-----Original Message-----
From: Gulick, R. van [R.van.Gulick@leiden.nl]
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2001 1:34 AM
Subject: vrouwekerk
I've read your mail about the subject Vrouwekerk in Leiden. I asked myself if you would know that people, who know everything exactly about the churchremnants (most of them are fake, dating from 1983), and about the city-plans (there have never been any plans for a shopping center, disco or parkinggarage for the site of the former Vrouwekerksite), look at you as somebody far from this world. Especially when they read about "a crime against the human spirit". Hahaha. What did you smoke?
R. van Gulick, Leiden
Aalmarkt Project Manager
View of the Vrouwekerk during excavation, 1979/80. In the wall to the right one can just see the 16th-century stone doorway that was moved to the other side when that part of the wall was replaced with an angled reconstruction, following another foundation line and providing buttressing support for the main wall. Until this photograph was produced in the discussion, Leiden's alderman for urban development was pretending that the 16th-century doorway had nothing to do with the church and was brought in during the restoration from some unknown source. He implied that the monument as we now know it is somehow a fake.
There are also ten black and white photographs of the Vrouwekerk wall, seen from the other side (the exterior when the church was still intact). These were submitted by the city to the court in May, 1999. I [Bangs] was given them by the court as public documents in the case. The photographs have been given outlines and provided with captions that give the date of the brickwork, by the city's monument service. The outlines have been high-lighted here and the captions have been translated. Each photo is outlined and identified for the main part of what is shown; sections that are only partly depicted are fully depicted and outlined on the next photo. This set of photographs conclusively demonstrates that almost all of the Vrouwekerk as it now stands is original and dates from the middle ages; the replacement work that protects parts of it is completely consistent with accepted practice in monument restoration and preservation throughout Europe and America.
Town claims that the Vrouwekerk wall is almost entirely a 19th-century re-creation are demonstrably false, and these photographs provide the proof.
1. "There is no evidence that the Pilgrims worshipped at the Vrouwekerk." ("the small number of Pilgrims associated with the Vrouwekerk isn't enough to justify saving any monument" --Ariela Netiv, Leiden City Archivist)
Pilgrim leader Edward Winslow made a special point of commenting on the fact that Huguenots from Leiden joined the Pilgrims, and that Pilgrims and Huguenots were in communion with each other- this is confirmed by a variety of archival sources. We do not know exactly how many of the 400 families who were ready in 1620 to migrate to America were Huguenots or Dutch, but we do know that some were. It is important to realize that the Pilgrims were not an isolated group of poor Englishmen motivated by hopes of economic gain but rather a cosmopolitan group of English, Huguenot, and Dutch people from many backgrounds, searching for a way to put their Reformed faith into practice.
2. "The Pilgrims also worshipped at the Pieterskerk, which is the 'real Pilgrim church'".
The Pilgrims never worshipped in the Pieterskerk. The Pilgrims as a whole worshipped in English, and Winslow mentions that Robinson's house was large. We assume their services were held in Robinson's house until that became illegal in the summer of 1619. (In 1619, in a measure to suppress the Remonstrants (Arminians), all discussion of religion in private homes was forbidden! This has to have contributed to the unease inspiring the Pilgrims to look elsewhere.) Robinson's house was across the churchyard from the Pieterskerk. Robinson died in 1625, and like everyone living in the parish area of the Pieterskerk, he was buried in that church. That is why there is a memorial to him there.
3. "We haven't actually announced that we're going to tear down the ruin."
The decision to tear down the Vrouwekerk was taken by the Mayor and Aldermen with Town Council approval in 1995. That decision stands. The alderman in charge of monuments, Mr. Alexander Pechtold, announced to the Associated Press on January 24, 2001, that the Vrouwekerk will be torn down: "I welcome the end of seven years of legal battles. The demolition will go ahead."
4. "The demolition of the ruins is not related to the Aalmarkt project."
The destructive renovation of the Vrouwekerk Square is part of a total policy of modernizing the medieval and 17th-century parts of Leiden, which has been going on for thirty years. This grand plan has been split into numerous smaller projects for financial management reasons. It is only in terms of convenience of administration that they are not related to each other. The Vrouwekerk demolition area is only half a block from the beginning of the Aalmarkt Project, which is in the Haarlemmerstraat, where a new street is to be created by tearing down one 16th century house and two 17th-century houses. The new street would lead to a new bridge across to the actual Aalmarkt (street) itself.
5. "The Pilgrim documents in the Leiden archives do not support the claim that the Vrouwekerk was important for the Pilgrims." ("The documents are in our archives and we have experts on them there, so we do not need to get our information from outside sources." --Leiden Alderman alderman Melanie Schultz).
There are no longer any Pilgrim experts at the Leiden Municipal Archives. The late Drs. B. N. Leverland, head of the archives study room and internationally known as an expert on the Pilgrims, is the person who discovered the connection of the Vrouwekerk with the Pilgrims. He published this information in 1954.
6. "This monument belongs to the city of Leiden, and its future will be decided
by Leiden. Americans have nothing to say about it."
The historic heritage is recognized by governments around the world as belonging to the people of the world, regardless of where they live. For that reason The Netherlands supports UNESCO efforts to preserve monuments in many other countries. The legal ownership of a monument of international cultural significance is both a privilege and a responsibility. The town of Leiden therefore has a moral obligation, of a sort recognized in treaties and conventions that The Netherlands has signed, to preserve the Vrouwekerk. Similarly, Fortis Bank, which has allowed registered monuments it owns in the Aalmarkt area to fall into serious disrepair, has a responsibility to restore and preserve them, especially because it is the deterioration of those monuments that is bringing others into danger, including the St. Catharine's Hospital associated with Pilgrim Myles Standish.
