Papers by Judith Pollmann
In: Pollmann, J., te Velde, H. (eds) Civic Continuities in an Age of Revolutionary Change, c.1750–1850. Palgrave Studies in Political History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09504-7_1, 2023
The Age of Revolutions has often been studied from the perspective from political modernisation, ... more The Age of Revolutions has often been studied from the perspective from political modernisation, and the rise of the nation state. This introductory chapter argues why there is also a need to consider the role of continuity in political processes and practices in Europe and the Americas. It makes the case for studying the continued relevance of older, often local, practices in (post) revolutionary politics, and explores in a comparative context how and why existing political practices, local civic habits and ‘residual’ powers remained productive throughout and after the Age of Revolutions: as tools to implement change, as a means for local people to participate in politics and acquire agency, and as a way to cope with change.
In: Pollmann, J., te Velde, H. (eds) Civic Continuities in an Age of Revolutionary Change, c.1750–1850. Palgrave Studies in Political History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09504-7_1, 2023
Many scholars argue that Age of Revolutions wrought a new sense of time, in which the gap between... more Many scholars argue that Age of Revolutions wrought a new sense of time, in which the gap between past and present had widened, and the future became unpredictable. Urban chronicles offer good evidence for temporal fissure, yet the genre also points to the persistence of traditional cultural strategies to deal with change. Using chronicle evidence from the Low Countries this chapter argues that for many ordinary people political change was primarily a local affair, and experienced in local terms.
Because of this, the restoration of some local practices or spaces could signal the restoration of ‘old times’, and allow a sense of closure. In this way phenomena that had once been new, could, within a generation, be perceived as part of an ‘old order’.
Communities, Environment and Regulation in the Premodern World Essays in Honour of Peter Hoppenbrouwers eds. Claire Weeda, Robert Stein, Louis Sicking (eds) series Comparative Rural History of the North Sea Area, 2022
Open access
Public Opinion and Changing Identities in the Early Modern Netherlands
Reworking the third chapter of the anonymous Spanish novel Lazarillo de Tormes (1554), Gerbrant B... more Reworking the third chapter of the anonymous Spanish novel Lazarillo de Tormes (1554), Gerbrant Bredero introduced his Dutch audience to the adventures of Robbeknol, the Dutch Lazarillo, and of his master Jerolimo, a ‘Spanish Brabanter’. Even if Bredero’s point was not to ridicule his contemporaries’ nostalgia for the old days, Van Stipriaan must be right that the historical dimension of the play is significant and requires a proper explanation. This chapter shows that such an explanation may emerge if we read the play in the context of the social memory of the Revolt among Bredero and his Amsterdam contemporaries, and consider the role that the history of the Revolt played in the political debates of the Truce years. The Spaanschen Brabander shows how important the Southerners had become in defining the shape of Dutch identity. Keywords: Amsterdam contemporaries; Dutch identity; Gerbrant Bredero; Jerolimo; Lazarillo de Tormes ; Spaanschen Brabander
BMGN - Low Countries Historical Review, 2016
Why did it take Historians so long to identify the Image-Breakers of 1566? judith pollmann This a... more Why did it take Historians so long to identify the Image-Breakers of 1566? judith pollmann This article asks why until the mid-twentieth century both Catholic and Protestant interpretations of the iconoclasm converged on the anonymising of the iconoclasts of 1566. It argues that, while a greater availability of sources, better source criticism and international debates helped eventually to give the iconoclasts a face, the main reason why it has took so long for the image-breakers to lose their anonymity was that it was in no one's interest to identify the culprits. For centuries, Protestants considered the iconoclasm an embarrassment, and preferred to dismiss its perpetrators as 'rabble', while Catholics in the Southern Netherlands tended to dismiss them as foreigers, manipulated by the nobility. Their anonymity was lifted through the intervention of German historian Erich Kuttner, whose main thesis was proven wrong, but at last triggered serious research into the identity of the iconoclasts, as well as alternative explanations of their motives. 