LAUSR

The toleration of Jews in early modern Dutch society is commonly seen as predicated on the maintenance of a clear social and religious separation between Jews and Christians. I argue that this view is incomplete and misleading. Close analysis of the only judicial persecution of Jews in the Dutch Republic’s history, the trial of three Jewish proselytes in the anti-Calvinist city of Hoorn in 1614–15, yields a more complex picture. Comparison of the Hoorn trial with cases of apostasy to Judaism in orthodox Calvinist Amsterdam during the same period suggests that the theological commitments of orthodox Calvinism played an important and hitherto unrecognized role in Dutch toleration.