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

February 23, 2023March 4, 2023Mike 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.”

Source = National Library, The Netherlands

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/.

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

January 31, 2023February 5, 2023Mike 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)!

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

November 29, 2022December 31, 2022Mike 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_.

Amsterdam Conference Presentation, 12 Nov. 2022

November 12, 2022November 12, 2022Mike 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.

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

May 26, 2022February 18, 2023Mike 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.

Evidence of “Anabaptist” Book Production, 1521-1700: Some Technical Notes

May 3, 2022January 5, 2023Mike Driedger

Last updated: January 2023

Headline:

A mainstream assumption in Mennonite studies since the early 20th century (maybe the 1880s, more accurately) is that early modern Mennonite history (i.e., Mennonite history before 1800 or even 1900) was shaped primarily by German culture and German-language sources. This assumption is problematic because it is built on an empirically questionable foundation. In other words, the sources and evidence for this assumption are weak.

The essay for which I prepared this research — “The Year 1625, the Dutch Republic, and Book Production: Perspectives for Reframing Studies of Mennonites and Early Modernity” — has now been printed in three languages. You can find the details by clicking the links for the German, Dutch, and English versions.

Joseph Sattler, _Die Wiedertäufer_ (1895): The Complete Illustrations

November 4, 2021January 1, 2023Mike Driedger

This post shares images from a famous 19th-century German printmaker that depict Anabaptist rule at Münster in the 1530s. It also outlines how these images have been confused repeatedly as 16th-century images.

UPDATED: 1 Jan. 2023

“The Ghost of Menno Simons”: 18th-century trolling?

October 31, 2021August 11, 2022Mike Driedger

For a little fun on Hallowe’en 2021, this post provides highlights from a short, 8-page pamphlet written in the voice of a ghostly Menno Simons. The Dutch-language pamphlet is anonymous and undated, but it from the early 1780s. This was the era of the Patriot Movement against Orange family rule in the Dutch Republic. One of the leading national organizers of the Movement was the Mennonite preacher in Leiden, François Adriaan van der Kemp. The anonymous author of the pamphlet uses the voice of Ghost Menno to wag a finger at Van der Kemp and his ilk. In 2020s terms, the author seems to be “trolling” democratically oriented, anti-Orange, Dutch Mennonites of the 1780s.

You can read more about Van der Kemp at this website (https://dutchdissenters.net/wp/2015/03/quotation-kemp-1782/, and https://dutchdissenters.net/wp/2019/03/francois-adriaan-van-der-kemp/).

Post updated: 2 Nov. 2021 (see text that follows the image of the title page below)

Special Issue of _Church History and Religious Culture_ (2021)

August 9, 2021December 21, 2024Mike 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.”

Conspiracy thinking, past and present

August 20, 2020August 20, 2020Mike Driedger

This is the start of new post. In it, I’ll highlight The Expert Guide to Conspiracy Thinking from the Anthill Podcast. Here’s a trailer for the series.

Stay tuned for more soon.

Dutch Dissenters

Prof. Mike Driedger's research website

Author: Mike Driedger