The Expansion of tolerance

Johannes Vingboons, Map of Recife and Mauricia (ca. 1665). This map shows the capital of
Dutch Brazil at the time when it was finally surrendered to the Portuguese in 1654.
contact with the Dutch enemy, and that ‘carried by private interests and relations
they might leave (God forbid) the Holy Faith and separate from the
purity of the Christian religion’. 33
In fact, even after 1641, while relations improved, the number of
conversions was small; but Portuguese appreciation for Johan Maurits’
religious and commercial policies was great. Moradores, Indians and blacks
all cried at his departure. Portuguese settlers still referred to him as ‘our
Saint Anthony’ and years later, in 1647, after Johan Maurits had gone back to
Europe, the very possibility of his returning to Brazil was enough to make
Portuguese policy-makers afraid that he might undercut the rebellion by
attracting the inhabitants of Brazil to his side once again. 34 The joint
inducements of liberty of trade and liberty of conscience posed a real threat.
Once the War of Divine Liberation had begun, the rhetoric of confessional
animosity and national loyalties set the parameters of behavior again
and were later adopted in a nationalist historiography. 35 Under ecclesiastical
urgings from pulpits and on the battlefield, Luso-Brazilian forces and leaders
meted out particularly harsh punishments to Catholic converts, black or
55