Willemijn Tuinstra MA
PhD candidate
Area(s) of interest: Early Modern History, European History, Religious History & Theology
Cohort/Start PhD: 2023-2024
Converts and their sponsors. Converting to Catholicism in protestant environments in the 17th century Dutch Republic and Holy Roman Empire.
Leiden University
Supervisors: Prof. Judith Pollmann, Dr. Felicia Roşu
Start project: 1-6-2023
This PhD-project investigates the consequences of conversion to Catholicism in protestant environments in the Northern Netherlands and the Holy Roman Empire in the first half of the 17th century. The project aims to gain more insight in what and who influenced the Werdegang and mobility of people who deliberately and voluntary decided to convert. It explores what infrastructure was available to new converts and how conversion did limit or broaden the scope and choice of networks, careers, friendships and patrons. Perhaps surprisingly, some converts were used for important missions and were able to make grand careers in for example the service of the Habsburg Emperors. The project therefore also explores what made converts attractive agents, how they were scouted and recruited and what role they played in for example the Thirty years war and in post-Tridentine Catholic Reformation strategies. Based on primary sources like private letters, diplomatic correspondence and correspondence of Papal Nuncios at the courts of the Habsburgs and of other Catholic Princes, it traces the lives and careers of a selected group of converts, thereby connecting individual agency to institutional frameworks and strategies.