A dog and his man

Abstract

In 1634 the chief judicial officer of Leiden’s strict Counter-Remonstrant government, Willem de Bont, held an extravagant funeral for his pet dog Tyter. News of the event produced a flurry of satirical songs (by the persecuted Remonstrants) and poems (by Vondel and others), castigating the childless Bont for giving his dog a funeral normally reserved for a child of the elite. These satires illuminate aspects of the human-dog relationship amidst the theological-political turmoil of early seventeenth-century Leiden. The popular assumption that the Remonstrants hanged Tyter leads to a study of contemporary criminal prosecution of animals and humans alike, and a look at contradictions in the treatment of Leiden’s dogs. Visually, the serenity of Jan Miense Molenaer’s pendant paintings of the event belie the satires. Ironically, Bont thought of his dog as a fellow human but treated the Leiden Remonstrants like dogs, while many regarded Bont himself as a beast.