A revised version of Forclaz’s Habilitation submitted at the University of Fribourg in 2011, this book is an important contribution to the religious and social history of the Dutch Republic. Forclaz focuses on the position of the Catholic community in Utrecht in the second half of the seventeenth century. The choice for this time frame is certainly laudable. In the past, several monographs dealing with the process of religious change in Dutch cities studied the establishment and the growth of the Reformed Church during the period of the Dutch Revolt while the second half of the seventeenth century received much less attention. Furthermore, Utrecht offers an attractive case since it was a city with a strong Catholic presence and tradition, being the seat of an archbishopric in the pre-revolt period.

The main question Forclaz tries to answer is how the position of the Catholic community developed in a multiconfessional city dominated by the Reformed Church. In the first three chapters, he presents an adequate analysis of the three big players: the Catholic community, the Reformed Church, and the civil authorities. The patronage of Catholic elites; the persistence of Catholic institutions, such as the chapter of Saint-Mary; and international networks, in particular with coreligionists in the Southern Netherlands and France, all contributed to the survival of a resilient Catholic community. Hence, it was certainly no coincidence that Utrecht became the center of the Holland mission. The resilience of the Catholic community strengthened in a certain way the orthodoxy of the Reformed Church, as did the establishment of a university in 1634 and the “Nadere Reformatie” of Johannes Voetius. As a consequence, the Reformed Church developed a stricter attitude toward Catholics and other dissidents in the course of the seventeenth century.

It is impossible to chart the evolution of the numerical strength of the different religious groups, although Forclaz presents data for the late 1650s: 40 percent of the Utrecht population were members of the Reformed Church, while 33 percent were Catholic and 8 percent Lutheran. Those who did not belong to a church or confession, including the so-called sympathizers of the Reformed Church, represented 17 percent. The civil authorities generally conducted a policy of pragmatic toleration toward Catholics and other dissidents. Their attitude could, however, fluctuate depending on confessional tensions in Europe, among other factors.

Chapter 5 deals with Utrecht’s occupation by the French Royal Army (1672–73) and equally shows the complexity of the Catholic community. During this intermezzo the Catholics enjoyed freedom of public worship, but this did not mean that all Catholics were loyal to or supported the French occupants. In the next chapter, Forclaz investigates to what extent Utrecht Catholics succeeded in integrating to urban society by examining the role of education, poor relief, and civic institutions. He concludes that there was an evolution toward increasing confessional separation, or “pilarization” (verzuiling in Dutch), but this trend was never absolute. There always remained some room for daily interconfessional contacts. These contacts are, however, poorly documented since they left few archival traces.

The phenomenon of mixed marriages, studied in chapter 7, seems to confirm this complex picture. There was in fact a tension between the official guidelines — whether they came from the civil authorities or the Reformed or Catholic Church — and the concrete policy in daily practice. The number of mixed marriages is difficult to quantify. Forclaz estimates that 10 to 15 percent of the members of the Reformed Church married someone of another confession. The number of conversions to the Catholic or the Reformed Church remained modest. There were no more than a few hundred in the second half of the seventeenth century, most of them being immigrants coming from neighboring countries.

Forclaz’s approach, to study the process of religious differentiation and coexistence from the bottom up and to situate the Catholic community in a broad social framework, is certainly rewarding. It yields a nuanced picture of a complex reality. He uses a broad variety of sources stemming from the Catholic and Reformed Church and the civil authorities. Yet, for a number of aspects, the source material is rather deficient so that one may wonder about the representativeness of some specific case studies, for instance, dealing with the social profile of the spiritual virgins called klopjes (60–62) and the Catholic elites (chapter 4). In any case, Forclaz’s interesting findings and conclusions invite further studies dealing with other Dutch cities in the same period.