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Hercules at the Crossroads: Confirmation as a Rite of Passage in the Nineteenth-
Century Netherlands Reformed Church
(published in Church History and Religious Culture, 2013)
Ardjan Logmans, Gouda, [email protected]
Herman Paul, Leiden University, Department of History, [email protected]
Abstract
What did it mean for eighteen- to twenty-year-old men and women in the nineteenth-
century Netherlands to be confirmed – that is, to sit in the front row of the church,
dressed in Sunday dress, and be accepted into full church membership? Previous
scholarship on confirmation in the Netherlands Reformed Church has mostly focused
on theological controversies surrounding the wording of the so-called confirmation
questions (three questions about Christian doctrine and morals that confirmants had to
answer during the service), treating these controversies as markers of growing
struggles between “wings” or “parties” in nineteenth-century Dutch Protestantism.
Important as these theological controversies were, this article nonetheless approaches
confirmation from a different, less frequently explored angle, arguing that
confirmation was also, and perhaps especially, a social rite of passage, which
symbolically marked transition into a new stage of life, with adult responsibilities in
church and society. Drawing on a rich array of published as well as unpublished
sources (sermons, booklets, letters, and diaries), the article examines what kind of
meanings were associated with this rite of passage, by both clergy and confirmants,
and to what extent these meanings changed over the course of the century. It shows
2
that Protestants throughout the nineteenth century tried to hold together, in one way or
another, what one may call the “inward” and the “outward” aspects of the ritual
(expressions of personal conviction and conformation to societal standards of
morality). Although they insisted that professions of faith must be made “from the
bottom of the heart,” they simultaneously equated confirmation with a promise to a
virtuous life. Also, while accepting sighs and tears as testifying to the sincerity of a
confirmant’s profession, many authors explicitly warned against strong emotions that
could carry newly confirmed church members away from the narrow path of virtue.
Keywords
confirmation; Netherlands Reformed Church; rites of passage; virtues; emotions;
feeling rules
“Yes, I cherish you, youthful Christians! who at the moment of standing on
HERCULES’s crossroads, at the decisive point of your life path, stretch out your hand
to the heaven and say: ‘I want to belong to Christ and not to the world.’”1 Whether the
young men and women who were about to profess their faith in front of their
congregation were all sufficiently versed in classical mythology to understand their
pastor’s allusion to Hercules, the Greek demigod, may be doubted. The metaphor was
quite appropriate, though. Just as, according to ancient sage, Hercules had to choose
between Venus and Minerva, or between a life of pleasure and a life of virtue, so
confirmants in the nineteenth-century Netherlands Reformed Church were typically
1 [C. E. van Koetsveld], Schetsen uit de pastorij te Mastland: ernst en luim uit het
leven van den Nederlandschen dorpsleeraar (Schoonhoven, 1843), p. 191. All
translations are ours.
3
exhorted to make a choice, for God, the church, and a holy conduct of life or for the
vain pleasures of this world. Confirmation, the rite of acceptance into full membership
of the church, marked a transition to religious adulthood. Saying “yes” in front of the
congregation amounted to a commitment to virtuous conduct in church and society.
In so far as the Protestant rite of confirmation has been subjected to historical
research, it has usually been studied in early modern contexts, often with a special
interest in theological accounts and in ecclesial attempts at regulation of it.2 A similar
focus characterizes those few studies that trace the development of confirmation
rituals in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe.3 Although attention has
been paid to various nineteenth-century controversies over, especially, the wording of
the confirmation questions, these struggles have usually been interpreted as markers
of theological divergence or, in a Dutch context, as scenes of battle in the so-called
richtingenstrijd or struggle between the “wings” or “parties” that the mid-nineteenth-
century Netherlands Reformed Church had seen emerge.4 Even David Bos, in his
2 E.g., Arthur C. Repp, Confirmation in the Lutheran Tradition (Saint Louis, MI,
1964), pp. 13-59; Ingmar Brohed, Offentligt förhör och konfirmation i Sverige under
1700-talet: en case study rörande utvecklingen i Lunds stift (Lund, 1977); Paul
Turner, The Meaning and Practice of Confirmation: Perspectives from a Sixteenth-
Century Controversy (New York, 1987); Robert Cornwall, ‘The Rite of Confirmation
in Anglican Thought During the Eighteenth Century,’ Church History 68 (1999), 359-
72.3 Lukas Vischer, Die Geschichte der Konfirmation: ein Beitrag zur Diskussion über
das Konfirmationsproblem (Zollikon, 1958), 89-104; Karl Hauschildt, ‘Zur
Geschichte und Diskussion der Konfirmationsfrage vom Pietismus bis zum 20.
Jahrhundert,’ in Kurt Frör (ed.), Confirmatio: Forschungen zur Geschichte und Praxis
der Konfirmation (Munich, 1959), pp. 43-73.4 A. F. N. Lekkerkerker, Kanttekeningen bij het hervormde dienstboek, 4 vols. (The
Hague, 1952-6), 4: 24-31; Hermanus Antonius Maria Fiolet, Een kerk in onrust om
4
stimulating monograph on Protestant clergy in the nineteenth century, mainly focuses
on the confirmation questions. Only near the end of his study, Bos points towards an
alternative by presenting confirmation as a “rite of passage to adulthood.”5
Confirmation rituals can be seen as rites of passage, indeed, rather than merely
as vehicles for theological controversy, especially if one allows the focus of study to
shift from how confirmation appeared in nineteenth-century theological polemics and
pastoral textbooks to what confirmation meant to those eighteen- to twenty-year-old
men and women who sat in the front row of the church, dressed in their Sunday best,
as well as to their local pastors. Without denying that theological concerns about
confirmation questions and ceremonies were important, if only in the sense that they
were intensively debated, we should like to explore some other dimensions of the
confirmation ceremony, which were arguably of at least equal importance to those
involved: the ritual, emotional, social, and moral connotations of this rite of passage
(which we understand, following Arnold van Gennep’s classic definition, as an
initiation ritual characterized by moments of separation, transition, and
incorporation).6
haar belijdenis: een phaenomenologische studie over het ontstaan van de
richtingenstrijd in de Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk (Nijkerk, 1953), pp. 138, 155,
188ff; P. L. Slis, L. W. E. Rauwenhoff (1828-1889): apologeet van het modernisme:
predikant, kerkhistoricus en godsdienstfilosoof (Kampen, 2003), p. 137.5 David Bos, Servants of the Kingdom: Professionalization among Ministers of the
Nineteenth-Century Netherlands Reformed Church, trans. David McKay (Leiden;
Boston, 2010), pp. 75-6, 404.6 Arnold van Gennep originally presented his three-stage model in Les rites de
passage: étude systématique des rites de la porte et du seuil; de l’hospitalité; de
l’adoption etc. (Paris, 1909). For a survey of how anthropologists of religion have
discussed and refined this model over the course of the past century, see Fiona Bowie,
5
This shift in focus not only allows us to redescribe confirmation in the
nineteenth century from a different, still largely unexplored angle, but also offers a
fascinating glimpse on the “inward” and “outward” spaces in which nineteenth-
century Protestant discourse located Christian piety. Following Peter van Rooden,
who has drawn attention to an “interiorization” of religion in the late eighteenth-
century Netherlands,7 we shall examine in this article how pastors and confirmants
conceptualized the relation between the “inward” (the heart) and the “outward”
(virtuous conduct) on what many of them referred to as the most solemn occasion of
their lives. To what extent was a “yes” in front of the congregation equated with a
promise to virtuous behavior, as in the opening quotation on Hercules’s crossroads?
To what degree was confirmation interpreted as expressing personal convictions or
emotions? And how did these two spaces, briefly referred to as the “outward” and the
“inward,” relate and interact?8
Our answers to these questions will be based on a diverse array of published as
well as unpublished sources (sermons, booklets, letters, and diaries), almost all of
which were produced by local pastors and confirmants in the Netherlands Reformed
Church (Nederlandsche Hervormde Kerk). On the base of this material, we shall
The Anthropology of Religion: An Introduction (Malden, MA; Oxford, 2000), pp.
