Batavia's Graveyard: The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History's Bloodiest Mutiny

by Mike Dash

  John Evelyn, the noted diarist, records witnessing the preparation of Venice treacle in 1646. The medicine, he wrote, was mixed annually in an event that had “all the character of a great proprietary ceremony and public festival. All the public squares and the courtyards of hospitals and monasteries in Venice were transformed for the occasion into great open-air theatres, adorned with rich damasks, with busts of Hippocrates and Galen, and with the great majolica jars destined to receive the precious medicament. Grave and important personages, sumptuously robed, moved to the applause of the crowds in an atmosphere of rejoicing and expectation.

  “In some cities the preparation was preceded by exhibiting the ingredients to the public for three consecutive days so that anybody could examine them. On the fourth day the actual making of the theriac was preceded by a benediction given by the highest ecclesiastical authority and by a panegyric delivered by the leading physician of the city. Only the leading pharmacists, who were vested with the office of Triacanti (theriac-makers), were allowed to make the theriac, and always under the eye of the chief physicians.”

  Sale of groceries and poisons Wittop Koning, Compendium voor de Geschiedenis van de Pharmacie van Nederland, pp. 90, 172, 206.

  Haarlem S. Groenveld, E. K. Grootes, J. J. Temminick et al., Deugd Boven Geweld. Een Geschiedenis van Haarlem 1245–1995 (Hilversum: Verloren 1995), pp. 144, 172–4, 177.

  Cornelisz’s house on the Grote Houtstraat ONAH 130, fol. 219v. For gapers, see Witlop Koning, Compendium voor de Geschiedenis van de Pharmacie van Nederland, pp. 97–8. Cornelisz does not appear among contemporary lists of Haarlem property owners, hence the supposition that the building was rented.

  Cornelisz’s popularity His neighbors were prepared to testify to his character and honesty before solicitors, which, as we will see, was certainly not true for every citizen of Haarlem.

  Cornelisz’s citizenship of Haarlem ONAH 129, fol. 78v. The Haarlem poorterboecken, which would have contained additional details concerning Jeronimus’s life in the city, have not survived.

  Belijtgen Jacobsdr, her pregnancy, her illness, and her maidservant Ibid.; ONAH 99, fol. 131 ONAH 130, fol. 159, 198. For her age, see ONAH 130, fol. 219v, where she is obliquely referred to as a “young mother”; this would hardly have applied in this period had she been Cornelisz’s age, 29 or 30. For the appearance of Dutch women, see Van Deursen, op. cit., pp. 81–2. For the contemporary incidence of death in childbirth, see Brockliss and Jones, op. cit., p. 62.

  Cathalijntgen van Wijmen ONAH 131, fol. 12. The remains of the afterbirth were finally removed by a “wise woman” who was the mother of Belijtgen’s maidservant five days after the birth. ONAH 99, fol. 134v.

  Belijtgen as an assistant in the apothecary shop See ONAH 130, fol. 159, where Jacobsdr is described as sitting in the shop on 28 April 1628.

  Breast-feeding in the Dutch Republic Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (London: Fontana, 1991), pp. 538–40.

  Burial of Cornelisz’s son GAH, burial registers 70, fol. 83v.

  Syphilis in infants Congenital syphilis is a well-recognized condition that affects about 70 percent of children whose mothers are infected with the disease and have not been treated. T. pallidum, the bacterium that causes the condition, infects the fetus through the placenta and the child is born with syphilis. The symptoms may not be visible at first and may take up to five weeks to manifest themselves. Early indications of the disease include bloody snuffles in the first weeks of the baby’s life, the appearance of a syphilitic rash after one to two weeks, and fissures on the lips and anus.

  It was once thought that diseased wet nurses could infect their charges with syphilis through their milk; indeed Ludwig II, the notorious “Mad King of Bavaria,” was popularly supposed to have been given syphilis by his nurse. This method of transmission is now thought to be a myth. Nevertheless, medical literature acknowledges the possibility that a very young infant may be infected with the disease by a third party shortly after birth. Transmission is by contact with open sores on the infected person’s body. Luger studied the case of three syphilitic infants reported from Vienna in 1968. His findings were that the disease could not have been transmitted venereally but was probably the product of crowded conditions and unsanitary housing. Eisenberg et al. had already reported 20 similar cases of asexually acquired syphilis from Chicago. H. Eisenberg, F. Plotke, and A. Baker, “Asexual Syphilis in Children,” Journal of Venereal Diseases Information 30 (1949): 7–11; A. Luger, “Non-Venereally Transmitted ‘Endemic’ Syphilis in Vienna,” British Journal of Venereal Diseases 48 (1972): 356–60; K. Rathblum, “Congenital Syphilis,” Sexually Transmitted Diseases 10 (1983): 93–9.

