Lux in Tenebris Lucet
Illuminating rational-spiritualism and the metaphor of inner light in a
Quaker - Collegiant dispute (1657-1662)
Martin van Wattingen 0153346
University of Amsterdam
Master Thesis, Research MA Theology & Religious Studies (June, 2017)
Thesis Supervisor: dr. H. J. Borsje Second Reader: Prof. dr. L. van Bunge
Table of Contents
Introduction ……… 3
Reseach Questions and Methodology
……….……… 9
Enlightenment Historiography ……….………. 12
From Kant to postmodernism
………..…………. 12
Jonathan Israel and the Radical Enlightenment
…….…………..
17
Historical Background ……..……….. 22
The Dutch Collegiants
……… 25
Early Quakers in Holland
….………. 30
The Pamplet War ……..………. 34
William Ames, Het Ligt dat in de duisternisse schijnt
…..………. 37
Pieter Balling, Het licht op den kandelaar
……….. 61
Conclusion ……..………. 70
Preface and Acknowledgments
The thesis before you was my final proof of competence for obtaining the Master of Arts (MA) degree from the University of Amsterdam. It was written to fulfill the graduation requirements and, at the same time, it is the end result of my time as a Research-master student and concludes my education.
According to historian Jan Wagenaar, the first Collegiants in Amsterdam held their meetings in a house on the corner of the Rokin and the Kalfsvelsteeg, merely a ‘stone’s throw’ away from the university library (Special Collections) where I have spend so much time completing my research. Coming from a long line of ‘Amsterdammers,’ the city’s history has fascinated me for as long as I can remember. Gradually, I started to develop a special interest in the intellectual ‘climate’ in the Golden Age of the Dutch Republic. It would not take long before Spinoza and the Collegiants ‘crossed my path.’
When you say Spinoza or Collegiants, the name Wiep van Bunge will follow suit. Our introduction was, understandably, a humbling and inspirational experience. It has been an honor that professor van Bunge has co-read my thesis. My supervisor, dr. Jacqueline Borsje, who was responsible for that introduction, has to be credited for the completion of my thesis in general. At a crucial moment she gave me the much-needed motivational speech and ‘push’ in the right direction. I am gratefull for both their time and dedication.
I also wish to express my sincere gratitude to my family, friends and girlfriend for their love, trust, support and encouragement when I needed it the most. And last, but definitely not least, my parents and my sister deserve particular appreciation. The completion of this project would not have been accomplished without your confidence and endless patience.
Introduction
In 1662, an extremely controversial pamphlet circled among the intellectual elite in Amsterdam, the largest and most densely populated city in the Dutch Republic. Its ambiguous title, Het licht op den kandelaar. Dienende, tot
opmerkinge van de voornaamste dingen; in het boekje genaamt De verborgentheden van het rijke Ghodts, &c. tegens Galenus Abrahamsz., en zijn Toestemmers &c. verhandelt en beschreven door William Ames (The Light on the Candlestick. Serving to Remark on the Foremost Things in the Book Called The Mysteries of God’s Kingdom, against Galenus Abrahamsz. and his Supporters by William Ames), engendered substantial controversy concerning
the author and its purpose. Although Het licht was published anonymously and “printed for the author” (Gedrukt voor den Autheur), it is now fairly certain that the author was Pieter Balling, a close friend of Spinoza who frequently visited the meetings of a specific group of protestant dissenters in the Dutch Republic, who were called Collegiants. Over time, however, the tract had been attributed to others as well. Especially William Ames, whose name is displayed prominently on the title page, has often been regarded as the author. Yet Ames was not the author. Instead, he wrote The Mysteries of
God’s Kingdom in which he responded to Galenus Abrahamsz. de Haan, a
minister of the Mennonite congregation in Amsterdam and leader of the local branch of Collegiants in the capital. But the ambiguity can only partly be attributed to the puzzling title. The theme of Balling’s pamphlet was the divine light that guides humankind, a topic Ames had written many times about. In fact, Ames’ oeuvre consisted primarily of publications with similar titles. As one of the first Quaker missionaries in Holland, he had often felt the need to defend the doctrine of the inner light, which was so central to their message. By the time Het licht op den kandelaar was issued, Quaker fascination with the inner light had become the main source of some heated arguments and a protracted “pamphlet war” between the two groups.
Light has been a common metaphor for truth, knowledge, the life force, (spiritual) insight, individual development, etc. since ancient times. Not only did light bear a religious connotation in its biblical expression of Christ as the divine light and the ‘gift’ of wisdom bestowed from above, as stressed, for instance, by Augustine in his theory of divine illumination. But it was also, as
knowledge of the real, associated with the ancient philosophy of Plato. In the
Republic Plato had Socrates draw an analogy between the sun, which
illuminates the visible realm, and the Idea of the Good illuminating the intelligible realm. Even Aristotle, who objected that knowledge ultimately derives from the senses and sense perception is connected with the soul, claimed that the soul needs an inner light to perceive. A century and a half of humanist scholarship, Arthur Herman observes, had shown Enlightenment historians and philosophers how much Christianity’s evolution owed to a fusion of Jewish and Neo-Platonic ideas. But over the course of the eighteenth century, the understanding Enlightenment thinkers had of the cultural and historical separation between them and the ‘ancients’ made Plato, not Aristotle, “the big loser in all this.”1 Most influential was John Locke, who, in Aristotelian fashion, dismantled Plato’s worldview and political philosophy by stressing the importance of perception and experience. Clearly mirroring Aristotle’s tabula rasa, Locke rejected the principle of innate ideas and emphasized that our mind is blank slate waiting to be written on. This contradiction, Herman argues, between Plato’s worldview and the view of reality Enlightenment thinkers inherited from Aristotle and Locke, was the main reason the Enlightenment “disliked Plato so much.”2
In her elaborate examination of how the Enlightenment’s construal of its ‘dark’ past served as a foil against which its own defining narratives were formulated, Alicia Montoya suggests that, as a rhetorical construct, the ‘medieval’ determined, to some extent, the eighteenth-century perception of modernity.3 According to Montoya, the Enlightenment’s foundational rhetoric renegotiated the meaning of the ancient metaphor of light to create a polemic with the dark and ignorant Middle Ages. Italian humanism in the Renaissance had reversed biblical dualism and the Augustinian metaphor of Christian light versus pagan darkness. Francesco Petrarch in particular had presented the Middle Ages as a dark period that emerged after the golden Age of Antiquity.4 Late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thinkers deviated
1 A. Herman, The Cave and the Light: Plato versus Aristotle, and the struggle for the
soul of Western Civilization (New York, 2013), pp. 362-366.
2 Ibid. p. 365.
3 A. Montoya, Medievalist Enlightenment: From Charles Perrault to Jean-Jacques
Rousseau (Cambridge, 2013).
