Seventeenth-century Dutch Research Articles

Henry van Roonhuyse and the first repair of a vesico-vaginal fistula (~1676).

Obstetric vesico-vaginal fistula is a traumatic complication of prolonged obstructed labor in which pressure necrosis from the impacted fetal head destroys portions of the vesico-vaginal septum, resulting in continuous and uncontrollable urinary incontinence. Ancient evidence suggests that fistula cases have probably been occurring since the development of rotational delivery mechanics in anatomically modern humans hundreds of thousands of years ago. It is likely that attempts to repair such injuries also have a long history. The early history of vesico-vaginal fistula surgery was investigated to determine the earliest credible report of successful cure of this condition. Historical review of vesico-vaginal fistula surgery was undertaken, focusing on the work of Henry Van Roonhuyse, a seventeenth century Dutch surgeon living in Amsterdam. Van Roonhuyse's clinical treatise entitled Medico-Chirurgical Observations (1676) was reviewed in detail and is described in this article. His technique for vesico-vaginal fistula repair included six essential steps that are still recognizable today: (1) use of the lithotomy position; (2) exposure of the fistula with a speculum; (3) sharp paring of the fistula edge prior to attempted closure; (4) careful approximation of the denuded edges of the fistula; (5) dressing of the wound with absorbent vaginal packing; (6) immobilization of the patient in bed until the repair has healed. Henry Van Roonhuyse is the most credible candidate presently known for having successfully repaired a vesico-vaginal fistula in the pre-modern era.

Climacus’ Miracle: Another Look at “the Wonder” in Philosophical Fragments through a Spinozist Lens

Abstract In Chapter 2 of the Philosophical Fragments, Søren Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Johannes Climacus poetises about a “king who loved a maiden.” Climacus concludes this venture with a bold claim: what he has just described is “so different from any human poem” that it should not be regarded as a poem at all, but as “the wonder” [Vidunderet] which leads one to exclaim in adoration that “[t]his thought did not arise in my own heart!” In the subsequent chapter of Philosophical Fragments, Climacus proceeds to offer a number of arguments against demonstrations of God’s existence, leading many scholars to conclude that he represents an unequivocally anti-rationalist perspective. Against such interpretations, this paper will seek to highlight how Climacus’ claims track those of the seventeenth century Dutch lens-grinder and rationalist philosopher, Baruch Spinoza. From this, it will be argued that “the wonder” in Climacus’ thought takes the form of an indirect, ethico-existentialist argument for the truth of Christianity’s incarnate God.

Afrikaans on the Frontier: Two Early Afrikaans Dialects

ABSTRACT The influence of Khoekhoe languages on Afrikaans on the Cape Frontier of the Nineteenth Century is considered as the cradle of Afrikaans. Two varieties of Afrikaans were used on the Frontier, the Afrikaans of cattle farmers and the Afrikaans of the Khoekhoen. Frederick Jackson Turner's theory, developed in relation to the American Frontier, is applied to the Cape Frontier. Turner argued that the American Frontier was not only a physical space, but a creator of new myths, and destroyer of existing ones. Frontiers can therefore be more than geographical spaces; they are a condition of constant transformation. Using the syntactic structure of Afrikaans verbal hendiadys we argue that the context of the Cape Frontier was the creator of Afrikaans. A closer examination of the community on the Cape Frontier suggests that it was a diverse but integrated community of Khoekhoen, Oorlams, Basters, Trekboers and European cattle farmers. They used Afrikaans as lingua franca. A syntactic analysis of the verbal connecting constructions of Standard Afrikaans suggests that Afrikaans constructions may originate from Khoekhoe languages and are not a spontaneous development from seventeenth century Dutch. Afrikaans, it is argued, is therefore less Germanic in origin and more Khoekhoe.

