Nobles, patricians and officers: the making of a regional political elite in late medieval Flanders.

In the county of Flanders the late medieval period was an era of important social mobility among the dominant classes, as a result of the formation process of the Burgundian state. I argue that in the course of the later Middle Ages, and more specifically in the period of Burgundian domination (1384-1492), a regional political elite was made, as much as it made itself, in the county of Flanders, to paraphrase E. P. Thompson. (1) Significant groups of the lower and higher nobility, the urban and rural dominant classes who did not belong to the nobility and the new social group of princely officers, itself made up of noble and non-noble elements, gradually integrated themselves in a 'power elite' on the level of the county of Flanders. They did this by forming social networks based on marriage alliances. They had common political and material interests and a common political ideology stressing the service to the state and the 'common good'. To establish empirically the early phases of such a 'political elite' from the integration of several previously distinct elite groups, I will use the following criteria. First, the careers of princely officers necessitated increased regional mobility, which led to the forging of connections between the different and previously more isolated urban and rural elite groups. This led, secondly, to a more profound social heterogeneity by means of marriages among the different elite groups. In turn this development, fuelled by the state formation process, created larger social networks encompassing patricians, nobles and non-noble rural elites. The families of mixed social origin adopted the ideology of the noble lineage, with a 'genealogical consciousness'. Thirdly, I want to show that important layers of this composite political elite developed into what could be considered a new 'state nobility' whose political ideology was to defend the bonum commune or commonwealth of the Burgundian state, abandoning the traditional autonomism of the Flemish urban political elites.

The state formation process in Flanders

The county of Flanders belonged to one of the most urbanised regions of Western Europe. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Ghent, a leading textile industry city, numbered at least 60,000 inhabitants and Bruges, one of the principal commercial centres of medieval Europe, contained at least 40,000 people. (2) Between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, a very progressive and intensive agriculture and the exploitation of new lands in the coastal plain reclaimed from the sea had boosted the Flemish economy. (3) From the eleventh century onwards a series of strong counts stimulated further urbanisation to increase their revenues. They also gradually built up a centralised government structure with an administrative apparatus. The counts of the twelfth century replaced the hereditary feudal viscounts who acted as prosecutors of comital justice in the cities and rural districts or kasselrijen of the county with comital bailiffs they could appoint and remove. (4) A network of central and local receivers collected the princely revenues. (5) Gradually, in the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a central comital court developed out of the traditional comital council or curia, the so-called Audientie of the counts of Flanders. (6) At the same time, a system of taxes, the aides or beden, paid by the cities and rural districts of the county, supplemented the comital revenues of the demesne. (7) Flowing from the negotiations over the payment of these taxes, a representative institution of a special kind developed in Flanders that differed from the classic model of the Three Estates. It was known as the 'Four Members of Flanders', because it included the three leading cities Ghent, Bruges and Ypres, and the rural district surrounding Bruges, the so-called Franc of Bruges. (8) Thus, a so-called 'modern state', characterised by regular tax incomes and the construction of a centralised judicial and administrative apparatus came into being. (9) During the fourteenth century, the counts had a lot of difficulties countering the independentist inclinations of the major cities, which rose in successive waves of revolt. As the cities tried to control their rural hinterland and defend their economic interests, they opposed the attempts of the count to centralise financial and judicial authority, and they were often successful. During the revolts of 1323-1328 and 1338-1345, the period of the popular Ghent leader James van Artevelde, the cities almost destroyed the count's authority. (10)

The balance of power changed, however, with the accession of a new dynasty to the comital office. In 1382, Count Louis de Male, who had no male successors, married his daughter to Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy and kinsman of the Valois dynasty of France. (11) At first the Burgundian dynasty principally tried to gain control over the kingdom of France, but especially after the accession of Philip the Good (1419-1467) (12) through a policy of warfare and marriages, it managed to construct a powerful composite state in Burgundy and in the Low Countries, including important principalities like Brabant and Holland. Having now at their disposal far more resources than the previous counts of Flanders, the Burgundians started a programme of centralising justice and finances and undermining the power of the major cities, especially Bruges and Ghent. One way to do this was to reduce urban privileges after the repression of ultimately unsuccessful urban revolts (Bruges, 1436-1438 and Ghent, 1449-1453). Another centralising measure was the development of powerful central and provincial institutions such as the ducal Great Council, the Council of Flanders (the supreme provincial court) and the Chamber of Accounts in Lille (an institution for financial control comparable to the English exchequer). (14) A final manner of building a centralised government, and perhaps the most important one, was the integration of the different local political elites into the Burgundian state construction.

The Nobility

Of course, one might consider the traditional Flemish nobility between the eleventh and the thirteenth century as a political elite in itself. (15) After all, nobles showed an important regional mobility in the choice of marriage partners, the filling of comital offices and the extension of their landed property. However, after the beginning of the thirteenth century, the so-called 'crisis of feudalism', (16) which was in fact foremost a crisis of landowners' revenues, (17) the Flemish nobility lost money, lands and numbers and so decreased in social and political importance. Burghers took over many fiefs and dominated the representative institution, the 'Four Members of Flanders'. (18) From the late thirteenth century the Flemish nobility made up a relatively small network of surviving families. (19) However, the unification of the Netherlandic principalities (Flanders, Artois, Brabant, Holland, Zealand, Hainaut, Namur, and Luxemburg) under the dukes of Burgundy created new opportunities and opened new horizons for the nobles on a social and geographical level. (20) On the one hand there was the gradual shaping of an interregional Burgundian aristocracy which gave the weak Flemish nobles an opportunity to lean on their fellow nobles in other principalities who still held important social positions. The Brabantine nobility, for instance, actually grew in strength during the fifteenth century. (21) On the other hand, as I want to show, the weakened Flemish nobility could rejuvenate itself with fresh blood by marrying families of the new 'state elite' of ducal officers.

In fact, during the fifteenth century, the possibilities for interaction between nobles and non-nobles were frequent. The nobility certainly did not cut itself off from the bourgeoisie, but rather the reverse occurred. (22) As the state formation process progressed, Blockmans argues, there was an increasing gap between the higher and the lesser nobility. While the upper nobility insinuated itself into court circles, the lesser nobility joined forces with the urban elites and took up offices in cities and rural districts or in princely service. (23) Hans Cools has called the highest nobles of the Burgundian state 'aristocrats'. The higher nobility distinguished themselves more and more from the lesser nobles who held ordinary princely offices. (24) In Flanders, as in Western Europe as a whole, historians have found that during the fifteenth century the borders between the nobility and the higher bourgeoisie became blurred and that the latter began to invest more and more in landed property. Recent research shows that for the Late Middle Ages Braudel's old thesis of the 'betrayal of the bourgeoisie' is essentially correct. (25) Consequently, the urbanised regions of the Netherlands witnessed a different evolution of the nobility than one that aimed elsewhere at agricultural economies alone. In Flanders, as in Brabant, nobles lived in the cities and burghers held large landed properties, and the dividing line between nobles and patricians was very hard to discern. (26) Before 1430, the Brabantine nobility made up about 60 percent of Brabantine councillors. (27) In the second half of the fifteenth and in the sixteenth centuries, members of urban patrician families gradually replaced some nobles in the Council of Brabant. However, nobles still made up about 50 percent of the Council on average. (28)

With Filip van Tricht I have examined what it meant to 'be noble' in late medieval Flanders and how the process of ennoblement evolved. (29) Of course, one could consider the nobility as a purely juridical estate, as was more and more the case in the early modern period. However, under the ruling Flemish customary law this social group in fact had a much more open character than is often assumed by historians or represented by contemporary observers. In late medieval Flanders being noble equalled being considered as noble and nothing more or less. As a matter of fact, the nobility can thus be generally described as a dominant social group that renewed and reoriented itself in response to changing economic and political structures. (30) From the twelfth century there was a certain kind of 'levelling' between the original feudal nobility and other elite groups such as clerics, rich burghers and rural elites. This process was further stimulated by the fact that noble status in Flanders was passed on both by father and mother. After the thirteenth century many noble families lost their land because of the decrease of their seigniorial rent income. (31) On the political level, nobles suffered from the increasingly strong position of the cities and the count. It is no accident that they were not represented in the Flemish representative institutions.

