"A wonderfull tryumfe, for the wynnyng of a pryse": guilds, ritual, theater, and the urban network in the Southern Low Countries, ca. 1450-1650*.

1. INTRODUCTION

On 4 August 1561 Richard Clough wrote one of his many letters from Antwerp to London to inform his master Sir Thomas Gresham, financial agent of and advisor to the English Crown, on local affairs. Clough notes that nothing had happened worthy of writing "savying that, as yesterday, (being the 3rd of August,) here hathe beene in thys towne of Andwarpe a wonderfull tryumfe, for the wynnyng of a pryse, weche ys callyd the Lande Juell." (1) Clough is referring to the entry of the Chambers of Rhetoric that participated in the Landjuweel, a large Brabantine theater competition that (in theory) was held every three years. However, due to the wars with France and the growing distrust of the central authorities towards theater practices in general--and the rhetorician guilds in particular--twenty years had passed since the previous Landjuweel had taken place in the town of Diest in 1541. Although negotiations with the court of the governess Margaret of Parma (1522-86) had been long and difficult, both the city council of Antwerp and the city's principal Chamber De Violieren (The Stockflowers) were determined to turn the competition into an unparalleled celebration of the city, its wealth, and its relations within the Brabantine urban network. (2)

These efforts and their effects did not escape Clough's keen eye. First of all, he notes that the ten-day festival would probably cost 100,000 marks. Because he was not sure his master had witnessed a similar competition during his own time in Antwerp, he offers Gresham a short introduction into the basics of rhetorician culture, where he notes that "every towne in thys lande hathe one company or 2 of Reteryke, so well as thys towne." He points out that the principal prize was awarded to the best play, but that there were also prizes for the best entry, the funniest fool, the most solemn church attendance and the most solemn mass, for the most impressive fireworks, and for many other categories. He continues with a lengthy description of the pageants of the participating Chambers, paying special attention to the costumes and the adornment of the wagons. Clough is particularly impressed with the entry of the Brussels Chamber, "weche methinks was a dreme." He estimates that the total number of horsemen and men and children on wagons equaled a thousand. (3) Finally, Clough concludes his description with a mixture of marvel and concern. He favorably compares the entry of the Brussels rhetorician guild in 1561 with the entry of Emperor Charles V (1500-58) and his son--then the future lord of the Netherlands and future King of Spain Philip II (1527-98)--into the same city in 1549, an entry that had been heavily sponsored by the foreign nations: "Thys was the strangyst matter that ever I sawe, or I thynke that ever I shall see; for the coming of King Fylyppe to Andwarpe, with the cost of all the nasyons together in apparel, was not to be comparyd to thys done by the towne of Brussells. And they shall wyn no more with all, but a skalle of syllver weying 6 ownsys!--I wolde to God that some of owre gentyllmen and nobellmen of England had sene thys,--(I mene them that think the world is made of ottemell) and then it wold make them to thynke that ther ar other as wee ar, and so provide for the tyme to come; for they that can do thys, can do more." (4)

Richard Clough's remarkable letter, with all its invaluable observations and inevitable exaggerations, illustrates that the Chambers of Rhetoric occupied a central place in the vibrant urban life of the sixteenth-century Low Countries. These guilds or confraternities of laymen devoted to the practice of vernacular theater and poetry--or what they called the Dutch Art of Rhetoric (Const van Rhetoriken)--were a remarkable variant on the merchant and artisan guilds, religious confraternities, and shooting guilds that existed all around Western Europe. The Chambers of Rhetoric trained their members in the writing and reciting of versed texts and in the performance of plays. They also participated in civic festivities such as processions, princely entries, and peace celebrations and, at the same time, organized their own theater and poetry festivals both in the public sphere and in the semiprivate sphere of their meeting-places. The Chambers of Rhetoric were founded by local inhabitants not only in large metropolitan centers such as Antwerp and Brussels, but also in small towns and even, in some regions, in villages.

This essay aims to establish the role of the Chambers of Rhetoric--and, in particular, the competitions they organized--in the construction of an urban culture in the Low Countries that resembled, and at the same time differed considerably from, those in other regions such as northern Italy and England. However, in order to do this, it is necessary first to define the concept of urban culture further. Therefore, in line with recent scholarship on urban society, the importance of public space and of urban association in the creation of a civic identity is discussed. Second, it is argued that the Chambers of Rhetoric offer an excellent tool for the analysis of urban culture in the early modern Southern Low Countries. Finally, the public regional and interregional theater contests the Chambers of Rhetoric organized are examined in greater detail to demonstrate the role of the Chambers of Rhetoric--alongside other festive groups--in what can be labeled, in the terms of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, as an economy of symbolic exchanges. (5) It is the central argument of this essay that urban culture in the Southern Low Countries was open, flexible, and multilayered and that it drew its meaning not only from social relations within the city, but also, and significantly, from the complex relations within the urban network.

2. URBAN CULTURE IN THE LOW COUNTRIES

Since the attention in Low Countries historiography has turned from social structures and quantitative methods to social representation and qualitative methods, a growing number of scholars has argued that the development of a dense network of cities and towns in the core regions of the Netherlands generated not only complex economic structures, new social settings, and sophisticated political institutions, but also a distinct urban culture. (6) In addition, the notion of urban culture has brought social historians, literary historians, and art historians together in interdisciplinary debates that focus on communication, ritual, and social representation in art and literature. (7) However, a definition of the concept of urban culture, applicable to the geographical and social context of the Low Countries, is lacking, and is usually not even discussed in studies that claim urban culture as a central theme. Yet only by a better understanding of the essence of Low Countries urban culture can we engage in meaningful comparisons with other highly urbanized regions. The recent work of Edward Muir on the sources of civil society and social trust in Renaissance Italy demonstrates the relevance of such questions, not only from a purely historical point of view but also in view of contemporary debates on social capital and civic culture. (8) The case of the Low Countries is especially relevant, because while the humanist rhetoric on the values of civil society was certainly less developed when compared with Northern Italy, its urbanites seem to have been marked by (at least) an equally strong civic identity. (9) Thus, the study of Low Countries urban cultural practices can give us better insight into the workings and varieties of Renaissance culture.