4 Ibid. pp. 43-46. Cf. J. Tunturi, “Darkness as a Metaphor in the Historiography of
from Christianity’s authoritative discourse and denounced the doctrine of divine light descending on the believer. Instead, following Descartes’ lumen
naturale, they started to propagate the idea of the natural light of reason as a
source of human knowledge and truth. “In its most common eighteenth-century use,” Montoya states, “the metaphor of light was assigned primarily a theological meaning, foregrounding perceived oppositions between light as reason and light as revelation.”5
According to Andrew Fix, an expert in Collegiant studies, light retained its central role in European religious and philosophical thought until it began to acquire a new, more secular usage in the late seventeenth century.6 In his
Prophecy and Reason, Fix propounds the thesis that the changing view of the
individual conscience among a specific group of Protestant dissenters in the Dutch Republic, who were called Collegiants, provides a perfect example of the secularizing and rationalizing trends occurring all over early modern Europe. In his view, “a trend toward secularism and rationalism developed out of religious despair and accelerated as the wars of religion drew to a close in 1648.”7 The decades following the Treaty of Westphalia witnessed the significant process of intellectual evolution that transformed the (older) spiritual notion of inner light into the natural light of human reason. In fact, Fix states, “nothing more clearly illustrates the role of Collegiant thought in the monumental seventeenth-century intellectual transition from faith to reason than the changing conception of the inner light found in Collegiant writings.”8 His argument is that the movement went through three stages: spiritualism, rational-spiritualism, and, finally, (secular) philosophical rationalism. First, their spiritual inclinations declined when Collegiants came into contact (and conflict!) with the ‘extreme spiritualism’ of the Quakers. Second, during the 1660s and 1670s, “a time when strong forces of rationalism and secularism were beginning to influence Collegiant thought,”9 Socinian tendencies and an active interest in the new rationalistic philosophy of Rene Descartes moved their thought in a rationalistic direction. Through
Mommsen, “Petrarch’s Conception of the Dark Ages,” in: Speculum, 17 (1942), pp. 226-242.
5 Montoya, op. cit., p. 44.
6 A. Fix, Prophecy and Reason: The Dutch Collegiants in the Early Enlightenment
(Princeton, 1991), p. 185.
7 Ibid. p. 11. 8 Ibid.
the gradual transformation of the Collegiant conception of the individual conscience from a spiritual to a rational inner light, their spiritualistic worldview evolved into a secular view based on human reason. “In this changing conception of the individual conscience,” Fix argues, “one can see in microcosm the larger transformation of the European worldview that took place during the course of the seventeenth century.”10 It is beyond the scope of this thesis, however, to examine Socinian and Cartesian influences on Collegiant thinking; instead we focus on the first part of this “dramatic transformation of Collegiant thought”:11 their response to the spiritualism of the Quakers.
The last decades of the twentieth century saw a significant increase in ‘Spinoza studies’ and closer inspection of the presumed tolerant attitude towards religious diversity in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. Much has been written about Collegiants as well in this context. Accordingly, yet not unlike some of the older overviews covering particular areas in Dutch history,12 they still feature predominantly as indicators of a religious pluralistic society13 or as “associates of” in works dedicated to the life and thought of Spinoza.14 Since the 1980s, however, studies on individual Collegiants have proliferated15 and have contributed significantly to our understanding of such chrétiens sans église.16 Most of these contributions,
10 Ibid. p. 11. 11 Ibid. p. 23.
12 J. C. van Slee, De Rijnsburger collegianten: geschiedkundig onderzoek (Haarlem,
1895); C. B. Hylkema, Reformateurs, 2 Vols. (Haarlem, 1900-1902); J. Lindeboom, Geschiedenis van het vrijzinnig Protestantisme, 3 Vols. (Assen, 1931-1935); Idem, Stiefkinderen van het christendom (‘s-Gravenhage, 1929); R. B. Evenhuis, Ook dat was Amsterdam: De kerk der hervorming in de gouden eeuw. 5 vols. (Amsterdam, 1965-1978), see, especially, parts 2 and 3.
13 See, for instance, S. Zijlstra, Om de ware gemeente en oude gronden: Geschiedenis
van de dopersen in de Nederlanden 1531-1675 (Hilversum, 2000), pp 402-410; W. Frijhof (et al.), 1650: Bevochten eendracht. Nederlandse cultuur in Europese context (The Hague, 1999), pp. 412-423. On the Collegiants in particular, see pp. 413-415.
14 K. O. Meinsma, Spinoza en zijn kring: Historisch-kritische studiën over Hollandsche
vrijgeesten (s-Gravenhage, 1896); W. Klever, Mannen rond Spinoza (1650-1700): Presentatie van een emanciperende generatie (Hilversum, 1997); W. van Bunge, “Spinoza and the Collegiants,” in: Spinoza Past and Present. Essays on Spinoza, Spinozism, and Spinoza Scholarship (Leiden, 2012), pp. 51-65; J. Israel, “Spinoza and the Religious Radical Enlightenment,” in: The Intellectual Consequences of Religious Heterodoxy 1600-1750 (Leiden, 2012), pp. 181-203.
15 The magazine Doopsgezinde Bijdragen, in particular, has several articles on
individual Collegiants: A. de Groot, “De Amsterdamse Collegiant Jan Cornelisz. Knol” (1984); W. Klever, “De Spinozistische prediking van Pieter Balling” (1988); R. Lambour, “De Amsterdamse collegiant Jacob Jansen Voogd (1630-1710)’ (1997); R.
however, are in Dutch, which, unfortunately, makes them inaccessible to interested non-parties who do not read Dutch.17 Aside from marginal references in the many social, cultural, or intellectual histories of the Enlightenment, Fix’s Prophecy and Reason is the only major study offering extensive insight into the intellectual evolution of Collegiant thought in English.
In contrast to the Collegiant movement, which ceased to exist by the end of the eighteenth century, Quakerism is still present to this day. The various branches are scattered throughout the world and their (section) meetings are open to anyone, from all different backgrounds, genders, races, ethnicities etc. There are many websites that offer information, thus histories as well as an abundance of data are readily available. The central doctrine of the inner light, which stresses the necessity of the inflowing (or, inward) light of Christ, was formulated by the movement’s founding father George Fox. Ever since it is seen as the first principle in all religious matters. From the beginning Quakers sought to spread their message among the many Radical Reformation groups. In Holland, one of their first mission fields outside the UK, they stumbled upon (what seemed like) like-minded people when they encountered the Collegiants, a native radical branch of the Second Reformation. Like the Quakers, Collegiants were a fringe church in numbers. Although they were “disproportionally prominent in Dutch intellectual debate,”18 Collegiantism came to an end after they had held their last general meeting in 1787. So why, then, study the role of Collegiants in their debate with the Quakers?
Lambour, ‘De familie en vrienden van Daniel Zwicker (1612-1678) in Amsterdam” (1999); W. van Bunge, “De bibliotheek van Jacob Ostens: spinozana en sociniana” (2004); R. Lambour, “De alchemistische wereld van Galenus Abrahamsz. (1622-1706)” (2005); P. Visser (ed.), “Kritisch commentaar van een collegiantische kwelgeest. Twee manuscripten en een pamflet van Jan Knol uit de jaren 1655-1659, ingeleid en van aantekeningen voorzien” (2012); R. Lambour, “De collegiant Frans Kuyper (ca 1628-1691), zijn Joodse moeder en de relatie van zijn vader met de Joodse filosoof Uriel da Costa (1584-1640)” (2016).
