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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
This brief communication will try to show the attitude of the Dutch Calvinists towards the other religious groups in Portuguese America, during the period of the occupation by the Dutch West India Company of northeast Brazil, from 1630 to 1654. At the time of their greatest expansion, the Dutch controlled all the coastal region from Sergipe to Maranhão.
Liberty of conscience had been announced beforehand for all Christians and Jews of the captaincy of Pernambuco in Brazil, which that company proposed to conquer. De facto, in the “Secret Instructions to General Lonck,” commandant of the squadron which took possession of that captaincy, instructions dated Middelburg, August 18, 1629, this liberty of conscience was immediately promised, although, at the same time, it was determined that “all the Jesuits, fathers and friars and other religious must be embarked with all their baggage.” Liberty of conscience was again promised by the Dutch in a manifesto addressed in 1632 to the owners of the sugar-mills and the inhabitants of Pernambuco, and, in 1635, when at the capture of Paraíba not only was this liberty promised but also liberty of cult.
José Antonio Gonsalves de Mello is Professor of History at the University of Recife, Pernambuco, and member of the Instituto Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais, an inter-disciplinary research group of that city. He is at present Visiting Professor at the University of The Hague, Holland. Among his important works are the following: Tempo dos Flamengos. Influência da Ocupação Holandesa na vida e na cultura do Norte do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1947); translator and editor of Adriaen van der Dussen, Relatório sobre as capitanias conquistadas no Brasil pelos holandeses (1639). Suas condições econômicas e sociais (Rio de Janeiro, 1947); Henrique Dias. Governador dos pretos, crioulos e mulatos do Estado do Brasil (Recife, 1954); João Fernandes Vieira, Mestre de Campo do terço de infantaria de Pernambuco (2 vols.; Recife, 1956). Address: Rua das Pernambucanas 420, Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil.
1 The “Secret Instruction” can be read in the “Secrete Notulen van de Vergaderinge van XIX in Middelburch” in the Algemeen Ryksarchief of The Hague, Holland, of which a copy is possessed by the Instituto Arqueológico e Geogràfico Pernambucano in Recife, in a volume entitled “Brieven en Secrete Notulen.” The other two documents can be found in Jan de Laet, laerlyck Verhael van de vehrichtingen des Geoctroyeerde West-lndische Compagnie (2nd ed.; 4 vols.; Haia, 1931–1937), III, 101–104 and IV, 132–134.
2 See the act of the Calvinist Consistory dated January 5, 1638, translated under the title “A religião Cristã Reformada no Brasil no século XVII,” Anais do 1° Congreso de Historia, I (Rio, 1914), 725 and 733, and “Dagelijksche Notule” of the Dutch government of Pernambuco for November 22, 1638, Algemeen Ryksarchief, oude WIC No. 68, in a copy of the Instituto Arqueológico mentioned above. The decision concerning processions is found in this last source, which stated besides that all manifestations of cult must be done within the walls of the churches.
3 See the book by the author of these lines, Tempo dos Flamengos (Rio, 1947), note 43, and the sources there indicated.
4 The so-called “Political Testament” dated Recife, May 6, 1644, is found in the Algemeen Ryksarchief, Oude WIC No. 59. It has been translated into Portuguese and published in the Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, No. 58 (Rio, 1895), pp. 234 f.
5 Tempo dos Flamengos, p. 284, note 38, and sources there given.
6 Ibid., pp. 296–297, and sources cited there.
7 Ibid., pp. 301–303, and sources cited there.
8 “Dagelijksche Notulen” of July 29, 1641, and of August 5 and 6, 1642, in the Algemeen Ryksarchief, Oude WIC No. 69; copies of these exist in the Instituto Arqueológico cited in Note 1.
