The Counter-Reformation of the Refugee: Exile and the Shaping of Catholic Militancy in the Dutch Revolt

2012 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 671-692 ◽  
Author(s):  
GEERT H. JANSSEN
Keyword(s):  
Low Countries ◽  
Southern State ◽  
Dutch Revolt ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Southern Netherlands ◽  
Reformation Movement

This article explores the Catholic exile experience in the Dutch revolt of the 1570s and 1580s. It shows how Catholic refugees negotiated their stay in places such as Cologne and Douai and developed a more militant, Tridentine identity. This process of religious radicalisation is reflected in a series of white papers by leading refugees about Catholic renewal in the contested Netherlands. This article argues that Catholic exiles became the mobilising forces of a popular Counter-Reformation movement in the southern Netherlands, thereby facilitating the eventual split of the Low Countries into a northern and southern state.

scholarly journals Reformations and Revolt in the Netherlands, 1500–1621

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Pollmann ◽  
Alastair Duke ◽  
Geert Janssen
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Freedom Of Conscience ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Dutch Revolt ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Southern Netherlands ◽  
Reformation History ◽  
Religious Landscape

The Low Countries have a special place in Reformation history, both because of the great diversity of the religious landscape and because they experienced a genuine Reformation “from below,” as well as fierce repression of Protestant heresies. Protests against the latter helped to trigger the revolt that resulted in the split of the Habsburg Netherlands. In the northern Netherlands, the Dutch Republic gave the Reformed Church a monopoly of worship but also guaranteed freedom of conscience to dissidents. The southern Netherlands, once “reconciled” with the Habsburgs and having expelled its Protestant inhabitants, became a bulwark of the Counter-Reformation. For more on the revolt, see the Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation article “The Netherlands (Dutch Revolt/Dutch Republic)” by Henk van Nierop.

Quo Vadis? Catholic Perceptions of Flight and the Revolt of the Low Countries, 1566–1609*

2011 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 472-499 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geert H. Janssen
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Identity ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Dutch Revolt ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Southern Netherlands ◽  
Quo Vadis ◽  
The Church

AbstractThis article examines Catholic views of flight, exile, and displacement during the Dutch Revolt. It argues that the civil war in the sixteenth-century Low Countries generated a new imagery of exile among Catholics, a process that was to some extent similar to what had happened to Protestant refugees a few decades earlier. Yet the Dutch case also demonstrates that the contrasting outcomes of the revolts in the Northern and Southern Netherlands led to very different appreciations of exile in Catholic communities in both areas. Habsburg triumph and Tridentine militancy sparked a Counter-Reformation movement in the Southern Netherlands that glorified exile and presented refugees as exemplary forces of an international militant church. In the northern Dutch Republic the revolt created a more ambiguous Catholic identity, in which loyalty to an officially Protestant state could coincide with commitment to the Church of Rome.

Enclosed Gardens of Mechelen

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Central Section ◽  
Unique Type ◽  
Charles V ◽  
Religious Women ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Southern Netherlands

During the Late Middle Ages a unique type of ‘mixed media’ recycled and remnant art arose in houses of religious women in the Low Countries: enclosed gardens. They date from the time of Emperor Charles V and are unique examples of ‘anonymous’ female art, devotion and spirituality. A hortus conclusus (or enclosed garden) represents an ideal, paradisiacal world. Enclosed Gardens are retables, sometimes with painted side panels, the central section filled not only with narrative sculpture, but also with all sorts of trinkets and hand-worked textiles.Adornments include relics, wax medallions, gemstones set in silver, pilgrimage souvenirs, parchment banderoles, flowers made from textiles with silk thread, semi-precious stones, pearls and quilling (a decorative technique using rolled paper). The ensemble is an impressive and one-of-a-kind display and presents as an intoxicating garden. The sixteenth-century horti conclusi of the Mechelen Hospital sisters are recognized Masterpieces and are extremely rare, not alone at a Belgian but even at a global level. They are of international significance as they provide evidence of devotion and spirituality in convent communities in the Southern Netherlands in the sixteenth century. They are an extraordinary tangible expression of a devotional tradition. The highly individual visual language of the enclosed gardens contributes to our understanding of what life was like in cloistered communities. They testify to a cultural identity closely linked with mystical traditions allowing us to enter a lost world very much part of the culture of the Southern Netherlands. This book is the first full survey of the enclosed gardens and is the result of year-long academic research.