Muir makes an important point in one of his essays: to measure the effectiveness of Renaissance civil society we have to look beyond the city walls to assess whether communal institutions and civic practices allowed for the integration of large groups of Italian society. (10) Likewise, Low Countries urban society cannot be understood without taking into account the relations with the countryside and within the urban network. In fact, in socioeconomic studies more and more attention is given to the role of a city as a central place within its rural settings or within a larger urban network. (11) Most students of urban culture, however, continue to focus on the construction of social relations within the city and to make an abstraction of the city's role in a broader system. (12)

When we define cities as central places, the question is whether it is possible to discern practices and values that can be labeled urban culture. In line with recent scholarship, I argue that public space was one crucial binding force of early modern urban society and urban culture. (13) The concept of public space evokes the dialectical relationship between, on the one hand, the material reality of cities and, on the other, the symbolic practices that infuse this material reality with meaning. Moreover, the concept of public space can also inform the relations of a city or town with the outside world. The most evident example is that of the marketplace. While the marketplace was often situated literally in the heart of the city, it drew its meaning primarily from the interaction of city-dwellers with merchants of other cities and regions and with inhabitants of smaller towns and the countryside. (14)

Often the same marketplace was also the scene, or at least one of the principal stages, in the enactment of civic ritual. The importance of civic ritual in the creation of late medieval and early modern urban identity has, of course, been stressed by many scholars. (15) Developing the framework proposed by Mervyn James, an impressive amount of research has been done, for example, on the organization of Corpus Christi processions, and also for the region of the Low Countries. Yet in this line of research the emphasis lies almost exclusively on the relations within the city walls. (16) The study of another remarkable form of civic ritual has brought one type of relation between the city and the outside world to the foreground of Low Countries studies. The princely entry--in which the feudal contract between city and prince was enacted by the handing over of the city's keys, the processional entry, and the public exchange of oaths--has gained special attention in recent years. (17) Borrowing from older work that stressed the constant struggle over economic and political power in a long fifteenth century between the large metropolitan centers such as Ghent and Bruges, on the one hand, and the Burgundian dukes, on the other, recent studies have emphasized the crucial importance of civic ritual in the political communication between the prince and his main cities. The public sphere, with the marketplace, the town hall, and the belfry at its heart, provided the scene for what could arguably be called the Burgundian theater state. (18)

While civic ritual turned the urban public sphere temporarily into a theater where every actor, from prince to artisan, had to take up his part, the medium of drama itself played an increasingly important role in the public communication in towns and cities in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. From the late fourteenth century onwards the inherent dramatic character of religious processions and princely entries was developed by the introduction of tableaux vivants along the pageant routes or on wagons. After the conclusion of the ceremonial part morality plays and farces were staged, often in the marketplace or in the graveyard. Farces were also performed, to give another notable example, in the context of Shrove Tuesday celebrations, when the world was turned upside down. (19)

The striking connections between civic ritual and urban theater have brought social and literary historians much closer together. Both now focus on context and performance. (20) This approach has led to one of the most provocative and stimulating theses in early modern Low Countries historiography. In his studies on urban theater and on urban literature in general, Herman Pleij has argued that from the fourteenth to the early sixteenth century an autonomous bourgeois culture was formed in the cities of the core regions of the Low Countries. Urban elites borrowed heavily from court culture and popular culture--the latter understood here primarily as rural culture--to develop a whole new value system that fitted their own social concerns and which centered on labor, self-preservation, and wisdom. According to Pleij, urban theater provided not only an instrument for the communication of these values to different social groups, but also a clever tool for the appropriation of older practices of reversal. (21)

Pleij's work has fueled the debates on subjects related to the theme of urban culture, but at the same time critical notes have been sounded, especially by social historians who question his model of social structures and social relations. (22) This issue brings us to the social implications of the concept of urban culture. In many studies the (often vaguely defined) urban elites are considered to be the primary actors in the efforts to create an urban identity. (23) Yet in recent years it has been increasingly stressed that the social middle class also played a crucial role in the shaping of urban society. More particularly, recent studies on the sixteenth-century Low Countries emphasize the political and religious dynamism of a prosperous and literate middle class. (24)

In a stimulating essay Jonathan Barry argues that men belonging to the middle class--for example, master artisans and small merchants--were, first and foremost, involved in the establishment and reestablishment of urban identity because they resolved their differences and individual powerlessness by association and collective action. The economically and politically divided middle class associated in guilds, corporations, societies, and confraternities, where they could forge the stability and continuity they needed to counter the challenges of migration and social mobility that the early modern city constantly presented. Obviously, this was often in the interest of urban elites, but just as often--for instance, during revolts--it was not. (25) I therefore argue, following Barry, that a second crucial binding force of urban culture was urban association, and that the values expressed by guilds and corporations--often in the public sphere--were preeminently urban values. (26)

3. THE CHAMBERS OF RHETORIC

The Chambers of Rhetoric are an excellent tool for analyzing our central question: How can we understand and define urban culture in the Southern Low Countries? (27) The Chambers were organized as traditional guilds or confraternities. A Chamber was devoted to a patron saint, held religious services at its altar in a local church, organized an annual feast, and held funeral services and Requiem Masses for its deceased members. A Chamber had an elected board with a deacon or a prince at its head. In principle, one chose freely to become a member. Usually, members had to pay an entrance fee, annual fees, and a doodschuld (death duty) to cover the cost for funeral services or Requiem Masses. There were often different categories of members, with possible distinctions between brothers--and sometimes also sisters (28)--with minimal devotional and financial duties; gezellen (companions) with additional financial duties and many representational duties, such as wearing the guild's uniform on public occasions; and, finally, personaigien (actors) with minimal financial duties but well-defined theatrical duties such as rehearsing, performing, and building and breaking-up stages. Of course, the elected board was expected to invest the most time and money in the Chambers' activities. In addition, most Chambers had a factor, a talented individual who was responsible for composing and directing plays, and who was remunerated for his services. (This was usually not enough to make a living.) (29)

