'To keep the people in the right faith'. A study of Catholic responses to the early Dutch Reformation (1517-1528)

Abstract

In historiography, much focus has been directed to the reception of Lutheranism in the Low Countries. According to many historical narratives, this initial reception was suppressed by an increasingly violent inquisition, leading to the outburst of popular resentment in the iconoclasm's of 1566. The blame for these events and the supposedly rapid dissemination of Protestant thought is often laid at the feet of the Catholic clergy by modern historians. These authors would have failed to respond adequately to the Protestant crisis. In this thesis, several works of clerical authors are studied and they reveal another side of early sixteenth-century Catholicism and its vibrant printing and reading culture. Catholic writers already had much experience with the printing press before the Luther-crisis began, and they were ready to respond to the reformist critiques with a biblical and vernacular defense of the Catholic Tradition.