CRRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Seminar: Anne-Laure Van Bruaene (Ghent University)

In ‘The Rites of Violence’ (1973), Natalie Zemon Davis famously drew attention to the logic of popular violence in the French wars of religion. During the same period, because of the rise of Reformed Protestantism and general political unrest, the Low Countries similarly faced religious violence. In this region, however, violence was primarily directed against material objects rather than people. The most notorious episode was the Beeldenstorm in 1566, a chain of iconoclast destructions in churches all around the Low Countries. Only recently have historians begun to explore the dynamics between perpetrators, victims and the contested material culture. This can partly be explained by the fact that the thoroughness of the Beeldenstorm, later waves of iconoclasm and Counter-Reformation decoration campaigns have left us with very few material traces. Moreover, traditional religious history has largely ignored the role of objects. However, the material turn in cultural history has led to the development of a more integrated methodological framework. In this seminar, we will discuss a variety of sources, including chronicles, polemical texts, judicial sources, political prints, visual representations of church rites and surviving material objects.

We recommend that in preparation for the seminar, you pre-read the selected materials.

Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, “Embodied Piety: Sacrament Houses and Iconoclasm in the Sixteenth-Century Low Countries,” BMGN – Low Countries Historical Review 131, no. 1 (2016): 36-58.