Batavia's Graveyard (50 page)

Belijtgen Jacobsdr, her pregnancy, her illness, and her maidservant
Ibid.;
ONAH 99, fol. 131 ONAH 130, fol. 159, 198. For her age, see ONAH 130, fol. 219v, where she
is obliquely referred to as a “young mother”; this would hardly have applied in
this period had she been Cornelisz’s age, 29 or 30. For the appearance of Dutch
women, see Van Deursen, op. cit., pp. 81–2. For the contemporary incidence of death
in childbirth, see Brockliss and Jones, op. cit., p. 62.

Cathalijntgen van Wijmen
ONAH 131, fol. 12. The remains of the afterbirth
were finally removed by a “wise woman” who was the mother of Belijtgen’s
maidservant five days after the birth. ONAH 99, fol. 134v.

Belijtgen as an assistant in the apothecary shop
See ONAH 130, fol. 159,
where Jacobsdr is described as sitting in the shop on 28 April 1628.

Breast-feeding in the Dutch Republic
Simon Schama,
The Embarrassment of
Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age
(London: Fontana, 1991),
pp. 538–40.

Burial of Cornelisz’s son
GAH, burial registers 70, fol.
83v.

Syphilis in infants
Congenital syphilis is a well-recognized condition
that affects about 70 percent of children whose mothers are infected with the disease and
have not been treated.
T. pallidum,
the bacterium that causes the condition,
infects the fetus through the placenta and the child is born with syphilis. The symptoms
may not be visible at first and may take up to five weeks to manifest themselves. Early
indications of the disease include bloody snuffles in the first weeks of the baby’s
life, the appearance of a syphilitic rash after one to two weeks, and fissures on the lips
and anus.

It was once thought that diseased wet nurses could infect their charges with
syphilis through their milk; indeed Ludwig II, the notorious “Mad King of
Bavaria,” was popularly supposed to have been given syphilis by his nurse. This
method of transmission is now thought to be a myth. Nevertheless, medical literature
acknowledges the possibility that a very young infant may be infected with the disease by
a third party shortly after birth. Transmission is by contact with open sores on the
infected person’s body. Luger studied the case of three syphilitic infants reported
from Vienna in 1968. His findings were that the disease could not have been transmitted
venereally but was probably the product of crowded conditions and unsanitary housing.
Eisenberg et al. had already reported 20 similar cases of asexually acquired syphilis from
Chicago. H. Eisenberg, F. Plotke, and A. Baker, “Asexual Syphilis in Children,”
Journal
of Venereal Diseases Information
30 (1949): 7–11; A. Luger, “Non-Venereally
Transmitted ‘Endemic’ Syphilis in Vienna,”
British Journal of Venereal
Diseases
48 (1972): 356–60; K. Rathblum, “Congenital Syphilis,”
Sexually
Transmitted Diseases
10 (1983): 93–9.

“. . . this was a very serious concern.”
Not only was it the
case that in the Dutch Republic at this time, women infected with venereal diseases by
their husbands were considered to have grounds for separation (Schama, op. cit., p. 406);
in Haarlem, in the 1620s, it was difficult to survive at all without the goodwill and
respect of one’s neighbors.

Like many other cities in the United Provinces, Haarlem was a town full of
strangers. The population had grown by a third since 1600, swollen by refugees who had
fled from the Southern Netherlands during the war with Spain. Others, including Jeronimus
and perhaps his wife, had arrived from other parts of the Republic, bringing with them a
variety of religious views, social mores, and degrees of wealth. For the 10,000 immigrants
who had moved to the city, most of whom had no family or friends to whom they could turn
in times of trouble, it was particularly important to be able to rely on assistance from
the
gebuurte,
or neighborhood.

Haarlem recognized almost 100 such neighborhoods, and the Grote Houtstraat, where
Cornelisz lived, contained no fewer than five. Honor mattered greatly in these miniature
societies. Without it, it was impossible to obtain credit, and—since the presence of
disreputable people brought discredit on their neighbors—any loss of honor was a
matter of concern for the whole
gebuurte.
It is only in this context that the
frantic efforts that Jeronimus and Belijtgen made to clear themselves of the suspicion
that they were infected with syphilis can be properly understood. See Gabrielle Dorren,
“Burgers en Hun Besognes. Burgemeestersmemorialen en Hun Bruikbaarheid als Bron voor
Zeventiende-Eeuws Haarlem,”
Jaarboeck Haarlem
(1995): 58; idem,
Het Soet
Vergaren: Haarlems Buurtleven in de Zeventiende Eeuw
(Haarlem: Arcadia, 1998), pp.
12–3, 16, 22–3, 27–9; idem, “Communities Within the Community,”
pp. 178, 180–3.

Economic conditions in the Dutch Republic in the 1620s
Israel, op. cit.,
pp. 478–9.

