Religious Cruelty Marked Dutch War for Freedom

TODAY the Roman Catholic Hierarchy in the Netherlands appears to be in the forefront of the criticism of Pope Paul’s policies. In particular was the Dutch stand opposing mandatory celibacy for priests considered an “unforgivable sin” by the Vatican. But did you know that four hundred years ago the Dutch were also in the forefront in opposing the Vatican’s policies?

The Dutch had good reason for this, for regarding those days a historian states: “Nowhere was the persecution of heretics more relentless than in the Netherlands.” That this is not exaggeration is seen from the remarks of their chief persecutor, Philip II: “Wherefore introduce the Spanish Inquisition? . . . the inquisition of the Netherlands is much more pitiless than that of Spain.”

It was primarily this inquisition that caused the people of the Netherlands to revolt and eventually to throw off the Catholic yoke of Spain. For eighty years (except for a truce from 1609 to 1620) the Dutch fought, and in 1648 they gained their freedom with the signing of the treaties of Münster and Westphalia. With these, “Spain yielded everything for which the Dutch contended.” Incidentally, what was then the Netherlands includes what today is Belgium.

Early History

The history of the Netherlands goes back to 58 B.C.E., when Julius Caesar conquered the area of the Low Countries. A few centuries later, missionaries of Christendom reached those lands. Religious intolerance was introduced by Charles Martel (“The Hammer”) in the eighth century and was continued by his grandson Charlemagne. Those rulers of Christendom gave the pagans the choice: Be baptized or die!

Some five centuries later, religious intolerance in the Low Countries again flourished, this time, not against pagans, but against those who found the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church at variance with the Bible. Among these victims of religious cruelty were the Anabaptists, the Waldenses and the Lollards. By and large, these preached “obedience to God, reliance on the Bible as a guide to Christian living, and simplicity of worship.”

Some idea of the nature of their sufferings may be gained from the historical records that tell what usually happened to a Waldenses victim. After his guilt was “proved” by hot iron or boiling kettle, he was stripped and bound to a stake. He was then flayed, that is, skinned alive, from the neck to the waist and swarms of bees were let loose to fasten on his bleeding flesh to torture him until death intervened.

The Rule of Charles V

In time the French Burgundian rulers managed to replace the successors of Charlemagne in the Low Countries. Through intermarriage with these new rulers the house of Hapsburg gained control of the seventeen provinces comprising this territory. And so it was that Charles V, a native, at the age of fifteen became ruler of the Netherlands, and at nineteen, in 1519, he also became emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of the Germanic nations.

Emperor Charles was greatly concerned, not only with making the seventeen provinces a political entity, but also with having them united religiously. We are told that “he spoke German, Spanish, Italian, French, and Flemish . . . He could be stately with Spaniards, familiar with the Flemings, witty with the Italians.” Because of these qualities, he was admired by some despite his grave crimes against God and man.

Political factors had caused Charles to make the treaty of Passau with the Lutherans of Germany, but in the Netherlands, as in Spain, he felt he could do as he really wished, so he promoted the Inquisition. In a 1521 edict to the Netherlanders he stated: “As it appears that the aforesaid Martin [Luther] is not a man, but a devil under the form of a man, and clothed in the dress of a priest, the better to bring the human race to hell and damnation, therefore all his disciples and converts are to be punished with death and forfeiture of all their goods.”

Further edicts became increasingly severe, reaching their nadir in his Edict of 1550. Now forbidden were all meetings in homes for religious worship, all reading of the Bible and all discussion of controversial religious matters.a Moreover, it was decreed that all men found guilty and who repented were to be beheaded, whereas repentant women were to be buried alive. Those who refused to recant were to be burned alive. The only way a ‘heretic’ could escape death was by betraying others.

This Edict of 1550 further warned that officials who dared to show leniency or mercy were to be deprived of their office and punished. The edict was to be a perpetual one, “published forever, once in every six months, in every city and village of the Netherlands.” It is estimated that during the forty-year rule of Charles between fifty and a hundred thousand Netherlanders perished in the Inquisition.

