Funerals

Because of Catholic teachings about holy ground, Protestants were not permitted to be buried in the consecrated cemeteries in either Cologne or Aachen. In Cologne, until 1578, Reformed Protestants buried their dead outside the city walls in an unmarked field. It is also possible that a few were interred in the so-called Elendenfriedhof (cemetery of the wretched), designated for foreigners (cimiterium alienorum), at the parish church of St. Johann the Baptist. Some wealthy Protestants seem to have been buried there, though we have found no evidence that any Dutch migrants were.2 Abt and Vomm, Der Kölner Friedhof Melaten, 14; Gorter, Gereformeerde migranten, 154–55. In 1576, the noblewoman Ursula Goor (a daughter of the imperial chamberlain Ailf von Wyenhorst) from Kaldenbroek in Limburg, donated a piece of land just outside Cologne’s city wall to serve as a formal Protestant cemetery. The cemetery eventually became known as the Beggars’ Cemetery (Geusenfriedhof), because of the association of Reformed Protestants with Dutch rebels in the civil war in the Low Countries.3 On the term “beggars,” see Van Nierop, “Beggars’ Banquet.” Cologne’s three Reformed congregations (Dutch-, German-, and French-speaking) shared the Beggars’ Cemetery with Lutherans and Anabaptists living in Cologne. No confessional tensions appear to have developed around the use of this extramural cemetery.4 Langer, “Die konfessionelle Grenze,” 49.

In Aachen, too, Reformed Protestants and Lutherans alike buried their dead in a field outside the city gates or in unconsecrated ground within the city walls. Starting in 1582, when the Protestant-dominated city council legalized Protestantism, all three Protestant congregations buried their dead in the cemetery at St. Jacob’s Hospital, which had fallen into disuse decades earlier.5 Gorter, Gereformeerde migranten, 156–57. The Dutch Reformed immigrants could now be buried honorably within the city walls. Reformed funerals in both Aachen and Cologne sparked no significant controversy, probably because they took place outside the city walls or away from consecrated ground.6 In Cologne, funeral regulations become confessionalized in the seventeenth century. Langer, “Die konfessionelle Grenze,” 46–47.

In the Catholic towns of Cleves, however, Reformed Protestants seem to have been buried in city cemeteries without commotion until the early 1590s. Take, for instance, the case of the infant Jacob van Randwijk, the first son of a nobleman from eastern Brabant, who was born in Xanten early in 1573. Because his parents, Floris van Randwijk and Mechteld van Boekholt, were members of the underground Reformed congregation, they took their infant son Jacob to the nearby Protestant town of Büderich for baptism. However, when Jacob died only a few days later, he was buried in Xanten’s city cemetery without any record of complaint.7 Schipper, “Across the Borders of Belief,” 144, 148. Catholic officials may have periodically raised objections, but there is no indication that burying Protestants—immigrants from the Netherlands or otherwise—caused serious problems in Goch, Xanten, Kleve, Kalkar, or Rees. The Catholic duke barred the practice, but local officials paid little heed to this order.8 Keller, Die Gegenreformation, 1:224. In 1583, knowing the duke’s orders full well, representatives from Rees, Kleve, and Xanten at the territorial diet (Landtag) even asked for explicit permission to bury Protestants in city cemeteries.9 Schipper, “Across the Borders of Belief,” 147 n.728; Dünnwald, Konfessionsstreit und Verfassungskonflikt, 170. As in the hometowns in the neighboring Catholic prince-bishopric of Münster, studied by David M. Luebke, Reformed laypeople seemed to prefer burial in the city cemeteries of officially Catholic towns.10 Luebke, “Confessions of the Dead.” While Goch’s Reformed elders sent church members to nearby Protestant towns for baptism and marriages, they left no record of sending families away for burials.11 Elders also complained about being barred from baptisms and marriages but never mentioned funerals. Van Booma, Communio clandestina, 1:248, 249; Schipper, “Across the Borders of Belief,” 149. Meanwhile, Catholics’ defended consecrated ground sporadically at best. A couple of incidents in which Protestant bodies were disinterred from Catholic cemeteries in Rees and Kalkar, occurring after the intensification of Catholicization in the 1590s, stand in contrast with the apparent normalcy of such burials in the preceding decades.12 Teschenmacher, Annales Ecclesiastici, 251–52. It was only after these cases that we find evidence of Reformed Protestants moving corpses to Protestant cities for burial.13 Schipper, “Across the Borders of Belief,” 148.

