Voices for Tolerance
In an Age of Persecution

Religious intolerance ultimately led to conflict, which when combined with dynastic and international power struggles became quite bitter and complex. The refusal of Philip II of Spain (1527-1598) to countenance ancient Dutch freedoms and to tolerate a diverse religious society led to an extended conflict referred to as both the Dutch Revolt and as the Eighty Years' War (1568-1648). It overlapped with pre-modern Europe's most extensive and destructive war, the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). Though sparked by a religiously inspired revolt by Bohemian Calvinists against the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II, the dispute rapidly lost its religious basis as it expanded into a European-wide superpower conflict.