16 The term, obviously, refers to L. Kolakowski’s Chrétiens sans Église: La conscience
religieuse et le lien confessionnel au XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1964).
17 These elaborate contributions include: W. van Bunge, Johannes Bredenburg
(1643-1691): Een Rotterdamse collegiant in de ban van Spinoza (Rotterdam, 1990); B. Leeuwenburgh, Het noodlot van een ketter. Adriaan Koerbagh 1633-1669 (Nijmegen, 2013); E. van der Wall, De mystieke chiliast Petrus Serrarius (1600-1669) en zijn Wereld (s.l.: 1987).
Although relatively small in number, Collegiants provide an exceptionally interesting case with regard to the dispute over the metaphor of inner-light metaphor we are examining here. They were educated, literate, well-read individuals with a considerable interest in the religious, philosophical, and intellectual developments of their time. Despite their diverse backgrounds, Collegiants shared a collective repudiation of clerical policies, a mistrust of institutionalized religion, and a firm belief in the freedom of expression. Maintaining this ‘free-speech’ mentality meant being open-minded about different interpretations of the issues under discussion in their meetings. It seems acceptable to assume that attendees influenced each other with their wide range of ideas and perspectives. Arguably, then, these ‘free-speech assemblies’ can be considered hotbeds of dissension and irreconcilable opinions, but Collegiant disputes are significant indicators of what was at stake outside the publicly endorsed Reformed state religion in the Dutch Republic as well.
Intellectually, Fix emphasizes, Collegiants were “lesser thinkers,” located in that broad stratum of intellectual society just below the leading figures but well above the great mass of uneducated people.19 Even if they were not great philosophers or theologians, and none among them was of outstanding intellectual talent, let alone produced a significant all-encompassing philosophical system, they were sensitive to the groundbreaking trends and standpoints of the “greater minds.” Some of their writings may clearly demonstrate the difficulty of coping with the intellectual developments in the seventeenth century. On the other hand, they illustrate their dedication to the task of grasping these complex ideas. Therefore, studying their written records means examining an important and interesting social context in which revolutionary ideas were discussed. Collegiants provide a useful example of how the educated classes in the relatively tolerant United Provinces dealt with the development of a rational conception of the world.
It seems, however, that Fix’s emphasis on the changing conception of inner light, presented as illustrative of the transition from a religious to a secular worldview, is somewhat overambitious. By constantly overstating the rationalizing and secularizing trend in the Rijnsburger movement, he appears to be examining the modernity aspect of Collegiant thought. In addition, his discussion is incomplete. There are other sources available, beyond the ones
Fix used to substantiate his claim. For instance, he presents the works of Pieter Balling and Jarich Jelles as the first to discredit Quaker spiritualism and demonstrate rationalistic development. In his chapter “The Rational Inner Light” he writes: “In the writings of Galenus’s followers Pieter Balling and Jarich Jelles the distinction so carefully maintained … between the inner light of the Spirit and natural human reason was erased.”20 In such “transitional works” the “transformation undergone by the idea of the inner light resulted in a conception of a divine reason.”21 Despite their importance for analyzing Collegiant thought, the choice for these texts seems rather unfortunate. Due to its ambiguous content it seems unlikely to regard Pieter Balling’s Het Licht op den Kandelaar as representing a ‘departure’ from Quaker influences. The problem with Jelles’ work is that he wrote his
Belijdenissse des Algemeenen en Christelyken geloofs more than ten years
after Balling.22 For the purpose of evaluating Fix’s view on the formative and transitional character of seventeenth-century Collegiant thought, it is necessary to complement these texts.
Research Questions and Methodology
The main goal of this thesis is, first, to research to what extent we can determine an increasing rationalistic and secular nature of Collegiant thought in the debates with the early Quakers. To explore the problem posed above I will discuss the following questions: What changes do we observe in Collegiant writings about the metaphor of the inner light in the Collegiant – Quaker dispute between 1657 and 1662? And to what extent can we detect a change in the their conception of the individual conscience that is so structural that we can refer to it as a ‘transformation,’ ‘intellectual evolution,’ or ‘secularization’ of their thought? To examine whether or not the
Collegiant-
20 Ibid. 192. 21 Ibid.
22 The only edition that survived was published by Jan Rieuwertsz. in 1684, a year
after Jelles’ death. This edition starts with an assignment-letter (opdracht-brief) Jelles wrote to a worthy friend (eerwaarde vriendt). The ‘letter’ has been added to Spinoza’s correspondence and is nowadays known as epistle 48a. In the epilogue (na-reden) Rieuwertsz. mentions the positive response Jelles received from his friend. Aside from this testimony, Pierre Bayle and a certain dr. Hallmann both refer to the response. The latter dates the response April 19, 1673. Together these three testimonies are combined as epistle 48b. See, F. Akkerman (et al.), Spinoza: Briefwisseling, pp. 16-17; 30; 44; 303-307; 488-489; 528-529.
Quaker dispute represents “an ever-widening fissure separating the traditional Christian worldview from the emerging secular and rationalistic view,”23 we have to provide more extensive insight into the ‘pamphlet war’ between both groups that took place between 1657 and 1662. This is the period, according to Andrew Fix, in which Collegiants encountered the Quakers’ extreme spiritualism of the inner light and started to develop an increasingly rationalistic view of the world. “In the process,” he states, “the power and authority gained by human reason seen as a divine light created the epistemological foundation in Collegiant thought for a powerful new rationalist system.”24 Although they did not arrive at “the doorstep of philosophical rationalism”25 until the 1680s, with this new view of reason Collegiants did take a decisive step in that direction.
Second and subsequently, it is my intention to demonstrate that general overviews run the risk of simplifying matters too much by not paying enough attention to the arguments used in the texts under examination. Since politicians and theorists have increasingly adopted the Enlightenment in their defense of contemporary ‘progressive’ values and ideals, the new ‘rational’ criteria dubbed early modern Europe the ‘cradle’ of Western civilization. Nonetheless, at least some caution concerning statements about the ‘modernity’ of Enlightenment ideas seems warranted. It remains highly questionable whether the secular (and ‘sensible’) perspective of today is rooted in the transformation of worldviews that took place during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. In other words, can we justifiably claim a direct link between Enlightenment morals, values and ideas and those in present-day social, political, and philosophical theories? Consequently, this study will focus on the dominant trends in Enlightenment historiography from Ernst Cassirer’s philosophical perspective to Jonathan Israel’s bifurcation of the Enlightenment as well.
