Reading Half of a Book: "Conversions"

I admit immediately that I read half of this book (Conversions: Two Family Stories from the Reformation and Modern America); the half I was interested in. I had purchased this book a few years ago and was always more interested in the Reformation era conversion story than I was the modern era conversion story. So I when I picked up the book again a couple of weeks ago, I barely skimmed the modern era conversion story chapters and concentrated on the Reformation era conversion story.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

As the publisher, Yale University Press, describes the book:

This powerful and innovative work by a gifted cultural historian explores the effects of religious conversion on family relationships, showing how the challenges of the Reformation can offer insight to families facing similarly divisive situations today. Craig Harline begins with the story of young Jacob Rolandus, the son of a Dutch Reformed preacher, who converted to Catholicism in 1654 and ran away from home, causing his family to disown him. In the companion story, Michael Sunbloom, a young American, leaves his family’s religion in 1973 to convert to Mormonism, similarly upsetting his distraught parents. The modern twist to Michael’s story is his realization that he is gay, causing him to leave his new church, and upsetting his parents again—what will they do now?

Recounting these stories in short, alternating chapters, Harline underscores the parallel aspects of the two far-flung families. Despite different outcomes and forms, their situations involve nearly identical dynamics and heart-wrenching choices. Through the author’s deeply informed imagination, the experiences of a seventeenth-century European family are transformed into immediately recognizable terms.

Jacob Rolandus was in a situation comparable to that of English converts, and so I was most interested in his story. Harline describes not only the family conflict Jacob's conversion caused, but the careful response of Catholic in Calvinist Holland. Although Catholics weren't in as much danger there as they were in England, there were still restrictions on their freedom. It could be dangerous to take in a convert--he could be an agent of the government trying to find out about the Catholic underground. Rolandus had to prove not only to his parents that his mind could not be changed, but prove to the Catholics, including the Jesuits or others from whom he was seeking help and protection from his parents, that he could be trusted. 

Harline explores the moral conflict of Jacob's disobedience to his parents when he becomes a Catholic. His father wants him to come home but Jacob, who is 21, wants to make a new life for himself in the Catholic world. He is finally accepted by the Society of Jesus and studies for the priesthood, eventually becoming a missionary to Brazil.  Jacob and his sister Maria exchange letters in which he tries to convince her to become a Catholic and she tries to convince him to come back home and be reunited with the family in their Reformed faith. Harline has provided a complete translated transcript of these letters on his website.

Harline presents these two conversion stories as parallel, but they really aren't. Jacob Rolandus becomes a Catholic; he is faithful to the Catholic Church; he becomes a Jesuit and a missionary, devoting his life to the spreading of the Gospel. "Michael Sunbloom" becomes a Mormon but then decides he can't remain a Mormon because he has decided he is a homosexual, so he is not faithful to the Mormon Church. Because, as a couple of other reviewers I've read have also noted (like this one), Harline focuses the discussion of conversion, conscience and conflict all on a relational level, he doesn't see the truth claims of religious faith. In fact, he rather dismisses the whole idea of truth in religious affiliation as a case of--particularly when describing the correspondence between Jacob and Marie--something habitual and social. Then why did Jacob leave his home, hurt his parents, sacrifice his life, and become not just a Catholic, but a Jesuit and a missionary? Do we really make such great changes in our lives out of habit and social convention? Because Jacob had some Catholic friends, he became a Catholic and endured all that meant in his time? That's why I skipped so much of the "Michael Sunbloom" narrative and don't accept Harline's conclusions. But I enjoyed the story of Jacob Rolandus, SJ. He was a brave and resolute man.

Johannes Vermeer, RIP, December 15, 1675

Believe it or not, there is a connection between the death of Johannes Vermeer and the English Reformation, the topic of this blog! The connection is the relationship between Church and State, always fraught with difficulty, but especially when the State chooses an official church and religion. The artist Johannes Vermeer became a Catholic when he married, and this site notes:

By the time Vermeer's parents were married in 1615, the suppression of the public celebration of the Catholic faith in Delft was complete. But even though national decrees denied Catholics the right to serve public office, many areas of the Netherlands remained solidly Roman Catholic. Despite the hostility, Dutch Catholics continued to worship and educate their children throughout the 17th century. In large cities like Amsterdam, Haarlem and Utrecht, commercial concerns dampened repeated calls for anti-Catholic laws. Although intolerance existed in the United Provinces, on the whole Dutch Catholics enjoyed remarkable freedoms compared with religious minorities elsewhere in early modern Europe. Penal laws against Catholics were occasionally enforced and Catholics were vulnerable to extortion, but things could have been far worse.

