Myriam Greilsammer . La roue de la fortune: Le destin d'une famille d'usuriers lombards dans les Pays‐Bas à l'aube des Temps modernes . Paris : Éditions de l'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales . 2009 . Pp. 412. €30.00.

This essay deals with the nature, background, and consequences of urban patronage for individual rhetoricians in the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Low Countries. Although this phenomenon is most likely rooted in courtly practice, it is mainly because of the usefulness of rhetoricians in the context of urban public festivals that some of them received financial rewards from city authorities. My analysis shows how in the Low Countries urban festive culture and the oral dissemination of literary texts played an important, and heretofore largely neglected, role in the professionalization and individualization of authorship during the early modern period.

In the sixteenth-century Low Countries, a market developed for a specific type of translation, designed for educational purposes. From the second half of the century onward, in particular, many bilingual editions appeared, presenting two versions of the same texts parallel to each other. These works furnished authoritative models that students could use to verify their own translation exercises. Children whose native language was Dutch, both boys and girls, used the pedagogical tool of translation to learn the prestigious French language that was crucial for a career in international trade or public service, or Latin, required for an academic trajectory. In this context, translation not only offered an authoritative published end product, but also an educational activity. This article maps the visibility of the various actors involved in these educational translations: printers, schoolmasters, and students. By analysing published schoolbooks designed for translation exercises, as well as handwritten material by schoolmasters and their pupils, it explores the involvement of different actors of translation and questions to what extent the activities of student translators can be retraced.

ABSTRACTAlthough sodomy was purportedly an “unmentionable vice” in the early modern period, popular songs from the Low Countries paint a different picture. Bringing musical sources to bear upon the subject adds an extra dimension to the now widely held view that sodomy was a multimedia phenomenon in early modern society. Sodomy was represented in art, literature, poetry, and popular song as well. These songs were pedagogical in that they aimed to encourage performers and audience to live a pious life, and they stimulated the formation of confessional identities. By drawing attention to this neglected chapter in the history of homosexuality—popular song in the early modern Low Countries—this article seeks to contribute to the research on cultural perceptions of sodomy in the period.

Contents: By way of introduction The elusive Netherlands: the question of national identity in the early modern Low Countries on the eve of the Revolt In defence of the common fatherland: patriotism and liberty in the Low countries, 1555a 1576 Moulded by repression: the early Netherlands Reformation, 1520a 55 The 'inquisition' and the repression of religious dissent in the Habsburg Netherlands, 1521a A legend in the making: news of the 'Spanish Inquisition' in the Low Countries in German evangelical pamphlets, 1546a 1550 Dissident propaganda and political organisation at the outbreak of the Revolt of the Netherlands Posters, pamphlets and prints: the ways and means of disseminating dissident opinions on the eve of the Dutch Revolt Calvinists and 'papist idolatry': the mentality of the image-breakers in 1566 Martyrs with a difference: Dutch Anabaptist victims of Elizabethan persecution The search for religious identity in a confessional age: the conversions of Jean Haren (c.1545a c.1613) Calvinist loyalism. Jean Haren, Chimay and the demise of the Calvinist republic of Bruges Bibliography Index.

Archduke Philip the Handsome promulgated a new constitution for the County of Zeeland (Keure van Zeelandt in Dutch).1 In Antwerp Govaert Bac later printed the text. It was the first time that the central authorities of the Low Countries resorted to printing to disseminate its official acts. This case, and in particular the links between the Antwerp printer Govaert Bac and the Burgundian court in Brussels, provide the starting point for a broader study, exploring the relationship between the community of printers and the central government in the early modern Low Countries. This complex relationship has not yet been the subject of a detailed study. Until now, only the relationship between printers and local, provincial or religious authorities have attracted the attention of scholars. Investigations were notably conducted on the French-speaking part of the Low Countries and Antwerp.

The Elusive Netherlands: the Question of National Identity in the early Modern Low Countries on the Eve of the RevoltThe idea of the Burgundian-Habsburg Netherlands having any sort of national identity is usually met with understandable scepticism. The constitutional obstacles to the construction of such an identity were formidable, not least the piecemeal formation of the Burgundian dynastic state, whose prince owed homage to the kings of France and to the Holy Roman Emperor for their territories, and some of whose subjects could still seek justice in ‘foreign’ courts . Not surprisingly the early modern Low Countries baffled foreigners, but even those thoroughly familiar with the region did not know whether it belonged to ‘Gallia’ and ‘Germania’, and in particular how the Habsburg Netherlands related to an entity as vague as ‘Nider teutschelant’. The rich yet problematic nomenclature for the Low Countries testifies to these difficulties, which were aggravated by the protean configuration of the Habsburg state and by uncertain relationship between ‘Dutch’ and ‘Teutsch zung’. The state-building activities of Charles V certainly did not resolve the political and cultural confusion, but by 1555 these had helped to foster a stronger consciousness of the Low Countries as a distinctive political community, especially in the ‘core’ provinces. On the eve of the Revolt this found expression, ironically, in the emerging opposition to the presence of Spanish soldiers and to the central government’s religious policy.

