Published 31 October 2003

Church History Collections

Menno Simons (1496-1561), engraving by Christoffel van Sichem, ca. 1605

The Church History Collections comprise early and modern printed works, manuscripts, prints, brochures, picture carriers and sound recordings relating to theology and church history in general, and to the history of Dutch Protestantism and the Radical Reformation in particular. Apart from its own extensive collection, the core of the Church History Collections is formed by the loans from the library of the Evangelical Lutheran Seminary, and from the Amsterdam libraries of the United Mennonite Congregation, the Remonstrant Congregation, the Reformed Evangelical Lutheran Congregation and the Begijnhof Foundation.

Refer to

Information on the collections
Searching in the collections
Reading Room Church History Collections / Mennonite Reading Room

Main focus

Dutch church history of the 16th to the 19th centuries, focusing on:

The history of Jansenism, the history of the Miracle of Amsterdam.
The history of Lutheranism (early and modern scholarly editions of Luther and Melanchthon, Luther bibles, hymnbooks, sermons).
The history of Anabaptism and the Mennonite movement from ca. 1520 to the present day (martyr books, bibles, hymnbooks, pamphlets and tracts by advocates and opponents).
The history of Remonstrantism (nearly complete collection of pamphlets and tracts by leaders and opponents of Remonstrantism, prints).
The history of spiritualism and heterodoxy (printed work by e.g. Sebastian Franck, Caspar Schwenckfeld, Hendrik Jansz Barrefelt [= Hiël], Hendrik Niclaes, Adam Pastor, David Joris, Faustus Socinus, Jacob Böhme, Antoinette Bourignon).
Bibles, psalm books and spiritual hymnbooks, works printed in Amsterdam in the field of religion, devotional literature and prints.

Source: Redactie BC