Vermeer very probably converted to Catholicism upon his marriage to Catharina Bolnes [in 1653] and there is no sign that his decision had negative repercussions on his career. The most influential painter in Delft and friend of the Vermeer family, Leonaert Bramer as well as the popular painter of Dutch family life, Jan Steen were noted Catholics.

So, like Catholics in England, Catholics in the Netherlands had to worship secretly--that line "things could have been far worse" might indeed be applied to English Catholics during the 17th century. Since this painting dates to 1670-1672, English Catholics were still under the Penal and Recusancy laws that made it an act of treason for a priest to be in England and a felony for a layperson to assist a Catholic priest in any way--although there was a hiatus in the persecution of Catholics during those years of Charles II's reign. It would start up again after the Fire of London and while Titus Oates' nefarious conspiracy of a conspiracy ran its perjurous course.

Catholics in the Netherlands were allowed to worship in schiulkerk, or hidden churches, as long as they kept it quiet.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has this Vermeer currently on display. Its description:

One of Vermeer's most unusual pictures, this large canvas was probably commissioned by a Catholic patron. The subject was adopted from a standard handbook of iconography, Cesare Ripa's "Iconologia." Vermeer interpreted Ripa's description of Faith with the "world at her feet" literally, showing a Dutch globe published in 1618. The divine world is suggested by the glass sphere hanging overhead. The painting of the Crucifixion on the wall copies a work by Jacob Jordaens. Among the several Christological symbols, the most prominent are the apple, emblem of the first sin, and the serpent (Satan) crushed by a stone (Christ, the "cornerstone" of the church). Dating from about 1670, the work strikes a balance between abstraction and haunting similitude.

Painted about 1670–72, this picture presents an allegory of Vermeer's adopted religion, and was probably made expressly for a private Catholic patron or for a schuilkerk, a hidden Catholic church. It is unlike any other work by Vermeer, though it shows compositional similarities to The Art of Painting (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) of about 1666–68. The latter work is also allegorical in subject, but only nominally, as it was intended mainly as a virtuosic display of the artist's abilities. In the MMA canvas, Vermeer shifts his late style towards a more classicist and schematic manner.

The choice and interpretation of the imagery included here would have been discussed by the artist and his patron. For many of the allegorical motifs, Vermeer must have turned to Cesare Ripa's emblem book, Iconologia (Rome, 1603), translated in a Dutch edition by Dirck Pietersz Pers (Amsterdam, 1644). The female figure represents the Catholic Faith, wearing white, a symbol of purity, and blue, the "hue of heaven". A hand raised to the heart indicates the source of living faith. She rests her foot on a globe, published in 1618 by Jodocus Hondius, to illustrate Ripa's description of Faith with "the world under her feet". In the foreground, Vermeer shows the "cornerstone" of the Church (Christ) crushing a serpent (Satan). The nearby apple, which has been bitten, stands for original sin. The table is transformed into an altar with the addition of a chalice, crucifix, and a Bible or, more likely because of its proximity to other objects used for the Mass, a missal. The glass sphere, hanging from a ribbon, was a popular decorative curiosity; in this context, it may be viewed as a symbol of heaven or God. The room itself, with its high ceiling, marble floor, and a large altarpiece based on a work by Jacob Jordaens (possibly identical with one in Vermeer's estate), was meant to be recognized by contemporary viewers as a private chapel installed within a large house or some other secular building. Though apparently an illusionistic device, the tapestry at left would also have been understood as part of a very large hanging, drawn aside to reveal a normally secluded space.

This book, published by Harvard University Press, covers the era: Faith on the margins: Catholics and Catholicism in the Dutch Golden Age by Charles H. Parker and this book even compares the two minority communities of Catholics in England and the Netherlands. And Vermeer is in the news with the release of Tim's Vermeer, a movie about a man's efforts to figure out how Vermeer composed his paintings so perfectly balancing light and shadow, using a camera obscura.