Towards new thinking in urban historiography. Old texts, new approaches. A reconsideration of urban historical consciousness in Northwest Europe
Interdisciplinary Conference, Groeningemuseum Bruges, 20-21 May 2015
ABSTRACTS (IN ALPABETHICAL ORDER)
Peter Bakker (VU Amsterdam): Historiography of the urban society in the Northern Netherlands (during the 15 th -16 th century)
The main focus of my PhD study are the Town chronicles of the town of Kampen. This is the first complete study on these chronicles. A nineteenth century transcription of the medieval manuscript exists, however it is incomplete and the transcriber randomly rearranged the order of the manuscript. Nowadays, these chronicles can be found in the municipal archive of the town Kampen by inventory number: Oud Archief 11 and 12. It is better known as De Annalibus quaedam nota and the incorrect name Liber Diversorum D . In the current study, the chronicles will be studied in a broad perspective. Today, there are only two town chronicles in the Northern Netherlands that we are aware of: the town chronicles of Kampen and the town chronicle of Den Bosch. Besides these, there are also chronicles in the Northern Netherlands with a clear urban link: chronicles written by citizens or monks with an urban relation. These chronicles will also be studied in comparison. In my lecture I will report on my theses and first conclusions on the town chronicles of Kampen. In order to understand the town clerks’ intentions behind writing a town chronicle, it is of great importance to study the relation between the daily work of the town secretaries and the town chronicles. [email protected]
Bram Caers (University of Antwerp): The changing face of Mechelen urban historiography in the long sixteenth century (1477-1630)
When compared to other cities in the (southern) Low Countries, the middle-sized town of Mechelen boasts a surprisingly early tradition of urban historiography. There are two independent strands of urban chronicles, both originating in the late fifteenth century. While research in the past – and indeed, cases presented at this conference – points towards alternative forms and faces of urban historical consciousness, it is still remarkable that Mechelen had two independent text traditions of texts explicitly presenting themselves as urban chronicles. This is probably due to the political status of Mechelen as a city-state of sorts. It formed an independent enclave within the duchy of Brabant and a prime motivation for early chroniclers seems to have been to detach Mechelen’s history from the dominant voice of Brabantine regional historiography.
The paper presented at the conference provides a bird’s-eye view of my PhD research, which is nearing completion. I will focus on the most important of Mechelen’s two chroncle traditions, starting with the alterations made by the initial author in his (mainly Brabantine) sources. Most attention however, will go to the manuscripts dating from the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The Mechelen case provides ideal material to study how the same text evolves in the
1 hands of subsequent scribes and continuators. One would half expect a diachronic evolution from what could be called ‘medieval’ towards ‘modern’ historiography, but in fact, each version presents unique aspects that can be linked to the scribe’s personal context within the city of Mechelen. The overall image is not a steady evolution towards modern historiography, but shows how individuals could deal very differently with the same historiographical material. I will focus on three scribes, showing how far apart their historiographical ambitions could lie.
While I believe I have succeeded in sketching the background of the sixteenth-century manuscripts and the historical backdrop against which they should be read, there are still many puzzling aspects surrounding the Mechelen chronicles. A returning issue is that of the intended audience. If we take into account the preliminary state of some of the manuscripts presented, one could ask the question which audience the scribes had in mind for their work. The most plausible answer is to turn away from medieval notions of authorship, with scribes spending years and years writing for wealthy patrons, and embrace the notion of private authorship for limited circles of readers (or indeed, no readers at all). However, the question of authorship can also be asked for the initial authorial stage (c. 1500). Why would a Mechelen author rewrite Brabantine historiography from a Mechelen point of view? Certainly, his intention cannot have been to keep the text to himself? My hope is that the expertise on other cases presented at the Bruges conference, will provide the beginnings of an answer to the questions that still remain, even in the closing stage of my PhD research. [email protected]
Laura Crombie (University of York): Writing on the Frontier; Jehan Nicolay and an urban viewpoint on the emotional impact of late fifteenth-century war.
Jehan Nicolay’s Kalendrier des guerres de Tournay (1477-1479) is not usually considered as a chronicle, and indeed has received limited attention. Nicolay’s work provides an unparalleled level of detail into life in a medieval warzone, the text does not describe large scale battles or dramatic sieges. Rather the Kalendrier narrates life, day by day, the violence and uncertain that surrounded his town. Tournai witnessed almost daily attacks by various ‘villains, ruffians, cowards and rebels’ and just as often the men of Tournai attacked their neighbours, burning buildings or simply stealing cattle. Tournai had, during the reigns of Philip the Good and Charles the Bold, being moving closer to the Burgundian orbit, but the violence of 1477 wrenched it from its neighbours, transforming Tournai from a node in a prosperous socio-economic networks into a frontier town of violence and mistrust.
