Calvinists and Libertines

Abstract

After the Reformation, the Dutch Republic emerged as the most religiously tolerant country in 17th-century Europe. This book examines the reasons behind this phenomenon, focusing on the struggle of Calvinist reformers to realize their theocratic aspirations in the Netherlands, and the fierce opposition offered to them by a large, amorphous group of people known as ‘Libertines’. Nowhere was this struggle more intense than in Utrecht, a city at the heart of the Dutch Reformation. The book illuminates the nature of this conflict through a study of the city and people of Utrecht, examining social relations, popular piety, civic culture, and state formation. This urban case-study shows how Dutch religious developments fitted into the wider European framework. Offering a fascinating microcosm of religious tensions in Europe around 1600, this book shows how the Calvinist–Libertine conflict in the Netherlands was in fact a local manifestation of a broader European phenomenon: the struggle between champions and opponents of ‘confessionalism’.

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