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Learned Servants: Dutch Ministers, Their Books and the Struggle for a Reformed Republic in the Dutch Golden Age

Reformed ministers played a pivotal role in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. As representatives of the public church, they took on a civic role helping to bind fragile communities together in shared belief and practice.1 A minister preached multiple times a week, and, when possible, attended to the catechising of members and liefhebbers, and visited and comforted the sick and dying. Occasionally, he wrote books to edify believers even when he could not be physically present. Ministers helped shape their congregation’s understanding of God, creation, and his expectations for their lives. Through these various forms, they ‘supplied all the key terms necessary to understand existence in this world and the next’.2 When executing his task faithfully, the minister mediated between his congregation and the cares of the ordinary world. From the pulpit to the deathbed, the ideal minister tirelessly encouraged and exhorted those in their flocks to pursue godliness. While the public role of ministers is unavoidable in contemporary histories of the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic, little attention has been given to the books they consulted to fulfil their pastoral and public duties.3 This is remarkable, because ministers were the largest group of academically trained