Like most Northern Netherlandish towns, late medieval Leiden boasted a great many ecclesiastical foundations â churches, monastic houses and convents, hospitals and alms-houses â within and just outside of its walls. Only Amsterdam, with its nineteen monasteries/convents and one beguinage, had more.1 Jacob van Deventerâs town plan of c. 1545 justifiably showcases Leiden as a town dominated by churches and chapels and focuses on such buildings to the exclusion of most other building types. Apart from the town walls with their towers and gates, the only secular buildings represented are the town hall, St Catherineâs hospital, the Burcht and the Gravensteen. Some twenty spires are shown pointing towards heaven in the town proper, adjoined by a smaller number outside the walls (Figure 11.1).
Jacob van Deventerâs town plan of c. 1545, with the locations of the churches, chapels, convents and monasteries mentioned in the text
SOURCE: BIBLIOTECA NACIONAL DE ESPAÃA, MADRID, RES/200
Today, other than the two main parish churches and a few chapels, little of this religious heritage has survived, and what there is has been much altered, whilst reliable iconographical material is scarce. The existing prints and drawings of the lost convent chapels invariably date from a time when the buildings had long since disappeared and were made by artists who at best fashioned their work after the schematic representations found in town plans, using their imagination to fill in the details. The documentary value of these drawings being negligible, one has to rely on the existing remains and on the oldest town plans to get a sense of what the now-lost cloisters and their churches looked like.2 The oldest known plan, drawn up by Hans Liefrinck in 1578, has survived in a 1744 copy by Jacob van Werven.3 Also invaluable are the
While the architecture of Leidenâs parish churches and the founding and organisation of the Leiden convents and monasteries have been the subject of various studies, little attention has been given to the architecture of the considerable number of convent chapels, which have also been passed over in studies dealing with medieval Low Countries architecture, probably because the buildings were not considered to be architecturally innovative. Also, when discussed at all, attention has centred on the finished buildings, not on the piecemeal fashion of their construction, where the unfinished state of a chapel was often used as a catalyst for increased or renewed funding, a practice that has been termed the âculture of incompletionâ. This phenomenon has only recently received more scholarly attention, notably from Caroline Bruzelius in her seminal study of Italian mendicant architecture.5
In this chapter, therefore, after discussing the earliest religious buildings in and around Leiden, attention will be given to where and when Leidenâs convents were built and with what objectives in mind. How and why did the chapels come to be erected, and what were the reasons behind the differences in their size and allure, considering that all of Leidenâs convents adhered to the ideals of poverty and sobriety? To conclude, I will briefly discuss the decline of the convents and the reasons why some convent chapels survived the upheavals of the sixteenth century, while others did not.
1 Churches and Chapels in the Town Centre
In England, already from an early date, the larger cities numbered dozens of parish churches. By 1300, London had over one hundred churches; Winchester had 57. Canterbury had 22 churches by 1200, and York 35.6 But in Germany, towns of equivalent size had far fewer churches. Cologne, with its nineteen parishes, is considered exceptional. Lübeck had five parish churches in the medieval period, Nürnberg only two. Dutch towns were generally relatively young and were often planned foundations, and therefore had one or two parish churches at most, which were consequently of considerable size and in constant need of extending throughout the medieval period as the cities
Leidenâs oldest and main parish church was the church of St Peter (Pieterskerk). Probably dating back to the early decades of the twelfth century, the church was renewed and expanded over time as the townâs commercial centre developed.8 Originally a comital foundation dating from 1268, St Peterâs came to be served by the Teutonic Order, whose commandry was situated to its south.9 The much smaller chapel of St Maryâs (Viskapel) near the Visbrug was built in 1383 by the fishmongers, replacing an older chapel they had been using since 1373, with the permission of the burggraaf (castellan). The fishmongers received communion in this chapel once a week, while convicted criminals who were to be put to death on the âblue stoneâ, the spot in the Breestraat where the four original wards that formed the town centre adjoined, received their final communion here.10 Leidenâs oldest hospital, that of St Catherine, was also to be found in this part of the town.
Leidenâs first extension saw the incorporation of the Hogeland, a triangular piece of land between the two arms of the River Rhine that forked near what is now Leiderdorp and came together again east of the town centre. In the Hogeland, separated from the eastern part of this island by the Vestgracht, a chapel dedicated to St Pancras was founded in 1314. This chapel, the later St Pancras Church or Hooglandse kerk, was to become Leidenâs second parish church.11 In 1355 the town incorporated the Maredorp (Mare village) on the north side of the Rhine. The chapel in this neighbourhood, a dependency of the parish church in Oegstgeest, was given full parish rights in 1365, and became known as the Vrouwekerk (Church of Our Lady).12 In 1386, Leiden was expanded in a south-westerly direction, moving outwards from the Rapenburg and Steenschuur.