Gradually, princely service played an ever more important role as a survival and career strategy of the Flemish nobility. At the same time, the crisis of the nobility made possible new forms of social mobility. The growth of the 'modern state' was crucial in the late medieval processes of ennoblement. The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has strikingly formulated this development: 'Le passage de l'Etat dynastique a l'Etat bureaucratique est inseparable du mouvement par lequel la nouvelle noblesse, la noblesse d'Etat (de robe), chasse l'ancienne noblesse, la noblesse de sang'. (32) In the Burgundian state the renovation and reconstruction of the nobility seems to have worked rather smoothly as there were no 'protectionist' reactions by the traditional feudal class. Marie-Therese Caron has shown that the integration of juridically trained officers in the Burgundian nobility was relatively trouble-free. (33) By these actions, the nobility did not cut itself off from new men coming from the world of commerce and in large part from the universities. (34) However, the ancient noble families of the duchy of Burgundy still made up the highest income group and retained the principal fiefs and seigneuries. (35) By that time, as I have explained, in the much more urbanised county of Flanders the traditional nobility was already pushed to the background and the odds were more in favour of the patricians and comital officers. Soon they would themselves become part of the nobility in growing numbers.

Some people were ennobled by princely charters. Others had to follow a more gradual path of transition into the nobility, which could take several generations (as in the saying 'three generations makes a gentleman'). In the later Middle Ages, a formal legal ennoblement was in fact a rare exception. In the French regions of the Bourbonnais, Forez and Beaujolais together only ten letters of ennoblement have been found. The dukes of Burgundy issued some 140 of them over a period of more than a century, and few were in Flanders. (36) The rare fortunates who obtained a lettre d'anoblissement from the dukes were mostly clerks of the chancery. This was for example the case for the Flemish officer Jan van Gent who received his noble status in 1436. A secretary to the duke, he was hereditarily ennobled because of his special services. In 1441 he married a bastard daughter from the house of Bavaria, which

was a very good marriage for someone of his humble descent. (37) Lotard Fremault, a maistre des comptes in the Chamber of Accounts of Lille, was also ennobled in the same year, even if he had to pay the sum of 100 golden riders for it. This wealthy wine merchant and money-changer, who came from a a patrician family in Lille, married Catherine d'Estambecque, a woman whose parents had both been ennobled in 1391. Lotard's son of the same name would later marry Margareta van der Tannerijen, daughter of Jacob, the procureur-generael (public prosecutor) of Flanders. In 1428 maistre Lotard Fremault himself was appointed master of the accounts after several members of the ducal council intervened on his behalf. He probably owed his ennoblement to the fact that he and his father had always been generous in extending credit to the duke and acting as sureties for his financial enterprises. Fremault inherited and further accumulated an important feudal patrimony. At least two of his daughters married knights. His son Philippe was a knight as well, and another son participated as a squire in the Burgundian military campaigns of 1475, doubtlessly to further integrate himself in the nobility. (38) Probably this third generation was already considered noble pur sang, since both their parents and their grandparents had been ennobled, the family patrimony included a lot of fiefs and many members of this lineage had taken up princely offices. In any case, the ennobled members of the first generation still had to fill non-noble offices at the ducal court. Their fiscal exemption was often not respected, and they could not wear the short clothes typical for the true nobility. (39)

A second form of ennoblement consisted of the ratification of an alleged (or invented) noble status by means of an 'inquiry'. In this way Duke Philip the Good 'confirmed' the status of the extremely wealthy financial officer Gautier Poulain, who claimed to descend from a noble family. Even though Poulain claimed descent from the nobility, this did not stop him from allying with a family of Lilleois money-changers. In 1433 he married Jehanne de Lanstais, daughter of the former master of accounts Jehan de Lanstais senior, and sister to Jehan junior, who was active as a money lender. A few witnesses confirmed that this family had been noble for a long time but it is likely that his extensive financial empire was the most convincing motivation for the match. (40) This example notwithstanding, most officiers' families who became a part of this new nobility did so in a very gradual manner rather than by a formal judicial decision. A typical example is the De Kethulle family. They gradually accumulated fiefs and seigneuries, allied themselves with daughters of uncontested noble lineages and took up a great number of princely offices. Over time all came to consider them nobles because they lived and behaved like nobles (the so-called vivre noblement). By the beginning of the sixteenth century, nearly a century after the beginning of their climb up the social ladder, no one doubted their status anymore. (41) By living and acting as nobles, marrying into the nobility and amassing rural estates, officers' families slowly integrated themselves into the newly emerging 'political' nobility.

Meanwhile, those nobles from older noble families who did survive the late medieval drop in rural income were those who had entered the duke's service before it was too late. The relationship between serving the prince and success in the land market is all too clear. In his research on the rural district surrounding Lille, Hans Cools shows that a limited circle of noble families, who were protected by the dukes and monopolised the important offices of the administration, also managed to accumulate most of the land. (42) Two-thirds of all land held in feudal tenure was in the hands of 32 persons, mostly nobles who owed their rise to the Duke of Burgundy. (43) My own research has suggested similar results; those nobles who were the most successful in accumulating lands were these who served the prince as officers. (44)

Non-noble Elite Groups

If during the later Middle Ages the nobles needed rejuvenation and reorientation as a social group, the dominant classes in the cities were stronger than ever before. Historians have traditionally viewed the Flemish patricians of the thirteenth and fourteenth century as strong urban particularists who primarily identified with their own city, and there is a lot of justification for this point of view. (45) The historical sociologist Yves Barel encapsulates what many case studies have shown, that the economic base of the patrician class consisted of long-distance trade in mainly manufactured goods, monetary exchange and ownership of land both in the city and in the rural hinterland of the city. Patrician families could be more or less 'closed' in a hereditary way, with the function of alderman being transmitted over the generations. They possessed judicial and political privileges or monopolies and displayed outward signs of their position. In general the patricians were diametrically opposed to the mass of urban artisans, who were the real champions of urban particularism in Flanders. (46) In a more recent literature the old and mostly artificial dividing lines between patricians and rural elites are dropped. Cowan among others points out that there was a tendency to integration of urban and rural elites in a broader elite. This phenomenon was typical for Europe in the early modern period. (47) In fifteenth century Flanders the opposition between the urban patricians and the landed nobility also steadily decreased.

There were several reasons for the lessening of differences between the landed nobility and the urban patricians. First, there were several waves of burgher investment in the countryside. Lands, many of which were fiefs or seigneuries lost by the impoverished nobility, were bought up by patricians and sometimes even by wealthy artisans. This question is difficult to tackle with the existing sources but it is clear that, unlike some other European regions where the traditional nobles retained their dominance, the Flemish burghers invested on a large scale in land outside the city, even before they entered the ranks of the princely officers in great numbers. At the end of the thirteenth century, and again at the end of the fourteenth century, the weakened position of the nobility and flourishing urban economies caused the first waves of this investment. The economic elites who raised their income in commercial and financial transactions, and gradually also more and more in princely offices, managed to partially push aside the traditional land-owning nobility from the countryside. Studies show that Ghent patricians already possessed many fiefs in the thirteenth century, and undoubtedly the situation was the same in and around the other large Flemish cities. (48) In a monetary economy with great material insecurity and a slow circulation of money, creditworthiness was essential in economic and social transactions. Land was the most important security as the most stable and important means of production, and the urban patricians sought that security eagerly. (49) Of course feudal and seigniorial titles also brought along social promotion, but there was yet another motive to invest in (feudal) land: to perpetuate one's possessions for the future and keep the heritage within the family. (50) A landed patrimony thus accompanied and demonstrated the social promotion of a family and this was especially important for princely officers.

Another reason for the rapproachment between the two groups involved state politics. With the extension of state power and the weakening of the autonomous power bases of the great cities, the patrician elites gradually started siding more and more with the Dukes of Burgundy. This happened first in the smaller cities, which took the duke's part because he protected them from the imperialist aspirations of the larger cities who tried to dominate them. The attitude of the Bruges patricians during the revolt of 1436-1438 makes it very clear that they supported the Burgundian state. While the artisan middle classes were still the champions of urban autonomy and vigorously opposed Duke Philip the Good and his supporters, the ruling families tried to mediate between the lord and the city and even acted as outright accomplices of the central power. (51) The same evolution took place in Ghent, albeit somewhat later. During the first half of the fifteenth century, a pro-ducal party, consisting of patricians and ducal officers within the city, gradually grew stronger, and after the repression of the revolt of 1449-1453 this party gained total power. (52) However, especially in Ghent, particularist elements remained numerous, and they would cause new revolts in 1468 and 1477. But the overall trend was clear; feeling that they had more common interests with the Dukes of Burgundy, the urban political elite gave up the autonomist aspirations they had defended during the fourteenth century. Many of them became landowners and loyal servants of their prince and strove to enter the nobility. (53)

Finally, if the Flemish urban patricians have been thoroughly studied, we know little about those rural elites in Flanders that did not belong to the nobility. However, economic-historic and agrarian research (54) points out that there were many large farmers who only paid a little hereditary rent and were the de facto owners of their land. There were even so-called 'capitalist farmers', especially in the coastal plains of Flanders, who employed wage-labourers. The participation of the free peasants of Flanders in several revolts (55) shows that in any case they felt they had something to lose. There were also rural elite groups, such as local receivers and bailiffs, judicial officers in the service of the count or the local lord, and aldermen of the local village benches, some of whom made it into the nobility or the service of the prince. Victor van Ysemberghe, for example, who became an official in the Lille Chamber of Accounts, clearly descended from such a non-noble rural elite family in the district of Furnes. The same went for other important councillors, such as Andrieu Colins, Omaer Claiszone and Jacob Donche. They all had ancestors who had seats in local and regional benches of aldermen. (56)

For nobles, patricians and non-noble rural elites, serving the prince proved to be the principal way of achieving material success and social status in late medieval Flanders. The ducal officers, whether from noble or patrician origins, had specific strategies for accumulating wealth, making use of all the assets they possessed. We can distinguish a 'legal', an 'illegal' and a 'social' way for the superior officers to enrich themselves. Salaries, pensions, gifts and 'epices' (customary fringe benefits received from legal parties or subordinate officers and institutions) made up the legal way. Corruption and bribery, probably frequent but always very difficult to trace in the sources, were the illegal ways. The 'social' way to enrichment included marriage, ennoblement and acquisition of patrimonial lands. (57) Francine Leclercq summarised the strategies of accumulation of the late medieval officers in the following way: 'Un bourgeois enrichi par le commerce a comme premier souci d'entrer au service des dues. Une fois en possession d'offices, il desire acquerir des terres'. (58) Lotard Fremault, for instance, gradually built up an impressive landed estate after a career in the service of his town and later of the prince, particularly investing in fiefs. (59) Thus, the social and economic strategies of the different elite groups, to the extent that they were still distinct from each other, showed very similar patterns. They all had a strong interest in the state construction, because it provided them with clear possibilities for enrichment and increase of social status.

Regional mobility

The elite groups of the city and the surrounding countryside had a tendency to overlap. Jan de Witte, a ducal councillor originating from Bruges, was related to a number of other Bruges families but also to many leading families of the 'Franc of Bruges', the rural district around the city including family names like Van Aartrijke, Van Eessene, Braderick, De Vos, Adornes, De Baenst, Metteneye, Losschaert and Van Theemseke, and also with the Triests, a officers' family from Ghent. (60) It is clear that he was deeply rooted in the Bruges milieu of commercial capitalists, as well as in that of the lords of the Franc. A similar example is the Mont family of officers. They originated from Ypres patricians of the thirteenth century, but their fifteenth-century representative, Diederic Mont, seems to have come from the surrounding rural district (the Kasselrij leper). (61) A Nicolas Mont had been alderman of Ypres in 1245, and a Jehan Mont had been a draper in 1303. Diederic Mont, who would become the procureur-generaal of Flanders, the public prosecutor of the duke in the county, started his career in 1436 at a meeting of the representative Estates of Flanders. He then became clerk of the rural district around Ypres and pensionaris (legal advisor) of the city in succession. Although he did not have a university degree, we can assume that he was a specialist in local privileges and customary law. In between, he also worked as a bailiff in the eastern portion of the rural district of Ypres. These career changes, passing over from one institutional level to another, did not seem to create any problems for those parties involved. After his short career in the service of the city, he once again became a bailiff of the feudal court of Ypres. Eventually he was commissioned as the prosecutor of the Council of Flanders, the highest court in the county. (63) The growing career mobility of the officers established links between different regional elites and institutions. The superior officers acted as power brokers defending different interests on different levels of power and, as I will show, creating a common political discourse.

The Flemish officers were obliged to take up their residence in the city where their office was located. (63) In their new places of residence they expanded their social capital, becoming a part of the local social and political elites. Often, their children remained in these cities. Thus, the government office of a certain officer led to the relocation of parts of important Flemish families. The nobility, however, had always been less bound to specific places of residence. Successful noble families not only possessed their country houses or castles but often also one or several urban residencies and they alternated frequently between residences. A noble councillor like Hector van Voorhoute, who was bailiff of Courtrai in 1424, at that time stayed in his castle in Wervik, but he undoubtedly also had a house in Ghent, where he became a member of the Council of Flanders in 1440. (64) The most important ducal officers possessed houses in all the principal cities in the county, and also in locations of the central Burgundian institutions, such as Mechelen, where the superior court of law of the Burgundian state was established in 1473, or Brussels and other frequent places of residence of the ducal court. Jan van de Kethulle, who was a top politician in the Flemish government institutions, normally lived in Bruges. As a clerk of the Franc of Bruges, he must have acquired a house there, which he retained when he became a ducal councillor. We also know that in the years 1409-1412 he resided in Lille, where he had a house in the Rue des Ensacquiees, close to the market. This was probably a rented house, because in 1412 duke John the Fearless granted him a gift of 300 francs to buy and redecorate a house in Lille. However, in 1414, the count of Charolais (65) ordered Kethulle to reside in Ghent. Initially he rented a house in the city, but finally in 1424 he bought a property known as the Braemsteen, in the Onderstraat, a street where many rich burghers and ducal officers lived. We also know that in 1413 he owned another house in Courtrai, close to one of the city gates. (66)