In analysing Jehan’s representation of war and violence, the changing position of Tournai, and changing perceptions of neighbours become clear. This paper will evaluate Nicolay’s work, in the context of other sources from Tournai, to offer a new urban view on the impact of war and the emotional impact of war on urban culture. In considering Nicolay’s changing ideas about Louis XI and ‘the French’ as well as his (initially) somewhat sympathetic attitude to Mary of Burgundy suggestion will be made concerning the place Nicolay saw for Tournai between these two powers. Nicolay valued loyalty, criticising those who changed sides far more than he criticised his ‘German’ ‘Burgundian’ ‘Flemish’ or ‘Brabant’ enemies, even having some respect for enemy commanders who died heroic deaths. Though little mention is made of the heroic past of Tournai in the Kalendrier,
2 with no elaborate foundation myths or panegyrics on a glorious past, it is clear Nicolay was proud of his town and believe in the possibly of divine aid for his town. This does not, however, mean he was always positive about the French garrisons imposed on his town, indeed a rather more nuanced relationship between the city and the centre appears from Nicolay’s text than has been seen in the registers of the councils of Tournai.
In suggesting that Nicolay’s Kalendrier be considered in the context of urban historical consciousness and in comparing his work to traditional chronicles this paper will contribute to broader conversations about urban historiography. [email protected]
Mario Damen (University of Amsterdam): An ‘urban’ chronicle in a ‘noble’ armorial? ‘Wapenboek Münster’ and the urban environment of a noble patron.
The library collection of the ‘Hoge Raad van Adel’ in The Hague hosts a very interesting manuscript of 43 folia, the so-called ‘Wapenboek Münster’. It is named after the German city where it was kept in the city archives until the second World War, when it was ‘returned’ to the Netherlands with some other manuscripts in exchange for some boxloads of ‘German’ documents.
Apart from the provenance of the manuscript, its contents is equally interesting. The manuscript can be divided in two parts. The first half is an armorial with some 400 coats of arms of princes and nobles, mainly from the counties of Holland, Hainaut, Flanders and the duchy of Gueldres. The majority of the coats of arms has a blazon, a formal description. It is striking that the artist who has a strong preference for some specific nobles and lineages; one entire page is dedicated to the lords of Arkel whereas the lords of Asperen pop up no less than three times.
The other half of the manuscript contains a chronicle with some 80 entries covering two centuries from 1315 to 1515, and mainly dealing with the history of the city of Delft and the dynastical and institutional history of the county of Holland. In any case the author was both a good heraldic artist and well informed on the history of the county of Holland.
Both the chronicle, the coats of arms and the handwriting seem to indicate that the manuscript was made in the first decades of the sixteenth century. Furthermore, the armorial and the chronicle reflect a strong historical awareness. But how do both parts of the manuscript relate to each other? Why was this ‘urban’ chronicle combined with an armorial and what does this tell us about the historical and memorial culture of the patron and the scribe? And finally: what does the contents of both the armorial and the chronicle reveal about the identity of the patron and the scribe?
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Lisa Demets (Ghent University): From regional to urban historiography? Rewriting the ‘Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen’ during and after the Flemish Revolt in Bruges and Ghent
In 1899, Victor Fris published an article on a group of late medieval manuscripts he had discovered in the Ghent University library. All the manuscripts narrated the history of the county of Flanders from its legendary origins, in the courtly adventures of the first forestier Liederik de Buc, through the rule of the Burgundian dukes in the fifteenth century. Fris classified five manuscript and one print versions into three separate traditions which he named the Kronijk van Vlaenderen , the Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen , and the Chronicle of Jan van Dixmude . Since Fris’s proposal, scholars have never questioned this subdivision. Although the manuscript tradition has never been thoroughly studied, many modern scholars have used the printed text and nineteenth-century editions to analyse late medieval revolts, urban life in Bruges and Ghent, and, particularly, the cultural exploits and literary production of the so-called Chambers of Rhetoric. However, few scholars have considered the environment surrounding the production of the manuscripts, or the factors that account for the tradition’s immense popularity. For these reasons, the Excellente Cronike tradition has long been one of the most underexploited manuscript traditions of the county of Flanders.
