Dutch Revolt

In Dutch nationalist historiography the Revolt against the Spanish monarchy has traditionally been considered a war of independence, fought by a small, freedom loving people against a much stronger and oppressive enemy wanting to impose its religion on the Dutch. In her article on the Spanish humanist Fadrique Furió Ceriol, Lisa Kattenberg argues that this conception is in need of some serious revision. Furió's writings show that during the first years of the conflict, at the Spanish court opinions on the attitude to be taken towards the Dutch rebellion were far from unanimous. Furió and others were strong supporters of a soft, reconciliative approach. They advised king Philip II to show his love to the people of the Netherlands and to forgive the revolt's leaders. Although in the end their efforts proved fruitless, at times the Spanish monarch was willing to listen to these voices in favour of peace.

The Revolt in the Netherlands erupted in 1566 and tore apart the Low Countries. In Memory Wars in the Low Countries, 1566-1700 Jasper van der Steen explains how public memories of the Revolt in the Habsburg Netherlands in the South and the Dutch Republic in the North diverged and became the objects of fierce contestation in domestic political struggles, on both sides of the border and throughout the seventeenth century.

Against widespread assumptions about the supposed modernity of cultural memory Memory Wars argues that early modern public memory did not require the presence of state actors, nationalism and modern mass media in order to play a role of political importance in both North and South.

Available! see http://www.brill.com/products/book/memory-wars-low-countries-1566-1700

The Theses LVI belong to a series of hitherto unpublished early manuscripts of the Dutch humanist and jurisconsult Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) that were acquired by the University of Leiden in 1864. It is not certain when the Theses were written, but preliminary research on the physical manuscript and the sources cited indicate two possible windows. The first is around 1602-1605, that is roughly at a time when Grotius was also working on his Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty (De Iure Praedae Commentarius). The second dating places the genesis of the manuscrbipt around 1613-1615.
In the context of Grotius’ writings, the Theses LVI assume an important position for several reasons: They raise questions about state formation, the duty of citizens to the state and the right of political resistance in far greater detail than in any other work of the celebrated Dutch humanist. The Theses LVI also feature important reading notes that yield priceless insights into the sources that Grotius directly consulted and their influence on his ideas. The manuscript grants modern scholars a unique glimpse into the working mind of its author. Evidence points not only to the ferocious haste with which Grotius wrote his works, but also the occasional sloppiness of his reading and research habits."""

Prudence, cautèle et dissimulation : le double discours des élites politiques durant la guerre de Quatre-vingts ans
Dans le discours politique des XVIe et XVIIe siècles, la prudence constitue la vertu centrale du gouvernant soucieux de servir l’État et le bien commun. Face à elle, la cautèle, précaution servant des intérêts particuliers, est la marque des tyrans. Entre ces deux concepts, la simulation et la dissimulation occupent un statut ambivalent : valorisées auprès des élites gouvernantes comme outils diplomatiques du souverain prudent, elles sont associées à la cautèle par les auteurs moralistes. Durant la guerre de quatre-vingts ans, ces concepts font l’objet d’une intense discussion par les pamphlétaires, eux-mêmes souvent issus des hautes sphères politiques. Alors qu’ils pratiquent la simulation et la dissimulation, pour eux essentielles au gouvernement vertueux, ils les condamnent dans leurs écrits auprès du reste de la population. Ce sont les raisons de ce double discours que cet article vise à mettre en évidence.

Prudence, Slyness and Dissimulation: The double discourse of the political elite during the Eighty Years War
In 16th and 17th-century political discourse, prudence is the central virtue of the ruler concerned about serving the State and the common good. By opposition, slyness, the precaution one uses to serve particular interests, is a trait shared by tyrants. Between those two concepts, simulation and dissimulation have an ambivalent status: whereas they are considered by the governing elite as a prudent ruler’s diplomatic tool, moral authors generally associate them with slyness. During the Eighty Years’ War, those concepts are abundantly discussed by pamphleteers, often members of the political elite themselves. Whereas they themselves make use of simulation and dissimulation which are, according to them, essential to govern virtuously, they condemn these in writings directed to the rest of the population. This article will thus attempt to put forward the reasons of this double speech.