  “. . . this was a very serious concern.” Not only was it the case that in the Dutch Republic at this time, women infected with venereal diseases by their husbands were considered to have grounds for separation (Schama, op. cit., p. 406); in Haarlem, in the 1620s, it was difficult to survive at all without the goodwill and respect of one’s neighbors.

  Like many other cities in the United Provinces, Haarlem was a town full of strangers. The population had grown by a third since 1600, swollen by refugees who had fled from the Southern Netherlands during the war with Spain. Others, including Jeronimus and perhaps his wife, had arrived from other parts of the Republic, bringing with them a variety of religious views, social mores, and degrees of wealth. For the 10,000 immigrants who had moved to the city, most of whom had no family or friends to whom they could turn in times of trouble, it was particularly important to be able to rely on assistance from the gebuurte, or neighborhood.

  Haarlem recognized almost 100 such neighborhoods, and the Grote Houtstraat, where Cornelisz lived, contained no fewer than five. Honor mattered greatly in these miniature societies. Without it, it was impossible to obtain credit, and—since the presence of disreputable people brought discredit on their neighbors—any loss of honor was a matter of concern for the whole gebuurte. It is only in this context that the frantic efforts that Jeronimus and Belijtgen made to clear themselves of the suspicion that they were infected with syphilis can be properly understood. See Gabrielle Dorren, “Burgers en Hun Besognes. Burgemeestersmemorialen en Hun Bruikbaarheid als Bron voor Zeventiende-Eeuws Haarlem,” Jaarboeck Haarlem (1995): 58; idem, Het Soet Vergaren: Haarlems Buurtleven in de Zeventiende Eeuw (Haarlem: Arcadia, 1998), pp. 12–3, 16, 22–3, 27–9; idem, “Communities Within the Community,” pp. 178, 180–3.

  Economic conditions in the Dutch Republic in the 1620s Israel, op. cit., pp. 478–9.

  The disgrace of bankruptcy Schama, op. cit., pp. 343–4; Geoffrey Cotterell, Amsterdam: The Life of a City (Farnborough: DC Heath, 1973), p. 118.

  Loth Vogel ONAH 99, fol. 159v. There is no surviving record of any person of this name in the Haarlem birth, marriage, or burial registers. However, the historian Gabrielle Dorren notes the existence of an Otto Vogel, an extremely wealthy corn merchant from Amsterdam who settled in Haarlem in the hope of improving the health of his sickly wife. This Vogel was in Haarlem by 1604 and resisted several efforts by local dignitaries to force him to become a full citizen of his adopted town. Eventually, Vogel became so irritated by this pressure that he threatened to leave the town, taking with him his—unnamed—brother. It seems possible that this brother may have been Cornelisz’s Loth. “De Eerzamen. Zeventiende-Eeuws Burgerschap in Haarlem,” in R. Aerts and H. te Velde (eds.), De Stijl van de Burger: Over Nederlandse Burgerlijke Cultuur vanaf de Middeleeuwen (Kampen: Kok Agora, 1998), p. 70.

  The case against Heyltgen For the condition of Belijtgen, see the testimony of Gooltgen Joostdr, 3 May 1628 (ONAH 130, fol. 159); Aeffge Jansdr, Ytgen Hendricxdr, Grietgen Dircksdr, and Wijntge Abrahamsdr, 18 June 1628 (ONAH 130, fol. 198); Maijcke Pietersdr van den Broecke, 6 July 1628 (ONAH 130, fol. 219); Willem Willemsz Brouwerius (Cornelisz’s physician), 8 August 1628 (ONAH 99, fol. 131); Aeltgen Govertsdr, 9 August (ONAH 99, fol. 134); and Aecht Jansdr and Ytgen Henricxd
r, 11 August 1628 (ONAH 99, fol. 134v). For Heyltgen, see the testimony of Jannitge Pietersdr, Willem Willemsz, Grietgen Woutersdr, Hester Ghijsbertsdr, Jannitgen Joostsdr, and Elsken Adamsdr, 27 July 1628 (ONAH 60, fol. 99); Elsken Adamsdr, 11 August 1628 (ONAH 99, fol. 135v).

  Aert Dircxsz ONAH 60, fol. 99. Asked by one Cornelia Jansdr who Dircxsz was, Heyltgen is alleged to have replied: “A dirty whore hunter.” In the context of the dispute, this might well be taken to suggest that her former lover carried a venereal disease.

  Heyltgen’s response ONAH 99, fol. 131; ONAH 130, fol. 159.

  “She twisted the scanty evidence” Aeltgen Govertsdr, who had given a statement to the solicitor Sonnebijl at the wet nurse’s request, later disputed the accuracy of the deposition he produced in her name. She had, she said, protested at the time, to which Sonnebijl’s wife, who was also present, had rejoined: “Well, woman, one cannot write perfectly—do you think my husband hasn’t got a soul to lose?” ONAH 99, fol. 134. Unfortunately the Sonnebijl archive has not survived, denying us Heyltgen’s side of this long-running dispute.

  Heyltgen’s reappearance in the Grote Houtstraat ONAH 130, fol. 159.

  Cornelisz comes to terms with Vogel ONAH 99, fol. 159. The solicitor on this occasion was Willem van Triere.

  Cornelisz as an Anabaptist There is no definite proof of Jeronimus’s Anabaptist antecedents, though V. D. Roeper (ed.), De Schipbreuk van de Batavia, 1629 (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 1994), p. 14, and Philip Tyler, “The Batavia Mutineers: Evidence of an Anabaptist ‘Fifth Column’ Within 17th Century Dutch Colonialism?” Westerly (December 1970): 33–45 have previously speculated that he had a background in the Mennonite community. The fact that he appears to have been unbaptized (for which see JFP 28 Sep 1629 [DB 211]; there is also no trace of any baptism in the surviving records of Leeuwarden, Bergum, or Haarlem) is obviously suggestive. Perhaps more significantly, the Haarlem archives indicate that his wife, Belijtgen, was herself an Anabaptist (in ONAH 130, fol. 159 Heyltgen Jansdr describes her, among other insults, as “a Mennonite whore”). Definite proof is unlikely ever to emerge; the records of the Haarlem Mennonites go back no further than the second half of the seventeenth century. But I am inclined to feel that there is an excellent chance Cornelisz came from Anabaptist stock.

  Anabaptist numbers in Leeuwarden Israel, op. cit., p. 656.

  Religious toleration and persecution Ibid. pp. 372–83.

  Anabaptist origins and views William Estep, The Anabaptist Story: An Introduction to Sixteenth-Century Anabaptism (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1996), pp. xi, 14–28, 171; Stayer, Anabaptists and the Sword, p. 290; Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 253; Israel, op. cit. pp. 84–95, 656; Van Deursen, Plain Lives in a Golden Age, pp. 307, 311.

  Anabaptist millenarianism and the siege of Münster Krahn, Dutch Anabaptism, pp. 114–5, 120–4, 130, 135–50; Stayer, op. cit., pp. 191–3, 227–80; Cohn, op. cit., pp. 259–61.

  Anabaptist revolutionaries in Amsterdam and Friesland Krahn, op. cit., pp. 148, 154; Israel, op. cit. pp. 92–6, 655–6.

  The emergence of the Mennonites Israel, op. cit., pp. 85–90.

  The Batenburgers and their successors Jan van Batenburg was born around 1495, and became mayor of a town in Overijssel. During the early 1530s, he converted to Anabaptism and found himself the leader of a large number of his coreligionists in Friesland and Groningen. He had Münsterite sympathies, but in 1535 one group of his followers urged him to announce himself as “a new David” and before long he had established a new and wholly independent sect, which quickly became the most extreme of all the early Anabaptist movements.

  The Batenburgers believed that every man and everything on earth was owned, in a literal sense, by God. They also believed that they were God’s chosen children. It followed, in their theology, that everything on earth was theirs to do with what they pleased; indeed, killing “infidel,” by which they meant any man who was not a member of their sect, was pleasing to their God. Those who joined the sect after 1535—when the Münsterite leadership had declared the door to salvation to be closed—could never be baptized, they thought, but these men and women would nevertheless survive the coming apocalypse and be reborn in the coming Kingdom of God as servants of the Anabaptist elite. The Batenburgers also shared the views of the radical Münsterites on polygamy and property; all women, and all goods, were held in common. A few Batenburger marriages did occur, and Van Batenburg himself retained the right to present a deserving member of his sect with a “wife” from the group’s general stock of women. However, such unions could be ended just as readily, and on occasion the prophet did order an unwilling wife to return to servicing the remainder of the Batenburger men.

  Van Batenburg seems to have commanded the loyalty of at least several hundred men. Members of his sect were required to swear oaths of absolute secrecy, however, and had to endure a painful initiation designed to ensure they would be able to resist torture if they were ever captured, so the true extent of his following never emerged. The Batenburgers did not gather openly in public and had their leader’s dispensation to pose as ordinary Lutherans or Catholics, going to church and living apparently normal lives in the lands along the borders of the Holy Roman Empire and The Netherlands for several years after the fall of Münster. They recognized one another by secret symbols displayed on their houses or their clothing, and by certain ways of styling their hair. It was only after Van Batenburg himself was captured and burned at the stake that they came together at last, infesting the Imperial marches for at least another decade under the leadership of a Leyden weaver called Cornelis Appelman. By now the group had been reduced to a core of no more than 200 men, most of whom were joined by bonds of family or marriage.

