The Expansion of tolerance
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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 />
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