The intellectual and cultural context of the Reformation in the Northern Netherlands

This chapter focuses on the intellectual context of the Reformation by analysing Menno Simon's religious autobiography and presents the main trends in the history of Calvinism in the Northern Netherlands. Menno Simons renounced the Catholic Church, he left Babel and entered Jerusalem and became in the very end the most important leader of the Mennonites in the Low Countries. Interpreting Menno's text sheds some new light on the cultural and intellectual context of the Reformation. The Reformation in the Netherlands was an international event par excellence. For the believers the Reformation had financial consequences. The Reformation had advantages for the believers but disadvantages for the priests. A Dutch legal historian has suggested that the people accepted the Reformation in order to be rid of their financial obligations. The new presbyterian organisational structure was an instrument in the campaign for the reformation of life and doctrine.