Episode 23: Overachieving Overijsselers and Holland versus Hansa
At the beginning of the 15th century, towns in the Oversticht, the region which mostly makes up today’s modern province of Overijssel but at the time was controlled by the prince-bishop of Utrecht, reached their medieval zenith largely because of their involvement and affiliation with the Hanseatic League. Strategically positioned along the IJssel river, which connected the Zuiderzee to the Rhine, towns such as Deventer, Kampen and Zwolle were able to take part in the sprawling trade network of northern German cities which dominated trade over the North and Baltic seas. But although the trading connections brought increased power and wealth to the region, it was also here that a new spiritual movement known as Modern Devotion was founded by a man called Geert Groote, who rejected the materialism and excesses of the Church and its clergy and called for sober, inward, religious reflection. His followers, known as the Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life, would spread throughout the low countries and parts of Germany creating schools, copying and producing books, and increasing literacy levels throughout society. But the privileged position that the Overijssel towns enjoyed was to be broken when the rising towns of Holland, particularly Amsterdam, went to war with the Hanseatic League and through piratical actions broke its near monopoly on the trade of fish, lumber and grain from the Baltics. From this, Holland would emerge as an even greater regional power.
What’s the Oversticht?
Located on the eastern shores of the Zuiderzee, the Oversticht comprised the modern day Dutch provinces of Overijssel and Drenthe. It was a mostly rural region which was bordered by Friesland to its north, the bishopric of Munster to its east and Guelders to its south. The most important geographical feature of the Oversticht is, unsurprisingly for the low countries, a river, known as the IJssel. The IJssel was once upon a time fed by a river now known as the Oude IJssel, the old IJssel.
The Oversticht, together with the Nedersticht, which is today’s modern province of Utrecht, formed part of the Prince-Bishopric of Utrecht. However, this was a rather awkward situation given that the lands of Guelders completely separated the Oversticht from the rest of Utrecht. Imagine the domains of the prince-bishops of Utrecht as being like two slices of bread and Guelders as being a really tasty hotdog nestled in-between them.
Map of the Low Countries with the main trading towns on the IJssel in the Oversticht: Kampen, Zwolle and Deventer. Made by David Cenzer.
Geert Grote
The origins of the Modern Devotion movement and the Brethren of the Common Life can be traced back to its founder, Geert Grote. He was born in Deventer, one of these big trade towns on the Ijssel, in 1340, he was the only son of a wealthy patrician cloth merchant. His father, Werner, was in the ruling elite of the town and served as the city’s treasurer on two occasions during Grote’s childhood. It is reasonable to assume that the young Geert was being prepared to follow in his father’s footsteps. But, as we are by now well aware, life in the 14th-century was unforgiving at the best of times and in 1350, not one, but both of Grote’s parents died of the Black Plague. Now suddenly orphaned, he was put in the care of an uncle and studied at the famous Latin School in Deventer, before being sent at the age of 15 to Paris for further study at the Sorbonne, funded by the wealth he had inherited after the death of his parents.
Grote graduated from the Sorbonne at 18 years of age, becoming a master of arts and although the full details of the next few years of his life are largely unknown, it is believed that he continued living and working in Paris for the next few years, studying medicine, theology, astrology and canon law. On two separate occasions during his time in France he acted as the representative of the town of Deventer to the antipope in Avignon and he eventually earned positions working as a Church administrator in Aachen in 1368 and then in Utrecht in 1372. So Grote grew up privileged, with financial means, extremely well educated, and through his early work life would have learned how to wheel and deal with the elite of the Church hierarchy, knowing whose hands to shake and which wheels to grease in order to maneuver his way up the ladder. Up until this point, his life was much like that of many others who operated in that upper realm of the social spectrum.