Nevertheless, the Excellente Cronike provides an ideal opportunity to analyse the relationship among manuscripts as a fluid, interwoven web of connections and networks. I will focus on the intended audiences of the Excellente Cronike manuscripts to illuminate the connections among various social networks and to uncover the ways in which the manuscripts reflect the specific political and cultural ideologies of their public. Political instability in the late fifteenth century triggered vernacular chronicle writing in many cities in Flanders: in Ypres, with the texts of Olivier van Dixmude and Pieter van de Letewe and in Ghent, with the memory books and ‘the Diary of Ghent’. Is it merely a coincidence that the first so-called ‘regional’ Excellente Cronike manuscripts appeared during this period? I used the codicological features of the manuscripts, differences in discourse, and data about owners and scribes to categorise some of the manuscripts into two different clusters linked to the Flemish cities of Bruges and Ghent. I will argue that political developments in Flanders related to the Flemish Uprising against Maximilian of Austria (1482-1492) were probably the foundation for these different Middle Dutch translations and continuations of the Chronicle of Flanders. [email protected]
Jenine de Vries (Durham University): It’s not just about chronicles. Forms of historical writing in late medieval towns in England and the Low Countries
Urban history writing in the middle ages in England or the Low Countries was nowhere near as extensive as it was in Germany or Italy, and the genre is often considered entirely non-existent in North-West Europe. Next to the limited extent of the genre, the main reason for a lack of study into urban historiography in these regions is the strong focus on national narratives and on political history. Although I am not disputing the fact that urban history writing in England or the Low Countries did not leave behind as many sources as it did in Germany or Italy, I do think it has to be
4 recognised and researched as an existing genre. An important step in this research, which will be the focus of my paper at this conference, is the forms urban historical writing can take on.
As this conference shows, recent years have seen recognition of urban history writing in the (Southern) Low Countries. In England also, several urban chronicles have been identified; the majority of which come from the capital and are known as the London Chronicles. But Bristol, York, Coventry, King’s Lynn, and other towns in England also produced urban historiography.
To study urban historiography in England, two types of sources have to be taken into account. Firstly, there are the many sources extant in city Record Offices all over the country. This mostly concerns semi-official histories and records, written by town officials or clerks. Due to the nature of these sources, they were rarely known outside the town and, when they survive, they usually do so in a single copy among the documents of the town record office. Two recurrent forms are annotated mayoral lists and custumals. Secondly, there are sources, often found in archives and libraries, by men characterised as ‘antiquarians’ or ‘historians’. These educated writers were usually interested in history writing and wrote multiple texts.
In this paper I will first discuss types of history writing in English towns and finish with some discussion of and a short comparison with urban sources from the Low Countries. I do not claim to have found an abundance of urban chronicles in these countries. I will, however, discuss several forms of urban writing, which I will argue can be seen as historical writings, whatever name we choose to give to it. I will focus on several sources from around England and the Low Countries, but will give special attention to Bristol as a great example of the width of the genre of medieval urban historical writing. Bristol is one of the towns where a number of interesting late medieval records have been preserved in the local Record Office. Most importantly, the Maire’s Kalendar of Bristol contains a town chronicle by the town clerk Robert Ricart from the second half of the fifteenth century. In addition several custumals, such as the Little Red Book and the Great White Book survive. Next to this, both the Itineraries and especially the Topography of Bristol by ‘antiquarian’ William Worcestre provide local information. [email protected]
Pia Eckhart (University of Freiburg): Writing about one’s past in the cathedral city. The example of late medieval Constance.
The CfP invites to broaden our understanding of urban historiography beyond the apparently strict categories based on well-studied Italian or German examples of the genre. But are these categories in fact as accurately defined and universally established as suggested? One notion that is expressed repeatedly throughout is that the authors of urban historiography mostly had close connections to the magistrate, either because they were part of it, or at least belonged to the sociopolitical elites of a town, or because their works were commissioned by the magistrate. Another opinion that’s been voiced often claims that historiographical texts have to deal principally with the city itself or its leading groups respectively in order to be called urban historiography. Both may be true for many and notably the best known and most prominent of the surviving texts. Their analysis
5 has no doubt led to the perception of urban historiography as a special field of research in the first place. But these definitions leave out parts of the rather heterogeneous historical tradition, which it has been to this day impossible to categorize in a generally accepted fashion.