Voorzichtigheid, sluwheid en veinzerij: de dubbele redenering van de politieke elite tijdens de Tachtigjarige Oorlog
In het politiek discours van de XVIe en XVIIe eeuw, is voorzichtigheid de centrale deugd van de bewuste bestuurder die eropuit is de Staat en het algemeen belang te dienen. Daar tegenover, de sluwheid, voorzorgsmaatregel die specifieke belangen dient, is het merkteken van tirannen. Tussen deze twee concepten, bezetten simulatie en veinzerij een tweeslachtig status: gevaloriseerd bij de regerend elites als diplomatiek instrumenten van de voorzichtig heerser, worden ze met het bedrog geassocieerd door de moralistisch auteurs. Tijdens de Tachtigjarige Oorlog, zijn deze concepten het onderwerp van een hevige discussie door de pamfletschrijvers, zelf vaak afkomstig uit de hoogste sferen van de politiek wereld. Terwijl ze zelf de simulatie en de huichelarij uitoefenen, voor hen van cruciaal belang voor de deugdzame overheid, veroordelen ze die in hun geschriften tegenover de rest van de bevolking. Dit artikel beoogt de redenen van deze dubbele redenering te onderstrepen.

"La naissance d’une thalassocratie" considers the contribution of the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands to the rise of the Dutch Republic as a maritime power. In Braudelian fashion, its chapters are centred around three lines of research. The first part, focuses on the long term or ‘temps structurel’ and considers geographical and infrastructural developments of port towns. The second part on the mid term or ‘temps conjoncturel’ (social and economic developments) takes maritime commerce, fisheries and maritime risk management into account. The third part deals with the short term or ‘temps événementiel’ (political developments) and includes chapters on military transports at sea, the unstable development of admiralties and on the Dutch Revolt at sea.

Over the past twenty years Louis Sicking has given conference papers, invited lectures and guest courses in France, Belgium, Spain, the US, the UK, and Scandinavia. The resulting articles have now been integrated in one book which offers new insights in the maritime history of the Low Countries in the 15th and 16th centuries, including a maritime perspective on the Dutch Revolt. While crossing the established boundaries of Dutch and Belgian historiographies, the book not only offers an unfamiliar maritime perspective, it also proposes a new and refreshing look at the origin of the Dutch Republic.

"La Naissance d’une thalassocatie" has been published in the ‘Collection d’histoire maritime’ by the Presses de l’université Paris-Sorbonne (PUPS). Founded in 1470 it is the oldest university press in France.



Text on the cover:
L’essor maritime sans précédent de la république des Provinces-Unies au XVIIe siècle, a impressionné les contemporains et continue de fasciner aujourd’hui.
La Révolte des Pays-Bas menée par Guillaume d’Orange et la naissance, pendant ce long conflit (1568-1648), d’une république indépendante est un thème classique de l’histoire européenne et domine toujours le cadre de l’histoire nationale des Pays-Bas actuels. A contrario, la période qui a precede ce point-pivot de l’histoire des Pays-Bas n’est que rarement évoquée, alors qu’elle a pourtant fortement influence la constitution de la république des Provinces-Unies et son success sur les mers du monde.
Ce livre vise à montrer l’importance de l’histoire maritime des anciens Pays-Bas pour la Révolte et l’expansion maritime des Provinces-Unies. Commençant avec l’intégration des provinces néerlandaises aux XVe et XVIe siècles par les Bourguignons et les Habsbourg, « la naissance d’une thalassocratie » analyse les changements ou les ruptures, mais aussi les continuités de l’histoire des Pays-Bas et la mer à l’aube du siècle d’Or, afin de proposer au lecteur une nouvelle perspective qui renouvelle les cadres traditionnels des historiographies néerlandaises et belges.

Article about local memory culture in the Dutch city of Haarlem after the Dutch Revolt. While it has been suggested that the unfortunate siege of Haarlem in 1573 had to be forgotten within Haarlem, this research proves that stories about the siege still circulated in and beyond the city. For example, inhabitants started to collect and display cannonballs and their accompanying stories - mostly about the way they had been saved from certain death by divine providence. Besides the stories about the siege, however, the magistrates of Haarlem also propagated an ancient medieval tale, the siege of Damietta, to demonstrate the innate courage of the city's population during the siege of 1573.

