Frankfurt

The Frankfurt Concord remained the official doctrinal statement for the city when the first Reformed migrants arrived in spring 1554.5 The liturgical standard used in Frankfurt had been updated in 1553, just before the Reformed migrants arrived. The texts used a model of the Lord’s Supper, baptism, and marriage, see Arend, Die evangelische Kirchenordnungen 9:524–31. The first to arrive were French-speaking Walloon Protestants led by pastor Valérand Poullain, who requested permission to live in the city.6 Poulain explained that they were drawn to the city primarily because it was a famed commercial center. FRH, vol. 1, Beylage I, 1–2. Meinert, Die Eingliederung, 3. See Bauer, Valérand Poullain. Poullain flatteringly explained that he “could not think of a better place than Frankfurt” to settle. In fact, he had thought of other places, including Catholic Cologne, where he had been seeking asylum when he happened to meet the powerful Frankfurt merchant Claus Bromm, then returning home from Brussels.7 Scholz, Strange Brethren, 36–38. Bromm suggested that the migrants might receive a warm welcome in Frankfurt, which was still suffering from a devastating siege during the Second Schmalkaldic War and some costly failed investments in the copper mines of Mansfeld.8 Schindling, “Wachstum und Wandel,” 229. Poullain decided to give it a go. Poullain’s main pitch to Frankfurt’s oligarchs was the introduction of a new weaving industry that the migrants would bring to the city.

The pastor explained to city leaders that they were all of “the same religion,” but that the French-speaking congregation would need its own church, simply because its members could not speak German.9 FRH, vol. 1, Beylage I, 2. He insisted that they would not interfere with the local church, that they would seek council approval before appointing a new pastor, and that they would submit their confession and liturgy to magistrates for approval.10 Besser, Geschichte der Frankfurter Flüchtlingsgemeinden, 9–10. Their liturgy was written by Poullain. Poullain, Liturgia sacra. In a meeting with city pastors, Poullain also expressed approval for the Frankfurt Concord (also known as the Concordia buceriana).11 Bauer, Valérand Poullain, 293. By June 1554, a small group of English-speaking Protestants arrived and received the same welcome.12 Meinert, Die Eingliederung, 7. Besser, Geschichte der Frankfurter Flüchtlingsgemeinden, 43–44; Ebrard, Die französisch-reformierte Gemeinde, 66–67. The following spring, the former superintendent for Emden and then for England’s stranger churches, Jan Łaski, negotiated the same deal for a Dutch-speaking Reformed congregation.13 Becker, Gemeindeordnung und Kirchenzucht, 26. It is not clear why Łaski and his followers left Emden, which had a public Reformed church and many Dutch migrants. See Scholz, Strange Brethren, 44–74. The council allowed the three congregations to share the Weißfrauenkirche (Church of the White Ladies), a former cloister church of the Order of St. Mary Magdalene that had stood unused since 1533.14 Dechent, Kirchengeschichte von Frankfurt am Main, 1:155. Apparently, sharing this building proved frustrating. In late August 1555, the English congregation requested a separate building for worship. The council turned them down. Besser, Geschichte der Frankfurter Flüchtlingsgemeinden, 25. Possibly, they wanted their own space just for practical reasons, but it is worth also noting the high internal discord within the French- and English-speaking congregations. Gunther, Reformation Unbound, 158–88. Łaski’s former London colleague, Marten Micron, who now held a post in Norden (East Friesland), preached the first Dutch sermon in September 1555, while Łaski looked for a permanent pastor for the congregation. He first reached out to Gaspar van der Heyden, a pastor of the underground Dutch Reformed congregation in Antwerp, who turned him down. He then turned to the twenty-four-year-old Petrus Dathenus, a former monk whom he knew from London. Dathenus arrived by November to take his first pastoral position.15 The first evidence of Dathenus’s presence in Frankfurt is a letter to John Calvin, dated November 2, 1555, CO 15, ep 2338, 847–48. Schreiber, Petrus Dathenus und der Heidelberger Katechismus, 44.

