16.01.2017 Views

The Expansion of tolerance

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.

Michiel van Groesen<br />

Introduction<br />

Tolerance in the early modern Dutch Republic is a topic that has fascinated<br />

generations <strong>of</strong> scholars, and continues to do so. After decades <strong>of</strong> merciless<br />

laws against religious dissidents under Emperor Charles V (1515-56) and<br />

his son King Philip II, and periods <strong>of</strong> strong persecution, the iconoclastic<br />

movement which swept the Low Countries in 1566, and the subsequent<br />

Revolt against Spain, altered the religious landscape <strong>of</strong> the Netherlands.<br />

<strong>The</strong> pluriformity <strong>of</strong> denominations was acknowledged as a permanent<br />

feature <strong>of</strong> society, while the Union <strong>of</strong> Utrecht in 1579 famously guaranteed<br />

that nobody was to be persecuted or investigated for religious reasons.<br />

Although the rebels and their leader – and champion <strong>of</strong> toleration –<br />

William <strong>of</strong> Orange had to concede the provinces <strong>of</strong> Flanders and Brabant<br />

to the Spanish armies, and hence to Catholicism, in the 1580s, freedom <strong>of</strong><br />

conscience was eventually established in the seven northern provinces that<br />

were to form the Dutch Republic.<br />

<strong>The</strong> Reformed Church, as it became the dominant religious force in this<br />

new and unprecedented political entity, did not acquire the exclusive status<br />

previously enjoyed by the Catholic Church. Calvinists only comprised a<br />

small minority <strong>of</strong> the population <strong>of</strong> the Dutch Republic, and the church was<br />

never able to enforce a position analogous to Protestant churches in some<br />

territories <strong>of</strong> the Holy Roman Empire after the Peace <strong>of</strong> Augsburg. Despite<br />

being the <strong>of</strong>ficial church <strong>of</strong> the United Provinces, it had to accept freedom <strong>of</strong><br />

conscience, and to some extent freedom <strong>of</strong> private worship, for Lutherans,<br />

Anabaptists, and even Catholics. Strict Calvinists, while not advocating<br />

confessional diversity, were well aware <strong>of</strong> the limitations <strong>of</strong> their authority<br />

in religious affairs, with many people in the Dutch Republic rejecting their<br />

beliefs and their insistence on church discipline.<br />

Tolerance, in the long run, proved to be the best and most pragmatic<br />

solution to the problem <strong>of</strong> religious pluriformity, and, as the seventeenth<br />

6

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!