Contested Space in a Contested Border Area: The Sint Jan in ‘s Hertogenbosch

This article investigates contemporary perceptions of church space in the border town of ‘s Hertogenbosch in the aftermath of the Peace of Westphalia. Through a close reading of two chorographies, the study sheds light on ways in which historians can try to grasp contemporary views on what mattered in a church interior in the contested border areas of the Generality Lands, regions in the Dutch Republic, where the Calvinist political elite remained a minority. The study alerts us to the temporality of changes to church interiors and its embeddedness in local and regional circumstances.


Introduction
Medieval and early modern churches were not only houses of worship; they were complex, multifaceted social spaces. They were "nodes" of social life, as well as, at times, trading places for goods (Hamilton and Spicer 2005, 1-26). This multifunctional use of church space was particularly prominent in the seventeenth-century Netherlands, where Calvinist church buildings also served as public spaces to entertain and educate, to meet, and to remember. The distinction that historians have made between the "preekkerk" (preaching church) and the "wandelkerk" (strolling church) gives testimony to this interpretation, which was also shared by contemporaries, even if the terms themselves were only coined in the eighteenth century (Pollmann 2002, 177-189). Matters in Dutch churches were complicated by the fact that magistrates and other local authorities reserved the right to nominate ministers and other church personnel. They were also formally in charge of the church building. While much research has been undertaken in recent years on the church interiors of European Lutheran churches, less is known about the Calvinist church interiors in the Netherlands (Spicer 2012(Spicer , 2007. Here, research into the rearrangement of church space, church furniture, and changes in the course of the Reformation has so far been dominated by art historians with an interest in the often enigmatic and always intriguing genre paintings of "church interiors" (Vanhaelen 2012;Mochizuki 2008;Brusati 2009;Pollmer-Schmidt 2016). Interpretations often focused on either the mastery of perspective and architectural know-how of Dutch artists of these interiors, or they assumed iconoclasm as an inevitable step towards the secularization of the seventeenth-century art market and its marketable topics. 1 However, the historicization of the Iconoclastic Fury as a step towards the sober Calvinistic church space painted by artists such as Hendrick van Vliet and Emanuel de Witte is, as more recent investigations into the topic have argued, an anachronistic approach to seventeenth-century media addressing the subject of church interiors (Heal 2017

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spaces and their presentation in contemporary media were far more than debates over the past or art expertise. They were "agents" in a discourse on religious diversity and identity. The confessional statements that could be read from paintings, and also from descriptions, travel accounts, and other contemporary media, were often deeply embedded in the local circumstances and discourses in which they were created and which they addressed. They might have changed over time, thus allowing for the perception of churches and their interiors to transform from a contested confessional space to a memory site musealizing art works, from former objects of devotion to high-quality craftsmanship, from places of worship to exhibition halls of civic pride and identity. It is the aim of this article to trace these interpretations and changes for 's Hertogenbosch, a border city that, after the siege and surrender to the Orangist forces in 1629, became incorporated into the Dutch Generality Lands of States Brabant. Its main church, the Sint Jan's Kerk, which had only in 1559 been elevated to the see of a bishop and decorated accordingly, was turned into a Reformed house of worship, displaying the above-mentioned multi-functionality as a space to take a stroll, listen to sermons, serve as a tourist attraction, surveys not only grant us a rare glimpse of the arrangement of the newly claimed Reformed space, but also present a contemporary comment on continuity and change of what mattered in this building and how this space was used over time. As will be seen in the following investigation, church spaces were less confessionally homogenous than most of the genre paintings so frequently used as evidence for the Calvinist "purification" of churches seem to indicate. At the same time, they also served as a stage for intra-confessional discourse of the various stakeholders with a claim to the church both as a public and as a sacred space.
"schoon", "cierlijck", "konstich" and "kostelich": descriptions of the church Reformed politics and ideas (Pollmann 2011;Frijhoff 2002). Whether these observations were also reflected by contemporary authors, such as van Oudenhoven, remains to be seen. and again in October 1566, which led to heavy losses of church decoration.
In 1584, parts of the church interior and its landmark, the great middle tower, whose original size is unknown but whose contemporary depictions and descriptions likened it to the spire of Antwerp's Our Lady's Cathedral, fell victim to a great fire. Bishop Clemens Crabeels, then in charge of the diocese, arranged for a massive redecoration programme to replace the destroyed images and artwork in the Cathedral (Boekwijt et al. 2011).
What were the highlights in this renewed church that van Oudenhoven presented to his readers twenty years after the Reformed takeover?  Gramaye's description of the whereabouts of the various parts of the tryptics remained vague. He only mentioned them as "still existing" (Büttner 2012, 21). Van Oudenhoven, however, simply stated that they "had been at the High Altar" (van Oudenhoven 1649, 25). The only other trace of these images can be found in 's Hertogenbosch's city archives, in which the treasurer recorded on 4 January 1671 that the city had paid the sexton of the Sint Jan the sum of 75 guilders for one of the wings of the Bosch altarpiece of the High Altar (Büttner 2012, 21

