Praet, Bronkhorst en Boetzelaer. Adellijke weduwes in de bres voor het calvinisme tijdens en na de Beeldenstorm (1566-1567).

Praet, Bronkhorst en Boetzelaer. Adellijke weduwes in de bres voor het calvinisme tijdens en na de Beeldenstorm (1566-1567).

with Nina Valkeneers, Handelingen van de Koninklijke Zuid-Nederlandse Maatschappij voor Taal-, Letterkunde en Geschiedenis 69 (2015) 265-284

Recently, historiography on early modern France has established the crucial role of noblewomen - and particularly of noble widows - in propagating the Calvinist Faith during the sixteenth-century Wars of Religion. This article unravels this very same phenomenon for the Habsburg Low Countries, concentrating on the eve and the aftermath of the Iconoclastic Fury in the year 1566. After the death of their husbands, the related noblewomen Petronella van Praet-Moerkerken, Catharina van Bronckhorst-Batenburg and Catharina van Boetzelaer became influential and instrumental in spreading Calvinism in their dominions, even when the Habsburg government took specific measures to prohibit their support for the ‘new religion’ and tried to interfere in the seigniorial administration. The Iconoclastic Fury certainly enabled these three noblewomen to perform activities which were not normally ascribed to their gender, such as offering shelter for coreligionists and organizing religious resistance and even iconoclasm. Compared with their spouses and male siblings defending their confession in leagues and battles, however, their action radius as women seems to have been confined chiefly to the limits of their lordships.

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