Jews and Muslims in Seventeenth-Century Discourse by Gary K. Waite

Author:Gary K. Waite [Waite, Gary K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Europe, Western, Great Britain, Jewish, Modern, 17th Century
ISBN: 9781351108973
Google: gjZ7DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-11-16T01:33:37+00:00

Turks in Reformed polemics

Interest in Islam was certainly on the rise in the Dutch press in the first decades of the seventeenth century, and this was used by pamphleteers in the Calvinist versus Arminian debate. For example, in 1616 a Counter-Remonstrant author accused his Remonstrant opponent of innovation – still a negative term in this era – and of being like the Muslim Turks in establishing a new doctrine to deceive humankind. The Remonstrant responded by aligning the Calvinist position on predestination with the Qur’an, quoting several suras in support of this controversial contention. He then implored Holland’s provincial States-General to purify the Reformed Church of these “Turkish abuses,” citing a case brought before the Holland Regents in 1599 when two foreigners were ordered to leave the Netherlands for having in their possession books that apparently accorded with “Turkish theology.”8 According to the States-General Resolution relating to this case, these two were Poles, whose books were judged to contain Turkish dogma because they denied the divinity of Christ and of the Holy Spirit. Undoubtedly these were Polish Socinians in refuge in Amsterdam, but why the University of Leiden theological faculty chose to condemn them as “Turkish” rather than as Arian, or Jewish, or just plain heretical, is unknown.9 It seems that since the Dutch had not established relations with Muslim princes at the time of this trial they still regarded the Muslim faith as the worst possible heresy with which to condemn their denominational opponent. Here we will trace the shifting attitudes toward the Turk in the Dutch press, beginning in the last decade of the sixteenth century.

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