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Comparative essays by an international panel of historians offer fresh insights into the unfolding of the Reformation across Europe. From Saxony to the Baltic to Transylvania, each chapter draws out the variables that shaped the spread of the Reformation across comparable geographic spaces, offering new perspectives on this epochal subject.
This lively collection of essays examines the link between public opinion and the development of changing 'Netherlandish' identities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Aristocratic dynasties have long been regarded as fundamental to the development of early modern society and government. Yet recent work by political historians has increasingly questioned the dominant role of ruling families in state formation, underlining instead the continued importance and independence of individuals. In order to take a fresh look at the subject, this volume provides a broad discussion on the formation of dynastic identities in relationship to the lineage’s own history, other families within the social elite, and the ruling dynasty. Individual chapters consider the dynastic identity of a wide range of European aristocratic families including the CroÃs, Arenbergs and N...
This book explores the reception of foreign news during the late sixteenth-century civil wars in France and the Netherlands. Analysing a large body of French and Dutch chronicles, Rosanne Baars innovatively demonstrates that the wider public was well aware of events abroad, though interest in foreign conflicts was far from constant. She sheds new light on the connections between the Dutch Revolt and the French Wars of Religion: contemporaries were gradually more inclined to see these wars as part of an international struggle. Baars argues that these times of civil war made inhabitants of both countries more apt at distinguishing rumour from reliable reports, thus contributing to the emergence of a public of critical news consumers.
This book recaptures the experience of exile and religious radicalisation among sixteenth-century Catholic refugees during the Dutch Revolt.
This volume offers an expansive survey of the role of single-sheet publishing in the European print industry during the first two centuries after the invention of printing. Drawing on new materials made available during the compilation of the Universal Short Title Catalogue, the twenty contributors explore the extraordinary range of broadsheet publishing and its contribution to government, pedagogy, religious devotion and entertainment culture. Long disregarded as ephemera or cheap print, broadsheets emerge both as a crucial communication medium and an essential underpinning of the economics of the publishing industry.
New and comprehensive insights into the seminal events that shaped Belgian identity In 1790, between the birth of America (1776) and the creation of the French National Assembly (1789), nine provinces nestled between the French and Dutch borders declared themselves a new free and independent country: the United States of Belgium. Before then, the provinces had been part of the vast Austrian Habsburg Empire ruled by Joseph II. In 1789 revolutionaries from Brussels to Ghent to Namur recruited a grass-roots army that, to the surprise of many, successfully chased imperial forces from the majority of the territories. The exhilaration of military triumph and political independence quickly faded as...
In Shaping the Stranger Churches: Migrants in England and the Troubles in the Netherlands, 1547–1585, Silke Muylaert explores the struggles confronting the Netherlandish churches in England when they engaged with (or disengaged from) the Reformation and the Revolt back in their homeland. The churches were conflicted over the limits of religious zeal and over political loyalty. How far could Reformers go to promote their faith without committing sin? How much loyalty did they owe to Philip II and William of Orange? While previous narratives ascribe a certain radicalism to the foreign churches, Muylaert uncovers the difficulties confronting expatriate churches to provide support for Reformed churches or organise resistance against authorities back home.
Exploring reason of state in a global monarchy, The Power of Necessity examines how thinkers and agents in the Spanish monarchy navigated the tension between political pragmatism and moral-religious principle. This tension lies at the very heart of Counter-Reformation reason of state. Nowhere was the need for pragmatic state management greater than in the overstretched Spanish Empire of the seventeenth century. However, pragmatic politics were problematic for a Catholic monarchy steeped in ideals of justice and divine justifications of power and kingship. Presenting a broad cast of characters from across Europe, and uniting published sources with a wide range of archival material, Lisa Kattenberg shows how non-canonical thinkers and agents confronted the political-moral dilemmas of their age by creatively employing the legitimizing power of necessity. Pioneering new ways of bridging the persistent gap between theory and practice in the history of political thought, The Power of Necessity casts fresh light on the struggle to preserve the monarchy in a modernizing world.
In 1563, the Council of Trent published its Decrees, calling for significant reforms of the Catholic Church in response to criticism from both Protestants and Catholics alike. Bishops, according to the Decrees, would take the lead in implementing these reforms. They were tasked with creating a Church in which priests and laity were well educated, morally upright, and focused on worshipping God. Unfortunately for these bishops, the Decrees provided few practical suggestions for achieving the wide-ranging changes demanded. Reform was therefore an arduous and complex process, which many bishops struggled to accomplish or even refused to undertake fully. The Bishop’s Burden argues that reformi...