Book contents
- Reformations Compared
- Reformations Compared
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Saxon Comparisons
- 2 Contrasting Outcomes in the Swiss Confederation
- 3 Austria and Bohemia
- 4 In the Shadow of the Crescent Moon
- 5 Beyond Toleration
- 6 Nordic Reformations Compared
- 7 The Reformations along the Southern Baltic Littoral
- 8 Reformations in the Low Countries
- 9 Tales of the Unexpected
- 10 British Reformations Compared
- 11 The Reception of the Protestant Reformation in the Iberian Peninsula
- 12 Italy and Its Reformations Reconsidered
- Index
- References
8 - Reformations in the Low Countries
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2024
- Reformations Compared
- Reformations Compared
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Saxon Comparisons
- 2 Contrasting Outcomes in the Swiss Confederation
- 3 Austria and Bohemia
- 4 In the Shadow of the Crescent Moon
- 5 Beyond Toleration
- 6 Nordic Reformations Compared
- 7 The Reformations along the Southern Baltic Littoral
- 8 Reformations in the Low Countries
- 9 Tales of the Unexpected
- 10 British Reformations Compared
- 11 The Reception of the Protestant Reformation in the Iberian Peninsula
- 12 Italy and Its Reformations Reconsidered
- Index
- References
Summary
Like the rest of Northern Europe, the Low Countries experienced a wide variety of religious reform movements in the sixteenth century: humanism, Anabaptism, Lutheranism, Reformed Protestantism and Catholic reform. In many respects, with its urban and rural diversity, the Netherlands could be seen as a microcosm of Reformation Europe as a whole. What made the case of the Low Countries distinct, however, was the political context: religious rebellion took place against the backdrop of the integration and disintegration of the Habsburg composite state in the Netherlands. Religious dissent grew inextricably entangled with political opposition to the centralising efforts of the Habsburg dynasty. This state of affairs led to the two key features of the Reformation in the Low Countries that distinguished from the rest of Europe: (1) an unusually harsh degree of official prosecution of Protestant heresy, and (2) the creation, by century’s end, of two distinct states, the Southern Netherlands and the Dutch Republic, because of the wars that Reformation at least partially instigated. Thus, while the ideas and qualities of the various reform movements in the Netherlands differed little from the rest of Europe, their outcome proved quite distinctive.
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- Reformations ComparedReligious Transformations across Early Modern Europe, pp. 167 - 189Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024