De Veluwe gereformeerd: Regionale machtswisseling en religieuze verandering in de zestiende eeuw

This study is about the sixteenth-century reformation process in the Quarter of Arnhem, shortly called Veluwe, as part of the duchy of Guelders and, as a consequence, of the Holy Roman Empire. In the introductory chapter, the developments in the international reformation research field that focus on the multiformity of the religious reformation movements will be assessed, as well as the unpredictability of political changes, the meaning of spatial and material conditions for religious practices, and the role of various social groups. The application of these historiographical challenges on the reformation process in the Veluwe leads to two general and four thematic chapters, in each of which an aspect of the integral process of regional power shift and religious change will be centralised. Chapter 1 (‘The sacral infrastructure’) pictures the spatial organisation of religious life in the Veluwe. Chapter 2 (‘Unforeseen reformations’) describes the course of the reformation process in the Veluwe in a non-teleological way. Chapter 3 (‘Reappraisal of the liturgy’) analyses conflicts revolving around the holy Sacrament by means of records of criminal processes, as laid-out by servants of Charles of Guelders and, after 1543, the councillors of the Court of Guelders. Chapter 4 (‘A catholic reformation agenda’) uses the iconography of the vault paintings in the Church of Our Lady in Harderwijk from 1561–1562 to dissect the reformation agenda of the devisors and initiators of these paintings. Chapter 5 (‘Professionalising the clergy’) studies the functioning of (parish) priests and preachers as key figures within the corpus christianum. Chapter 6 (‘The formation of a new elite’) provides a collective biography of the nobility in the Veluwe during the Reformation era. In the concluding observations the integral process of the regional change of power and religious change in the Veluwe is described by means of five characteristics. It becomes clear that the processes of renewal in the Veluwe appeared to result in a renewed catholic order, but was reversed, through the Iconoclastic Fury of 1566 and the Beggars’ raids of 1572, into a protestantisation. Moreover, the reformation process in the Veluwe had an irregular and incalculable course and was locally differentiated on top of that (‘Multiple and unpredictable reformations’).