'Iconoclasts Anonymous'. Waarom duurde het zo lang voordat historici de beeldenstormers van 1566 identificeerden? Dit artikel werpt de vraag op waarom zowel katholieke als protestantse geschiedschrijvers tot de tweede helft van de twintigste eeuw zo weinig belangstelling hadden voor de identiteit van de beeldenstormers van 1566. Hoewel bredere beschikbaarheid van bronnenmateriaal, betere bronnenkritiek en internationale debatten uiteindelijk hielpen om de beeldenstormers een gezicht te kunnen geven, betoogt dit artikel dat het eeuwenlang vooral in niemands belang was om de daders te identificeren. Protestanten vonden de herinnering aan de Beeldenstorm erg pijnlijk en maakten daarom anoniem arm 'gespuis' tot zondebok, terwijl katholieken in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden ze het beeldenstorm: iconoclasm in the low countries Hendrick van Steenwijck II (1580?-1649), Church interior with Iconoclasm (ca 1610-1630). Oil on canvas. Museum Prinsenhof, Delft. iconoclasts anonymous 157 pollmann liefst wegzetten als de buitenlandse werktuigen van opstandige edellieden. Hun anonimiteit werd opgeheven door de interventie van de Duitse historicus Erich Kuttner, wiens interpretatie weliswaar niet houdbaar bleek, maar wiens werk wel de aanzet werd tot serieus onderzoek naar de beeldenbrekers, en alternatieve verklaringen voor hun motieven. In 2008 Museum Prinsenhof in Delft bought an unusual picture: Hendrick van Steenwijck II's representation of an episode of image-breaking that was painted some time between 1610 and 1630. The scene is surprisingly orderly. At the main entrance of a church, a gentleman sits on a pile of statues, and calmly directs the work done by five figures who are in the process of taking a saint's image down from its place, high up in the portal of a church. Everyone is dressed decently, and the men are proceeding with caution; one person is holding the ladder which another has climbed to put a rope around the saint-three others just starting to pull it down. Two little boys are, in the meantime, carrying smaller images to the pile. So orderly is the scene that some observers have concluded that in the Dutch Golden Age, memories of the Iconoclastic Fury of 1566 were uncontroversial. Indeed, Van Steenwijck was evidently painting the scene as he or his patron would have liked it to be, rather than in order to evoke the much more chaotic, violent scenes of image-breaking that people had witnessed in 1566. Yet this did not mean that in the Republic of the Golden Age, the event was commonly recalled with pride. Had this been so, we would expect it to have been painted much more frequently than it actually was. There is only one other known painting of the iconoclasm, that by Dirk van Delen in the Rijksmuseum. 1 While many other canonic episodes from the Revolt were memorialised over and over again, apparently the iconoclasm was not central to the memory culture of the Revolt. This impression is confirmed when we extend our view to other media. Many individuals in the Republic recorded their war experiences, but of the many people who had been involved in the iconoclasm, no one left a record except to exonerate themselves. As we will see, Protestant historians tried to be as brief about it as they possibly could. 2 Catholics, while keener than their Protestant
BMGN: Low Countries Historical Review, 2018
For half a century, historians of the Low Countries have studied the decades around 1800 as a per... more For half a century, historians of the Low Countries have studied the decades around 1800 as a period of radical transition. By way of historiographical introduction to this special issue, this article surveys both the national and international origins of this approach, assesses its consequences for our understanding of citizenship in the period, and argues for the need to add another perspective, that of continuity. This article is part of the special issue 'Political Change and Civic Continuities in the Age of Revolutions'. In de afgelopen vijftig jaar hebben historici van de Lage Landen de decennia rond 1800 vooral bestudeerd als een periode van radicale transitie. Bij wijze van historiografische inleiding op dit themanummer, geeft dit artikel een overzicht van de nationale en internationale ontwikkeling van deze benadering, en bekijkt welke consequenties die heeft gehad voor ons begrip van burgerschap in deze periode. Het betoogt dat er behoefte is een nieuw perspectie...