In Protestant cities, Reformed Protestants from the Low Countries buried their dead in city cemeteries, regardless of whether their congregation was legal or whether they worshipped regularly in the parish churches.14 French-speaking Protestant migrants in the English city of Southampton also shared the city cemetery. Spicer, French-speaking Reformed Community, 126. In Wesel, burial in the city cemetery was permitted to everyone, regardless of confession. By treating funerals as a civic obligation owed to all Christians, rather than a confessional marker, residents reduced conflicts over the treatment of the dead.15 For Catholic funerals, see SAW A3/56 fols. 25r–26r. An example of an Anabaptist who received an honorable burial is Herman Barbier’s wife in 1585. EKAW Gefach 37,6 fol. 1231. Spohnholz, Tactics of Toleration, 208. The fact that Protestants denied that the cemetery was sacred space certainly made this compromise easier. When Wesel’s government expanded the cemetery in the Mathena suburb in 1582, the city received contributions from the Walloon and Dutch Reformed communities as well as the “Heshusians,” a reference to supporters of the stridently Lutheran Tilemann Heshusius, who had been expelled from the city in 1564 for his anti-Reformed vitriol.16 SAW A3/60 fol. 70r. On Heshusius, see Spohnholz, Tactics of Toleration, 64–66; Barton, Um Luthers Erbe.

After a generation of living in the city, starting in the 1580s Reformed Netherlanders began requesting funeral tolling, even though Reformed theologians elsewhere rejected the practice as superstition because it suggested that the ringing might affect the outcome of the dead person’s soul.17 These results were previously published in Spohnholz, “Calvinism and Religious Exile,” 246–47. Elsewhere, frustrated Reformed ministers also fumed against this practice, but only where governments were supportive of their agenda was funeral tolling abolished. Van Deursen, “Kerk of parochie?”; Spicer, “’Rest of their bones’.” These men and women had not abandoned their religious convictions—they included devoted Reformed deacons and elders. Around the same time, the first Reformed Netherlanders also began purchasing church graves as markers of social status.18 EKAW Gefach 37,6 Willibrordi Kirchenrechnungen, 1581 fols. 1014–1015; 1584, fol. 1235. On this practice in general, Daniell, Death and Burial; Samuel Cohn, “The Place of the Dead in Flanders and Tuscany: Towards a Comparative History of the Black Death,” in Gordon and Marshall, Place of the Dead, 17–43. Reformed preachers fought against this tradition fiercely, with mixed results. Spicer, “’Rest of their bones’,” 167–83; Andrew Spicer, “‘Defyle not Christ’s Kirck with your Carrion’: Burial and the Development of Burial Aisles in Post-Reformation Scotland,” in Gordon and Marshall, Place of the Dead, 149–69. In such cases, migrants were adopting markers of civic honor and communal membership in funeral observance. While we have less detailed evidence for Frankfurt, it seems that Reformed immigrants were permitted to bury their dead in the city cemeteries—though they were only permitted dishonorable night burials—and there is no evidence of any conflicts raised by this limitation.19 Gorter, Gereformeerde migranten, 157–58.