Sixteenth-century political, religious and intellectual authorities were themselves concerned about the persuasive power of songs and poems. Fearing the divisive potential of such works, they developed special censorship rules such as bans on the treatment of certain subjects, the checking of texts prior to performance, and thereafter prosecution and, where deemed necessary, sanctions. This chapter examines the process of the formation of public opinion in the early modern Low Countries with a special focus on the insufficiently examined role of literature in forming opinions and ways of thinking. It shows that the early modern Low Countries did in fact have the potential to develop a public opinion, and that literary works were important in this regard. The chapter demonstrates that it should be no less natural for historians to use responses to social, political, religious and other issues which appeared in a literary form as well as other sources. Keywords: early modern Low Countries; public opinion

‘The Sharpness of a Smooth Tongue’. Literary Texts and the Formation of Public Opinion in the Early Modern NetherlandsThe Low Countries hardly play any role in international debates about the history of the formation of public opinion in early modern Europe. In the wake of Jürgen Habermas, historians have focused in particular on late seventeenthand eighteenth-century England and France. Scholars have criticised the notion that it was during the eighteenth century that the formation of free public opinion came into existence due to a combination of the periodical press, its critical role and a national readership. Nevertheless, the period before 1700 is hardly referred to at all during discussions about the role of public opinion. During that time a permanent, structured public openness did not exist. However, in the early modern Low Countries many socio-cultural and institutional conditions seem to be present which made the formation of critical public opinion among the population possible. The literary culture of these regions offers an important research subject for studies into the formation of public opinion.

The early modern book economy thrived on a system of bartering, swapping printed sheets for printed sheets or other valuable bookish material. Widely discussed as Tauschhandel in the context of the Frankfurt Book Fair, this practice continued to flourish in the Low Countries during the seventeenth century as the fair’s popularity declined. This article examines the bartering practices between the Officina Plantiniana in the city of Antwerp, the best-documented print business of the handpress era, and merchants and booksellers in its northern neighbour Amsterdam. While the output of the Plantin presses is well studied, its input, including maps, lottery tickets, reams of high-quality French and Dutch paper, and even luxury objects such as sugar and globes, has gone unrecognised. Ultimately, I argue that Dutch sellers were motivated to barter with the Officina by their superior access to books, paper, and other luxury goods, and their robust professional and personal networks.

Introduction to the special issue 'Time and Temporality in the Early Modern Low Countries'.

Contents: Preface Craft guilds in comparative perspective: the Northern and Southern Netherlands, a survey, Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly The establishment and distribution of craft guilds in the Low Countries, 1000-1800, Bert De Munck, Piet Lourens and Jan Lucassen Corporate politics in the Low Countries: guilds as institutions, 14th to18th centuries, Maarten Prak Export industries, craft guilds and capitalist trajectories, 13th to 18th centuries, Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly Dressed to work: a gendered comparison of the tailoring trades in the Northern and Southern Netherlands, 16th to 18th centuries, Harald Deceulaer and Bibi Panhuysen Religion and social structure: religious rituals in pre-industrial trade associations in the Low Countries, Alfons K.L. Thijs A tradition of giving and receiving: mutual aid within the guild system, Sandra Bos Corporative capital and social representation in the Southern and Northern Netherlands, 1500-1800, Johan Dambruyne Conclusion, Jan Lucassen and Maarten Prak Bibliography Indexes.

Previous studies of radical thinkers have brought us few examples of female radicals from the Low Countries, even if the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic was a hub for radical thought which offered a relatively female-friendly climate. In this article, we explore how new perspectives and modes of analysis, better adjusted to the restrictions and opportunities women experienced, make women’s radical thought visible. By doing so, we aim to present a more balanced perspective on what might count as female radical thought in the early modern Low Countries (1500–1800). Starting from the notion of “agency,” we analyze the life, work and relations of three Dutch authors, as well as representations of female radicalism in two literary works, in order to rebalance the notion of radicalism in a woman’s world. Anna Bijns, Meynarda Verboom and Margaretha van Dijk were not radically disruptive in the sense of operating completely outside of male-dominated domains. Instead, they gained agency by negotiating their position in patriarchal knowledge systems and by bending conventions within male-dominated networks so that their voices could be heard. To understand these voices, it is necessary to disconnect “being radical” from “the amount of disruption caused” by female agency.

This paper describes the iterative process of conflating historical population statistics for the medieval and early modern Low Countries. This process improves the quality of analyses of the data by adding fine-grained geospatial definitions to the historical observations, gradually refining the underlying historical GIS itself too: both intertwined processes benefit from each other. A flexible semantic model for premodern administrative units in the Low Countries is introduced to accommodate the continuous refinements, while maintaining backward compatibility.

This chapter shows how an early modern theatre society facilitated forms of public debate and the formation of public opinion which Habermas believed to have been absent at the time for lack of proper media and of an engaged and informed public. Using the case of Amsterdam in the 1530s it argues that a sophisticated interplay of theatrical, visual, oral, manuscript and printed media increased public debate, and helped create an interregional movement and the formation of its leadership. Theatrical means were used by various layers of society to create maximum publicity effects. Finally, the chapter argues that, if societies can be characterized by their dominant communication systems, then, given the example of Amsterdam and many other places in and outside the Low Countries, early modern urban society can be termed a theatre society. Keywords:Amsterdam; early modern theatre society; Low Countries; public debate; public opinion

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Low Countries were a melting pot of religious beliefs: Roman Catholicism and several Protestant and Catholic Reformation movements coexisted together, the ‘radical Reformation movement’ of the Anabaptists, the ‘militant movement’ of Calvinism, and the more mild variant of Lutheranism. The Southern part of the Low Countries were ‘re‐catholicized’ after the Fall of Antwerp in 1585, and the Counter‐ Reformation was active there. Authors of several denominations wrote Latin plays. In this article I will look at the theology represented in some of these plays, particularly those of Macropedius and Laurimanus as examples of Roman Catholic (non‐Jesuit) plays; those of Lummenaeus a Marca and Libenius as examples of Jesuit drama; and those of Gnapheus as examples of Protestant theatrical writing. Thus, it will be possible to draw some general conclusions about religion, theology and confessionalization in neo‐Latin drama of the Low Countries.