The Royalist Republic: Literature, Politics, and Religion in the Anglo-Dutch Public Sphere, 1639–1660 by Helmer J. Helmers

Reviewed by: The Royalist Republic: Literature, Politics, and Religion in the Anglo-Dutch Public Sphere, 1639–1660 by Helmer J. Helmers Jeroen Dewulf Helmers, Helmer J. The Royalist Republic: Literature, Politics, and Religion in the Anglo-Dutch Public Sphere, 1639–1660. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2015. Pp. 342 illus. CDN$128.95 hardcover, CDN$39.95 paperback, US$28.00 ebook. A review of this book requires, first and foremost, a recognition of the groundbreaking work of the late Professor Paul Sellin, a pioneer in the study of Anglo-Dutch relations in the early modern age. His article “Royalist Propaganda and the Dutch Poets on the Execution of Charles I,” published in 2000 in the journal Dutch Crossing, demonstrated how a large number of pro-Stuart poems circulated in the Dutch Republic. Sellin argued that these sources formed a distinct corpus of interrelated Anglo-Dutch materials that were not only of interest to the political and literary-bibliographical history of the Netherlands, but also to the history of English printing and literature. His findings were surprising since it seemed natural–at least to nonspecialists in seventeenth-century Anglo-Dutch relations–to assume that Dutch sympathies in the struggle between King Charles I and Parliamentarian forces would have been overwhelmingly on the side of those who ultimately were to establish the (Republican) Commonwealth of England. Sellin made clear, however, that the view of the Dutch Republic as a nation solely defined by republican values needed correction, even in the field of literary studies. Sellin’s appeal for further study of this fascinating material was taken up by Helmer Helmers, an expert in early-modern Dutch diplomatic history whose systematic analysis of mid-seventeenth-century Dutch literature enabled him to identify many works dedicated directly or indirectly to the 1642 Civil War and its aftermath. His long list confirms that Dutch writers–and, we can assume, Dutch public opinion–passionately followed the events in England and that their sympathies were predominantly with Charles I. Helmers’s methodological and theoretical approach to this complex matter can be classified as a text-oriented form of cultural history, influenced by New Historicism and Cultural Materialism, yet with an international, multilingual (Dutch-English) approach that places the English Civil War in a broader European context. This approach was well chosen, since English royalism could only survive after Charles I’s defeat at Naseby thanks to continental support. This also accounts for the efforts of both parties to influence public opinion in the Netherlands and the creation of what Helmers aptly calls a “hybrid sphere,” where British politicians and migrants flooded the Dutch market with political pamphlets, to which Dutch authors reacted with their own interpretations. As Helmers explains, the way people on the European continent perceived the English power struggle is of vital importance in understanding the survival of English royalism and its eventual resumption of power in 1660. However, he also points to the importance of the Dutch national self-image and [End Page 618] to parallels between the Dutch uprising against Spain and the English Revolution. Through their reflections on English affairs, mid seventeenth-century Dutch authors often also made statements about the Dutch nation, its history, its present state, and in particular, its future. Anti-Cromwellian pamphlets, for instance, could implicitly also target the Dutch statesman Johan de Witt. In the subsequent chapters of his book with the provocative title The Royalist Republic, Helmers explains in detail why so many Dutch authors felt attracted to the royalist cause in England and why Stuart defenders in the Netherlands included people from a wide variety of religious, social, and geographical backgrounds. Among them were, obviously, many Catholics, such as the influential Joost van den Vondel, who sympathized with Charles I in consequence of his marriage to Henrietta Maria of France. Unsurprisingly, we also find many Orangists among the Stuart sympathizers. Yet, as Helmers argues, the latter’s ambitions to establish a joint Anglo-Dutch royalist faction should be understood with reference not only to personal ties between the Princes of Orange and the Stuarts and to the diplomatic efforts undertaken by Charles II during his Dutch exile, but also to concerns over political dominance...

