Lambert Bidloo

Amsterdam 1688

in 1666 Lambert married Maria van der Lys. Their children were Maria, who was his faithful life long amanuensis, the celebrated doctor, Nicolaas Bidloo and Celia, who married Cornelis De Bree, compass maker.[8] The years of the young professional and family life of Lambert Bidloo were marked by the great economic and political crisis of the rampjaar that saw the tragic downfall of republican Jan de Witt and the rise by the young stadholder William of Orange. At this low point Lambert composed a hopeful review of current events, a composition in Latin verse dedicated to his great, but beleaguered city, Amstela dulcis[9]

Botanist author Jan Commelin, 1629-1692, by Gerard Hoet. Bust of Pliny the Elder in niche)

Lambert trained as an apothecary at the new Athenaeum Illustre of Amsterdam where Latin was the language of instruction and a professional requirement. In addition the study of botany, chemistry and pharmacology he gained a thorough mastery of languages and letters, ancient and modern, which he would display in his compositions in Latin and Dutch. Part of the new city-sponsored university was the "Collegium Medicum" where pharmacology was taught to future pharmacist-apothecaries. Bidloo's contemporary, the esteemed botanist and fellow pharmacist Jan Commelin(1629-92) taught there and was responsible, together with burgomaster Joan Huydecoper II, for the Hortus Botanicus,(initially named the Hortus Medicus, soon famous for the introduction of exotic plants the world over through Commelin's descriptive works and the beautiful illustrations by Jan Moninckx and Maria Moninckx.[10] Commelin's first publication was in Dutch Nederlands Hesperides 1676. This treatise on lemon and orange trees in Holland appeared in English in 1683.[11]. The same year saw the publication of the botanist's first work in Latin with the collaboration of Lambert Bidloo, already known as a Latin author for his patriotic poem of 1674, Amstela Dulcis. This was a catalogue of the native plants of Holland, updating and completing from previous botanical texts.[12] Commelin's Catalogus plantarum indigenarum Hollandiae opens with Bidloo's De re herbaria in an essay of 82 pages. Bidloo takes pains to include all the classical authorities, the Georgics of Virgil, (Pliny the Elder's Natural History, etc. He treats on the comparative qualities and merits of "indigenous" and "exotic" plants, including tobacco, and the "Aard Apfel" i.e. potato, etc.[13] Bidloo also recommends the new botanical garden as a proving ground for exotic plants. After attacking a requisite list of falsities (e.g. love philters, fava beans, mandrake, alchemy) he addresses the student users of this text. Thereafter, with its own pagination comes Commelin's catalogue, 1-114. Commelin identifies the Latin botanical classifications of the plants, an important contribution to the Latin systematization of Linnaeus. It is interesting to read the Dutch locations after the standard nomenclature in Latin, e,g, "Cannabis sativa",[14] While Commelin continued on with exotic plants at his botanical garden. In 1688 Bidloo was elected the Supervisor of the medical colllege.[15] In contemporary Amsterdam, Bidloo's intellectual and literary pretensions were perceived as conceited.[16] The fine engraving portraits we have of him and his brother certainly show both with a imperious nose we might easily characterize as"snooty". While highly respected by his peers for his erudition[17] he cut a figure easily caricatured in Amsterdam,[18] even on the stage.[19]

Michiel Fortgens, 1663-1695, Mennonite preacher of the Zonists. Likeness drawn by Nicolaas Bidloo, encomium in Dutch, Lambert Bidloo

