Prevailing scholarly analysis of the public disputations between D.V. Coornhert (1522-1590) and Dutch Reformed ministers is firmly rooted in a principled view of early modern tolerance. This study proposes a new point of departure, which involves breaking away from a Coornhert-centred reading of the debates in Leiden and the Hague, while focusing on the formal status of these disputations instead. Government support of the Reformed Church proved the backbone of these illuminating 'disputations by decree'. The public legitimization of the Reformed Church - a goal with both political and...

Sixteenth-century Brussels and Antwerp in combination formed the northern linchpin of an international communication network that covered Western and Central Europe. In the seventeenth century both cities saw the rise of newspapers that compare revealingly with those produced in Germany, the Dutch Republic, England and France. In From Ghent to Aix, Paul Arblaster examines the services that carried the news, the types of news publicized, and the relationship of these newspapers to Baroque Europe's other methods of public communication, from drums and trumpets, ceremonies and sermons, to...