Cultures of Communication: Theologies of Media in Early Modern Europe and Beyond ed. by Helmut Puff, Ulrike Strasser, and Christopher Wild

Reviewed by: Cultures of Communication: Theologies of Media in Early Modern Europe and Beyond ed. by Helmut Puff, Ulrike Strasser, and Christopher Wild Maximilian M. Scholz Cultures of Communication: Theologies of Media in Early Modern Europe and Beyond. Edited by Helmut Puff, Ulrike Strasser, and Christopher Wild. Toronto: University of Toronto Press in association with the UCLA Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies and the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 2017. Pp. ix + 225. Cloth $48.75. ISBN 978-1442630376. This thought-provoking collection traces the theme of media through ten fascinating essays on various early modern topics—from Nicholas of Cusa's mystical theology to seventeenth-century Dutch maps of the Straits of Magellan—and in so doing achieves something remarkable: it inverts the adage "no Reformation without print" and proves the obverse, namely "no print without the Reformation." The authors here represent some of the most influential scholars of early modern history and German studies. Each one contributes an illuminating case, drawn from the author's area of expertise, in which early modern thinkers began to reimagine media and the roles media play in the religious designs of the era. Taken together, the ten essays convince the reader that the Reformation (examined in part 1) and the global expansion of Christianity (part 2) were quests for pure forms of communication, both with God and with other human beings. These quests transformed media culture and necessitated new technologies, effects overlooked by media theorists and historians of the printing press. The essays in Cultures of Communication span an ambitious chronological and geographic field, beginning in fifteenth-century Germany and ending in early eighteenth-century Latin America. The reader travels from Transylvania to the Straits of Magellan with brief excursions to Jesuit outposts in Asia. To prevent the reader from suffering whiplash, the editors organize the essays around two questions. The six essays in part 1 address the question: How did the Reformation reimagine and reinvent the media necessary for communication with God? The four essays in part 2 address the question: How did global evangelization transform the media necessary for communication between people? These two questions help guide the reader, but what ultimately holds the book together are the frequent references by individual authors to their fellow contributors. The ten authors also use similar language and employ the conceptions of media developed by economic historian Harold Innis and, more recently, German philosopher Joseph Vogl. As a result, Cultures of Communication reads like a vibrant exchange of ideas centered around a shared interest in religion's impact on early modern media, especially in Germany and Latin America. Christian Kiening begins the volume by exploring Cusa's theological advice regarding images. Cusa's late medieval contemporaries fixated on the role of images as media, and, as Kiening aptly shows, Cusa encouraged this focus as a way to see Christ, [End Page 141] the absolute medium and mediator. Lee Palmer Wandel stresses another aspect of divine mediation in medieval Europe: the presence of God during the Eucharist. The Reformation unraveled previously intertwined understandings of Eucharistic presence, and Wandel maintains that this unravelling explains emerging confessional differences. Tracing confessional distinctions back to disparate understandings of presence, Wandel offers a bold new account of the Reformation. The next essay by Marcus Sandl shows how Martin Luther restaged the earliest, face-to-face Reformation debates in print, thus ensuring that print became paramount, and in some cases synonymous with the Reformation. Helmut Puff then offers a reappraisal of the oft misunderstood Thomas Müntzer, uncovering Münzter's profound desire, expressed in his German liturgy, to reduce the levels of mediation separating human beings from God. Puff presents a refreshing image of Müntzer, while also suggesting a new paradigm of religious reform during the Reformation. Susan Karant-Nunn tackles the medium of singing and asks why some sixteenth-century Lutherans refused to sing in church, at least according to visitation records. Sensitive to cultural context, Karant-Nunn posits that refusal to sing constituted an avenue of resistance to the social disciplining brought on by the Reformation. Daniel Weidner demonstrates, through an analysis of the seventeenth-century printed opera Seelewig by Georg Philip Harsdörffer...

