Calvinists and Libertines

Why did the Netherlands, after the Dutch Reformation, emerge as the most religiously tolerant country in Europe? The causes lie in the fierce resistance offered by people known as `Libertines' to the attempts of Calvinist reformers to make the Dutch Republic into a theocratic `New Israel'. Nowhere was this conflict between Calvinists and Libertines more intense than in Utrecht, a city at the heart of the Dutch Reformation. Benjamin Kaplan's fascinating case-study placed Dutch religious developments within their broader European context, and increases our understanding of the European Reformation as a whole.