Vondel's Lucifer

by Joost van den Vondel

This poem was a glorification of the Mass, and was divided into three books. Vondel, in writing this able work, was assisted by the counsel of the most learned and the most profound men in the Catholic Church. The doctrines of Thomas Aquinas and other celebrated schoolmen, and the teachings of the best modern authorities were here poetically combined, and the poet was hailed on every side as the ablest defender of the tenets of the Church of Rome.

This poem provoked a celebrated reply by Jacob Westerbaen, one of the most noted of the School of Dort, who, while praising the art of the new champion of Catholicism, at the same time attacked his doctrinal position with such piercing analysis and with so great display of theological dogma, that, in the opinion of the Protestants, Vondel was ingloriously vanquished. The Catholics, of course, thought differently.

Jacob, Archbishop of Mechlin, to whom Vondel's poem was dedicated, sent the author a painting with which Vondel was at first greatly pleased. Learning, however, that it was only a bad copy, he gave it away to his sister, no longer wishing to have such a poor reward for so great an undertaking before his eyes.

A prose translation of the works of Virgil was the next thing that this indefatigable worker essayed. This version received the commendation of most of his contemporaries. Barlæus, indeed, found fault with it, saying that it was without life and marrow; adding, cynically, that Augustus would surely not have withheld this Maro from the flames. But, then, Barlæus was such a thorough Latinist that his own language seemed foreign to him. He would have had the translator preserve the peculiarities of the Latin at the expense of his native tongue. And, then, was he not also Vondel's rival for the hand of Tesselschade? Praise from him surely was not to be expected. The universal opinion was that it was a difficult work excellently done. This translation was also the forerunner of a drama. "Maria Stuart" was the name of the tragedy which the bard now offered for the perusal of his countrymen.

The poet represented the unhappy Queen of Scots as perfect and without stain, while her victorious rival Elizabeth was painted in infernal black.

This subject naturally gave the proselyte occasion to display his burning zeal for Rome; and upon the publication of the play a great outcry was raised against both drama and author. Some of Vondel's enemies, indeed, were so incensed, and raised such a commotion, that the poet was brought before the city tribunal, and fined one hundred and eighty guldens; "which," says Brandt, Vondel's biographer, "seemed indeed strange to many, seeing what freedom in writing was allowed at this time, and because, also, even to the poets of antiquity more was permitted than to most others." Abraham de Wees, Vondel's publisher, however, paid the fine, being unwilling that the poet should suffer by that which brought him profit.

Hugo Grotius was now dead, but shortly before his decease he had written several pamphlets whose object it was to effect some reconciliation between Catholic and Protestant. Vondel now translated those portions of these favorable to the papacy, combining them in a polemic called "Grotius' Testament." Whereupon many said that he had now gone too far in his zeal for his adopted church; for it was claimed that upon the statements of Grotius he often put a construction not favored by the context. It was even insinuated by some that he had not acted in good faith.

Brandt himself made this intimation in a preface written by him to an edition of Vondel's collected works which was published in the year 1647. Brandt was then yet a mere youth, and was rankling with the memory of a severe and unjust reprimand that the older poet some time before had given him. He therefore acknowledges in his naïve biography that he eagerly welcomed this opportunity to be revenged upon the distinguished offender, and accordingly made this dose of his gall as bitter as possible. The poet felt the insinuation keenly, and for a long time suspected Peter de Groot, the son of the great lawyer, as the perpetrator of the offending paragraph. Many years afterwards, however, the smart of the wound having departed, the real culprit confessed his sin to the then aged poet, and obtained the asked for absolution.

It was in 1641 that Vondel openly embraced the Catholic faith, though his tendency in that direction had been apparent in his poems many years before. We have already referred to the report that his love for a beautiful and wealthy widow, Tesselschade, had been the main instrument in drawing him from his Protestant moorings, and this was doubtless to some extent true. And yet it is almost certain that Vondel would have embraced the cause of Rome even without the alluring wiles of this fair enchantress.

Many of his relatives, including his brother William, belonged to that faith. Many of his dearest friends also were of that denomination. His daughter Anna, furthermore, had not only entered that church, but had also taken the veil. Moreover, he had long been drifting away from the creed of his early childhood, the Anabaptism of his parents. The severe pietism of that belief had never strongly appealed to him. True, he had espoused the cause of the Arminians, as against their enemies the Gomarists; but it was only because they were the under side, and because their cause was also the cause of civil liberty, that he had entered the lists with them.