The Distance from Home by Daniel Jacobs

Reviewed by: The Distance from Home by Daniel Jacobs Dr. Jeffrey Berman The Distance from Home by Daniel Jacobs. New York: International Psychoanalytic Books. 220 pages. “You must change your life.” Daniel Jacobs, the author of the 2019 novel The Distance from Home, does not quote Rainer Maria Rilke’s famous injunction, which appears at the end of his 1908 poem “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” but it describes precisely the predicament of his protagonist, Hannah Avery. Not that her life was entirely bad when she decided, twenty-two years earlier, in 1972, to accept George Albright’s invitation to join him, his wife Pru, and friends on a trip to Nepal. Hannah was thirty-seven at the time, single, still mourning the death of her mother when she was nine. An art curator at the Musϧe Baudry, Hannah enjoys her work, but it doesn’t prevent her from feeling lonely, restless, and unfulfilled. Past relationships with men have not worked out; her boss has recently disparaged her work, and she feels the biological clock ticking. She is looking for someone or something that will help her change her life. Will trekking through the unforgiving Himalayan mountains provide Hannah with that opportunity? This is the question that drives the novel. Daniel Jacobs is well known in the psychoanalytic community. He is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and Director of the Hanns Sachs Library. He is also Director of the Center for Advanced Psychoanalytic Studies at Princeton and Aspen. A coauthor of the 1995 book The Supervisory Encounter: A Guide for Teachers of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, Jacobs has published many articles on psychoanalysis, but The Distance from Home is his first novel—a daunting challenge for an octogenarian. The Distance from Home contains a wide cast of compelling characters, beginning with Hannah, who is complex, sympathetic, and believable. Jacobs narrates the story through Hannah’s point of view, and we trust her perceptions and value judgments. She realizes, from the moment she agrees to travel to Nepal, that the experience may be life-transforming. An authority on seventeenth-century Dutch garden design, she loves paintings because they never change—unlike people, who do. [End Page 446] Jacobs knows the art world well, and Hannah’s judgments about painting are authoritative without being opinionated. Unlike other curators, she never believes that she knows more about a painting than the artist who painted it. (Just as a literary critic doesn’t know more about a story than the writer who created it.) She understands that you must look at a painting for hours before it reveals itself. The same is true for a novel: you need to reflect on it and read it more than once before it reveals itself. Indeed, nearly everything Hannah says about painting is true of literature. She is involved in the restoration of art—and as we ponder the novel, we see that she is involved in nothing less than the restoration of her own life, trying to repair the damaged parts of her existence caused by her mother’s early death, her father’s self-absorption and alcoholism, and her boyfriends’ lack of understanding. “Only art clarifies things—for a moment anyway” (p. 30), she tells her former lover, the painter Leon Kaminsky, who is anxious to resume their relationship in Nepal. The two characters could not be more different. “Loving is so messy,” he declares; she points out that the opposite is true for her: “Love order things” (p. 62). Part of Hannah’s attraction to art is that it gives her the order and control she needs. Similarly, part of the pleasure of reading The Distance from Home is that we see how Jacobs portrays Hannah’s pursuit of love and order while trekking through Nepal. She knows that love is not always enough, but without love and self-esteem, she cannot imagine the possibility of happiness. Hannah’s mother remains an absent presence throughout the novel. There are more than a dozen references to the woman who wasted away from metastatic cancer while her daughter looked on helplessly. Hannah cannot exorcise the image of her mother...

From Print to Painting: Jan Miense Molenaer’s Lute players

Seventeenth-century Dutch genre painter Jan Miense Molenaer (1610/1611–1668) often depicted the sitting male, elegant, full-size lute player for about a decade. He changed the figure little except ...

Het Staatse ambassadegebouw in de zeventiende eeuw. Het logement van Hendrick van Reede van Renswoude in Madrid, 1656-1669

Even though Dutch historians have been investigating seventeenth-century material culture with regard to lifestyle and home furnishing extensively since the early 1980s, no such research has been done on the material world of the United Provinces’ diplomats abroad. This article seeks to provide insights into the main material cultural aspects of the seventeenth-century Dutch embassy: the building’s exterior, lay-out, and furnishing. A detailed inventory of Baron Hendrick van Reede van Renswoude’s movables, the first ambassador of the Lords States General to the Spanish court (1656-1669), is the main source for a detailed case study on the accommodations of the Dutch ambassador. His residence in Madrid, its indoor and outdoor spaces were equipped with the customary attributes of an early modern European diplomat. Although less lavish, opulent and refined than the French or Spanish, the Dutch diplomat’s material cultural world fitted in with the general diplomatic culture, which was increasingly influenced by the ethos of the nobility across Europe in the seventeenth century. At the same time, local conditions and lifestyle conventions shaped the ambassadorial building’s exterior and interior. The fact that Dutch diplomats, like almost all European diplomats,took residence in rented furnished local houses, undermined the implicit separateness of the embassy as a distinctly national space that reflected a typical lifestyle, a political or religious message.

