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Reformation in the Low Countries, 1500-1620
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 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.
- GenresHistory
236 pages, Paperback
Published June 9, 2022
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November 24, 2023A clear and smoothly written synthesis of the Reformation in the low countries. it would make a nice textbook - clear, authoritative and balanced.
In the downside I felt that her statement that the reformation was a mosaic was undercut by her presentation, there are no case studies here, no sense of a stories built from the ground up towards a synthesis but rather the opposite, a unfied top down perspective that pays lip service to the idea that the actuality was chaotic and anarchistic even or possibly particularly on the Catholic side.
The dates chosen to frame the study reflect what I found the strongest element of her book - the period of the Archdukes' rule over the Spanish Netherlands (roughly the area of modern Luxembourg, Belgium, and the part of northern France around Lille ). Here there was massive investment in New religious houses , especially for new orders like the Capuchins, who did not work to create a broadbased popular Catholic identity through the provision of a delicious coffee drink topped with frothed milk, but rather through preaching and an active presence in towns across the region. At the same time the archbishop of Mechelen used revenues from old established monasteries to set up a seminary.
Through this one can perceive the weaknesses of the reformation era church , but also the possibility of creating in the fashion of George Orwell's Newspeak, a complete cultural environment in which political and religious deviancy, or disobedience became effectively intellectually impossible - whether that was the conscious intention of just what emerged as a consequence of separate actions by independent actors Kooi does not say.
The pre-reformation church by contrast could not achieve a total cultural environment partly because as with Edmond Burkes's Reflections on the Revolution in France - the existence of the book undermines the argument that it is trying to make: tradition is not sufficient in itself, it cannot by itself guarantee stability and continuity. Likewise the reformation shows us that the pre-reformation church was an open system, one that was inspiring people in new ways, Kooi points out that the early openness of the Reformation in the Low Countries was replaced from the 1540s onwards by new concepts of group identities such as Calvinist and Lutheran, and eventually Catholic too.
She nuances Geoffrey Parker's opinion in The Dutch Revolt that the outbreak of image breaking in 1566 was perpetrated by rented mobs, Kooi slows that this was the fact in some cases but not in all. I think from what she says in the book as a whole that we can go further. Whether motivated by money or not, the fact that mass image breaking occurred demonstrates that there was no mass of opinion that held that images were sacred, spiritually significant, or a part of the community that needed to be protected and honoured - all factors that were to become unimaginable in the Spanish Netherlands of the Archdukes. As such the incidents are testimony to the fluid situation of faith and community in the Low Countries in the mid sixteenth century. Eventuality north and south the secular and religious authorities worked to put in place structures to contain and channel popular culture, and this book points to the beginnings of that process in a clear and readable manner.
In contrast the synod of Dortrecht of Calvinists in the north cannot function as a narrative counterpoint in the book. Although Calvinist may have been the largest grouping, still they were not large enough to dominate society in the same way as religious and political hierarchies could in the south.
At the end of the book I was left wondering by what route Calvinism entered the Low Countries; moving from French speaking communities to Dutch speaking ones. Lutheranism, kooi tells us spread both through the German merchant community and also through the Augustinians, Anabaptism seems to have arisen spontaneously and remained strong in certain regions. Logically I would have thought that Calvinism spread out from the French speaking regions - but it is in the French speaking South that the Hapsburgs began to re-establish their authority in the early 1580s, and it was there that Catholicism remained strong and Calvinism rare as shown by the group of Calvinists predestined to be caught in a tavern in Lille. So perhaps Calvinism had already made the jump into German and Dutch speaking communities earlier in the sixteenth century.
The cover shows part of a painting called De Zielenvisserij which you can view on Wikipeadia or in person at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, that illustrates the religious situation in the Low Countries at the time of the Twelve years Truce (1609-1621) with Catholics on the right bank, Protestants on the left bank, with boats of clergy fishing for the undecided souls in the middle of the river between the two camps.
In the downside I felt that her statement that the reformation was a mosaic was undercut by her presentation, there are no case studies here, no sense of a stories built from the ground up towards a synthesis but rather the opposite, a unfied top down perspective that pays lip service to the idea that the actuality was chaotic and anarchistic even or possibly particularly on the Catholic side.
