Adventures in Museum-Going

The NC Museum of Art is currently running an exhibition on Esther in the Age of Rembrandt. This is the ideal of a museum exhibition for me: I know the art movement's major figures and approaches; I know the Biblical story (thank you Sunday School); and on account of my grad school experience, I know the Dutch 17th century very well. As a result, I can just roll in and enjoy the art.

In the middle of one of the rooms was a manuscript with frankly unreadable handwriting. The pages had a library header, typewritten, reading "GROOT", which taken along with the bad handwriting meant it was certainly written by Hugo Grotius, onetime dissertation subject of mine, as indeed it turned out to be. The manuscript, from 1615, was placed after a bunch of (deserved) paeans to Dutch tolerance, and written to imply that these draft instructions limiting the times and places of Jewish worship in the Netherlands were backwards and restrictive. My first thought was the typical apologia for John Locke, that building liberalism out of illiberalism is not a neat process and involves a lot of things that look rather backward now.

On further reflection, there's a century of Dutch history that's truly remarkable. In, say, 1560, one runs the risk of death or exile in Catholic Holland for simply not being Catholic. Once Spain is overthrown, say 1590-1610 or so, one again risks death or exile for being the wrong kind of Protestant. (Grotius himself risked both.) In 1615, you're preparing to fight Spain yet again and probably well aware that having a large Jewish population that has fled Spain and Germany makes you more of a target. And by 1660, people everywhere in Europe understand that the Netherlands is the place you go when you're not safe at home for reason of your beliefs, because you will be tolerated there. (Does this liberty rise and be abetted by colonial exploitation that eases tensions because everyone is richer? It sure does.)

The point of all the forgoing, I think, is that it was never exactly the Dutch intention to become a haven of tolerance. But it proved advantageous in some respects, and the ratchet of liberty seemed to only go one way. Which is also to say that now we might be making strategic agreements or concessions that seem unwise, or even wrong, but whose longterm effects will be positive.