In his 1897 work, Suicide, Emile Durkheim argued that while individual suicides may have
psychological causes, suicides rates are primarily a social phenomenon and, therefore, rightfully fall
under the purview of sociologists. He attributed variations in suicide rates to the effect of social forces,
or the “collective tendencies” of a given society which produce external pressure or influence on
individual decisions. 1 These forces are intangible and unconscious; “uncrystalized” as Durkheim calls
them, and include such phenomenon as “the great movements of enthusiasm, indignation, and pity in a
crowd”. 2 Similar to the proverbial fickleness of crowds, social forces vary according to the historical
circumstances that constitute and consume them. In order to highlight the potential explanatory power
of social forces, Durkheim’s project compared suicide rates across time and across national borders in
nineteenth century Europe. In these studies, he largely ignored the Netherlands, as he deemed the
number of reported cases too small. In doing so, he glossed over a case of potentially great significance
for the understanding of suicide in the past. Since the sixteenth century, suicide rates in the
Netherlands appear to have been consistently below the European norm, and they remain so today.3
As so much of the history of this tiny northwestern corner of Europe has been exceptional, it is no
surprise that suicide rates should also be so. The interesting question, however, is why? What unique
social forces have shaped the collective mindset of the Dutch people?
When the seven northern provinces of the Dutch Republic claimed independence from Spain in
1579, they found themselves in a precarious position. Their independence was not recognized by the
King of Spain, Philip II, who continued to pursue an aggressive war to retain his possessions. The war
would last eighty years and required the disparate populations of the provinces to cooperate to a
historically unprecedented degree. It also left them without a central mechanism to facilitate that
1
Emile Durkheim, Suicide: A Study in Sociology. Trans. John A. Spaulding and George Simpson. (New York: The Free
Press, 1951), 309.
2
Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method. (New York: Free Press, 1964), 4.
3
S. Gargas, “Suicide in the Netherlands.” American Journal of Sociology 37 (1932), 697-713.
cooperation and, especially after the assassination of William of Orange in 1581, without a clear
leader. The document that became their constitution, the Union of Utrecht, resembled an alliance
agreement more than an actual basis for a functioning government. After two disastrous experiments
with borrowed kings, the new state chose the default option, which was to continue making the
majority of their decisions at the local, or town level. Under absentee rulers Charles V and Phillip II,
the towns of the Netherlands had gained an extraordinary independence of action, especially fiscal
action.4 They grew accustomed to controlling their own finances and making their own decisions, a
custom they continued through the interregnum and independence. The States General and the
Stadhouder provided a thin veneer of central government, but for most of the life of the Dutch
republic, decisions were negotiated at the level of the town and provincial governments, the direct
opposite of the trend that characterized the rest of ancien regime Europe.
This decentralization can be real thorn in the side of an historian, for it results in wide
divergences in practices among towns and provinces, which makes it difficult to compile ‘national’
statistics of nearly any sort and certainly complicates the prospect of comparing the Netherlands to
other countries. Historians have calculated suicide rates for the southern towns of Brussels and Ghent
and the northern towns of Amsterdam and Breda.5 Yet, they have overlooked the town of Leiden.
Leiden was one of the largest cities in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century and its population
grew exponentially with the flood of immigrants that found work in Leiden’s thriving textile industry.
The growth of the town presented new challenges to its magistrates, who struggled to maintain law,
order, and balance amidst an ever-changing urban population.
4
For more details see James Tracy, A Financial Revolution in Habsburg Holland. (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1985).
5
For Brussels, see F. Vanhemelryck, De criminaliteit in de ammanie van Brussel van de late middeleeuwen tot het einde
van het Ancient Regime (1404-1789). (Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en
Schone Kunsten van Beligie—Klasse der Letteren, 43, 97, 1981). For Ghent, see A. van Werveke, Bijdragen tot de
Geschiedenis en de Oudheidkunde van Vlaanderen. (Ghent: Van Rysselberghe & Rombaut, 1927). For Breda, see J. van
Haastert, “Beschouwing bij de criminele vonnissen van de schepenbank van de stad Breda uit de jaren 1626 tot 1795”,
Jaarboek van de Geschied- en Oudheidkundige Kring van Stad en Land van Breda ‘De Oranjeboom’ 29 (1976), 77-79.