According to Fix, the pamphlet war began with the publication of William Ames’ Het Ligt dat in de duisternisse schijnt, in which he responded to Galenus Abrahamsz.’ XIX Artikelen.26 Pieter Balling’s Het licht op den
kandelaar published in 1662, at the time of Ames’ untimely death, marks the
23 Fix, Prophecy and Reason, p. 212 24 Ibid. p. 192.
25 Ibid. p. 255. 26 Ibid. p. 196.
end of the debate. As one of the most widely discussed tracts written by a Collegiant, Fix states, it was a work “solidly anchored in the Collegiant religion of individual conscience as well as in the tradition on inner-light spiritualism, but it also contained unmistakable rationalistic elements.”27 For Jonathan Israel, Het licht “seemed to many deftly to bridge the gap between the ‘inner light’ of the Spiritualists, a mystical emanation from God, and the philosophical reason of the Cartesians.”28 Wim Klever, who reissued Het licht
op den kandelaar in 1988,29 stresses the extensive research it would require to determine the exact standpoints of both Galenus Abrahamsz. and William Ames and to fully grasp the significance of their dispute, to which Balling refers on his title page. Recently, Jo van Cauter and Laura Rediehs have made a first step in this research by providing a full transcription and translation of Ames’ work and to demonstrate the influence The Mysteries had on Balling’s Licht, to which I will return in my discussion of the document.30 In 2011, Michiel Wielema edited and translated an equally important tract written by the radical Collegiant Adriaan Koerbagh.31 In line with these contributions, I have considered it important to provide a transcription and translation of William Ames’ Het Ligt dat in de duisternisse
schijnt, which actually is a compilation of several refutations. For the sake of
brevity, I will focus on, what I think, are the first pamphlets in the “war.” It seems appropriate to start with Galenus’ treatise and end with Balling’s Het
Licht op den Kandelaar, published shortly after the ‘pamphlet war’ between
Collegiants and Quakers had ended. A close reading of these writings should demonstrate that the debate about inner light was more elaborate than that presented by Fix.
27 Fix, Prophecy and Reason, p. 200. 28 Israel, Radical Enlightenment, p. 343.
29 W. Klever, “De Spinozistische prediking van Pieter Balling: Uitgave van ‘Het Licht op
den Kandelaar’ met biografische inleiding en commentaar,” in: Doopsgezinde Bijdragen, nieuwe reeks (1988) pp. 55-85.
30 J. van Cauter and L. Rediehs, “Spiritualism and Rationalism in Dutch Collegiant
thought: New Evidence from William Ames’ Mysteries of the Kingdom of God (1661), with a Translation,” in: Lias (2013), pp. 105-175.
31 M. Wielema (ed.), Adriaan Koerbagh: A Light Shining in Dark Places: To Illuminate the
Main Questions of Theology and Religion (Leiden, 2011).
Enlightenment Historiography
“Aufklärung ist der Ausgang des Menschen aus seiner selbstverschuldeten Unmündigkeit. Unmündigkeit ist das Unvermögen, sich seines Verstandes ohne
Leitung eines anderen zu bedienen. Selbstverschuldet ist diese Unmündigkeit, wenn die Ursache derselben nicht am Mangel des Verstandes, sondern der Entschließung und des Mutes liegt, sich seiner ohne Leitung eines anderen zu
bedienen. Sapere aude! Habe Mut, dich deines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen! ist also der Wahlspruch der Aufklärung.”
Immanuel Kant wrote these now famous words in 1784 in response to the question: ‘Was ist Aufklärung?’32 The Prussian philosopher thus defined Enlightenment as escape of humankind from its self-imposed immaturity. Echoing Voltaire’s “osez penser par vous-même” (“dare to think for yourself”33), he encouraged the individual to think on his/her own without ‘guidance’ by others. But the appeal to independent thinking, succinctly encapsulated in the Enlightenment’s motto (sapere aude! —dare to know!), was not just the expression of his desire for people to make use of their own intellectual capacities. Kant understood that Enlightenment was a process and not a completed project: he realized that his was not an enlightened age but an age of Enlightenment.34 Moreover, the short (but often misinterpreted35) essay demonstrates that Kant and his contemporaries sought to present clearly what it was that marked the advent of Enlightenment.
32 Kant, ‘Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?,’ Berlinische Monatsschrift, 12,
pp. 481-494. The complete text can be found on the website of the German Text-archive:
http://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/book/view/kant_aufklaerung_1784?p=17.
33 N. Cronk (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Voltaire (Cambridge, 2009) p. 62. See,
also, E. van der Wall & L. Wessels (eds.), Een Veelzijdige Verstandhouding: Religie en Verlichting in Nederland 1650-1850 (Nijmegen, 2007), p. 28.
34 Kant, (op cit.,): “Wenn denn nun gefragt wird: Leben wir jetzt in einem aufgeklärten
Zeitalter? so ist die Antwort: Nein, aber wohl in einem Zeitalter der Aufklärung” (p. 491).
35 Kant postulated a balance between the public and private exercise of reason. To
avoid the outbreak of chaos, he insisted on restricting the latter. The public use of reason, on the other hand, must always be free since it alone can bring about enlightenment among people. Cf. J. Schmidt (ed.), What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth Eighteenth-Century Questions (Berkeley & Los Angeles, 1996); D. Outram, The Enlightenment (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 1-3.
The past decades have witnessed a conspicuous resurgence of interest in the Enlightenment. Predicated on the assumption that the Enlightenment and modernity are inextricably linked, globalization and the influence of non-Western civilizations have urged intellectuals to re-examine the morals and values of the Western world today. In an unabated stream of publications, the ‘long Eighteenth century’ is currently being reclaimed for its positive elements. Depicted as the cradle, or, as Vincenzo Ferrone recently formulated, the “laboratory” of Western civilization, the rehabilitation of Enlightenment ideas and values is evident.36 Ferrone’s defense is based on his view that “the new united Europe that is on the rise badly needs to find again it’s authentic roots within eighteenth century cosmopolitanism, tolerance, liberty and, more generally, within that notion of the rights of man that Enlightenment culture promoted as the proper political language of the modern and as a legitimate existential aspiration for all people of the earth.”37 Illustrative of the demanding task sketched by Ferrone is the overall lack of consensus. Experts and non-experts alike have grappled with the problem of conceptualizing and defining (the) Enlightenment since the eighteenth century. The confusion begins with understanding that the term is used to denote either a certain period or something in or about that period.38
When addressing the issue of definition, it is important to bear in mind that the term ‘Enlightenment’ is a translation of two other, distinct terms: the German Aufklärung and the French lumières. Although all three terms share the concept of light, they are not identical. In the preface to the English edition of the Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, Philip Stewart draws attention to the “problem of equivalences among the different languages.”39
Aufklärung and ‘Enlightenment’, he states, have different histories and
convey different subtleties but are semantically close since both words denote processes. Lumières, on the other hand, is more abstract and was often used interchangeably with les philosophes. Many metaphorical references to light were to be found in eighteenth-century discourse, but neither ‘Enlightenment’ nor its continental equivalents were used to describe the era. In English,
36 V. Ferrone, The Enlightenment: History of an Idea (2010; New Jersey, 2015), pp.
xi-xvi.