161-76.7 Peter van Rooden, Religieuze regimes: over godsdienst en maatschappij in
Nederland, 1570-1990 (Amsterdam, 1996), p. 115.8 Christine Schönebeck, Denkspruch und Konfirmationsschein: zur Geschichte der
Konfirmation in Westfalen (Bielefeld, 2005) raises these questions only in passing, but
makes a pioneering contribution towards understanding confirmation as a social rite
of passage by examining certificates, testimonials, and other material relics related to
the ritual. Although this article has a slightly different focus, it is indebted to
Schönebeck’s fine study for pointing the way towards a cultural-historical reading of
confirmation rituals.
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argue that the relation between the “inward” and the “outward” was a paradoxical
one, in the sense that the human heart was seen not only as the locus of inner held
convictions (indispensable for a honest profession of faith), but also as a source of
temptations (which threatened to lure confirmants into disloyalty to their profession).
This explains why especially pastors were often ambiguous about emotional
expressions in the confirmation service. While one or two tears on the cheek could
testify to a confirmant’s sincerity, a flood of tears was seen as evidence of emotional
instability or dangerous susceptibility to momentary impressions. Moreover, emotions
were welcomed as “outward” markers of “inward” sincerity only in so far as they
conformed to nineteenth-century middle-class codes, including emotional conventions
or “feeling rules.” This, in turn, helps explain why a great many sources, from all
quarters of the church, spent more words on how confirmation candidates were
supposed to feel and behave than to the theological significance of the confirmation
ritual.
I
Although the rite of confirmation was perhaps never elevated to such great emotional
height as in the mid-nineteenth century, the Reformed Church had a long tradition of
marking acceptance into full church membership with ceremonies of various kinds.
Just as Protestant churches elsewhere,9 it had offered catechetical instruction in order
9 Wilhelm Maurer, ‘Geschichte von Firmung und Konfirmation bis zum Ausgang der
lutherischen Orthodoxie,’ in Frör, Confirmatio (see above, n. 3), pp. 9-38; Bjarne
Hareide, Konfirmasjonen i reformasjonstiden: en undersøkelse av den lutherske
konfirmasjon i Tyskland, 1520-1585 (Lund, 1966), also published in German as Die
7
to prepare children for confirmation, at some point between their twelfth and
eighteenth year, depending on local or regional custom. Confirmation ceremonies had
also varied across time and place. Although confirmants had usually been tested on
doctrinal issues (under reference to the Heidelberg Catechism, for example) and
expected to answer a couple of questions (about their endorsement of the church’s
doctrine, their commitment to a holy conduct of life, and their subjection to church
discipline), such ceremonies had not always been conducted in public. They had taken
place in the consistory, before a delegation of the church council, or in the parsonage,
sometimes but not always in the presence of other congregation members.10
A 1791 engraving by Theodoor Koning nicely depicts such an “acceptance
ceremony” or aannemingsavond. The print shows a robed clergyman in front of about
ten young men and women, in a spacious and luxury interior. They are separated by a
table that is furnished with a book (the Bible?) and writing materials (for entering new
names into the membership register?). All eyes are fixed upon the minister, who
seems to address the confirmants while emphasizing his words by gesticulating with
both hands.11 Although, of course, Koning’s artistic representation tells us little about
actual historical practice, it is significant that this engraving – part of a tableau that
Konfirmation in der Reformationszeit: eine Untersuchung der lutherischen
Konfirmation in Deutschland 1520-1585, trans. Karin Kvideland (Göttingen, 1971).10 Willem Verboom, De catechese van de Reformatie en de Nadere Reformatie
(Amsterdam, 1986), pp. 136-40; A. Th. van Deursen, Bavianen en slijkgeuzen: kerk
en kerkvolk ten tijde van Maurits en Oldenbarnevelt, 3rd ed. (Franeker, 1998), pp.
167-8.11 Theodoor Koning, Monument voor Johannes Calvijn, 1509-1564 (1791), as
reproduced in G. D. J. Schotel, De openbare eeredienst der Nederl. Hervormde Kerk
in de zestiende, zeventiende en achttiende eeuw, rev. ed. by H. C. Rogge (Leiden,
[1906]), p. 333 and online at https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/nl/collectie/RP-P-OB-
78.813 (assessed 27 June 2013).
8
also depicted baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and a church council meeting – locates the
rite of confirmation in the seclusion of what seems to be a private house (the
parsonage?). Although public confirmation services on Saturday evening seem not to
have been uncommon,12 it had been acceptance for the church council, rather than a
ceremony in the presence of the entire congregation, that had carried most weight.
Finally, the frequency with which confirmation-related problems and abuses had been
discussed by classes and synods throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth
centuries suggests that the variety of practices recommended by the church’s
governing bodies may have been corresponding to an even greater variety of local
customs.13
It was this variety that, in 1816, the Algemeen Reglement (General Regulation)
and its bylaws tried to curtail. The Algemeen Reglement was drafted at the Ministry of
Public Worship, a government body that invested considerable energy in centralizing
church government and standardizing ecclesial practices so as to make the church a
“servant,” not merely to God’s Kingdom, but also to that of King William I, whose
dream was a united church in a united nation state.14 As part of this centralizing
program, the Reglement op het godsdienstig onderwijs in de Nederlandsche
12 Schotel, Openbare eeredienst (see above, n. 11), p. 333.13 Verboom, Catechese (see above, n. 10), p. 137.14 This is an allusion to the well-chosen title of Bos’s monograph, Servants of the
Kingdom (see above, n. 5). Examples of the Ministry’s influence on local church
practice are given in Herman Paul and Bart Wallet, ‘A Sun that Lost its Shine: The
Reformation in Dutch Protestant Memory Culture, 1817-1917,’ Church History and
Religious Culture 88 (2008), 35-62, there 38-45. On the General Regulations, see
Nikolaj Hein Bijleveld, Voor God, volk en vaderland: de plaats van de hervormde
predikant binnen de nationale eenwordingsprocessen in Nederland in de eerste helft
van de negentiende eeuw (Delft, 2007), pp. 43-62.
9
Hervormde Kerk (Regulation on Catechetical Instruction in the Netherlands Reformed
Church) stipulated that “from now on, the confirmation of church members shall take
place in public.” It specified which questions confirmation candidates had to answer
and that these questions were to be read aloud from the pulpit. Moreover, the
regulations emphasized that confirmation ceremonies had to be “solemn” and larded
with “appropriate addresses.”15 Uniformization thus went hand in hand with an
attempt at ritualization – a combination that could also be observed in other
(Lutheran) parts of Europe around 1800.16 This ritualization, in turn, was not limited
to confirmation services, but has also been observed for baptism and marriage
services, where pomp and cicumstance had to compensate for the loss of the services’
administrative function after the introduction of civil registration in 1811 and
population registration in 1828.17
Unsurprisingly, the new requirement met with rejection and incomprehension.
Some pastors stuck to local habits, whereas others preferred to ask their confirmants
other questions than those specified in the Reglement. Confirmants, too, not always
saw the benefits of professing their faith in front of the congregation. As late as the
15 Reglement op het godsdienstig onderwijs in de Nederlandsche Hervormde Kerk
([The Hague], [1816]), p. 7.16 See, e.g., Brohed, Offentligt förhör (see above, n. 2), pp. 171-84. In Basel, however,
such attempts at uniformization were made only in the second half of the century:
Christine Burckhardt-Seebass, Konfirmation in Stadt und Landschaft Basel (Basel,
1975), p. 187.17 Bos, Servants of the Kingdom (see above, n. 5), pp. 55, 62. Although the
confirmation service never had such an administrative function, it is plausible that its
official introduction in 1816 must be seen in this larger context.
10
1830s, complaints about neglect and absenteeism of candidates reached the synod.18
Nonetheless, compared to the amount of protest sparked by the introduction of the
1807 hymnbook,19 the resistance displayed against public confirmation services was
limited and momentary. The liturgical creativity exhibited by pastors and church
councils in search of “solemnity” even seems to indicate a relatively broad level of
support for the idea of a festive confirmation service.
