scholarly journals Policing the environment of late medieval Dordrecht

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Naaktgeboren
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Population Growth ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Public Morality ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Environmental Challenges

An important Dutch trading centre, Dordrecht experienced considerable population growth and many environmental challenges during the later Middle Ages. Surviving administrative, financial, and legal records help us to establish which bylaws were implemented, and the extent to which conflicts reached the courts. We can document official policies regarding urban space, sanitation, and nuisances, while also determining the responsibilities of residents in matters of public health. Magistrates often reissued regulations concerning the construction of buildings, the disposal of rubbish and offal, and public morality and safety, while a variety of officials monitored compliance, imposing on-the-spot fines when necessary. Since Dordrecht’s wealth derived from trade, disturbances, dirt, and the diseases, fires, and floods that suggested divine displeasure could threaten its prosperity.

Urban Identity in Medieval English Towns

2002 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 571-592 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorraine Attreed
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Civic Identity ◽  
Urban Identity ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Law ◽  
Physical Spaces

Throughout the later Middle Ages, English towns continued to augment both their legal privileges and the physical spaces in which they exercised them. Urban officials struggled to define civic identity as distinct from the rural, noble, and ecclesiastical power that surrounded them. Four case studies from Exeter, Shrewsbury, Norwich, and York allow in-depth explorations to be made of the ways in which towns defined physical and juridical space through lawsuits. The disputes and their pursuit before the law show clearly how urban space impacted territorial, legal, and ethnic identity in late medieval society.

Urban Space and Political Conflict in Late Medieval Flanders

2002 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 621-640 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Boone
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Civic Spaces ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
History Of

Urban public space was a forum for political contests between cities of the Low Countries—particularly Ghent—and the late medieval Burgundian state. Contrary to much of the scholarship on the Low Countries' urban history of the late Middle Ages, civic space was independentof marketact ivities, however important these activities were. In the long fierce contests over rights and privileges waged by the late medieval cities of the southern Low Countries against princely hegemony, possession of civic spaces became the ultimate sign of political legitimacy. But their ultimate possessors often destroyed them, thus ending their power to confer legitimacy on future challengers and/or erasing memory of their defilement at the hands of pretenders.

People and land: rural population developments and property structures in the Low Countries, c. 1300–c. 1600

2002 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
BAS J. P. VAN BAVEL
Keyword(s):  
Population Growth ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Rural Population ◽  
Regional Differences ◽  
Regional Level ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Distribution ◽  
Medieval Population

Population developments in the western European countryside not only show strong fluctuations during the later Middle Ages, but they also exhibit sharp regional differences. By investigating and comparing developments in three parts of the Low Countries this study tries to shed more light on the causes underlying these regional diversities. In this connection, particular attention will be paid to differences in the social distribution of landownership. Examination of the data at regional level indicates that property structures were indeed an important factor in late-medieval population trends. Later sections of the article investigate the various factors which shaped the interrelationships between population growth, density and property structures, thus contributing to a clearer comprehension of the different demographic histories of the three regions and a better understanding of regional diversities in late-medieval population developments in general.

Domina Paupertas: the praise of voluntary poverty by St. Francis of Assisi and its reflection in late medieval Spanish painting

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 105
Author(s):  
José María Salvador González
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Large Set ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Perfect Model ◽  
Material Goods ◽  
Potential Impact ◽  
Francis Of Assisi

As is well known, St. Francis of Assisi heroically embraced evangelical poverty, renouncing material goods and living in abject poverty, in imitation of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, through his writings and oral testimonies collected by his disciples, the saint fervently urged Christians to live to some degree voluntary poverty , of which Christ was the perfect model. By basing this reading on some Poverello’s quotations, this paper intends to show the potential impact that these exhortations from San Francisco to poverty may have had in the late medieval Spanish painting, in some iconographic themes so significantly Franciscan as the Nativity and the Passion of the Redeemer. Through the analysis of a large set of paintings representing both issues, we will attempt to put into light if the teachings of St. Francis on evangelical poverty are reflected somehow in Spanish painting of the late Middle Ages.

