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beginning of the sixteenth century, the corruption and elaborate ritual of the established (Catholic) Church found itself under attack throughout northern Europe. First, Erasmus of Rotterdam promoted ideas of reformation, and then, in 1517, Martin Luther (1483–1546) went one step – or rather, leap – further, producing his 95 theses against the Church practice of indulgences, a prelude to his more comprehensive assault on the entire institution. Furthermore, when Luther’s works were disseminated his ideas gained a European following among a range of reforming groups branded as Lutheran by the Church, while other reformers were drawn to the doctrines of John Calvin (1509–64). Luther asserted that the Church’s political power should be subservient to that of the state; Calvin emphasized the importance of individual conscience and the need for redemption through the grace of Christ rather than the confessional. Luther’s writings and Bible translations were printed in the Netherlands, but the doctrines of Calvin proved more popular in Amsterdam, setting the seal on the city’s religious transformation. Calvin was insistent on the separation of Church and State, but the lines were easily fudged in Amsterdam by the Church’s ruling council of ministers and annually elected elders, who soon came to exercise considerable political clout. The council also had little time for other (more egalitarian) Protestant sects, and matters came to a head when, in 1535, one of the radical splinter groups, the Anabaptists, occupied Amsterdam’s town hall, calling on passers-by to repent. Previously the town council had tolerated the Anabaptists, but, prompted by the Calvinists, it acted swiftly when civic rule was challenged; the town hall was besieged and, after its capture, the leaders of the Anabaptists were executed on the Dam.

History |

The revolt of the Netherlands

In 1555, the fanatically Catholic Philip II succeeded to the Spanish throne. Through a series of marriages the Spanish monarchy – and Habsburg family – had come to rule over the Low Countries, and Philip was determined to rid his empire of its heretics, regardless of whether they were Calvinists or Anabaptists. Philip promptly garrisoned the towns of the Low Countries with Spanish mercenaries, imported the Inquisition and passed a series of anti-Protestant edicts. However, other pressures on the Habsburg Empire forced him into a tactical withdrawal and he transferred control of the Low Countries to his sister, Margaret of Parma, in 1559. Based in Brussels, the equally resolute Margaret implemented the policies of her brother with gusto. In 1561 she reorganized the Church and created fourteen new bishoprics, a move that was construed as a wresting of power from civil authority, and an attempt to destroy the local aristocracy’s powers of religious patronage. Right across the Low Countries, Protestantism – and Protestant sympathies – spread to the nobility, who now formed the “League of the Nobility” to counter Habsburg policy. The League petitioned Margaret for moderation but were dismissed out of hand by one of her (French-speaking) advisers, who called them “ces geux” (those beggars), an epithet that was to be enthusiastically adopted by the rebels. In 1565 a harvest failure caused a winter famine among the urban workers of the region and, after years of repression, they struck back. In 1566 a Protestant sermon in the tiny Flemish textile town of Steenvoorde incited the congregation to purge the local church of its “papist” idolatry. The crowd smashed up the church’s reliquaries and shrines, broke the stained-glass windows and terrorized the priests, thereby igniting what is commonly called the Iconoclastic Fury. The rioting spread like wildfire and within ten days churches had been ransacked from one end of the Low Countries to the other, nowhere more so than in Amsterdam – hence the plain, whitewashed interiors of many of the city’s churches today.

History | The revolt of the Netherlands |

The Council of Blood and the Waterguezen

The ferocity of this outbreak shocked the