During the Middle Ages, Leiden had been held under Rhineland law, which was administered
by the count of Holland or his representative. The law was a mixture of old Friesian and old-Frankish
principles, with the experiences of past and present rulers thrown in the mix.6 By the mid-fifteenth
century, control over Holland had passed into the hands of a series of Burgundian-Habsburg rulers,
including Charles V, who were generally content to reinforce the independent privileges of the
northern towns in return for large cash payments. In 1434, the Leiden municipal court asserted its
right to administer both higher and lower justice in the town and its surroundings. Crimes against the
prince or his regime were still remaindered to the higher court at The Hague, but otherwise the legal
matters of Leidenaars were handled by a court of select citizens, which satisfied the requirement of
Rhineland law for a council of “wellborn men” to administer justice.7 According to the same privilege,
the schout, or sheriff, was to lead the court and carry on his functions with “a rod in his hand in a
symbol of knowledge.” 8
From 1434 onwards, the legal system of the towns of Holland moved further away from its
origins in Germanic law. Though it maintained some of its nomenclature and procedural etiquette, the
old forms were increasingly mixed with Roman law, precedent, and the opinions of the schout and
other members of the bench. This made for a very specific body of law that related very closely to the
environment from which it sprang--the energetic industrial town of Leiden. According to the old
customs, suicide in Leiden fell under the jurisdiction of the criminal court. Each case of suicide or
possible suicide was subject to a post-mortem evaluation by court experts, upon whose
recommendations the judges of the Schepenbank issued sentences. Between 1575 and 1646, the court
conducted 399 post-mortem examinations and ruled that thirty eight of them were suicides. After 1646,
6
P.J Blok, Geschiedenis eener Hollandsche Stad Vol. 2: Eene Hollandsche Stad in de Middeleeuwen. (The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1910), 223.
7
Blok, 223.
8
Blok, 228.
no more cases of post-mortem investigation appear in the court records and it would appear that the
criminality of suicide had, at least in practice, been suspended. A similar pattern occurred in
Amsterdam, where juridical condemnation of suicide ended in 1658.9
Leiden’s suicide rate seems low, even in comparison to other European countries in the
seventeenth century. Jeffrey Watt, in his masterful study of suicide in Geneva, uncovered forty
suicides during the same period, though that city’s population was less than half of Leiden’s.10 Arne
Jansson’s study of suicide in Stockholm does not include sixteenth century figures but does suggest
that if suicide and what she calls suicidal murders are counted, the rate was higher than Leiden’s and
was rising rapidly.11 In England, McDonald and Murphy shy away from a great deal of statistical
analysis, citing problems with the records, but still indicate that suicides rates in English towns during
this time were as high as 10 per 100,000 and rose rapidly in the latter half of the seventeenth century.12
Leiden’s apparent exceptionality may also be due, at least in part, to problems with the records.
Across Europe, there was a strong social stigma against suicide and, therefore, great motivation to
disguise it for the sake of propriety. There were also more tangible disadvantages. The legal sanctions
against convicted suicides included public display and condemnation, property confiscations, and
dishonorable burial. While these penalties could certainly be substantial, there is evidence that they
weighed more lightly in the Netherlands than they did elsewhere in Europe.
9
Pieter Spierenburg, The Broken Spell: A Cultural and Anthropological History of Preindustrial Europe (New Brunswick,
1991), 177.
10
Jeffrey Watt, Choosing Death: Suicide and Calvinism in Early Modern Geneva. (Kirksville, MO: Truman State
University Press, 2001), 24.
11
Arne Jansson, From Swords to Sorrow: Homicide and Suicide in Early Modern Stockholm. (Stockholm: Almqvist and
Wiksell International, 1998), 26 and 50.
12
Michael Zell, “Suicide in Pre-Industrial England”, Social History xi (1986), 309-310.
Public ritual executions and draggings were common European practice for suicides.13 In 1587,
for example, the Leiden court ordered the body of suicide Jacob Jacobs to be dragged over the
threshold of his former house and afterwards to be hung in the gallows’ field to serve as ‘a mirror to
others’, but such spectacles seem to have been increasingly rare in seventeenth century Holland.14 The
Leiden court recorded only three other cases between 1560 and 1650, each with extenuating
circumstances. In 1627, Jan Jorisz. committed suicide while a imprisoned for sheep rustling. After
hanging himself in his cell, the court ordered that his body be displayed at the gallow’s field with
sheep fleece glued to it.15 In 1638, the body of Joris Ballieu suffered the indignation of being displayed
at the Gallow’s field, but he was a foreigner, originally from England.16 Finally, in 1639, the court
convicted Adriaetngen Frederiz. of infanticide after an examination of the body of her child. They
sentenced her to death and ordered that her body by displayed at the gallow’s field with a wooden doll
in her arms.17 Pieter Spierenburg, the foremost scholar on Dutch crime and punishment, suggests that
the gradual disappearance of punishment as a public spectacle was characteristic of much of the
seventeenth century Netherlands.18
The confiscation of property was also rarely prescribed. In England, confiscated property
reverted to the Crown under the crime of felo de se (a felon to himself). Between 1485 and 1660,
English courts declared 95% of English suicides to be felo de se, as opposed to only 2% found to be
13
Lieven Vanderkerckhove, Van Straffen Gesproken: De bestraffing van zelfdooding in het oude Europa. (Tielt: Lannoo,
1985), 53-72.
14
H.M van den Heuvel, De Criminele Vonnisboeken van Leiden 1533-1811. Leiden: Rijnland, Tijdschrift voor Sociale
Genelogie en Streekgeschiedenis voor Leiden en Omstreken 1977-8 n. 14 and 15, 43.
15
Van den Heuvel, 171.
16
Van den Heuvel, 205.
17
Van den Heuvel, 210.