Across Europe, the parish church has stood for centuries at the centre of local communities; it was the focal point of its religious life, the rituals performed there marked the stages of life from the cradle to the grave. Nonetheless the church itself artistically and architecturally stood apart from the parish community. It was often the largest and only stone-built building in a village; it was legally distinct being subject to canon law, as well as consecrated for the celebration of religious rites. The buildings associated with the ‘cure of souls’ were sacred sites or holy places, where humanity interacted with the divine.

In spite of the importance of the parish church, these buildings have generally not received the same attention from historians as non-parochial places of worship. This collection of essays redresses this balance and reflects on the parish church across a number of confessions – Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed and Anti-Trinitarian – during the early modern period. Rather than providing a series of case studies of individual buildings, each essay looks at the evolution of parish churches in response to religious reform as well as confessional change and upheaval. They examine aspects of their design and construction; furnishings and material culture; liturgy and the use of the parish church. While these essays range widely across Europe, the volume also considers how religious provision and the parish church were translated into a global context with colonial and commercial expansion in the Americas and Asia. This interdisciplinary volume seeks to identify what was distinctive about the parish church for the congregations that gathered in them for worship and for communities across the early modern world.

Contents:
The early modern parish church: an introduction
Andrew Spicer
Patrician and episcopal rivalry for the Milanese parish church: San Nazaro in Brolo during French and Spanish rule,
Philippa Woodcock
Exploring the features and challenges of the urban parish church in the southern Low Countries. The case of 16th-century Ghent
Anne-Laure Van Bruaene
The Counter Reformation and the parish church in western Brittany (France) 1500-1700
Elizabeth Tingle
The body of the faithful: Joseph Furttenbach’s 1649 Lutheran Church plans
Emily Fisher Gray
Staging the Eucharist, adiaphora, and shaping Lutheran identities in the Transylvanian parish church
Evelin Wetter
Parish temples of Geneva and the Swiss Romande
Andrew Spicer
'Which of them do belong to the parish or not’. The changing rural parish in the Dutch Republic after the Reformation
Arjan Nobel
Unitarian parish churches in early modern Transylvania
Maria Crăciun
Heaven on earth: churches in early modern Hispanic America
Andrew Redden
Franciscans and the parish in early modern Brazil
Ivan Cavalcanti Filho
Parish churches, colonisation and conversion in Portuguese Goa
Mallica Kumbera Landrus
Dutch churches in Asia
Andrew Spicer
'To build up the walls of Jerusalem’: Anglican churches in 17th-century Virginia
Carl Lounsbury
Parish churches in the early modern world - afterword
Beat Kümin

Bachelor thesis on the historical origins of the Dutch Bible Belt as a religious-geographical phenomenon. I review the debate between historians on the matter during the past c. 120 years. The main conclusions were that the geographical distrubution of Catholics and Protestants in the Netherlands was mainly established in 1580-1620 by force during the Eighty Years' War, but it was not until the late 19th century that a clear geographical pattern between liberal and orthodox Protestants could be discerned (generally ranging from Walcheren in Zeeland to Staphorst in Overijssel).

Written during the Dutch war of independence against the Spanish, De Antiquitate Reipublicae Batavicae of 1610 defends the sovereignty and maturity of the republican government in Holland. Hugo Grotius shows from the Roman and Medieval history of Holland that government there had always been aristocratic rather than monarchical, and that the Batavians and Dutch had always been politically independent from foreign powers. Using a wealth of historical and antiquarian sources, the work gives a fascinating picture of a humanist's use of history and rhetorics for political purposes The extensive antiquarian notes to the work by Petrus Scriverius (1630) have been added, which offer a picture of contemporary antiquarian scholarship and its applications in political debate.

The appended file contains the introduction to this edition. For information on availability of the book, see elsewhere in this profile under 'Bibliotheca Latinitatis Novae' or contact Leuven UP.