The same month that Micron first preached in the Dutch language in Frankfurt, the Peace of Augsburg was signed and quickly ratified by Frankfurt’s magistrates. Almost immediately, a few city pastors, led by Hartmann Beyer, complained about the religious deviance of the foreigners.16 Meinert, Die Eingliederung, 13. Emboldened by the new imperial law, the city pastors expressed skepticism that the newcomers were Augsburger Konfessionsverwandten. The foreign pastors explained that they would be happy to sign the Augsburg Confession but did not clarify which version they meant.17 Schreiber, Petrus Dathenus und der Heidelberger Katechismus, 48. Besser, Geschichte der Frankfurter Flüchtlingsgemeinden, 47. Skeptical clergy insisted that the newcomers conform in belief and practice to the 1530 invariata. Since 1536, Frankfurt’s magistrates’ claims to adhere to the Augsburg Confession had been predicated not on its clergy signing either the variata or the invariata, but on the Wittenberg and Frankfurt Concords, compromise texts designed to promote harmony between those theologically oriented toward Saxony and those oriented toward Upper Germany. In late 1555 and early 1556 the council still referred the newcomers and local pastors to the Frankfurt Concord.18 Meinert, Die Eingliederung, 18–20, 24–25. FRH, vol. 1, Beylage IX, 151. Magistrates, that is, still claimed the right to define what it meant to be Augsburger Konfessionsverwandten. For them, it seems that the Augsburg Confession served more as a political symbol of support for the evangelical cause than as a fixed definition of theological orthodoxy on whose text all Protestants in the empire needed to agree.

Over time, the new imperial law encouraged political leaders to concretize further what it meant to conform to the Augsburg Confession. Local pastors remained unconvinced that the newcomers conformed to the invariata’s statement on the Lord’s Supper.19 Gegenbericht vnd verantwortung der Predicanten zu Franckfort am Meyn off etliche ungegrundte klagschrifften der Welschen, Das ist, der Frantzösischen vnd Flemmischen Predicanten vnd gemeyn deselbst … (1563), printed in FRH, vol. 2, Beylage XIV, 407–66. In defense of the Reformed migrants, Jan Łaski published his Purgatio ministrorum in ecclesiis peregrinorum Frankfurti (Cleaning of the Ministers in the Pilgrim Church of Frankfurt, 1556), which argued that it was not the Reformed migrants who deviated from the Augsburg Confession, but Frankfurt’s pastors.20 FRH, vol. 2, Beylage XVII, 167–216. Also available in Kuyper, Johannes à Lasco Opera, 1:243–68. Gorter, Gereformeerde migranten, 34–35; Schreiber, Petrus Dathenus und der Heidelberger Katechismus, 51. On May 22, 1556, Łaski also held a colloquium with Johannes Brenz at Stuttgart aimed at finding agreement on doctrine that conformed to the Augsburg Confession and thus to imperial law. Rohls, “A Lasco und die reformierte Bekenntnisbildung,” 115–16. There were some differences in the interpretation of a few passages of the Augustana, Łaski conceded, but that was unsurprising given that Melanchthon himself had written multiple versions. Łaski argued that the Reformed immigrants conformed to the Augsburg Confession because their teachings conformed to the Confessio Saxonica of 1551. Melanchthon had prepared that text for Maurice of Saxony in advance of the invitation of leading Protestants to the Council of Trent the following year. Not only was this text the work of the same author as the Augustana, but Melanchthon had called it a simple “repetition” of the Augsburg Confession, and thus a plausible argument could be made that its signers were Verwandten (“kindred spirits”). Finally, the Reformed immigrants could accept the “true and substantial” presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, since the framing in the document did not also rely on the doctrine of Christ’s ubiquity. Łaski’s argument highlighted for Frankfurt’s magistrates the problem with arguing that conforming to the Augsburg Confession only required signing a statement of faith with which they could plausibly argued aligned with that document.21 Soon after, Łaski left for his native Poland, where he took over leadership of the Reformation under King Sigismund II August. Such a strategy only complicated the question of determining who conformed. By October 21, 1556, the city’s patrician leaders shifted their approach to demand simply that the newcomers conform to the Augsburg Confession directly, though they still did not indicate which version.22 Meinert, Die Eingliederung, 36–37.

