Vrome daden en gedachten. Een revisionistische kijk op het katholieke verleden van Nederland

Abstract

L. Bogaers, Aards, betrokken en zelfbewust. De verwevenheid van cultuur en religie in katholiek Utrecht, 1300-1600Ch.H., Parker, Faith on the Margins. Catholics and Catholicism in the Dutch Golden Age Pious Deeds and Thoughts. A Revisionist View of the Netherlands’ Catholic PastThis contribution comments upon the renewed interest in the Catholic past of the Netherlands. It discusses two recent books by Llewellyn Bogaers and Charles H. Parker on late medieval and early modern Catholicism, respectively. Both authors reject a teleological conception of history and propose studying the devotion of laymen, laywomen and the clergy from within. Both studies can be considered as part of a wider international – partly anthropologically inspired – trend to reassess the history of Catholicism. The author of this contribution applauds these developments but advocates a stronger integration of the study of religious practices on the one hand, and the study of religious experiences and ideas on the other hand.