D1.8.4: The Kotzé Case

D1.8.4: The Kotzé Case

Newspaper Clippings

Bleek reviews the controversial Kotzé case in which Johannes Jacobus Kotzé, the minister of Darling, was expelled by the Synodical Commission following their rejection of his Heidelberg Catechism. As the Right Reverend Moderator of the Cape Synod, Andrew Murray chastised him for refusing to preach from question 60 of the Catechism, which Kotzé felt was in error. The Synod called his refusal to retract heretical. The Synod's decision to expel Kotzé was not unanimous.

Printed newsprint glued on paper

23 April 1864

Two cut-out columns of printed newsprint mounted on foolscap folio (warped). 'The Kotzé Case' is the title Bleek wrote on the mount.

Kotzé case (concerning Johannes Jacobus Kotzé), Synodical Commission (its proceedings concerning Kotzé), Andrew Murray Jr (Right Reverend Moderator of the Cape Synod), heretic (said of Kotzé by Synod), catechism (Kotzé's interpretation of the Heidelberg catechism), Dutch Reformed Church (orthodox tyranny in the)

Pressed clippings of Victorian current affairs opinion pieces by Wilhelm Bleek. Published in Het Volksblad on Saturday, April 23rd, 1864. The then Dutch Reformed Church ('DRC') minister at Swellendam was likely William Robertson (van Tonder, 2017: 62). Andrew Murray Jr (1828-1917), serving from 1864 to 1871, would have been the DRC's third minister at Cape Town -- alongside Abraham Faure (1822-1867) and Stephanus Petrus Heyns (1839-1873). Dammes Huet was likely the relevant minister at Maritzburg. The ensuing court proceedings for Kotzé v. Murray (1864) ran from August 23rd to September 2nd. Bleek's August 25th (1864) opinion column on Kotzé v. Murray is not among the BC 151 clippings. Kotzé v. Murray showcased a schism in the DRC between the orthodox and 'liberal' reformist theologians (preceded by the Liberal Struggle of the 1850s). Kotzé would later sue the Dutch Reformed Church in a civil court for unjust expulsion.

Van de Sandt de Villiers & Co.