Adriaan Koerbagh

Adriaan Koerbagh (1632 to 1669) was a Dutch physician, scholar and writer, a critic of religion and conventional morality who moved in the circle of supporters of Baruch Spinoza. He studied at Utrecht, Franeker and Leiden, became a doctor of medicine in 1659 and a master of jurisprudence in 1661, and placed the authority of reason above that of dogma. He described the Bible and doctrines such as the Trinity as human work, argued that God is identical with nature, and held that natural science rather than theology was the real theology of the world. His dictionary of legal terms of 1664, the Bloemhof of 1668 published under a pseudonym, and A Light Shining in Dark Places angered the Reformed church. Found guilty of blasphemy in 1668, he was sentenced to ten years in the Amsterdam Rasphuis and died there in 1669.