HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT IN THE SEVENTEENTH- CENTURY DUTCH REPUBLIC The Case of Marcus Zuerius Boxhorn (1612-1653) Jaap Nieuwstraten HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT IN THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY DUTCH REPUBLIC The Case of Marcus Zuerius Boxhorn (1612-1653) Historisch en politiek denken in de zeventiende-eeuwse Nederlandse Republiek De casus van Marcus Zuerius Boxhorn (1612-1653) Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam op gezag van de rector magnifi cus Prof.dr. H.G. Schmidt en volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties. De openbare verdediging zal plaatsvinden op vrijdag 4 mei 2012 om 09.30 uur door Jacob Tomás Nieuwstraten geboren te Haarlem Promotiecommissie Promotor: Prof.dr. R.C.F. von Friedeburg Overige leden: Prof.dr. H. Hotson Prof.dr. H.J.M. Nellen Prof.dr. S. Stuurman Historical and Political Thought in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic: The Case of Marcus Zuerius Boxhorn (1612-1653) © 2012 by Jaap Nieuwstraten Published by Jaap Nieuwstraten, Saenredamstraat 65, 2021 ZP Haarlem, The Netherlands All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form (electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other means) without prior written permission of the publisher Cover design by GBU grafi ci, Urk Printed by GBU grafi ci, Urk Deo, parentibus sororique CONTENT PREFACE v ACKNOWLEDGEMENT vii ABBREVIATIONS ix CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 2. INTELLECTUAL CONTEXT 7 Early modern historical thought 7 Early modern political thought 16 CHAPTER 3. BIOGRAPHY 35 Early years (1612-1625) 35 Student (1626-1631) 39 1. The town and the university 39 2. Leiden University I. Goals, administration, and organisation 43 3. Leiden University II. Structure, method, and content of education 46 4. Boxhorn’s educational background 48 I. The value of history: Daniel Heinsius 49 II. The politica of Franco Burgersdijk 55 III. Remnants of the past: Petrus Scriverius 60 IV. Conclusion 62 Professor (1632-1653) 63 1. Career 63 2. Personal life 66 3. Professional life 74 4. Position on social issues and ‘religious-political’ persuasion 80 Conclusion 84 CHAPTER 4. TIMES OF SUCCESS. DEFENDING THE FATHERLAND 85 Why we may fi sh. Boxhorn’s defence of Dutch navigation and fi shery 86 1. Boxhorn’s analysis of war and trade 86 2. The Apologia and the Magnus Intercursus 92 Hard-won unity or sealed discord? The road to Münster 105 Conclusion 115 ii Content CHAPTER 5. TIMES OF TROUBLE. TAKING A STAND 119 For king and country 119 The case of the Republic stated 133 A predictable war 155 Conclusion 166 CHAPTER 6. NEW TIDINGS 169 Nehalennia 170 On the threshold of a new era 180 Conclusion 189 CHAPTER 7. THE MISTRESS OF LIFE 193 On history 194 Dutch history 205 The history of Rome 223 Conclusion 238 CHAPTER 8. THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. THE INSTITUTIONES POLITICAE 243 Background to the Institutiones politicae 244 A fi rst survey 248 The nature of politics 250 The nature of man and the birth of the commonwealth 251 The nature of the commonwealth I. Majestas, obedience, and ‘public opinion’ 258 The nature of the commonwealth II. Freedom, rights, and protection 265 The mechanisms of order and obedience. Religion, law, and political participation 272 1. Religion 272 2. Law 276 3. Political participation 278 In Aristotle’s footsteps I. Aristocracy as ‘the most commendable form of government’ 282 In Aristotle’s footsteps II. The road to democracy? 295 The problems among the best 300 Content iii CHAPTER 9. THE WORKING OF POLITICS. THE DISQUISITIONES POLITICAE 303 Background to the Disquisitiones politicae 303 Addressing political questions. Content and method of the Disquisitiones politicae 309 ‘The well-being of the commonwealth should be the highest law’ 310 Past, present, future. The direction of politics 315 ‘Times change and we change with them’ 322 CHAPTER 10. CONCLUSION 329 BIBLIOGRAPHY 343 Manuscript sources 343 Primary literature 343 Secundary literature 357 SUMMARY IN DUTCH (SAMENVATTING IN HET NEDERLANDS) 387 CURRICULUM VITAE 389 About the author 389 Publications 390 Preface Like so many studies this study owes much to many people. Let me begin by thanking the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for funding the research programme Conquest, Competition and Ideology: Inventing Governance in the Dutch Golden Age of which this study formed a part. The staff members of the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication are to be thanked for all the help and advice that they gave to me all those years. I was also fortunate enough to spend a semester at Central Michigan Univer- sity, where I had the pleasure of following a course on Roman history under the guidance of Gregory Smith. Thanks to the warm welcome and help of Timothy Hall and his staff this stay in the New World proved to be a wonder- ful experience and I am grateful for the