The local and imperial levels opened another opportunity for the Reformed migrants in the summer of 1557. On June 13, most Protestant princes in the Empire met in Frankfurt to prepare for the upcoming Colloquy of Worms—a meeting of leading Catholic and Protestant theologians scheduled for September to build a theological consensus meant to solve the empire’s constitutional problems that had grown out of the Reformation.23 Slenczka, Das Wormser Schisma. At this Frankfurt Princely Diet (Fürstentag), dozens of theologians and many princely representatives signed a statement agreeing that the foundation of evangelical unity was in a shared Christian doctrine but that this need not be expressed in identical rituals or customs, which could differ according to location. At the event, Frankfurt’s foreign pastors presented the Confessio Saxonica as their statement of faith.24 Dingel, “Augsburger Religionsfrieden und ‘Augsburgerverwandtschaft’,” in Schilling and Smolinsky, Der Augsburger Religionsfrieden, 161. After the meeting, various figures who had attended the princely diet advocated on behalf of the foreign Protestant churches in Frankfurt.25 This included Count Georg von Erbach, for instance, as well as Philip Melanchthon. FRH, vol. 2, Beylage XXIII, 279–80 and Beylage XXVIII, 84–86. There is reason to think that the newcomers’ efforts might have had some success. After all, the city council reprimanded Hartmann Beyer for railing against the Reformed migrants in sermons that summer and, on December 8, again urged all citizens to be kind to them (freundlich und gepurlich zu halten).26 Meinert, Die Eingliederung, 48, 53.

Subsequent events in Worms thwarted the newcomers’ strategy. Less compromising Lutherans who had been absent from the Frankfurt Fürstentag were present at Worms, and they were not about to accept the earlier agreement. At the Colloquy, evangelical negotiators broke into open dispute in front of their Catholic counterparts. In March 1558, following that embarrassment, six leading Protestant princes met again in Frankfurt, where they were attending the coronation of Emperor Ferdinand I. There they signed the Frankfurt Recess, written by Philip Melanchthon to satisfy his hardline Lutheran critics, calling for the deposition of any ruler who tolerated deviation from the 1530 Augsburg Confession. The Recess left an ever-smaller window for Reformed Protestants in the empire to argue that they fell under the Peace of Augsburg. Frankfurt’s political safety and not just its religious unity increasingly depended on its attachment to the invariata. All the Dutch pastor Petrus Dathenus could do in 1560 was write yet another treatise arguing that his church shared “common fundamentals of doctrine” with the Augsburg Confession. 27 Schreiber, Petrus Dathenus und der Heidelberger Katechismus, 192. He acknowledged differences between himself and some of Frankfurt’s pastors, but argued that their different understandings did not mean they fell out outside of Christ’s Church.28 Schreiber, Petrus Dathenus und der Heidelberger Katechismus, 62. Such arguments may or may not have had intellectual legitimacy, but by 1560 in Frankfurt they lacked the political legitimacy to change city leaders’ minds.

By April 28, 1561, Frankfurt’s magistrates decided that the Reformed immigrants, whose numbers had been steadily increasing since 1554, would no longer be able to worship publicly unless and until they conceded all disputed matters of faith to the city’s clergy.29 Meinert, Die Eingliederung, 89. Magistrates’ other concerns included theological disputes among the Walloon congregations and the appearance of Anabaptist and spiritualist ideas among the foreign congregations. Gorter, Gereformeerde migranten, 38–39. Dathenus felt dark clouds looming over his congregants, for whom he had few kind words. He called them querulous, inflexible, arrogant, and murmuring.30 As he expressed in a April 22, 1561 letter to Godfried van Winghen in London. Hessels, Epistulae et Tractatus, 2:155. His church presented a petition on August 7, 1561 urging that “we are not fanatics [Schwärmer], nor violators of the sacrament, not even Calvinists or Zwinglians” as Beyer and his allies had claimed, but “follow the truth as written in Scripture.”31 FRH, vol. 1, Beylage XLII, 77. Gorter, Gereformeerde migranten, 40. This claim might be seen as a prevarication or even a lie. However, this perspective misunderstands the situation from the vantage point of 1561, when “Calvinist” and “Zwinglian” were terms of derision, not expressions of identity. Dathenus believed that his faith was the true Christian one, rather than that promoted by any one man, Calvin or otherwise. But members of the city council were unmoved. Interventions from foreign allies—including the powerful Elector Friedrich III of the Palatinate—likewise had no effect.32 Letters of support also came from Edmond Grindal, the bishop of London, Philip of Hesse, and others. FRH, vol. 1, Beylage XLVII–XLIX, 79–83. Hessels, Epistulae et Tractatus, 2:178–80. Meinert, Die Eingliederung, 107–10. Godfried van Winghen, the Dutch pastor in London, also traveled to Frankfurt to advocate for the foreign-language churches. Members of the council did permit them to hold Christmas services in Weißfrauenkirche but then locked up the church again.33 Meinert, Die Eingliederung, 103–4.

