Digital history

“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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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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HUMA 7P55: An Example of Distant Reading (Augustine and Melville)

HUMA 7P55: An Example of Distant Reading (Augustine and Melville)

Mike Driedger

In February 2020 the HUMA 7P55 reading group will be testing Voyant Tools in conjunction with several theoretical readings by Reinhart Koselleck, Raymond Williams, and Ian Hacking. If you’d like to Read More, you’ll find a Voyant Tools analysis frame that compares Augustine’s City of God with Melville’s Moby-Dick: Or, the Whale. The reason for offering this comparison is that one of the participants is part of another reading group at McMaster University in Hamilton that is focused on these two texts (click the link to RELIGST 775). Note: The image above the post is a fixed version of the dynamic cirrus (word cloud) available below in the interactive Voyant window, together with many other dynamic frames.

NOTE: Last updated on Friday, 31 Jan. 2020

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Using Zotero to Build Bibliographies: Why and How? (2018; updated 2023)

Using Zotero to Build Bibliographies: Why and How? (2018; updated 2023)

Mike Driedger

This is a quick introduction to using Zotero, a bibliographic tool that is unique and powerful because it allows for individual and collaborative work. Its main audience is intermediate- and graduate-level university students. I created this introduction originally for Gary Waite and his graduate students at the University of New Brunswick at Fredericton. This is background for the example later in this page. Suggestions for improving this introduction to Zotero are welcome. Read more →

The Blasphemy of Jan of Leiden: A research plan

The Blasphemy of Jan of Leiden: A research plan

Mike Driedger

ORIGINAL POST (May 2017): The Blasphemy of Jan of Leiden is the oldest text by Menno Simons, and it indicates that he was an early opponent of the Anabaptists of Münster. This, at least, has long been the consensus view about early Mennonite history. A challenge for researchers, however, is that the oldest copy of The Blasphemy is from 1627. This post introduces a project to find out more about this 1627 text.

UPDATE (Sept 2019): The transcription project is still in planning. Brookelnn Cooper has completed her MA research paper (“Identifying the Anonymous Printer of Menno Simons’ The Blasphemy of Jan van Leiden [1627]: A Typographical Analysis”) and her degree at Brock U, and she has begun doctoral studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, where she’s working with Jeffrey Collins.

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Ngram reflections on Henri Krop’s Faultline 1700 paper

Mike Driedger

DBNL-Ngram-Godsdienst-enHenri Krop’s paper at the Faultline 1700 conference discussed shifting conceptions of religion in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. His paper’s short title was “From Singular to Plural.” Inspired in part by his paper, I have tried out a new digital humanities tool from the DBNL, the online database for Dutch literature. The graph above shows the frequency across time of the keywords godsdienst (religion) in green and godsdiensten (religions) in blue. For more on the DBNL ngram viewer, see this video. I haven’t been able to figure out how to embed an active version of the tool in this blog. The data points on the graph are clickable, if you use it as intended at dbnl.org.