Motifs and Contexts of a Multi-Scale Building Ensemble in the Age of the Confessional Wars

The Belgian pilgrimage site of Scherpenheuvel, founded shortly after 1600 by the Spanish archdukes Albrecht and Isabella, is rooted in an ideal project that combines urban planning, garden architecture, architecture and pictorial decoration into a unified work of art. Based on this current research topic of the Chair of Architectural History, the lecture gives an overview on architectural developments around the year 1600, which not only covers the south Netherlands, but also powerful developments and models in Italy and Spain.

The focus thus lies on a time in which the Catholic authorities in their confrontation with Protestantism struggled for power and interpretive sovereignty and in which the early absolutist rulers appropriated religious cults and objects and instrumentalized them for the consolidation and centralization of their rule within the framework of sacred building programmes.

The Catholic Reform – especially after the conclusion of the Council of Trent in 1563 – triggered efforts to sacralize the city and landscape. It also lead to a new appreciation of the veneration of relics and images of grace, which resulted in new developments in sacred buildings and pilgrimage architecture. Against the background of the religious conflicts and the ubiquitous experience of war, which shaped the landscape, city and architecture around 1600, the lecture also covers the ways in which fortress construction became charged with meaning and demonstrates the fusion of the concepts of the ideal city and the ideal fortress.