Bmgn-The low countries historical review, 2018
For half a century, historians of the Low Countries have studied the decades around 1800 as a per... more For half a century, historians of the Low Countries have studied the decades around 1800 as a period of radical transition. By way of historiographical introduction to this special issue, this article surveys both the national and international origins of this approach, assesses its consequences for our understanding of citizenship in the period, and argues for the need to add another perspective, that of continuity. This article is part of the special issue ' Political Change and Civic Continuities in the Age of Revolutions '. In de afgelopen vijftig jaar hebben historici van de Lage Landen de decennia rond 1800 vooral bestudeerd als een periode van radicale transitie. Bij wijze van historiografische inleiding op dit themanummer, geeft dit artikel een overzicht van de nationale en internationale ontwikkeling van deze benadering, en bekijkt welke consequenties die heeft gehad voor ons begrip van burgerschap in deze periode. Het betoogt dat er behoefte is een nieuw perspectie...
More so than the subjects of most monarchs, or even those of a republic like Venice, the seventee... more More so than the subjects of most monarchs, or even those of a republic like Venice, the seventeenth-century Dutch were exposed to mixed, and often also contradictory, messages about their military needs and achievements. They were not only familiar with a discourse that highlighted and glamorized the glorious achievements of the Republic’s army and navy. Side by sidewith this there emerged a discourse that centred on victimhood, sacrifice, and the glories that they brought. This chapter discusses how these two coexisting discourses came into being and gained a prominent presence in the cultural landscape, before briefly turning to the silences surrounding war.
Early Modern Low Countries
German History
If one intervention could be said to be emblematic of the ‘memory boom’ of the late twentieth cen... more If one intervention could be said to be emblematic of the ‘memory boom’ of the late twentieth century, it was that of Pierre Nora, whose concept of lieux de mémoire stimulated a generation’s worth of discussion and research on memory culture. Étienne François and Hagen Schulze’s three-volume Deutsche Erinnerungsorte subsequently offered up a wealth of examples of symbols and sites of remembrance for every period and type of German history. Yet Nora’s own work was shaped to a large extent by modernist agendas, and by a desire to explain focal points of French national identity. It rested on a series of assumptions about premodern memory, often characterized as cohesive and unchanging. A close look at the memory practices of the late medieval and early modern periods reveals, however, the myriad and shifting uses of premodern memory, both official and unofficial. Chronicles and annals, images and architecture, festivals and other rituals all formed part of a lively and dynamic commemorative culture that has long been an object of study for medievalists and early modernists, augmented most recently by a growing interest in ego-documents as mediators of memory. How, if at all, did premodern modes of cultural remembering differ from modern? Does the concept of places of remembrance (lieux de mémoire) have any explanatory power in an age before nationalism? How far can medievalists and early modernists investigate the complex interplay between individual and collective or social memory? Can recent interest in the history of emotions and in the paradigm of trauma provide useful stimuli? The editors invited Matthew Lundin (Wheaton), Hans Medick (Berlin), Mitchell Merback (Johns Hopkins), Judith Pollmann (Leiden) and Susanne Rau (Erfurt) to consider these and other questions.
Dutch Crossing, 2000
Abstract Although scholars have been aware for some time that women far out-numbered men in the D... more Abstract Although scholars have been aware for some time that women far out-numbered men in the Dutch Reformed Church of the Golden Age, it has proved difficult to explain why this was the case. By gaining a better understanding of which women joined the Churches, we may also get a better sense of why they did so. An analysis of the membership of the Utrecht Reformed Church in the early 1620s shows that two groups were over-represented, older unmarried women and young women who lacked paternal support. Single women being at high risk of incurring dishonour, this article suggests that they saw church membership as a way to enhance their ‘eerlijkheid’ (honour). Moreover, whilst religiousness was deemed particularly desirable for older women, society was quick to condemn female religiousness that was practised outside confessional boundaries. Thus, as well as benefiting women because it was a source of ‘eerlijkheid’, Church membership also legitimized their religiousness.
