This is an account of the ordinary working people of Holland in the seventeenth-century, the so-called 'golden age'.

Taking up the invitation extended by tentative attempts over the past three decades to construct a functioning definition of the genre, Jonathan Bradbury traces the development of the vernacular miscellany in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain and Spanish-America. In the first full-length study of this commercially successful and intellectually significant genre, Bradbury underlines the service performed by the miscellanists as disseminators of knowledge and information to a popular readership. His comprehensive analysis of the miscelánea corrects long-standing misconceptions, starting from its poorly-understood terminology, and erects divisions between it and other related genres. His work illuminates the relationship between the Golden Age Spanish miscellany and those of the classical world and humanist milieu, and illustrates how the vernacular tradition moved away from these forebears. Bradbury examines in particular the later inclusion of explicitly fictional components, such as poetic compositions and short prose fiction, alongside the vulgarisation of erudite or inaccessible prose material, which was the primary function of the earlier Spanish miscellanies. He tackles the flexibility of the miscelánea as a genre by assessing the conceptual, thematic and formal aspects of such works, and exploring the interaction of these features. As a result, a genre model emerges, through which Golden Age works with fragmentary and non-continuous contents can better be interpreted and classified.

Essays by American and Dutch scholars and museum curators explore the collecting and reception of seventeenth-century Dutch painting in America, from the colonial era through the Gilded Age to today.

The Catholic Reformation (1999) provides a dynamic and original history of this crucial movement in early modern Europe. Starting from the late middle ages, it clearly traces the continuous transformation of Catholicism in its structure, bodies and doctrine. Charting the gain in momentum of Catholic renewal from the time of the Council of Trent, it also considers the ambiguous effect of the Protestant Reformation in accelerating the renovation of the Catholic Church. It explores how and why the Catholic Reformation occurred, stressing that many moves towards restoration were underway well before the Protestant Reformation. The huge impact the Catholic renewal had, not only on the papacy, Church leaders and religious ritual and practice, but also on the lives of ordinary people – their culture, arts, attitudes and relationships – is shown in colourful detail.

During the seventeenth century, the Dutch Republic was transformed into a leading political power in Europe, with global trading interests. It nurtured some of the period's greatest luminaries, including Rembrandt, Vermeer, Descartes and Spinoza. Long celebrated for its religious tolerance, artistic innovation and economic modernity, the United Provinces of the Netherlands also became known for their involvement with slavery and military repression in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. This Companion provides a compelling overview of the best scholarship on this much debated era, written by a wide range of experts in the field. Unique in its balanced treatment of global, political, socio-economic, literary, artistic, religious, and intellectual history, its nineteen chapters offer an indispensable guide for anyone interested in the world of the Dutch Golden Age.

This biography recalls the fascinating life of the second Reformed minister of New Amsterdam (present-day New York), Everardus Bogardus, a poor but gifted youth who worked himself upward into the ministry. The first part of the book provides an in-depth analysis of his mystical experience as a 15-year old orphan in his hometown Woerden (Holland) and its significance in the Dutch context. The second part explores Bogardus’s agency in the colonial context and his appropriation of his new fatherland - as a minister among the Europeans, the Native Americans, and the blacks, as a spokesman of the opposition during Kieft’s War, and as a colonist married to the famous Anneke Jans. This biography is conceived as a mentality history of an early modern male individual. Fulfilling God’s Mission: The Two Worlds of Dominie Everardus Bogardus, 1607-1647 has been granted the 2008 Hendrick's Award.