Beeldenstorm in een glas? Wouter Crabeths Bestraffing van de tempelrover Heliodorus en Dirck Crabeths Tempelreiniging in de Sint Janskerk in Gouda

Abstract

Iconoclasm in a glass? Wouter Crabeths "Scourging of Heliodorus" and Dirck Crabeths "Cleansing of the Temple" in Gouda's Sint Janskerk. Two monumental stained-glass Windows, The Scourging of Heliodorus (1566) by Wouter Crabeth (ca.1535-1585) and the Cleansing of the Temple (1567) by his older brother Dirck Crabeth (ca.1525-1574), occupy the eastern walls of the transept of Gouda's Sint Janskerk, to the left and right of the ambulatory. They were part of the ambitious decoration campaign that started after the church was gutted by a fire in 1552. By the time the Sea Beggars took Gouda in 1572, twenty monumental windows had been realized. Although heavily restored, the ensemble survives until today. Clearly, the Heliodorus and the Cleansing of the Temple form a typological pair. The former tells the apocryphal story of general Heliodorus who comes to claim the treasures of the Temple, upon which the priest Onias prays to God, who sends an angel and a heavenly horseman to whip the general out (2 Maccabees 3, : 24-26). The composition is based on Raphaels version, which the glass painter knew through a print by Coornhert after Maerten van Heemskerck. It was donated by Erick of Brunswick II, a German count brought up in the Lutheran faith. He converted to Catholicism as an adult and became a staunch defender of that religion and a close ally of Philip II. Among his greatest achievements was the capture of the highest ranking generals of the French army at the battle of St. Quentin in 1557. The King then made him Lord of Woerden, a town next to gouda, where Eric started to live with his mistress, far from his estranged wife in Germany. The donation of this window in Gouda confirmed his newfound prominence in Holland and his closeness to Philip II, who in 1557 had donated the magnificent window in the North Wall of the transept, right next to Erick's. The donor's border included a portrait of the donor in full formal dress, plus his family arms going back four generations, and a patron saint - in this case St. Lawrence, whose death was celebrated at the 10th of August, the day of the battle of St. Quentin. It also bears a striking incription : CATHOLICAE RELIGIONIS ERGO, ('because of the Catholic religion'). It is the first time that the words 'Catholic religion' appear on a church monument in the Netherland. Ironically but understandably, it happened at a moment when the supremacy of this faith was waning. The Scourging of Heliodorus, dated 1566, was put in place in the spring of 1567. As Lord of Woerden, Erick of Brunswick's mercenaries had chased the Lutherans out of the town's parish church after they occupied it during the iconoclasm of 1566. No wonder that later authors like local historian Walvis (1713) and Conrad busquen Huet (1882-1884) explained the Windows as a memorial to the victory over the iconoclasts. It was only at the end of the twientieth century that this interpretation was refuted. Documents in the church archive show that production of the window started in 1564, which means that the design was long finished by then. We don't need the Iconoclasm to explain it - the iconography elaborates on the other windows in the transept, notably the ones donated by King Philip II and Margaret of Parma, which are also about the integrity of the church and its defence. The figure of Heliodorus was already seen as a symbol of the threat of the reformation before 1566. This is borne out by the poetry of Anna Bijns, an Antwerp school teacher and the foremost lay spokesperson against the reformation of her time. The pendant on the other side of the choir, Dirck Crabeth's Cleansing of the Temple, follows the text of John 2 : 13-22. Arriving at the Temple, Christ saw money changers and people selling cattle, sheep and dogs. He then made a whip out of cords and drove them all away, scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tablets. the groups of men standing around arguing refer to the Jews who ask christ to give a sign that shows he has the authority to do this, to which Christ answers that they can even destroy the temple and he will raise it again in three days. The genesis of this Windows was complicated by the political events of the time. It carries the date 1567 but by then it was already five years in the making. In 1562 Wouter Crabeth travelled to The Hague to draw William of Orange' s portrait, which his brother Dirck intended to use for the donor's border. At the time of his portrait sesion, Orange still belonged to Philip II' s immediate circle. but in 1567 when the window was near completion, he had become the leader of the Dutch Revolt againstthat same king. William ended up not paying for the window and when it was finally placed in 1569, his portrait was not included - no doubt because of his breach with the Habsburg house. the design for the donor's border remained unexecuted so the lower part of the window had to be bricked up but the main scene was placed anyway, which shows the determination of the churchwardens to complete the glazing. After the protestantization of the church (1573), as William of Orange's reputation as the founder of the protestant Republic grew, people started to see the subject of his window as an 'answer' to Erick of Brunswick's - where The scourging of Heliodorus protested against iconoclasm, the Cleansing of the Temple supposedly applauded the removal of Catholic clergy, rites and abuse. When the city councilmen decided in 1656 to have the bricked-up part of the window opened up again to create a newly designed donor's border with their own family arms, they had an anti-Catholic poem inscribed on it framed in branches of the orange tree, an obvious reference to William of Orange, whose failed donation was hereby definitively cast in a protestant light. In hindsight we must conclude that such a Reading is unhistorical, as both windows formed part of a Catholic decorative program and were both designed before the events they were supposed to refer to had happened. Originally, the subject of the Cleansing of the Temple must also have been intended to evoke associations with the battle against the reformation. The creation and execution of the decorative program were overseen by the powerful humanist Viblius van Aytta, president of the Secret Council and personal councillor to Charles V, Philip II and Margaret of Parma. Apparently advised by theologians from the university of Louvain he saw to it that the Windows contained a devotional message as well as a political one. Whereas medieval typology stressed the parallels between Old- and New Testament stories, the creators of the Gouda decoration programme re-oriented themselves on the writings of St Augustine, who time and again stressed the superiority of the New Testament over the Old Testament. This way of thinking is exemplified in the two windows discussed here: A Godly intervention in the Old Testament is contrasted with an act of Christ, who tells doubters that with His coming, a new era has started. Mankind will need no more signs apart from what He Himself says and does.