Another significant point seems to be that in the light of extremely intensive study of the medieval commune as a political entity, much emphasis has been placed on the political context of urban historiography. But urban culture – especially as a setting for historical writing – is not to be equated with civic culture, as many studies (not primarily concerned with historical writing) have pointed out, since the city harboured social spheres and centers of education more or less independent of but nevertheless connected to the urban authorities, such as monasteries, universities and courts – in the case of cathedral cities notably the court and administration of the bishop. Thus, we may have missed out on understanding textual interconnections of historical works while examining texts which were produced in immediate vicinity once, but are divided according to genre or provenance by research now. The paper would like to suggest a broadened understanding of urban historiography that is not a priori bound to the city’s political institutions, but considers all forms of historical writing in the urban context. This case study for the cathedral city of Constance is focused on the analysis of a single chronicle, the work of episcopal notary Beatus Widmer written around 1526. On the one hand it serves to examine the process of historical writing, its potentials and intended purposes beyond political instrumentalization. On the other hand the chronicle offers an opportunity to examine through its narrative of the city’s and bishopric’s origin the local tradition of this type of 1 historiographical text. For the most part, urban narratives of origin are seen as phenomena of municipal provenance. Instead, it is the aim of this paper to show different contexts and situations in which these texts were produced and applied. Only if one brings together all sorts of these texts (regarding provenance, form, function etc.) the intertextual relationships and developments become clear. Not only are surviving texts of urban historiography heterogeneous, urban perspectives on the city’s past were as well. History was something worth controlling for various reasons, but attempts to do so did not go unchallenged. [email protected]
Jelle Haemers (University of Leuven) & Frederik Buylaert (Vrije Universiteit Brussel): Chronicle writing and noble identity in the fifteenth-century Low Countries
This contribution focuses on the ways how record keeping was functional to the performance of nobility as an intrinsically public form of social status, proceeding from the analysis of a recently rediscovered manuscript of a nobleman who suddenly and unexpectedly came to play a prominent role in the political crisis of the Low Countries in the late 1470s. Rather than adhering to pre-existing forms of evidentiary learning, in which the use of records was not a novelty, this Flemish lord created literary content through the careful selection of pre-existing records, each with its own established form. In our paper, we will focus on the underlying social logic of the manuscript’s composition, arguing that the seemingly random collection of records actually provides a careful illustration of elements that were crucial to the author’s noble status, namely lordship, kinship and public service. Furthermore, the lord of Dadizeele wanted to proof that he had remained loyal to the count of
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Flanders, because the city of Ghent (of which he was the bailiff) rebelled against the count in the last years of his life.
Shortly after becoming a war hero in the wars between the Burgundian-Habsburg Low Countries and France, the Lord of Dadizele (near Ypres) started to work on an extensive description of his family’s history and his own exploits. As this John of Dadizele was murdered in the Autumn of 1481 as a consequence of mounting tensions between the Burgundian-Habsburg dynasty and their Flemish subjects, the project was never completed. Yet, the unfinished manuscript, approximately 240 folios long, reveals that John of Dadizele mainly relied on extant records to tell his story, copying a wide array of texts – property deeds, feudal agreements, sentences from law courts, letters of commission and so on – into one book.
The project of John of Dadizele differed from a long-established practice of record copying in two important respects. First, the balance between self-authored text and texts copied from extant records was inversed: of the 42 chapters of the manuscript, only about a quarter is a new text, authored by the Lord of Dadizele himself. Combining copies of records, sparingly interspersed with self-authored texts such as a military memoir or a family tree, was in fact the preferenced approach. This evidence shows that a fifteenth-century nobleman had no difficulty in thinking of extant chronicle writing in complex ways, not only seeing the practical purpose it served, but also how the manuscript could be redeployed to form a coherent representation of himself and his family. Secondly, analysis shows that this intense use of records by the Lord of Dadizele for the creation of his own family history was not driven by the wish to substantiate potentially contentious claims vis-à- vis a general reader. Riddled by internal inconsistencies obvious to any reader, the manuscript was primarily geared towards the close friends and family of the Lord of Dadizele, who were already convinced of the validity of his claims. In sum, the case of the Lord of Dadizele thus suggests that the history of record keeping in pre-modern Europe is very much social and political history. [email protected] – [email protected]
Marcus Meer (University of Münster): Signs of ldentity, Signs of the City: The Heraldic Display of Urban ldentity in the Augsburg Chronicle and the Gossernbrot Armorial
The illumination that decorated the workshop announcement, taken from the fifteenth- century Augsburg chronicle Cronographia Augustensium, shows its author, Sigmund Meisterlin, dedicating the chronicle to the city council in 1457. While they tend to be overlooked in favour of the textual narratives, the prominent position of coats of arms in this illumination is remarkable. The actors are 'labelled' with their coat of arms, and the visual centre is claimed by the arms of the city. In fact, heraldic signs feature frequently in manuscripts of the Augsburg Chronicle , and indeed urban chronicles in general.