1. Shifting identities in hostile settings: towards a comparison of the Catholic communities in e... more 1. Shifting identities in hostile settings: towards a comparison of the Catholic communities in early modern Britain and the Northern Netherlands - Willem Frijhoff 2. Cooperative Confessionalisation: lay-clerical collaboration in Dutch Catholic Communities during the Golden Age - Charles H. Parker 3. 'So they become contemptible': clergy and laity in a mission territory - Michael Mullett 4. Integration vs. segregation: religiously mixed marriage and the 'Verzuiling' model of Dutch society - Benjamin J. Kaplan 5. 'Getting on' and 'getting along' in parish and town: Catholics and their neighbours in England - William Sheils 6. Burying the dead reliving the past: ritual, resentment and sacred space in the Dutch Republic - Judith Pollmann 7. Beads, books and bare ruined choirs: transmutations of Catholic ritual life in Protestant England - Alexandra Walsham 8. The southern Netherlands connection: networks of support and patronage - Paul Arblaster 9. Priests, nuns, presses and prayers: the southern Netherlands and the contours of English Catholicism - Claire Walker 10. Second-class yet self-confident: Catholics in the Dutch Generality Lands - Charles de Mooij 11.Between conflict and coexistence: the Catholic community in Ireland as a 'visible underground church' in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries - Ute Lotz-Heumann 12. Orphans and students: recruiting boys and girls for the Holland Mission - Joke Spaans 13.Harbourers and housekeepers: Catholic women in England 1570-1720 - Marie B. Rowlands 14.Paintings for clandestine Catholic churches in the Republic: typically Dutch? - Xander van Eck 15.Cultures of dissent: English Catholics and the visual arts - Richard L. Williams 16.Conclusion: Catholic communities in Protestant states, Britain and the Netherlands c.1580-1720 - Ben Kaplan and Judith Pollmann Index
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 2013
ABSTRACTFolklore experts have shown that for a legend to be remembered it is important that it is... more ABSTRACTFolklore experts have shown that for a legend to be remembered it is important that it is historicised. Focusing on three case-studies from early modern Germany and the Netherlands, this article explores how the historicisation of mythical narratives operated in early modern Europe, and argues that memory practices played a crucial role in the interplay between myth and history. The application of new criteria for historical evidence did not result in the decline of myths. By declaring such stories mythical, and by using the existence of memory practices as evidence for this, scholars could continue to take them seriously.
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 2013
Memory before Modernity, 2013
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Papers by Judith Pollmann
Because of this, the restoration of some local practices or spaces could signal the restoration of ‘old times’, and allow a sense of closure. In this way phenomena that had once been new, could, within a generation, be perceived as part of an ‘old order’.
Because of this, the restoration of some local practices or spaces could signal the restoration of ‘old times’, and allow a sense of closure. In this way phenomena that had once been new, could, within a generation, be perceived as part of an ‘old order’.
Many students of memory assume that the practice of memory changed dramatically around 1800; this volume shows that there was much continuity as well as change. Premodern ways of negotiating memories of pain and loss, for instance, were indeed quite different to those in the modern West. Yet by examining memory practices and drawing on evidence from early modern England, France, Germany, Ireland, Hungary, the Low Countries and Ukraine, the case studies in this volume highlight the extent to which early modern memory was already a multimedia affair,
with many political uses, and affecting stakeholders at all levels of society.
Contributors include: Andreas Bähr, Philip Benedict, Susan Broomhall, Sarah Covington, Brecht Deseure, Sean Dunwoody, Marianne Eekhout, Gabriela Erdélyi, Dagmar Freist, Katharine Hodgkin, Jasmin Kilburn-Toppin, Erika Kuijpers, Johannes Müller, Ulrich Niggemann, Alexandr Osipian, Judith Pollmann, Benjamin Schmidt, Jasper van der Steen