Utrecht sodomy trials

Several disasters had hit the country: the flooding of Stavoren in 1657, the collapse of the Utrecht Dom Church's nave in 1674 due to an intense storm now thought to have been a bow echo and the earthquake of 1692 were all ascribed to divine wrath.

In July of the same year, Holland followed suit[2] and a nationwide wave of prosecutions ensued; several men in high positions were suspected, but fled before they could be arrested.

[2] Protestant preachers supported the purge, using among other things the aforementioned shipworm in the Dutch dikes as evidence of God's wrath against homosexuals.

Overall, though, most accusations appear to have been true, the victims of prosecution having mostly been actual homosexuals, leading Rictor Norton to comment that "this is properly described as a pogrom (...) rather than a hysterical witch-hunt".

As a result of the trials, the demonym Utrechtenaar gained a second meaning as a slang term to denote homosexuals (first attested in a dictionary of 1861), esp.