18
Pieter Spierenburg, The Spectacle of Suffering: Executions and the Evolution of Repression: From a Preindustrial
Metropolis to the European Experience. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
non compos mentis.19 Tudor reforms strengthened the crown’s ability to prosecute suicides and to
receive the confiscations as a source of revenue, likely some several hundred pounds each year. 20 In
Leiden, on the other hand, the court prescribed confiscation in only one case of suicide, that of the
Englishman Joris Ballieu in 1638, though it was frequently invoked in cases of capital punishment for
other crimes. Their actions had precedence in Dutch law. In the Carolina, a 1532 edict concerning
crime including suicide, Charles V favored using confiscation only in cases in which it was clear that
the suicide was not motivated by disease, melancholy, or mental deficiency, and/or when the suicide
occurred in connection to other crimes.21
In most suicide cases, the Leiden court did set restrictions on burial. In most cases, suicides had
to be buried during prescribed hours, usually at night, and often with the admonition that the ceremony
be held ‘in full silence’. In some cases, bodies had to buried in areas outside of the regular churchyard,
perhaps symbolic of their separation from the community. In 1592, the court required that the body of
suicide Annetgen Dircxdr. be buried in the place normally reserved for criminals.22 In 1602, Lijsbeth
Bartolomeesdr. died in prison where she was serving a term for infanticide. It is not clear from the
records whether or not she committed suicide, but the court ordered that her body be donated to the
University for anatomical research.23 The court usually dictated that female suicides be buried at the
Vrouwenkerk, though in 1624 they indicated that the body of a male suicide, Pieter Isaaxszn Bats, be
buried there as well.24 Burial at night was certainly not desirable, but it was preferable to the
alternative of public display in the gallow’s field. In 1633, the court explicitly stated that it would not
19
Michael McDonald and Terence R. Murphy, Sleepless Souls: Suicide in Early Modern England. (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1990), 16.
20
McDonald and Murphy, 27.
21
Vandekerckhove, 87.
22
Van den Heuvel, 51.
23
Van den Heuvel, 72.
24
Van den Heuvel, 159.
condemn one suicide to the gallow’s field because it appeared that he was ‘not mentally normally’ and
instead sentenced him to a night burial.25 In several instances, family intervention swayed the courts to
hand down the lighter sentence of night burial.
The Leiden court did not seem to be inclined to judge the crime of suicide harshly, even as their
punishments for other crimes, such as theft, escalated. This suggests that underreporting of suicide may
not have been as prevalent as it was in other places. On the other hand, the Leiden judges still faced the
problem of detection. Of the eighteen cases which reported the method of suicide, thirteen were death
by hanging, two by stabbing, two by drowning, and one by poison. The court usually called upon
surgeons to perform the post-mortem investigations, but their methods were certainly not foolproof.
For example, in 1625, the case of the body of Dionijs Maertenszn. baffled the authorities.26 They
could not determine the method of death and the court noted that there was no apparent use of poison
or signs of disease. In the absence of proof, they granted permission for her body to be properly buried.
Drownings were more problematic. The court performed the vast majority of post-mortem
investigations upon bodies that had been recovered from one of Leiden’s many canals. Living in a
community surrounded by water made drowning an all-too-frequent occurrence. While they could
easily establish the cause of death, the judges were less able to ascertain whether the drownings were
intentional or accidental. In light of this, several early laws required that drowning victims be left with
their feet in the water by their point of recovery and other laws emphasized the importance of
witnesses and extenuating circumstances. In the period from 1575 to 1646, the court investigated 130
cases of death by drowning.27 Forty four of these were children under the age of eighteen and so were
unlikely to be suicides. Thirteen cases were noted as being clearly accidental. The other seventy three
25
Van den Heuvel, 190.
26
Van den Heuvel, 160.
27
For a comparison, see Karla Oosterveen, "Deaths by Suicide, Drowning, and Misadventure in Hawkshed, 1620-1700,"
Local Population Studies 4 (1970): 17-20.
cases are all possible suicides, though the high incidence of drowning in the winter months strongly
suggests that people frequently found themselves literally and figuratively skating on thin ice. The
court consistently bestowed the benefit of the doubt in these cases and allowed full burial privileges.
Many of the patterns exhibited by the Leiden court will not be surprising to those familiar with
the history of early modern suicide. In England and Geneva, the end of the seventeenth century marked
the beginning of a period of relative leniency towards the punishment of suicides and an increasing
concern with the state of mind of the perpetrator, a trend which would culminate with the full
‘medicalization’ of suicide in the eighteenth century and the end of criminal suicide prosecutions.28
What is noteworthy is that these transformations seem to have occured earlier in Leiden then they did
elsewhere. Why?
Durkheim found the strongest correlations between suicide rates and religion, noting that
Catholic societies had lower rates of suicide than Protestant ones. Other scholars have suggested that
Protestantism, with its emphasis on individual conscience, led to increased anxiety or despair and,
therefore, a greater tendency towards suicide.29 Durkheim, on the other hand, argued that the
differences were not strictly attributable to theological differences, but rather to sociological ones.
