Returning home from exile? Arnold Cornelisz's ministerial networks and the religious landscape of the liberated Netherlands☆

Abstract Scholars of the Dutch Reformation have attributed the rapid development of Reformed churches in the liberated areas of the Northern Netherlands after 1572 to the immigration of radical migrants from Flanders or returning exiles who learned the trade in the refugee churches outside the Low Countries. However, the impact of the networks, rather than the ideology, of a third transformative stream of migrants often gets overlooked. This article argues that a wider network of mobile ministers centred around the University of Heidelberg had a profound impact on the religious landscape of the Low Countries. It demonstrates this using a network analysis of the correspondence of one of the leading Reformed ministers in the liberated Netherlands after 1572, Arnold Cornelisz, combined with a prosopographical examination of the network. The idea that exile brought innovation through the formation of networks itself is not new. Yet, the article suggest that scholars should also take into account the interaction of exile with other forms of migration. Although Reformed ministers did not always recognize themselves as refugees or exiles, they were part of a large, transferable network that formed an innovative force after their return to the Low Countries.