At the end of episode 49, we said that we were going to move away from the political part of the story of the History of the Netherlands for a while to instead focus on some of the other important societal developments that were happening concurrently at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries. To be honest, perhaps it is because we have taken quite a long break, or maybe because of the change of direction we want to make now, but we have found it rather difficult to write this episode. The 16th century saw so many radical developments in such a vast variety of subjects that the prospect of somehow covering this all in a satisfactory way in this podcast without being forever consumed by it is, to put it lightly, daunting, bordering on overwhelming. So bear with us over the next few episodes as we, in our typical way, blithely set off in a new direction and attempt to lay foundations to explain how a new zeitgeist of education and learning that had originated in the Italian peninsula in the 14th century, took hold in the Low Countries in the 15th. As usual, it is not possible nor is it our intention to cover every single facet of every single topic which we bring up in this podcast, so please don’t be too disappointed if we fail to bring up your favourite 15th/16th century Renaissance humanist. Cool? Alright. Let’s go.

With thanks to Bill Weedman, Liran Braverman, Dennis van Heeren, Johan Verbeek and Egbert for their Patreon support.

SHOW NOTES: https://www.republicofamsterdamradio.com/episodes/historyofthenetherlands/episode-50-the-granddaddy-of-netherlandish-humanism

PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/historyofthenetherlands

TWITTER: https://www.twitter.com/historyofNL

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