Catholic societies provided stronger support networks, both formal and informal, for their members
than their Protestant counterparts. According to Durkheim, Protestantism was simply less conducive to
social integration than Catholicism. Unfortunately, all of the detailed studies of early modern suicide
come from Protestant countries so no comparison with Catholic counterparts is currently possible,
28
For a discussion of this, see Michael McDonald, "The Medicalization of Suicide in England: Laymen, Physicians, and
Cultural Change, 1500-1870," in Framing Disease: Studies in Cultural History, ed. Charles Rosenberg & Janet Golden
(New Brunswick, 1992), 85-103.
29
See for example H.C. Erik van Midelfort, "Religious Melancholy and Suicide: On the Reformation Origins of a
Sociological Stereotype," in Madness, Melancholy and the Limits of the Self, ed. Andrew D. Weiner and Leonard V.
Kaplan, 41-56 (Madison, 1996).
though many studies of contemporary societies have tended to reinforce his thesis, albeit with some
qualification.30
The towns of the Netherlands, with relatively low rates of suicide, would seem to disprove this
thesis. Certainly, Watt’s study suggests that Durkheim’s thesis did not hold true for early modern
Geneva, an undeniably Protestant state.31 The situation in Leiden is not so clear cut. The religious
complexion of the Dutch Republic in general and Leiden in particular is very difficult to gauge. The
Republic has long been associated with Calvinism, but the identification is a superficial one. In his
influential essay, “Dutch Civilization in the Seventeenth Century”, Johan Huizinga passionately argued
that the spirit of Dutch society was not Calvinist. The Reformed Church never achieved the position of
State Church and few of the leading lights of the Dutch Golden Age-including Grotius, Vondel, and
Rembrandt-were openly confessed Calvinists.32 By most counts, Calvinists constituted barely 10% of
the population in 1580 and did not constitute a majority even by 1650.33
The more difficult question is: if they were not Calvinist, what were they? The Republic
tolerated many faiths, and there were substantial Catholic, Jewish, and Anabaptist minorities living
within its borders, but the religious beliefs of the remaining population, a substantial majority, remain
unknown. Jonathan Israel has suggested that they were crypto-Protestants and A.H. van Deursen called
them liefhebbers, sympathetic to Protestant beliefs but unwilling to submit to the disciplinary regimen
required for full membership.34 Others have suggested that the religion of the Netherlands owes much
to the Devotio Moderna movement and one of its leading students, Erasmus. The libertines emphasized
30
See for example K.D.Breault, “Suicide in America: A Test of Durkheim’s Theory of Religious and Family Integration,
1933-1980”. American Journal of Sociology 92 n. 3 (1986), 628-56.
31
Watt, 263.
32
J. Huizinga, Nederland’s Beschaving in de Zeventiende Eeuw. Haarlem: H.D. Tjeenk Willink and Son (1941), 98.
33
L.J. Rogier, Geschiedenis van het katholicisme in Noord-Nederland in de 16e en 17e Eeuw. Vol. 1. Amsterdam: (1945),
439
34
Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477-1806. Oxford: Clarendon Press (1995), 85.
A.Th. van Deursen, Plain Lives in a Golden Age: Popular Culture, Religion, and Society in Seventeenth Century Holland.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 262.
the highly personal nature of religious belief and practice and the importance of balance and
moderation in religious affairs. 35 On one hand, then, it would be incorrect to throw Durkheim’s baby
out with the bathwater, as the Dutch republic could not properly be called a ‘Protestant’ state. On the
other hand, the “dogmatically pluriform and radically decentralized” state of Dutch religion does not
appear to be conducive towards generating increased social integration.36 Of the eight suicide cases
who registered their marriages in Leiden, all of them did so civilly, choosing neither the Catholic nor
the Reformed ceremonies.
On the other hand, by 1641, Leiden was home to 3,500 Catholics (7% of the total population)
and approximately 17,500 Calvinists (35%).37 The population of Leiden had been decimated by a siege
in 1574, and the town magistrates, themselves Calvinists, worked to attract new residents through a
series of legal and financial enticements. Their efforts were highly successful and the population grew
spectacularly throughout the early seventeenth century, largely due to the influx of new immigrants
from the southern Netherlands.38 The majority of these immigrants left their homes for religious
reasons and tended (throughout the Republic) to be the most vocal supporters of orthodox Calvinism.
In the factional strife between the States and Orangist parties, the town of Leiden consistently
supported the latter, due in no small part to the Prince’s championing of Orthodox Calvinism. Popular
demonstrations in favor of the Prince of Orange occurred frequently. In short, while the Calvinists may
not have constituted a majority of the population of Leiden, they had a significant impact on its
government and social structure. According to Durkheim’s thesis, the plurality of religious faiths and
35
Ben Kaplan, “Hubert Duifhuis and the Nature of Dutch Libertinism” Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 105 (1992), 1-19.
36
Source of quote: Israel, 85.
37
Israel, 390.
38
Dirk Jaap Noordam, “Nieuwkomers in Leiden, 1574-1795.” In In de Nieuwe Stad: Nieuwkomers in Leiden 1200-2000 ed.
