Amsterdam, ‘in ’t Martelaarsboek’, ‘Dirk van Assensteegh’

Rieuwertsz Sr. was one of the most productive and influential publishers in Amsterdam of his own time. Spinoza's contacts with him and with like-minded dissenting spirits who frequented his bookstore ‘in ’t Martelaarsboek’ (‘In the Book of Martyrs’) in the Dirk van Assensteegh (nowadays the Dirk van Hasseltsteeg, running off the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, close to the Nieuwendijk) were of crucial importance for him.

In the eyes of orthodox Calvinists in Amsterdam, the bookshop of Rieuwertsz Sr. had a clandestine ring to it. Because of a suspect Socinian anthology Rieuwertzs Sr. published between 1665 and 1668 (the Bibliotheca fratrum Polonorum), the Kerkenraad had put his shop in the Dirk van Assensteeg under close surveillance in late March 1669. On April 4, watchdogs of the Consistory reported about Rieuwertsz bookstore ‘in ’t Martelaarsboek’ that:

several people, of different stripes, meet there in the shop, and [they] entertain strange discussions. Others tell that they gather in a room, but that is uncertain.

Source: Amsterdam, SA, 376: ‘Archief van de Hervormde Gemeente; Kerkenraad’, ‘Algemeen’, ms. ‘Protocolboeken’, inv. no. 12.