Philip II Succeeds Charles

Because of wretched ill health Charles V turned over his rule of the Netherlands and certain of his other dominions to his son Philip II, although handing over to his brother Ferdinand his office of emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. From his place of retirement, in a monastery, Charles urged his son Philip to be “cutting out the root of heresy with rigor and rude chastisement.”

Philip, however, needed no such urging, for dearest to him was his title “Most Catholic King.” He estranged himself from his Dutch subjects by his religious intolerance as well as by his being able to speak only Spanish, and by surrounding himself with Spaniards. He married Catholic Mary Tudor, queen of England, better known as “Bloody Mary” because of her ruthless killing of Protestants during her brief reign. In 1556 Philip reenacted the notorious Edict of 1550, and with that began what has been called “the longest, the darkest, the bloodiest, the most important episode in the history of the religious reformation in Europe.”

Philip appointed inquisitor generals who sent out a dozen inquisition officers throughout the Netherlands to ferret out and execute ‘heretics.’ Most notorious of these was Peter Titelmann, a sadist who joked as his victims writhed in the flames. Typical of the way he went about his business was his breaking into a certain house and finding ten persons reading the Bible and praying. For these offenses he immediately had them burned at the stake. It is told that Titelmann once met up with a secular sheriff who asked him how it was that he needed no protective military escort whereas the sheriff did. Titelmann replied: “I seize only the innocent and virtuous, who make no resistance.” The sheriff replied: “But if you arrest all the good people and I all the bad, ’tis difficult to say who in the world is to escape chastisement.”

The Duke of Alva

For ten years and more Philip II urged the local authorities in the Netherlands to support his inquisition, during which time he returned to Spain. But they were becoming more and more reluctant to do his bidding. As the number of ‘heretics’ kept increasing, Philip resorted to more drastic measures. He sent the most skillful and experienced general in all Europe, the duke of Alva, to stamp out this heresy once and for all. This was in the year 1567.

The duke arrived in the Low Countries with a force of 24,000 persons and 6,000 horses. Included were 10,000 of the best soldiers of Europe, together with 2,000 prostitutes. He at once established a “Council of Troubles,” known by the Dutch as the “Blood Council.” By treachery and deceit he caught leading Netherlanders in his net, and mere wealth was sufficient to doom a man.

Early in the duke’s rule the pope’s Holy Office even went so far as to condemn all three million Netherlanders to death as heretics, and ten days later Philip II confirmed the decree. The New Catholic Encyclopedia states: “Alva’s six-year reign was to be an unforgettable reign of terror in which the Spanish government attempted forcibly to uproot the now firmly entrenched Protestantism of the Northern provinces. . . . Alva . . . ruthlessly attacked, subdued, and pillaged without any mercy [the cities of] Mons, Malines, Zutphen, Naarden, and Haarlem.” Still he was losing out, for the firm Dutch defenders took a great toll of the duke’s forces. Thus it had cost his army of 30,000 seven months of time and 12,000 lives to take the city of Haarlem. War-weary, the duke finally sneaked out of the country to elude his creditors, boasting at the same time that he had executed 18,600 heretics during his six years. This could well be, for in one ‘holy week’ he killed 800.

William “the Silent”

The fact that Philip II and his agents, such as the duke of Alva and his successors (Don Juan of Austria and the duke of Parma), all failed to subdue the Dutch was no doubt due largely to the role played by William of Orange, “the Silent,” and his sons who followed him. In his teens William had been the favorite of Emperor Charles V and in time became stadtholder or governor of three of the Netherlands’ northern provinces. He earned his title “the Silent” because of his hiding his consternation upon hearing of the plot by Philip II and the king of France to wipe out Protestantism by extirpating all Protestants in their realms.