Leidenâs new parishes were given hospitals of their own, each with a chapel. The St Elisabethâs hospital, near the Vrouwekerk, served the parish of Our Lady. The hospital of Our Lady served the St Pancras parish.13 There was also St Barbaraâs hospital (in Maredorp, opposite the Burcht). In 1477, the Jacobskerk developed out of a house belonging to the confraternity of St James of
In the earliest centuries of its existence Leiden had no monasteries, cloisters or convents within its walls, but in its environs were the nunnery of Rijnsburg, founded by Countess Petronilla of Holland in 1133, and the slightly less prestigious Cistercian nunnery of Leeuwenhorst, founded near Noordwijk in 1261. As in other Netherlandish towns, the beguines were the only religious community in the town itself. The Leiden beguinage, mentioned as early as 1293, was located along the Pieterskerkhof (the cemetery west of St Peterâs) on comital land and had no chapel of its own.14
Beguines either lived together in large gated communities (court beguinages) or in private houses.15 The women generally worked for their living, either teaching, looking after the poor, the sick and dying, or practising some sort of handicraft in the textile industry. Committed to the ideals of sobriety and chastity, their daily routine also included prayer, contemplation and penitence. Even so, they took no vows. Despite their way of life having been sanctioned by various papal decrees, as they did not belong to a religious order the beguines raised suspicion. In 1298, Pope Boniface VIII, and, in 1311â1312, the decrees of the Council of Vienne condemned the beguine way of life, even accusing them of heresy.16 Although the beguines within the diocese of Utrecht were exonerated in 1324, the damage was done, as suspicion lingered.
2 Sister Houses, Convents and Monasteries in and around Town
Even though Leiden had enough churches and chapels to serve the religious needs of its parishioners, in the late fourteenth century, like elsewhere in Holland, the town saw a sudden surge in the founding of religious communities in the wake of the Devotio Moderna movement. Most of these convents settled in the newly developed areas of Maredorp and along the Rapenburg, with those in the Rapenburg expansion developing into more prestigious
The earliest of Leidenâs convents, St Hieronymus, had settled along the Jan Vossensteeg by 1388, but moved to a location along the Rapenburg around 1446, where it became a house of regular Augustinian canonesses known as Roma. With 102 nuns in 1460â1461, Roma was the largest nunnery within Leidenâs walls. St Catherine Schagen, which moved into the abandoned buildings along the Jan Vossensteeg, was the smallest nunnery in town, with merely 38 nuns in 1460â1461.18 A tertiary convent, consisting of six women, was founded in 1398 and dedicated to St Margaret in a house behind the Vrouwekerk, but the community soon moved to a location outside the Haarlemmerpoort, where it became quite successful. By 1460â1461, St Margaretâs numbered 170 nuns, and there were as many as 197 by 1464, when the nunnery moved to Roomburg near Zoeterwoude, disliking the damp and unhealthy conditions on the site outside the Haarlemmerpoort. A plan of the nunnery drawn up by Jacob Coenraedts in 1574 shows a sizeable complex that included a chapel, a conventual building, a weaving house, a brewery and an extensive farm. Other sources indicate that the nunnery also possessed extensive lands.19 The Leiden buildings originally occupied by St Margaretâs were taken over by the tertiary convent of St Agnes (Agnietenklooster) in 1404. St Margaretâs premises outside the Haarlemmerpoort went to the convent of St Mary Magdalene in 1464. Maredorp further housed the tertiary convents of St Michael and Nazareth or St Clara, while the other houses here, St Ursula, St Agatha, St Mary Abcoude and St Catherine Schagen, followed the Augustinian rule.
In addition to Roma, the Rapenburg area also hosted several other religious houses. The Dominican Wittevrouwenklooster was founded shortly before 1447. The Augustinian nunnery of St Catherine was right behind the Wittevrouwenklooster. The Alexians (cellebroeders) originally settled along the Papengracht but moved to what came to be known as the Cellebroedersgracht (now the Kaiserstraat) in 1421. The nunnery of Bethany, also known as St Barbara, was a tertiary house, founded in 1441 along the Rapenburg and Voldersgracht. Finally, just outside Leidenâs walls were a Franciscan friary (founded in 1445) and the monasteries of Engelendaal and Lopsen. The latter was a male tertiary convent that later adopted the Augustinian rule.20
The Faliede Begijnhof (beguinage) as shown on the map of Leiden drawn by Pieter Bast around 1600
SOURCE: ERFGOED LEIDEN EN OMSTREKEN, PV329 1A
Chapel of the Faliede Begijnhof in its present state
SOURCE: AUTHOR
Outside Leidenâs walls, the number of religious houses also gradually increased after 1400. The patrons of these new houses being nobles, albeit of a somewhat lower status than the founders of the earlier houses of Rijnsburg and Leeuwenhorst, their buildings were, as far as can be deduced from the documentary evidence, more prestigious than those of the convents in Leiden itself. Although not situated in the town, Orlers already included these houses in his description of Leiden, suggesting they were important to the townâs history.23 Not only were the nuns of these new houses recruited from amongst the townâs elite, these institutions were also emulated inside the town walls by Leidenâs patricians for reasons of status and prestige. Moreover, a considerable amount of documentation has survived concerning their founding and construction history that can be used to place the architecture of the religious houses in Leiden proper into perspective.
