Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the history of philosophy podcast brought to you with the support of the philosophy department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich online at history of philosophy.net.

Today's episode, born to be contrary, toleration in the Netherlands.

We seem to be living in a time when people are not very good at disagreeing with one another, or rather we find it exceedingly easy to disagree what we are not so good at is resolving disagreement.

Social and political disputes lead to distrust between implacably opposed camps instead of leading to attempts at resolution.

Much ink has been spilled and many hands rung over this contemporary situation and its causes.

I'd like to suggest an unusual approach, namely that we might look back to an earlier period of intense dispute to see what lessons we might learn.

I have in mind Europe in the late 16th century, which makes the early 21st century look like a sing-along hosted by Mr. Rogers.

In a time of violent disagreement, violent rhetoric, and plain old violence, the Netherlands were a scene of particularly intense conflict.

Mr. Rogers's gentle question, won't you be my neighbor, would typically have been answered, sure, but only if you accept my highly specific interpretation of Christianity.

Most obviously there was the clash between Catholicism and Protestantism. The Catholics were represented by King Philip II, who claimed authority over the low countries and ruled them from distant Spain.

Ranged against him were the Protestants, especially the Dutch reformed church, which adopted a broadly Calvinist theological outlook.

But other groups joined the Frey. There were Lutherans who argued with the reformed, and there were anabaptists, especially the followers of Menos Simons or Menonites.

They adopted a pacifist approach to avoid being associated with the sort of upheaval scene when an earlier group of anabaptists took over Munster.

As this already implies, there were a variety of subgroups among the anabaptist movement, with no little friction between them.

And as we'll see momentarily, there were also the Armenians. In short, there was no shortage of opportunity for disagreement, even, or perhaps especially, between those who mostly agreed with one another.

Nor was this disagreement exclusively verbal. A wave of iconoclasm led to destruction of church images beginning in 1566, and war pitted the Protestant William of Orange and his followers against the Spanish.

In 1581, the states general of the provinces in the Netherlands officially repudiated Philip II, making themselves a Protestant state.

But then, and still today, the low countries were divided between Catholicism and Protestantism.

After the brutal Duke of Alva staged a reconquest of the South in the 1580s, many Protestants left for the North.

The town of Ghent was a Calvinist stronghold, sometimes called the Geneva of Flanders, now about half the population abandoned it and went into exile.

Making matters more complex, rivalry between religious factions was overlaid atop competition within the political order.

There was a long and healthy tradition of uprisings by Dutch towns against their overlords going back to the late Middle Ages.

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