Caught between Canon and Secular Law: Catholic Marriage Practices in the Dutch Golden Age

“No single provision of the entire council affected the Catholic laity more than Tametsi,” wrote John O’Malley in his recent history of the Council of Trent.1 Attempting to regulate the widely varying marriage practices, combat clandestine marriages, and establish the Church’s authority over this sacrament and important rite of passage, the Council stipulated that a valid marriage required the presence of a “parish priest or of another priest authorized by the parish priest or by the ordinary and in the presence of two or three witnesses.”2 Marriages contracted in another manner would be declared “invalid and null”, while punishment awaited those involved in concluding such a marriage.3 No less significant than Tametsi, at least for Dutch Catholics, were the decrees promulgated by the various Provincial States of the nascent Dutch Republic. Largely issued in the 1580s and 1590s, these decrees required marriages to be solemnized either in the presence of a Reformed minister or a municipal officer.4 The resulting mismatch between canon and secular law had grave consequences for Catholics living in the Dutch Republic. Marriages that were valid in the eyes of the Catholic Church were discarded by the secular authorities, and vice versa.5 This article studies the debates waged among Catholic clergy-