At a time when fundamentalisms and populisms threaten basic human rights, it is extremely important to investigate the roots of European values such as egalitarianism and democracy. This examination is necessary to contribute to both popular and scholarly debates on these subjects in an informed way. This project – titled “European Women and Religious Dissent: The Advent of Modernity and the Democratic Public Sphere” (EuWoRD) – aims to analyze the contribution of laypersons (women and men) to the development of the Enlightenment, when democratic concepts gradually emerged as basic rights. In particular, focusing on a Protestant religious group in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic, it will reveal how religion and religious concepts contributed to the development of modernity.
EuWoRD examines a Protestant group founded in Holland around 1619, called the Collegiant Movement. Their name results from their meetings, called Colleges, which were quickly established in many Dutch cities – the most famous being Amsterdam, Leiden and Rotterdam. Reading and commenting on the Scripture freely – a practice termed “freedom of prophesying” – was the main focus of Colleges. Thus, participants were entitled to speak freely about Scriptural passages, enjoying egalitarianism among members and a broad toleration for all opinions. Differences in social, cultural and religious background did not cause divisions among participants, nor did they hinder the practice of free discussion. It should not be surprising then that people belonging to other religious minorities joined the several Colleges, either as regular members or as occasional participants. Moreover, women enjoyed the same rights as men did when attending such meetings and in Rotterdam, they even organized a women-only College. However, their participation in free discussions was not without consequences. In the late 1650s and 1660s, a few Collegiants raised their voices against such a practice, starting a debate on whether women should enjoy the same right to free speech as men did. The goal of EuWoRD is to analyze such debates within their social and historical context, revealing how the practice of enlightened concepts and the participation of women in Colleges co-created the development of enlightened values. The theory did not cause the practice: both were mutually implicated in development.
While later philosophers were able to expound clearly secular approaches to social and political organization, EuWoRD aims to prove that they were assisted in this by the Collegiants’ social customs and practices, as well as by the Collegiants’ discussions on the development of secularized concepts within the boundaries of religion. EuWoRD has two interrelated objectives. First, it provides an account of Colleges’ organization and practices, focusing on their membership and especially on the presence of women among Collegiants’ ranks. This account reveals that Colleges were not simply religious meetings, but also cross-cultural and interconfessional citizen’s associations, which fostered new social relations, a vernacular reading culture and a freer exchange of ideas. Indeed, besides reading and interpreting the Scripture, participants discussed social and political issues as well. Second, it investigates the interrelations between such practices and the concepts the Collegiants advocated in their writings. This examination pays particular attention to the debates around gender equality and women’s right to free speech, placing them within a broader European context, to explore their relations to similar debates in other European countries (e.g. England and France) and to assess how the Collegiants contributed to such debates.
Given the orginality of this topic and the interdisciplinarity of EuWoRD, it is expected that its outcomes make an important contribution to several scholarly fields, including Women’s and Gender History, the History of European Ideas, the History of Philosophy, and Church and Religious History. Ultimately, EuWoRD will challenge the accepted dichotomy between secularism and religion, re-evaluating the relationship between religion and ideas of modernity, as well as the significance of women and non-philosophers for the history of European ideas. Besides this academic impact, it is expected that EuWoRD makes also a societal impact. This project offers a reminder of how practices of informed and respectful debate can lead to the elaboration of ideas which has underpinned democracies in Europe. While addressing a specific case-study, it provides a new account of an early form of citizens’ association, whose member freely met to discuss basic democratic rights and practices. This is fundamental to inform and inspire the current and still emerging movement of citizen’s assemblies which have begun to convene across Europe. Therefore, to maximize its impact, EuWoRD has produced outcomes for a wide-ranging audience. For instance, beside academic outcomes – such as conference presentations and scholarly papers – a project website has been launched using the ArcGis Storymap Telling programme. This includes a summary of the history of the Collegiant movement and of the role of women among them written for a broad audience. It also includes interactive maps that locate the Collegiant meetings in the city of Amsterdam and Rotterdam both in the seventeenth century and today. In addition to the website, EuWoRD has produced blogs in relevant venues. Two datasets including the list of men and women participating in Collegiant meetings has been made publicly available through Zenodo.
