Personally, there is a sense of having come full circle with this publication. My academic career began by researching exiles from the Southern Netherlands, who sought refuge in England following the Iconoclastic Fury, the ‘first revolt’, and the government’s suppression of the Reformed movement in 1566–67. While my doctorate focused on the community established at Southampton and the integration of these refugees into Elizabethan England, in the background there was an unanswered question about what happened after these families and individuals left. How did communities in the Southern Netherlands rebuild and re-establish the sanctity of places of worship devastated by confessional violence? My thesis and the subsequent monograph were completed while teaching at Stonyhurst College, Lancashire. The origins of the school lie in the reverse migration of persecuted Catholics from Elizabethan England to the Southern Netherlands. The college was founded by the Jesuits at Saint-Omer in 1593, with the support of Philip II of Spain. Although those who sought exile in southern England do not feature directly in this monograph, there is a fleeting reference to the Jesuit college at Saint-Omer, whose former buildings you can pass walking from the station to the city archives.
It was some years later that I began work on this monograph. It started as an unrealised idea for a doctoral research topic alongside the AHRC The Early Modern Parish Church and Religious Landscape project (AH/E510337/1), which ran from 2007 to 2010. Building on my work on iconoclasm, sacred space, religious architecture, and liturgical items, this monograph presents new research on the restoration of Catholic churches and the material culture of worship in the Francophone dioceses of the Southern Netherlands, after the destruction of 1566–67, and amidst further conflict during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
The monograph draws on both archival research and site visits across the areas of northern France and Belgium that originally constituted the ecclesiastical province of Cambrai. Travelling on foot, by bike, bus, train and, once, by car, it has been a great pleasure to visit the churches discussed in this work. Initial research to identify buildings and church furnishings was aided by the digitised collections in the BALaT (Belgian Art Links and Tools) database of the Institut royal du Patrimoine artistique and POP (Plateforme Ouverte du Patrimoine) of the French Ministère de la Culture. The Eglises Ouvertes scheme, Journées européennes du patrimoine, as well as the decision of some parishes to keep their churches open, meant that many of these buildings were readily accessible. Elsewhere, I am grateful to the custodians who opened their churches for me, particularly at St Jean-Baptiste, Namur. Although the church remains closed for restoration, the architect André Rouelle, Luc Maréchal, president of the fabric committee, and John Borremans took me on a comprehensive tour of the building. Climbing stairs, ladders, and scaffolding to get a unique view of the interior, the upper storeys of the tower, the roof space above the nave vaulting, and to see close-up the eighteenth-century conversion of the original Gothic arches into round classical ones.
Archival research was undertaken at the Archives de l’État, Mons; Archives de l’État, Tournai; Archives départementales du Nord, Lille; Archives départementales du Pas-de-Calais, Arras; Archives et Bibliothèque de la Cathédrale de Tournai; Archives générales du Royaume, Brussels; Archives municipales de Douai; Archives municipales de Valenciennes; Bibliothèque d’Agglomération du pays de Saint-Omer; Bibliothèque de recherche Georges Lefebvre, Université de Lille; Bibliothèque du Grand Séminaire, Liège; Bibliothèque municipale de Besançon; Bodleian Library, Oxford; British Library, London; Collectie Universiteitsbibliotheek Gent; Le Labo (Médiathèque municipale de Cambrai); Médiathèque municipale d’Arras; Médiathèque Simone Veil de Valenciennes. I am grateful for the assistance of the archivists and librarians of these collections, especially those who went out of their way to accommodate someone on a short visit from Oxford.
I have presented papers on this material at conferences and seminars in Antwerp, Berlin, Brussels, Cambridge, Dublin, Durham, Ghent, Glasgow, Oxford, Ronse, St Andrews, as well as at the Sixteenth Century Society conferences in Baltimore, Bruges, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Montreal, Saint Louis, San Diego, and San Juan. I have learned much from the questions and discussions at these meetings as well as from conversations with colleagues including Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, Luc Duerloo, Simon Ditchfield, Dagmar Germonprez, Bridget Heal, Mack Holt, Koenraad Jonckheere, Matthew Laube, Charlotte Methuen, Anne-Françoise Morel, Eelco Nagelsmit, Eric Nelson, Jacques Pycke, Ruben Suykerbuyk, Elizabeth Tingle, Alexandra Walsham, and Philippa Woodcock. Several colleagues have also generously shared material, references, and their research: Maarten Delbeke, Anne Dupont, Marianne Eeckhout, Geert Janssen, Guido Marnef, Arjan Nobel, Violet Soen, Alexander Soetaert, Géraldine Vaughan, and Arnoud Visser. The mayor of Hondschoote, Hervé Saison, arranged for Jean-François Lemaire to photograph an altarpiece at the parish church, while Marc Vanderstichelen, President of the Cercle Royal Archéologique d’Enghien, photographed of the town’s Capuchin chapel. John Trappes-Lomax kindly provided the Latin translations, while the French ones are my own. Tim Grass copy-edited the manuscript for submission with his customary efficiency and attention to detail. I am grateful to Erik Goosmann for drawing the maps, which include many of the small communities mentioned in this volume.
Since signing the contract for this manuscript with Brill in 2010, Arjan van Dijk has been a very patient publisher, especially as the volume has expanded. After working initially with Ivo Romein, Yael Isaacs has overseen the publication process.
Particular thanks are due to Judith Pollmann who has provided encouragement and support, as well as reading the early drafts of some chapters. Margit Thøfner generously provided a critical and perceptive eye over my exploration of the religious art of the period, from which I learned a great deal. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their comments and feedback on the volume. I hope I have acted on this advice but whatever errors and shortcomings remain are my own.
Finally, I would like to express my thanks to Alastair Duke. Although this is not his usual historical milieu, he has been an enthusiastic supporter of this project from the outset; he has read and commented on every chapter of this monograph. It is forty years since Alastair first introduced me to the Reformed community of Valenciennes and the events of 1566–67. I was very fortunate to have had such a generous and thoughtful doctoral supervisor, and someone who has taken a keen interest in my subsequent academic career. In dedicating this book to him, I hope that I can express something of my gratitude and thanks for his friendship and support over the last four decades.
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