De Tachtigjarige Oorlog gaat over het militaire raadsel van de Republiek der Verenigde Nederlanden. Toen in 1568 in de Nederlandse gewesten een opstand uitbrak tegen de Spaanse koning, was niet te voorzien dat deze zou uitmonden in de scheuring van de Nederlanden. Alleen de noordelijke gewesten wisten zich militair staande te houden. Zij vormden een onafhankelijke Republiek die steeds beter opgewassen was tegen het machtige Spanje. Hoe was dit mogelijk? Om daarachter te komen wordt in deze studie het optreden van het leger en de vloot van de opstandelingen tegen de Spaanse militaire macht ontrafeld. Van de overlevingsstrijd van de geuzen onder Willem van Oranje tot Maurits’ slag bij Nieuwpoort en de klinkende overwinning van Tromp bij Duins, al deze confrontaties op land en ter zee worden in deze eerste integrale militaire geschiedenis van de Tachtigjarige Oorlog in hun onderlinge samenhang besproken. In thematische hoofdstukken wordt stilgestaan bij de tactische militaire revolutie bij leger en vloot, de bewapening, de rekrutering, organisatie en financiering van de militaire macht, en de altijd gespannen relatie tussen het krijgsvolk en de burgerbevolking. Vele, soms unieke afbeeldingen brengen dit verleden tot leven. Deze militaire geschiedenis van de geboorte van de Nederlandse staat is het eerste deel van een zesdelige serie over de militaire geschiedenis van Nederland.

For ordinary people, the impact of the Reformation would have centred around local parish churches, rather than the theological debates of the Reformers. Focusing on the Calvinists, this volume explores how the architecture, appearance and arrangement of places of worship were transformed by new theology and religious practice.

Based on original research and site visits, this book charts the impact of the Reformed faith across Europe, concentrating in particular on France, the Netherlands and Scotland. While in some areas a Calvinist Reformation led to the adaptation of existing buildings, elsewhere it resulted in the construction of new places of worship to innovative new designs. Reformed places of worship also reflected local considerations, vested interests and civic aspirations, often employing the latest styles and forms of decoration, and here provide a lens through which to examine not only the impact of the Reformation at a local level but also the character of the different religious settlements across Europe during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

"So in an unexpected twist, it is now possible to confirm that many soldiers in the later Thirty Years’ War were, in fact, veterans of the English Civil War."

This article gives an overview for the arrival and motivations of soldiers from Great Britain who served in the Thirty Years' War. While highlighting the well understood service of Scots, it especially adds to our understanding of English recruits. It will surprise many that from both kingdoms, the 1640s saw large scale recruitment particularly to the Dutch and French armies.

Bij het uitbreken van de Nederlandse Opstand werd Filips Willem, de oudste zoon van Willem van Oranje, als gijzelaar naar Spanje afgevoerd. Noodgedwongen verbleef hij daar bijna dertig jaar. In de Nederlandse historiografie wordt Filips Willem veelal als een krachteloze marionet geportretteerd. In werkelijkheid stelde Filips Willem na zijn terugkeer uit Spanje alles in het werk om het familiale patrimonium te behoeden voor versnippering. Dat streven ging ook voor op het eigenbelang van de prins. De gijzeling is een voorbeeld van de Habsburgse praktijk om oudste zonen van vorstelijke dynastieën uit cliëntstaten voor langere tijd als gijzelaar vast te zetten.

"This book offers annotated translations of documents touching on Dutch admiral Cornelis Matelieff de Jonge and his voyage to Asia between 1605 and 1608. These translations are aimed at a contemporary English-speaking Asian readership interested in the early modern history of European trade, warfare and expansion in Southeast Asia with a focus on Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. Researchers specialising in early European colonialism, international law, international relations, security studies, and diplomatic history will also find that the documents translated in this volume offer new and unfamiliar perspectives. Materlieff’s business acumen, military and diplomataic prowess as well as his vision of empire all have implications for examining not only European expansion into Southeast Asia, but also into other regions at large, including especially south Asia, Africa and the Americas.
Admiral Matelieff was a director of the Rotterdam Chamber of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) formed in 1602. He was appointed fleet commander on one of the company’s first voyages to Asia. Matelieff’s mission was both commercial and military: he launched a major sea-borne attack on the Portuguese colony of Melaka, arranged for the signing of treaties with the rulers of Johor, Aceh and Ternate, and founded the first Dutch fort on the island of Ternate. His endeavours, however, to open the Chinese market for the Dutch company proved unsuccessful.
Following his return to the Dutch Republic in September 1608, Matelieff penned a series of memorials and letters. In these he advanced recommendations for changing the way the company organized its fleets and conducted business. More importantly he offered  his Dutch contemporaries a vision of empire in Asia. The materials contained in this volume offer important observations of a perceptive analyst who was also determined to grasp the political and economic structures of Asia, and also of inter-state relations in across this vast region. At a time of Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, French and English engagement in Southeast Asia, Matelieff sought to critically assess and strategize on the ways in which Europeans were increasingly engaging with Asian polities and their rulers.