A large part of the activities of the Chambers--from devotional to sociable and literary events--took place in the semiprivate sphere of their meeting-places. Sometimes this was a proper guild house: Richard Clough, for example, notes in his letter "that in thys towne of Andwarpe ther are 3 companys or brotheroods of Reteryke; whome have every one of them a house alone." (30) However, the case of a less wealthy Chamber in Ghent called Marien Theeren (In Honor of Mary) shows that for lack of better accommodations other rhetorician guilds kept their costumes and attributes in the guild's chapel, rehearsed in the homes of members, and held their meetings and annual feasts in inns--or sometimes, too, at their members' homes. (31)

Already in the late Middle Ages the core regions of the Low Countries had a strong tradition of merchant and artisan guilds, religious confraternities, and shooting guilds. (32) The institution of the Chambers of Rhetoric proved to be an equally great success. From the first half of the fifteenth century, when rhetorician culture took shape, to about the 1560s, the number of Chambers kept growing in the Southern Low Countries. In 1561 about forty Chambers were active in the Duchy of Brabant and no less than about 120 in the County of Flanders. (33) This meant that every town or city in these core regions had at least one--but often two, three, or more--Chambers within its walls. For example, in Brabant both Antwerp and Brussels hosted three Chambers, while in Flanders Bruges and Ghent had two and four, respectively. The available information suggests that these Chambers were established in different parishes or neighborhoods. The majority of these Chambers were officially recognized by their town council and enjoyed local privileges. Moreover, in industrial centers such as Antwerp informal Chambers, which were sometimes dominated by younger members, held theatrical performances and gathered in rented rooms and attics. (34)

In addition to these urban Chambers, in sixteenth-century Flanders a little less than forty percent of the total number of Chambers of Rhetoric was situated in villages. (35) This was especially the case in the west of Flanders, where a market-oriented agriculture flourished and rural industry (especially cheap cloth production) was expanding. (36) At the same time, the growth of economic wealth in this region was mirrored by the development of an elaborate schooling network. In the towns, large industrial villages, and even small villages of western Flanders, primary schools and sometimes even Latin schools were instituted. As a result, these towns and villages increasingly furnished the University of Louvain with students. On the other hand, Calvinism, especially from the second half of the 1550s onwards, was well received in this region. (37) Thus it can be argued that with changing economic relations the boundaries between town and countryside became more fluid in Flanders, and that new intellectual practices were introduced into the Flemish countryside. These new practices sometimes went hand-in-hand. Jan van Mussem, priest and Latin schoolmaster in the village of Wormhoudt, became the leader of the local Chamber--De Communicanten (The Communicants)--that was established in the 1540s. In the same years he wrote a heretical play and a textbook in the vernacular on classical rhetoric, which was printed in Antwerp in 1553. (38)

The leadership of priests seems to have been a special feature of the village Chambers. The fragmented sources indicate that besides priests, local officials were particularly prominent in the board of village Chambers. (39) This group of priests and local dignitaries derived its prestige from its contacts with the outside world, both in a religious and a secular sense. (40) Fortunately, more sources have survived with regard to the social background of the members of the urban Chambers. Best-documented for the late fifteenth to the late sixteenth centuries are the large cities of Ghent in Flanders and of Brussels in Brabant--both had a population of about 40,000 in the sixteenth century (41)--with membership lists for the Ghent Chamber Marien Theeren from 1478 onwards and for the Chamber of Den Boeck (The Book) and De Corenbloem (The Cornflower) in Brussels for the second half of the sixteenth century. (42) The principal observation is that the Chambers of Rhetoric in Ghent and Brussels recruited almost exclusively from among the middle class of skilled artisans, shopkeepers, and local merchants. The data available for other cities corroborates this fact. However, this middle class that was attracted to membership in rhetorician guilds was also socially and culturally divided. While in Ghent the sixteenth-century Chambers of Rhetoric assembled mainly skilled manual laborers from the textile, clothing, leather, and fur sectors, the Brussels Chambers also recruited from among highly skilled artisans such as painters and tapestry weavers and from among well-to-do merchants. The differences in recruitment can be partly attributed to the divergent economic structures of Ghent and Brussels: Ghent was an industrial city primarily oriented towards mass textile production, while Brussels was a center for luxury products, especially renowned on the international scene for the quality and composition of its tapestries. (43) It has yet to be noted that in other cities, too, the Chambers of Rhetoric counted visual artists among their more prominent members. In Antwerp, the Chamber of De Violieren, which hosted the festival of 1561, was even active within the institutional context of the prestigious guild of St. Luke that boasted the membership of famous painters such as Pieter Bruegel the Elder. (44)

