Twentieth-century scholarship gave birth to two distinct and antagonistic traditions regarding the feuds that frequently occurred in the urbanized society of late medieval Flanders: that factionalism was rooted in the clashes within urban elites; or that it rose from the tensions that existed between different socio-economic layers of society. This article develops a perspective that integrates those older traditions through a synthetic discussion of the discourse on factionalism in late medieval sources and a reassessment of the distribution of wealth, power and honour in late medieval Flanders. It also connects the debate on urban factionalism to recent scholarship on the genesis of the princely state in the medieval Low Countries. The growing political influence of the Burgundian dynasty in urban factional conflict in Flanders is unmistakable, but the growth of state power probably did not lead directly to a decrease in private violence
During the Late Middle Ages, faction formation in Flemish cities was largely determined by both international and local political and socio-economic relationships or oppositions and conflicts concerning honour and interests between rivalling elite networks. The ‘factions’
of the Flemish patricians often had a concentric pattern, with a core – usually closely interconnected by means of family ties – and a sympathising periphery, supporting the core for economic, political, or ideological reasons. The reasons why corporative middle groups supported
factions are sometimes hard to fathom. The sources show that patrician factions often feared the middle classes and manual workers. These were able to punish newly elected leaders severely if they did not live up to their – sometimes great – expectations. The stakes of such conflicts
were high, which probably explains their intensity as well as the increasingly frequent interventions by the state. Although the growing political influence of the Burgundian dynasty in the urban faction struggle in Flanders must be recognized, it can be disputed whether growing state power
ensured less ‘private violence’. On the contrary, it seems that the Dukes often consciously ‘participated’ in faction struggles in order to reinforce sovereign power in the city.
Résumé Le présent article veut considérer l’activité législative des ducs de Bourgogne de la maison de Valois comme le résultat d’une forme de communication politique entre le prince et ses sujets. En tant que tel, il traite le contenu des ordonnances ducales comme incorporant divers langages ou discours idéologiques, parfois même antagonistes. En focalisant la recherche sur des édits datant du règne de Philippe le Bon, qui formait l’apogée du pouvoir de l’« État bourguignon », cette contribution tâte l’évolution d’allocutions législatives plutôt « dialogiques », incorporant des notions populaires, vers un discours princier « hégémonique ». Ce sondage s’effectue grâce à l’utilisation d’un logiciel lexicographique (Hyperbase) , qui permet également l’identification de l’emploi dans les ordonnances ducales, dans des contextes politiques spécifiques, de diverses chaînes de signifiants propres au duc ou aux organes représentatives de ses sujets. Ainsi, la législation se révèle non seulement en tant qu’exécutante d’un politique princier ou le résultat de conflits politiques, mais aussi comme un champ de bataille idéologique évoluant.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.