this issue
previous article in this issuenext article in this issue

Document Details :

Title: Franciscan Religious Instruction in the Low Countries, c. 1520-1560
Author(s): ROEST, Bert
Journal: Ons Geestelijk Erf
Volume: 85    Issue: 4   Date: 2014   
Pages: 292-310
DOI: 10.2143/OGE.85.4.3071294

Abstract :
This article discusses a range of texts issued by (Observant) Franciscans active in the Low Countries between the 1520s and the 1560s, to illustrate the importance of Catholic works of religious instruction in shaping the religious mind-set during those decades. Although such works are well-known to scholars of Dutch religious literature and to specialists of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century biblical, homiletic and devotional texts, they hardly figure in mainstream historical studies on the religious and cultural transformations of the Low Countries up till the start of the Dutch Revolt. This oversight is understandable from the perspective of ingrained disciplinary divisions and the enduring impact of humanist and Protestant depictions of sixteenth-century religious life and learning, but it does not do justice to the complex historical reality. This article is therefore also an argument to integrate the existing evidence concerning the vibrancy of Catholic religious culture into our historical representations of the history of the Low Countries during this period.

Download article