In Warmond, Jan van den Woude (â 1417) founded the convent of St Ursula of the Eleven-Thousand Virgins and the Cistercian monastery of Mariënhaven in 1410 and 1412 respectively. The first was a nunnery for enclosed women, housed in a property Jan possessed to the north of the Warmond parish church. To ensure that the nuns could worship and fulfil their religious obligations unseen by the parishioners, and to restrict contact between the nuns and the officiating priests, he vowed to build a covered passage leading from house to church as well as a gallery in the church itself. Nunsâ galleries are a characteristic of enclosed female convent churches, setting these churches apart from those of
The foundation of Mariënhaven came at a much greater expense. Jan pledged to build a glazed dormitory, one hundred feet long and 26 feet wide, with walls 3.5 stones thick, with six cells and a lavatory, within one year of the arrival of the six founding monks from IJsselstein. To begin with, the monks would have two beds; the rest would follow when all six monks had arrived. Jan also promised to build a stone refectory, forty feet long and twenty feet wide, over a cellar. In the third year, he would donate two hundred (presumably Flemish) nobles25 to the building of a church, and obtain the permission of the bishop of Utrecht, the parish priest of Warmond, and the Leiden town council to have this church consecrated, at no cost to the brethren. He would also found a chapelry of twenty French crowns a year or donate land equalling
In 1428, Boudewijn van Zwieten (1370/73â1454), a prominent member of Leidenâs elite â the treasurer of Jacqueline of Bavaria, Countess of Holland, and adviser to her successor Duke Philip of Burgundy (1396â1467) â founded the nunnery of Mariënpoel outside Leidenâs town walls, in Oegstgeest. Although Boudewijn stipulated that life in Mariënpoel was to be sober and that its income was not to exceed a hundred pounds a year, save a little money set aside for maintaining the buildings, Mariënpoel developed into a rich institution that housed up to ten lay sisters and forty enclosed nuns who followed the Augustinian rule.28 The nunnery was endowed with a farm, houses, substantial tracts of land and the sum of three thousand Philippus guilders. Philip of Burgundy approved and supported the foundation, and for this he was awarded four annual memorial services and four annual masses for the benefit of his soul. The townâs elite followed suit, sending daughters to Mariënpoel to become nuns, and endowing the foundation with land, money, houses, food and wine, as well as liturgical objects, statuary and paintings, some by Leidenâs best artists.29
3 The Problem with Stone Chapels
Quite a few of the new religious houses in and around Leiden were given stone chapels. In town, these visible markers of their existence made them stand out
Rich as Jan van den Woude was, the passage leading from the convent building to the Warmond parish church and the nunsâ choir that he had promised to build when he founded the convent of St Ursula in 1410 were not realised until 1428. The chapel of Boudewijn van Zwietenâs foundation Mariënpoel was completed only after his death by his sons, some 26 years after the founding of the convent.32 The same held true for the monastery of Lopsen. Although permission to build a chapel and cemetery was granted by the bishop of Utrecht in 1429, due to lack of funds building progress was slow. In 1439 Claes Pietersz and his wife donated an altar in honour of St Mary, St James and St Anthony that was placed in the existing chapel for the time being, suggesting that building had not even begun. By 1446 the building had still not progressed beyond the foundations, and in 1453, at the time of the consecration, the church was unfinished. In 1460 the town council gave Lopsen a subsidy towards the building costs.33 Even so, excavations have shown that the building was no grand affair but measured approximately 20 by 5 metres.34 This raises questions. If stone chapels were so expensive to build and unnecessary for the religious life of the convent, why then did so many of the religious houses decide to erect one?
4
In 2014, Bruzelius remarked that in thirteenth-century Europe âthe friars reversed the tradition of reserving church and cloister burial as an honour for the upper clergy, royalty, and nobles, making sacred space available for the middle-class merchants and bankers. Burial was âdemocratizedâ, though not perhaps for the poor.â35 This is how burial became big business. What started with the Franciscans and Dominicans soon took a hold on other institutions. Parish churches also started offering burial spaces inside their walls for those willing to pay, and offered memorial masses for the benefit of souls in purgatory in return for legacies and donations.
