The last type of community that played host to Dutch Reformed migrants in our study comprise the territorial cities in the Electoral Palatinate. Here again, the newcomers’ arrival depended on the particularities of how the Peace of Augsburg was applied, but in a wholly different way than in the other cases, because, beginning around the time of their arrival, the Palatinate was officially Reformed. That development turned into an imperial crisis after Elector Palatine Friedrich III abandoned the existing confession of faith and church ordinance for his territory that had been written by Johannes Brenz and instead adopted the Heidelberg Catechism and the Palatine Church order in 1563.
1 Wolgast, Reformierte Konfession und Politik. Friedrich stretched the limits of what it meant to be
Augsburger Konfessionsverwandt, particularly because of his new Heidelberg Catechism’s Reformed teaching on the Lord’s Supper. Friedrich argued that the Heidelberg Catechism agreed with the 1530
variata, which he claimed constituted a legitimate interpretation of (rather than an alternative to) the 1540
invariata.
2 Pohlig, “Wahrheit als Lüge,” 154–57; Dingel, “Augsburger Religionsfrieden und ‘Augsburgerverwandtschaft’,” in Schilling and Smolinsky, Der Augsburger Religionsfrieden, 160–61. Friedrich thereby concluded that his territory’s church was permitted under the Peace of Augsburg.
Elector Friedrich and Frankenthal’s founding pastor Petrus Dathenus quickly realized that their fates were linked by 1562. Friedrich had been among those taking an active role in urging Frankfurt’s magistrates to tolerate the Reformed migrants in 1561.
3 FRH, vol. 1, Beylage XLVII, 79–90. When that effort failed, in 1562, Friedrich granted Dathenus and a group of his supporters (made up of about fifty-eight families) a tract of land in the Palatinate at the former Frankenthal cloister, where they established a new community—building by building and road by road—according to Reformed norms without the hiding or constitutional or ecclesiastical compromising seen in the other communities in our study.
4 Becker, “Kirchenordnung und Reformierte Identitätsbildung”; Elisabeth Bütfering, “Niederländische Exulanten in Frankenthal—Gründungsgeschichte, Bevölkerungsstruktur und Migrationsverhalten,” in Hürkey, Kunst, Kommerz, Glaubenskampf, 37–47; Roosbroeck, “Die niederländischen Glaubensflüchtlinge”; Cuno, Geschichte der wallonisch-reformirten Gemeinde zu Frankenthal. Frankenthal operated as a kind of small but functional utopian model of Reformed purity. The city adopted the Heidelberg Catechism and the Palatine church order as its doctrinal and liturgical standards. Reformed Protestants crafted a new community—churches, courts, schools—largely free of interference. Anyone moving into the city had to pass an examination of faith, present a written attestation of past behavior, and submit to church oversight in every aspect of their lives.
5 In August 1582 Pierre Remu got in trouble for not having his. StAF 1/11/84 fol. 545r. If an attestation could not be supplied an exception could be made in which witnesses could be called to testify to the person’s faith and conduct. Such was the case for Amis Reuiert in May 1582. StAF 1/11/84 fol. 526r. Bailiffs walked house-to-house to make sure no one skipped church, and they levied fines on any truants.
6 StAF 1/11/83 fol. 11v; 1/11/84 fol. 443r. Heinz Günter Steiof, “Alltag in Frankenthal um 1600,” in Hürkey, Kunst, Kommerz, Glaubenskampf, 65. Anyone who did not obey orders from the minister or elders was subject to secular punishments.
7 See, for instance, the case of Hans van Vasterscauen, from May 31, 1582. StAF 1/11/84 fol. 356r. Here, Reformed migrants were not forced to compromise with locals, for the simple fact that there were no locals.
In the security provided by Frankenthal, Dathenus recast his position on the Augsburg Confession. In a letter to Heinrich Bullinger, Dathenus now explained that in Frankfurt he had never defended nor approved the Augsburg Confession. He explained to his colleagues in Zurich that the “true doctrine of the Eucharist” could not be found in the Augsburg Confession.
8 Van Schelven, “Petrus Dathenus,” 333–34. See also Ruys, Petrus Dathenus, 50–52. While in Frankfurt, Dathenus had complained about his fellow Reformed causing conflict. Now he placed all the blame for the clashes there on the city pastors’ ignorance of the Gospel and fractious spirit.
9 Dathenus, Kurtze und Wahrhafftige Erzehlung. The intellectual freedom and political security of Frankenthal allowed Dathenus to emerge as a leader of the Dutch Reformed movement. While there, he published Dutch translations of the Heidelberg Catechism and Palatine church order and a Genevan-inspired version of the psalms.
10 Spohnholz, Convent of Wesel, 52–58. He also engaged in a theological disputation that more clearly defined the Reformed movement against Anabaptism.
11 Protocoll, Das ist, Alle handlung des gesprechs zu Frankenthal.At the imperial level, questions about whether the Heidelberg Catechism conformed to the teaching of the Augsburg Confession remained a topic of significant debate. Some Protestant princes—including Duke Christoph of Württemberg and Count Wolfgang of Palatine-Zweibrücken—stressed that its Reformed views on the Lord’s Supper were excluded by the Peace of Augsburg. Others, including the powerful Elector August of Saxony, worried that such inflexibility would weaken a united Protestant front against Catholics. Meanwhile, Elector Friedrich of Palatine always insisted that his territory’s church conformed to the Peace of Augsburg. No unambiguous decision on this point was ever achieved in the sixteenth century.
12 Pohlig, “Wahrheit als Lüge,” 162–65. Yet, from the vantage point of Frankenthal, there was no ambiguity at all. The town remained a haven for persecuted Reformed Christians seeking freedom to worship according to their consciences.
Frankenthal, however, never thrived, but remained relatively small and unimportant. By 1573, the town had only grown to about five hundred people. Many thousands more Reformed refugees were fleeing to locations where their faith was illegal, semiclandestine, or at least legally disputed, than ever came to Frankenthal, which was the only place where their faith maintained an undisputed religious monopoly. That immigration proved less robust than expected is shown in the conditions of a second treaty (
Kapitulation) defining the city’s rights and responsibilities from May 9, 1573, which reduced the fee required for residency by half and offered a full reimbursement for those who chose to depart within their first year.
13 StAF 1/1/B. These efforts were in vain. Records from the church in Frankfurt suggest that some migrants who had opted to move from there to Frankenthal, changed their mind and returned to the imperial city where they had to worship either in Lutheran churches or underground. We have found forty such cases, including that of Jan Claerboue, who escaped anti-Reformed sentiment in Frankfurt for Reformed Frankenthal in 1567, only to return to the Lutheran imperial city soon after.
14 DNRM-FL-1433. It is likely many found they could not make a living in this small town with little infrastructure or preexisting commercial networks.