This lecture will address two important questions crucial to the problem of social justice: who got access to the political decision-making process, and what kind of social policy was elaborated by those who were in power? The period of the so-called Calvinist Republic in usually Catholic Antwerp offers an exceptional opportunity to answer these questions.
Guido Marnef is a professor of history at the University of Antwerp and a member of the Center for Urban History. Marnef’s research focuses on the Protestant and Catholic Reformation in the Low Countries, the Dutch Revolt, and cultural life in the cities of the Low Countries, with special attention on the role of the printing press, the chambers of rhetoric and education.