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Master’s thesis August 2019

Shared Space

The multi- and intermediality of lay devotion within the space of the

fifteenth-century parish church of St. Peter in Leiden

Marlies Johanna Cecilia Draaisma

University of Groningen Faculty of Arts

Research Master’s Programme Classical, Medieval and Early Modern Studies

Excerpt of the endowment of Boudijn van Zwieten for a daily mass on his altar and the singing of the Divine Office every day on the choir of the St. Peter’s church in Leiden. ELO, 0502, inv. no. 210, f. 3r

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Master’s thesis Research Master Classical, Medieval and Early Modern Studies

Marlies Johanna Cecilia Draaisma Steentilstraat 19A 9711 GJ Groningen The Netherlands e-mail: mjcdraaisma@gmail.com student number: s2775611 Supervisor

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Table of Contents

List of figures 4

List of tables 4

List of abbreviations and consulted archives 4

1. Introduction 6

1.1. Beyond memoria 8

1.2. Multi- and intermediality 9

1.3. The privatization of sacred space 10

1.4. The St. Peter as research topic 11

1.5. Research question 12

1.6. Methodology 12

2. The parish and church of St. Peter in Leiden 14

2.1. St. Peter parish 14

2.2. A short history of the St. Peter church 15

2.3. The organizations and administrators in charge 18

2.4. Laypeople and the St. Peter 20

2.5. Conclusion: building the exterior and interior space of the St. Peter church 21

3. The Zevengetijdencollege: music and performance in the St. Peter 23

3.1. Boudijn van Zwieten 24

3.2. The foundation deed of Boudijn van Zwieten of 1443 26

3.3. The association of the seven Hours 28

3.4. The implication for the church and its visitors 32

3.5. Lay persons and memorial services: asking for specifics 36

3.6. Music in the St. Peter’s church outside of the Divine Office 37

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4. Visual commemoration: paintings, altars and liturgical objects for the here

and hereafter. 40

4.1. Altars and altarpieces as decorations, memorial pieces and signs of status 41

4.2. Stained-glass-windows 46

4.3. Prominent families in Leiden and their presence in the St. Peter 50

4.4. The wall painting of Van Boschuysen 53

4.5. Conclusion: visual prominence in the public space of the church 56

5. Shared space: Willem Heerman’s public bible 59

5.1. Books in the St. Peter church 59

5.2. Willem Heerman 61

5.3. ‘die bibele in duytsche die hy mit zyn eygen hant gescreuen heeft’ 62

5.4. Privatization of sacred space? 65

5.5. Intermediality: the objects combined 67

5.6. Conclusion: shared space 69

6. Final Considerations 70

6.1. Transforming the liturgy and the performance in the St. Peter 70

6.2. Transforming the visual space 71

6.3. Public and private 72

6.4. The multimediality and indermediality of lay devotion 73

Bibliography 76

Appendix 1: The 1443 endowment of Boudijn van Zwieten 80

Appendix 2: The 1463 bequest of Willem Heerman to the City Hall 96

Appendix 3: The 1462 bequest of Willem Heerman to the St. Peter church 99

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List of figures

Figure 1: The expansion of the city in the thirteenth and fourteenth century 15 Figure 2: Schematic depiction of the expansion of the St. Peter’s church,

ca. 1390-1600 16

Figure 3: Map with the locations of the altars in the St. Peter’s church in Leiden in the

early sixteenth century 25

List of tables

Table 1: Daily and Weekly services performed by the zevengetijdencollege

in the St. Peter church 30

Table 2: Annual services performed by the zevengetijdencollege in the

St. Peter church 31

List of abbreviations and consulted archives

The following abbreviations are used for references to archival depositories. ELO Erfgoed Leiden en Omstreken (Regional Archives of Leiden)

The following abbreviations are used for references to the several archives within the archival depository of the Erfgoed Leiden en Omstreken archive.

0501 Archief der Secretarie van de stad Leiden (Stadsbestuur (SA I))

SA I (1290-1575)

0502 Inventaris van de Archieven van de kerken van Leiden (Leiden 1915) 2 parts 0503 Inventaris van de Archieven van de Kloosters, (1310) 1393-1572 (1655) 0509 Inventaris van de archieven van de Gilden, de beurzen en de

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1. Introduction

“Soe wil ick ende begheer dat dese voirseyde zeuen priesteren, die nv zyn off hier namaels

wesen zullen, tot eeuwigen daegen zullen verbouden wesen te doen een misse alle daege op myn altair voorseyt […].

Ende voirt zoe wil ick dat myn twee

ornamenten myn missale ende myn kelck, die ick

zelue hebbe doen maicken, gebruycken sullen ende bezigen tot eewygen daegen die getyde priesteren als zy hoer

missen doen vp myn altair voorseyde, ende anders nergent1

So declared patriciate Boudijn van Zwieten when he decided to found a number of liturgical services in the St. Peter church in Leiden on May the 15th, 1443. It is an example of the many foundations that the St. Peter church received throughout the fifteenth century. In it, Van Zwieten stipulates in detail what his wishes are and exactly what funds will be provided for his Masses. Such founded liturgical services furthered the salvation of the soul of the benefactor, and together with the practice of donating goods and objects to the church, they also contributed to the look of the interior and the liturgy in their parish church. The excerpt of Van Zwieten’s endowment, for example, shows the influence a wealthy citizen could have over the performed liturgy in the church. Every day, certain priests were present around his altar, said the requested Masses and used specifically designated objects (the missal and the chalice).

Van Zwieten was not the only benefactor of the St. Peter that paid for religious services or bequeathed it with objects. Throughout this thesis, the endowments of Van Zwieten and other

1 “I wish and desire that these aforementioned seven priests, that are now or will be in the future, will for all

eternity celebrate a Mass on my aforementioned altar every day […] Next I want my two ornaments, my Missal and my chalice, that I have commissioned myself, to be used for all eternity by the priests that sing the Divine Office when they celebrate Masses on my aforementioned altar, and that they are not to be used anywhere else.” Excerpt from: ELO, 0502, inv. no. 210, fol. 3r and 6r. Whenever I include transcriptions of manuscripts into the running text of this thesis, I normalize it with regard to the use of capitals, forms of punctuation, and word separation. Abbreviations are expanded, but the supplied letters are not explicitly identified as to make the reading easier. Omitted parts of the text are symbolized with two brackets (‘[…]’) and the transcriptions themselves are set apart in the text through the use of quotation marks. The spelling is not normalized. All transcriptions are made by the author of this thesis, unless stated otherwise in the accompanying footnote. All translations into English are also made by the author of this thesis.

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well-to-do laypersons will be the points of discussion. The emphasis will be on their possibility to affect the space of the church, the media they used to do so and the transformation that might occur for the church interior and its visitors. Here, the presence of the laity is researched in one particular parish church; the St. Peter church in Leiden. This large, late Gothic church is located at the city centre. The interior consists of brick walls, white ceilings, large pillars, and a couple of graves and memorial markers. In the fifteenth century, however, before the iconoclasms of 1566 and 1572, the church had a significantly different look. Many pillars were painted, stained-glass windows provided a coloured light, statues and paintings decorated the walls, and Masses and memorial services were conducted every day. The churchwardens, the parish priests and the inhabitants of the parish were together responsible for the look of the St. Peter.

