Kovbasiuk S. Popular culture in the early modern Netherlands (1480s - 1580s).

Social and political, economic and religious transformations affecting both the popular culture and its perception by the urban elites have been thoroughly explored in this thesis. Four principal domains of the then everyday life in the Provinces, which sustained the most profound changes, have been identified: i.e. political-administrative, socio-economic, religious and local politics. Social and administrative reforms transformed the Netherlands from a patchwork of territories once governed by the dukes of Burgundy into a centralized state with hereditary monarchy and unequivocal integrity imposed by the Pragmatic Sanction. Religious administration was also reorganized with the number of episcopacies quadrupled.