Material Culture and Popular Calvinist Worldliness in the Dutch ‘Golden Age’

Abstract

The juxtaposition of exorbitant commercial success and the relatively fast advent of Calvinism in 17th-century Netherlands present an informative setting in which to explore historical Protestant perspectives on material culture. Max Weber’s 1905 attribution of ‘innerworldly asceticism’ to Dutch Reformed mentalities in this period has left a legacy in western intellectual tradition that is being challenged through an interdisciplinary approach to historical inquiry evident in contemporary historians and art historians of the Dutch Republic. This essay explores early modern Dutch Reformed mentalities towards material culture and worldly engagement as evidenced in popular religious texts (Willem Teellinck, Jacob Revius, Jodocus van Lodenstein, and Petrus Vander Hagen) in conjunction with visual images representing two genres (an Aelbert Cuyp cityscape and an Emmanuel de Witte architectural interior) and demonstrates characteristics shared by textual and visual sources that question Weber’s portrayal. These characteristics include graphic description, attention to material detail, earthbound idyllic allusions, sensory appeal, sacred space, and interest in religious-political motifs. In contrast to reluctance towards material culture, my interpretation of visual and textual primary sources constructs a popular Dutch ‘Golden Age’ Reformed worldliness that, without denying the significance of nonmaterial (spiritual) conceptions and purported entities, affirmed material culture, sensory apprehension, corporeal identity, politics, and temporal existence as part of a comprehensive worldview and a holistic understanding of human religious experience.