Weddings

In Catholic Cologne, almost three quarters of recorded marriages between Reformed couples took place outside the city walls. The most common locations for these weddings were the city of Elberfeld (in the duchy of Berg, forty-four kilometers north-northeast) or Neukirchen (in the county of Moers, sixty-nine kilometers north-northwest), both of which had functioning Protestant churches from the late 1560s.1 On Elberfeld, see Bonterwek, “Die Reformation im Wupperthal.” On Neukirchen, Heiner Faulenbach, “Hermann, Graf zu Neuenahr und Moers,” in 400 Jahre Bedburger Synode, 82, 86. Other Reformed Protestants traveled even further afield to marry, often to small Herrschaften and Unterherrlicheiten ruled by Adolf von Neuenahr, a nobleman with close ties to the Netherlands and to the Palatinate.2 Gorter, Gereformeerde migranten, 151–53; J. F. G. Goeters, “Die Herrschaft Bedburg und ihre kirchliche Verhältnisse zur Zeit der Reformation,” in 400 Jahre Bedburger Synode, 58–60. In Dutch, the Neuenahr noble family’s name is spelled Nieuwenaar. Such weddings would be less likely to raise questions about the legitimacy of the union from Catholic authorities—who recognized lawfully performed weddings celebrated in Protestant churches the pastors of which were apparently quite willing to cooperate—than ones celebrated clandestinely.3 Protestants and Catholics shared anxieties about clandestine marriages or couples living together outside of marriage. Harrington, Reordering Marriage, 48–100. Traveling to marry had the benefit of guaranteeing both legal recognition of the union and ensuring that the service took place within a true church of God. To some degree, however, the reliance on clergy elsewhere to officiate weddings for their church weakened the consistory’s authority over congregants. They tried to compensate by closely monitoring whether couples had approval from parents and the congregation for their union. On March 1, 1587, for instance, elders in Cologne admonished their counterparts in Frankfurt for permitting the marriage of Caspar Bynoit and Barbara de Costere there (while they were visiting the Frankfurt Messe) without getting permission from their home consistory.4 WMV 3/5, 108–9. Gorter, Gereformeerde migranten, 152. The frequency of traveling for marriage also meant that there existed no central archive documenting the weddings of people in this congregation. This fact makes it harder for historians to trace these migrants, just as it made it harder for pastors and elders to do so at the time.

Some Reformed Protestants also married in Cologne’s Catholic churches, perhaps to avoid drawing attention to their nonconformity. The consistory fined this behavior, though some church members may have been willing to pay the cost if it helped them avoid being expelled from the city as religious dissidents.5 Langer, “Die konfessionelle Grenze,” 41. The consistory always recognized weddings in Catholic churches, of course, just as Protestants across Europe did. While Protestants did not believe that marriage was a sacrament, neither did they want to garner a reputation for promoting fornication or clandestine weddings.6 The nonsacramental status of marriage for Protestants also sometimes encouraged them to legalize divorce. Kingdon, Adultery and Divorce. In practice, though, divorce remained extremely uncommon even where it was legalized. Watt, “Divorce in Early Modern Neuchâtel.” Spousal abandonment proved a more common method of ending an unhappy marriage. Burghartz, Zeiten der Reinheit, 214–18. For cases in refugee communities, Spohnholz, “Instability and Insecurity.” Indeed, during the sixteenth century, Protestants and Catholics alike increasingly required weddings to take place in church buildings in front of a congregation. These factors meant that elders left Reformed couples relatively free to decide how they would marry.

In the years when Aachen’s Reformed congregations operated covertly and under exclusively Catholic rule (1544–1559 and 1566–1574), presumably similar patterns emerged, though we do not have evidence for those years.7 Aachen’s government issued no marriage ordinances and did not let the city’s Catholic churches create universal rules on marriage. Kirchner, Katholiken, Lutheraner und Reformierte, 337–38. But the same seems to have been the case in officially Catholic communities in Cleves. Consistories encouraged members to travel to nearby Protestant cities to marry. On December 4, 1580, the consistory in Goch concluded that its members should only marry “in a public church that practices proper Christian discipline.”8 Van Booma, Communio clandestina, 1:238. Wesel’s marriage registers periodically indicate that couples came from a nearby town to wed. Such was the case with Catharina Weltschuit and Gerrit Haeth in 1578 and Gertgen Hanssen and Evert ohn gen Guim in 1589, each of whom came to Wesel from Xanten to marry. The same was the case with Neesken Mercators and Wilhelm de Raed, who came from Goch for their wedding in 1590.9 EKAW Mathenakirche Trauregister, 1578, 1589, 1590. Social pressure or political danger probably encouraged some to marry in parish churches. Though parish records might indicate that this practice did not survive, the fact that church members attended other rituals in Cleves’s Catholic churches suggests that it probably did happen.