Although such a service could in principle be scheduled on a weekday
evening, arguments in favor of a Sunday service (or even an Eastern Sunday service)
were frequently heard.20 Sooner or later, most congregations settled on a Sunday
service in the weeks before or after Eastern and adopted a liturgical choreography that
included at least the following elements: confirmants who sat in a front row and stood
at the moment suprême, a pastor who read the confirmation questions from the lofty
height of the pulpit, an out-loud “yes” or, in case of young women, an approving nod
of the head in response to the questions, followed by some words of admonition,
either taken from the Bible or in free improvisation. In a more elaborated version, the
18 Handelingen van de algemeene christelijke synode der Hervormde Kerk in het
Koningrijk der Nederland in den jare 1830 (The Hague, 1831), p. 28; Handelingen
van de algemeene christelijke synode der Hervormde Kerk in het Koningrijk der
Nederland in den jare 1832 (The Hague, 1833), pp. 108-9.19 Although protests against the Evangelische gezangen were not as massive as has
been suggested in afgescheiden circles, the disturbances that accompanied their
introduction in 1807 resembled those surrounding the new rhymed version of the
psalms in 1773. See Roel A. Bosch, En nooit meer oude psalmen zingen: zingend
geloven in een nieuwe tijd, 1760-1810 (Zoetermeer, 1996), pp. 335-42.20 G. H. van Senden, De plegtige bevestiging van leerlingen tot ledematen der
hervormde gemeente te Zwolle, op Paschen 1836, naar Rom. V:3, 4 (The Hague,
1836), pp. 2-9.
11
ceremony could include a “bowing of the body,”21 kneeling, a laying on of hands,
hymn singing by the confirmants (together or in alternation with the congregation),22 a
benediction of the newly confirmed members, or the assignation of appropriate Bible
verses to the young men and women who had just professed their faith.23
Whatever the liturgical shape of the service, both pastors and church members
seemed to agree with the Ministry of Public Worship on the solemn character of the
occasion. “You have never experienced a more beautiful and more important day than
today,” one pastor told his confirmation candidates.24 “Surely, this is the most solemn,
most moving, most holy moment in your life,” agreed another.25 “May it be
unforgettable until your dying breath!”26 Confirmants and their family members often
used a similar vocabulary. In 1820, for example, Grietje Gerritsdochter described the
21 J. G. Veltman, Leerrede over de verbindtenis aan God ter plegtige bevestiging der
lidmaten in de christelijke gemeente op den 30 maart 1825 te Dordrecht (Dordrecht,
1825), p. 10. For the gender connotations of this bowing, see E[gbertina] C. v[an]
d[er] M[andele], Het wetboek van mevrouw étiquette in 32 artikelen, 7th ed. (Utrecht,
1909), p. 242.22 Veltman, Leerrede (see above, n. 21), p. 32; J. L. Nijhoff, Herinnering onzer
christelijke hervormde belijdenis en blijdschap over die onzer kinderen, naar
aanleiding van 2 Joh. vs. 4 (Arnhem, 1825), p. 25; A. Francken, Leerrede bij de
bevestiging van lidmaten der gemeente, ter aanprijzing van getrouwe verbindtenis
aan hunnen Heer (Utrecht, 1849), pp. 6, 19-20.23 Haarlem, Noord-Hollands Archief, archive family Van Sypesteyn, inv. no. 722,
‘Mijne herinneringen over het doen mijner belijdenis’ (19 March 1842).24 J. J. van Oosterzee, Gespaard, maar bewaard: inzegening van nieuwe lidmaten:
Joh. XVII:15 (Rotterdam, 1860), p. 168.25 Veltman, Leerrede (see above, n. 21), p. 10.26 C. N. de Graaff, Het uur zijner openbare belijdenis van het evangelie, het
onvergetelijkste uur uit het leven van den christen: leerrede over Joh. I vs. 40, laatste
gedeelte, bij de opentlijke bevestiging van ledematen (Leiden, 1843), pp. 14, 21. Cf.
Van Senden, Plegtige bevestiging (see above, n. 20), pp. 20-1.
12
confirmation ceremony as “serious” and “even more serious” for being conducted in
public. She felt emotionally moved “when I thought of the gravity of the matter.”27
Likewise, in a letter to his children on the occasion of their confirmation, W. J.
Bosboom referred to their profession of faith as “solemnly made, in the presence of
God,” during what he called a “grave and weighty” ceremony.28 An anonymous diary
writer even exclaimed:
A holy day for the Christian congregation when a host of new professors [of
the faith] has publicly joined her! Double holy for young and old, for the rich
and the poor (…). A day of serious reflection for those who once preceded
those in the same confession! A day of deep humility, but also of thankful
praise for all!29
Although, in the course of the century, growing theological divergences in the
Netherlands Reformed Church resulted in sometimes bitter controversies over the
wording of the confirmation questions or the supposed (lack of) orthodoxy of the
27 Leeuwarden, Tresoar, archive family Fortuijn, inv. no. 12, ‘Overdenkingen van
Grietje Gerritsdr. n.a.v. door haar te Heeg beluisterde preken van ds. J. G. H. ten Doll’
(16 July 1820).28 The Hague, Gemeentearchief, archive family Bosboom, inv. no. 3, ‘Een woord aan
mijne kinderen Elisabeth Anna, Johannes, en Nicolaas, na de aflegging hunner
godsdienstige belijdenis den 25e maart 1834 toegesproken door hunnen vader W. J.
Bosboom.’29 The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, inv. no. 79 H 49, diary by an anonymous male
person (25 March 1855).
13
pastor in charge of the service,30 few disagreed that the confirmation of new members
was a solemn occasion, to be marked with appropriate dignity.31 In fact, precisely
because a confirmation service was considered a high point in the life of the
congregation as well as in the lives of its (new) members, such questions as to which
“party” the pastor belonged grew in significance in times that witnessed a widening
rift between liberal and orthodox wings in the church. In Rotterdam, for example, the
church council spent years quarreling about the question whether candidates were
allowed to be confirmed by a pastor of their own persuasion – a wish expressed in
particular by orthodox parts of the congregation. Observing that growing numbers of
confirmation candidates postponed their confirmation until it was their preferred
minister’s turn to lead the service, pastor W. J. Jorissen proposed that all ministers
would confirm their own candidates, each in their own church building, rather than in
one festive but crowded and contested service for the entire Rotterdam
congregation.32 Unsurprisingly, critics complained that this idea threatened both the
30 E.g., Francken, Leerrede (see above, n. 22), pp. 15-7; J. J. van Toorenenbergen,
Twaalf kerkredenen uitgesproken te Rotterdam (1869-1879) (Culemborg, [1881]), p.
87; T. B. Granpré Moliere, Leesboek voor de aannemings-catechisatie (Woerden,
1897), pp. 108-9; H. H. Meulenbelt, Van belijdenisdoen en van belijdenisvragen
(Nijmegen, 1904), pp. 76-8.31 The model of the Netherlands Reformed confirmation service was (creatively)
appropriated by other denominations, including even Jewish congregations: Bart
Wallet, Nieuwe Nederlanders: de integratie van joden in Nederland (1814-1851)
(Amsterdam, 2007), pp. 167-8; Chaya Brasz, ‘For the Deaf and Dumb? Confirmation
Ceremonies in Dutch Judaism,’ in Yosef Kaplan and Dan Michman (eds.), The
Religious Cultures of Dutch Jewry (forthcoming).32 [W. J. Jorissen Mzn.], Advies uitgebracht in de vergadering van den bijzonderen
kerkeraad der Nederduitsch Hervormde Gemeente te Rotterdam den 20 november
1867 (Rotterdam, 1867), p. 7.
14
unity of the congregation (producing “fifteen little churches”) and the solemnity of the
occasion.33 Others reversed the argument, expecting Jorissen’s solution to enhance
“the gravity of the confirmation service [belijdenis-predikatie].”34 Apparently, their
differences notwithstanding, all those concerned agreed on the symbolic weight of the
confirmation service.
II
Why, then, was confirmation so important? What meanings were associated with this
rite of passage? Among nineteenth-century Netherlands Reformed clergy, to start
with, four clusters of meaning can be distinguished. There were, in other words, four
distinct though overlapping and mutually reinforcing ways in which pastors perceived
confirmation as marking a transition from one phase of life to another. The first of
these identified confirmation with acceptance into full church membership. Full
members had access to the Lord’s Supper and were in a privileged position to apply
for poor relief in times of financial hardship.35 And that was not yet all. Even though,
after the separation of church and state, church membership was officially no longer
33 W. Francken Azn., Advies in zake eener voorgestelde verandering in de openlijke
bevestiging van nieuwe leden, uitgebracht op de kerkeraadsvergadering der Ned.