This book will be released for sale in Australasia and Europe in June 2014 and available in the Americas after September 2014
""""

Over a period of two hundred years, between c. 1450 and c. 1650, the Catholic religious literature of Delft in the Netherlands underwent consecutive stages of growth, crisis and (to a certain extent) rebirth. All this occurred in the face of relentless social, political and cultural change, and amidst alternating periods of stability and turmoil. Yet despite a number of setbacks, Delft's Catholic religious literature displayed a surprising continuity, not only surviving, but even attaining a small 'Golden Age' of its own in the first decades of the 17th century. This study documents that 'struggle for survival' by presenting a broad synthesis of the production and reception of Catholic religious literature in Delft within a range of literary-historical and cultural contexts.

Sleutelwoorden: Delft, kerkgeschiedenis, religie en literatuur, middeleeuwen, vroegmoderne periode.

MA Thesis in Maritime History (Faculty of Letters, Lisbon University FLUL, 2014) - revised version

The present thesis Shipwrecks of the “Carreira da Índia” (1595-1623) – Sources
for the Study in Portuguese Maritime History deals with factors which caused losses of
ships of the Carreira da Índia which linked the European metropolis Lisbon with its
Goa based Estado da Índia between 1595 and 1623. Although Portuguese-Asiatic
shipping was formally separated from the Habsburg Empire during the Union of the
Two Iberian Crowns (1580-1640), the European policies of the Spanish Kings,
especially towards the United Provinces and the Netherlands had its influence and
effects on the Portuguese side.
Shipwrecks, either on the outward bound or homeward bound voyages had
occurred for various reasons since the early days of the Carreira da Índia yet the
emergence of the two private European Companies, the Dutch United East India
Company (founded in 1602) and the British East India Company (founded in 1600)
were a new momentum by which’s characteristics of concurrence and struggle for
supremacy of the European-Asiatic spice trade, losses of Portuguese ships were caused
by planned and executed military operations as well.
Focusing on the geographical region of the Mozambique Channel in which the
losses have taken place, the thesis combines a historiographical approach with records
of underwater archaeology analyzing questions related to the political environment and
planed military operations in which shipwrecks have occurred as well as causes of
shipwrecks observing ship building and design modifications and effects related to
economic patterns such as the monetary flows of the Portuguese outward bound
shipping during the period of observation.

Naufragios da Careira da Índia (1595-1623)

Fortified Cities in the Spanish Netherlands (Thionville, Groningen, Vlissingen, Maastricht, 1567-1579).
My contributions to the catalogue of the exhibition “Leonardo e il Rinascimento nei Codici napoletani” (Napels, Biblioteca Nazionale, 12 December 2019-13 March 2020) discuss the design of fortifications in the Low Countries in the 16th century and concentrate in particular on five drawings from “Flanders” (i.e. the Spanish Netherlands) preserved in the so-called “codice Tarsia” of the Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli (Ms XII.D.1). My essay offers first a general overview of the development of military architecture in the 16th-century Low Countries, with particular regard to exchanges with Italy and the use and circulation of fortification drawings, and then focuses on the first years of the Dutch Revolt (1567-1572) and the works in these years of the engineers Francesco Paciotto, Bartolomeo Campi and Jacques van Noyen at Thionville, Vlissingen and Groningen. The related catalogue entries examine in more detail the five drawings in question. The drawing of Thionville (c. 7v) shows an ambitious but never executed design for a new bastioned enceinte with eight bastions, attributable to Bartolomeo Campi or his son Scipio Campi and datable to the years 1568−1579. This design must be interpreted as an alternative to Paciotto’s more austere project of 1567, though it also bears similarities to another design for Thionville attributable to Van Noyen. The drawing of Vlissingen (c. 10v), evidently by the same author as the Thionville drawing, comprises an accurate plan of the eastern part of the town with the old harbour and the new citadel, designed by Bartolomeo Campi in 1571 but never completed. The two drawings of Groningen (c. 4v, c. 6r) carefully depict the city’s fortifications with the new citadel, designed by Bartolomeo Campi and built between 1569 and 1576; one of them (c. 6r) shows also the city’s street pattern and the surrounding countryside. The fifth “Flemish” sheet is a previously unknown drawing (c. 8r b) which I identify here as a partial, unfinished plan of the siege of Maastricht in 1579. This drawing has remained unknown until now because it was used as a support of the well-known drawing in the same album of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome under construction and was rediscovered only after a recent restoration. It represents the southern part of the city of Maastricht (with the Tongersepoort and Sint-Pieterspoort) during the siege led by Alexander Farnese in 1579, showing both the city’s fortifications and the surrounding siege works.

