Competing Sacred Spaces in the Dutch Republic: Confessional Integration and Segregation

Abstract

In the Dutch Republic, the Reformed Church enjoyed the exclusive religious use of church buildings. Formerly, these churches had belonged to Catholics, who were forced to establish their own (semi-clandestine) places of worship known as schuilkerken or huiskerken. As such, Reformed Protestant and Catholics each had their own religious infrastructure and competing sacred spaces. Employing a comparative perspective and a conceptual distinction between churches as legal, sacred and social spaces, this article studies the myriad of relationships between Catholics, their former (parish) churches, and their schuilkerken. It argues that clandestine Catholic churches were never able to replace parish churches completely since the latter continued to be used by Dutch Catholics to exercise legal rights, express and forge social hierarchies, and at times even to practise their faith. While the existence of competing sacred spaces could cause confessional strife and signifies a degree of segregation, at the same time the enduring ties between Catholics and their former churches indicate a level of confessional integration in seventeenth-century Dutch society.