Projects

This research has two interlinked goals. The first aims to analyze to what extent did the Louvain professors of civil law Petrus Gudelinus (1550-1619) and Antonius Perezius (1583-1672) avail themselves of the discourse of natural law as part of a strategy to define, defend or limit royal authority, and how that contributed to the emancipation of public law and, by extension, for a new conception of the law of nations (Ius Gentium). The second ...

The doctoral research focuses on five manuscripts in partbook format, i.e. five sets of matching codices, from the early 16th century, which were produced in Habsburg-Burgundy court circles. More specifically, these are four manuscript sets from the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (VienNB 18832, VienNB 15941, VienNB 18746 and VienNB 18825) and one from the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (VatP 1976-1979). They are the only surviving ...

The theme of the Ottomans was in the Spanish and Austrian Netherlands a common topic in media such as celebrations, printed matter, sermons, etc. A study on media and communications in the Spanish and Austrian Netherlands on the Ottomans can be enlightening for how the imagery proceeded for the identification processes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, exposing one’s own culture by mirroring it to other cultures. The analysis of ...

This research will focus on the motif of genealogy in sixteenth-century Renaissance art, specifically with regard to prints and illuminations made for the Habsburg Empire, in relation to prevailing contemporary philosophies on portraiture and political power. At the start of the sixteenth century, several monumental genealogies were designed for the Habsburgs, attesting to a growing interest in the theme by patrons and artists. Lineage and ...

This dissertation studies the production of religious books in the Ecclesiastical Province of Cambrai between 1559 and 1659. From its foundation in 1559, this province included most of the French-speaking (or Walloon) regions of the Habsburg Low Countries. Because of its specific location at the frontier between the Kingdom of France and the Spanish Habsburg territories, the region has been afflicted by long-lasting warfare, disrupting its ...

The goal of present doctoral project is to offer a thorough, intertextual and contextual analysis of the phenomenon of political counsel (consilium) in the Spanish-Habsburg monarchy of the Southern Netherlands from the late sixteenth century until the middle of the seventeenth century. Only recently have historians begun to focus on the phenomenon of political consilium in the early modern courts of Europe. By then, the ...

To date, historians assume that the Habsburg state became strong enough in the Low Countries to integrate the once autonomous nobles as docile servants into the “modern state”. Yet, recent international research for the surrounding regions has demonstrated that the development of a powerful state did not necessarily plunge the nobility into a crisis. On the contrary, the noble class created strategies to maintain its social position precisely ...

In 1668 the French Sun King, Louis XIV, established a sovereign council in Tournai for the (mostly Flemish) areas that had been placed under French authority since the capitulation of Lille in 1667. Since 1686 this institution was titled the 'Parlement de Flandre'. During the War of the Spanish Succession this Parlement experienced years of turbulence, being forced to move to Cambrai before definitively settling in Douai (at least until the ...

The objective of this research is to understand the origin and various traditions of the state bedroom in noble residences and understanding its different roles at different courts; understanding the difference in location, architecture and display between ceremonial bedrooms and private bedrooms; understanding its ceremonial function and its changing role in the creation of the court's desired identity. Case-studies will be chosen from the ...