In Leiden, too, the number of burials inside the parish churches steadily increased from the fourteenth century onwards. Whereas ordinary citizens were still buried in the churchyard, the well-to-do could afford a simple tombstone inside the church, while patricians and nobles erected private altars, founded chantries (i.e. they provided funds to pay one or more priests to read/sing memorial masses) and even built private chapels.36 In the Leiden Pieterskerk, these foundations were administrated by the masters of the Holy Spirit, and their surviving registers provide useful information about the founding and locations of altars (of which there were at least thirty by the sixteenth century), the foundation of chantries, the donation of, for example, stained glass windows, and, of course, the location of graves and the memorial masses due. The earliest register dates from 1386.37 Leidenâs two other parish churches also saw an enormous increase in altars, memorial foundations and altar pieces to remind the clergy of what they owed their benefactors in terms of prayers and memorial services.38
The best burial sites were soon taken, and sometimes even fought over.39 It therefore did not take long before there was nothing exclusive about a memorial mass, chantry or tombstone in the parish church. To ensure that their prayers were heard, those who had the necessary means to do so started to diversify their patronage, founding masses for their souls in various locations. Lady Adriana van den Woudeâs will, for example, benefitted five of Leidenâs
Others even founded their own convents to ensure exclusivity.41 This certainly holds true for Jan van den Woudeâs prestigious foundations in Warmond, where Jan was buried in front of the high altar of the Cistercian abbey, while his wife Agnes van Kruiningen found her last resting place in front of the high altar of the parish church, which also doubled as the convent chapel.42 The already-mentioned Boudewijn van Zwieten is another example. Not only did he sponsor a chapel in the Leiden Pieterskerk and patronise the leper chapel of St Anthony and the Warmond St Ursula convent, above all he founded Mariënpoel in the hope of âobtaining grace and forgiveness in the presentâ and âglory in eternityâ.43 In return for his generosity, Boudewijn and his family were granted burial in the choir of Mariënpoel, and it was stipulated that the nuns, each time they entered the choir, should first visit his grave and recite prayers there, and do the same on their departure. In addition, a weekly requiem mass was to be read over his grave and an annual memorial service held on the day of his demise, for himself and his family, including a vigil the day before, as well as a requiem mass followed by a visit to the grave on the day itself. When Boudewijn died in 1454, the nuns explicitly mentioned their âindebtednessâ to him and their need to pray for him over all other people in eternity.44 To showcase his familyâs status and help the nuns remember the founding family, a painted memorial, showing Boudewijn, his first wife Lutgard and their children, was placed near their tombs. Johanna Adriaansdr (â 1554), Boudewijnâs great-granddaughter, renewed the deteriorated painting in 1522 and had the figures of herself, her brother Jan (â 1510) and their mother Otte van Egmond added.45
Maybe in emulation of the above-mentioned foundations in Warmond and Oegstgeest, Leiden patricians who could afford it, founded or started to sponsor convents in Leiden, thus establishing their own exclusive burial sites within or just outside the confines of the town walls. The size of the chapel and the success of the convent depended very much on the endowments they were granted and on continued sponsorship. Quite often a convent was only provided with enough funds to start building and had to rely on the âculture of
Leidenâs Dominican nunnery was founded by Margaretha Boudewijnsdr (â 1481) and Machteld Jansdr (â 1490) in 1441 as a community of religious-minded women. By 1450, it possessed a chapel with altars dedicated to St Mary Magdalene and St Elisabeth of Thuringia, of which the Dominican Arnoldus of Doetinchem is said to have been the founder.46 This chapel was presumably built on an east-west axis and would have been large enough to accommodate the nuns and a restricted number of visitors: shortly after 1450, indulgences were issued: for those who went to confession in the convent church on special feast days and truly repented; to those who attended the services in the church; and to those who remembered the church in their testament or bestowed gifts like gold, silver, clothing, books, chalices, lights, church ornaments and so on. In 1454, the convent was officially welcomed into the Dominican order. At the time, the nuns were living âin der Jan van den Wouden huysingeâ and Machteld Jansdr was the conventâs first prioress.47 It may thus be presumed that Jan van den Woude was an important donor.
The original chapelâs thatched roof burned down in 1458. To help the nuns rebuild it, Philip the Good granted the nunnery the right to accept inheritances bestowed to their convent and exempted them from paying various taxes.48 A bequest of a house along the Rapenburg in 1477, adjacent to the chapel, enabled the latter to be enlarged. The orientation of the building is likely to have been altered, as the existing church is, rather unusually, located on a north-south axis along the Rapenburg. The permission which allowed the nuns to collect funds in various Dutch cities in 1510 may well have been connected to this rebuilding. The altar of St Mary Magdalen was rededicated in 1516.49
The enlarged chapel consisted of a large hall, eight bays long, lit by high windows separated from one another by exterior buttresses of alternate courses of brick and white Gobertange stone from Walloon Brabant, with a narrower aisle along its west flank (Figure 11.4). Aisle and nave were separately roofed, and on the inside they were divided from one another by an arcade supported by freestone columns. The sculptural decoration was restrained, befitting the
Plan of the chapel of the Wittevrouwenklooster along the Rapenburg, now the Academy building of Leiden University
SOURCE: PLAN BY B.V. VAN DEN BERGH, RIJKSDIENST VOOR HET CULTUREEL ERFGOED, AMERSFOORT, BT-020760
Leiden Universityâs Academy building, formerly the chapel of the Wittevrouwenklooster
SOURCE: PHOTO AUTHOR
Certain anomalies in the building suggest the church was built in distinct phases. Counting from the south, the fifth and sixth bays are wider than the others. Also, the lower parts of the fourth and sixth column, again counting from the south, are angled. It therefore seems likely that the church was enlarged every time additional funding came along with the demands of the benefactor(s) for a high-status burial space: a clear-cut illustration of the already-mentioned âculture of incompletionâ.
