The birth-pangs of the Dutch Republic and its so-called Remonstrant Troubles generated innovative thought of wider European impact on matters of State and Church.
This introduction sets the stage for the purview in this volume. Section ι sketches the socio-political context of the Dutch Revolt and the intellectual climate at Leiden; Section ιι focuses on Predestination, State and Church, and the role of the Hebrew Constitution in the works of Franciscus Junius, Hugo Grotius and Petrus Cunaeus.
It is a sobering tale we are to address. The story opened on the highest of tenors with the confident aim to purge religion, implement social justice, and enhance the overall quality of thought and life in the Netherlands. Haec Libertatis Ergo, Haec Religionis Ergo read the ambitious motto of the Dutch Revolt. Its twofold aspirations were backed by the keenest political minds of the period in joint effort with the world of divinity. Giants they were in their fields. Yet, like the Titans of old, they played with fire and diced with death. Or, to use Franciscus Junius's metaphor, they jumped from the one chariot onto the other as do circus artists, and as daredevils acted on the high seas as though comfortably anchored in harbor.[38]
The discourse opened at the intersection of Aristotelian dialectics and (Neo-) Thomist scholasticism, the stern doctrine of Calvin and the critical humanÂism of Melanchthon. From lack of empathy and understanding, and of social accountability one may add, the dialogue became bogged down in a morass of hair-splitting idiosyncrasies that boomeranged back onto society and state polÂities. In a traumatic process, first the unity of the Seventeen Provinces was lost; then, in the truncated North, strife turned inwards to issue in civil war. What opened with dissent on abstruse technicalities of Erastianism, Socinianism and Pelagianism ended with widespread purges, arrests and the scaffold.
Or did it? Truth be told, the riddle of State and Church was never solved throughout the full two centuries of the Dutch Republic. It kept flaring up, under different titles, to trigger more fratricide, lynching, incarceration and exile.
All the while, it left the greater part of the Dutch nation, from Catholics to Lutherans to Anabaptists to Jews, beyond the pale. The Sephardic financers of the Indian Companies and William's Glorious Revolution never obtained civil rights. Until, that is, the Republic's mouldering fabric was done away with by the Enlightenment thought hailed by another great revolution. At home, in 1795, the so-called Patriots who joined the French banners were tellingly branded as â€?foul Remonstrants'.And yet, in a way, the above pitfalls, if considerable, might well be preÂsented as mere collateral damage. As majestic counterpoise to the above tale of embarrassment rises the Dutch seaborne empire that was the wonder of the world; the Amsterdam Exchange; voc and wιc; the wealth of intellectual exchange and artistic outpouring that made Amsterdam the melting-pot of cultures to rival Venice and recall Philo Josephus's Alexandria; the entourage that spurred the critical minds of Spinoza, Descartes and Pieter de la Court, and the humanist philology that encompassed the legacy of the Greco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian traditions; last not least the printing houses that mapped the world. The blatant contrast of spheres is epitomized in that protean prinÂciple we call Toleration.
The above is meant to underpin the sheer scope and lasting impact of the debate. It encompasses the full canvas of religion and morals, politics and the law, and the ambition to harness intellectual precepts and stern doctrine to the pragmatics of life and the contingency of the human condition.
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