The devotional reasons for the laity to bequests some of their revenues to a religious institution (as Boudijn van Zwieten did) were usually the salvation of one’s soul and the bringing of honour and praise to God. From the pulpit and in religious educational literature, Christians were told that only those without sin would go to heaven. The ordinary man or women, therefore, had to purify their soul first by going through purgatory and “burning away” their sins. The many depictions of both hell and the flames of purgatory attest to the frightening image this might have been for the viewer. Luckily, there were a couple of ways to ensure a shorter stay in these flames. One was doing “good works”. Other means were donations, penance and prayer, both during and after one’s life. The St. Peter church could provide this in multiple shapes and forms. This thesis will be mainly concerned with one of those; the making of pious donations to the church in exchange for heavenly rewards in the afterlife and social benefits in the here and now. One of the keynotes of this idea were the words of Christ, saying that “anyone who has left houses, or brothers or sisters, or father or mother, or children, or land for the sake of my name will be repaid many times over, and gain eternal life” (Matthew 19:29).2

In exchange for these donations, benefactors could expect more profane benefits next to the salvation of their souls through the intercession of saints and eternal liturgical commemoration. Worldly rewards were material, legal or political advantages such as a burial site inside the church, prestige, exposure and public attention through an object or work of art – which were only accessible to the happy few.3 In the following chapters, it will be clear that for many, the considerations of piety and class-consciousness were easily mingled.

2 Arnoud-Jan A. Bijsterveld, Do Ut Des: Gift giving, Memoria, and Conflict management in the Medieval Low

Countries (Hilversum: Verloren, 2007), 189-190.

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1.1. Beyond memoria

The commemorative function of pious donations to the church was a prominent one. Such commemoration was often the result of gifts and grants by laymen or founded chantries and Masses. It formed one of the main reasons for many of the well-to-do in Leiden to get involved with the St. Peter church. This type of commemoration can be called memoria – a practice that has resulted into a research field focused around commemoration as a tool to gain salvation of the soul. Gaining importance since 1980, a multitude of inquiries has been made into nobility, monastic commemoration and everything from the historiography of prayers for the dead4, to the memorial practices of a particular convent5 and the relation between memoria and gift giving.6 Memoria research found its way into the Netherlands through the work of Truus van Bueren and a growing group of students and colleagues around her. The accompanying catalogue of an exhibition by Van Bueren and the Catharijneconvent Museum in 1999 was one of the first (art)historical works concerning memoria in the Netherlands. Other research has been done from the historical and anthropological point of view, of which bundled collection of publications by Arnoud-Jan Bijsterveld is an example.7 Of note is the Medieval Memoria Online-project (started in 2009) which has led to a database with descriptions of memorial texts and objects in the present-day Netherlands, and a number of accompanying websites since 2013.8 This resource has been a useful tool in finding suitable objects for the case-studies in this thesis.

In Living Memoria: Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Memorial Culture, memoria is defined as the commemoration of the dead, and as “care for the here and hereafter”. The research in this book is focused around the ways in which medieval men and women from different parts of society tried to secure their family’s and their own salvation through the foundation of religious institutions, the commissioning of memorial pieces, tomb monuments, donating gifts, founding Masses and other liturgical services.9 This thesis will stay in line with the above view of memoria. Here, memoria will be defined as consisting of all the different

4 Megan McLaughlin, Consorting with Saints: Prayer for the Dead in Early Medieval France (Ithaca and

London: Cornell University Press, 1994).

5 Truus van Bueren and Bini Biemans, “A Veritable Treasure Trove: The Memorial Book of St. Nicholas’s

Convent in Utrecht and Its Art Donations,” in Care for the Here and the Hereafter: Memoria, Art and Ritual in

the Middle Ages, eds. Truus van Bueren and Andrea van Leerdam (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2005):

249-266.

6 Arnoud-Jan A. Bijsterveld, Do Ut Des: Gift giving, Memoria, and Conflict management in the Medieval Low

Countries (Hilversum: Verloren, 2007).

7 Bijsterveld, Do Ut Des.

8 Medieval Memoria Online (MeMO). https://memo.sites.uu.nl/

9 Rolf de Weijert and Truus van Bueren, Living Memoria: Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Memorial

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ways in which the dead were commemorated and the accompanying human actions meant for a person’s lifetime (such as prestige or the identification with a specific group) as well as the hereafter (salvation of the soul).

This thesis, however, will go beyond the field of memoria-research. This type of research tends to focus on a single medium of devotion or a single case-study, on benefactors and their actions, and on the practice of donating objects itself. While those lines of inquiry will certainly be touched upon – and the research that has already been done in this field (and on the three case-studies that are discussed in the following chapters) is gratefully made use of in this thesis – this study will take a different approach. Instead of departing from a benefactor, practice or object, I will start with a space. Through such a spatial approach it is possible to go beyond single instances of bequests and see the whole of the laity’s presence in the St. Peter. While this study may start some of its chapters with specific endowments, the idea of these objects and goods being in one space simultaneously is always taken into account. By focusing not on a specific person or donation but on the whole space, we can see so much more of the effects these persons, objects, performances, requests and sounds could have on the interior space of a church and on anyone visiting.

Throughout this thesis, the concepts of multimediality, intermediality and privatization will be used repeatedly, as I believe these often aptly describe the practices of lay devotion in fifteenth-century Leiden. The fifteenth century provides an excellent period for looking at the influence of the laity on the space of the St. Peter church and the multiple media with which they expressed their devotion. It is a source-rich period in case of Leiden and a century in which the laity was manifesting itself prominently in devotional activities.

1.2. Multi- and intermediality

Multimediality, here, is to be defined as a combination of different media. From our spatial approach this means the combination of different media within a certain space – in this case the sacred space of the church building. The church interior combines many different media and ways of communicating messages, such visual arts, music, performance, architecture and textuality, into a unity. The St. Peter could therefore be seen as a multimedia environment. The atmosphere created within its interior and the related connection to the sacred were not a result of a single element but of the interaction of several factors within its architecture. Next to a multimedial space, the church was therefore also a place of intermediality. The sum of its atmosphere, its interior space, was created through multiple types of media and through the connection and interaction among those media. While intermediality is a concept with many

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different interpretations, mainly derived from media studies10, here, it will be used as the mutual influences between media (interaction) that results in a redefinition of the affected media. In other words, by being in one space, the different media within the St. Peter influenced each other and this determined in part how the objects looked or how they were interpreted. This can be seen in elements such as motifs and narrativity that can appear across a variety of objects or performances11, tying them together, and in the sense that media never exist in isolation.12 By being in the St. Peter in Leiden simultaneously, images, stained-glass windows, altars, architecture, inscriptions, read or sung texts and rituals were interpreted with their relation to the other objects (of which multiple could be seen in one glance) and the space that housed them in mind.

Both multimediality and intermediality serve to illustrate the idea of this thesis that the sacred space of the church was a shared space; not only between the laity, elite and clergy, but also between the different objects, images and performance that were present there. Lay devotion in the fifteenth century made capable use of the different possibilities available. As will become clear in the following chapters, the laity used multiple media to suit their intentions and make themselves visible, memorialized and heard between all other devotional intentions in the St. Peter church in Leiden.

