scholarly journals Confessional Coexistence in the Habsburg Netherlands

2021 ◽  
Vol 136 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-26
Author(s):  
Roman Roobroeck
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
Historical Review ◽  
Stable System ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Interreligious Relations ◽  
Private Devotion ◽  
Religious Differences ◽  
Public Worship

For decades, early modern historians have stressed the religious differences between the Dutch Republic and the Habsburg Netherlands. The former is usually represented as a tolerant Reformed state, while the latter is represented as a repressive Catholic regime. By consequence, the similarities in terms of confessional coexistence have never been considered. This article seeks to fill that gap by reviewing the Geuzenhoek, a small rural Reformed minority group in Flanders. Fortunately, a plethora of available sources allows us to research the interactions between the Protestants and the Catholic majority. This article shows that the divide between public worship and private devotion played a key role in keeping peaceful interreligious relations and that a stable system of connivance dominated the local framework. This situation was very similar to that of the Dutch Republic. As a result, this study concludes that confessional coexistence in the Habsburg Netherlands should be re-evaluated and merits further investigation. Vroegmoderne historici hebben jarenlang vooral de religieuze verschillen tussen de Republiek der Verenigde Nederlanden en de Habsburgse Nederlanden benadrukt. De een werd gewoonlijk voorgesteld als een tolerante gereformeerde staat, terwijl de andere bekendstond als een repressief katholiek regime. De gelijkenissen op vlak van confessionele co-existentie zijn daarom nooit nader onderzocht. Dit artikel wil dit hiaat opvullen door de Geuzenhoek, een kleine landelijke gereformeerde minderheidsgroep in Vlaanderen, onder de loep te nemen. Dankzij een ruime collectie aan bronnen konden de interacties tussen de protestanten en de katholieken in beeld gebracht worden. Dit artikel toont aan dat de scheiding tussen publieke en private devotie een grote invloed had op het bewerkstelligen van vredige contacten, en dat in deze lokale context een systeem van ‘oogluikendheid’ domineerde. Deze situatie is vergelijkbaar met die in de Republiek. De conclusie van deze studie is dan ook dat de confessionele co-existentie in de Habsburgse Nederlanden een herevaluatie en verder onderzoek verdient. ActualiteitsparagraafVrienden noch vijanden? Katholieken en protestanten in vroegmodern Vlaanderen Over de interacties van protestanten en katholieken in het verleden overheersen ook vandaag nog hardnekkige clichés: ze konden elkaars bloed wel drinken, geweld tussen religieuze groepen kwam vaak voor en verdraagzaamheid was vrijwel onbestaand. Toch was de historische realiteit vaak anders. Roman Roobroeck toont in zijn artikel in BMGN – Low Countries Historical Review over de Geuzenhoek aan dat de verhoudingen tussen katholieken en protestanten in het zeventiende-eeuwse overwegend katholieke Vlaanderen opvallend vreedzaam waren. Tussen de leden van deze rurale protestantse groep nabij Oudenaarde en hun katholieke buren ontsponnen zich conflicten, maar over het algemeen waren hun relaties vreedzaam. De protestantse dorpelingen profiteerden van het afwachtende beleid van de Habsburgers en ontwierpen samen met de lokale katholieken een gedoogsamenleving. Deze vorm van religieuze co-existentie kwam dus niet enkel in de Noordelijke Nederlanden voor, maar ook in de Habsburgse Nederlanden. Misschien was het religieuze klimaat in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden dan toch niet zo rigide als vaak gedacht?