The strict rules of the enclosed Dominican convents enforced silence and forbade visitors from entering the cloister walls. However, since the chapel was used by the secular confraternity of St Catherine of Siena, and as visitors were encouraged to go to confession and attend masses in the convent church, some parts of the church were clearly exempt from this âclausuraâ.51 The surviving tomb slabs, dating between 1465 and 1556, indicate that it was not only the nunsâ confessors who received burial here but also outsiders. These included eminent personages like Philips Codde (a doctor, but also burgomaster and alderman of Leiden), Richaert Barradot (â 1518, secretary to the king), members of the Van den Boechorst and Van Adrichem families, and Jacob van Montfoort Florisz (â 1554) and his wife, the owners of Rapenburg 59â61. Lucas van Leydenâs Healing of the Blind Man at Jericho Triptych (now the State Hermitage museum, St Petersburg), showing the heraldry of Van Montfoort and his wife Dirckgen Dirck Boelensdr, probably adorned their altar in the church.52 Other paintings, by Lucas van Leyden and others, three altars, and
The convent of St Barbara, founded in 1441 by Jan van den Woudeâs brother Simon Jansz van Alkemade, named Van Woude (c. 1395â1476), and his wife Sophia IJsbrandsdr van Spaarnwoude, presents a different story. They donated their own house for the purpose, and provided the community with lands, the yield of which was to sustain the community and fund the building of a chapel.54 The coupleâs tombstone, in place by 1468, and drawn by the antiquarian Buchelius (1565â1641),55 used to lie in front of the high altar, where yearly masses were to be sung for their and their daughterâs benefit. Similar masses were read for other benefactors.56 Van Dulmanhorstâs drawing of the convent, seen from the Voldersgracht, shows a rather meagre-looking church, not quite 30 metres long: a box of no great height, pierced by seven windows terminating in a three-sided apse (Figure 11.6). The oldest plan, dated 1667, indicates the presence of buttresses between the choir windows and on the convent side of the church. There were none on the Voldersgracht side.57 It would seem that the nuns, after the initial phase when Simon van den Woude provided for them, received no substantial patronage, which is why the chapel remained as it was, low and uninspiring.
The convent of St Barbara, as shown in Van Dulmanhorstâs Grachtenboek
SOURCE: ERFGOED LEIDEN EN OMSTREKEN, NL-LDNRAL-0501A, F. 40
In 1464, the Leiden Alexians were given the rights to choose their own confessor and to have an altar in their oratory, where mass could be read, with closed doors (meaning that
Plan showing the buildings constituting the Alexian monastery, drawn up in 1589
SOURCE: ERFGOED LEIDEN EN OMSTREKEN, PV_PV1151.1
The Alexian complex as shown on the 1744 copy by Jacob van Werven of Hans Liefrinckâs map of Leiden from 1578
SOURCE: MUSEUM DE LAKENHAL, NO. 11351
The convent of St Catherine Schagen was allowed its own confessor as well as the right to bury outsiders in its cemetery, but memorial services were to be held only for those belonging to the community. The convent, although small, was well off and in no need of external funding to make ends meet. It was also
The chapel of St Clara or Nazareth was also undistinguished, but for other reasons. This convent being extremely poor, the nuns had to go out begging to provide for themselves. No wonder they explored ways of drawing sponsors in. Permission to build a chapel was granted by the chapter of Leidenâs St Pancras Church in 1497. To finance construction, the nuns organised a fundraiser in the villages around Leiden. Building the chapel took time and in 1550 the abbey of Rijnsburg granted the nuns additional funding towards the project, as well as for a new tabernacle. In the end it was all for nothing, as the convent was not granted permission to conduct memorial masses for outsiders from
To return to Van Deventerâs 1545 plan showing the town dominated by chapels and churches, it must be concluded that, although Leiden had a fair number of turrets and spires, the plan is clearly an exaggeration. Where the plan shows all churches and chapels with a spire, this was not the case in reality. Neither were all convent churches neatly finished and similar in size, shape and allure. In fact, the differences between Leidenâs convent churches were substantial, their prominence, size and furnishings being very much indicative of their success with the high and mighty, and the funds available to them. The chapels of Leidenâs lesser convents were not landmarks at all. Moreover, at the time of the Reformation, many of the chapels were still under construction, their construction often being consciously conducted in a deliberately piecemeal fashion, with the unfinished state acting as a stimulus to attract patrons. Even the still existing church of the Dominican nunnery, one of the finer specimens, shows evidence of this procedure through the irregularities of its ground plan and superstructure.
5 Leidenâs Religious Houses in Decline
After 1480 no new religious houses were founded in Leiden and many of the existing ones gradually declined, as also happened elsewhere in Holland. The reasons for this are not entirely clear. In this paragraph several of the possible factors for this decline will be discussed, such as the enlargement of Leidenâs parish churches, increased taxation by the Habsburg emperors, and the growing unpopularity of convents, which gave rise to an increasing number of regulations intended to restrict cloistersâ capacity to manufacture and produce goods for the market that also negatively influenced the balance sheet.