But sometime around 1372-1374 Grote experienced a life changing epiphany. According to one story, Grote suffered from a severe illness which brought him to the edge of death. A priest was brought in to give him the last rights, but upon seeing books in his house which he claimed contained “black magic” refused to perform the ritual. Upon this, Grote took his books to the main square of Deventer, known as de Brink, had them publicly burned and thereafter made a full and unexpected recovery from his illness,. Following this he decided to give up his former lavish lifestyle and start afresh on a new spiritual path.
Whatever the veracity of this story may be, it is clear that something majorly altered his outlook on life. In 1374 he had his family home in the city of Deventer transformed into the Meester Geertshuis, a kind of hospice or shelter wherein poor women could serve God. There they would engage in devotional prayer, care for the sick, support themselves through manual labour like sewing or weaving, and were free to leave if they wished. He then went and spent a large part of the next 5 years living in a Carthusian monastery called Monnikhuizen, near Arnhem. Whilst there he never took vows, but he must have spent hours undergoing intense personal reflection, analysing his life up until then and where he could change his ways. Furthermore, Grote also clearly thought about the material body by which people connected to God, the Church, considering its current state and whether it truly served the purpose it was meant to. At some stage he came to find himself filled with criticisms towards it. According to van Engen’s Sisters and Brother’s of the Common Life, Grote found his old lifestyle “more unclean than he had words for”. Instead he resolved that the way to live a truly Christian life was to imitate Jesus Christ and his initial followers, and wrote down resolutions about how he would do so.
He saw all kinds of corruption in the Catholic Church if viewed through this more austere lens, and he now turned against it. He determined that the Church was being tainted by the self-interest of the priests, bishops and clergy who were taking positions purely to gain personal wealth, property and prestige. He targeted pluralism, which had become common practice .This is where people would attain multiple benefices, salaried positions within the Church, but the actual work of which they could farm out to others for a lower amount. Basically rich people were getting richer for nothing by manipulating the mechanisms of church administration. He also found it incongruous how many monks lived lives of luxury inside monasteries whilst simultaneously begging for money on the streets. Groote was vehemently against the taking of concubines by priests, another practice not difficult to find being engaged in. He believed that what was important was one’s own personal connection to God and he wanted to get away from what he saw as the worldly and corrupting distractions within the Church to focus on the true meaning of piety and Christianity.
In 1379 he was encouraged to go visit the prince-bishop of Utrecht and, perhaps surprisingly, the prince-bishop showed an interest in the things that Grote was saying. He was allowed to become a deacon, a kind of travelling lay preacher who would go from town to town in the Nedersticht and the Oversticht giving the word to crowds of people. He spoke in Deventer, Zwolle, Utrecht, Amersfoort, Delft and began setting up houses and schools across the region. He worked with a man named Florentius Radewyn in creating a house in Deventer where teams of young priests could copy books. His most famous work is a Book of Hours, a prayer book written in the Dutch language, not Latin, which made it possible for common people to work on their own personal spiritual development. In so doing he attracted both followers and detractors. You might very well imagine that a bunch of priests, living deluxe lifestyles with their mistresses, did not exactly like the message that Grote was spreading. In 1383, enough pressure was put on the prince-bishop of Utrecht by opponents of Grote that he was compelled to cease allowing unordained deacons, like Grote, from preaching. Within 12 months of that ban, Grote’s remarkable life came to an end, when he succumbed to the same fate that his parents had, the plague.
Devotio Moderna
Although Grote himself died, his message did not. His ideas resonated with many people. It is important to remember that the Catholic Church at this point was in a moment of crisis, there were two men running around claiming to be Pope and the abuses which he pointed out must have been glaringly obvious to many. By writing in the vernacular he brought the message of Christ’s life and the ideals by which one should live to have a virtuous life to a much larger audience. Some historians have suggested that Grote can be viewed as a forerunner to Martin Luther and the Reformation, whilst others point out that this is probably going too far. It does seem that Grote was more interested in attacking the morality of the clergy and trying to bring about change within the established Church, rather than going after the theological foundations which underpinned the Church itself, as Luther would do.
