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Political Revolt & Religious Reform Around 1650

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Political Revolt & Religious Reform Around 1650 116 AUTHORITY VS. AUTHENTICITY THE LEIDEN DEBATE ON BIBLE AND HEBREW (1575-1650) Arthur Eyffinger Political Revolt & Religious Reform Around 1650, with Amsterdam glorified as a European metropole of Jewish life, thought and trade, and home to some of the world’s most reputed Jewish printing houses, Leiden University stood out among the foremost centres of biblical research and Hebrew studies in Europe. Nothing of the kind could possibly have been anticipated three-quarters of a century before, at the impromptu launching of Leiden University in 1575. Nor had the decades in-between exactly been plain sailing. Mid- way, from 1609 to be precise, the political experiment of the Dutch Republic had experienced a severe crisis. This crisis had triggered social infighting beyond compare. The outcome, to a large extent, has moulded the face and figure of the Netherlands as we know it today. Two elements co-militated to bring about Leiden’s prominence. The first was of a political nature. In the late 1570s, the conservative nobility in the area covering what is nowadays Belgium and the Netherlands – after a full decade of desperate trench warfare in defence of its former prerogatives as against the modernity of overruling Hapsburg imperialism – gradually gave in to political reality and the onward march of Parma’s superior Spanish war machine. Grudgingly evacuating Brussels, Louvain and Antwerp – their political, intellectual, and commercial citadels – and despairing of securing the fervently envisaged unity of the Seventeen Provinces, the stubborn rebels gathered in Utrecht in 1579 in order to harness the remaining Seven (northern) Provinces into a would-be union, subsequently withdrawing their banners and ideals to far-out The Hague.1 At the time, it seemed a last stand without much prospect. Struggling for their sheer existence, the blatant religious, cultural and commercial incongruities of the Seven Provinces were the least of their leaders’ many concerns. 1 The story has been told in full detail from various angles. See e.g. Kossmann, E. H., Political Thought in the Dutch Republic, Amsterdam, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 2000; Israel, J., The Dutch Republic, Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477-1806, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1995; van Gelderen, M., The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt (1555-1590), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992; Leeb, I. L., The Ideological Origins of the Batavian Revolution, The Hague, Nijhoff, 1973; Den, T. J., Oldenbarnevelt, 2 vols., Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1973. THE LEIDEN DEBATE ON BIBLE AND HEBREW 117 By that time at Emden, in a parallel universe so to speak, the ideals of religious reform running wild throughout this region, as indeed throughout all of Europe, had crystallized, or perhaps one should say, fossilized into the constitution of a Dutch Reformed Calvinist Church. This historic event, which took place in 1571 and occurred beyond the control of whatever still remained of public authority in the North, successfully challenged both the surge of Catholic Counter-Reformation in the South and what had been until that juncture the prevailing reform programs of Lutheranism and Anabaptism in the North. Leiden University By 1575, to compensate for the loss to Loyola’s militant Jesuits of the celebrated Collegium Trilingue at Louvain – the foremost centre of biblical and Hebrew studies in the Low Countries, founded at Erasmus’ instigation in 1517 – political leaders of the Revolt and the Calvinist Church agreed upon the launching of an ideological centre of their own. Intended as a doctrinal counterpoise to Louvain, the new centre of learning was to be located in a small township in Holland, reputedly in recompense of its gallant defiance of a prolonged siege by the Spanish in 1573-74. External pressure had forced somewhat unlikely bedfellows into the straightjacket of a marriage of convenience. Heralded by some as the bastion of political independence and intellectual liberty, and by others as the citadel of doctrinal orthodoxy, Leiden University from the start exemplified the tragic ambiguity – symbolized in its emblematic Haec Libertatis Ergo as against Haec Religionis Ergo – to which, with time, the lofty ideals of the Dutch Revolt were to fall victim and which, more than any outward foe, would undo the ideology and fabric of the early Republic. While the ‘Utrecht’ political manifesto preached toleration, the ‘Emden’ religious creed claimed exclusivity. As Hugo Grotius would concisely put it in his famous History of the Dutch Revolt: the Politycqen felt inspired by Erasmus’ credo of humanism and irenicism, while the Kerckelycken were enthused by Calvin’s rigid orthodoxy and exclusivism.2 It was the 2 Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) was a foremost intellectual and politician active in Holland from about 1600 up to the crisis of 1618. His history of the Dutch Revolt is written in superb Tacitean style (Annales et Historiae) and is one of the highlights of Dutch historiography. On these socio-political issues see Hsia, R. P. and van Nierop, H. (eds), Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002; Nobbs, D., Theocracy and Toleration: A Study of the Disputes of Dutch Calvinism from 1600 to 1650, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1938. .
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