A Brill Calendar: June 7

Few modern Western political doctrines are less contested than that of the benefit of separating Church and State.

Given the length of traditions, this is a young creed; not much older than the European Enlightenment and the 18th century. A thousand earlier years, the idea would have been a blasphemous fantasy: secular and regular modes of thought were akin to one another, densely interwoven. An example: the monastic rule of Saint Benedict of Nursia – flourishing from 480 until 547 AD – originated as an authoritative manual to sustain stable communities and organizations, but also inspired codes-of-conduct and legislation in secular institutions, particularly in universities. Reading, writing and copying manuscripts became integral part of monastic life and a cradle of post-classical scholarship. The Monastic Abbot is the Father of the University Rector and the CEO.

In the Low Countries this applies as well. In the 16th century the great Benedictine Abbey of Egmond, near Alkmaar City, had become a dominant worldly owner of land and real-estate in Holland, a County lacking a University; while its chapels, shrines, churches and cloisters, sustaining the adjacent village carrying the same name, were a splendid sight; in Michelin terms, a ‘mérite le voyage’.

On June 7, 1573 this ‘City of God’ was dismantled in a handful of days. Given the commencement of a siege of Alkmaar by Spanish troops, an intact Abbey would give the foreign foe any number of military advantages, while timber, stone, bronze, lead and iron of the colossal complex could help and fortify a city not built to withstand an armed force of this massive strength. It is seldom that a struggle for independence was expressed so materially: the elimination of Egmond Abbey is an emblem for the end of the Middle Ages in northern Low Countries.