The Peace of Münster, signed between the Catholic Monarchy and the United Provinces in 1648, went against the political culture of both polities. The fact that the Spanish Monarchy definitively accepted the independence of its former subjects clearly negated the policy put forward by the Monarchy during the "eighty" years that the war lasted and to the Monarchy's declared main goals. For the United Provinces, signing a peace with the archenemy without having brought liberty and religious freedom to ten of the seventeen provinces that formed part of the ancient Burgundian circle was also considered by important groups in the "rebel" provinces as a defection.
Portraying the political culture of both the Catholic Monarchy and the United Provinces, Conflicting Words analyses the views held in both territories concerning the points that were discussed in pamphlets and treatises published during the peace negotiations. Laura Manzano Baena also traces the origin of the arguments presented, showing how they were transformed during the period under study, and discusses their influence, or presence, in the diplomatic negotiations among the ambassadors of the United Provinces and the Catholic Monarchy in the German town of Münster. These discussions are inserted in the wider framework of a Christian realm that had to reassess its own values as a consequence of the confessionalization process and the Thirty Years' War, which affected not only the Empire but also all Central and Western Europe.
Author(s): Laura Manzano Baena
Publisher: Leuven University Press
Year: 2011
Language: English
Pages: 286
City: Leuven
Conflicting Words
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1. Rebels
Confronting rebellion
Religion and revolt: The United Provinces
The Spanish attitude towards rebellion
‘No reason to revolt’: Privileges and rebellion
Sacrilege and rebellion
Negotiating with rebels in an international setting: From Cologne to Münster
Chapter 2. Tyrants
Tyranny’s two faces and the problem of tyrannicide
Fighting usurpers: Defining the tyrant in the Spanish Monarchy
The usurper’s unjust rule
Distinguishing between impious tyrants and misguided rulers
Defying tyrannical rule in the Low Countries and Catalonia
The tyrant’s intolerable behaviour
Violators of legal and moral order
Tyrants of all the world
Trusting the tyrant’s word: The Dutch road to Münster
Chapter 3. Authority
Sources, extension and limits to kingly power in the Spanish Monarchy
The power of kings
The dynasty and political power
Law, grace and the exercise of power
The morals of power
No king but a Catholic king
Ordered and disordered love
Refashioning authority in the United Provinces
Defining political authority
The peace negotiations with the Spanish Monarchy as a catalyst for internal strife
Provinces at odds
The Orange family, its aristocratic ideology and the Spanish Monarchy
Chapter 4. Negotiating sovereignty
Hispanic attempts at a protectorate over the United Provinces (1628-1632)
Relinquishing sovereignty: The Treaty of Munster (1648)
The incomplete Republic
A patrimonial concept of sovereignty
Transferring the rights over the Low Countries
Negotiating spiritual sovereignty
Monarchia in Ecclesia
The Dutch Republic and the problem of spiritual sovereignty
Chapter 5. Negotiating religious coexistence and toleration
The politics of confessionalization
The Spanish Monarchy and its confessional reason of state
From the ‘Arminian troubles’ to William ii’s stadholderate: Religious allegiances and politics in the United Provinces
Religious tolerance and confessional coexistence
Tolerance as (the lesser) evil
Dutch tolerance and its limits
The Dutch Republic and its Catholic subjects: negotiating coexistence in Den Bosch
Chapter 6. An invalid conclusion or a peace not meant to last (but which did)
Bibliography
Index
Avisos de Flandes
