A few years before Emma and Wilhelmina began their campaign for the hearts and minds of Amsterdam, a new annual Catholic ritual had been initiated in commemoration of the city’s Miracle of the Sacrament. Amsterdam’s miracle took place in 1345. It was a standard miracle of the era: the host administered to a dying man was vomited and the vomit discarded into a fire but, miraculously, the next morning the host was found floating above the fire unscathed by flame or heat. When the miraculous host was removed to the church, it disappeared and then reappeared back at the home of the dying man. Within two years of the event, a chapel had been established to accommodate pilgrims at the site of the hearth and soon a yearly cycle of events was inaugurated to celebrate the anniversary of the miracle: two weeks in which pilgrims came to the city, a market was held, and on the first Wednesday after 12 March, the host was carried through the city in a solemn procession. The procession was a colourful event: in the front were the guilds carrying candles, banners, and statues of patron saints. Children followed: girls dressed as angels and boys as black devils. Then followed the militia, singing choirboys, priests, and monks. Finally, under a canopy carried by Amsterdam’s four mayors, walked a priest with the monstrance holding the sacrament. The last participants in the procession followed behind: city officials, ordinary citizens, pilgrims, and foreigners.21
This Procession of the Holy Sacrament was the most important civic and sacred event of the year for 200 years, constitutive to the urban identity of Amsterdam. But with the Reformation, the annual celebration came to a complete halt in 1578. The chapel was taken over by the Dutch Reformed Church and the practice of Catholicism became invisible, tolerated in private churches, allowed no public expression. It was not until the Batavian Republic was established in 1795 that freedom of religion was introduced. Even so, Catholics were still excluded from holding public office until passage of the Liberal constitution of 1848. In the period following that constitutional reform, Catholics began to emerge into the public realm, shedding the restrictions that had oppressed them.22
In 1881 a few lay Catholics had the idea of piously following the path of the old procession on the appointed day after a hiatus of over 300 years.23 A document from 1651 recorded an elderly woman’s recollection of the pre-Reformation procession.24 The original path of the old procession could then be reconstituted; history could be reconstructed; and Catholic Amsterdam could re-establish its identity through the use of public space. However, article 167 of the Constitution of 1848 expressly prohibited use of public space for religious practice;25 the procession had to be modified. Instead of the colourful pageantry of the medieval procession, the new event was made to accommodate Protestant fears of Catholic revival: it took place in the dead of night and it was silent.26
The modern-day procession started at the site of the miracle, outside the chapel, still occupied by the Reformed Church (Figure 5.5). The course of the procession followed the main streets of the medieval city through the Dam, passing to the river, then back along the oldest street of Amsterdam, which had become one of the most notorious centres of decadent night life.27 Accordingly the latter-day procession was scheduled for the dark of early morning when night life was most subdued; women were excluded for the sake of their safety.28 In contrast with the original procession
and with contemporary royal processions, there were no decorations, no 5.5
music, no costumes, and no participation of officials. From the beginning the Path of the Silent
Procession
lay organizers insisted on silence, on the absence of any banners or public prayers – nothing that might arouse the antipathy of the majority Protestant culture or give the appearance of an official religious procession. The concept was that the participants were individuals walking the street of the city, in the eyes of the law not collective celebrants. However, participants were encouraged to recite silently five Lord’s Prayers and five Hail Marys at three locations: at the Dam for King and Fatherland, at the former river’s edge for sailors and those lost at sea, and on the bridge before the chapel for the Church, the Pope, and Christian unity. The procession thus became a spatial practice that combined Catholic devotion and nationalism.29
From 2 laymen, the procession grew to 12, then to 100, then 1,000. By 1920, more than 20,000 were following the old path, a discrete but public declaration of the connection between the Catholic community and the history of Amsterdam, a subtle reminder of the Catholic claim that the rise of the city was due to its history as pilgrimage destination. This was a chapter that tended to be omitted from the self-congratulatory histories of the Protestants who privileged the Reformation and Golden Age. The revival of the procession route can be seen as an experiential equivalent to contemporaneous Catholic attempts to write themselves back into Dutch national history by bringing the Middle Ages into view instead of identifying the national heritage exclusively with the Revolt against Spain and the Golden Age.30
Resurrection of the colourful pomp of the original Procession of the Holy Sacrament remained a dream that could not be fulfilled. From 1918 a reduced version took place within the private confines of the Begijnhof, where the objects associated with the miracle were preserved in a church. This was, however, no public display and lacked all the characteristics of the medieval procession that had made it a central event in the life of the city. Obscure, marginal, and private, it was a shadow of the original. By contrast, the Silent Procession placed a claim on the plan of Amsterdam, openly recharting old territory. Its spatial dimension gave it an effectiveness that belied its failure to reconstitute the forms of the medieval procession and drew thousands of Catholics into a public expression of devotion that strengthened their collective identity while carefully avoiding open provocation of the Protestant majority.