The Catholic Roots of the Protestant Gospel. Encounter Between the Middle Ages and the Reformation. By Stephen Strehle. Studies in the History of Christian Thought 60. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1995. xi + 146 pp. $45.75.

The system of compulsory tithes in the Middle Ages has long been used by protestant and liberal historians as a stick with which to beat the medieval Church. ‘This most harassing and oppressive form of taxation’, wrote H. C. Lea in his well-known History of the Inquisition, ‘had long been the cause of incurable trouble, aggravated by the rapacity with which it was enforced, even to the pitiful collections of the gleaner’. Von Inama-Sternegg remarked on the growing hatred of tithes in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, especially among the small free landholders, ‘upon whom the burden of tithes must have fallen most heavily’. Gioacchino Volpe said that tithes were ‘the more hated because they oppressed the rich less than the poor, the dependents on seigneurial estates less than the small free proprietors to whose ruin they contributed…. At that time tithes were both an ecclesiastical and secular oppression, a double offence against religious sentiment and popular misery’. G. G. Coulton, writing before the introduction in England of an income tax at a rate of over ten per cent., proclaimed that before the Reformation tithes ‘constituted a land tax, income tax and death duty far more onerous than any known to modern times, and proportionately unpopular’.

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Medieval impacts on the vegetation around the confluence of the river Meuse and its tributary the Swalm, the Netherlands

Netherlands Journal of Geosciences – Geologie en Mijnbouw ◽

10.1017/njg.2016.21 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 96 (2) ◽

pp. 165-173 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Corrie Bakels

Keyword(s):

The Netherlands ◽

Middle Ages ◽

Large Scale ◽

Vegetation History ◽

Black Death ◽

Anthropogenic Stress ◽

River Meuse ◽

Pollen Diagrams ◽

History Of ◽

The Middle Ages

AbstractThe vegetation history of the area around the confluence of the rivers Meuse and Swalm (the Netherlands) during the Middle Ages is covered by two pollen diagrams. The diagram Swalmen reveals a large-scale deforestation as a result of the foundation of a nobleman's homestead around 950. The diagram Syperhof shows a period during which the forest partly returns after a long history of unremitting anthropogenic stress. This temporary phenomenon is ascribed to the onslaught of the Black Death in 1349. Both diagrams provide evidence of the start of buckwheat growing.

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Tussen ‘vandalisme’ en ‘la manie de tout conserver’ : Limburgse archieven in een revolutionaire tijd

Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis ◽

10.5117/tvgesch2020.3.005.vanr ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 133 (3) ◽

pp. 499-522

Author(s):

Jacques van Rensch

Keyword(s):

The Netherlands ◽

Middle Ages ◽

National Level ◽

Border Region ◽

Ancien Regime ◽

The North ◽

History Of ◽

Public Record ◽

Ancien Régime ◽

The Middle Ages

Abstract In between ‘vandalism’ and ‘la manie de tout conserver’. Limburg’s archives in revolutionary timesThe history of the Dutch province of Limburg during the French period from approximately 1795 to 1815 is more like that of Belgium and the Rhineland than the north of the Netherlands. The province itself, in a border region of the Netherlands, is a creation of the nineteenth century with a very complex geopolitical history going back to the Middle Ages. So Limburg, located at the edge of several countries, is a region which has never received much attention at a national level. The same is true for the Limburg archives of the Ancien Régime. This is of particular note because the Limburg archives contain the oldest original sources in the Netherlands. Despite this, consulting the archives of the Ancien Régime was not attractive to historians until well into the twentieth century. In the past many records of institutions dating to the Middle Ages were deliberately destroyed or lost as a result of war, or taken abroad, or they were accidentally ‘forgotten’ and ended up in the attic. Not unjustly the revolutionary government during the French period has been regarded as bearing directly or indirectly a great responsibility for this loss. But this is not the whole picture, and the account must be more nuanced. Owing to secularization, records from religious orders were lost in the decades leading up to the French period; and after 1815 there was little interest in archives, except perhaps for financial reasons. Documents previously sent for safe-keeping abroad disappeared from circulation. However, sometimes by coincidence, sometimes by the concerted actions of lovers of old documents, a number of extremely important historical documents have been preserved. The largest part of these has over time been acquired by the State Public Record Office of Limburg. As a result of this collecting of archives from abroad, Limburg has a richer collection from this period than is found in the rest of the Netherlands.

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