Lordship and Administration

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Hardy
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Urban Elites ◽  
Interconnected Networks ◽  
Territorial States

The Holy Roman Empire, and especially Upper Germany, was notoriously politically fragmented in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. A common way to interpret this fragmentation has been to view late medieval lordships, particularly those ruled by princes, as incipient ‘territories’, or even ‘territorial states’. However, this over-simplifies and reifies structures of lordship and administration in this period, which consisted of shifting agglomerations of assets, revenues, and jurisdictions that were dispersed among and governed by interconnected networks of political actors. Seigneurial properties and rights had become separable, commoditized, and highly mobile by the later middle ages, and these included not only fiefs (Lehen) but also loan-based pledges (Pfandschaften) and offices, all of which could be sold, transferred, or even ruled or exercised by multiple parties at once, whether these were princes, nobles, or urban elites. This fostered intensive interaction between formally autonomous political actors, generating frictions and disputes.

Monastic Apostasy in late Medieval England

1981 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Harper-Bill
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
Late Medieval England

References to apostates from the monastic life appear frequently in ecclesiastical and governmental records of the later Middle Ages, yet little attempt has been made to examine motives for flight or the measures which were adopted to recapture the fugitives. The problem of apostasy regularly attracted the attention of the legislators of the Orders, bishops were anxious both to restrain the culprits and to mitigate the severity of vengeful superiors, and the crown lent the weight of the secular arm to attempts at coercion, although an appeal to Rome might often avert the worst consequences of flight. The ecclesiastical authorities were, of course, concerned that no religious should prejudice his hopes of salvation by the rejection of his profession. Those who without the licence of their superior emigrated to another Order, accepted a secular benefice, or wandered off in search of carnal pleasure or spiritual benefits must be restrained, and those sinners and criminals who sought to evade the jurisdiction of their superiors must be punished. Most serious, however, were those cases in which apostasy was a symptom of dissension within the community and polarisation into factions, and where the fugitive sought from outside the walls to disrupt the life of the cloister until he might return to dominate his monastery.

Time and the Testator, 1370–1540

2002 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 133-144
Author(s):  
Judith Middleton-Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Past ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Perception Of Time ◽  
Limited Duration ◽  
At Will

There were many ways in which the late medieval testator could acknowledge time. Behind each testator lay a lifetime of memories and experiences on which he or she drew, recalling the names of those ‘they had fared the better for’, those they wished to remember and by whom they wished to be remembered. Their present time was of limited duration, for at will making they had to assemble their thoughts and their intentions, make decisions and appoint stewards, as they prepared for their time ahead; but as they spent present time arranging the past, so they spent present time laying plans for the future. Some testators had more to bequeath, more time to spare: others had less to leave, less time to plan. Were they aware of time? How did they control the future? In an intriguing essay, A. G. Rigg asserts that ‘one of the greatest revolutions in man’s perception of the world around him was caused by the invention, sometime in the late thirteenth century, of the mechanical weight-driven clock.’ It is the intention of this paper to see how men’s (and women’s) perception of time in the late Middle Ages was reflected in their wills, the most personal papers left by ordinary men and women of the period.

Institutional and Legal Responses to Begging in Medieval England

2002 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 447-473 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elaine Clark
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Political ◽  
Community Life ◽  
Social Planning ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Positive Aspect ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Legal Responses ◽  
Religious Impulse ◽  
The Needy

A great many factors other than philanthrophy influenced social policy in England during the Middle Ages. Although political thinkers steadfastly acknowledged the importance of received tradition, especially the religious command to help the poor, many lawmakers were profoundly ambivalent about begging. It is true that the opinion of the nineteenth century implied that medieval almsgiving was so “reckless” that English “beggars had an easy life,” but more recent research has challenged this perspective, bringing the parameters of medieval mendicancy into sharper focus. Seen individually, beggars were pathetic and vulnerable, but if viewed collectively they were thought to be dangerous and willfully idle. Parliament's decision to regulate begging in the years after the first appearance of the Black Death (1349–50) compelled the king's subjects to rethink the claims of the needy, even though almsgiving had long seemed a positive aspect of community life. Obviously by the close of the fourteenth century something had happened to broaden the story of casual relief, extending its boundaries beyond religious impulse to include the frustrations and passions that animated the political arena. Here contentious voices sounded, although parliamentary argument and debate were often tempered by the conviction that men of affairs could legislate a more orderly realm. Even so, efforts at social planning were by no means limited to statutory decree or confined to the late medieval world.

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