ABSTRACT
Writing about the French Revolution, the English art historian David Bindman observed that ‘revolutionary politics had its language, rhetoric and slogans; its own gestures, forms of deportment and costumes – including hairstyle, its own imagery, symbols and iconography; its distinctive temples, ceremonies and festivals’.2 Of course the Netherlanders who opposed the religious policy of their prince in the 1560s had no intention of re-making the world after the manner of the French revolutionaries. Nonetheless the opponents of Philip II during the 1560s also had to invent their own group identities, mobilise support and advertise that support to the community at large. To that end they entered sworn leagues, commissioned pamphlets, posted seditious handbills, produced political cartoons, dressed outlandishly, wore badges and coloured sashes, struck commemorative medals and counters, devised their own party cry and sang both scurrilous streetballads and metrical psalms; they even – if one considers the fleeting appearance of Calvinist octagonal temples late in 1566 – developed their own style of architecture. Yet because the taboos on opposition to princely authority were then so strong, because indeed the opponents of Philip’s religious policy themselves subscribed to those taboos, they necessarily employed an ambiguous vocabulary and iconography in order to construct a dissident political culture which did not too blatantly overstep the bounds of acceptability.
