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Persisting in the Negative: the Banishment, Exile, and Execution of Gerard Udinck, 1657-1665Beeler, David 13 February 2019 (has links)
In January 1663 the former alderman of the Groningen tailors’ guild, Gerard Udinck, was sentenced to death for his role in orchestrating a series of riots in the city. On the day of his execution, however, Udinck received a pardon in the form of a lifelong banishment. Although initially relieved to be alive, Udinck’s experiences in exile would prove taxing in a variety of ways. He spent the next three years in northwestern Germany, first in Steinfurt and then in Neuenhaus, where he recorded his daily life in a diary. Many of these entries describe a life that was shaped by disparaging gossip, threats of violence, physical assaults, a devastating plague epidemic, the loss of powerful patrons, and financial hardships. In the autumn of 1665 a massive army of mercenaries from Münster, some 20,000 strong, began advancing on the eastern provinces of the Dutch Republic. Fearing for his life and his property, Udinck made the fateful decision to flee back to the Dutch Republic. Soon after, he was arrested by the Groningen authorities, who accused him of conspiring with the Münster army, and subsequently sentenced him to death.
The story that follows explores Udinck’s banishment, exile, and execution using a microhistorical approach. As a microhistory, this dissertation is primarily concerned with the juxtaposition between Udinck’s agency or free will and the broader constraints of seventeenth- century European society. It argues that Udinck’s arrest in 1665 was not simply the result of his possible collusion, stubbornness or naivety, but instead was informed by significant external events, such as the consolidation and monopolization of power in Groningen’s municipal government, as well as an acute sense of panic caused by the military invasion from Münster.
Recognizing that diaries, and other egodocuments, can serve as important counterweights to more formal sources, this dissertation examines Udinck’s story through the lens of his diary entries. Furthermore, these are read against a number of other contemporary sources including trial records, interrogators’ notes, pamphlets, and various accounts of the seventeenth-century Dutch historian, Lieuwe van Aitzema. As such, Udinck’s diary provides a unique glimpse into the life of a man who was under enormous social pressure and heavily critical of the political leaders attempting to profit from his downfall. Udinck criticized these men in his diary entries, in letters, and in conversations in taverns and homes. For the Groningen authorities, Udinck’s words were subversive and threatening to the social order. And with an enemy army literally outside the gates, the leaders of Groningen would not entertain the idea of a second pardon.
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Peindre pour les milieux catholiques dans les Pays-Bas du Nord au XVIIe siècle / Paintings for Catholics in the Dutch Republic during the 17th centuryMarquaille, Léonie 21 November 2015 (has links)
Les enjeux de ce travail sont multiples et s’inscrivent dans le renouvellement de la recherche sur la peinture hollandaise. S’il est courant d’opposer un peu rapidement la Flandre catholique d’une part, associée à une production importante de peinture religieuse, et la Hollande calviniste de l’autre, cantonnée à la peinture de genre, on sait à quel point la situation historique et sociale des Pays-Bas était plus complexe. L’existence de milieux catholiques dans les provinces protestantes a entraîné la production non négligeable de peinture : tableaux religieux pour les églises ou pour la dévotion privée ; portraits de clercs ou de laïcs affichant leur confession ; peintures représentant des allégories de la foi catholique. C’est à l’étude de l’ensemble de cette production que je me suis consacrée, en tentant de cerner les besoins et usages des milieux catholiques, ainsi que les réponses des peintres. Je me suis en particulier efforcée de rendre compte le plus précisément possible de la diversité des situations rencontrées et de la difficulté à les faire entrer dans des schémas. Ainsi en est-il par exemple de la question des liens entre l’appartenance confessionnelle des artistes et celles des commanditaires comme des rapports entre sentiments religieux et production artistique ou encore de l’interprétation catholique d’une œuvre. Mon étude vise à enrichir la connaissance du regard des milieux catholiques sur la peinture à l’âge de la Contre-Réforme, par la mise en lumière d’une situation géographique et socio-politique très singulière, et à nuancer l’opposition traditionnelle entre les Pays-Bas du Sud et du Nord en matière d’œuvres d’art. / This research intends to be part of the Dutch art historiography’s renewal. The traditional opposition between North and South, Calvinism and Catholicism, History painting and Genre painting is no longer relevant. Although the Reformed church was the public church, the choice of personal religion permitted « sects », like Catholicism, Anabaptism, Lutheranism, to remain active. The presence of Catholics in the calvinist Dutch Republic during the 17th century maintains a demand for paintings : religious art works for churches or private devotion, portraits of the clergy or catholic lay, allegory of the catholic faith. I considered not only the expectations of Catholics in terms of painting, but also the responses of the painters whether they were Catholic or not. My aim is to extend the knowlegde of the production and reception of paintings during the age of the Counter-Reformation in an uncommon political and geographic situation.
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Ideologická intervence v raném novověku. Příklad Republiky Spojeného Nizozemí a stavů Kleve-Mark ve 40. a 50. letech 17. století / Ideological Intervention in the Early Modern Period. The Case of the Dutch Republic and the Estates of Cleves-Mark in the 1640s and 1650sKozmanová, Irena January 2015 (has links)
(EN) Ideological Intervention in the Early Modern Period. The Case of the Dutch Republic and the Estates of Cleves-Mark in the 1640s and 1650s 1648 is traditionally considered a major break in international relations. This thesis deals with the Dutch interventions in Cleves-Mark in the period before and after the Treaties of Westphalia and sets out to test some of these traditional assumptions. Rejecting the concept of the "Westphalian" sovereignty, it advocates a relational view based on mutual recognition. Accordingly, it focuses on the negotiations of the three subjects under scrutiny - the Dutch Republic as the intervening power, the Estates of Cleves-Mark as instigators and beneficiaries of the intervention, and the Elector of Brandenburg as the legitimate ruler - about their sovereignty, as they took shape in the arena of the "courtly public", especially in diplomacy. In the first part I argue that the Dutch Republic reacted very conservatively to the pressure to legitimize its role as a new member of the highly monarchical "courtly public". I also examined the impact of the domestic political system and diplomatic ceremonial on the external performance of the Dutch Republic, thereby uncovering the particular role of the Province of Gelderland. In three case studies of direct diplomatic...
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<em>La Grande Arche des Fugitifs?,/i> Huguenots in the Dutch Republic After 1685Walker, Michael Joseph 12 December 2011 (has links) (PDF)
In the seventeenth century, many refugees saw the United Provinces of the Netherlands as a promised land—a gathering ark, or in French, arche. In fact, Pierre Bayle called it, "la grande arche des fugitifs." This thesis shows the reception of one particular group of Protestant refugees, the Huguenots, who migrated to the Netherlands because of Catholic confessionalization in France, especially after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The thesis offers two case studies—one of the acceptance of Huguenot clergymen and one of the mixed reception of refugee radical and philosopher Pierre Bayle—in order to add nuance to existing knowledge and understanding of the Huguenot diaspora, and of the nature of tolerance in the Dutch Republic, especially in regard to the Dutch Reformed Church. Dutch society, and especially the Reformed Church, welcomed the Huguenot refugees because of their similar religious beliefs and the economic and cultural benefits they brought with them. Particularly following the 1685 Revocation, refugees fleeing France settled securely in the Republic amongst the Walloons, descendants of refugees already settled there, and worshiped in prosperity and peace within the Walloon Church, a French-speaking arm of the Dutch Reformed Church. Using synodal records, this thesis examines the relationships between refugee pastors and the established Walloon leaders and finds that there was a bond of acceptance between the two groups of clergy, motivated by the desire for orthodoxy in religious belief, or in other words, by a Reformed desire for confessionalization"”more Reformed adherents also made Dutch society more Reformed. Huguenots were also able to maintain a measure of French identity while still being integrated into Dutch society. The second chapter shows the limits of Dutch tolerance by examining the Netherlandish experience of Pierre Bayle, a Huguenot refugee and philosopher. His experience was typical for a controversial philosopher and refugee in the Netherlands because he endured intolerance from certain religious authorities, but also received protection from other moderate religious officials and university and civic authorities. Bayle expressed sentiments that the Netherlands was a safe haven, or ark, for refugees, even though he endured censure from church officials. Their aims were to make the community's religious convictions more uniform, and some leaders of the Dutch Reformed Church saw Bayle's ideas as threats to that—to confessionalization. In the same vein as Benjamin Kaplan's Divided By Faith, this thesis shows that tolerance certainly existed in the Republic, but was more complicated than Bayle and others suggested. Indeed, efforts that thwarted confessionalization were met with intolerance by the Dutch Reformed Church. This thesis also contributes to Huguenot studies by discussing the relationships of refugees to their host community in the Dutch Republic.
