Unity and Diversity as a Theme in Early Modern Dutch Religious History: an Interpretation

Abstract

The Reformation in the Low Countries fascinates both church historians and general historians. Religious change and political revolution went hand in hand. The history of the Reformation is an integral part of the history of the birth of the Dutch nation. Although well-researched, its attraction is renewed with each successive historiographical fashion.

Far less well-known is the history of Dutch religious life after the Reformation, Although a lot of detailed research has been done in this field, it is very difficult to give a synthesis of Dutch church history during the early modern period. The main problem is the apparent impossibility of integrating church history into the general history of the Dutch Republic. In modern works on Dutch history religion simply fades away somewhere around the middIe of the seventeenth century, only to reappear around the middle of the nineteenth century. No conceptual tools have been devised to come to grips with all that lies in between ...