SPIEGEL, Hendrick Laurenszoon

(1549-1612)

Hendrick Laurenszoon Spiegel was a Dutch Renaissance poet and moralist. In the second half of the sixteenth century, Holland emerged as the literary and cultural center of the Low Countries, and Spiegel, a native of Amsterdam, be­came one of the leading literary figures of the Dutch Renaissance. From an early age Spiegel distinguished himself as a poet, and throughout his life his poetry had a serious and sober tone to it. In Amsterdam Spiegel was closely associated with the De Englantier, an established chamber of rhetoric (rederijkerskamer) that functioned as a literary society and a center of literary life. Many of the chambers of rhetoric felt the influence of humanism and the Renaissance in the sixteenth century, and as a leader in De Englantier, Spiegel came under this influence as well.

Spiegel's literary production was quite varied, but he is best known for two major works. The first is the Twe-spraack vande Nederduitsche Letterkunst (Di­alogue on the Dutch language), published in 1584. This important grammar, the first of its kind, was very influential for the development of the Dutch language and helped to establish a standard Dutch for the Netherlands as a whole. Throughout his life Spiegel remained a strong advocate for the Dutch language. Spiegel's other major work, the Hertspiegel (Mirror of the Heart), did not appear until after his death in 1614. This lengthy and not easily accessible poem reflects many of the common elements of the Dutch Renaissance. It was a work of moral philosophy that contained both Christian and Stoic themes, and that em­phasized the role of reason, natural law, and virtue in the moral life. Spiegel's poem clearly demonstrated the influence of the classical tradition as well as his own religious vision that emphasized ethics rather than dogma. Spiegel himself never left the Catholic church and did not support Amsterdam's embrace of the Protestant Reformation in 1578.

Bibliography

R. P. Meijer, Literature ofthe Low Countries, 1971.

Michael A. Hakkenberg