Hervormde Gemeente te Rotterdam, den 16 october 1867 (Rotterdam, 1867), pp. 3-7.34 Het gemoedsbezwaar van ds. Jorissen op nieuw ter behandeling voorgesteld in den
Rotterdamschen kerkeraad (Rotterdam, 1867), p. 6.35 Bos, Servants of the Kingdom (see above, n. 5), p. 76. That application for
confirmation could be motivated by the prospect of access to poor relief was already
observed by Theodorus Adrianus Clarisse, Nagelaaten leerredenen over Paulus brief
aan de Kolossensen, ed. Petrus Abresch, 5 vols. (Utrecht; Groningen; Amsterdam,
1784-92), 5: 269; Jan van Eyk, Eenvoudig onderrigt over den heiligen doop
(Amsterdam; Rotterdam, 1800), p. 45.
15
required for the exercise of public offices, it still counted as a strong recommendation
for those in search of a social position. To what extent the church endorsed this view
is apparent from an 1843 instruction, issued by the synod of the Netherlands
Reformed Church, which summoned pastors
to further common and timely profession of faith and especially to see as much
as possible that everyone belonging to the Reformed Church [Hervormd
Kerkgenootschap] is confirmed as member before going into obligatory
military service, into servanthood, or into any other established position
[vasten levensstand], on condition of having reached a mature age [rijpen
leeftijd].36
Secondly, then, confirmation was identified with transition into adulthood and with
entrance into “a new area of duty.”37 Confirmation was a boundary marker on the road
to engagement, marriage, and employment.38 In a metaphor reminiscent of Heinrich
36 Thus the 1843 version of the Reglement op het godsdienstig onderwijs, cited in C.
Hooijer, Kerkelijke wetten voor de hervormden in het Koningrijk der Nederlanden
(Zaltbommel, 1846), p. 108.37 [G. W. Vreede], Levensschets van G. W. Vreede, naar zijn eigen handschrift
uitgeg[even], [ed. A. C. Vreede] (Leiden, 1883), p. 54; C. W. Pape, Het leven en
werken van J. D. Janssen, ridder der Orde van den Nederlandschen Leeuw,
secretaris-generaal en adviseur bij het departement voor de zaken der Hervormde
Kerk enz. (’s-Hertogenbosch, 1855), p. 24; J. L. Nijhoff, Herinnering (see above, n.
22), pp. 10-11; K. F. W. Eijmael, Wenken voor armenbesturen, armenverzorgers en
allen die in de armenverzorging belang stellen (Zwolle, 1849), pp. 56-7; [Cornelia],
Het afleggen der geloofsbelijdenis, door Cornelia (Breukelen, 1901), p. 4.38 M. Kruseman, Mijn leven (Dordrecht, 1877), p. 8; Cornelis Eliza van Koetsveld,
Fantasie en waarheid: nieuwe schetsen en novellen, 2 vols. (Schoonhoven, 1863), 1:
16
Heine, confirmation was described as a “ticket” that granted access to salon, academy,
and business office.39 Not unlike a girl’s first ball, or first communion in Catholic
circles, confirmation symbolized the boundary between childhood and adulthood.40 In
fact, a first ball was unlikely to occur prior to the confirmation service, as pastor and
poet Eliza Laurillard explained in a famous little dialogue:
“You ask whether my Mary will come to the ball.
Consider how very strange this would look;
the girl has not yet been confirmed.”
“You are right, Madam! I forgot to think of that.”41
If this suggests that confirmation opened up a world of rendez-vouses and awakening
love, pastors subscribing to a third set of meanings were quick to sound a moral
219; H. de Veer, Frans Holster, 3 vols. (Rotterdam, 1871), 3: 442; A. G. van Hamel,
Belijdenis-doen: een schetsje uit de kerkelijke en onkerkelijke wereld, 2nd ed.
(Arnhem, 1883), p. 7.39 Van Hamel, Belijdenis-doen (see above, n. 38), p. 31. Speaking about nineteenth-
century Jewish-Christian conversion, Heine famously described baptism as “the
entrance ticket to European culture.” Quoted in Deborah Sadie Hertz, How Jews
Became German: The History of Conversion and Assimilation in Berlin (New Haven;
London, 2007), p. 199.40 Pieter Stokvis, Het intieme burgerleven: huishouden, huwelijk en gezin in de lange
19de eeuw (Amsterdam, 2005), p. 56; M. W. A. van Tilburg, Hoe hoorde het?
Seksualiteit en partnerkeuze in de Nederlandse adviesliteratuur, 1780-1890
(Amsterdam, 1998), p. 19.41 Cited in Vinger Gods, wat zijt gij groot: een bloemlezing uit het werk van de
dominee-dichters Nicolaas Beets, J. P. Hasebroek, Bernard ter Haar, J. J. L. ten
Kate, Eliza Laurillard, ed. Anton Korteweg and Wilt Idema (Amsterdam, [1978]), p.
254.
17
alarm. Confirmation also had an ethical connotation. Precisely in so far as
confirmation was a social rite of passage, the ritual was invariably (and throughout the
theological spectrum) accompanied with moral instruction, often in the form of
warnings against the world’s temptations. In 1825, Johannes G. Veltman voiced the
concerns of many when he sermonized: “Avoid all places, companies, and pleasures
for which you feel ashamed in front of honest, respectable people, at which you
cannot bear the thought of God, death, and judgment, for this takes away and
suffocates the good seed that has been sown in you.”42 Young men pursuing idle
pleasures in pubs and theatres or, worse, young women who got pregnant before
marriage were considered not to have made their profession “from the bottom of their
heart”: they were merely “so-called professors” [zogenaamde belijders].43
The heart as the affective center of the human person played a pivotal role in
the fourth set of meanings, which focused on the genuineness of the profession and
the sincerity of the confirmant. Although the heart could be a fabrica idolorum, as
John Calvin had argued,44 and therefore a source of temptations luring Christians into
sin and immorality, the heart was also equated with the “inner self” or kernel of one’s
personality. If confirmants were told that their “yes” in front of the congregation had
42 Veltman, Leerrede (see above, n. 21), p. 37.43 J. G. Verhoeff, Een woord tot allen, die in de Nederl. Herv. Kerk belijdenis des
geloofs hebben afgelegd, 2nd ed. (Nijkerk, 1899), p. 8. In 1890, a catechist in Emmen
complained about a girl named Hendrikje Hendriks, who turned out to have been
pregnant and unmarried at the moment of her confirmation. ‘During the years in
which I (…) was allowed to help [confirmation candidates] prepare for their
confirmation, nobody has played as hypocritically with their confirmation as
Hendrikje Hendriks.’ Assen, Drents Archief, archive Netherlands Reformed
congregation Emmen, inv. no. 85, W. C. Lodder to church council, undated (1890).44 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1
(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), I.11.8, p. 108.
18
to be a “heartfelt yes,” or a “profession from the heart,” this served as a warning that
confirmation was not just an “outward ceremony,” and that living in accordance with
one’s profession requirement more than “outward bourgeois fulfillment of duties.”45
Varying upon a romantic distinction, then, Reformed clergy from various persuasions
emphasized the importance of “inward” sincerity, either in correction to what they
perceived as overemphasis on “outward” social conventions or, more pragmatically,
in the awareness that virtuous standards had to be internalized in order to be
effective.46 C. E. van Koetsveld, the pastor who told his confirmants about Hercules’s
crossroads, therefore appreciated the “holy diffidence” among the “deeply moved”
men and women in front of him: such (cultivated) emotions testified to the sincerity of
their profession and, accordingly, to their commitment to a holy conduct of life.47
Obviously, neat distinctions between these clusters of meaning cannot be
drawn. They often overlapped, intersected, and reinforced each other. Moreover, the
clusters are not exhaustive, as they hardly cover the knowledge aspect that was and
would remain bound up with confirmation: candidates were tested on their knowledge
of Reformed doctrine during “acceptance evenings” such as depicted by Koning in
1791. Nonetheless, the four-fold typology serves some valuable heuristic purposes. It
45 Veltman, Leerrede (see above, n. 21), p. 10; Francken, Leerrede (see above, n. 22),
p. 43.46 Although the distinction was often formulated in romantic terms, this does not
imply, of course, that warnings against mere outward confessions only emerged with
the rise of romanticism. In the late eighteenth century, Rheinvis Feith already
criticized what he called “a confirmation of the lips” in his Dag-boek mijner goede
werken, in rekening gebragt bij God, tegen den dag der algemeene vergelding
(Amsterdam, 1785), p. 180.47 C. E. van Koetsveld, Tot wien Heer? Een geschenk aan jeugdige lidmaten
(Schoonhoven, 1870), p. 36.
