The Jan Jacobszgezinden on the Bloemstraat

The ultra-conservative Jan Jacobszgezinden came into being in Harlingen after a schism in the late-sixteenth century between the Old Frisian Mennonites and the followers of elder Jan Jacobsz. In his eighteenth-century study of Dutch “Doopsgezinden or Mennonites,” S.F. Rues describes this splinter group in his section on the so-called fijne minnisten – the groups who maintained the sharpest degree of separation from the world, and were the strictest in their sober dress, church practices, and application of the ban. Outside of Friesland, the only other gathering places of the Jan Jacobszgezinden were in Hoorn and Amsterdam.

The Amsterdam vermaning was purpose-built behind the gables of two houses on the Bloemstraat sometime during the development of the Jordaan neighbourhood after 1610 and before 1645. Cornelis Pronk (1691-1759), a member of the nearby Arcke Noach, made drawings of the exterior house fronts and the extremely plain interior in 1729, just after the church’s closure. These were later used as the basis for prints by Caspar Philips Jacobsz., and several other artists made copies after his drawings too.

Pronk depicts the unadorned room from beneath the three-sided balcony. There is no organ; this would have been deemed too worldly. On the main floor, at the left, we see the bench for the deacons and a larger and smaller chair for the preacher and, most likely, the cantor. In middle of the room, there is open space for chairs for the women and at the back their are benches for the men.

Between 1725 and 1728, the congregation had grown so small that they decided to join the united Lam and Toren congregation. A document from the merger indicates the assets that would be transferred to the larger congregation and includes the names of the 16 members who planned to transfer membership – three of whom signed by way of a “X,” meaning they did not know how to write. Four other members protested, obtaining a notarial declaration indicating their desire to have the Bloemstraat building returned to them in 1730. Their efforts were unsuccessful.

The property was converted into houses in the eighteenth century. One building was demolished in the 1930s, while the other one, together with the house next to it, was torn down in 1961. The buildings on the site today are no longer properties of Doopsgezind Amsterdam, but four small commemorative plaques from the year 2000, which read “BIJ HET LAM III ANNO 2000,” “MENNO SIMONSZ. 1496-1561,” “Oude Friezen A⁰ MM,” and “III Mennonieten,” offer a reminder of the former Mennonite ownership of this site.