1. van Marnix, Philips, Den Byencorf de H. Roomsche Kercke, ed. Ornee, W. A. and Strengholt, S. L. (Zutphen, 1974).Google ScholarFor a list of editions see van Toorenenbergen, J. J., ed., Philips van Marnix van St. Aldegonde: Godsdienstige en kerkelijke geschriften, Aanhangsel (‘s-Gravenhage, 1871–1878), pp. 195–214.Google ScholarIn 1590, Marnix published a French version of the work, Tableau des differends de la religion, vols. 1–4 of Oeuvres de Philippe de Marnix de Sainte Aldegonde, ed. Lacroix, Albert, 6 vols. (Geneva, 1971).Google ScholarThere has been a prolonged debate over exactly when Marnix wrote The Beehive and in which language it was first written. A summary of these positions appears in Frans van Kalkan and Tobie Jonckheere, Marnixde Sainte Aldegonde (Brussels, 1952), pp. 16–18.Google ScholarAlso see Gosselinus Oosterhof, La vie littéraire de Marnix de Sainte Aldegonde el son Tableau des différends de la religion (Geneva, 1971)Google Scholarand Govaert, Marcel, Le langue et le style de Marnix de Sainte Aldegonde dans son Tableau des différends de la religion (Bruxelles, 1953).Google ScholarAlthough I consulted the English translation of George Gilpin the Elder, all translations from Den Byencorf are my own.Google Scholar

2. Gurevich, Aron, “The Elucidarium: Popular Theology and Folk Religiosity in the Middle Ages,” in Medieval Popular Culture: Problems of Belief and Perception, tr. Bak, Janos M. and Hollingsworth, Paul A. (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 153–157.Google Scholar

3. By way of a definition of “popular audience,” I am distinguishing between a Latin, or learned, culture which most likely included scholars as well as members of the aristocracy and the upper middle class, and a vernacular or lay culture which included artisans and craftsmen. Implicit in this definition of a popular audience is the distinction, derived from Robert Redfield's model, which Burke, Peter makes in Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (New York, 1976), p. 28, between the tradition of formal education for the learned culture and the tradition of popular culture, which was available to all in the informal setting of the market-place, tavern, or church. I am not convinced that there was a stern division between these two cultures, but rather that there were points of contact where the two cultures of the mid-sixteenth century Low Countries were very alike. Obviously I think that one of these points of contact was popular religious belief as opposed to formal theological disputation.Google Scholar

4. On the Calvinist doctrine of the Word and the Lord's Supper see Wallace, Ronald S., Calvin's Doctrine of the Word and Sacrament (Grand Rapids, 1957);Google ScholarRaitt, Jill, The Eucharist Theology of Theodore Beza: Development of the Reformed Doctrine (Chambersburg, Pa., 1972);Google Scholarand Selinger, Suzanne, Calvin Against Himself: An Inquiry in Intellectual History (Hamden, Conn., 1984), pp. 115–116, 155, 161.Google Scholar

5. For the role of pamphlet literature in the Dutch Revolt, see Antoon, PieterGeurts, Marie, De Nederlandse Opstand in de Pamfletten, 1566–1584 (Nijmegen, 1956), which considers the publications and involvement of Marnix and others in the political struggle. The study of Marnix has been largely dominated by a debate over whether he was a nationalist or a Calvinist. He has appeared to historians as both a traitor, who put the interest of the Calvinists before that of the nation, and a national hero.Google ScholarSummaries of the positions taken by various historians are nicely presented in Alois, Gerlo, Marnix l'énigmatique?: A propos d'une nouvelle biographie de Marnix de Sainte-Aldegonde (Brussels, 1953),Google Scholarand also in the most recent biography of Marnix, which is little more than a summary of these scholarly conflicts, Verhoef, C. E. H. J., Philips van Marnix, Heer van Sint Aldegonde (Weesp, 1985).Google Scholar

6. This raises the intriguing problem of the choice of title. In the Dutch version the entire work is entitled Den Byencorf, despite the fact that the beehive metaphor is contained in the concluding section. In the French version, also done by Marnix, the entire work is entitled Tableau des différends de la religion. In the author's preface to the French version, which does not appear in the Dutch, the plan of the work is laid out. The fifth and final section of the Tableau is explicitly called “La Ruche Catholique des abeilles de Sainte Mère Eglise Romaine.” While the first four sections of the Tableau are a French version rather than a translation, when compared to the Dutch, the actual beehive metaphor section is virtually a translation. My assumption is that either the printer or Marnix chose the different titles for the work, and that this choice reflects a desire to reach different audiences of purchasers—a more educated audience for the French and a popular audience for the Dutch—the one perhaps attracted by a pseudorecondite title (a Tableau), and the other by the more mundane metaphor of a beehive.Google Scholar