19
contributes, first, to recognizing that the language of “solemnity” and “gravity,”
employed by virtually all nineteenth-century commentators, could convey a variety of
ideas or intuitions about the significance of confirmation ceremonies. This variety, in
turn, demonstrates that confirmation services were much more than litmus tests for
theological orthodoxy and, consequently, occasions for controversy among “parties”
or “wings” in the church. As we shall demonstrate in what follows, pastors,
confirmation candidates, and their family members were often especially concerned
about the social and moral connotations of the confirmation service as well as about
feelings and emotions that befitted the occasion.
III
The social connotations of the confirmation rite were hard to overlook. Whoever
visited a confirmation service and observed the candidates, male and female, sitting in
the front row, immediately recognized that these boys and girls had become men and
women.48 Their shorts had been replaced by trousers; their knee skirts had been
abandoned in favor of ankle-length skirts. Women had done their hair and men grew a
moustache or beard.49 These were visible signs that the confirmants had reached a
“mature age” and were now ready to assume adult responsibilities. Dress and outlook
48 Although cases of 50-year-old confirmants have been reported (L. Tinholt, De
lidmaten questie in de hervormde gemeente te Sneek: verzameling van officieële
stukken [Sneek, 1870], p. 36), the social significance of this rite of passage caused the
average age at confirmation to be in the late teens.49 Van Hamel, Belijdenis-doen (see above, n. 38), p. 7; Stokvis, Intieme burgerleven
(see above, n. 38), pp. 51-2; Katharina Pauline Christine de Leeuw, Kleding in
Nederland, 1813-1920: van een traditioneel bepaald kleedpatroon naar een begin van
modern kleedgedrag (Tilburg, 1991), p. 354.
20
emphasized that confirmation marked transition into adulthood.50 Those who could
afford it, moreover, bought themselves a special suit of clothes or “confirmation
costume” – a smart dress to be worn on occasion.51 Although such a dress could have
theological significance, in referring to the new, white robes with which the multitude
before the Lamb will be clothed (Rev. 7,9),52 it was chiefly regarded as appropriate
for the solemnity of the occasion. Hence also the wide-spread preference for decent
black, which nineteenth-century etiquette books identified with “soberness” and
“gravity.”53 Almost all confirmation candidates were dressed in black, observed
pastor Cornelis van Schaick in 1848.54 Women, says another mid-century source,
typically wear a black silk dress.55 Around 1900, advertisements for confirmation
suits (“conspicuous for their steadiness and elegant touch”) still appealed to this
preference for sober black.56 Stylish dress, then, was a middle-class means for
conveying that confirmation was a significant rite of passage.
Although such clothing conventions were not entirely new – eighteenth-
century authors had already complained about the “stiff” and “ungraceful” dress in
50 Van Koetsveld, Tot wien (see above, n. 47), p. 97.51 J. A. Klokman, ‘Een Achterhoekschen boerenzoon, die Artis bezoekt,’ Het
Leeskabinet 3 (1864), 1-28, there 3.52 H. Mohrmann, ‘Nieuwe kleederen met Paschen,’ De Navorscher 3 (1853), 125-6;
Chr. Hunningher, Over den doop en het belijdenis doen van onze kinderen (Baarn,
1910), p. 27.53 V[an] d[er] M[andele], Wetboek (see above, n. 21), p. 242.54 C. van Schaick, Tafereelen uit het Drentsch dorpsleven, 2 vols. (Haarlem, 1848), 1:
119-20.55 ‘Bekentenissen eener jonge dame, medegedeeld door den oude heer Smits IX,’
Nederlandsche Spectator 2 (1857), 113-9, there 119.56 Rotterdamsch Nieuwsblad (3 April 1905); Hilversumsche Courant (24 March
1906).
21
which young female confirmants were supposed to appear57 – the ritualization of the
confirmation service after 1816 put a growing emphasis on appropriate dress. The
mid-nineteenth century even saw confirmation increasingly celebrated in birthday-like
fashions,58 with tea-parties, congratulation letters, and specially-bought presents.59
Right after the service, neighbors, friends, and relatives would come to pay their
respects to the newly confirmed members and their families, “shaking hands” in what
one source describes as a “festive and uplifting atmosphere.”60 Edifying books were a
favorite confirmation present, judging by book sellers’ advertisements in the second
half of the century.61 Around 1900, vintners and jewelers also tried to get their shares,
57 E. M. Post, Het waare genot des levens: in brieven (Amsterdam, 1796), p. 120.58 On which see Elizabeth H. Pleck, Celebrating the Family: Ethnicity, Consumer
Culture, and Family Rituals (Cambridge, MA; London, 2000), pp. 141-61.59 Johannes Burkhardt, ‘Reformations- und Lutherfeiern: die Verbürgerlichung der
reformatorischen Jubiläumskultur,’ in Dieter Düding, Peter Friedemann, and Paul
Münch (eds.), Öffentliche Festkultur: politische Feste in Deutschland von der
Aufklärung bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg (Reinbek, 1988), pp. 212-36, has called attention
to the bourgeois festive culture that nineteenth-century German Lutherans developed
around Reformation Day (October 31). Although this pattern cannot be observed so
clearly in Dutch commemorations of the Reformation, presumably because the Dutch
national historical canon did not grant the Reformation such a prominent place as did
the German one (Paul and Wallet, ‘Sun that Lost its Shine’ [see above, n. 14], 37),
Burkhardt’s thesis does apply to nineteenth-century Dutch confirmation ceremonies:
they were increasingly celebrated in bourgeois fashion.60 Utrecht, Utrechts Archief, archive family Van Weede, inv. no. 95-3, letter to Jacob
van Weede (13 April 1889); archive family Van Sypesteyn, ‘Mijne herinneringen’
(see above, n. 23); Van Hamel, Belijdenis-doen (see above, n. 38), pp. 50-1.61 E.g., Algemeen Handelsblad (20 March 1846); Leidsch Dagblad (3 April 1865);
Nieuws van den Dag (3 April 1885).
22
for instance by offering rings with engraved confirmation date.62 Parents sometimes
gave their son or daughter a Bible, with appropriate dedication,63 or wrote them letters
with parental exhortations.64 It was not exceptional for confirmants to receive “quite a
pile of letters from friends and acquaintances.”65 Once the day had passed, gratitude
“for the many signs of interest received on the occasion of the confirmation of our
children” could be expressed in a newspaper advertisement, although this seems to
have been more common in Roman-Catholic circles.66 Other sources report about
annual commemorations of the confirmation date – another sign of how confirmation
was increasingly celebrated as a birthday.67
As sources from lower-class strata of society are sparse, one wonders to what
extent such middle-class types of celebration were appropriated or imitated by less
fortunate families.68 Did they borrow or hire a suit or dress for the occasion, perhaps,
62 V[an] d[er] M[andele], Wetboek (see above, n. 21), p. 241. Examples of such
advertisements can be found in the Rotterdamsch Nieuwsblad (19 and 25 April 1905,
14 April 1909).63 Rotterdam, Gemeentearchief, archive family Reuchlin, inv. no. 94, Maarten
Reuchlin to his son Piet, (22 March 1863).64 Archive family Bosboom, ‘Woord’ (see above, n. 28).65 V[an] d[er] M[andele], Wetboek (see above, n. 21), p. 239; Willemijn Ruberg,
Conventional Correspondence: Epistolary Culture of the Dutch Elite, 1770-1850,
trans. Maria Sherwood-Smith (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2011), pp. 160-3, 211.66 Nieuwe Tilburgsche Courant (10 April 1898).67 Van Koetsveld, Tot wien (see above, n. 47), p. 124; [anon.], Tot een aandenken aan
uwe belijdenis, uitgereikt aan Jan Jakob Fuchs 23 maart 1855 (n.p., n.d.), p. 1. The
German equivalents are discussed extensively in Schönebeck, Denkspruch (see above,
n. 8).68 More research would be needed on the social background of the confirmation
candidates and, especially, on working-class perceptions of the confirmation ritual.
