On August 20, 1672, a mob led by royalist thugs grabbed the deWitt brothers and beat them with sledgehammers, stabbed them with knives and swords, and repeatedly shot them at close range. They were stripped naked and hung by their feet. Body parts and internal organs were removed. An eye was eaten by someone, others ate raw flesh, and the liver was roasted on a fire and eaten by many. Fingers, ears and body parts began trading for cash. A finger went for 20 cents. The Hague Historical Museum has a tongue and finger on display.
Baruch Spinoza had been 23 when he was excommunicated by the Jewish community in Amsterdam decades earlier. When the Inquisition expelled Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal, many fled to the Netherlands because of its religious tolerance.
After the deWitt’s organized a successful and completely bloodless revolution in the Netherlands that toppled the ruling royal family (103 years before the American revolution), surrounding nations began mobilizing with the intent of invading and restoring the Dutch monarchy. Spinoza, like the deWitt’s, belonged to a successful merchant family. However, their ships had been destroyed in the first Anglo-Dutch War. Spinoza went to the city council to release himself from his father’s debts, a violation of Jewish law that infuriated the Jewish council. All Jews were commanded to cut off communication with Spinoza, including his own family. He had been living in isolation for decades when the deWitts were murdered.
Most likely, Spinoza’s views on the Torah were involved. He had recently anonymously published Theological-Political Treatise (1670), which claimed nations needed to secularize and reign in religions, and freedom of thought and speech were essential to spreading democracy. Spinoza knew Moses could not have written the Torah because the Torah contains a description of the death and burial of Moses. It was not the divine word of god, but assembled by men over many generations.
Although known for his stoic behavior, the 39-year-old Spinoza lost it when he heard the news about the deWitts, and immediately painted a sign with words “Ultimi barbarorum” and wanted to bring it to the site while the mob was still assembled, but was prevented by his landlord. Had he done so, Spinoza would also have been hung by his feet and eaten.
Spinoza’s views on democracy changed that day and he no longer trusted the masses. In fact, the murders had been carefully orchestrated by the deposed royals who were pumping out leaflets blaming the massing French army on the border as being the fault of the deWitts. Remove them, and the invasion threat would go away.
Spinoza continued to write extensively but nothing much was published until after his death at age 44, five years after the murder of the deWitts.
Ethics (Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata) argues that God and nature are the same substance and everything in the universe is a part of God. Freedom and happiness do not come from free will, which is an illusion, but from deploying reason to understand emotions and laws of nature. He is recognized as the earliest fundamental figure in the European Enlightenment, preceded by Descartes and followed by Locke, Newton and Voltaire.
A film director in Israel recently wanted to make a documentary on Spinoza with the help of Yitzhak Melamed in Amsterdam. Far from reconsidering the cherem, or ex-communication, that the rabbinical authorities in Amsterdam pronounced against Spinoza in 1656, when he was just 23, rabbis in the Netherlands extended that cherem to Melamed and to the filmmakers.
Hollywood has never gotten anyone near this amazing story. Wonder why.