4. THE CHAMBERS OF RHETORIC AND THE URBAN PUBLIC SPHERE

While the meetings of a Chamber of Rhetoric offered members--at least those who chose active membership--an honorable and educational pastime and a shared religious self-image, the Chambers unmistakably constructed their collective identity around their role in the urban public sphere. From the first half of the fifteenth century until the early seventeenth century, when they were upstaged by the Jesuits, the Chambers of Rhetoric determined the genres, subject matter, formal rules, and messages of urban public theater in the Low Countries. They staged allegorical plays--called spelen van zinne (morality plays) and most often containing religious subject matter--and comic plays, called esbattementen (farces), that promoted moral rules and ridiculed archetypal characters such as greedy clerics, coarse peasants, and unruly women. These plays were performed publicly, on fixed stages or wagons, most often in the context of local events such as fairs, procession days, celebrations of local patron saints, and peace celebrations. Often during official or ceremonial meals less-elaborate plays, called tafelspelen (table plays), were staged by one to four actors. (45) A chain of incidents in Brussels in 1559 gives a valuable insight into the variety of plays the local Chambers of Rhetoric were used to performing. Firstly, in April an esbattement was staged by De Corenbloem in the context of the public celebration of the Peace of Cateau-Cambresis (3 April 1559). It was a straightforward play with a clear anticlerical message: alms should be given to the real poor instead of to the friars. In spite of the outraged protests from the local Franciscans, the play was staged again at the central marketplace in September 1559. A week later, on the feastday of St. Michael, the patron saint of Brussels, a tafelspel was performed by the Chamber of Het Mariacransken (The Garland of Mary) in honor of the local magistracy. Finally, in October a tafelspel was staged, this time by Den Boeck, during the wedding party of a local official. Complaints followed that during these two tafelspelen the Mass was ridiculed. (46)

Incidents such as those in Brussels in 1559--with plays that upset at least some members of the urban community--provided a threat not only to religious, but also to civic, unity. Indeed, in the preambles of statutes and requests the rhetoricians wrote, the honor of the city was frequently invoked beside the honor of God and his saints. In 1481 the gezellen of De Roose (The Rose) in Louvain requested the city magistracy to ratify their new statute "because the honor of the city and of the company greatly depends on it." (47) Another common formula pointed to the efforts of the Chambers to entertain the local population. In a conflict with the local shooting guilds the Antwerp Chamber De Olijftak (The Olive Branch) pleaded in 1556 for the continuation of the exercise of rhetoric "in adornment of our city and in the recreation of the inhabitants." (48) According to a particularly eloquent scribe of the small town of Deinze in Flanders, the local Chamber De Nazareenen (The Nazarenes) deserved to be remunerated because they "performed in a rhetorical way an amorous play on the fair day of this city in 1561, where many poor neighbors were gathered in recreation and consolation of melancholy spirits, and in honor and profit of the city." (49)

The Chambers of Rhetoric quasi-monopolized urban theater, but it must not be overlooked that, more generally, they also played an important role in the performance of civic ritual in the Low Countries. Many Chambers of Rhetoric had developed in the fifteenth century out of local groups that performed plays and tableaux vivants in the context of religious processions. For example, in 1514 the confraternity of the Holy Cross asked the city magistracy of the town of Kortrijk in Flanders for an official recognition as a Chamber of Rhetoric, arguing that for years on end it had performed a large part of the passion plays in the local Corpus Christi procession. (50) In fact, the role of the Chambers of Rhetoric in local processions could vary from the parading of the Chamber's gezellen or its board members in the guild's uniform to the performance of tableaux vivants and plays during and after the pageant, or to the responsibility for the organization of the procession itself. (51) According to their statute from 1496, the rhetoricians of De Vreugdebloem (The Flower of Joy) in the Brabantine town of Bergen op Zoom were expected to set up and coordinate the tableaux and dances--notably the dance around the Golden Calf--in the local Holy Cross procession. (52) In practice, the city magistracy usually appointed one individual to direct the local procession. Until the end of the sixteenth century this was often a prominent rhetorician, such as the factor of a local Chamber. Around the middle of the sixteenth century in the Flemish town of Oudenaarde, the priest and notary Matthijs de Castelein--one of the most famous Dutch rhetoricians--was not only the factor of two local Chambers, but was also paid for the writing and correcting of all the short speeches that were to be recited by the actors in the tableaux vivants of the local Corpus Christi procession. The other rhetoricians received a short written note explaining their role only a week in advance. (53)

The Chambers of Rhetoric also contributed to the staging of princely entries. Although the antagonism between city and prince has been highlighted in Low Countries studies, it has to be noted that the efforts the princes made to integrate themselves with urban political and cultural networks were exceptional. It is true that townsmen often did not hesitate to rise up in arms against the prince's representatives if local privileges were under threat, but at the same time they highly valued rituals, such as entry ceremonies, that could function as symbolic tools to smooth and elaborate the relations with their prince. Besides, these ceremonies served economic interests as well as the city's prestige. (54) The first documented participation of a Chamber in a princely entry dates from 1458, when, as an act of reconciliation after years of rebellion, Ghent lavishly welcomed the Burgundian Duke Philip the Good (1396-1467) within its walls. During the entry De Fonteine (The Fountain) draped its guildhouse with blue cloth and illuminated it with torches to present itself--in the same fashion as the artisan guilds--as a guild with a clearly defined collective identity. A couple of days later De Fonteine and Sint-Barbara, another local Chamber, competed together with other local companies in a theater contest. The plays were performed first in the streets and subsequently, with explanations in French, at the town hall in the presence of the duke. (55)

As the number of entries and related festivities--such as ducal marriage or birth celebrations--increased during the fifteenth century, the Chambers became more and more involved in their organization. Especially in the years around 1500--during the government of Duke Philip the Fair (1478-1506) and the regencies (1482-94 and 1506-15) of Emperor Maximilian I of Austria (1459-1519)--prominent rhetoricians from local Chambers were engaged to direct entries and other ducal celebrations. (56) In Brussels, Jan Smeken (d. 1517) and Jan Pertcheval (d. 1523) from De Lelie (The Lily) were frequently remunerated during the years 1498-1506 for their involvement in the organization of all kinds of festivities, often in honor of the Burgundian-Habsburg dynasty. Moreover, they were sent on behalf of the Brussels magistracy to cities such as Ghent, Bruges, and Malines to report on how these cities dealt with dynastic ceremonies. In addition, both men wrote plays and poems that celebrated the fusion of urban and courtly values in general, and the relations between the city of Brussels and its dukes in particular, such as the poem Jan Smeken wrote on the eighteenth chapter of the Order of Knights of the Golden Fleece that was held in Brussels in 1516. (57)