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Les compagnons de Mercure. Écrire et publier l'information politique européenne. Provinces-Unies - France (1680-1740) / « Les Compagnons de Mercure ». Writing and publishing European political news Dutch Republic – France (1680-1740)Brétéché, Marion 24 November 2012 (has links)
Cette étude trouve son origine dans un double étonnement. Les années 1680-1740 sont marquées par la publication aux Provinces-Unies d’ouvrages en français qualifiés d’« historiques » et consacrés à l’actualité politique européenne immédiate et à son analyse. Ce phénomène trouve sa plus belle illustration dans la parution, à Leyde, à la fin du mois de juillet 1686, de l’Histoire abrégée de l’Europe, le premier mensuel politique de langue française. À l’apparition de cette nouvelle forme éditoriale vouée à un bel avenir, que nous désignons sous le qualificatif de « mercures historiques et politiques », s’ajoute l’impression d’Histoires consacrées aux évènements récents mais aussi de collections diplomatiques, recueils qui compilent les pièces ayant trait aux relations internationales. Or, ces trois types d’ouvrages sont rédigés par les mêmes auteurs, une douzaine d’exilés français installés en Hollande qui n’avaient rien publié avant leur départ de France. Ce corpus qualifié d’« histoire du temps présent européen » permet de saisir comment, dans la Hollande des années 1680-1740, publier l’actualité politique est devenu une profession caractérisée par des pratiques d’écriture et des compétences valorisables auprès du public mais également auprès des autorités politiques grâce à l’entretien de correspondances. En observant comment ces hommes qui s’érigent en spécialistes ont participé à la constitution d’un marché de l’information politique, cette étude analyse les procédés par lesquels ils ont rendu publics la politique et ses instruments et interroge les implications qu’un tel phénomène éditorial peut induire sur le rapport des lecteurs à l’action des gouvernements. / This study started from two surprising facts. Between 1680 and 1740, numerous works, written in French and published in the Dutch Republic, were labeled “historical” and devoted to describing and analyzing current European political events. The best example of this phenomenon is the publication in Leyden in late July 1686 of the “Histoire abrégée de l’Europe”, the first political monthly in French. This new editorial format (which we call “mercures historiques et politiques”) emerged was to know a great success. At the same time, some Histoires dealing with current events were also printed, as well as diplomatic collections, compiling all the pieces related to international relations. In fact all three types of books were penned by the same people, a dozen of exiled Frenchmen living in Holland who had never published anything before leaving France.These several printings, called “histoire du temps present européen” allow us to understand how, in late 17th and early 18th century Holland, writing about current political affairs turned into an profession, characterized by writing practices and skills that can help these authors to live by their pen, thanks to their public via several editorial media, and thanks the political authorities with which they entertained correspondences. By studying how these self-styled “specialists” have contributed to the emergence of a market for political information, I will analyze the processes they used to publicize political life and its instruments, and investigate the implications of this phenomenon on the way readers perceive the government’s action.
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Religious Nonconformity and cultural Dynamics: The Case of the Dutch CollegiantsRicci, Rosa 27 April 2015 (has links) (PDF)
Rosa Ricci
Summary of the PHD Dissertation: Religious Nonconformity and cultural Dynamics: The Case of the Dutch Collegiants
There is ample reason to engage in research around the Collegiants, a minority religious movement in the Netherlands of the 17th century. An exploration of this topic can be interesting not only for a contribution to the history of Religion but also to understand the development of some central concept in the early modernity. Prominent, in this research, is the question that initially stirred my personal interest in the Collegiantism; i.e. to define and understand the religious and cultural background that represents the practical field of confrontation of Baruch Spinoza\'s philosophy. This historiographical question had the purpose of highlighting the relationship between Spinoza and the religious movements of his time in order to fully understand the public to whom he addressed his texts. Collegiants, however, constitute an interesting field of research not only for the study of Spinoza, but widely to understand the cultural and social dynamic of the Dutch Golden Age, a backdrop against which emerged a new idea of religion. This dissertation is not exploring a curiosity or an inconsistent exception in the history of the 17th century, but rather the centrality of a group that was influenced by and largely influenced its Dutch social, political and religious context.
One of the major problems in capturing the significance of the Collegiants arises from the difficulty in defining this movement, which chose never to formulate a confession of faith and consciously refused to be classified within a specific Church, sect, or congregation. The name, Collegiants, was not the consequence of an active choice but a label that arose, together with that of Rijnsburgers, in the polemic pamphlets of the epoch. The difficulties to define such elusive religious group make, however, the Collegiants a fascinating field of research. In this dissertation the Collegaints are termed a “movement” in order to emphasize their explicit lacks of norms or model and to highlight the continual change and redefinition of their religious identity. This process can be properly defined using Deleuze\'s concept of becoming minorities:
Les minorités et les majorités ne se distinguent pas par le nombre. Une minorité peut être plus nombreuse qu\'une majorité. Ce qui définit la majorité, c\'est un modèle auquel il faut être conforme [...] Tandis qu\'une minorité n\'a pas de modèle, c\'est un devenir, un processus [...] Quand une minorité se crée des modèles, c\'est parce qu\'elle veut devenir majoritaire, et c\'est sans doute inévitable pour sa survie ou son salut.
This definition can help us to see both the positive and the productive side of the Collegiant movement, even thought it defined itself negatively in order to protest against the institutional Church and normative religion. The Collegiants were involved in this process of “devenir minoritaire” in a highly conscious way. They decided willfully to avoid strict affiliation to Churches or congregations and criticized explicitly the necessity of an identitarian definition. It can hardly be denied, indeed, that the religious reflection of the Collegiants was characterized by the conscientious refusal to construct a model or a norm to which they could refer. In this dissertation the term “minority” will therefore be used, always in reference to this concept, without drawing too much stress to the effective number of the Collegiants\' members. This question appear, indeed, misleading because it does not take into account the position that Collegiants\' member occupied in the economic, political and intellectual life of the United Provinces. It is the case of a group which, indeed, demonstrated in several occasions its deep influence in the Dutch religious life. Collegiants\' continuous efforts towards de-institutionalization and their aspiration to an egalitarian and democratic religious life have to be conceived as an invitation to their coeval confessions, to undertake the way of evolving minorities renouncing whichever exclusivity and authority.
