County Of Flanders Research Articles

Subjects’ strategies against lordship in Burgundian and Habsburg Flanders

Abstract From the thirteenth until the 18th century, the county of Flanders knew a special citizen status for rural residents. Country dwellers, normally residing under the jurisdiction and fiscality of lordships, could register themselves as external citizens or ‘outburghers’. Outburghership has primarily been researched within the context of state building and urban studies. This contribution prioritizes the perspective of the countryside. Studies on premodern Flanders have shown that the counts and cities tried to undermine the power of local lords by providing as many seigneurial subjects as possible with fiscal and judicial exemptions to the lords’ justice and taxes. The accessibility of outburghership and its varying appeal along time and space has not been adequately researched. This study argues that the heyday of outburghership in Flanders was between 1300 and 1550. After 1600, outburghership endured as defence mechanism against seigneurial lordship until both institutions met their demise in 1795.

Tussen corporatisme en kapitalisme?

This article uses returns by nineteen Flemish cities to an industrial survey undertaken by the central authorities in the Austrian Netherlands in 1738, to explore the state of urban industries in the County of Flanders on the eve of an economic revival that would lead into the first industrial revolution on the European continent. By focussing on three empirical questions – the extent and nature of industrial activity, the importance of craft guild organization, and indications of capitalist labour relations – the study aims to contribute to wider debates on the relationship between guilds and economic change in the run-up to industrialization. While the sundry nature of the data complicates their quantitative analysis, they provide valuable insight into the underlying diversity of both social realities and conceptions of ‘industry’ and ‘work’ in this period of transformation. The resulting image confirms a continued dominance of textile production in Flemish cities, in which mixed fabrics have replaced traditional woollens, while showing the tentative emergence of new consumption-culture oriented sectors (such as earthenware, tobacco, soap) and signalling the presence of varied organizational forms (workshops, manufactures, subcontracting, domestic workers, family labour). While the bulk of urban industrial activity was still craft-organized, this did not preclude the presence of highly proletarianized labour relations in both guild-based and non-guild-based activities.

The Various Reasons for Killing Wolves in the Fifteenth-Century Liberty of Bruges

Abstract In the fifteenth-century Liberty of Bruges, a rural castellany in the county of Flanders, a bounty system was established to promote the elimination of wolves. Prize money made the wolf not only an unwanted but also an actively tracked animal, a combination that resulted in its wholescale slaughter. Researchers who have previously examined these bounties believed that they were primarily part of a system of pest control. They did not realise, however, that the inhabitants who came forward to claim the bounty killed wolves not to clear the Liberty of Bruges of vermin but for entirely different reasons, which depended on the context in which encounters with wolves occurred. In this text, I use the records concerning the bounty system established by the Liberty of Bruges to understand the complex relationships between humans and wolves in this fifteenth-century castellany. I first introduce the long series of records; thereafter, I attempt to identify reasons for killing wolves in the Liberty of Bruges and the contexts in which such killings occurred.

The Family De Goux and the ‘Land of Wedergate.' A case of Nobility, Lordship & Social Mobility in the County of Flanders

The Family De Goux and the ‘Land of Wedergate.' A case of Nobility, Lordship & Social Mobility in the County of Flanders

Urban privileges (‘keuren’) in medieval Flanders: charters or dynamic legal documents?

Summary Between 1163 and 1240 urban privileges in the county of Flanders often lack the formal characteristics typical of medieval charters. They consist solely of a list of legal articles preceded by a general heading. In Flanders, such formless law texts are traditionally known as ‘keuren’. The most famous of these documents is the so-called ‘Grote Keure’ by which Count Philip of Alsace imposed a uniform criminal law on the major towns in his realm between 1165 and 1175. In this paper, I argue that these formless law texts are dynamic legal documents that could be updated whenever this was necessary: obsolete clauses were omitted, other passages were modified and new articles were added as time went by. At first, these changes were made to the Latin texts of the ‘keuren’. In a second stage they were translated into the vernacular and these French or Dutch versions then became the basis for further changes.