As the sixteenth century progressed the number of princely entries decreased, since both Charles V and Philip II were often absent from their Low Countries territories. At the same time, the role of the rhetoricians (who increasingly stirred religious controversy) in the entry ceremonies declined. These entries, notably those of 1549, were now modeled on classical prototypes: city magistracies therefore turned to learned humanists for their services. Yet the Chambers continued to stage some of the tableaux vivants. (58) Moreover, when rebellious Calvinist city magistracies (1577-85) set up entries for the leader of the Dutch Revolt William of Orange (1533-84) in 1577 and for the French Prince Francois d'Anjou (1554-84) in 1582, much of the classic form and subject matter was dropped in favor of more traditional biblical and mythological themes. Again, the organization was run by men with strong links to the Chambers of Rhetoric, such as the painter and poet Lucas d'Heere (1534-84) in Ghent, the poet and civil servant Jan-Baptist Houwaert (1533-99) in Brussels, and the versatile visual artist Hans Vredeman de Vries (1526-1609) in Antwerp. (59)

5. COMPETITIONS AND THE URBAN NETWORK

It can be concluded at this point that the Chambers of Rhetoric--as associations of skilled artisans, shopkeepers, and local merchants--played an important role in the construction of urban culture in the Southern Low Countries through their stress on public theater, civic ritual, and public communication, and through their ability to fashion complex discourses that alternately sustained urban and princely politics while expressing the concerns of their own social group. In addition, another feature of rhetorician culture reveals a particularly striking characteristic of Low Countries urban culture. When held locally, the competitions of the Chambers of Rhetoric underlined the relations among different groups and neighborhoods within one city. Yet, when held on a regional or interregional level, they emphatically celebrated the relations among different cities and towns within the urban network.

Flanders and Brabant were indeed highly urbanized and densely populated regions. Cities, towns, and even a number of villages were involved in their export-oriented industrial production. Exchanges among the inhabitants of different localities were facilitated by an elaborate system of roads and waterways. The economic networks also gave rise to hierarchical political networks. In the County of Flanders the representational institutions were formally dominated by the cities of Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres--each of which represented a larger district--and the prosperous rural district of the Franc. (60) In the Duchy of Brabant the principal urban centers were Louvain, Brussels, Antwerp, and Malines. Of course, in the sixteenth century the rise of Antwerp as a commercial metropolis profoundly changed economic relations, as the city's influence and attraction spread well beyond the duchy's borders. (61)

Evidently, the economic and political networks in the Southern Low Countries not only necessitated interaction, but also generated sharp rivalry between cities and towns. (62) One of the cooperative solutions to these conflicts and tensions lay in the elaboration of a delicately balanced discourse of paternal hierarchy and fraternal reciprocity. The Chambers of Rhetoric played a significant role in this process because, on the one hand, their practices reflected and reinforced the economic and political hierarchies within the urban network, and, on the other, they contributed actively to the creation of civic networks of social trust. (63) In this process, urban identity--both in the strict sense of a consciousness of belonging to one city or town, and in the larger sense of a consciousness of being part of a greater community of interdependent cities and towns--was constantly tested and redefined.

In the first half of the sixteenth century it became a rule in Flanders that Chambers from smaller towns and villages should seek official confirmation, first from local authorities and then from one of the three Chambers in Flanders that had the competence to baptize new rhetorician guilds and allow them to participate in competitions. It was no coincidence that these three Chambers were established in the principal cities of Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres. (64) In 1516 De Kruisbroeders (The Brothers of the Cross) from Kortrijk asked Alpha et Omega from Ypres to be baptized "in order to be allowed to appear in all rhetorician meetings, both inside and outside the County of Flanders, free, unrestricted and without reproach, like other guilds and companies." (65) Significantly, Alpha et Omega conferred the authority to charter and judge subordinate chambers upon a "father." (66)

The Chambers of Rhetoric were sometimes directly involved in the inauguration of new channels for trade. In 1561 the Brussels Chambers of Rhetoric celebrated with plays and banquets the opening of a new canal between Brussels and the basin of the river Scheldt--and, thus indirectly, Antwerp. (67) This is no coincidence, because a large number of members of the Brussels Chambers were tapestry weavers who depended upon the Antwerp market for the trading of their finished products. (68) This example indicates that the rhetoricians were very aware of the importance of relations within the urban network, both for their own professional and for their city's interests.

In the same way we must understand the pomp that accompanied the entries of the competing Chambers into a rhetoricians' contest. These entries were greatly appreciated by the crowd and sometimes even matched the princely entries in splendor, as was the case in Antwerp in 1561. While princely entries underlined the feudal contract between prince and city, the entries of the rhetorician guilds ritualized the interdependencies within the urban network. As such, the public practices of the Chambers of Rhetoric were part of a set of cultural strategies to decrease tensions, and consolidate and extend existing relations. Therefore, it can be argued that the Chambers of Rhetoric contributed to what can be called an economy of symbolic exchanges. (69) One strategy within this economy was to create religious ritual networks among cities and towns. For example, delegations from cities in Flanders, Artois, Hainault, and Brabant annually attended the Our Lady procession in the city of Tournai and donated devotional objects to the miraculous statue of the Virgin. Tournai was an episcopal city situated on the banks of the river Scheldt, one of the crucial commercial arteries of the Low Countries. By participating in the procession, the delegations from other cities consolidated their relations with this important religious and economic center. (70)

