The Exeter Madonna at The Frick

At The Frick in New York City, an exhibition explores some artifacts and paintings from the world of the Carthusians, associated with the Charterhouse of Bruges:

This exhibition brings together two masterpieces of early Netherlandish painting commissioned in the 1440s by the Carthusian monk Jan Vos, reuniting them for only the second time in their history. The panels — the Frick’s Virgin and Child with St. Barbara, St. Elizabeth, and Jan Vos, by Jan van Eyck and his workshop, and The Virgin and Child with St. Barbara and Jan Vos by Petrus Christus, now in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin — were commissioned by Vos during his tenure as prior of the Carthusian monastery (or charterhouse) of Bruges. The panels are presented with Carthusian objects that place them in their rich monastic context, offering a glimpse into the visual environment of the charterhouse and highlighting the role that images played in shaping devotional life and funerary practices in Europe during the late Middle Ages.

The Charterhouse of Bruges is on view in the museum’s Cabinet Gallery and is curated by Emma Capron, the 2016–18 Anne L. Poulet Curatorial Fellow at The Frick Collection. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated scholarly catalogue published by The Frick Collection in association with D Giles Ltd., London.

The Virgin and Child with St. Barbara and Jan Vos by Petrus Christus is also known as the Exeter Madonna because its "first modern owner" was Brownlow Cecil, the 2nd Marquess of Exeter (second creation in 1801). He acquired it in 1815 and sold it in 1888.

The Charterhouse of Bruges referred to in this exhibit was at Genadendal. The other famous Charterhouse in Bruges was the Sheen Anglorum, founded after the Carthusians in England were either executed, starved to death, or sent into exile during the English Reformation.

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.

Franciscan Martyrs of Gorkum, South Holland

On Saturday, July 12, the Franciscans of England will celebrate several martyrs during the Recusant era and the Popish Plot crisis. Today, Franciscans (and Dominicans) in the Netherlands and Belgium remember the Gorkum martyrs, brutally tortured and executed by Calvinist pirates against the wishes of Prince William of Orange. From Catholic Exchange:

On July 9, 1572, nineteen priests and religious were put to death by hanging at Briel, the Netherlands. They had been captured in Gorkum on June 26 by a band of Calvinist pirates called the Watergeuzen (sea-beggars) who were opposed to the Catholicism of the Spanish princes of the country.

During their imprisonment, the priests were tortured, subjected to countless indignities, and offered their freedom if they would deny the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the primacy of the pope. Despite a letter from Prince William of Orange ordering their release and protests from the magistrates of Gorkum, the men were thrown half-naked into the hold of a ship on July 6, and taken to Briel to be killed in the presence of a Protestant nobleman, Admiral Lumey, who was noted for his hatred of Catholicism. Their bodies, mutilated both before and after death, were callously thrown into a ditch.

The scene of the martyrdom soon became a place of pilgrimage. Accounts of several miracles, performed through the martyrs’ intercession and relics, were used for their beatification. Most of their relics are kept in the Franciscan church at Brussels to which they were secretly conveyed from Briel in 1616.

The 19 martyrs, canonized by Pope Pius IX on June 29, 1865, are:

1.     Leonard van Veghel (born 1527), spokesman, secular priest, and since 1566 pastor of Gorkum

2.     Peter of Assche (born 1530), Franciscan lay brother

3.     Andrew Wouters (born 1542), secular priest, pastor of Heinenoord in the Hoeksche Waard

4.     Nicasius of Heeze (born 1522), Franciscan friar, theologian and priest

5.     Jerome of Weert (born 1522), Franciscan friar, priest, pastor in Gorcum

6.     Anthony of Hoornaar, Franciscan friar and priest

7.     Godfried van Duynen (born 1502), secular priest, former pastor in northern France

8.     Willehad of Denemarken (born 1482), Franciscan friar and priest

9.     James Lacobs (born 1541), Norbertine canon

10. Francis of Roye (born 1549), Franciscan friar and priest

11. John of Cologne, Dominican friar, pastor in Hoornaar near Gorkum

12. Anthony of Weert (born 1523), Franciscan friar and priest

13. Theodore of der Eem (born c. 1499–1502), Franciscan friar and priest, chaplain to a community of Franciscan Tertiary Sisters in Gorkum

14. Cornelius of Wijk bij Duurstede (born 1548), Franciscan lay brother

15. Adrian van Hilvarenbeek (born 1528), Norbertine canon and pastor in Monster, South Holland

16. Godfried of Mervel, Vicar of Melveren, Sint-Truiden (born 1512), Franciscan priest, vicar of the friary in Gorkum

17. Jan of Oisterwijk (born 1504), canon regular, a chaplain for the Beguinage in Gorkum

18. Nicholas Poppel (born 1532), secular priest, chaplain in Gorkum

19. Nicholas Pieck (born 1534), Franciscan friar, priest and theologian, Guardian of the friary in Gorkum, his native city

The church alluded to in the Catholic Exchange article is St. Nicholas Church in Brussels, not too far from the Grand Place. The martyrs' reliquary is a large rectangular case decorated with their images on the sides, and events of their arrest and martyrdom on the lid. The relics had been transferred originally to a nearby Franciscan friary which was suppressed during the French Revolution (1796), and then moved to St. Nicholas; the gilded bronze reliquary was created in 1870 for the relics. 

Prince William the Silent might have ordered the Calvinist pirates to release the Catholic priests, demonstrating mercy, he was not accorded the same justice as King Philip II of Spain declared him an outlaw and promised a reward for his assassination. Balthasar Gerard wanted the reward and shot the Prince of Orange to death on July 10, 1584, 12 years and one day after the Gorkum martyrs were hung. Gerard was captured, tortured, and brutally executed--obviously not receiving the reward he sought.