Zorgeloos plezier

Abstract Fun without worries. Cities promoting fairs in the Austrian Netherlands. Focusing as a case study on the fairs of Kortrijk, a middle-sized city in the county of Flanders, this contribution aims to further our knowledge of an increasing respectability of fairs in the eighteenth century. The city magistrate regulated fairs, but also increasingly had an active role in their organization. Kortrijk had a variety of fairs in the early modern period, ranging from local parish processions to two large scale commercial fairs with additional forms of entertainment visited by people coming from as far away as Normandy. The fairs were celebrated practically all year round and were spread over many locations in the city. They took place on squares and in public buildings. Although traces of the fairs are scarce and need deep archival research to be recovered, there is no doubt that in the latter half of the seventeenth century and in the eighteenth century the fairs of Kortrijk were attractive for all social groups and deemed respectable. This ties in with current research on fairs by, among others, Benjamin Heller and Ann Tlusty, who have situated fairs as visited by elites and actively promoted by city governments. Why this was so, I suggest, is because the persistence of fairs as cyclical ritual in the Austrian Netherlands matched with policies of local government to create spaces and activities of leisure for their citizens.

The Societal Effects of the Eighteenth- Century Shipworm Epidemic in the Austrian Netherlands (c. 1730-1760)

In the 1730s, the Austrian Netherlands (eighteenth century Belgium) faced the devastating effects of the Great shipworm epidemic. Shipworms are marine wood scavenging molluscs that use their shells to eat their way into submerged wood. Due to the changing environmental conditions (temperature, salinity, …) at that time, the shipworm population exploded along the West-European coast. Within a few years the wooden flood protection structures protecting the low-lying Flemish coastal plain were damaged beyond repair. Adoption of new technologies was successful in safeguarding the embankments, but conflicting interests with the governing elites provoked a political deadlock ultimately resulting in the collapse of the Slyckens locks. The ensuing popular anger - together with other political and economic developments - played an important role in toppling the ruling elites in the county of Flanders in 1754. The following enlightened reforms, backed by Vienna and Brussels, had a decisive and positive impact on both the Flemish waterway and flood protection system. As a consequence of this a new ecosystem emerged which reduced the shipworm’s reproductive capacities.

Of seals and siblings: Teresa/Matilda (d. 1218), queen of Portugal and countess of Flanders

ABSTRACT The present article demonstrates that material culture offers medievalists an often untapped primary source, in this case the seals of Matilda of Flanders (d. 1218). Born Teresa of Portugal, she was the daughter of King Afonso Henriques of Portugal and Queen Mafalda of Savoy; as wife, then widow of Count Philip of Flanders, Matilda issued two double-sided seal types. By foregrounding the material traces connected with the countess, an unexpected picture unfolds of a self-conscious royal heiress and staunch promotor of her natal family. Here it is shown that Matilda's seals share signifying elements with those of her royal siblings Sancho and Urraca, arguing that her seal was part of an explicit statement of familial connections. This visual declaration reveals a previously unrecognized chapter of the countess’ history, in which she asserted her place within the Portuguese dynasty from her new lands in the County of Flanders.

Dissecting Violence. Autopsy, Medical Expertise and Criminal Justice in Early Modern Flanders

Abstract Drawing on a sample of 875 forensic medical reports produced within the early modern County of Flanders, this contribution aims to analyse and explain some developments in the medico-legal discourse of violent crime. While sixteenth-century post-mortem reports essentially deal with assessing the lethality of wounds, later centuries witnessed a more elaborate approach to violent death, in which attempts were made to establish the relationship between a wound and fatality by reconstructing its pathology. In this way, medical expertise contributed to a more nuanced qualification of violent crime, thoroughly influencing judicial decision-making by bringing new attenuating circumstances into play, while adhering to a cautious empiricist epistemology. This cautiousness also constituted one of the weaknesses of the reports, making their content vulnerable to criticism by judicial officials whose primary concern was to resolve homicide cases.

The legal foundations of post-mortem examinations in early modern Flanders. Princely legislation, custom, doctrine and judicial practice

Summary Because of its manifold references to the consultation of medical experts in homicide and infanticide cases, the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1532) is often regarded as an important milestone in the development of early modern forensic medicine. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the County of Flanders, a principality within the Habsburg Netherlands, witnessed a similar upsurge in the production of normative and doctrinal texts aiming to regulate forensic activities. Drawing on princely legislation, local customary law and the writings of the jurists Filips Wielant and Joos de Damhouder, this contribution will compare the corpus of Flemish legal texts with its practical application by the myriad of law courts operating within the county. As the princely legislation only laid out a general framework, the regulation of the forensic post-mortem was essentially an issue of local governance. The local nature of forensic practices should however not be overestimated. Evidence from preserved post-mortem reports demonstrates that there were more similarities between towns and regions within the county than actual differences.

Een nieuwe tekstgetuige van de Historie van Troyen van Jacob van Maerlant

Summary A hitherto unknown fragment of Jacob van Maerlant’s Historie van Troyen has been discovered in the binding of a composite volume of three post-incunables in the library of the Abbey of Berne in Heeswijk-Dinther, Netherlands. It is the nineteenth text witness of Maerlant’s text, which was already known as the most widely spread chivalric story in Middle Dutch, although only one complete manuscript has survived. This article offers a first edition of the tiny fragment (25 incomplete lines on each side) and discusses its variants in comparison with the complete manuscript and one other fragment with which it shows overlap. The new fragment seems to be the only known remnant of this manuscript, which probably had three columns per page (56 lines each). The form of the letters suggests that it dates from the first quarter of the fourteenth century, which makes it the third-oldest text witness of the Historie van Troyen. The linguistic characteristics of the verses suggest that this manuscript was written in the county of Flanders.

A paradox of maritime access. Origins and consequences of subaltern relations in a medieval portuary system in Flanders: The case of Hoeke

Although unlimited maritime access was advantageous, medieval seaports and port cities were often incorporated into serving a capital city’s economy by providing merchants with a transport system. Consequently, these outports had a subaltern relationship with that city, as well as tenuous relations of competition and cooperation with neighbouring outports. This article focuses on the hierarchical relations underpinning the subaltern status of Hoeke, one of the smallest cities in the medieval County of Flanders and a minor hub in the portuary system in the Zwin. This city is used as a case study through which to explore the paradox of maritime access and development. The research indicates that arguments of geography are insufficient to explain the development of these portuary systems, utilizing new insights from recent historical research and other academic disciplines. I will demonstrate that Hoeke’s retreat from the waterfront put an end to the paradox of maritime access, resulting in the transformation of the hierarchy in its relations with the capital city.

Corporate collective action and the market cycle of the cloth industry in Nieuwkerke, Flanders, 1300–1600

This article addresses the connections between corporate collective action and economic development in the pre-industrial Low Countries. It focuses on a micro-historic case study: the textile industry of the village of Nieuwkerke in the county of Flanders. This rural cloth centre witnessed an exceptional industrial expansion between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Following the recent proposition by Bas van Bavel that market economies follow a fixed pattern of development, the chronology of the evolution of Nieuwkerke’s cloth industry can be discussed in terms of three phases. This article argues that the first phase of development (1358–c.1500) was characterized by limited success because of pressure from the city of Ypres. The second phase (c.1500–c.1550) was marked by an industrial boom, predicated upon successful corporate collective action intertwined with the perception of social equality among the village’s cloth entrepreneurs. The third and final phase (from c.1550) was one of stagnation and decline, caused by the breaking down of the collective and concomitant social polarization. The case study thereby closely conforms to van Bavel’s theory about market cycles. Yet, the correlation between economic decline and social polarization should in this case be understood in terms of changing perceptions of inequality, rather than increasingly unequal opportunities.

Transforming the landscape: Cistercian nuns and the environment in the medieval Low Countries

ABSTRACTThis article investigates the extent to which women’s monastic communities intervened in the natural landscape of the southern Low Countries in the Middle Ages, irrevocably transforming the environment in their efforts to support their communities. Focusing on the county of Flanders in particular, it contributes to an expanding historiography that traces the impact of human intervention on the natural world in the pre-modern period. Simultaneously, it offers a glimpse into a world where religious women worked alongside their male counterparts, challenging past notions about how gender shaped monasticism in the Middle Ages. While scholars have often noted the role of monastic communities in reclamation activities, this article makes a unique contribution by inserting Cistercian nuns into the narrative, ultimately producing a more inclusive and more accurate understanding of monastic experience in the Middle Ages.

The Great Famine in the county of Flanders (1315–17): the complex interaction between weather, warfare, and property rights

AbstractThe exceptional weather conditions and associated harvest failures of 1315–17 marked the beginning of the worst subsistence crisis in European history. Until now, historians have mainly viewed the Great Famine, and medieval famines in general, through theoretical models of the larger fourteenth‐century crisis. However, this article suggests that this approach is flawed and instead applies recent theories on contemporary famines to the crisis of 1315–17 in the county of Flanders. This new perspective not only leads to a re‐examination of existing explanations, such as the role of warfare, but also reveals the importance of property rights in entitlement to food: the power of elites, the relative number of large‐scale landowners, and the structure of household income all influenced peasants’ degree of vulnerability.

