Between Tolerance and Republicanism

In the library of the Remonstrant Congregation of Amsterdam, preserved at the Allard Pierson, there is a manuscript related to the history of the Collegiant movement (Hs. I H 15). The Collegiants were a Protestant Christian group that emerged in the Netherlands around 1619, operating without clerical or governmental oversight. Their meetings were known as Collegien (“Collegies”), hence the Dutch name Collegianten (“Collegiants”) for the whole group. They are also sometimes referred to as Rijnsburgers, after the village in which they established their first college, Rijnsburg, near Leiden. Early modern historians are paying increasing attention to the history of the movement, due to the unique features of their meetings. They met without any church ministers appointed to oversee the assemblies and there was no confession of faith required to attend their meetings. They practiced a form of freedom of expression called “freedom to prophesize”, namely the freedom to read the Scripture and express one’s own interpretation and opinion, and thus, they practiced also a broad toleration for all religious ideas. They met on equal grounds, regardless of social, cultural, and religious differences.

The manuscript in the Allard Pierson was written in 1801 by Gerard van Nijmegen, a Collegiant from Rotterdam. He was the brother of Elias van Nijmegen, who in 1775, wrote the first history of the Collegiant movement, titled Historie der Rijnsburgsche vergadering. Elias van Nijmegen died in 1781 and in 1801, his brother, Gerard, decided to write an appendix to the Historie, which had been published 26 years earlier. The manuscript is thus divided into two main parts: the Byvoegsel op de Historie der Rhynsburgsche Vergadering (pp. 1-54), which includes the transcription of a speech delivered by Jacob van Eems, medicine doctor from Leiden (pp. 13-54); and The Aanteekeningen wegens de Vergadering der Collegianten te Rotterdam (pp. 55-97).

The Appendix to the History of the Rijnsburg Assembly contains details of the Collegiants’ meeting places in Rijnsburg, where baptism by immersion was performed, and a list of those baptised there during the eighteenth century. However, it should be noted that the Collegiants did not consider such a ceremony to be exclusionary: those who were not baptised in Rijnsburg were welcomed into their assemblies just as much as those who were. It then containes information on the history of the Collegiant movement between 1781 and 1801. The longest and arguably most interesting section of the Appendix is a transcription of a sermon delivered in Rijnsburg in 1757. Van Nijmegen regretted that the most important speeches delivered in Rijnsburg had not been transcribed and published, as this would have recognised the worth and learning of those who spoke there, while also exhibiting the significance of the local college. For this reason, Van Nijmegen decided to include a transcription of one of these speeches, delivered by Jacob van Eems before the Lord’s Supper ceremony on Sunday morning, 29 May 1757, which he had in his possession. The sermon’s main focus is Christian tolerance.

The Notes Regarding the Assembly of the Collegiant in Rotterdam contains important details on where and when the Collegiants met in Rotterdam, what the Collegiants did in such meetings, and a list of preachers who delivered sermons there during the eighteenth century, until the closing of the College in September 1787. Most importantly, the Notes include information on the reasons why the Collegiants stopped their meeting in Rotterdam. Two of their spokespersons, Cornelis van den Bosch Junior and Pieter de Koker, were members of the Dutch Patriotic movement and held important offices in the city of Rotterdam. According to Van Nijmegen, many other members were also inclined towards Patriotic ideas, such as Jan Verveer, a poet and brother of Jacob Verveer, another important spokesperson among the Rotterdam Collegiants in the eighteenth century. Thus, when the Prussian army entered Rotterdam and William V was reinstated as stadtholder, the Collegiants were among those who suffered the consequences of their political affiliation. Van den Bosch and De Koker, for example, died in exile in Bruxelles in 1788.

The involvement of some Collegiants in Rotterdam with the Patriotic movement seems to be a new development in its history. Indeed, when writing his history of the movement in 1895, historian Jacobus van Slee did not mention the involvement of the Rotterdam Collegiants among the Patriots. He also failed to mention two important eighteenth-century publications: two collections of sermons delivered at the Rotterdam College between 1780 and 1782. Van Nijmegen included their titles in the final pages of the manuscript. Thus, this document opens up new avenues of research that could shed new light on the history of the Dutch Collegiant movement in the years preceding the French Revolution.
 

Francesco Quatrini

Francesco Quatrini obtained his PhD at the University of Macerata (Italy) in 2017, with a dissertation on the life and thought of the Collegiant Adam Boreel. He has then worked at Queen’s University Belfast, the University of Naples L’Orientale, and University College Dublin. Currently he is an Assistant Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His research interests focus on early modern Protestant dissenters such as the Collegiants and the Socinians, and the interrelations between their practices and ideas.