@article{aup:/content/journals/10.5117/DAE2021.005.MOLE, author = "Molenaar, Sven", title = "‘De trou schijnt schoon’", journal= "De Achttiende Eeuw", year = "2021", volume = "53", number = "1", pages = "70-87", doi = "https://doi.org/10.5117/DAE2021.005.MOLE", url = "https://www.aup-online.com/content/journals/10.5117/DAE2021.005.MOLE", publisher = "Amsterdam University Press", issn = "2667-2081", type = "Journal Article", keywords = "prohibited texts", keywords = "Catholic Church", keywords = "marriage", keywords = "sexuality", keywords = "libertinism", abstract = "Abstract The Antwerp manuscript ‘Het Mengelmoes’ from 1696 contains several ‘taboo texts’, in which views and opinions were expressed that were inconsistent with those of the Catholic Church. In manuscript, these texts escaped ecclesiastical censorship. This article will present and discuss a selection of these ‘taboo texts’, since some of them bear witness to libertine ideas in the late seventeenth-century Southern Low Countries. These ideas seem to have come over from France, but there are indications of influences from the Dutch Republic as well. They relate in particular to sexual morality, presenting marriage as an unnatural institution and advocating sexual freedom instead. Since the most prominent cultural language in the Southern Low Countries at the time was French, it is highly interesting that some of the libertine ‘taboo texts’ were written in Dutch. ‘Het Mengelmoes’ provides evidence of the existence of Dutch-language, seventeenth-century libertine literature from the Southern Low Countries.", }