7. Sterck, J. G., “Van Commanentaire tot Tableau: een bijdrage tot de studie van Marnix' godsdienstig polemisch proza,” Leuvese Bijdragen 36 (1944/1946), p. 98, concludes that the beehive allegory had been previously written in 1565 and was added to the work against Hervet.Google ScholarThe same author repeats his position in Bronnen en samenstelling van Marnix' Bienkorfder H. Rommsche Kercke (Leuven, 1952), pp. 198–199, 201.Google Scholar

8. Marnix, Den Byencorf, p. 37.Google ScholarOn Hervet as polemicist see Popkin, Richard H., The History of Skepticism from Erasmus to Descartes (Assen, The Netherlands, 1960), pp. 35–36;Google ScholarKingdon, Robert M., Geneva and the Consolidation of the French Protestant Movement, 1564–1572 (Madison, Wis., 1967), pp. 84–85;Google Scholarand Kelley, Donald R., The Beginning of Ideology: Consciousness and Society in the French Reformation (Cambridge, 1981), p. 116.Google Scholar

9. The beehive metaphor is self-contained with its own chapter numbers and stands beside the larger work in its extant published form, not as an incorporated part of this longer text. Regrettably, to my knowledge there are no extant copies of the beehive addendum alone, nor any mention of its independent publication by Marnix or others. There is also the possibility that the combining of the two works was the result of a printer's decision, as it was not unusual in the sixteenth century for a printer to decide to combine two works into one volume.Google Scholar

10. I have used figures produced by Harline in his study of Dutch pamphlets and their relative cost. Harline, Craig E., Pamphlets, Printing, and Political Culture in the Early Dutch Republic (Dordrecht, 1987), pp. 63–64.CrossRefGoogle ScholarThe work on Flanders by Decavele, Johan, De Dageraad van de Reformatie in Vlaanderen (1520–1565), 2 vols. (Brussels, 1975), 1:528–549,Google Scholarshows that in comparison to the Anabaptists, the Calvinists had a much larger base in the “burgerij” and “middenstand,” seeming to confirm that Calvinists could certainly constitute Marnix's intended audience.Google Scholar

11. van Schelven, A. A., Marnix van Sint Aldegonde (Utrecht, 1939), p. 18.Google Scholar

12. See the discussion on the linguistic division, as well as a linguistic map in Parker, Geoffrey, The Dutch Revolt (Ithaca; 1977), pp. 31, 35–37.Google ScholarOne fascinating example of the contemporary awareness of the importance of this division was Philip II's plan to reorganize the bishoprics of the Netherlands on a linguistic basis. Dierickx, Michel, S.J., ed., Documents inédits sur l'érection des nouveaux Diocèses aux Pays-Bas (1521–1570), 3 vols. (Brussels, 1962) 1:10, 107–150.Google Scholar

13. On the linguistic division and intended audience see Harline, , Pamphlets, Printing, and Political Culture, p. 33;Google Scholarand Eisenstein, Elizabeth L., The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 31–32.Google Scholar

14. To point out the obvious, the subsequent translations into English and German were not time-and-place specific for Marnix, but they were doubtless perceived by their translators in a similar vein of propaganda.Google Scholar

15. By 1500 the French-speaking areas of Artois, Cambrai, and Limburg had a population density of twenty to thirty-eight inhabitants per square kilometer, while Luxemburg's density was fewer than twenty. Only Hainaut had a density equal to a Dutch province such as Brabant with a density of thirty-nine to fifty-nine, while Holland and Flanders had densities of over sixty inhabitants per square kilometer. Prevenier, Walter and Blockmans, Wim, The Burgundian Netherlands (Cambridge, 1986), p. 391.Google Scholar

16. For the role of this group of Calvinist nobility in 1565–1567, see Wyntjes, Sherrin Marshall, “Family Allegiance and Religious Persuasion: The Lesser Nobility and the Revolt of the Netherlands,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 12, no. 2 (1981): 43–60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarThough the date of publication might belie it, perhaps it was for this noble culture of his youth that Marnix published a tract on the Lord's Supper in 1596, which, in contrast to The Beehive, was a formal, non-satirical, scholarly attack on the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist. Marnix of Saint Aldegonde, Traicté du sacrament de la saincte cene du seigneur, ed. Toorenenbergen, van, Marnix van St. Aldegonde: godsdienstige en kerkelijke geschriften, 2:245–494. There were also Low Countries Calvinist emigrant churches in London and Sandwich, which could also have been numbered among the potential readers of this work.Google Scholar

17. Crew, Phyllis Mack, Calvinist Preaching and Iconoclasm in the Netherlands, 1544–1569 (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 105–106. One would assume that the former Catholic clergy at Emden were better educated than the artisans, and thus would make the artisans the even more likely target of The Beehive.Google Scholar

18. Chrisman, Miriam, “From Polemic to Propaganda: The Development of Mass Persuasion in the Late Sixteenth Century,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 73 (1982): 175–176.Google Scholar

19. Examples such as Le catéchisme du docteur Panlalon et de son disciple Zani, Satyre Menippée, or Agrippa d'Aubignés Confession du sieur de Sancy are of the same type as Marnix's Beehive. On the use of humor,Google Scholarsee Kelley, Donald R., The Beginning of Ideology: Consciousness and Society in the French Reformation (Cambridge, 1981), p. 246.Google ScholarAlso, Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich, Rabelais and His World, tr. Iswolsky, Helene (Cambridge, 1968), p. 100, suggests that “[a]t that time people … were suspicious of seriousness and were accustomed to relate sincere and free truth with laughter.”Google Scholar

20. Ellul, Jacques, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes, tr. Kellen, Konrad and Lerner, Jean (New York, 1965), pp. 21–61.Google Scholar

21. Pliny, The Natural History, tr. Bostock, John and Riley, H. T., 4 vols. (London, 1855), 3:5;Google ScholarSeneca, On Clemency l.xxix.2 (Loeb Classical Library Moral Essays 1.410);Google ScholarSirElyot, Thomas, The Boke Named the Governour (London, n.d.), pp. 8–9;Google ScholarDee, John, The Parliament of Bees, ed. Cocke, William T., 111 (New York, 1979);Google ScholarCalvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. McNeill, John T., tr. Battles, Ford Lewis (Philadelphia, 1960), 4.4.8.Google Scholar

22. Merrick, Jeffrey, “Royal Bees: The Gender Politics of the Beehive in Early Modern Europe,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 18 (1988), p. 26. Of course, this was before the invention of the microscope and the revelation that the king was a queen.Google Scholar

23. There are a number of studies which examine this aspect of Marnix's work. Among them are Sainean, L., L'influence et la réputation de Rabelais (Paris, 1930), pp. 261–302;Google ScholarOosterhof, La vie littéraire de Marnix; and Govaert, La langue et style de Marnix, pp. 34–41, where a list of words borrowed from Rabelais is included. It should also be observed that the scholars who make the argument for Marnix's use of Rabelais consider the French version of the work. One should remember that the parodies and puns of Rabelais would not necessarily have translated easily into Dutch.Google ScholarSterck, J. G., “Protestantse Bronnen van Marnix' Bienkorf,” Sacris Erudiri: Jaarboek voor Godsdienstwetenschappen 1 (1948): 299–322;CrossRefGoogle ScholarSterk, Bronnen en samenstelling, pp. 106–107, 172–178.Google Scholar

24. It is worth noting that other Calvinist propagandists used the style of Rabelais in their satires, for example Estienne's, HenriL'apologie pur Hérodote (1566; reprint Paris, 1879),Google Scholarand Viret's, PierreSatires chrestiennes de Cuisine Papale (1560; reprint Geneva, 1857).Google ScholarBakhim, Rabelais, p. 100.Google Scholar

25. Oosterhof, La vie littéraire de Marnix, p. 76, has suggested that the inspiration for the use of the model of the beehive derives from Rabelais's fifth book, where Rabelais compares the papal bird and the clerical birds of “l'lsle Sonnate” to bees in a hive. This passage is found in Rabelais, François, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Jourda, Pierre 2 vols. (Paris, 1962), 2:290–291.Google ScholarEqually valid as a source maybe Calvin, , Institutes, 4.4.8, where Calvin states that contrary to Catholic ideas the bees do not select a head for all of the bees of the world, but only for one hive. One last comparison can be made between the two uses cited here. Unlike Rabelais, Calvin used the metaphor as a positive model which he charged the papacy with violating, while Rabelais sought a comic comparison.Google Scholar

26. Pliny, , The Natural History, 3:5–24; 4:339–345.Google Scholar

27. Chrisman, Miriam U., “Printing and the Evolution of Lay Culture in Strasbourg, 1480–1599,” in The German People and the Reformation, ed. Hsia, R. Po-Chia (Ithaca, 1988), p. 75.Google Scholar

28. It was a commonplace to see a beehive at an ecclesiastical institution. Because the Catholic church used beeswax exclusively for its candles, every monastery and abbey kept bees. Other associations of the wax with the church included rents and tithes paid in beeswax, gifts and legacies of beeswax, the celebration of Candlemas, and the Paschal candle of Easter. Moore, Daphne, The Bee Book: The History and Natural History of the Honeybee (New York, 1976), pp. 129–132.Google Scholar

29. Crane, Eva, The Archaeology of Beekeeping (Ithaca, 1983), p. 218.Google Scholar

30. Sybesma, Jetske, “The Reception of Breughel's Beekeepers: A Matter of Choice,” The Art Bulletin 73 (1991): 467–478.CrossRefGoogle ScholarIn this article the author seeks to date the print before 1569 and thus have it antedate the publication of Marnix's Den Byencorf. While this is possible, the article ignores the fact that Marnix's beehive allegory is largely a selfcontained segment, which could have been written well before 1569. But more importantly her dating the print before 1569 is based on the cropping of the margin of the print which leaves a date of MDLXV. On this basis the conclusion is drawn that the print could not have been done after MDLXVIII. While I do not know what Breughel's practice in dating was, in Dutch archives I have seen entirely too many Roman numeral nines written as VIIII, rather than our practice of IX, to be persuaded by this evidence that the print has to be before 1569. Also, the author has a fundamental misreading of Marnix, when it is stated that both Marnix and Brueghel demonstrate that the Catholic church is a mere empty hive (p. 478). Marnix does not see the hive as empty, but rather his concern was that it continued to produce polluted honey, as I shall demonstrate later in this article.Google Scholar

31. Bynum, Caroline Walker, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley, Calif., 1987), pp. 115–117.Google Scholar

32. Eire, Carlos M. N., War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 16–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33. Rubin, Miri, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 164–210, 292–300.Google Scholar

34. Marnix, , Den Byencorf, p. 181.Google Scholar

35. Ibid., p. 169.

36. Calvin, , Institutes, 4.2.1, 4.2.4. Exodus 16:11–36.Google Scholar

37. Calvin, , Institutes, 4.8.13, 4.7.3, 5;Google ScholarCalvin, Jean, “Petit traicté de la Saincte Cène de nostre Seigneur Jesus Christ,” in Three French Treatises, ed. Higman, Francis M. (London, 1970), pp. 102, 109–112, 130.Google Scholar

38. “The Belgic Confession of 1561,” The Evangelical Protestant Creeds, vol. 3 of The Creeds of Christendom, ed. Schaff, Philip (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1966), p. 429.Google Scholar

39. Calvin, Jean, “The Catechism of the Church of Geneva,” Calvin: Theological Treatises, ed. Reid, J. K. S. (Philadelphia, 1954), pp. 129–139;Google ScholarWallace, , Word, pp. 137–140.Google Scholar

40. Marnix, , Den Byenrorf, pp. 170–171.Google Scholar

41. Calvin, as does Marnix, attacks “the pollution and the contamination” of the Eucharist in “Petite traicté,” p. 109.Google Scholar

42. A very common fear expressed in the Low Countries before 1566 was that Philip II's planned episcopal reorganization was a ruse under which to introduce a “Spanish Inquisition.” See for example Dierickx, ed., Documents, 2:245–254, 301–306;Google Scholarvan Aytta, Viglius, “Discours sur les règne de Philippe II,” Memoires de Viglius et d'Hopperus sur le commencement des Troubles des Pays-Bas, ed. Wauters, Alph. (Brussels, 1858), p. 29;Google Scholarand most tellingly for this article, Marnix, Vray narration el apologie des choses, passes au Pays-Bas, touchant le fait de la religion en l'an 1566, in Philips van Marnix … geschriften, 1:47–50, which was published in 1567.Google Scholar

43. Bynum, , Holy Feast and Holy Fast, pp. 189–194.Google Scholar

44. Moore, , Bee Book, pp. 80–81.Google Scholar

45. Calvin, , Institutes, 4.2.3.Google Scholar

46. Marnix, , Den Byencorf, pp. 176–177.Google Scholar

47. Sterk, , Bronnen en Samenstellmg, p. 201, in a not very convincing argument, interprets this reference to be the announcement of the Tridentine decrees in 1564 as part of his effort to date the beehive section to 1565.Google Scholar

48. Marnix, , Den Byencorf, p. 179.Google Scholar

49. Moore, , Bee Book, pp. 74–80.Google Scholar