This study takes as its focus the early-sixteenth-century metropolis of Antwerp in the southern Low Countries. Reformation thought made swift inroads into this community, not least via the city's active trade routes and renowned publishing houses. As part of his patrimonial inheritance, Charles V was keen to quash reforming thought in Antwerp, and constructed a secular inquisition in an attempt to achieve this aim. But the city fathers of Antwerp fought all of Charles's efforts to curtail the religious activities of their inhabitants, albeit for reasons that were dominated by economic and...