Since they rejected the concept of holy ground, Reformed migrants often proved willing to bury their loved ones in Catholic or Protestant cemeteries. To them, the greater risk came from attending Catholic funerals, because of their concern around the temptations of the supposed idolatry associated with crucifixes, bell ringing, holy water, incense, and clerical vestments.20 Karant-Nunn, Reformation of Ritual, 170–86; Koslofsky, Reformation of the Dead. The elders at Goch, in September 1590, reprimanded Jacob Kop for attending the funeral of an Augustinian canon at the Windesheim monastery in nearby Gaesdonck, which they noted “would not have happened without superstitious and idolatrous ceremonies.”21 Van Booma, Communio clandestina, 1:328. The pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church in Cologne, Herman Faukelius, and the delegates at the classis meeting at Bedburg in 1580, urged Cologne’s Dutch-speaking consistory to limit the presence of Reformed Protestants at Catholic funerals. In response, elders of the congregation, who were mostly wealthy merchants, insisted that skipping the funeral of one’s neighbor would cause annoyance and confusion. They only urged that members make their concerns known about what they described as the superstitious parts of the ceremony, by which they presumably meant the priest’s surplice, crucifixes, incense, bell ringing, and holy water.22 For differences in funeral traditions, see Karant-Nunn, Reformation of Ritual, 138–89. In March 1587, Raymond Rijngold—an elder of Cologne’s Dutch-speaking congregation—even participated in the funeral procession of the Dutch Catholic merchant Simon de Decker. Aachen’s Reformed consistory took a similar perspective, allowing its members to attend Catholic funerals, so long as they did not embrace external signs of Catholic piety they considered superstitious.23 Kirchner, Katholiken, Lutheraner und Reformierte, 345–47. From March 1574 until October 1584, delegates at the classis meeting held in Aachen adopted this more lenient approach.24 WMV 2/2 35, 94, 118. Later, the classis again banned attending Catholic funerals in 1587, though it is unlikely that this rule was enforced.25 Gorter, Gereformeerde migranten, 156. In 1597, Aachen’s Reformed consistory reconsidered the question again, yet scribes did not record any new resolution.26 Gorter, Gereformeerde migranten, 156. As late as 1609, the Reformed in both cities argued that attending funerals was a Christian act as well as a civic act that marked one’s respect for one’s neighbors, and that friends and relations should attend funerals regardless of confession.27 Cologne’s Walloon Reformed in the city rejected this argument as tolerating papistry, but they did little to halt the practice. Langer, “Die konfessionelle Grenze,” 48–50. Delegates from the Reformed congregations in the classis of Cleves debated whether Reformed Christians could attend Catholic funerals in October 1575, April 1576, October 1582, October 1592, and May 1597.28 Simons, Synodalbuch, 514, 522, 577, 597, 607; Van Booma, Communio clandestina, 1:22, 23, 339, 342. The fact that ministers and elders kept returning to the issue suggests that the answer was far from clear to them, but it also suggests that members of their churches kept attending Catholic funerals. From a Protestant perspective, this ambivalence might be understandable. Funerals were civic rites, not sacraments.29 Luebke, Hometown Religion, 168–93. Their chief concern was to avoid the temptation of “idolatry,” though in truth living in a Catholic city probably meant that dealing with Catholic ornamentation and rituals was an unavoidable daily experience, not one limited to funerals.

Meanwhile, similar cases were not recorded in Frankfurt and Wesel, since Catholics were small minorities in both cities.30 On Catholics in Wesel, see Spohnholz, Tactics of Toleration, 161–76. On Catholics in Frankfurt, see Schindling, “Wachstum und Wandel,” 211–12; Meyn, Die Reichsstadt Frankfurt, 235. However, elders did warn members of their congregation against attending Lutheran funerals that included “superstitious” ritual elements that betrayed what Reformed Protestants described as Lutherans’ half-finished Reformation. Thus, in July 1577, the Dutch Reformed consistory in Frankfurt banned church members from attending Lutheran funerals because the local practice of carrying a cross at the head of the procession was simply too close to what they described as Catholic idolatry.31 Gorter, Gereformeerde migranten, 157–58. On this concern elsewhere, Koslofsky, Reformation of the Dead, 123. A few years earlier, in 1572, members of the consistory also debated whether to introduce sermons to their funerals, which was becoming a Lutheran practice, not a Reformed one. There is no record of a decision in this matter. Gorter, Gereformeerde migranten, 157 n.14. On Reformed views on this topic, Van den Broeke, “No Funeral Sermons”; Karant-Nunn, Reformation of Ritual, 185. Consistories at the synod held at Aachen, which included delegates from Cologne, permitted their own church members to use crosses as funeral markers. WMV 2/2, 119; Gorter, Gereformeerde migranten, 158. Meanwhile in Wesel, Reformed elders reported in the autumn of 1581 that many Reformed refugees disparaged the traditional burial practices followed by locals.32 EKAW Gefach 72,2 fols. 236r, 242r. One specific concern was the use of funeral wreaths (verheuen kranssen), which family members laid on the graves of their deceased relatives. Elders not only warned their own members to avoid this practice but asked the town pastors to discourage it. Unsurprisingly, magistrates refused to accept any limitations on the practice.33 SAW A3/61 fol. 81r. As with marriage, official uniformity coexisted with informal representations of difference.