The articulation of the Collegiants\' proposal can be appreciated by studying the different lines of thought that emerged clearly from their texts. Most of Collegiants\' publications were polemical or written to answer specific accusations. Within the enormous number of sources that can be included in Collegiants\' works emerge a limited number of arguments. The question of religious organization, tolerance, freedom of speech and the epistemological approach in reading the Scriptures; these arguments can be taken as guidelines to understanding and defining the nature of the movement. These sources present arguments and concepts that we can take to be the Collegiants\' stance on religious life and belief. Some arguments, however, emerged with particularly force because of the sanction of the Church orthodoxy. Tolerance, free-prophecy and egalitarian and anti-authoritarian tendencies were sensitive points to which the Church or Congregations reacted with particularly vehemence, sensing a threat to their institutional power.
The Chapter 5 of this dissertation are dedicated to the enumeration of these arguments. Each chapter presents a specific theoretical core and question. However the chapters are not self-conclusive because the various problematics encountered in the study of Collegiants overlap each other in continuous cross-reference and this gives rise to a kaleidoscopic effect. The concepts debated in this dissertation can be fully understood only in relation to each other, as they emerge to construct a semantic constellation useful to their contextualization. Each chapter, furthermore, comes to focus on one or more texts that are considered exemplary or representative of a particular tendency in the Collegiants´history. This methodology wants to underline how the constant redefinition of the Collegiants\' identity is always a matter of personal as well as collective choice, of internal debate and external polemic.
An emphasis on the intentionality of Collegiants\' behaviour is particularly important in understanding which specific choice they made to contrast the authoritarian and exclusive vision of the religious life. These choices are well reflected in the use of a specific vocabulary and in the emergence of specific concepts that can be considered as key guideline to identifying some stable points in the shifting nature of the Collegiants.
The first chapter of this dissertation delineates an initial general history of the movement together with the ground on which the Collegiants built their vision of belief: the question about Church organization. The chapter refers directly to the practical organization of the Collegiant movement, an egalitarian and anti-charismatic religious life which involved considerations of power and identity. This specific position, with its high level of nonexclusivity and anticharismatic consciousness, makes Collegiants movement an exception in the pluralist world of 17th century Holland and marked their difference to the constellation of Dutch reformation. Although some Collegiants\' demeanor mirrored the progressive individualization of cults and beliefs, they accorded central importance to the community, the context in which their religious ideal of confrontation and discussion was realized.
The first attempt to write an exhaustive history of the rise and development of the Rijnsburgers was made by a Remonstrant preacher, Paschier de Fijne. He was the first opponent of the Collegiants; his book, Kort, waerachtigh, en getrouw Varhael van het eerste Begin en Opkomen van de Nieuwe Sekte der Propheten ofte Rynsburgers in het dorp Warmont anno 1619 en 1620 (Brief, truthful, and faithful history of the beginning and origin of the new sect of the Prophet of Rijnsburg in the village of Warmont), published anonymously in 1671 by his son, expresses his critical position vis à vis the Rijnsburgers. Besides representing the first opposition to the Collegiants, this work constitutes an important source because the author attended the first Collegiant\' assembly (the Rijnsburgers\' vergadering). In particular it describes the way in which this first meeting took place. For the first complete history of the Collegiant movement, however, we have to wait until 1775 when the Histoire der Rijnburgsche Vergadering (History of Rijnsburg\'s assembly), written by the Collegiant Elias van Nijmegen, appeared in Rotterdam. Both these sources are key instruments for reconstructing and understanding how Collegiants organized their assemblies, and how they achieved an acharismatic meeting, through debate and free-exegesis. These testimonies, which embrace a whole century, have, however, the demerit of representing the Collegiant\' vergadering (assembly) as an eccentric but defined ritual. What emerges, on the other hand, from Collegiants internal debate is that the conduct of the meeting supper, the organization of religious life, the definition of free-exegesis and the limitation of free speech were all subject to constant argument and discussion inside the movement. These concerns emerge in a fragmentary way in the manifold sources that discuss the nature of free-prophecy, tolerance and ecclesiology. In the polemic with Bredenburg, the Bredenburgse twisten, the debate about tolerance involved the discussion of women’s role in the vergadering and the reflections on free-prophecy indirectly interrogate the charismatic nature of the organization.
Another important characteristic of the Collegiant\' movement, delineate in the first chapter, is the autonomous and independent development of the single collegia. City autonomy and the different religious and social contexts in which the Rijnsburger vergadering took root led to large-scale differentiation. The capacity of Collegiants to survive for more than a century with their refusal of normativity and authoritarian organization was substantially due to the penetration of the Collegiants\' arguments into the different confessions. This deep influence, in particular in the Mennonite and Remonstrant communities, defined the nature of the Collegiants, especially in some cities, as a stream inside institutionalized Churches. Because the collegia were open to all Christians, without limitation, even including Socinians and Catholics, most of the participants were also members of structured Churches, congregations or sects. In Amsterdam this phenomenon was particularly evident and the penetration of Collegiants\' argument in the Flemish community through Galenus Abrahamsz led to one of the most important schisms in the Mennonite history in the United Provinces. In other cities such as Leiden or Haarlem, the existence of cultural circles and other forms of nonreligious association constituted the basis for the spread of Collegiantism. It was only in Rijnsburg, the village in which the movement first emerged, that a common house was built, after 1640, to host the twice yearly Collegiant national vergadering.
The practical organization of the Collegiants, as has been stated, represents the foundation on which noncharismatic ecclesiology and anticonfessional ideals were constructed. With the historical background of the first chapter it is then possible to discuss the main religious and political tendencies inside the movement.
The second chapter of this dissertation, following the issue of religious organization discussed in the first chapter, deals with the principles of free-prophecy, Biblical exegesis, and Collegiants ecclesiology. The central concept examined in this chapter is nonconformity analysed in its historical development of England and the Netherlands. This chapter suggests that nonconformity as religious phenomenon was an elaboration and transformation of the anti-confessional and anti-clerical thought that emerged in the 16th century with the radical Reformation. The inception of nonconformity in the Netherlands is indicated by the transformation of the debate about Nicodemism, following Coornhert\'s defense of religious dissimulation and indifferentism. Nicodemism was indeed considered, in the early 16th century, as necessary behavior to avoid pointless martyrdom and persecution, utilized especially by the crypto-reformed in Catholic countries such as Italy and Spain. The diffusion of this conduct among Catholics in reformed countries but, principally, the diffusion and justification of Nicodemism in the United Provinces, where inquisitorial control and confessional repression presented a relative risk after the revolt against Spain, testify of the new meaning that this behaviour took on in the late 16th century. Nicodemism, as Coornhert\'s position shows, became the justification of anticonfessionalism as conscious behaviour, with the possibility of openly criticizing rituals and ceremonies as for achieving salvation.
In this chapter particular attention is paid to the consciousness and the open dimension of this behavior. The neglect of dissimulation and the necessity of making public personal religious sentiments, is one of the basic elements in the change between Nicodemism and nonconformity. The nonconformists acquired the anticonfessional and anticlerical content of Nicodemism, but added a principal characteristic: the veridiction. The veridiction represents the necessity of telling the truth about personal belief and religious conscience, but also institutes the core of reality in the conformity between internal belief and external behavior. These elements were present in both English and Dutch nonconformity, which developed, however, into different and sometimes opposite ecclesiology. In the English case, external nonconformity to the dominant Church and the necessity of openly showing belief led to a demand for exclusivity and a process of individualization rooted in the juridical meaning of nonconformity. Despite the turning of the debate around the necessity of free-conscience, the understanding of nonconformity as a refusal of secular world and the attempt of Baxter to disconnect the debate around nonconformity to a juridical question, the English debate never developed into a criticism of the Church\'s organization or in the necessity of a democratization of the religious life, which was, on the contrary, dominant among the Collegiants.
