Central Place and Periphery in Early and High Medieval North-Eastern German Territory

The Central Town Square in Medieval Towns in the (Southern) Low Countries: Urban Life, Form, and Identity between Social Practice and Iconographic Identity

“…This social surplus is, however, in the case of late medi eval Flanders not based on the organizational power of the overlord (the feudal prince or king), but on that of the leading urban residents, the merchant patricians. They gradually arrogated a dominant and independent social, political, and cultural position that opposed the feudal power and might that were at the origins of many of these towns (Verhulst 1999;Wilkin and Naylor 2015;Biermann 2015;Tys, Deckers, and Wouters 2016). As Michael E. Smith (2009, 20-21) rightly notes, however, the appearance of monumental architecture in the towns is much more than a simple result of the rise of a new political authority.…”