Jaap Moes and Ed van der Vlist, 39-85. (Leiden: Dirk van Eck, 1996), 41.
the strong influence of the Reformed Church should both point to increasing rates of suicide, but in the
case of Leiden, they do not.
If the answer to our question does not lie in the religious character of the young Republic,
perhaps we should widen our search to include more variables. Dutch historiography has long been
plagued with the ‘precocious modernity’ thesis, i.e. the idea that the Republic exhibited characteristics
of modernity--such as religious tolerance, high literacy rates, capitalist economic growth--long before
the rest of the world. In the last fifty years, historians have poked many holes in the thesis, and the
conventional wisdom has settled on the compromise position that although the republic possessed
many of the apparent characteristics of modernity, it lacked the spirit or ideology of modernity. More
precisely, the Dutch adopted policies, such as freedom of speech or republicanism, that may have
appeared forward-thinking or ‘modern,’ but they did so by default or inability, not intention.39 Could it
be that their treatment of suicide follows a similar trend?
Dutch leniency towards prosecuting suicides and their relatively early termination of juridical
suicide might be a sign of modern enlightened attitudes towards death and the causes of suicide. Until
the seventeenth century, popular opinion attributed suicidal tendencies to diabolic or demonic
possession, usually as the result of witchcraft.40 The Netherlands were among the first places to
discontinue witch hunts and trials, and there is little evidence of a belief in possession stemming from
the court records.41 By mid-century, the Leiden judges displayed clear sympathy towards those
suicides whose friends and relations testified that they suffered from melancholy or mental
incompetence. It is also possible that the judges took the principle of freedom of conscience, as
39
See for example S. Groenveld, “The Mecca of Authors? States Assemblies and Censorship in the Seventeenth-Century
Dutch Republic.” In Too Might to be Free: Censorship and the Press in Britain and the Netherlands ed. A.C. Duke and
C.A. Tamse, 63-86. (Zutphen: De Walburg Press, 1987).
40
For a general discussion of this shift, see Jeffrey Burton Russell, Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World.
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986) and P. Spierenburg’s The Broken Spell.
espoused most eloquently by William of Orange, seriously and saw that it applied to the freedom to
choose one’s own death, as is the case with modern Dutch laws governing euthanasia and assisted
suicide.42
Unfortunately, there is little evidence to support the idea that Leiden city officials had
developed a noble, ideological defense of suicide. The rulings on suicide were not mitigated when it
came to cases that did not involve mental distress. The question is not prominent in the writings of
Dutch scholars. Spinoza’s contributions to the subject, for example, are brief and largely
oppositional.43 On the other hand, the subject was definitely not ignored by Reformed preachers who
continued to expand on the evils of suicide, which had been recurrent topics with Luther and Calvin.
Popular books of Dutch emblems and poems spoke about suicide as an affront to God, and images of
Biblical suicide were reproduced in popular forms, including Delftware tiles. The lesson to be learned?
Life was precious and not to be squandered by suicide.44 In the Netherlands, popular culture was
replete with pressure not to commit suicide.
It is far more likely that they had to discontinue their investigations of suicide because the court
simply became too busy to handle its caseload. From 1550 to 1599, the court handled 131 cases,
including violent crimes and post-mortem investigations, the latter of which constituted approximately
16% of its casework. From 1600 to 1649, that number jumped to 556, nearly 30% of which were postmortem investigations. These cases could be complicated as they could involve conferring with
experts, witnesses, and family and friends of the deceased, especially with the apparent increased
41
The last (known) death sentence for witchcraft in the Netherlands was in Schoonhaven in 1597. (Source: Van Deursen,
252.
42
For a fuller discussion of the modern debate over morality and euthanasia in the Netherlands, see David C. Thomasma et
al, ed. Asking to Die: Inside the Dutch Debate about Euthanasia. New York: Kluwer (1998). The Dutch law allowing
euthanasia and assisted suicide was enacted on April 10, 2001.
43
Steven Barbone, "Spinoza and the Problem of Suicide," International Philosophical Quarterly 34(1994): 229-41.
44
Ron M. Brown, The Art of Suicide. London: Reaktion Books (2001), 115.
attention paid to the state of mind at the time of the act. With few severe penalties other than ritual
execution, an act that was widely falling into disfavor, it would make sense for the court to spend its
time more efficiently elsewhere, especially in the prosecution of violent crimes.45
Durkheim argues that modern suicide rates vary inversely with homicide rates and that as a
society develops, the latter will fall while the former rises. Historians have generally assumed that
suicide rates were low during the Middle Ages, though records are scarce, and that rates began to rise
first in England during the seventeenth century and in the rest of Europe during the eighteenth. In
eighteenth century Geneva, Watt found that suicides did increase precipitously and though homicides
decreased, they did so less dramatically.46 In Stockholm, the trend was similar, though suicides did not
increase as rapidly, perhaps due to an increase in suicidal murder.47 This pattern directly contradicts
the precocious modernity thesis because it suggests that the suicide rate in the Netherlands remained
pre-modern in the seventeenth century, despite the trappings of modernity. Because suicide statistics
are not available for eighteenth century Leiden, it is not known if its rates followed a similar pattern,
though the decline is evident in other Dutch towns, such as Breda, where not a single suicide took
place from 1700-1795.48 Violent crime, including homicide, assault, and rape in Leiden did markedly
decline, both relatively and absolutely, starting from the middle of the century, as Figure 1.1 shows.
