Mitologie nazionali e scritture patriottiche dei Paesi Bassi

Prominent among the outcomes of humanistic thought and geographical discoveries, Europe experienced a renewed interest in the Past. This demand took place through the recovery of local antiquities, which turned into a full-fledged ideological appropriation that proved to be auxiliary to the process of building political bodies – as the works of Biondo Flavio, Conrad Celtis, Heinrich Bebel, Justus Lipsius, the Magnus brothers, William Camden, and Richard R. Verstegan, to name but a few, exemplify. The recovery and mythical re-creation of a glorious past, at the origin of a people, a lineage, or a dynasty, represent recurring themes in many cultures and are linked to processes of establishing a ‘national’ identity rooted in times and places that are often extraordinary or otherwise unexpected. North of the Alps, this trend was matched by the turning point of the Reformation and the sensational discovery of a supposedly lost 9th-century codex containing a copy of Tacitus’s Germania. In this mood of rediscovery of the Germanic antiquitates, underpinned by the theme of the origo gentis, this short text helped to fuel a vast array of works focusing on the exaltation of local cultures and values, giving rise to growing anti-classical/-Catholic feelings. In the Netherlands, an area formerly linked to intermittent settlement phenomena, the issue took on the relevance of an inventio; this was mainly due to the absence of an established local tradition among those groupings that historically gave rise to unequal political and cultural experiences, as is reflected in the related medieval and early modern literary heritage.