37 Ibid. p. xvi.
38 S. Grote, “Review-Essay: Religion and Enlightenment,” in: Journal of the History of
Ideas (2014), pp. 141-146.
39 M. Delon (ed.), The Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, Vol I (1997; New York,
Stewart argues, etymologically related expressions such as ‘this enlightened age’ were severely outnumbered by “semantically similar terms independent of the light metaphor, the best known of which is “The Age of Reason.”40 Enlightenment, explains John Robertson, was mainly a philosophical idea from the beginning (and remained so).41 It was not established as a period label for the eighteenth century until it came under historical scrutinization by the time the nineteenth century had almost come to an end.
From the 1920s onwards, syntheses of Enlightenment thought and accounts of its key concepts dominated the scholarly agenda for almost half a century. Unlike Kant’s characterization of Aufklärung, these historical reconstructions presented ‘the Enlightenment’ (with the definite article) as a unified phenomenon, primarily associated with French and German thinkers. Such interpretations remained in vogue, even when Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno linked modernity’s totalitarianism with the Enlightenment during their years in exile.42 Two of the most influential writers to provide such synthetic interpretations of Enlightenment ideas radiating from Germany and France were Ernst Cassirer and Paul Hazard.
To revise the derogatory Romantic verdict of the “shallow Enlightenment,” Cassirer offered a sympathetic history of Enlightenment philosophy. In his seminal Die philosophie der Aufklärung (1932) he emphasizes that the Enlightenment had to be presented in the light of the unity of its underlying principle rather than its manifestations and results.43 During the eighteenth century, Cassirer observes, philosophy liberated itself by breaking down the older form of philosophical knowledge, i.e., metaphysical systems. No longer confined within the limits of a systematic doctrinal structure, philosophy becomes the universal atmosphere of all intellectual activity. The true nature of Enlightenment thinking cannot be seen as a formulated set of axioms and theorems. It is a process which involves all active intellectual forces in daily life. With regard to reason he writes:
Here again is evident a characteristic change of meaning in the concept of reason as compared with seventeenth century usage. In the great
40 Ibid. p. xi.
41 J. Robertson, The Enlightenment: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2015), pp. 2-3. 42 M. Horkheimer, T. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklarung: Philosophische Fragmente
(Amsterdam, 1947).
metaphysical systems of that century—those of Descartes and Malebranche, of Spinoza and Leibniz—reason is the realm of “eternal verities,” of those truths held in common by the human and the divine mind. … The eighteenth century takes reason in a different and more modest sense. … It is not the treasury of the mind in which the truth like a minted coins lies stored; it is rather the original intellectual force which guides the discovery and determination of truth. This determination is the seed and indispensible presupposition of all real certainty. The whole eighteenth century understands reason in this sense; not as a sound body of knowledge, principles and truths, but as a kind of energy, a force which is fully comprehensible in its agency and effects.44
One general characterization of the Enlightenment Cassirer refutes is the view that it was an irreligious era. It was not the rejection of belief but the new form of faith it proclaimed that counted as one of the most important positive achievements of the time.45 Via Bayle, Diderot, English Deism, and Kant, Cassirer traces the pleas for religious tolerance and the joint fight of knowledge and faith against their common enemy: superstition. The struggle for the “freedom of an all-comprehensive, a truly universal awareness of God” was, especially for Bayle, intended to establish a universal goal and represent a principle which would be equally binding for every form of belief.46 The theoretical principle of freedom of faith and conscience brought about a positive religious force which, eventually, became the new and unique characterization of the Enlightenment epoch. This new religious awareness, according to Cassirer, could only be attained by a complete change in religious aims and sentiment. “Henceforth,” he states, “religion is not to be a matter of mere receptivity; it is to originate from, and to be chiefly characterized by, activity. Man is not merely seized and overwhelmed by this activity as by a strange power, but he in turn influences and shapes the activity from within.”47 It might seem paradoxical that the Enlightenment, as a period of pure intellectualism, attempted to emancipate religion from understanding, but the principle of religious certainty excludes, by definition, all differences in religious ideas and concepts produced by the dogmatic system of theology. Such “outside wrappings” reduce belief to a mere
44 Ibid. p. 13. 45 Ibid. p. 135. 46 Ibid. pp.166-167. 47 Ibid. p. 164.
acknowledgment of certain ideas and arguments “and thus deprive it of its real moral and practical force.”48
In his equally classical work, La crise de la conscience européenne,
1680-1715 (1935), the French literary historian Paul Hazard argued that virtually
all ideas which were considered revolutionary by 1760, or even 1789, had already been formulated as early as 1680. In the “unexplored” decades spanning the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth Hazard discerned a crisis in the European mind.49 For Hazard, it was the most important crisis between the Renaissance and the French Revolution. Eventually, the older civilization founded on duty was replaced by a civilization founded on rights. Within this “unsafe, hardly passable zone” the “rationaux” and the “religionnaires,” as Bayle had labelled them, clashed in confrontations over questions of faith, tradition and authority.50
In contrast to Cassirer’s philosophical perspective, Hazard offers a more historical approach. By studying the development of ideas he arrives at the conclusion that it is the intellectual and moral forces that guide and determine life, not the material ones.51 According to Margaret Jacob, Hazard was right to recognize the significance of the Dutch Republic for the maturation of the crisis, but his “Francophone characterization” of the Netherlands focused primarily on its geographical merits.52 “It happened to be,” she avers, “the place where the migration stopped and the English freethinkers first encountered the French Huguenot refugees.”53 True, Hazard’s historiography indeed omits economic and social factors but the thesis he propounded, as Jacob admits, has “admirably withstood the passage of time.”54
Peter Gay’s magisterial two-volume study of the Enlightenment (published in 1966 and 1969)55 was one of the last post-war syntheses in which a single Enlightenment was defined by a coherent programme. It held sway until the next decade, when the appeal of postmodernism began. Historians and philosophers rejected the traditional emphasis on ideas,
48 Ibid. p. 165.
49 P. Hazard, De crisis in het Europese denken, p. 25. 50 Ibid. p. 24.
51 Ibid. p. 27.
52 M. Jacob,”The Crisis of the European Mind: Hazard Revisited,” in: Mededelingen
van de Stichting Jacob Campo Weyerman (1984), p. 72.
