INTRODUCTION Robert Stein In 1549, the future King Philip II of Spain visited the Low Countries in order to have himself acclaimed as the legitimate heir to his father as sovereign of the Burgundian-Habsburg lands. In the Burgundian- Habsburg state such a progress, also known as a joyeuse entrée, was a major and crucial step in the transfer of power. It took the prince no less than seven months to visit all localities. Everywhere, he was greeted with great joy, tableaux vivants were presented, processions were held, plays performed, jousts fought. Th e splendour conveyed all kinds of messages, some only comprehensible to those who were well- versed in the Low Countries’ legal and political culture, some obvious to all. No-one, for instance, could fail to notice the importance of the oaths that were sworn by the prince, as happened in Ghent, where Philip, according to custom, should ring a bell when he had sworn his oath as count of Flanders, or in Leuven, where all the articles of the Brabant constitution—the famous joyeuse entrée—were proclaimed by the chancellor. However, not all messages were unequivocal. To associate Philip with biblical and legendary kings like David, Salomon, Arthur and Charlemagne was not just pious fl attery; it also reminded the prince that he was expected to follow in the footsteps of these just and fair rulers. Moreover, the festivities expressed not only the love of the Ne- therlanders for their common ruler, but also reminded him that the Low Countries formed a diverse polity, that consisted of a range of principalities and many more towns and liberties, and which all cher- ished their own origins and local diff erences. In Brabant, Philip was reminded that his predecessors had been the dukes of Brabant; in Flanders, that they had been counts of Flanders. In Hainault he was confronted with a tableau-vivant of twenty-two virgins representing the county’s towns. In Antwerp he was greeted by the local antihero, the giant Antigonus.1 Th e multiplicity of Philip’s status in the Low 1 J.C. Calvete de Estrella, Le très-heureux voyage fait par très-haut et très-puissant prince don Philippe, fi ls du grand empereur Charles-Quint depuis l’Espagne jusqu’à 2 robert stein Countries was confi rmed by the nineteen princely titles that he was to carry, ranging from the fi ctitious and megalomaniac title of duke of Lotharingia to the modest but real seigniorial title of Mechelen. Th e princely progress in 1549 was sandwiched between the conclu- sion of two treaties that were intended to complete the unifi cation of the Low Countries: the treaty of Augsburg of 26 April 1548 established the Low Countries as a virtually separate entity in the Holy Roman Empire—a ‘Burgundian Circle’—, while the Pragmatic Sanction of 4 November 1549 confi rmed that all the principalities would be subject to the same rules of succession. Th irty years before, the area dominated by the Burgundian-Habsburg house had looked very diff erent, mainly consisting of the western parts of the Low Countries. Yet Charles V had extended his control over the east, and it seemed that in 1549 all was ready for the formation of a new and lasting state. As it happened the new state was not to last. Forty years later, the Low Countries had been split by Revolt and civil war. Th e northern parts were now a Republic that was on the brink of becoming a world power in its own right; the southern parts, on the contrary, remained a province of the enormous Habsburg empire. Even if the existence of the Seventeen Provinces as one political entity was short-lived, the ambition to unify the territories had been in evidence long before the sixteenth century. With hindsight we can establish that the unifi cation started with the acquisition of Flanders and Artois by the Burgundian house in 1384.2 When compared with the older unions, the main importance of the unifi cation from 1384 onwards is that it had a more lasting eff ect, even if it did not result in a permanent union. Not only did it produce a lasting change of sta- tus for old feudal principalities like Flanders, Brabant and Guelders, by detaching them from their formal feudal ties with France and the Empire, it also led to a thorough modernisation of government. From ses domaines de la Basse-Allemagne avec la description de tous les États de Brabant et de Flandre, trans. Jules Petit (Brussels, 1873). See for an interpretation of this kind of manifestations: Wim Blockmans and Esther Donckers, ‘Self-representation of court and city in Flanders and Brabant in the fi ft eenth and early sixteenth centuries’, in Showing status. Representations of social positions in the late Middle Ages, ed. W.P. Blockmans and A. Janse (Turnhout, 1999), 81–111. 2 As André Uyttebrouck has shown, a series of dynastic unions inside the Low Countries’ territory, starting in the middle of the eleventh century, long preceded this: André Uyttebrouck, ‘Phénomènes de centralisation dans les Pays-Bas avant Philippe le Bon’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 69 (1991), 872–904..