1.3. The privatization of sacred space

As a consequence of the varied bequests from the laity to their parish church – and especially of the larger and more elaborate ones -, some families or individuals had quite the visible presence in the St. Peter. Those that had the funds to pay for art- or liturgical objects, architectural elements such as altars or windows, usually had a say in its looks. Family crests, portraits or inscriptions were not unusual and, in a sense, marked the object or sometimes even the location where they were situated as part of the individual’s or family’s sphere of influence. The idea that wealth laymen could claim spaces in a church is labeled the ‘privatization of sacred spaces’ by art historian Jonathan K. Nelson. His essay titled “Memorial Chapels in Churches: The Privatization and Transformation of Sacred Space,” analyzes Renaissance

10 See for example the different interpretations described in Gabriele Ripple, ed., Handbook of Intermediality:

Literature – Image – Sound – Music (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015); and Ginette Verstraete, “Intermedialities: A

survey of conceptual key issues,” Kunstlicht 32, no. 3 (2011).

11 Werner Wolf, “Intermediality,” in: Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory (London: Routledge, 2005),

253-255.

12 Jens Schröter, “Four Models of Intermediality,” in: ReBlurring the Boundaries, ed. Bernd Herzogenrath

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family chapels in Florence and the phenomenon of such chapels as a whole.13 Nelson discusses the possible effect of such private chapels on the architecture of the church, how they were used and why they were built in the first place. With privatization Nelson refers to the “appropriation of public, sacred spaces for personal use” that, consequently, could transform the appearance and function of churches.14 This approach to lay devotional practices in the church might very well be applicable to the St. Peter. It can shed a different light on the ideas of private and public with regard to the laity’s presence and bequests in the parish church. The church was a public space, but many of the endowments made by the well-to-do (such as altars, chapels or liturgical books) were meant for private use. Can we speak of ‘privatization’ in the case of the fifteenth century St. Peter in Leiden? And, what does this mean for the interior of the church and the visitor that experiences the many objects, art pieces and performances within this space? These sub questions will be addressed in chapter 5.

1.4. The St. Peter as research topic

The reasons for choosing the St. Peter church in Leiden are partly based on the rich source material available for the church in the Leiden archives. Administrative documents are an important source in researching the donations made to the church and the benefactor’s specifications as to how the donation was to be used and what should be done by the priests in return (such as described in charters), or the locations of memorial services and the obligations the priests had throughout the year (as described in their memorial registers). The Churchwardens’ memorial register, for example, was composed probably around 1450 and contains later additions until 1480. This register does not only include a monthly calendar in which the required memorial services were written down, but also remarks on the foundations, gifts, silverware, and church tower. Quite a number of folia are dedicated to testaments and arrangements concerning Masses and services, making it a useful source to research the amount and the different types of services that were performed throughout the year in the St. Peter church.

Leiden, and the St. Peter church in specific, are also a fruitful subject for this thesis due to the available research already done on the city’s and church’s history. Jeanne Verbij-Schilling, for example, wrote a very useful introduction to a variety of topics connected to the

13 Jonathan K. Nelson, “Memorial Chapels in Churches: The Privatization and Transformation of Sacred Space,”

in Renaissance Florence: A Social History, eds, Roger J. Crum en John T. Paoletti, p. 353-376 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

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church, such as the various associated institutions, art, literature, processions and music in Leiden: de geschiedenis van een Hollandse stad.15 More specifically focussed on the memorial practices of the city of Leiden are the various studies by Douwe J. Faber, who, in his dissertation, addressed the memorial practices of the city with a focus on the three different parish churches (the St. Peter church, Our Lady’s church and the St. Pancras Church).16 He discusses in particular the patronage of the St. Peter by the Teutonic Order, the different types of institutions that were responsible for memorial services, some specific foundations, their financial aspects, and the city as a religious community.

1.5. Research question

Both in memoria research and in studies concerning the city of Leiden, the factors of space, privatization, multimediality and intermediality seem to be a relatively new and sometimes undervalued element with regard to lay religiosity. To fill this lacuna, this thesis aims to answer the research question: how were the multimediality and intermediality of lay devotion reflected in the space of the St. Peter church in Leiden in the fifteenth century and in what ways were lay devouts able to transform this devotional space?

At first sight the laity might seem to have had little to do with the liturgy and the overall experience of their parish church. They might be seen as uninformed or non-participatory - and at a glance this has some credibility. The clergy and the laity were separate classes, the liturgy was performed in Latin, with the priests’ back to the congregation, and sometimes even with a rood screen in between. Yet studies by Eamon Duffy, for example, have shown that the laity did not participate in the liturgy in the same way as the clergy, but was nonetheless actively involved. In this thesis I, too, like to prove that while the church and religion might have had a large influence on daily life, the laity, on the other hand, might have had just as much influence on their church in return.

1.6. Methodology

To answer this question and keep it focussed and comprehensible, this study will be shaped around three case-studies as examples. These case-studies will cover liturgical services and

15 J. Verbij-Schilling, “Kerk en cultuur,” in Leiden: de geschiedenis van een Hollandse stad, part I until 1574,

eds. R. C. J. van Maanen and J. W. Marsilje (Leiden: Stichting Geschiedschrijving Leiden, 2002), 151-200.

16 D. Faber, “Memoria in Leiden in de late Middeleeuwen: stichten en bespreken, samenwerken en betwisten,”

(Phd Diss. University of Utrecht, Utrecht, 2018); D. Faber, “Zorgen voor de ziel. Het Leise memoriewezen van de late Middeleeuwen,” Jaarboekje voor geschiednis en oudheidkunde van Leiden en omstraken 98 (2006), 67-95.

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visual objects that were founded or donated by laymen to the St. Peter. They will serve as an illustration of the different types of memoria present within the church (the multimediality approach of lay benefactors) and as a motive for related questions. The first of these case-studies is the foundation of the zevengetijdencollege (Confraternity of the Seven Hours), which was responsible for the singing of the seven canonical Hours or the day in the St. Peter church. This foundation was part of an endowment by Boudijn van Zwieten. The second is a wall painting with eight saints and the heraldic shield of the Van Boschuysen family. It is roughly dated between 1425 and 1475 and is still visible on one of the pillars in the choir of the church. The third and final case-study will be the donation by Willem Heerman, magistrate and major, who in 1462 gifted the St. Peter church with a lectern and an autographed bible. These three sources all illustrate a different means of lay devotion; music and performances, visual objects and art, and textuality. These sources were all donations made by laypersons who wanted to be commemorated, assert a certain influence and leave something tangible to be experienced by the public that visited the St. Peter church. By 1462 (the date on which Heerman gifted his bible), all three donations were in some shape or form present in the same space, which allows us to look at the aspect of intermediality in the St. Peter church in Leiden.

These three case-studies will inform the structure of the thesis. The second chapter will be an introduction to the St. Peter church itself and the associated institutions. In the third chapter the foundation of Boudijn van Zwieten and the multitude of liturgical services, requested by the laity, will be discussed. In the following chapter, this study will move on from performance and music to the visual means of commemoration. The main focus will be on the painting representing the Van Boschuysen family and the many altarpieces and stained-glass windows that were visible in the St. Peter church. What were the reasons the well-to-do of Leiden paid for these objects and to what extent did they have a say in the eventual appearance of these objects? The fifth and final chapter is centered around Willem Heerman and the manuscript ible he had donated to the church. It will discuss in detail what Willem Heerman stipulated in his endowment and continues with the related question of the public aspect of memoria in the St. Peter church. The chapter will close with a focus on the idea of intermediality, as by 1462 the donations discussed in chapters 3 to 5 were all in the same space, roughly at the same time.

