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.

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.

Religieuze literatuur tussen het Middelnederlands en het Frans

2020 ◽  
Vol 136 (3) ◽  
pp. 99-129
Author(s):  
Anna Dlabačová ◽  
Margriet Hoogvliet
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Religious Literature ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Devotional Texts

Abstract Making use of ideas and concepts from Barbara Cassin’s philosophy of translations and of l’histoire croisée, this essay explores the shared cultures of religious reading between the Dutch and French languages in the late medieval period. While religious literature disseminated in both Dutch and German has received a fair amount of attention in recent scholarship, religious and devotional texts that were available to readers in both Dutch and French have remained understudied. By providing an overview of the most important religious literature that was translated from French into Dutch and the other way around, and of texts originally composed in Latin in the Low Countries and translated into both vernacular languages, we argue that textual mobility between the two languages was frequent and reciprocal. Casestudies of two texts – Pierre Michault’s La Danse aux aveugles and Gerrit van der Goude’s Boexken vander Missen – further indicate that changes – or the lack thereof – in texts that moved between the two languages point to shared cultures of religious reading on equal terms.

Ambrosius Spiera: A Fifteenth-Century Italian Preacher and Scholar

1974 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 448-459
Author(s):  
Ronald M. Rentner
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Medieval Theology ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Late Medieval Period

Our attempts to piece together the mosaic of ideas and events during the late medieval period have been enriched in recent years by the increased attention given to the study of sermons. Sentence commentaries, summae and tracts are the bedrock for the study of medieval theology, but we also wish to know what was being preached.

International Humanitarian Law

2020 ◽  
pp. 117-137
Author(s):  
Aryeh Neier
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
The West ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Sun Tzu ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
Chinese Military ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter explores the notion that truly “civilized” people should set boundaries even in war, which was not solely confined to those who founded Western civilization. It mentions the Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu, whose writings about the relationship between warfare and politics anticipated much contemporary thought on civility. It also identifies some of the leading figures in the Christian Church in the West that called for restraint in combat. The chapter looks into the most significant development of codes imposing restraints on the conduct of hostilities that took place during the “age of chivalry,” which was the late medieval period that lasted from about the twelfth to the fifteenth century. It also reviews accounts of the development of contemporary international humanitarian law, starting with the battle of Solferino in 1859.

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.

Margery Kempe and the Lonely Reader

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Krug
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
Margery Kempe ◽  
Emotional Engagement ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Christian Mysticism ◽  
Spiritual Community ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
First Child ◽  
Devotional Writing

Since its rediscovery in 1934, the fifteenth-century Book of Margery Kempe has become a canonical text for students of medieval Christian mysticism and spirituality. Its author was a fifteenth-century English laywoman who, after the birth of her first child, experienced vivid religious visions and vowed to lead a deeply religious life while remaining part of the secular world. After twenty years, Kempe began to compose with the help of scribes a book of consolation, a type of devotional writing found in late medieval religious culture that taught readers how to find spiritual comfort and how to feel about one's spiritual life. This book shows how and why Kempe wrote her Book, arguing that in her engagement with written culture she discovered a desire to experience spiritual comfort and to interact with fellow believers who also sought to live lives of intense emotional engagement. An unlikely candidate for authorship in the late medieval period given her gender and lack of formal education, Kempe wrote her Book as a revisionary act. This book shows how the Book reinterprets concepts from late medieval devotional writing (comfort, despair, shame, fear, and loneliness) in its search to create a spiritual community that reaches out to and includes Kempe, her friends, family, advisers, and potential readers. It offers a fresh analysis of the Book as a written work and draws attention to the importance of reading, revision, and collaboration for understanding both Kempe's particular decision to write and the social conditions of late medieval women's authorship.

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.

scholarly journals Writing the Ethnic Origins of the Rasulids in Late Medieval South Arabia

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 380-399
Author(s):  
Daniel Mahoney
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Islamic Period ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
South Arabia ◽  
New Strategy ◽  
Origin Story ◽  
Political Groups ◽  
Ethnic Origins

The Rasulids arrived in South Arabia towards the end of the sixth/twelfth century as Turkoman officers in the Ayyubid military. Thereafter they established a dynasty that lasted until the mid-ninth/fifteenth century. At the height of their power at the end of the seventh/thirteenth century, an effort to further buoy their political legitimacy was undertaken by resituating their ethnic origins to South Arabia. This first appeared within a genealogy that simultaneously showed their emergence from the complex web of descent of the local tribes, as well as juxtaposed them with the rulers of the Islamic Caliphate and elevated them above other contemporary political groups in South Arabia. However, after the Rasulid military was increasingly challenged over the course of the eighth/fourteenth century and the dynasty’s influence in the region and the wider Islamic world continued to dissipate, the assertion of their local origins was greatly fleshed out into a narrative at the beginning of a dynastic chronicle of the early ninth/fifteenth century. This prologue explains more explicitly how they first emigrated from South Arabia in the pre-Islamic period only to then return in the late medieval period as its rightful rulers. Overall, the construction of this origin story points to the Rasulids’ attempt to take on a new strategy of identification through the appropriation of South Arabian cultural memory in order to strengthen their political status.

Late Gothic Script

2020 ◽  
pp. 444-458
Author(s):  
J. P. Gumbert
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Late Medieval Period

Surveying Late Gothic scripts of the Netherlands, the author acknowledges similarities to the scripts of its eastern and southern neighbors in the late medieval period, while calling attention to some distinctive features of the scripts of the northern Low Countries. He discusses the defining characteristics of Dutch textualis, cursiva, and hybrida scripts and illustrates them with many examples.

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