© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10 . 1163 / 9789004367579 _ 002 Chapter 1 Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Religion A Historiographical Introduction Bertram Kaschek “Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Religion” – the topic of this volume is both nar- row and broad at the same time. It is narrow because it sets a clear focus on a single aspect of the artist’s varied and complex oeuvre. This single aspect, however, is in itself multifaceted and highly controversial, serving as a keyhole view of a broad field of connected issues. Thus, for our enterprise, the rather vague category of “religion” is not a direct pathway to the essence of Bruegel’s art but a flexible heuristic tool that might help to investigate diverse aspects of the artist’s imagery. First, one has to acknowledge the fact that in the second half of the six- teenth century, “religion” is anything but a monolithic phenomenon. Although the Netherlands under Habsburg rule remained nominally Catholic until 1572, alternative and competing forms of worship and spirituality found increasing resonance during Bruegel’s lifetime.1 Antwerp, the town where Pieter Bruegel started his artistic career in the early 1550s, was not only the contemporary “capital of capitalism” (Larry Silver) but also a hotspot of religious diversity, with a broad range of deviant positions from Erasmianism, Lutheranism, Zwinglianism and Calvinism to several branches of Anabaptism and Spiritualism.2 Starting in the early 1520s, Emperor Charles V had taken great 1  Cf. Cornelis Augustijn, “Godsdienst in de zestiende eeuw,” in Ketters en papen onder Philips II: Het godsdienstig leven in de tweede helfe van de 16de eeuw [exh. cat., Rijksmuseum Het Catharijneconvent, Utrecht] (’s-Gravenhage: 1986), 26–40; Robert P. Zijp, “Spiritualisme in de 16de eeuw: een schets,” in Ketters en papen onder Philips II , 75–93; George H. Williams, The Radical Reformation, 3rd ed. (Kirksville/Mo.: 1992), 95–103, 524–547, 723–753, 904–912; Mirjam van Veen, “Spiritualism in The Netherlands: From David Joris to Dirck Volkertsz Coornhert,” Sixteenth Century Journal 33/1 (2002), 129–150; The Low Countries as a Crossroads of Religious Beliefs [Intersections 3], eds. Arie-Jan Gelderblom, Jan L. de Jong, and Marc van Vaeck (Leiden and Boston: 2004). 2  Cf. Eric Piltz, “Reinheit oder Frieden? Religiöse Devianz und die Rhetorik der Gottlosigkeit in Antwerpen 1562–1565,” in Göttlicher Zorn und menschliches Maß: Religiöse Abweichung in frühneuzeitlichen Stadtgemeinschaften, eds. Alexander Kästner and Gerd Schwerhoff (Konstanz and Munich: 2013), 123–154; Guido Marnef, Antwerp in the Age of Reformation: Underground Protestantism in a Commercial Metropolis 1550–1577 (Baltimore: 1996). Kaschek et al_text_proof-02.indb 1 05/16/2018 6:42:39 PM