Reformulating the Cult of Our Lady of Scherpenheuvel: Marie de'Médicis and the Regina Pacis Statue in Cologne (1635–1645)

Abstract

The idea that the post-Tridentine Catholic Reform movement should be viewed in terms of a top-down imposition of an institutionalised, religious control has been increasingly replaced by an interpretative model which emphasises the complex, reciprocal processes that determined the making and meaning of Tridentine piety. For example, Robert Bireley in his influential book The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450-1700 underlines the adaptiveness of the Roman Catholic Church when arguing that 'the church reshaped itself in light of the evolving culture and society, so did this changing culture and society help refashion the church. Catholics were both agents and subjects of change.'1 This flexibility of Early Modern Catholicism, according to Bireley, ultimately allowed for local divergences and modifications of the social and cultural manifestations of the Catholic Reform. In this respect, Simon Ditch-field convincingly argued that the Roman Catholic reforms have to be viewed as a 'new geography of exchange, in which and periphery can join popular and elite as dualistic labels that require thorough contextualisa-tion if they are to be of continuing use.'2This article contributes to this call for a more nuanced approach to Catholic forms of devotion in Early Modern Europe through an analysis of the dissemination of the Brabantian cult of Our Lady of Scherpenheuvel in Cologne, free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire, in the 1640s. The propagation of this Marian cult in the Rhine city was initiated by several civic, papal and monastic factions who re-shaped it to their own, variegated spiritual needs and political objectives.3 In this way, the cult of Our Lady of Scherpenheuvel cannot be understood as being monolithic and stable, but has to be regarded as a highly dynamic process which espouses multiple forms and identities not amenable to clear definition.The cult of the Virgin of Scherpenheuvel is traceable to the discovery of a miracle-working wooden statue of the Virgin found in an oak tree by a shepherd on a hill known as Scherpenheuvel (meaning 'sharp' or 'pointed' hill) or Montaigu near the township of Zichem in north-east Brabant in 1500. Post-Tridentine Catholic reformers embraced saintly miracles and wonders to renew a sense of the tangible proof of the Catholic truth. Philip Soergel argued that this 'notion of the Roman religion as an unbroken heritage punctuated and proven by miracles provided state and church officials with a powerful appeal'.4 Ultimately, this experiental nature of the Roman religion was perceived as superior to Protestantism's exclusive focus on Christ and the Scripture. Pilgrimage places, holy shrines and miraculous statues were thus revitalised as a means of championing the cause of the Catholic Church. The cult of Scherpenheuvel even reached national and international recognition with the support of the new co-sovereigns of the Spanish Netherlands, the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, eldest daughter of the Spanish King Philip II, and her husband, the Archduke Albert of Austria, brother of Emperor Rudolph II. This extensive publicity campaign by the Archdukes entailed a bitter controversy about religious imagery and miracles between Catholic authors and their Protestant adversaries.5 Even the Infanta Isabella's Franciscan confessor, Andres de Soto, contributed to the dispute with a treatise in defence of miracles as a manifestation of the divine.6 The defence of the cult became intimately linked with the advancement of the Archdukes' political and territorial aspirations, because Albert and Isabella came to venerate the Virgin of Scherpenheuvel as the guardian of their realm and sovereignty after their military victories over the Dutch in s'Hertogenbosch and Ostend in 1603 and 1604. In 1607, the initial wooden chapel of 1603, which had been restored after an attack by troops from the United Provinces in 1604, was replaced with a stone chapel as it is represented in the centre background of Figure 3. …