Samenvatting

This articles offers an overview of four centuries of ‘forbidden relations’ in The Netherlands. From the late sixteenth century onwards, the dominant Calvinist church tried to ‘purify’ the Dutch nation by persecuting all forms of fornication, adultery, incest, and sodomy. The French period (1795-1813) separated church and state, and removed several forms of forbidden relations from the penal code. But social control on relations remained intense. An ‘ideal’ marriage was based on equality of the spouses in terms of social background, religion and age. Parents as well as the local community made sure young people made the ‘right’ choice. Competition between religious groups intensified in the late nineteenth century and mixed marriages became even more problematic. In the 1960s and 1970s all this began to change, and many rules and norms regarding partner choice were relaxed. An example of the changes over time are unmarried cohabitations which transformed from a crime (sanctioned by banishment) to deviant behaviour (sanctions through withholding poor relief) to a more or less normative ‘trial marriage’.