The central text in the history of Collegiantism and in the Dutch definition of nonconformity is Galenus Abrahamsz and David Spruyt\'s XIX Artikelen. This text was conceived, from the very beginning, as a collective discussion about the nature and the sense of a religious community in the absence of Holy Gifts. Collegiants give to the term nonconformity a specific meaning which designates the absence of conformity to the first apostolic Church and the end of the extraordinaries gifts of the Holy Spirit. This radical statement caused a reaction among the orthodox members of the Mennonites and Quakers, which see in the absence of Holy inspiration a complete secularization of the religious community. Nonconformity assumed therefore for the Collegiants a double meaning: on one side it was an elaboration of anticonfessional criticism through the statement of the absence of holy influence on the religious life, on another side it represented a deep criticism of priestly authority conceived as a secularized power acting as constraint of consciences. The absence of Holy Gifts was, for the Collegiants, the demonstration that no Church or Congregation could pretend to be the true or original one. The reaction of Dutch orthodoxy appears, indeed, completely justified, because Collegiants\' religious nonconformity presents itself not only as conscious antiauthoritarian criticism but also as a statement of the full secularization of the Church. Nonconformity was, for Abrahamsz and Spruyt, not only an unavoidable state, but also a necessary behavior to unmask the inauthentic religious life. This position represented the core of Collegiants\' practice, the reason for their continuous redefinition and, on the same level, for their refusal of any type of identification. The recognition of the secularized status of common religious life arose among the Collegiants accompanied by an ample debate about free-prophecy and Bible exegesis, stressing the possibility of an individual form of salvation.
A central role, in this direction, was played by reflection on the veridiction as a form of conformity between the inward conscience and the external behavior. Although there emerged from the sources a controversial statement about how to approach and read the Scriptures, through the free-prophecy the Collegiants organized a form of collective exegesis that had its principal aim to avoid charismatic and authoritarian leadership but also to realize a form of community close to the first apostolic Church. The communitarian discussion also involved a debate on salvation, which had no more to be tied to the simple membership in a confession but developed as an articulated discussion on the significance of the ethical and religious life. A good Christian had to reinterpret and bring alive the first teaching of the Gospel, which can be summarized as love for others and in the propagation of tolerance as ethical and interpersonal behavior.
Collegiants\' reflections on religious life, organization of communities, and their continuous effort to maintain equal relations in the absence of charismatic gifts in the Church institution, never turn to consideration of society or political forms. This absence was even more significant in a cultural and social context in which theological questions involved directly or indirectly political questions. In the same period, furthermore, Hobbes\' reflections on jusnaturalism challenge for the first time the divine legitimacy of political power, establishing the basis of a new vision of the political community. Collegiants understood religious community as deprived from any form of divine inspiration and conceived it as a human association, nevertheless they never outline a political parallelism to this situation. The most evident reason of this absence is probably the lack of a strong monarchy in the 17th century United Provinces. However the relationship between secular and religious ideology did not fail and was well summarized by the situation after the Synod of Dordrecht, which created a rupture in Dutch society with the consequent convergence of the religious position with the political one. The intervention of Grotius in favor of the Arminian party testified to a clear identification between theological opposition to predestination (which meant a challenge to Calvinist orthodoxy) and antimonarchical opinion. This fracture remained invisible in Collegiants sources that debated the secularization of Churches and consider religious congregations as human institutions, but never tried to define the legitimacy of political institutions. It is possible, however, to find in the history of the Collegiants one significant exception: Cornelius Plockhoy\'s attempt to promote a religious-social project in the Dutch colonies of Delaware .
Plockhoy\'s work illuminates the relationship and the fruitful parallels that it is possible to make between the United Provinces and England, especially during the time of the Cromwellian Commonwealth. Plockhoy\'s most significant works were written, indeed, in England, some years before the fail of Cromwell, and testify to a particular social and political engagement in the construction and definition of a community with a religious basis. It is interesting to note that only after the English experience did Plockhoy returned to Holland, following the end of the Commonwealth, to propose a similar project to the city of Amsterdam. This chapter suggests an analysis of his English and Dutch sources, stressing the differences and the modifications to his proposal. The importance of this author lies in the possibility of deducing from his position a possible Collegiant\' thinking on politics and social organization. This contribution is certainly not descriptive of Collegiantism as a whole but represents the only explicit trace of the modification of Rijnsburger\'s religious reflections on the secular field.
The description of Plockhoy\'s community in many respects echoes a certain irenicism sourced form the reading of Rosicrucian text; however it reflets and refers principally to his Collegiant experience . Although Plockhoy\'s account of the community project is never exclusively religious, the confessional element appears as prominently in both his Dutch and English projects. His religious and political project emerge clearly from his letters to Cromwell: it is essentially devoted to resolving the problem of religious conflict and the disturbance of social peace. It is, indeed, clear that Plockhoy\'s aim was not that of describing an ideal society or forming a separate community in order to conserve a purist religious ideal, but to propose a paradigmatic alternative to the religious turmoil and the social injustices of his time. The relation between political and religious arguments in Plockhoy\'s solution to religious turmoil highlights the interconnection between religious tolerance and colonial criticism, social injustice and authoritarianism. Plockhoy\'s meticulous pedagogic description of his project, his underlining of the necessity of economic independence for women and the possibility of them participating in collective work are expressions of an outlook that includes an aware judgment of his contemporary society. The last part of this chapter is dedicated to criticizes two approaches dominant in the literature about Plockhoy: one is the description of his project as a classical form of Utopia the other one is the reading of the Delaware religious community interpreted as a triumph of the work ethic.
The third chapter of this dissertation deals with the tolerance, a fundamental and central concept to understand the nature of the Collegiants. It is our intention to show how during the 17th century there emerged in the Netherlands, in the religious context, a new concept of tolerance inspired by Castellio\'s works. The publication and translation, in the first half of the 17th century, of some of Castellio\'s work testify to the major interest that the French author had in the United Provinces, especially for the oppositors to the intolerant and orthodox Calvinist tradition. For the Collegiants, Castellio represented a predecessor in the struggle for religious peace. His work against the persecution of the heretics, supported by Biblical argumentation, represented a constant source of inspiration for the partisan of religious toleration. As suggested by Voogt , Castellio\'s deconstruction of the concept of heresy, as it was used by the Calvinist orthodoxy, in order to redefined it to signify a person who acts and believes differently from the mainstream, represented Collegiants\' basis to rethink the concepts of rationality and truth.
The peculiarity of the Dutch concept of vedraagzaamheid (tolerance), in opposition to how tolerance was defined and discussed in the European mainstream debate, was certainly due to the elements of reciprocity and mutuality that this particular form of tolerance included. In the 17th century, tolerance (especially religious tolerance) was used to label negative behavior, to identify indifferentism or libertinism, intolerance was, on the contrary, a sign of unity, integrity, and orthodoxy. Furthermore, arguments for religious intolerance were justified by the biblical example of the Mosaic theocracy, while religious tolerance represented the interests of the emerging mercantile elite, which supported the Republican experiment and advocated cities\' autonomy. Tolerance became, in the 17th century, a concept contested because of its pejorative meaning; the progressive introduction of the pro-tolerance position, in order to contrast with this negative predominant vision, supported the idea that tolerance was not a menace to the integrity and peace of the Dutch Republic but the principal reason for its prosperity. The concept of tolerance became, afterwards, the battle-field on which the best juridical, economical and political form of the United Provinces was decided.