Dathenus made a bid to retreat. He wrote to Emden asking for permission to settle, but the consistory there declined.34 Schilling, Die Kirchenratsprotokolle, 1:130. Emden’s consistory members suggested that Dathenus get letters of support from the Landgrave of Hesse and the Elector Palatine sent to the Lutheran count of East Friesland, which effectively amounted to a refusal. They recommended instead that his congregation move to England. Four and a half years later, when disputes broke out in Emden, the Bürgermeister and city council of Emden warned the consistory to maintain unity in the church, otherwise they would not tolerate foreigners “following the example of Frankfurt.” Schilling, Kirchenratsprotokolle, 226. Early in 1562, the Reformed migrants tried once again, reminding Frankfurt’s council that they had signed the Confessio Saxonica of 1551 and the Augsburg Confession (they did not say which, of course) and included copies of the French Confession of Faith of 1550 and the recently penned Belgic Confession of 1561.35 FRH, vol. 2, Beylage XXXIX, 335–41. But a majority of the fourteen patricians were unmoved. On March 26, 1562, after a year of back and forth, Dathenus renounced his citizenship and left with a group of about 250 Netherlandish Reformed Protestants for the Palatinate, where they began building a new community at the site of a former Augustinian friary that had been seized by Elector Friedrich III’s officials.36 Meinert, Die Eingliederung, 107–9. In Frankenthal, Dathenus penned an account of these events, stressing the city pastors’ cruelty, professing his conformity to the Augsburg Confession, and ignoring the disputes between Reformed migrants. Dathenus, Kurtze und wahrhafftige Erzehlung. Other Netherlanders moved to Emden, or back to England, where their former church had reopened under the rule of Queen Elizabeth I.

It is likely that most of the roughly two thousand Dutch-speaking Reformed migrants in the city left in 1562. It’s hard to know how many remained.37 On December 17, 1562, the three Protestant imperial electors (Palatinate, Saxony, and Brandenburg) wrote a petition in support of the foreign churches. Meinert, Die Eingliederung, 111. That suggests that Reformed Netherlanders were still in Frankfurt during the coronation of the new Emperor Maximillian II, on November 30. Some still lived in Frankfurt the following year. Schilling, Niederländische Exulanten, 129. Some who stayed may have started attending services in the city churches, but others joined the Walloon congregation, which started holding French-language services across the street from the Weißfrauenkirche in a barn owned by Peter Gaul, or in a nearby house called Zur grossen Aunung on the Mainzerstraße. Their ability to do so probably reflects a high level of bilingualism, though later reports suggest that the Walloons sometimes allowed them to hold Dutch-language services.38 Meinert and Dahmer, Das Protokollbuch, 72–73; Gorter, Gereformeerde migranten, 43. This was not exactly a fully secret or underground church, but it was a private-house church. After all, in the coming years, city pastors continued to complain about the illicit Reformed services.39 FRH, vol. 2, Beylage XLVI, 365–70. The Reformed migrants also wrote repeated petitions to the council requesting that they reopen the Weißfrauenkirche for them.40 FRH, vol. 2, Beylage LX–LXVII, 93–114. In these supplications, they underplayed confessional differences with local clergy and stressed instead the importance of being able to worship in one’s native language.41 FRH, vol. 2, Beylage LXV, 103 and Beylage LXVI, 1–7; Dingel, “Religionssupplikantionen.” They continued to profess that they followed the Augsburg Confession but appealed to the variata or the Confessio Saxonica as evidence of this claim. Further, since the Reformed immigrants still married and baptized their infants in the city churches—probably to ensure skeptics that they harbored no Anabaptists—their absence at celebrations of the Lord’s Supper and other rites was surely conspicuous.42 See Meinert and Mahmer, Das Protokollbuch, 212–15. On December 9, 1576, the elders explained to Matthijs Schats, recently arrived from Brussels, that they held marriages and baptisms in the city churches “because the government asks us to do so and to protect the unity of the churches as much as possible, in order to cause no further conflict or to anger the government anymore.” Meinert and Dahmer, Das Protokollbuch, 151. For more than two decades, city officials made no serious effort to flush them out.