The disgrace of bankruptcy
Schama, op. cit., pp. 343–4; Geoffrey
Cotterell,
Amsterdam: The Life of a City
(Farnborough: DC Heath, 1973), p.
118.

Loth Vogel
ONAH 99, fol. 159v. There is no surviving record of any person
of this name in the Haarlem birth, marriage, or burial registers. However, the historian
Gabrielle Dorren notes the existence of an Otto Vogel, an extremely wealthy corn merchant
from Amsterdam who settled in Haarlem in the hope of improving the health of his sickly
wife. This Vogel was in Haarlem by 1604 and resisted several efforts by local dignitaries
to force him to become a full citizen of his adopted town. Eventually, Vogel became so
irritated by this pressure that he threatened to leave the town, taking with him
his—unnamed—brother. It seems possible that this brother may have been
Cornelisz’s Loth. “De Eerzamen. Zeventiende-Eeuws Burgerschap in Haarlem,”
in R. Aerts and H. te Velde (eds.),
De Stijl van de Burger: Over Nederlandse
Burgerlijke Cultuur vanaf de Middeleeuwen
(Kampen: Kok Agora, 1998), p. 70.

The case against Heyltgen
For the condition of Belijtgen, see the
testimony of Gooltgen Joostdr, 3 May 1628 (ONAH 130, fol. 159); Aeffge Jansdr, Ytgen
Hendricxdr, Grietgen Dircksdr, and Wijntge Abrahamsdr, 18 June 1628 (ONAH 130, fol. 198);
Maijcke Pietersdr van den Broecke, 6 July 1628 (ONAH 130, fol. 219); Willem Willemsz
Brouwerius (Cornelisz’s physician), 8 August 1628 (ONAH 99, fol. 131); Aeltgen
Govertsdr, 9 August (ONAH 99, fol. 134); and Aecht Jansdr and Ytgen Henricxdr, 11 August
1628 (ONAH 99, fol. 134v). For Heyltgen, see the testimony of Jannitge Pietersdr, Willem
Willemsz, Grietgen Woutersdr, Hester Ghijsbertsdr, Jannitgen Joostsdr, and Elsken Adamsdr,
27 July 1628 (ONAH 60, fol. 99); Elsken Adamsdr, 11 August 1628 (ONAH 99, fol.
135v).

Aert Dircxsz
ONAH 60, fol. 99. Asked by one Cornelia Jansdr who Dircxsz
was, Heyltgen is alleged to have replied: “A dirty whore hunter.” In the context
of the dispute, this might well be taken to suggest that her former lover carried a
venereal disease.

Heyltgen’s response
ONAH 99, fol. 131; ONAH 130, fol. 159.

“She twisted the scanty evidence”
Aeltgen Govertsdr, who had
given a statement to the solicitor Sonnebijl at the wet nurse’s request, later
disputed the accuracy of the deposition he produced in her name. She had, she said,
protested at the time, to which Sonnebijl’s wife, who was also present, had rejoined:
“Well, woman, one cannot write perfectly—do you think my husband hasn’t got
a soul to lose?” ONAH 99, fol. 134. Unfortunately the Sonnebijl archive has not
survived, denying us Heyltgen’s side of this long-running dispute.

Heyltgen’s reappearance in the Grote Houtstraat
ONAH 130, fol.
159.

Cornelisz comes to terms with Vogel
ONAH 99, fol. 159. The solicitor on
this occasion was Willem van Triere.

Cornelisz as an Anabaptist
There is no definite proof of Jeronimus’s
Anabaptist antecedents, though V. D. Roeper (ed.),
De Schipbreuk van de
Batavia,
1629
(Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 1994), p. 14, and Philip Tyler, “The
Batavia
Mutineers: Evidence of an Anabaptist ‘Fifth Column’ Within 17th Century Dutch
Colonialism?”
Westerly
(December 1970): 33–45 have previously speculated
that he had a background in the Mennonite community. The fact that he appears to have been
unbaptized (for which see JFP 28 Sep 1629 [DB 211]; there is also no trace of any baptism
in the surviving records of Leeuwarden, Bergum, or Haarlem) is obviously suggestive.
Perhaps more significantly, the Haarlem archives indicate that his wife, Belijtgen, was
herself an Anabaptist (in ONAH 130, fol. 159 Heyltgen Jansdr describes her, among other
insults, as “a Mennonite whore”). Definite proof is unlikely ever to emerge; the
records of the Haarlem Mennonites go back no further than the second half of the
seventeenth century. But I am inclined to feel that there is an excellent chance Cornelisz
came from Anabaptist stock.

Anabaptist numbers in Leeuwarden
Israel, op. cit., p. 656.

Religious toleration and persecution
Ibid. pp. 372–83.

Anabaptist origins and views
William Estep,
The Anabaptist Story: An
Introduction to Sixteenth-Century Anabaptism
(Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans,
1996), pp. xi, 14–28, 171; Stayer,
Anabaptists and the Sword,
p. 290; Norman
Cohn,
The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists
of the Middle Ages
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 253; Israel, op. cit.
pp. 84–95, 656; Van Deursen,
Plain Lives in a Golden Age,
pp. 307,
311.