The penetration of this debate about tolerance and intolerance in the Collegiants movement was adapted into an anticonfessional and irenic orientation focusing on religious and social peace. The defense of an unlimited and mutual tolerance represented, for the Collegiants, a proposal of pacification in the pluralistic dimension of the Dutch religious life, which was perceived, by their coeval, as a source of division and instability. The practice of nonexclusive tolerance and the extensive reception of different confessions inside the movement was a pragmatic attempt to find a solution to the problematic turbulence inside the Doopsgezinden and more generally to the religious disputations in the United Provinces. The central figure investigating the conduct and the limits of this debate inside the Collegiants was Jan Bredenburg. This chapter will, indeed, analyze the trouble arising from Bredenburg\'s position on tolerance and his extensive use of Spinozist concepts and language. This debate about the extension and the limits of tolerance involved, indirectly and directly, a discussion regarding religious organization, freedom of speech, and charismatic authority.
In his works, Bredenburg, with his continuous redefinition of the discussion about tolerance, shows all the ambiguity and ambivalence of this term. Unlimited and mutual tolerance finds its limits in the continuous exigence of a normative delimitation of it, in the distinction of necessary and unnecessary dogma, but also, in a trivial way, in the impossibility of tolerating the intolerant. In the case of the Collegiants the adversaries of the unlimited and mutual tolerance undermined Collegiants\' nonexclusivism with their proposals to identify with a confession of faith. Pressures in the direction of identification and exclusivism were, however, only a part of the tolerance problem. With the “Bredenburgse Twisten” (Bredenburg controversy) the limits and the ambiguities of the concept of tolerance and the limits of the penetration of Spinoza\'s philosophy in Collegiant\' movement become clear. These limits concerned especially the necessity and priority of contrasting skeptical and atheist tendencies in the field of belief.
The final chapter of this dissertation is dedicated to a question that underlines the problems of anticonfessionalism, tolerance, and secularization. The question asked in this conclusive part regards the possibility to trace the emergence of rational argument in Collegiants understanding of the divinity. To answer this question it was necessary to make some preliminary remarks about the diffusion and vernacularization of Descartes\' and Spinoza\'s philosophies in the 17th century Netherlands. Short descriptions of the two most influential systems of thought of the epoch are two methodological steps useful in understanding not only the degree of penetration of these philosophies into Collegiants but also the nature and meaning of the concept of rationality at that time.
The definition of the relationship with the divinity, after the XIX Arikelen\'s statement of the unholy Church, is represented, in the history of the Collegiant movement, by a precise moment: the discussion and dispute between the Rijnsburgers and the Quaker missionaries in the United Provinces. The debate with the Quakers assumes a specific meaning not only because it shows the proximity and similarity between the two religious movements but also because it testifies to the emergence of a central concept: the light. Central text to determine the nature of this relationship and to define the meaning that for the Collegiants had the concept of light, is Balling´s Het licht op den Kandelaar (The Light on the Candlestick). Balling\'s answer to Quakers represents a penetration of Spinozist language into the definition of religion as knowledge of God but also a singular affinity and fascination for the Quakers\' concept of light. The question of contact with the divinity appears in the text as an individual experience, not mediated by any human instrument via language or the empirical experience. The approach to God is certainly described as an epistemological progression but the perfect comprehension of God is defined with the vocabulary of the affections rather than as full rational understanding. This text is certainly highly controversial and the continuous shift between philosophical and Quakers\' language make its interpretation problematic. Het licht op den Kandelaar reflects Collegiants\' position as a sum of philosophical argumentation, mysticism, and the irreconcilable reference to God as an infinite and unknowable creature. What emerges with force in the analysis of this source is the impossibility of understanding Balling\'s description of the relationship with God as purely rational. Balling, however, stresses the possibility of the constant perfectionism of human knowledge and self-emancipation and, furthermore, proposes new terms for religious thought. What he calls the “true religion” is described as ethical behavior constructed with the combination of tolerance, equal participation in the religious life, and the refusal to countenance formal conformism to Church institutions. Collegiants\' acceptance of a Church without God does not necessary involve a pure absence of divine work, on the contrary, the proximity to God is progressively researched in an interior sphere which involve a process of knowledge. The legitimacy of the “Truth” is, then, given no more by the transcendental gift of the divinity but in the accordance of personal conviction and ethical behavior, the religion is, indeed, redefined according to these terms. True religion is, for Balling, a continuous inquiry into the natural and internal principle that each individual possesses in order to achieve full comprehension of God\'s word. This statement testify not only of a new conception of the Religion but also reaffirm the minoritaire core of Collegiants´nature; religion, in their understanding, is not more matter of concord, unity, orthodoxy but source of knowledge, problematization and continuous questioning about its own identity.
Nonconformity and cultural dynamics: some preliminary remarks
Before starting the presentation of the Collegiants\' argument about tolerance, Church organization, and rationalism, to fully understand some choices and the approach of this dissertation, and to comprehend how Collegiants sources have been read, some methodological remarks are necessaries about the emergence and development of the historical phenomenon called nonconformity and how was it received and transformed in 17th century Holland. Nonconformity is, as will be shown, one of the central concepts developed by the Collegiants to justify their antiauthoritarianism and anticonfessionalism. The concept appears more interesting if we look at the number of meanings and social phenomena that it includes. It first developed in England in the juridical context and was named in the later 17th century as a defined religious movement that opposed the Act of Uniformity. In the English sources it is possible to retrace the history of this concept, demonstrating how the significance and arguments regarding nonconformity changed in one hundred years. Not far from England, in the United Provinces, the evolution of the concept of nonconformity follows another route, giving rise to radically differe
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Religious Nonconformity and cultural Dynamics: The Case of the Dutch CollegiantsRicci, Rosa 13 June 2014 (has links)
Rosa Ricci
Summary of the PHD Dissertation: Religious Nonconformity and cultural Dynamics: The Case of the Dutch Collegiants
There is ample reason to engage in research around the Collegiants, a minority religious movement in the Netherlands of the 17th century. An exploration of this topic can be interesting not only for a contribution to the history of Religion but also to understand the development of some central concept in the early modernity. Prominent, in this research, is the question that initially stirred my personal interest in the Collegiantism; i.e. to define and understand the religious and cultural background that represents the practical field of confrontation of Baruch Spinoza\''s philosophy. This historiographical question had the purpose of highlighting the relationship between Spinoza and the religious movements of his time in order to fully understand the public to whom he addressed his texts. Collegiants, however, constitute an interesting field of research not only for the study of Spinoza, but widely to understand the cultural and social dynamic of the Dutch Golden Age, a backdrop against which emerged a new idea of religion. This dissertation is not exploring a curiosity or an inconsistent exception in the history of the 17th century, but rather the centrality of a group that was influenced by and largely influenced its Dutch social, political and religious context.
One of the major problems in capturing the significance of the Collegiants arises from the difficulty in defining this movement, which chose never to formulate a confession of faith and consciously refused to be classified within a specific Church, sect, or congregation. The name, Collegiants, was not the consequence of an active choice but a label that arose, together with that of Rijnsburgers, in the polemic pamphlets of the epoch. The difficulties to define such elusive religious group make, however, the Collegiants a fascinating field of research. In this dissertation the Collegaints are termed a “movement” in order to emphasize their explicit lacks of norms or model and to highlight the continual change and redefinition of their religious identity. This process can be properly defined using Deleuze\''s concept of becoming minorities:
Les minorités et les majorités ne se distinguent pas par le nombre. Une minorité peut être plus nombreuse qu\''une majorité. Ce qui définit la majorité, c\''est un modèle auquel il faut être conforme [...] Tandis qu\''une minorité n\''a pas de modèle, c\''est un devenir, un processus [...] Quand une minorité se crée des modèles, c\''est parce qu\''elle veut devenir majoritaire, et c\''est sans doute inévitable pour sa survie ou son salut.