By 1571, Petrus Dathenus, from the safety of the Palatinate, continued to support the effort to legalize Reformed worship in Frankfurt in his Bestendigen Antwort (Persistent Answer), which reiterated the unsuccessful argument that the foreigners in Frankfurt conformed to the Saxon church.43 Dathenus, Bestendige antwort. Summarized in Schreiber, Petrus Dathenus und der Heidelberger Katechismus, 278–81. This time, it was not the Confessio Saxonica to which he appealed, but the more recent Consensus Dresdensis, a compromise meant to mend the rifts among theological faculty at the Universities of Wittenberg and Leipzig that was proposed that October.44 Hund and Jürgens, “Pamphlets,” 174. Signing the Consensus Dresdensis, Dathenus claimed, proved that the Reformed immigrants were Augsburger Konfessionsverwandten. He never referred to the specific confessional standards of his own church in Frankenthal (the Heidelberg Catechism and the Belgic Confession of Faith), only vaguely referring to “our church” (“unserer Kirche”).45 Dathenus, Bestendige antwort, 12, 18. Frankfurt’s preachers grew suspicious of another effort to introduce what they viewed as Sacramentarian heresy with a claim that it allied with Saxon policies. Conformity to the invariata, they insisted, was a sine qua non for public worship in Frankfurt. They also rejected claims that Dutch speakers needed to worship in their own language. They spoke German perfectly well, Frankfurt’s pastors explained.46 Gorter, Gereformeerde migranten, 45. Indeed, it’s true that many migrants were proficient in German. The pastors argued that foreigners should simply go to services in one of the city’s churches. In the end, the council did not grant the Reformed refugees the right to public worship, but neither did it make any effort to close their house churches.

What the council did do was request that the Walloon congregation present a list of all its members in January 1572. Apparently, they were concerned that the Reformed community might become a conduit for Anabaptists to enter the city. At this point, it seems that magistrates did not realize that the Dutch speakers had formed a separate congregation some eighteen months before since it did not ask them for a list as well.47 Gorter, Gereformeerde migranten, 167–68. That same month, the Dutch pastor Sebastian Matte and an elder Peter Bisschop wrote to theology faculty at the University of Heidelberg for advice about whether they should volunteer a membership list. On the one hand, the Dutch speakers might get in trouble for operating a congregation without permission (further evidence that the Walloons had, in fact, tacit permission for their congregation). On the other hand, they hoped that transparency might ingratiate them to local leaders. Heidelberg’s theology professors encouraged them to volunteer the list, advice they subsequently followed. Dathenus also wrote a separate letter to the Walloons, reprimanding them for not being honest with the council about the Dutch members in the first place. The admonishment only embittered the Walloons. Meanwhile, Peter Orth, the senior mayor (Ältere Bürgermeister) of Frankfurt, approached Matte and his Dutch-speaking elders, asking them if they “were of a different religion” (een andere religie waren), which they explained was not the case.48 Meinert and Dahmer, Das Protokollbuch, 105. Reformed Protestants were not permitted public worship unless they would conform to the teaching and worship of local clergy, though by 1573 the Dutch began renting a private house in which to hold services separate from the Walloons.49 Meinert, Die Eingliederung, 198. Gorter, Gereformeerde migranten, 129.

That year, the Elector Palatine also sent a delegation made up of Immanuel Tremellius, Guillaume Houbraque, and Jean Taffin to convince the city council to reopen a public church for Frankfurt’s Reformed.50 Gorter, Gereformeerde migranten, 46. The council remained divided on the matter. Many sympathized with the Reformed migrants and wanted to maintain good relations with Friedrich III. Others worried about angering Lutheran and Catholic powers in the region, or that allowing public Reformed services would encourage Anabaptists to infiltrate the city. This time, there appears to have been no discussion of conformity to the Augsburg Confession or concern that the Reformed were themselves heretics or dangerous sectarians. Still, the council rejected the request. In the coming years, as the size of Frankfurt’s Dutch Reformed community stabilized and even grew, returning to 2,000 by the mid-1560s and climbing to 4,000—roughly 20 percent of the city’s population—by the 1590s.51 Schilling, Niederländische Exulanten, 52–53. In all this time, some three decades, Frankfurt’s patrician leaders made no serious effort to flush out their formally illegal services, even in the face of complaints from city pastors.52 Johann, Kontrolle mit Konsens, 44. In October 1577, the Dutch Reformed pastor at Frankfurt, Werner Helmichius, wrote to a colleague in Delft that his congregation was able to remain in the city by keeping quiet (quiescimus).53 Cited in Gorter, Gereformeerde migranten, 47. As at Cologne and (until 1581) Aachen, city leaders in Frankfurt allowed the Reformed only by turning a blind eye to their private services. Meanwhile, Frankfurt’s Dutch Reformed Protestants kept a low profile for their illegal worship services. Just as at Cologne and Aachen, this unofficial coexistence ran on a mix of discretion and inaction.