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2. The Parish and church of St. Peter in Leiden .

2.1. St. Peter parish

In Western Europe, since the early Middle Ages, the parish was a unit of churchly organization in which the pious were organized in the territorial context of the parish under the spiritual guidance of the pastor.17 The parish of Leiden was for most of its time centered around the parish church of St. Peter. What initially started as a chapel of the count of Holland around 1100 became a large, late gothic church that dominated the central area of the city. The count’s chapel was located south of the count’s castle and functioned as a private place of worship. Possibly the chapel was consecrated to the apostles Peter and Paul on the 11th of September 1121 by the bishop of Utrecht, though we lack contemporary source material to confirm this. Thanks to a note inserted in a fifteenth century memorieboek (memorial register) from the St. Peter church (a book that contains, in a calendar format, the memorial services that were to be celebrated by the priests of the church) we know that:

“In den jaere duisent hondert een ende twintich, des sonnendaechs nae Onser Liever Vrouwengeboirte, worde dese jegenwoirdighe kerck gewijt, in de eere Goidts ende der heyligher apostelen sincten Pieter ende Pouwels, onder de E. zeere religieuse, devote heere ende vader in Gode, Godebaldus de vier ende twintichste bisschop van Uuytrecht.”18

Leiden, by that time, was not a large city. From recent archeological and historical research, we know that only around the year 1200 Leiden started to look like a proper city, rather than a settlement. Around that year, Leiden had roughly a thousand inhabitants. If there indeed was a consecrated church in Leiden by 1121, it probably was a small tuff stone and aisleless church.19

From the thirteenth century onwards, this small church started functioning as a parish church for the inhabitant directly around it. And as the parish church, the pastor and priests of the St. Peter were responsible for the pastoral care of all the inhabitants of Leiden. This would

17 Jan Kuys, Kerkelijke organisatie in het middeleeuwse bisdom Utrecht (Nijmegen, 2004), 43.

18 “In the year 1120 on the Sunday after the birth of Our Lady, this church was consecrated in the honor of God

and the holy apostles SS. Peter and Paul, by the very pious lord and father Godebaldus the fourth, the twenty-fourth bishop of Utrecht.” ELO, 0502, inv. no. 7, f. 1r.

19 Jan Dröge and John Veerman, “De Bouwgeschiedenis,” in: De Pieterskerk in Leiden: Bouwgeschiedenis,

Inrichting en Gedenktekens, eds. E. den Hartog, J. W. Veerman, E. Grasman, and D. J. de Vries (Zwolle:

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not remain the case for long, however. With the growth of trade and industry the population of Leiden increased in size; around 1400 Leiden housed circa 5000 to 6000 inhabitants. In 1498 – based on the numbers from the property tax raised that year – the amount was roughly 12.000.20 Consequently, an enlargement of the city was inevitable. Over time, multiple new parts were added to the city of Leiden, such as the Hoogland to the east and the incorporation of the village Marendorp to the north.21 The effect of the enlargements of the city from the fourteenth century was the growth of the parish borders (around 1514 the parish of St. Peter in Leiden housed around 5000 communicants22) and eventually the inclusion of two other parishes within the city: the parish of St. Pancras (Hooglandsekerk) and the Church of Our Lady (Marekerk). This was an abundant number for a small city such as Leiden. Church towers dominated Leiden’s ‘skyline’ and a lot of space within its wall was taken up by monasteries and chapels. Of these three Leiden parish churches, the St. Peter church was the largest and the oldest, and consequently kept playing a central role in the city’s everyday life.

2.2. A short history of the St. Peter church

The St. Peter church slowly turned, from a chapel and a small parish church, into a gothic basilica with transepts, over the course of around a hundred and

eighty years of

construction. This process of construction started around 1390 when the older and smaller St. Peter church was being replaced, since the growth of Leiden necessitated a larger building. The whole building process

20 André Bouwman and Ed van Vlist, Stad Van Boeken: Handschrift En Druk in Leiden, 1260-2000 (Leiden:

Primavera Pers, 2008), 17.

21 Bouwman and van Vlist, Stad Van Boeken, 17.

22 Eric Jas and Peter de Groot, De Leidse Koorboeken: Een Ongehoorde Schat (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum,

2011), 22.

Figure 1. The expansion of the city in the thirteenth and fourteenth century. Drawing by Bert de Jong, department Stedenbouw Leiden. From: R. C. J. van Maanen and J. W. Marsilje, eds., Leiden. De geschiedenis van een Hollandse stad deel I, Leiden tot 1574 (Leiden: Stichting Geschiedschrijving Leiden, 2002), 33.

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can be followed, at least up until 1428, through a number of churchwarden accounts.23 First, a new choir and ambulatory arose, including a separate compartment that held the sacristy and the churchwarden’s room, which was finished by 1398. The ambulatory was roofed in 1405, the choir around six years later, and after twenty years the whole of the eastern part was roofed and furnished. The next step was the nave with two flanking aisles.

In the mid-fifteenth century, the church more or less had gained its definitive shape. It had a high nave with clerestory and on both sides an aisle. Yet due to extensive use, this building soon became too small again. The number of parishioners had increased, and together with the growing number of altars and graves, a shortage of space became apparent. The doubling of the aisles

would take around thirty-six years to complete and the transept, another enlargement of the

23 ELO, 0502, inv. no. 323. Transcriptions of these churchwarden accounts can be found at

https://oudleiden.nl/werkgroepen/jan-van-hout-archiefonderzoek/rekeningen-pieterskerk-1398-1428

Figure 2. Schematic depiction of the expansion of the St. Peter church, ca. 1390-1600. Drawing by J. Lambrechtsen. From: R. C. J. van Maanen and J. W. Marsilje, eds., Leiden.

De geschiedenis van een Hollandse stad deel I, Leiden tot 1574 (Leiden: Stichting Geschiedschrijving Leiden, 2002),

155.

Image 1. A profile of Leiden from the south, 1601, by Peter Bast. Left the St. Peter church can be seen, next to it is the church of Our Lady and all the way to the right is the church of St. Pancras. Leiden City Archive (ELO). From: R. C. J. van Maanen and J. W. Marsilje, eds., Leiden. De geschiedenis van een Hollandse stad deel I, Leiden tot 1574 (Leiden: Stichting Geschiedschrijving Leiden, 2002), 152.

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church, was concluded between 1500 and 1539.24 The St. Peter church sported a high tower, which sadly collapsed in 1512 and was never rebuilt. In the seventeenth century some extensions to the church were made in the form of attachments on the outside. Modernization started in the eighteenth century and many reparations and restorations were carried out over the late nineteenth and twentieth century.25

Partly through multiple donations from the laity, consisting of money and building materials, the construction processes could be financed.26 This was not a small project. Between 1390 and 1539 the St. Peter seemed to have been almost constantly under construction in one

24 Elizabeth den Hartog, “De verdwenen interieurs voor de Beeldenstormen van 1566 en 1572,” in: De

Pieterskerk in Leiden: Bouwgeschiedenis, Inrichting en Gedenktekens, eds., E. den Hartog, J. W. Veerman, E.