45
Vandekerckhove develops a similar argument (and a few others) about the end of confiscations and prosecutions in the
last section of her Van Straffen Gesproken, see pages 139-150.
46
Watt, 57.
47
Jansson, 16 and 26.
48
Van Haastert, 78.
FIG 1.1: Rates of Suicide and Violent Crime in Leiden, 1550-1799
1550-99
1600-1649
1650-1699
1700-1749
1750-99
# Violent Crimes
110
390
44
77
21
# Suicides
9
26
N/A
N/A
N/A
Population
(Approximate)
12,000
55,000
65,000
45,000
31,000
* The figures in column 1 (1550-99) and column 3 (1650-1699) are likely to be distorted, as population was rising rapidly
in the first period and falling rapidly in the second. The average population figures used do not adequately take this into
account. 49
Durkheim believed that the transition from high rates of homicide to high rates of suicide was
attributable to the alienation brought on by modern economic life, including an advanced division of
labor and the nature of urban, industrial work. If this is the case, we are again left with an apparent
paradox as Leiden was primarily an industrial city, with an urban workforce geared towards the mass
production of goods for export markets. The primary output of the city was in textiles, and from 1580
to 1648 annual output exploded to over 130,000 pieces valued closed to 10 million guilders.50 Of the
399 cases of accidental death investigated by the court, 202 were identified by profession and of those
92 worked in the textile industry (46%). Of the 38 cases of suicide, fifteen were identified by
profession and of those, 8 (53%) worked in the textile industry. At its height, the textile industry
employed roughly half the urban work force in Leiden, so these percentages suggest that their numbers
were not over-represented in the frequency of suicide.51
49
Source for population figures: Noordam, “Nieuwkomers in Leiden, 39-85. Source for violent crime figures: Van den
Heuvel, Criminele Vonnisboeken. The content of this text has been partially digitized and can be accessed at
http://esf.niwi.knaw.nl/esf1998/projects/criminal/.
50
Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude, The First Modern Economy: Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch
Economy, 1500-1815. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 285-6.
51
For a fuller discussion of the role of the textile industry in Leiden, see N.W. Posthumus’ classic multi-volume study, De
Geschiedenis van de Leidsche Lakenindustrie. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1939).
In his study of Geneva, Watt proposed an alternative to Durkheim’s definition of modernity.
Similar to their Leiden counterparts, the judges in the Consistorial court made thorough examinations
of the state of mind of suicidal men and women. In his examination of these proceedings, Watt found
that an increasing number of suicides felt compelled to take their lives for what can prosaically be
called reasons of the heart. With the exception of spikes in suicidal behavior during periods of extreme
social and political disruption, an increasing number of suicides came from those victimized by love,
either through broken engagements, bad marriages, loneliness or similar troubles.52 From this, Watt
concluded that increased suicide is an unfortunate by-product of the transition from traditional
marriage patterns to those based more on conceptions of romantic love.53
In the case of Leiden, such enviable records are not available, but some hypotheses can be
drawn about the state of romantic love. In only one case is there enough evidence to suggest that
romantic love may have been a cause. In December of 1637, Aron Loovoet, a widower, married
Christina van de Walle, a recent immigrant from the Southern Netherlands. Only six months later, he
took his life and she quickly remarried.54 In the seventeenth century, Leiden was a city of immigrants.
J.C.A. Briels estimated that 2 out of every 3 Leidenaars were born elsewhere (though this figure is now
regarded by most scholars as too high and the most likely ratio is 40%).55 Marriages between two
people born in completely different places were the norm and matches made through family and other
traditional ties were less common, especially among the lower classes. Because the majority worked in
industry, there was little or no admonition to wait for marriage until land could be secured to support a
family. Even in the early sixteenth century, the average age at first marriage in Leiden was lower than
52
Watt, 223-229.
53
Watt, 251.
54
Doop-, Trouw-, en Begraafregisters Leiden, Huwelijken voor Schepenen 1592-1795, available at Digitale Stamboom
Leiden, http://leiden.websilon.nl.
55
For the different views see Noordam, 45.
the European average. It would seem that romantic love had arrived in Leiden, but higher suicide rates
were not forthcoming, at least not yet.
So, is Durkheim completely unhelpful in explaining the low suicide rates in seventeenth
century Leiden and, by extension, for the early modern Netherlands in general? Not if his argument is
examined more closely. In a 1989 article, Bernice Pescosolido and Sharon Georgianna argued that the
essence of Durkheim’s argument was the role of social cohesion and the function of churches as
natural communities. He focused on religion because that was the main determinant of social networks
in many nineteenth-century societies, but it appears not to have been in the seventeenth century, at
least in Protestant countries, nor is it necessarily the case today. Social cohesion, if it is not too
restrictive, provides individuals with a sense of meaning and order in their lives and a large support
group to help them in times of trouble.56 Was there perhaps another source of social cohesion in
Leiden, one that was largely independent of the church and the state?
