The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

25the pagan-ethical bourgeoisThe Royal Palace on the Dam Square in Amsterdam began its life in 1648 notas a monument to royalty—Holland was officially a republic untilNapoleon—but to the burgerlijk virtues that had triumphed in war andcommerce over Spain during the Eighty Years’ War. 1 It was raised on themud by the Amstel on a forest of Norwegian logs, proverbially 13,659 ofthem. So precise were these bourgeois. Dutch schoolchildren learn it as 1followed by 365 followed by 9. It was among the largest nonecclesiasticalbuildings in Europe, the eighth wonder of the world, as Christian Huygens,the Dutch Sir Philip Sidney, and Joost van den Vondel, the Dutch Shakespeare,both proudly claimed. It was completed in 1665.For a century and a half afterward it was the city hall, the Stadhuis. Itsmain room, judged one of the architectural jewels of Europe, was named DeBurgerzaal, the (full, voting) citizens’ hall. The hall and its building weredesigned on strict Vetruvian principles, an outsized Palladian villa, but builtfor the bourgeois citizens of Amsterdam rather than for an outsizedly richpatriarch of Aquileia or Venetian nobleman. The Dutch historian PieterGeyl calls it “a real citizen’s palace.” 2Larger than the great New Church next door (“new” in 1385), contemporariesspoke of a contest between secular and ecclesiastical power. The alternativeproposal for celebrating the peace was to supply the church with amagnificent new tower. The church-improving proposal was rejected, andthe New Church to this day lacks a proper tower. The Stadhuis served noroyal or religious purpose, no celebration of aristocratic or peasant/Christianvirtues.