53 Ibid. 54 Ibid. p. 65.
challenged the ‘old’ intellectual history on its separation of ideas from context and started to question the premises of what they considered the ‘Enlightenment project.’ Stressing both the discontinuity of history and the redundancy of meta-narratives, leading authors such as Michel Foucault and Robert Darnton no longer viewed the Enlightenment as a unified, monolithic, and secular phenomenon.56 They redirected their investigations towards social contexts and highlighted the different ‘types’ (local, national, confessional etc.) of Enlightenment. However, as has recently been argued, the recoil from postmodernist ‘relativism’ seems inevitable due to postmodernism’s “evident failure to evaluate the Enlightenment intellectual arena fully or correctly.”57
Jonathan Israel and the Radical Enlightenment
During the past two decades, Jonathan Israel has forcefully modified the dominant narrative in Enlightenment scholarship. Considering the sheer size of his copious tripartite study,58 it is not surprising that each one of these weighty tomes have been among the most extensively reviewed and discussed works in the genre.59 Rejecting the large body of critical postmodern
56 D. Brewer, The Enlightenment Past: Reconstructing Eighteenth-Century French
Thought (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 2-3; J. Robertson, The Enlightenment: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2015), pp. 123-125; J. Kent Wright, “A Bright Clear Mirror: Cassirer’s Philosophy of the Enlightenment,” in: K.M. Baker and P. H. Reill (eds.), What’s Left of Enlightenment? A Postmodern Question (Stanford, 2001), pp. 71-72; W. Clark, J. Golinski and S. Schaffer (eds.), The Sciences in Enlightened Europe (Chicago, 1999), pp. 9-10; D. Outram, The Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1995), p. 4.
57 J. Israel, “Enlightenment: Which Enlightenment?,” in: Journal of the History of
Ideas (2006), pp. 528-530.
58 Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity
1650-1750 (New York, 2001); Idem, Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man 1670-1752 (New York, 2006); Idem, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750-1790 (New York, 2011).
59 For instance, Douglas Shantz (“Religion and Spinoza in Jonathan Israel’s
Interpretation of the Enlightenment,” in: Religious Minorities and Cultural Diversity in the Dutch Republic) has recently emphasized Israel’s structural neglect of the transformational reform that took place within the religious (mostly Protestant) movements themselves. But the list seems almost endless. See, also, S. Stuurman, op. cit.; M. Jacob, “Spinoza Got It,” in: London Review of Books (2012), pp. 26-27; Idem, “Radical Enlightenment and Freemasonry: Where We Are Now,” in: Philosophica (2013), pp. 13-29; R. Leo, “Caute: Jonathan Israel’s Secular Modernity,” in: Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory (2008), pp. 76-83; H. Jürgens, “Contesting Enlightenment Contested. Some questions and remarks for Jonathan Israel,” in: De Achttiende Eeuw (2007), pp. 52-61; J. Stalnaker, “Jonathan Israel in Dialogue,” in: Journal of the History of Ideas (2016), pp. 637-648; Wolin, R., “Introduction to the
literature, Israel is convinced that contesting methodologies (the French
histoire de mentalités, the German Begriffsgeschichte and British
contextualism) failed in their attempt to “integrate intellectual history effectively with social, cultural and political history.”60 What is needed to reform intellectual history is an approach that focuses on debates and disputes, for these contribute substantially to our understanding of the interaction between ideas and the (social) context in which they were (and are) worth discussing. Because key concepts are repudiated and/or defended through polemical arguments, such encounters provide more than the intellectual reflections of individual theorists; they are a crucial indicator of what is at stake in society at large. Therefore, by emphasizing the two-way interaction between ideas and society, expressed clearly by shared and disputed concepts, the controversialist approach increases comprehension of major and minor representative issues. The numerous early Enlightenment public controversies, Israel writes, enable us to see “in a reasonably objective light how structures of belief and sensibility in society interact dialectically with the evolution of philosophical ideas.”61
In addition, Israel takes issue with the notion of a plurality of (more or less) national Enlightenments, a notion most famously advocated by Roy Porter, Franco Venturi and John Pocock who introduced the concept of a ‘family of Enlightenments.’62 For Pocock, the Enlightenment “occurred in too many forms to be comprised within a single definition and history.” Therefore, he continues, “we do better to think of a family of Enlightenments, displaying both family resemblances and family quarrels.”63 Although he agrees with Israel that the histories of certain actors have a great deal in common, he is
Symposium on Jonathan Israel’s Democratic Enlightenment,” in: Journal of the History of Ideas (2016), pp. 615-626.
60 Israel, Enlightenment Contested, pp. 15-23. 61 Ibid. p. 26.
62 J. Israel, “J. G. A. Pocock and the ‘Language of Enlightenment’ in his
Barbarism and Religion,” in: Journal of the History of Ideas (2016), pp. 107-127; Idem, Enlightenment Contested, pp. 16-20, 863-867; Idem, Revolution of the Mind, pp. 18-20.
63 J.G.A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion: The Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon
1734-1764 (Cambridge, 1999), here p. 9. See also, idem, “Enthusiasm: The Antiself of Enlightenment,” in: Huntington Library Quarterly (1997), pp. 7-28; Idem, “Historiography and Enlightenment: A View of their History,” in: Modern Intellectual History (2008), pp. 83–96; Idem, “Response and Commentary,” in: Journal of the History of Ideas (2016), pp. 157-171.
convinced that the narratives to which they gave rise do not display enough generalized characteristics to justify writing a history of ‘the’ Enlightenment.64
Israel, on the other hand, sees modernity as the continuous conflict between the three “irreconcilably opposed intellectual blocs” of the modern West: a mainstream Enlightenment, a radical Enlightenment and a successive counter-Enlightenment.65 The most distinctive feature of his theory is the bifurcation of the Enlightenment into a moderate and a radical wing. The irresolvable essential duality, he argues, was rooted in the metaphysical dichotomy of one-substance doctrine and two-substance dualism.66 Briefly stated, all three of the ideological blocs had to cope with the sweeping measures Descartes’ revolutionary conceptual and interpretive paradigm entailed.67 The Counter-Enlightenment emphasized the traditional authority of theology as the only true guide for human life. The moderate, mainstream position postulated a balance between reason and tradition. Despite its political and cultural preponderance, the Moderate Enlightenment was intellectually unstable, for “all its philosophical recipes for blending theological and traditional categories with the new critical-mathematical rationality proved flawed in practice, not to say highly problematic and shot through with contradiction.”68 Even the ‘great minds’ of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, such as Rene Descartes, John Locke, Isaac Newton, Nicolas Malebranche, Gottfried Leibniz, Christian Wolff etc. failed in their attempts to merge the new philosophical systems with traditional, religious worldviews.69
By far the most significant Enlightenment was radical because its adherents rigidly rejected any compromise with the past. Instead, they endorsed “a package of basic concepts and values” such as secularization, democracy, tolerance, equality, emancipation, and other hallmarks of modernity.70 Emphasizing that human reason was fundamental for a society based on liberty, equality, and freedom of thought and expression, the radical faction considered Mosaic creation, heavenly commandments, and divine
64 Idem, “Response and Commentary,” pp. 166-167. 65 Israel, Enlightenment Contested, pp. 10-11; 37.
66 J. Israel, A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual origins
of Modern Democracy (Princeton, 2010), p. 18.
