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Traits ofTOLERAN

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The seventeenth-century Dutch Republic was a place of surprising religiousdiversity. That much is clear if we look at its leading artists: Frans Hals was

Reformed, Jan Steen and Johannes Vermeer were Catholic, and Rembrandt wasnot tied to any church. They all sold their work to patrons from wide-rangingreligious backgrounds.

Only the Reformed Church was recognised by the authorities, but many otherreligions thrived behind closed doors. This book sheds light on how governmentand the public worked together to resolve a new dilemma: how can peace bemaintained in a country with a variety of religious groups, each of which believesit has a monopoly on the truth?

Chapters by Xander van Eck, Joke Spaans and Corinne van Dijk, and examinetolerance in seventeenth-century history and art. A concluding essay by PaulSchnabel presents his view of the similarities and di^erences between the pastand present in matters of religious toleration.

Religious Toleranc in the Golden Age

Traits ofTOLERANCE

Xander van EckJoke SpaansCorinne van DijkPaul Schnabel

Traits of TOLERANCEReligious Tolerance in the Golden Age

Xander van Eck and Ruud Priem (eds.)

With contributions byXander van Eck, Corinne van Dijk, Paul Schnabel and Joke Spaans

Zwolle, wbooksUtrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent

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Table of Contents

Prefaceruud priem and marieke van schijndel

Introductionxander van eck

A Reluctant Tolerance?joke spaans

Word over Imagecorinne van dijk

Painting and Religious Toleration in the Golden Agexander van eck

Toleration and Accommodation in the Netherlands Todaypaul schnabel

Notes

Index of names

Credits

9

Introduction

Xander van Eck

The image of the Netherlands as a tolerant nation originated in theearly years of the Dutch Republic. Foreigners who visited the coun-

try at the beginning of the seventeenth century expressed their surpriseat the religious diversity of society and the nonchalance with which peo-ple with divergent views were accepted. The French immigrant Jean-François LePetit wrote about Amsterdam, as early as 1616, that the Dutch‘receive and welcome people from diverse nations, who may freely re-side there, without any religious scrutiny: French, German, English, Ital-ian, Spanish, Portuguese, Scottish, Danish ... indeed, there are evenTurks and Jews.’ It is an image that corresponds closely to the self-imagethat the Dutch have built up over the centuries. But is it true? Is tolerancean innate characteristic of the Dutch, or was it created in response to cer-tain historical conditions? Does the religious toleration that existed inthe seventeenth century correspond to the definition of tolerance thatwe use today? This book deals with these and many other questions re-lating to religious tolerance and intolerance in the Netherlands of theGolden Age, and will naturally also look at the relevance of this historyto the present-day world.

Tolerance: The Dutch Self-image The roots of the Dutch self-image as a tolerant nation lie in the Revoltagainst Spain in 1568, which led to the Eighty Years’ War. William of Orange and his supporters, the high-ranking nobles of the Netherlands,wanted to formally sever their ties with their sovereign, King Philip ii.To justify what was an unprecedented objective in that era, they claimedthat all manner of privileges and ‘liberties’ that the king had promisedhad been violated. As a result, the sovereign’s subjects no longer owed

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him their allegiance. Propaganda prints and pamphlets distributed bythe rebels presented the population of the Netherlands as – from timeimmemorial – a peace-loving nation, which now found itself robbed ofits ‘freedom of conscience’. That the King had never actually promisedfreedom of conscience in so many words was a minor matter; it was arousing battle cry behind which the majority of Dutch nobles, and laterthe population at large, were pleased to rally. Even Catholics were aghastat the idea that at any moment you might be hauled out of your bed andtaken o^ to be executed, merely for your thoughts.

