Cologne

Considering Cologne’s fervent devotion to Catholicism, the city might seem a rather unlikely place for a sustained community of Reformed migrants. And yet Dutch-speaking Reformed Protestants, who arrived in significant numbers in the 1560s, remained in Cologne through the rest of the century.8 Chaix, “Die schwierige Schule der Sitten,” 231. There are two reasons for Reformed Protestants’ survival. The first is their successful efforts to keep their dissenting faith from attracting attention. Cologne’s Reformed congregations worshipped in secret. Consistory meetings usually rotated through elders’ houses. These small affairs, usually consisting of between three and seven people, were probably relatively easy to conceal. Reformed Protestants also tended to reside (along with other dissenters) in a few neighborhoods, especially the Breitstraße, where other disreputable activities, such as prostitution, took place.9 Ennen, Geschichte der Stadt Köln, 806; Monge, Des communautés mouvantes, 193. As Ute Langer has noted, keeping a low profile meant that maintaining the trust of acquaintances—especially servants—became extremely important.10 Langer, “Die konfessionelle Grenze,” 40. Protestants in Cologne also learned to prevaricate when confronted. In October 1571, at a synod held in Emden, Cologne’s Dutch-speaking Reformed Protestants inquired whether it was permissible to answer questions about whether they were Catholic with a simple “yes” and questions about whether they had disobeyed King Philip with a simple “no.”11 Cologne’s consistory sent twenty-four questions to the synod, of which only twelve were answered. This question was among those not addressed. WMV 3/5, 14. Rutgers, Acta, 90–96. On forms of dissimulation in this era, see Sommerville, “‘New Art of Lying’”; Zagorin, Ways of Lying. They hoped that such casuistry around the ambiguous meaning of the adjective “catholic” and their claim that Philip could no longer demand obedience because he had broken his oath of office would grant them the safety they sought. When Raymond Rijngold, a Reformed migrant from Brussels, was accused of heresy in 1570, he managed to stay in Cologne by promising his loyalty to the city council.12 Gorter, Gereformeerde migranten, 74. When the Reformed silversmith, Hubert van Coninxloo, also from Brussels, was charged with heresy that same year, he convinced officials that envious merchants had falsely accused him. Accused again three years later, Van Coninxloo brought in a local Catholic friend, Heinrich Faber, to speak on his behalf. Faber told the council that since Van Coninxloo shared a household with a number of Catholics, magistrates had no reason to worry about him.13 Gorter, Gereformeerde migranten, 74.

The second reason for Dutch Reformed Protestants’ ability to reside in Cologne was the deliberate inaction of city officials. City leaders surely had both economic and political reasons to turn a blind eye now and again. The city’s economy had long depended on its ties to the Antwerp and Flemish markets, such that welcoming foreign merchants with ties to those markets created lucrative opportunities.14 Bosbach, “Köln,” 64. From 1565 to 1571, the irenical mayor Konstantin von Lyskirchen played a key role in encouraging Protestant immigration.15 Schwerhoff, Köln im Kreuzverhör, 243. Further, there existed anti-Spanish sentiment in Cologne as well as distaste for the harsh punishments inflicted on dissenters in the Netherlands.16 Schwerhoff, Köln im Kreuzverhör, 207–8, 253. Some officials may also have distinguished between the existential danger of an abstract heresy and the less threatening reality of individual migrants whom they knew.17 For more on this point, see Pollmann, Religious Choice in the Dutch Republic. In 1578, the city councilor (and diarist) Hermann von Weinberg noted with frustration that “people were not only preaching the condemned doctrine secretly in private homes, but publicly, with open doors, and that many libelous writings and paintings were being published and displayed in the city.”18 Quoted in Lundin, Paper Memory, 22. However, in 1569 Weinberg seemed rather blasé about discussing matters of faith with his Reformed guest, the pastor at Rheinbrohl John Tonberg.19 Die autobiographischen Aufzeichnungen Hermann Weinsbergs, April 28, 1579. Usually, local officials only took drastic measures against Reformed Netherlanders when external pressure compelled them to do so. Such was the case with the raid of November 1571, which followed increased pressure on the city council—from the papacy, the Habsburg government in Brussels, and the archbishop of Cologne—to take sharper action against Reformed Protestants.20 Schwerhoff, Köln im Kreuzverhör, 243.