The dates chosen to frame the study reflect what I found the strongest element of her book - the period of the Archdukes' rule over the Spanish Netherlands (roughly the area of modern Luxembourg, Belgium, and the part of northern France around Lille ). Here there was massive investment in New religious houses , especially for new orders like the Capuchins, who did not work to create a broadbased popular Catholic identity through the provision of a delicious coffee drink topped with frothed milk, but rather through preaching and an active presence in towns across the region. At the same time the archbishop of Mechelen used revenues from old established monasteries to set up a seminary.
Through this one can perceive the weaknesses of the reformation era church , but also the possibility of creating in the fashion of George Orwell's Newspeak, a complete cultural environment in which political and religious deviancy, or disobedience became effectively intellectually impossible - whether that was the conscious intention of just what emerged as a consequence of separate actions by independent actors Kooi does not say.
The pre-reformation church by contrast could not achieve a total cultural environment partly because as with Edmond Burkes's Reflections on the Revolution in France - the existence of the book undermines the argument that it is trying to make: tradition is not sufficient in itself, it cannot by itself guarantee stability and continuity. Likewise the reformation shows us that the pre-reformation church was an open system, one that was inspiring people in new ways, Kooi points out that the early openness of the Reformation in the Low Countries was replaced from the 1540s onwards by new concepts of group identities such as Calvinist and Lutheran, and eventually Catholic too.
She nuances Geoffrey Parker's opinion in The Dutch Revolt that the outbreak of image breaking in 1566 was perpetrated by rented mobs, Kooi slows that this was the fact in some cases but not in all. I think from what she says in the book as a whole that we can go further. Whether motivated by money or not, the fact that mass image breaking occurred demonstrates that there was no mass of opinion that held that images were sacred, spiritually significant, or a part of the community that needed to be protected and honoured - all factors that were to become unimaginable in the Spanish Netherlands of the Archdukes. As such the incidents are testimony to the fluid situation of faith and community in the Low Countries in the mid sixteenth century. Eventuality north and south the secular and religious authorities worked to put in place structures to contain and channel popular culture, and this book points to the beginnings of that process in a clear and readable manner.
In contrast the synod of Dortrecht of Calvinists in the north cannot function as a narrative counterpoint in the book. Although Calvinist may have been the largest grouping, still they were not large enough to dominate society in the same way as religious and political hierarchies could in the south.
At the end of the book I was left wondering by what route Calvinism entered the Low Countries; moving from French speaking communities to Dutch speaking ones. Lutheranism, kooi tells us spread both through the German merchant community and also through the Augustinians, Anabaptism seems to have arisen spontaneously and remained strong in certain regions. Logically I would have thought that Calvinism spread out from the French speaking regions - but it is in the French speaking South that the Hapsburgs began to re-establish their authority in the early 1580s, and it was there that Catholicism remained strong and Calvinism rare as shown by the group of Calvinists predestined to be caught in a tavern in Lille. So perhaps Calvinism had already made the jump into German and Dutch speaking communities earlier in the sixteenth century.
The cover shows part of a painting called De Zielenvisserij which you can view on Wikipeadia or in person at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, that illustrates the religious situation in the Low Countries at the time of the Twelve years Truce (1609-1621) with Catholics on the right bank, Protestants on the left bank, with boats of clergy fishing for the undecided souls in the middle of the river between the two camps.
December 2, 2023
Vanuit Amerika, vanuit de Universiteit van Louisiana zowaar, komt een zoveelste boek over onze rumoerige 16de eeuw aanwaaien. Is het de moeite waard? Zeker! Dit boek is een aanrader zowel voor de toevallig geïnteresseerde lezer, als voor wie (net als ik) maar niet genoeg kan krijgen van deze zo boeiende periode.
Als hoogleraar Europese geschiedenis is Christine Kooi gespecialiseerd in de vroegmoderne Nederlandse godsdienstgeschiedenis. Ze draagt dit boek op aan haar grootouders, “allen gereformeerde Nederlanders”, en bekijkt de geschiedenis grotendeels door een religieuze bril. Dat blijkt best verfrissend.
De reformatie in deze streken kan je uiteraard niet los zien van het gewapend conflict hier dat de vorm aannam van “afwisselend (en dan weer tegelijkertijd) een rebellie, burgeroorlog, godsdienstoorlog en een strijd tussen grootmachten”(p.167) en dat uiteindelijk zou leiden tot de splitsing van de Nederlanden.
