1st Edition
Jews and Muslims in Seventeenth-Century Discourse From Religious Enemies to Allies and Friends
Jews and Muslims in Seventeenth-Century Discourse explores for the first time the extent to which the unusual religious diversity and tolerance of the Dutch Republic affected how its residents regarded Jews and Muslims.
Analyzing an array of vernacular publications, this book reveals how Dutch writers, especially those within the nonconformist and spiritualist camps, expressed positive attitudes toward religious diversity in general, and Jews and Muslims in particular. Through covering the Eighty Years War (1568-1648) and the post-war era, it also highlights how the Dutch search for allies against Spain led them to approach Muslim rulers. The Dutch were assisted in this by their positive relations with Jews, and were thus able to shape a more affirmative portrayal of Islam.
Revealing noticeable differences in language and tone between English and Dutch publications and exploring societal attitudes and culture, Jews and Muslims in Seventeenth-Century Discourse is ideal for students of British and Dutch early-modern cultural, intellectual, and religious history.
1. Introduction
Two Turkish Slaves in Limburg
The Religious Other
Pamphlets, Newssheets, and Chronicles
England and the Netherlands in the Seventeenth Century
Religious Conformity and Dissent – the Netherlands and England
Christians, Jews, Muslims
Transgressing Confessional Boundaries
Contents of the Book
2. Jews in England and the Netherlands, 1550-1620 – Anti-Semitism, Religious Polemics, and Realpolitique
A Hebrew Army
Dirck Volckertsz Coornhert
Religious Conflict and Tolerance in the Dutch Republic
The Sad Case of Dr. Rodrigo Lopez
The Jews in Amsterdam
Hugh Broughton and Rabbi David Farar, Amsterdam, 1605
Abraham Costerus, 1608
Hugo Grotius’s Recommendations, c.1615
Regulations and Petitions, 1616-20
Jews in Pamphlets, 1600-1620
Jews in Reformed Polemics
Henry Finch and the Great Restauration, 1621
Samuel Pallache
Conclusion
3. Christian Nonconformists and Jews, 1540-1650
The Lisbon Pogrom of 1506
Anabaptists and Spiritualists on Jews
Mennonite Pieter Jansz Twisck’s Chronicles, 1609 and 1620
Joost van den Vondel’s Hierusalem Verwoest, 1620
The End of the Twelve Years Truce and Rosicrucian Efforts
Reformed Reaction
The Conversion of Isaac Pallache, c. 1631
Conclusion
4. Muhammad: Christian Fantasies of the Prophet and the Qur’an
Signs and Wonders and Muhammad’s Birth
Muhammad’s Biography
Pre-Reformation Imaginings of Muhammad
Muhammad in Sixteenth-Century Reformation Polemics
Muhammad in the Hands of Christians, 1600-1620
Dutch Mennonites – Pieter Jans Twisck, 1620
Broer Jansz, 1627
Two Later Divergent Histories of Muhammad, 1666 and 1671
English Catholics and Ottoman Antichrists
Liberal Dutch Mennonites and the Qur’an
Conclusion
5. Moors and Moriscos, 1550–1620
The Jesuit and the Blackamoor
Europeans, Moors, and Jews
English Merchants in Morocco
The Enemy of My Enemy
The Dutch Republic Joins the Fray
A Muslim Convert to Reformed Protestantism?: Henri Chérif
European Reports on Morocco’s Civil Wars, 1603–09
Moors, Jews, and Doopsgezinden in Amsterdam
Europeans and the Moroccan "Saint-King," 1612
The Expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain, 1609-14
Conclusion
6. Europeans and the Ottomans: Fantasy and Reality, 1610-1648
The Scourge of God?
Turks in Reformed Polemics
Pamphlets and Newssheets – Sixteenth Century
Dreaming Sultans
Ottomans and the Lost Tribes of Israel
Persians and Prester John
War and Peace with the Ottomans
The Dutch and the Ottomans, 1607-14
Cornelis Haga’s Mission to The Porte
Chroniclers and the Turk
News from Turkey, 1618: Sultans Ahmed and Mustafa
Elect Nations
Pieter Jansz Twisck on the Turks, 1620
Dutch and English Pamphlets on the Turks, 1621-30
Dutch and English Writers on the Turks after 1630
Conclusion
7. Millenarian Dreams, Ecumenical Prophets, and the Lost Tribes Found, 1648-65
The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel in the Americas
Jews, Christians, and Muslims c. 1648
1648: Spain and the Netherlands at Peace
Jan Zoet of Amsterdam, 1648
The Lost Tribes Discovered
Menasseh Ben Israel and his Circle
The Hope of Israel
English Christian Israelites
Menasseh ben Israel’s Plea to Oliver Cromwell, 1655
The Baptist Henry Jessey
Reaction to Menasseh ben Israel
Margaret Fell and Quaker Pamphlets
Jews and Turks in the Dutch Press, 1650-65
Costerus, Buxtorf and Zoet
Jews as Equals?
Johannes Serwouter’s Hester
Christians and Muslims after the Peace with Spain
Conclusion
8. The Sabbatai Zevi Experience: Jews, Christians, and Muslims, 1666-1700
The Messiah Arrives?
The Year of Living Messiahly: Sabbatai Zevi, 1666
Christian Responses to Sabbatai
Petrus Serrarius, Anthoinette Bourignon, and Jean de Labadie
Georgius Hornius and Balthasar Bekker
P. Cornelius Hazart
Mennonites and the Jews after Sabbatai Zevi
Rabbi Saul Levi Morteira’s Praise of New Reformed
Baruch Spinoza
The 1680s: Anti-Semitism Redux?
Conclusion
Conclusion
Jan Jacob Mauricius and a Ritual Murder Accusation in Nijmegen, 1710-16
A Counterfeit Jew in Newcastle, 1653
A Quaker Turned Jew
Rethinking Religious Identity
Biography
Gary K. Waite is a professor of early-modern European history at the University of New Brunswick. He has published widely on religion, drama, and culture in the Low Countries, on Anabaptism and spiritualism, witchcraft and demonology, and is currently preoccupied with seventeenth-century Dutch religious nonconformists and the early Enlightenment.
'This insightful and original study offers an ambitious dual comparison, exploring attitudes to Jews and Muslims, in England and the Dutch Republic, during the seventeenth century. Approaching this topic from a wide range of angles – individual, diplomatic, commercial and theological – and making use of a rich and diverse corpus of primary sources, this book will be of great interest to scholars and teachers of early modern European history, religious studies, and the history of community relations and toleration.'
Adam Sutcliffe, King's College London, UK