Clearly, ducal officers were not tied to a particular place. In connection with the personal cursus honorum we can discern forms of geographical mobility for the councillors of the dukes of Bourbon as well. (67) It is not self-evident or even desirable to classify the Flemish officers in a specific region. Even before the Burgundian epoch the elites were far more mobile geographically than has been assumed. The same family could have different branches in different cities or regions, and linguistic barriers were in this respect of subordinate importance. As I will show, there are many examples of officers' families scattered over both the French- and Dutch-speaking areas of the county of Flanders. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Gherbode family held some offices in the city government of the (French-speaking) town of Lille, while in fact they came from the (Dutch-speaking) town of Ypres. A somewhat romantic hypothesis is that they might have fled their hometown after a revolt in 1303 when many of the aldermen were killed. (68) The Gherbodes reached their apogee when Thierry Gherbode became an important secretary and garde des chartes, the archivist, of the Flemish counts. Everaert Gherbode, his grandson, was a councillor in the Council of Flanders. He was born in Ypres, but he settled in Lille and was buried in the small town of Wervik. The landed property of the Gherbodes was spread throughout the districts of Courtrai and Lille. (69) In this way, officers' families like the Gherbodes showed increasing similarity to noble families who also had different branches in different towns and regions and whose landed property could be scattered around the county. Gradually, by marrying other similar families of nobles and officers, these lineages made up a regional political elite with a broader geographical scope.

Social and political networks

It is now clear that the ducal officers constructed family and social networks that went beyond their class and geographical origins. Some of these officers' families were at the same time active as aldermen of the most important cities, in the regional administration of bailiffs and receivers, and in the central and provincial institutions of the Burgundian state. They maintained patronage relations with the urban patricians and middle classes of artisans and with the rural notables. This shows how the senior officers played a key role in the political integration of the central and local elites, which was a conditio sine qua non for the state formation process. In the fifteenth century, the noble Van Gistel family, for instance, filled positions in local, regional, and central civil service. (70) Leading families also had a tendency to establish 'regional networks' with similar families in neighbouring regions which went beyond the differences in language. (71) The local elites of the western part of the Dutch-speaking part of Flanders seem to have been somewhat oriented in their career perspectives towards the French-speaking districts of Lille, Douai and Orchies. The presence of the Chamber of Accounts in Lille clearly attracted them. The Van Ysemberghe family, originally from the Dutch-speaking region of Veurne in western Flanders, had representatives in the principal institutions of Walloon (French-speaking) Flanders, the Gouvernance and the Chamber of Accounts. Victor van Ysemberghe first married a woman of the Lille patrician family, Le Nepveu, and in a second marriage, he wed a granddaughter of the former master of accounts Berthelmy a la Truye, also a member of the Lille political elite. Many important persons, laymen and clerics, of that city were present at the conclusion of his second marriage contract. (72)

Typical rural families who did not belong to the nobility were often more 'urban' than one would think at first sight. In the county of Flanders, with the exception of some peripheral regions in the Northwest, there was a small town with several thousand inhabitants at least every ten or twenty miles. (73) Urban and rural elites thus tended to overlap. The Donche family, for instance came from an important family in the Veurne district. Their name is to be found in sources up to the fourteenth century around the parish of Alveringem, the home of many aldermen of the regional bench of the Veurne district. Jacob Donche, the most successful member of the family, had obtained his first office as a secretary to the aldermen of Ghent thanks to the support of his father-in-law and patron Pieter Boudins. After the death of his first wife Maria Boudins, he remarried Philippa Utenhove, a scion of one of the most important Ghent families which had been supporting the counts for generations. In this way he gained entry to the pro-ducal network in Ghent. He joined the confraternity of Saint James and the archers' guild of Saint George as a way to further integrate himself into the leading circles of the city. His indisputable loyalty to the Burgundian dynasty is proven by the fact that he was exiled in both the revolts of 1451 and 1477. In the 1488 revolt, the rebels even destroyed his house. However, his activities in this Ghent elite network did not prevent him from keeping an eye on his interests in his place of birth in western Flanders. His brother Regnault still held the one of the highest positions in the Kasselrij of Veurne, the home region of the Donche family. Master Omaer Claiszone was another important Flemish officer who came from that same region. He also insinuated himself into the Ghent political milieu, and he was buried in the Ghent collegiate church of Saint Veerle. He was also exiled from Ghent for talking contemptuously about the city's privileges, something the supporters of civic independence did not appreciate at all. (74)

High officials tended to ally themselves to their counterparts within the same institution or within the larger state apparatus. Jehan de Lannoy, an important nobleman in the service of the dukes of Burgundy, called nepotism a coustume in Flanders. Some offices in the Burgundian administration were held so often by members of the same family that they were really dynastic property. (75) In her study of the staff of the Chamber of Accounts of Lille, Leclercq found that officials reinforced their common interests by forming endogamous kinship ties. (76) The families of the masters of accounts de Lanstais, Poulain, Fremault, de la Tannerie, a la Truye, de Hauteville, Boids and van Ysemberghe were allied by marriage to each other. Some of these were noble, some were not. (77) The result of this situation was that the power elite of the Burgundian state showed more and more coherence, and ability to pass on bureaucratic knowledge and experience to its posterity, and after a while, to reproduce itself. Nevertheless, they included new elements from the local political elites of the nobility to avoid sclerosis and to further social integration. The formation of such a power elite gave a new orientation to the dominant groups, and it was also to the prince's advantage. This process already started before the fifteenth century in the comital council where family networks of officials came into being, (78) but now it continued on a larger scale. (79) So what were the ties between the late medieval Flemish officers' lineages and the traditional noble families? To what extent did they overlap and form alliances?