Given that acceptance into full membership of the Netherlands Reformed Church
23
or content themselves with less expensive rituals, if they could afford a confirmation
ceremony at all? A fictive sketch from 1892 illustrates that middle-class conventions
surrounding the confirmation ceremony were not always easy to ignore, even though
the exchange can also be read as an ironic commentary on the kind of bourgeois
expectations that late nineteenth-century confirmants were supposed to meet:
Pastor: “Well, Katie, why didn’t you sign up to do your confirmation?”
Katie: “Minister, my hat is not too well and I do not have a new one.”
Pastor: “My dear child, we only pay attention to the inner, not to the outward.”
Katie: “Yes, minister, but the lining is torn, too.”69
Although it is not impossible that confirmation customs varied across social strata,
there are no indications that the significance attached to such things as a new dress or
an appropriate present depended on the theological persuasion of the confirmants or
their families. Both the “orthodox” Isaäc da Costa and the “modern” A. G. van Hamel
bought their acquaintances a well-chosen gift or observed this practice in their
required a fee (the height of which varied across time and place) as well as that
confirmation classes were not always offered for free, it seems reaonable to presume
that confirmation was not affordable for all. On the other hand, full church
membership was financially attractive to the extent that members were eligible to
poor relief. Bos, Servants of the Kingdom (see above, n. 5), p. 76, suggests that the
latter might explain why church councils felt a need to charge a fee: the demand for
poor relief would otherwise exceed their means.69 Nieuws van den Dag (11 September 1892).
24
immediate environment.70 As fervently as the richtingen in the Netherlands Reformed
Church could quarrel over the theological connotations of the confirmation questions,
as unanimously they agreed on the festivity of the occasion and on the appropriateness
of celebrating confirmation as a social rite of passage.
IV
To some extent, this also holds for the moral significance attached to confirmation.
Although one might expect orthodox pastors to be suspicious of “Pelagianism” in
moral affairs and therefore less inclined to emphasize the “path of virtue” that
confirmed Christians were supposed to walk, divergences of opinion tended to focus
more on what constituted Christian morality than on the desirability of morally
sanctioned behavior as such.
Netherlands Reformed clergy most eloquently expressed their moral
expectations in what gradually became a distinct genre of confirmation tracts:
booklets with such revealing titles as Vergeet het niet! Na afgelegde geloofsbelijdenis
(Don’t Forget It! After the Profession of Faith) and De goede belijdenis: geschenk
voor lidmaten van de Ned. Herv. Kerk na het afleggen hunner geloofsbelijdenis (A
Good Profession: A Gift to Members of the Netherlands Reformed Church after Their
Profession of Faith).71 These gift booklets – some of which were so popular as to be
70 [Isaäc da Costa], ‘Aan den oudsten zoon van een geliefden vriend,’ in Da Costa’s
kompleete dichtwerken, ed. J. P. Hasebroek, 4 vols. (Arnhem, 1870-1), 2: 210; Van
Hamel, Belijdenis-doen (see above, n. 38), pp. 17, 49.71 J. M. Assink Calkoen, Vergeet het niet! Na afgelegde geloofsbelijdenis, 10th ed.
(Amsterdam, [c. 1899]); A. Prins, De goede belijdenis: geschenk voor lidmaten van
de Ned. Herv. Kerk na het afleggen hunner geloofsbelijdenis (Rotterdam, [1906]).
25
reprinted no less than fifteen times72 – can be read as collections of moral topoi and
hence as ecclesial contributions to the wider genre of (youth) advice literature.73 A
unique feature of these confirmation tracts, however, was their appeal to the moral
“pledge” that confirmants had made before God and the congregation. Confirmation,
wrote Van Koetsveld, is an “agreement to conduct oneself irreproachable, following
the lessons of Christ.”74 Whoever willingly forfeited this pledge, for instance by
entering in mixed marriage, effectively annulled his or her confirmation.75 So,
whereas baptism marked the parents’ responsibility for their children’s moral and
religious development, confirmation symbolized a transfer of this responsibility to the
full-grown children themselves.76
How, then, did appropriate moral behavior look like, in the pastors’ eyes? For
one thing, confirmation tracts left no doubt about the significance of regular religious
practice. They insisted on weekly church attendance, emphasized the importance of
catechetical sermons (which were increasingly considered as a burden of tradition, but
72 The 16th edition of Assink Calkoen, Vergeet het niet! (1885) appeared in 1909,
according to S. B. J. Zilverberg, ‘Assink Calkoen, Jacob Marange,’ in Biografisch
lexicon voor de geschiedenis van het Nederlandse protestantisme, ed. D. Nauta et al.,
6 vols. (Kampen, 1978-2006), 2: 38.73 Van Tilburg, Hoe hoorde het? (see above, n. 40).74 Van Koetsveld, Tot wien (see above, n. 47), p. 28.75 U. P. Goudschaal, Een woord van waarschuwing tegen het gemengde huwelijk, een
geschenk voor hervormde jongelieden, bij het afleggen hunner geloofsbelijdenis
(Groningen, 1843), 25.76 T. C. R. Huijdecoper, Gedachten bij het naderen van den dag der aflegging mijner
geloofsbelijdenis (Utrecht, 1875), p. 18; [anon.], Een klein geschenk of woorden uit
het hart van eenen leeraar aan zijne leerlingen, bij het afleggen hunner
geloofsbelijdenis en aanneming tot leden in de hervormde gemeente, door den ring
van Rhenen (Amsterdam, 1838), p. 5.
26
until 1859 were compulsory for pastors to preach),77 and stressed the need for
domestic devotional practices (regular prayer and Bible reading). They also offered
pastoral advices, such as never to marry a Roman Catholic and to consult a minister or
elder in case of religious doubt.78 Most of their exhortations, however, focused on
social intercourse, on the moral benefits of well-chosen friendships, and, conversely,
on the destructive influence of evil friends. The booklets warned at length against
temptations of the flesh, such as felt especially in places of “vain pleasure,” as well as
against drunkenness, dancing, and bad friends.79
As the century progressed, such warnings became increasingly more concrete
and gender specific, presumably because pastors increasingly felt that moral codes
were not, or no longer, self-evident. Thus, in 1857, Hendrikus van Berkum explicitly
warned young women against “flatters” – men who would appear less interested in
“the purity and nobility of her heart” than in the “elegant shape of her body.” By
flattering the girl’s coquetry, they would lure her into sin and bring misery upon her
life.80 A “letter to Lady Z.,” written by a pastor from Utrecht, even described in some
detail the miseries of those women who read too much, troubled themselves about the
77 Handelingen van de algemeene synode der Nederlandsche Hervormde Kerk, ten
jare 1859 (The Hague, 1859), p. 143.78 [Anon.], Tot een aandenken (see above, n. 67), pp. 6-8; [anon.], Een klein geschenk,
door den ring van Rhenen (Amsterdam, 1838), pp. 8-13.79 Van Koetsveld, Tot wien (see above, n. 47), pp. 96, 97, 101; N. Beets, Op den dag
der bevestiging, aan jonge lidmaten der gemeenten (Utrecht, 1870), p. 17; N. A. de
Gaay Fortman, Een terugblik op de ure der geloofsbelijdenis (Vlissingen, 1883), pp.
12, 15.80 H. van Berkum, Avondmaalsroeping en avondmaalszegen: een geschenk voor
lidmaten der christelijke kerk en voor hen, die het wenschen te worden (Utrecht,
1857), pp. 123, 125.
27
latest fashion, or neglected the education of their children.81 Men, in turn, were
instructed to avoid pubs, fairs, and theatres – places of worldly entertainment where
the dangers of bad friendships and drunkenness lurked. A 1883 booklet instructed its
male readers not to leave the “homely fireside” for “tavern or bad company.” But
even there, in the privacy of their houses, dangerous books or magazines could divert
men from the virtuous path.82
Widespread as these moral exhortations were, the ethical connotations of the
confirmation ceremony were nonetheless never uncontested. Among orthodox
pastors, for example, the language of virtue met with hesitation. When the pietistically
inclined minister Bernardus Moorrees looked back upon his youth in the years around
1800, he complained: “I did not hear anything about godliness and piety, but rather
much about civilized, decent, good bourgeois, and virtuous living.”83 Although this
complaint came close to a topos among orthodox pastors, it was, of course, not to be
misunderstood as legitimizing amoral behavior. To the contrary, Moorrees and his
kindred spirits as unambiguously insisted on the importance of a devout life as their
colleagues in other wings of the church. They also strongly disapproved of “worldly
gatherings” and scornfully spoke about confirmation pledges that were not followed
81 S. G. Jorissen, Christelijke wenken voor beschaafde vrouwen bij en na het afleggen
van hare belijdenis, medegedeeld in een brief aan jonkvrouw Z. (Utrecht, 1848), pp.