Traditionally, these signs were of interest only to the heraldists, while historians, apart from the purpose of identification, neglected heraldic signs as a source. Yet scholars recently rediscovered heraldry as a source for cultural history. An interest in symbolic and visual communication analyses arms as a form of visual textuality that was able to represent ideas, identity, legitimacy, status and
7 power. Unfortunately, heraldry is still almost always discussed as an aristocratic phenomenon, and heraldic display in urban contexts is disregarded. To the contrary, I aim to explore the potential of this rapprochement with heraldry for urban history by looking at two essential sources of medieval Augsburg.
Looking, firstly, at the illuminations in the Augsburg Chronicle in relation to the text, it will become evident that the city arms appear in relation to historical events, and thus the city's historical identity. Likewise, the arms become the visual centre of attention which is, literally, upheld by the governing elite of the city council (see figure). The interplay of the heraldic signs with the texts of urban historiography reflects and reinforces their function in expressing urban collective identity. Furthermore, the fact that a copy of the chronicle is followed by an 'armorial' of the city's leading families, as well as a similar armorial in another copy that lists the bishops of Augsburg and their (largely fi.ctitious) arms, points to the importance heraldry had in the governing elite's mentality.
This is underlined, secondly, by the Armorial of Sigmund Gossembrot , mayor in 1458, who collected, depicted and blazoned the arms of the city's notable families. While the armorial's arrangement may provide insight into the self-perception of the urban patriciate, an attached treatise-like 'guide to heraldry' provides a rare insight into the urban attitude towards heraldry of a townsmen normatively explicating his knowledge of the use of heraldry.
These sources demonstrate the importance the use of and the knowledge about heraldry had for civic (elite) self-fashioning and identity, and that this importance resonates within the urban sources. [email protected]
Dirk Schoenaers (University of St. Andrews): ‘ Hot Tramp, I Love You So (?)’ 1 Narratives of Revolt in the Burgundian Low Countries
Our image of who we are, the truths we hold, our relation with others and the events in which we are embedded, are simultaneously influenced and constructed by narratives, stories we tell ourselves and which we are told by others. Some of these stories are personal (e.g. when it comes to self-perception), others may be shared (e.g. views on society). These public narratives can promote community-building, but also have the power to subvert. The stories we believe to be true constantly compete with others, may be influenced, or shift altogether.
Communities, in this case ‘the city’, can thus be defined along the lines of the public narratives they share, for instance about big issues and important events, and how these stories relate to those of competing groups. Any definition of ‘urban historiography’ should therefore not (only) rely on the city as main protagonist, but (also) consider the views and opinions voiced by these texts. Obviously, the polyphonic nature of the city, as a melting-pot of factions with different, often opposing needs and concerns, inevitably problematizes such an approach. Moreover, individuals or groups of people that oppose each other in one matter, may well be allies in the next.
1 David Bowie, ‘Rebel, Rebel’, 1974. 8
In this paper I will develop the case of revolt in the Burgundian Low Countries. On multiple occasions, spread throughout the 15th c and over different territories, groups of people (in the cities, and outside) rose against Burgundian authority. In the 1440s, the stadtholder’s favoritsm led to urban rioting in Holland. A decade later Philip the Good was embroiled in the Second Ghent War (1449-1453). In the final decades of the century, the politics of Maximilian of Austria again caused urban upheaval etc. These events resonated over the region’s borders and reports were included into larger historiographical bodies, traditionally identified as ‘regional chronicles’.
In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that after the Burgundian takeover and the dissolution of the individual courts, (regional) historiography found its way into the cities. When it comes to insurgence, P.C.M. Hoppenbrouwers has observed that earlier chronicles of Holland, written at or near the court, tended to confirm the official dynastic perspective. In the urban – and Burgundian context - it seems certainly worthwhile to confront the narratives in newer, ‘regional’ sources with competing (?) official accounts. Obvious questions (and no doubt many more than can be addressed in the span of 20 minutes) include:
• Is it fair to assume that the shift of historiographical centre has led to a different stance as regards popular revolt in regional historiography? • Does the ideology reflected in these narratives of revolt allow us to identify them as ‘urban’? • What can narratives of revolt tell us about the (dynamic) allegiances of these historiographers or their imagined audiences? • Does all of this apply to accounts of all kinds of revolt, also those pertaining to events that occurred outside the city walls or beyond the borders of one’s own region? • Have descriptions of events situated in the more remote past been reframed to conform to present narratives? (e.g. as compared to accounts in older/source texts) • Does the reframing of older texts in newer copies also affect their perception of revolt (be it peritextually, e.g. through rubrication, illustration or annotation, through adaptation or compilation). • And finally, and perhaps more importantly as a point of further discussion: if this case study indeed proves to be a valid access point, what other ‘public narratives’ could lead to a better definition of urban historiography? [email protected]
Ina Serif (University of Freiburg): Urban chronicals – urban perspectives? Historical texts in new codicological contexts
By the end of the 14th century, Jakob Twinger von Königshofen, a cleric of Strasbourg, composed a chronicle in the vernacular, consisting of five chapters and a register. While the first three chapters deal with the history of the world, the Roman emperors and kings, and the popes, chapters 4 and 5 focus on the history of Strasbourg, from its origin to the present of our chronicler. In those two chapters, ancient facts have been redrafted in service of contemporary urban needs, but
9 recent events have been inserted, too. Thus, the chronicle was suited for the reader to relate with his contemporary urban society.
