University of Utrecht 1636–1676: res ecclesia, res publica and … res pecunia

The early history of Utrecht University (founded 1636) reflects an emerging
public sphere (Habermas’s ‘bürgerliche öffentlichkeit’) of a major town in the
Netherlands. This public sphere was a contested field among the different
groups establishing and administering the university: university professors,
town magistrates and representatives of the newly established Reformed
Church and the former dominant Catholic Church. The factionalised magistrates
developed a public sphere, while also trying to limit the passionate but
destabilising debate concerning the new philosophy of Descartes. They
supported the Calvinistic anti-Descartes movement while permitting, and even
advocating, the establishment of the new philosophy at the university. They
ambivalently protected the academy from the consistory’s control while
simultaneously trying to safeguard their own (financial) position. It is
concluded that the Habermasian framework has to be fleshed out in local
histories, such as this case study of Utrecht University, to demonstrate the
‘messy’ complexities in reality.