Marching in step
Dutch Catholics were cut off from Europe yet still heeded the Council of Trent, says Jonathan Wright
13 June 2008

Faith on the Margins: Catholics and Catholicism in the Dutch Golden Age by Charles H Parker, HUP £32.95

In terms of religious toleration, the 17th century was less of a golden age for the Dutch and more of an age of silver gilt. Until relatively recently it was historiographically fashionable to regard the early modern Dutch as trailblazers of modern notions of liberty of conscience. And to be fair, as Charles Parker explains in his excellent new book, "nowhere else in post-Reformation Europe did people have a greater range of confessional choices with fewer threats than did the Dutch in the United Provinces". Catholics, Calvinists, Lutherans and Mennonites all managed to sustain vibrant communities and congregations. There is, however, a grave risk of anachronism here. What we understand by religious toleration and what our 17th-century forbears understood by the term are two very different things, and any triumphalist, teleological narrative that leads inexorably to latter-day notions of a "right" to liberty of conscience is entirely inappropriate.

As Parker explains, early moderns would simply not have understood talk of human rights: they are a later invention. Very few 17th-century people questioned the duty of rulers to punish religious heterodoxy, and when rulers did follow more tolerant policies they almost always did so for strategic, political or economic reasons. Early modern religious toleration can best be understood as an absence of persecution rather than as the morning star of religious pluralism.

Moreover, while it was undoubtedly easier to be a Catholic in the Dutch Republic than in most other parts of Protestant Europe, it certainly wasn't pleasant. Any Dutch citizen was entitled to believe what he or she pleased; acting on those beliefs was a very different matter, however, and any species of Catholic worship or devotion was forbidden. Catholics could not hold public office - not even as a road sweeper or a grave digger - and, while there was a remarkable degree of peaceful coexistence in the Republic, the Catholic community certainly had to endure its moments of religious violence.

Parker's book traces how a distinctive Dutch Catholic mentality emerged in this unusual environment. Dutch Catholics fashioned themselves as members of an embattled community: people who had been robbed of their churches and had to worship in private houses, usually under cover of darkness.

In such straitened circumstances they gained great sustenance from the history of happier times, and from the abiding notion that it was often the lot of the true Christian to live a life of suffering and persecution.

Not, as Parker continues, that Dutch Catholics simply descended into the gloom of self-pity. On the contrary, they often turned unpromising circumstances to their advantage. Diocesan structures had been dismantled and most of the priests had fled, but this allowed the laity to play an unusually important role in the Church's governance and organisation. It also put a great deal of power into the hands of the so-called Holland Mission: the dynamic, clerically-led organisation steered by a series of impressive apostolic vicars throughout the period. Parker's book carefully explores how these different groups managed to maintain a semblance of discipline and efficiency between the outbreak of the Dutch Revolt in 1572 and the Jansenist schism in 1702: training priests, raising funds for poor relief and, while largely cut off from the rest of Catholic Europe, heeding and enforcing the nostrums and pronouncements of the Council of Trent. This, in fact, is one of the more important conclusions of Parker's book: it was entirely possible to create a decidedly Tridentine local Church without the help of state support.

The Catholics of the Dutch Republic were undoubtedly adrift but, in many ways, they marched in step with their less harried brethren.

Parker's book is scrupulously researched, fluently written and, crucially, it avoids any generalisations about the lives and tribulations of early modern Dutch Catholics. Local situations could be radically different from one another. In some places officials were far more amenable to being bribed - allowing Catholics to worship together without harassment. In some the sheer size of the Catholic community made it far more likely that local rulers would govern with a less draconian touch. In other places, however, Catholics had a great deal more to endure. It was a far more confused situation than many previous historians have allowed, and Parker is to be heartily commended for writing a book of such nuance.