First, the second half of the fifteenth century saw Leidenâs parish churches being enlarged, creating more burial and chapel space and thus ways to display status in order to satisfy their remaining patrons and maybe even to lure back families that in the preceding decennia had preferred the convents as a focus for their âmemoriaâ. The Pieterskerk, which had been rebuilt from the late
The parish churchesâ success did not last. Following the 1512 collapse of the tower of St Peterâs on the west end of the church into the nave, the tower was not rebuilt. In fact, the nave roof was subsequently extended up to the west wall. Building stopped around 1540; the planned chapels along the choir were never built.63 The same holds true for Leidenâs Hooglandse kerk that was rebuilt from 1470 onwards. Work proceeded in a slow and piecemeal fashion, and when construction came to a halt in 1543â1544 the building was nowhere near completed. The beautiful Renaissance capitals of the unfinished triforium are still hidden under the roofs of the side aisles.64 It is clear that the cash flow gradually ceased and came to a halt in the 1540s. Undoubtedly, this draining of the available resources was related to increased taxation by the new Burgundian and Habsburg rulers who needed money for their costly wars.
Already in 1474, whilst the rebuilding of Leidenâs main parish churches was still in full swing, the Lopsen monks heavily contested the bede â the request of the ruler to grant him a large sum of money to cover exceptional costs that could hardly be denied â that was imposed on religious houses by the Burgundian ruler Charles the Bold. The Lopsen protest had a negative effect, only leading to a tax increase, with Lopsen having to pay more than other houses.65 The struggling monastery closed its doors in 1526.66 Its land and buildings were given to Leidenâs St Catherineâs hospital. A reason for Lopsenâs decline, mentioned by the papal legate who decided on Lopsenâs dissolution in 1526, was that the monks who âhad over the years sustained themselves with the writing,
Taxation increased under the Habsburg ruler Charles V, who not only targeted the religious houses but also the towns and cities. As ecclesiastical property was held in mortmain â meaning that it belonged to the endowment of the institution and could neither be alienated nor taxed â this implied that, when a town or city was taxed, the burghersâ tax portions increased as ecclesiastical property was augmented, which led to the decreasing popularity of the convents. There were even attempts to put a halt to the foundation of new convents. In addition, being exempt from municipal taxes, convents supporting themselves with handicrafts and trade were considered to offer unfair competition for the town or cityâs merchants and workmen, which worked against them. Restrictions as to what and how much they could produce were therefore imposed. In concordance with this, in 1446, the Leiden town council decided that tertiary institutions were not true cloisters, as their inhabitants made money by crafts and trade and were thus not exempt from municipal taxes, leading to a long-standing conflict between the town and the sisters that lasted well into the sixteenth century.68 At the same time, due to taxation, patrons clearly had less to spend, and with the decline in donations, the rebuilding of the Leiden parish churches halted and many convents found it increasingly difficult to make ends meet and maintain their stone buildings, let alone complete them. By the sixteenth century, it was not only Lopsen that was struggling to survive.
The convent of St Mary Magdalene, which had settled in the premises outside the Haarlemmerpoort, formerly occupied by the nuns who had moved to Roomburg, closed down.69 The convent buildings of St Agatha were given to the nearby leper hospital in 1553, while the remaining nuns could stay on condition that they did not take on new recruits. The hospital of St James did not fare well either, after receiving permission to build its own chapel in 1477. The church that was built (nowadays Steenschuur 19) may well have exceeded its available means, causing the hospital to struggle for survival until the curtain fell in 1547. The chapel was then put to various uses and eventually transformed into another saaihal. In 1807 it was turned into the Catholic church of St Louis.70 In the end, only the well-endowed houses and those that forged
6 Change and Continuity
The Reformation was the harbinger of the greatest changes to Leidenâs ecclesiastical landscape. During the iconoclasm of 1566 most churches in Leiden suffered losses and the Franciscans were driven from their friary just outside Leidenâs walls. The populace held it against them that they had played an active part in the Inquisitionâs measures against the so-called Protestant heresy.71 The events unfolding during the Siege of Leiden in 1573â1574 had an even greater impact on the ecclesiastical heritage, especially that outside the town walls. In July 1572, the Franciscan monastery was levelled, and this was followed by the sacking of Mariënpoel and Roomburg. In 1573, in view of the oncoming siege by the Spaniards, all buildings within a certain range of the town needed to be demolished so as not to afford the enemy cover.72 It was at this time that the last remains of the Lopsen monastery, the orchard included, disappeared. These measures led to an influx of refugees from the nunneries and cloisters outside the walls.
The situation worsened in 1573 when the States of Holland prohibited Catholicism in their territories. Church buildings and estates were confiscated by a decree issued in 1577. From this time onwards, Leidenâs two main parish churches were used for protestant worship and, in time, the third parish church, the Vrouwekerk, was given over to the Walloon community. Most convents became redundant. Their inhabitants were pensioned off and the buildings were either reconverted or pulled down to allow for housing projects. In some cases, the plunder from the churches was used to decorate private houses. The elephant from the 1586 facade of Aalmarkt 27, for example, was made from a fine piece of Gothic sculpture that probably came from one of Leidenâs churches or chapels.73 Although losses were inevitable, the religious houses along Leidenâs prestigious Rapenburg were reused to facilitate Leidenâs university, founded in 1575.