Caring for Cows in a Time of Rinderpest: Non-academic Veterinary Practitioners in the County of Flanders, 1769–1785

Summary Non-academically trained practitioners of early modern veterinary medicine are still commonly described in decidedly unflattering terms; their practices often conceived of as folkloristic or otherwise static and unchanging. This article examines a group of such veterinary practitioners in the county of Flanders, known as cow masters. It argues that the medicine they practised was theoretically sophisticated and in line with contemporary mainstream medicine, while they made use of a variety of newly available chemical and exotic remedies. It is postulated that these newer remedies augmented the market for specialised practitioners, which has important implications for the history of medicine as a whole.

Enemies of the Count and of the City

During the fourteenth century, the struggle for power between the craft guilds and patricians dominated the county of Flanders to such an extent that it resulted in three major revolts between 1302 and 1361. A common punishment for collective action was banishment from the city or from the entire county, either temporarily or for life. A mitigation of the capital punishment, sending those politically defeated into exile, partially transferred social and political tensions abroad and allowed the victorious party to restore order, although sometimes only until the return of the exiles under new political conditions. Thus these revolts were followed by waves of large scale collective expulsions, in the execution of which both princely and urban authorities were involved. After these, however, the importance of collective exile as a measure of repression sharply declined and other types of punishment were inflicted on rebellious communities. The purpose of this article is to explain this brief but intensive legal phenomenon within the judicial and political structures of the county.

Affin leur faire reparacions honorables cest assez de deux voiaiges : brevi note sul pellegrinaggio giudiziario dalla Fiandra verso la Terrasanta

The “compulsory” pilgrimage or judicial pilgrimage is a revealing sign of a new culture which is beginning to assert itself with the success of a manufacturing and market economy, able to adapt itself to this new path categories and models belonging to the the High Middle Ages, to a world which during the 6th century attests to the adoption on the Continent of an essential component of medieval Irish and Anglo-Saxon communities, which is to say, the idea of penitence. In this way, with the aim of understanding more clearly the evolution of the compulsory pilgrimage, it might be useful to refer to the general aspects of judicial pilgrimage as an experiment and a form of personal growth. Special attention has been paid to the introduction of “compulsory” pilgrimages within the context to the County of Flanders in the cities such as Gand, Bruges, Antwerp and Brussels where it was used as a sanction imposed on citizens guilty of certain criminal acts. That these same citizens should keep the peace was an essential condition for the well-being and the development of the community at large, and thus pilgrimage came to be used as a kind of compensation for serious offences or crimes that went against the peace and the equilibrium of the community. When analysing these documents certain elements and characteristics particular to compulsory pilgrimage may be discerned, as well as the relation between crime and punishment which, nonetheless, has not been identified within the general context of social custom. Using valuable sources such as city statutes and sentences from magistrates’ courts it has been possible to examine some concrete cases where enforced pilgrimage to Jerusalem was applied as an amendment.

The Identity of the urban ‘Commoners’ in 13th century Flanders

This article studies the social protest of the 1280s in the main cities of the county of Flanders. The protestors were a very heterogeneous group, because wealthy tradesmen, craftsmen and middle class artisans united forces to fight their common enemy, the established families that had governed the cities for many decades. The protesters had a shared, distinct and insistent identity. They presented themselves as the meentucht, a vernacular translation (or better: a contemporary interpretation) of the Latin communitas. The use of this term as a basis for their self-definition justified their protest because the rebels saw themselves as the true commoners of the city.

Heating the house. An archaeological and archaeometrical investigation into the tile-stoves of late-medieval Flanders, Belgium (14–17th centuries)

SUMMARY: Tile stoves arise in the Low Countries from the 14th century onwards. Although they have been well documented in northern and central Europe, they have remained an almost forgotten aspect of the material culture of the historic county of Flanders (Belgium). In recent years the amount of stove tiles found in archaeological excavations has increased considerably, raising questions concerning their production and origin. Micro X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy was used to determine the elemental composition of these tiles to see if they could be divided into groups and what these groups could tell us about the distribution of workshops, resources and finished products.