William of Orange and the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1572-84

William of Orange and the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1572-84
Author: K.W. Swart
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2017-05-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 135187277X

The figure of Prince William of Orange (1572-84) dominates the political landscape of the sixteenth century Netherlands, and in many ways personifies the Dutch revolt against Spanish hegemony. Yet despite the European significance of his struggle, there has not been a major English-language study of William since C.V. Wedgwood's biography published in 1944. As such, scholars will welcome this publication of Koen Swart's distinguished and authoritative biography of the first of the hereditary stadholders of the United Provinces. Originally available only in Dutch, this edition provides an English speaking audience for the first time with a detailed account of William's role in the Dutch Revolt that reflects the vast amount of scholarship undertaken in the field of European political and religious history over the last few decades. In the book, Swart explores the means by which William established his rule in Holland and Zeeland in the 1570s, and provides an analysis of William's relations with the provincial states, the States-General and the towns, and the creation of a new system of government and finance. Within this framework of national history, he is always careful to locate the subject in its broad international context, thus adding to our wider understanding of this turbulent period. Moreover, Swart avoids the uncritical glorification of William evident in some previous works, and asks searching and pertinent questions concerning the wisdom of William's decisions, such as that to break up the pre-1572 unity of the Habsburg Netherlands. In so doing, Swart provides a much more balanced view than has hitherto been available, that not only takes Protestant views into account, but also contemplates the Revolt form the perspective of the Catholic population, and shows sympathy for Charles V's and Philip II's predicament. In so doing, this book provides the most important revision of William for a century, and will undoubtedly have repercussions upon many studying the history of Europe in the age of Reformations. Published posthumously, this book also includes introductory material written by leading scholars H.F.K. van Nierop, M.E.H.N. Mout, J. Israel and A.C. Duke.

William the Silent and the Dutch Revolt

William the Silent and the Dutch Revolt
Author: Nick Ridley
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2021-07-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000406768

William the Silent and the Dutch Revolt examines the first stages of the Dutch struggle against Spanish rule during the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The book analyses the causes of growing discontent in the Netherlands and the various stages of the revolt, focusing on the key tipping points where discontent and violent upheaval escalated to become a national struggle for independence. The book also provides comparative analyses of insurgencies in the modern era and examines how popular discontent throughout history has often developed into struggles for full independence. The book is a key resource for scholars and students of early modern European history, as well as those interested in the history of revolts.

Revolt in the Netherlands

Revolt in the Netherlands
Author: Anton van der Lem
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2019-03-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1789140889

In 1568, the Seventeen Provinces in the Netherlands rebelled against the absolutist rule of the king of Spain. A confederation of duchies, counties, and lordships, the Provinces demanded the right of self-determination, the freedom of conscience and religion, and the right to be represented in government. Their long struggle for liberty and the subsequent rise of the Dutch Republic was a decisive episode in world history and an important step on the path to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And yet, it is a period in history we rarely discuss. In his compelling retelling of the conflict, Anton van der Lem explores the main issues at stake on both sides of the struggle and why it took eighty years to achieve peace. He recounts in vivid detail the roles of the key protagonists, the decisive battles, and the war’s major turning points, from the Spanish governor’s Council of Blood to the Twelve Years Truce, while all the time unraveling the shifting political, religious, and military alliances that would entangle the foreign powers of France, Italy, and England. Featuring striking, rarely seen illustrations, this is a timely and balanced account of one of the most historically important conflicts of the early modern period.

A Companion to Multiconfessionalism in the Early Modern World

A Companion to Multiconfessionalism in the Early Modern World
Author: Thomas Max Safley
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 512
Release: 2011-06-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004216219

In the sixteenth century, the Christian church and Christian worship fragmented into a multiplicity of confessions that has grown to the present day. The essays in this volume demonstrate that multiconfessionalism, understood as the legally recognized and politically supported coexistence of two or more confessions in a single polity, was the rule rather than the exception for most of early modern Europe. The contributors examine its causes and effects. They demonstrate that local religious groups across the continent could cooperate with confessional opponents and oppose political authorities to make decisions about their religious lives, depending on local conditions and contingencies. In so doing, this volume offers a new vision of religion, state, and society in early modern Europe. Contributors include: Bernard Capp, John R. D. Coffey, Jérémie Foa, David Frick, Raymond Gillespie, Benjamin Kaplan, Howard Louthan, David Luebke, Keith Luria, Guido Marnef, Graeme Murdock, Richard Ninness, Penny Roberts, Jesse Spohnholz, Peter Wallace, Lee Palmer Wandel.

Dissident Identities in the Early Modern Low Countries

Dissident Identities in the Early Modern Low Countries
Author: Alastair Duke
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 506
Release: 2016-12-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351943480

Alastair Duke has long been recognized as one of the leading scholars of the early modern Netherlands, known internationally for his important work on the impact of religious change on political events which was the focus of his Reformation and Revolt in the Low Countries (1990). Bringing together an updated selection of his previously published essays - together with one entirely new chapter and two that appear in English here for the first time - this volume explores the emergence of new political and religious identities in the early modern Netherlands. Firstly it analyses the emergence of a common identity amongst the amorphous collection of states in north-western Europe that were united first under the rule of the Valois Dukes of Burgundy and later the Habsburg princes, and traces the fortunes of this notion during the political and religious conflicts that divided the Low Countries during the second half of the sixteenth century. A second group of essays considers the emergence of dissidence and opposition to the regime, and explores how this was expressed and disseminated through popular culture. Finally, the volume shows how in the age of confessionalisation and civil war, challenging issues of identity presented themselves to both dissenting groups and individuals. Taken together these essays demonstrate how these dissident identities shaped and contributed to the development of the Netherlands during the early modern period.