In the end, the state formation process was a less decisive factor in the network building of the old nobility. As a traditional ruling class they had already for centuries used tried-and-true social practices and strategies, which now became integrated into the rise of the modern state. Of course, the family networks of the officers partly overlapped the existing noble kinship structures. Pre-capitalist ruling classes often made up restricted milieus in which everyone of a specific region knew each other very well, and practically everybody was related, despite the strict ecclesiastical ban on incestuous unions. For instance, a short history, minus the genealogical details, of the Van de Woestine family shows that they were already noble at the beginning of the thirteenth century (a knight Filips van de Woestine was mentioned in 1213). By 1300 they were related to another prominent Flemish noble family, the Van Kooigems, and by 1400, with De Mortagnes, a similar noble family that had entered comital service. During the Burgundian period they were related to officers' families, like the Utenhoves, the Gherbodes and the De Wittes, and with noble lineages, such as the Van Gistels and the Van Dadizeles. Now they had widened their scope by marrying their children to families that did not belong to the older nobility, a sign of just how important officers had become. (80) From the opposite end of the social ladder, the progress of the descendants of the important secretary and councillor Jan Wielant demonstrates how officers' families achieved upward social mobility by marrying their children into noble lineages. Wielant married Catharina van de Kethulle, a daughter of Jan van de Kethulle, who occupied a similar position to Jan Wielant. He had twelve children with her, of whom five were still alive at Jan's death. Their son Filips Wielant became the most brilliant Flemish jurist of the Middle Ages, who would make a career that even outdid that of his father. Jan's daughter Florentine, lady of Bavikhove, married Willem, lord of Heule, Oosthove, Westhove, Leeuwergem and Beerlegem, military captain of the castle of Courtrai, and a traditional nobleman. When the latter was killed by Ghent rebels in 1487, she remarried Jacob, lord of Vichte and of Zandvoorde, knight and hereditary marshal of Flanders (an old feudal title) and a councillor to emperor Charles V. Johanna, another of Jan's daughters, was given in marriage in 1460 to Cornelis de la Barre, squire and lord of Mouscron, Luingne and Herseaux, esquire trenchant of duchess Margaret of York and bailiff of Courtrai. Johanna owned fiefs in Saint-Genois, Steeland, Bellegem, Lauwe, Tourcoing and Opbrakel, and died in Mouscron in 1504. Their son Jacob, lord of Lassus and Oultrepret, became a squire as well. Jan Wielant's son Joos was born in Dendermonde in 1452. Following noble tradition, as one of the younger sons, he was destined for a clerical career. He finished his studies at the University of Leuven in 1473 and subsequently became a priest, a monk, and later a prior in the important Benedictine abbey of St. Peters in Ghent. Jan Wielant's youngest son, also called Jan, was born in Ypres in 1454 and studied at Leuven. He became lord of Scoppeghem and married Margaretha of Boonem, who came from an politically prominent family in the Franc of Bruges. (81) Examples like these clearly demonstrate the process of intergenerational social mobility and the formation of family networks encompassing families from the different kinds of social and political elites. Daughters carried out a different function from sons in this process. They were married out as richly and nobly as possible, thereby bringing in 'social capital' to the family by associating the name of a noble lineage with the officer's family. Of course, in return, a family of wealthy officers could offer the marriageable noblemen wealth and political influence. However, the lords of Heule and Mouscron were no stereotypical penniless hoberaux who looked for a rich bourgeois heiress with an influential father. They could have married ladies of undisputed nobility, but chose instead a further integration into the social networks of the state and its officers. The reproduction strategies of the nobility itself had changed and were more and more adapted to the process of state formation.

The late medieval Flemish political elite not only exhibited a type of cosmopolitanism, with their broad outlook and extensive geographical and social mobility, but also practiced its dialectical opposite, localism. They were diligent in defending the interests of their own local communities, which served as their own power base, or as a location of their important family and patronage relationships. In that sense they operated as 'power brokers'. The Power-broking officers not only defended their own local interests but also those of their relatives, friends and regional institutions. Loys Dommessent, master of accounts in Lille, and himself originally from the patrician class of that city, clearly operated as a power broker for his hometown in the institutions of the Burgundian state, judging by the amount of gifts he received from Lille. But as a ducal secretary he also received a yearly gift of 50 pounds parisis from the Franc of Bruges. (82) The fact that high officials operated as patrons and power brokers in their own region does not necessarily contradict the formation of a new political elite, not even from the prince's point of view. In the long run the ducal political network could only be effective if it was embedded in the existing local power structures. The example of Joris de Bul makes this clear. He was probably a descendant of a rich Bruges family of merchants and house owners, who entrenched himself in the Ghent social networks as a result of state formation. Other members of this family remained as members of the Bruges political and social elite, but during the middle of the fifteenth century, a few members of the De Bul family held the office of alderman in Ghent. Joris de Bul married Katelijne Sersanders, a daughter of Filips Sersanders and Catherine Utenhove, two of the most prominent Ghent patrician families. Katelijne Sersanders' brother was the ducal councillor Jan Sersanders. One of De Bul's friends, Jacob Donche, another ducal councillor, was present when the testament of Joris' father was made up in 1473. Donche originally came from the rural district of Veurne-Ambacht but had settled in Ghent. Also present was Joris' cousin Pieter Boudins, a ducal secretary in Ghent. This network of family and friends played an active role in the manipulation of the Ghent aldermen's election in 1449, one of the factors that led to the revolt of this city in 1449-1453. They were part of a larger pro-ducal political network, made up of local elites and officers who had moved to Ghent from other regions, which was gradually formed in the rebellious city in the first half of the fifteenth century and served to strengthen the power of the dukes of Burgundy. (83) It was clearly in the interest of the prince that these elite families from different parts of the county united in social networks that would help him penetrate local power structures.

Genealogical consciousness

Along with ennoblement and upward social mobility, high officials adopted the family structure of the patrilineal 'lineage' typical of the nobility. (84) This objective process was also subjectively interiorised and socially reproduced in the guise of an incipient 'genealogical consciousness', a phenomenon that would become very important for the later noblesse de robe of the Early Modern period, when important offices automatically would bring about a juridical ennoblement. Around 1468 master of the accounts Thomas Malet drew up a genealogy of his 'lineage'. The first paragraph, in which he gave the motivation for his work, is very characteristic of the growing family consciousness and the noble aspirations of fifteenth- century officers:

  'Pour ce que nature humaine est si frelle, la vie des hommes si
  breifve, et les linaiges si tost eslongies et oublies des entendemens
  et memoires des hommes, especialement apres le mort des anciens, et
  que la redenture en chiet sur les josnes gens quy n'y mettent point
  leur entendement, et de legier s'en passent, se n'est quand il leur
  est necessaire d'estre servis de leur linage, ou quant aulcun prouffit
  ou succession leur est apparant d'escheir, a laquelle, pose qu'ilz y
  eussent droit, il n'y scevent parvenir, par faulte de scavoir declarer
  la genealogie dont ilz sont descendus; je, pour tant qu'il porra
  touchier a mes enffans ou temps advenir, par maniere d'avertissement
  leur feray la declaration quy s'ensieut'. (86)

The fact that Malet embellished the truth in his family history caused him no qualms at all. His forefathers were supposedly knights in the service of William the Conqueror who took part in the conquest of England, and what is more, they were crucial to winning the battle. Later ancestors fought in the crusades and so on. By usurping family trees of real but non-related lineages and other subtle tricks, Malet constructed a genealogy down to his father. His sisters, and other women, were hardly mentioned. They were quantite negligeable. In fact, more important than his own fictive ancestors, was the fact that he himself wished to become a progenitor of a lineage. For the later generations, the genealogy was of course more reliable. Malet emphasized his relations to uncontested noble families like the de Lannoy, the de Roubaix, the de Croy, the de Croix and the van Kooigem. These imaginary lineages became more and more real at the end of the Middle Ages, and they were the start of the typical genealogical falsifications of the noblesse de robe of the modern period who always claimed to descend from the old nobility. (86)

Cultural investments

Late medieval officials had a particular interest in representational strategies, as they wanted their memory to be kept alive for the succeeding generations. (87) The officers were a social group whose status was still unstable and fragile (88), and the logical consequence of this insecurity was a strong urge to be distinguished in the public sphere. Recognizing that funerary rituals and monuments reflected social differences and identity, rich but self-conscious officers deliberately invested in representation after death to acquire or consolidate social status. The officers invested in chapels, tomb sculpture and pictorial art. Tombstones, inscriptions and masses were not only an expression of their social standing but also a way of assuring a lasting social promotion for themselves and their family. Because particular elements of the sign language typical for funerary monuments and inscriptions are related to the social position of the deceased, officals imitated courtly and noble examples in their burial practices as a fundamental part of their social strategy and their search for distinction. They wanted their 'official' and family identity to be remembered. Most of them, with the exception of the old nobility, were buried in those churches that were centres of princely power, in a separate chapel which they had founded or next to the choir. They endowed annual masses in those same churches. Councillor Jan van Culsbrouc was buried before the main altar, his colleague Daniel Alaerts in the high choir, Jan van de Kethulle in the choir, Jehan de Mortaigne and Wouter van der Gracht beside the main altar, and Jan Quevin before the stairs of the choir. In fact, the officers did not differ from the prevailing religious, devotional and artistic patterns of the traditional dominant class, though the old nobles still wanted to be buried in the parish church of their own seigniory, which was still their main power base. (89) As could be expected, the 'new men' had to invest more in self-representation than the older elites but these new men were essentially adopting the noble cultural language. (90) Imitation of the nobility included these cultural and religious aspects of the vivre noblement, an "officers' culture," first identified by Prevenier, essentially characterised by the pursuit of social prestige and supported by dress, titles and other cultural expressions. (91) This furthered integration of officers' families into the new political elite on a more subjective level.