Another effective strategy within this economy of symbolic exchanges was the setting up of competitions among companies from different cities and towns. These could be sportive encounters--jousts, for example, or contests for the crossbow or hand-bow--or literary meetings, as in the case of the Chambers of Rhetoric. (71) During these different types of competitions (which were always sustained by elaborate ritual) a symbolic sphere was created, where real political and economic tensions were channeled. Symbolic competition temporarily replaced the need for real rivalry and offered communities the opportunity to commit themselves and strengthen their mutual ties. Significantly, the organizers of theater contests applied a rhetoric of harmony, joy, fraternity, reciprocity, and peace. (72) An invitation to a competition in the small Flemish town of Hulst in 1483 was addressed to "dear, worthy and special brothers and friends"; one to a competition in Antwerp in 1496 to "honorable, prudent and dearly beloved brothers and friends." (73) In the last verses of its invitation to the Landjuweel of 1561 the Chamber of De Violieren underlined the value of reciprocity: "Because you are as we, and we as you." (74)

The organization of literary competitions--such as theater and poetry contests, and sometimes a combination of both--among companies from different localities proved to be a successful formula in the Southern Low Countries. Between 1400 and 1650 at least 270 literary competitions were organized that gathered companies from different cities, towns, and sometimes even villages. From about the middle of the fifteenth century these competition networks were dominated by the emerging Chambers of Rhetoric. In the years 1480-1565, when rhetorician culture enjoyed its heyday, more than two competitions between different localities were organized on average each year. The year 1566, however, brought a brutal stop to the rhythm of competitions, as iconoclast riots broke out all over the Low Countries and, in many places, rhetoricians were held partly responsible. The Chambers of Rhetoric in the Southern Low Countries never succeeded in overcoming the distrust of the central authorities before the end of the Dutch Revolt (1566-1648), but during the Twelve-Year Truce (1609-21) the Catholic government conditionally allowed, and even encouraged, Chambers to organize some large-scale competitions. (75) The regional and interregional contests of the shooting guilds, notably those of the crossbow and of the hand-bow, have been less systematically studied, but it seems likely that their number was even higher than that of the rhetorical contests. (76)

The power of these symbolic competitions lay in their creation of a strong fiction of equality. Economic and political hierarchies and social inequalities were temporarily neutralized, because all participating groups had to undergo the same tests, without exception. In the case of rhetorician competitions, there were ritual contests--such as staging the most impressive entry into the organizing city or attending Mass in the most solemn manner--and literary contests--such as performing the best morality play or farce, or reciting the best refrein (an adaptation of the older French ballade). Nor did the social prestige of the competing Chambers count as such, but rather their ability to handle creatively literary and moral conventions and rituals. In this context it was essential to avoid references to the political and economic rivalry between communities, and to emphasize repeatedly the motif of disinterested love. (77) The invitation to the competition in Hulst in 1483 argued eloquently that the Art of Rhetoric must promote brotherly love, recreation, and virtuousness, and banish hate, envy, sloth, wrath, and other sins. (78) The rhetoricians even tried to circumvent the explicit formulation of the competitive nature of their contests by using alternative terms such as feasts, solemnities, meetings, plays, jewels, or prizes, suggesting in the last two cases that competitors might win, while veiling the possibility of their losing. (79) In this manner a compelling fiction of social harmony, limited in time and space, was instituted.

But how effective in practice was this fiction of brotherly love, harmony, and peace? When we take a closer look, it seems that the ideals of the rhetoricians were more often than not flawed by conflicts between competing Chambers. In 1494, the provincial Court of Flanders had to judge a conflict between De Vreugdenaars (The Joymakers), a Chamber from Ypres, and a theatrical company from the French-speaking city of Lille in Walloon Flanders. Both companies had performed plays at a competition in the small Flemish town of Wervik. Ironically, this competition had celebrated the treaty of the Peace of Senlis (23 May 1493), which had ended war with France and a decade of rebellion in the Low Countries. To honor the occasion, the city magistracy of Wervik had put up a silver statue of St. Medard, patron saint of the town, for the best spel van zinne. The competing plays were then judged by a jury of three clerics, namely an Augustinian, a Carmelite, and a Dominican. According to De Vreugdenaars of Ypres, these clerics had recommended that the prize be awarded to their play, but instead the city magistracy had given the prize to the company from Lille. This company in turn claimed that none of this was true and that they had staged in Wervik "the most subtle morality play that ever was performed there." (80)

Many other examples can be given of disputes over rhetorician contests. Moreover, other types of regional and interregional competitions generated conflicts. A joust that was organized by the city of Douai at the end of the thirteenth century caused so many skirmishes between the inhabitants of Douai and Lille that the Count of Flanders had to intervene: the animosity between both cities did not fade in the following centuries. (81) Throughout the sixteenth century the rivalry between the Brabantine towns of Lier and Herentals time and again caused squabbles during the regional competitions of the shooting guilds and those of the Chambers of Rhetoric. (82) However, these conflicts were not as contradictory to the ideals of the rhetoricians as they seemed. It can be argued that although the fiction of peace and harmony temporarily lost its credibility, conflicts were inevitable in--and, in a sense, even vital to--this economy of symbolic exchanges. It was indeed crucial that all participants took the play seriously. Therefore, they had to invest symbolic capital--in the first place their collective honor, namely that of the company and that of its city or town. (83) In theory, competitions could better the relations with other groups and communities while enhancing the honor of the company and, by extension, of the city or town it represented. In practice, although the organizers of competitions were very creative in the invention of numerous categories for prizes to be won, there were always losers--and, more often than not, bad losers. But this did not mean that there was nothing to gain from losing. Collective honor was an essential value in a society where membership in well-defined groups and corporations was indispensable to social survival. To develop this collective honor in a complex urban society it was necessary to interact with other groups, even--or, perhaps, preferably--if this was in the aggressive manner of an open conflict. (84)

