Lisa Demets

Tijdens de opstand tegen de Habsburgse aartshertog Maximiliaan van Oostenrijk (1482-1492) schreef Bruggeling Jacob van Malen vlijtig aan een eigen versie van de Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen. Deze kroniek verhaalt de geschiedenis van Vlaanderen vanaf het legendarische ontstaan met de eerste Vlaamse woudmeesters tot aan de regering van de Bourgondische her togen. De Excellente Cronike werd overgeleverd in negentien zeer uiteenlopende handschriften. De kroniek werd gedurende de vijftiende eeuw door verschillende Vlaamse stadsbewoners zoals Jacob herschreven. Sommige handschriften vertonen een uitgesproken 'Gentse' of 'Brugse' blik op het Vlaamse verleden. Lisa Demets reconstrueert de verschillende sociale, politieke en culturele netwerken van scribenten en eigenaars van deze handschriften.

Medieval Bruges was an important international economic hub in the late Middle Ages. Similar to other luxury goods, manuscripts produced in Bruges were intended for both local and international audiences. This article scrutinizes the specific urban context of Bruges as a multilingual contact zone focusing on quantitative data of extant manuscripts and case-studies of professional and non-professional book production. The dominance of francophone manuscripts in a Dutch-speaking town is noteworthy and called for an actively bilingual community of book professionals. Furthermore, the social competition of locally embedded social groups (court, merchants, craft guilds) influenced language choice as well. Both ‘official’ production of books for trade by professional writers and librarians, and the ‘private’ multilingual literary accomplishments of Bruges city-dwellers, illustrate the multilingual dynamics of urban contacts in Bruges.

In the first issue of Nederlandse letterkunde, Dieuwke van der Poel analysed Der vrouwen heimelijcheit, a rhymed Middle Dutch text regarding all sorts of 'women's affairs' such as conception, pregnancy and menstruation. She examined the text from a gender perspective and in particular from the different point of view of women as readers. Building on this approach, this article presents a brief overview of the research trends on gender in Middle Dutch literature since Van der Poel's publication. The unique position of women as readers and writers is a central topic, alongside new developments in the field of user contexts. The increasing focus on manuscript variation offered new insights into readership and how readers (m/v/x) interact with their texts. In addition, intersectional analysis of the relationship between status and gender provides additional understanding of the possibilities and limitations of women and their role in both creating and interpreting Middle Dutch literature.

To get information about the Germans'. Women as spies and messengers in the Flemish Revolt (1488-9) Women played a crucial role in 1488-9 during the war of the Flemish cities against Maximilian of Austria, the regent of count Philip the Fair. They were key figures in communication networks, carrying letters between different cities and their militias. Moreover, as spies they also provided intelligence on the position of enemy armies. This article shows how various women from Ghent, Ypres, and Bruges travelled almost invisibly, alone or in pairs, between towns, and also inside and outside enemy camps. These towns developed a sophisticated communication network that relied heavily on women as messengers or spies. As a result women played a more important role in such military conflicts than is generally assumed.

This article analyses the production and consumption of francophone manuscripts in thirteenth-century Flanders from a multilingual perspective. The polyglot linguistic reality of the County of Flanders, home to both Dutch-and French-speaking communities, is evident in documentary sources and manuscripts from around 1200. Using a database compiled for The Multilingual Dynamics of the Literary Culture of Medieval Flanders (ca 1200-ca 1500) project, the quantitative evidence for the apparent popularity of French literature will be scrutinized in the extant manuscripts produced and used in Flemish urban, monastic, and court environments during the thirteenth century. Furthermore, manuscript case studies related to the Flemish court illustrate how thirteenth-century francophone literary culture is shaped by social milieus and user contexts, including examples of the interregional francophone networks of noblewomen, cultural exchange between the court and urban elites, and a renewed interest in crusader history.

This chapter examines the construction of collective historical identities in late medieval Flemish towns in the early fifteenth century. The Burgundian dukes and the Flemish elites tried to shape and ‘control’ representations of their principality, but in literary, pictorial, and historiographical sources the focus on the Flemish count gradually gave way to a focus on the largest Flemish cities. Analysing the Imago Flandriae, a Latin prophecy on the Hundred Years’ War, and the Flandria Generosa C, a Latin chronicle of Flanders, I argue that these literary sources illustrate the new influence of major Flemish towns in new regional institutions, such as the Four Members of Flanders, and on regional politics under Burgundian rule.

Medieval views on rulers from the past were often politically instrumentalised in the service of contemporary interests. In the recent historiography on medieval Flanders, the reconstruction of how ‘historical truth’ changed over time to cater for topical needs has primarily been examined from the perspective of ‘social’ or ‘communicative’ memories, which were orally transmitted over a short period of time. This line of research followed the dominant ‘communicative memory’ – paradigm. However, historians have paid far less systematic attention to the question how urban elites and state officials used histories that went farther back in time and dealt with the ‘high politics’ of princes and rulers to assert (rebellious) political ideologies of the moment. In this vast topic of research, historians are dealing with histories that were transmitted through manuscripts and not through oral communication. Instead of relying on the ‘communicative memory’ – paradigm, which allows historians to consider how the recent past has been ideologically reconstructed, this article examines how late fifteenth century Flemish urban elites rewrote, interpolated, deformed and manipulated histories from a more distant past to shape a functional ‘cultural memory’ (in the sense of Jan Assmann’s definition) that influenced a society’s ideological vision on history. Taking the political speech of Willem Zoete (1488) and the late fifteenth-century popular and widespread Flemish historiographical Middle Dutch corpus, the Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen, as a starting point, this article shows how rulers from the past served as a vehicle to express contemporary rebellious ideas against the regency of Maximilian of Austria, and how ideologicalmotives and discursive strategies were deployed to advocate the ideology of the ‘political contract’ between the prince and his subjects, as well as the idea of the ‘natural prince’.