The nuns of the convent of St Barbara were told to vacate their premises in 1575, which were to house the newly founded university. Two years later the
The Reformation thus had a huge impact on Leidenâs ecclesiastical heritage. The religious houses founded by the nobility outside Leidenâs walls were the first to go. As they had endangered the town during the Siege, they were razed. The smaller convents on the outskirts of town gradually disappeared after becoming redundant, together with their chapels. Not only are these likely to have been in a bad state of repair, in view of the financial difficulties of the communities that had maintained them, the space they took up was also needed for housing. The larger and more prestigious the church, the more likely it was to survive. More towards the centre, several of the convents were granted a second life as part of the university. The three parish churches, even though their reconstruction was halted, were turned into protestant prayer halls.
I cannot hide that I can never behold, without great amazement, our soaring churches which our good ancestors built or enlarged with blind zeal and at great cost and lust, and which they endowed with many goods, something that we, their offspring, would never do today. In the cities
that abolished the papacy, and after the Troubles, what half-destroyed or ruined churches [â¦] have been rebuilt again to such height, beauty and size as in the old days: nowhere: and I am certain that the like will never be erected again in our times.76
Orlers was right. Around 1540, church building in Leiden had come to a standstill. This stagnation was exacerbated by the Reformation and the so-called Eighty-Years War that followed. It was not until 1639, with the building of the protestant Marekerk, that Leiden was graced, once again, with a new highlight of religious architecture.
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One of the few sites to have been partially excavated, in 1984, is that of the St Michael and St Agnes convents, with most attention being focused on the latter institution; De Boer and Pompe, âHet St. Agnietenklooster in Leidenâ; Van Heeringen, âArcheologisch onderzoekâ. Remains of the farm belonging to the Roomburg convent near Leiderdorp were excavated in 2003; Brandenburgh and Hessing, Matilo, Rodenburg, Roomburg. More recently, some light has been shed on the layout of the monastery of St Hieronymusdal, which was better known as Lopsen; Van den Ende, âKlooster Lopsenâ.
Archief Erfgoed Leiden en Omstreken, Leiden (hereafter ELO), Beeldbank K4-8907.
ELO, NL-LdnRAL-0501A, no. 5153 and no. 5113.
Bruzelius, Preaching, Building, and Burying, 89â107.
Schofield, âSaxon and Medieval Parish Churchesâ, 41â42.
Beuckers, Köln, 43â44.
Dröge and Veerman, âInleidingâ.
Loopstra, âDe Leidse commanderijâ.
Van Oerle, Leiden, 1:86, 92.
Leverland, St. Pancras op het Hogeland. For the building history, see Veerman, âDe bouwgeschiedenisâ.
De Boer and Vos, âVan Vrouwekapel tot Vrouwekerkâ, 67.-91.
Van Oerle, Leiden, 1:149.
Koorn, Begijnhoven in Holland en Zeeland, 9, 138â39.
For a general history of the beguines, see Simons, Cities of Ladies; Swan, The Wisdom of the Beguines.
Swan, The Wisdom of the Beguines, 155â72.
Orlers, Beschrijvinge der stad Leyden, 28â29; Verbij-Schillings, âKerk en cultuurâ, 164â70.
Van Kan, âLeiden en de Moderne Devotieâ; Van Luijk, âBruiden van Christusâ, 51â52.
Brandenburgh and Hessing, Matilo, Rodenburg, Roomburg, 78â80.
See, for the Franciscan friary en Engelendaal: Van Oerle, Leiden, 1:237. And for Lopsen: Van Oerle, 1:126; Smithuis, âLopsen en de Moderne Devotieâ; Obbema, De middeleeuwen in handen, 41â48, 126â27; Van den Ende, âKlooster Lopsenâ.
Koorn, Begijnhoven in Holland en Zeeland, 26, 148â53.
Orlers, Beschrijvinge der stad Leyden, 84.
Orlers, 88â91.
Eman, âMiddeleeuwse nonnengalerijenâ; Eman, âNonnengalerijenâ.
The value of the Flemish noble varied but was roughly the equivalent of about eight working hours. A Flemish noble was the equivalent of 92 groten. A master mason working at the court of Holland in The Hague in 1450 earned 6 stuivers per working day in summer (12 groten) and 3 stuivers (6 groten) in winter, see: Noordegraaf, Daglonen in Holland, 25, table 1; Zuijderduijn, Stapel, and Lucassen, âCoin Production in the Low Countriesâ. With many thanks to Robert Stein and Rombert Stapel.
The value of the French crown was about half of that of the noble and the equivalent of 46 groten, Bos-Rops, Graven op zoek naar geld, 340â41. This means the chaplain would have earned 920 groten a year, supplemented with 2760 groten from the land. With many thanks to Robert Stein and Rombert Stapel.
ELO, NL-LdnRAL-0503, no. 1469, Cartularium (1375â1569), no. 26, f. 9v and no. 33, f. 11v.
Bijleveld, âHet nonnenklooster Mariënpoelâ, 151â56.
Van der Velde, âBoudewijn van Zwietenâ, 5; Vogelaar, âLucas en Leidenâ, 28â33.
Van Luijk, ââWant ledicheit een vyant der zielen isââ, 115.
