c CUNYB/Clarke December, :
The French Liar’s Monkey and the Utrecht Crisis within Dutch Calvinism to draw attention to one of the implications of
Voetius’ conduct, namely, that he assumed a theocratic authority by telling
the magistrates of another civil power how to behave in their social lives.
The rhetorical effect of this claim was greatly enhanced by an independent
and on-going tension, between different provinces, about decisions con-
cerning war and peace. After August, the states of Holland signaled
their independence with respect to foreign policy by withholding from
their delegates to the States General the authority to negotiate with other
provinces without specific instructions from Holland.
Voetius emerges from Descartes’Letter to Voetiusas someone who
changes roles from one scene to another, but always with the same funda-
mental objective. ‘Your skills as a mime artist are well known; you adopt
the role at one time of the Faculty of Theology, at another of the Univer-
sity, at another of the city Senate, then of the whole Republic, then of the
Dutch Church, then as a Prophet or as the Holy Spirit, or finally as one
or other of your disciples’ (viii-.). In conclusion, having painted an
extremely unfavourable picture of a dogmatic, interfering minister who
disputes even with senior civil members of the Dutch Calvinist Church
in another jurisdiction, Descartes appeals to the religious freedom that he
is guaranteed under the law. ‘I need not invoke the religious freedom that
is granted to us [i.e., French residents] in this republic’ (viii-.). The
book published by Voetius, or published in his name by Martin Schoock,
is so filled with ‘culpable lies, scurrilous insults, and odious calumnies’
(viii-.) that no one could express them, even against an enemy or an
infidel, without revealing his own depravity.
TheLetter to Voetiusrepays him in the same currency of personal attack
that had marred the whole discussion from the beginning. Contemporaries
were almost embarrassed by the intensity of the public row. Huygens,
as usual, was sympathetic, complimenting Descartes on the justice he
displayed toward Voetius and his ‘aide-de-camp’, Schoock.He even
applied to this theological dispute a comment that he had heard previously:
‘theologians are like pigs; when you pull the tail of one of them, they all
squeal together.’Andreas Colvius was more impartial, regretting the fact
that two renowned scholars were publicly accusing each other of atheism,
while each of them displayed the lack of charity of which he accused the
other.He suggested that Descartes would have been better advised to
concentrate on delivering to the world the work on natural philosophy
that he had long promised. However, in replying to Voetius, Descartes did