| I have been invited to spend 1 September 2006-31 January 2007 as a fellow of NIAS in Wassenaar in order to complete a book that aims to explore the response of Netherlandish Catholics to the religious and political changes that were precipitated by the Reformation of the sixteenth century. The main thesis of my book is that the key to initial Catholic ?passivity? and later ?success?, lay in the extent to which clerics were prepared to mobilize laypeople for the Catholic cause, and to encourage formation of new (male) elites of committed Catholics. My findings extend beyond the scope of Netherlandish history, and contribute to the debate on the history of the recatholicization of Europe in the seventeenth century. |