The Union of Utrecht, the document establishing the Dutch Republicin 1579, emphatically guaranteed freedom of conscience. Although theprinciple discouraged o·cers of the law from prosecuting individualsfor their faith, the government nonetheless cherished the ideal of grad-ually uniting the whole population in one Church – the CalvinistChurch, which was accordingly given the use of all the churches it want-ed and permitted to build new ones wherever necessary. In the mean-time, the Catholics had had an opportunity to regroup, while a numberof alternative Reformed movements were also developing into fully-fledged Churches. And then there was a substantial proportion of thepopulation that declined to join any Church at all.

The Dutch Republic was not alone in prescribing toleration of reli-gious minorities, but it was the only country in which the religion recog-nised by the state represented a minority of the population. The diversi-ty of the society that emerged from the Revolt meant inevitably that any-one with strong religious beliefs would have to tolerate a great deal frompeople di^erent from themselves. This did not always go smoothly, nordid it happen without causing conflict – verbal and in some cases phys-ical. The government devised practical solutions to mould the country’slegislation so as to preserve public policy while accommodating allfaiths.

Religious DiversityFrom 1580 onwards, provincial councils and city councils published fre-quent ordinances forbidding religious minorities to hold services inpublic or to make themselves conspicuous by wearing clerical dress ororganising processions and suchlike. In the absence of a strong centralgovernment, it was the cities that had to enforce such laws, but theylacked the resources to do so. The police (the sheri^ or baili^ with his as-

1 Hendrick ter Brugghen, Annunciation, 1629. Stadsmuseum De Hofstadt, Diest, on loan from the Public Centre for Social Welfare

(ocmw), Diest, photo Hugo Maertens.

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sistants) had not been equipped for a task of such magnitude, and thecivic militia generally consisted of members of all denominations, andcould therefore not be expected to take an active part in repressive meas-ures.

A compromise was struck, in the form of turning a blind eye tochurches in private houses. Everyone, including o·cers of the law,knew where these services were held. However, o·cers seldom inter-vened, at least as long as the illusion that people were practising theirfaith in the family circle was not shattered all too ostentatiously. Regu-lations varied from one city to the next. While Amsterdam’s Jewish com-munity was allowed to build monumental synagogues, there were oth-er cities that would not admit Jews at all. Few obstacles were placed in thepath of the Muslims who visited the Dutch Republic – there were ad-mittedly very few of them. The States did express concern, however, lestcitizens of the Dutch Republic who visited the Ottoman Empire under-go conversion to Islam. Sti^ penalties were put in place to deter suchconversions.

In spite of religious di^erences and government-imposed restric-tions on minorities, people found ways of smoothly conducting theireveryday business: what is now known as omgangsoecumene – pragmat-ic ecumenism. They did not shrink from forging business or other rela-tions with those whose beliefs di^ered from theirs. After all, peoplefrom diverse faiths lived alongside each other in the same towns and vil-lages. Di^erences of faith were frequently found even within a singlefamily. Strict orthodoxy was therefore impossible to sustain. In addi-tion, being part of the growing, prosperous Dutch Republic generated afeeling of solidarity.

In professional organisations and militia guilds, people of all reli-gions mingled freely. The group portrait of the governors of the sur-geons’ guild by Nicolaes Maes depicts Calvinists, Remonstrants andMennonites sitting shoulder to shoulder. Indeed, the government en-couraged them to do so. Old traditions with a Catholic tint, such as Sin-terklaas, the Feast of St Nicholas, were a thorn in the side of Calvinistministers. But the government saw little harm in them, and mostProtestants happily celebrated Sinterklaas.

