The monopoly of social affluence. The jus circa sacra around Spinoza

It is easy to argue that the issue of civil and ecclesiastical power consists of the degree of separation between State and church or churches. However, the State of the XVII century – even more so that in the Seven United Provinces of the Low Countries or Dutch Republic – was not the State of the contemporary world and the churches were not centralized institutions. What prevailed instead was the slow formation of centers of power: ideal or real, doctrinal or practical, intellectual or armed, sovereign and coercive. This process involved the whole of society. From 1650 to 1672, the so-called Dutch Republic represented the most fecund period of comparison and encounter between the various tendencies shaking Dutch and European society. This is why the best standpoint for considering the meaning and extent of the jus circa sacra in the Seven United Provinces is that of the monopoly of human happiness. Who has the task of meeting the material and spiritual needs of men who live together and how do they go about it? An obvious answer is that earthly happiness is the prerogative of the civil commonwealth while salvation is the preserve of churches. There is, nevertheless, no agreement about the idea that happiness is one thing in this world and another in the hereafter. Furthermore, there is no univocal idea about the functions of a church. Nor can it be denied that there are connections between life on earth and that which is believed to be lived in the hereafter. And if men are more inwardly satisfied, it benefits the wealth of the nation. Civilized life improves men’s ideas and is an inextricable mixture of material wellbeing and spiritual development. Who, then, holds the monopoly of happiness? In this article I argue – with examples from different authors such as Spinoza, Grotius, Hobbes, van Velthuysen, G.I. Vossius, etc. – that this is one of the pivotal points in the discussion about ecclesiastical power in the XVII century. One that enables us to identify the links between an apparently solely juridical theme and the entire range of life and impetuous growth of a civilization like that of the Dutch Golden Age.