effect it would have in men’s attitudes towards the State. Indeed the Treaty of Cateau Cambresis was regarded by them rather as a league for the suppression of Calvinism and other heresy than as a mere cessation of war. The means adopted by the two monarchs to attain these ends for te history of the Revolt of the Netherlands and of the Huguenot Wars in France, while the measures applied to Antwerp and the resistance offered to them by the Magistrates and the inhabitants make memorable the period of decline of Antwerp from the prosperity in which she was in  1559 to her ruined condition after the siege by Parma in 1586.

No doubt many realized what was in store, and Sir Thomas Challoner, writing to Cecil from Brussels in January 1560  of the marriage feast of Philip and Isabella, the French Princess whom the Treaty gave to him, says:

‘The inquisition like the hangman shall shut up the tale of the feast with more than  hundred carbonades.’