Whatever the case may be, the movement which he created became known as Devotio Moderna, or Modern Devotion. There were three separate branches of “the Devout” as they became known. Women who Grote had housed in his former family home in Deventer laid the foundations for the Sisters of the Common Life, and an analogous group made up of men became known as the Brethren of the Common Life. The third branch, set up by his colleague Florentius Radewyn, was a more formally organised monastery at Windesheim, close to the town of Zwolle.
The Brethren and Sisters of the Common Life were communities of mostly lay people who took no vows, yet dedicated themselves to a lifestyle of doing charitable work, taking care of the sick, reading and studying the Bible and other religious texts, copying books and setting up schools to educate the masses. Although the first of the houses set up by the Brethren of the Common Life were based in Deventer and Zwolle, from there they spread throughout the Low Countries and Germany. Houses were opened, amongst others, in Amersfoort in 1395, Munster in 1401, Delft in 1403, den Bosch in 1424, Doesburg in 1426, Groningen in 1430, Gouda in 1445 and Utrecht in 1474. Unlike monks and nuns who lived cloistered lives, locked behind large walls and separated from the societies around them, members of the Brethren of the Common Life were encouraged to take an active role in the wider community.
The efforts of the Brethren of the Common Life in regards to education are famous to this day. Many members worked in prestigious educational institutions and the schools in which they were influential were renowned for the quality of education and attracted the best scholars of the day. But in addition to this, they also enabled poorer children and children from rural areas to attend the public schools in towns. The houses which they created also acted as a kind of dormitory for these children and the Brothers would pay for the school fees of those who could not afford it, as well as offer them tutoring and spiritual guidance. The schools run by the Brethren of the Common Life were also simply huge. It’s estimated that up to a quarter of the residents of Deventer and Zwolle were being taught by the Brothers. In other towns the Brethren also set up boarding schools which were renowned for their strict discipline.
Many famous pupils attended schools run by the Brethren of the Common Life. These include Desiderius Erasmus, although admittedly he did not have many nice things to say about them, writing once in a letter in that he found his stay at the school in ‘s Hertogenbosch a waste of time because he knew more than his teachers did. Martin Luther himself attended a school run by the Brethren at Magdeburg and Thomas of Kempen was taught at the Latin School in Deventer which was led by one of the Brothers. Kempen’s book, The Imitation of Christ, lays out the principles of the Modern Devotion movement and provides spiritual instruction. It would become one of the most read Christian devotional books of all time, still thought to be the second most read book in Christianity to this day, behind only the Bible.
In their essay Why Did The Netherlands Develop So Early, Ter Weel, Webbink and Akçomak claim that the most important legacy of the Brethren of the Common Life was their role in building what they called “human capital” in the Low Countries. Through the copying of books, and eventually printing after the invention of the press, by creating educational institutions and promoting learning for all, the Brethren of the Common Life helped raise the level of literacy in the Low Countries to a much higher level than other contemporary and nearby societies. In the Netherlands in 1500 the number of book editions created per capita was 25% higher than in Germany, 3 times higher than France, around 8 times higher than in Spain and Portugal, and 10 times higher than England. In addition to this, the presence of a Brethren of the Common Life house also played a strong role in city growth in the period between 1400-1560; those cities with a Brethren house grew on average 35% more than those without. This suggests that the strong presence of the Brethren of the Common Life also helped fuel economic growth within the Low Countries in this time period.
Wendic cities of the Hanseatic League
The real power of the Hanseatic League derived from the commercial might of the so-called Wendic cities, which were Lübeck, Hamburg, Luneberg, Rostock, Wismar and Stralsund. Spreading out from this northern part of the German empire, over centuries they and their merchants had established offices and agents in market-places and commercial centres around Europe and their strength and influence flourished because they connected the goods and people of different corners of western Europe. Over the centuries they had built trading alliances with powerful groups and individuals; with city patritiates from Flanders to Venice; with monarchs and princes and high-ranking clergy; with other merchants of varying levels of influence; and so had managed to establish near monopoly access to the source of their strength, the Baltic markets, where so much grain, in particular, but also fur, fish, wood and much else came from. Before the 14th century few sailors dared to sail through the treacherous waters around Denmark, and into the passage called the Danish Sound. The early strength of the Wendic cities, especially Lübeck and Hamburg, was that they were located on either side of the skinniest bit of the Jutland peninsula. Goods would move from the North Sea to the Baltic by being taken overland from Hamburg to Lübeck and vice versa.