67 Ibid. pp. 5-6.
68 Israel, Enlightenment Contested, p.11.
69 Ibid. pp. 37-38; Idem, Radical Enlightenment, p. 15. 70 Ibid. p. 11; 866.
providence of no importance in everyday life.71 In addition, they dared to progressively challenge the intellectual incompatibility of new discoveries and existing authoritative structures, which so troubled the dualistic thought of mainstream philosophers. “The only kind of philosophy,” Israel avers, “which could (and can) coherently integrate and hold together such far-reaching value condominium in the social, moral and political spheres, as well as in ‘philosophy,’ was the monist, hylozoic systems of the Radical Enlightenment generally labeled ‘Spinozist’ ...”72 In other words, the core values of Western societies today are based on the central principles of the Radical Enlightenment. Postmodernism’s denial of a moral core to the Enlightenment and the claim that all values are equally valid are a “major threat” to those vital aspects of modernity.73 Furthermore, postmodernist philosophers such as Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre discredit the Enlightenment by questioning the credentials of its “principal heroes” (Locke, Newton, Voltaire and Hume). But these thinkers, Israel remarks, were social and moral conservatives who rejected the main line of egalitarian, democratic, and republican thought.74 Spinoza, on the other hand, produced a philosophically coherent and cogent system in which he integrated previous atheistic concepts into an unbroken chain of reasoning.75 This intellectual consistency, according to Israel, was the advantage monist systems always afford.76
Traditional historiography, according to Israel, erred on more than one occasion. First, more emphasis should be placed on the importance of the Early Enlightenment. Like most historians, he concurs with Hazard regarding the introduction of a transitional phase, or prelude, to the Enlightenment, which Hazard described as an intellectual crisis.77 For Israel, however, Hazard’s dating of the onset of this crisis at around 1680 is “unacceptably late.”78 Subsequently, the focus in Enlightenment studies should be directed towards the freethinking intellectual underground that was developing in the Dutch Republic from the middle of the seventeenth century on. It was not Voltaire, Locke, or Newton who were the prime instigators of the Radical
71 Ibid. pp. 11-12; 36-41. 72 Ibid. p. 867.
73 Ibid. pp. 806-808; 868-869.
74 J. Israel, “Enlightenment: Which Enlightenment?,” pp. 528-530. 75 Israel, Radical Enlightenment, pp. 159-174; 230-241.
76 Israel, Enlightenment Contested, p. 40. 77 Ibid. pp. 14-22.
78 Ibid. p. 20. Cf. S. Stuurman, “Pathways to the Enlightenment: From Paul Hazard
Enlightenment, but the Dutch philosophical culture headed by men like Franciscus van den Enden, Lodewijk Meyer, and Spinoza. The ‘modern’ values these men endorsed are now being increasingly appreciated as Enlightenment products. Recent research, Israel contends, has improved our knowledge of previously forgotten clandestine texts and unfairly marginalized figures. Regretfully, however, most of the works contributing to this new emerging picture remain ‘hidden’ to those in English-speaking countries, due to the fact that this “revisionist turn” has appeared predominantly in Dutch, Italian, French and German.79 Moreover, as Israel puts it, British and American scholars seem to overemphasize and exaggerate the English or Anglo-American inspiration of modern Enlightenment values. Uncovering their true origins, in contrast to the “Atlantic perspective” in English scholarship, should result in a greater appreciation for the indispensable continental ‘enlightened’ contributions.80 In fact, the first outlines of his binary view of the Enlightenment were formed while summarizing the research of Dutch, French and German scholars.81 “None of these,” he asserts, “contested, or has since, the essential duality characterizing the remarkable early Enlightenment tableau their work so vividly illustrates.”82 From this perspective, Israel might indeed be considered only one (though eminent) representative of an already existing group of Early Enlightenment experts and Spinoza scholars.83
79 Israel, “Enlightenment: Which Enlightenment?,” p. 530. 80 Ibid. pp. 532-533.
81 J. Israel, “A Reply to Four Critics,” in: H-France Forum (2014), pp. 77-97: “I myself
contributed little that was original, mostly just summarizing the research of others, principally Dutch and German colleagues to whose work I was (and still am) greatly beholden—Wim Klever, Wiep van Bunge, Manfred Walther, Winfried Schröder, and, later, Michiel Wielema, Wijnand Mijnhardt, and Henri Krop” (p. 77).
82 Ibid. p.77. See also, Israel, “Rousseau, Diderot, and the ‘Radical Enlightenment’: A
Reply to Helena Rosenblatt and Joanna Stalnaker,” in: Journal of the History of Ideas (2016), pp. 649-677; Idem, “Replying to Hanco Jürgens,” in: De Achttiende Eeuw (2007), pp. 61-71.
83 H. Jürgens, “How to Study the History of Change? Enlightenment and the Sixties,”
Historical Background
In the wake of Luther’s revolt, the sola scriptura principle advanced a kind of epistemological subjectivism that was resilient enough to last throughout the (post-)Reformation era. But the subjective certainty of the Reformers was open to many objections. Luther, as Richard Popkin put it, had opened Pandora’s box. The intellectual quarrels over the criterion for religious truth and the search for justification and certainty of these truths eventually fostered a feeling of uncertainty towards all authoritative criteria. With each side (Catholics and Protestants) seeking justification for its own infallible truths while at the same time questioning the Rule of Faith of the other, the post-Reformation world inherited an almost incomprehensible “sceptical crisis.”84 Coincidentally, the quest for certainty coincided in time with a revived interest in the arguments of the ancient sceptics. Especially the rediscovered manuscripts of Sextus Empiricus raised new enthusiasm for Pyrrhonian scepticism, which seemed far more appropriate when dealing with the intellectual crisis brought on by the Reformation than the ‘negative dogmatism’ of the Academic sceptics. Hence, Popkin adds, “the crisis is more aptly described as a crise pyrrhonienne than a crise academicienne.”85
During the course of the seventeenth century, two major philosophies were advanced to counter the sceptical challenge and justify the ‘new science.’ According to Popkin, even Descartes’ metaphysical theology was very much influenced by his desire to overcome the sceptical crisis of the time.86 But the usual presentation of the philosophical battle between Cartesian rationalism and British empiricism seems to omit an important group that responded to the sceptical crisis in a distinctive manner. The attempts of this latter group to “combine elements of empirical and rationalist thought with theosophic speculations and Millenarian interpretations of scripture” grouped them together and set them apart from the other seventeenth-century philosophical traditions. This “Third force,” as Popkin has labelled the group, consisted of people who do not fit well into the framework of Descartes,
84 R. Popkin, The History of Skepticism: From Savaranola to Bayle (Oxford, 2003). See,
especially, chapter 1.
85 Ibid., p. xx. According to Wiep van Bunge (De Republiek, Spinoza en de radicale
Verlichting, (Brussel, 2010)), no one in the Dutch Republic seems to have been troubled by this Pyrrhonian ‘revival’, which appears to have been a predominantly French affair (p.84).
Spinoza, Hobbes, and Locke and have therefore been left out of most scholarly research. To comprehend the complete transformation that took place in the seventeenth century, however, the anti-sceptical and millenarian ideas of Joseph Mede, Samuel Hartlib, John Dury, Comenius, the Cambridge Platonists Henry More and Benjamin Whichcote, and other like-minded individuals must be taken seriously and studied accordingly. Although none of the above-mentioned individuals were Dutch, almost all lived in Holland at one time, and/or had connections there.