ELO, NL-LdnRAL-0503, no. 1487.
Bijleveld, âHet nonnenklooster Mariënpoelâ, 151â56.
Obbema, âLopsen onder Leidenâ, 172â74.
Van den Ende, âKlooster Lopsenâ, 52.
Bruzelius, Preaching, Building, and Burying, 182; Van den Ende, âKlooster Lopsenâ, 52.
Bueren, Leven na de dood; Bueren, Care for the Here and the Hereafter.
Van Baarsel, âDe memoriemeestersâ; Den Hartog, âInleidingâ.
Den Hartog, âInleidingâ, 164â65. For the patronage of art works in Leidenâs parish churches, see: Vogelaar, âLucas en Leidenâ, 25â28.
Den Hartog, âInleidingâ, 173.
Van Luijk, âBruiden van Christusâ, 67.
For an extensive discussion of âmemoriaâ in Leiden, see Brand, âMémoire individualiséeâ.
ELO, NL-LdnRAL-0503, no. 1469, Cartularium (1375â17569), no. 26, f. 9v and no. 33, f. 11v.
Bijleveld, âHet nonnenklooster Mariënpoelâ, 129, 139.
Bijleveld, 167.
Van der Velde, âBoudewijn van Zwietenâ, 6.
Wolfs, Middeleeuwse dominicanessenkloosters, 42, 47â48.
Machteld was probably a daughter of Jan van den Woude (â 1444), the son of Jan Florisz [Alkemade] van den Woude and Aleid van den Boekhorst, and not of Jan van den Woude (â 1417) of Warmond.
Ottenheym, âVan Witte Nonnen klooster tot Academiegebouwâ, 781â83.
Wolfs, Middeleeuwse dominicanessenkloosters, 42; Ottenheym, âVan Witte Nonnen klooster tot Academiegebouwâ, 786â87.
Van Oerle, âHet academiegebouwâ; Ter Kuile, Leiden en westelijk Rijnland, 116â21; Ottenheym, âVan Witte Nonnen klooster tot Academiegebouwâ, 785â88.
Ottenheym, âVan Witte Nonnen klooster tot Academiegebouwâ, 784â85, 790.
Van Oerle, âHet academiegebouwâ, 77; Beets, âDe bestellersâ, 155â60.
Wolfs, Middeleeuwse dominicanessenkloosters, 53.
Lunsingh Scheurleer, Fock, and Van Dissel, Het Rapenburg, 2:165â73.
Buchelius, Monumenta, fol. 72r.
Van Oerle, Leiden, 1:95â96; Lunsingh Scheurleer, Fock, and Van Dissel, Het Rapenburg, 2:170.
Van Oerle, Leiden, 1:185.
Van Oerle, 1:202; Leupen, âHet Leidse cellebroederskloosterâ.
Van Oerle, Leiden, 1:177â78; Van Luijk, âBruiden van Christusâ, 68.
Van Oerle, Leiden, 1:178; Van Luijk, âBruiden van Christusâ, 76â77.
Dröge and Veerman, âInleidingâ, 33â43, 53â56.
Den Hartog, âInleidingâ, 173â82; Grasman, âHet Laatste Oordeelâ.
Dröge and Veerman, âInleidingâ, 43, 55â56.
Veerman, âDe bouwgeschiedenisâ.
Smithuis, âLopsen en de Moderne Devotieâ, 216.
Smithuis, 21.
ELO, NL-LdnRAL-0503, no. 212; Obbema, De middeleeuwen in handen, 127.
Van Luijk, âDe tweede religieuze vrouwenbewegingâ, 60.
Van Oerle, Leiden, 1:216.
Van Oerle, 1:197.
Knappert, âEen liedjeâ.
Van Oerle, Leiden, 1:215â16.
Jan Dröge, Gevelsteen De Zwarte Olifant, Aalmarkt 27 Leiden, Digital 3D Model (Erfgoed Leiden en Omstreken, 2019), https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/gevelsteen-de-zwarte-olifant-aalmarkt-27-leiden-046dfacebe934c5698dd73f37e6bd56e.
Lunsingh Scheurleer, Fock, and Van Dissel, Het Rapenburg, 2:172â226.
Van Oerle, Leiden, 1:202.
Translation author. Orlers, Beschrijvinge der stad Leyden, 66â67: âDoch ick en can niet verbergen/ dat ick onse hoochgheboude kercken nimmermeer sonder groot verwonderen can aenschouwen / de welcke onse goede voorsaten in haren blinden yver met meerder costen ende lusten hebben gebout / vermeerdert / ende met velen goederen begiftet / als (ducht ick) wy hare goede nacomelinghen huyden ten daghe soude doen. want / in wat steden uyt het pausdom getreden zijnde / heeft men sedert dat de Troublen gheweest / eenighe half afgheworpen ofte verdistrueerde kercken [â¦] van sulcke hoochten / schoonheden / ende grootte / wederomme ghebout ende opghetimmert / als die van ouden tijden gheweest hebben: voorwaer nergens: ende ick houde voor seecker dat sulcx in deze onse tijden nimmermeer ghedaen sal werdenâ.