Enlightened Religion

Joke Spaans, Ph.D. (1989, Leiden University), is Associate Professor for the history of Christianity at Utrecht University. She publishes on early modern Dutch religious history — her most recent monograph is Graphic Satire and Religious Change, The Dutch Republic 1676-1707 (Brill, 2011).Jetze Touber, Ph.D. (2009, Groningen University), is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of History, Ghent University. He has published on the interrelations between religion, scholarship and science in early modern Europe, including the monograph Spinoza and Biblical Philology in the Dutch Republic (1660-1710) (Oxford University Press, 2018).

“The volume focuses on developments in the Dutch Republic at the turn of the eighteenth century, a society unique for its tolerance both of a wide variety of confessions and of radical philosophical ideas [...] these trends helped contribute to a new kind of Protestantism in the Enlightenment, where Protestant believers of all kinds were redefining how their beliefs could coexist in a time and place of growing possibility and knowledge. These essays will be valuable reading for scholars interested in the continuing evolution of the various Protestant Christianities in the post-Reformation era.” Christine Kooi, Louisiana State University. In: The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 71, No. 1 (2020), p. 197.“[The editors] have taken an important step forward to a new understanding of that complex period called the Enlightenment; their volume […] will no doubt prompt further studies in these fields.”Francesco Quatrini, Università degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale. In: Renaissance and Reformation, Vol. 44, No. 2 (2021), pp. 273–275. “Der Band vereint eine Mixtur von mitunter sehr speziellen, meistenteils aber interessante und große Linien ziehenden Beiträgen. Diese eröffnen zwar nicht eine völlig neue Perspektive auf den religiösen Wandel in den Niederlanden am Beginn des 18. Jahrhunderts, doch regen sie sehr wohldazu an, sich der Gestalt des Protestantismus in Holland etwas differenzierter und auch mit einem frischem Blick zuzuwenden, gerade auch unter Einbeziehung von bislang übersehenen schriftlichen und visuellen Quellen.” Jürgen Overhoff, Münster, in: Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert[“The volume combines a mixture of sometimes highly specialized, but mostly interesting and broad-based contributions. These do not open up a completely new perspective on the religious change in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 18th century, but they do stimulatestudying the shaping of Protestantism in Holland in a more differentiated way, with a fresh look, especially with the inclusion of previously overlooked written and visual sources.”]

• ContentsList of IllustrationsAbout the Authors Introduction: Enlightened Religion: From Confessional Churches to Polite Piety in the Dutch RepublicJoke Spaans and Jetze TouberPART 1: Trends1 From Religion in the Singular to Religions in the Plural: 1700, a Faultline in the Conceptual History of ReligionHenri Krop2 Tracing the Human Past: The Art of Writing Between Human Ingenuity and Divine Agency in Early Modern World HistoryJetze Touber3 Colonies of Concord: Religious Escapism and Experimentation in Dutch Overseas Expansion, ca. 1650–1700Arthur Weststeijn4 Negotiating Ideas: The Communicative Constitution of Pietist Theology within the Lutheran ChurchMartin Gierl5 The Collegie der Sçavanten: A Seventeenth-Century Cartesian Scholarly Society in UtrechtAlbert Gootjespart 2: Individuals6 “Let no citizen be treated as lesser, because of his confession”: Religious Tolerance and Civility in De Hooghe’s Spiegel van Staat (1706–7)Frank Daudeij7 The Power of Custom and the Question of Religious Toleration in the Works of Marcus Zuerius Boxhorn (1612–1653): An Investigation into the Sources of the Transformation of Religion around 1700Jaap Nieuwstraten8 Romeyn de Hooghe’s Hieroglyphica: An Ambivalent Lexicographical History of ReligionTrudelien van ’t Hof9 Popularizing Radical Ideas in the Dutch Art World of the Early Eighteenth Century: Willem Goeree (1635–1711) and Arnold Houbraken (1660–1719)Jonathan Israel10 Bayle’s Skepticism RevisitedWiep van Bunge11 Between the Catechism and the Microscope: The World of Johannes DuijkeriusJoke Spaans12 Warning against the Pietists: The World of Wilhelmus à BrakelFred van LieburgIndex