Democracy and Civil Society in the Early Modern Period: The Rise of Three Types of Civil Societies in the Spanish Netherlands and the Dutch Republic

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-81
Author(s):  
Maarten F. Van Dijck
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
Craft Guilds ◽  
Civil Societies

This article proposes to refine the concept civil society by discerning three distinct forms of civil society in the past. This refined conceptual framework counters the criticism that civil society suffers from its growing popularity and its broad definition. The usefulness of these three forms of civil society—which are based on the later work of Jürgen Habermas—are applied in this article on the seventeenth-century Low Countries. The central question is how these forms of civil society acted as schools of democracy in the seventeenth-century Spanish Netherlands and Dutch Republic. The three types of civil society are identified that developed through time and built a cumulative tradition of civil society. These are the medieval craft guilds (liberal civil society), the early modern civic militia (republican civil society), and the modern Enlightenment sociability (deliberative civil society). Data about the associational life in two cities in the Low Countries, Mechelen and Rotterdam, show that different forms of civil societies had different functions according to the societal context. Furthermore, the data show that societies with civil societies characterized by social inclusive boards and high mutation ratios had less political impact when they lacked links with existing political institutions. This implies that civil societies did not as a rule serve as schools of democracy.

The Coming of Age of the Lutheran Congregation in Early Modern Amsterdam

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Sabine Hiebsch
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Influencing Factors ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Religious Minority ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
House Church ◽  
The Public ◽  
Reformed Church

AbstractContrary to most of the German Lands of the Empire, Lutherans in the Low Countries were a religious minority. In order to establish a congregation in the nascent Dutch republic the Amsterdam Lutherans had to manoeuver between a non-Lutheran authority, the public Reformed Church with the most rights and the highest visibility and other religious minorities. This article describes the influencing factors that helped the Lutherans in this ongoing dynamic and vulnerable process of negotiation. It shows how experiences made by the first generations of Dutch Lutherans in Antwerp were important for the choice to start as a house church. It further explores the international connections of the Amsterdam Lutherans, especially with Scandinavia, that eventually made it possible for them to own two big, publicly visible churches, while still being a religious minority.

Spinoza and Biblical Philology in the Dutch Republic, 1660-1710

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jetze Touber
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Dutch Reformed ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Biblical Criticism ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Dutch Golden Age

This book investigates the biblical criticism of Spinoza from the perspective of the Dutch Reformed society in which the philosopher lived and worked. It focusses on philological investigation of the Bible: its words, its language, and the historical context in which it originated. The book charts contested issues of biblical philology in mainstream Dutch Calvinism, to determine whether Spinoza’s work on the Bible had any bearing on the Reformed understanding of the way society should engage with Scripture. Spinoza has received massive attention, both inside and outside academia. His unconventional interpretation of the Old Testament passages has been examined repeatedly over the decades. So has that of fellow ‘radicals’ (rationalists, radicals, deists, libertines, enthusiasts), against the backdrop of a society that is assumed to have been hostile, overwhelmed, static, and uniform. This book inverts this perspective and looks at how the Dutch Republic digested biblical philology and biblical criticism, including that of Spinoza. It takes into account the highly neglected area of the Reformed ministry and theology of the Dutch Golden Age. The result is that Dutch ecclesiastical history, up until now the preserve of the partisan scholarship of confessionalized church historians, is brought into dialogue with Early Modern intellectual currents. This book concludes that Spinoza, rather than simply pushing biblical scholarship in the direction of modernity, acted in an indirect way upon ongoing debates in Dutch society, shifting trends in those debates, but not always in the same direction, and not always equally profoundly, at all times, on all levels.

The Paradox of “A High Standard of Public Honesty”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Kennedy ◽  
Ronald Kroeze
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Side Effect ◽  
High Standard ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Liberal Politics ◽  
Patronage Politics ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This chapter takes as its starting point the contemporary idea that the Netherlands is one of the least corrupt countries in the world; an idea that it dates back to the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. In this chapter, the authors explain how corruption was controlled in the Netherlands against the background of the rise and fall of the Dutch Republic, modern statebuilding and liberal politics. However, the Dutch case also presents some complexities: first, the decrease in some forms of corruption was due not to early democratization or bureaucratization, but was rather a side-effect of elite patronage-politics; second, although some early modern forms of corruption disappeared around this period, new forms have emerged in more recent times.

War and Rural Life in the Early Modern Low Countries.

1981 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 495
Author(s):  
Alastair Duke ◽  
Myron P. Gutmann
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Rural Life ◽  
Low Countries
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document