Books
The Matter of Piety provides the first in-depth study of Zoutleeuw’s exceptionally well-preserved... more The Matter of Piety provides the first in-depth study of Zoutleeuw’s exceptionally well-preserved pilgrimage church in a comparative perspective, and revaluates religious art and material culture in Netherlandish piety from the late Middle Ages through the crisis of iconoclasm and the Reformation to Catholic restoration. Analyzing the changing functions, outlooks, and meanings of devotional objects – monumental sacrament houses, cult statues and altarpieces, and small votive offerings or relics – Ruben Suykerbuyk revises dominant narratives about Catholic culture and patronage in the Low Countries. Rather than being a paralyzing force, the Reformation incited engaged counterinitiatives, and the vitality of late medieval devotion served as the fertile ground from which the Counter-Reformation organically grew under Protestant impulses.
Full Text available in OpenAccess on https://brill.com/view/title/54729.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Articles
Epitaphs and memorial donations may not have been ornamenta sacra in the strict sense, but their ... more Epitaphs and memorial donations may not have been ornamenta sacra in the strict sense, but their donors nevertheless made great efforts to have them included in the liturgy after their deaths. This paper considers the post-mortem, (para)liturgical lives of these commemorative objects – from bequeathed wax over epitaph triptychs to monumental tombs – and argues that their ritual use was essential for the proper enactment of memory. To do so, it will present a selection of the rich material and archival evidence from the sixteenth-century Low Countries. Rather than looking at these objects from the finite perspective of the living donor or the creating artist, i.e. as finished products once installed, by means of a functional reading I propose to look at them as objects that were imbued with a sense of life. In particular, I will elaborate upon earlier interpretations of the function of religious material culture in memoria, by demonstrating how the ritual use and site-specificity of epitaph triptychs were instrumental in temporarily reactivating the presence of their donors, and visually and materially suggesting their actual participation in the liturgy.
A pdf of the complete article is available on request.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
This contribution assesses the impact of the Protestant Reformation and iconoclasm on the memoria... more This contribution assesses the impact of the Protestant Reformation and iconoclasm on the memorial culture of tombs, epitaphs, and rituals in the Low Countries (c. 1520-1585), and analyses the consequences these events had on ancestral remembrance. Demonstrating how circulating Protestant critiques and iconoclastic attacks fundamentally endangered the archival function of churches, it argues that this imminent threat to memory provoked a heightened awareness of the ancestral past in the later sixteenth century. Most significantly, it shows that this precarious situation led to the genesis of a new type of commemorative manuscript, the épitaphier, in which heraldic, genealogical, and other information on various types of memorial monuments in churches was recorded. In tracing the production and dissemination of these épitaphiers, the article casts new light on the pan-European heraldic and ‘genealogical craze’ in this period: while English scholars have emphasized social dynamics as explanation, this paper puts forward the religious debates as a hitherto neglected factor, and demonstrates how the two interlocked.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
A pdf of the complete article is available on request.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Zoutleeuw's church of Saint Leonard exceptionally preserves three altarpieces painted by Frans Fl... more Zoutleeuw's church of Saint Leonard exceptionally preserves three altarpieces painted by Frans Floris and his studio. This article presents the first overview of the rich archival evidence of this ensemble, and updates previous iconographic analysis.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Although the iconoclastic scare must have been enormous and the actual impact of the attacks of s... more Although the iconoclastic scare must have been enormous and the actual impact of the attacks of summer and autumn 1566 can hardly be exaggerated, the Beeldenstorm was not as thorough as it seemed to contemporaries and subsequent historians. Indeed, a considerable number of important cities in the Habsburg Netherlands actually managed to ward off destructions, but until now their role has hardly been studied. The aim of this article is twofold: first it seeks to map the cities in question. Second, it analyzes the preventive measures that they enacted against the violence. In so doing, it nuances the idea of the Beeldenstorm as an all-destructing wave, and provides insights into the dynamics of the Iconoclastic Fury. More specifically, the cliché that the passivity of magistrates was the main reason for all losses seems in need of considerable revision.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
After 450 years the Beeldenstorm of 1566 still deserves our careful historical analysis because i... more After 450 years the Beeldenstorm of 1566 still deserves our careful historical analysis because it was unquestionably a game changer in Netherlandish politics and culture. More generally, we believe that iconoclasm breaks open cultural codes and thereby helps us to understand past societies. While we must thank the previous generations of historians for taking the iconoclasts seriously, the historians and art historians in this issue go a step further by also taking seriously the targets
of iconoclasts – lay Catholic devotion and religious material culture. This theme number analyses the dialectics between iconoclasts and the material objects they targeted, between those who attacked and those who actively or passively defended the traditional community, between those who destroyed and those who restored or reinvented the religious patrimony, and in doing so reveals what was at stake in the sixteenth-century Low Countries.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Book Reviews
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Exhibition catalogue entries
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Full Text available in OpenAccess on https://brill.com/view/title/54729.
A pdf of the complete article is available on request.
of iconoclasts – lay Catholic devotion and religious material culture. This theme number analyses the dialectics between iconoclasts and the material objects they targeted, between those who attacked and those who actively or passively defended the traditional community, between those who destroyed and those who restored or reinvented the religious patrimony, and in doing so reveals what was at stake in the sixteenth-century Low Countries.
Full Text available in OpenAccess on https://brill.com/view/title/54729.
A pdf of the complete article is available on request.
of iconoclasts – lay Catholic devotion and religious material culture. This theme number analyses the dialectics between iconoclasts and the material objects they targeted, between those who attacked and those who actively or passively defended the traditional community, between those who destroyed and those who restored or reinvented the religious patrimony, and in doing so reveals what was at stake in the sixteenth-century Low Countries.