This definition can help us to see both the positive and the productive side of the Collegiant movement, even thought it defined itself negatively in order to protest against the institutional Church and normative religion. The Collegiants were involved in this process of “devenir minoritaire” in a highly conscious way. They decided willfully to avoid strict affiliation to Churches or congregations and criticized explicitly the necessity of an identitarian definition. It can hardly be denied, indeed, that the religious reflection of the Collegiants was characterized by the conscientious refusal to construct a model or a norm to which they could refer. In this dissertation the term “minority” will therefore be used, always in reference to this concept, without drawing too much stress to the effective number of the Collegiants\'' members. This question appear, indeed, misleading because it does not take into account the position that Collegiants\'' member occupied in the economic, political and intellectual life of the United Provinces. It is the case of a group which, indeed, demonstrated in several occasions its deep influence in the Dutch religious life. Collegiants\'' continuous efforts towards de-institutionalization and their aspiration to an egalitarian and democratic religious life have to be conceived as an invitation to their coeval confessions, to undertake the way of evolving minorities renouncing whichever exclusivity and authority.
The articulation of the Collegiants\'' proposal can be appreciated by studying the different lines of thought that emerged clearly from their texts. Most of Collegiants\'' publications were polemical or written to answer specific accusations. Within the enormous number of sources that can be included in Collegiants\'' works emerge a limited number of arguments. The question of religious organization, tolerance, freedom of speech and the epistemological approach in reading the Scriptures; these arguments can be taken as guidelines to understanding and defining the nature of the movement. These sources present arguments and concepts that we can take to be the Collegiants\'' stance on religious life and belief. Some arguments, however, emerged with particularly force because of the sanction of the Church orthodoxy. Tolerance, free-prophecy and egalitarian and anti-authoritarian tendencies were sensitive points to which the Church or Congregations reacted with particularly vehemence, sensing a threat to their institutional power.
The Chapter 5 of this dissertation are dedicated to the enumeration of these arguments. Each chapter presents a specific theoretical core and question. However the chapters are not self-conclusive because the various problematics encountered in the study of Collegiants overlap each other in continuous cross-reference and this gives rise to a kaleidoscopic effect. The concepts debated in this dissertation can be fully understood only in relation to each other, as they emerge to construct a semantic constellation useful to their contextualization. Each chapter, furthermore, comes to focus on one or more texts that are considered exemplary or representative of a particular tendency in the Collegiants´history. This methodology wants to underline how the constant redefinition of the Collegiants\'' identity is always a matter of personal as well as collective choice, of internal debate and external polemic.
An emphasis on the intentionality of Collegiants\'' behaviour is particularly important in understanding which specific choice they made to contrast the authoritarian and exclusive vision of the religious life. These choices are well reflected in the use of a specific vocabulary and in the emergence of specific concepts that can be considered as key guideline to identifying some stable points in the shifting nature of the Collegiants.
The first chapter of this dissertation delineates an initial general history of the movement together with the ground on which the Collegiants built their vision of belief: the question about Church organization. The chapter refers directly to the practical organization of the Collegiant movement, an egalitarian and anti-charismatic religious life which involved considerations of power and identity. This specific position, with its high level of nonexclusivity and anticharismatic consciousness, makes Collegiants movement an exception in the pluralist world of 17th century Holland and marked their difference to the constellation of Dutch reformation. Although some Collegiants\'' demeanor mirrored the progressive individualization of cults and beliefs, they accorded central importance to the community, the context in which their religious ideal of confrontation and discussion was realized.
The first attempt to write an exhaustive history of the rise and development of the Rijnsburgers was made by a Remonstrant preacher, Paschier de Fijne. He was the first opponent of the Collegiants; his book, Kort, waerachtigh, en getrouw Varhael van het eerste Begin en Opkomen van de Nieuwe Sekte der Propheten ofte Rynsburgers in het dorp Warmont anno 1619 en 1620 (Brief, truthful, and faithful history of the beginning and origin of the new sect of the Prophet of Rijnsburg in the village of Warmont), published anonymously in 1671 by his son, expresses his critical position vis à vis the Rijnsburgers. Besides representing the first opposition to the Collegiants, this work constitutes an important source because the author attended the first Collegiant\'' assembly (the Rijnsburgers\'' vergadering). In particular it describes the way in which this first meeting took place. For the first complete history of the Collegiant movement, however, we have to wait until 1775 when the Histoire der Rijnburgsche Vergadering (History of Rijnsburg\''s assembly), written by the Collegiant Elias van Nijmegen, appeared in Rotterdam. Both these sources are key instruments for reconstructing and understanding how Collegiants organized their assemblies, and how they achieved an acharismatic meeting, through debate and free-exegesis. These testimonies, which embrace a whole century, have, however, the demerit of representing the Collegiant\'' vergadering (assembly) as an eccentric but defined ritual. What emerges, on the other hand, from Collegiants internal debate is that the conduct of the meeting supper, the organization of religious life, the definition of free-exegesis and the limitation of free speech were all subject to constant argument and discussion inside the movement. These concerns emerge in a fragmentary way in the manifold sources that discuss the nature of free-prophecy, tolerance and ecclesiology. In the polemic with Bredenburg, the Bredenburgse twisten, the debate about tolerance involved the discussion of women’s role in the vergadering and the reflections on free-prophecy indirectly interrogate the charismatic nature of the organization.
Another important characteristic of the Collegiant\'' movement, delineate in the first chapter, is the autonomous and independent development of the single collegia. City autonomy and the different religious and social contexts in which the Rijnsburger vergadering took root led to large-scale differentiation. The capacity of Collegiants to survive for more than a century with their refusal of normativity and authoritarian organization was substantially due to the penetration of the Collegiants\'' arguments into the different confessions. This deep influence, in particular in the Mennonite and Remonstrant communities, defined the nature of the Collegiants, especially in some cities, as a stream inside institutionalized Churches. Because the collegia were open to all Christians, without limitation, even including Socinians and Catholics, most of the participants were also members of structured Churches, congregations or sects. In Amsterdam this phenomenon was particularly evident and the penetration of Collegiants\'' argument in the Flemish community through Galenus Abrahamsz led to one of the most important schisms in the Mennonite history in the United Provinces. In other cities such as Leiden or Haarlem, the existence of cultural circles and other forms of nonreligious association constituted the basis for the spread of Collegiantism. It was only in Rijnsburg, the village in which the movement first emerged, that a common house was built, after 1640, to host the twice yearly Collegiant national vergadering.
The practical organization of the Collegiants, as has been stated, represents the foundation on which noncharismatic ecclesiology and anticonfessional ideals were constructed. With the historical background of the first chapter it is then possible to discuss the main religious and political tendencies inside the movement.
The second chapter of this dissertation, following the issue of religious organization discussed in the first chapter, deals with the principles of free-prophecy, Biblical exegesis, and Collegiants ecclesiology. The central concept examined in this chapter is nonconformity analysed in its historical development of England and the Netherlands. This chapter suggests that nonconformity as religious phenomenon was an elaboration and transformation of the anti-confessional and anti-clerical thought that emerged in the 16th century with the radical Reformation. The inception of nonconformity in the Netherlands is indicated by the transformation of the debate about Nicodemism, following Coornhert\''s defense of religious dissimulation and indifferentism. Nicodemism was indeed considered, in the early 16th century, as necessary behavior to avoid pointless martyrdom and persecution, utilized especially by the crypto-reformed in Catholic countries such as Italy and Spain. The diffusion of this conduct among Catholics in reformed countries but, principally, the diffusion and justification of Nicodemism in the United Provinces, where inquisitorial control and confessional repression presented a relative risk after the revolt against Spain, testify of the new meaning that this behaviour took on in the late 16th century. Nicodemism, as Coornhert\''s position shows, became the justification of anticonfessionalism as conscious behaviour, with the possibility of openly criticizing rituals and ceremonies as for achieving salvation.