  Appelman remained active until his own capture in 1545. He was if anything more extreme than Van Batenburg, giving himself the title of “The Judge” and killing any of his followers who refused to join his criminal activities, or proved themselves lax in killing, robbing or committing arson. Like Van Batenburg, he preached and practiced polygamy, with the additional refinement that the women of his sect could leave their husbands at any time should they decide to marry a man further up the Batenburger hierarchy. Appelman himself murdered his own wife when she refused him leave to marry her daughter, and subsequently killed the girl as well.

  After the Judge’s death, the Batenburger sect fragmented into several tiny groups, one of which, the Children of Emlichheim, was active in the middle 1550s. Its sole creed appears to have been revenge against the infidel; on one notorious occasion its members stabbed to death 125 cows that belonged to a local monastery. The last of the Batenburger splinter groups, and also the largest, was the “Folk of Johan Willemsz.” This sect persisted until about 1580, living by robbery and murder in the countryside around Wesel, on the Dutch-German border. It was when Willemsz himself was burned at the stake that the remnants of the group found their way to Friesland. L. G. Jansma, Melchiorieten, Münstersen en Batenburgers: een Sociologische Analyse van een Millenistische Beweging uit de 16e Eeuw (Buitenpost: np, 1977), pp. 217–35, 237, 244–75; Jansma, “Revolutionairee Wederdopers na 1535” in MG Buist et al. (eds.), Historisch Bewogen. Opstellen over de radicale reformatie in de 16e en 17e eeuw (Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff, 1984), pp. 51–3; S. Zijlstra, “David Joris en de Doperse Stromingen (1536–1539), in ibid., pp. 130–1, 138; M. E. H. N. Mout, “Spiritualisten in de Nederlandse reformatie van de Zestiende Eeuw,” Bijdragen en Mededelingen Betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden 111 (1996): 297–313.

  Giraldo Thibault’s fencing club Govert Snoek, De Rosenkruizers in Nederland: Voornamelijk in de Eerste Helft van de 17de Eeuw. Een Inventarisatie (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Utrecht, 1997), pp. 164–73. The Amsterdam club shut down in 1615, when Thibault moved temporarily to Cleves, so Cornelisz could not have attended it himself. However, Thibault returned to the Dutch
Republic in 1617 and apparently settled in Leyden, where he died in 1626. It is possible, though there is certainly no proof, that Jeronimus could have met the fencing master there; in any case, the point is that he may well have attended some intellectual salon run along similar lines.

  Guillelmo Bartolotti Israel, op. cit., pp. 345, 347–8.

  Cornelisz and Torrentius Cornelisz’s association with Torrentius was taken for granted in the Batavia journals, which occasionally refer to him as a “Torrentian.” For a discussion of this point, see epilogue.

  The extent of the Torrentian circle Snoek, op. cit., pp. 78–9.

  Schoudt and Lenaertsz Ibid., pp. 89–90, 91, 94; ONAH 99, fol. 159; Bredius, Torrentius, p. 42. Lenaertsz witnessed the legal document that Cornelisz. had drawn up to transfer all his worldly goods to Loth Vogel, a matter so humiliating that he would surely have called on only a close friend to countersign it.

  “. . . apothecaries sold the paints . . .” Roeper, op. cit. p. 14.

  “Disciple” Antonio van Diemen to Pieter de Carpentier, 30 November–10 December 1629, ARA VOC 1009, cited in Henrietta Drake-Brockman, Voyage to Disaster (Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1995), p. 50. It should be admitted here that there remains no direct evidence that the two men were acquainted, and Jeronimus’s name does not appear in the process file concerning Torrentius’s eventual arrest and trial. Nevertheless, in a town with an elite the size of Haarlem’s—perhaps 1,000 men—it would actually be remarkable if two men of such distinct views were not known to one another.

  Torrentius Bredius, Johannes Torrentius, pp. 1–3, 12, 22–6, 29–31, 34–5, 45–6, 49, 58; Rehorst, Torrentius, pp. 11–4, 15–6, 78–80; Zbigniew Herbert, Still Life with a Bridle (London: Jonathan Cape, 1993), pp. 82–100; Snoek, pp. 60, 67–8, 71, 80–3, 87, 90, 101, 171. He was born in Amsterdam in 1589. Torrentius’s father is famous for having been the first inmate of Amsterdam’s new prison; his mother, Symontgen Lucasdr, remained loyal to him throughout his imprisonment and exile and survived him.