Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age

Cambridge University Press
Edition: Reissue, 12/16/2010
EAN 9780521173193, ISBN10: 0521173191

Paperback, 196 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.1 cm
Language: English

Dutch society has enjoyed a reputation, or notoriety, for permissiveness from the sixteenth century to present times. The Dutch Republic in the Golden Age was the only society that tolerated religious dissenters of all persuasions in early modern Europe, despite being committed to a strictly Calvinist public Church. Professors R. Po-chia Hsia and Henk van Nierop have brought together a group of leading historians from the US, the UK and the Netherlands to probe the history and myth of this Dutch tradition of religious tolerance. This 2002 collection of outstanding essays reconsiders and revises contemporary views of Dutch tolerance. Taken as a whole, the volume's innovative scholarship offers unexpected insights into this important topic in religious and cultural history.

1. Introduction R. Po-Chia Hsia
2. 'Dutch' religious tolerance
celebration and revision Benjamin J. Kaplan
3. Religious tolerance in the United Provinces
from 'case' to 'model' Willem Frijhoff
4. The bond of Christian piety
the individual practice of tolerance in Golden Age Holland Judith Pollmann
5. Religious policies in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic Joke Spaans
6. Paying off the sheriff
strategies of Catholic toleration in Golden Age Holland Christine Kooi
7. Sewing the bailiff in a blanket
Catholics and the law in Holland Henk van Nierop
8. Anabaptism and tolerance
possibilities and limitations Samme Zijlstra
9. Jews and religious toleration in the Dutch Republic Peter van Rooden
10. Religious toleration and radical philosophy in the later Dutch Golden Age Jonathan Israel
11. The politics of intolerance
citizenship and religion in the Dutch Republic (17th–18th centuries) Maarten Prak.