Religious Nonconformity and Cultural Dynamics: The Case of the Dutch Collegiants Der Fakultät für Geschichte, Kunst- und Orientwissenschaften der Universität Leipzig eingereichte D I S S E R T A T I O N zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades DOCTOR PHILOSOPHIAE (Dr. phil.) vorgelegt von Rosa Ricci geboren am 14.03.1984 in Benevento Leipzig, den 30.10.2013 Summary Introduction ........................................................................................................... 1 Nonconformity and cultural dynamics: some preliminary remarks ..................... 9 Chapter 1. The nature and spread of the Collegiant movement ........................................... 13 1.1. Introduction .............................................................................................. 13 1.2. The Rijnsburg general assembly: a network of Collegiants ........................ 15 1.3. Spread of the collegia prophetica and their territorial characterization ...... 27 1.3.1.The case of Amsterdam's collegium ..................................................... 29 1.3.2. The other collegia: Rotterdam, Leiden and Haarlem ............................ 39 1.4.Nonconformity as development of anticonfessional and anticlerical thought in the 17th century .......................................................................................... 44 1.5.Conclusions ............................................................................................... 49 Chapter 2. The question of nonconformity and the Collegiants' model of anticonfessionalism .............................................................................................. 53 2.1.English nonconformity and its European dimension .................................. 53 2.2.The XIX Artikelen: nonconformity and the Church without God .............. 59 2.3.Freeprophecy and the specificity of the Collegiants' reading of the Bible .. 65 2.4. Conclusions .............................................................................................. 76 Chapter 3. The communitarian projects and the utopian question in the works of Plockhoy van Zierikzee (1659-1663) .................................................................................... 79 3.1.Introduction ............................................................................................... 79 3.2.The political value of Plockhoy's works ..................................................... 80 3.3.Plockhoy's English period .......................................................................... 82 3.3.1. A question of attribution ...................................................................... 84 3.3.2. The English works............................................................................... 85 3.4.Plockhoy's Dutch works ............................................................................. 92 3.5.Plockhoy's community projects and the utopian question ........................... 95 Chapter 4. Collegiants' tolerance: theoretical and religious roots ...................................... 101 4.1.Introduction ............................................................................................. 101 4.2.Castellio and the definition of verdraagzaamheid in 17-th century Holland ......................................................................................................... 103 I 4.3.Onbepaalde verdraagzaamheid and the possibility of resolving the conflicts .......................................................................................................... 114 4.4.The “Bredenburgse twisten” and the dichotomy of tolerance.................... 122 Chapter 5. Epistemology and inner light in the Collegiant movement ............................... 127 5.1. Introduction ............................................................................................ 127 5.2. The epistemological paradigm of Descartes and Spinoza ........................ 133 5.2.1 Balling and the imaginatio ................................................................. 138 5.2.2 Balling and the scientia intuitiva ....................................................... 140 5.3 Collegiants' dispute with the Quakers and the position of Het licht op den Kandelaar ..................................................................................................... 142 5.4 Het licht op den Kandelaar, the possibility of knowledge, and the inner light ............................................................................................................... 150 5.5 The idea of God and the true religion in Balling's Het licht op den Kandelaar ...................................................................................................... 155 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 163 Appendix 1: XIX Artikel ......................................................................................................... 167 Introduction ................................................................................................... 167 Appendix II: Occurrence of the word nonconformity, nonconformist and nonconfrmism between 1500 and 1789 ...................................................................................... 173 Bibliography ....................................................................................................... 175 Acknowledgments .............................................................................................. 189 Introduction There is ample reason to engage in research around the Collegiants, a minority religious movement in the Netherlands of the 17th century. An exploration of this topic can be interesting not only for a contribution to the history of Religion but also to understand the development of some central concept in the early modernity. Prominent, in this research, is the question that initially stirred my personal interest in the Collegiantism; i.e. to define and understand the religious and cultural background that represents the practical field of confrontation of Baruch Spinoza's philosophy. This historiographical question had the purpose of highlighting the relationship between Spinoza and the religious movements of his time in order to fully understand the public to whom he addressed his texts. Collegiants, however, constitute an interesting field of research not only for the study of Spinoza, but widely to understand the cultural and social dynamic of the Dutch Golden Age, a backdrop against which emerged a new idea of religion. This dissertation is not exploring a curiosity or an inconsistent exception in the history of the 17th century, but rather the centrality of a group that was influenced by and largely influenced its Dutch social, political and religious context. One of the major problems in capturing the significance of the Collegiants arises from the difficulty in defining this movement, which chose never to formulate a confession of faith and consciously refused to be classified within a specific Church, sect, or congregation. The name, Collegiants, was not the consequence of an active choice but a label that arose, together with that of Rijnsburgers, in the polemic pamphlets of the epoch. The difficulties to define such elusive religious group make, however, the Collegiants a fascinating field of research. In this dissertation the Collegaints are termed a “movement” in order to emphasize their explicit lacks of norms or model and to highlight the continual change and redefinition of their religious identity. This process can be properly defined using Deleuze's concept of becoming minorities: Les minorités et les majorités ne se distinguent pas par le nombre. Une minorité peut être plus nombreuse qu'une majorité. Ce qui définit la majorité, c'est un modèle auquel il faut être conforme [...] Tandis qu'une minorité n'a pas de modèle, c'est un devenir, un processus [...] Quand une minorité se crée des modèles, c'est parce qu'elle veut devenir majoritaire, et c'est sans doute inévitable pour sa survie 1 ou son salut.1 This definition can help us to see both the positive and the productive side of the Collegiant movement, even thought it defined itself negatively in order to protest against the institutional Church and normative religion. The Collegiants were involved in this process of “devenir minoritaire” in a highly conscious way. They decided willfully to avoid strict affiliation to Churches or congregations and criticized explicitly the necessity of an identitarian definition. It can hardly be denied, indeed, that the religious reflection of the Collegiants was characterized by the conscientious refusal to construct a model or a norm to which they could refer. In this dissertation the term “minority” will therefore be used, always in reference to this concept, without drawing too much stress to the effective number of the Collegiants' members. This question appear, indeed, misleading because it does not take into account the position that Collegiants' member occupied in the economic, political and intellectual life of the United Provinces. It is the case of a group which, indeed, demonstrated in several occasions its deep influence in the Dutch religious life. Collegiants' continuous efforts towards de-institutionalization and their aspiration to an egalitarian and democratic religious life have to be conceived as an invitation to their coeval confessions, to undertake the way of evolving minorities renouncing whichever exclusivity and authority. The