The Hanseatic League expanded by coming to trade deals with various towns, and even began projecting their power through warfare. After the second Danish-Hansa war ended in 1370 with the Treaty of Stralsund, the Hansa were essentially given control of the Danish Sound, and facilitated the granting of privileges for foreign boats to go to Norway.
Like all labels of the past we must allow for a bit of flexibility as to what was considered a Hansa town, or what was merely an affiliate. For instance, the right to trade in Norway was granted in 1376 in bulk to various towns in the Low Countries who had formed another trading union known as the Cologne Confederate. This included Amsterdam, Deventer, Kampen and Lübeck. Lübeck was a Wendic city, Kampen and Deventer, in the Oversticht, were not, but their connectivity on the river IJssel made them perfect affiliates for the Hanseatic League. Amsterdam shared the same advantages as these towns on the Ijssel and could arguably be called a Hanseatic city since it had been granted the Norwegian trading rights via being in the Cologne Confederate. So it’s not all cut and dry when we speak about towns being ‘Hansa towns’ and, of course, we can always assume that towns would do whatever was in their best interests first, and then consider the impact on any wider association with this trade network that they might have. The league was a loose-knit association and, although the Hansa cities often cooperated with each other, they could also disagree with each other and towns could and would refuse to support each other if doing so went against their own interests.
Rise, the towns of Holland and Zeeland
The towns of Holland and Zeeland were spreading their wings by the mid 1430s. Hainault, Holland and Zeeland had been incorporated in the Burgundian domains, after the Burgundian Duke, Philip the Good, finally defeated his cousin, Jacqueline of Bavaria. Remember how after defeating Jacqueline, Philip had decided that he would allow Holland to more or less continue ruling itself? First he had put it under the control of a guy named Frank van Borsele, who he then immediately felt threatened by, and removed from office, and replaced him with a guy called Hugo van Lannoy. The position he created for them was called stadthouder, literally place holder, a person who would act on behalf of the duke when he was absent from those regions. The position of stadhouder will become very important later on in the history of the Netherlands. Philip also left his second wife, Isabella of Portugal, to keep an eye on things.
The Hanseatic League was well entwined in markets all throughout Philip’s domains, yet we have also seen how Dutch fishermen were gaining supremacy on the water, and driving innovation within Dutch ship building technologies. They had been busy fishing for herring in the waters nearby Denmark and with this new found sailing experience began sailing through the Sound and into the Baltic. This meant that they could reach ports further north, and transfer goods without having to use the overland route from Lübeck to Hamburg. Holland ships, with Amsterdam at the forefront, operated in the northern region with greater autonomy and less care for how the Wendic cities would feel about it. The Wendic cities did not feel great about it, and they began to blockade and even sack or loot Dutch ships, coming in and out of the Danish sound without their permission.