Grasman, and D. J. de Vries (Zwolle: WBooks, 2011), 151.

25 Dröge and Veerman, “De Bouwgeschiedenis,” 56.

26 H.H. Vos, Graven in De Pieterskerk (Leiden: Stichting Vrienden van de Pieterskerk, 1981), 77-78.

Image 2. Anonymous, The St. Peter church in Leiden around 1500, before the collapse of the tower in 1512. Painted around 1515, now held at the Lakenhal Museum, Leiden, inv. no. S 5795.

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way or the other. In the fifteenth century parts of the church were still being roofed, the aisles were expanded from 1450 onwards27, and throughout the century the church was in a constant process of being furnished; both by the church’s priests and wardens, and the many lay benefactors it would attract over time.

2.3.The organizations and administrators in charge

The pastoral care of the parish of the St. Peter church was in the hands of the curatus or pastor. Since 1268, the patronage of the church was in the hands of the Teutonic Order (given to them by count Floris V) and they subsequently held the right to appoint the pastor of the St. Peter.28 The Teutonic Order was a religious order founded as a military order in the Holy Land. It contemplated monastic vows – including those of celibacy, poverty and obedience – but largely served as a crusading military. The Order slowly founded Commanderies all over central and North-western Europe in which the brothers lived more like a monastic community than a crusading one. Regional structures were set up and Utrecht became the head of such a regional zone, led by a Kammerbalei (Chamber Bailiwick), under which the Commandery of Leiden fell. The Order in Leiden owned a Commandry (Het Duitse Huis) that was located next to the graveyard of the church.29 Members of the Order had a say in the St. Peter church’s business up until the Late Middle Ages, but surprisingly, they left little to no traces of themselves in the church.30

The pastor (the Commander of the Teutonic Order in Leiden) was, together with some chaplains, responsible for the Masses on Sundays and the liturgical feast days. Next to these services, there was the daily pastoral care of the parish that fell into the hands of the pastor and which included baptism, marriage, confession and burial.31 The care for the church building, the graveyard, the overseeing of the church’s funds and treasury, and the supervision of the high altar was in the hands of the churchwardens (kerkmeesters).32 This was a small group of three laypersons, chosen from the Leiden patriciate, each year on 21st February.33

27 R. C. J. van Maanen and J. W. Marsilje, eds., Leiden. De geschiedenis van een Hollandse stad deel I, Leiden

tot 1574 ( Leiden: Stichting Geschiedschrijving Leiden, 2002), 154.

28 van Maanen and Marsilje, eds., Leiden. De geschiedenis van een Hollandse stad, 153-154.

29 Kees Kuiken, "En leyt buyten, ende is nu binnen. De inrichting van de Leidse Pieterskerk omstreeks 1400

volgens het memorieboek Den Haag, KB, 73 E 41," Jaarboek voor liturgieonderzoek 25 (2009): 90.

30 Dröge and Veerman, “De Bouwgeschiedenis,” 15. 31 Bouwman and van Vlist, Stad Van Boeken, 37.

32 Liesbeth M. Helmus, Schilderen in Opdracht: Noord-Nederlandse Contracten Voor Altaarstukken 1485-1570

(Utrecht: Centraal Museum, 2010), 52.

33 F. J. W. van. Kan, Sleutels tot de macht. De ontwikkeling van het Leidse patriciaat tot 1420 (Hilversum:

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Next to the pastor and the churchwardens there were the chantry priests that performed weekly, monthly, or yearly Masses and other liturgical services in exchange for funds from memorials and chantries. The chantry priest was directly connected to a chantry which was supposed to provide his living expenses, as it was in essence an endowment consisting of rents, goods or lands. Chantries were founded by guilds, confraternities and individuals, and the priests that were appointed to say the Masses were often from among the founder’s relatives or friends. 34 Since chantries were connected to a certain altar where the religious services as stipulated by the founder were to be performed, the St. Peter church must have had quite a number of chantry priests walk their way from door, to altar, to grave.35

Chantry priests were many in the St. Peter church because Masses and prayers said for the benefit of the soul of the founder were rather popular. In fact, memorial services requested by the laity became so many over the course of the fifteenth century as to require a separate group to deal with all of them. Memorial services were taken care of by either the parish priests, the churchwardens (meaning that memorial services were partially mediated by lay authorities), the Heilige Geestmeesters and the gasthuismeesters, but now a new group competed with them; several priests had organized themselves into an interest group: the memoriemeesters (board of memorial priests).36 Eventually, the Zevengetijdenmeesters (masters of the Confraternity of the Seven Hours) – who were responsible for the daily celebration of the Divine Office in the St. Peter (see chapter 3) – joined this group that offered parishioners memorial services ranging from grave-visits to extensive Masses.

The founding of altars or chantries was, however, only a real option for those inhabitants of Leiden and confraternities that were financially capable to do so. They were expensive and as a result it was the patriciate that was particularly active in the business of memorial services. Between 1307 and 1417 twenty-seven members of the Leiden patriciate were responsible for thirty-six chantries and sixteen benefices (a permanent religious office appointment to which revenues for certain services were connected).37 The number of clerics from the ranks of the patriciate was considerable as well.38 The names of many of these patriciate families are therefore recurrent throughout the rest of this paper. Most prominent were the families of Van Zwieten, Paedzen van Sonnevelt, the Heerman family, the Boschuysens, and the Van

34 van Maanen and Marsilje, eds., Leiden. De geschiedenis van een Hollandse stad, 160. 35 Jas and de Groot, De Leidse Koorboeken, 22.

36 Eric Jas, Piety and Polyphony in Sixteenth-Century Holland: The Choirbooks of St Peter Church (Leiden:

Boydell & Brewer, 2018), 5.

37 van Maanen and Marsilje, eds., Leiden. De geschiedenis van een Hollandse stad, 171-172. 38 van. Kan, Sleutels tot de macht, 201.

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Alkemades.39 Members of these families were often part of the ruling elite and the court of Leiden, and they can be found in connection to altar foundations, chantries, stained-glass windows, graves and other donations to the St. Peter in the fifteenth century.

2.4.Laypeople and the St. Peter

The church and religion had a profound influence on daily life. The church building functioned as a place for liturgy, but simultaneously played a public role by being a safe haven, a playground for kids and dogs, a storage place and a dry location for catching-up with neighbors.40 The church tower could be a watch post, its bells rung to warn of danger and determined the rhythm of the day. This resulted in a close connection between the church and secular government. Magistrates had a say in who filled some of the church positions and many feast (secular or religious), were ushered in with a liturgical service. Many organizations, such as the city militia and confraternities, and those that held high secular offices, had Masses read at an altar in the St. Peter.41 The Leiden patriciate was closely connected to the church of St. Peter as well. As mentioned above, they were the churchwardens, but they were also responsible for many memorial services and donated liturgical objects or windows. In fact, the patriciate held a vested interest in the St. Peter church by being both responsible for its treasury and the building (as churchwardens), many of the endowed chantries and altars, and partly for the building’s furnishings, art and liturgical objects. Their coats of arms, names and likenesses were to be seen throughout the church’s interior (see chapter 4).

