Recent research in early modern print media and the early enlightenment have dramatically changed the way we look at the Dutch Republic in the later seventeenth century. For a long time, this was an underresearched area. Interdisciplinary approaches now demonstrate how a dense, varied, and for its time, technically advanced media landscape managed to involve intellectuals, politicians and craftsmen in debates on current issues. Based on a small corpus of enigmatic satirical prints, so far overlooked by art historians and historians of religion alike, this book explores how polarization between theological schools during the reign of stadholder William III triggered, necessarily covert, debates on the shortcomings of early modern Churches that prepared the way for a more enlightened religious culture.
Joke Spaans, Ph.D. (1989) at Leiden University is Associate Professor for the History of Christianity at Utrecht University. She publishes books and articles on Dutch church history and religious cultures from a variety of perspectives.
“Spaans’s command of the material is exceptional and her ability to piece together the long buried meaning of broadsheet imagery remarkable.”
Nadine M. Orenstein, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In:
Print Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 3 (September 2013), pp. 342-344.
CHAPTER 1:
RELIGION IN THE WORLD OF EARLY MODERN COMMUNICATION
Prints and pamphlets
Interesting times
Contention over theology and civil religion
Religion, media and censorship
Composition of this book
CHAPTER 2:
CLEANSING THE TEMPLE AND BURYING THE DISCIPLE OF ARISTOTLE
The Momma-affair
Political culture
Theology
The clash
The sequel
Zeeland’s Evil Spirit
The Ecclesiastical Funeral Cortege.
Defining true religion
CHAPTER 3:
THE WHEELBARROW, THE NIGHT-SOIL CART AND THE VICTORY CHARIOT
Hoppeans and Germans
Ministers and lay leaders
Contested elections
A war over popular franchise
A local media storm
Ecclesiastical conflict in cartoons
CHAPTER 4:
FORTUNE-SEEKERS AND REBELS
Expansion and the search for space
The New or Round Church
Centrifugal tendencies
A theological waggon-race
The Ills of the Church
CHAPTER 5:
VISIONS OF TIMES AND ETERNITY
Fascination with the Millennium
Rallying the saints
Rachabs in action
Rothé’s fall
Cartoon or emblem?
CHAPTER 6:
THE ALPHEN PIG WAR
A church divided
The pigs’ attack
Lamenting the pig war
CHAPTER 7:
POPISH ANGELS AND DEMONS
The Frisian Hercules
Bible translation under fire
From Amsterdam to Ysenborgh
Again a riddle of dates
Towards the Peace of the Church
CHAPTER 8:
HIEROGLYPHS AND SPECTATORIAL SATIRE
A fox preaching the passion
Mission or Church?
Jansenism
Priestcraft and the Pope’s Mule
Religion, politics and Enlightenment
CHAPTER 9:
EPILOGUE
ABBREVIATIONS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Archival and manuscript sources
Printed sources
Literature
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
INDEX
All those interested in cultural history, especially early modern religious culture, Dutch history and the history of satire.