Other evidence that the government turned a blind eye to dissent comes from 1582, following a public psalm singing with some five hundred people led by a Reformed preacher just outside the city gates. The city government reacted to this open act of dissent by ordering the expulsion of all non-Catholic migrants from the Low Countries who had arrived since 1566. And yet officials took few actions to enforce this edict.21 Schnurr, Religionskonflikt und Öffentlichkeit, 75; Bergerhausen, Die Stadt Köln und die Reichsversammlungen, 150–52. While Cologne’s magistrates banished a Reformed elder from Antwerp, Leonard Hoessen, for heresy in August 1582, there is no evidence of any effort to compel his expulsion, and Hoessen remained in Cologne until at least 1594—and probably died there.22 DNRM-CL-7. Moreover, although a series of Reformed Protestant refugees had been escorted out of town with their families and servants by armed guards in 1585, many of then—like the Ghent cloth merchants Anthony Balbiaen and Anthony Lambrecht—soon returned and resided in Cologne for many more years without further issues.23 Ennen, “Die reformirte Gemeinde,” 514. The church elder Anthony Balbiaen and his wife Petronella de Peystere baptized their next child, Sara, in Cologne’s underground Reformed church the following year. DNRM-CL-679, DNRM-CL-713. Andries Lambrecht and his wife Anna van Hulle, had twins (Andries and Sara) in Cologne in 1588. DNRM-CL-782, DNRM-CL-1473. And when Alexander Farnese, the governor-general of the Habsburg Netherlands, sent a list of thirty-three names of heretics and rebels who were being tolerated in Cologne, demanding that their asylum be revoked, city officials questioned twenty-three of them but formally expelled only eight (and again, enforcement of this order was lax). In their response to Farnese, they wrote that many of the migrants in question had lived there for years, even decades, without incident, and that even many of the more recent arrivals were peaceful, obedient, and even had passports from the city of Antwerp (or even from Farnese himself!).24 Ennen, “Die reformirte Gemeinde,” 517–18.

We see a similar Janus-faced policy pertaining to Protestants’ participation in the economic and political life. From 1583, the city government placed economic restrictions on non-Catholics.25 The city also hosted Anabaptists, spiritualists, and Lutherans, most of whom were migrants as well, and a Jewish community. From then on, in order to become a citizen or join a Gaffel (i.e., the trade associations that also served as the basis for political activity), a priest had to vouch for a man’s loyalty to Rome.26 Bosbach, “Köln,” 63, 73. And, while non-Catholics were barred from serving on the city council, at least one Protestant, Ailff von Straelen, sat on the council for forty years!27 Herborn, “Die Protestanten,” 143; Hsia, Social Discipline, 80. Only in 1616 did the city require all citizens to declare loyalty to the Catholic Church, through Protestants still lived in the city and rented property.28 Hsia, Social Discipline, 81. Thus, as long as religious minorities remained peaceable and quiet, the city council often ignored them or was slow to act—particularly if violations were committed by the wealthy merchants who were the heart of Cologne’s Dutch Reformed community. Yet, in a city of roughly forty thousand inhabitants, Protestants made up some 10 percent, and roughly half of those were Netherlanders. Surely, they remained a visible presence.29 Bergerhausen, Die Stadt Köln und die Reichsversammlungen, 151. Our point here is not to paint a cheerful picture of a tolerant Cologne. It is, rather, to identify that even in the city where the constitutional situation was the least ambiguous, lax implementation, even in a Catholic bastion, allowed Dutch Reformed migrants to remain in Cologne for decades.

In the early years of their stay in Cologne, Dutch Reformed rarely made arguments legitimizing their stay based on their conformity to the Augsburg Confession. Indeed, there was little reason to think that such an effort would have any success. However, one version of this argument was made at the imperial diet held at Speyer in 1570 to protest the mistreatment of Netherlandish Protestant immigrants in Cologne. On December 9, Protestant princes—including all three Protestant imperial electors—petitioned that these migrants be granted freedom to worship in the Catholic metropolis. At one point, the authors of this letter (which dealt with other matters as well) referred to Netherlanders in Cologne who “confess to the Augsburg Confession” in arguing that these migrants should have free worship, even there.30 Lanzinner, Der Reichstag zu Speyer, vol. 2, 1988, 972–80. References are to pages 975–76 and 979. This request came after external pressure convinced magistrates on July 21, 1570 to order the expulsion of Netherlandish refugees by August 13. Bergerhausen, Die Stadt Köln und die Reichsversammlungen, 152. However, the argument that, as Augsburger Konfessionverwandten, Reformed Protestants could be granted freedom to worship based on the peace agreement of 1555 was only implicit in this petition. Further, its terms were not accepted by the emperor, Catholic estates, or city leaders in Cologne. The argument was not even accepted by Protestant estates, whose delegates mostly argued that Reformed Protestants did not follow the “true” Augsburg Confession (that is, the invariata).

A more elaborate version of this argument from Reformed Protestants in Cologne came in 1590, after the Reformed pastor Johannes Badius was arrested following another raid of the Reformed congregation. Badius told his interrogators that he supported the Augsburg Confession variata, which he explained was also followed in the Electoral Palatinate and elsewhere in the Holy Roman Empire.33 Gorter, Gereformeerde migranten, 91–93. The Reformed pastor Johannes Badius claimed in an undated confession of faith to have followed the Augsburg Confession of 1530 when it came to the Lord’s Supper. His messaging, however, was contradictory or at least confusing. “Hiemit stimmet auch ein die lehr der Augpurgischen Confession und deren Apologi, in welcher, da von den Sacramenten und ihrem rechten brauch gehandelt wirdt, also stehet: Denn Sacrament und verheischung gehoret zusamen, und seindt die Sacrament nicht anders, denn nur Zeichen und siegel der verheißung. Nun kan man verheißung nicht anders empfangen denn durch gläuben.” Rotscheidt, “Confessio D. Johannis Badij,” 557. Though he was soon after expelled (he moved to Aachen), he continued to defend himself from the polemic of a Cologne priest, Kaspar Ulenberg, who claimed that “Calvinists” like Badius hid under the cover of the “Zwinglian Augsburg Confession” (i.e., the variata of 1540), rather than what he called the “Lutheran Augsburg Confession.”34 Ulenberg, Summarische Beschreibung, 9. The following year, Badius wrote a pamphlet repeating his support for the Augsburg Confession.35 On Ulenberg, see Solzenbacher, Kaspar Ulenberg. In 1591, an imprisoned Reformed pastor Wilhelm Nickel also claimed to interrogators that his congregation was allowed to hold private services because it followed the Augsburg Confession.36 Gorter, Gereformeerde migranten, 93. Of course, appeals citing the Augsburg Confession had little practical value in Cologne, where Lutheran worship was also banned.37 In 1582, Lutherans in Cologne—mostly Netherlanders from Antwerp—pled their case at the imperial diet, urging Protestant estates to intercede with the emperor on their behalf, but this effort failed. Simons, Niederrheinisches Synodal- und Gemeideleben, 79. It is unlikely that any of these Reformed pastors actually expected this strategy to grant them freedom to worship. They were probably only contributing to an empire-wide effort among Reformed Protestants to broaden what it meant to be Augsburger Konfessionverwandten, as well as to link themselves to the protection of the Palatinate.