For the Military Orders the age of the Reformation was a period of severe crisis in which their very existence was challenged by protestant princes and reformers. Especially in the northern part of Europe the Hospitallers and the Teutonic Order faced serious losses. Religious convictions played an important role, but events were also influenced by processes of state building and the personal ambitions of the orders' leaders on all levels. These and other themes are treated in thirteen contrib...

This inventory provides a key to the hitherto virtually uncatalogued collection of the Catharijneconvent, a museum of Christian culture. Its manuscript holdings are particularly rich in liturgy and devotion, including dozens of Books of Hours, many with fine miniatures, as well as a number of venerable older treasures, over a thousand items in all (including fragments). This book is the vol. 1 (but the second to appear) of a series of inventories of a completely novel type, giving of each ite...

In the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period people took extensive care to safeguard their own salvation and eternal remembrance, and that of their deceased relatives. Their care for the here and the hereafter is expressed in the concept of memoria, which can be defined as the complex of liturgical and social acts connecting the living and the dead. As such, memoria is much more than a religious concept. During her career dr. Truus van Bueren has become an internationally acclaimed scholar ...

Ethics, published (anonymously) by Coornhert in 1586, is a remarkable publication for a number of reasons: it is the first work on ethics written in a European vernacular; it is a mature work, appearing four years before Coornhert's death, and summarizes a lifetime of writing and thinking about the good life; it is considered to be fundamentally pagan because of the absence in Zedekunst of biblical references or any direct mention of Christ. Asked why he did not write about such things as the...

Sovereignty is a key issue in the baroque, and especially in the Dutch Republic with its incredibly complicated political organisation. Consequently, in and through Joost van den Vondel's theatre plays, sovereignty was explored. Vondel sensed a fundamental problem in the construction of Europe’s politico-cultural 'house'. The questions he asked with respect to that construction concerned the relation between theology and politics, also in terms of gender and culture. Since these questions co...

For this special issue of Queeste four prominent non-Dutch speaking medievalists have read Of Reynaert the Fox, the recently published English translation of Van den vos Reynaerde. In their essays they reflect on ways in which this Middle Dutch text could provide new insights in their own research and/or on ways in which their area of expertise might shed new light on the study of the Reynaerde. Thus, Queeste offers a fascinating journey of a German, a Canadian and two English scholars, trave...