Private Aspects of Public Decisions of the Walloon Consistories in the United Provinces of the Netherlands

The dimension of privacy in the context of early modernity has become an important element of study of daily life at the time. The Livre Synodal contains information regarding the affairs of the French Reformed religious community in the United Provinces. The Livre Synodal is a source not for religious affairs but for matters relating to privacy and the life of the community. Based on two case studies, that of De La Rouille in Middelburg and Huguenin in Leiden and Wesel, the author assesses the perspectives of privacy existing in these, and analyses them through the prism of the so-called heuristic zones of privacy.