historical and political thought in the seventeenth - RePub - Erasmus ...

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Chapter 4. Times of success. Defending the fatherland
confirmed and augmented these and other privileges granted to the Dutch,
showing a real concern for Dutch interests. 45 Clearly then, Christian IV, who
did his best to obstruct and hinder Dutch trade as much as he could, was the
odd man out.
The Apologia, concentrating as it does on the privileges of the Danish kings,
can therefore not only be seen as a refutation of Heuterus’s wrong allegation,
but also as a somewhat tacit defence put forward to counter the pretensions
of Christian IV. 46 It did so not by questioning Christian IV’s pretended right
to the lordship over the seas adjoining his dominions, but by showing that the
policy of the latest king of Denmark stood in stark contrast with that of his
predecessors who had for centuries been kindly disposed towards the Dutch
whose activities at sea had carried them to the Baltic and the far ends of the
world.
A salient detail is that Boxhorn had copied the five privileges that he quotes
in the Apologia from Pontanus’s History of Denmark. 47 Pontanus had written
the work, which was published in Amsterdam in 1631, at the request of Christian
IV who wanted to add a scholarly flavour to his worldly ambitions. 48 In
the History of Denmark Pontanus had depicted Denmark as the modern centre
of Northern European trade and the Danes as vigilant conquerors and traders,
a picture that he gave colour with a batch of quotations taken from classical
authors and primary sources such as the privileges just mentioned. 49 In the
Apologia, however, these privileges are presented to serve an opposite cause;
praesentium exhibitores Burgenses de Harderwiick regnum nostrum cum suis mercimoni[i]s visitantes, sub
nostra pace suspicimus, & protectione specialiter defendendos … vid. quandocumque & quotiescunque alicubi in
Regno nostro in Skanor vel alibi cum navibus suis applicuerint, naves possint secure exonerare & bona sua sive
in sale sive in pannis laneis vel lineis aut in cera in vario opere fuerint, seu in aliis mercimoniis quibuscunque
quocunque nomine censeantur ad terram & suas bodas vel hospitium pro suae libitu voluntatis libere deducere, &
non debeant per advocatos nostros … nec per aliquos alios impediri.’ The date could be miss read. Valdemar
III was king of Denmark between 1326 and 1329.
45 Ibidem, p. 208. ‘Litteras etiam, ut notat Clarissimus, Doctissimusque Pontanus, cognatus & amicus
noster lib. x. rerum Danicarum, anno millesimo, & supra quadrigentesimum quadragesimo septimo
Christophorus ejus nominis tertius Daniae Rex, non unas evulgari curavit, quibus populorum vicinorum
immunitates ac privilegia voluit asserta. In his Hollandiae Zelandiaeque, Frisiaeque incolis, qui
Balticum mare, hasque Boreae oras navigationibus, suisque commerciis adirent, libere ire, ac redire, suaque
exercere negotia, ac omnibus, quas à majoribus ipsius accepissent, praerogativis ac privilegiis, uti,
frui, idque ob merita, quibus iidem indigenae atque incolae sibi jam dicta regna saepe numero devinxissent,
inque posterum suis officiis demereri, ac sibi devincire possent, clementer concessit.’ Reference to
Johannes Isacius Pontanus, Rerum Danicarum historia libris X (Johannes Janssonius; Amsterdam, 1631),
X, p. 623.
46 The text of the Apologia counts 29 pages; more than seven pages of the Apologia are dedicated to
privileges granted to, or mentioning, Dutch towns and/or citizens of Dutch towns.
47 Following the sequence as they appear in the Apologia, the five privileges can be found at respectively
Pontanus, Rerum Danicarum historia, VIII, p. 499; IX, p. 522; VII, pp. 442-44; X, pp. 629-30; X, p. 623.
48 Skovgaard-Petersen, Historiography at the Court of Christian IV, IV pp. 9-10, 25-32.
49 Ibidem, pp. 144-49. Pontanus’s chronogical account of the history of Denmark runs up to the
year 1448. It counts 638 pages, of which quotations take up about 130 pages. Ibidem, p. 133.