Godfried van Mierlo

Godfried van Mierlo, O.P. (February 2, 1518, Helmond – July 28, 1587, Deventer), was a Dominican friar who served as the Bishop of Haarlem and the last direct Abbot of Egmond Abbey from 1570 to 1578.

Van Mierlo was born in the City of Helmond in 1518, then the Duchy of Brabant, part of the Habsburg Netherlands. He entered the Dominican Order in 1533, at the age of 15, in 's-Hertogenbosch. He professed his religious vows as a friar of the Order the following year. After completing his studies, he was ordained a Catholic priest in 1542. He gained the degree of doctor of theology and was appointed as the Prior Provincial for Holland.

Van Mierlo was named the Bishop of Haarlem and the Abbot of Egmond Abbey in March 1570 by Pope Pius V. He was welcomed to that city in early 1571, where he was consecrated a bishop on February 11 of that year in the original Cathedral of St. Bavo by Franciscus van der Velde, the Bishop of Antwerp. The following year, however, on December 4, 1572, the cathedral suffered the iconoclastic destruction of the Beeldenstorm and temporarily became the scene of Calvinist services, which lasted until the end of the Siege of Haarlem. Van Mierlo had to re-sanctify the church in 1573. In Veere, in 1577, Van Mierlo set his seal to the "Satisfactie van Haarlem" wherein he promised to swear allegiance to Willem the Silent rather than Philip II of Spain, on the condition that the Catholics would keep the same rights as Protestants.

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