In this chapter particular attention is paid to the consciousness and the open dimension of this behavior. The neglect of dissimulation and the necessity of making public personal religious sentiments, is one of the basic elements in the change between Nicodemism and nonconformity. The nonconformists acquired the anticonfessional and anticlerical content of Nicodemism, but added a principal characteristic: the veridiction. The veridiction represents the necessity of telling the truth about personal belief and religious conscience, but also institutes the core of reality in the conformity between internal belief and external behavior. These elements were present in both English and Dutch nonconformity, which developed, however, into different and sometimes opposite ecclesiology. In the English case, external nonconformity to the dominant Church and the necessity of openly showing belief led to a demand for exclusivity and a process of individualization rooted in the juridical meaning of nonconformity. Despite the turning of the debate around the necessity of free-conscience, the understanding of nonconformity as a refusal of secular world and the attempt of Baxter to disconnect the debate around nonconformity to a juridical question, the English debate never developed into a criticism of the Church\''s organization or in the necessity of a democratization of the religious life, which was, on the contrary, dominant among the Collegiants.
The central text in the history of Collegiantism and in the Dutch definition of nonconformity is Galenus Abrahamsz and David Spruyt\''s XIX Artikelen. This text was conceived, from the very beginning, as a collective discussion about the nature and the sense of a religious community in the absence of Holy Gifts. Collegiants give to the term nonconformity a specific meaning which designates the absence of conformity to the first apostolic Church and the end of the extraordinaries gifts of the Holy Spirit. This radical statement caused a reaction among the orthodox members of the Mennonites and Quakers, which see in the absence of Holy inspiration a complete secularization of the religious community. Nonconformity assumed therefore for the Collegiants a double meaning: on one side it was an elaboration of anticonfessional criticism through the statement of the absence of holy influence on the religious life, on another side it represented a deep criticism of priestly authority conceived as a secularized power acting as constraint of consciences. The absence of Holy Gifts was, for the Collegiants, the demonstration that no Church or Congregation could pretend to be the true or original one. The reaction of Dutch orthodoxy appears, indeed, completely justified, because Collegiants\'' religious nonconformity presents itself not only as conscious antiauthoritarian criticism but also as a statement of the full secularization of the Church. Nonconformity was, for Abrahamsz and Spruyt, not only an unavoidable state, but also a necessary behavior to unmask the inauthentic religious life. This position represented the core of Collegiants\'' practice, the reason for their continuous redefinition and, on the same level, for their refusal of any type of identification. The recognition of the secularized status of common religious life arose among the Collegiants accompanied by an ample debate about free-prophecy and Bible exegesis, stressing the possibility of an individual form of salvation.
A central role, in this direction, was played by reflection on the veridiction as a form of conformity between the inward conscience and the external behavior. Although there emerged from the sources a controversial statement about how to approach and read the Scriptures, through the free-prophecy the Collegiants organized a form of collective exegesis that had its principal aim to avoid charismatic and authoritarian leadership but also to realize a form of community close to the first apostolic Church. The communitarian discussion also involved a debate on salvation, which had no more to be tied to the simple membership in a confession but developed as an articulated discussion on the significance of the ethical and religious life. A good Christian had to reinterpret and bring alive the first teaching of the Gospel, which can be summarized as love for others and in the propagation of tolerance as ethical and interpersonal behavior.
Collegiants\'' reflections on religious life, organization of communities, and their continuous effort to maintain equal relations in the absence of charismatic gifts in the Church institution, never turn to consideration of society or political forms. This absence was even more significant in a cultural and social context in which theological questions involved directly or indirectly political questions. In the same period, furthermore, Hobbes\'' reflections on jusnaturalism challenge for the first time the divine legitimacy of political power, establishing the basis of a new vision of the political community. Collegiants understood religious community as deprived from any form of divine inspiration and conceived it as a human association, nevertheless they never outline a political parallelism to this situation. The most evident reason of this absence is probably the lack of a strong monarchy in the 17th century United Provinces. However the relationship between secular and religious ideology did not fail and was well summarized by the situation after the Synod of Dordrecht, which created a rupture in Dutch society with the consequent convergence of the religious position with the political one. The intervention of Grotius in favor of the Arminian party testified to a clear identification between theological opposition to predestination (which meant a challenge to Calvinist orthodoxy) and antimonarchical opinion. This fracture remained invisible in Collegiants sources that debated the secularization of Churches and consider religious congregations as human institutions, but never tried to define the legitimacy of political institutions. It is possible, however, to find in the history of the Collegiants one significant exception: Cornelius Plockhoy\''s attempt to promote a religious-social project in the Dutch colonies of Delaware .
Plockhoy\''s work illuminates the relationship and the fruitful parallels that it is possible to make between the United Provinces and England, especially during the time of the Cromwellian Commonwealth. Plockhoy\''s most significant works were written, indeed, in England, some years before the fail of Cromwell, and testify to a particular social and political engagement in the construction and definition of a community with a religious basis. It is interesting to note that only after the English experience did Plockhoy returned to Holland, following the end of the Commonwealth, to propose a similar project to the city of Amsterdam. This chapter suggests an analysis of his English and Dutch sources, stressing the differences and the modifications to his proposal. The importance of this author lies in the possibility of deducing from his position a possible Collegiant\'' thinking on politics and social organization. This contribution is certainly not descriptive of Collegiantism as a whole but represents the only explicit trace of the modification of Rijnsburger\''s religious reflections on the secular field.
The description of Plockhoy\''s community in many respects echoes a certain irenicism sourced form the reading of Rosicrucian text; however it reflets and refers principally to his Collegiant experience . Although Plockhoy\''s account of the community project is never exclusively religious, the confessional element appears as prominently in both his Dutch and English projects. His religious and political project emerge clearly from his letters to Cromwell: it is essentially devoted to resolving the problem of religious conflict and the disturbance of social peace. It is, indeed, clear that Plockhoy\''s aim was not that of describing an ideal society or forming a separate community in order to conserve a purist religious ideal, but to propose a paradigmatic alternative to the religious turmoil and the social injustices of his time. The relation between political and religious arguments in Plockhoy\''s solution to religious turmoil highlights the interconnection between religious tolerance and colonial criticism, social injustice and authoritarianism. Plockhoy\''s meticulous pedagogic description of his project, his underlining of the necessity of economic independence for women and the possibility of them participating in collective work are expressions of an outlook that includes an aware judgment of his contemporary society. The last part of this chapter is dedicated to criticizes two approaches dominant in the literature about Plockhoy: one is the description of his project as a classical form of Utopia the other one is the reading of the Delaware religious community interpreted as a triumph of the work ethic.
The third chapter of this dissertation deals with the tolerance, a fundamental and central concept to understand the nature of the Collegiants. It is our intention to show how during the 17th century there emerged in the Netherlands, in the religious context, a new concept of tolerance inspired by Castellio\''s works. The publication and translation, in the first half of the 17th century, of some of Castellio\''s work testify to the major interest that the French author had in the United Provinces, especially for the oppositors to the intolerant and orthodox Calvinist tradition. For the Collegiants, Castellio represented a predecessor in the struggle for religious peace. His work against the persecution of the heretics, supported by Biblical argumentation, represented a constant source of inspiration for the partisan of religious toleration. As suggested by Voogt , Castellio\''s deconstruction of the concept of heresy, as it was used by the Calvinist orthodoxy, in order to redefined it to signify a person who acts and believes differently from the mainstream, represented Collegiants\'' basis to rethink the concepts of rationality and truth.
