This article discusses a woodcut series with an elaborate iconographic representation of the Flemish city of Ghent, printed in 1524 by Pieter de Keysere. The three-sheet composition consists of a city view, an image of the allegorical Maiden of Ghent, and an extensive heraldic program with the coat of arms of prominent Ghent families and of the Ghent craft guilds. The print series’ production and consumption are unraveled and framed within the wider debate on civic religion in Renaissance Europe. The main argument is that while in this region of Northern Europe civic ideology was equally strong as in Italy, it was not the exclusive playground of the ruling elites. Pieter de Keysere’s woodcut series was aimed at a socially broad, local audience, most particularly Ghent’s corporate middle groups.

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This article discusses the propagation of the devotion of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mary in the Low Countries around 1500. The central argument is that the secular goal of the promoters of the devotion was to create a large spiritual and emotional community in support of the Burgundian-Habsburg dynasty and its ideology of peace and territorial unity. To this end a whole array of old and new media was exploited. The article analyses the dynamics of this devotional communication and gives special attention to the role of miracles, vernacular theatre and the printing press.

On the eve of the Beeldenstorm, a great number of churches in the Low Countries had a sacrament house, a shrine for the Corpus Christi, often metres high. These monstrance-like tabernacles were nearly all destroyed by iconoclasts between 1566 and 1585. This essay discusses the dialectics between the construction and destruction of sacrament houses before and after the Beeldenstorm. It argues against a strict divide between material devotion and spiritual belief by highlighting the intertwining of Catholic and Calvinist embodied pieties. Fuelled by their opposing conceptions of the Eucharist, Catholic devotees and Protestant iconoclasts both engaged with sacrament houses and other expressions of the Corpus Christi devotion (processions, miracle cults et cetera) in a deliberate and intensely physical manner. Belichaamde vroomheid. Sacramentshuizen en iconoclasme in de zestiende-eeuwse NederlandenAan de vooravond van de Beeldenstorm stond in heel wat kerken in de Nederlanden een sacramentshuis, een vaak metershoge toren met het uiterlijk van een reusachtige monstrans, waarin het Corpus Christi werd tentoongesteld.Deze tabernakels werden haast allemaal vernield door iconoclasten tussen 1566 en 1585. Dit artikel bestudeert het samenspel tussen het optrekken en afbreken van sacramentshuizen voor en na de Beeldenstorm. De centrale stelling luidt dat we af moeten van een strikte scheiding tussen materiële devotie en spiritueel geloof. Zowel katholieken als calvinisten beleefden hun geloof op een belichaamde manier en hun handelingen waren steeds verweven. Vrome katholieke leken en protestantse beeldenstormers hadden sterk conflicterende ideeën over de eucharistie, maar juist daarom gingen ze op een heel bewuste en uiterst lichamelijke manier om met de sacramentshuizen en andere uitingen van sacramentsvroomheid zoals ommegangen en mirakelcultussen. embodied piety van bruaeneEvoking iconoclasm in his own parish church in Ghent, Marcus Van Vaernewijck, one of our most reliable and prolific witnesses to the 1566 Beeldenstorm, writes:Also, the sacrament house, a sophisticated Gothic one (as mentioned) -polychromed in some places -that reached to the top of the arch of the church, was demolished right down to the pavement, just as one chops down a tree.Still, good little women were doing their devotion thereabouts. 1 The opposition is set between, on the one hand, the violent iconoclasts who tore down the sacrament house as if it was a sacrilegious tree and on the other, the simple but devout female parishioners who continued to kneel and pray in the midst of the debris. Although obviously partisan, Van Vaernewijck's remark demonstrates the point I want to make in this essay: the Beeldenstorm was a physical and material reaction of Calvinists to the physicality and materiality of Catholic devotion. 2 I use the words 'physical' and 'material' twice, because the evident opposition between iconoclasts and devotees must not conceal their common ground. Both experienced religion as an embodied piety: their spiritual belief was ...

Anne-Laure Van Bruaene (1975) is associate professor of early modern cultural history and urban history at Ghent University. Most of her work concerns urban culture in the Low Countries in the period from circa 1450 to circa 1650. She has published two monographs: on urban chronicles (1998) and on urban literary societies or rederijkerskamers (2008). In 2016, she co-edited with Bruno Blondé and Marc Boone a multi-authored synthesis on the urban history of the Low Countries (Gouden eeuwen. Stad en samenleving in de Lage Landen, 1100-1600; English and French translations forthcoming). Sarah Van Bouchaute (1985) is scientific collaborator in Museum Dr. Guislain in Ghent. In 2007 she completed a Master's thesis on drinking and drunkenness in rederijker texts.