In 1438 the Council of Holland, an assembly of members of the estates across the province, came together and declared that three years of such treatment by ships from the Wendic cities was enough. In rather grandiose terms they declared their intent:
“To all those who see this letter or hear it read, the council of my gracious lord the duke of Burgundy and of Brabant charged by him with the government of Holland, of Zeeland, and of Friesland, offers its friendly greetings. We wish it to be known that for more than three years the people of Holland, Zeeland and Friesland have suffered unjust and unreasonable damage to lives and goods at the hands of the duke of Holstein and his subjects and the six Wendish towns, that is, Liibeck, Hamburg, Liineburg, Rostock, Wismar and Stralsund... The Four Members of Flanders, who trade a great deal with the Hansards, persuaded our gracious lord [the duke] to agree to hold a conference between his lands of Holland, Zeeland and Friesland and the above mentioned duke of Holstein and the six Wendish towns, which took place in the town of Bruges and then at Ghent. At this conference a truce was arranged, which has been continued from time to time since, in the hopes that the complaints of either side might meanwhile be submitted in writing to arbitrators in order to achieve a settlement … but the deputies of the duke of Holstein and the Wendish towns refused to accept arbitrators . . . and planned to ally with the Prussians and other Hanseatic towns to retaliate for the damages they claimed to have suffered in Holland, Zeeland and Friesland...
Consequently, the nobles and towns of Holland, Zeeland and Friesland have asked us to allow and permit them, in the name of our gracious lord of Burgundy, count of Flanders, to recover the value of the damage they have suffered from those who caused it. And we, unable to deny this, have consented and agreed on behalf of our gracious lord of Burgundy, count of Holland, that the duke of Holstein’s subjects and those of the six Wendish towns may be damaged,seized and injured in lives and goods wherever they can be found, and...that in future no-one shall take any merchandise eastwards by sea.”
Hollanders were no longer going to meekly accept it, and as such the battle-cry went out. All ships in Holland and Zeeland were given two weeks notice to prepare to sail, and the administrations and armed forces of all the towns of Holland were to prepare for war. Eighty ships known as Baardsen were to be built by the Holland towns within two weeks’ time. Amsterdam would contribute the most, with four, but other towns, such as Alkmaar, Brielle, Beverwijk, Enkhuizen, Edam, Goes, Gorcum, Goedereede, Haarlem, Hoorn, Medemblik, Muiden, Vlissingen, Veere, Veenhuizen, Weesp, Woerden and Westzaan, would also be required to contribute to the effort.
What was to follow over the next three years was not so much a war in the traditional sense of land battles and naval encounters but rather a series of privateering raids, boat hijacks and trade blockades which had massive economic consequences for both sides. The Holland fleet was out to recoup the damages which they had suffered from seizures made by the Wendic towns, but also they needed to secure access to the grain which came from the Baltic area. As a result of the subsidence of the sphagnum which occurred as a by-product from their land reclamation, big swathes of Holland became unsuitable for agriculture, a fact compounded by large scale flood events such as the St Elizabeth’s Day flood of 1421. As such they relied on grain coming from France or the Baltic, both of which were now threatened because of the political circumstances with the Hanseatic league, via this conflict with the Wendic cities. When poor weather created crop failures in successive years in the 1430s, the Low Countries were hit by rising food prices and widespread famine, described in the Tielse Kroniek as follow: “In 1438 there was such a dearness and famine in the entire Netherlands so that one did not know how to complain about poverty and moan on misery.” Given these circumstances the war was waged not only for revenge, but also to secure Holland’s ability to be able to literally continue feeding itself. Furthermore, grain was an essential ingredient in one of the most widely-used, lucrative and essential products of the age: that most nourishing of liquids for the medieval body and soul, beer.
The Holland-Hansa war
In early May 1438, a fleet made up of 54 large and 50 small ships under the command of some mayors of Amsterdam set sail to go and confront a Hansa fleet of 11 Wendic ships and 23 Prussian ones nearby Brest in France. A few months before the outbreak of war, the Hansa ships had sailed past Zeeland on their way south to collect salt and been reassured by the Admiral, Hendrik van Borselen that their neutrality would be respected in the upcoming conflict, so long as they stopped in Zeeland on their way back again to be searched. The Hollandic fleet confronted the Hansa ships nearby Brest, but those from the Wendic cities immediately sailed into the town to avoid being captured. The Prussian ships, thinking their neutrality would be respected, agreed to sail under escort of the Hollanders back to Zeeland. Upon arrival, their ships were immediately seized, their cargoes plundered and declared spoils of war and their crew put to land to journey back to Prussia by foot. Ouch. This was, perhaps, intended to send a message to all of the Hansa towns that the Hollanders were not messing around, and that they were prepared to do whatever it took to ensure their freedom to sail through the Danish Sound.