Anabaptist millenarianism and the siege of Münster
Krahn,
Dutch
Anabaptism,
pp. 114–5, 120–4, 130, 135–50; Stayer, op. cit., pp.
191–3, 227–80; Cohn, op. cit., pp. 259–61.

Anabaptist revolutionaries in Amsterdam and Friesland
Krahn, op. cit., pp.
148, 154; Israel, op. cit. pp. 92–6, 655–6.

The emergence of the Mennonites
Israel, op. cit., pp.
85–90.

The Batenburgers and their successors
Jan van Batenburg was born around
1495, and became mayor of a town in Overijssel. During the early 1530s, he converted to
Anabaptism and found himself the leader of a large number of his coreligionists in
Friesland and Groningen. He had Münsterite sympathies, but in 1535 one group of his
followers urged him to announce himself as “a new David” and before long he had
established a new and wholly independent sect, which quickly became the most extreme of
all the early Anabaptist movements.

The Batenburgers believed that every man and everything on earth was owned, in a
literal sense, by God. They also believed that they were God’s chosen children. It
followed, in their theology, that everything on earth was theirs to do with what they
pleased; indeed, killing “infidel,” by which they meant any man who was not a
member of their sect, was pleasing to their God. Those who joined the sect after
1535—when the Münsterite leadership had declared the door to salvation to be
closed—could never be baptized, they thought, but these men and women would
nevertheless survive the coming apocalypse and be reborn in the coming Kingdom of God as
servants of the Anabaptist elite. The Batenburgers also shared the views of the radical
Münsterites on polygamy and property; all women, and all goods, were held in common. A
few Batenburger marriages did occur, and Van Batenburg himself retained the right to
present a deserving member of his sect with a “wife” from the group’s
general stock of women. However, such unions could be ended just as readily, and on
occasion the prophet did order an unwilling wife to return to servicing the remainder of
the Batenburger men.

Van Batenburg seems to have commanded the loyalty of at least several hundred
men. Members of his sect were required to swear oaths of absolute secrecy, however, and
had to endure a painful initiation designed to ensure they would be able to resist torture
if they were ever captured, so the true extent of his following never emerged. The
Batenburgers did not gather openly in public and had their leader’s dispensation to
pose as ordinary Lutherans or Catholics, going to church and living apparently normal
lives in the lands along the borders of the Holy Roman Empire and The Netherlands for
several years after the fall of Münster. They recognized one another by secret symbols
displayed on their houses or their clothing, and by certain ways of styling their hair. It
was only after Van Batenburg himself was captured and burned at the stake that they came
together at last, infesting the Imperial marches for at least another decade under the
leadership of a Leyden weaver called Cornelis Appelman. By now the group had been reduced
to a core of no more than 200 men, most of whom were joined by bonds of family or
marriage.

Appelman remained active until his own capture in 1545. He was if anything more
extreme than Van Batenburg, giving himself the title of “The Judge” and killing
any of his followers who refused to join his criminal activities, or proved themselves lax
in killing, robbing or committing arson. Like Van Batenburg, he preached and practiced
polygamy, with the additional refinement that the women of his sect could leave their
husbands at any time should they decide to marry a man further up the Batenburger
hierarchy. Appelman himself murdered his own wife when she refused him leave to marry her
daughter, and subsequently killed the girl as well.

After the Judge’s death, the Batenburger sect fragmented into several tiny
groups, one of which, the Children of Emlichheim, was active in the middle 1550s. Its sole
creed appears to have been revenge against the infidel; on one notorious occasion its
members stabbed to death 125 cows that belonged to a local monastery. The last of the
Batenburger splinter groups, and also the largest, was the “Folk of Johan
Willemsz.” This sect persisted until about 1580, living by robbery and murder in the
countryside around Wesel, on the Dutch-German border. It was when Willemsz himself was
burned at the stake that the remnants of the group found their way to Friesland. L. G.
Jansma,
Melchiorieten, Münstersen en Batenburgers: een Sociologische Analyse van een
Millenistische Beweging uit de 16e Eeuw
(Buitenpost: np, 1977), pp. 217–35, 237,
244–75; Jansma, “Revolutionairee Wederdopers na 1535” in MG Buist et al.
(eds.),
Historisch Bewogen. Opstellen over de radicale reformatie in de 16e en 17e eeuw
(Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff, 1984), pp. 51–3; S. Zijlstra, “David Joris en
de Doperse Stromingen (1536–1539), in ibid., pp. 130–1, 138; M. E. H. N. Mout,
“Spiritualisten in de Nederlandse reformatie van de Zestiende Eeuw,”
Bijdragen
en Mededelingen Betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden
111 (1996):
297–313.