16-44, 54-62; see also J. J. van Noort, ‘Begraaf uwe belijdenis niet!’ (Amsterdam,
[1903]), pp. 30-1.82 De Gaay Fortman, Terugblik (see above, n. 79), pp. 14-5; Van Noort, Begraaf (see
above, n. 81), p. 29. Cf. Jorissen, Christelijke wenken (see above, n. 81), p. 37;
Nijhoff, Herinnering (see above, n. 22), p. 24; Van Oosterzee, Gespaard (see above,
n. 24), pp. 182-3.83 B. Moorrees, Bekeering en eerste levensjaren van wijlen den weleerw., zeer
geleerden heer B. Moorrees, in leven bedienaar des Goddelijken Woords, door zijne
eerwaarde zelven beschreven (Leiden, 1890), p. 22.
28
by observable changes in conduct.84 In so far as there existed disagreement, it focused
more on the sources of the confirmants’ moral behavior than on the desirability of
pious behavior as such.
More substantial objections were formulated by confirmants themselves. The
eighteen-year-old Gosewinus de Voogt, for example, who professed his faith in 1850,
felt torn between high moral expectations and the mundane realities of his own life.
On the one hand, he agreed that his public “yes” was a solemn pledge to treat the
Bible as a “guide to my doings and dealings.” Judging that neglect in forsaking sin
amounted to nothing less than perjury, he wrestled with what he perceived as a
gnawing lack of holiness: “I know very well what it means to be confirmed as a
member of the congregation, but in my own eye I still behave so nastily.”85 Yet, on
the other hand, De Voogt did not wish to identify with those of his compeers who
became holier-than-thou: “They no longer go out; they see harm in a Sunday walk
through the park; no glimmer of a smile anymore appears on their lips, and the Bible
84 Moorrees, Bekeering (see above, n. 83), p. 29; D. A. Detmar, Gods vrijmagtige
genade aan eenen zondaar verheerlijkt, of echt verhaal van zijne eerste levensjaren,
krachtdadige verandering in zijne jeugd, verkeer met godvruchtige vrienden, gelovige
omhelzing van Jezus, dagelijks leven in hem, en zijne en aller gelovigen verwachting
op de eeuwige zaligheid, met een woord van waarschuwing, bemoediging en
vertroosting: in eenige brieven aan eenen vriend medegedeeld, 3rd ed. (Amsterdam,
1835), pp. 11, 13; J. G. Verhoeff, Een woord tot allen (see above, n. 43), pp. 5, 8.85 [Gosewinus de Voogt], Bladen uit het dagboek van Gosewinus: geboren 24 oct.
1832, gestorven 23 oct. 1852: na zijn ontslapen in het licht gegeven door J. E. de
Voogt, predikant te Amsterdam (Rotterdam, 1858), pp. 65, 67, 64. Similar confessions
can be found in archive family Fortuijn, ‘Overdenkingen (see above, n. 27); archive
family Van Sypesteyn, ‘Mijne herinneringen’ (see above, n. 23); Rotterdam,
Gemeentearchief, archive family De Monchy, inv. no. 120, ‘Aantekening houdende
de belijdenis van Sara Francina Havelaar’ (1846).
29
lies always opened before them.”86 Other confirmants, too, questioned such far-
fetched ideals of piety (how to find a spouse if the ballroom was declared forbidden
territory?) or appeared more impressed by the adult world that they were now allowed
to enter than by the incorruptible fruits of virtuous behavior.87 Based on the amount of
energy that pastors invested in moral exhortation, and on their ceaseless complaints
about moral laziness and religious indifference among their confirmation candidates,
one may safely assume that such conscientious young men as De Voogt (a pastor’s
son) were more exceptional than the clergy might have wished.
V
De Voogt spoke for many, though, when noting in his diary how emotionally
overwhelmed he felt on the occasion of his confirmation. Realizing that he made his
profession “before God and the people,” his courage “failed him completely” when
the pastor (his father) read aloud the confirmation questions. Afterward, listening to
his father’s “profoundly cordial and moving” personal address, the young man once
again lost all confidence in his own powers. “Only my father’s words floated before
my mind; I prayed God for help and support and felt strength from above working
inside me!”88 It is hard to say, of course, whether this is what De Voogt really felt at
the moment suprême, given that diary notes are stylized representations that as such
are likely to follow the “feeling rules” that mid-nineteenth-century middle classes
86 De Voogt, Bladen (see above, n. 85), p. 65.87 Van Hamel, Belijdenis-doen (see above, n. 38), p. 16.88 De Voogt, Bladen (see above, n. 85), p. 72.
30
associated with confirmation.89 If this is the case, however, diary notes, family letters,
and sermons are valuable sources precisely in so far as they reflect broadly shared
emotional expectations, which in turn are indicative of meanings that Dutch church
goers associated with the rite of passage.
Partly in response to what was perceived as an overemphasis on the social and
moral significance of the confirmation ceremony (the second and third clusters of
meaning distinguished above), pastors warned against “merely outward” professions
of faith by emphasizing the need to make a “profession from the heart.” This
emphasis on the heart was not particularly new, of course. As Peter van Rooden has
shown, religion had been located in the inner self as early as the late eighteenth
century.90 Judging by nineteenth-century confirmation sermons, however, which often
displayed more suspicion than trust in emotions that welled up from the heart, this
“interiority” was not to be equated with “emotionality.” While eighteenth-century
pastors, in their published confirmation sermons at least, had hardly ever warned their
confirmants not to be carried away by emotions, their nineteenth-century predecessors
spent much more words on “feelings” and “sentiments” and increasingly discouraged
public display of emotion. Such would not only violate social conventions, but
because miss the whole point of professing the faith – putting one’s trust in God
instead of in feelings that were “temporary and transitory.”91 As one of the most
influential Dutch pastors of his time, Nicolaas Beets, explained at some length, “an
elevated feeling, a stirred and deeply serious state of mind, and the spiritual diversion
89 We borrow this term from Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Managed Heart:
Commercialization of Human Feeling (Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of
California Press, 1983), pp. 56-75.90 Van Rooden, Religieuze regimes (see above, n. 7), pp. 78-120.91 Van Koetsveld, Tot wien (see above, n. 47), p. 37.
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[geestelijke wellust] of a holy emotion” could only lead to misplaced self-confidence.
How many young men and women had been “nothing but emotion” when standing in
front of the congregation, only to succumb to the first possible “temptation to
unfaithfulness”?92 Writing in 1839, another pastor declared:
It takes little effort to shake the youthful, highly inflammable feeling, to wring
a flood of tears from the eye, and to give oneself the triumph of having caused
an intense rush of emotion. Infinitely more is required, however, for
commending the religious truth, clearly and convincingly, and in calm earnest,
to the mind, and to bring it deep in the sanctuary of the heart, in order to give
the stirred feeling a proper direction, and to make a lasting impression.93
If such passages convey a growing nineteenth-century distrust in the instability of the
human emotion, they also seem to espress misgivings about the significance that
sometimes was attached to emotional expressivity – if not by clergy members, then by
confirmation candidates and their relatives, whose diaries and letters often overflew
with emotional language. “May [God] give you to experience what you are about to
profess”, wished one letter writer. And another, writing to his children: “O, that it may
go deep into your souls…”94 In a “memoir about my profession of faith”, a noble lady
92 Nicolaas Beets, Waakt en bidt: leerrede over Matth. XXVI:41 ter bevestiging van
lidmaten (Domkerk 31 maart 1867) (Utrecht, 1867), p. 15.93 A. Radijs, Leerrede over ’s Heilands bede: Heilige Vader! bewaar ze in uwen
naam! uitgesproken bij de plegtige bevestiging van lidmaten (Doesburgh, 1839), pp.