church descriptions and confessional controversies
What also mattered for van Oudenhoven was the soundscape of the church. He, however, emphasized the celestial constellations which were shown, rather than the scenario of the Last Judgement (Gramaye 1610, 23). Van Oudenhoven also gave very detailed descriptions of the numerous bells in  been completed after the Reformed takeover, and was regarded as one of the finest of its kind (Fig. 4).
The organ pipes were made by Florens Hocque from Cologne, whose name is also mentioned by van Oudenhoven, together with the spectacular price of the whole construction, which amounted to 14.700 guilders. In  prince's hope to keep further antagonism of the defeated Boschenaers at bay (Gaskell 1990). It might also have been his response to the more radical voices of the Calvinist church on his and his family's adherence to the traditional and powerful Catholic Marian sodality in the city, which counted men of the high aristocracy as its lay members, the so-called Swan brothers. In the end, the sodality was the only Catholic institution in the city that remained (more or less) intact after the takeover. William the Silent had been the first member of the Orange family to be admitted to the Swan brothers, and the privilege was extended to his offspring. Van Oudenhoven was certainly aware of this special relationship between the family and the Sint Jan (Gaskell 1990 Given that the text was also meant to attract potential new ministers to the area, it remained very moderate in its sketches of the "preekkerk", mentioning its Reformed church furniture, and the-albeit contestedinstruments of Reformed church service, such as the organ. At this level, one can state that van Oudenhoven contributed to an argument within a Reformed dispute, siding with a more lenient interpretation of the use of bells and music. In this respect, van Oudenhoven also sided with the city council, whose members were responsible for the purchase and the [1629], some over-zealous soldier did cut off his mitre and arms" (Strien 1998, 208). Interestingly, he also added: "Had he been caught, the Prince of Orange had bestowed a rope in him for his recompense." It was thus known to later travelers that Frederik Hendrik had been the protector of the church and its interior-even including a memorial to a bishop, whose role he would contest. While either the memory of or the interest in the tomb seems to have faded away in later years, travelers still seemed to find it relevant to take note of them in the accounts of their visit. In August 1671, Richard Holford noticed that he had seen the "effigies of a priest and archbishop [sic], with this inscription", but the space of the inscription is left blank. Whether he intended to include the rather long biographical sketch of Masius, which was inscribed in Latin, at the front of the tomb monument or his more poignant motto, "omnia mors aequat" (death is the same for everyone), on top of it, remains unknown (Strien 1998, 210).

changes over time
One   What van Oudenhoven created, instead, was an account of a city which had once been glorious, prosperous, and influential-attributes that were encapsulated in his description of the Sint Jan and the devotional practices around the church and its main spiritual centre, the Chapel of Our Lady. The boundaries, however, between the glorious past and the less glorious present of the city were blurred, thus leaving it to the reader to draw comparisons between the past and the present of the city.
conclusion Jesse Spohnholz (2011) has recently encouraged us to rethink the narrative of the reformation of church spaces in the Dutch Republic that has informed much of the scholarship on church interiors. He has also called for further nuance in the distinction between "public" and "private" places of worship.
For areas with an overwhelmingly Catholic population, such as States paintings, the Sint Jan degraded into a building with masonry which was at risk of collapse and was only provisionally repaired with cheaper materials, and whose many windows could no longer be maintained in their original form (Boekwijt et al. 2011, 242-259 he now simply stated her miraculous powers, which, before 1629, had brought many people into the city and supported the costs of the church.
Church spaces thus served many and different purposes for their beholders.
The case of van Oudenhoven's description of the Sint Jan has demonstrated that ways of viewing and describing church interiors were multi-layered and changed over time-even over a seemingly short period of 21 years.
In the Netherlands, rather than following seemingly simple patterns of desacralization and public appropriation, church spaces could be presented as places of civic pride and craftsmanship, and their description was embedded in local or national discourses. They were not nearly as confessionally homogenous as their city and church councilors might have implied. Moreover, there was also local dissent about the nature of Calvinist church furniture and the use of accessories for worship, which found its way into van Oudenhoven's comments. If they served as vehicles to historicize the past, then which past was invoked, rejected, or glorified?
Caroline Bynum has recently challenged the standardized chronological landmarks for the Reformation and its implementation, which, she argued, have traditionally been based on texts, such as the introduction of Lutheran (or Reformed) church orders and the installation of Lutheran (or Reformed) ministers. Instead, she alerts us to a different chronology, based on the "lives" of things, church furniture, vestments, and other items used in church services. She argues that many of these not only survived but continued to carry meaning in their local contexts of piety and devotion, but also as representations of prestige and power (Bynum 2016). Van Oudenhoven's survey of the Sint Jan's church interior supports this claim, and it is this nuance and this diversity that is worth further investigation.