Ideology

The new regional political elite which was partially created by the state formation process also constructed itself subjectively by adapting what we could call a 'state ideology', typical of the ruling classes of the later Middle Ages. (92) Ideologically, the princely officers were especially inspired by Roman Law, to which, naturally, the notion of justice was central. Medieval jurists believed that peace and good government resulted from the 'veritable justice'. It was their task to assure this justice. Frequently the officers expressed a sincere sense of law and equity. In 1481, Guillaume Dommessent, master of the accounts at the Chambre des Comptes of Lille, wrote to his institution regarding the present condition of the county where he was staying: En verite, c'est une pitie de veoir et oir chacun jour les clameurs du peuple. Justice est du tout mise en oubly. Gens de guerre et autres de leur sorte reignent au pays. (93) The brilliant Flemish jurist and politician Philippe Wielant expressed this 'reason of state' in the smooth functioning of justice, which should not be au prejudice de la marchandise, du police et de la chose publicque, (94)--values that corresponded to the aspirations of the urban middle and higher classes. Vanderjagt has shown how the dukes of Burgundy and their entourage appropriated classical texts to serve the needs of the state. (95) Armed with old theories, the officials constructed a new kind of state and a new sort of society. In the typical discourse of the officials of the later Middle Ages some 'central signifiers' recurred frequently. These concepts--res publica, bonum commune, aequitas, ratio, lex, reformatio and justitia--constituted "knots of signification" which dominated and determined the other concepts and directed political action. (96) These terms, directly originating from the classical and Christian intellectual heritage and Roman Law, made up the essential elements of the new state ideology of the late medieval officers.

Once a conservative platform, this discourse about the 'common good' now inspired Burgundian state officials to legislative action and reform. The centrality of the utilitas rei publicae and the common good was also the Leitmotiv in the discourses of those who in later medieval French history are known as the reformateurs, officers, delegates in representative assemblies, and scholars who strove for social reform. (97) During the later Middle Ages, the notion of reformatio underwent a gradual shift in meaning. From the typical medieval idea of re-formatio as the 'restoration' of an older, previous situation or ancient custom, it evolved into a concept of the progressive improvement of the condition of the realm by means of written laws that reconciled the needs of the prince and those of the people. removing corrupt officials and improving the administration of justice, economic and monetary stability, in short all that was included in the medieval conception of chose publicque formed the fixed elements in this ideological discourse. (98) Concepts of classical and Christian origin utilized in the typical works in their libraries or in their university studies assumed a new function--constituting a precocious basis of the state ideology. In this sense, the officials of the later Middle Ages made up a new group of intellectuals in the service of the centralising state and organically linked to it. In this manner, they did not only contribute to the independence of their own position but also to that of the state itself.

Conclusion

As was the case in other parts of Western Europe, the various late medieval elite groups in Flanders tended to amalgamate in a new 'power elite', breaking through some of the binary divisions that historians have argued for in earlier periods (town/country, noble/burgher etc.). (99) The state formation process was the fundamental cause of this development. Political and social elites of town and countryside and of the different regions of the county established durable social networks. Impoverished noble lineages who survived by serving the prince fused with rich patrician families who also took up princely offices. The latter gradually gave up their autonomist urban outlook and widened their perspectives. Thus, the nobility did not at all close itself off from newcomers. On the contrary, a new 'state nobility' was created, which mixed traditional noble values and patrilineal family structures with practical bourgeois capacities in law and finances, and maintained a 'state ideology' in which the defence of justice and the common good were the key elements. Objectively shared interests in maintaining the structure of the state were thus subjectively reproduced.

Department of Medieval History

Ghent, Belgium

ENDNOTES

I would like to thank professor Walter Prevenier and Dr. John Watts for their comments.

1. E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London, 1963).

2. A general history of the county of Flanders can be found in D. Nicholas, Medieval Flanders (London, 1992).

3. See A. Verhulst, Precis d'histoire rurale de la Belgique (Brussels, 1990) for an assessment of Flemish agriculture.

4. L.M. Degryse, "Some Observations on the Origin of the Flemish Bailiff (bailli): The Reign of Philip of Alsace," Viator, 7 (1976), 243-294; H. Nowe, Les baillis comtaux de Flandre, des origines a la fin du XIVe siecle (Brussels, 1928).

5. T. Soens, "Evolution et gestion du domaine comtal en Flandre sous Louis de Male et Philippe le Hardi (1346-1404)," Revue du Nord, 83, 1 (2001), 25-63.

6. J. Buntinx, De Audientie van de graven van Vlaanderen. Studie over het centraal grafelijk gerecht (c. 1330-c.1409) (Brussels, 1949).

7. A. Zoete, Organisatie en betekenis van de beden in het graafschap Vlaanderen onder de hertogen Jan Zonder Vrees en Filips de Goede (1405-1467) (Brussels, 1994).

8. W. Blockmans, "A Typology of Representative Institutions in Late Medieval Europe," Journal of Medieval History, 4 (1978), 189-215.

9. J.-Ph. Genet, ed., L'Etat moderne: genese: bilans et perspectives (Actes du colloque tenu au CNRS a Paris, les 19e-20e septembre 1989) (Paris, 1990), and the other participants of the research program "Origins of the Moderns State" saw a tendency in Western Europe to the construction of modern states in the period 1280-1360, see H. De Schepper and J.-M. Cauchies, "Legal tools of the Public Power in the Netherlands, 1200-1600," in A. Padoa-Schioppa, ed., Legislation and Justice (The origins of the Modern State in Europe, C) (Oxford, 1997), 229-268.

10. W. Te Brake, A Plague of Insurrection: Popular Politics and Peasant Revolt in Flanders, 1323-1328 (Philadelphia, 1993); D. Nicholas, The van Arteveldes of Ghent: The Varieties of Vendetta and the Hero in History (Leiden, 1988).

11. On him see R. Vaughan, Philip the Bold. The Formation of the Burgundian State (London, 1962).

12. R. Vaughan, Philip the Good. The Apogee of the Burgundian State (London, 1970).

13. J. Van Rompaey, De Grote Raad van de Hertogen van Boergondie en het Parlement van Mechelen (Brussels, 1973).

14. M. Jean, La Chambre des Comptes de Lille. L'institution et les hommes (1477-1667), Paris, 1992; J. Dumolyn, De Raad van Vlaanderen en de Rekenkamer van Rijsel. Gewestelijke overheidsinstellingen als instrumenten van de centralisatie (1419-1477) (Brussels, 2002).

15. E. Warlop, The Flemish Nobility before 1300, 2 vol. (Courtrai, 1976).

16. G. Bois, Crise du feodalisme: economie rurale et demographique en Normandie orientale du debut du 14e siecle au milieu du 16e siecle (Paris, 1976).

