Reproduction of the original.

This volume examines the period of history which looks at counter-reformation and the price revolution, 1559-1610.

The Dutch Revolt has long been hailed as the triumph of political freedom over monarchical tyranny. In 1781, John Adams observed that the American Revolution was its "transcript." Known for its many protagonists—King Philip II, the Duke of Alba, the counts of Egmont and Hornes, radical Calvinists, obstreperous townspeople, and William of Orange—the Dutch Revolt brought into relief conflicts among civic freedoms, religious dissent, representative institutions, and royal authority. Drawing on a vast array of sources-including archival documents, political and religious pamphlets, ballads, chronicles and letters, and a rich store of popular prints-Peter Arnade gives us a new history of the core years of the revolt between 1566 and 1585, showing how the act of rebellion forged a political identity through ritual, symbol, and public action. In Beggars, Iconoclasts, and Civic Patriots, Arnade focuses on the political culture that took shape during the Revolt, a culture that itself fueled decades of turmoil. He sees the pulse of the Revolt in its public dramatization-the acts, words, and cultural representations that were its "daily bread and popular voice." The violent wave of radical iconoclasm that swept the southern Netherlands in 1566 is the book's pivot, setting the stage for the Duke of Alba's brutal effort to restore the authority of the Spanish crown. Arnade details the sieges and violent sacks of Dutch cities by the Army of Flanders, and the response of Dutch rebels, who touted defiant cities as the seats and guarantors of unassailable rights and freedoms. This civic patriotism hailed William of Orange as father of the fatherland, his apotheosis hearkening back to late medieval princely ritual even as it invoked new republican imagery.

In Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court: Antiquity as Innovation, Dirk Jansen provides a survey of the life and career of the antiquary, architect, and courtier Jacopo Strada (Mantua 1515–Vienna 1588). His manifold activities — also as a publisher and as an agent and artistic and scholarly advisor of powerful patrons such as Hans Jakob Fugger, the Duke of Bavaria and the Emperors Ferdinand I and Maximilian II — are examined in detail, and studied within the context of the cosmopolitan learned and courtly environments in which he moved. These volumes offer a substantial reassessment of Strada’s importance as an agent of change, transmitting the ideas and artistic language of the Italian Renaissance to the North.