“Away with all my pleasant things in the world…”: model death-bed accounts of two young victims of the plague of 1664 in the Dutch town of Leyden

摘要

One of the most successful religious children's books ever written is James Janeway's A Token for Children (1671/1672). This book offers 13 examples of “well-dying” children, including the death-beds of two Dutch children. Details concerning the background of those children are lacking in the English-language historiography of children's literature. Janeway borrowed their stories from a broadsheet, published in English in 1666, describing the “last hours” of Susanna Bickes and her little brother Jacob. They died at the age of 14 and seven, respectively, as victims of the plague that raged in 1664 in the Dutch town of Leyden (Leiden). The account of their pious departures had been published in Holland in 1664 as instructive illustrations (exempla) of the Christian ars moriendi. This paper sheds more light on the historical and biographical backgrounds of the dramatis personae of this little book and on its religious and ecclesiastical context. It then evaluates the pious stories from a pedagogical point of view and finally their international and inter-confessional reception is traced.