Frankfurt’s patricians seemed relatively content to maintain this informal toleration. They made no serious effort to shutter this illegal church. Indeed, when the pastor Franciscus Gomarus in August 1589 requested permission for his father to live in the city, the city council’s scribe referred to him as the “Flemish preacher” without any sense of surprise or disapproval.54 Meinert, Die Eingliederung, 397–98. Of course, one critical reason for the lenience was that wealthy Netherlanders, who made up the core of the Dutch Reformed congregation in Frankfurt, paid taxes and tariffs directly to the city coffers and spurred the local economy by purchasing local goods and services and hiring Germans from the area.55 Breustedt, “Bürger- und Beisassenrecht.”

From the late 1570s, Frankfurt’s government began limiting immigration, though most of these rules applied to German and Netherlandish migrants equally and did not put any new religious conditions on immigration. In 1578, for instance, the government began demanding that immigrants present attestations from their previous homes.56 Johann, Kontrolle mit Konsens, 48, n.142; Breustedt, “Bürger- und Beisassenrecht,” 605, n.48. In 1580, Frankfurt’s government refused to grant resident alien status to newcomers who could not present proof of employment.57 Breustedt, “Bürger- und Beisassenrecht,” 605–6. In 1586, another law stipulated that immigrants who became citizens could not marry foreigners.58 Meinert, Die Eingliederung, 323; Bothe, Die Entwicklung der direkten Besteuerung, 244. The 1587 proclamation explicitly targeted Netherlanders, but in 1589 was extended to all citizens. Meinert, Die Eingliederung, 348, 394–95. The council sometimes made exceptions for Lutherans, as it did for Jacob de Kaisers in 1592. Meinert, Die Eingliederung, 482. In 1589, magistrates required a new annual “protection fee” (Schutzgeld) of 100 guilders for all resident aliens (Beisassen).59 Meinert, Die Eingliederung, 378–79; Breustedt, “Bürger- und Beisassenrecht,” 309. These policies were not aimed at halting immigration or persecuting religious dissenters, but ensuring immigration proved socially stabilized, economically beneficial, and politically harmless. They also did not place Augsburger Verwandtschaft at the center of Frankfurt’s immigration policies.

When considering the patricians’ actions, it is useful to remember just how diverse and dynamic Frankfurt was as a city. It was home to one of the largest Jewish communities in the Empire.60 Kasper-Holtkotte, Die jüdische Gemeinde von Frankfurt/Main. Catholics remained free to worship, in accordance with imperial law, and pressure from the powerful imperial elector next door, the archbishop of Mainz, as well as from Holy Roman Emperors ensured that their rights were respected, even if they rankled local Protestants.61 Schindling, “Wachstum und Wandel,” 211–12; Meyn, Die Reichsstadt Frankfurt, 235. The Catholic community included religious orders who retained their use of several prominent churches and a foreign Italian merchant community whose members also had permanent alien status.62 Breustedt, “Bürger- und Beisassenrecht,” 627. Further, twice a year, Frankfurt played host to the largest trade fair in central Europe, the Frankfurt Messe, welcoming book publishers, jewelers, goldsmiths, and all sorts of international merchants to the city by the thousands.63 Dietz, Frankfurter Handelsgeschichte, vol. 2. The city also hosted imperial coronations, meetings of foreign princes, and all manner of international diplomatic assemblies. To a remarkable degree, Frankfurt was a cosmopolitan community whose members were accustomed to seeing foreigners and people of other faiths on their streets.

