Print and Catholic Persistence in the Dutch Golden Age

Reveals the hidden world of ephemeral Catholic print in the so-called Dutch Golden Age, reconstructing lost works to discover the lived experience of a religious community marginalised within a multi-confessional society.

Emerging from the turbulent politico-religious landscape forged by the Eighty Years' War (1566/8-1648), the rich and increasingly accessible print culture of the Dutch Republic generated a vast Catholic repertoire that sustained the identity and practice of a minority faith. Reconstructed from archival traces and contemporary references, and using innovative methods derived from digital humanities, this material reveals how clergy and laity created and used print to navigate their political and social marginalisation, as well as the demands of overlapping Catholic and Reformed regimes of censorship. Print, in both licit and illicit forms, acted as a lifeline, a tool for education and conversion, and even an instrument of religious controversy.

By integrating insights from novel research on early modern Catholicism, lived religion, and the history of communication, Elise Watson demonstrates how the Dutch Catholic experience can be reinterpreted when the full spectrum of printed materials is placed at the centre. Typologies developed for Catholic books and printed ephemera illuminate how these objects structured memory, education, devotion, and community. The result is a nuanced portrait of a thriving minority whose religious life was continually made and remade through print, shaped by local conditions and yet connected to a wider European world.