Pragmatic ecumenism was also expressed in the art of the Golden Age.Artists were entrepreneurs who need to sell their paintings for a living,and they tended to make what the public wanted to buy. Pieter Saen re -

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dam produced both Catholic and Protestant versions of the interior ofthe St Lawrence’s Church in Alkmaar. Jan van Goyen’s Catholicism didnot influence his landscapes, nor did it a^ect the composition of hisclientele, which was a cross-section of the entire population. Converse-ly, Protestants could paint deeply moving altarpieces if called upon to doso; Hendrick ter Brugghen’s Annunciation (1629) is a fine case in point(fig. 1). It is true that painters would often start by gaining most of theirsupport and commissions from among people of the same faith – a ten-tative beginning to the ‘pillarisation’ that would become a major featureof Dutch society. A small group of Mennonite pupils formed around theMennonite painter and minister Lambert Jacobsz, for instance, includ-ing Govert Flinck and Jacob Backer, who initially did much of their workfor co-religionist clients. But anyone who could produce truly remark-able work, such as Rembrandt or Hals, soon acquired a much wider pop-ularity. This is clear from the portraits they made of people from everyconceivable religious background.

Practical ToleranceThe tolerance of the Golden Age originated, both on the government’spart and among the country’s citizens, from the need to find practical so-lutions to deal with the simple reality of society’s assorted religions. Itdid not stem from the tolerant nature of the Dutch, nor from any ideal-istic conviction that all faiths were of equal value – an idea that gainedcurrency only gradually, during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment.That is not to say, it should be added, that peace has reigned ever sincethen. The pillarisation of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries helpedto defuse tensions, but it also fostered a certain alienation between reli-gious groups. Deep mistrust between Protestants and Catholics per-sisted for a very long time. In 1885 King William iii decided against attendingthe opening of the Rijksmuseum because he thought that the buildinglooked too much like a cathedral; as recently as 1964, Princess Irene’smarriage to a Catholic prince caused controversy. Now, fifty years on,this hurdle appears to have been taken. Queen Máxima’s Catholicism nolonger provokes objections.

Today, the Netherlands is struggling to accommodate the recent Mus-lim arrivals, while these Muslims in turn often have di·culty respond-ing to what is expected of them in the Netherlands. Tolerance is stillpainful, but history teaches us that a government that adopts a moder-

ate, mediating position can help to channel the process of adjustment inthe right direction. And however much we may wish to nuance and qual-ify the supposed tolerance of the Dutch, it cannot do any harm that manyclaim proudly to possess it.

34 Gerrit de Jongh, Portrait of a Family Outside the Ruins of the Chapel of Our Lady of Refuge at Heiloo, 1630. Museum

Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, bmh s473b, photograph by Ruben de Heer.

35 Pieter Saenredam, View of a Chapel in the North Transept of the Great or St Lawrence’s Church, Alkmaar, 1635. Museum

Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, bmh s124, photograph by Ruben de Heer.

51 Jan Steen, The Feast of St Nicholas, 1665-1668. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, sk-a-385.

52 Jan Steen, The Feast of St Nicholas, c. 1668. Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, rmcc s325,

on loan from Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam.

cover

front: Pieter Saenredam, View of a Chapel in the North

Transept of the Great or St Lawrence’s Church, Alkmaar, 1635.

Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, bmh s124,

photograph by Ruben de Heer.

back: Anon., Wall panel with the text of Luke 11:28, 1600-1700.

Protestant Congregation of Haarlem.

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ISBN 978 90 663 0497 0

(Nederlands)

ISBN 978 90 663 0674 5

(Engels)

NUR 694

Credits

published by

wbooks, Zwolle

in partnership with Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht

authors

Xander van Eck, Joke Spaans, Corinne van Dijk and Paul

Schnabel

editors of dutch text

Xander van Eck, Izmir University of Economics

Ruud Priem, Museum Catharijneconvent

final editing

Inge Schriemer with the assistance of Ruud Priem,

Museum Catharijneconvent

english translation by

Beverley Jackson, Jackson Academic (Preface, Introduc-

tion, Chapters 1 and 3) and David McKay, Open Book

Translation (chapters 2 and 4).

pictorial editing

Kees van Schooten, Museum Catharijneconvent

design

Marjo Starink

photographs

The photographs of objects derive from the institutions

and photographs named in the captions to the images