17. E. Thoen, "A 'Commercial Survival Economy' in Evolution. The Flemish Countryside and the Transition to Capitalism (Middle Ages-19th Century)," in P. Hoppenbrouwers and J.L. Van Zanden, eds., Peasants into Farmers? The Transformation of Rural Economy and Society in the Low Countries (Middle Ages-19th Century) in Light of the Brenner Debate (Corn Publication Series) (Turnhout, 2001), 102-157.

18. W. Blockmans, De volksvertegenwoordiging in Vlaanderen in de overgang van Middeleeuwen naar nieuwe tijden (1384-1506) (Brussels, 1978).

19. J. Dumolyn and F.Van Tricht, "De sociaal-economische positie van de laatmiddeleeuwse Vlaamse adel: enkele trends," Handelingen van het Genootschap voor Geschiedenis te Brugge, 137 (2000), 3-46.

20. On the Burgundian state see W. Blockmans and W. Prevenier, The Burgundian Netherlands (Cambridge, 1986); B. Schnerb, L'Etat bourguignon (Paris, 1999).

21. P. De Win, "De adel in het hertogdom Brabant van de vijftiende eeuw. Een terreinverkenning," Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 93 (1980), 391-409; H. Cools, Mannen met macht: edellieden en de moderne staat in de Bourgondisch-Habsburgse landen (1475-1530) (Zutphen, 2001).

22. M.-Th. Caron, La noblesse dans le duche de Bourgogne, 1315-1477 (Lille, 1987), 160-161; for the Netherlands R. Van Uytven, "Classes economiques, hierarchies sociales et influence politique aux Pays-Bas du Sud du XIVe au XVIIe siecle," in A. Guarducci, ed., Gerarchie economiche e gierarchie sociale secoli XII-XVIII (Florence, Instituto Internazionale di Storia Economica "F. Datini"), Serie 2, 12 (1990), 372.

23. W. Blockmans, "De Bourgondische Nederlanden: de weg naar een moderne staatsvorm," Handelingen van de Koninklijke Kring voor Oudheidkunde, Letteren en Kunst van Mechelen, 77 (1973), 15.

24. H. Cools, Mannen met macht (Amsterdam, 2002), 15-20.

25. E. Crouzet-Pavan, "Les elites urbaines: apercus problematiques (France, Angleterre, Italie)," in Les elites urbaines au Moyen Age (XXVIIe Congres de la Societe des Historiens Medievistes de l'Enseignement Superieur Public. Rome, mai 1996) (Paris, 1997), 25.

26. A. Uyttebrouck, Le gouvernement du duche de Brabant au Bas Moyen Age (1355-1430) (Brussels, 1975), 310.

27. Ibid., 302-304.

28. H. De Ridder-Symoens, "Milieu social, etudes universitaires et carrieres des conseillers au Conseil de Brabant (1430-1600)," in Recht en instellingen in de Oude Nederlanden tijdens de middeleeuwen en de nieuwe tijd. Liber amicorum Jan Buntinx (Leuven, 1981), 277.

29. J. Dumolyn and F. Van Tricht, "Adel en nobiliteringsprocessen in het laatmiddeleeuwse Vlaanderen: een status quaestionis," Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis van de Nederlanden, 115 (2000), 197-222; see also J.M. D'Arbaumont, "Les anoblis de Bourgogne, periode ducale (1361-1477)," Revue Nobiliaire, Heraldique et Biographique, 3 (1866), 151-165; J.R. Bloch, L'anoblissement en France au temps de Franc, ois Ier, essai de definition de la condition juridique et sociale de la noblesse au debut de XVle siecle (Paris, 1934).; W. Paravicini, "Soziale Schichtung und soziale Mobilitat am Hof der Herzoge von Burgund," Francia, 5 (1977), 145-149.

30. See the definition of L. Genicot, "Les recherches relatives a la noblesse medievale," Bulletin de l'Academie Royale de Belgique (Classe des Lettres), 5e serie, 61 (1975), 46-47.

31. J. Dumolyn and F. Van Tricht, "De sociaal-economische positie van de laatmiddeleeuwse Vlaamse adel: enkele trends," Handelingen van het Genootschap voor Geschiedenis te Brugge, 137 (2000), 7-8; Thoen, "A commercial survival economy."

32. P. Bourdieu, "De la maison du roi a la raison d'etat. Un modele de la genese du champ bureaucratique," Actes de la Recherche en Siences Sociales, 118 (1997), 61.

33. Caron, La noblesse, 534.

34. Ibid., 167-168.

35. Ibid., 443.

36. O. Matteoni, Servir le prince. Les officiers des ducs de Bourbon a la fin du Moyen Age (1356-1523) (Paris, 1998), 435; Paravicini, "Soziale Schichtung," 145-146; P. De Win, "The Lesser Nobility of the Burgundian Netherlands," in M. Jones, ed., Gentry and Lesser Nobility in Later Medieval Europe (Gloucester, 1986), 107.

37. J. Dumolyn, Staatsvorming en vorstelijke ambtenaren in het graafschap Vlaanderen (1419-1477), (Antwerp-Apeldoorn, 2003), 163.

38. Dumolyn, Staatsvorming, 163-164.

39. Paravicini, "Soziale Schichtung," 151.

40. Dumolyn, Staatsvorming, p. 164; M. Boone, "Poulain (Gautier)," in Nationaal Biografisch Woordenboek, vol. 14 (Brussels, 1992), kol. 529-536.

41. H. Douxchamps, La famille de la Kethulle, 3 vol. (Office Genealogique et Heraldique de la Belgique) (Brussels, 1996).

42. H. Cools, "Le prince et la noblesse dans la chatellenie de Lille a la fin du XVe siecle: un exemple de la plus grande emprise de l'Etat sur les elites locales?," Revue du Nord, 77 (1995), 405-406.

43. Ibid., 400.

44. J. Dumolyn, "Pouvoir d'Etat et enrichissement personnel: investissements et strategies d'accumulation mis en oeuvre par les officiers des ducs de Bourgogne en Flandre," Le Moyen Age (2005) (forthcoming)

45. The literature is abundant, see p.e.: M. Boone, "Droit de bourgeoisie et particularisme urbain dans la Flandre bourguignonne et habsbourgeoise (1384-1585)," Revue Belge de Philologie et Histoire, 84 (1996), 707-725.

46. Y. Barel, La ville medievale: systeme social, systeme urbain (Grenoble, 1977), 81-82; M. Boone, "La terre, les hommes et les villes. Quelques considerations autour du theme de l'urbanisation des proprietaires terriens," in La ville et la transmission des valeurs culturelles au bas moyen age et aux temps modernes, Credit communal. 17e Colloque internationale. Actes (Brussels, 1996), 160.

47. A. Cowan, "Urban Elites in Early Modern Europe: an Endangered Species?," Historical Research, 64 (1991), 121-122.

48. F. Blockmans, Het Gentsche stadspatriciaat tot omstreeks 1302 (Antwerp, 1938), 289-302; Boone, "La terre, les hommes et les villes," 159; Dumolyn and Van Tricht, "De sociaal-economische positie," 23-24; D. Heirbaut, Over heren, vazallen en graven: het persoonlijk leenrecht in Vlaanderen ca. 1000-1305 (Brussels, 1997), 79-80; D. Nicholas, Town and countryside. Social, Economic and Political Tensions in Fourteenth Century Flanders (Bruges, 1971), 250-251.