The peculiarity of the Dutch concept of vedraagzaamheid (tolerance), in opposition to how tolerance was defined and discussed in the European mainstream debate, was certainly due to the elements of reciprocity and mutuality that this particular form of tolerance included. In the 17th century, tolerance (especially religious tolerance) was used to label negative behavior, to identify indifferentism or libertinism, intolerance was, on the contrary, a sign of unity, integrity, and orthodoxy. Furthermore, arguments for religious intolerance were justified by the biblical example of the Mosaic theocracy, while religious tolerance represented the interests of the emerging mercantile elite, which supported the Republican experiment and advocated cities\'' autonomy. Tolerance became, in the 17th century, a concept contested because of its pejorative meaning; the progressive introduction of the pro-tolerance position, in order to contrast with this negative predominant vision, supported the idea that tolerance was not a menace to the integrity and peace of the Dutch Republic but the principal reason for its prosperity. The concept of tolerance became, afterwards, the battle-field on which the best juridical, economical and political form of the United Provinces was decided.
The penetration of this debate about tolerance and intolerance in the Collegiants movement was adapted into an anticonfessional and irenic orientation focusing on religious and social peace. The defense of an unlimited and mutual tolerance represented, for the Collegiants, a proposal of pacification in the pluralistic dimension of the Dutch religious life, which was perceived, by their coeval, as a source of division and instability. The practice of nonexclusive tolerance and the extensive reception of different confessions inside the movement was a pragmatic attempt to find a solution to the problematic turbulence inside the Doopsgezinden and more generally to the religious disputations in the United Provinces. The central figure investigating the conduct and the limits of this debate inside the Collegiants was Jan Bredenburg. This chapter will, indeed, analyze the trouble arising from Bredenburg\''s position on tolerance and his extensive use of Spinozist concepts and language. This debate about the extension and the limits of tolerance involved, indirectly and directly, a discussion regarding religious organization, freedom of speech, and charismatic authority.
In his works, Bredenburg, with his continuous redefinition of the discussion about tolerance, shows all the ambiguity and ambivalence of this term. Unlimited and mutual tolerance finds its limits in the continuous exigence of a normative delimitation of it, in the distinction of necessary and unnecessary dogma, but also, in a trivial way, in the impossibility of tolerating the intolerant. In the case of the Collegiants the adversaries of the unlimited and mutual tolerance undermined Collegiants\'' nonexclusivism with their proposals to identify with a confession of faith. Pressures in the direction of identification and exclusivism were, however, only a part of the tolerance problem. With the “Bredenburgse Twisten” (Bredenburg controversy) the limits and the ambiguities of the concept of tolerance and the limits of the penetration of Spinoza\''s philosophy in Collegiant\'' movement become clear. These limits concerned especially the necessity and priority of contrasting skeptical and atheist tendencies in the field of belief.
The final chapter of this dissertation is dedicated to a question that underlines the problems of anticonfessionalism, tolerance, and secularization. The question asked in this conclusive part regards the possibility to trace the emergence of rational argument in Collegiants understanding of the divinity. To answer this question it was necessary to make some preliminary remarks about the diffusion and vernacularization of Descartes\'' and Spinoza\''s philosophies in the 17th century Netherlands. Short descriptions of the two most influential systems of thought of the epoch are two methodological steps useful in understanding not only the degree of penetration of these philosophies into Collegiants but also the nature and meaning of the concept of rationality at that time.
The definition of the relationship with the divinity, after the XIX Arikelen\''s statement of the unholy Church, is represented, in the history of the Collegiant movement, by a precise moment: the discussion and dispute between the Rijnsburgers and the Quaker missionaries in the United Provinces. The debate with the Quakers assumes a specific meaning not only because it shows the proximity and similarity between the two religious movements but also because it testifies to the emergence of a central concept: the light. Central text to determine the nature of this relationship and to define the meaning that for the Collegiants had the concept of light, is Balling´s Het licht op den Kandelaar (The Light on the Candlestick). Balling\''s answer to Quakers represents a penetration of Spinozist language into the definition of religion as knowledge of God but also a singular affinity and fascination for the Quakers\'' concept of light. The question of contact with the divinity appears in the text as an individual experience, not mediated by any human instrument via language or the empirical experience. The approach to God is certainly described as an epistemological progression but the perfect comprehension of God is defined with the vocabulary of the affections rather than as full rational understanding. This text is certainly highly controversial and the continuous shift between philosophical and Quakers\'' language make its interpretation problematic. Het licht op den Kandelaar reflects Collegiants\'' position as a sum of philosophical argumentation, mysticism, and the irreconcilable reference to God as an infinite and unknowable creature. What emerges with force in the analysis of this source is the impossibility of understanding Balling\''s description of the relationship with God as purely rational. Balling, however, stresses the possibility of the constant perfectionism of human knowledge and self-emancipation and, furthermore, proposes new terms for religious thought. What he calls the “true religion” is described as ethical behavior constructed with the combination of tolerance, equal participation in the religious life, and the refusal to countenance formal conformism to Church institutions. Collegiants\'' acceptance of a Church without God does not necessary involve a pure absence of divine work, on the contrary, the proximity to God is progressively researched in an interior sphere which involve a process of knowledge. The legitimacy of the “Truth” is, then, given no more by the transcendental gift of the divinity but in the accordance of personal conviction and ethical behavior, the religion is, indeed, redefined according to these terms. True religion is, for Balling, a continuous inquiry into the natural and internal principle that each individual possesses in order to achieve full comprehension of God\''s word. This statement testify not only of a new conception of the Religion but also reaffirm the minoritaire core of Collegiants´nature; religion, in their understanding, is not more matter of concord, unity, orthodoxy but source of knowledge, problematization and continuous questioning about its own identity.
Nonconformity and cultural dynamics: some preliminary remarks
Before starting the presentation of the Collegiants\'' argument about tolerance, Church organization, and rationalism, to fully understand some choices and the approach of this dissertation, and to comprehend how Collegiants sources have been read, some methodological remarks are necessaries about the emergence and development of the historical phenomenon called nonconformity and how was it received and transformed in 17th century Holland. Nonconformity is, as will be shown, one of the central concepts developed by the Collegiants to justify their antiauthoritarianism and anticonfessionalism. The concept appears more interesting if we look at the number of meanings and social phenomena that it includes. It first developed in England in the juridical context and was named in the later 17th century as a defined religious movement that opposed the Act of Uniformity. In the English sources it is possible to retrace the history of this concept, demonstrating how the significance and arguments regarding nonconformity changed in one hundred years. Not far from England, in the United Provinces, the evolution of the concept of nonc
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CALL TO ACTION: THE ROLE OF RELIGIOUS PAINTING IN UTRECHT'S GOLDEN AGE (1590-1640)STRASBAUGH, CHRIS 02 July 2007 (has links)
No description available.
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“In Search of Truth Alone”: John Locke’s Exile in HollandBarr, Kara Elizabeth 24 April 2009 (has links)
No description available.
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Forging a coalition army: William III, the grand alliance, and the confederate army in the Spanish Netherlands, 1688-1697Stapleton, John M., Jr. 03 February 2004 (has links)
No description available.
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