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Project

Training priests for the Dutch Mission. The Defining Impact of Educational Institutions in Louvain on Catholicism in the Early Modern Dutch Republic (1592-1727)

Because of the ban on Catholicism of 1580, the Dutch Mission relied on foreign educational institutions to train Catholic priests for the Dutch Republic. As popular training centers of secular and regular clerics, educational institutions in Louvain could thus exert a powerful influence on Dutch Catholicism. Not only did they imbue future priests with the theological views that shaped their approach to their pastoral duties, they also acted as advisers to the clergy of the Dutch Mission on important religious questions. However, their vast intellectual contribution to the Dutch Mission, and thus to Dutch Catholicism, has received little scholarly attention. Through a combination of archival research and a study of the social networks connecting them, I aim to shed new light on how educational institutions in Louvain impacted the Dutch Mission between 1592 and 1727. I will give special attention to two debates which had a particularly profound and lasting impact. Firstly, disagreements on the legal status of the Dutch Mission not only led to conflicts between secular and regular clerics, but also gave rise to different approaches to their assignments. Secondly, moved by a combination of theological and political considerations, antiJansensists started to campaign against their supposedly Jansenist peers, leading to divisions among the clergy in the Dutch Mission. I strive to elucidate which role influences from educational institutions in Louvain played in both discussions.
 

Date:1 Oct 2018 →  30 Sep 2021
Keywords:training priests, Dutch Mission, Early Modern Dutch Republic
Disciplines:Theology and religious studies, Other philosophy, ethics and religious studies not elsewhere classified