Twinger’s work has been copied many times, mainly along the Upper Rhine and Bavaria, being transformed by the scribes according to their needs or their clients wishes. Since the chronicler had written his text for a particular targeted audience, it was necessary to make changes and additions according to the new context the copied text was to be used in.
The character and range of these additions help us to interpret the intended scope of a particular manuscript. In several copies the historical horizon is narrowed down to a private circle such as a family, thus giving additional informations, such as the family’s pedigree. But there are also notes deriving from an urban context – short annals of a town, lists of bishops, reports of recent events that took place in a town, etc. At this point, it is interesting that the town of Strasbourg is not necessarily the point of interest for the inserted informations anymore. Manuscripts compiled in the city of Basel or Constance contain either a full or a fragmented account of Twinger’s chronicle and combine it with other works, historical as well as fictional ones. The question remains how the Strasbourg chronicle was used in such alien contexts.
By analyzing manuscripts containing both the Strasbourg chronicle (or parts of it) as well as smaller additions and other texts, I want to show how a chronicle in transition served as a means of communication of urban news and changing perceptions of the town itself within an urban context. I also want to ask whether Twinger’s work provided an urban background that influenced the perception and function of the other texts in those manuscripts. [email protected]
Marco Tomaszewski (University of Freiburg): 'Basler Chroniken'. What is Urban Historiography in Basel? Answers from Editions and Manuscripts
What we understand as late medieval urban historiography is crucially influenced by the editions of the 19th and 20th century. Consequently it was suggested that our image of a strong tradition of urban historiography in the German speaking parts of the Empire is first of all caused by the huge edition of the ‘ Chroniken der deutschen Städte ’ (Chronicles of the German towns). 2 Where similar sources were not edited, or were edited in other contexts and labeled different, e.g. as 'regional chronicles', their similarity to the 'typical' sources of urban historiography was ignored.
As the planned workshop also aims at a comparison between cases from the Low Countries and from abroad, especially a comparison to cases from the supposed centres of urban historiography in the southwest parts of the Empire seems to be necessary.
2 Cf. Stein, Robert: "Selbstverständnis oder Identität? Städtische Geschichtsschreibung als Quelle für die Identitätsforschung", in: Brand, Hanno, Staub, Martial, Monnet, Pierre (Hg.), Memoria, communitas, civitas. Mémoire et conscience urbaines en Occident à la fin du Moyen Âge, Ostfildern 2003; Meyer, Carla: "Zur Edition der Nürnberger Chroniken in den 'Chroniken der deutschen Städte'", in: Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg 97 (2010), S. 1-29. 10
I propose to give some insight into the historiography of the town of Basel 3 which was edited around 1900 as 'Basler Chroniken' (Basel chronicles) in seven (later followed by more) volumes. 4 This series was also understood as a counterpart to the Chroniken der deutschen Städte. What is presented there as Basel chronicles in fact derives from different social contexts and contains very diverse issues. For example, many of the texts of Basel's urban historiography are surviving in the genre of 16th century family books, why a focus of the contribution lies on this phenomenon. But above all, the texts presented in the edition were (re)constructed, extracted, compiled, and arranged chronologically. So, to get an impression of the original contexts of this 'Basel urban historiography', it is necessary to compare the edited 'chronicles' with the manuscripts themselves.
