ABSTRACT
This chapter explore the strategies among a small network of Catholics in an urban setting, the Dutch city of Leiden. By taking a closer look at a set of urban Catholic memory practices, it shows that in the very memory practices that were intended to assert the differences between past and present, we also find peculiar parallels and continuities between the pre- and post-Reformation world. Just as pre-Reformation magistrates had done, Leiden’s rebel authorities immediately began to invest in the commemoration of this providential end to their plight. As traditional Catholic memory practices disappeared from Leiden’s public sphere, a new set of counter-memories that focused on the Catholic victims of the Revolt in Leiden began to make an appearance. While many of Leiden’s Catholics in 1734 hoped for a restoration of power, others argued that ‘true Catholics’ should reject all revolutionary aspirations; content enough with their position in Dutch society, they thought themselves good patriots.
