Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden. Deel 119

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Summaries

Violet Soen, ‘C'estoit comme songe et mocquerie de parler de pardon.’ Blocking a peace initiative (1566-1567)

After the Compromise of the Nobles and a spurt of iconoclasm in 1566, a general pardon - a collective amnesty - was repeatedly proposed as a strategy to pacify the Low Countries and reaffirm royal power. This article describes how and why the suggestion to issue a general pardon provoked policymakers in Brussels and Madrid to place major obstacles in its path, even though the collective amnesty was in fact drawn up as a salutary measure. Alternate reactions from key players such as Philip II, Margarita de Parma, the Duke of Alba and Cardinal Granvelle actually corresponded to well-defined patterns and conceptions of issuing a pardon.

Evert Peeters, Degeneration and dressage. Natural cures, vegetarianism and naturalism as building blocks for a modern society, 1890-1950

Aloïs van Son, a natural therapist from Antwerp, presided over a successful medical practice in the 1920s en 1930s and strongly believed that his search for a drug-free ‘natural’ therapy was rooted in a much broader struggle against a ‘degenerate’ society that had lost touch with nature. It was only by changing oneself (Selbstreform), Van Son preached, that the modern individual could heal society. In this article, a crucial autobiographical confession by this headstrong and charismatic therapist will help to deepen our understanding of the ‘life reform’ movement (Lebensreform) as it developed between 1890 and 1950 not only in societies of natural therapists, vegetarians and naturists in Germany, but also among their Belgian counterparts. My aim is not, as has been done before, to provide an accurate qualification of the ‘modern’ or ‘antimodern’ character of the exterior ideology of this movement. On the contrary; I will try to lay bare the interior dynamics of ‘life reform’ practices. I will argue that opponents like Van Son found in the ascetic experience that these practices not only provided a refuge from but also gave access to modern reality.

Peter Ghosh, Max Weber in the Netherlands

This article has two main aims. First, it explores the treatment of the Netherlands in Max Weber's canonical essays on the Protestant Ethic. This is a real history and not simply a static exploration of a text, since Weber's attitudes towards Dutch religion (though not capitalism) shifted considerably after he first drafted the Protestant Ethic in 1904-1905. His engagement with the Dutch was a central part of the revision of the text that took place in 1906-1908, a period which also saw the writing of the companion essay on ‘the Protestant sects.’ Here is a phase in the history of this work which has been neglected hitherto; and yet the final text of the Protestant Ethic, as it was issued in 1920, was primarily a work of the years 1904-1908. By 1920 it was, as Weber said, an ‘older’ work. The second aim is to cast light on this history.