“Notorious Abuse,” “Traditious Ignorance,” and “Ambitious Incroachment” in Seventeenth-Century Dutch, English, and French Maps of North America

In consideration of Richard Daniel’s alarmed discourse found in the text accompanying his map of the English empire in America (1679), one must investigate the supposedly offending French, English, and Dutch maps of the second half of the seventeenth century for North America and, in particular, the region of the Atlantic coastline and the rhetorical devices of possession found on or in these geographical works. In addition to looking at territorial boundaries, one should also make note of armorial bearings, ships with naval ensigns, toponyms and their placement on the territory, dedicatory cartouches, legends with geographical or historical information, native scenes, and symbols for settlement. In addition to attention to possible constraints on or from the map trade, one must consider the correspondence between colonial officials and their respective governments regarding boundaries, encroachment, sovereignty, or the need for maps with a particular focus on the North American coastline. This correspondence reflects the state’s point of view, which in turn was often manifested on maps and in geographical works. Interestingly intertwined with this outspoken sense of rightful possession were the contemporary claims from some quarters that the cartographic enterprise of the late seventeenth century now embraced an empirical approach, as well as the seemingly opposing thread of the economic realities of the print trade, which often used old copper plates with little to no cartographic revision, so that long after political, economic, or military actions resulted in an “adjustment” in possession, printed maps, atlases, and other geographical works still reflected earlier circumstances.

The Reformed Church and the Regulation of Religious Literature in the Early Dutch Atlantic World

Catechisms, Bibles, and other printed works were critical for the successful plantation and growth of Dutch religion and culture in the seventeenth-century Atlantic world. This essay examines the provision, regulation, and various controversies surrounding religious books and pamphlets in that period. Under the joint supervision of the West India Company and the Dutch Reformed churches of the Netherlands, colonial clergy were supposed to teach everyone from Company soldiers and officers to European settlers, from Africans and African slaves to Native Americans. And the clergy certainly had some missionary achievements, especially where the Company’s power was greatest. However, colonial clergy and churches also faced tremendous difficulties and fell short of their original plans and goals. Studying the different tools they had at their disposal—studying the creation (and destruction) of their printed materials—helps us see the church’s own culpability in these difficulties and failures. Early seventeenth-century Dutch Calvinism was restrictive enough and the churches of the Netherlands worried enough about deviance and heterodoxy that they unintentionally undermined their own mission and reduced the Dutch footprint overseas.

Kondschappen

Abstract Petitions, public opinion, and personal connections. The three Ps of lobbying in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic This article argues that lobbying was an essential element in political decision-making in the early modern period. There were three main ways of lobbying: by issuing petitions, influencing public opinion, and through personal connections. While petitions were used to convince political mandataries, public opinion was used to pressure decision-makers. Use of personal connections and social credit were essential to secure the support of a majority of decision-makers. Studying these lobbying networks shows that they were alliances based on shared interests. These alliances transcended other barriers and brought together individuals from different genders, belief systems, nationalities, races, and classes.

How to Succeed in Marketing Something Repulsive: A Recently Discovered Drawing of a Yogi by Willem Schellinks (1623– 1678)

Abstract In seventeenth-century Dutch paintings, ascetics are a rare and remarkable subject, even more so when they are Hindu ascetics. The drawing of a yogi created by Rembrandt’s contemporary Willem Schellinks (1623– 1678) is unique for this reason. This article investigates the various possible sources of Schellinks’ drawing – an eyewitness report, the many travel accounts on South Asia, Indian miniatures, or the like – and discusses its place between the European tradition of exoticism and the iconography of saints, as well as its position in Schellinks’ own oeuvre. Far from resorting to exotic stereotypes, Schellinks enlarged the canon of Dutch painting by combining observed foreign objects with established exotic motifs.

Competition, Choice and Diversity in the Newspaper Trade of the Dutch Golden Age

This article expands on the themes of choice and diversity within a national, competitive news market in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. It is often suggested that early newspapers largely copied one another. But that did not mean that these newspaper publishers all made the same choices, or that they adopted the same tone. Rather, they embraced and copied what they liked, and ignored what they did not. The newspaper trade in the Dutch Republic was driven by competition, innovation and diversity. The standards of what made a “good” newspaper were constantly refined during the seventeenth century. Publishers made conscious choices concerning the style, format, price and content of their papers in order to maximise their commercial potential. The diversity of titles was vital to the stimulation and later sustenance of the growing market for periodical news. News readers in the Dutch Republic were offered the greatest range of titles, complementing one another in content and style. If we look close enough at the titles available to us, we can come to a refined understanding of the early burgeoning business of news.

The Culture of Catechesis and Lay Theology

Abstract In the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic, non-professional theologians articulated well-informed biblical interpretation, producing a lay theology that was unwelcome to representatives of the churches. Historians have long considered this lay theology as a manifestation of Early Enlightenment. It did not, however, necessarily result from the activities of rationalist philosophers usually associated with the Dutch Early Enlightenment, such as Benedictus de Spinoza (1632–1677). Equally important were the clergy’s efforts to educate laity in reading the Bible and contemplating divinity autonomously. This paper reconstructs the Dutch “culture of catechesis,” a collective effort to involve laity in reflection on religion and the Bible, dating back to at least the 1640s. Based on catechetical materials and their authors, this paper argues that the “culture of catechesis” had its roots in the Public Church itself, and that it contributed to lay theology, as much so as the outspoken programs of eccentric philosophers.

Paper warfare: contested political memories in a seventeenth-century Dutch Sammelband

This article investigates the flexible boundaries of Early Modern Dutch print media and the practice of Early Modern publishers and collectors who combined printed images and texts to create historical narratives in accordance with their own beliefs. It takes as a case study one seventeenth-century Dutch Sammelband, or composite volume, that conveys an Orangist reading of the past and aspirations for the future through the purposeful arrangement of twenty-one printed images and texts about two statesmen: Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (1547–1619) and Johan de Witt (1625–72). The printed images, pamphlets, and broadsides contained in the Sammelband were published during two periods of intense political upheaval in the Dutch Republic, in 1618–19 and 1663–64. This article argues that the core of this Sammelband was a ready-made set of prints and pamphlets that Amsterdam printmaker and publisher Claes Jansz. Visscher bundled together in 1619 to capitalize on contemporary political conflicts and to shape viewers’ interpretations about the causes, remedies, and future implications of them. The Sammelband, like Visscher’s readymade bundles of prints and pamphlets, reveals how collections of Early Modern printed images and texts worked to control historical accounts, reinforce partisan points of view, and articulate political aspirations.

Bow Jewels of the Golden Age

The bow jewel in the Rijksmuseum collection is one of the finest examples of its kind. The provenance of this piece of jewellery is unclear, as is generally also true of the other extant bow jewels. The strong resemblance to a number of ornament prints has often led to the suggestion that the Rijksmuseum’s bow brooch, and bow jewellery in general, was a French concept that came about in the late sixteen-fifties or early sixties, but seventeenth-century Dutch portraits and inventories indicate that in the Netherlands it was already a popular jewel by then. Bow jewels could be acquired from jewellers in the Low Countries in the early sixteen-thirties and at the end of the decade they were worn at court in The Hague. Princess Amalia of Solms-Braunfels owned several diamond bow jewels in 1640, and in a portrait made a few years earlier she wears a pearl bow on her dress. The aristocracy and the wealthy citizens in the Republic started following this example and the bows set with diamonds and pearls stayed in fashion throughout the rest of the century. The bow jewel was already in fashion in the Low Countries thirty years before it became in vogue in France.

