scholarly journals Partakers with the Altar

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 250-280
Author(s):  
Joke Spaans
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Dutch Reformed ◽  
Economic Decline ◽  
Public Finances ◽  
Hierarchical Order ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Seating Arrangement ◽  
The City ◽  
The Prestige

Contrary to prevalent assumptions, city magistracies did not simply pay for the upkeep of the churches used by the Dutch Reformed church. Based on the archives of churchwardens for the eleven public churches of Amsterdam, this article shows that for about a century between 1650 and 1750 the churches paid for themselves, how this was possible, and why they eventually came to rely municipal subsidies. After the devastations wrought by Revolt and Reformation, the buildings were refurnished in a luxurious style, befitting the prestige of the city. Burgomasters imposed a seating arrangement that, maintained by a variety of church attendants, reflected the hierarchical order of society. The biographical background and the work of these attendants provide a window into the ritual of churchgoing. During the heyday of Amsterdam’s prosperity people were happy to pay or the services the churches provided, including the display of rank and dignity. Economic decline, critique of the established social order, and changing religious sensibilities undercut this source of funding. The report of an auditing committee, analysing the administration of churchwardens in 1795 and 1796, testifies to the difficulties even the staunchest Batavian revolutionaries experienced when rethinking early modern public finances.

Arminian, Remonstrant, and Early Methodist Theologies

2014 ◽  
pp. 386-401
Author(s):  
Keith D. Stanglin
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
The State ◽  
Dutch Reformed ◽  
Religious Toleration ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
The Common ◽  
Enlightenment Philosophy ◽  
Dutch Reformed Church

This essay describes the principal and distinctive theological elements of various forms of early modern Arminianism. Beginning with Jacob Arminius, it sketches the historical development and background of Arminianism in the Netherlands, its continuation in Dutch Remonstrant theology, and its manifestation in the Methodism of John and Charles Wesley in England. These contexts were quite different from one another. Arminius forged his theology in the context of the Dutch Reformed Church. Remonstrant theology developed outside the state church and in conjunction with Enlightenment philosophy. Wesleyan Methodism was nurtured by an Anglican Arminianism that found new life in evangelical revival. Despite the differences, the essay also traces elements of the common legacy that unites these divergent forms of Arminianism, such as the abiding concern over antinomianism, the plea for religious toleration, and the doctrine of a God who wants to be in eternal communion with all people.

“Regenten” (Gentlemanly) Capitalism: Saint-Simonian Technocracy and the Emergence of the “Industrialist Great Club” in the Mid-nineteenth Century Netherlands

2010 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 753-783
Author(s):  
Albert Schrauwers
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Stock Market ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Dutch Reformed ◽  
Geometric Pattern ◽  
Royal Palace ◽  
The North ◽  
The City ◽  
The Web

The geometric pattern of Amsterdam's canals was iconic of its nineteenth-century social order. The spider's web of canals fanned out along the Amstel river in concentric rings, its barge traffic linking the city to its hinterland, the province of Holland, and to the wider Netherlands of which it is the nominal capital. These canals divided the “Venice of the North” into ninety islands linked by more than a thousand bridges. Imposing aristocratic and merchant houses stretched along the innermost canal ring, the Golden Curve of the Gentleman's Canal. At the center of the web lay de Dam, the 200 m long market square built on the first medieval dike protecting the city from the encroaching sea. The three pillars of the Dutch state framed the market square: the Royal Palace of the Merchant King, the Dutch Reformed New Church, and in the nineteenth century, the Amsterdam stock market, the world's oldest exchange.

Staging an Empire: An Ottoman Circumcision Ceremony as Cultural Performance

2018 ◽  
Vol 123 (2) ◽  
pp. 463-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaya Şahin
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Male Circumcision ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Cultural Performance ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
Military Elite ◽  
The Status ◽  
East And West ◽  
Gift Exchanges ◽  
The City

Abstract This article discusses an Ottoman circumcision ceremony for three princes held in the summer of 1530. The event stemmed from a new Ottoman court ceremonial, and its sundry activities, including gift exchanges, mock battles, processions, skills demonstrations, and feasts, were spread over a twenty-day period. These activities enabled individuals and groups within the Ottoman political-military elite, and within the city of Constantinople, to perform their identities and assert their place in the Ottoman social order. The ceremony allows us to discuss the origins and contents of Ottoman ceremonial culture, which borrowed themes and motifs from the Byzantines, the Venetians, and the myriad Turko-Muslim polities with whom the Ottomans maintained intense diplomatic and cultural relations. Next, it highlights the elevation of male circumcision, a fundamental ritual in all Islamic societies, to the status of a major dynastic event that addressed the entire Ottoman polity as well as its competitors in East and West. Finally, it shows how, in early modern societies, public ceremonies served as instruments of governance by creating highly visible, memorable, and relatively participatory events, and by constituting new spaces for political and cultural interactions.

