Special Issue of _Church History and Religious Culture_ (2021)

Mike Driedger

We (my co-editors and I) are pleased to announce the publication of a Special Issue of Church History and Religious Culture (101: 2-3) that was released in late July 2021. The theme is “Spiritualism in Early Modern Europe.”

The collection features essays by Theo Brok, Michael Driedger, William Cook Miller, Francesco Quatrini, Nina Schroeder, Anselm Schubert, Christine Schulte am Hülse, Nigel Smith, James Stayer, Stefano Villani, Hans de Waardt, and Gary Waite. The guest editorial team consists of Driedger, Quatrini, Schroeder, and Waite. In addition to spiritualist cultures among Protestants in post-reformation England, Germany, and the Low Countries (approx. 1521-1721), the collection will be of interest to scholars of religious dissent and nonconformity, the variety of ways that researchers discuss “radicalism” in early modern religious cultures, and the debates about “the Radical Reformation” and “the Radical Enlightenment.”

You can link to the Special Issue by going to https://brill.com/view/journals/chrc/101/2-3/chrchttps://brill.com/view/journals/chrc/101/2-3/chrc.101.issue-2-3.xml. There you can find free downloads of the Special Issue introduction, plus several other Open Access articles. All of the other articles are available to CHRC subscribers, and the articles will soon be available through university library connections (after the embargo period).

The collection began at a symposium in Amsterdam in the summer of 2019. Other symposium contributors who have published related work in other venues and are therefore worthy of special attention from readers of this collection are:

We recommend their work highly!

The guest editorial team would like to thank the journal’s editors and production staff (Ward Holder and Dieuwertje Kooij in particular) for their work in guiding this collection from a proposal to publication!

Norman Cohn’s Divergent Legacies: A Presentation on YouTube

Mike Driedger

On the 23rd of June, 2020, I gave a paper via remote link to an audience at the Europa Universität in Frankfurt / Oder. The talk is entitled:

Reflections on The Pursuit of the Millennium, Europe’s Inner Demons, and The War on Heresy: Six-Word Arguments to Highlight Norman Cohn’s Divergent Legacies. (The orange text is important when you peruse the Prezi frames.)

I used the Prezi below in the presentation. You can explore it on your own by going to https://prezi.com/raocgxnxjxkv/. There are many frames that I did not discuss in detail.

If you would like to read my presentation, you can find it by opening the rest of this post.

UPDATE from 27 May 2021: I have changed the title of this post (although the URL remains the same). The original post indicated that the YouTube video and other parts of the post were related to a June 2020 presentation (Vortrag) I was making at the Europa-Universität in Germany.

UPDATE from 24 June 2020: I have put the recording of my presentation on YouTube. The text below is a close but not exact transcript of the presentation.

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True Crime and Conspiracy Theories: The Sherman Murders (#podcastpairings)

True Crime and Conspiracy Theories: The Sherman Murders (#podcastpairings)

Mike Driedger

In December 2017 a Canadian billionaire couple, Barry and Honey Sherman, were found dead in their Toronto home. At first the police suspected a murder-suicide, but after protests from the family and a private counter-investigation, the police were persuaded to change their theory of the case. The investigation is ongoing. This post provides links to three podcast series that I find helpful for learning about the case in all its complexities.

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Podcast Pairings (#podcastpairings): A Preview of More Posts (2023)

Mike Driedger

This blog series is focused on my main research subjects: the history of Dutch- and German-speaking adult baptizing Protestants (Mennonites, Doopsgezinden and others maligned as “Anabaptists”) and other European religious minorities before about 1850. This is a very specialized area of research.

With this post I’m starting a new focus for upcoming entries: “Podcast Pairings”. I plan to use posts under this heading to record my broader reading and listening interests.

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“Reading” Early Modern Dutch Texts with Voyant Tools: Examples from Three Revolutionary-Era Mennonite Sermons

“Reading” Early Modern Dutch Texts with Voyant Tools: Examples from Three Revolutionary-Era Mennonite Sermons

Mike Driedger

THIS POST WAS FIRST COMPLETED ON 1 March 2023

The Bigger Purposes of This Post Are Three-Fold:

  1. to promote digital text analysis as a complement to traditional techniques of close reading, and Voyant Tools as a first-choice for digital analysis programs;
  2. to advertise my Dutch stop-words list (available in Voyant Tools and in Academia.edu); and
  3. to give some background about the career and ideas of the unconventional Dutch Mennonite preacher and revolutionary-era activist — François Adriaan (Francis Adrian) van der Kemp.

In this post I have several interactive windows from Voyant Tools. The text-combination I use in each Voyant window includes 3 sermons from the anti-Orange activist and Dutch Patriot Movement leader François Adriaan van der Kemp. Each sermon is from Elftal Kerkelyke Redevoeringen [11 Sermons]. In 1782, when he published the collection, van der Kemp was the preacher of the Doopsgezind (also known in English as “Mennonite”) congregation in Leiden. The sermons were presented at several Doopsgezind congregations in the Dutch Republic. The stop-word list helps make the Voyant analysis manageable and productive.

NOTE: This post is best viewed on a laptop or desktop computer, not a phone or smaller tablet.

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The Mennonite Preacher François Adriaan van der Kemp’s 1782 Sermon on the Duties of Wives (from _Elftal Kerkelycke Redevoeringen_; original Dutch with no commentary)

Mike Driedger

DE PLICHTEN DER VROUWEN.

Coloss. III: 18.

Gy vrouwen! zyt uwe eigene mannen onderdaenig, geljk ‘t betaemt in den Heere.