In his classic work, The Civilizing Process, Norbert Elias suggests that the harbinger of the
modern state was the process of self-discipline, first adopted by European elites in an effort to distance
themselves from the lower ranks of society. This discipline focused on control over arbitrary,
impulsive, or instinctive behavior, and included such behavior as the cultivation of table manners and
the suppression of violent activities, including sports.57 As these behaviors trickled down to the middle
and eventually the lower classes, the result was a society with much lower rates of violent crime, but
also one that could more easily be ruled by a central authority, which Elias linked to the acceptance of
totalitarian regimes in the 1930’s.58 In looking at crime and capital punishment in the Netherlands,
Spierenburg has found ample evidence to support the spread of the civilizing process, albeit in a
56
Bernice A. Pescosolido and Sharon Georgianna, “Durkheim, Suicide, and Religion: Toward a Network Theory of
Suicide,” The American Sociological Review 54 (1989), 43.
57
Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process, Vol. 1: The History of Manners. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982).
58
Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process Vol. 2: Power & Civility. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982).
slightly different form than Elias’ original, and has linked it to not only the decline in violent crime,
but also to the end of exemplary punishment. 59
Michel Foucault has also looked at changes in crime and punishment in the early modern
period. In some sense, his conclusions are similar to Elias’ in that discipline played a decisive role in
changing attitudes, but he puts the locus of discipline not on the individual but on the state and statesponsored bodies. Rather than trickling up, discipline trickles down in Foucault’s model, as states work
to achieve and institutionalize docile populations.60 Both theorists conclude that the ultimate result of
disciplinary regimes, be they personal or political, is increased power for the centralized state. This
conclusion is clearly problematic for the Dutch republic, which lacked a central bureaucratic apparatus
sufficiently large to effect such changes or to take on such powers, and it continued to lack these until
well into the nineteenth century.
Supporting the conclusions made earlier against Durkheim’s religion thesis, John Bossy says
that the period of the Reformation did not produce many significant differences between Catholic and
Protestant societies. Protestantism and Counter-Reformation Catholicism, he argues, were simply
slightly different responses to the same underlying reality, the transition to a radically new social
structure.61 In both Protestant and Catholic countries, the result was the same--the migration of the
holy, as he calls it, or the shift in the responsibility for order and control from the Church to the State,
in which sense he concurs with Elias and Foucault.
The problem is that in the early modern Netherlands, the holy had nowhere to migrate—the
central state was simply too weak to perform these functions. Instead, those functions fell by default on
the new and previously existing intermediary institutions---guilds, church, family, the military, public
59
See Pieter Spierenburg, “Elias and the History of Crime and Criminal Justice: A Brief Evaluation”. IAHCCJ Bulletin 20
9 (1995), 17-30.
60
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison. trans. Alan Sheridan and Allen Lane (Penguin: London,
1977).
61
John Bossy, Christianity in the West 1400-1700. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).
funds, orphanages, etc. The strength of these institutions explains why factors that would normally
affect suicide rates-economic and political upheaval, large amounts of immigration -result in very little
change in suicide rates in Leiden.
One such intermediary body was guilds. Although the Dutch may have possessed the ‘first
modern economy’, they did not achieve this by consciously applying the principles of classical
economics. Their economy was driven by workers who were firmly enmeshed in a moral economy
normally considered incompatible with modern capitalism or a modern worldview in general. In
Leiden, guilds were not primarily instruments of self-regulation, but of social control. According to
Robert DuPlessis and Margaret Howell, the town magistrates supported and maintained the guild
system in order to keep the amount of work spread out among a number of small enterprises, thus
preventing the rise of larger conglomerations. Such conglomerations could potentially threaten not
only the livelihoods of a large number of town residents, but also the power of the town to control its
own affairs.
Another was the various churches. The disciplinary tactics of the Reformed Church are wellknown, especially as practiced in the Calvin’s model godly community in Geneva. How do they apply,
though, in a state such as the Netherlands where church and state were separate? In a 1993 article,
Philip Gorski argues as follows:
Calvinism…consisted not only of a work ethic but an ethic of self-discipline. In order to
maintain self-discipline, the Calvinists employed a wide variety of techniques…these included
regular devotional readings, frequent prayer, and moral logbooks or journals. Yet why would
anyone voluntarily adhere to such a harsh creed? Part of the answer no doubt lies in purely
religious needs and interests. But self-discipline also contained a status claim, that is, a claim to
moral superiority. While this claim likely exercised general attraction, it had a particularly
strong “affinity” to the interests of political elites…, for self-discipline could buttress or even
replace birth as a sign of fitness to rule. The Calvinist ethic was therefore suited not only to
justifying the economic activities of a nascent economic class but also to legitimating the
domination of rising political elites.62
62
Philip Gorski, “The Protestant Ethic Revisted: Disciplinary Revolution and State Formation in Holland and Prussia.” The
American Journal of Sociology. 99. No. 2 (1993), 273.
