The transformation of rural elites in late medieval Flanders: oligarchy, state formation and social change in the Liberty of Bruges (c. 1350–c. 1525)

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
FREDERIK BUYLAERT ◽  
ANDY RAMANDT
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Rural Society ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Political Factor ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Elite Formation

AbstractProceeding from an in-depth analysis of the Liberty of Bruges, an important rural district in the late medieval Low Countries, this contribution frames rural elite formation by means of two debates which are seldom used in combination, namely, the debates on state building and on the commercialisation of rural society. We challenge the thesis, inspired by modernisation theory, that socio-economic transformation engendered political change in pre-modern Europe as newly emerging rural bourgeoisies are alleged to have become an important political factor, shifting their allegiances between lords and peasants as they saw fit. The evidence discussed shows instead a trend towards oligarchy from the fifteenth century onwards, in which an increasingly exclusive social network came to combine hitherto separated forms of political power, largely at the expense of the growing number of wealthy rural bourgeois. It is argued that this transformation of the rural political elites is closely tied to changes in the established relations between the central government and the regional elites of the Low Countries.

scholarly journals Returning urban political elites to the research agenda: the case of the Southern Low Countries (c. 1350 – c. 1550)

Urban History ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 568-588
Author(s):  
Frederik Buylaert ◽  
Jelten Baguet ◽  
Janna Everaert
Keyword(s):  
Special Section ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
High Turnover ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

AbstractThis article provides a comparative analysis of four large towns in the Southern Low Countries between c. 1350 and c. 1550. Combining the data on Ghent, Bruges and Antwerp – each of which is discussed in greater detail in the articles in this special section – with recent research on Bruges, the authors argue against the historiographical trend in which the political history of late medieval towns is supposedly dominated by a trend towards oligarchy. Rather than a closure of the ruling class, the four towns show a high turnover in the social composition of the political elite, and a consistent trend towards aristocracy, in which an increasingly large number of aldermen enjoyed noble status. The intensity of these trends differed from town to town, and was tied to different institutional configurations as well as different economic and political developments in each of the four towns.

Multilingualism and Language Contact in the Cely Letters

2021 ◽  
Vol 139 (2) ◽  
pp. 327-364
Author(s):  
J. Camilo Conde-Silvestre
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Great Majority ◽  
Substantial Part ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Business Context ◽  
Business Transactions ◽  
Late Medieval England ◽  
Late Fifteenth

Abstract The Cely Letters is a well-known collection of correspondence exchanged by members of this London family of wool merchants and their associates between 1472 and 1488. A substantial part of the corpus was written and received by factors based in Calais, which had been an English outpost in France since 1346 and was strategically connected to the wool marts of the Low Countries. The great majority of the letters are monolingual English texts, thus attesting to the widespread use of the vernacular in personal correspondence by the late fifteenth century. Nevertheless, behind the monolingual English surface, traces of multilingualism are revealed. In this paper, I intend to analyse this issue with a twofold purpose. In the first place, attention will be paid to the multilingual background of the letters, considering both the persistent use of French in late medieval England and the specificity of the business transactions carried out at Calais and the marts, where language contact must have been the norm. In the second place, different textual reflections of such contact in the letters are examined and classified, both as regards the generic conventions of letter writing and as part of the multilingual business context where they were produced and received.

English small towns and the emergence of capitalist relations, c. 1450–1550

Urban History ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Spencer Dimmock
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Small Town ◽  
Rural Society ◽  
Urban Society ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Late Medieval

This paper seeks to extend the knowledge of small-town structures and of conflict in late medieval urban society by utilizing the unusual survival of a variety of sources for the English small town of Lydd in Kent. The main focus is an analysis of conflicts over capitalizing enclosure in Lydd in the mid-fifteenth century from which it then seeks to generalize, and to implicate towns in the feudalism to capitalism debate previously overwhelmingly confined to rural society.

scholarly journals Economic inequality in the rural Southern Low Countries during the Fifteenth century: sources, data and reflection

2020 ◽  
pp. 205-229
Author(s):  
Thijs Lambrecht ◽  
Wouter Ryckbosch
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Regional Variation ◽  
Regional Differences ◽  
Reliable Data ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Income Distributions ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
Rural Income ◽  
Distribution Of Income

This chapter seeks to explore local and regional variation in levels of inequality in different types of rural localities and regions within the late medieval County of Flanders. Our research indicates that fiscal sources for the County of Flanders can produce reliable data on the distribution of income during the late medieval period. The analysis of these data shows that important local and regional differences can be observed in the distribution of rural income. To a large extent, these local variations can be explained by differences in access to local economic resources. Our results, however, also indicate that substantial regional differences in access to rural resources can produce similar income distributions.

scholarly journals Printed Pages, Perfect Souls? Ideals and Instructions for the Devout Home in the First Books Printed in Dutch

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 45
Author(s):  
Anna Dlabačová
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Religious Instruction ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Religious Reform ◽  
Printed Books