 

“Wel dien, die een vernuftig wyf heeft; wel dien die een deugdzaem wyf heeft; dies leeft hy nog eens zo lange. Een huislyk wyf is haeren man ten vreugde, en vervult de jaeren zyns levens met vreede. Een deugdelyk wyf is eene edele gave, en wordt dien gegeven, die God vreest. ‘t Zy dat hy ryk of arm is, zo is ‘t hem een troost en maekt hem altyd vrolyk. Een vriendelyk wyf verblydt haeren man, en wanneer zy vernuftiglyk met hem omgaet, ververscht zy hem zyn harte; een vrouwe die zwygen kan is eene gave Gods; eene welgemanierde vrouwe is een onwaerdeerbaer goed, het liefst op aerde; en een kuisch wyf is ‘t kostelykst van allen”.

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A Dutch Mennonite Preacher’s Revolutionary Sermons from 1782: Background about _Elftal Kerkelycke Redevoeringen_ [11 Sermons]

Mike Driedger

Bow before the God of Freedom, or bend your neck under the Yoke.

— François Adriaan van der Kemp, 1782

 

Original from _Elftal Kerkelyke Redevoeringen_, page 243: …”bukt U voor den God der Vryheid, of kromt uwen nek onder het Juk.”

Van der Kemp is probably best known among scholars today as a friend to several of the American Founding Fathers and an immigrant to the young American Republic. His pre-American, Mennonite career in the Dutch Republic is much less well-known, especially in the English-speaking world. This post is about what might seem at first glance to be a surprising link between religion and politics. After all, what was van der Kemp doing giving a set of revolutionary sermons? Weren’t Mennonites pacifists? The answers are quite complex. This post will provide some historical background to the sermons. For a biography of François Adriaan (Francis Adrian) van der Kemp, see the biography included at https://dutchdissenters.net/wp/2019/03/francois-adriaan-van-der-kemp/.

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Happy Birthday, John Lydon: Musings about Musical and Religious Nonconformists

Happy Birthday, John Lydon: Musings about Musical and Religious Nonconformists

Mike Driedger

UNDER CONSTRUCTION…This is a draft post, started on Jan. 31, punk superstar John Lydon’s birthday (born 1956).  Is it a coincidence that Menno Simons also died on Jan. 31? Weird, right? What could be weirder? Answer: The fact that Menno Simons shaped his career as a religious reformer around his reaction against the legacy and memory of Jan van Leiden (aka John of Leyden)!

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Mennonite Book Ownership: Evidence from Early Modern Dutch Book Sales Catalogues

Mike Driedger

Updated: 30 Dec. 2022

Below is a list of Dutch Doopsgezind-Mennonites whose estates created auction catalogues of books. The source is Books Sales Catalogues of the Dutch Republic, 1599-1800 (https://primarysources.brillonline.com/browse/book-sales-catalogues-online). The purpose for collecting these names is my ongoing research on early modern Dutch Mennonite cultural history. I have not yet had a chance to analyze any of these catalogues, but I have written about another one from Germany (published in the 1999 edition of the Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter). You can find a pre-publication version of the essay at https://www.academia.edu/11125489/Gerrit_Karsdorp_1729_1811_Mennonite_Preacher_and_Supporter_of_the_Enlightenment_The_Library_of_a_Hamburg_Businessman_1999_.

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Amsterdam Conference Presentation, 12 Nov. 2022

Amsterdam Conference Presentation, 12 Nov. 2022

Mike Driedger

Amsterdam as a City of Refuge for Contributors to the Growing Book Industry during “the Golden Age”:

Evidence from the eCartico Website

This paper presents some preliminary work based on an analysis of data collected in a multi-year, online research project (eCartico). eCartico is one of several digital projects in early modern history based at the Universiteit van Amsterdam. I am not associated actively with any of these projects, but I do know one of eCartico’s main contributors.

My purpose in this paper is to highlight this valuable resource for participants at the conference on “Amsterdam as a Haven for Religious Refugees in the Early Modern Period” (10-12 Nov. 2022, held at the Embassy of the Free Mind / Ritman Research Institute in Amsterdam). For more details about the conference, go to https://embassyofthefreemind.com/en/library/271-amsterdam-as-haven.

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“Anabaptist,” Mennonite and Doopsgezind Women in Early Modern Dutch History (ca. 1570-1800)

“Anabaptist,” Mennonite and Doopsgezind Women in Early Modern Dutch History (ca. 1570-1800)

Mike Driedger

Updated: 3 Jan. 2023. The basic message of this post is: Check out the Vrouwenlexicon!!! There are lots of fascinating details here about the lives of women from adult baptizing backgrounds before 1800. Look below for more details. I cite this post in my 2023 article “The Year 1625, the Dutch Republic, and Book History” (https://www.academia.edu/93269154/The_Year_1625_the_Dutch_Republic_and_Book_History_Perspectives_for_Reframing_Studies_of_Mennonites_and_Early_Modernity_2023_).

Updated: 18 Feb. 2023. In “The Year 1625, the Dutch Republic, and Book History” (Jan. 2023) I provide reasons for preferring “adult baptizers” to “Anabaptists” or even “Mennonites” as a general term. In short, the people who baptized adults in the early modern world were diverse. In addition to Mennonites, they included people from Mennonite milieus who rejected that name, and they included Baptists (of course), as well as some Socinians and Collegiants. With this diversity in mind, I have expanded the list below to include women who do not fit into the general framework of Mennonite church history.

On the technical front, I have also updated the URLs from http the https (it looks like the website has been updated).

Names that I have added in Feb. 2023 I have marked with an *. In an older version of this post I had two lists, and I have now integrated these lists into one.

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