A Brill Calendar: May 26

Defining Definitions

Few pursuits are as harmless as etymology, namely; the study of the ‘true sense of a word’.

The definition can be found in Ernest Klein’s ‘A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language – Dealing with the origin of words and their sense development thus illustrating the history of civilization and culture’ (Amsterdam, Oxford & New York, Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, 1971). The lemma ‘alteration’ is not treated there. However, ‘alter’ is: ‘the other (of two)’. And May 26 is as good a day as any to ponder in innocence on this ‘true sense’.

In the year 1578 it is the day that a prospering and staunchly Roman-Catholic fishing community in Holland, famous for a religious Miracle that happened there some two centuries earlier and attracting pilgrims from all over Europe, embraced the cause of the Prince of Orange and Reformation of religion: the last city in Holland to do so. Naarden, Haarlem, Alkmaar and Leyden testified to their loyalty to the rebellion with outstanding bravery several years earlier.

At that time the city at the river Amstel couldn’t be termed a ‘primus inter pares’ in terms of secular and economic power. Hoorn, Delft, Haarlem, Alkmaar or Leyden carried more clout in rebelling against Habsburg Spain.

It is seldom that a shift in loyalty generates such revenue: whether economically, socially, or culturally. The period 1568 – 1648, labelled by professional scholars in European history the ’Eighty Years War’, lasts in Amsterdam to all practical purposes just ten years. The remaining seventy became for this eccentric municipality an unsurpassed economic blessing, unctuously disguised by Calvinist regents, aldermen and burgomasters. Seven years after this ‘Alteration of Amsterdam’, the established metropolis of the Low Countries, Antwerp, came under Habsburg control, and caused from both sides of the river Scheldt an exodus of people, capital and knowledge, unlike anything seen north of the Alps & Pyrenees before.