Ysbrandus Trabius' Sermon Het Cleyn Mostertzaet (1590) Examined On the Pastor's Profile

Abstract

In 1590, the Reformed minister Ysbrandus Balkius (Trabius in Latin)' described the professional profile of a pastor in a sermon entitled Het Cleyn Mostertzaet. The sermon recalled the turbulent years of the Dutch reformation. Trabius, who was working shortly after the 1566 outbreak of iconoclasm in Antwerp, had to go exile a half-year later, when the Spanish Duke of Alva arrived. He preached a farewell sermon on the mustard seed.2 From Emden, he left for England and successively became pastor in Norwich, Maidstone, Stamford, and Sandwich. After eleven years of exile, he returned to Antwerp. Seven years later, he had to return to exile; this time because the city fell to the Spanish Duke of Parma. Just before his second involuntary departure, Trabius pronounced another sermon on the mustard seed. He published the written reworking of the twice-given farewell sermon five years later, also under the title of Het Cleyn Mostertzaet. In an elaborate prologue, Trabius addresses the members of his congregation, most of whom had, in the meantime, left Antwerp. They found themselves dispersed in all directions: into Holland, Zealand,