<P> Where justice till the 12th century existed by Kangaroo courts, which often meant Trial by ordeal to establish a person's guilt or innocence, the ecclesiastical and secular powers started in the course of the 12th century to control the justice system . The church rules (in particular by the Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215) and the monarchs maintained the order . At the end of the Middle Ages, the Devotio Moderna (among others Geert Groote and Thomas à Kempis) created a spiritual innovation . In the 14th and 15th centuries, the first calls were heard for religious reform, although inside the Catholic Church . Geert Groote established the Brethren of the Common Life, an influential mystical order, but only under the influence of humanism (among others Erasmus and Dirck Coornhert) changed the Dutch world fundamentally, and started to shift from a theocentric to an anthropocentric worldview . </P> <P> Catholicism dominated Dutch religion until the early 16th century, when the Protestant Reformation began to form . Early Protestantism in the form of Lutheranism did not gain much support among the Dutch, but Calvinism, introduced two decades later, did . It began its spread in the Westhoek and the County of Flanders, where secret sermons were held in the outside, called hagenpreken ("hedgerow orations") in Dutch . Gradually discontent among the Dutch grew, and erupted in 1566 with the so - called Beeldenstorm, a surge of iconoclasm, which quickly spread among all Dutch regions and finally resulted in what would become the Dutch revolt . During the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation an independent Dutch religious tradition began to take shape in the northern parts of the independent Netherlands . </P> <P> The most prominent Dutch theologian was the humanist Desiderius Erasmus . Erasmus worked in the midst of the growing Reformation . He was critical of the abuses within the Catholic Church and called for reform, but he kept his distance from Luther and Melancthon . He continued to recognise the authority of the pope . Erasmus emphasized a middle way, with a deep respect for traditional faith, piety and grace, and rejected Luther's emphasis on faith alone . Erasmus therefore remained a Catholic all his life . In relation to clerical abuses in the Church, Erasmus remained committed to reforming the Church from within . He also held to Catholic doctrines such as that of free will, which some Reformers rejected in favour of the doctrine of predestination . His middle road approach disappointed and even angered scholars in both camps . </P> <P> The 16th and 17th century were characterized by the Protestant Reformation, which greatly influenced the history of the Netherlands, especially in western and northern areas of the country . The first wave of Reformation, initiated by Martin Luther, did not come to the Netherlands . The second wave of the Protestant Reformation, Anabaptism, became very popular in the counties of Holland and Friesland . Anabaptists were very radical and believed that the apocalypse was very near . They refused to live the old way, and began new communities, creating considerable chaos . A prominent Dutch anabaptist was Menno Simons, who initiated the Mennonite church . Another Anabaptist, Jantje van Leyden became the ruler of a newly founded city, New Jerusalem . Anabaptists survived throughout the centuries and they were recognized by the States - General of the Netherlands in 1578 . Institutionalized Dutch baptism stood for a model for both English and American Baptists . </P>

Who ruled the netherlands at the time of the reformation