Hugh O'Neill and the Nine Years War in Tudor Ireland

1993 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hiram Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Dutch Reformed ◽  
Royal Authority ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Dutch Revolt ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Ecclesiastical Authority ◽  
English Speaking

ABSTRACTThe Tudor regime faced its greatest challenge in Ireland at the turn of the sixteenth century. The extension of royal authority had run into fierce opposition from a confederacy of Gaelic lords led by Hugh O'Neill. The Tudors stigmatized such resistance as rebellion but the fact that it was taking place in a dependent kingdom in which the monarch was not resident quickly rendered it a war of liberation. This prompts comparison with the other great independence struggle of the early modern period – the Dutch revolt. In both cases the language of faith and fatherland came to the fore. In Ireland this rhetoric was directed at the English-speaking descendants of the Norman conquerors whose support was crucial to the success of O'Neill's cause. Yet it fell on deaf ears because the confederates were unable to legitimize their struggle in the eyes of these catholic loyalists. The sources of political and religious legitimacy were stronger in The Netherlands. While the Netherlandish provincial estates were founts of popular sovereignty, the Irish parliament was an organ of the Tudor state. And whereas in Holland the source of ecclesiastical authority was the non-hierarchical Dutch Reformed Church, in Ireland it was externalized in the person of Clement VIII who could not be won over in spite of the efforts of Peter Lombard, O'Neill's agent in Rome.

The French Church of Maastricht

2020 ◽  
Vol 100 (4) ◽  
pp. 463-486
Author(s):  
Julien Léonard
Keyword(s):  
Survival Strategies ◽  
Dutch Reformed ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Front Line ◽  
The Public ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Massive Influx ◽  
The City ◽  
Unique Status ◽  
Dutch Reformed Church

Abstract The French Reformed church of Maastricht, founded in 1632 following the Dutch takeover of the city, was a geographically isolated institution within the Dutch Republic. This isolation was reinforced by the city’s unique status, which allowed the public exercise of Catholicism. Within this context, and situated next to the hostile Principality of Liège, the French church had to develop survival strategies and establish relations not only with the States-General and the Walloon synod, but also with the urban authorities and the Dutch Reformed church, in order to withstand the influence of Catholicism. Yet even though Maastricht was on the confessional and military front line—a place of passage for merchants, refugees, and Catholic clergymen—the French Protestant community survived the French occupation of 1673–1678 and managed to absorb the massive influx of Huguenot refugees from 1686 onwards.

Becoming early modern in the late medieval Low Countries

Urban History ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 300-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha Howell ◽  
Marc Boone
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Economic Decline ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Political Upheaval ◽  
Social Trauma ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
History Of ◽  
Social Conservatism

The history of cities in the Low Countries at the end of Middle Ages is commonly presented as one of discontinuity in which old textile centres collapsed, and were replaced by new centres such as Antwerp, Leiden, Lille and Amsterdam which were in fundamental respects entirely unlike their medieval predecessors. This conventional interpretation is challenged with reference to Ghent and Douai. Neither suffered devastating economic decline, social trauma or political upheaval in the period, and both enjoyed a degree of relative economic success. Contradictions are also identified, especially the way that economic flexibility was associated with an intensification of social conservatism. This process not only helped produce a characteristically ‘early modern’ social order but also decisively linked the ‘medieval’ with the ‘early modern’ in these two cities.

Letters Home: Banaras pandits and the Maratha regions in early modern India

2009 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROSALIND O'HANLON
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
New Models ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
The City

AbstractMaratha Brahman families migrated to Banaras in increasing numbers from the early sixteenth century. They dominated the intellectual life of the city and established an important presence at the Mughal and other north Indian courts. They retained close links with Brahmans back in the Maratha regions, where pressures of social change and competition for rural resources led to acrimonious disputes concerning ritual entitlement and precedence in the rural social order. Parties on either side appealed to Banaras for resolution of the disputes, raising serious questions about the nature of Brahman community and identity. Banaras pandit communities struggled to contain these disputes, even as the symbols of their own authority came under attack from the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. By the early eighteenth century, the emergence of the Maratha state created new models of Brahman authority and community, and new patterns for the resolution of such disputes.

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