Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis - Volume 126, Issue 2, 2013

This special issue of Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis is dedicated to processes of civic education in the cities of pre-modern Europe. We suggest that civic education often relied on what we might call ‘civic mirrors’, i.e. texts, images, monuments, and rituals that offered instruction to citizens about acceptable and expected styles of citizenship and civic leadership, by presenting them with a (positive or negative) ideal type. The introd Read More

Contrary to the strong tendency to consider Athenian citizenship in strictly political and juridical terms, the Athenians themselves often described their membership of the polis in terms of active religious participation. Athenian polis religion was thus an important defining platform for citizenship, while at the same time differences in participation could articulate and display an ideal image of the different groups, roles, Read More

This article explores notions of medieval citizenship by examining the ‘uncivil’ behavior of withdrawal in the ascetic tradition of Western European intellectuals. Although those intellectuals explicitly defined their way of life as solitary, they considered themselves at the same time as belonging to a metaphorical city of kindred souls. By taking a key moment in the long-term cultural history of Europe as a case study, the article exa Read More

The succesful vernacular work Le livre de bonnes meurs (c.1404/1410) by the Augustinian monk Jacques Legrand undermines several historical commonplaces about the late Middle Ages: it made parts of the Bible accessible to laypeople in the vernacular (laypeople are even strongly encouraged to read the Bible); and the author openly criticizes the behaviour of the religious and political authorities. Le livre de bonnes Read More

Ludovico Capponi (1534-1614) commissioned the painter Bernardino Poccetti (1548-1612) to decorate the Sala Grande of his palace in Florence around 1580. The subject of the elaborate programme was the political and military accomplishments of the Capponi family. By means of a text on the wall, Ludovico invites the viewer to consider these deeds as examples and incitements to virtue. He makes himself part of their virtu Read More

This article discusses the rhetoric and function of seventeenth-century Dutch clandestine satire as counterpart to the more official laudatory literature in which the mighty regents were morally praised and honoured because of their civic virtues. While these laudatory texts served both as honorary monuments for the rulers and positive civic mirrors at the same time, their satirical counterparts functioned as moral negative Read More

Laudatory poems from the middle of the seventeenth century present the new Amsterdam town hall as a wonder that completely overwhelms. They describe how visitors to the Civic Hall have to think of floating between the earth and the stars and how the tribunal stupefies them with its lifelike Gorgons and historical punishments. This article connects these overwhelming effects with the propagation of civic ideals and legi Read More