Merlijn Hurx, Architecture as Profession: The Origins of Architectural Practice in the Low Countries in the Fifteenth Century. (Architectura Moderna 13.) Turnhout: Brepols, 2018. Paper. Pp. 459; 16 color plates, many black-and-white figures, 10 maps, and 5 tables. €119. ISBN: 978-2-503-56825-6.

Speculum ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 261-263
Author(s):  
Robert Bork
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Architectural Practice ◽  
Black And White

THE FEAST OF THE SEVEN SORROWS OF THE VIRGIN: PIETY, POLITICS AND PLAINCHANT AT THE BURGUNDIAN-HABSBURG COURT

2016 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 261-307
Author(s):  
Emily S. Thelen
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Special Interest ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Economic Instability ◽  
Habsburg Court ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Late Fifteenth

Devotion to the Virgin of Seven Sorrows flourished in the Low Countries in the late fifteenth century during a period of recovery from civil war, famine and economic instability. The Burgundian-Habsburg court took a special interest in this popular lay movement and, in an unusual move, sponsored a competition to generate a liturgy – a plainchant office and mass – for the growing devotion. This article identifies new sources for the text and music of the Seven Sorrows liturgy and ties them to the court’s competition. An examination of the surviving office and mass demonstrates the texts’ dependence on an earlier Marian celebration of the Compassion of the Virgin. The reworking of this older devotion reveals that the plainchant competition and the creation of the new Seven Sorrows liturgy were part of the court’s political agenda of restoring peace and unity to their territories.

Bruges, 15th-century centre of the notarial profession in the Low Countries

2009 ◽  
Vol 77 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 73-102
Author(s):  
Hendrik Callewier
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Northern Italy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
North Western

AbstractOn the strength of previous research it has often been assumed that in Flanders the notarial profession had barely developed before 1531. That position can no longer be upheld, in particular with regard to fifteenth-century Bruges, since a prosopographical study into the notaries public who were active at the time in Bruges shows that nowhere else in the Low Countries was the notariate so successful. Moreover, because of their numbers, of their intensive activity in pursuing their trade and of the nature of the deeds they drafted, the Bruges notaries appear to have set the standards for their colleagues in the other parts of the Low Countries. Even so, it remains true that in Bruges as in the rest of North-Western Europe, the notarial profession remained far less important than in the cities of Northern Italy.

The Merchant Adventurers of England: their origins and the Mercers' Company of London

2002 ◽  
Vol 75 (187) ◽  
pp. 25-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne F. Sutton
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Common Origin ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Dominant Position ◽  
History Of

Abstract The history of the adventurers, or overseas merchants, trading to the Low Countries is taken back to their earliest privileges, those from Brabant 1296–1315, to the establishment of their fraternity of St. Thomas c.1300, and to their common origin with the staplers. This discounts the theories that they owed their beginnings to the Mercers’ Company of London. The rise of the London mercers to an increasingly dominant position among the Adventurers to the Low Countries is traced from c.1400, and their records, the frequently misleading acts of court, are re-examined. The theory that the Company of the Merchant Adventurers of England was created at the end of the fifteenth century is similarly discounted.

The transformation of rural elites in late medieval Flanders: oligarchy, state formation and social change in the Liberty of Bruges (c. 1350–c. 1525)

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
FREDERIK BUYLAERT ◽  
ANDY RAMANDT
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Rural Society ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Political Factor ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Elite Formation

AbstractProceeding from an in-depth analysis of the Liberty of Bruges, an important rural district in the late medieval Low Countries, this contribution frames rural elite formation by means of two debates which are seldom used in combination, namely, the debates on state building and on the commercialisation of rural society. We challenge the thesis, inspired by modernisation theory, that socio-economic transformation engendered political change in pre-modern Europe as newly emerging rural bourgeoisies are alleged to have become an important political factor, shifting their allegiances between lords and peasants as they saw fit. The evidence discussed shows instead a trend towards oligarchy from the fifteenth century onwards, in which an increasingly exclusive social network came to combine hitherto separated forms of political power, largely at the expense of the growing number of wealthy rural bourgeois. It is argued that this transformation of the rural political elites is closely tied to changes in the established relations between the central government and the regional elites of the Low Countries.

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