Transforming the Urban Space
Catholic Survival Through Spatial Practices in Post-Reformation Utrecht
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4162850 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Genji Yasuhira (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and Utrecht University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 255 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 39-86 |
| Publication date | 2022-04-29 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Past & Present (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0031-2746 • E-ISSN: 1477-464X |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/pastj/gtab014 |
| OpenAlex | W4211004285 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 3 |
This article argues that historians have underestimated the agency which Catholics, a politico-religious minority within the Dutch Republic, wielded in surviving the Reformed regime in seventeenth-century Utrecht, the main theatre of the confessional struggle between Calvinists and Catholics on Dutch soil. The Reformed public authorities strategically attempted to deprive Catholics of their spaces where they could live as Catholics, claiming that they were being Catholic too publicly even inside their private homes. Catholics, for their part, persisted in practising their faith not only in their houses, but also in public facilities, tactically deploying diverse spatial practices; they continued to use the urban space as they had in medieval times, and newly appropriated that space as they sought to adjust to the early modern environment of confessional coexistence. Through their spatial practices, Catholics not only actively facilitated their Catholic way of life, but also played an indispensable role in transforming Utrecht from a mono-religious medieval city to a multi-confessional early modern city. The Utrecht case thus bears witness to a hitherto neglected, yet surprisingly dynamic agency exercised by politico-religious minorities in shaping an urban landscape of coexistence
Agency (philosophy) · Confessional · Faith · Political science · Politics · Public space · Sectarianism · Social science · Sociology · Space (punctuation) · Theology · Witness · Historical Influence and Diplomacy · Historical Studies of British Isles · History · Law · Philosophy · Public Administration · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |