These fourteen "main lines of the canon" are meant to serve as background texts to the fifty windows. They are the red threads running through the history of the Netherlands that indicate the cross-links between the separate windows, thereby helping to create cohesion in the topics, objects,...

City rights are a medieval phenomenon in the history of the Low Countries. A liegelord, usually a count, duke or similar member of high nobility, granted a settlement he owned certain town privileges that settlements without city rights did not have.

The great river of Western Europe whose head waters are collected in the Lake of Constance, and lose themselves in the German Ocean by a thousand channels, was for centuries the highway of Western commerce and civilization.

Under Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, and king of Spain, the region was part of the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands, which also included most of present-day Belgium, Luxembourg, and some land of France and Germany.

The great river of Western Europe whose head waters are collected in the Lake of Constance, and lose themselves in the German Ocean by a thousand channels, was for centuries the highway of Western commerce and civilization.

From the 16th to the 18th century the name Huguenot was applied to a member of the Protestant Reformed Church of France, historically known as the French Calvinists.

The first Jews to settle permanently in the Netherlands were descendents of Spanish and Portuguese Jews. Their arrival in the Netherlands was a result of dramatic changes on the Iberian peninsula, where Jews had lived for centuries in varied circumstances.