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oa Dom Bougre en het beeld van de kartuizer monnik in de achttiende-eeuwse Nederlanden
- Amsterdam University Press
- Source: De Achttiende Eeuw, Volume 53, Issue 1, Jan 2021, p. 106 - 126
Abstract
The philosophical-pornographic novel Dom B… portier des chartreux, écrite par lui-même (1740) is a fictitious autobiography by a charterhouse’s porter about the years preceding his joining of the order. The author criticizes the hypocrisy of the regular priests, who do not at all abstain from sex while at the same time disputing the opinion that sexuality was not wanted by God. In the opinion of the charterhouse’s porter, it is rather chastity that corrupts nature as He created it. The book became widely known among refined, libertine readers in the eighteenth-century Dutch Republic. In the same period, Jacob Campo Weyerman published a number of fierce diatribes on the same theme, i.e. against the hypocrite dealing of monks with their own pretended ideals on chastity. This article analyzes Dom B…’s storyline in conjunction with Weyerman’s statements on the carthusians in order to formulate assertions on the ways in which the order was perceived in the years around 1740. The contemporary debates on jansenism constitute a formative contextual theme.