In 1842 a twenty-two year old Catholic woman of nobility (J.W.C. van Gorkum) married a colonel in the Dutch Cavalry. He was not of nobility and was Protestant as well. That must have been the scandal of the century in Roermont. However, the marriage had lasted almost forty years, when the colonel died. Eight years later the woman past away also. She had refused to be laid to rest in the family's large tomb and, instead, had ordered the monument that you can still see today. She lies on one side of the wall, he on the other, still holding hands.
40 years of marriage, and yet at the end it was friction between two differing denominations of the same Christian religion that kept them apart.
Religion, giving people a reason to hate when no other reason exists.
We lived in a small rural SE KS town in the 1980's. It had a populationa of around 2,000 people by a generous estimate.
ReplyDeleteHowevver, it had a minimum of three cemetaries: one for the white Catholics, one for white Protestants but it was divided into mainstream and funamenatalists (not formally, but de facto separation), and then a small - very small - cemetary for blacks.
Jews were not welcome in the area so there were no provisions for them.
The churches were similarly divided. People got along - just. There ewas a thin veneer of civility, but all bets were off if the fundamentalists were offended. So glad to be out of there.