Corporate honor was, of course, a value that counted as much inside as outside the city walls. The Chambers of Rhetoric in one city often disputed each other's privileges and seniority and argued with the shooting guilds over issues such as the design of the guild's uniform. (85) Early modern urbanites clearly understood that the strength of a group's collective honor was best tested in the public sphere. (86) In the Low Countries the Chambers of Rhetoric in particular played an important role, as they had mastered a language and a ritual discourse that could be used effectively in public disputes over collective honor. In songs and poems and in dialogues and actions on stage, rhetoricians could subtly communicate their insults to other groups. Local authorities often warned the rhetorician guilds against insulting other guilds. To prevent new conflicts between the two Chambers of Rhetoric in the Brabantine town of Aarschot, the widow of the margrave issued an undated charter (ca. 1521-40) that stated "from now on, no company may abuse the other in words or in plays, nor bring the other into shame with words or ridicule the other through ballads, songs, poems, or moral or comic plays." (87) Even worse, of course, was the mocking of secular and religious dignitaries. In fact, what had outraged the Brussels Franciscans most in 1559 was that one of the actors of De Corenbloem had worn a real Franciscan habit so as to ridicule their order. (88)

While corporate honor was an essential part of corporate identity, civic honor was a crucial part of urban identity. Therefore, rhetoricians did not hesitate to insult the inhabitants of other towns. Mathijs de Castelein, the factor from Oudenaarde (and, notably, a priest) wrote a poem on the inhabitants of the nearby city of Tournai--which had been recently conquered by Charles V--with no fewer than thirty-six stanzas filled with abusive terms and nicknames. In the same text De Castelein alluded to a performance by a company from Tournai of a play that had simultaneously ridiculed the emperor and St. Andrew, the patron saint of the Burgundian-Habsburg dynasty. (89)

De Castelein's text was primarily written for his own public, the inhabitants of the town of Oudenaarde. Rhetorician contests, on the other hand, offered an opportunity to bring disputes between towns into the microcosm of symbolic competition. As such, these disputes could be directly and publicly settled with the other competitors as witnesses. It is revealing that while the language of love and harmony dominated, it was also stressed in invitations to competitions that, besides material prizes, competing companies could win honor. The invitation for the Landjuweel in Antwerp in 1561 encouraged Chambers to participate with the following formula: "Thus, do not lament your journey; he who wins honor will win a good reward." (90) What is more, the honor of the urban community was directly at stake during rhetorician contests. The organizers of the competition in Hulst in 1483 explicitly asked the participants to bring with them the coats of arms of their respective cities. A prize was awarded to the best-executed escutcheon. (91) For the competition in Antwerp in 1496 the organizers put up a prize for the prologue "that most honored the city of Antwerp." (92) The Chamber De Peoene (The Peony) from Malines decided to print the literary productions from a competition in 1620 because they would contribute to the "fame and honor of our neighboring towns and of each poet in particular." (93)

Significantly, honor disputes between Chambers of Rhetoric often corresponded to the position within the urban network of the towns they represented. For example, the rivalry between the Chambers of Rhetoric of the secondary Brabantine towns of Herentals and Lier mirrored the eternal friction between their home towns. Both Chambers claimed that, in relation to each other, they enjoyed the privilege of precedence at regional competitions. During the Landjuweel in Brussels in 1532 this conflict reached a climax. While Mass was being celebrated the members from the Chamber from Herentals ostentatiously marched to the offering and returned to their seats before the members from Lier did. This incident was taken very seriously by the other Chambers. While the conflict was intensified during a competition between the shooting guilds in 1534, a temporary verdict was reached only during the following Landjuweel in Malines in 1535. According to the judging Chambers it was not the seniority of the guilds that counted, but that of the cities they represented. The conflict was continued before the provincial Court of Brabant, where the magistracy of Turnhout, another Brabantine town, argued that the Chamber of Lier was acting rightfully--because, analogously, during the meetings of the secondary towns belonging to the district of Antwerp the magistracy of Lier had always enjoyed precedence over that of the city of Herentals. (94)

6. COMPETITIONS AND CIVIC RELIGION

We must conclude at this point that the competitions of the Chambers of Rhetoric played an important role in the process of defining and redefining collective identities in the Low Countries: not only corporate and urban identities, but also regional and interregional ones. It is no coincidence that most interregional competitions in the Southern Low Countries--with participants from Flanders, Brabant, and sometimes Holland, Zeeland, and Hainault--were held during pivotal periods--such as during and after the civil wars at the end of the fifteenth century and during the growing political and religious unrest in the 1560s on the eve of the Dutch Revolt (95)--when political crisis forced urban communities closer together. It would go too far, however, to label these events as evidence of the emergence of a precocious national sentiment. The Low Countries remained an amalgam of principalities dominated, at least in the core regions, by wealthy cities that tenaciously defended their local privileges. (96)

Yet, another feature that is revealed by the study of rhetorician contests indicates how exceptional urban culture in the Southern Low Countries was in comparison with other regions in Western Europe. With regard to Renaissance Italy, Edward Muir has argued that one of the most important sources of civil society and urban identity was civic religion. Civic rituals, especially processions, modeled and sustained the ideal of community, but the weakness was that civic religion "could not be easily exported beyond the town walls to the countryside." (97) In the Southern Low Countries, however, civic religion was decidedly more open due to the practices of the Chambers of Rhetoric. By organizing competitions in the context of religious events, the rhetoricians contributed to the shaping of a unique religious culture that drew its meaning from the public and often-ritualized exchange of values, practices, and ideas among the inhabitants of different cities, towns, and villages.