IV Letters of Bolingbroke to the Earl of Orrery 1712-13

1992 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 350-371
Author(s):  
H.T. Dickinson
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Effective Barrier ◽  
Southern Netherlands ◽  
The Hague

Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, was one of the Secretaries of State in Queen Anne's Tory administration of 1710–14 which sought to bring an end to the increasingly burdensome War of the Spanish Succession. Employing somewhat dubious means, he and his ministerial colleagues eventually made peace with France by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713; a treaty which paid more attention to the interests of Great Britain than to those of her allies, the Dutch and Austrians. In seeking peace at almost any price Bolingbroke and his colleagues faced a particular problem with the former Spanish territory of the Southern Netherlands (or Flanders). The Dutch were particularly interested in this territory because they hoped to secure possession of strong fortresses there which would provide them with a secure barrier against a sudden attack by the French. The Austrians, for their part, hoped to gain this territory as part of the Emperor's inheritance of former Spanish possessions. Britain herself was concerned to serve her allies in this territory at least. She also had commercial interests in Flanders and had long sought an effective barrier to French efforts to expand into the Low Countries. These concerns were reflected in Bolingbroke's correspondence with Charles, Earl of Orrery, one of his Tory friends, who was appointed in 1711 as the Queen's envoy-extraordinary to the States General in The Hague and to the Council of Flanders in Brussels. Orrery served in this capacity for most of 1711. In late 1712 he returned to these duties and served there for a further year

A Prodigy Child of the Dutch Revolt: Immediate ‘Precursors’ to Grotius on Just Revolt

Grotiana ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 390-411
Author(s):  
Raymond Kubben
Keyword(s):  
Political Environment ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Dutch Revolt ◽  
The Right ◽  
Right Of Resistance

Abstract One of the odd things about Grotius’s thought is that he – advocate of a rebellious regime – was not very supportive of the right of resistance. Justifying the revolt at the time not only meant legitimizing the new regime he was serving; it also meant ruling out opposition against it. That posed an intricate puzzle; a puzzle Grotius solved by drawing on the theorizing on just revolt of the previous decades. This paper purports to show the connection between Grotius’s thought on just revolt and the intellectual and political environment in which Grotius came of age. It also sets out to show that the solution to the puzzle lies in the element of authority and the particular view taken on the constitutional position of the States in the Low Countries.1

Historical Fiction, Cultural Transfer and the Recycling of the Black Legend between the Low Countries and Britain: A Nineteenth-Century Case Study

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raphaël Ingelbien
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Historical Novels ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Cultural Transfer ◽  
Liberal Politics ◽  
Dutch Revolt ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Black Legend

This chapter compares Henri Moke’s Le Gueux de Mer (1827) and Thomas Colley Grattan’s The Heiress of Bruges (1830), two historical novels set at the time of the Dutch Revolt and written in the final years of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. The comparison provides insights into the respective priorities of British and ‘Netherlandic’ writers who dealt in images of Spain in the early nineteenth century. Beyond some clear differences in the ideological urgency of their work, the authors’ liberal politics, their sympathy towards Catholicism and the influence of Romantic Orientalism create important nuances in their versions of the Black Legend, which are ultimately denunciations of bigotry and tyranny rather than expressions of wholesale Hispanophobia.

Amsterdam

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henk van Nierop
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Town Planning ◽  
City Government ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Dutch Art ◽  
Dutch Revolt ◽  
The Baltic

