page_title: Calvinist Republic of Ghent
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Calvinist Republic of Ghent / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Execution of Sodomite monks in Ghent, June 28, 1578. Italiano: Alcuni frati sodomiti sono garrotati (si noti il boia in azione a sinistra) e il loro cadavere è bruciato, a Gand, in Belgio, il 28 giugno 1578 (la data si legge in fondo alla didascalia). Nederlands: Executies van monniken op de Gentse vrijdagmarkt, 28 juni 1578.
context_page_description: The Calvinist Republic of Ghent was a Calvinist republic that existed between 1577 and 1584 in the Flemish independent city of Ghent.
context_section_description: After the States General of the Netherlands had concluded the peace treaty, called the Pacification of Ghent, with the rebelling provinces of Holland and Zeeland on 8 November 1576, thereby throwing down the gauntlet to the government of the overlord of the Habsburg Netherlands, king Philip II of Spain (who was count Philip III of Flanders), the royal stadtholder of Flanders Jan van Croÿ chose the side of the rebels and helped the citizens of Ghent subdue the Spanjaardenkasteel in the city. However, when the new royal governor-general of the Netherlands, Don Juan of Austria arrived in the country, Croÿ resigned his post, and was replaced by Philippe III de Croÿ, duke of Aarschot (and therefore commonly called Aarschot in the literature) by appointment of the States General. However, Aarschot was a prominent Roman Catholic and therefore not trusted by the Calvinists in Ghent.
  On 28 October 1577 the Ghent magistracy under the leadership of two prominent Calvinists, Jan van Hembyse and François van Ryhove performed a Coup d'état with the tacit approval of the Prince of Orange and took power in Flanders. Aarschot, the grootbaljuw of Ghent, and the bishops of Bruges and Ypres were arrested. Previously a similar coup had taken place in the capital of the Duchy of Brabant, Brussels and there the city government had been taken over by a Council of 18 members, called the Achttienmannen. Ghent similarly now installed a similar council for its new government, also called the Achttienmannen. Hembyse became the chairman of this council with the title of First Schepen. Hembyse had the support of the noted Calvinist clergymen Petrus Dathenus and Herman Moded who helped him keep control of the Calvinist "mob". He armed the citizens of Ghent and hired Scottish mercenaries. This gave him the military means to conquer a number of other Flemish cities where similar Calvinist city republics, governed by councils of Achttienmannen were formed.
  The Ghent Calvinists were not interested in Orange's "religious peace", but wanted to persecute their Catholic opponents as stringently as the Catholics had previously persecuted the Calvinists. Hembyse and Ryhove orchestrated an Iconoclastic Fury in Ghent in May 1578 after rumors of sodomy by monks of a local Catholic monastery had spread. The monks were arrested, tried, and (after they had confessed under torture) convicted and sentenced to be burned at the stake. These persecutions, and also the terror of the Scottish mercenaries who mercilessly looted the Flanders countryside, provoked a Catholic reaction, led by the faction of the Malcontents, that eventually would cause the secession of the Walloon provinces, who were united in the Union of Arras and concluded a separate peace with the Spanish Crown at the Treaty of Arras in May 1579.
  The Union of Arras was countered by the defensive Union of Utrecht and the Ghent Republic joined that union already on 4 February 1579. King Philip was declared to have vacated the throne (two years before the States General did the same thing in the Act of Abjuration) on 6 August 1579. The Ghent magistracy assumed his sovereign powers for the city republic.
caption: Execution of Ghent monks for alleged sodomy
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