Religious processions--and, in particular, Corpus Christi processions--were held everywhere in Western Europe, in cities and even in small towns. (98) These rituals focused primarily on the city's insiders: the adult male burghers and the secular and regular clergy. Women, journeymen, and children generally participated in a more passive way as members of the public. Some notable processions could also boast a larger public, with visitors from the surrounding countryside and neighboring towns and a delegation of religious and secular dignitaries. (99) This was no different in the Southern Low Countries. For example, the Corpus Christi procession in the town of Oudenaarde was widely renowned, not in the least because of its spectacular tableaux vivants. (100) Many local processions, especially in the west of Flanders, offered an additional attraction: the pageant was followed by a rhetorician contest of religious and sometimes even comic plays. These contests were open to companies from neighboring towns and villages. For example, each year from the late fifteenth century to 1560 the small seaport of Nieuwpoort organized a theatrical competition after the Corpus Christi procession. Alternately, rhetorician guilds from no fewer than thirty-four cities, towns, and nearby villages in western Flanders participated. (101) Similar competitions were organized within the context of the Our Lady procession in Ypres. Some plays that the Bruges playwright Cornelis Everaert wrote for both processions have survived, such as two morality plays that typologically compared the Virgin with the city of Jerusalem (for the Nieuwpoort competition in 1527) and with the throne of Solomon (for the Ypres competition in 1529), as well as a farce (for the 1529 competition). (102) It is striking that Everaert wrote these plays for two different Chambers, one in Bruges and in one in the town of Veurne, indicating that some playwrights had built up an acknowledged expertise. A particularly prestigious competition took place in 1517 when the city of Bruges set up a ten-day contest in the context of its illustrious Holy Blood procession. On May 1 the Chambers--mostly from the larger cities in Flanders--made their solemn entry; on the second day they drew lots for the order of play; on the third day they paraded in the Holy Blood procession; finally, on the fourth day, the competition started. (103)

Thanks to the combination of religious processions and rhetorical competitions, the Southern Low Countries, and Flanders in particular, developed a civic religion that differed considerably from those in other regions. While the urban public sphere remained at the center of religious ritual, competitions allowed inhabitants of small towns and villages to participate as intensively and on a near-equal footing. In comparison, in northern Italy hierarchical relations between city and countryside always dominated during religious processions. Inhabitants from the surrounding countryside were often forced to participate in civic rituals, but--not surprisingly--they seldom identified with the urban idiom. Moreover, there was almost no ritual interaction among different cities. (104) In pre-Reformation England there is evidence for processional activities in small towns and villages, but interactions among different localities were exceptional and clearly less elaborate than those in the Southern Low Countries. (105)

In the Southern Low Countries the exchanges among rhetoricians from cities, towns, and villages contributed to an open civic religion in a double sense. First, they allowed townsmen to define themselves as members of a community that was part of a larger urban network. Urban space did not end at the city walls: the civic body in the Southern Low Countries was a socialized body. Second, this civic religion was flexible because it stimulated the exchange and creative assimilation of ideas. Rhetoricians wrote, discussed, performed, and compared texts and let their performances be judged by clerics and fellow rhetoricians from outside their hometown. While in the fifteenth century these cultural practices could boast the approval and support of secular and religious authorities, in the sixteenth century they more and more constituted a threat to religious and civic unity. Richard Clough, the keen English observer of the Landjuweel in Antwerp in 1561, was well aware of this fact. In his letter he refers to a competition in Ghent in 1539 that had led to a condemnation of the religious morality plays which had not only been performed for a large public, but had also been printed (and illegally reprinted). (106) Although the central authorities had reacted severely--the printed plays had been put on the Index and the Chambers had received some serious warnings--Clough clearly, but no less meaningfully, exaggerates the consequences of the 1539 competition: "But ther was at thatt tyme syche plays played, that hath cost many a thowsantt man's lyves; for in those plays was the worde of God fyrst openyd in thys contrey. Weche plays were, and ar forbeden, moche more strettly than any of the boks of Martyn Luter." (107)

7. CONCLUSION

In many respects, rhetorician culture was a unique feature of urban culture in the Low Countries. In this essay we have limited ourselves to the Southern Low Countries, especially the core regions of Flanders and Brabant, but it must be stressed that many Chambers of Rhetoric were active in the Northern Low Countries as well, notably from the late fifteenth century onwards. (108) There is enough evidence that in northern Italy confraternities, and especially youth confraternities--such as the Florentine confraternity of the Arcangelo Raffaello that has been the object of an impressive study by Konrad Eisenbichler (109)--performed theater. In pre-Reformation England, craft guilds and religious guilds were responsible for the staging of procession plays, such as those of the famous York cycle. (110) Nevertheless, guilds in northern Italy and England never reached the same degree of specialization as the Chambers of Rhetoric. From the late Middle Ages onwards, Singschulen (singing schools) and puys marials (Marian literary confraternities) developed in the German and the northern French territories, respectively. These were urban associations that devoted themselves to poetry and singing and that held competitions. Yet, the Singschulen and puys marials only found fertile ground in the larger cities, and as such were much more limited in numbers than the Chambers in the Low Countries. (111) On the other hand, the French societes joyeuses (fool societies) primarily occupied themselves with the performance of farces and other entertainment during Shrove Tuesday celebrations. In the fifteenth century many of these societes joyeuses seem to have lacked the organizational structures of the Chambers. However, in the sixteenth century some claimed a central place in urban public culture, such as the Abbaye des Conards in Rouen. (112) As such, there were many similarities between the societes joyeuses and the Chambers of Rhetoric, but there are no indications of a comparably developed competition network in France.

It is evident that further comparative research on the literary practices of early modern confraternities and guilds is needed, not only to document and interpret these practices from a literary point of view, but also to reach a better general understanding of the cultural practices of townsmen. The particular case of the Chambers of Rhetoric has proved to be an excellent tool for analyzing urban culture in the Low Countries. It can be concluded that the Chambers of Rhetoric gave meaning to Netherlandish urban culture in significant ways because their institution and development were inseparably linked to two features essential to the concept of early modern urban culture: urban association and public space. The rhetoricians used and adapted corporate models in order to express their ever-changing cultural and religious needs and values; at the same time they helped to mold urban public space--both in a physical and in an intellectual sense--into an open, flexible, and competitive civic sphere that was profoundly marked by the relations within the urban network.

GHENT UNIVERSITY 

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