This article studies the role of the earliest books printed in the Dutch vernacular in the religious practice of lay individuals and the devout home. Many of the texts disseminated in these early printed books have received little attention and scholars have tended to view them within the sphere of the Modern Devotion, even though often there is no direct link to this religious reform movement. This article attempts to show that the first books printed in Dutch offer an interesting lens through which to study domestic devotion in the Low Countries in the last decades of the fifteenth century. It argues that these books bridged the gap between catechetical instruction and the private home, literally bringing home many of the ideals and instructions that the clergy would have offered in church and thus increasingly ‘textualizing’ the lives of the late medieval laity. Printers such as Gerard Leeu and his contemporaries acquainted Christians to the use of printed books for personal and practical religious instruction and knowledge and thus paved the way for developments in the sixteenth century.

Contesting the City

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian D. Liddy
Keyword(s):  
Urban Politics ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Urban Citizenship ◽  
Town Government ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Political Narrative ◽  
Classical Models ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The City

The political narrative of late medieval English towns is often reduced to the story of the gradual intensification of oligarchy, in which power was exercised and projected by an ever smaller ruling group over an increasingly subservient urban population. This book takes its inspiration not from English historiography, but from a more dynamic continental scholarship on towns in the southern Low Countries, Germany, and France. Its premise is that scholarly debate about urban oligarchy has obscured contemporary debate about urban citizenship. It identifies from the records of English towns a tradition of urban citizenship, which did not draw upon the intellectual legacy of classical models of the ‘citizen’. This was a vernacular citizenship, which was not peculiar to England, but which was present elsewhere in late medieval Europe. It was a citizenship that was defined and created through action. There were multiple, and divergent, ideas about citizenship, which encouraged townspeople to make demands, to assert rights, and to resist authority. This book exploits the rich archival sources of the five major towns in England—Bristol, Coventry, London, Norwich, and York—in order to present a new picture of town government and urban politics over three centuries. The power of urban governors was much more precarious than historians have imagined. Urban oligarchy could never prevail—whether ideologically or in practice—when there was never a single, fixed meaning of the citizen.

A Mathematical Turn

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Oosterhoff
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
University Reform ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Nicholas Of Cusa ◽  
Devotio Moderna ◽  
Court Politics ◽  
Spiritual Reform ◽  
The University

Lefèvre described his own mathematical turn as a kind of conversion. This chapter explains what motivated his turn to mathematics, considering the place of mathematics in fifteenth-century Paris in relation to court politics and Lefèvre’s own connections to Italian humanists. But more importantly, Lefèvre’s attitude to learning and the propaedeutic value of mathematics drew on the context of late medieval spiritual reform, with its emphasis on conversion and care of the soul. In particular, Lefèvre’s turn to university reform seems to have responded to the works of Ramon Lull, alongside the devotio moderna and Nicholas of Cusa, which he printed in important collections. With such influences, Lefèvre chose the university as the site for intellectual reform.

scholarly journals Seigneurial governance and the state in late medieval Guelders (14th–16th century)

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-59
Author(s):  
Jim van der Meulen
Keyword(s):  
State Formation ◽  
Cross Sections ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
The State ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Central Argument

AbstractThis article charts the long-term development of seigneurial governance within the principality of Guelders in the Low Countries. Proceeding from four quantitative cross-sections (c. 1325, 1475, 1540, 1570) of seigneurial lordships, the conclusion is that seigneurial governance remained stable in late medieval Guelders. The central argument is that this persistence of seigneurial governance was an effect of active collaboration between princely administrations, lords, and local communities. Together, the princely government and seigneuries of Guelders formed an integrated, yet polycentric, state. The article thereby challenges the narrative of progressive state centralisation that predominates in the historiography of pre-modern state formation.

Schools of Empiricism

2021 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 261-289
Author(s):  
Andreas Friedolin Lingg
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
Mining District ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Scientific Observation ◽  
Useful Knowledge ◽  
Mining Town ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

Abstract Recent research emphasizes that empiricist approaches already emerged long before the seventeenth and eighteenth century. While many of these contributions focus on specific professions, it is the aim of this article to supplement this discourse by describing certain social spaces that fostered empiricist attitudes. A particularly interesting example in this respect is the mining region of the Erzgebirge (Saxony) in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. The following article will use this mining district as a kind of historical laboratory, as a space not only for scientific observation but also as a structure within which specific forms of knowledge were socially tested, to show how the economic transformation of this region supported the rise of characteristic elements of empiricist thinking. It is common practice to link the appraisal of useful knowledge, (personal) experience and the distrust towards (scholastic) authorities in those days with only small minorities. By addressing not only the struggles of the commercial elites but also the challenges faced by the average resident of a mining town, this paper tries to add to this view by demonstrating how entire masses of people inhabiting the late medieval Erzgebirge were affected by and schooled to think in empiricist ways.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document