A closer look at the manuscripts shows that a definition of urban historiography could not be as precise as it is suggested by former research and that certain texts and parts of the manuscripts were not perceived as part of this urban historiography so far. Such a revision of the “the all too strict categories based on well-studied [...] German examples of the genre” ( CfP ) could provide a fertile ground for discussion on “a reconsideration of urban historical consciousness in the Low Countries”, as it is suggested in the title of the workshop. [email protected]
Paul Trio (KULeuven – Kulak): Ypres as a historiographical breeding ground in late medieval Flanders. Origin and interconnectedness of urban and regional historiography
In an earlier contribution, we have pointed out the existence of a ‘traditional’ urban chronicle for the town of Ypres. This was discovered as the result of a new interpretation of the chronicle on the period 1366-1443, which literature traditionally attributes to Olivier van Diksmuide (Oliver of Dixmude). The urban character of the chronicle is incontestable: it was composed by several Ypres chroniclers and it strongly focuses on urban events, though ample attention is also paid to political and military developments in the county of Flanders. In it, each year is prefaced by an overview of the new urban governors, lists of whom were kept by the town’s administration since 1366. This method neatly dovetails with that of the little known chronicle attributed to Pieter van de Letewe (Peter of the Letewe) covering the periode 1443-1480. The latter, however, contains more excerpts from or complete transcripts of charters. Of the events relating to the revolt against Maximilian of Austria (1477) mentioned in this chronicle, there existed a slightly different version in another manuscript. The method used for these two urban chronicles somewhat resembles that of the Ghent memorial registers, though the former seem to reflect the more official view of the then town government and pay rather less attention to faits divers than the Ghent memorial books.
The more trivial events were recorded in various other Ypres manuscripts. Before 1914, the former Town Archive contained some ten registers of so-called ‘memories of remarkable events’ or ‘memorials’, containing urban ordinances and sentences from other registers, as well as various other interesting pieces of information. One of the oldest registers (in a hand dating from the second
3 To prevent misunderstandings, until 1648 the Swiss confederation was a fully accepted part of the Holy Roman Empire, Basel itself was member of the confederation only since 1501. 4 Basler Chroniken, ed. by Historische und Antiquarische Gesellschaft Basel, Leipzig, later Basel 1872 ff. 11 half of the fourteenth century) began as early as 1314 and ran to 1400. Remarkably, one Joos Brijde (Bryde) once possessed some of those memorials, as well as both urban chronicles. Joos Brijde was a close relative of the Van Diksmuide family: Olivier van Diksmuide was married to a member of the Brijde family. Joos added himself some data with regard to the period 1303-1440 to the chronicle attributed to Olivier van Diksmuide. It would not be unreasonable to suppose that not only Brijde, but also the authors of the urban chronicles gleaned some of their (oldest) data from those memorials. Unfortunately, only a few fragments had been published before they were irrevocably lost in 1914. And yet some of their content survives. Indeed, various archival depots and libraries contain together some twenty chronicles and yearbooks of the history of the city of Ypres, all of which were composed or copied in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Hitherto, these Ypres chronicles were considered to be unreliable and they were consequently often shunned by historical researchers. Yet they contain surprisingly much information regarding medieval times, and whenever this could be checked, they seem to be rather factual. This can only be explained if one assumes that they are (indirectly) based on the fourteenth- to sixteenth-century memorials. Joos Brijde was, without question, an interesting link between both types of local urban historiography, and further research into this person is definitely warranted.
On the other hand, there is also the attribution by the then publisher Lambin of the Flemish chronicle Dits de cronike ende genealogie van den prinsen ende graven van den foreeste van Buc, dat heet Vlaenderlant (863-1436) (This is the chronicle and the genealogy of the princes and counts of the forest of Buc, that is called the Land of Flanders) to Jan van Diksmuide (John of Dixmude), who is supposed to have died shortly after 1436. This attribution, however, has recently been questioned, though perhaps prematurely so, in light of what follows. We know, for instance, that yet another scion of the Van Diksmuide family, Pauwels van Diksmuide (Paul of Dixmude) († 1473), was the author of a Vlaemsche cronicque van de beghinsele van de lande van Vlaender ende andere etc. (Flemish chronicle of the origin of the Land of Flanders and others etc.), and that that work described various events from Ypres’ history, such as the tournaments of 5 March 1317 and 23 August 1338 on the Great Marketplace. Pauwels was a brother of the aforementioned Olivier and – just like most of the male members of that family – actively involved in the town’s government. Considering his political function and his close family relations to the other authors, it seems almost inconceivable that Pauwels would have been unaware of their historiographical output. Further research may tell us how the various authors influenced each other. Finally, there was a Jan van Diksmuide (John of Dixmude) who in 1520/21 n.s. completed a manuscript on natural sciences, including the origin of earth itself. It would require additional research to establish the precise relationship between those different members of the patrician Van Diksmuide family, for the existing genealogical literature on this Ypres family is not always reliable.
