On August 7, 1546, a gate with a tower full of powder was struck by lightning in Mechelen. Emperor Charles V had previously decided to store a stock of the explosive mixture in this old Zandpoort on the edge of the city. The lightning strike caused the gate to explode and stones flew through the city. According to contemporaries, the disaster left two hundred dead and six hundred injured, and many buildings were destroyed. The news spread quickly, from Antwerp to Amsterdam and even the German areas.
However, the explanation for this disaster differed from place to place, as Marieke van Egeraat (1992) noted. She recently received her PhD from Radboud University Nijmegen for her dissertation entitled ‘Zoo zee ghesindt waeren’: the news and explanations of disasters in the sixteenth-century Netherlands.
“The explanations given in the news for disasters were – and still are – never neutral. Perhaps it was not consciously intended that way, but there was always an underlying purpose behind an explanation.” To investigate the different functions of explanations, she delved into old chronicles and news pamphlets.
An Amsterdam pamphlet from 1546 provided an answer to the question why Mechelen in particular had been hit. Printer Jan Ewoutzoon saw it as a clear punishment from God for the many sins that people had committed. The Zandpoort would only be a warning for the other regions in the Netherlands. He prayed to God that his wrath would now be quenched.
“I am not in favor of drawing lessons directly from history, but we can see how mechanisms work. One of the most common explanations for a cataclysmic event in the sixteenth century was divine providence, the idea that God communicated—often punishingly—to people about his plan for the world. Even today, the explanations for a catastrophic event are not neutral, but arise from the society in which the disaster occurs. The corona crisis offers a good example: it was explained differently by everyone. There was a reason behind this – unconsciously or not. For example, Trump calling it the ‘Chinese virus’ was clearly motivated by his desire to undermine China.”
“Disasters are inherently social and cannot be separated from society. People are always involved, because it is only a disaster if it happens in a society that is not prepared for it. If we had not built dikes, they would not have flooded.”
Community building
Van Egeraat saw that disasters offered an opportunity to define communities. “By declaring a disaster or a sign in a specific way, groups could strengthen their own identity, setting themselves apart from other groups in society. In the sixteenth century there was a lot of discussion between Catholics and the new Protestants, and disasters were widely used to smear each other.”
Marieke van Egeraat’s publication is part of the project Dealing with Disasters in the Netherlands: The Shaping of Local and National Identities, 1421-1890, funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). “I really enjoy my sources and doing research, but at the end of the working week it did not give me satisfaction. It is quite lonely writing a dissertation. That’s why I quickly knew that I didn’t want to continue in science. It was really my project team and friendly colleagues who ensured that my dissertation is now ready.”
Van Egeraat still works at the university – not in an academic but in a supporting position. While writing my dissertation, I had the opportunity to organize the big conference for our project. I really liked that, and that is exactly what I am now doing in my new job as project coordinator at the Research Office of the Faculty of Arts of Radboud University.
For grandpa and grandma
Her thesis starts with a blank page, with only the words ‘for grandpa and grandma’, to whom she dedicated her thesis. “My grandfather often asked if I wanted to send a chapter. They are Catholic people, so they find the idea of providence very interesting and also see it reflected in today’s society. He said: ‘Well, I took off the footnotes, I thought it was a bit too much, but I read two whole chapters and sent it back with comments in its own way.”; very much with a parallel to the present day.
“My grandfather often talks about an encyclical from the Pope, which he thinks fits in and approaches the subject completely differently. I find his input an extremely valuable addition, because I don’t want to write my dissertation just for scientists. I actually want people like my grandparents to read something in it that they find interesting. I honestly don’t think it would be difficult for me to write it down, that’s not in me. Science should be accessible, especially a historical subject that interests many people.”