Catholic Survival in the Dutch Republic: Agency in Coexistence and the Public Sphere in Utrecht, 1620-1672

Catholic Utrechters used their social status and networks to claim more rights in the public sphere and survive the Reformed regime, contributing to a multi-religious society in the Northern Netherlands.

Format: Hardback
Length: 425 pages
Publication date: 05 June 2024
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press

Catholics in post-Reformation Utrecht faced significant challenges, but they exercised considerable agency in navigating these circumstances. Despite the Reformed Church's pressure, the city's magistrates attempted to exclude Catholics from the urban public sphere through repression and toleration. However, Catholic Utrechters responded by mobilizing their social status and networks, creating room to live as pious Catholics and honourable citizens. They claimed more rights in the public sphere through their spatial practices and in discourses of self-representation. This book explores how Catholic priests and laypeople cooperated and managed to survive the Reformed regime by participating in a communal process of delimiting the public, relying on the medieval legacy, and adapting to early modern religious diversity. By deploying their own understandings of publicness, Catholic Utrechters not only enabled their survival in the city and the Catholic revival in the Dutch Republic but also contributed to shaping a multi-religious society in the Northern Netherlands.

Weight: 734g
Dimension: 163 x 242 x 30 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9789048558452