Amsterdam was the biggest and the most important commercial metropolis of 17th-century Europe. Its wealthy merchants provided a booming market for luxury industries, making Amsterdam a European-wide production center and market for art and other luxury products, as well as books, prints, maps, and atlases. The largest, richest, and most powerful city in the Dutch Republic by far, it often played an independent role in international politics and diplomacy. Promotion of trade interests prompted Amsterdam’s burgomasters to tolerant policies toward Catholics, Jews, Mennonites, and other religious minorities. Originating as a modest settlement near a dam built in the river Amstel (hence its name), Amsterdam soon became the most important port in the Low Countries for trade with the Baltic, importing mainly grain and timber. The Reformation gave rise to fierce controversies. Anabaptist and Reformed risings in 1535 and 1566 provoked brutal repression by the Catholic city government. During the Dutch Revolt, Amsterdam initially remained loyal to church and king but switched allegiance in 1578 and adopted the Protestant Reformation. The capture of Antwerp by the Spanish army in 1585 heralded Amsterdam’s age of greatness. With Antwerp’s harbor closed and the southern provinces wracked by warfare, Amsterdam took over Antwerp’s function as the center of the highly integrated economy of the Low Countries. Amsterdam enlarged its one-sided mercantile economy with new trade routes to Russia, the Mediterranean and the Levant, the Atlantic world, and the Indies. Its newly found wealth led to an unprecedented wave of immigration, increasing its population from about 30,000 in 1578 to over 200,000 by the end of the 17th century. The urban government facilitated trade by the institution of an exchange bank and a commodity exchange, the construction of dockyards, and two bold and ambitious town-planning projects, including Amsterdam’s celebrated ring of canals. This article contains only works specifically dedicated to the history of the city of Amsterdam. Only a few of them are in English. Since Amsterdam was by far the biggest, wealthiest, and most powerful city of the Dutch Republic, much valuable information about Amsterdam is to be found in general works about the Dutch Republic listed in the Oxford Bibliographies articles on The Netherlands (Dutch Revolt / Dutch Republic) and Reformations and Revolt in the Netherlands, 1500–1621. For studies on artists working in Amsterdam and the Amsterdam art market, see the Oxford Bibliographies article on 17th-Century Dutch Art.

Early Modern Jansenism

2015 ◽  
pp. 435-450
Author(s):  
Ephraim Radner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Reformation Movement

This chapter presents Jansenism as an originally seventeenth-century Counter-Reformation movement with a key commitment to a certain theology of grace. This had several pastoral consequences that were broadly influential among both Catholics and Protestants, especially in the areas of scriptural study and devotion. Jansenist interest in the Augustinian tradition, however, proved a losing cause within the evolving modern church. Three papal bulls condemned certain Jansenist ideas and provided the impetus for the conflict with Rome, the French monarchy, and other institutions. The major political aspects associated with the movement in the eighteenth century eventually overwhelmed its theology and hopes. By the nineteenth century, the movement’s final political phase was seen as an amalgam of anti-papalism, anti-Jesuitism, conciliarism, republicanism, and nationalism.

The Spanish Netherlands, 1598–1700

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luc Duerloo ◽  
Guido Marnef
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Catholic Reformation ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Popular Imagination ◽  
Composite State ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
Dutch Revolt ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Dutch Golden Age

The Dutch Revolt split the Habsburg possessions in the Low Countries into two new and very different polities. The northern provinces broke away to form the Dutch Republic. South of the great rivers, Alexander Farnese succeeded in restoring Habsburg rule with a blend of compromise and conquest. The entity that was thus called into being corresponded more or less to present-day Belgium (without, however, the prince-bishopric of Liège, but still with those parts that would eventually be annexed by France) and has been variously described as the Spanish, Southern, Catholic, Royal or Habsburg Netherlands. In contrast with its northern neighbor, its regime was based on the twin pillars of a monarchy tempered by traditional liberties and the religious monopoly of Roman Catholicism. Initially a composite state of eleven principalities, it witnessed a period of limited independence under the Archdukes Albert and Isabella (1598–1621) before its reintegration in the Spanish monarchy. Over the course of the 17th century, the Spanish Netherlands suffered severely from their geopolitical position. In the hands of a declining monarchy and surrounded by three of the major powers, they became one of the habitual battlegrounds of early modern Europe. As a consequence, the Spanish Netherlands have often been depicted as languishing in the shadows of the Dutch Golden Age. Their fate was anchored in the popular imagination as the Ongelukseeuw (the Century of Misfortunes). Without necessarily belittling the setbacks and the suffering, historians have come to question the almost uniformly dark hues in which the period was customarily represented. Their exercise in revision has revealed a country with an agrarian sector that was experimenting with new forms of crop rotation, had one of the highest levels of urbanization in Europe, and was known throughout the continent for the arts and luxuries it produced. Reconstituted into a bulwark of the Catholic Reformation, the Spanish Netherlands played a pivotal role in propagating the teachings of the Council of Trent. Their sense of mission found its artistic expression in the Flemish baroque. With a strange twist of fate, they also became the birthplace of the Jansenist controversy.

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