In Protestant cities and towns, Reformed migrants from the Netherlands married in parish churches without incident or controversy, regardless of whether local authorities recognized their congregation or Reformed migrants attended sermons or celebrated communion in the public churches. In Frankfurt, the Dutch Reformed consistory rarely interfered in matters of marriage among its church members, leaving arrangements to the city’s pastors. The service in the Lutheran churches was recognizably Protestant, and contained nothing likely to spark controversy for Reformed Protestants.10 The 1589 marriage service included far more theological content than the 1553, however. But none of it was likely to provoke disputes. Arend, Die evangelische Kirchenordnungen, 9:529–30, 554–56. Of course, this willingness to stay out of overseeing matrimony is precisely what angered Cologne’s elders in the case of Caspar Bynoit and Barbara de Costere, described above. In December 1578, Frankfurt’s elders explained to one church member, Philips Pehij, that he would not have to travel to the Netherlands to get his parents’ approval to marry Tanneken van Wechele and, if a letter he requested from his parents did not arrive in time, that it would not be a problem for the wedding to take place in Frankfurt.11 Gorter, Gereformeerde migranten, 150; Meinert and Dahmer, Das Protokollbuch, 183–84. Marrying in Frankfurt’s city churches probably ensured clarity of property inheritance for the largely well-to-do Dutch Reformed community, provided a symbol of their community engagement, and allowed them to earn civic confirmation of their matrimonial bond. In 1588, the elders even refused to intervene on behalf of a member of their congregation who was having difficulty getting approval from the city pastors and magistrates to marry.12 Gorter, Gereformeerde migranten, 48. In 1590, Frankfurt’s elders also explained that couples did not even need to notify them when they announced the banns.13 That was probably a response to increase government oversight over who migrants could marry, aimed at encouraging integration into the city. Gorter, Gereformeerde migranten, 150. On this point, see chapter 3. Reformed migrants’ willingness to marry in Frankfurt’s city churches also suggests a mutual recognition on the part of city pastors and Reformed migrants alike of some degree of shared faith, despite the heated confessional polemics in other matters. The fact that none of them saw marriage as a sacrament probably made this cooperation easier.

In Protestant Wesel, too, Dutch Reformed elders who ran the consistory left wedding oversight to the city pastors.14 In the case of a man who wanted a divorce from his wife in 1581, they forwarded the matter to city pastors. EKAW Gefach 72,2 fol. 234r. Yet they regularly involved themselves in reconciling unhappy marriages. The consistory there had approved the decisions of the synod held in Emden in 1571, which required that church members get the elders’ approval before marrying.15 EKAW Gefach 72,1, fol. 12v. Elders never recorded giving such permission.16 In one case from 1578, a couple failed to get parental consent from the bride’s parents. The elders did not get involved but did recommend that the groom write a letter to his father-in-law in Jülich, asking forgiveness. EKAW Gefach 72,2 fol. 84r, 105r. In another case, a father asked the elders to urge a woman to marry his son, but they refused to get involved. EKAW Gefach 72,2 fol. 14r. It’s impossible to prove from this absence that elders did not require their approval for marriages, however Reformed Protestants in Wesel disregarded those decisions made at Emden that proved irrelevant or impossible to implement in their local situation.17 Matters on which Wesel’s church differed include procedures for the calling of pastors, the administration of poor relief, and the administration of Christian discipline. On this point, see also chapter 5. Wesel’s wedding ceremony, which was traditional but recognizably Protestant, was conducted by city pastors in one of the two parish churches, where the banns were also declared for three weeks before the ceremony.18 Wied, Einfältiges Bedenken, 173–79. No Reformed Protestant ever gave any indication of concern with the ceremony or questioned the pastors’ role in officiating.19 There are two cases of couples traveling to Frankfurt to marry, but there is no indication of the reason. It’s possible their parents disapproved of the unions. Spohnholz, Tactics of Toleration, 204.

Evidence suggests that Wesel’s confessional neutrality concerning weddings was more nuanced in practice. It turns out that Reformed migrants sometimes married in the Mathena church, even when they lived in the Old Town, and were formally required—according to a rule known as Pfarrzwang in German and bannus parochialis in Latin—to marry in St. Willibrord’s church. Such was the case with Gerhardt Hesseling, a Reformed migrant from Limburg in 1567, the Brabantine button maker Jan Boisot in 1577, the deacon Peter van Wassenberg in 1575, as well as for the three marriages of Jan de Becker. Their actions probably reflect a preference for Mathena’s pastor, Johannes Heidfelt, who proved more welcoming of Reformed migrants, over St. Willibrord’s Gerhard Veltius, who expressed resentment about the activities of the Reformed consistory in the city.20 Spohnholz, Tactics of Toleration, 79, 85, 97–98, 105. We do not know whether migrants in Frankfurt may have attempted a similar kind of maneuver, but given the acrimony that had developed between Reformed migrants and those ministers who defended the Augsburg Confession invariata, it seems plausible to think that Reformed migrants there might have approached more sympathetic pastors for their own weddings.

Wesel’s pastors proved less willing to officiate weddings for the Reformed migrants living in other towns in the duchy of Cleves. In August 1574, they urged Jan Dogewerdt, a widower living in Emmerich and Yttgen van den Bosch, a widow residing in Goch—both members of the semiclandestine Reformed congregations in those towns—to live in Wesel for at least three months before they celebrate their union. They explained that they were concerned that Catholic officials of the duke might threaten their city if Wesel gained a reputation for casually permitting residents of other cities to marry within its walls.21 Spohnholz, Tactics of Toleration, 205. Yet in later years, Reformed residents of nearby towns married in Wesel without any fuss. Elders in Xanten or elsewhere never recorded any concern regarding members of their congregation marrying in Wesel. They were content, and even supportive, of members of their congregation marrying in public Protestant churches, even those that were not part of the Dutch Reformed ecclesiastical system. Indeed, even when members of these semiclandestine congregations married in Catholic churches, while elders expressed concern about the idolatry their decision might promote, they never questioned the legitimacy of the marriage.