Politics, social memory and historiography in sixteenth-century Flanders: towards a research agenda

Abstract

The purpose of this contribution is to refl ect on recent research on historiographical culture within the county of Flanders before the Dutch Revolt. It is a Que sais-je about a fi eld of scholarship, whose scope and interpretative framework is now being reconsidered in light of the booming fi eld of 'memory studies' and the recent advancements in the study of both the theory and practice of late medieval politics 2 . In consequence, specifi c forms of pre-modern historiography are now increasingly understood as a part of a broader set of practices that allowed specifi c groups to construct and to propagate a particular social and political interpretation of the past and the present vis-à-vis the political community as a whole. Recent scholarship is increasingly focused on the intricate connections between late medieval chronicles and the memorial practices of specifi c individuals and social networks.The starting point of this line of enquiry was the age-old observation that pre-modern chronicles were usually quite ambitious in their scope. They also intended to fi xate the remembering and understanding of specifi c events for many generations to come. A clear-cut example of how chronicles could be used to infl uence the perception of both the contemporaries and future generations is provided by Der Weisskunig and Theuerdank, both commissioned by Maximilian of Austria, who ruled the Low Countries from 1482 to 1493 as regent for his

City Portrait, Civic Body, and Commercial Printing in Sixteenth-Century Ghent

“…Hence, its composition was inspired by the conventional allegories that captured the Ghent 94 See in particular Van Bruaene, 2008;Haemers, 2011. For similar observations for the equally popular tradition of the Chronicles of Flanders, see Buylaert, 2010b;Buylaert, Haemers, Snijders;Villerius. 95 See also Van Bruaene, 2009. 96 Terpstra, 2009.…”