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Christopher W Close, The Convent of Wesel: The Event that Never was and the Invention of Tradition, German History, Volume 36, Issue 3, September 2018, Pages 438–439, https://doi.org/10.1093/gerhis/ghy033
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Extract
On 3 November 1568, over fifty men gathered in the north German city of Wesel to debate a list of articles for organizing the Reformed church in the Low Countries. Known as the Synod or Convent of Wesel, this meeting set the framework for the subsequent development of the Reformed church in the German and Dutch territories. At least, so goes the story that generations of historians have told, one that Jesse Spohnholz exposes as a myth that developed over several centuries. In this fascinating and thought-provoking book, Spohnholz traces how the myth of the Convent of Wesel emerged, what factors gave it staying power, and how its persistence highlights methodological challenges that confront all historians.
Spohnholz structures his book in two sections that reflect the work’s ambitious hybrid nature. The first part offers a microhistory of the 1568 Wesel articles, while the second part provides a macrohistory of the articles’ reception from 1618 to the present. In the first four body chapters, Spohnholz argues that no physical meeting like the mythical Convent of Wesel ever occurred, although he does maintain that conditions in Wesel in November 1568 explain why the articles were drafted in the first place. Wesel housed many exiles who had fled across the Dutch border, and the area served as a muster place for William of Orange’s soldiers in preparation for his invasion of the Netherlands in fall 1568. These factors created the immediate regional context for the articles’ creation. Spohnholz contends that the brief era of optimism that accompanied William’s invasion provided a window in which planning for the immediate future of the Dutch Reformed church seemed not only logical but necessary. It makes sense, therefore, that the articles were drafted during this timeframe.