Middeleeuwse opvattingen over vorsten uit het verleden werden vaak politiek geconstrueerd in functie van eigentijdse belangen. Uit de recente historiografie over middeleeuws Vlaanderen blijkt dat historici de manier waarop de ‘historische waarheid’ door de eeuwen heen werd ge(re)construeerd voornamelijk vanuit het perspectief van ‘sociale’ of ‘communicatieve’ herinneringen hebben onderzocht. Deze benadering past binnen het dominante theoretische model van ‘communicatieve herinnering’, waarbij de focus ligt op herinneringen die binnen de korte tijdsspanne van enkele generaties en voornamelijk mondeling werden overgeleverd. Tot nu toe is er veel minder aandacht besteed aan hoe stedelijke elites geschiedverhalen over de politieke daden van vorsten uit een verder verleden hebben gebruikt om actuele (opstandige) politieke statements te maken. In dit onderzoeksdomein staan geschiedverhalen centraal die veeleer schriftelijk dan mondeling werden overgeleverd. Anders dan in het heersende model van ‘communicatieve herinnering’, onderzoeken wij in dit artikel hoe de laatmiddeleeuwse stedelijke elite in Vlaanderen de geschiedenis uit een ver verleden herschreef, vervalste, vervormde en manipuleerde in functie van de constructie van een ‘culturele herinnering’ (in de definitie van Jan Assmann), die van invloed was op de eigentijdse ideologische visie op het verleden. Aan de hand van een analyse van de politieke redevoering van Willem Zoete (1488) en het bekende, laat vijftiendeeeuwse Middelnederlandse historiografische corpus, de Excellente cronike van Vlaenderen, wordt getoond hoe geschiedverhalen over vorsten uit een ver verleden werden ingezet om zich tegen het actuele regentschap van Maximiliaan van Oostenrijk te verzetten, en hoe ideologisch geladen discursieve strategieën daarbij werden ontplooid om de gangbare opvattingen over zowel het ‘politieke contract tussen de vorst en zijn onderdanen’ als ook over de ‘natuurlijke vorst’ te verdedigen.

The absence of a ‘real’ urban chronicle tradition in fifteenth-century Flanders similar to the Italian or German models has raised questions among scholars. However, there is also no satisfactory consensus on the exact meaning or contents of medieval ‘urban historiography’. Some were ‘official’ city chronicles, while others lauded patrician lineages or took the viewpoint of specific social groups or corporate organizations and reinforced construction of the groups’ collective memories. Some seem to express the literary aspirations of individual city officials or clerics with strong connections to their towns.We propose an analytical framework to identify and measure the ‘urbanity’ of late medieval chronicles, taking into account the authorship and thematic emphasis of historiographical texts, but focusing on the social environment of their circulation and the ideological strategies at work.

The Middle Dutch ‘Chronicle of Flanders’ is a complex chronicle group consisting of various distinct manuscript versions. This chronicle group is generally divided into three separate ‘traditions’: the Chronicle of Jan van Dixmude, the Kronijk van Vlaenderen, and the Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen. The most important question dealt with in this contribution is whether this subdivision still makes sense today. Research strategies on medieval chronicles shifted from a focus on the authority of a chronicle’s ‘author’ towards an increasing attention to its readers and audience. Searching for this (intended) audience makes it possible to underline the connections among various manuscripts. However, lately, a countermovement has renewed the interest in chronicles’ (scribal) authorship; it focuses on the self-fashioning aspect in historiographical works. This article argues that these methodologies are not so conflicting as has been thought previously. The manuscripts of the Middle Dutch ‘Chronicle of Flanders’ provide an ideal opportunity to analyse the relationship among medieval manuscripts on the one hand as a fluid, interwoven web of connections and networks, and as the self-fashioning project of one person or family on the other hand.

The political and social milieus in which manuscripts circulated can offer new insights into the writing aims of the material author(s) or scribe(s) and the interpretation strategies of subsequent owners. In this light, this contribution reconsiders the writing context of the so-called Chronicle of pseudo-Jan van Dixmude. By confronting the material and textual information provided by the original manuscript (Ghent, University Library, G. 6181), the manuscript can be related to a politically ambitious family in sixteenth-century Ghent. The writing of medieval Flemish historiography in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Flanders seems to be closely related to the practice of politics, more particularly in moments of crisis such as revolts. Jan van Dixmude’s manuscript version of the Middle Dutch Chronicle of Flanders or Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen provides new insights into the social and political identities of late medieval patricians aspiring noble ambitions.

The development of the duchy of Brabant in the twelfth and thirteenth century has already been analysed by many diplomatic scholars. Nevertheless, the political discourses in the charters of the dukes have never been scrutinized before. Charters are written in a formal lexicological framework and do not seem to be the ideal sources for the study of political discourses. Still, discourse analysis can offer new
insights into medieval diplomatic studies and reveal “hidden” ideologies behind the structure of a charter. This contribution deals with the use of different identities (such as Lotharingia, Louvain and Brabant) in the ducal charters and how they contributed to the legitimate authority of the dukes. Furthermore, the authority of the dukes will be analysed related to other contemporary actors present in the charters (such as the
emperor, religious and urban communities) and their part in the territorial politics of the dukes.

If you wish to attend the conference, please send an e-mail to the project team on multilingualdynamics@gmail.com. Note that there are a limited number of places for members of the audience, so places will be allotted on a “first come, first served basis”.