Guido Marnef, born in Duffel, Belgium, in 1959. Ph.D. from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Professor of Early Modern History at the the University of Antwerp.
VNC Fellow (1 September 2006 – 30 June 2007)
THE CALVINIST REPUBLIC IN ANTWERP 1577-1585
I worked on a book about the Calvinist Republic in Antwerp, a research topic I started more than twenty years ago. Reading the piles of notes of archival and printed sources was time consuming but rewarding since it gave me a better and more concrete idea of the possibilities, the structure and the contents of the book. The book consists of two large parts, one dealing with the political situation and another with the religious situation. I largely completed the crucial section on the political situation. It includes an extensive chapter with an analysis of the city government during the Calvinist Republic, based on a thorough prosopographical research. I had the opportunity to present the first results of my research at a number of conferences and seminars. I also wrote three articles of which one was closely connected to the book project. I greatly profited from the discussions with the other fellows, especially with my VNC fellow Henk van Nierop and with Judith Pollmann who are both working on the period of the Dutch Revolt.