‘A Garden Walled Around’. Labadie at Amsterdam, 1669, 1670

Abstract

When banishment from Zeeland became a serious possibility, Labadie had approached Haarlem as a possible place of refuge. Now, however, the choice fell on Amsterdam.¹) This had its logic, for Amsterdam was the city of freedom, ‘Eleutheropolis’, where ethnic minorities had their rights and religious sects their freedom of worship on condition of occasional inspection by commissioners. As a result of this policy the city already housed several separatists in Labadie’s own mould; Antoinette Bourignon he had already met, and Jan Amos Comenius, last elder of the Czech Unitas Fratrum had corresponded; Petrus Serrarius, who died at the point of Labadie’s arrival, had been outspoken in his favour; and there were others: Friedrich Breckling, Daniel Zwicker, and the theosophist Johann Georg Gichtel.