Editing Flanders (section)

==== Beeldenstorm ====
In 1500, [[Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor|Charles V]] was born in [[Ghent]]. He inherited the [[Seventeen Provinces]] (1506), Spain (1516) with its colonies and in 1519 was elected [[Holy Roman Emperor]].<ref>William Robertson, The History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V (NY, 1874), p 116</ref> Charles V issued the [[Pragmatic Sanction of 1549]], which established the Low Countries as the Seventeen Provinces (or [[Spanish Netherlands]] in its broad sense) as an entity separate from the [[Holy Roman Empire]] and from France. In 1556 Charles V abdicated due to ill health (he suffered from crippling [[gout]]).<ref>William Robertson, The History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V (NY, 1874), p 456</ref> Spain and the Seventeen Provinces went to his son, [[Philip II of Spain]].

Over the first half of the 16th century [[Antwerp]] grew to become the second-largest European city north of the [[Alps]] by 1560. Antwerp was the richest city in Europe at this time.<ref>{{cite book
 |last = Dunton
 |first = Larkin
 |title = The World and Its People
 |url = https://archive.org/details/worldanditspeop05duntgoog
 |publisher = Silver, Burdett
 |year = 1896
 |page = [https://archive.org/details/worldanditspeop05duntgoog/page/n171 163]}}</ref> According to Luc-Normand Tellier "It is estimated that the port of Antwerp was earning the Spanish crown seven times more revenues than the [[Spanish colonization of the Americas|Americas]]."<ref>Luc-Normand Tellier (2009). ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=cXuCjDbxC1YC&pg=PA308 Urban world history: an economic and geographical perspective] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151025052002/https://books.google.com/books?id=cXuCjDbxC1YC&pg=PA308 |date=25 October 2015 }}''. PUQ. p. 308. {{ISBN|2-7605-1588-5}}.</ref>

[[File:Incendio Ayuntamiento Amberes.jpg|thumb|The [[Sack of Antwerp]] in 1576, in which about 7,000 people died]]

Meanwhile, Protestantism had reached the Low Countries. Among the wealthy traders of Antwerp, the [[Lutheranism|Lutheran]] beliefs of the German [[Hanseatic (class)|Hanseatic]] traders found appeal, perhaps partly for economic reasons. The spread of Protestantism in this city was aided by the presence of an [[Augustinians|Augustinian]] cloister (founded 1514) in the St. Andries quarter. Luther, an Augustinian himself, had taught some of the monks, and his works were in print by 1518. The first Lutheran martyrs came from Antwerp. The [[Protestant Reformation|Reformation]] resulted in consecutive but overlapping waves of reform: a Lutheran, followed by a militant [[Anabaptist]], then a [[Mennonite]], and finally a [[Calvinism|Calvinistic]] movement. These movements existed independently of each other.

[[Philip II of Spain|Philip II]], a devout Catholic and self-proclaimed protector of the [[Counter-Reformation]], [[suppression of dissent|suppressed]] Calvinism in Flanders, [[Duchy of Brabant|Brabant]] and Holland (what is now approximately [[Limburg (Belgium)|Belgian Limburg]] was part of the [[Prince-Bishopric of Liège]] and was Catholic ''de facto''). In 1566, the wave of [[iconoclasm]] known as the ''[[Beeldenstorm]]'' was a prelude to religious war between Catholics and Protestants, especially the Anabaptists. The ''Beeldenstorm'' started in what is now [[French Flanders]], with open-air sermons ({{langx|nl|hagepreken}}) that spread through the Low Countries, first to Antwerp and Ghent, and from there further east and north.