The Expansion of tolerance

Stuart B. Schwartz
Portuguese Attitudes of Religious
Tolerance in Dutch Brazil
In the history of toleration, the occupation of north-eastern Brazil by the
Dutch West India Company, and especially the period of the government of
Count Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen (1637-44), is sometimes presented as
a kind of Camelot on the Capiberibe, a moment when under the protection
of a humanist governor and an enlightened Renaissance prince, Catholics,
Protestants, and Jews were able to live in relative peace and tranquility, a
peace and harmony that in its concessions to freedom of conscience and of
worship exceeded even that of Amsterdam itself. 1
Toleration, or the multi-confessional state, we should remember was
viewed by most governments at the time as a prescription for internal
dissent and disloyalty. We now know that Johan Maurits did not have an
easy time in enforcing such a policy. He had to struggle continually against
the intransigence of most of the predikanten of the local Calvinist ministry as
well as the demands by the directors of the West India Company for a less
tolerant policy in the colony. Moreover, he faced steadfast opposition to
his government and the presence of the Dutch from many of the resident
Catholic clergy, directed in their opposition by the bishop of Salvador, the
capital of Portuguese Brazil. 2
This doctrinal opposition to Johan Maurits’s pragmatism in matters of
religion was accompanied by the use of rhetoric of conflict that increasingly
became a reality after Johan Maurits was recalled by the West India Company
and an uprising of the Portuguese residents (The War of Divine Liberation,
1645-54) broke out. The ties of political interest and religious affiliation, long
present but now stimulated by wartime rhetoric and propaganda after 1645,
hardened along national and religious lines, and the bellicose discourse of
both sides emphasized the heretical nature of their opponents, disguising to
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