49. Boone, "La terre, les hommes et les villes," 157; H. Soly, "The "betrayal" of the 16th-century bourgeoisie: a myth?," Acta historiae Neerlandicae, 8 (1975), 262-280.

50. Boone, "La terre, les hommes et les villes," pp. 157-158.

51. J. Dumolyn, De Brugse opstand van 1436-1438 (Courtrai-Heule, 1997).

52. J. Haemers, De Gentse opstand 1449-1453. De strijd tussen rivaliserende netwerken om het stedelijk kapitaal (Courtrai-Heule, 2004), passim; Dumolyn, Staatsvorming, 205-206.

53. In the period 1477-1492, with the accession of the Habsburg dynasty, and as a result of the unpopular politics of the deceased Charles the Bold, there was a temporary setback of this process because Maximilian of Austria was not considered a rightful and natural prince by many nobles and patricians. See W.P. Blockmans, "Autocratie ou polyarchie? La lutte pour le pouvoir politique en Flandre de 1482 a 1492, d'apres des documents inedits," Bulletin de la Commission Royale d'Histoire, 140 (1974), 257-368.

54. See especially E. Thoen, Landbouwekonomie en bevolking in Vlaanderen gedurende de late Middeleeuwen en het begin van de Moderne Tijden. Testregio: de kasselrijen van Oudenaarde en Aalst (eind 13de-eerste helft 16de eeuw) (Ghent, 1988).

55. Te Brake, A Plague.

56. Dumolyn, Staatsvorming, p. 156.

57. M. Baelde, "Les possibilites d'enrichissement des cadres 'administratifs' aux anciens Pays-Bas (XVIe-XVIIIe siecles)," in Atti della Sesta Settimana di Studia 27/4-3/5/1974 (Florence, 1978), 262-263.

58. F.Leclercq, Etude du personnel de la chambre des comptes de Lille sous les ducs de Bourgogne (Paris, 1958), 91.

59. Ibid., 121-123, 127.

60. Dumolyn, Staatsvorming, 157.

61. S. Fecheyr, "Het stadspatriciaat van Ieper," in O. Mus, ed., Prisma van de geschiedenis van Ieper (Ieper, 1974), 290-312.

62. Dumolyn, Staatsvorming, 157-158.

63. The same was true for the officers of the dukes of Bourbon also Matteoni, Servir le prince, 273-274.

64. Dumolyn, Staatsvorming, p. 140. On the Voorhoutes and their links with the neighbouring county of Zeeland, see: W. Prevenier, "Vrouwenroof als middel tot sociale mobiliteit in hte 15de-eeuwse Zeeland," in D.E.H. De Boer, and J.W. Marsilje, eds., De Nederlanden in de late middeleeuwen (Utrecht, 1987), 410-424.

65. This was the title of the son of the duke of Burgundy.

66. Ibid., 127.

67. Matteoni, Servir le prince, 309.

68. P. Ferrant-Dalle, "Thierry Gherbode," in Gedenkboek Paul Ferrant-Dalle 1885-1966 (Wervik, 1967), 63-70.

69. Dumolyn, Staatsvorming, 141.

70. Ibid., 197.

71. On language differences in the Flemish administration see W. Prevenier and Th. de Hemptinne, "La Flandre au Moyen Age. Un pays de trilinguisme administratif," in O. Guyotjeannin, ed., La langue des actes. Actes du XIe Congres International de diplomatique (Troyes, jeudi 11-samedi 13 septembre 2003), Paris, ELEC, editions en ligne de l'Ecole des Chartes (on-line publication on http://elec.enc.sorbonne.fr/document174.html).

72. Ibid., 208.

73. A general picture of the small Flemish town in P. Stabel, Dwarfs among Giants: the Flemish Urban Network in the Late Middle Ages (Leuven, 1997).

74. Dumolyn, Staatsvorming, 209.

75. J. Bartier, Legistes et gens de finances au XVe siecle: les conseillers des ducs de Bourgogne Philippe le Bon et Charles le Temeraire (Brussels, 1952-1955), 87-88.

76. Leclercq, Etude du personnel de la chambre, 136.

77. Ibid., 137-139. Matteoni described a similar situation in other chambers of accounts: Matteoni, Servir le prince, 296.

78. Buntinx, De audientie, 98-101.

79. For similar family networks in government institutions see J. Kerherve, L'Etat breton aux 14e et 15e siecles: les ducs, l'argent et les hommes (Paris, 1987), II, 774; F. Autrand, Naissance d'un grand corps de l'Etat. Les gens du Parlement de Paris 1345-1454 (Paris, 1981).

80. Dumolyn, Staatsvorming, 196-197.

81. Ibid., 175-176.

82. Ibid., 201.

83. Ibid., 206-207.

84. See L. Stone, The family, sex and marriage in England 1500-1800 (London, 1979), 29.

85. R. Rodiere & C. De La Charie, Les archives de la famille Beaulaincourt (Societe d'Etudes de la Province de Cambrai, 2-3) (Cambrai, 1911-1912), 1091-1100.

86. Dumolyn, Staatsvorming, 192-193.

87. For the following paragraph see J. Dumolyn and K. Moermans, "Distinctie en memorie. Symbolische investeringen in de eeuwigheid door laatmiddeleeuwse hoge ambtenaren in het graafschap Vlaanderen," Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 116 (2003), 332-349.

88. D. Courtemanche, Oeuvrer pour la posterite: les testaments parisiens des gens du roi au debut du XVe siecle (Paris, 1997), 9.

89. Courtemanche, Oeuvrer pour la posterite, 130-133

90. W. Prevenier, "Culture et groupes sociaux dans les villes des anciens Pays-Bas au Moyen Age," in J.-M. Duvosquel and J. Nazet, ed., Les Pays-Bas bourguignons. Histoire et institutions. Melanges Andre Uyttebrouck (Brussels, 1996), 354.

91. W. Prevenier, "Officials in Town and Countryside in the Low Countries. Social and Professional Developments from the Fourteenth to the Sixteenth Century," Acta Historica Neerlandicae, Studies on the History of the Netherlands, 7 (1974), 1-17.

92. For what follows: see also J. Dumolyn, "Justice, Equity and the Common Good. The State Ideology of the Councillors of the Burgundian Dukes," in R. Boulton and J. Veenstra (ed.), The Ideology of Burgundy (forthcoming)

93. Lille, Archives Departementales du Nord, B17737.

94. J.J. De Smet, ed., "Philippe Wielant. Recueil des antiquites de Flandre," in: Corpus Chronicorum Flandriae (Brussels, 1865), 111.

95. A. J. Vanderjagt, "Expropiating the Past. Tradition and Innovation in the Use of Texts in Fifteenth-Century Burgundy," in R. Suntrup and J. R. Veenstra, eds., Tradition and Innovation in an Era of Change (Frankfurt am Main, 2001), 186-187.

96. For this concept see E. Laclau and C. Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London, 1985).

97. J. Blanchard and J.-C. Muhlethaler, Ecriture et pouvoir a l'aube des temps modernes (Paris, 2002), 109.

98. A, Harding, Medieval Law and the Foundation of the State (Oxford, 2002), 254.

99. Compare with P. Coss, The Origins of the English Gentry (Cambrigde, 2003); B. Guenee, Tribunaux et Gens de Justice dans le bailliage de Senlis a la fin du Moyen Age vers 1380-vers 1550 (Paris, 1963).

By Jan Dumolyn

University of Ghent