Pierre-Ernest de Mansfeld (1517-1604) was one of the most important political figures and art patrons in the sixteenth-century Low Countries, but he was first and foremost an army commander. In the course of his long and distinguished military career in the service of Charles V and Philip II, he played a leading role in many notable feats of arms, including the battle of Saint-Quentin in 1557, the battle of Moncontour in 1569, and the siege of Antwerp in 1585. His sumptuous residence in Luxembourg was decorated with paintings of some thirty different battles; in half of these he had personally participated. Using visual and other sources, this essay offers a panorama of Mansfeld’s martial exploits, from the border wars with France in the 1540s and 1550s to the Dutch Revolt in the 1570s and 1580s.

– Jacques van Noyen (attr.): Plan des fortifications de Thionville en 1568 (cat. 26), pp. 367-368.
– Anonyme: Le siège de Maastricht en 1579 (cat. 35), pp. 377-379.
– Giacinto Gimignani: La bataille sur la digue de Kouwenstein en 1585 (cat. 37), pp. 383-384.
– Romeyn de Hooghe: Le commencement du siège d’Anvers et la remise de la Toison d’Or à Farnèse par Mansfeld en 1585 (cat. 38), pp. 385-386.
– Giovanni Guerra: Quatre dessins de la série Alexandri Farnesii heroica acta (cat. 39a-d), pp. 386-390.
– Gerhard Stempel: Deux plans du siège de Wachtendonck en 1588, dédiés à Mansfeld” (cat. 40a-b), pp. 391-393.
– Frans Hogenberg: Evénements historiques de la Révolte (cat. 41a-m), pp. 393-404.
– Pierre Lepoivre: Receuil de plans de sièges, batailles, fortifications, etc. (cat. 42a-p), pp. 405-410.
– Pierre Lepoivre: Traité d’architecture, perspective et fortification en six livres (cat. 43a-b), pp. 411-414.
– Antoon van den Wijngaerde: La bataille de Saint-Quentin, le 10 août 1557 [dessin] (cat. 46), pp. 418-421.
– Antoon van den Wijngaerde: La bataille de Saint-Quentin, le 10 août 1557 [gravure] (cat. 47), pp. 421-424.
– Antoon van den Wijngaerde: La bataille de Saint-Quentin, le 10 août 1557 [tableau] (cat. 48), pp. 425-429.
– Antoine Lafréri (éd.): Carte de la France occidentale avec la bataille de Moncontour, 1569 (cat. 49), pp. 430-431.
– Anonyme: La bataille de Moncontour, le 3 octobre 1569 (cat. 50), pp. 431-432.
– Jean Perrissin et Jacques Tortorel: La bataille de Moncontour, le 3 octobre 1569 (cat. 51a-b), pp. 433-435.

in: Un prince de la Renaissance. Pierre-Ernest de Mansfeld (1517-1604) (ed. Jean-Luc Mousset, Krista De Jonge), exhibition catalogue (Luxembourg: Musée national d’histoire et d’art), 2007.

This pathbreaking and stunningly illustrated book recovers the intersections between natural history, politics, art, and philosophy in the late sixteenth-century Low Countries. Insect Artifice explores the moment when the seismic forces of the Dutch Revolt wreaked havoc on the region’s creative and intellectual community, compelling its members to seek solace in intimate exchanges of art and knowledge. At its center is a neglected treasure of the late Renaissance: the Four Elements manuscripts of Joris Hoefnagel (1542–1600), a learned Netherlandish merchant, miniaturist, and itinerant draftsman who turned to the study of nature in this era of political and spiritual upheaval. Presented here for the first time are more than eighty pages in color facsimile of Hoefnagel’s encyclopedic masterwork, which showcase both the splendor and eccentricity of its meticulously painted animals, insects, and botanical specimens.