Calvinist discipline applied only to those 30% of the population who belonged to them, including those
who held public office, who were required to be members of the Church. That 30% had to face formal
and informal disciplinary procedures, from regular home visits from clergy to sentences passed by the
courts, which included the ‘crimes’ of bankruptcy, drunkenness, or sleeping in church. Another 10% of
the population fell under the disciplinary sway of the smaller Anabaptist churches, who were also
noted for their strict disciplining of members. The Calvinists also worked to extend their influence to
the rest of the population by building a host of charitable institutions, including workhouses, organized
poor relief, orphanages, and even prisons.63
There were other institutions that inspired strength of mind outside of the guilds and the
churchs. Gorski cites the increased discipline in the army as just one example. The reforms of Maurice
of Nassau led to an army that was more standardized, organized, and supervised than the European
norm. There were change made in the structure and curriculum of schools during the period, in many
ways designed to impart moral messages and to instill in children the values of obedience and
restraint.64 Even families, Protestant and non-Protestant, became increasingly important conduits for
the transmission of behavior norms as the nuclear family emerged as perhaps the most important site of
associational identity in the Netherlands beginning in the sixteenth century. 65
63
For prisons see Pieter Spierenburg, The Prison Experience. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991). For
orphanages and poor relief, see Anne McCants, Civic Charity in a Golden Age: Orphan Care in Early Modern Amsterdam.
(Chicago/Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 1997).
64
Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age. (Berkeley/Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1988).
65
For studies on the family as a site for indoctrination and discipline, see the following: R.A. Houlbrooke, The English
family 1450-1700 (1984); J. Flandrin, Families in former times (1979) C. Hill, `The spiritualization of the household' in
Hill’'s Society and Puritanism (1964), S. Amussen, An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England
(1985); and L. Roper, The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg (1989). For a specific discussion
of the role of families in the Netherlands, see P. Spierenburg, The Broken Spell, chapter 8: Family Life: Bonds Between
Men and Women, Parents and Children”, 227-287.
These same institutions also apparently acted as an effective safety net against suicide. The
court records support such a conclusion in several ways. First, the few suicides that are found are
drawn overwhelming from the ranks of those not fully incorporated into these networks. Most of the
suicide victims had been born elsewhere and none of them appeared to have obtained full citizenship in
the town, even during the period when the fees for this privilege had been greatly reduced. Only two
of the Leiden suicides have entries in the rolls of the local churches (both Protestant). At least three
had been prisoners. These were men (and women) on the margins of the social world.
The majority of the suicides were men, about two thirds, which was the typical pattern in most
of Europe. Watt posits the thesis that marriage was more important to men and that they found
bachelorhood difficult. Women, on the other hand, often found the married state more onerous. His
conclusions are supported by the Leiden records, as eighteen of the male suicides were bachelors,
versus only three that had wives and ten of the female suicides were married, versus only one that was
not. Marriage, especially for men, clearly had integrative functions. Children had a special place in
Dutch society and their parents treasured them above all possessions, so the lack of children may have
been a factor leading to suicidal despair.66 Unfortunately, the court records do not contain information
about children, except when the victim itself is a child. In five cases, the family of the suicide victim
intervened on his or her behalf, but it is not clear if this means children, parents, or extended family
members.
A large number of the suicides were apprentices or temporary workers (about 20% of those
reported), many of them middle-aged or older, who were not subject to the full benefits of guild
membership. This may suggest poverty as a cause of suicide, but wages in the Netherlands were higher
than the rest of Europe and rose throughout most of the seventeenth century. Certainly, fluctuations in
the fortunes of the textile industry (and others) produced structural unemployment, but there is
66
Schama, chapter on Children.
considerable evidence that temporary workers floated from town to town throughout the republic, and
possessed the ability to move to where work could be found. Suicide was not limited to the
economically marginal, as it also took the life of the daughter of the schout and several men who
practiced highly-skilled trades that would have been in heavy demand. Elsewhere in Europe, soldiers
had exhibited high rates of suicide, but not one soldier in Leiden committed suicide, though the court
did examine the bodies of six soldiers who had met untimely deaths in other ways. Finally, the suicide
rates were higher for those who lived and work outside of the city (i.e. in rural areas), a trend that has
reappeared in the twentieth century and has no known parallel anywhere else.67
The fragmentary evidence available from the Leiden court records suggests that the
intermediate, corporate groups in Dutch society acted as effective agents of social cohesion, knitting
together the disparate elements of the Dutch state, in a manner that was strengthened by the absence of
interference from a centralized state. Rather than instituting a repressive regime, theirs was a grass
roots movement, achieved not by any central mechanism, but by the collective decisions of thousands
of Dutch people adapting to the circumstances in which they found themselves after independence.
The social forces of the Dutch towns produced a state and a people much stronger, politically,
economically, and morally, than either historians or contemporaries have been willing to give them
credit for.
67
See Austin L. Porterfield, “Suicide and Crime in Folk and in Secular Society.” American Journal of Sociology 57 (1952),
331-338.