Adriaan Koerbagh

Adriaan Koerbagh (* 1633 in Amsterdam, † October 1669 in Amsterdam; pseudonym Vreederijk Waarmond ) was a Dutch critic of religion and morality.

Life

Koerbagh studied in Utrecht and Leiden. He graduated as a doctor of medicine, and had, moreover, a degree in law. He was considered one of the most consistent representative of the Enlightenment, by refusing church and state as unreliable institutions. The technical language of theologians and jurists, he criticized as a means to blind the people, and thereby to enable retention of power. By Koerbagh is the reason from dogma, he can be described as free-thinkers. Not theology but science is true science. He also referred to the Bible as the work of man, while God as Baruch Spinoza is equated in truth with nature. Religion is irrational and is a force to maintain power. This statement Koerbaghs he had to feel later on his own body, as he had persecuted by the church into autonomous Culemborg and eventually fled to Leiden. He was a critic of the Dutch Reformed Church. Betrayed by his printer, Koerbagh was eventually sentenced to ten years in prison, but died under the conditions already after one year. Koerbaghs criticism of church and state was thus placed in a way that they end cost him his life.

Work (selection)

• Een Bloemhof van allerley lieflijkheyd (1668 )
• Een Ligt schynende in duystere plaatsen, om te verligten de voornaamste saaken the Godsgeleerdtheyd s godsdienst