Marisa Anne Bass unfolds the circumstances that drove the creation of the Four Elements by delving into Hoefnagel’s writings and larger oeuvre, the works of his friends, and the rich world of classical learning and empirical inquiry in which he participated. Bass reveals how Hoefnagel and his colleagues engaged with natural philosophy as a means to reflect on their experiences of war and exile, and found refuge from the threats of iconoclasm and inquisition in the manuscript medium itself. This is a book about how destruction and violence can lead to cultural renewal, and about the transformation of Netherlandish identity on the eve of the Dutch Golden Age.

https://press.princeton.edu/titles/13413.html

This biographical essay chronicles the life and work of the architect, engineer and cartographer Pierre Lepoivre (c.1546-1626), on the basis of the latest research. Born in Mons (Belgium) in around 1546, Lepoivre was originally trained as an architect and sculptor, but after the start of the Revolt in 1567 he started to work as an engineer in the service of the Spanish crown. During the next forty-five years he had a very active career in the Low Countries: he worked on the fortifications of some thirty different sites and participated in the conquest of more than twenty towns, until his retirement in around 1611. A skilled draughtsman, Lepoivre is now known above all for the many drawings which he made after the end of his active career, and of which two volumes survive. The first one is a theoretical treatise on architecture, perspective and fortification, composed in 1613-1614 (now in Madrid, Biblioteca Real) ; the other is a precious atlas, assembled between 1615 and 1624, containing 128 manuscript maps and plans of towns, fortifications and military campaigns (now in Brussels, Royal Library).

This well-known phrase consciously interprets the defeat of the Armada (1588) as a mighty act of God. The phrase has a biblical background, but there are also parallels in other literature from the ancient Near East, for instance in the Hittite annals of Mursili II.

This article explains the treatment by the Vatican Index of Forbidden Books of Hugo Grotius' Annals and Histories of the Dutch Revolt, by which the book was investigated in 1659. In the article I provide editions of the new documents on the 'trial' of this book which I discovered in the archives in the Sant'Uffizio, and reconstruct the way the investigation proceeded. It appears that the relatively mild fist censure report by the Croatian consultor Stephan Gradic was replaced by a much more critical report by a second consultor, Giovanni Arata, which provided a basis for the ban on Grotius' history which was proclaimed on 16 September 1659.

As governor of the province of Luxembourg, Pierre-Ernest de Mansfeld (1517-1604) was, for more than half a century, responsible for the defence of this territory. As a border province of the Habsburg Low Countries, the duchy of Luxembourg was of great strategic importance and indeed suffered several French invasions. It was Mansfeld’s responsibility to keep the Luxembourg border fortresses (Thionville, Montmédy, Damvillers, Yvoix, Luxembourg) in a state of defence and to direct the planning and construction of new fortifications. He supervised the construction of the first bastions there in the 1540s and remained actively involved in military architecture for the next sixty years, entertaining close contacts with local master builders as well as Italian engineers. An especially important but hitherto largely unstudied figure is the engineer Jacques van Noyen, who worked with Mansfeld from around 1560 until the latter’s death in 1604 and presumably intervened also in the design of Mansfeld’s famous château in Clausen.

As governor of the province of Luxembourg, count Peter Ernst von Mansfeld (1517-1604) was for nearly sixty years responsible for overseeing all fortification works in this strategically important border province of the Habsburg Low Countries and thus entertained close contacts with many engineers and military architects, including Donato de Bono, Francesco Paciotto, Jacques van Noyen and Pierre Lepoivre. Besides discussing Mansfeld’s role and his interactions with these engineers in the Luxembourg border fortresses (Thionville, Montmédy, Damvillers, Yvois, Luxembourg, Arlon) and elsewhere in the country, this article also identifies and publishes for the first time several previously unknown drawings, including a plan of the castle of Aspremont from c.1551 (fig. 1), the earliest known fortification plans, datable to the early 1550s, of Luxembourg (fig. 2) and Thionville (fig. 3), a plan of Yvois by the Venetian engineer Giovan Tommaso Scala (fig. 4), and a remarkable design for Thionville which is here attributed to Jacques van Noyen c.1561-62 (fig. 8).
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A thoroughly revised and updated version of this article, with other illustrations, appeared in the 2007 exhibition catalogue “Un prince de la Renaissance. Pierre-Ernest de Mansfeld (1517-1604)”, pp. 97-112.