It would seem as if already during the course of the fourteenth century, there existed in Ypres a tradition to note down information on remarkable events in town. These memorials no doubt supplied some of the information contained in the two fifteenth-century urban chronicles attributed respectively to Olivier van Diksmuide and Pieter van de Letewe. A key part in this was played by Joos Brijde, a close relative of the Van Diksmuide family, who made himself a limited contribution to the town’s historiography and who had in his possession some of those memorials. Almost at the same time, other members of the Van Diksmuide family began to show interest in the history of Flanders, though Ypres’ role in it was never completely ignored. These different forms of historiography show that a firm historiographical tradition took root in Ypres, even though it was a tradition dominated by
12 a single (broad) family, that of the Van Diksmuides. The case of Ypres also illustrates – for the very first time – how urban historiography developed in its initial phase. This is one reason why the loss of the Ypres Town Archive is to be greatly deplored. Even so, enough clues remain to further trace this historiographical production and its protagonists. [email protected]
Tineke Van Gassen (Ghent University): The Diary of Ghent: late medieval historiography between urban chancery and personal memory
The so-called the Diary of Ghent is a curious manuscript which tells us in detail the developments in the city of Ghent during the rebellious period at the end of the 15 th and beginning of the 16 th century. Three different parts can be distinguished in this document and there are many official records woven into the narrative structure: correspondence and letters with the Burgundian duke and the French king, fragments of city accounts, a list of the military arsenal of the city and so on. Besides the fact that this source contains very rich information about events happing in the city during these tumultuous years, the nature of this document is also intriguing. Considering the general assumption that there were no urban chronicles in the late medieval Low Countries, we see instead that this is a mixed historiographical-journalistic product which shows also elements of urban image-building. The Diary is not telling a story about the origins of the city and it does not contain the annual lists of aldermen. These are the words of an eyewitness reporting about contemporary events from a pronounced local perspective. Maybe the authors felt the need to write down these events because of their exceptional character as they described them as ‘diverssche wonderlic zaken’. The fact that several internal documents of the city are transcribed, lead us to the hypothesis that the author was a member of the city administration which could explain his access to information. I will pay special attention to the discourse and ideological points of view of these anonymous authors. On the basis of a profound content analysis, I will map out their profile and their intended audience. In which entourage circulated this Diary and why? And what was its function and meaning towards certain networks or social groups in the city? [email protected]
Louise Vermeersch (Ghent University): P rinted almanacs: a popular medium for urban historiography and religious dissent?
Historical consciousness is formed through various channels and media next to manuscript chronicles. From this perspective, I would like to highlight an under-appreciated genre, namely the printed almanac, not only as a channel of urban historiography but also as a popular medium to spread religious dissident ideas. The printed almanac of Gaultier Manilius, produced in 1583 during the reign of the Calvinist regime in Ghent, will be compared with the content of historical calendars that accompanied protestant prints such as psalm translations. I will argue that Manilius was inspired by these calendars and hereby supported the intentions of the urban authorities to establish a
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Calvinist culture in Ghent. Hence, a daily instrument could be a vehicle to nurture a historical consciousness that fitted the ideology of the political and religious dissenters in the Low Countries.
When the Ghent printer Gaultier Manilius decided to produce an almanac in 1583, he was without a doubt inspired by these historical calendars. Next to more practical information such as the place and date of the yearly markets, the worldly and religious historical data resemble in content as well as formulation the protestant almanacs. Psalm translations of Dathenus, for example, were often accompanied by a kalendier historiael (a historical calendar) in which the foundation of the protestant church in the Low Countries, the first hedge preaching in Antwerp, the death of Luther, Hus and Buccerus, among other events, was commemorated. Not only religious events were assembled in the margins, also worldly victories for the rebel party in the Dutch conflict were mentioned as well as the ‘tyrannous' actions of the Duke of Alva and his Spanish soldiers. Due to its regional character, the scarce extant calendars are very similar though not identical. Just as lists of aldermen, these calendars borrowed from one another while each keeping their own particularities. Although the almanac of Manilius omitted lots of the biblical data that is given in the protestant calendars, it still lists historical events that were particularly important for the Calvinist community in the Low Countries. Whereas the city accounts don’t mention the 1583 almanac, this publication fits well within other urban strategies to legitimize the establishment of a Calvinist republic. Manilius worked regularly by order of the urban authorities and in 1612 the city archive mentions him as ‘sole deliverer of almanacs’ for the city council.
Due to the nature of this popular genre, very little almanacs are preserved, yet none of the earlier extant Ghent almanacs contain such historical annotations. How can we interpret this initiative and how does it relate to other historical genres? It seems that the adaptation of these protestant calendars can shed another light on the use of historiography and the printing press in a local context. [email protected]
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