The parish was a community of the clergy and all of its parishioners, however, and those that were not a part of the city magistrate or the well-to-do had a connection to the St. Peter church as well. Daily life was for a large part determined through the liturgical calendar, for example.42 The St. Peter in Leiden was often the center of yearly hoogtijdagen, special feast days in the parish such as Easter, Pentecost, Christmas and Marian feasts, celebrated throughout the city, and the yearly feasts of confraternities that were present in the church and were connected to saints such as St. Martin that was celebrated on 11th November.43 Consequently, medieval men and women attended church more often than we do now. Not only did they visit

39 den Hartog, “De verdwenen interieurs,” 172. 40 Jas and de Groot, De Leidse Koorboeken, 14.

41 van Maanen and Marsilje, eds., Leiden. De geschiedenis van een Hollandse stad, 151. 42 van Maanen and Marsilje, eds., Leiden. De geschiedenis van een Hollandse stad, 182. 43 Jas and de Groot, De Leidse Koorboeken, 40.

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the Sunday Masses, but they were to be found in the St. Peter on one of the circa fifty yearly liturgical feast days as well.44

2.5.Conclusion: building the exterior and interior space of the St. Peter church

Because memorial services, such as chantries, donations in goods, revenues and materials, the offices of churchwarden and parts of the funding of the construction process of the St. Peter church were in the hands of the laity, its interior and atmosphere were largely determined by them. Especially the well-to-do made themselves prominently visible and audible (through the recitation of their family names in liturgical commemoration) over the course of the fifteenth century. While the building itself started out as a modest church in a small city, in the fourteenth and fifteenth century a new, large and imposing parish church arose. Not in a small part thanks to the generosity of its parishioners, who were to be seen in the church almost every day – though not necessarily for the religious services performed.

As Leiden grew, so did its parish church. By the mid-fifteenth century the building took on its characteristic appearance and neared (temporary) completion, though it seems as if throughout the rest of the century the church was constantly being repaired, rebuilt and enlarged. The same can be said of the interior space. It slowly grew through the donations of the pious laity that hoped to gain spiritual salvation, and its liturgical program expanded through the foundations of chantries, altars and other liturgical services. The church was a busy place. Not coincidentally, the liturgical life of this period was called zielenheilsmarkt (“salvation market”) by Hans Mol in the 90’s, due to the many possibilities the laity possessed to further their salvation.45 For most, representation and salvation went hand in hand; by being a benefactor they hoped to gain both perpetual glory and eternal life. Those appearances and their externalization take on a growing importance in the religious expression of the well-to-do in Leiden, as will be demonstrated in the following chapters.

The multitude of religious activities, such as the daily Mass, hoogtijden, chantries, celebrations initiated by confraternities, the jaargetijden and their grave-visits made the church into a focal point and meeting place of Leiden. Parishioners, city magistrates and the church priests all came together in the St. Peter church and formed a religious community. As Faber demonstrated in his PhD on memoria in Leiden, religion and the church were important elements in the city community and memoria played a large part in the parishioner’s lives. The

44 Bouwman and van Vlist, Stad Van Boeken, 37.

45 J.A. Mol, 'Kruisheren op de Friese zieleheilsmarkt. De stichting van de kloosters te Sneek en Franeker in de

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city magistrates legitimized themselves through certain Masses, participation in processions, and their connection to the churchwardens. The laity visited the church almost daily and donated money, rents and goods to the church in exchange for prayers. And the patriciate exerted control over the church finances and placed their names and family crests all over it. Together with the clerics, the inhabitants of Leiden shared in the religious life of the city.46

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3. The Zevengetijdencollege : music and

performance in the St. Peter.

On the 15th of May 1443, Boudijn van Zwieten granted the still relatively new institution of the zevengetijdencollege (Confraternity of the Seven Hours) an income from two of his own chantries in the St. Peter church in Leiden “om den dienst Goeds te vermeeren ende zalicheyt mijnre zielen.” 47 From then onwards, the zevengetijdencollege would make sure that the Divine Office was sung daily in the church, changing the music, the liturgical routine and the overall atmosphere of the church over the hundred-and-thirty years the Confraternity was active in Leiden.48

Boudijn van Zwieten was one of many who donated in money, goods or interests to receive the benefits of a chantry (also called a private endowment; this usually meant that an altar was endowed with interests, forming the income for the attending priest who, in exchange, celebrated annually, weekly or daily masses and prayed for the souls of the benefactor and his or her family), a jaargetijde or memoriedienst (anniversary or memorial service; which was an annual service held on a specific day such as a feast day or the anniversary of someone’s death, that consisted of a visit to the benefactor’s grave on two occasions, including prayers and psalms), or a more simple endowment of only prayers or a grave-visit. These benefits included, among other things, social prestige, the salvation of one’s own soul or the souls from family members in purgatory, the continuation of the memory of a deceased person, and the increased honour for God, as Boudijn van Zwieten’s motivations mentioned above illustrate. Where chantries and votive morrow Masses on the high altar were relatively expensive, memoriediensten were affordable for a larger group and became very popular in the fifteenth century.49 Between 1350 and 1500 roughly twenty-one hundred memorial services were founded in the three parish churches of Leiden and its convents combined.50

47 “To expand the honoring of God and the salvation of my soul.” ELO, 0502, inv. no. 210, fol. 3r. 48 Jas and de Groot, De Leidse Koorboeken, 28; Jas, Piety and Polyphony, 51.

49 Jas, Piety and Polyphony, 5.

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3.1 Boudijn van Zwieten

In the years that Boudijn van Zwieten founded his two chantries and funded the zevengetijdencollege, he was already an established man in Leiden. He came from the noble family Van Zwieten, and had, by 1443, been clerk to John III, count of Holland and Hainaut, had been promoted to secretary of that same count, and was appointed treasurer of Holland and Zeeland. In 1434 Boudijn made it to advisor of Philips the Good but resigned from this position in fifteen years later in favour of his son, Dirck.

Boudijn van Zwieten was a political figure but he was just as active as lay devout. For example, through his patronage of the St. Peter church where he paid for the wood used in the church’s building projects of 1407 onwards, and his part in the founding of the convent of Mariënpoel in 1431.51 It is in this convent that Boudijn chose to have his final resting place, even though he had purchased a grave in the ambulatory of St. Peter church.

The Van Zwieten’s had a family keep, but it seems that Boudijn spent most of his life living directly opposite the St. Peter church, which he therefore might have visited often.52 Boudijn held an altar in this church, located in the northern ambulatory, next to the grave he had bought.53 On this altar he founded two chantries. One from October 1421, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, which required the attending priest (named as Phillips Aelbaerntsz.)54 to read three masses there every week, visit Boudijns grave, there make two prayers for the deceased and read the Miserere mei Deus and De profundis.55 On that same altar, Boudijn founded a second chantry in 1427, dedicated this time to the saints James, Stephen, Agnes and Martin and attended to by the priest Pieter van Schoten.56 Here too, three masses were to be read weekly

51 A convent of Augustinian nuns in Oestgeest, just outside of Leiden. Jas, Piety and Polyphony, 51; F.J.W. van

Kan, “Boudijn van Zwieten, tresorier in Holland,” Holland 13 (1981): 291-295, 298-299.

52 Jas, Piety and Polyphony, 51.

53 Den Hartog, "De verdwenen interieurs," 164; Jas, Piety and Polyphony, 51-52.

54 ELO, 0502, inv. no.322 (Book of Foundations of the churchwardens), f. 31r. Phillips was probably related to

Boudijn van Zwieten, as this endowment lists extensively who could be chantry priest at his altar and mentions that he has to be of ‘minnre maechscap’ and ‘enen anderen priester off enen clerc van minen bloede’ (f.31v).

55 The Book of Foundations of the churchwardens: ELO, 0502, inv. no. 322; Jas and de Groot, De Leidse

Koorboeken, 23; Jas, Piety and Polyphony, 52.

56 Pieter van Schoten was called by Boudijn in this endowment his nephew. He was, however not the first choice

of chantry priest. In the foundation of 1427 as in the endowment of 1443 of Boudijn, he stipulates that priests have to visit his grave and say prayers over it. This was the grave of priest Jan Willemsz. In his 1427 foundation of a chantry to four saints Boudijn states ‘Jan Willemsz. […] priester die ghestoruen is den ic eerst die nutscap

hier off ghegheuen hadde’. Just as in his foundation of 1421, Boudijn says the collator has to be ‘of his blood’. It

is likely that Jan Willemsz. was connected to Boudijn through family ties. Either Pieter van Schoten or Phillips Aelbaerntsz. passed away or left the chantry before 1443, as that endowment names Ghijsbrecht Mast as the person that holds one of these chantries. ELO, 0502, inv. no. 322, ff. 32v-33r.

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and included a visit to Boudijn’s grave.57 Both stipulations of these chantries were carried out for over twenty years, until Boudijn changed them in 1443.

1. St Eloy 2. St Agatha 3. St Catherine 4. St Leonard 5. St Bartholomew- or Van Zwieten-chapel 6. Lokhorst-chapel 7. Van-Boschuysen-chapel 8. Virgin Mary 9. St Nicholas 10. St Anthony 11. St Hubert 12. St Sebastian

57 The Book of Foundations of the churchwardens: ELO, 0502, inv. no. 322; Jas and de Groot, De Leidse

Koorboeken, 23; Jas, Piety and Polyphony, 52. 13. St Ewald and St Josse 14. H. Cross 15. Three Magi 16. St Anna 17. St Nicasius 18. St Quirinus 19. St James 20. St John (Van Zwietenaltar) 21. St George (Vincken) 22. Floris Paedzen 23. St Francis and St Ursula 24. St Severus 25. St Barbara 26. St Crispin 27. St Andrew 28. St Mary Magdalene 29. St Catherine 30. St Michael a. baptistry

b. chapel of the holy sepulchre c. chapel (?) d. sacristy / medieval church wardens chamber e. tabernacle or Holy Sacrament's house f. high altar g. east entrance

Figure 3. Map with the locations of the altars in the St. Peter church in Leiden in the early sixteenth century, according to Den Hartog and Veerman. Elizabeth den Hartog, “De verdwenen interieurs voor de Beeldenstormen van 1566 en 1572,” in De

Pieterskerk in Leiden: Bouwgeschiedenis, Inrichting en Gedenktekens, eds. E. Den Hartog and J. Veerman (Zwolle: WBooks,

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3.2 The foundation deed of Boudijn van Zwieten of 1443

With his foundation of 15 May 1443 Boudijn van Zwieten made some important changes to the religious celebration in his parish church. His earlier foundation of two chantries in 1421 and 1427 are referred to in his endowment of 1443, but Boudijn changes some earlier made arrangements. The appointed chantry priests of these foundations will no longer gain the incomes of these two endowments. These funds will instead go to the zevengetijdencollege. Boudijn van Zwieten did this for both his soul and ‘om den dienst Goeds te vermeeren’ (to expand the honoring of God), but he also mentions in his endowment the fact that he saw the need for such a foundation (“omdat ick gesien hebbe dattet dair toe van noode was”).58 Boudijn decides that the Divine Office, which was already sung in the St. Peter church, should be sung on all days dedicated to saints by the schoolmaster and his students. On all other “workdays” the seven hours had to be sung by seven priests and two choirboys, appointed by the getijdenmeesters (masters of the Confraternity of the Seven Hours). The sexton, if he so wished, was allowed to join the group of singers.

The zevengetijdencollege was supposed to read a mass on Boudijn’s altar every day, compensating for the loss of six masses a week as by his former arrangements. This mass, Boudijn determined with precision, was to take place after the introit of the mass at the high altar was done. After the service at Van Zwieten’s altar, just as in his previous chantries, a grave-visit followed with a Miserere mei Deus and a De profundis, including prayers for the deceased in name of Boudijn, his wife, their parents, their children and all lords and ladies Boudijn had served.59 The daily masses were apparently not expected to be said by the same priest, as Boudijn states in his endowment that the priest that says these masses on the Monday, Wednesday and Friday, needed to duplicate the ritual at the grave of Van Zwieten at the site of the deceased priest Jan Willemsz. tomb slab. The priest that performed any of the weekly masses, moreover, was instructed to make use of the missal and chalice that Boudijn had had made specifically for this foundation. These could only be removed from the altar if Boudijn himself of his successors needed them.

After compline, the endowment states, the priests and choirboys of the Confraternity of the seven hours had to gather at the northern side of the ambulatory of the church to hold a memorial service for all those benefactors of the zevengetijdencollege, alive or deceased. They

58 There are two copies of this foundation charter in the Leiden Archives (ELO), both made in the sixteenth

century. Both appear in the archives of the getijdenmeesters, one in a cartulary (ELO, 0502, inv. no. 203), the other a separate copy of eight folio’s (ELO, 0502, inv. no. 210).

59“Voor my, myne wyffe, onser ouderen onse kinderen ende vriende zielen, ende mynen lantsheeren, lantsvrouwen

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read the same two prayers as mentioned above and ended with a Salve regina, versicle and collect in honour of Our Lady. This was, however, not all that the priests were supposed to do. Boudijn continues with a stipulation that on the Mondays after the six feast days of Our Lady, chaplains that visited Boudijn’s grave were to receive a small monetary compensation. The Sunday before, the singers were expected to perform a Requiem Mass on the high altar directly after the hour of Prime. And, continuing his multi-page ordinance, the celebration of Boudijn’s altar dedication (which was to be held at the Sunday after the feast of the Assumption of Mary) was to be celebrated with the placing of four large candles on his grave, to be burned during the Requiem Mass of the following day. A priest, wearing a white vestment and holding a holy-water sprinkler, had to visit this grave with the other members of the getijdenzangers, to read, once again, a Miserere mei Deus and a De profundis, say prayers for the deceased and conclude in the same way as after Compline. On this day an amount of wheat had to be distributed among the poor of the parish.

In between these stipulations, Boudijn lists the interest and other finances that were supposed to pay for these services and the specific amounts of money that were to be handed out to the attending priests and singers. Interestingly, Boudijn listed the possibility for Ghijsbrecht Mast, who before 1443 held one of the chantries on Boudijn’s altar, to disagree with the aforementioned arrangements and continue to execute the chantry’s three masses a week. In that case the zangmeesters had to return a part of the interests they received from Boudijns ordinance and could excuse themselves from three masses at the altar, due to the fact that Ghijsbrecht, the churchwardens, the gasthuismeesters and the Heilige Geestmeesters

Image 3. Endowment of Boudijn van Zwieten (detail). A fifteenth-century copy from the original, placed as a separate document, without any other texts, in the archive of the getijdenmeesters. Eight folio’s, paper. ELO, 0502, inv. no. 210, f. 3r.

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undertook these services. After Ghijsbrechts death, the chantry would be removed, and the incomes returned to the Confraternity of the Seven Hours.

3.3 The Confraternity of the Seven Hours

The existence of a zevengetijdencollege or Confraternity of the Seven Hours in the St. Peter church in Leiden is first mentioned in a foundation of 23 April 1440. This seems to be the very first mention of a getijdencollege in the Netherlands.60 Usually these Confraternities were initiated by magistrates or private persons (which could be clerics as well) who granted financial means to the singers. In Leiden this was no different. The celebration of the Officium Divinum was of old a task performed by monks and canons. Apparently, the lack of the Office performed daily, or at all, in the parish church was considered a shortcoming.

The first mention of the Confraternity in 1440 was made by Gijsbrecht van Zwieten (a son of Boudijn van Zwieten who held different city offices) and his wife Catharina van Diemen, who granted the zevengetijdencollege a yearly interest of one pound so they could sing ‘die zeven getyden alle dage mede’ (the Seven Hours all days).61 Whether or not there were singers before in the church and who they were and how they were organized, remains unclear.62 The foundation of Boudijn van Zwieten, however, assured the continued existence of the Confraternity of the Seven Hours by granting them additional financial means, because he saw there was a need for this.63 Apparently the one pound a year the Confraternity was gifted in

1440 was not enough to comfortably sustain their duties. Later, other parishioners and the City Council followed the initiative of Boudijn van Zwieten and provided funds, lands and interests for the getijdencollege, thereby stipulating their routines and duties.64 The city magistrates even

60 van Maanen and Marsilje, eds., Leiden. De geschiedenis van een Hollandse stad, 161; Jas, Piety and

Polyphony, 50.

61 ELO, 0502, inv. no. 203; van Maanen and Marsilje, eds., Leiden. De geschiedenis van een Hollandse stad,

162; Jas, Piety and Polyphony, 50.

62 According to A. Annegarn there was a college of govenors that regulated the singing of the Hours in Leiden as

early as 1316 (Alfons Annegarn, “Floris En Cornelis Schuyt: Muziek in Leiden Van De Vijftiende Tot Het Begin Van De Zeventiende Eeuw” (Phd diss., Utrecht, Vereniging van Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 1973), 13; According to Overvoorde, on the other hand, the origin of the college of St. Peter is to be placed at the beginning of the fifteenth century (J. C Overvoorde and Archieven van Leiden, Archieven van de Kerken. dl I:

Inventarissen en Regesten van de Sint Pieters en Onze Lieve Vrouw Kerk (Leiden: G. F. Théonville, 1915). Eris

Jas, however, thinks the statement of Annegarn incorrect, based on a private communication from Jan Doove who assumed the college was active already in the fourteenth century, because he had found references to sung requiem masses in 1320. The church accounts of 1398-1401 list payments to “the clerics who rule the choir”, and it is probable that the schoolmaster of the Latin school and his students were involved in the church and its musical programme as well, the period before 1440 remains guesswork. Jas, Piety and Polyphony, 50.

63 ELO, 0502, inv. no. 210.

64 van Maanen and Marsilje, eds., Leiden. De geschiedenis van een Hollandse stad, 162; Jas and de Groot, De

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decided to give the getijdencollege twenty pounds a year out of the sextonship of St. Peter to sustain them.65

The singers (priests, choirboys, schoolmasters and students) were the ones that executed the tasks ordained by Boudijn van Zwieten and other, later benefactors, but it was the getijdenmeesters who were responsible for the finances and the administration. They were often assisted by a steward who kept the administration of the Confraternity’s property and collected the incomes and donations. These were, as described by Boudijn in his endowment, to be chosen, every year, by the authorities of Leiden on St. Peter eve (21st February).66 This was the same day on which the churchwardens and the sacristan of the parish churches in the city were picked.67 There were to be three getijdenmeesters and all members of the upper class of Leiden were potential candidates for the position.

On the organization of the singing of the Hours in parish churches, much remains unclear. When we compare, however, with other getijdencolleges there seem to be some general aspects to the Confraternity. Stipulations from Delft in 1456, for example, mention three to four getijdenmeesters who picked seven, eight or more priests to sing the Hours daily on the choir. On certain days the first Vespers, Mass and second Vespers were to be seen to by the schoolmaster and some of his students. And one or two singers were appointed to direct the choir and make sure everything went well.68 In many ways the getijdencolleges operated the same in different cities (around seven priests, the involvement of the Latin school, the daily singing of the Hours, memorial services for benefactors and the yearly election of the getijdenmeesters).69 As Leiden seems to be the first city with such an Confraternity, it might very well be that other cities took a cue from Boudijn and organized the Hours in their parish in a likewise manner.

Payment for the singers was arranged by using loodjes (small pieces of lead). After every service they attended, the singers received such a lead piece which they could exchange for their salaries ones every few days with the getijdenmeesters.70 It seemed a sound system, but the singers did not always end up going about their task smoothly. In two instances, of which the first might have been around 1450 and the other in the first half of the sixteenth century, two letters with complaints were written. It contained complaints about the singers

65 Jas, Piety and Polyphony, 53. 66 ELO, 0502, inv. no. 210, f. 7v.

67 van Maanen and Marsilje, eds., Leiden. De geschiedenis van een Hollandse stad, 162. 68 Jas and de Groot, De Leidse Koorboeken, 21.

69 Jas, Piety and Polyphony, 54.

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showing up late or not at all, singing to fast, chattering, private reading or writing during the performance, or sometimes they even showed up drunk. 71 A response from the getijdenmeesters tried to put these wrongs right, but it remains a question whether or not that was effective enough to keep the singers from transgressing.

That the singers sometimes neglected parts of their duties is perhaps not as surprising when we consider the many different tasks that they were supposed to perform over the course of the fifteenth century. Their most important duty was to sing the daily Hours, but the tables below (comprised by Eric Jas) show that the getijdencollege accumulated more tasks and more

71 ELO, 0502, inv. no. 206 and 208; Jas, Piety and Polyphony, 198-202; van Maanen and Marsilje, eds., Leiden.

De geschiedenis van een Hollandse stad, 162; Jas and de Groot, De Leidse Koorboeken, 37-38.

Table 1. Daily and Weekly services performed by the zevengetijdencollege in the St. Peter church. Eric Jas, Piety and

Polyphony in Sixteenth-Century Holland: The Choirbooks of St Peter's Church, Leiden (Melton: Boydell & Brewer, 2018),

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benefactors over the years, who followed the initiative of Van Zwieten and were all together responsible for the filling-up of the schedule of the getijdenzangers. The fact that the singers were consecrated priests, meant that they could also provide (well paid) memorial services as a way to supplement their income.72 Another important task of the getijdenzangers thus became the reading or singing of Masses for deceased benefactors, or a musical performance

72 Jas and de Groot, De Leidse Koorboeken, 21.

Table 2. Annual services performed by the zevengetijdencollege in the St. Peter church. Eric Jas, Piety and Polyphony in

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