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45 - Calvinism in the Early Modern Netherlands and the Dutch Atlantic World

from Part VI - Calvin’s Reception

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2019

R. Ward Holder
Affiliation:
Saint Anselm College, New Hampshire
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Summary

Writing on the religious culture of the early modern Dutch Republic, the eminent historian Johan Huizinga once observed, “The foreigner who wishes to understand our history begins with the assumption that the Republic was indisputably a Calvinist state and a Calvinist land.” To this Huizinga, a Groninger with Mennonite antecedents, wryly rejoined, “We Dutch know better.”1 Indeed, although in the popular imagination Calvinism and the Netherlands are virtually synonymous, the actual history of this relationship is, of course, far more complicated. In the Netherlandish context John Calvin, or rather the religious movement his ideas helped to inspire, had to compete with a wide variety of other equally zealous and committed groups intent on religious reform. Although Calvinism would “win” the Reformation in the Netherlands by becoming the only publicly sanctioned religion of the independent Dutch state, it would also have to coexist with a wide variety of religious movements and sects throughout its history. The Dutch Republic was not Calvinist, but Calvinist and pluralist.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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References

Suggested Further Readings

Th. van, Deursen. A.. Bavianen en slijkgeuzen: Kerk en kerkvolk ten tijde van Maurits en Oldenbarnevelt. Franeker: Van Wijnen, 1998.Google Scholar
Duke, Alastair. Reformation and Revolt in the Low Countries. London: Hambledon Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Gerstner, Jonathan N.A Christian Monopoly: The Reformed Church and Colonial Society under Dutch Rule.” In Christianity in South Africa: A Political, Social and Cultural History, ed. Elphick, Richard and Davenport, Rodney. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997, 1630.Google Scholar
Jacobs, Jaap. New Netherland: A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century America. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2005, esp. ch. 5.Google Scholar
Kooi, Christine. Liberty and Religion: Church and State in Leiden’s Reformation, 1572–1620. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2000.Google Scholar
Nijenhuis, Willem. “Variants within Dutch Calvinism in the Sixteenth Century.” In Ecclesia Reformata: Studies on the Reformation. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1972, 2: 163182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pettegree, Andrew. Emden and the Dutch Revolt: Exile and the Development of Reformed Protestantism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Schutte, G. J. Het Calvinistisch Nederland: Mythe en werkelijkheid. Hilversum, The Netherlands: Verloren, 2000.Google Scholar
Spohnholz, Jesse. “Confessional Coexistence in the Early Modern Low Countries.” In A Companion to Multiconfessionalism in the Early Modern World, ed. Safley, Thomas Max. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2011, 4773.Google Scholar
Woltjer, J. J., and Mout, M. E. H. N.. “Settlements: The Netherlands.” In Handbook of European History 1400–1600, ed. Brady, Thomas A. et al. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1995, 385415.Google Scholar

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