{"id":7457,"date":"2016-11-20T19:05:56","date_gmt":"2016-11-20T19:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/?p=7457"},"modified":"2016-11-21T07:10:29","modified_gmt":"2016-11-21T07:10:29","slug":"the-hidden-treasures-of-johannes-coccejus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/?p=7457","title":{"rendered":"The hidden treasures of Johannes Coccejus"},"content":{"rendered":"

The focus of the most recent catalogue to be published in EMLO \u2014 theologian Johannes Coccejus<\/a> \u2014 may be best known for the conflict into which he was drawn by the Utrecht-based theologian Gisbertus Voetius<\/a> and his followers, but I\u2019d like to highlight today how Coccejus’s afterlife contains an extraordinary episode entirely in keeping with his peace-loving character.<\/p>\n

\"Coccejus,_Johannus_crop3\"

Coloured engraving of the monument to Johannes Coccejus in the Pieterskerk, taken from K. J. F. C. Kneppelhout van Sterkenburg, ‘De gedenkteekenen van de Pieterskerk te Leyden’ (Leiden, 1864), p. 113. (Source of image: Wikimedia Commons)<\/p><\/div>\n

Although Coccejus (or Cocceius) was German by birth \u2014 he was born and raised in Bremen \u2014 he spent most of his adult life in the low countries. An eminent scholar, he become professor of Hebrew and oriental languages at Franeker from 1636, and from 1650 until his death in 1669 was professor of theology at Leiden. The late\u00a0Willem van Asselt<\/a>\u00a0(who was professor of Reformed Protestantism at the university of Utrecht and professor of historical theology at the Evangelical Theological Faculty in Leuven) portrays Coccejus\u00a0as: \u2018a man of a deep personal faith and piety. His students observed this and one of them wrote: “His hearers noted that his eyes would fill with tears when, in giving an exposition of Scripture, he praised the richness of God\u2019s grace”.\u2019\u00a0It seems Coccejus was an unwilling (this noted by van Asselt) combatant in the Voetian dispute, which centred around the interpretation of the Sabbath and the Fourth Commandment, and on interpretations of salvation in the Old and New Testaments. This debate, which\u00a0arose and took hold in the middle of the seventeenth century in the United Provinces, continued far\u00a0beyond Dutch national\u00a0borders and long after the deaths of the major protagonists.<\/p>\n

Coccejus fell victim to plague in Leiden. He was buried in the Pieterskerk. And it was here, where the memorial erected to him still stands, that he provided from the grave scholarly refuge and shelter in a way he could never have foreseen. In 1940, as Nazi troops entered the city, the curators of the University of Leiden took the symbolic treasures of the institution \u2014\u00a0the keys, the seals, and the sceptres \u2014\u00a0and hid them in Coccejus\u2019s tomb. Even the register of students used in graduation ceremonies was tucked in for safe-keeping with the theologian\u2019s remains. There\u2019s something gloriously apt\u00a0about Coccejus\u00a0proving himself \u2014 again in\u00a0van Asselt\u2019s words \u2014 a \u2018defender of academic freedom and the Reformed tradition\u2019 almost three centuries after his death.<\/p>\n

\"Leiden_Pieterskerk_postcard\"

Postcard of the Pieterskerk, Leiden. (source of image: Wikimedia Commons)<\/p><\/div>\n

The calendar of correspondence you’ll find now in EMLO spans Coccejus’s scholarly\u00a0life and is based on the metadata\u00a0of his letters printed in epistolaries that have been collated by Monika Estermann\u00a0in her invaluable inventory of German correspondence. This is another catalogue we are incorporating into EMLO in\u00a0the expectation\u00a0that scholars will find it of use\u00a0and will be tempted to contribute additional metadata. If you’d like to add to the calendar, please be in touch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The focus of the most recent catalogue to be published in EMLO \u2014 theologian Johannes Coccejus \u2014 may be best known for the conflict into which he was drawn by the Utrecht-based theologian Gisbertus Voetius and his followers, but I\u2019d like to highlight today how Coccejus’s afterlife contains an extraordinary episode entirely in keeping with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}