Historians already knew that Catholics meant a lot to the Revolt in the Netherlands. But what did the Revolt do to the Catholics? Judith Pollmann investigated why Catholics initially reacted passively to Protestant religious and political aggression.
In her recently published book ‘Catholic Identity and the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1520-1635’ the historian Prof. Dr. Judith Pollmann tries in the head of the 16 e - en 17 e century Catholic to crawl.
To this end, she did not use the usual ecclesiastical writings, but studied more original sources:diaries, memoirs, pamphlets and poems by Catholics from all walks of life, from beer carrier to lawyer. A few women even 'had their say'.
“The question that concerns me is how it was possible that Catholics were initially so passive towards the religious and political aggression of the Protestants, while a few decades later – around 1585 – they enthusiastically supported the revival of their faith. Around that time, churches and shrines were being built up everywhere in the Southern Netherlands, and Catholicism seemed to be embraced with new impetus.”
Priest Problem
The key, according to Pollmann, lies in the relationship between the clergy and the laity. “When Calvinism made its appearance in the Netherlands, priests saw it as a problem that only concerned priests. Although the crisis was seen as a punishment from God, everyone should just go home and ponder their own sins. So they didn't say:mobilize yourself and do something about it. Also, laymen were not given an explanation about the new faith.”
Catholics, however, were deeply concerned that their faith was being threatened. The Ghent diarist Marcus van Vaernewijck describes how people lay in bed terrified after the Iconoclasm, wondering why God did not intervene. The government did nothing, the king was far away, the church distraught. But Catholics had no idea what to do about it themselves. While people were praying at home, the world around them changed. The Revolt radicalized; around 1580 Calvinist city-states arose and Protestantization became more aggressive. The heresy was no longer a priest problem, but a problem that concerned everyone.
Clubs
“The result was that significant refugee flows started,” says Pollmann. “The exiles from cities such as Ghent, Antwerp and Brussels found support in a new Catholic order, that of the Jesuits. They saw it as their task to make lay people activist. They set up clubs in which they taught people how to fight heretics. “Tell your landlord to get those pagan pictures off the wall,” was one instruction, for example.”
When those exiles were able to go home after 1585, they gained a lot of political influence. Their activism mixed with Habsburg politics. War – so the reading was – is a punishment from God that we can avert with devotion. That message got across. The Southern Netherlands, once a real heresy's nest, eventually became a stronghold of the Counter-Reformation. And that meant that a reunification of the entire Netherlands was soon unimaginable.