PROLOGUE
I am in my twilight years. There is no point in denying it; the evidence is there every time I try to climb a flight of stairs without something to lean on. No matter; I have arranged my life so that I can potter around my study, my bedroom and the university refectory without too much exertion; and, because my eyes are not as sharp as once they were, I leave most of the writing to my clerk, Jan van der Meer, whom I have had charity enough to retain for the better part of thirty years despite his imperfections. [Marginal note: his many imperfections.]
Without seeking public notice, I have kept company with many of the great men of this and other lands. I would have preferred to have been a simple professor, studying and writing here in Leiden, without the distractions of public service. In case my previous memoirs have not come to the reader’s notice, permit me to explain that it all began when three young girls were abducted in Delft and the mayor sent to the University of Leiden asking for the cleverest man available to help the city fathers solve the problem, so — of course — I was sent.
Word of this must have reached the Stadhouder, William of Orange, who requested my help in the small matter of a treasonous plot against him. It was an unpleasant business made only marginally more palatable by a very substantial fee. I would not have it thought that I am avaricious, but already having money means you don’t need to earn it, which would enable me to devote more time to my studies. There was never any danger that the University would pay me enough to arrive at this happy result.
I had hoped that I was quit of the Stadhouder’s service after this. I was wrong.
Occasionally nitpickers and other blackguards delight in finding fault with my accounts, pointing to alleged inaccuracies and my great age as evidence that my tales are not to be relied upon. I beg to differ. I was there, and they were not. I have copious notes — somewhere — and an excellent memory for distant events. Things like the location of my slippers may be a different matter.
CHAPTER ONE
Beloved in the Lord, we are assembled here in the presence of God for the purpose of joining in marriage (name) and (name). Since we have received no lawful objections to their proposed union, let us reverently call to mind the institution, purpose, and obligations of the marriage state.
The holy bond of marriage was instituted by God himself at the very dawn of history. Making a man in his own likeness, he endowed him with many blessings and gave him dominion over all things. Moreover, God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him” (Genesis 2:18). So God created woman of man’s own substance and brought her to the man. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).
Despite being an ordained minister, I have never had to say those words, because I don’t have a parish. As a lecturer at the University of Leiden I have to preach occasionally, but since all our students are male the chances that two will want to marry each other are very slight. After all, if they expressed an interest in so doing they would immediately be burned at the stake as sodomites.
Neither has anyone said the words to me. I have not married. There are two reasons for this. First, I haven’t had time. The life of an academic is very busy. Second, I am an ordained Catholic priest.
Yes, I know that seems a trifle odd, but I was first ordained as a minister in the Reformed Church; then, as a result of further study, the Bishop of Namur ordained me a priest, but in view of the persecutions then being visited on Catholics he instructed me to keep my ordination secret. He wanted a group of priests to call upon to form a new church if the old one were destroyed. This suited me because I am not enamoured of physical pain, and it seemed to me that the best way to avoid torture and imprisonment was not to let anyone know that I was a Catholic. There is also the little problem of losing my job if I were known to be Catholic; and I haven’t actually left the Reformed Church, just joined another one.
I am bound to remark that matters have never come to that in my own country. The Dutch genius for compromise came into play, so at intervals anti-Catholic measures would be introduced but nobody would do much to enforce them. We all knew the rules. Catholic churches had to be discreet, hidden in side streets, and we must not meet outside the hours of the Divine Services.
In some cities, such as Utrecht, there was even more toleration most of the time, but at the cost of one’s loyalty to the state being under question. And since it was the state that could hang you up by your thumbs in a dungeon and leave you there till you rotted, I chose not to upset it. Believe me, I’ve seen what the state is prepared to do to people who cross it, and while it was uncomfortable to watch I suspect it was a lot more uncomfortable for the poor wretches who were on the receiving end. There are some difficult pastoral issues that a man of the cloth must consider when a man begs you to show God’s mercy and cut his throat.
In the autumn of 1674, I bade farewell to the Stadhouder and his court and returned to my chamber in Leiden, firmly resolved not to get embroiled in anything of the kind again. That Stadhouder, William III, was a nice man, pious and honest, but he seemed to regard a man’s life as completely expendable when it came to defending his interests. I view things differently, especially where my own existence is concerned. I have no doubt that Heaven may be wonderful, but I am in no hurry to get there, and being cornered in dark alleys by knife-wielding fanatics is not something I want to experience too often.
Thus, for nearly two years I lived the peaceful life of a university lecturer with all that it entails. I taught, I marked, I examined, I wrote, I studied, I ate in the refectory, despite the cavalier disregard for cookery technique and elementary hygiene displayed by Albrecht the master cook, and whenever I could slip away I spent the evening in Jan Steen’s inn on the Langebrug. I eat at the University for free, but it was worth a few stijvers to eat something that had not been through the burning, fiery furnace of Albrecht’s oven. And Steen’s beer was a cut above the average, possibly due to the unstinting quality control he practised personally every evening at some cost to his health.
One of the effects of my service to the Stadhouder was that he allowed the Rector of our University to step down, as he had been wishing to do for some time. We had not expected that he would choose to retire altogether, but he decided that he had been away from teaching for too long, so he bought a house and spent much of his time cultivating tulips. A few times a year he returned for University events or to conduct his personal study, when we would exchange some friendly words, but he seemed genuinely happy to have laid aside the burden of his office.
The new Rector was a man called Johannes Coccius, who was a philologian, but none the worse for that. He was a fair man who could always see both sides of an argument and therefore had great difficulties in deciding between them; or, indeed, in making any other decisions. The great benefit of this was that the University’s governance returned to the pattern originally envisaged, namely, one in which the senior staff made their points and a collective decision was reached, with the Rector acting largely as a chairman. The concomitant problem was that these men were very reluctant to discipline their own kind, as a result of which the collective decisions were disobeyed with impunity. Thus one of my own students was expelled, reinstated, re-expelled and finally admitted to classes by the head of the school without the knowledge or agreement of the University council.