Though himself a Catholic with no sympathy for the Reformed religion, William saw that “an inquisition for the Netherlands had been resolved upon more cruel than that of Spain, since [one] would need but to look askance at an image to be cast into the flames.” He tells that he felt “compassion for so many virtuous men and women thus devoted to massacre,” and determined to do all he could to save them. Though commanded by Philip II to wipe out all sects “reprobated by our Holy Mother Church,” he did just the opposite, “thinking it more necessary to obey God than man.” And so, instead of becoming the chief tool of the Inquisition he became the pillar around which the Dutch rallied. Affectionately he became known as “Father William.”

As a consequence of many years of religious cruelty William, on August 31, 1568, made a formal declaration of war against the duke of Alva and urged his countrymen to unite and battle for freedom. Thus began the Dutch “Eighty-Year War.” Though time and again the Dutch were defeated on land, more often than not they were victorious at sea, chiefly through the piratelike sailor bands known as “Beggars of the Sea.” In time William converted to Protestantism and became a “soldier of the Reformation.”b The enemy, realizing his importance to the Dutch fight for freedom, set an enormous price upon his head. After a number of attempts, an assassin’s bullets finally cut short his life in 1584 at the age of fifty-one. But his sons carried on​—first Maurice for nearly forty years, then Frederick Henry for some twenty-two years, who, in turn, was followed by his son William II, at the beginning of whose rule the Dutch finally had their freedom guaranteed.

During this eighty-year war for freedom the Dutch repeatedly received help from England as well as from the French and the Germans.

Religious Cruelty on Both Sides

During all these eighty years many of the Dutch, while fighting for religious (as well as for political) freedom for themselves, were not willing to grant it to others. Among the most notorious was Sonoy, a governor of a northern Dutch province in 1575. His torture of some, whose only crime was that of practicing the Catholic religion in secret, was so revolting that one sickens to read the details. Says a historian: “Sonoy, to his eternal shame, was disposed to prove that . . . Reformers were capable of giving a lesson even to inquisitors in this diabolical science.” While the Dutch, by and large, disavowed these cruelties of Sonoy (in fact, William had explicitly warned Sonoy against persecuting Catholics), efforts to bring him to account in later years failed because of the role he had played in their war for freedom.

As long as William of Orange lived, he was a mainstay of religious tolerance, and time and time again rebuked officials for their intolerance. Typical were his instructions to the magistrates of Middleburg: “We declare to you . . . that you have no right to trouble yourselves with any man’s conscience, so long as nothing is done to cause private harm or public scandal. We therefore expressly ordain that you desist from molesting these Baptists [Anabaptists], from offering hindrance to their handicraft and daily trade, by which they can earn bread for their wives and children. . . . Beware, therefore, of disobedience and of resistance to the ordinance which we now establish.”

But how far removed his own people were from such humanitarian principles they showed in the way they punished Balthazar Gerard, who succeeded in assassinating their beloved “Father William.” Their rage knew no bounds. “Excruciating tortures” were employed.

A few among the Dutch even went about smashing images, destroying ‘holy’ pictures, libraries, altars in hundreds of churches, monasteries and convents. But it must be added that, as a rule, these rioters harmed neither nuns nor priests, nor did they plunder any riches.

During the latter part of the rule of William’s son Maurice, who excelled his father in military skill but not in humanitarian principles, a sect appeared known as the Remonstrants. These argued for less dogmatic doctrines, especially as to predestination and salvation, than the predominant Calvinists. Members of the minority sect were fined, imprisoned, banished and even massacred.

Yes, shocking religious cruelty was employed by both sides in the Dutch eighty-year war for freedom. Surely all of this shows that none of these could possibly have been the true followers of Christ! All such religious cruelty is diametrically opposed to the principles Christ enunciated: “All things, therefore, that you want men to do to you, you also must likewise do to them.” “All those who take the sword will perish by the sword.” “I am giving you a new commandment, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love among yourselves.”​—Matt. 7:12; 26:52; John 13:34, 35.

What about the situation today in the Netherlands? Again there is revolt against the power of the Vatican. This time it is not marked by such violence as in the past. Yet how many of those who are rejecting the power of the papacy are really adopting and putting into practice in their lives the high standards set out in God’s own Word, the Bible?

[Footnotes]