page_title: Willem van Haecht the Elder
section_title: Exile and return
hierarchical_section_title: Willem van Haecht the Elder / Life / Exile and return
caption_attribution_description: In the foreground left Wealth (Divitiae), surrounded by money boxes and stock goods. Dressed as a trader, he holds a purse of money in his right hand, which he presents to a woman and her family. Right in the foreground Avaritia. She is dressed like an old woman and buries her treasures under a tree. In the background on the left the building of a house with hard-working workers everywhere. On the right a slum with beggars. The print has a Latin, French and Dutch caption in verses. The verses praise riches as the use of God's gifts, but they condemn miserliness as a grave sin. Print published in Antwerp by Adriaen Huybrechts (I). Willem van Haecht composed the text. Design by Crispijn van den Broeck engraved by Hans Collaert.
context_page_description: Willem van Haecht, sometimes also Willem van Haecht the elder to distinguish him from the painter Willem van Haecht was a Flemish poet writing in the Dutch language. He was also a cloth merchant, draughtsman, a bookseller and publisher. He was a member since 1552 and from 1558 a factor of the chamber of rhetoric De Violieren in Antwerp. In that role he played an important part in the transition of the development of theatre in Flanders from plays mainly dealing with epic, moralising or allegorising themes towards plays expressing the humanist ideas of the Renaissance. He published the Psalms of the Bible in Dutch verse and also wrote poems and songs.
  A supporter of the Calvinist cause, he fled to Aachen in 1567 when the religious persecution of Calvinists in the Low Countries intensified upon the arrival of the new governor, the Duke of Alva. Van Haecht returned to Antwerp in the early 1570s, but left his home town again after the Fall of Antwerp in 1585 as Calvinists were then forced to choose between renouncing their religious allegiance or leaving the Spanish Netherlands.
context_section_description: With the arrival of the Duke of Alva in the Low Countries in 1567 the fairly tolerant religious climate was replaced by one of persecution of those who no longer adhered to the Catholic faith. Van Haecht fled to Aachen and subsequently to the northern Netherlands.
  Van Haecht returned to Antwerp in the 1670s. When, in 1578 the Lutheran congregation was restored in the city, he started openly practicing his Protestant faith again. In the same year he published engravings which represented the Lutheran doctrine of grace. The following year, his rhymed translation of the Psalms was published for the benefit of the Lutheran congregation of Antwerp. Its editions carry the privilege of two Catholic princes: the first, from 1579, that of the Archduke Mathias, and that of 1583, strangely, that of the Duke of Parma. This indicates that at the time, the followers of the Augsburg Confession in Brabant were hardly oppressed by the Reformers. The second edition also contains an appendix containing a Dutch translation of the Gloria Patris, translated in seven ways.
  Van Haecht was a friend of the Brussels-based humanist and author Johan Baptista Houwaert. He compared Houwaert to Cicero in the opening eulogy of the Lusthof der Maechden written by Houwaert published in 1582 or 1583. In his eulogy van Haecht further states that every sensible man should recognize that Houwaert writes eloquently and excellently.
  The last record about van Haecht dates from 1583. If he was still alive in 1585, he would likely have left Antwerp again, for parts unknown, in 1585 or shortly thereafter, upon the take-over of Antwerp by the Catholics, unless he had already died.
caption: Avarice, the danger of wealth, from a series on poverty and wealth
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