The Monument’s End

The Monument’s End
Author: Marisa Anne Bass
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2024-10-15
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0691238804

"An examination of monument-making in the Dutch Republic during the early modern period, during which this form first manifested and flourished"--

Rubens and the Dominican Church in Antwerp

Rubens and the Dominican Church in Antwerp
Author: Adam Sammut
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 556
Release: 2023-05-15
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9004276386

This book is about the Dominican church in Antwerp (today St Paul’s). It is structured around three works of art, made or procured by Peter Paul Rubens: the Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary cycle (in situ), Caravaggio’s Rosary Madonna (Vienna) and the Wrath of Christ high altarpiece (Lyon). Within the artist’s lifetime, the church and monastery were completely rebuilt, creating one of the most spectacular sacred spaces in Northern Europe. In this richly illustrated book, Adam Sammut reconceptualises early modern churches as theatres of political economy, advancing an original approach to cultural production in a time of war. Using methodologies at the cutting edge of the humanities, the place of St Paul’s is restored to the crux of Antwerp’s commercial, civic and religious life.

Reformation in the Low Countries, 1500-1620

Reformation in the Low Countries, 1500-1620
Author: Christine Kooi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2022-06-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1009075403

This accessible general history of the Reformation in the Netherlands traces the key developments in the process of reformation – both Protestant and Catholic – across the whole of the Low Countries during the sixteenth century. Synthesizing fifty years' worth of scholarly literature, Christine Kooi focuses particularly on the political context of the era: how religious change took place against the integration and disintegration of the Habsburg composite state in the Netherlands. Special attention is given to the Reformation's role in both fomenting and fuelling the Revolt against the Habsburg regime in the later sixteenth century, as well as how it contributed to the formation of the region's two successor states, the Dutch Republic and the Southern Netherlands. Reformation in the Low Countries, 1500-1620 is essential reading for scholars and students of early modern European history, bringing together specialized, contemporary research on the Low Countries in one volume.

Pragmatic Toleration

Pragmatic Toleration
Author: Victoria Christman
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2015
Genre: History
ISBN: 1580465161

Using the case of early-sixteenth-century Antwerp, argues that practices of religious toleration in the Christian West first emerged not as the outgrowth of beliefs about human rights, but as a practical consequence of religious coexistence. In a modern world still struggling to achieve religious coexistence, there has been a recent burgeoning of scholarship aimed at examining the history of such coexistence. Most of these studies focus on developments in the seventeenth century and beyond. This book redirects attention earlier, to the first half of the sixteenth century, and argues that impulses to toleration were already at work even amid the religious upheaval of the European Reformations.In the early modern metropolis of Antwerp, the author finds a wealthy merchant city struggling to balance the competing interests of municipality and empire. While their imperial overlords attempted to impose religious uniformityvia increasingly repressive anti-heresy edicts, the city fathers of Antwerp found ways to circumvent those laws in order to accommodate the religious heterodoxy of their most valued inhabitants. The result was the development of pragmatically tolerant practices that arose in the service of fundamentally nonreligious motivations. Via a series of case studies, this book documents the development of such practices on the part of the Antwerp fathersas they defended their heterodox inhabitants. It seeks to understand the motivations underlying the councilors' lenient treatment of heterodoxy in their city, and attempts to answer the question of how we are to understand such pragmatically tolerant behavior as part of the broader history of religious tolerance in the Christian West. Victoria Christman is associate professor of history at Luther College.

Gabriel Harvey and the History of Reading

Gabriel Harvey and the History of Reading
Author: Anthony Grafton
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 440
Release: 2024-01-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1800081685

Few articles in the humanities have had the impact of Lisa Jardine and Anthony Grafton’s seminal ‘Studied for Action’ (1990), a study of the reading practices of Elizabethan polymath and prolific annotator Gabriel Harvey. Their excavation of the setting, methods and ambitions of Harvey’s encounters with his books ignited the History of Reading, an interdisciplinary field which quickly became one of the most exciting corners of the scholarly cosmos. A generation inspired by the model of Harvey fanned out across the world’s libraries and archives, seeking to reveal the many creative, unexpected and curious ways that individuals throughout history responded to texts, and how these interpretations in turn illuminate past worlds. Three decades on, Harvey’s example and Jardine’s work remain central to cutting-edge scholarship in the History of Reading. By uniting ‘Studied for Action’ with published and unpublished studies on Harvey by Jardine, Grafton and the scholars they have influenced, this collection provides a unique lens on the place of marginalia in textual, intellectual and cultural history. The chapters capture subsequent work on Harvey and map the fields opened by Jardine and Grafton’s original article, collectively offering a posthumous tribute to Lisa Jardine and an authoritative overview of the History of Reading.