Academic Interests and Catholic Confessionalisation: The Louvain Privileges of Nomination to Ecclesiastical Benefices

Delving into the tangled involvement of academic institutions with the benefice system in the Early Modern Period, this book focuses on an anomaly: medieval privileges that provided academics at Louvain, the self-declared storm-troopers of Catholic and dynastic restoration in the Netherlands, with access to the Post-Tridentine clerical job market. Despite their anachronistic flavour in a regional job market characterised by its openness for graduates, these privileges were considered vital for the survival of the university and of Catholicism. This conundrum, addressed via the analysis of the privileges and the conflicts they provoked in Louvain colleges, local church administrations, Brussels secretariats and Roman palaces during the archducal period (1588/1598-1621/1625), leads to refreshing explorations of a fabric of Academia in the making and of the multiple worlds of early modern Catholicism.