Private Aspects of Public Decisions of the Walloon Consistories in the United Provinces of the Netherlands

Abstract

The “Livre Synodal” is a book in which the affairs that the synods in the Dutch Republic dealt with. The particular one under consideration here collects the affairs dealt by the Synods of the Huguenot (French-speaking Calvinist communities) Churches, or by their more renowned name – Walloon Churches. The author, based on the “Livre Synodal”, examines in this article as a source for the study for early modern privacy. Based on two case studies, that of De La Rouille in Middelburg and Huguenin in Leiden and Wesel, the author assesses the perspectives of privacy existing in them, and analyses them through the prism of the so-called heuristic zones of privacy.