Preface

Summary

The purpose of this book is to introduce the reader to material which although not easily accessible ought to be more widely known. Most of the texts published in the following pages were written in Dutch and it was evident from the start that they should appear in translation. We were less certain about the French and Latin texts. When we decided to translate these too we did not underrate the erudition of those who will use this book but merely hoped to achieve a greater measure of uniformity. As we have only in twelve cases thought it necessary to print documents in full (Documents 3, 4, 7, 8, 15, 23, 24, 28, 29, 37, 49, 66), specialists may want to know more than we can offer and thus in any case have to turn to the originals.

The series in which our collection appears is devoted to the history and theory of politics. This obliged us to touch upon the religious issues which played, we think, a decisive part in the Revolt of the Netherlands only in their political form, that is, only insofar as they caused the problem of toleration to be discussed. It obliged us, in the second place, to concentrate on theoretical aspects and to reduce to a minimum the factual and narrative elements that make the history of the Revolt so absorbing an epic.

Obviously the selection of fragments remains somewhat arbitrary. W. P. C. Knuttel's catalogue of pamphlets in the Royal Library at The Hague shows how overwhelming the quantity of available material is.