There were certainly efforts to restrict Reformed Protestants from integrating permanently into the city. In 1583, a new law required that Netherlanders have permission from the city government before they purchase a house.64 Bothe, Die Entwicklung der direkten Besteuerung, 244. And, especially after the arrival of a wave of Netherlanders into the city following Alexander Farnese’s conquest of much of the southern Netherlands in the 1580s, efforts to restrict citizenship and resident alien status specifically targeted Netherlanders, even if they also technically applied to other foreigners.65 Breustedt, “Bürger- und Beisassenrecht,” 607. Even so, such efforts did not succeed in pushing Reformed Netherlanders out. A census taken in 1588 showed that there were more than eighty men who had been denied citizenship status in Frankfurt—mostly for belonging to the Reformed congregation—who continued living in the city undisturbed for years, including those who held permanent alien status.66 Breustedt, “Bürger- und Beisassenrecht,” 608. Even after identifying this discrepancy, the council did not act. Indeed, after the city council revoked the citizenship of Netherlandish baker Matteß de Hameln for religious nonconformity in the summer of 1589, nothing kept De Hameln from remaining in the city until at least 1597.67 Meinert, Die Eingliederung, 463. On October 24, 1597 he was listed as still living in Frankfurt when he visited Frankenthal for his son’s marriage. Velden, Registres de l’Eglise, 2:37.

Starting in 1592, Frankfurt’s patricians regulated immigration and religious conformity more strictly. In January of that year, the council banned the Dutch Reformed congregation from appointing a preacher without its permission.68 Meinert, Die Eingliederung, 514. That July, it took an even stricter stance, prohibiting Reformed schools and the hiring of “Calvinist” pastors altogether.69 Meinert, Die Eingliederung, 475, 513–14, 516–19. In 1594, Frankfurt’s city council halted Reformed services and banned the Reformed Netherlanders from appointing a new pastor. It also became even stricter in enforcing explicit laws that banned Reformed Protestants from becoming citizens.70 Meinert, Die Eingliederung, 531, 568; Breustedt, “Bürger- und Beisassenrecht,” 610. These new efforts highlight how lax the city government in Frankfurt had been for decades. After this new volte face, roughly half of the four thousand Dutch Reformed immigrants left.71 Meinert, Die Eingliederung, 576. Initially, the Reformed set up a congregation in nearby Bockenheim, which was ruled by the young Count Philip Ludwig II of Hanau-Münzenburg, under the guardianship of his distant relative, Philipp V of Hanau-Lichtenberg.

In response to this new pressure, Reformed Netherlanders in Frankfurt began a campaign to convince Philip Ludwig’s administration to welcome them, describing the deplorable intolerance they faced in Frankfurt. We agree with Maximilian Scholz that these petitions reflected Reformed Netherlanders’ genuine frustration at being denied public worship.72 Scholz, “Religious Refugees,” 778–79; Scholz, Strange Brethren, 8–9, 121–22. However, we also argue that Reformed Protestants in Frankfurt were adopting a strategic gambit: if they could get a genuine invitation from a nearby prince, perhaps they could finally convince Frankfurt’s patricians to grant them religious freedom—out of fear of losing revenue from taxes and tariffs should the wealthy Netherlandish community leave. If that is the case, the scheme worked for a time. In 1597, soon after taking the throne and marrying Catharina Belgica (the half-sister of the Dutch Reformed hero Maurice of Nassau), Philip Ludwig founded Neu-Hanau, a new settlement twenty kilometers away that was purposefully designed to attract Reformed migrants from Frankfurt.73 See Bott, Gründung und Anfänge der Neustadt Hanau. Dölemeyer, “Kapitulations und Transfix.” On Count Philip’s relationship with House of Orange, see Rauch, “Graf Philipp II.”

By 1601, Frankfurt’s patricians realized their mistake. They again permitted Reformed Protestants in the city (though about half had never left), and even allowed the construction of a small church just outside the Bockenheimer Gate (on land owned by Johnn Adolf von Glauburg, a longtime patron of the Reformed migrants). The church burned in 1606, in a case of suspected arson.74 On the investigation into the fire, see Scharff, “Die Niederländische und die Französische Gemeinde in Frankfurt,” 287–91. Reformed Protestants were not again permitted a public church building, probably out of fear that xenophobia might increase. But Reformed Protestants continued to live (and worship) in the city well into the seventeenth century. And during the Fettmilch Uprising of 1612–14, during which Frankfurt’s citizens committed a horrific pogrom against the local Jewish community, protestors also complained about restrictions against the Netherlandish migrants who (they said) contributed to the common good just as the other citizens.75 Bothe, Frankfurts wirtschaftlich-soziale Entwicklung, 388.