Texts Concerning The Revolt Of The Netherlands

Professor Kossman and Dr Mellink gather together the threads of the complicated story and analyse some of the major theoretical problems discussed by sixteenth-century Netherlands

Historical and literary works from the Spanish Golden Age offer a wealth of information about the Spanish view of the conflict in the Netherlands during the Dutch Revolt and the ensuing Eighty Years' War (1568-1648). The war in the cold north was to become a fixed component in the lives of the Spaniards of the Golden Age for many years. This book reconstructs the images that the Spanish had of the Netherlands and its inhabitants. These images are inextricably intertwined with the picture that the Spanish constructed of themselves as participants in the conflict. This book follows the developments of these images from the construction of an image of the enemy that reached a climax between 1621 and 1648 and then gradually faded away. Which images and representations circulated the most, and where did they come from? Which rhetoric was used to present them to the public, and in which genres and contexts were they disseminated and preserved? On the basis of a varied collection of sources, war chronicles and plays, as well as pamphlets, poems, historical works and prose writings, the author illustrates the appearance of the Netherlands through Spanish eyes during the course of the Eighty Years' War.

From one of the leading historians of Christianity comes this sweeping reassessment of religious freedom, from the church fathers to John Locke In the ancient world Christian apologists wrote in defense of their right to practice their faith in the cities of the Roman Empire. They argued that religious faith is an inward disposition of the mind and heart and cannot be coerced by external force, laying a foundation on which later generations would build. Chronicling the history of the struggle for religious freedom from the early Christian movement through the seventeenth century, Robert Louis Wilken shows that the origins of religious freedom and liberty of conscience are religious, not political, in origin. They took form before the Enlightenment through the labors of men and women of faith who believed there could be no justice in society without liberty in the things of God. This provocative book, drawing on writings from the early Church as well as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, reminds us of how “the meditations of the past were fitted to affairs of a later day.”

This is a major new English-language edition of five central texts in the history of the political thought of the Dutch Revolt. Published between 1570-1590 these texts exemplify the development of the political ideas that motivated and legitimated resistance to Philip II. The introduction locates these ideas in their political and intellectual context and argues that they were inspired by the indigenous legacy of Dutch constitutionalism and civic consciousness.

This book is a comprehensive study of the history of the political thought of the Dutch Revolt (1555-90). It explores the development of the political ideas which motivated and legitimized the Dutch resistance against the government of Philip II in the Low Countries, and which became the ideological foundations of the Dutch Republic as it emerged as one of the main powers of Europe. It shows how notions of liberty, constitutionalism, representation and popular sovereignty were of central importance to the political thought and revolutionary events of the Dutch Revolt, giving rise to a distinct political theory of resistance, to fundamental debates on the 'best state' of the new Dutch commonwealth and to passionate disputes on the relationship between church and state which prompted some of the most eloquent early modern pleas for religious toleration.

The essays in this volume explore the theories and practices of sovereignty in the context of state-building in the early modern Northern and Southern Low Countries. The book approaches this historical debate from three angles: (1) political theoretical, (2) legal, and (3) politico-historical.

Bringing together the latest scholarship and research from leading experts in the field this study examines the Dutch revolt against Spanish rule in the sixteenth century.