Most historians studying the Dutch Golden Age have concentrated on the first half of the seventeenth century, whereas Dutch Enlightenment specialists tend to focus on the eighteenth century. In line with the general trend in Enlightenment historiography, these experts have also shifted their attention towards the social and cultural elements of the Dutch Enlightenment. For good reasons, however, it seems appropriate to situate the early Dutch Enlightenment around the initial stages of the first stadholderless age, a time when the young, wealthy nation with a high level of literacy and printing possibilities was supplied with an academic/intellectual infrastructure.87 Philosophy came into its own after the Revolt had ended and the newly established universities were among the first academic institutions in Europe to discuss the reception of both Cartesiansim and Newtonianism.88 The Dutch Republic, Wiep van Bunge points out, “only began to produce a distinctive contribution to the European history of ideas during the second half of the seventeenth century.”89 By then, various magazines, pamphlets, and books started to proliferate and intellectual life gained momentum. Notwithstanding the fact that certain books were obviously banned, structural censorship was absent; a characteristic predominantly attributed to the decentralized organization of the Republic’s government.
That fragmented political structure is considered to be responsible for another remarkable feature of the United Provinces as well: the exceptional confessional diversity.90 Indeed, the process of ‘confessionalization’,91 as
87 W. van Bunge (ed.), The Early Enlightenment in the Dutch Republic (1650-1750),
(Leiden, 2003), pp. 7-9. Cf. W. van Bunge, De Nederlandse Republiek, pp. 32-34.
88 Ibid. pp. 8-9. 89 Ibid. p. 8.
90 W. van Bunge, De Nederlandse Republiek, p. 33.
91 A comprehensive overview of the concept far exceeds the scope of this thesis. For
unfolded by Heinz Schilling and Wolfgang Reinhardt, could not have been enforced from above as it had been in the princely absolutist states surrounding the Dutch provinces. Confessionalization, in the strict sense, required a forceful interaction between state and church, which was absent within the borders of the Low Countries. Instead, Olaf Mörke objects, the peculiar situation should be explained ‘from below.’ Dutch society, he stresses, was “eine lockere Föderation souveräner Provinzen auf der Basis ständischer Regimenter, einem ‘zusammengesetzten Staat’ mit nur schwach entwickelter zentralstaatlicher Gestaltungskompetenz.”92 All sovereign provinces could be held accountable for local turmoil and disorder. The high level of participation and reflexivity from the States-General down to the municipal governments of such a political situation brought about the ensured “Formierung einer disziplinierten Gemeindeorganisation” and not “einer neuzeitlich disziplinierten Untertanengesellschaft”, the latter so crucial for Schilling’s “etatistische Mainstream der Konfessionalisierungsthese.”93
Around 1650, then, the Republic had become the breeding-ground of innovative religious ideas and the obvious place of refuge for persecuted nonconformists. There were, the author of an anonymous pamphlet observed, “as many sects in the country as there were mosquitoes in the summer” (… “daer ‘t land so vol af is als den somer vol mugghen”).94 Within this turbulent religious landscape, the newly arrived Quakers came into conflict with native Collegiants on the question of the inner light. Their differences of opinion quickly deteriorated into serious polemical writings. According to Andrew Fix,
Reinhard, “Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and the Early Modern State. A Reassessment,” in: The Catholic Historical Review, 3 (1989), pp. 383-404; H. Schilling “Confessionalzation: Historical and Scholarly Perspectives of a Comparative and Interdisciplinary Paradigm,” in: J. Headley, H.J. Hillerbrand and A.J. Papalas (eds.), Confessionalization in Europe, 1555-1700: Essays in Honor and Memory of Bodo Nischan (Aldershot, 2004), pp. 21-35; H. Schilling, “Confessional Europe,” in: T. Brady, H.A. Obermann and J.D. Tracy (eds.), The Handbook of European History, 2 (Leiden, 1995), pp. 641-670; U. Lotz-Heumann, “The Concept of ‘Confessionalization’: A Historiographical Paradigm in Dispute,” in: Memoria y Civilización (2001), pp. 93-114.
92 O. Mörke, “Die Politische Bedeutung des Konfessionellen im Deutschen Reich und
in der Republik der Vereinigten Niederlande. Oder: War die Konfessionalisierung ein ‘Fundamentalvorgang’?” in: R. Asch, H. Duchhardt (eds.) Der Abslutismos: Ein Mythos? Strukturwandel monarchischer Herrschaft in West- und Mitteleuropa (ca. 1550-1700), (Cologne, 1996), pp. 125-164.
93 Ibid. pp. 145-146.
“the bitter quarrel between the two groups … had the effect of pushing some Rijnsburgers still farther down the path to rationalism.”95
The Dutch Collegiants
Dutch Collegiantism arose as a counter-movement following the expulsion of liberal Arminian theologians after the Synod of Dordt had ruled in favour of the orthodox Gomarists.96 When Prince Maurice died and was succeeded by his brother Frederick Henry in 1625, the hostile attitude towards the Remonstrants gave way to a more open atmosphere. Although the cities and institutions in the Republic remained divided, the Remonstrant leaders felt they could slowly campaign from exile for their return and readmission.97 Irrespective of whether or not Frederick Henry was more inclined to the Arminian view, during the first years of his stadtholderate he allowed many deported Remonstrant ministers to return. But, with their ministers expelled and their churches confiscated, Remonstrant congregations often met in small, clandestine gatherings to pray and study the Bible together. These get-togethers were called ‘colleges,’ a term that had been in use since the late sixteenth century to describe the informal meetings held by small groups of Protestants who were denied access to - or deliberately refrained from - worship in the ‘public church.’ At first, these assemblies functioned as schools for discussion and religious education through mutual instruction, yet they soon came to represent a movement that spread rapidly throughout the Republic, especially the provinces of Holland and Friesland.98
In the small town of Warmond near Leiden, the Van der Kodde brothers initiated the first of these meetings as a way of dealing with the outcome of the synod. Because of their Arminian heritage, the essential message of the early Collegiants was directed against the doctrinal rigidity of the Reformed church. Basing themselves on I Corinthians 14 in the Bible,
95 Fix, Prophecy and Reason, p. 194.
96 Here I cannot elaborate on the theological discussion between Arminius and
Gomarus. For further research on this topic see works by E. Dekker, Rijker dan Midas. Vrijheid, genade en predestinatie in de theologie van Jcobus Arminius (1559-1609) (Zoetermeer, 1993); and K. Stanglin, Arminius on the Assurance. The Context, Roots, and Shape of the Leiden Debate, 1603-1609 (Leiden, 2007); A. Goudriaan and F. van Lieburg (eds.), Revisiting the Synod of Dordt (1618-1619) (Leiden, 2010).
97 F. Sierhuis, The Literature of the arminian Controversy: Religion, Politics and the
Stage in the Dutch Republic (Oxford, 2015), pp. 227-230.