The Burgundian rulers were extremely displeased with this independent action taken by the Holland shippers. By ignoring the neutrality of the Prussian ships, they had risked bringing the wrath of the Grandmaster of the Teutonic Order down on Burgundy, all because some Hollandic fishermen couldn’t tow the line. Piracy and privateering offered small rewards for those undertaking it, but could have much larger diplomatic ramifications. But with what power was Philip going to stop them? Well, Philip decided that it was time he reined things in a bit in Holland. He dismissed Hugo van Lannoy as stadhouder, instead appointing a man named Willem van Lalaing. As argued by Ad van der Zee in his book De Wendische Oorlog, The Wendic War, this was the moment when the Burgundians really began to take proper control of Holland. In September 1439 privateering was ordered to stop.
Throughout that year, the war continued. Much of the sea traffic in the North and Baltic Seas had been ground to a halt as a result of the ongoing conflict, so the Dutch fleet floated around rather aimlessly, much to the displeasure of the ships’ captains and crew who had been hoping for a bit of plunder. The Hollanders and the Wendic cities then both got involved in internal conflicts in Denmark, with the Dutch backing the incumbent King Eric against a challenge by his nephew, Christopher, who was supported by the Wendic. Philip the Good didn’t like privateering, but he apparently didn’t mind getting involved in dynastic disputes. Unfortunately, however, they got involved on the wrong side of this affair, because Eric would lose and Christopher would become king. After winter hiatus in 1440, the Dutch returned and occupied Helsingborg and Helsingor and then went ravaging, taking control of castles all along the Sound. The new King Christopher was not one, apparently, to hold a grudge, because when a new fleet of Hansa ships, manned by many of his own soldiers, set out to force the Dutch away, he warned them in advance and gave them sufficient time to make a hasty exit.
The Dutch fleet then sailed back to Holland, but not necessarily with its tail between its legs, nor with the war over. The Dutch occupation of so much of the Sound, and especially of Helsingborg and Helsingor, would have given the Wendic towns and the Hanseatic League a frightful glimpse at a nasty prospect; that the Dutch, and particularly the towns of Holland and Zeeland, now constituted a naval power which could definitely throw its weight around. For their part, the Wendic cities were not slow in communicating their wish for a cessation in hostilities, Lübeck itself proposing at a Hansa Diet to consider under which conditions they should ask Holland for peace terms.
The powers-that-be in Holland decided to try and increase their leverage, and make it clearly known that they were very much still up for continuing the fight. Around early March, 1441, while the Hansa fleet still remained docked for winter, Holland sent 15 well armed Baardsen ships up the river Elbe, to where several merchant ships as well as the Wendic war fleet was resting. They stole the merchant ships and poured molten lead into the locks of the gate that blocked the harbour, meaning that the Wendic fleet could not give chase. This cheeky Hollandic fleet did not then simply go home with their spoils, but sailed up the Weser river, to another mooring spot for Wendic ships, and did it all over again. Then, to really drive the point home, apparently the whole fleet went and sailed around Denmark’s northern cape, Skagen, and made their presence known to other Wendic cities.
Hamburg and Lübeck and the others put out calls for help to their allies within the wider trading networks, but these neutrals refused once more to get involved. Some, in particular those Hansa affiliated towns on the Zuiderzee coast in the Oversticht, held their own trade talks with Holland. Then word spread that Holland’s ships had appeared off the west coast of France, and were in range of the important Hansa salt harbours. All of this created enough angst within the Wendic cities that when Holland put peace talks on the table, they were readily accepted. A date was set in Copenhagen and in June the delegates from the Wendic side began turning up. And then they waited for team Holland to rock up. And they waited, and waited. At least it was summer, because they ended up waiting for two months.