new friends I met there. Over the years I have greatly benefitted from the help and advice of Alex- ander Bick, Hans Blom, Adrie van der Laan, Henk Nellen, Koen Stapelbroek, Toon Van Hal, Jan Waszink, and Arthur Weststeijn. I also owe much to my col- leagues and fellow Ph.D. students, both old and new, at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication. Jan Hartman, Michel Reinders, and Ingmar Vroomen became friends. The discussions we had and their humor and support made life as a Ph.D student so much more enjoyable. Thanks is also due to all those people, who, in one way or another, helped me with my translations of Latin texts and who introduced me to a linguistic world to which I was but a novice. In this context most praise should go to Adrie van der Laan and Jan Waszink, who saved me from many errors and greatly contributed to the improvement of my translations. It goes without saying that I alone am responsible for all remaining faults. I would also like to express my gratitude to Howard Hotson, Henk Nellen, and Siep Stuurman, who were willing to take a place on the board of examin- ers responsible for the examination of my doctoral thesis. I am particular indebted to my Ph.D. supervisor Robert von Friedeburg. He not only informed my ideas and gave me directions, but he also kept faith in my work when I had lost it. If this thesis has any merits, it is for an important part thanks to him. I also want to thank all my family and friends for their interest and support. I am especially grateful to my parents and sister whose generous financial support enabled me to fully concentrate on my work and – also very impor- tant – to sometimes sit back and relax. vi Preface The greatest thanks, however, I owe to God, who guided me through dif- ficult times and gave me strength to carry out a work that sometimes felt as a great burden. This thesis is a work of man. As such, it is likely to contain all kinds of misinterpretations, inaccuracies, and errors. I hope, however, that despite all its possible flaws, this study will please all those who have helped and sup- ported me throughout the years and that it will be of use to the general reader. Haarlem March 2012 Acknowledgement Parts of this thesis have appeared before as Jaap Nieuwstraten, “Why the Wealthy should rule: Marcus Zuerius Boxhorn’s Defence of Holland’s Aris- tocratic Mercantile Regime”, in Jan Hartman, Jaap Nieuwstraten and Michel Reinders (eds.), Public Offices, Personal Demands: Capability in Governance in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic (Cambridge Scholars Publishing; Newcas- tle upon Tyne, 2009), pp. 126-49, and are here published with the permission of Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Abbreviations KB Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague Knuttel Knuttel, W.P.C., Catalogus van de pamfletten- verzamelingberustende in de Koninklijke Biblio- theek, 1486-1853. Bewerkt, met aanteekeningen en een register der schrijvers voorzien, 9 vol. (Algemeene landsdrukkerij; The Hague, 1889-1920) NNBW Nieuw Nederlandsch biografisch woordenboek Chapter 1 Introduction The subject of this thesis is the historical and political thought of Marcus Zue- rius Boxhorn (1612-1653), professor at Leiden University from 1633 until 1653. The primary goal of this thesis is to unearth Boxhorn’s historical and political thought, or at least to discover and present their most central features. On the basis of the results of this investigation into Boxhorn’s historical and political thought, an attempt will be made to make some more general observations about the nature and development of Dutch historical and political thought in the seventeenth century. That is the secondary goal of this thesis. The out- come of this thesis will show that Boxhorn was an important transitional fig- ure between the ‘traditional’ humanist approach to history and politics, on the one hand, and the ‘new’ approach to history and politics of the later seven- teenth century and Enlightenment, on the other. Thanks to the reception of Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), which had already begun in the sixteenth century, and the appearance of the works of Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) and Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), the seventeenth century witnessed two important intellectual developments: the rise of modes of secular political thought and the rise of new ideas of natural law. These two developments were sometimes accompanied by a hostile attitude towards the received academic tradition. Hobbes, for example, explicitly campaigned against the ‘Vain Philosophy’ he believed was taught at the universities and which he wanted to see replaced with his own teachings as expressed in Levi- athan (1651).1 In the Dutch Republic Hobbes’s attack on academic learning found an echo in the Politike discoursen (Political Discourses, 1662) of the Lei- den cloth merchant Johan de la Court (1622-1660).