ABSTRACT
Spatial practices represented an essential aspect of Catholic survival tactics in Utrecht. This chapter analyses how Catholics produced spaces to facilitate their Catholic way of life. Through their creative spatial practices in Utrecht, which concerned public facilities (including public church buildings, monasteries, convents, and hospices) as well as public streets and their own houses (including clandestine churches), Catholic Utrechters managed both to preserve their traditional sacred spaces and to create new ones. By continuing to use the urban space as in medieval times, and by newly appropriating that space to adjust themselves to post-Reformation religious diversity, Catholics sought spaces to live as observant Catholics and transformed Utrecht’s urban space from a mono-religious medieval city into a multi-religious early modern city.