Map of the Hansa League trading network. Map by David Cenzer
When the representatives from Amsterdam, Haarlem, Delft, Den Briel, Leiden, Hoorn and Zierikzee, along with four councils and a secretary of Philip the Good finally arrived in August, they would have made it clear that they would not be cowed in this. It took only two weeks before a ten year truce was agreed to. Holland received very favourable terms, being the restoration of all their former trading privileges in the north, including free passage for their ships going through the Sound. They had to pay some reparation to the Prussians for the damage they had caused when they took their salt fleet in 1438, but they had achieved their aim of the war, which was to maintain free sailing rights in the Danish sound, without having to suck up to the demands of the Hanseatic League. Most importantly, they had secured their access to the quantities of grain in the north which could sustain their growing population. Even though there are going to be more lucrative trades in Holland’s future, this one will be known as the ‘moedernegotie’ - the Mother-of-trade, such would be its continued importance.
By their belligerence they had shown the Wendic cities and, by association, anyone involved with the Hanseatic League that the towns of Holland were now both willing and able; a force to be reckoned with on an international level. Though the Hansa would carry on for a long time after this, in this war Holland had exposed some major cracks in it, cracks which over the years would be exploited by other powers in the regions it operated and that, ultimately, contributed to the demise of the League in the 17th century. It was around the conclusion of this war that the towns in the Oversticht began to lose ground to the up and coming Holland in terms of their importance to the trade and economy of the region.
Holland had been waging naval war for centuries; we have seen it in their attempts to deal with those frisky Frisians. The big difference here, however, is that whilst those expeditions had been organised by the nobility in their power games, this war was coordinated by the towns of Holland and Zeeland. We’ve seen time and time again so far in our story how towns in the Low Countries had often failed to support each due to their own rivalries. Here, however, through their cooperation, and under the leadership of Amsterdam, they were able to order and execute the mobilisation of a naval fleet to project their power, even when the actions they undertook went against the interests of their sovereign, the Duke of Burgundy. Although this would make Philip the Good begin to tighten his grip in Holland and Zeeland, this war and the fleet is sometimes pointed to as the beginning of a Dutch national navy and of the maritime identity of Holland and especially Amsterdam. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that that will become an essential part of the History of the Netherlands to come.
Sources
De Wendische Oorlog by Ad van der Zee
Why Did the Netherlands Develop so Early? The Legacy of the Brethren of the Common Life by i. Semih Akçomak, Dinand Webbink and Bas ter Weel
Devotio Moderna by John van Engen
Sister and Brothers of the Common Life by John van Engen
Hamaland, Bishopric (Sticht) Utrecht incl. Oversticht (Drente, Overijssel) at ‘Paul Budde’s History Files’
Geert Grote (1340-1384) – Grondlegger van de Moderne Devotie at Historiek.net
Wie Was Geert Grote? at Geert Groote Huis
Gerrit de Groote and the Brothers of the Common Life. at Christian Classics Ethereal Library at Calvin College
Encyclopedia of Martin Luther and the Reformation, Volume 2 by Mark A. Lamport
The Foundations of Modern Political Thought: Volume 2, The Age of Reformation by Quentin Skinner
The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism by Regnerus Richardus Post
Concise History of the Netherlands by James Kennedy
Traders, Ties and Tensions: The Interactions of Lübeckers, Overijsslers and Hollanders in Late Medieval Bergen by Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz
The 1430s: a cold period of extraordinary internal climate variability during the early Spörer Minimum with social and economic impacts in north-western and central Europe by Chantal Camenisch
Cities of Commerce by Oscar Gelderblom
Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy by Marco Sgarbi
The Lubeck Uprising of 1408 and the Decline of the Hanseatic League by Rhiman A. Rotz from Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 121, No. 1 (Feb. 15, 1977), pp. 1-45
Philip the Good: The Apogee of Burgundy by Richard Vaughan
The Hansa Towns by Helen Zimmern