‘All these things one has to endure from these Germans’: German Stage Characters as Means to Criticize Changing Social Positions in Seventeenth-century Amsterdam

In seventeenth-century Dutch theatre many stereotypical German characters appeared on the stage. Uncouth, ridiculous Germans speaking Dutch/German pidgin became a stereotypical joke in comic theatre, and this caricature enhanced the reception and entertainment value of a play. Moreover, playwrights also criticized or denounced ‘moffen’ (‘Krauts’) in Amsterdam as welfare-grabbers or social-climbers. Criticizing Germans was relatively safe for a playwright. Laughing at ‘others’ created a sense of solidarity among the audience, ‘us’ vs. ‘them’. Criticizing Dutch culture and populace, however, involved a risk for the author and actors. The audience could take the criticism personally and since theatre needed an audience to survive, this could be very harmful. An author therefore had to anticipate the response of the audience. Because of their relative proximity to the Dutch people, some authors inserted German characters into their plays as instruments to criticize the foibles in Dutch society and class relations in particular. They criticized the exuberance of Amsterdam’s society, the hypocrisy of rich upstarts, the naivety of those who are easily convinced by fancy titles and members of the working class such as handmaidens with ambition to climb the social ladder.

Hermann Samuel Reimarus, the Jewish priests of the Old Testament and the trope of imposture

ABSTRACTIn recent years, the Radical Enlightenment has been primarily associated with the philosophical criticism of Spinoza and his disciples. But the Radical Enlightenment’s attack on Christianity did not solely hinge on the philosophical grounding of its proponents, let alone the philosophy of the seventeenth-century Dutch savant. Focusing on the German Enlightenment radical Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768), and his criticism of the ancient Jewish priesthood, this essay shows that an equally potent criticism of Christian doctrine targeted its Old Testament foundations, in which Christian theologians had located the prefiguration of the New Covenant. However, not many radical thinkers were equipped to execute such a profound attack, as it required not only an understanding of the subtleties of Christian theology, but also substantial philological training and an intimate knowledge of historical and linguistic scholarship on ancient Israel. This essay explores how Reimarus’s criticisms bridged the Radical Enlightenment and older traditions of Christian humanism and Hebraism within the trope of priestcraft.

Rocking the Cradle of Dutch Domesticity: A Radical Reinterpretation of Seventeenth-Century “Homescapes”1

In the light of a newly discovered source of thousands of seventeenth-century Dutch letters found in the English National Archive a case is made for a radical reinterpretation of seventeenth-century Dutch paintings. These so-called “homescapes” feature in the historiography of the modern home as proof of the fact that seventeenth-century Holland was the cradle of female domesticity. However, the captured Dutch letters written to the home front by seamen sailing on the large Dutch mercantile fleet, as well as the women’s letters to their seafaring husbands tell quite a different story. Especially the letters from the home front narrate of dire circumstances and shed a new light on the subjects of the homescapes, more in particular on the subject of letter-reading and letter-writing females, and intimate mother-and-child scenes. The nineteenth-century revaluation of the glory of seventeenth-century Dutch painting in general and the homescapes in particular explains how the myth of Holland as the cradle of female domesticity came into existence.

Marriage and the Construction of Colonial Order: Jurisdiction, Gender and Class in Seventeenth‐century Dutch Batavia

Gender & HistoryVolume 29, Issue 3 p. 622-640 Article Marriage and the Construction of Colonial Order: Jurisdiction, Gender and Class in Seventeenth-century Dutch Batavia Deborah Hamer, Deborah Hamer orcid.org/0000-0003-3086-9455 Search for more papers by this author Deborah Hamer, Deborah Hamer orcid.org/0000-0003-3086-9455 Search for more papers by this author First published: 14 October 2017 https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12316Citations: 1Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume29, Issue3November 2017Pages 622-640 RelatedInformation