Judith Pollmann, born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 1964. Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam. Associate Professor in Early Modern Dutch History at Leiden University.
Fellow (1 September 2006 – 31 January 2007)
CATHOLIC IDENTITY AND RELIGIOUS CHANGE IN THE HABSBURG NETHERLANDS, 1520-1635
I had planned to use my stay at NIAS to complete the first draft of a book, provisionally entitled Catholic identity and religious change in the early modern Netherlands, 1520-1625, that explores the response of Netherlandish Catholics to the religious and political changes that were precipitated by the Reformations of the sixteenth century. Using the writings of lay Catholic diarists, poets and pamphleteers rather than ecclesiastical archives, the book argues that the initial ‘passivity’ of Netherlandish Catholics and their later radicalisation in the face of the Protestant challenge can be explained by the extent to which clerics were prepared to mobilise lay people for the Catholic cause, and allow them a stake in the survival of the Church. I wrote the introduction and four of the seven chapters. The outline of the other chapters is clear in my mind and I hope to be able to complete the book this coming summer.