Herman Schijn, 1662-1727, Zonist minister and Mennonite historian

Bidloo was a leading member of the Amsterdam Mennonites called "Zonists" for the name of their meeting place on the Singelgracht, "op te Zon". The Mennonites or Doopgezinde were an independent Anabaptist group originating in the Netherlands at the onset of the Protestant Reformation. During the dramatic Munster Rebellion (1534/35) a splinter group had staged a temporary social revolution which completely endangered their existence and made them social outlaws for their provocative role in the Radical Reformation. Consequently, their group, which took the name of patriarch, ex-priest [[{Menno Simons]] (1496-1561]] suffered great persecution in the defense of their Dissident beliefs, namely believer's baptism, foot washing, "defenseless" pacifism and the ban on swearing oaths, also to be espoused by the Quakers. These Mennonite principles became enumerated in the 18 points of the Dordrecht Confession of Faith (1632)[20]. By Lambert's time his church was emerging from its clandestine status into congregational meetings that were tolerated by the Calvinist officialdom out of the public eye. But by 1660 the differences between liberals and conservatives provoked a major schism among the Mennonites that would last, despite repeated attempts at reunification, until 1801. The liberal "Lamist" Mennonites were lead by Galenus Abramsz de Hann. Against them, the "Zonists", lead by Samuel Apostool, a more conservative group, scandalized by what they saw as the too tolerant and inclusive practices of the Lamists, set up their own congregation and organized against what they saw as the betrayal of their traditions and the heresy of their former co-religionists.[21] Lambert was a fervid Zonist from the beginning of the schism on and wrote contentious pamphlets against the Lamists more inclusive and tolerant views of the "Flemish" congregation, 'Op te Lamm".[22] Behind the censures of the censure of the Zonist there loomed the spectre of Socinianism, the Anti-trinitarian heresy for which Calvin had [Michael Servetus] burned at the stake (1553).[23] As part of this conservative reaction Bidloo's contemporary and fellow Zonist, Thieleman J. van Braght produced a monumental Martyrology for his co-religionists.[24] This Martyrs Mirror became a fundamental text for all Anabaptists, especially through Jan Luiken's illustrated second edition of 1685.[25] In a similar vein, but with a smaller scope was one of the first publications of Lambert's brother Govert, Letters of the Marytyred Apostles (1675)[26] During Govert's lifetime there were 20 editions of his work which include a poem contributed "by his brother".[27] While Mennonite beliefs were an important components in the art (Rembrandt) and poetry (Vondel) of the Dutch Golden Age, and while the inner circle of Baruch Spinoza's friends and supporters included many free-thinking Remonstrants, Collegiants and Lamist Mennonites, as a Zonist Bidloo's conservative religious beliefs would keep him far afield from the Dutch origins of the so called "Radical Enlightenment".[28]

Lambert Bidloo, presenting his ""Kabinet" Panpoeticon Batavum.Mezzotint by Arnoud van Halen

In the productive retirement of his final decade the Mennonite patriarch cultivated poetry.<ref. the fine season of 1718</ref> Hebecame the poetical collaborator of artist Arnoud van Halen in the curious "Kabinet" of Dutch writers that they presented in the curious project of the Panpoeticon Batavum (1720).[29] In the eighteen books of his composition Bidloo does for Dutch writers what the Mennonite artist-writer Karel van Mander, had illustrated, after Vasari, for the arts in his Schilder-Boeck(1604).[30] This, Bidloo's best known work, is the poetic component of a fascinating gallery of miniature portraits,[31] partially preserved in the Rijksmuseum. Bidloo's poetic review of the best Dutch writers constitutes one of the first historical presentations of this literary tradition.

His younger brother, Govert Bidloo was a writer for the Amsterdam theatre and an eminent doctor who, despite being a Mennonite, became the personal physician of the Dutch William III of England and a professor of anatomy at Leiden. Lambert's son, Nicolaas Bidloo, also gifted artistically, studied under his uncle at Leiden and became a doctor, as well. Nicolaas, a Zonist Mennonite like his father, left Amsterdam for Russia as physician to Peter the Great and became a founder of Russian medicine. For a half century, together with Govert, he had been a leading citizen in the Dutch Republic of Letters so, in the Panpoeticon Batavum he initiates the historical and artistic gallery of the Dutch Golden Age, a collection still partially visible in the Rijksmuseum.

The octogenarian Bidloo also set himself to a life project, the challenge of translating l'huomo di lettere (1645) of the Jesuit literary luminary and historian of his order, Daniello Bartoli. By this time the book had had countless editions and had been translated into German, French, Latin, English and Spanish. Bidloo's Dutch rendering of the Italian work is entitled Een Geletterd Man verdadigd en verbettererd. with a beautiful frontispiece engraving in the Italianate/Flemish style of the Bamboccianti (perhaps by the young and talented Jacobus Houbraken). The title page proposes the defense and bettering of Bartoli's "lettered" man. Even after Bidloo's death in 1724 Hendrik Bosch, his Amsterdam printer, likely a fellow Mennonite, would continue publishing the works of the learned chemist.[32] The preface of his translation begins with a dedication to his daughter Maria, his faithful "bibliothecaria". He goes on to recall his first introduction to Bartoli's opuscula as a literary nec plus ultra through his acquaintance with Aloysius Bevilacqua who arrived in the Netherlands to represent pope Innocent XI as nuncio at the Congress of Nijmegen (1677/78), seeking peace for the Dutch Republic against the invader Louis XIV. As was the custom, the book is decorated with a garland of laudatory poems by noted literary contemporaries, Pieter Langendijk, Jan van Hoogstraten. Matthaeus Brouwerius, et al. Bidloo provides the section headings of the treatise with chapter numbers. Part I, 1-11; Part II, 1-27.[33]

Een Geletterd Man verdadigd en verbetterd, 1722