2-3. Other examples: Van Oosterzee, Gespaard (see above, n. 24), p. 182; Beets, Op
den dag (see above, n. 79), p. 16.94 Archive family Van Weede, letter to Jacob van Weede (see above, n. 60); archive
family Bosboom, ‘Woord’ (see above, n. 28). Other examples: Johanna L.: een berigt
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called Adriana Willemina van Vredenburch not only reported about the “moving”
confirmation service, which “touched all of us deeply”, but also about the emotional
stress caused by her mother’s visit on this special occasion:
I had the privilege of having my beloved mama with me, who had come from
The Hague for my pleasure alone. (…) She had a great headache, caused by
agitation and excitement, and one could tell that she was worn out. (…) I also
had a great headache, for it was the first time in long that I saw her again, at
such an occasion moreover.95
These examples suggest, then, that sighs and tears were regarded as ambiguous, even
in more than one sense. First, there was the ambiguity of emotions being regarded as
markers of sincerity on the one hand and as quicksand on the other. While proving
that more than just an “outward” pledge was being made, emotions could also cause
“frivolity” and “desire,” which in turn could distract the newly confirmed church
members from the path of Christian virtue.96 Secondly, while wiping away a tear was
considered a sign of sincerity, more expressive displays of emotion – women who
“fainted”, “screamed”, or “cackled” (kakelen), as De Voogt wrote with the disdain of
an eighteen-year-old male – were dismissed as detracting from the “solemnity” of the
van haar leven: uittreksels uit haar dagboek en sommige harer brieven: bijeengebragt
door haar vriendin: met eenen brief aan dezelven van J. F. van Hoogstraten (Utrecht,
1843), p. 5; Da Costa’s kompleete dichtwerken (see above, n. 70), 2: 237.95 Archive family Van Sypesteyn, ‘Mijne herinneringen’ (see above, n. 23).96 Assink Calkoen, Vergeet (see above, n. 71), pp. 15-6; Van Berkum,
Avondmaalsroeping (see above, n. 80), p. 119.
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occasion.97 Confirmation candidates were supposed, then, to obey the nineteenth-
century middle-class code that emotions had be controlled: “they were to feel, but not
to feel too much.”98 As such, emotional behavior in confirmation services was subject
to the same ambiguity that has been observed for nineteenth-century mourning
practices: emotions were appreciated as long as they conformed to socially sanctioned
repertoires of expression.99
VI
This brings us back, by way of conclusion, to Hercules’s crossroads, on which pastor
C. E. van Koetsveld metaphorically positioned his confirmation candidates. Just as
Van Koetsveld used a classic image for conveying to them the moral significance of
their profession of faith, the sermons, letters, and diaries consulted for this article all
emphasize, in one way or another, the importance of culturally sanctioned feeling
rules and patterns of behavior. They show that a “yes” in front of the confirmation
was a socially significant event, not only in the sense that it was increasingly
celebrated as a bourgeois birthday party, but also in the sense that confirmants, on the
brink of entering adulthood, were supposed to feel and behave in manners acceptable
97 De Voogt, Bladen (see above, n. 85), pp. 65-6.98 Martha Tomhave Blauvelt, ‘The Work of the Heart: Emotion in the 1805-35 Diary
of Sarah Connell Ayer,’ Journal of Social History 35 (2002), 577-92, there 579.99 Willemijn Ruberg, ‘Outer Display and Inner Insincerity: The Functions of
Mourning Dress in the Nineteenth-Century Netherlands,’ Nineteenth-Century
Contexts 30 (2008), 247-60, there 256-8; Dorothée Sturkenboom, ‘”…want ware
zielesmart is niet woordenrijk”: veranderende gevoelscodes voor nabestaanden 1750-
1988,’ in Albert van der Zeijden (ed.), De cultuurgeschiedenis van de dood
(Amsterdam; Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1990), pp. 84-113, there pp. 97-9.
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to nineteenth-century middle-class standards. Just as Hercules preferred virtue over
pleasure, so the candidates were expected to dedicate themselves, at this extraordinary
moment, to a life of Christian virtue and to express that commitment in accordance
with the gendered feeling rules of their society.
The confirmation ceremony thereby displayed all the three features that
Arnold van Gennep, more than a century ago, attributed to what he called a rite of
passage. First of all, confirmation separated the confirmants from their past. This was
perhaps most visible in how the confirmants dressed: boyish shorts had been replaced
by adult trousers, and girl skirts by ankle-length dresses. Secondly, the confirmation
ceremony was a moment of transition or boundary crossing, marked with rituals and
festivities which conveyed that confirmation was a point of no return: the days of
youth had passed. Finally, confirmation had an aspect of incorporation: the
confirmants entered a new world of adult responsibilities, for which the young adults
received no small amount of warning and advice (in the pastor’s sermon, but also in
speeches, confirmation booklets, and letters written on this special occasion).
As long as confirmation served as such a rite of passage into adulthood – that
is, as long as church membership was considered part and parcel of good
citizenship100 – clergy members warned at length against “outward” professions of
faith. This was not merely because confirmation was perceived as “an undertaking to
God,”101 which as such required heartfelt dedication, but also because virtuous
conduct was unlikely to be acquired without sincere intentions to walk the path of
100 This dimension was even stronger in those German-speaking territories in which
congregations were required to report the names of their new members to the
government: Schönebeck, Denkspruch (see above, n. 8), pp. 106-7; Burckhardt-
Seebass, Konfirmation (see above, n. 16), pp. 168-70.101 Veltman, Leerrede (see above, n. 21), p. 10.
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virtue. Seen in this light, confirmation letters that emphasized the experience of the
moment (“O, that it may go deep into your souls…”) did perhaps not so much wish
for moments of religious exaltation as well as for “lasting impressions” that would
help the newly confirmed church members to stay on the right path. Exaltation, after
all, was not particularly appreciated. At the same time, the repeated warnings against
it, especially in clerical publications, combined with complaints about young women
crying or fainting in the church, suggest that culturally sanctioned feeling rules could
easily be broken, and that the confirmation service was a rite during which this was
likely to happen.
If this illustrates how closely the “inward” and the “outward” were related and
intertwined, it has become clear that the “inward” or, more precisely, the human heart
played a pivotal role in nineteenth-century reflections on the confirmation ceremony.
It was the heart that was seen as the locus of both deeply held convictions (without
which a profession of faith would be insincere) and temptations (seeking to lure the
confirmants into disloyalty to their profession). Although some pastors and diary
writers were more impressed by the “dangers of the world” than others, many of
them, across the theological spectrum, agreed on this fundamentally ambiguous role
of the human heart – on the need to make a heartfelt profession, on the one hand, and
to control the heart’s (emotional) impulses, on the other. Equally true, however, is that
these authors emphasized the habits of the heart at least in part for the sake of virtuous
conduct. Confirmation was never “interiorized” to the extent that commitment to a life
of virtue lost its significance.
If we had to single out two respects in which confirmation ceremonies in the
late nineteenth century had come to distinguish themselves from those developed right
after 1816, this widely shared interest in the ambiguities of the heart might rank as the
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most important one, immediately followed by a bourgeois festive culture adorning the
confirmants’ “yes” in the church with congratulation letters, tea-visits, and presents at
home. Van Koetsveld lived long enough to witness both of these changes, without
knowing, however, that around the time of his death, in 1893, the ritual was about to
lose some of its social significance as a rite of passage. Confirmation, after all, could
serve as a publicly recognized marker of entrance into a world of adult chances and
responsibilities only in a society in which the authority of the church was relatively
undisputed. The more this authority came under pressure, in a time when church-
leaving and non-church membership became increasingly more accepted, the more
difficult it became for confirmation to serve as an entrance ticket into salon, academy,
and business office. Never, then, was confirmation more widely accepted as a rite of
passage as when most of middle-class society by and large agreed with what pastors
like Van Koetsveld told their confirmants to do at Hercules’s crossroads.102
102 This article draws on Ardjan Logman’s MA thesis, ‘”Wij zien alleen naar het
inwendige en niet naar het uitwendige”: de belijdenis en de feminisering van religie in
Nederland,’ supervised by Herman Paul and defended at Leiden University in August
2011. The authors should like to thank David Bos for his helpful comments on a draft
version.
