The Janskerk or St. John's Church is a former church in the Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 city of Haarlem

Haarlem

Haarlem is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland, the northern half of Holland, which at one time was the most powerful of the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic...

. Today it houses the North Holland

North Holland

North Holland |West Frisian]]: Noard-Holland) is a province situated on the North Sea in the northwest part of the Netherlands. The provincial capital is Haarlem and its largest city is Amsterdam.-Geography:...

 Archives (Noord-Hollands archief).

History

Gerard van Tetrode

Tetrode (family)

Tetrode, also given as van Tetrode and spelled variously as Tetterode, Tetteroo, Tettero, Thetrode and Tetroe, was a Dutch medieval noble family which later became a prominent patrician family in Holland. The most famous member of this family was the 16th-Century sculptor Willem Danielsz van...

 donated land in 1310 in the centre of Haarlem

Haarlem

Haarlem is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland, the northern half of Holland, which at one time was the most powerful of the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic...

 to build St. John's monastery. Later the St. Barbara gasthuis was founded in 1435 by the Hugo van Assendelft, priest of the St. John's monastery, on the south side of this area. The monastery's church and the old Gasthuis doorway are the only parts of the large complex that still exist today. It was a commandry of the Knights of Saint John and is the oldest church in Haarlem after the St. Bavochurch. The order of St. John was disbanded after the Protestant Reformation

Protestant Reformation

The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...

 and the church reverted to the state in 1625. The Haarlem council sold most of the monastery's land, and much of the art during the following years, which added considerably to the wealth of the city.

In 1936 it became the location of the Haarlem Archives, and it is now the location for the North Holland Archives.

Though many objects from the church were removed from the city by the Order of St. John before the iconoclasm, many have also survived and are in the collection of the Frans Hals Museum

Frans Hals Museum

The Frans Hals Museum is a hofje and municipal museum in Haarlem, Netherlands. The museum was founded in 1862 in the newly renovated former cloister located in the back of the Haarlem city hall known as the Prinsenhof...

 or the Museum Catharijneconvent

Museum Catharijneconvent

The Museum Catharijneconvent is a national museum of religious art in Utrecht. It is located in the former Catharijneconvent, having been sited there since 1979. Its collections include those of the museum of religious art of the Catholic Archbishopric of Utrecht, located in the convent until...

in Utrecht (which contains the former collection of the Haarlem Bishop museum).

External links

• http://www.noord-hollandsarchief.nl/ - Website of the North Holland Archives (in Dutch).