Nieuw (voor mij) is dat Kooi de religieuze reformatie zo duidelijk aan beide kanten van het conflict situeert. De hervorming vond plaats binnen de katholieke kerk (waar het kon) en buiten de katholieke kerk (waar dat dan zogezegd moest). In een noodlottige wisselwerking tussen politieke spanning en religieuze onrust leidde dit tot een gigantisch conflict. Opportunisme en polarisatie zorgden voor stokebrand. De gevolgen daarvan voelen we nog steeds.
Reformatie in de Lage Landen is helder, beknopt en toegankelijk. Natuurlijk komen er diverse religieuze kierewieten aan bod en is het niet altijd gemakkelijk om al die nieuwdenkers van mekaar te onderscheiden. Daarbij valt wel eens een gekke term. Bij de “supralapsische soteriologie van Beza” op p.257 ging ik lacherollend over de vloer.
Als hoogleraar Europese geschiedenis is Christine Kooi gespecialiseerd in de vroegmoderne Nederlandse godsdienstgeschiedenis. Ze draagt dit boek op aan haar grootouders, “allen gereformeerde Nederlanders”, en bekijkt de geschiedenis grotendeels door een religieuze bril. Dat blijkt best verfrissend.
De reformatie in deze streken kan je uiteraard niet los zien van het gewapend conflict hier dat de vorm aannam van “afwisselend (en dan weer tegelijkertijd) een rebellie, burgeroorlog, godsdienstoorlog en een strijd tussen grootmachten”(p.167) en dat uiteindelijk zou leiden tot de splitsing van de Nederlanden.
Nieuw (voor mij) is dat Kooi de religieuze reformatie zo duidelijk aan beide kanten van het conflict situeert. De hervorming vond plaats binnen de katholieke kerk (waar het kon) en buiten de katholieke kerk (waar dat dan zogezegd moest). In een noodlottige wisselwerking tussen politieke spanning en religieuze onrust leidde dit tot een gigantisch conflict. Opportunisme en polarisatie zorgden voor stokebrand. De gevolgen daarvan voelen we nog steeds.
Reformatie in de Lage Landen is helder, beknopt en toegankelijk. Natuurlijk komen er diverse religieuze kierewieten aan bod en is het niet altijd gemakkelijk om al die nieuwdenkers van mekaar te onderscheiden. Daarbij valt wel eens een gekke term. Bij de “supralapsische soteriologie van Beza” op p.257 ging ik lacherollend over de vloer.
April 23, 2024
Wat een helder beschreven werk is dit van Christine Kooi, waarin ze de Reformatie (de aanloop en uitkomst in de Lage Landen) goed beschrijft. Ze kiest de 'religieuze lens' om nader in te zoomen op de Lage Landen. Maar tijdens het lezen wordt duidelijk dat religie-politiek-samenleving (en andere perspectieven) losse elementen zijn die zich tot elkaar verhouden. Waardoor je via diverse invalshoeken zicht krijgt op dit interessante en woelige tijdsgewricht. De these in haar boek is dan ook zeer accuraat: "De centrale stelling van dit boek is dat de politieke context van de zestiende-eeuwse Lage Landen doorslaggevend was voor het verloop en uitkomst van de Reformatie in dit gebied. Maar het betoogt ook het tegenovergestelde, namelijk dat religieuze gebeurtenissen, vraagstukken en ontwikkelingen de politieke uitkomsten van de Nederlandse Oorlogen bepaalden."(p. 26).
Wat ik meeneem uit dit werk is dat de religieuze pluriformiteit die Nederland kenmerkt, voorkomt uit de Reformatieperiode en het leven in de Republiek. Dit boek is dan ook een aanrader voor lezers om het (christelijke) religieuze Nederlandse landschap beter te begrijpen.
Wat ik meeneem uit dit werk is dat de religieuze pluriformiteit die Nederland kenmerkt, voorkomt uit de Reformatieperiode en het leven in de Republiek. Dit boek is dan ook een aanrader voor lezers om het (christelijke) religieuze Nederlandse landschap beter te begrijpen.
February 13, 2024
Erg gefocust op het religieuze aspect
Weinig details, voorbeelden, wat sappigere anekdotes
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Weinig details, voorbeelden, wat sappigere anekdotes
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews