Urban History Writing in Northwest Europe (15th-16th Centuries) (Studies in European Urban History (1100-1800)) 2503583768, 9782503583761

Table of contents :
Content
Introduction Urban Historiography in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe
Constructing Urban Historiography
Urban Chronicles – Urban Consciousness?
It’s not just about Chronicles
Ypres as a Historiographical Breeding Ground in Late Medieval Flanders
The memory of Conflict
Records and Rumours from Tournai
The Diary of Ghent
Opposing Reports on Loyalty and Rebellion
Heraldry, Historiography and Urban Identity in Late Medieval Augsburg
The Origin and Purpose of the Town Chronicles of Kampen
Printed Almanacs
Index of places, proper names and

Citation preview

Urban History Writing in North-Western Europe (15th–16th centuries)

SEUH Studies in European Urban History (1100–1800)

Volume 47 Series Editors Marc Boone Anne-Laure Van Bruaene Ghent University

Urban History Writing in North-Western Europe (15th–16th centuries)

Edited by Bram Caers, Lisa Demets and Tineke Van Gassen

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Cover illustration: München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 213, fol.12v (Sigismund Meisterlin: Augsburger Chronik)

© 2019, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. D/2019/0095/124 ISBN 978-2-503-58376-1 eISBN 978-2-503-58377-8 DOI 10.1484/M.SEUH-EB.5.116703 ISSN 1780-3241 eISSN 2294-8368 Printed on acid-free paper.

Content

Introduction. Urban Historiography in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe Jan Dumolyn and Anne-Laure Van Bruaene 7

Questioning Genre and Typologies Constructing Urban Historiography. The Edition Basler Chroniken and the Beinheim Manuscript Marco Tomaszewski 27 Urban Chronicles – Urban Consciousness? On the Chronicle of Jakob Twinger von Königshofen in New Codicological Contexts Ina Serif 47 It’s not just about Chronicles. The Variety of Forms of Historical Writing in Late Medieval Towns in England and the Southern Low Countries Jenine de Vries 63 Ypres as a Historiographical Breeding Ground in Late Medieval Flanders. Origin and Interconnectedness of Urban and Regional Historiography Paul Trio 81

The memory of conflict: the social and political context of urban historiography Records and Rumours from Tournai. Jehan Nicolay’s Account of a Town at War and the Construction of Memory Laura Crombie 97 The Diary of Ghent. Between Urban Politics and Late Medieval Historiography Tineke Van Gassen 115

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Opposing Reports on Loyalty and Rebellion. Urban History Writing in Late Medieval Bruges and Mechelen Bram Caers and Lisa Demets 137

Materiality and Mixed Media Heraldry, Historiography and Urban Identity in Late Medieval Augsburg. The Cronographia Augustensium and the Gossembrot Armorial Marcus Meer 159 The Origin and Purpose of the Town Chronicles of Kampen Peter Bakker 187 Printed Almanacs. A Popular Medium for Urban Historiography and Religious Dissent? Louise Vermeersch 205 Index of places, proper names and titles 

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Jan Dumolyn and Anne-Laure Van Bruaene

Introduction Urban Historiography in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe Since the somewhat self-congratulatory success of the historical disciplinary field known as ‘memory studies’, an increasing number of scholarly analyses of medieval and early modern historiographical sources have seen the light.1 Although the focus on this ‘new’ concept of memory – which is arguably just another form of ‘ideology’2 – has reoriented the study of annals, chronicles and related types of historical texts and ego-documents, it builds on a very long tradition. The geographical, chronological and social ubiquity of annals, chronicles, diaries and similar historiographical documents in pre-industrial societies, and the fact that these sources and their critical study have been vital to professional history writing since the epoch of antiquarianism has always ensured a steady attention to them. Yet, for the past few decades the purely ‘typological’ approach and old-fashioned historical criticism – the creation of a distinction between ‘genres’ such as ‘universal chronicles’, ‘local chronicles’, ‘monastic historiography’, ‘genealogies’ or ‘memoirs’, the study of textual transmission in the classical Lachmannian manner, or the traditional descriptive codicology of manuscripts – are no longer dominant.





1 For medieval historiography see notably Patrick J. Geary, ‘History as Memory’, in Writing History: Identity, Conflict, and Memory in the Middle Ages, ed. by Patrick J. Geary, Florin Curta, and Cristina Spinei (Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române, 2012), pp. 230–67; Id., Phantoms of Remembrance. Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). A number of agenda-setting contributions for the early modern period include Daniel Woolf, The Social Circulation of the Past. English Historical Culture, 1500–1730 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Memory before Modernity. Practices of Memory in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Erika Kuijpers, Judith Pollmann, Johannes Müller, and Jasper van der Steen (Leiden: Brill, 2013); ‘Forum: Memory before Modernity: Cultures and Practices in Early Modern Germany’, German History, 33 (2015), 1, 100–22. 2 Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (London: Penguin, 2003). A useful critique of the concepts of (collective) memory in James Fentress and Chris Wickham, Social Memory: New Perspectives on the Past (Oxford/Cambridge [MA]: Blackwell, 1992).

Urban History Writing in North-Western Europe (15th–16th centuries), ed. by Bram Caers, Lisa Demets and Tineke Van Gassen, SEUH 47 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 7–24. © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.SEUH-EB.5.117865

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While during the 1970s and 1980s the studies of ‘self-representations’ and ‘mentalities’ also used historiographical sources,3 at present the study of chronicles often addresses their social and political contexts and functions, by considering questions of patronage, reception of texts by intended audiences, their horizons of expectation, and personal and collective identity constructions. At the same time, under the influence of narrativism, poststructuralism and the loose, heterogeneous phenomenon in historical studies generally denoted as the ‘linguistic turn’, there has been discussion of issues surrounding the ambiguous distinctions between historiographical texts and fictional or autobiographical writing, and between reading practices and ‘aurality’.4 And most recently – as historians always seem to be turning – the ‘material turn’ and ‘pictorial turn’ have led to the reappraisal of the materiality of chronicles and the interplay of text and image.5 While scholars have applied these approaches to specifically ‘urban’ forms of history writing in pre-industrial Western Europe in a steady but fragmented stream of literature, clear and thoughtful overviews on the European scale are, to our mind, still lacking.6 Introducing the present volume presents us with the opportunity to discuss the conceptual and methodological problems inherent in the urban historiographical phenomenon of the central Middle Ages through the early modern period. Geographically, this volume centers on the large and smaller towns of one of the pre-industrial urbanized regions par excellence, the Low Countries (including studies of Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, Mechelen, Tournai and Kampen). Outside the Netherlands, it considers certain classic German-Swiss



3 For instance Reinhard Barth, Argumentation und Selbstverständnis der Bürgeropposition in städtischen Auseinandersetzungen des Spätmittelalters: Lübeck 1403–1408, Braunschweig 1374–1376, Mainz 1444–1446, Köln 1396–1400 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1976). 4 Among many other titles, see Janet Coleman, English Literature in History 1350–1400: Medieval Readers and Writers (London: Hutchinson, 1981); Gabrielle Spiegel, The Past as Text: the Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). 5 An example for the early modern period (focusing on prints) is Philip Benedict, Graphic History: The Wars, Massacres and Troubles of Tortorel and Perrissin (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2007). 6 Medieval historians have defined ‘urban chronicles’ on a primary but rather unsatisfactory level. Elisabeth M. C. Van Houts, Local and Regional Chronicles. Typologie des sources du Moyen Âge occidentale, fasc. 74 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995), pp. 42–49 includes a very brief paragraph, which is useful for the Central Middle Ages but hardly deals with the Late Middle Ages, when urban historiography became more prominent. The characterization of the urban chronicle by Regula Schmid, ‘Town Chronicles’, in Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, ed. by Graeme Dunphy and others (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2010), II, pp. 1432–38, is too restrictive and too narrowly based on German scholarship, as it only includes ‘official’ writings of authors who ‘served the community’ and wrote ‘for the honour and benefit of communal leaders’. Another fairly recent attempt at a synthesis, Augusto Vasina, ‘Medieval Urban Historiography in Western Europe (1100–1500)’, in Historiography in the Middle Ages, ed. by Deborah Mauskopf Delyannis (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2003), pp. 317–52 is generally incoherent and uninformed. Notably, the author uses a rather absurd definition of the medieval city as confined to seats of bishoprics. Even Ghent, with its 65,000 inhabitants, is not a real city according to Vasina. Günther Lottes, ‘Stadtchronistik und städtische Identität. Zur Erinnerungskultur der frühneuzeitlichen Stadt’, Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg, 87 (2000), 47–58 only considers the German tradition. The most interesting attempt at a synthesis, but again almost exclusively dealing with German urban chronicles, is surely Peter Johanek, ‘Das Gedächtnis der Stadt. Stadtchronistik im Mittelalter’, in Handbuch Chroniken des Mittelalters, ed. by Gerhard Wolf and Norbert H. Ott (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), pp. 337–98.

introduction

town chronicles (notably Strasbourg, Augsburg, Konstanz and Basel). There are only two cases for England, from London and Bristol, and this volume does not examine urban historical writing in other heavily urban regions such as Italy or the Mediterranean in general.7 In this overview, we discuss late medieval and early modern urban historiography from three distinct but related angles: first, the formal aspects, by problematizing the idea of the urban chronicle as a specific genre; second, the social and political context, by analysing the components of what is now often called ‘urban memory’; and third, the material features, by advocating for an object-oriented approach to historiographical manuscripts. Urban Historiography as a Specific Genre? Does an archetypical ‘urban chronicle’ exist? The superficial scholarly consensus is that there was an archetype in the free towns of Germany and Switzerland, in Northern and Central Italy, perhaps also in London although not in the rest of the British Isles. Traditionally, the ‘prehistory’ of urban historiography includes the genre of the gesta of local bishops, prominent from the eleventh century onwards, which on occasion paid attention to the urban life of their civitates, as well as the genre of the laus civitatis (‘praise of a city’), for instance written in early medieval Milan and Bologna.8 Given their precocious urban development, it is not surprising that specifically ‘urban’ types of historical writing developed first in the northern and central regions of the Italian Peninsula. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Italian annals and chronicles dealt with heroic deeds but also with internal social conflicts, family feuds and partisan strife among the inhabitants of the city-states. A classic example is Caffaro’s early twelfth-century Annales Ianuenses, a text typically followed by several continuations, by the thirteenth-century patrician Iacopo Doria and others. Although most Italian chronicle writers of this period remained anonymous, it is clear that they were generally notaries or clerks, brothers from the mendicant orders, or sometimes merchants.9





7 See a recent synthesis on Italian urban or ‘local’ chronicles in Cristian Bratu, ‘Chroniken im mittelalterlichen Italien. Ein Überblick’, in Handbuch Chroniken des Mittelalters, pp. 721–33. Other overviews are provided by Chronicling History. Chroniclers and Historians in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, ed. by Sharon Dale, Alison Williams Lewin, and Duane J. Osheim (Pennsylvania: the Pensylvania State University Press, 2007) and Eric Cochrane, Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago: The Chicago University Press, 1981). Also very useful is Giovanna Petti Balbi, ‘La mémoire dans les cités italiennes à la fin du Moyen Âge: quelques exemples’, in Villes de Flandre et d’Italie (XIIIe–XVIe siècle). Les enseignement d’une comparaison, ed. by Elisabeth CrouzetPavan and Elodie Lecuppre-Desjardin (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), pp. 131–46, and Renato Bordono, ‘La mémoire des villes’, Villes de Flandre et d’Italie, pp. 165–72. This volume compares Italians and Flemish towns, the latter dealt with by Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, ‘L’écriture de la mémoire urbaine en Flandre et en Brabant (XIVe–XVIe siècle)’, Villes de Flandre et d’Italie, pp. 149–64. 8 Reinhold Kaiser, ‘Die Gesta episcoporum als Genus der Gechichtsschreibung im frühen Mittelalter’, in Historiographie im frühen Mittelalter, ed. by Anton Scharer and Georg Schreibelreiter (Vienna/ Munich: Böhlau, 1984), pp. 459–80. 9 Bratu, ‘Chroniken’, pp. 721–25; Giovanna Petti Balbi, Caffaro e la cronachistica genovese (Genova: Tilgher, 1970).

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However, Italy was not the site of the oldest urban chronicle written in a vernacular language, namely the official consular history of Montpellier begun in the early thirteenth century, the so-called Petit Thalamus. The early development of vernacular literature in the Occitan-speaking area makes this less surprising. The towns of southern France, culturally close to Italy, maintained a very lively tradition of urban historiography, usually based on official lists of consuls, but there has been little systematic work on these texts. Beginning in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, forms of urban historical writing appeared in northern, French-speaking towns as well, but these have not yet received much scholarly attention.10 In North-Western European regions with Germanic language speakers, proper urban chronicles came into being later than in Italy or the south of France. London developed a relatively early tradition of urban historical writing, inserted into a list of city officials and originally in Latin.11 At the same time Mendicant chroniclers were active outside Italy, for instance in Flanders, where the early fourteenth-century Annales Gandenses, written by a Ghent Grey Friar, should surely be considered ‘urban’.12 Vernacular urban chronicles in German debuted in some locations in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but scholars generally consider the fifteenth century – when Italian historians were already writing humanist histories of their towns – to be the real starting point of urban historiography in Northern Europe, produced particularly in the cities of the Holy Roman Empire. The fifteenth century also witnessed the transition from composing chronicles in verse to writing in prose and from Latin to the vernacular. From this period onwards, German towns have dominated medieval urban historiography. It is generally acknowledged that urban chronicles comprise the bulk of the historiography about the late medieval Holy Roman Empire (including the Swiss Confederation), and scholars have studied them extensively since the nineteenth century.13 Remarkably, with regard to the Low Countries, home to some of the largest cities north of the Alps and a majority population of Middle Dutch speakers linguistically

10 The main exception is the recent work of Challet on the Montpellier chronicles: Vincent Challet, ‘The Petit Thalamus of Montpellier. Moving Mirror of an Urban Political Identity’, Imago Temporis Medium Aevum, 10 (2016), pp. 215–29; Aysso es lo comessamen. Écritures et mémoires du Montpellier médiéval, ed. by Vincent Challet (Montpellier: Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée, 2010). In Agde, Vienne, Nîmes, Béziers and other towns of the Midi, there were similar chroniques consulaires, but less so in the rest of France, such as La Rochelle; see André Chédeville, Histoire de la France Urbaine. 2: la ville médiévale des Carolingiens à la Renaissance (Paris: Seuil, 1980), pp. 583–88; Juliane Kümmel, ‘Alltagsweltliche Erfahrung und Formen volkssprachlicher Historiographie in den spätmittelalterliche Städten Frankreichs’, in La littérature historiographique des origines à 1500. Tome 1 (partie historique) (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1987), pp. 735–54. 11 See for London and other developments in England: Antonia Gramsden, Historical Writing in England, c. 550–c. 1307 (London: Routledge, 1982). 12 Annals of Ghent, ed. by Hilda Johnstone (London: Nelson, 1951). 13 Johanek, ‘Das Gedächtnis’, p. 372; Klaus Wriedt, ‘Bürgerliche Geschichtsschreibung im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert. Ansätze und Formen’, in Städtische Geschichtsschreibung im Spätmittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Peter Johanek (Cologne: Böhlau, 2000), p. 21. See also F. R. H. du Boulay, ‘The German Town Chroniclers’, in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages, ed. by Ralph Davis and J. M. WallaceHadrill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 445–69 and the other contributions in this volume.

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closest to German, there has been fierce debate over whether real ‘urban chronicles’ were ever written. While the earlier scholarly consensus was that there were no ‘real’ urban chronicles, lately regional specialists have fundamentally reconsidered this point of view.14 In order to come to a new understanding of the rise or urban historiography in medieval Europe, some explanation should first be given for the lack of attention paid to medieval and early modern urban history writing in the English, French and Dutch-speaking regions. Of course, the first question is: what’s in a name? When is a chronicle urban ‘in essence’? Historians constructed the concept of the late medieval Stadtchronik amidst the historicist, and often also Hegelian mood of mid-nineteenth-century Germany, beginning with the edition of the Chroniken der deutschen Städte on the initiative of Karl Hegel in 1862 (although it was originally inspired by Georg Heinrich Pertz, the first secretary of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica). Karl Hegel was the son of the great philosopher, a student of Leopold von Ranke and, although his work is largely forgotten now, an important medieval historian in his own right who specialized in German and Italian cities. For Hegel junior – reflecting the dominant historical ideas of his time – the German town chronicles were an expression of civic order from the perspective of city residents who were developing a proper historical consciousness, or urban Geist, on a path towards modernity. While burghers themselves may not have written the chronicles, the authors certainly aimed for a bourgeois audience.15 This teleological conception of German historiography, for which nineteenth-century editors would even manipulate manuscripts, cutting sections to create ‘pure’ urban chronicles and construct a ‘bourgeois consciousness’, is still relevant to modern discussions of this ‘genre’. The same ideas appear, for instance, in some Italian commentaries on central medieval urban historiography that emphasize the ‘civic spirit’ or in the overly enthusiastic detection of new civic and ‘secular’ features in the fifteenth-century London chronicles.16 Most

14 The viewpoint that no urban chronicles are extant for the Low Countries is defended by Jan Romein, Geschiedenis van de Noord-Nederlandsche geschiedschrijving in de middeleeuwen. Bijdrage tot de beschavingsgeschiedenis (Haarlem: Tjeenk Willink, 1932), p. 830; Bunna Ebels-Hoving, ‘Nederlandse geschiedschrijving 1350–1550. Een poging tot karakterisering’, in Genoechlike ende lustige historiën. Laatmiddeleeuwse geschiedschrijving in Nederland, ed. by Bunna Ebels-Hoving, Catrien Santing, and Karin Tilmans (Hilversum: Verloren, 1987), p. 222 and p. 225; Elodie Lecuppre-Desjardin, La ville des cérémonies. Essai sur la communication politique dans les anciens Pays-Bas bourguignons (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 71–76. A critique in Robert Stein, ‘Selbstverständnis oder Identität? Städtische Geschichtsschreibung als Quelle für die Identitätsforschung’, in Memoria, communitas, civitas. Mémoire et conscience urbaines en Occident à la fin du Moyen Âge, ed. by Hanno Brand, Martial Staub, and Pierre Monnet (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2003), pp. 181–202; Van Bruaene, ‘L’écriture de la mémoire urbaine’. 15 Die Chroniken der deutschen Städte vom 14. bis ins 16. Jahrhundert, ed. by Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Historische Kommission (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1862–1917, later volumes: Stuttgart/ Gotha: F. A. Perthes 1928–31; Bremen: Schünemann 1968). On Hegel junior, see Ferdinand Frensdorff, ‘Karl Hegel und die Geschichte des deutschen Städtewesens’, Hansische Geschichtsblätter, 29 (1901), 141–62. 16 Guiseppe Martini, ‘Lo spirito cittadino e le origini della storiografia comunale lombarda’, Nuova Rivista Storica, 54 (1970), 3–22; Mary-Rose McLaren, The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century. A Revolution in English Writing (Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2002), pp. 140–46. See also the extensive critique of this idealism in Stein, ‘Selbstverständnis oder Identität?’.

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of the authors in this volume critically engage with the prejudices arising from the German urban chronicles editions project. On the one hand, as Marco Tomaszewski and Ina Serif show, the focus of the Chroniken der deutschen Städte on an ideal or typical urban chronicle led to the neglect of other less straightforward historiographical sources. On the other hand, as Jenine De Vries, Bram Caers and Lisa Demets argue in this book, the dominance of the German-Swiss model led to the erroneous conclusion that no ‘real’ urban historiography existed in England and the Low Countries. Though French towns are not treated in this volume beyond Crombie’s contribution on Tournai, the same is in fact true for both the langue d’oc and langue d’oïl regions of France. The Jacobin tradition of historical writing focusing on the Grandes Chroniques de France and similar dynastic texts has mostly failed to acknowledge more local and less ‘pure’ forms of historiography. Even Bernard Guenée, in his masterly synthesis on medieval historical culture, never contemplated the existence of urban chronicles in medieval France.17 Even though French medievalists, such as Jean-Marie Moeglin and Pierre Monnet, have recently analysed the historiography of the imperial towns, almost no one has extended their analysis to the towns of France itself, which remain a largely untapped field of study.18 Therefore, we must first deconstruct the implicit and explicit assumptions underpinning the traditional concept of an urban chronicle before proposing new approaches to utilizing the concept as an analytical tool in historical research. There are several challenges inherent in defining pre-industrial European urban historiography in a post-positivist manner; the first is genre blurring and intertextuality. There was often considerable overlap between historiographical and administrative texts. The German Amtsbücher or Ratsbücher are notable examples, as these were often structured around lists of city magistrates and contained copies of charters and other documents from the town’s archives. The same is true for the Flemish memorieboeken, or ‘memory books’. Although most of the surviving memory books come from Ghent (about 100 for the period between 1400 and 1800), these books also existed in other major Netherlandish towns, as Paul Trio demonstrates in his chapter on Ypres. Several contributions in this volume also show the interdiscursive relations with forms of administrative writing apart from lists of mayors and aldermen. Indeed, Johanek argues that putting urban memories in writing legitimized them politically and judicially, just as a charter gained legitimacy by being copied into a cartulary.19 In fact, English ‘custumals’ and other types of cartularies produced by urban chanceries, judicial registers, guild inventories, and membership lists from all

17 Bernard Guenée, Histoire et culture historique dans l’Occident médiéval (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1980). 18 Jean-Marie Moeglin, ‘L’historiographie urbaine dans l’Empire’, in Écrire l’histoire à Metz au Moyen Âge: actes du colloque organisé par l’Université Paul-Verlaine de Metz, 23–25 avril 2009, ed. by Mireille Chazan and Gérard Nauroy (Bern: Peter Lang, 2011), pp. 54–78. An exception for the early modern period is Des villes de papier. Ecrire l’histoire de la ville à l’époque moderne, ed. Clarisse Coulomb, theme number Histoire Urbaine, 28 (2010), 2. 19 Johanek, ‘Das Gedächtnis’, pp. 367–70.

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over medieval and early modern Europe often contained historical notes. As Tomaszewski, Van Gassen, Bakker and Trio explore these dialogical interactions between administrative and historiographical texts, this is a major theme of this volume. Moreover, various types of other sources such as calendars of saints, almanacs and armorials could have a decisive influence on forms of urban historiography, as Crombie, Vermeersch and Meer show. These connections raise the question of whether the concepts of the ‘urban chronicle’ and ‘urban historiography’ in general actually distort our understanding of the much wider corpus of texts that fulfilled practical functions for late medieval and early modern urban society. For example, Van Gassen argues that the Dagboek van Gent (‘Diary of Ghent’) served as a practical instrument in the political deliberations of the city with other parties. For these reasons, a recent proposal is to use the more neutral term of ‘record-keeping’ as a category for all kinds of administrative and commemorative writing.20 The overlap between urban historiography and different types of ‘ego-documents’ or ‘lifewriting’ also deserves more scrutiny. The most famous of these are the Italian Libri di Ricordanze, private forms of record-keeping and accounting produced by elite and sometimes middle class families.21 While scholars have analysed similar sources from French and German regions (see the contribution of Meer in this volume), few have explored these family books from the Low Countries.22 In the Flemish city of Ghent alone, for example, a large number of handboeken that contain notes on family and business affairs, are waiting in the archives.23 French medievalists have traditionally considered the so-called journaux historiques as a specific genre, another reason that they have not identified urban forms of historical writing, besides their centralist perspective. Even when they observe a close connection between the urban world and these ‘journals’, such as the Journal d’un bourgeois de Paris, or the (also erroneously) entitled Chronique scandaleuse by Jean de Roye,24 French scholars have never 20 Alexandra Walsham, ‘The Social History of the Archive: Record-keeping in Early Modern Europe’, in The Social History of the Archive: Record-keeping in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Liesbeth Corens, Kate Peters, and Alexandra Walsham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 9–48. 21 Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, La maison et le nom. Stratégies et rituels dans l’Italie de la Renaissance (Paris: Editions de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1990); Giovanni Ciapelli, Memory, Family, and Self. Tuscan Family Books and Other European Egodocuments (14th–18th Century) (Leiden/ Boston: Brill, 2014). 22 Jean-Louis Biget and Jean Tricard, ‘Livres de raison et démographie familiale en Limousin au quinzième siècle’, Annales de démographie historique, 1981, 321–63; Simon Teuscher, ‘Parenté, politique et comptabilité. Chroniques familiales autour de 1500 (Suisse et Allemagne du Sud)’, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 59 (2004), 847–58; Haus- und Familienbücher in der städtischen Gesellschaft des Spätmittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Birgit Studt (Köln/Weimar/Wien: Böhlau, 2007); Claudia Ulbrich, ‘Family and House Books in Late Medieval German-speaking Areas. A Research Overview’, in Mapping the ‘I’. Research on Self-Narratives in Germany and Switzerland, ed. by Claudia Ulbrich, Kaspar von Greyerz, and Lorenz Heiligensetzer (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2015), pp. 209–26. 23 Marc Boone, ‘De discrete charmes van het burgerbestaan in Gent rond het midden van de vijftiende eeuw. Het financieel handboek van Simon Borluut (1450–1463)’, Bijdragen tot de Geschiedenis, 81 (1998), 99–113. 24 Journal d’un bourgeois de Paris, de 1405 à 1449, ed. by Colette Beaune (Paris: Librairie Generale Francaise, 1990); Jean de Roye, Chronique scandaleuse, journal d’un Parisien au temps de Louis XI, ed. by Joël Blanchard (Paris: Agora, 2015). Various examples, with full references, are listed in Kümmel,

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called these works urban chronicles, while in Germany the same sort of text would have borne that label. Defying any rigid typology, there are also many examples of even more hybrid forms of writing, interweaving civic chronicle, family diary and personal reflection, such as the works by Hermann Weinsberg, an obsessive writer documenting his life in sixteenth-century Cologne.25 Particularly in the early modern period, there are a great number of surviving texts that combine urban historiography with passages on family and personal experience, which suggests that, while still firmly embedded in urban memorial practices, this form of ‘autobiography’ is connected to a rising concept of the ‘self ’, both in elite and artisan circles.26 We must be careful, however, not to erect artificial boundaries between the medieval and early modern periods based on the alleged development of the individual beginning in the Renaissance, another teleogical myth from unnuanced historiography. An unintended consequence of the monumental Chroniken der deutschen Städte is the praise and attention given to the ‘Golden Age’ period between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries, while urban historiography – both in old and new forms – actually continued to flourish in the seventeenth, eighteenth and even nineteenth centuries.27 Study of the urban chronicle thus offers an exciting opportunity to cross the boundary between the pre-modern and modern age, to include the nineteenth-century antiquarian quest for local memories and the recording of family memories that stretches into the nineteenth century and even beyond.28 Urban historiography, a genre closely related to other forms of urban record-keeping, served the practical function of preserving useful knowledge that could be passed on within the civic administration, guilds and families as a

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‘Alltagsweltliche Erfahrung’, pp. 742–73. See also a recent contribution on a similar example in SaintOmer: Estelle Doudet, ‘L’héritage des d’Haffrengues: pistes pour une histoire de l’historiographie urbaine dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux, 15e–18e siècles’, Le Moyen Français, 62 (2008), pp. 63–78. Matthew Lundin, Paper Memory. A Sixteenth-century Townsman Writes his World (Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 2012). James S. Amelang, The Flight of Icarus. Artisan Autobiography in Early Modern Europe (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998). See also Pierre Monnet, ‘Ville réelle et ville idéale à la fin du Moyen Âge: une géographie au prisme des témoignages autobiographiques allemands’, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 56 (2001), pp. 591–621; Myriam Greilsammer, La roue de la fortune. Le destin d’une famille d’usuriers lombards dans les Pays-Bas à l’aube des temps modernes (Paris: Editions de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 2009); Alain Lottin, “Chronique mémorial des choses mémorables par moy Pierre-Ignace Chavatte” (1657–1693). Le mémorial d’un humble tisserand lillois au Grand Siècle (Brussels: Commission Royale d’Histoire, 2010). Lottes, ‘Stadtchronistik und städtische Identität’; Susanne Rau, Geschichte und Konfession. Städtische Geschichtsschreibung und Erinnerungskultur im Zeitalter der Reformation und Konfessionalisierung in Bremen, Breslau, Hamburg und Köln (Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz Verlag, 2002); Rosemary H. Sweet, ‘“The Private and Uninteresting History of a Single Town?” Les histoires des villes provinciales dans l’Angleterre du XVIIIe siècle’, Urban History, 28 (2010), 2, 85–103; Raingard Esser, The Politics of Memory. The Writing of Partition in the Seventeenth-century Low Countries (Leiden: Brill, 2012); Andy Wood, ‘Tales from the ‘Yarmouth Hutch’: Civic Identities and Hidden Histories in an Urban Archive’, in The Social History of the Archive, pp. 213–30. Judith Pollmann, ‘Archiving the Present and Chronicling for the Future in Early Modern Europe’, in The Social History of the Archive, pp. 231–52.

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form of civic pedagogy.29 The preferred format was the ‘annal’, with its seemingly dry and rhythmic annotations (usually starting with the word ‘Item’), but often larded with transcriptions of charters and oaths or genealogical trees. Although the connection is tangential to this volume, the overlap with other genres might also extend to what we now consider ‘literary’ texts, epic-chivalric and hagiographical narratives that served as models for ‘historical’ or ‘political’ songs, as well as for plays, poems, songs and pamphlets commenting on historical or political events. The same holds true for foundation myths that embellished a city’s history by sketchy reworkings of biblical or ancient stories, especially those about Troy.30 Even though there was a constant dialogue with other types of texts, a conglomeration too vast to be systematically treated in this introduction, it does appear that the urban chronicle, as a crafted historical narrative and carefully composed literary text, was exceptional in some regions.31 As De Vries explains the multiple parts of the fifteenth-century Maire’s Kalendar from Bristol, including a Trojan foundation myth, lists of city officials and a transcription of customs of the town, she concludes that literary, administrative and historiographical texts often interacted within one manuscript.32 Instead of trying to define ‘the urban chronicle’ as a fixed genre, we need to explore the rationale of the divergent forms and their functions within specific urban contexts. What Constitutes Urban Memory? Above we used a formal perspective to problematize the genre of the urban chronicle, but the precise definition of ‘urban’ is equally unsettled. The days are long gone when historians could discern hard and fast dichotomies between conceptual pairs such as ‘urban culture’ and ‘court culture’, ‘lay culture’ and ‘clerical culture’, and the same holds true for historical texts and wider memory practices. Older studies of urban chronicles often refer to the existence of an urban ‘world view’ or urban ‘historical consciousness’, which created a surge of interest in the genre in the 1980s and 1990s, but lack rigorous analytical value.

29 On the notion of ‘useful knowledge’, see Pollmann, ‘Archiving the Present’, p. 234. 30 Wilma Keesman, ‘Oorsprongsmythen als zelfuitlegging. Over achtergrond en betekenis van middeleeuwse verhalen rond Trojaanse stedenstichtingen’, in Op belofte van profijt. Stadsliteratuur en burgermoraal in de Nederlandse letterkunde van de middeleeuwen, ed. by Herman Pleij and others (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 1991), pp. 262–79; Graeme Small, ‘Les origines de la ville de Tournai dans les chroniques légendaires du bas Moyen Âge’, in Les Grands Siècles de Tournai (12e–15e siècles). Receuil d’études publié à l’occasion du 20e anniversaire des Guides de Tournai, ed. by Albert Châtelet, Jean Dumoulin, and Jean-Claude Ghislain (Tournai/Louvain-la-Neuve: Fabrique de l’église cathédrale de Tournai, 1993), pp. 81–113; Renaud Villard, ‘Le héros introuvable: les récits de fondation de cités en Italie: XIVe–XVIe siècles’, Histoire, Economie, Société, 19 (2000), 5–24. 31 A fine study of this textual interplay in Italy is Petti Balbi, ‘La mémoire’. 32 For similar examples in Flanders see Van Bruaene, De Gentse memorieboeken als spiegel van stedelijk historisch bewustzijn (14de tot 16de eeuw) (Ghent: Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent, 1998).

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The starting point should be three more precise and perhaps obvious concepts: authorship, geographical scope and intended audience. Of course, the criterion of authorship – the straightforward notion that an urban chronicle is written by a ‘burgher’ – is in itself a problematic. While some early Italian urban chronicles were already written by laymen, emphasizing the lay or ‘bourgeois’ character of town chroniclers again evokes a vaguely Hegelian and liberal sense of the emancipating urban spirit. The reality, however, was usually far more complex. We are able to identify some authors as burghers of their towns, but there are also many urban historiographical texts written by clerics that show no demonstrable differences in world view or interest. In Italy, as we have noted, Mendicant friars played an important part in the production of city chronicles from the late thirteenth century, but there is no absolute distinction between chronicles written by friars and those written by laymen.33 The bourgeois de Paris was probably a secular canon.34 Jakob Twinger von Königshofen, who wrote the history of Strasbourg at the end of the fourteenth century and whose influential work is analyzed by Tomaszewski and Serif in this book, was a parish priest and a canon. A long tradition of monastic and episcopal chronicling, mastery of writing skills and close relationships with urban governments explains why clergymen were significant constructors of historical texts, especially in the initial phase. But even clerics’ personal writings might reflect a heavily urban outlook. One example is the well-known Flemish chronicle of Galbert of Bruges, a quite exceptional text for its age, the early twelfth century.35 Although it deals extensively with Flemish urban politics and identifies with urban society, scholars have not classified it in the same category as the almost contemporary Genovese Annales by Caffaro, a text often considered the earliest urban chronicle.36 Another heavily discussed issue is the geographical scope of urban chronicles. While it seems self-evident that a city chronicle would be limited to the history of one town, there is often considerable overlap between regional and local historiographies, especially in those areas where cities were part and parcel of a feudal society of counts, dukes and prince-bishops. In Brabant, city magistrates invested in writing regional chronicles to flatter their dukes and educate their own populations, taking care at the same time to hail the special place of their own city in the duchy’s history.37 Recently, Lisa Demets has demonstrated the smooth interaction of urban and dynastic histories in the Excellente Cronike

33 Petti Balbi, ‘La mémoire’, pp. 136–40. 34 Journal d’un bourgeois de Paris (see footnote 24). 35 Jeff Rider, God’s Scribe: the Historiographical Art of Galbert of Bruges (Washington (D.C.): Catholic University of America Press, 2001). 36 Petti Balbi, Caffaro. 37 Robert Stein, Politiek en historiografie. Het ontstaansmilieu van Brabantse kronieken in de eerste helft van de vijftiende eeuw (Leuven: Peeters, 1994).

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van Vlaenderen.38 Her essay with Bram Caers in this volume further explores the complexity of different geographical outlooks in urban historiography. Moreover, upon close examination, even the so-called archetypical German or Swiss town chronicles were often originally composed from a more ‘regional’ or ‘dynastic’ point of view. In fact, they could be considered Landeschroniken and were often written by clerics rather than burghers. This is also true for Italian ‘urban chronicles’ that usually dealt with the surrounding region and sometimes situated the history of the city-state in a much wider framework, as for instance Giovanni Villani does in his famous Florentine chronicle. As we will discuss below, writers copied, rewrote and added material to chronicles, changing the primary perspective over time in multiple directions, from ‘universal’ to ‘national’ to ‘local’. Rather than the breadth of a chronicle’s geographical scope, the main criteria should be the display of a set of social and political values typical of urban society and its narrative focus on events within a single city. In this ideological framework, urban space constitutes the unifying factor connecting multiple forms of urban historiography: in the mindset of the urban memorialist an event always happened at an identifiable and recognizable place. Chroniclers often expressed a strong attachment to significant sites, since the urban landscape was a store of memories of the written and spoken word and also of signs and collective performances of remembrance.39 According to Challet, the Petit Thalamus helped create an urban consciousness of the universitas of Montpellier in the same way as the town walls shaped the town as a physical whole.40 In this sense, Johanek has considered urban space an Erinnerungslandschaft, a landscape full of sites and signs carrying shared memories, a space in which stories were remembered, through oral communication, but also evoked and reconstructed through images and architecture.41 The urban veneration of saints and their relics played a similar role in evoking local stories about the past.42 But perhaps the most important criterion for a historiographical text’s ‘urbanity’ is the extent to which it reveals its intended audiences and their horizon of expectations. Does the text imply a primarily urban social milieu as an ‘interpretative community’, and did this community actively share and reproduce the text as an object of interpretation?43 In this respect, we think it useful to make a distinction between what is now often denoted as the ‘memory practices’, whether written, visual or performative, of the urban government 38 Lisa Demets, ‘The Late Medieval Manuscript Transmission of the ‘Excellente Cronike Van Vlaenderen’ in Urban Flanders’, The Medieval Low Countries, 3 (2016), 123–73; Lisa Demets and Jan Dumolyn, ‘Urban Chronicle Writing in Late Medieval Flanders: The Case of Bruges During the Flemish Revolt of 1482–1490’, Urban History, 43 (2016), 1, 28–45. 39 Lecuppre-Desjardin, La ville des cérémonies. 40 Challet, ‘The Petit Thalamus of Montpellier’. 41 Johanek, ‘Das Gedächtnis’, pp. 343–45, 355–60. 42 Petti Balbi, ‘La mémoire’, pp. 137–38. 43 Hans-Robert Jauss, Towards an Aesthetic of Reception (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1982); Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 1980). Schmid, ‘Town chronicles’, p. 1432, identifies the ‘main defining element’ of town chronicles as ‘the audience, rather than the social status of the author, or the content of form’.

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itself – which usually receive most scholarly attention – and those produced and consumed by other urban groups such as merchant, craft, and shooting guilds, confraternities, religious communities and elite families. ‘Official’ urban historical narratives were usually composed by clerks employed by the city council, although it is not always clear if they acted on commission or on their own initiative. Nevertheless, this form of what we would term ‘civic memory’ is a specific and easily recognizable category of a more general and socially diverse ‘urban memory’ in general.44 The German Amtsbücher and Ratsbücher are good illustrations of this practice.45 In the Low Countries, there are also a few examples, like the early-sixteenth-century chronicle written by Peter van Os, city secretary of ‘s-Hertogenbosch, and the chronicles compiled by anonymous scribes in the small town of Kampen which Bakker discusses in this volume.46 Another important group of historiographical texts produced within the urban environment was directly linked to elite lineages and is therefore categorized as family chronicles, with the understanding that these families were often politically active in their towns. The Italian libri di ricordanze, the livres de raison in French, or the German Familienbücher belong in this category, as do other German texts that have previously been classified as Städtechroniken, and many ‘minor chronicles’ written by and for Venetian patrician families, hybrid Flemish ‘memory books’, and some ‘private’ London chronicles. Some of these registers record family possessions, births, baptisms, marriages and deaths of family members, and even financial affairs and bookkeeping.47 In this volume Tomaszewski, Trio and Meer discuss the examples from Basel, Ypres and Augsburg respectively.

44 For the analogy with the notion of ‘civic religion’, see Pierre Monnet, ‘Pour en finir avec la religion civique?’, Histoire Urbaine, 27 (2010), 107–20; Guido Marnef and Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, ‘Civic religion: gemeenschap, identiteit en religieuze vernieuwing’, in Gouden eeuwen. Stad en samenleving in de Lage Landen, 1100–1600, ed. by Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, Bruno Blondé, and Marc Boone (Ghent: Academia Press, 2016), pp. 165–206. 45 Heinrich Schmidt, Die deutschen Städtechroniken als Spiegel des bürgerlichen Selbstverständenisses im Spätmittelalter (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1958), pp. 14–21; Regula Schmid, Geschichte im Dienst der Stadt: amtliche Historie und Politik im Spätmittelalter (Zürich: Chronos, 2009). 46 Kroniek van Peter van Os. Geschiedenis van ’s-Hertogenbosch en Brabant van Adam tot 1523, ed. by A. M. van Lith-Droogleever Fortuijn, J. G. M. Sanders, and Geertrui A. M. Van Synghel (The Hague: Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis, 1997). See also the contributions in Cultuur in het laatmiddeleeuwse Noord-Brabant. Literatuur-Boekproductie-Historiografie, ed. by Arnoud J. A. Bijsterveld, J. A. F. M. van Oudheusden, and Robert Stein (’s-Hertogenbosch: Stichting Brabantse regionale geschiedbeoefening, 1998). 47 Van Bruaene, De Gentse memorieboeken; Jean-Marie Moeglin, ‘Les élites urbaines et l’histoire de leur ville en Allemagne (XIVe–XVe siècles)’, in Les élites urbaines au Moyen Âge (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1997), pp. 351–83; Anne F. Sutton and Livia Fuchs-Visser, ‘The Making of a Minor London Chronicle in the Household of Sir Thomas Frowyk (Died 1485)’, The Ricardian, 126 (1994), 86–103; McLaren, The London Chronicles; Charles de la Roncière, ‘Les ricordanze florentines aux XIVe et XVe siècles’, Provence Historique, 54 (2004), 285–92; Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, ‘Mémoire de soi et des autres dans les livres de famille italiens’, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 59 (2004), pp. 805–26; Haus- und Familienbücher in der städtischen Gesellschaft des Spätmittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Birgit Stüdt (Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2007); Karin Czaja, ‘The Nuremberg Familienbücher: Archives of Family Identity’, in Uses of the Written Word in Medieval Towns, ed. by Marco Mostert and Anna Adamska (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp. 325–35.

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Although civic and patrician memories clearly had a greater chance of surviving in archives and libraries, the production, circulation and consumption of urban history was not a monopoly of the city’s elites. While our focus on these memories may only result from what has come down to us, it may also come from overly narrow perspectives and superficial readings of the existing sources. In the late medieval and early modern Netherlands, for instance, collective urban memory was also produced by corporative groups, such as craft and shooting guilds, who inserted annalistic notes in their membership registers and cartularies.48 In addition, close reading of historiographical texts has revealed that middle class artisan families created their own histories by cherishing the memories of their forefathers’ participation in urban political struggles. Some historians specializing in late medieval revolts, popular politics and religious dissent during the Reformation suggest that ‘non-official’ historiographical texts are excellent sources for what could be called ‘counter-memories’.49 In sum, when we consider the authorship, geographical scope and intended audiences of urban chronicles, we are struck by the diversity of perspectives. Any rigid definition or overly narrow analytical framework increases the risk of excluding sources and ‘the polyphony of voices’, to use a phrase by Bakhtin, that once were important building blocks of urban memory. We must also consider one other noteworthy common feature in the diverse historiographical texts considered here: they are usually more concerned with the present than with the past, as they are a form of Gegenwartsgechichtschreibung, or as Graus called it, the Präsentismus (presentism), a feature in fact typical of later medieval chronicle writing in general.50 Urban historiography addressed topics such as price movements in times of scarcity, exceptional meterological events, and anecdotes about crime, but also ceremonial receptions of princes, the fortunes of leading urban lineages, feuds, wars and rebellions.51 There is an obvious but often obscured distinction between authors who wrote about the past with presentist concerns (for instance, defending the city’s political status to a wider region, or feeding the status aspirations of a family), and those who dutifully recorded the present they were living. In both cases, however, political conflict

48 For instance, the Bruges shearers’ guild: Albert Schouteet, ‘Kroniekachtige aantekeningen uit het gildeboek van de Brugse droogscheerders, 1519–1598’, Handelingen van het Genootschap voor Geschiedenis, 94 (1957), 66–73; the Bruges crossbow guild: City Archives of Bruges, 385 (St.Jorisgilde), register 1321–1531; the Ghent crossbow guild: Ghent, City Museum (STAM), ms. G 3018/3 (we thank Laura Crombie for the latter reference). On London, see Jennifer Bishop, ‘The Clerk’s Tale: Civic Writing in Sixteenth-century London’, in The Social History of the Archive, pp. 112–30. 49 Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, ‘S’imaginer le passé: conscience historique et identité urbaine en Flandre à la fin du Moyen Âge’, in Memoria, communitas, civitas, pp. 167–80; Jelle Haemers, ‘Social Memory and Rebellion in Fifteenth-century Ghent’, Social History, 36 (2011), 443–63. 50 Johanek, ‘Das Gedächtnis’, p. 380; Frantisek Graus, ‘Funktionen der spätmittelalterlichen Geschichtsschreibung’, in Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsbewusstsein in späten Mittelalter, ed. by Hans Patze (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1987), pp. 11–55. 51 Du Boulay, ‘The German town-chroniclers’, pp. 449–54.

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and strife functioned as frequent catalysts of urban history writing.52 In this collection, Crombie makes a thoroughly researched case for Jehan Nicolay’s Kalendrier des Guerres de Tournay, which records in detail the violent events in and around this episcopal city in 1477–78. Demets and Caers argue more broadly that authors rewrote and adapted chronicles as well as writing new chronicles in periods of political crisis, always to defend a particular viewpoint rather than reflect a homogeneous urban memory. The Urban Chronicle as a Material Object In recent years, the discussion of genre and refinements to the content analysis of urban chronicles have been supplemented by a growing attention on the material features of the manuscripts that have transmitted these texts. The edition of the Chroniken der deutschen Städte and similar nineteenth-century edition projects in other countries have long obscured the material composition of medieval and early modern chronicles and the ways in which they circulated as objects in urban society. We cannot ignore the merit of these older editions, not only because they – especially after digitization – make sources widely available, but also because they have become shadow archives of manuscripts lost in the devastating twentieth-century world wars, as in the cases of Ypres and Tournai discussed in this volume. Nevertheless we strongly advocate for a return to the libraries and archives to measure paper and parchment, study bindings, compare hands and reassess marginal notes. A material perspective is imperative, for both personal journals composed in single manuscripts and chronicles transmitted in many copies, such as the chronicle of Jakob Twinger von Königshofen, for which Serif inventoried a staggering number of 120 manuscripts. A combination of three approaches, réécriture of texts, circulation of objects and visual strategies of manuscripts, helps move beyond the often sterile discussions of genre to reveal the functions of memorial writings in urban societies. The ‘new philology’, with its emphasis on the concept of réécriture, stresses the problematic nature of trying to distinguish among ‘authors’, ‘scribes’, ‘continuators’ and ‘copyists’ for medieval and early modern texts.53 Historiographical texts, in particular, are often collective works, composed by consecutive generations of official scribes or of family members who wrote continuations and added interpolations. When there were multiple authors of a text, they may have come

52 Wilfried Ehbrecht, ‘Uppe dat sulck grot vorderfenisse jo nicht meer enscheghe. Konsens und konflikt als eine Leitfrage städtischer Historiographue, nicht nur im Hanseraum’, in Städtische Geschichtsschreibung, pp. 51–109. See also Judith Pollmann, Catholic Identity and the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1520–1635 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 53 Paul Zumthor, Essai de poétique medieval (Paris: Seuil, 1972), pp. 65–75; Bernard Cerquiglini, Éloge de la Variante: Histoire Critique de la Philologie (Paris: Seuil, 1989). See also the 1990 volume of Speculum: Stephen Nichols, ‘Introduction: Philology in a Manuscript Culture’, Speculum, 65 (1990), 1–10. Gabrielle Spiegel, ‘History, Historicism and the Social Logic of the Text in the Middle Ages’, Speculum, 65 (1990), 59–86.

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from similar backgrounds, but they may also have been city residents of widely varying status: clerics, city officials, merchants, or artisans. A textual ‘tradition’ might begin with a clerical author translating a Latin text into the vernacular in the honor of a prince and presenting a regional or dynastic perspective, but subsequent versions might address a new urban audience and narrow the focus to a particular town. Consecutive authors or scribes might add to the narrative or leave out sections, to please a certain social circle or political institution, advance a personal agenda, or adapt to changing interests. This also explains why urban chronicles were seldom printed before the eighteenth century; manuscripts could be continuously customized.54 In fact, as Bram Caers has recently shown for Mechelen, we should consider any form of urban history writing that has come down to us in manuscript form as a social product, created and recreated through the rewriting strategies of the different ‘hands’ or ‘voices’ who worked on the various copies.55 Since every copy of a chronicle is an autograph, it is often useful to replace the author of a text with the compiler of the manuscript, because the manuscript has a more easily identifiable place, time and social context. Practices of rewriting and customizing narratives were not limited to manuscripts; Vermeersch, in her essay on printed almanacs, points out similar strategies. The act of rewriting must be considered together with questions about the circulation of objects in urban society. While the concept of réécriture is borrowed from philology, discussions about transmission of knowledge and the circulation of objects are central to the history of science, a discipline that has also increased its attention to urban contexts.56 After the dominance monastic and other ecclesiastical environments had in the production and circulation of knowledge in the early Middle Ages, in the late medieval and early modern period, the urban environment was the space where most historical works were copied in manuscript form and in print after the fifteenth century. In cities such as Paris huge book markets sold works of history along with other texts.57 However, urban chronicles were seldom printed because their potential markets and audiences were likely restricted, or because they served the needs of private individuals, city governments, specific corporations, or narrow social circles. We have found it useful in this body of work to think more systematically about

54 Pollmann, ‘Archiving the Present’, p. 237. 55 Bram Caers, ‘Vertekend verleden. Geschiedenis herschrijven in vroegmodern Mechelen (1500–1650)’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Antwerp, 2015). See also Jan Dumolyn, Johan Oosterman, Tjamke Snijders, and Stijn Villerius, ‘Rewriting Chronicles in an Urban Environment. The Middle Dutch “Excellent Chronicle of Flanders’’ Tradition’, Lias, 41 (2014), 2, 85–116; Frederik Buylaert, ‘Memory, Social Mobility and Historiography. Shaping Noble Identity in the Bruges Chronicle of Nicholas Despars (+1597)’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, 88 (2010), 377–408. 56 Sven Dierig, Jens Lachmund, and J. Andrex Mendelsohn, ‘Introduction: Toward an Urban History of Science’, Osiris, 18 (2003), 1–19; Lissa Roberts, ‘Situating Science in Global History. Local Exchanges and Networks of Circulation’, Itinerario, 33 (2009),1,  8–30; Pascal Schillings and Alexander van Wickeren, ‘Towards a Material and Spatial History of Knowledge Production: An Introduction’, Historical Social Research, 40 (2015), 1, 203–18. 57 Guenée, Histoire, pp. 321–23.

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who owned historiographical manuscripts, how they were passed on and how ‘private’ or ‘public’ they were.58 This implies, for example, that we have to leave behind modernist ideas about how urban archives and administrations work. In fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Flanders, private persons of appropriate social status were allowed to borrow official administrative documents, including historiographical texts, to make copies of their own. These copies then gained a new life circulating within families or religious institutions, for example. They were expanded with new notes, leading to the appropriation and adaptation of civic memory.59 From the sixteenth century onwards, these practices of unofficial urban record-keeping evolved into a more deliberate collection of historiographical material and a growing antiquarian interest in the history of one’s own city.60 Reconstructing these ‘networks of circulation’ requires systematic work on manuscripts (studying owner’s marks, colophons and marginal notes) and scrutiny of other sources, such as city accounts and inventories of households and institutions. This labour-intensive approach casts fresh light on many methodological problems raised above, such as the issue of genre blurring and intertextuality and the question of intended and unintended audiences. An interesting phenomenon, for example, is the censoring of chronicles by later owners, who tore out pages and blotted or scratched out sensitive words, sentences and paragraphs.61 The fact that an urban chronicle was an object to be shared and thus viewed entails that its visual features also deserve attention. Because most chronicles were unimpressive paper volumes, from a material perspective, they were not distinguishable from practical documents. The Ghent mercer Joos vander Stoct, for instance, used an empty account book to transcribe his personal ‘memory book’.62 While official historiographical manuscripts can also be underwhelming (see Van Gassen’s discussion of the ‘Diary of Ghent’ in this book), there are also richly adorned parchment books embellished with gilt and beautiful calligraphy clearly designed to impress, such as the Maire’s Kalendar from Bristol, discussed by De Vries. As Tomaszewski and Meer point out in this volume, many of the 58 The importance of the social and political environment in which urban chronicles circulated was first emphasized in the pioneering and groundbreaking study by J. B. Menke, ‘Geschichtsschreibung und Politik in deutschen Städten des Spätmittelalters. Die Entstehung deutscher Geschichtsprosa in Köln, Braunschweig, Lübeck, Mainz und Magdeburg’, Jahrbüch des Kölnischen Geschichtsvereins, 33 (1958–59), 1–84 and 34 (1960), 85–194. 59 Van Bruaene, De Gentse memorieboeken, pp. 59–70; Tineke Van Gassen, ‘Te vindene tghuent dat men gheerne ghevonden hadde. Het documentaire geheugen van een middeleeuwse grootstad: ontwikkeling en betekenis van de Gentse archieven’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Ghent, 2017). 60 Woolf, The Social Circulation of the Past; Hilary J. Bernstein, ‘Réseaux savants et choix documentaires de l’histoire locale française. Écrire l’histoire de Bourges dans la seconde moitié du XVIIe siècle’, Histoire urbaine, 28 (2010) 2, 65–84; Tom Hamilton, ‘Recording the Wars of Religion: The ‘Drolleries of the League’ from Ephemeral Print to Scrapbook History’, in The Social History of the Archive, pp. 288–310. 61 Jonas Roelens,‘From Slurs to Silence? Sodomy and Mendicants in the Writings of Catholic Laymen in Early Modern Ghent’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 46 (2015), 3, 537–57. 62 Van Bruaene, De Gentse memorieboeken, pp. 316–19.

introduction

most visually impressive urban chronicles, such as the Geschlechterbücher from Augsburg, Frankfurt and Nuremberg are in fact family books designed to bolster the status of a patrician lineage.63 Using heraldry was an essential visual strategy in historiographical manuscripts. We often connect depiction of beautifully coloured coats of arms with the world of the nobility and read them as manifestations of noble aspirations. A much less analysed but important use of heraldry took place in an urban context, not only because patrician families displayed coats of arms on their houses, altar pieces, clothing and textiles, but also because craft, shooting and rhetorician guilds and the cities themselves sported their own heraldic signs.64 Therefore, Meer’s call to consider heraldry as an urban form of visual communication and a form of urban history in its own right has two advantages. It offers a new, complementary way to analyse urban chronicles and adds a large number of genealogical and heraldic manuscripts to the corpus of urban historiography. Propositions for Further Research In this introductory chapter we have developed an inclusive approach to late medieval and early modern urban historiography. In our view there are no fixed textual formats, social or political categories, or material forms that exclusively define ‘the urban chronicle’, let alone ‘urban memory’ or ‘urban historical culture’ in general. Urban historiography in pre-modern Western Europe came in many guises, from the dry and modest historical notes in a guild register, to the elaborate heraldic images in a luxury manuscript made on commission for a patrician family, to the legally founded political narrative of a professional scribe in an official town chronicle. The contributions in this volume attest to the diversity of the ‘genre’, if this word still has any meaning. We are left with the question of how to advance the study of this extremely rich corpus of sources. In addition to the suggestions we have made in the preceding paragraphs, in the rest of this volume the authors, most of them young, emerging scholars will

63 Martial Staub, ‘Zwischen Denkmal und Dokument. Nürnberger Geschlechterbücher und das Wissen von der Vergangenheit, in Wissen und Gesellschaft in Nürnberg um 1500. Akten des interdisziplinären Symposions vom 5. und 6. Juni 1998 im Tucherschloss in Nürnberg, ed. by Martial Staub and Klaus A. Vogel (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999), pp. 83–104; Bürgermacht und Bücherpracht. Augsburger Ehren- und Familienbücher der Renaissance, ed. by Christoph Emmendörffer and Helmut Zäh (Luzern: Quaternio, 2011). 64 Werner Paravicini, ‘Gruppe und Person: Repräsentation durch Wappen im späteren Mittelalter’, in Die Repräsentation der Gruppen: Texte, Bilder, Objekte, ed. by Otto Gerhard Oexle and Andrea von Hülsen-Esch (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1998), pp. 327–89; Peter Seiler, ‘Kommunale Heraldik und die Visibilität politischer Ordnung: Beobachtungen zu einem wenig beachteten Phänomen der Stadtästhetik von Florenz, 1250–1400’, in La bellezza della città: Stadtrecht und Stadtgestaltung im Italien des Mittelalters und der Renaissance, ed. by Michael Stolleis and Ruth Wolff (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2004), pp. 205–40; Christoph Friedrich Weber, Zeichen der Ordnung und des Aufruhrs: Heraldische Symbolik in italienischen Stadtkommunen des Mittelalters, Symbolische Kommunikation in der Vormoderne (Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2011); Frederik Buylaert, Jelle De Rock, and Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, ‘City Portrait, Civic Body, and Commercial Printing in Sixteenth-century Ghent’, Renaissance Quarterly, 68 (2015), 3, 803–39.

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add their own. We like to conclude with two final propositions, which can be summarized as ‘zooming in’ and ‘zooming out’. A first suggestion is to develop case-studies of local traditions of urban historiography that allow for in-depth analysis by a combination of the methodologies discussed above. A first step in the study of a local tradition is the assembly of a corpus of manuscripts that have a direct historical relationship (e.g. they were once kept together in the urban administration or belonged to one family) or that contain versions of a similar text. A second step is the application of paleographical and codicological methods, studying different hands, bindings, measurements, owner’s marks, heraldic and other visual representations, and combinations with other texts. A third step is the reconstruction of the circulation of these manuscripts through detailed network analysis of the social and political milieus in which they were composed, transmitted and preserved. A fourth step is a discursive and pragmatic textual analysis, focusing on the ideological messages in text and image, on elements indicating acts of performance and practices of aurality, and in particular on the processes of rewriting and the reflection these cast on the intended audiences and their horizons of expectation. Such inquiries into meaningful links among manuscripts, texts and historical actors are complex and labour-intensive and inevitably restricted by the availability of sources, but there are usually no methodological shortcuts to avoid these difficulties.65 We can also broaden our perspectives by performing further comparative analysis. Geographical comparison between different regions is the first level of analysis. This volume makes a significance advance by comparing the Low Countries, the German-Swiss regions and England. The many similarities in form and function as well as the ubiquity and heterogeneity of urban historiography in the North-Western European area are striking. Broader comparisons, for example with Italy, may nuance this picture. In addition, focused studies on urban chronicles written in French and English are still too rare, and we have not even begun to consider Castilian, Catalan and Portuguese chronicles systematically, let alone those of Scandinavia or Eastern Europe. Comparisons of different types of cities (such as episcopal towns or guild-dominated cities) or large cities with small towns might also be revealing. On a second level, we advocate a long-term perspective, because urban historiography is a phenomenon that stretches from the Central Middle Ages into the modern period. By highlighting continuities and changes in urban memory constructions, embracing a long-term view might well challenge traditional narratives of modernity. Finally, we stress again the need to go beyond the ‘genre’ of urban historiography to compare recognized urban historiography texts with other practices of administrative record-keeping, traditions of writing on family and self and production of literary fiction and visual imagery, to understand how city dwellers mobilized pen, paper and parchment to organize their urban world, make sense of their day-to-day urban experiences and manage the condition urbaine.

65 Demets and Dumolyn, ‘Urban Chronicle Writing’, pp. 28–45.

Questioning Genre and Typologies

Marco Tomaszewski*

Constructing Urban Historiography The Edition Basler Chroniken and the Beinheim Manuscript The Modern Concept of Urban Historiography In 1872, the first volume of the Basler Chroniken was published.1 The primary purpose of this series was to make the late medieval historiography of the Swiss town Basel accessible. In his preface, the editor Wilhelm Vischer remarked that Basel did not have a real late medieval town chronicle as an independent monograph like in Strasbourg or Bern. While Strasbourg had the chronicle by Jakob Twinger von Königshofen,2 Bern is an extraordinary example. In 1420, the Bernese council commissioned town clerk Conrad Justinger to write a chronicle of the town. This chronicle had quite an effect as a basis for the continuations by Diebold Schilling (1483) and Valerius Anshelm (1529–74) who was even engaged as a paid town chronicler in 1529.3 In contrast, Basel saw the appearance of a monograph of the history of the town as late as 1580: Christian Wurstisen’s Basler Chronik, which was a printed book.4 These examples of elaborated self-contained town chronicles fit well into our modern idea of this genre. But what actually was handed down from the late Middle Ages and found its way into the source editions of urban historiography are in many cases varying forms of texts dealing with different aspects of the past. * I would like to thank Tessia Coggio for proofreading. 1 Basler Chroniken, ed. by Historische und Antiquarische Gesellschaft Basel, 7 vols (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1872–1915). The later continuations from 1945 onwards were not part of the original programme and will be not regarded in this article. 2 Chronik des Jacob Twinger von Königshofen, ed. by Karl Hegel, Die Chroniken der deutschen Städte vom 14. bis ins 16. Jahrhundert, 8–9 (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1870–71). See Ina Serif ’s article in this volume. 3 Regula Schmid, Geschichte im Dienst der Stadt. Amtliche Historie und Politik im Spätmittelalter (Zürich: Chronos, 2009), pp. 62–71. 4 Christian Wurstisen, Bassler Chronick, dariñ alles, was sich in Oberen Teutschë Landen, nicht nur in der Statt und Bistumbe Basel, von ihrem Ursprung her, […] biss in das gegenwirtige MDLXXX. Jar, gedenckwirdigs zugetragen: sonder auch der Eydtgnoschafft, Burgund, Elsass und Breissgow […] warhafftig beschrieben: sampt vieler Herrschafften und Geschlechtern Wapen und Stambäumen, etc. […] (Basel: Sebastian Henricpetri, 1580), VD 16: W 4670 and W 4671. Reprint: Christian Wurstisen, Basler Chronick. Mit einem Vorwort von Andreas Burkhard (Genève: Slatkine, 1978).

Urban History Writing in North-Western Europe (15th–16th centuries), ed. by Bram Caers, Lisa Demets and Tineke Van Gassen, SEUH 47 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 27–46. © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.SEUH-EB.5.117866

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For Basel, according to Vischer, the sources are restricted to the depiction of single periods or events, to the history of single institutions such as monasteries, reports, personal experiences, diary-like recordings and annalistic, incoherent notes. In his preface, one really can feel Vischer’s disappointment at the state of the late medieval historiography of his town.5 In fact, such a heterogeneous tradition of historiographical sources is far from exceptional – it can be found in many towns of the German-speaking regions. Conversely, the existence of a single coherent town chronicle like in Bern was more likely the exception than the rule. Actually, there was no medieval concept of a distinct urban historiography. Even today there is no consensus on the meaning of this term.6 Though this fact is often emphasized,7 modern scholars attempt to define urban historiography nonetheless. Hence, there exists some idea of its meaning: for instance, it is assumed that the content is related to the direct surroundings of the town and that urban historical writing is mainly a phenomenon of the German Empire (including the Swiss Confederation) and Italy.8 This concept is highly influenced by research interests of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For a long time, medieval 5 Basler Chroniken, I, p. V: ‘Basel besitzt, wie es bei einer Stadt von seiner Bedeutung zu erwarten ist, aus der Zeit, die wir als die eigentliche Zeit der Städtechroniken bezeichnen können, d. h. aus den Jahrhunderten, in denen sich der Uebergang vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit vollzieht, eine ganze Anzahl von Aufzeichnungen über seine Geschichte. Zu einem Werke, das eine zusammenhängende Darstellung derselben von den Anfängen der Stadt bis auf die Zeit des Schreibers anstrebt, wie die Nachbarstädte Strassburg und Bern deren schon zu Ende des 14. und zu Anfang des 15. Jahrhunderts aufzuweisen haben, ist es freilich erst am Schlusse dieser Periode gelangt, erst in Folge des neuen Anstosses, den die historischen Studien im Reformationszeitalter erhielten. Damals hat Christian Wurstisen es unternommen, ein solches zu liefern in der im Jahre 1580 gedruckten “Baszler Chronick”, die als ein Product fleissigen Sammelns und gewissenhafter Forschung bis auf den heutigen Tag ein wohlverdientes Ansehn geniesst. Was uns aus früherer Zeit erhalten ist, beschränkt sich auf die Darstellung einzelner Zeitabschnitte oder einzelner hervorragender Begebenheiten, auf die Schilderung der Geschichte einzelner Anstalten, wie eines Klosters, auf Berichte über persönliche Erlebnisse, tagebuchartige Aufzeichnungen über die Zeitbegebenheiten, durch welche der Niederschreibende mehr oder weniger unmittelbar berührt wurde, und wo etwa aus dem Gesammtgebiete der städtischen Geschichte Nachrichten über einen langem Zeitraum zusammengestellt sind, geschieht es in unzusammenhängender, rein compilatorischer Weise.’ 6 See Pia Eckhart and Marco Tomaszewski: ‘Städtische Geschichtsschreibung des Spätmittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit – Standortbestimmung und Perspektiven eines Forschungsfelds’, in Städtisch, urban, kommunal – Perspektiven auf die städtische Geschichtsschreibung des Spätmittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Pia Eckhart and Marco Tomaszewski (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2019), pp. 11–43; Lisa Demets and Jan Dumolyn, ‘Urban Chronicle Writing in Late Medieval Flanders: The Case of Bruges during the Flemish Revolt of 1482–1490’, Urban History, 43 (2016), 1, 28–45 (p. 29); Oliver Plessow, Die umgeschriebene Geschichte. Spätmittelalterliche Historiographie in Münster zwischen Bistum und Stadt (Köln: Böhlau, 2006), pp. 141–84; Uwe Neddermeyer, ‘Einleitung: Städtische Geschichtsschreibung im Blickfeld von Stadthistorie, Inkunabelkunde, Literatur- und Historiographiegeschichte’, in Spätmittelalterliche städtische Geschichtsschreibung in Köln und im Reich. Die ‘Koelhoffsche’ Chronik und ihr historisches Umfeld, ed. by Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken and Georg Mölich (Köln: SH–Verlag, 2001), 1–28, František Graus and Hans Patze, ‘Zusammenfassung der Tagungen’, in Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsbewusstsein, ed. by Hans Patze (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1987), pp. 821–45 (p. 840); Karl Schnith, ‘Chronik (Mittelalterlicher Westen)’, in Lexikon des Mittelalters, 2 (München: Artemis, 1983), col. 1556–57. 7 Peter Johanek, ‘Einleitung’, in Städtische Geschichtsschreibung im Spätmittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Peter Johanek (Köln: Böhlau, 2000), pp. VII–XIX (p. X). 8 Johanek, ‘Einleitung’, p. XIII.

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towns were central points of reference for the modern German bourgeoisie.9 Many modern historians perceived the content of medieval urban history writing as some kind of a prefiguration of their own modern bourgeois society and their urban constitutions.10 Hence, medieval historiography was especially used to reconstruct events, facts, and dates for the political and constitutional history of medieval towns. This led to the fact that former research often characterized urban history writing as ‘official’. Indeed, if a chronicle or some historical records were written on behalf of the town council, they could be called official. For example, the shorter historical records in town books, which Bernhard Menke called Relationen, had an official character.11 If historiographical texts were purchased by the council after they were written, they can be called semi-official. But in the end, such modern classifications of the official character of chronicles have only limited analytic value. In some cases, authors gave chronicle manuscripts to councils as gifts and in return hoped to get tenure as a scribe.12 Only in the middle of the twentieth century did research start to analyse medieval historiography regarding people’s consciousness and mentality. Emphasizing the unity of towns, modern scholars especially reproduced the perspective of medieval urban authorities, who postulated unity as an important value of towns. For Heinrich Schmidt, in his pioneering study from 1958, German town chronicles reflected the self-concept of medieval burghers.13 Retrospectively, he self-critically reviewed this ‘idea of the harmonious unity’14 of towns and recognized that he projected a uniform bourgeois self-concept on urban historiography, which he had traced back to a juridical concept of the town.15 In contrast, recent research stresses the diversity of medieval and early modern towns. While the towns indeed perceived themselves and were perceived as



9 Klaus Schreiner, ‘Die Stadt des Mittelalters als Faktor bürgerlicher Identitätsbildung – Zur Gegenwärtigkeit des mittelalterlichen Stadtbürgertums im historisch–politischen Bewußtsein des 18., 19. und beginnenden 20. Jahrhunderts’, in Stadt im Wandel. Kunst und Kultur des Bürgertums in Norddeutschland 1150–1650, ed. by Cord Meckseper (Stuttgart: Ed. Cantz, 1985), IV, pp. 517–41. See also Robert Stein, ‘Selbstverständnis oder Identität? Städtische Geschichtsschreibung als Quelle für die Identitätsforschung’, in Memoria, communitas, civitas. Mémoire et conscience urbaines en Occident à la fin du Moyen Âge, ed. by Hanno Brand, Martial Staub, and Pierre Monnet (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2003), pp. 184–86, and Franz-Josef Arlinghaus, ‘Einheit der Stadt? Religion und Performanz im spätmittelalterlichen Braunschweig’, in Die Pfarre in der Stadt. Siedlungskern – Bürgerkirche – Urbanes Zentrum, ed. by Werner Freitag (Köln: Böhlau, 2011), pp. 95–96. 10 Johanek, ‘Einleitung’, p. XI. 11 Bernhard Menke, ‘Geschichtsschreibung und Politik in deutschen Städten des Spätmittelalters’, Jahrbuch des Kölnischen Geschichtsvereins, 33 and 34/35 (1958 and 1959/60), 1–84 and 85–194. 12 See e.g. Andre Gutmann, Die Schwabenkriegschronik des Kaspar Frey und ihre Stellung in der eidgenössischen Historiographie des 16. Jahrhunderts, 2 vols (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2010), II, p. 764. 13 Heinrich Schmidt, Die deutschen Städtechroniken als Spiegel des bürgerlichen Selbstverständnisses im Spätmittelalter (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1958). 14 Heinrich Schmidt, ‘Bürgerliches Selbstverständnis und städtische Geschichtsschreibung im deutschen Spätmittelalter. Eine Erinnerung’, in Städtische Geschichtsschreibung im Spätmittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Peter Johanek (Köln: Böhlau, 2000), p. 5: ‘Mir paßte diese Einheit […] vorzüglich in das Bild harmonischer Geschlossenheit, das ich mir von der städtischen Welt im Selbstverständnis ihrer Bürger machte.’ 15 Schmidt, ‘Bürgerliches Selbstverständnis’, p. 8.

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unities and communities, in fact they were ‘heterogeneous unities’16 and ‘imagined communities.’17 They were places of high social differentiation and an intense density of communication.18 In many cases, the writing of history was not a task initiated by the council. The urban culture of remembrance was not only created by the authorities or by the urban community as a collective. In contrast, different agents and groups interacted and competed with each other: members of the ruling classes, merchants, craftsmen, clergymen, families, or guilds.19 Contrary to the idea of former research, urban historiography as one part of a diverse urban culture of remembrance was neither uniform nor controlled from the top. This changed perspective on towns and urban historiography also led to new attempts to give meaning to the concept of urban historiography. There were several approaches to create a typology of the heterogeneous tradition of sources. Klaus Wriedt identified chronicles, documenting records, and personal or family related notes.20 Considering the example of Nuremberg, Joachim Schneider used different criteria with regard to time, content, form, and social aspects.21 Uwe Neddermeyer distinguished between chronicles telling the town’s 16 Richard Münch, ‘Die Stadt und die Dynamik der kulturellen Erneuerung’, in Stadt und Kultur. Symposion aus Anlaß des 700jhährigen Bestehens der Stadt Düsseldorf, ed. by Werner Gephardt and Hans Peter Schreiner (Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 1991), p. 60. 17 Carla Meyer, ‘“City branding” im Mittelalter? Städtische Medien der Imagepflege bis 1500’, in Zimmermann, Clemens (Hg.), Stadt und Medien. Vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart, ed. by Clemens Zimmermann (Köln: Böhlau, 2012), pp. 19–48 (p. 27). The concept of imagined communities goes back to Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). 18 See Jörg Oberste, ‘Einführung: Verdichtete Kommunikation und städtische Kultur’, in Kommunikation in mittelalterlichen Städten, ed. by Jörg Oberste (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2007), pp. 7–10; Pierre Monnet, ‘Die Stadt, ein Ort der politischen Öffentlichkeit im Spätmittelalter? Ein Thesenpapier’, in Politische Öffentlichkeit im Spätmittelalter, ed. by Martin Kintzinger and Bernd Schneidmüller (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2011), pp. 329–59 (p. 357). 19 See the contributions in Peter Johanek (ed.), Städtische Geschichtsschreibung im Spätmittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit (Köln: Böhlau, 2000); Pia Eckhart and Birgit Studt, ‘Das Konzil im Gedächtnis der Stadt. Die Verhandlung von Wissen über die Vergangenheit in der städtischen Geschichtsschreibung am Oberrhein im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert’, in Urbanität. Formen der Inszenierung in Texten, Karten, Bildern, ed. by Martina Stercken and Ute Schneider (Köln: Böhlau, 2016), pp. 83–104. See for certain groups Pierre Monnet, Les Rohrbach de Francfort. Pouvoirs, affaires et parenté à l’aube de la Renaissance allemande (Genève: Droz, 1997), p. 347; Katherine A. Lynch, Individuals, Families and Communities in Europe, 1200–1800. The Urban Foundations of Western Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Patrick Schmidt, Wandelbare Traditionen – tradierter Wandel. Zünftische Erinnerungskulturen in der Frühen Neuzeit (Köln: Böhlau, 2009); Michael Hecht, Patriziatsbildung als kommunikativer Prozess. Die Salzstädte Lüneburg, Halle und Werl in Spätmittelalter und früher Neuzeit (Köln: Böhlau, 2010), pp. 86–90; Pia Eckhart, Ursprung und Gegenwart. Geschichtsschreibung in der Bischofsstadt und Werk des Konstanzer Notars Beatus Widmer (1475–ca. 1533) (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2016); Marco Tomaszewski, Familienbücher als Medien städtischer Kommunikation Untersuchungen zur Basler Geschichtsschreibung im 16. Jahrhundert (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017). 20 Klaus Wriedt, ‘Bürgerliche Geschichtsschreibung im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert. Ansätze und Formen’, in Städtische Geschichtsschreibung im Spätmittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Peter Johanek (Köln: Böhlau, 2000), pp. 19–50. 21 Joachim Schneider, ‘Typologie der Nürnberger Stadtchronistik um 1500. Gegenwart und Geschichte in einer spätmittelalterlichen Stadt’, in Städtische Geschichtsschreibung im Spätmittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Peter Johanek (Köln: Böhlau, 2000), pp. 199–204.

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whole history on the one hand and contemporary-history or autobiographical and family-related records on the other hand.22 In addition to this typology, scholars tried to find certain criteria for a definition of urban historiography. Regula Schmid stressed the criteria of urban target groups, authors, issues and formal aspects, while Carla Meyer emphasized the town as the subject of the texts.23 Uwe Neddermeyer combined the criteria urban authors, recipients, as well as subjects and functions.24 In order to prevent being influenced by prejudices adopted from the editions, it is necessary to reconsider our understanding of urban historiography by reviewing both the editions and the manuscripts. In the following, this will be accomplished by taking the example of the Swiss city of Basel. First, the influential role of the series Chroniken der deutschen Städte25 which set standards for many other similar source collections in the German-speaking areas will be demonstrated. Then, an overview of Basel’s sources of late medieval historiography will be given and compared with the edition series Basler Chroniken. One particular manuscript, usually called Beinheim Manuscript, will be analysed regarding materiality, textual and pictorial content, as well as audience: How is the manuscript arranged? Which texts does it contain? How and by whom could it be used? And, above all, to what extent are these ‘urban’ characteristics? Setting Standards in Editing Urban Historiography: Die Chroniken der deutschen Städte The series Chroniken der deutschen Städte set standards in editing urban historiography of the German-speaking areas regarding content as well as methods. Robert Stein has shown how common ideas of urban historiography reflect the selection criteria of this collection and they in turn are influenced by it.26 The idea that urban historiography has a focus in the German Empire can be traced back to the nationally oriented selection of this source edition. Similar texts also survive in other parts of Europe which could be part of this edition.27 Regarding the temporal selection of sources, the collection focused on the fourteenth to the

22 Neddermeyer, ‘Einleitung: Städtische Geschichtsschreibung’, p. 21. See for a proposed differentiation in terminology between ‘urban’ and ‘communal’: Eckhart and Tomaszewski: ‘Städtische Geschichtsschreibung’, p. 29. 23 Regula Schmid, ‘Town Chronicles’, in Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, ed. by Graeme Dunphy and others, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 2010), II, pp. 1432–38; Carla Meyer, Die Stadt als Thema. Nürnbergs Entdeckung in Texten um 1500 (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2009), pp. 26–58. 24 Neddermeyer, ‘Einleitung: Städtische Geschichtsschreibung’, pp. 20–21. 25 Die Chroniken der deutschen Städte vom 14. bis ins 16. Jahrhundert, ed. by Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Historische Kommission (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1862–1917, later volumes: Stuttgart: F. A. Perthes 1928–31; Bremen: Schünemann, 1968). 26 Stein, ‘Selbstverständnis oder Identität?’, p. 187. 27 Stein, ‘Selbstverständnis oder Identität?’, p. 195.

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sixteenth centuries, a period which was seen as the heyday of German towns.28 This focus led to the fact that early modern urban historiography was poorly researched until recent times.29 Regarding today’s research interests, basic difficulties result from the usage of these older editions for two main reasons.30 First, the selection of ‘urban’ content by the editors appears problematic. In the manuscripts, urban issues frequently are mixed up with reports about events farther away, and often no clear urban perspective can be identified in the texts. Ignoring this, editors selected the true urban content and left out events from outside the town.31 So the use of the editions often leads to circular reasoning, because under such circumstances there can be no other result than that there was an impressive local self-concept in German medieval towns.32 Furthermore, parts of the compilations, which were already printed somewhere else, were not edited. The selection of the texts created a canon that, even today, provides the foundation for any further research. It is obvious that this has influence on our idea of urban historiography. Second, the edited texts hardly reflect the nature of the texts in the manuscripts. They are artificial constructions combined from different manuscripts, presented only in selected fragments and arranged chronologically. Usually, textual criticism as the methodological state of the art adopted from philology was the methodological approach of the editions.33 Its basis formed the assumption that a text is a static entity, written by one author. Hence, reconstruction of the original text was the aim of editorial research.34 In practice, that meant

28 Karl Hegel, ‘Bericht betreffend die Herausgabe einer Sammlung von Chroniken deutscher Städte, der historischen Commission zu München vorgetragen am 2. September 1859’, Historische Zeitschrift 2 (1859), 22–30, p. 22: The source edition should present the heyday of German urbanism from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century in contemporary sources: ‘die Blüthezeit des deutschen Städtewesens während des Zeitraumes vom 14. bis ins 16. Jahrhundert hinein in gleichzeitigen Zeugnissen darstellen’. 29 Günther Lottes, ‘Stadtchronistik und städtische Identität. Zur Erinnerungskultur der frühneuzeitlichen Stadt’, Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg, 87 (2000), 47–58 (p. 47). 30 Horst Fuhrmann, ‘Überlegungen eines Editors’, Probleme der Edition mittel– und neulateinischer Texte. Kolloquium der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft, Bonn, 26.–28. Februar 1973, ed. by Ludwig Hödl and Dieter Wuttke (Boppard: Boldt, 1978), pp. 1–34; Fritz Fellner, ‘Die historische Quelle – Instrument der Geschichtsforschung und Baustein des Geschichtsbewußtseins oder Baustein der Geschichtsforschung und Instrument des Geschichtsbewußtseins?’, in Umgang mit Quellen heute. Zur Problematik neuzeitlicher Quelleneditionen vom 16. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart, ed. by Grete Klingenstein, Fritz Fellner, and Peter Hye (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akadamie der Wissenschaften, 2003), pp. 19–36. 31 Meyer, "City branding" im Mittelalter?, p. 23. 32 Stein, ‘Selbstverständnis oder Identität?’, p. 201. 33 Originally, textual criticism was developed by Karl Lachmann for an analysis of the different versions of the new testament, see Sebastiano Timpanaro, The Genesis of Lachmann’s Method (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). Cf. Patrick Sahle, ‘Die disziplinierte Edition – eine (kleine) Wissenschaftsgeschichte’, in Editionswissenschaftliche Kolloquien 2005/2007. Methodik – Amtsbücher – Digitale Edition – Projekte, ed. by Matthias Thumser and Janusz Tandecki (Torún: Tow. Naukowe w Toruniu, 2008), pp. 35–54; Thomas Bein, Textkritik. Eine Einführung in Grundlagen germanistischmediävistischer Editionswissenschaft (Frankfurt: Lang, 2008). 34 Gabriele von Olberg-Haverkate, Zeitbilder – Weltbilder. Volkssprachige Universalchronistik als Instrument kollektiver Memoria. Eine textlinguistische und kulturwissenschaftliche Untersuchung (Berlin: Weidler, 2008), p. 31.

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that scholars focused on seeking out the so-called ‘archetype’, which in fact can only be found in a few cases. In the case of compilations, research aimed at identifying as many sources and their authors as possible. However, searching for archetypes in compilations is only possible to some extent, and certainly does not make sense in every case. A more economically motivated issue was the question of whether the whole text of a compilation should be printed or only parts of interest that were not already published elsewhere.35 This led to massive interventions of the editors into the text with the result that many of the edited chronicle texts in fact are modern constructions. These artificial texts became independent from the manuscript tradition and are perceived as fixed entities with certain titles such as Nürnberger Jahrbücher or Basler Annalen (titles which in fact were established by the editors).36 It is almost impossible to get a real impression of the appearance of the manuscripts and the arrangement of the compilations by using the printed collections of urban historiography.37 Also, it is not possible to learn about the knowledge horizons of the contemporaries or their dealings with the sources.38 At an extreme level, sometimes the source editions reflect the perspective of their editors more than that of their sources. Hence, a certain view of author and work was characteristic of the older editions. The selection of their content was caused by the epistemological interest of nineteenth and twentieth century historical research. For Karl Hegel, first editor of the Chroniken der deutschen Städte, the selection of texts was related to their ‘inner values’. ‘Worthless burdens’ in the chronicles should be eliminated. For him, chronicle texts were only valuable, if they could serve as testimonials either of historical events or of an older tradition.39 Therefore, for the former editors medieval historiography was most of all storage of information concerning historical events and circumstances.40 Chroniclers were evaluated on the basis of the facts they provided and also with respect to their stylistic skills.41 Another

35 This was discussed already in the nineteenth century, see Hartmut Hoffmann, ‘Die Edition in den Anfängen der Monumenta Germaniae Historica’, in Mittelalterliche Texte. Überlieferung – Befunde – Deutungen. Kolloquium der Zentraldirektion der Monumenta Germania Historica am 28./29. Juni 1996, ed. by Rudolf Schieffer (Hannover: Hahn, 1996), pp. 189–232. 36 See Carla Meyer, ‘Zur Edition der Nürnberger Chroniken in den “Chroniken der deutschen Städte”‘, Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg, 97 (2010), 1–29 (p. 8); Klaus Graf, ‘Basler Annalen’, in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters. Verfasserlexikon, 14 vols (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1978–2008), XI (2004), col. 221–23. 37 See Joachim Schneider, Heinrich Deichsler und die Nürnberger Chronistik des 15. Jahrhunderts (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1991), p. 42; Peter Johanek, ‘Weltchronistik und regionale Geschichtsschreibung im Spätmittelalter’, in Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsbewusstsein im späten Mittelalter, ed. by Hans Patze (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1987), pp. 287–330 (p. 312). 38 Schmid, Geschichte im Dienst der Stadt, p. 36. 39 Hegel, ‘Bericht betreffend die Herausgabe einer Sammlung von Chroniken deutscher Städte’, p. 27. 40 Franz-Josef Schmale, Funktion und Formen mittelalterlicher Geschichtsschreibung (Darmstadt: Wisschenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1985), p. 2; Gert Melville, ‘Spätmittelalterliche Geschichtskompendien – eine Aufgabenstellung’, Römische Historische Mitteilungen, 22 (1980), 51–104 (p. 77). 41 Graus and Patze, ‘Zusammenfassung der Tagungen’, p. 821.

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point is that texts were rearranged regarding their chronology. For Karl Hegel, it was obvious that some chronicles had to be edited more liberally, in terms of the chronological rearrangement of events and dates.42 Many other editions of that time proceeded in a similar way.43 To sum up, the edited portion of text often is only a selection of the text in the manuscript, the texts often consist of fragments taken out of their original context, they contain numerous gaps, because parts which were already printed elsewhere were omitted, the texts are rearranged chronologically, and attributed to authors who cannot always be definitively identified. Despite these fundamental flaws, the editors purport to reproduce their source texts faithfully according to the scientific standards of their time. The Chroniken der deutschen Städte set standards for other similar editions in the German speaking area. In the following, this should be examined by taking a closer look at the example of Basel. Urban Historiography in Basel: Edition and Manuscripts In the late Middle Ages, Basel was the urban centre between the High and Upper Rhine. It was a city of long-distance trade and finance as well as the bishop’s residence. As a mid-sized city, its premodern population was between 5000 and 10,000 inhabitants.44 Since the thirteenth century, the city increasingly emancipated itself from the bishop as town lord and, as a result of growing sovereignty, could be considered a Free City by the fourteenth century. In fact, the legal disengagement from the bishop’s power was not achieved until 1585.45 As of the fourteenth century, the city pursued its own territorial policy and gained subject territories in the surrounding regions in the fifteenth century.46 Originally, after the so called Handfeste (an episcopal charter) of 1337, the Council included four noble knights, eight burgher (a Patrician class called Achtburger) and fifteen representatives of the guilds, later also the masters of the guilds. The so-called heads of the town were the burgomaster or mayor who was selected from the knights and the Highest Guild Master (Oberzunftmeister), usually a representative of the Achtburger. Until 1521, the Council, which consisted of a Small and a Great Council, was confirmed and inaugurated in an annual ritual by the bishop. The heads of the city were elected by the so called Small Council. Every year on Midsummer Day ( June 24), the existing Council elected a new one. But, in practice, the old and new council met together. So the election was primarily the regular cooptation of the Council and the symbolic legitimacy of 42 Hegel, ‘Bericht betreffend die Herausgabe einer Sammlung von Chroniken deutscher Städte’, p. 29. 43 Schmale, Funktion und Formen mittelalterlicher Geschichtsschreibung, p. 3. 44 Basel – Geschichte einer städtischen Gesellschaft, ed. by Georg Kreis and Beat von Wartburg (Basel: Merian, 2000), p. 410. 45 See Hans Berner, ‘die gute correspondenz’. Die Politik der Stadt Basel gegenüber dem Fürstbistum Basel in den Jahren 1525–1585 (Basel: Helbing und Lichtenhahn, 1989), pp. 165–85. 46 See Juliane Kümmell, Bäuerliche Gesellschaft und städtische Herrschaft im Spätmittelalter. Zum Verhältnis von Stadt und Land im Fall Basel/Waldenburg 1300–1535 (Konstanz: Hartung-Gorre, 1983).

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the system.47 At the beginning of the sixteenth century Basel experienced some changes with long-lasting implications – political structures of the city formed at this time remained quite stable up until the Swiss Revolution in 1798. Basel became a member of the Swiss Confederation in 1501. In 1515, political privileges of the Achtburger were abolished (the knights were virtually deemed insignificant). This coincided with increasing curtailment of the bishop’s competences as town lord from 1521 onwards. A protest in 1521 and the Reformation in 1529 led to the exclusion of some members of the Council.48 Of course these complex political, social, economic and mental processes of change challenged positions and called for legitimation. To get a first overview of Basel’s late medieval historiography one can use the edition Basler Chroniken which reflects its heterogeneity. Following the categories and selection criteria of the edition, one could divide the historiography of Basel along genres, authors, or regarding institutional or social aspects. First, the edited text’s historiography appear as daily records,49 an apologetic text,50 entries in town and guild books,51 monastery chronicles,52 entries in a debt register,53 a chronicle of the Peasants’ War,54 and a world chronicle compilation from the sixteenth century;55 furthermore, addenda to greater works such as the Flores temporum,56 the Sächsische Weltchronik,57 or to the chronicle of Jakob Twinger

47 August Burckhardt, ‘Die Basler Bürgermeister von 1252 bis zur Reformation’, Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde, 23 (1925), 1–29; Martin Alioth, ‘Geschichte des politischen Systems bis 1833’, in Das politische System Basel-Stadt. Geschichte, Strukturen, Institutionen, Politikbereiche, ed. by Lukas Burckhardt and others (Basel: Helbing und Lichtenhahn, 1984), pp. 17–36; Werner Meyer, ‘Basel (-Stadt)’, in Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS) [accessed 09 March 2015]. 48 See Hans Füglister, Handwerksregiment. Untersuchungen und Materialien zur sozialen und politischen Struktur der Stadt Basel in der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts (Basel: Helbing und Lichtenhahn, 1981); Claudius Sieber-Lehmann, ‘Neue Verhältnisse. Das eidgenössische Basel zu Beginn des 16. Jahrhunderts’, in Identità territoriali e cultura politica nella prima età moderna/Territoriale Identität und politische Kultur in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Marco Bellabarba and Reinhard Stauber (Bologna: Società Ed. il Mulino, 1998), pp. 271–99; Valentin Groebner, Gefährliche Geschenke. Ritual, Politik und die Sprache der Korruption in der Eidgenossenschaft im späten Mittelalter und am Beginn der Neuzeit (Konstanz: UVK, 2000), pp. 221–75; Amy Nelson Burnett, Teaching the Reformation. Ministers and Their Message in Basel, 1529–1629 (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2006). 49 ‘Das Tagebuch des Kaplans Hans Knebel, 1473––1479’, Basler Chroniken, II and III. 50 ‘Die Chronik Henmann Offenburgs 1413–1445’, Basler Chroniken, V, pp. 203–99. 51 ‘Chronikalien der Rathsbücher’, Basler Chroniken, IV, pp. 3–164; ‘Hans Brüglingers Chronik 1444– 1446’, Basler Chroniken, IV, pp. 165–210; ‘Bericht über den Rotberg–Erenfelsischen Handel 1410’, Basler Chroniken, V, pp. 75–104; ‘Chronikalien aus Zunftbüchern’, Basler Chroniken, VII, pp. 447–62. 52 ‘Die Chroniken des Karthäuser Klosters in Klein–Basel 1401–1532’, Basler Chroniken, I, pp. 233–492. 53 ‘Die Chronik in Ludwig Kilchmanns Schuldbuch 1468–1518’, Basler Chroniken, VI, pp. 425–62. 54 ‘Heinrich Ryhiners Chronik des Bauernkrieges 1525’, Basler Chroniken, VI, pp. 463–524. 55 The compilation of Konrad Schnitt, cf. Basler Chroniken, VI, pp. 165–74. 56 ‘Des Kaplans Niklaus Gerung genannt Blauenstein Fortsetzung der Flores Temporum 1417–1475’, Basler Chroniken, VII, pp. 21–94. 57 ‘Die Chronik Erhards von Appenwiler’, Basler Chroniken, IV, pp. 223–364. See Ina Serif ’s article in this volume.

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of Königshofen,58 annals,59 lists of bishops,60 and family records.61 There are also many texts just entitled records or chronicles.62 Secondly, different types of authors can be identified. The texts were written by clerks, chaplains of the cathedral, carthusians, guild masters, scholars, artists, a judicial vicar, as well as persons from the guilds or councilmen. Also, the texts could be attributed to the respective institutions. Considering the methodological problems of the editions discussed above, it is obvious that these classifications and denominations have to be used carefully.63 Some of the edited texts are transmitted in single manuscripts. But in many cases, texts that are named as distinct ‘chronicles’ in the edition are in fact excerpts from greater compilations. Some are transmitted in several manuscripts – in continuation of greater chronicles as well as in sixteenth century compilations and composite manuscripts. Basler Chroniken. The Edition as a Modern Conservative Project In spite of this heterogeneous and non-uniform character of Basel’s historiographical sources, in the edition these most diverse sources are labelled as Basler Chroniken (Basel’s chronicles) which suggests a certain unity and homogeneity. The editors were aware of that and stressed that they subsumed sources under a general title, although, strictly speaking, it did not fit for each and every one of them.64 It seems that the title should compensate for the lack of a coherent town chronicle.

58 E.g. ‘Anonyme Zusätze und Fortsetzungen zu Königshofen’, Basler Chroniken, IV, pp. 411–62. 59 ‘Die Grösseren Basler Annalen’, ‘Die Kleineren Basler Annalen’, Basler Chroniken, V, pp. 3–67. 60 ‘Des Kaplans Niklaus Gerung genannt Blauenstein Chronik der Basler Bischöfe’, Basler Chroniken, V, pp. 95–133; ‘Konrad Schnitts Wappentafel der Basler Bischöfe’, Basler Chroniken, VII, pp. 309–40; ‘Des Dekans Niklaus Brieffers Chronik der Basler Bischöfe’, Basler Chroniken, VII, pp. 359–435. 61 ‘Die Ryffische Familiengeschichte’, Basler Chroniken, I, pp. 198–99; ‘Die Offenburgische Familienchronik’, Basler Chroniken, V, pp. 300–14; ‘Die Familienchronik der Meyer zum Pfeil’, Basler Chroniken, VI, pp. 381–424. 62 ‘Die Chronik des Fridolin Ryff mit der Fortsetzung des Peter Ryff ’, Basler Chroniken, I; ‘Die Röteler Chronik’, ‘Die Chroniken Heinrichs von Beinheim’, ‘Die Anonyme Chronik von 1445’, ‘Die Anonyme Chronik der Burgunderkriege’, Basler Chroniken, V; ‘Die Anonyme Chronik des Schwabenkrieges 1492–1504’, ‘Die Anonyme Chronik der Mailänderkriege 1507–1515’, ‘Die Chronik Konrad Schnitts 1518–1537’, ‘Die Anonyme Chronik bei Schnitt, sammt Fortsetzung 1495–1541’, ‘Die spätern Aufzeichnungen bei Schnitt 1400–1487’, ‘Die Anonyme Chronik bei Cosmas Ertzberg, sammt dessen eigenen Aufzeichnungen 1431–1532’, ‘Die Aufzeichnungen Adelberg Meyers 1374–1542’, Basler Chroniken, VI; ‘Die Aufzeichnungen Heinrich und Konrad Iselins und eines Unbekannten 1364–1452’, ‘Die Aufzeichnugen von Johannes Ursi 1474–1498’, ‘Die Aufzeichnungen des Kaplans Hieronymus Brilinger 1474–1525’, ‘Die Anonyme Chronik aus der Reformationszeit’, ‘Konrad Schnitts Auszüge aus verlornen Quellen 1284–1541’, Basler Chroniken, VII. 63 See e.g. Graf, ‘Basler Annalen’. 64 Cf. Basler Chroniken, II, p. III.: ‘Wenn wir die ganze Sammlung als eine Sammlung von Chroniken bezeichnet haben, so haben wir nach dem Beispiele und im Anschlusse an die Herausgeber der Chroniken der deutschen Städte Geschichtsquellen verschiedener Art unter einem allgemeinen Titel zusammengefasst, der streng genommen auf einzelne derselben nicht genau passt.’

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The edition series was guided by the model of the Chroniken der deutschen Städte. Wilhelm Vischer, editor of the first volume of the Basler Chroniken, called this collection a supplement to the Chroniken der deutschen Städte.65 Methodologically, he followed its edition principles, and both collections were published by Salomon Hirzel in Leipzig.66 Other than its German counterpart, the Basler Chroniken also include Latin sources, therefore the series was printed in Latin letters. On the publishing date of the first volume of the Basler Chroniken, Karl Hegel, in a letter to the Historical Society of Basel, explicitly stressed that the historiographical sources from Basel also would have been worthy of consideration for his German edition. Though he congratulated and thanked the editors from Basel for their work, he nevertheless regretted that these sources were not published in his own collection.67 The original programme of the Basler Chroniken covered the period until 1580 when Christian Wurstisen’s Chronicle of Basel was published.68 It was the aim of the edition to compose the historiography of Basel before Christian Wurstisen’s chronicle. But the texts edited in the Basler Chroniken are of a completely different type compared to Wurstisen’s coherent printed town chronicle. Such diverse forms of handwritten historiographical records and chronicles existed before as well as after Wurstisen’s Chronicle of Basel was published. This selection of the production time of the sources was influenced by the time span covered by the Chroniken der deutschen Städte, which focused on the period between the fourteenth and sixteenth century. Additionally, by the conservative elites of nineteenth-century Basel the time between the fourteenth and sixteenth century was seen as the flourishing period of their town. When in the second half of the nineteenth century the old elites of Basel lost their political privileges, they increasingly began to project their claim of power and authority on the cultural and religious sphere. Sara Janner explained that in this time, an image of the old Basel was created that was oriented around the values and ideas of these elites and served to glorify their historical role in forming the reformed city state.69 Rudolf Wackernagel’s History of Basel (1907–24),70 still the most important reference for the history of Basel today, can be seen as the culmination of this phase in which the bourgeois conception

65 Basler Chroniken, I, p. IX. 66 This is true for the first seven volumes of the Basler Chroniken. For Salomon Hirzel see Martin Nissen, Populäre Geschichtsschreibung. Historiker, Verleger und die deutsche Öffentlichkeit (1848–1900) (Köln: Böhlau, 2009), pp. 269–80. 67 Staatsarchiv Basel-Stadt PA 88, J 5, Letter of Karl Hegel to the Historische Gesellschaft Basel, 18 November 1872. Printed in: Tomaszewski, Familienbücher als Medien städtischer Kommunikation, p. 202. 68 Staatsarchiv Basel-Stadt PA 88, J 5, Letter of August Bernoulli to the Historische Gesellschaft Basel, 2 September 1913, see also Basler Chroniken, I, S. VIII. 69 Sara Janner, Zwischen Machtanspruch und Autoritätsverlust. Zur Funktion von Religion und Kirchlichkeit in Politik und Selbstverständnis des konservativen alten Bürgertums im Basel des 19. Jahrhunderts (Basel: Schwabe, 2012), p. 530. 70 Rudolf Wackernagel, Geschichte der Stadt Basel, 3 vols (Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1907–24).

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of history was distributed and popularized.71 The Basler Chroniken as a scientific project, which was supported by the same agents, presented the old Basel as an antipole to the new one. The preface of the edition’s first volume shows that it was intended not only for historians but also for the citizens of Basel.72 The edition’s focus on the late Middle Ages also resulted in the fact that in Basel, as elsewhere, the sources from the Early Modern Period were not edited and disappeared from view. For example, the University Library in Basel contains many historiographical records and chronicles from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 73 Indeed, no comprehensive chronicle was produced until the end of the eighteenth century. But this is also true for the ostensible ‘golden age’ covered by the edition. To get an impression of how sources are presented in the Basler Chroniken and to evaluate the sources from a perspective not influenced by the edition, in the following, one manuscript compiled in the sixteenth and seventeenth century will be more closely examined. The Beinheim Manuscript – An Example of ‘Urban’ Historiography? The so called Beinheim Manuscript was compiled in the year 1545 by Adalberg Meyer zum Pfeil (1474–1548).74 Since the fifteenth century, the Meyer zum Pfeil family bore the title Junker and owned fiefs.75 It can be assumed that they would have become member of the patrician group of the Achtburger. But after the changed social and political circumstances in Basel at the beginning of the sixteenth century this no longer seemed appropriate.76 Adalberg Meyer was a well-off cloth merchant and, as the first of his family, was elected burgomaster in 1522. He held this office until he died in 1548 and was the first burgomaster who was not named by the bishop but elected by the council.77 His brother Bernhard (1488–1558) succeeded him in this office

71 Janner, Zwischen Machtanspruch und Autoritätsverlust, p. 530. See also Claudius Sieber-Lehmann, ‘Mit Wackernagel weiter kommen’, Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde, 112 (2012), 19–31. 72 Basler Chroniken, I, p. XX: ‘möge dieser Arbeit eine freundliche Aufnahme zu Theil werden von Seiten der Männer der Wissenschaft sowohl als von Seiten der Basler Bürgerschaft, der einer der wichtigsten Abschnitte aus der Vergangenheit ihres Gemeinwesens in lebensvollen Zügen vor Augen geführt wird.’ See also Tomaszewski, Familienbücher als Medien städtischer Kommunikation, pp. 159–184. 73 Cf. Marco Tomaszewski, ‘A Longue Durée of Urban Historiography? Peter Ochs‘s History of Basel (1786–1822) From a Long-Term Perspective’ History of Humanities, 2 (2017), 101–130. 74 University Library Basel, Ms. H IV 27. 75 Hans Berner, ‘Meyer zum Pfeil, Adelberg’, in Neue Deutsche Biographie, 25 vols (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1953), XVII (1994), pp. 324–25. 76 Cf. August Burckhardt, ‘Stände und Verfassung in Basel vom 16. bis 18. Jahrhundert’, Basler Jahrbuch 1915, 70–115 (p. 76); Samuel Schüpbach-Guggenbühl, Schlüssel zur Macht. Verflechtungen und informelles Verhalten im Kleinen Rat zu Basel, 1570–1600, 2 vols (Basel: Schwabe, 2002), I, p. 155. 77 Samuel Schüpbach-Guggenbühl, ‘Meyer, Adelberg (zum Pfeil)’, in Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS) [accessed 14 March 2016]; Füglister, Handwerksregiment, p. 338.

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from 1548 to 1558.78 Adalberg’s and Bernhard’s father Nikolaus Meyer zum Pfeil (d. c. 1500) grew up as an orphan at the house of Heinrich von Beinheim, author of a short chronicle after which the Beinheim Manuscript is named.79 Adalberg’s son Hans Ludwig was member of the Dreizehner, the most important committee of the Council. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Hans Ludwig’s son Adalberg Jr. was involved in an inheritance dispute with the Eckenstein family concerning his marriage with Elisabeth Spyrer, widow of Hans Eckenstein. Finally, in 1616, Adalberg Jr. was found guilty of witchcraft, divorced, and ousted from the Council.80 It seems that this loss of honour and authority weakened the family’s position substantially. Hans Conrad Meyer zum Pfeil (1589–1659), great-grandson of Adalberg Sr. and nephew of Adalberg Jr. was the last member of the family holding political offices. The Beinheim Manuscript contains family related records as well as a historiographical compilation. Such a composite manuscript containing historical records dealing with the family, lists of birth and death dates, ego-documents as well as genealogical and heraldic depictions could be classified as a family book.81 The Beinheim Manuscript is a prestigious and lavishly ornamented family book, even though it cannot be compared with the famous and splendid Geschlechterbücher from Augsburg, Frankfurt, or Nuremberg, or the well-known Swiss illuminated chronicles.82 The manuscript consists of two parts. The first part contains records related to the Meyer zum Pfeil family, genealogical depictions 78 Samuel Schüpbach-Guggenbühl, ‘Meyer, Bernhard (zum Pfeil)’, in Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS) [accessed 14 March 2016]. 79 Basler Chroniken, V, pp. 329–37; Veronika Feller-Vest, ‘Beinheim, Heinrich von’, in Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS) [accessed 30 December 2012]. 80 Cf. Schüpbach-Guggenbühl, Schlüssel zur Macht, I, p. 18; Eduard Eckenstein-Schröter, Der Er-– und Güterrechts-Prozeß zwischen den Eckhensteinsch`schen und Adalbert Meyer zum Pfeil, Zunftmeister und Ratsherr der Zunft zu Fischern. Eine Familienepisode aus dem Anfang des XVII. Jahrhunderts (Basel: Gasser & Cie., 1905). 81 For a definition of this term see Gregor Rohmann, ‘Eines Erbaren Raths gehorsamer amptman’. Clemens Jäger und die Geschichtsschreibung des 16. Jahrhunderts (Augsburg: Wißner, 2001), p. 141. Cf. Birgit Studt, ‘Einführung’, in Haus- und Familienbücher in der städtischen Gesellschaft des Spätmittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Birgit Studt (Köln: Böhlau, 2007), IX–XX; Giovanni Ciapelli, Memory, Family, and Self. Tuscan Family Books and Other European Egodocuments (14th–18th Century) (Leiden: Brill, 2014); Claudia Ulbrich, ‘Family and House Books in Late Medieval German-Speaking Areas. A Research Overview’, in Mapping the ‘I’. Research on Self-Narratives in Germany and Switzerland, ed. by Claudia Ulbrich, Kaspar von Greyerz, and Lorenz Heiligensetzer (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 209–26. Cf. Tomaszewski, Familienbücher als Medien städtischer Kommunikation, p. 5. 82 Helmut Haller von Hallerstein, ‘Nürnberger Geschlechterbücher’, Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg, 65 (1978), 212–35; Martial Staub, ‘Zwischen Denkmal und Dokument. Nürnberger Geschlechterbücher und das Wissen von der Vergangenheit’, in Wissen und Gesellschaft in Nürnberg um 1500. Akten des interdisziplinären Symposions vom 5. und 6. Juni 1998 im Tucherschloss in Nürnberg, ed. by Martial Staub and Klaus A. Vogel (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999), pp. 83–104; Hartmut Bock, Die Chronik Eisenberger. Edition und Kommentar. Bebilderte Geschichte einer Beamtenfamilie der deutschen Renaissance – Aufstieg in den Wetterauer Niederadel und das Frankfurter Patriziat (Frankfurt a.M.: Historisches Museum, 2001); Gregor Rohmann, Das Ehrenbuch der Fugger, 2 vols (Augsburg: Wißner, 2004); Bürgermacht und Bücherpracht. Augsburger Ehren- und Familienbücher der Renaissance, ed. by Christoph Emmendörffer and Helmut Zäh (Luzern: Quaternio, 2011).

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with coats of arms, and the copy of a charter of a foundation for an annual mass (Familienjahrzeit). Around 1616, Hans Conrad continued these records as well as the depiction of the coats of arms and also added a description of the family grave and a copperplate print. He also commissioned a new binding. The second part of the manuscript consists of a historiographical compilation commissioned by Adalberg Meyer and written by the same scribe, a certain magister Berlinger who also wrote the family records.83 Attached is a list of the burgomasters of Basel. Because the compilation starts with a chronicle of Heinrich von Beinheim from 1445, scholars called this book Beinheim Manuscript.84 This shows that they focused not so much on the family records of the manuscript but more on the historiographical compilation. This compilation, for which Adalberg Meyer did preparatory work,85 was made between June 1544 and June 1545. This can be proved by the list of the burgomasters, which was written by Berlinger until 1544, while the later entries are from other authors.86 The homogeneity of the layout, writing, and ink colour of this compilation indicates that it was written in quite a short time. Its main focus is on the history of Basel and the history of the Swiss Confederation. Issues are the origin of Basel, the significance of the town’s patron Heinrich II, the Council of Basel, conflicts of the town in the fifteenth century, the Burgundian Wars, contemporary events of the sixteenth century, and the development of laws and constitution of the town. Also the formation of the Swiss Confederation takes up quite some space. Above that, it contains numerous notes on natural phenomena. The whole compilation has headlines that do not appear in the original sources. The headlines organize the text and can serve as guidance for looking up certain parts. Such paratexts made it possible to use the compilation as a reference text.87 The Presentation in the Edition The parts concerning the history of the town and the Confederation were edited separately from the family-related parts. Volume V of the Basler Chroniken contains some of the ‘chronicles’ of this manuscript while the family records were edited in volume VI. There is no text edition of the whole compilation or even the whole manuscript. Though the manuscript is precisely described in

83 Basler Chroniken, VI, p. 442 and Basel, UB Ms. H IV 27, fol. 1r: ‘Dem herren magister Berlinger hat man imme von jedem platt 6 d. geben, umm dinten sammpt dem papeir 6 d.’ (‘Magister Berlinger was given 6 d. for each sheet, for ink and paper 6 d.’) 84 For a detailed description of the manuscript see Tomaszewski, Familienbücher als Medien städtischer Kommunikation, pp. 185–187 and Frank Hieronymus, Oberrheinische Buchillustration II: Basler Buchillustration 1500–1545 (Basel: Universitätsbibliothek, 1984), pp. 639–41. 85 University Library Basel, Ms. Ki. Ar. 67, no. 4. 86 Basler Chroniken, V, p. 454. 87 Melville, ‘Spätmittelalterliche Geschichtskompendien’, p. 98. For the term paratext see Gérard Genette, Paratexts. Thresholds of Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

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the edition, this kind of presentation blurs the actual material context of the manuscript. The sources of this compilation were widely identified by the editor August Bernoulli.88 Besides handwritten sources from Basel, which were mostly edited elsewhere in the Basler Chroniken, the compiler used the widely disseminated chronicle of Jakob Twinger von Königshofen (which circulated in handwritten copies) and the Swiss Chronicle of Petermann Etterlin, which was printed in Basel in 1507.89 In the compilation, the copied parts of these chronicles were intermingled with other texts while in the edition the excerpts from already known chronicles were not printed. Bernoulli separated the thus far unknown parts from the known texts and labelled them. If he could identify authors, he put them into the title, such as Basler Chronik Heinrichs von Beinheim,90 Die Chronik Konrad Schnitts,91 or Aufzeichnungen Adalberg Meyers.92 If he could not identify any author, he edited the texts as anonymous chronicles.93 His mode of operation shows that he was not interested in the whole compilation but only in the separate texts. How such texts were in fact constructed by the editor can be observed in the example of the so called Anonyme Chronik der Burgunderkriege. August Bernoulli described his proceeding as follows: ‘Wie die Anonyme Chronik von 1445, so ist uns in der Beinheimischen Handschrift auf Bl. 93 bis 116 auch eine solche der Burgunderkriege erhalten – jedoch nur in Gestalt einer Compilation, deren Grundlage und Hauptinhalt der entsprechende Theil von Etterlins Chronik bildet. Es ist somit alles weggelassen, was schon aus letzterem Werke konnte genommen werden, und deshalb dürfen wir auch kein unversehrtes Ganzes erwarten, wenn wir aus dem Texte Etterlins diese Zusätze ausscheiden und zusammenstellen. Immerhin erhalten wir auf diese Weise eine Chronik, welche von 1473 bis 1479 reicht.’94 (‘Like the anonymous chronicle of 1445, the Beinheim Manuscript contains on sheet 93 to 116 also a chronicle of the Burgundian Wars – but only as a compilation, of which the basis and main content is an extract of the Etterlin chronicle. Hence, everything is excluded which could be taken from this latter work, and that is why we must not expect an undamaged entity, if we separate these amendments from the text of Etterlin and compile them. Nevertheless, in this way we gain a chronicle, which covers the time from 1473 to 1479.’)

88 Basler Chroniken, V, pp. 442–60. See for the following also Tomaszewski, Familienbücher als Medien städtischer Kommunikation, pp. 64–79. 89 Petermann Etterlin, Kronica von der loblichen Eydtgnoschaft Jr harkommen und sust seltzam strittenn und geschichten (Basel: Michael Furter, 1507), VD 16: E 4110 and ZV 19913. 90 Basler Chroniken, V, pp. 359–427. 91 Basler Chroniken, VI, pp. 89–164. 92 Basler Chroniken, VI, pp. 345–80. 93 ‘Anonyme Chronik von 1445’, Basler Chroniken, V, pp. 476 ff. ‘Anonyme Chronik der Burgunderkriege’, Basler Chroniken, V, pp. 501–27, ‘Anonyme Chronik der Mailänderkriege’, Basler Chroniken, VI, pp. 23–88. 94 ‘Die Anonyme Chronik der Burgunderkriege 1473–1479’, Basler Chroniken, V, p. 501.

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Hence, this ostensibly anonymous chronicle is not an independent text at all, but is composed out of fragments, which in the manuscript were strongly interconnected with excerpts from Etterlin’s Swiss Chronicle. One example is the description of the battle of Grandson, which occurred near the Lake of Neuchâtel on 2 March 1476. On the bottom of fol. 103v, a new paragraph starts with a new heading. The heading tells how the cities of Basel, Strasbourg, Colmar and Schlettstadt (Sélestat) of the Lower League, an alliance against the Burgundian Duke Charles the Bold, sent troops to the lake of Neuchâtel to help the city of Bern.95 This, as well as the battle itself, is described on the following pages. The chapter ends with a new heading on the bottom of fol. 106r. The presentation of the Swiss’ plan of attack on fol. 104r as well as the description of the battle on fol. 104r to 106r are copied from Petermann Etterlin’s chronicle, and these parts were not edited in the Basler Chroniken. There can be little doubt that Etterlin’s text in the manuscript is adapted from a certain Basel perspective, but by eliminating all the parts from Etterlin, the presentation of the text in the edition even intensifies this perspective.96 This short example of the so called Anonyme Chronik der Burgunderkriege can only give some impression of the editors’ methodological proceeding as well as of the difference between the texts handed down in the manuscripts and their presentation in the source editions. Some fragments of compilations were extracted and created as single texts by the editors. They then became part of the canon of sources and consequently developed some kind of a life of their own, were repeated in handbooks and reference works. The editors also created texts with a genuinely urban perspective and ignored the more complex intertextual relations of the handed-down texts. The Manuscript as a Guide to the Contexts of Historiography As shown, the edition presents rather sterile texts purified from all contextual information and delivering pure textual content. This suggests a concept of urban historiography as a genre of shorter or longer independent texts, conveying historical information on the city from a certain perspective that is accessible to read if necessary. For addressing questions on the audience of these texts, their usage, their accessibility, their interrelations with other texts or media, these editions are only partly suitable. The manuscripts give more indication on social, textual, and media-related contexts. Though it is not possible to analyse these issues profoundly here, some aspects should be broached.97

95 University Library Basel, Ms. H IV 27, fol. 103v, Basler Chroniken, V, p. 519: ‘Wie die Nideren Stett denen von Bern ein reysigen zúg schicktent, und als der gantz zúg zu eynander kam, wie man dem hertzogen von Burgund fúr sin wagenburg zoch.’ 96 See for this aspect generally Stein, ‘Selbstverständnis oder Identität?’, p. 126. 97 See for a more detailed analysis Tomaszewski, Familienbücher als Medien städtischer Kommunikation, pp. 43–64.

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When we take a closer look at the family-related part of the Beinheim Manuscript (or rather: the Meyer zum Pfeil family book), it becomes obvious that in his family records Adalberg focused on contemporary events. On fol. 2v and 3r he notes his third marriage with Katharina Bischoff in 1533, the birthdays of his descendants (1534, 1535, 1537, and 1539) and their godparents as well as the day of his wife’s death in 1541. A double sheet (fols 19 and 20) contains the coats of arms of Adalberg Meyer’s and his wife Katharina Bischoff ’s ancestors as well as the coats of arms of his two deceased wives and his brothers. Especially fols 19r and 19v are arranged as a proof of ancestry for Adalberg Meyer, paternal as well as maternal. This served to position himself and his offspring within the current Basel elite. The need for such a self-positioning is understandable, especially in light of the social reorganisation in Basel in the first half of the sixteenth century when political, social and economic changes led to competing conceptions of order and one’s perception and representation had to be adapted to the context. As premodern cities were far from being characterized by equality, social status was contested, defended and frequently redefined.98 So, by the proof of ancestry, Adalberg Meyer also wanted to show that he deserved his prominent position in the city. Inserting the copy of the pre-Reformation foundation charter of an annual family mass probably served Adalberg a similar purpose. Such foundations were part of the habitus of late medieval urban elites and were expected to be made.99 They simultaneously represented social status and honour. Charitable aspects of such foundations (as in case of Meyer zum Pfeil’s annual mass to donate white bread to the poor) represented the founder’s ability to care for the city. So, on the one hand, this pious foundation served for a public representation of the family and its members in the city and showed their social rank.100 On the other hand, the act of remembrance, which was part of the annual mass, constituted the family itself and also strengthened the identity of the persons belonging to it.101 After the Reformation in 1529, these rituals were no longer celebrated; nevertheless their social functions remained important. The representative and 98 Cf. Valentin Groebner, ‘Ratsinteressen, Familieninteressen. Patrizische Konflikte in Nürnberg um 1500’, in Stadtregiment und Bürgerfreiheit. Handlungsräume in deutschen und italienischen Städten des Späten Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Klaus Schreiner and Ulrich Meier (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1994), pp. 278–308. See also Gerhard Fouquet, ‘Stadt-Adel. Chancen und Risiken sozialer Mobilität im späten Mittelalter’, in Sozialer Aufstieg. Funktionseliten im Spätmittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Günther Schulz (München: Boldt im R. OldenbourgVerl., 2002), pp. 171–92 (p. 174). 99 Cf. Stefanie Rüther, ‘Soziale Distinktion und städtischer Konsens. Repräsentationsformen bürgerlicher Herrschaft in Lübeck’, in Ordnung und Distinktion. Praktiken sozialer Repräsentation in der ständischen Gesellschaft, ed. by Marian Füssel and Thomas Weller (Münster: Rhema, 2005), pp. 103–36 (p. 118). 100 Mireille Othenin-Girard, ‘“Helfer” und “Gespenster”. Die Toten und der Tauschhandel mit den Lebenden’, in Kulturelle Reformation. Sinnformationen im Umbruch 1400–1600, ed. by Bernhard Jussen and Craig Koslofsky (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1999), p. 179. 101 Cf. Benjamin Scheller, Memoria an der Zeitenwende. Die Stiftungen Jakob Fuggers des Reichen vor und während der Reformation (ca. 1505–1555) (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2004), pp. 159–92 (p. 19).

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identity-establishing functions of the foundation could especially be fulfilled by a media change from the pre-Reformation ritual of remembrance to the insertion into the family book.102 At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Adalberg’s great-grandson Hans Conrad Meyer zum Pfeil continued the family records as well as the armorial depictions. In contrast to Adalberg, he clearly constructed an agnatic lineage starting with Adalberg and his brother Bernhard. In a time when the family’s honour was under attack, focusing on the glorious past of his ancestors was likely intended to serve as a counterpoise. Corresponding to that, he also fit in the description of the family’s grave. In sum, the parts of the containing family records functioned as a representation of the family’s status by documenting godparents, the pre-Reformation annual mass foundation, or the family grave. Second, they also served to define the family Meyer zum Pfeil by remembering ancestors as well as constructing an agnatic lineage at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Considering the historiographical compilation discussed before, one could ask why Adalberg Meyer wanted quite a large part of the printed Swiss chronicle of Etterlin to be copied. Of course a compilation offered the opportunity to rearrange the text and to give it a new perspective – in his case to tell the history of the Swiss confederation with a focus on Basel’s participation in 1501. But one can also assume another reason, which is connected to the particular media character of handwriting. Its production and usage is to a greater extent reliant on context than a printed piece is, in part because it offers the opportunity to control this single version of text. A handwritten compilation in a unique manuscript also has a Walter Benjamin-style aura that a printed text does not,103 which can be considered a ‘stigma of print.’104 Hence, the book could also be understood as just a representative, prestigious handwritten history book, which

102 Cf. Martial Staub, ‘Memoria im Dienst von Gemeinwohl und Öffentlichkeit. Stiftungspraxis und kultureller Wandel in Nürnberg um 1500’, in Memoria als Kultur, ed. by Otto Gerhard Oexle (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1995), pp. 285–334 (p. 334); Thomas Lentes, ‘Auf der Suche nach dem Ort des Gedächtnisses. Thesen zur Auswertung symbolischer Formen in Abendmahlslehre, Bildtheorie und Bildandacht des 14.–16. Jahrhunderts’, in Imagination und Wirklichkeit. Zum Verhältnis von mentalen und realen Bildern in der Kunst der frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Klaus Krüger and Alessandro Nova (Mainz: von Zabern, 2000), pp. 21–46 (p. 21). See also Craig Koslofsky, ‘From Presence to Remembrance: The Transformation of of Memory in the German Reformation’, in The Work of Memory. New Directions in the Study of German Society and Culture, ed. by Alon Confino and Peter Fritzsche (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 2002), pp. 25–38. For the term media change see Irina O. Rajewsky, Intermedialität (Tübingen: Francke, 2002), pp. 15–17. 103 Walter Benjamin ‘Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit Dritte Fassung (1939)’, in Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, 7 vols, ed. by Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1972–1999), I,2: Abhandlungen (1980), pp. 471–508 (pp. 480–81). For the term Aura see also Ulrich Johannes Beil and others, ‘Benjamins Aura–Konzept und die historische Mediologie. Ansätze, Kontexte, Perspektiven’, in Aura und Auratisierung. Mediologische Perspektiven im Anschluss an Walter Benjamin, ed. by Ulrich Johannes Beil and others (Zürich: Chromnos, 2014), pp. 11–34. 104 John W. Saunders, ‘The Stigma of Print. A Note on the Social Bases of Tudor Poetry’, Essays in Criticism, (1951), 1/2, 139–64.

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may rather be used as a ‘coffee-table-book’ without much attention on its (urban historical) textual content.105 All in all, the historiographical compilation does not exhaust itself in the term ‘urban’ historiography. Firstly, and rather importantly, it can be read not only as urban history but as confederate (‘Swiss’) history as well. Secondly, it is possible that it was more the materiality of the representative book that was received rather than its historical content. Conclusions Common ideas of what characterizes urban historiography are – especially in German scholarship – strongly influenced by the source editions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. This concerns assumptions on its geographical spreading, its subjects and contents, and its social contexts of production and transmission. The most influential collection of sources was the standard-setting series Chroniken der deutschen Städte. What we know as urban historiography in German speaking regions depends on what was edited as such. In turn, where no editions of urban historiography were produced, as in the highly urbanized region of today’s Belgium and the Netherlands, the heterogeneous tradition of historiographical records, chronicles, compilations, and other texts, was not recognized as urban historiography. Even if produced in urban contexts, historical writings were either ignored or perceived from a regional or national perspective, as the other contributions in this volume show. As a result, to broaden our view on the sources and to sharpen our understanding of what characterizes urban historiography, research has to analyse the handed-down manuscripts. To take the example of the Beinheim Manuscript, storing and presenting urban history was not the only function of this book. As was shown, the family-related parts rather serve to represent status and to constitute the family. Representation was also a function of the historiographical compilation which is presented in a representative, handwritten ‘coffee-table-book’. In addition to that, the text can be read as urban history as well as confederate (‘Swiss’) history. But that does not mean to consider it the other way around and neglect the manuscript’s and its text’s urban characteristics. The manuscript’s context was genuinely urban, for example, the struggle for acceptance of the family’s social status within the city with its duty to represent a certain elite habitus by

105 Werner Paravicini, ‘Gruppe und Person. Repräsentation durch Wappen im späteren Mittelalter’, in Die Repräsentation der Gruppen. Texte – Bilder – Objekte, ed. by Otto Gerhard Oexle and Andrea von Hülsen-Esch (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1998), pp. 327-89 (p. 345): ‘Wie wurden diese Handschriften benutzt? […] Coffee-Table-Books, schön und teuer, aber kaum gelesen oder betrachtet?’ Cf. Tomaszewski, Familienbücher als Medien städtischer Kommunikation, pp. 145–148.

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donations, foundations, and family graves. This included collecting and presenting historical knowledge about the city but also much more. Texts focussed on by former research have to be contextualized and embedded in their communicative situations and surroundings. Therefore, to learn more about characteristics, functions, and (communicative) entanglements of urban historiography, we have to consider the manuscripts.

Ina Serif

Urban Chronicles – Urban Consciousness? On the Chronicle of Jakob Twinger von Königshofen in New Codicological Contexts In the Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, Regula Schmid defines town chronicles as ‘“histories” of events and deeds of urban communities written from the eleventh century through to the end of the Middle Ages for the honour and benefit of communal leaders’.1 This definition does not only state a rigid connection between urban chronicles (and chroniclers) and urban authorities,2 it also excludes a huge range of works that could be labelled ‘urban historiography’ using alternative definitions. Additionally, this perception has an impact on the analysis and interpretation of urban historiographies that have undergone changes in the process of copying: if these texts leave the context they were originally produced for or used in, do they lose their primary characteristics and functions? Can a town chronicle continued by a later writer including notes about his family not be interpreted as urban historiography? Or do these private notes also count as a product of urban consciousness because they are inserted into a codex with an originally urban character, by a member of the urban society? It seems that we – eventually – have to find more differentiating typologies for historiographical texts that derive from late medieval towns; annalistic records, short chronicles about a town, lists of bishops, diaries, etc. were not only written by or for the town leaders as official works for the benefit of the city’s reputation or the use of the council, but also on the initiative of individuals that were interested in their own and their town’s past.3 Since the 1980s, several definitions of urban historiography have been suggested, changing the traditional idea of towns as uniform entities and therefore the





1 Regula Schmid, ‘Town chronicles’, in Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, 2 vols, ed. by Graeme Dunphy et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2010), II, p. 1432. 2 Such connections existed of course. In his chronicle about Nürnberg, Sigmund Meisterlin writes in 1488 ‘dasz ich bin überwunden das zu thun durch stettig anligent gebet und fordrung des gar weisen senats […]’. (‘that I have been asked to write this on constant request and demand of the wise senate’.) In Die Chroniken der deutschen Städte vom 14. bis ins 16. Jahrhundert, ed. by Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 35 vols (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1862ff.), III (1864), p. 33. – All translations are the author’s. 3 In 2017, a conference in Freiburg i. Br. adressed some of these aspects, cf. the proceedings in Städtisch, urban, kommunal. Perspektiven auf die städtische Geschichtsschreibung des späten Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Pia Eckhart and Marco Tomaszewski (Göttingen: V&R, 2019).

Urban History Writing in North-Western Europe (15th–16th centuries), ed. by Bram Caers, Lisa Demets and Tineke Van Gassen, SEUH 47 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 47–61. © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.SEUH-EB.5.117867

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classification of their literary products as mirrors of one unique urban identity or consciousness.4 But the most explicit expressions of historical awareness can still be found in the most prototypical product of historical writing in the city, the town chronicles: in some of the prefaces, we can read about reasons for the composition or the intended purpose of the work. The aim of strengthening the urban identity of the citizens, as well as stimulating urban consciousness, becomes apparent in a number of forewords, for example in the Magdeburger Schöppenchronik, likely written by Heinrich von Lammespringe between 1360 and 1372.5 The author claims that his chronicle was written ‘minen leven heren den schepen der stad to Magdeborch to leve und der sulven stad to vromen’,6 and that the history of the town from its beginning to the present time is told ‘to vromen der stad’.7 Konrad Justinger writes in the preface of his Berner Chronik that it would befit all towns of the Holy Roman Empire to know their past and that he wrote down the history of Bern ‘umb daz die vergessenheit […] uns daran nit hindre noch sume, sunder von kraft wegen der geschrift ein ewig memorial und angedenken allen lüten sye’.8 These texts and other town chronicles were read and copied in their places of origin, but some also spread, putting in question the functions stated above: identity seems to be something very specific – can this concept be transferred and adapted for other towns and communities, in the same way as the work itself ? In the following, I will show that town chronicles can serve as a basis for urban writing in other towns, and therefore as a basis for urban identity and consciousness in a new context and in many different ways. The vernacular chronicle by Jakob Twinger von Königshofen, a cleric, will serve as an example.9



4 For literature on this subject cf. the article of Marco Tomaszewski in this volume. 5 Hilkert Weddige, Jürgen Wolf: ‘Magdeburger Schöppenchronik’, in Killy Literaturlexikon, ed. by Wilhelm Kühlmann, 13 vols (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008–11), VII (2010), col. 608–10. 6 Die Chroniken der deutschen Städte, VII (1869), p. 1. Transl. ‘For the love of my beloved masters, the Schöffen of the town of Magdeburg, and for the benefit of this very town.’ 7 Die Chroniken der deutschen Städte, VII (1869), p. 1. Transl. ‘For the benefit of the town’. For more examples see Peter Johanek: ‘Inszenierte Vergangenheit. Vom Umgang mit geschichtlicher Überlieferung in den deutschen Städten des Mittelalters’, in Ferne Welten – freie Stadt. Dortmund im Mittelalter, ed. by Thomas Schilp, Matthias Ohm and Barbara Welzel (Bielefeld: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, 2006), pp. 39–48. 8 Gottlieb Studer, Die Berner-Chronik des Conrad Justinger (Bern: K. J. Wyss, 1871), pp. 1–2. ‘So that oblivion […] does not hinder us, but that it will be, by the power of the written record, an eternal memory and commemoration for all people’. Justinger wrote his chronicle at the request of the town council: ‘Harumbe an sant vincencien abend […] hant die vorgenant fromen wisen jungherr Rudolf Hofmeister edelknecht, ze den ziten Schultheis ze berne, die rete, venre, heimlicher und die zweyhundert der vorgenanten Stat Berne begert vnd geheissen, daz man von dem anefange als die vorgenant stat berne gestiftet wart untz uf disen hüttigen tag, als dise kronek angefangen ist, alle der vorgenant ir stat berne vergangen und grosse sachen […] zesamen bringen […]’. (‘Therefore at St Vincent’s evening the aforementioned pious wise men, the noble Rudolf Hofmeister, at that time mayor of Bern, and the town’s councils, the small and the big one [‘Rat der Zweihundert’], demanded and asked that from the origins when the aforementioned town of Bern was founded up to the present day, when this chronicle has its beginning, all the past and major things of the aforementioned town of Bern should be brought together’.) In Studer, Berner-Chronik, p. 2. 9 My PhD thesis on the chronicle of Jakob Twinger, finished in 2017, will be published in autumn 2019.

ur b an chronicles – urba n consciousness?

The chronicle of Jakob Twinger von Königshofen Twinger’s work, written at the end of the fourteenth century in the town of Strasbourg, consists of six chapters. It starts with the Creation, followed by a history of the Emperors in the second chapter, and a history of the Popes in the third chapter. Chapter four is a history of the bishops of Strasbourg; chapter five tells the story of the city itself, and the last chapter is an index.10 The chronicle features several elements considered typical of urban historiography: in every chapter we find references to Strasbourg’s past and present, but primarily chapters four and five report the history of the town and provide information that is of special interest for its citizens – accounts of fires, earthquakes, and deluges; events of death, murder, and fatal diseases; increases in prices and bad harvests.11 But, as the work begins with a history of the world itself, it also widens the type of the chronicle to a world chronicle. Considering the fact that Jakob Twinger wrote the chronicle in the vernacular and that he constantly explains facts or concepts that could be thought of as common knowledge within the academic sphere, it seems likely that his intent was not simply to have an influence on scholars, but rather to turn his individual perception of history into a collective perception, to broaden the historical knowledge of the citizens of his town, to strengthen their urban identity by inserting funding myths and focusing on the town’s prosperity, and to build a historical consciousness amongst them.12 In the preface of his work, Twinger notes that educated clerics as well as laymen like to read about historic facts; they even prefer to learn about new facts that, as we have seen, mostly concern events in and regarding the city of Strasbourg: ‘Man vindet geschriben in latine vil kroniken, das sind bücher von der zit, die do sagent von keysern, bebesten, künigen und von andern fürsten und herren, wie ir

10 For the structure of the chronicle and its chapters see Norbert Warken, Mittelalterliche Geschichtsschreibung in Straßburg. Studien zu ihrer Funktion und Rezeption bis zur frühen Neuzeit (unpublished doctoral thesis, Universität Saarbrücken, 1995), pp. 165–218. 11 The foundation of the town is of course also of interest for Twinger and his audience. He uses and modifies the legend of Trebeta, the son of the Assyrian king Ninus and the queen Semiramis, who is said to be the founder of Trier. Twinger includes the legend in both the first and the fifth chapter of his chronicle and makes some changes, making Trebeta also the founder of Strasbourg. Thereby he creates a new history of origin for his town and emphasizes the position of Strasbourg as the oldest city in the Alsace. Cf. Ilse Haari-Oberg, Die Wirkungsgeschichte der Trierer Gründungssage vom 10. bis 15. Jahrhundert (Bern: P. Lang, 1994), pp. 80–85. 12 Before starting to write in the vernacular, Twinger had composed a Latin chronicle, with a similar arrangement of the chapters. This Latin text is often considered a mere collection of sources, cf. Klaus Kirchert, Städtische Geschichtsschreibung und Schulliteratur. Rezeptionsgeschichtliche Studien zum Werk von Fritsche Closener und Jakob Twinger von Königshofen (Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1993), p. 21; Olivier Richard, ‘Histoire de Strasbourg, histoire pour Strasbourg. Sur la chronique allemande de Jakob Twinger von Königshofen’, Revue d’Alsace, 127 (2001), 219–37 (p. 220). As the autograph is lost, traces of use cannot be examined. But this chronicle, in contrast to the German work, had not been copied. This makes a private use for Twinger himself quite possible, rather than the composition of a Latin version for educated readers. For this position cf. Warken, p. 154 and p. 628, footnote 6 with more literature. For the structure of the Latin chronicle see Warken, pp. 153–57.

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leben si gewesen, und von etlichen nenhaftigen dingen die von in oder bi iren ziten geschehen sint. aber zü dütsche ist lützel sollicher bücher geschriben, wie doch das die klügen legen also gerne lesent von semelichen dingen also gelerte pfaffen. ouch hant die menschen me lustes zü lesende von nuwen dingen denne von alten, und ist doch von den striten, reysen und andern nenhaftigen dingen die bi nuwen ziten sint geschehen aller minnest geschriben.’13 In writing his chronicle, Twinger tried to reach a wide range of interested readers, who could, besides reading stories from the past for pleasure, use his work as a reference for their memory as well as a source of information. The work was not only continued and therefore updated by him,14 but also by later writers: we know over 125 manuscripts, mainly written in Strasbourg, along the Upper Rhine and up to the town of Constance, but also further south and east,15 that contain either a full or a fragmented version of the work.16 Through repeated copying and insertion of continuations, the chronicle remained a tool to connect both contemporaries and subsequent readers to urban society as well as a lieu de mémoire, a kind of memory that, like one’s personal memory, does not merely store facts, but whose contents encounter ceaseless modifications, e.g. by learning new facts.17 In the case of medieval manuscripts, this would be 13 Die Chroniken der deutschen Städte, VIII (1870), p. 230. Transl. ‘There are many chronicles written in Latin, i.e. books about time, that tell about emperors, popes, kings, and other rulers and masters, how their lives have been, and about many noteworthy things that happened through them or at their times. But in German only little books like these have been written, even though educated laymen like to read about such things as much as erudite clerics. Also people prefer to read about new facts than about old ones, but still only very little is written about conflicts, travels, and other noteworthy things that happened recently’. In the Latin chronicle, we find a similar preface: ‘Licet de hystoriis pontificum et regum romanorum seu aliarum rerum gestarum multos revolveremus libros, paucos tamen vel quasi nullos de rebus moderno tempore gestis vidi compilatos, quamvis humanum genus transacta postponens, novis maxime delectetur.’ In ‘Koenigshoven. Fragments de la chronique latine’, ed. by Léon Dacheux, in Bulletin de la société pour la conservation des monuments historiques d’Alsace, 15 (1892), 283–300 (p. 288). 14 Twinger himself composed three different versions, a longer (version C) and two shorter ones (A and B), and updated the former until his death in 1420. The edition of 1870/71 by Carl Hegel in the Chroniken der deutschen Städte is based on the longest version, C. Hegel established the classification in these three versions and added ‘D’ for ‘verstümmelten gemischten oder frei bearbeiteten Text’ (‘mutilated, mixed, or loosely revised text’). In Chroniken der deutschen Städte, VIII, p. 199. Since the autograph and only copy of version C was burnt in 1870, I will stick to Hegel’s edition as a point of reference for the comparison of the structure of the work. 15 Places of origin are, amongst others, Strasbourg with thirteen still existing manuscripts (of the at least nine manuscripts containing Twinger possessed by the Strasbourg library that burnt in the fire in 1870, four had been identified as copies made in Strasbourg), Basel with seven, Constance with five, Bern with three, Augsburg with six, but also more distant places like the monastery of Eberhardsklausen (one manuscript), Cologne (two) or Salzburg (one) and Linz (one). 16 Over one hundred of them are still preserved; for an up-to-date list of the manuscripts see Ina Serif: ‘Der zerstreute Chronist. Zur Überlieferung der deutschsprachigen Chronik Jakob Twingers von Königshofen’, in Mittelalter. Interdisziplinäre Forschung und Rezeptionsgeschichte, 05/12/2015, latest update: 13/02/2019, http://mittelalter.hypotheses.org/7063. 17 For the differentiation between memory as repository memory, Speichergedächtnis, and as functional memory, Funktionsgedächtnis, in the cultural memory studies, see amongst others Aleida Assmann, Erinnerungsräume: Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses (München: C. H. Beck, 2009), pp. 133–42. Günther Lottes states that the ‘Aufkommen der Stadtchronistik […] einen zentralen

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the continuation of a work as well as the addition or insertion of texts into a terminated work.18 If we look at the preserved manuscripts, we can see that the text in the copies differs significantly. Not only do the perspectives change, the functions of the work do as well: initially the chronicle was written in an urban context, the specific urban context of the town of Strasbourg, for urban recipients. There, it served as a repository of knowledge as well as a means of communicating the town’s past and recent history, as an instrument for legitimation, and as a source of identity for the citizens.19 But the chronicle also became successful in other places, in other towns, where it was copied and transformed, continued, abridged, summarized, and compiled.20 In some copies, we can see how urban news of other towns found its way into text material dealing mainly with Strasbourg. For towns that did not have a chronicle of their own, this was a way of spreading local information. Such conversions of Twinger’s chronicle could be as vast as finding the manifestation of another town’s urban identity in the initially specific Strasbourghian text. I will return to this later. Different forms of historical writing – regional, urban, dynastic, religious, personal – can be found in different manuscripts that contain the Twinger chronicle fully or in parts. This raises another question, apart from the one regarding the existing typologies: how dynamic, how processual was historical, and/or historiographical writing? And can we deduce some sort of variability and dynamics of urban historical consciousness(es) from the variability and dynamics of urban historical texts?21

18 19

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21

Vorgang der Restrukturierung des kulturellen Gedächtnisses der Stadt dar[stellt]’. Günther Lottes, ‘Stadtchronistik und städtische Identität. Zur Erinnerungskultur der frühneuzeitlichen Stadt’, Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg, 87 (2000), 47–58 (p. 48). Pia Eckhart and Birgit Studt point out the dynamic character of memory, referring to recent approaches in cultural memory studies: Pia Eckhart and Birgit Studt, ‘Das Konzil im Gedächtnis der Stadt. Die Verhandlung von Wissen über die Vergangenheit in der städtischen Geschichtsschreibung am Oberrhein im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert’, in Urbanität. Formen der Inszenierung in Texten, Karten, Bildern, ed. by Ute Schneider and Martina Stercken (Köln: Böhlau, 2016), pp. 83–104. For literary works as both stable and changing see Ann Rigney, ‘The Dynamics of Remembrance. Texts between Monumentality and Morphing’, in A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, ed. by Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), pp. 345–53. Augusto Vasina suggests that the rising autonomy of the towns in the Late Middle Ages involves ‘in this or that chronicler’ the discovery of ‘a principle of communal identity in this tendentially absorbing and unifying experience, and [the transmission of ] a strong consciousness of it from generation to generation’. Cf. Augusto Vasina, ‘Medieval Urban Historiography in Western Europe (1100–1500)’, in Historiography in the Middle Ages, ed. by Deborah Mauskopf Delyannis (Leiden: Brill, 2003), pp. 317–52 (p. 321). Even though Twinger’s chronicle was mainly copied in towns, the work’s diffusion was not restricted to this environment: e.g. close to the city of Worms, an Augustinian canon of the monastery of Kirschgarten used the chronicle for his Latin work, the Chronicon Wormatiense. Cf. Rolf Sprandel, Chronisten als Zeitzeugen: Forschungen zur spätmittelalterlichen Geschichtsschreibung in Deutschland (Köln: Böhlau, 1994), p. 7. Rigney’s observation in her study on literary works can also be transferred on medieval historiographical works and their roles as object of cultural remembrance: ‘Firstly, literary works resemble monuments in that they provide fixed points of reference. They are “textual monuments”

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In the copies of Twingers work, we can see that the historical horizons differ according to the transition of the purpose of the chronicle: in some codices, parts of the text of the former world chronicle are used as an historical background, e.g. for theological compilations that rather required a historical account of Creation – here the historical horizon is narrowed down to what is necessary for the text version in question.22 We can also trace broadened horizons, not only in manuscripts that added continuations to the chronicle that reported the history of another town, but also in the various compilations in which Twinger’s chronicle, or a part of it, is joined with texts of a different kind. Those compilations, sometimes called impure versions, which in some cases combine different historiographical works, raise the issue of the loss – or deletion? – of former urban aspects; and if they were left out, in favour of what? If we look at the Twinger manuscripts, the types of transformation of the chronicle are the following: continuation of a copy of the whole chronicle according to the arrangement of the chapters, production of a codex that contains only extractions of chapters or parts of chapters of the chronicle, combination of the whole chronicle or parts of it with other historiographical works, and combination of the whole chronicle or parts of it with non-historiographical accounts.23 What could be interesting in the context of this paper would be to find, in the transformed copies, an extension or a reduction of any account that could be characterized as urban, leading to an assumption concerning the dynamics of urban consciousness visible through the dynamic of urban historiographical texts. For this purpose, we will have a look at the city of Basel. Urban historical writing in Basel and the reception of Twinger’s chronicle Basel lies about 140 km up the Rhine from Strasbourg. There, we do not find any coherent historiographical work worth mentioning until the late sixteenth century, aside from some rather unmotivated attempts by the town’s council.24 which can be reprinted time and again in new editions […]. At the same time as they may enjoy this monumentality, however, literary works continuously morph into many other cultural products that recall, adapt, and revise them in both overt and indirect ways’. Cf. Rigney, p. 349. 22 See for example Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Ms. mgq 1534, written in the early fifteenth century, probably in the town of Constance. This manuscript contains legends, prayers and exempla, while the beginning of chapter one of Twinger’s chronicle is inserted at the end of the codex, serving as historical background. In Bibliothèque Nationale de France Paris, Ms. allem. 150, composed in Speyer also in the beginning of the fifteenth century, the first chapter of Twinger follows the account of the travels of John Mandeville. After Twinger’s chapter on Creation several texts with religious character are inserted. Also here the extract of the Strasbourg chronicle seems to integrate the individual accounts, forming a background of the history of salvation. 23 Cf. the three different types of continuations that Warken defined for copies made in Strasbourg, pp. 235–36. 24 Matthias von Neuenburg, born in 1295 in Neuenburg am Rhein, had lived in Basel several years and later moved to Strasbourg. It was only there that he composed a Latin chronicle that covers the years from 1245 to 1350 and concentrates on the Upper Rhine region, with a focus on Basel until

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In this environment, Twinger’s universal chronicle did not only serve as a reference book of history. It also helped to insert local history into a wider frame, thereby forming a legitimate and authoritative history for its readers and listeners and providing a structure for accounts of the town itself, like inserted lists of aldermen, bishops, and council members. We know of seven manuscripts written in Basel that transmit Twinger’s chronicle wholly or in parts; two of them represent quite faithful copies of the whole chronicle25 and five show rather altered constellations with three of them only delivering a few extracts. One of them is a print of the Kronica von der loblichen Eydtgnoschaft, jr harkommen und sust seltzam strittenn und geschichten by Petermann Etterlin, printed in Basel in 1507,26 which contains a range of different historiographical notes in the margins, including passages of the Strasbourg chronicle.27 This annotated print was probably one of the templates for another manuscript that also comprises several seemingly random entries deriving from Twinger.28 In another codex mainly consisting of texts concerning the Council of Basel, we find a short passage of Twinger’s fifth chapter, translated into Latin.29 Two other manuscripts modified the chronicle of Strasbourg for specific needs: they contain

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the year 1328. See Klaus Arnold, ‘Matthias von Neuenburg’, in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters. Verfasserlexikon, ed. by Kurt Ruh and others, 14 vols (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1978–2008), VI (1987), col. 194–97. One example for an attempt of the Council to record recent history and important events to remember them is a decision in 1439 to write a book ‘darinne geschriben werden sollent solich sachen uff das kúrzest, die uns zuo guot oder argem beschehent; umb das unser nachkommen ettlicher mosse wissen mogen, wie sich die sachen by unsern tagen gemacht und gehandelt haben.’ (‘in which should be written concisely good and bad things that happen to us; so that our descendants may know how things were done and treated at our times’.) Such a book is not preserved, and maybe it was never composed. Cf. Basler Chroniken, ed. by Historische und Antiquarische Gesellschaft Basel, 7 vols (Leipzig: S. Hirzel. 1872–1902), IV (1890), pp. 5–6. Even though we do not have an official town chronicle of Basel until the printed chronicle of Christian Wurstisen in 1580, it is not true that we do not find urban historical writing in the city itself. But applying typologies sometimes leads to false impressions: on the edition principles of the Basler Chroniken and its contents see Marco Tomaszewski, Familienbücher als Medien städtischer Kommunikation. Untersuchungen zur Basler Geschichtsschreibung im 16. Jahrhundert (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017) and his article in this volume. The lack of official historical writing is not to be understood as an absence of historical consciousness or interest for the history of the town; the Council purchased several historical texts, amongst others an account about the Council of Basel by Enea Silvio Piccolomini. Cf. Rudolf Wackernagel, Geschichte der Stadt Basel, 3 vols (Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1907–24), II (1916), p. 920. Universitätsbibliothek Basel, Ms. Cod. E I 1 and Cod. E I 1h, the former being the template for the latter. For a description of E I 1 see https://aleph.unibas.ch/F/?local_base=DSV05&con_ lng=GER&func=find-b&find_code=SYS&request=000117791, for E I 1h see https://aleph.unibas. ch/F/?local_base=DSV05&con_lng=GER&func=find-b&find_code=SYS&request=000117794. ‘Chronicle of the praiseworthy Confederacy, its origins and other notable wars and stories’, cf. Regula Schmid, Geschichte im Dienst der Stadt. Amtliche Historie und Politik im Spätmittelalter (Zürich: Chronos Verlag, 2009), pp. 78–79. Universitätsbibliothek Basel, Ms. Cod. A λ IV 14; for a description see https://aleph.unibas. ch/F/?local_base=DSV05&con_lng=GER&func=find-b&find_code=SYS&request=000108430. Universitätsbibliothek Basel, Ms. Cod. H IV 27; for a description see https://aleph.unibas. ch/F/?local_base=DSV05&con_lng=GER&func=find-b&find_code=SYS&request=000088826. Universitätsbibliothek Basel, Ms. Cod. E I 4, fol. 432v; for a description see https://aleph.unibas. ch/F/?local_base=DSV05&con_lng=GER&func=find-b&find_code=SYS&request=000197997.

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several – and very differing – extracts of Twinger’s work, combining them with other, mostly historiographical texts.30 One of these two is the manuscript M. ch. f. 82, today in Würzburg, written at the end of the fifteenth century in Basel, mainly by Johannes Betz/Ursi, a scholar. Ursi lived from around 1440 to 1498. He was town scribe of Breisach and moved to Basel in 1475. He applied unsuccessfully for the position of town scribe there. Instead, he held the office of an advocate at the episcopal court and became professor of canon law at the University of Basel. From 1483 until 1490, he represented the town’s council in affairs with other cities, making several journeys on behalf of the council.31 The codex M. ch. f. 82 consists of four parts, of which only the third was written by Ursi himself (fol. 10r–55r). We do not know who wrote the first pages, but there we can already find insertions from Ursi that relate to the city of Basel, e.g. a short list of the Ammeister of Basel from 1385 until 1389.32 If we look at the part that Ursi wrote, we can roughly classify the texts as belonging to four categories: documents that concern Ursi’s work as a professor,33 literary texts,34 accounts with an ecclesiastical background,35 and historical texts.36 If we now take a closer look at the extracts of the Twinger chronicle, we can see that Ursi detached them from their original context and connected them to the history of Basel: in a short account on the origin of the town,37 he stresses the fact that Basel has always been independent from its bishop.38 By introducing parts of Twinger’s third chapter, the history of the popes, he puts the history of the relationship between the town and the bishops of Basel into a wider context and also stresses the historical truth of his record. In a time when conflicts with bishops were on the agenda on a regular basis, historically justified arguments were always useful.39 Another strategy that we can find in Ursi’s manuscript is to modify or complement Twinger’s text 30 Universitätsbibliothek Basel, Ms. UB, Cod. E VI 26 (see https://aleph.unibas.ch/F/?local_ base=DSV05&con_lng=GER&func=find-b&find_code=SYS&request=000086050) and Universitätsbibliothek Würzburg, M. ch. f. 82 (see Die Handschriften der Universitätsbibliothek Würzburg, ed. by Hans Thurn, 5 vols (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1970–1994), V (1994): Bestand bis zur Säkularisierung: Erwerbungen und Zugänge bis 1803, pp. 257–59 and in Basler Chroniken, VII (1915), pp. 167–71). A short overview over both manuscripts is given at the end of this paper. 31 Basler Chroniken, VII, pp. 163–65. 32 Members of the council; fol. 9v. 33 e.g. on fol. 10v–11r is a list of the doctors that received their bachelor’s or doctoral degree under the tuition of Johannes Ursi (copied and slightly modified on fol. 41r–41v), on fol. 17v–18v we find model speeches, on fol. 50r–50v Ursi made notes about courts and taxes and about two Basel charters dating from 1218 resp. 1366. 34 The epitaph of sultan Mehmed II is copied on fol. 47v, the rhymed response of Enea Silvio Piccolomini to Frederick III to thank him for his Bulla laureationis is inserted on fol. 17r. 35 On fol. 40v we find two decrees of the Council of Basel (1431–49) of 1435. 36 The historical accounts are mostly extracts of the chronicles of Jakob Twinger and Gottfried of Viterbo and an unidentified world chronicle; both the ecclesiastical accounts and the historical texts have in some cases Basel-specific contents or are put in a Basel-specific context. 37 Universitätsbibliothek Würzburg, M. ch. f. 82, fol. 49r–49v. 38 Cf. Basler Chroniken VII, p. 170. 39 Ursi uses also further sources, e.g. an unidentified world chronicle or parts of the Decretum Gratiani. They fulfil the same function as the extracts of Twinger, primarily legitimation.

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in favour of his town: in the fifth chapter, Twinger reports the invasion of the Huns and the Goths in the year 452, saying that they destroyed everything and conquered Strasbourg and alle stette uf dem Ryne und ouch Rome.40 In Ursi’s manuscript we do not only read about the destruction of Strasbourg, but also of Basel, by king Attila himself: ‘Anno domini 452 Attila rex Hunorum et Gottorum destruxit Basileam Argentinam et civitates Reni et Romani. Aes postea victi per Romanos et Dietrichem de Berna.’41 Corresponding to the other texts in his codex, Ursi translated Twinger into Latin, which fits his profession, and very likely his self-conception. Nonetheless, it was still an effort to take a German text, search it for useful passages, and translate it, instead of using already existing historiographical works in Latin.42 As Ursi lived in Basel, we can assume that he also had access to other chronicles that circulated in the town in greater quantities in the fifteenth century, e.g. the Sächsische Weltchronik or the Flores temporum, both containing a history of the world including the emperors and the popes – and the latter written in Latin.43 The reason for choosing Twinger’s chronicle could be found in its quality as a dedicated town chronicle. The Sächsische Weltchronik as well as the Flores temporum are historiographical works that do not explicitly focus on cities; but in Twinger’s work, Ursi found a narration that already addressed an urban audience and in which he only had to replace ‘Strasbourg’ with ‘Basel’. The Strasbourg chronicle serves as a transmitter of urban historical consciousness into a new environment, without interfering with the specific historical background of Basel. As a counterexample, I would like to mention the Basel codex E VI 26, initiated around 1420 in Basel by an unknown scribe and continued until the sixteenth century by its several owners. The majority of the continuations and insertions were made between 1439 and 1470 by Erhard von Appenwiler, a chaplain at the cathedral of Basel.44 The manuscript consists of three parts, one main codex

40 ‘All the towns along the Rhine and also Rome’: Die Chroniken der deutschen Städte, IX (1871), p. 788. 41 Universitätsbibliothek Würzburg, M. ch. f. 82, fol. 32r. 42 One of the faithful copies of Twinger’s chronicle mentioned before, Universitätsbibliothek Basel, Cod. E I 1, most probably was Ursi’s template. Cf. Basler Chroniken, VII, p. 168. 43 Universitätsbibliothek Würzburg, Cod. D IV 10 was written around 1475 in Basel by Nicolaus Gerung von Blauenstein, chaplain at the town’s cathedral, and contains several historiographical accounts, including the Flores temporum. Cf. Basler Chroniken, VII, pp. 18–37. The codex contains also a chronicle of the bishops of Basel, written by Gerung himself, that was copied into Aarau, Kantonsbibliothek, Cod. Z 37 and into Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. H IV 27. The latter codex also contains several extracts from Twinger’s chronicle. Cf. Basler Chroniken, V (1895), pp. 443–47. We can therefore assume that Gerung’s manuscript was not kept for private use, but circulated. The codex Universitätsbibliothek Basel, Cod. E VI 26 contains among others the Sächsische Weltchronik, and also this codex served as a template for later compilations. For this manuscript cf. below. 44 For a description of the codex and on Erhard von Appenwiler see Basler Chroniken, IV, pp. 223–42; Jürgen Wolf, Die sächsische Weltchronik im Spiegel ihrer Handschriften. Überlieferung , Textentwicklung , Rezeption (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1997), pp. 25–29; Gabriele von Olberg-Haverkate, ‘Basler Chroniken aus dem 15. Jahrhundert. Zum Problem der Textallianzen und Textsortenzuordnung spätmittelalterlicher Chroniken’, in Studien zu Textsorten und Textallianzen um 1500, ed. by Jörg Meier and Ilpo Tapani Piirainen (Berlin: Weidler, 2007), pp. 181–93; Gabriele von Olberg-Haverkate,

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with two enclosed booklets. The booklets, originally made up of 14 respectively 8 sheets each, were bound to the codex by Appenwiler, who filled most of their pages. The whole manuscript includes different historiographical accounts: parts of the Weltchronik by Rudolf von Ems45 and of the Sächsische Weltchronik, copied into the codex by an unknown scribe in the early fifteenth century, extracts of the Colmarer Chronik,46 of the Rötteler Chronik,47 and of Twinger’s chronicle, all added by Appenwiler, and different annalistic accounts. It further contains fragments of two literary works, the Alexander by Lamprecht and a poem of Troy, both already inserted into this manuscript’s template of the Sächsische Weltchronik. It also includes many additions, either independent notes or supplements to the historiographical accounts that were made by the different owners of the manuscript. At first glance, it seems like a compilation of historiographical texts enriched with urban news that suggests an owner or client highly interested in the history of his town and his region and proud of its past, also making use of the Strasbourg chronicle as a text with a focus on the town.48 But after a closer look at the additions I would argue that, at least while possessed by Appenwiler, it represents rather a collection of a private person interested simply in wars and conflicts: when Appenwiler acquired the codex, it already contained the Weltchronik and the Sächsische Weltchronik; there was no practical need for the insertion of yet another world chronicle. But if we look at Twinger’s chronicle as a town chronicle, there is no reason to assume that Appenwiler chose this work

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Zeitbilder – Weltbilder. Volkssprachige Universalchronistik als Instrument kollektiver Memoria. Eine textlinguistische und kulturwissenschaftliche Untersuchung (Berlin: Weidler Buchverlag, 2008), pp. 363–80. A very early rhimed world chronicle in German with over 100 known manuscripts. Cf. Wolfgang Walliczek, ‘Rudolf von Ems’, in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters. Verfasserlexikon, ed. by Kurt Ruh and others, 14 vols (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1978–2008), VIII (1992), col. 322–45; Dorothea Klein, ‘Rudolf von Ems’, in Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, 2 vols, ed. by Graeme Dunphy et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2010), II, pp. 1307–39; for an incomplete overview of the manuscripts, see [accessed 7 August 2017]. A chronicle in German from creation up until 1403, with two continuations. Cf. Erich Kleinschmidt, ‘Colmarer Chronik’, in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters. Verfasserlexikon, ed. by Kurt Ruh and others, 14 vols (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1978–2008), I (1978), col. 1294–1295; Erich Kleinschmidt, ‘Die Colmarer Dominikaner-Geschichtsschreibung im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert. Neue Handschriften und Forschungen zur Überlieferungsgeschichte’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 28 (1972), 371–496 (pp. 418–19); edited in August Bernoulli, Die älteste deutsche Chronik von Colmar (Colmar: Jung 1888). The family chronicle of Markgraf Rudolf III von Hachberg-Sausenberg, covering the years from 1376 up until 1428. It is the continuation of parts of the Twinger chronicle. Cf. Warken, pp. 263–78; Claudius Sieber-Lehmann, ‘Rötteler Chronik’ in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters. Verfasserlexikon, ed. by Kurt Ruh and others, 14 vols (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1978–2008), VIII (1992), col. 288–89; edited in Basler Chroniken, V, pp. 120–89. Gabriele von Olberg-Haverkate points towards the regional contents of the manuscript; she sees the linking element of the different texts combined in the codex in the resort to collective memory knowledge: the reception of antiquity, the history of the Holy Roman Empire, and the accounts concerning Basel would gear towards the educated citizens of Basel. She also states that Appenwiler and his predecessors would show a ‘städtisches Memoriabewusstsein’ by inserting subjects that would interest the citizens of a town. But the inserted accounts seem rather too specific (e.g. Latin annals of the monastery of Pairis, where a brother of Appenwiler was monk) to fulfil this function – if ever intended by the writers. Cf. Olberg-Haverkate, Zeitbilder – Weltbilder, p. 379.

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for its characteristics as an explicitly urban historiographical text: nearly all the extracts of Twinger’s chronicle, originating from chapters two to six, report on emperors, battles, conflicts, deaths, murders, etc. Sometimes the chronological order is respected, at one point we find an entry about a treachery in the town of Zurich in the year 1350 surrounded by extracts of the Sächsische Weltchronik that deal with Constantine the Great.49 All of the previous blank spots were filled with entries that fitted the interest of the owner, regardless of the content of the surrounding texts. Of course a big part of chronicles consists of this kind of news – who would not insert attention-grabbing facts? However, in this codex the percentage of the added entries that illustrate an interest in wars etc. does, in my view, rather point towards somebody who created a private collection, a compilation that more or less accidentally includes information about his hometown. In this copy, the original urban aspects that are attributed to works like Twinger’s chronicle were simply neglected. They were not quite deleted, as Appenwiler was quite likely interested in the events of his town, but he did not want to write a text for the citizens of his town or with an urban perspective, but for himself. The urban aspects of the compiled historiographical accounts were not important for him.50 The first example, the codex of Ursi, shows that it was not a problem for the citizens of Basel – and of other towns51 – to generate news about their city by using another city’s chronicle. Another city with its own specific interests, aspects, political tendencies, etc.; in some Basel manuscripts, we therefore find the chronicle of Twinger with continuations that focus on local or urban news that mostly concern the area around Basel. The quantity of the information is enhanced; the thematic spectrum however is reduced in favour of a concentration on the town of Basel.52 The openness of Twinger’s chronicle – the possibility 49 Already in the Basler Chroniken, Bernoulli tried to put the scattered extracts of Twinger’s chronicle and other historiographical insertions into a chronological order: ‘Fügen wir nun diese verschiedenen Fragmente nach der Zeitfolge zusammen, so erhalten wir ein Ganzes, welches den Zeitraum von 1431 bis 1454 umschliesst und sich als eine Fortsetzung zu Königshofen Kap. V (Localchronik) auffassen lässt’. Basler Chroniken, IV, p. 413. And also Warken, despite acknowledging that Appenwiler was more interested in the choice of specific accounts than in the chronological order, states that the insertions compose a continuous chronology, cf. Warken, pp. 280–81. I would like to underline the importance of the content of the particular entries for Appenwiler instead of their order in time – he did not intend to write a text of urban historiography, therefore he did not have to pay attention to chronology. 50 After Appenwiler’s death the manuscript was possessed by several owners that continued the work. With the additions made by Heinrich Sinner von Dachsfelden and later by Hans Wiler the function of the codex changed again: Sinner inserted information about his family, and Wiler used it as a compendium, making additions and commenting several sections. Cf. Basler Chroniken VII, pp. 237–41, 395–401. 51 See for example Staatsbibliothek Berlin, mgq 1143, written at the end of the fifteenth century in the area around Linz (Austria). This manuscript contains chapters two and three of the chronicle of Twinger and substitutes chapters four and five with a list of the bishops of Salzburg and a chronicle of this town. 52 The acquisition of historiographical information seems to have been central to the commissioners of two of the Basel copies mentioned above (footnote 25): the index, in Twinger’s composition the last chapter, is found at the beginning of the codices (whilst it is often omitted in copies written in other places).

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to add, delete, insert accounts – led to a dynamic of the text itself as well as to a dynamic of the functions, concepts, and ideas related to a particular manuscript.53 Not only the manuscript was subject to a process of constant change through the modifications by the different owners and scribes. The historical consciousness that is visible through the analysis of the inserted – or deleted – components also altered: we have manuscripts that use originally urban accounts, not for creating a manuscript related to the town with urban contents, but for their own purpose, as the example of Appenwiler shows. These manuscripts are still a source for the exploration of urban perspectives and urban consciousness, not necessarily intended by the writers or compilers, but because they contain hints that tell us about the distribution, migration, and use of information and news that initially concerned one specific town. The so-called Konstanzer Jahrgeschichten can serve as a last example: this short annalistic record in German, written in the fifteenth century, consists of notes mainly on the history of the town of Constance for the years from 1256 to 1388 and survives in twelve manuscripts.54 Eleven of them contain extracts or whole chapters of the chronicle of Jakob Twinger,55 and the annals are always placed directly after the Twinger parts; in nine of them we also find a list of the bishops of Constance, continued until the election of Otto III von Hachberg in 1411. In these manuscripts as well, we see the insertion of urban news in codices with texts that contained urban-related topics and therefore served as a thematic background. And the Jahrgeschichten migrated as well. Of course Constance was one of the main places where this short record has been copied, but the work is also found in manuscripts produced in the cities of Augsburg, Strasbourg, and Basel.56 In ten of these manuscripts we find a report about the murder of bishop Guillaume de Menthonay of Lausanne in 1406 that precedes the Jahrgeschichten. This account resembles a section in the Berner Chronik of Konrad Justinger and a section in the Rapperswiler Chronik.57 These works originated in Bern,

53 Richard suggests that after an analysis of the numerous continuations and modifications of the work regarding its specific properties – ‘composition soignée, écriture pour le conseil de Strasbourg, défense des villes, sentiment national’ – one would perhaps discover that it is in some cases not because, but in spite of some of these characteristics that the work achieved such a success. Cf. Richard, p. 236. 54 Die Chroniken der deutschen Städte, VIII, p. 207; Franz Josef Mone, ‘Die Konstanzer Zusätze’, in Quellensammlung der badischen Landesgeschichte, ed. by Franz Josef Mone, 4 vols (Karlsruhe: Macklot, 1848–67) I (1848), pp. 300–01; Klaus Graf, ‘Die verschollene Twinger-Handschrift aus dem Regularkanonikerstift Dürnstein’, in Archivalia, 27 May 2013, http://archivalia.hypotheses.org/6941 [last accessed on 27 March 2019]; Ina Serif: ‘Konstanzer Jahrgeschichten’, in Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, ed. by Graeme Dunphy, Cristian Bratu, 2nd online edition 2016, http://dx.doi. org/10.1163/2213-2139_emc_SIM_001450 [last accessed on 27 March 2019], with a list of the known manuscripts. 55 Konstanz, Stadtarchiv, A I 1 probably used a continued copy of Twinger’s chronicle as a template for a list of bishops, but does not contain parts of the chronicle itself. Cf. Warken, p. 297. 56 Appenwiler inserted them in the codex Universitätsbibliothek Basel, E VI 26. 57 For Justinger see Studer, p. 197 (ch. 327: ‘Daz der bischof von losen ermurt wart’), for the Rapperswiler Chronik (also known as Klingenberger Chronik) see Die sog. Klingenberger Chronik des Eberhard Wuest, Stadtschreiber von Rapperswil, ed. by Bernhard Stettler (St. Gallen: Historischer Verein des Kantons St. Gallen, 2007), p. 166 (‘Der bischoff von Lousen ward ermürt’).

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respectively in Rapperswil and found their way into manuscripts with content decisively related to the town of Constance. Urban consciousness as product and process A work like the chronicle of Jakob Twinger is often used to show the developing urban consciousness of the cities north of the Alps by the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century. In this coherent work, the chapters concerning the history of the town of Strasbourg would illustrate the growing confidence of the citizens and their awareness for their and their town’s past. But if we do not limit our analyses to the somehow classical town chronicles that are edited in the Chroniken der deutschen Städte, but infer the existence of urban consciousness amongst others from short town-related records such as the Konstanzer Jahrgeschichten, this concept seems to be very flexible and dynamic. Of course every manuscript offers and fulfills different functions. But the fact that accounts of a specific town found their way into manuscripts that contained records of other towns can show the actual spreading, or distribution, of historical consciousness. Apart from a certain grade of ascribed importance and therefore popularity of the particular work, in this case the chronicle of Jakob Twinger, it still was a work that originated from a specific town, a product of a specific environment. And nonetheless its copies could serve as repositories for the expression of urban consciousness in other towns – via a primarily Strasbourghian town chronicle. The various copies not only represent a work in progress, a work that is subject to changes of typology and genre, but, at least in an urban context, give an insight into the progress of the urban consciousness as well and, perhaps, the constant changing of urban identity itself. Annex: manuscript information Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek, M. ch. f. 82 Paper – 59 fols – 300 × 225mm – Basel – last quarter of the 15th century (by Johannes Ursi, fols 10r–55r) 1v 1v–2v 3r–3v 5r–9v 9v 10r 10v–11r, 41r–41v 12r–16v

List of relics of St Mathias, Trier Pilgrim report Law on the Pfahlbürger by emperor Sigmund (1431) Reformatio Friderici (1442) List of the Ammeister of Basel 1385–89 Extracts of a world chronicle List of the doctors that received their PhD under Johannes Ursi Extracts of Twinger’s chronicle, ch. 2, 3, 4 (all extracts of the chronicle have been translated into Latin)

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17r 17v–18 19r–20v 21r–25r 25v 26v 27v 28r–31r 31r–40v 40v 41v 42r–42v 43r–43v 44r–45v 46r 46v 47r 47v 49r–49v 50r–50v 51r–51v 52r–54r 55r 55v–59r

Bulla laureacionis for Enea Silvio Piccolomini Examples of speeches Historical notes concerning Basel; extracts of Twinger, ch. 5 Extracts of a world chronicle and of Gottfried’s of Viterbo Pantheon Historical notes concerning Basel (1492) Extract of a world chronicle (until 1070) Extracts of Twinger, ch. 4, 5 Extract of a world chronicle (until Charlemagne) Extracts of Twinger, ch. 2–6, with additions concerning the history of Basel Two decrees concerning the Council of Basel Historical notes concerning Basel Table of the peoples by Gottfried of Viterbo Extracts of a world chronicle Notes about legal questions and laws Extracts of the Rötteler Chronik Constitution of pope Eugen IV to a bishop of Lucca Epistula Lentuli (on the shape of Christ) Epitaph for Mehmet II On the origin of Basel; extracts of Twinger, ch. 2, 5 Notes about courts and taxes, about two records Extracts of a world chronicle (until 693) Graduation speeches of Johannes Ursi (1482, 1484) Extracts of Twinger, ch. 3 Additions by later writers: extracts of Twinger, ch. 5; on a record; on a Basel bell; inscriptions of Breisach and Schönau; account book

Basel, Universitätsbibliothek. Cod. E VI 26 Paper – 235 fols – 290 × 210 mm – Basel – 1420/30 (Sächsische Weltchronik, fols 1ra–179ra), 1439–71 (by Erhard von Appenwiler, fols 179v–215v, 224r–231v), last quarter of the 15th century (by Heinrich Sinner and an unknown continuator, fols 186r, 216r–228v) 1ra–14ra 14ra–17va 17vb–179ra

Extracts of Rudolf ’s von Ems Weltchronik Fragments of a poem of Troy Sächsische Weltchronik, continued until 1350, and additions concerning Basel (until 1356)

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22vb–67va 85v, 175v–185v, 192r, 205r 162v, 163v, 167v, 175v, 176r, 192v 179ra–rb, 180v, 181r 179v–180r 181r 181r, 205r 180v–231r 184r–v 185r 184v–195r 186r, 219r–223v 195v–196v 198r–199ra 199v 202v–211v 209v 224v–231v

Basel adaptation of Lamprecht’s Alexander Extracts of the Colmarer Chronik Notae historicae Argentinenses, German translation Additions by Erhard von Appenwiler Annales Parisienses (a monastery in Alsace) 1335–1422 Notes on the years 1349, 1386, 1408, 1453 Konstanzer Jahrgeschichten Chronicle of Erhard von Appenwiler Latin notes on the year 1439 News on the Basel family Sinner Epistola Morbosani, Latin Rötteler Chronik Coronatio regis Frederici anno 1442 List of the deaths of the battle of Sempach 1386 Feud letter of the Turkish Sultan, German Extracts of Twinger with additions until 1454 Invitation letter of the Turkish Sultan, German Notes on the War of Basel 1444–46

isolated extracts of Twinger on fols 85v, 91r–100v, 118v, 162v–167v, 174v–179, 180v, 181r–v, 185v, 186r, 186v, 192.

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Jenine de Vries*

It’s not just about Chronicles The Variety of Forms of Historical Writing in Late Medieval Towns in England and the Southern Low Countries Italy, Switzerland and Germany have received much attention over the years for their medieval urban chronicles, while it was widely assumed few examples existed in North-Western European countries, such as England and the Low Countries.1 This view of history writing in Flanders has changed in recent years after new research showed urban history writing was certainly part of the historical culture in its late medieval towns. This article will pursue this line of argument further and will attempt to break new ground by using a similar approach for England. Within fifteenth-century North-Western Europe, Flanders and England are two regions with different political situations and degrees of urbanisation, which makes it interesting to study whether urban history writing occurs in these areas in a similar way. An important step in this research, which will be the focus of this paper, is to recognize the forms which urban historical writing might take. In this paper, I will first discuss how urban history writing has been perceived and studied and how the concept of historical culture fits into it. A discussion and comparison of several types of history writing in English and Flemish towns will follow. This will show that there are other forms of writing that can be considered history writing, even though they differ from the more traditional form of German town chronicles. The examples given will illustrate this wide range of shapes and forms urban history writing can take and will provide ample opportunity for further research of many sources. Discussing the forms urban history writing appears in supports a debate about typology and definition, which will enhance our understanding of history



* I want to thank Professor Graeme Small and all participants of the Bruges workshop ‘Towards new thinking in urban historiography’ for their helpful comments and suggestions on this paper. I would also like to thank Durham University, and especially the Department of History and the Institute for Medieval and Early Modern Studies for funding the research this paper is based on. 1 For example Peter Johanek, ‘Einleitung’, in Städtische Geschichtsschreibung im Spätmittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Peter Johanek (Köln: Böhlau, 2000), pp. vii–xix; Bunna Ebels-Hoving, ‘Nederlandse geschiedschrijving 1350–1530. Een poging tot karakterisering’, in Genoechlicke ende lustige historiën. Laatmiddeleeuwse geschiedschrijving in Nederland, ed. by Bunna Ebels-Hoving, Catrien G. Santing, and Karin Tilmans, Middeleeuwse studies en bronnen, 4 (Hilversum: Verloren, 1987), p. 225.

Urban History Writing in North-Western Europe (15th–16th centuries), ed. by Bram Caers, Lisa Demets and Tineke Van Gassen, SEUH 47 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 63–80. © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.SEUH-EB.5.117868

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writing and medieval perceptions of history. It will also demonstrate the wealth of material there is to find and how many sources previously discarded due to strict typologies are in need of proper study within this context. Views on urban history writing Articulating a widely shared vision, Peter Johanek in his 2000 work on urban history writing stated ‘dass es sich bei städtischer Geschichtsschreibung des Mittelalters um ein Gebiet der Historiographie handelt, das weitgehend auf die Städtewelt Italiens und des Reichs, einschliesslich jener Gebiete des östlichen Mitteleuropas beschränkt blieb, in denen der Einfluss deutscher Stadtrechte dominiert’.2 This quote shows well that the traditional understanding of what constitutes a ‘proper’ town chronicle was based on German and Italian city (state) examples. This is reflected in the publication of editions of many Italian and German urban chronicle texts, not least in series Die Chroniken der deutschen Städte that started in 1862 and continues until the present day. These edited texts are generally in a recognisable narrative chronicle style, ordered by chronology, and consist of a combination of copied material from older sources, such as (world) chronicles, and contemporary writings. However, this image is partly created through biased editing principles of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, favouring the publication of passages containing distinctly urban and hitherto unknown information. Recent research of the manuscripts, as Marco Tomaszewski’s article in this publication also shows, makes clear these editions were incomplete and more homogenous than the original manuscript sources. The view that there is a lack of urban history writing in the Low Countries has been reassessed in recent years after new research, although with AnneLaure Van Bruaene I recognize that what we call urban historiography in these regions exists in fewer and more diverse forms than in Germany or Italy.3 Van Bruaene’s work on the Memorieboeken (‘memory books’) of the city of Ghent, as well as Paul Trio’s work on chronicles of Ypres provide us with clear examples of Flemish urban history writing.4 Alongside this work there has been a great deal of research in the field of memory studies, and a range of sources (chronicle fragments, songs, archival material) have been discovered and interpreted from that perspective in recent years.5 For England no urban chronicles are recognized



2 Johanek, ‘Einleitung’, p. xiii. 3 Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, ‘L’écriture de la mémoire urbaine en Flandre et Brabant’, in Villes de Flandre et d’Italie (XIIIe–XVIe siècle): Les enseignements d’une comparaison, ed. by E. Crouzet-Pavan (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), pp. 149–64, especially p. 156. 4 More on these below. Paul Trio, ‘The Chronicle Attributed to “Olivier van Diksmuide”: a Misunderstood Town Chronicle of Ypres from Late Medieval Flanders’, The Medieval Chronicle V, ed. by Erik Kooper (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008), pp. 211–25; Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, De Gentse memorieboeken als spiegel van stedelijk historisch bewustzijn (14de tot 16de eeuw) (Ghent: Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent, 1998). 5 This article will not use the concept of social memory, because this concept focuses more on ideas than on form and materiality. Also, most of the sources I studied only exist in a single manuscript, which does not provide much information to discuss reception and social interaction and influence.

i t’s not j ust a bout chronicles

before the antiquarian histories and descriptions of towns in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. One generally acknowledged exception is the London Chronicles.6 Because the field of urban history writing in England is less well developed than its counterpart in Flanders, this paper will emphasize English sources and use the Flemish sources generally for comparison and context. Applying new ideas and approaches from historiographical research in Flanders to poorly studied English sources will increase our understanding of the extent and nature of medieval urban history writing in England. It is not only the traditional focus on Germany and Italy which has affected the study of medieval history writing in the Low Countries and England, the modern historiographical traditions of the countries themselves have also been influential. The interest in centralisation politics as well as a general historical emphasis on economic and political factors has given urban history a focus on political institutions and national narratives for a long time, leaving little attention for the local aspects of many historiographical sources. Antonia Gransden’s impressive two-volume Historical writing in England is an example of the impact of this regnal and national framework in English historical research. The overview of history writing is organized by monarchs and civil wars. This regnal framework does not allow for much thought about urban history writing that is relatively unconnected with national affairs or regnal politics. All chronicle writings from towns other than London are discussed, for example, in a single footnote.7 Although it is still one of the most thorough books on English town chronicles, Ralph Flenley’s 1911 Six town chronicles of England, was also written from a national perspective. Five of his six town chronicles are from London, which is unremarkable given his view on provincial town sources: ‘they have all the defects of the London chronicles, the narrow range, the limitation of form and poverty of expression, without the fullness, the participation in and





See for example: Frederik Buylaert, Jelle Haemers, Tjamke Snijders, and Stijn Villerius, ‘Politics, Social Memory and Historiography in Sixteenth-century Flanders: Towards a Research Agenda’, Publications du Centre Européen d’Études Bourguignonnes (XIVe–XVIe s.): Mémoires conflictuelles et mythes concurrents dans les pays bourguignons (ca 1380–1580), 52 (2012), 195–215. Jelle Haemers, ‘Social Memory and Rebellion in Fifteenth-century Ghent’, Social History, 36 (2011), 4, 443–63. Frederik Buylaert, ‘Memory, Social Mobility and Historiography. Shaping Noble Identity in the Bruges Chronicle of Nicholas Despars (†1597)’, Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis, 87 (2010), 377–408. Jan Dumolyn and Jelle Haemers, ‘Political Poems and Subversive Songs. The Circulation of “Public Poetry” in the Late Medieval Low Countries’, Journal of Dutch Literature, 5 (2014),1, 1–22. Jelle Haemers, ‘Geletterd Verzet. Diplomatiek, politiek en herinneringscultuur van opstandelingen in de laatmiddeleeuwse en vroegmoderne stad (casus: Gent en Brugge)’, Handelingen van de Koninklijke Commissie voor Geschiedenis, 176 (2010), 5–54. 6 See for the most recent study: Mary-Rose McLaren, The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century: a Revolution in English Writing. With an Annotated Edition of Bradford, West Yorkshire Archives MS 32D86/42 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002). This paper will only comment on the London Chronicles very briefly below, as they have been studied in depth already and the point of this paper is to extend our understanding of urban historical sources, rather than focus extensively on one particular town. 7 Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England, 2 vols (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), II, p. 227, note 47.

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knowledge of events of national interest, and the comparatively clear field which go to make the London chronicles of value for English history’.8 Fortunately, Flenley still makes the effort to mention many urban historiographical sources, such as Bristol, Yarmouth, King’s Lynn, Chester, Shrewsbury, Norwich and Coventry, although often without clear references.9 The second aspect that shaped research in urban history was the strong focus on political and institutional history. Recent years have seen greater attention paid to ceremony, space and ideology, and the field of memory studies, which opens up new research questions, quite distinct from older studies which looked at chronicles to discover ‘facts’.10 These older historical traditions have remained influential for decades, in both English and Flemish historiography, because much of later research has been based on nineteenth-century editions. However, now that scholars have returned to look at the manuscripts, the limitations of those editions have become clear. The chronicle of Olivier van Dixmude, for example, has always been described and studied as a chronicle of Flanders. Comparison of the edition to the manuscript text has shown that the local information on the town of Ypres, in Flanders, was excluded from the edition, as well as the lists of magistrates which formed the very structure for the historical notes.11 A similar example of how this national and political focus has shaped historical research in England is the 1871 edition of the The Maire of Bristowe is Kalendar from Bristol, a text I will discuss in greater detail below.12 In the edition we are told that the early parts of the chronicle, which include an urban foundation story, are excluded because of their limited value, as well as the early chronicle entries in the mayoral lists.13 Until Peter Fleming took an interest in the Kalendar, all writing on this very interesting text was based on the nineteenth-century edition.14 8 Ralph Flenley, Six Town Chronicles of England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), p. 27. 9 Flenley, Six Town Chronicles of England, pp. 28–35. 10 For example Élodie Lecuppre-Desjardin, La ville des cérémonies. Essai sur la communication politique dans les anciens Pays-Bas Bourguignons (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004). Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, ‘The Habsburg theatre state. Court city, and the performance of identity in the early modern southern Low Countries’, in Networks, regions and nations. Shaping identities in the Low Countries, 1300–1650, ed. by Robert Stein & Judith Pollmann (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 131–49. Marc Boone and Peter Stabel (eds.), Shaping Urban Identity in Late Medieval Europe (Leuven; Apeldoorn: Garant, 2000). Andrew Brown, Civic Ceremony and Religion in Medieval Bruges c. 1300–1520 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 11 This research could be done because of the find of a more accurate nineteenth-century copy of the original manuscript in the Courtrai Town Library. The original manuscript has unfortunately been lost with most of the Ypres City Archives in 1914. Trio, ‘Misunderstood Town Chronicle’, pp. 211–20. Olivier Van Dixmude, Merkwaerdige gebeurtenissen, vooral in Vlaenderen en Brabant, en ook in de aengrenzende landstreken: van 1377 tot 1443, ed. by Jean-Jacques Lambin (Ypres: Lambin, 1835). The edition of Pieter van de Letewe’s Ypres chronicle is also incomplete: Pieter van de Letewe, Vernieuwing der wet van Ypre van het jaer 1443 tot 1480, met het geene daer binnen dezen tyd geschiet is, ed. by Isodore Diegerick (Ypres: Lafonteyne, 1863). 12 Robert Ricart, The Maire of Bristowe Is Kalendar, ed. by Lucy Toulmin Smith, Camden Society New Series, 5 (London: Camden Society, 1872). 13 Ricart, Kalendar, pp. xxi and 26. 14 See below, note 55.

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There is no widespread agreement on exact definitions of town chronicles, but common elements can be specified. Du Boulay’s article on German town chroniclers and Van Houts’ publication on typology both specify a writer from, or based in, the town, and a geographical focus on events in and relevant to the town as the two core elements of their definitions.15 Stein and Van Bruaene use definitions based on previous literature on German and Italian chronicles and, next to these points, also emphasize the involvement of the town government.16 Schmid adds that next to content, form, or author ‘the main defining element is the audience’.17 This focus on social context is extended in the recent publication of Jan Dumolyn and Lisa Demets, where the geographical and ideological focus of the contents but mainly the social milieu of authorship, ownership and audience define the ‘urbanity’ of the work.18 These attempts at definition all discuss how to measure the ‘urban’ part of ‘urban chronicle’, but do not explicitly comment on what forms can be named ‘chronicles’.19 After Van Bruane’s work on the Ghent Memorieboeken and Trio’s new interpretation of the Ypres chronicles showed that urban history writing existed in Flanders, but maybe took on different shapes compared to the stereotypical forms known from German and Italian towns, many different sources have been studied and implicitly recognized as history writing.20 However, because most of this has been done in a context of social memory studies, with an emphasis on reception, not much discussion about form has taken place.21 To facilitate wider discussion of urban history writing in different areas the recognition of common or shared forms, or the lack thereof, is important. This will enhance both the ongoing recognition of urban history writing in England and the Low Countries, as well as a new comparison with German and Italian forms.

15 Francis R. H. Du Boulay, ‘The German Town Chroniclers’, in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages. Essays Presented to Richard William Southern, ed. by R. H. C. Davis and others (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 445–70. Elisabeth M. C. Van Houts, Local and Regional Chronicles, Typologie des Sources du Moyen Âge Occidental, 74 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995). 16 Robert Stein, ‘Selbstverständnis oder Identität? Städtische Geschichtsschreibung als Quelle für die Identitätsforschung’, in Memoria, communitas, civitas. Mémoire et conscience urbaines en Occident à la fin du Moyen Âge, ed. by H. Brand, P. Monnet and M. Staub (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2003), pp. 181–202 (pp. 182–3). Van Bruaene, ‘L’écriture’, p. 151. 17 R. Schmid, ‘Town Chronicles’, in Encyclopaedia of the Medieval Chronicle, ed. by Graeme Dunphy, 2 vols (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2010), II, pp. 1432–1437 (p. 1432). 18 Lisa Demets and Jan Dumolyn, ‘Urban Chronicle Writing in Late Medieval Flanders: The Case of Bruges During the Flemish Revolt of 1482–1490’, Urban History, 43 (2016), 1, 28–45. 19 For a discussion of the definition of the general term ‘chronicle’, not necessarily in an urban context, see for example David Dumville, ‘What Is a Chronicle?’, The Medieval Chronicle, II (2002), 1–27 and Bernard Guenée, Histoire et culture historique dans l’Occident médiéval (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1980) and Bernard Guenée, ‘Histoires, annales, chroniques. Essai sur les genres historiques au Moyen Âge’, Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations, 28 (1973), 4, 997–1016. 20 For examples see above footnote 5. 21 Jan Dumolyn and co–authors note the lack of a dominant genre and give some Flemish examples of types of text in the discussion of the context of production of these texts. Jan Dumolyn, Johan Oosterman, Tjamke Snijders, Stijn Villerius, ‘Rewriting Chronicles in an Urban Environment. The Middle Dutch “Excellent Chronicle of Flanders” Tradition’, Lias, 41 (2014), 2, 85–116 (pp. 96–97). Demets and Dumolyn, ‘Urban Chronicle Writing’, pp. 30–32.

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It will be evident that any search for ‘traditional’ medieval chronicles, showing the characteristics of well-studied examples from Germany or Italy, will produce very few results in England or the Low Countries. My intention therefore is to study written evidence of historical culture in towns. This concept has been used successfully by Bernard Guenée and, more recently, Daniel Woolf, in connection to history writing.22 Histories do not stand by themselves in a society, but are fundamentally intertwined with the social context they come from. The study of history writing implies the study of the social background of both author and audience. Also, history writing is one form of a sense and understanding of the past that is communicated in many other ways within the same society. According to Daniel Woolf ‘a historical culture consists of habits of thought, languages, and media of communication, and patterns of social convention that embrace elite and popular, narrative and non-narrative modes of discourse’.23 By ‘historical culture’ I understand not merely writing, and definitely not merely ‘traditional’ chronicles, as we know them from some German towns. Historical culture can include urban symbols and ceremonies and material and oral culture, although the focus here will be on textual evidence. Therefore, I am interested in all sorts of historical texts, texts which portray a historical consciousness, whether they are long narrative stories from creation until the present day, short lists of civic officials with a few notes, or even plays with historical characters. To illustrate the wide range of historical texts, I will give an example of how many different forms can be found in one place, Bristol, but first consider a number of common types of sources in both England and Flanders. Just as the ‘urban chronicle’ has proven too restrictive a categorization in the past, any neat typology will fail to provide entirely effective descriptions. All types of sources described here exist in both pure and more commonly, in hybrid forms, and both are equally carriers of historical culture. In search of forms of urban history writing There are many different documents I have found to be common in English and Flemish towns that can portray a sense of history. To facilitate discussion in this paper, I have categorized these in three types. The typology here is primarily based on material form and lay-out and geographical scope of the contents. The function of the text, and its social context of production, ownership and reception is not incorporated here.24 Although of great interest, this article does not have the scope to discuss these. The aim of the current description is to show the amount of sources 22 Guenée, Histoire et culture historique; Daniel R. Woolf, The Social Circulation of the Past: English Historical Culture 1500–1730 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Anne-Laure Van Bruaene does not use the term ‘historical culture’, but her approach allows for a similar broader view on history writing, see Van Bruaene, ‘L’écriture’. 23 Woolf, Social Circulation, p. 9. 24 See also Hans-Werner Goetz, Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsbewusstsein im hohen Mittelalter (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2008), pp. 110–14 on the different criteria applied to distinguish between genres in medieval history writing.

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available as well as making a comparison possible between English, Flemish and even German and Italian sources. The below account of these categories, mainly using English examples, is intentionally descriptive, as it would be counter-productive to set specific requirements and strict limitations for these genres and create new boundaries within the broader framework of historical culture. The three categories used here are custumals, annotated mayoral lists and the personal chronicle or common-place book. Custumals, or registers, are common throughout our period, but it is not always easy to see them as historical works. Annotated mayoral lists are more obviously historiographical, and close to sources traditionally described as annals. From the mid-sixteenth century, these lists increase considerably in numbers in towns all over the country, but early examples are not very common. ‘Traditional’ chronicles, whether of a town or simply owned by an urban citizen, are even rarer. I will discuss these three categories in more detail. Firstly, the term custumal needs to be introduced in this context. Custumals are collections of administrative documents, such as charters, decrees, ordinances, and other documents, collected and copied into one volume to be easily accessible for the town clerk and the town government.25 Both the collection of administrative documents itself and the inclusion of evidently historical texts in some cases give us evidence of the historical culture of the town. Custumals were written in the context of the town administration and are often still found in town archives. Another term commonly used for this type of book is register. This type differs from cartularies in their collection of a much broader range of documents and they differ from minute books because they contain deliberately copied material, not drafts of every-day administrative work.26 Oaths and election processes of civic officials, as well as some town charters, were almost always included as they formed the very core of civic government and were needed on a yearly basis. A list of kings of England is a national element included in many of the English custumals. Other elements which also concern national politics are elections of Members of Parliament and charters, letters and royal demands. The lists of the kings of England are also the most easily recognizable historical element, as are some of the oldest charters. The large majority of entries in this type of urban document are mainly of administrative nature. Some have a juridical function, such as the charters explaining liberties received from the king or local landlord, deeds or royal decrees. For these sorts of items, the custumal functions as evidence and precedent book to be able to show and defend the town’s rights. Custumals function at the same time as an aide-mémoire of all the civic rules, such 25 This separates the genre from other government documents, such as council minutes etc. which were copied continuously and concurrently. See The York House Books 1461–1490, ed. by Lorraine C. Attreed, 2 vols (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1991), I, pp. xiii–xiv and Graeme Small, ‘Municipal Registers of Deliberations in the late Middle Ages: Cross-Channel Comparisons’, in Les idées passent-elles la Manche?, ed. by Jean-Philippe Genêt and François-Joseph Ruggiu (Paris: Presses universitaires de la Sorbonne, 2007), pp. 50–51. 26 Raoul C. Van Caenegem, Guide to the Sources of Medieval History, Europe in the Middle Ages. Selected Studies, 2 (Amsterdam; New York; Oxford: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1979), pp. 76–82.

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as the processes for the election of civic officers, oaths to be taken, and rentals and deeds about local properties. In addition to this, some custumals contain small narrative accounts on events in the more or less distant past. Custumals were relatively cheap and functional books, and there is usually no decoration or rubrication. Because they were generally kept for decades after the initial scribe’s contribution, the outlook of a custumal can be quite messy, with many different hands of different dates combined on the pages where later scribes saw a little opening to pen down later contributions. The main type of entry or focus of the book is therefore also possible to shift over the time of its use, when other court books or mayor’s minutes took over some of the functions of the register. In most towns the book was not known by the term custumal, but by its appearance, as we know of Oak or Parchment Books, and many Black, White or Red Books. It is also not uncommon for towns to have several of these in use at the same time. Bristol’s town administration kept a Great White Book, a Great Red Book and a Little Red Book. Colchester had both a Red Parchment and a Red Paper Book that were used more or less simultaneously in the town administration. This genre of White Books, Red Books etc. existed also in the Low Countries and France.27 The Ghent Archives for example contain many registers such as White and Green Books. However, a range of similar documents survived under alternative names. A more particular Ghent example of the custumal genre would be the fifteenth-century Dagboek van Gent (‘Diary of Ghent’).28 This register, which is the subject of Tineke Van Gassen’s contribution in this publication, is also a combination of copied administrative documents and additional narrative. It is however different from many English custumals in that it seems to have been written with a single storyline in mind, for which relevant documents from the town archive were used. Although many registers are started because of a political reason, this is usually not as evident as the diplomatic negotiations of the Diary of Ghent. Registers in town administrations were often started when a change in government or town privileges occurred, but they collected a wider range of material over the years.29 Register 298 from Haarlem in Holland is closer to the English forms of these registers. Next to overviews of charters and privileges, several peace agreements, ordinances given by the Counts of Holland

27 For example Marco Mostert and Anna Adamska (eds.), Writing and the Administration of Medieval Towns, 2 vols (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), I, pp. 1–10. 28 Ghent, State Archives, Fonds Gent, 158. Edition: Dagboek van Gent van 1447 tot 1470 met een vervolg van 1477 tot 1515, ed. by Victor Fris (Ghent: Annoot-Braeckman, 1901–04). 29 Examples include the Little Domesday book of Ipswich which was written after documents were lost, see Richard Percyvale, The Great Domesday Book of Ipswich: liber sextus, ed. by C. H. Evelyn White (Ipswich: Pawsey & Hayes, 1885); the Oath Book of Colchester written when problems arose after the 1372 New Constitution, see R. H. Britnell, ‘The Oath Book of Colchester and the Borough Constitution, 1372–1404’, Essex Archaeology and History, xiv (1982), 94–101; the Bristol Kalendar written in commission of the mayor after the town pledged allegiance to the wrong side during the Wars of the Roses, see Peter Fleming (ed.), The Maire of Bristowe is Kalendar, Bristol Record Society’s Publications, 67 (Bristol: Bristol Record Society, 2015), pp. 3–5. This same publication also describes the production of a Great Charter Roll in Waterford in the fourteenth century to assemble evidence for a dispute between the town and New Ross, see p. 7.

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and a conversion table of coins, it also contains a poem on the Nine Worthies, a short chronicle of Holland and a short chronicle of Haarlem.30 Custumals are a very distinct type of administrative document, one that was used to record the highlights of civic political and juridical life in an administrative way.31 It is a document in which the authors, usually town secretaries, clerks or civic officials, noted down the (administrative) events in civic history which made the town how it was in their own days and which they thought were essential for future generations to remember and have recorded. These registers can therefore be seen as sharing important characteristics with, for example, the texts generally referred to as Stadtbücher or Ratsbücher in Germany. Early examples of these also originated in the context of the civic administration and similarly contained privileges, charters, lists of freemen or civic officials in between which ‘chronicle’ entries on important events in the city found a place.32 Not all registers that can be placed in the category of custumals are useful in this study. The Sandwich Custumal, for example, is a well-known text, extant in several copies from the fourteenth century onwards, but it does not contain any chronicles or annals, nor does it give us any information about the passing of time, the importance of history or the way time or the past was recorded.33 It is a purely administrative book written down in one sitting, without references to the past, lists to show the past or continuation into the present or any given dates. How do we discuss these custumals, made mainly for administrative purposes, in the context of history writing? They are evidently not history books, so in what ways do they contain a civic sense of history? Chronicles and history books have more obvious ways to commemorate the past or express a sense of history, however other texts and registers display some of these elements as well. As we have noted, many of these registers contain for example a list of English kings. Examples of this can be found in the Colchester Oath Book on fols 19r–v, where the calendar year, the name of the king, the years of his reign and his place of burial is given.34 Another example is on fol. 17 of the Black Book of Winchester, now in the British Library.35 This list stars with Aluredus, who is said to have been the first king of the entire kingdom of England, and continues to Henry VI in one hand. Consecutive monarchs are added until Mary I in later hands. Two local comments on St. Swinthunus interrupt the list. The Great Domesday Book 30 Noord-Hollands Archief, City Archives Haarlem, Register 928. Peter Bakker describes an example of a similar volume from Kampen in his article in this publication. 31 Esther Liberman Cuenca, ‘Town clerks and the authorship of custumals in medieval England’, Urban History, 46 (2019), 2, 180-201. 32 Heinrich Schmidt, Die Deutschen Städtechroniken als Spiegel des bürgerlichen Selbstverständnisses im Spätmittelalter (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1958), pp. 21–22; Gerhart Burger, Die Südwestdeutschen Stadtschreiber im Mittelalter (Böblingen: Verlag Wilhelm Schlecht’sche Buchdruckerei, 1960), pp. 189–91; Van Bruaene, ‘L’écriture’, pp. 156–57. 33 Kent Archives, within ref. Sa/LC. 34 Essex Record Office, D/B 5 R1. Edition: The Oath Book or Red Parchment Book of Colchester, ed. and transl. by W. Gurney Benham (Colchester: Essex County Standard Office, 1907). 35 British Library, Add MS 6036. Edition: The Black Book of Winchester (British Musuem, Additional Ms. 6036), ed. by W. H. B. Bird (Winchester: Warren, 1925).

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of Ipswich from 1520 contains verses on the English kings starting with William the Conqueror.36 This is a lot more elaborate than just a list of names, as every king and his deeds are described in a seven-line stanza. The verses do not forget to state the duration of every king’s reign. Henry VI is again the last king to be mentioned. The origin of these verses is attributed to the English monk and poet Lydgate.37 Such lists of English kings can be seen as an expression of a sense of history. The possible administrative purposes of these texts should not be forgotten, considering the administrative context we find them in. However, the fact that these lists start with very early kings, mythical ones even, and that no calendar years are given, meant they have limited value as administrative dating tables. The length of the reign of every king is carefully added, and sometimes the place of burial is provided too. These aspects enhance the focus on a sense of continuity from the past and the long history of the English monarchy. The chronicle of Colchester featuring King Coel and the adapted and summarized Brut chronicle in the Bristol Kalendar with King Brennius, both providing origin myths discussed in more detail below, are however more obvious examples of historical texts, which show an easily recognized presence of historical consciousness. Next to the fragments of explicitly historical material in these registers, the very existence of these custumals is also a portrayal of historical culture. The specific collection of charters, privileges and other administrative documents draws a picture of the town’s past in itself. Through these collections we see the major events in the distant and recent past from the town’s perspective. A second category consists of the annotated lists of magistrates. In England this usually takes the form of a list of mayors, whereas in Flanders the names of the schepenen (‘aldermen’) are generally recorded. This category is easier to recognize as historical writing, even though these may relate more closely to what might be thought of as annals rather than chronicles. Mayoral lists become quite widespread from the late sixteenth century onwards, but in the previous century they occur less frequently.38 However, the only group of texts generally accepted as urban history writing in England is written according to this format. The London Chronicles are a large group of documents from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and their very identification is based on their form by Mary-Rose McLaren in her 2002 study: ‘Although they are diverse, the manuscripts are classed together as London chronicles because they share a structural form. It is usual for the manuscripts to 36 Suffolk Record Office, C/4/1/4, fols 237v–239v. Richard Percyvale, The Great Domesday Book of Ipswich; Liber Sextus: With an Introduction to the Entire Volume, Full Notes, and a Commentary … by … C. H. Evelyn White., ed. by C. H. Evelyn White (Ipswich: Pawsey and Hayes, 1885), pp. 30–36. Bristol’s Maire’s Kalendar also includes two-line verses on the English kings of an unknown origin. 37 Compare Lydgate’s rhymed royal stanzas ‘Verses on the Kings of England’, Alain Renoir and C. David Benson, ‘John Lydgate’, in A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050–1500, ed. by Albert E. Hartung, 11 vols (New Haven: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1980), VI, pp. 1809–1920 (pp. 1864–65). 38 D.R. Woolf, ‘Genre into artefact: the decline of the English chronicle in the sixteenth century’, The Sixteenth Century Jounal, 19 (1988), 3, 321-354.

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begin at 1189 and to date by mayoral years, giving accounts of events under the names of the mayors and sheriffs in any given year.’39 York also has a list of the mayor selected each year from 1272 to 1515.40 This Latin text precedes the lists of freemen accepted annually in York for the years 1272–1671. Next to the mayors, elections and details of office of some of the other civic officials, such as the sword bearer and the town clerk, are provided. The text known as the Coventry Annals is another good example of the type.41 The oldest version of these annals is on a parchment roll from circa 1462 and covers the period 1346–1462. A paragraph above the annals gives the number and names of past English kings. Then follow the mayors’ names (without regnal or calendar years) with notes of national and local interest. The Kent Archives contain several examples of lists of mayors from the town of Sandwich. Although most of them are from a later date, they may well go back to originals from the fifteenth century.42 Another example of lists in a simple form, with a few annotations, are the rolls with Lincoln’s mayors.43 Two early sixteenth-century lists and one seventeenth-century copy feature regnal years with the corresponding Lincoln mayor and bailiffs or sheriffs, as well as comments on local and national events under several years. One of these lists is also preceded by a paragraph giving the names of both legendary and historical kings of England. A final English example comes from the city of Bristol, which also has a similar text in the Maire’s Kalendar (a work I will elaborate on below), written in the fifteenth century by the town clerk Robert Ricart.44 This barely retains the lay-out of a list anymore. The names of the mayors are given for every year (with one or two provosts, bailiffs or sheriffs, depending on the year), with both the calendar year and the regnal year in the margin and empty space underneath available for notes. The lay-out is designed to cover two years per page, even if there are no entries for those years. The first entry is of the year 1217, allegedly the year of Bristol’s first mayor, but the list was continued till the end of the nineteenth century by Ricart and his successors as town clerk. The lay-out of this work makes clear it was meant to be used for note-taking, rather than to provide a list of the names of the magistrates. Lists of magistrates are also a regularly occurring format for historical texts in Flanders. A well-studied example of such lists which eventually turn into more

39 McLaren, The London Chronicles, p. 4. 40 York, City Archives, Y/COU/3/1. 41 Finch-Knightley of Packington Hall MSS, LH1/1. Edition: Peter Fleming, Coventry and the Wars of the Roses, Dugdale Society Occasional Papers, 50 (Stratford-upon-Avon: Dugdale Society in association with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, 2011). 42 This is suggested by two extant copies that both start with the year 1415 and give information for almost every year thereafter. Considering the writers were writing or copying the surviving lists at least a century later an earlier source is highly likely. Kent Archives, Sa/LC9 and Sa/ZB5. 43 J. W. F. Hill, ‘Three Lists of Mayors, Bailiffs and Sheriffs of the City of Lincoln’, Associated Architectural Societies Reports and Papers, 39 (1929), 217–56. Lincolnshire Archives, Dioc/Misc Rolls/1. 44 Bristol Record Office, CC/2/7, the mayoral list begins on fol. 60r and occupies the third, but also sections of the fourth, fifth and sixth parts of the book. Ricart, Kalendar, pp. 25–68.

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narrative town chronicles, but start from a limited amount of notes added to the lists of schepenen in the fifteenth century, are the above-mentioned Memorieboeken of Ghent.45 Forty-two manuscripts of these registers (the name memory book was a nineteenth-century title) are extant, dating from the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries. The focus and structure of these texts are the lists of the aldermen, usually starting with the lists of 1301, the year of a charter granting Ghent a new election system.46 The extant manuscripts from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries contain few notes, and all of them are added in the margins or at the bottom of the page, but the chronicle entries become more and more elaborate and can fill several pages for a single year in manuscripts in later centuries. These registers were used both in the official context of Ghent’s town administration and by private citizens. Also already mentioned above were the works attributed to Olivier van Dixmude and Pieter van de Letewe from Ypres.47 They are often given as examples of regional chronicles, due to incomplete nineteenth-century editions. However, their form is similar to the Ghent Memorieboeken in origin because they too have a structure ‘dominated by the records concerning the Ypres aldermen’.48 The third category I want to mention in this broad overview is the one closest to the ‘traditional’ chronicle. There are a few commonplace books or chronicles that are interesting in this respect, for example, William Asshebourne’s book from King’s Lynn.49 This is a personal notebook of William, the common clerk of the town in the early fifteenth century. He records and collects mainly administrative documents on his town, such as important civic ordinances and precedents for court cases, but no explicitly historical information. There is also a text known as the chronicle of King’s Lynn, of which Flenley published a short edition in his 1911 book on city chronicles.50 This text covers the period between 1477 and 1542 and contains a very ‘traditional’ chronicle content of royal marriages, deaths and births, international wars and politics, extraordinary celestial events, prices of foodstuffs, local building works, and also the local struggle of legal procedures of the town against the bishop. According to Flenley, this text was based on Fabyan’s Chronicle with added notes on local and some other international events. It is interesting though that the Bodleian manuscript of which this chronicle is part is

45 Van Bruaene, De Gentse memorieboeken. 46 Jacoba van Leeuwen, De Vlaamse wetsvernieuwing: een onderzoek naar de jaarlijkse keuze en aanstelling van het stadsbestuur in Gent, Brugge en Ieper in de middeleeuwen (Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, 2004), pp. 32-36. 47 See above, note 11. The edition of Van Dixmude’s chronicle omitted the lists of magistrates, although the structure of magistrates lists is provided in the otherwise incomplete edition of Pieter van de Letewe’s work: Van de Letewe, Vernieuwing der wet van Ypre. 48 Trio, ‘Misunderstood Town Chronicle’, p. 217. 49 King’s Lynn Corporation Archives 10/2. Edition: The Records of a Commission of Sewers for Wiggenhall, 1319–1324 / William Asshebourne’s Book, ed. by A. E. B. Owen and Dorothy Mary Owen, Norfolk Record Society, 48 (Norwich: Norfolk Record Society, 1981). 50 Bodleian Library, Top. Norfolk C2. Edition: Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, pp. 84–95 and 184–201. British Library, Add MS 8937 is a seventeenth-century version of the list of King’s Lynn magistrates, but the content of the annotations is different.

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a composite manuscript which is a collection of administrative documents from Norfolk. Some elements of this source therefore overlap with characteristics of the above-mentioned custumals. It is very interesting to see again how common this sort of context is for English urban sources. The Red Paper Book and the Oath Book of Colchester, two works I would label custumals, show one of the problems names and labels give. Both contain a little ‘chronicle’ according to Richard Britnell, who studied Colchester extensively. However, although I agree with him that both sources contain very interesting historical parts, the two texts he names chronicles are extremely different. In the Red Paper Book Britnell identifies a chronicle of 1372–78.51 This refers to several pages with narrative entries in a single hand focussing on the deeds of bailiff William Reyne during his time in office. Next to that it contains the oaths to be sworn by the civic officials, notes on elections and comments on the wool market and royal taxes. This part does not look very different from the rest of the custumal book, which has similar entries. The entries are also entirely about administrative events, although they are told from the bailiff ’s point of view and the good reign of this particular bailiff is explicitly praised. In the Colchester Oath Book, after two lists of kings of England, a page-anda-half-long text describes the earliest history of the city of Colchester, deriving its name from the legendary King Coel.52 This text is laid out in two columns with the calendar year on the left of the page and the corresponding entry next to it. The thirty short entries are roughly chronological, although those from the eleventh until the thirteenth centuries are not always in chronological order, very probably because they were copied in sections from different sources. This text gives a very interesting early history of Colchester, connecting the town in just three generations to ‘rex britonnum fortissimus’, the most powerful King of the Britons, King Coel, his daughter Saint Helena, who retrieved the Holy Cross, and her son Roman Emperor Constantine who brought Christianity to Europe. Not a bad ancestry for a town! These are two very different texts; both referred to in the literature as chronicles. Both represent a sense of history about and in the city of Colchester. Even this very short chronicle opens up many questions on the spread of the Colchester foundation story among the general public of the city, its origins, the political message it contains and the reasons and purposes for writing it down in an otherwise administrative book. Together with the chronicle in the Maire’s Kalendar from Bristol, these sources demonstrate the inaccuracy of the idea that England does not know any urban history writing, and how much information we lose out on when all these sources are not properly studied.

51 Essex Record Office, D/B 5 R2, fols 5v–10v. Edition: The Red Paper Book of Colchester, ed. by W. Gurney Benham (Colchester: Essex County Standard Office, 1902), pp. 10–13. R.H. Britnell, Growth and decline in Colchester, 1300-1525 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), chapter 8. R.H. Britnell, ‘The Oath Book of Colchester and the Borough Constitution, 1372-1404’, Essex Archaeology and History: Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society, xiv (1982), 94-101. 52 Essex Record Office, D/B 5 R1, fol. 20r-v.

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If we shift our focus again to Flanders, similar sources in this third category can be found here too. The number of ‘proper’ chronicles in Flanders is higher. Het Boeck van al ‘t gene datter geschiedt is binnen Brugghe (‘The Book of all that happened within Bruges’) is one example.53 It starts with events from 1477 and describes the following rebellious years of Bruges until it ends mid-sentence in 1491. The anonymous author gives accounts of processions, executions, royal entries and all the political and practical issues connected to the war efforts of the rebellious 1480s in the town. Throughout all his descriptions the focus is very much on the town itself, for example, the moment of actual peace agreements is not recorded, but rather the moment it was announced in Bruges. A later example is the Chronijcke van Ghendt drawn up in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by several authors but known as Jan van den Vivere’s chronicle.54 Although this text is not based on the structure of magistrates lists, it does start with an account of the customs and privileges according to which the magistrates were chosen in the city of Ghent. This theme was evidently very important for Flemish city writers. The example of Bristol Next to the more isolated examples given above, we will now have a look at sources in one specific English town. Bristol is, after London, the city with possibly the most generous urban historiographical source material. I will give a quick sketch of the extant sources there to provide an example of the extent of a single town’s historiographical accounts. The pride of the town, or at least of the city archives at the Bristol Record Office, is The Maire of Bristowe is Kalendar. So much so that its illustrations now decorate the walls of the modern Record Office. However, in academic circles the manuscript has attracted remarkably little attention, until Peter Fleming took an interest in it in recent years (although much of his work is on the political stance of the Kalendar in the Wars of the Roses as well).55 The Maire’s Kalendar is a large book, still in its original binding, which was mostly written by Robert Ricart, Bristol’s town clerk. It was composed at the request of the mayor, in the years from 1479 onwards and is divided into six parts, of which the first three parts can be seen as a chronicle.56 The text starts

53 Brussels, Royal Library, 13167–13169. Edition: Het boeck van al ‘t gene datter gheschiedt is binnen Brugghe, sichtent Jaer 1477, 14. februarii, tot 1491, ed. by Charles Louis Carton (Ghent: C. AnnootBraeckman, 1859). 54 Jan van den Vivere, Chronijcke van Ghendt, ed. by Frans De Potter (Ghent: S. Leliaert, 1885). 55 Peter Fleming has published a new partial edition to complete the 1872 edition: Fleming (ed.), The Maire of Bristowe is Kalendar. Further: Peter Fleming, ‘Politics and the Provincial Town: Bristol, 1451–1471’, in People, Places and Perspectives. Essays on Later Medieval & Early Tudor England in Honour of Ralph A. Griffiths, ed. by Keith Dockray and Peter Fleming (Stroud: Nonsuch Publishing, 2005), pp. 79–114; Peter Fleming, ‘Making History: Culture, Politics and the Maire of Bristowe Is Kalendar’, in Reputation and Representation in Fifteenth-century Europe, ed. by Douglas L. Biggs, Sharon D. Michalove, and Albert Compton Reeves (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2004), pp. 287–316. 56 For a more elaborate description see Peter Fleming, ‘A New Look at the Maire of Bristowe Is Kalendar’, The Regional Historian, 9 (2002), 17–23 and Fleming, ‘Making History’.

i t’s not j ust a bout chronicles

with a very interesting history of the begynnyng and first foundacion of the saide worshipfull Toune, describing a Trojan ancestry for Bristol.57 This first part is mostly based on the Anglo-Norman Brut chronicle, with a few added lines to the ancient foundation of the city of Bristol by the mythological King Brennius. The structure is formed by the dynasty of Brutus and his descendants as well as the list of towns they found. Part 2 continues the chronicle from 1066 to 1216, and is taken mostly from Matthew Paris’ Flores Historiarum (although heavily summarized). Whereas the first part had the clear aim of giving Bristol a place in the earliest history of Britain and putting it on a par with other towns, such as York, this second part is seemingly without a clear local agenda and follows national events, although a little information on local buildings (foundations of Bristol Castle and abbeys) and a summarized twelfth-century charter of King John are incorporated. The structure of this chronicle is formed very clearly by the reigns of the kings of England. Not only are the years counted in that way rather than using calendar years Anno Domini, the start of every reign is marked by a half-page image of the king. In Part 3 this practice continues, although instead of regnal years, the years are noted primarily by mayors’ names. This chronicle gives a list of city officials from 1217, the year of the first mayor in Bristol, but becomes more and more elaborate towards the middle of the fifteenth century, when it approaches Ricart’s own time. This part contains local comments and comments about London, the weather, prices, mayors, trade, gossip; all subjects we associate with comments in a ‘traditional’ chronicle. Part 4 then contains customs of the town, such as oaths, election of mayors, and a civic calendar. Part 5 is announced as containing the Bristol charters, although in reality it is just a copy of the incorporation charter of 1373 from the Little Red Book. A copy of a London custumal forms the final part, which is significant because it shows Bristol was (or wanted to be) ruled in a similar way as the capital. Several other calendars were produced in Bristol after Ricart’s and in addition both a Little and a Great Red Book of Bristol survive as well as a Great White Book.58 These contain, in a thematic rather than chronological way, administrative records of the city, such as deeds, wills, and rentals about the town’s land; ordinances and licenses to trade; letters between the town, the abbot and the king about the conflict over power in the town etc. In addition to this, and in a very different genre of sources, both the Itineraries and especially the Topography of Bristol by William Worcestre provide local information.59 Worcestre, although active in the second half of the fifteenth century, is often characterized as an antiquarian writer, 57 Ricart, Kalendar, pp. 8–10. 58 The Little Red Book of Bristol, ed. by Francis B. Bickley, 2 vols (Bristol; London: W. C. Hemmons; H. Sotheran, 1900); The Great Red Book of Bristol, ed. by E. W. W. Veale, Bristol Record Society’s Publications, 2 (Bristol: Bristol Record Society, 1931); The Great White Book of Bristol, ed. by Elizabeth Ralph, Bristol Record Society’s Publications, 32 (Bristol: Bristol Record Society, 1979). 59 Worcestre’s Itineraries says little on Bristol, but does give information on other towns, such as Oxford, Yarmouth and Bury St. Edmunds. William Worcester, William Worcestre: The Topography of Medieval Bristol, ed. by Frances Neale, Bristol Record Society’s Publications, 51 (Bristol: Bristol Record Society, 2000); William Worcester, Itineraries, ed. by John Harvey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969).

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who paid more attention to buildings and measurements than a chronological story. His Topography does include some extracts from chronicles and notes on the history or previous ownership of buildings in Bristol, but he did not set out to write a history of Bristol. This short overview of Bristol’s historical sources gives an example of how many urban texts there can be found in English town archives that are extremely interesting and productive to study in the context of urban historical culture. Bristol is not the only English town with such a range of different sources, although most urban city archives are not as lucky as Bristol in the extent of surviving material. Many urban sources have been studied only from a political or administrative point of view in which the content of the sources was used, but have not been the focus of historiographical study themselves. Deliberate selections of historical material can be found in many types of sources, including administrative documents. To look at urban sources in search of the sense of history they portray and the comparison of many different sources of many different towns will be a valuable contribution to the current state of research. The Bristol Kalendar is a large investment of time and effort, taken by the town clerk, in commission of the mayor. The aim of this work seems to have been to commemorate the past, but in a specific way as to at the same time come to terms with and rewrite history of loyalties of the town in the last century that did not play out so well. Fleming calls it a ‘practical guide’ for civic officers to defend their town’s liberties in the future.60 It definitely is a statement of the high status of the town, through the past, and through connections with the capital, although it is not detailed enough to really be seen as a precedent book for privileges or court cases. The mythical founders of the town, Kings and brothers Brennius and Belinus, are still watching over Bristol from St. John’s gate. We have accounts of the entry of Henry VII in 1486 where ‘King Brennius’ played a part as a way for the population to use his status as royal and direct descendant from the great Brutus to address the visiting King about difficult matters.61 Even though Robert Ricart’s addition to the Brut to tell of the foundation of his town was only a few lines long, it is obviously part of a wider tradition, and significant to the people of Bristol as a way to identify themselves both within the national framework, and against it. Bristol finds its place within the national narrative, through sharing its ultimate ancestry with the Londoners and kings of early England (Brennius calls Henry VII his cousin), and Bristol simultaneously identifies itself as an autonomous town, confronting the king with its own demands and taking status from its long ancestry. These descriptions may not amount to what is commonly called a ‘town chronicle’, but I hope that the example of the Bristol images and comments show the wealth of information available on the historical culture in towns, which may take many different forms. 60 Fleming, ‘New Look’, p. 6. Ricart states a similar purpose in his introductions: Ricart, Kalendar, pp. 5, 69. 61 Bristol, ed. by Mark C. Pilkington, Records of Early English Drama (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), pp. 10–14.

i t’s not j ust a bout chronicles

Conclusions This paper gives an outline of new categories or genres we ought to embrace as sources of information on urban historical writing and historical culture in late medieval towns. Looking at these new genres means we have to re-establish, or rethink, the boundary between administrative sources and history writing, because it is evident they can be intertwined.62 The combination within Bristol’s Maire’s Kalendar of chronicle elements and custumals of both Bristol and London is a perfect example of this. The fact that the London Chronicles, despite their name, were placed in the second category in this overview rather than the third is also indicative of the obvious overlap in perception of these sources. The above description showed that urban history writing can take different forms and that late medieval urban historical culture radiates through many types of sources. Examples of the three categories (custumals, lists of magistrates and chronicles/note books) appear both in England and in Flanders, although not every genre exists to the same degree in both regions. But this overview has made evident that there was no dominant form for urban history writing in either region and that the main forms used were comparable. These three categories are of course by no means intended to become a new rule and exclude other evidence. These genres currently provide a useful pragmatic tool to be able to compare sources and countries. However, they are not final or complete, but merely a representation of my finds in city archives so far. Other representations of historical culture can be found in different forms, which will need more study. The Bruges Archives for example contain at least two guild books, from the cloth shearers guild and the St George guild, with historical narrative entries.63 This shows again how flexible the boundary between administrative sources and history writing can be and how diverse the places where we can look for a town’s sense of history are. In addition to that, most areas of the Low Countries have a tradition of regional chronicles, some of which have strong ties to certain towns or have continuations with a strong urban character. The Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen is of course a famous example of this, and one of the few regional chronicle traditions already studied in an urban environment. A majority of the fifteenth-century extant manuscripts of this regional chronicle retell the history of Flanders from a Bruges perspective. They are written in and for a network of members of the urban elite of Bruges who were rebelling against the centralising politics of the new rulers.64 This is indeed

62 This idea is not new, as Ianziti’s work on Milan and Brabant’s situation described by Robert Stein prove. See Gary Ianziti, Humanist Historiography under the Sforzas. Politics and Propaganda in Fifteenth-century Milan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988) and Robert Stein, Politiek en historiografie: het ontstaansmilieu van Brabantse kronieken in de eerste helft van de vijftiende eeuw (Leuven: Peeters, 1994). However, in historical research in England and the Low Countries these have often been studied as separates spheres. 63 Bruges, City Archives, 324 and 385. 64 Demets and Dumolyn, ‘Urban Chronicle Writing’. Paul Trio’s work on Ypres can be mentioned as another example of a Flemish regional/urban text.

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not just a Flemish phenomenon, the duchy of Brabant (e.g. Jan van Boendale’s Brabantsche yeesten) and the county of Holland (e.g. Gouds Kroniekje) knew a tradition of regional chronicles that contain very strong urban ties and urban messages.65 In England some national chronicles, such as the Brut chronicle, are used in urban historical texts.66 These regional or national chronicles, until now generally studied as regional sources, should be included in the field of urban historiography as well, and more research will show whether the urban uses of these more general texts differs between the geographical regions. To be able to fully compare the English sources with sources such as the regional and urban chronicles from Flanders, or indeed the town chronicles from Germany or Italy, we need to look further than the form discussed above. Several other aspects need to be taken into account, although it goes beyond the scope of this paper to discuss these here. Authorship and audience need to be studied to see in which social contexts these texts functioned, for example. The contents of the texts are also very important, both ideologically and in terms of their geographical focus. Do English towns focus mainly on their kings and national history; do they aim to connect their town with the national narrative? And do Flemish towns focus more on their local history, and create a history independent from the Burgundian dukes? A town’s sense of history can be closely connected to the national narrative, but it can also oppose it, depending on political circumstances. And finally, the function of texts is very important. How and when and where were they used? And how do uses of English sources relate to the function of urban chronicles in Germany, Italy or Flanders? The wide range of textual sources displaying urban historical texts opens up many further opportunities to study urban historical culture.

65 Stein, Politiek en historiografie. A. Janse, ‘De gelaagdheid van een laatmiddeleeuwse kroniek. De ontstaansgeschiedenis van het zogenaamde Goudse kroniekje’, Queeste, 8 (2001), 1, 134–59. A. Janse, ‘De Nederlandse Beke opnieuw bekeken’, Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis, 9 (2006), 116–49. H. Ter Boom and J. Van Herwaarden, ‘Rotterdamse kroniek. Aantekeningen van Rotterdamse stadssecretarissen, 1315–1499 (1570)’, Nederlandse Historische Bronnen, 2 (1980), 7–84. 66 Several London Chronicles are added to copies of the Brut chronicle, McLaren, The London Chronicles, p. 47. See also the example of the Bristol Kalendar above.

Paul Trio

Ypres as a Historiographical Breeding Ground in Late Medieval Flanders Origin and Interconnectedness of Urban and Regional Historiography In an earlier contribution, I have pointed out the existence of a traditional urban chronicle for the town of Ypres.1 By ‘traditional urban’ chronicle, I mean a chronicle strongly focusing on the city’s history. Recent research on urban historiography in the county of Flanders labels chronicles as ‘urban’ whenever there is an urban point of view or position, even though thematically, they mainly concern the history of the region or the country in which the town in question is situated.2 The Ypres town chronicle was discovered as the result of a new interpretation of the chronicle which records the period 1366–1443,3 and is traditionally attributed to







1 Paul Trio, ‘The Chronicle Attributed to “Olivier van Diksmuide”. A Misunderstood Town Chronicle of Ypres from Late Medieval Flanders’, The Medieval Chronicle V, ed. by Erik Kooper (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008), pp. 211–25. I am currently preparing a new study on this chronicle, which will include corrections on the edition by Lambin, as well as an edition of some text passages that had not been included in Lambin’s edition. The latter will be based on an early nineteenth-century transcript kept in the Courtrai State Archives, Manuscripts Goethals-Vercruysse, 303. These manuscripts were very recently transferred to the Courtrai State Archives from the City Library of Courtrai. Description of this manuscript: Paul Faider and others, Catalogue des manuscrits de la bibliothèque publique de la ville de Courtrai (Bibliothèque Goethals-Vercruysse et autres fonds), Catalogue général des manuscrits des bibliothèques de Belgique, 3 (Gembloux;Paris: Duculot, 1936), p. 164. See also: Jan Dumolyn, Johan Oosterman, Tjamke Snijders and Stijn Villerius, ‘Rewriting Chronicles in an Urban Environment. The Middle Dutch “Excellent Chronicle of Flanders” Tradition’, Lias, 41 (2014), 2, 85–116 (pp. 95–96). 2 See, for instance, the way in which the general chronicles of Flanders, such as the Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen, were ‘urbanized’, already by: Anne-Laure van Bruaene, ‘L’écriture de la mémoire urbaine en Flandre et en Brabant (XIVe–XVIe siècles)’, ed. by Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan and Elodie Lecuppre-Desjardin, Villes de Flandre et d’Italie: les enseignements d’une comparaison (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), pp. 149–64; and more recently by: Lisa Demets and Jan Dumolyn, ‘Urban Chronicle Writing in Late Medieval Flanders: The Case of Bruges During the Flemish Revolt of 1482–1490’, Urban History, 43, (2016), 1, 28–45. See also some studies mentioned hereafter. Whenever we use the term ‘urban’ chronicles or ‘urban’ memorieregisters/boeken (memorial registers/books) in what follows, however, it will be in its narrower sense, which means that the chronicle or memorial book focuses, thematically, on the history of the town of Ypres. 3 With some gaps in the years 1378–91, 1393–1402 and 1416–18: Trio, ‘The Chronicle’, p. 216.

Urban History Writing in North-Western Europe (15th–16th centuries), ed. by Bram Caers, Lisa Demets and Tineke Van Gassen, SEUH 47 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 81–94. © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.SEUH-EB.5.117869

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Olivier van Dixmude.4 The urban character of the chronicle is incontestable: it was composed by several Ypres chroniclers, of whom Olivier van Dixmude was possibly one, and it strongly focuses on urban events, though ample attention is also paid to political and military developments in the county of Flanders. The description of each year is prefaced by an overview of the new urban governors, records of whom were kept since 1366, probably by the town’s administration. This method neatly dovetails with that of a little-known chronicle attributed to Pieter van de Letewe covering the period 1443–80.5 The latter, however, contains more excerpts or complete transcripts of charters. The Van de Letewe chronicle is a continuation of the aforementioned Olivier van Dixmude chronicle. Of the events relating to the revolt against Maximilian of Austria (1477) mentioned in this chronicle, a slightly different version, composed by the same author, can be found in another manuscript.6 The method used to write these two urban chronicles somewhat resembles that of the Ghent memorieboeken (‘memorial books’), though the former seem to pay rather less attention to faits divers than the Ghent memorieboeken.7 The often forgotten, succinct chronicle notes which were added to the manuscript attributed to Olivier van Dixmude, according to the nineteenth-century Ypres archivist Jean-Jacques Lambin, were authored by Joos Bryde. They cover the period 1303–1440 and discuss both local Ypres events and events that took place elsewhere in the Burgundian Low Countries.8 This third chronicle may be rather limited, but it nevertheless deserves the title of Ypres town chronicle. 4 The Narrative Sources from the Medieval Low Countries, ed. by Jeroen Deploige [accessed 7 August 2017]): ‘Livre du renouvellement de la loi d’Ypres depuis 1366 à 1443; Olivier van Dixmude, Merkwaerdige gebeurtenissen vooral in Vlaenderen en Brabant, en ook in de aengrenzende landstreken, van 1377 tot 1443, ed. by Jean-Jacques Lambin (Ypres: Lambin en zoon, 1835). 5 This chronicle is not mentioned in Narrative Sources. There is only one edition: Pieter van de Letewe, Vernieuwing der wet van Ypre van het jaer 1443 tot 1480, met het geene daer binnen dezen tyd geschiet is, ed. by Isidore L. A. Diegerick (Ypres: Simon Lafonteyne, 1863–78). The edition remained unfinished, which may explain why it is not very well known. The text was mentioned in: Jelle Haemers, For the Common Good. State Power and Urban Revolts in the Reign of Mary of Burgundy (1477–1482), (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), p. 278; Dumolyn e.a., ‘Rewriting Chronicles in an Urban Environment’, p. 96. It is also our intention to prepare a more in-depth study on this chronicle and its author(s) in the near future. 6 Also not mentioned in Narrative sources online database. For the edition, see Pieter van de Letewe, ‘Episode de l’histoire d’Ypres sous le règne de Marie de Bourgogne, 1477’, ed. by Isidore L. A. Diegerick, Annales de la Société d’Emulation de Bruges, 10 (1850), 423–74. The text is part of a compilation codex that includes other texts, mostly pertaining to this revolutionary event. See note 18. 7 Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, De Gentse memorieboeken als spiegel van stedelijk historisch bewustzijn (14de tot 16de eeuw), (Ghent: Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent, 1998). The name ‘memorial books’ for these Ghent urban chronicles dates only from the nineteenth century. With the exception of a single manuscript that contains a limited number of fourteenth-century annotations, most memorial books date from the fifteenth and – predominantly – sixteenth centuries. Very characteristic of the genre is the annual listing of aldermen and possibly other urban governors, always followed by some events and facts relating to that year. The idea that these memorial books were typically very anecdotal is, however, partly the result of the way in which they were published, by gathering isolated data from various manuscripts: Memorieboek der stad Ghendt van ’t jaer 1301 tot 1737, ed. by Polydore-Charles van der Meersch, Maatschappij der Vlaemsche bibliophielen, 2nd series, 15 (Ghent: C. Annoot-Braeckman, 1852–61). 8 Olivier van Dixmude, Merkwaerdige gebeurtenissen vooral in Vlaenderen en Brabant, pp. 179–82.

ypres as a historiographical breeding ground in late medieval flanders

Still, many questions remain unanswered with regard to these three chronicles. The authorship of the three chronicles – attributed to Olivier van Dixmude, Pieter van de Letewe and Joos Bryde, respectively – attested by the editors and town archivists Lambin and Diegerick, has become untenable. Their authorship is particularly questionable because these persons have historically been considered to be the only authors. The question of how these and other possible authors obtained their information also remains unanswered, especially with regard to events that they could not, in any way, have witnessed or heard about themselves, since they occurred long before the actual composition of the chronicles.9 The authorship problems might be solved to some extent, however, if other chronicles with an Ypres origin were taken into account, even those that give less attention to the urban context of Ypres. Tracing the previous owners of these chronicles might also shed light on the authorship of these urban chronicles.10 Furthermore, it might help to browse through the inventories of the former City Archives of Ypres, as we will demonstrate below.11 Before the City Archives were largely lost during World War I, they contained some remarkable manuscripts that may help explain the first types of urban historiography. Moreover, there are various seventeenth and eighteenth-century Ypres chronicles which turn out to be surprisingly relevant to the search for the first historiographical production in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Surprisingly, in spite of the catastrophe of 1914, the Ypres source situation is better than that of other Flemish towns as far as discovering the origin of medieval urban historiography in Flanders is concerned.12 In short, with this inquiry into the urban historiographical production in Ypres in the late Middle Ages, we hope to provide an example of a type of urban historiography that probably developed in a similar way in other towns of the county of Flanders and elsewhere, but that has been obscured from view for those other towns due to the lack of sources. Urban and urbanized historiography flourished in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, partly because it was mobilized by the political discourse of that time and used to express the symbolic capital of individuals and families. Research on this has

9 This is somewhat less the case for Pieter van de Letewe, even though here also, it is hard to imagine that he consciously lived the period he described, spanning no less than thirty-six years. 10 These last years, researchers have paid more attention to the materiality of manuscript transmission, to the production contexts of historiography and to previous owners and readers of manuscripts. Compare with Frits van Oostrom, Stemmen op schrift. Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur vanaf het begin tot 1300, (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2006), passim. 11 More general information on the former City Archives of Ypres: Paul Trio, ‘Arthur Merghelynck. Het Merghelynckfonds in de Koninklijke Bibliotheek: een verademing voor de historicus’, in Arthur Merghelynck. Passies van een Edelman, ed. by Annemie Morisse (Furnes: Stadsbestuur Veurne, 2008), pp. 87–103 (pp. 94–99). 12 The city of Ypres, an industrial town internationally famed for its cloth, had no more than c. 10,000 inhabitants in the fifteenth century, whereas it may have had as much as 40,000 around 1300. For its importance during the Middle Ages, see most recently: Octaaf Mus, ‘De ruimtelijke ontwikkeling van de stad Ieper vanaf de ontstaansperiode tot aan de vooravond van de Eerste Wereldoorlog’, in De geschiedenis van de middeleeuwse grootstad Ieper. Van Karolingische villa tot de destructie in 1914, ed. by Paul Trio (Ypres: Stad Ieper, 2010), pp. 24–94.

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gained momentum in recent years.13 We will investigate whether any other factors, apart from the aforementioned ones and those hitherto mentioned in the secondary literature, facilitated the embedding of historiography for this time period. This does not imply that those other factors and contexts did not shape the urban historiography of Ypres. Rather, we maintain that it is useful to first explore the formal historiographical developments before focusing on the content and the meaning of that historiographical production. The earliest recording of memorable events, the so-called memorieregisters Before 1914, the City Archives contained some fifteen registers of so-called ‘memories of remarkable events’ or memorieregisters, containing urban ordinances and sentences, as well as various other interesting pieces of historical information.14 One of the oldest registers, dating from the second half of the fourteenth century, began as early as 1314 and ran to 1400: Diversche memorien ende ghedinghen ghetrocken uuten ferien van swondaghs ghedinghe beginnende int jaer duust iijc lxj (‘Various memories and court cases gleaned from the court hearings of the Wednesday sessions starting from the year 1361’).15 Some registers contained copies of older manuscript fragments which were later embellished, resulting in some manuscripts which had similar content. This process of text formation resulted in a collection of manuscripts pertaining to events from the fourteenth to the beginning of the sixteenth century in Ypres and containing, on the one hand, texts of a purely archival nature – such as aldermen’s ordinances and verdicts – and, on the other, loose notes that can be seen as pure chronicle annotations. Since the original registers are lost, the relationship of these texts to each other with regard to form and content can no longer be established. It is furthermore somewhat unclear whether these registers were first and foremost intended to record legal sentences, and that other notes 13 Some recent prominent publications on that subject: Demets and Dumolyn, ‘Urban Chronicle Writing’, pp. 28–45; Dumolyn e.a., ‘Rewriting Chronicles in an Urban Environment’, pp. 85–116; Frederik Buylaert, ‘Memory, Social Mobility and Historiography. Shaping Noble Identity in the Bruges Chronicle of Nicholas Despars (†1597)’, Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis, 87 (2010), 377–408; Van Bruaene, ‘L’écriture de la mémoire urbaine’, pp. 149–64. 14 Emiel de Sagher, Notice sur les Archives communales d’Ypres et documents pour servir à l’histoire de Flandre du XIIIe au XVIe siècle (Ypres: Callewaert-De Meulenaere, 1898), pp. 261–63. See also some references in the unpublished inventory of the Ypres City Archives drafted by town archivist JeanJacques Lambin at the beginning of the nineteenth century: Brussels Royal Library, Collection Merghelynck, no. 4. 15 Some sections of this register, mainly sentences and pardons, have already been published: Registres aux sentences des échevins d’Ypres, Recueil des anciennes coutumes de la Belgique, ed. by Prosper de Pelsmaeker, in Commission royale des anciennes lois et ordonnances de Belgique: Coutumes des pays et comté de Flandre. Quartier d’Ypres (Brussels: Koninklijke Commissie uitgave Belgische oude wetten en verordeningen, 1914), pp. 243–85. The register is also mentioned in: Arthur Merghelynck, Le fief-manoir dit “le château de Beauvoorde”, 2 vols (Bruges: Joseph Bondmont-Carbonez, 1900–02), p. 9 note 9.

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were added either simultaneously or afterwards, or whether they were registers in which all kinds of matters were noted down, including verdicts gleaned from the books of verdicts composed for precisely that purpose. The oldest registers of verdicts – containing only civil judicial decisions – were kept in the former City Archives and dated from 1366, while those with regard to criminal jurisdiction did not precede the year 1500.16 Where the aldermen’s ordinances or voorgeboden are concerned, the former City Archives possessed registers of resolutions from 1458 onwards.17 During the late Middle Ages, a body of manuscripts existed in the town of Ypres, of which possibly just a small part was still preserved in the City Archives in 1914, which contained in their pages some kind of collective memory of significant events and decisions of the local government.18 To what extent can the Ypres memorieregisters be compared to the Ghent memorieboeken?19 Such a comparison is extremely difficult, given the fact that we no longer possess the Ypres memorieregisters, but we would nevertheless like to hazard a guess. The titles of the manuscripts and our limited knowledge of their contents would seem to suggest that a framework consisting of an enumeration of urban governors, on which the various historical facts and events of that year were grafted – which is present in the Ghent memorieboeken – is lacking from the Ypres registers. It should, however, always be kept in mind that it is unclear whether these titles date from the actual period in which the manuscripts were composed. However, as we will point out later, the Ypres chronicles composed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries contain numerous passages from these memorieregisters, and in those cases, the annual list of governors was indeed the point of departure. The fact that, in the Ypres memorieregisters, the memorable facts were recorded before, between or after the sentences and ordinances by the urban bench of aldermen or other justice and government bodies, suggests that they originated within the urban administration, for which the recorded sentences could serve as a future guideline. The recording of decisions of the administrative bodies can also be seen as the creation of an administrative precedent: policies to be followed in the future. This seems the most likely purpose of the careful annotation of the ritual of the Joyous Entries 16 De Sagher, Notice sur les Archives communales d’Ypres, pp. 306–08 and 308–10. 17 De Sagher, Notice sur les Archives communales d’Ypres, p. 281; Arthur Merghelynck, Vade-mecum pratique et utile de connaissances historiques et indicateur nobiliaire et patricien de ces contrées renfermant de nombreux inventaires de collections d’archives inédits jusqu’ici, appartenant à plusieurs dépôts publics et privés de la Belgique, ou catalogue-répertoire analytique, méthodique et raisonné de 555 manuscrits formés pour la plupart au moyen des documents y inventoriés, orné de sept planches en photo-typie et gravure (Tournai: Vasseur-Delmée, 1896–97), p. 397. 18 These do not include judicial documents that contained some chronicle-like content, or could be made to contain such passages after some rewriting. A good example can be found in a manuscript that used to belong to the former Ypres City Archives. It contains texts written on the occasion of the revolt in 1477, either adapted or not: De Sagher, Notice sur les Archives communales d’Ypres, pp. 302–04. Published in: ‘La répression à Ypres après la révolte de 1477. Documents faisant suite à l’“épisode de l’histoire d’Ypres sous le règne de Marie de Bourgogne”’, ed. by Jean Justice, Annales de la Société d’Emulation de Bruges, 41 (1891), 1–68. In this register, once the property of Joos Bryde (cf infra), we also find the narrative on the 1477 revolt, written by Pieter van de Letewe, which has been mentioned earlier. 19 About the memorieboeken from Ghent, see note 7.

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of both secular and ecclesiastical dignitaries. Indeed, this allowed the urban governors to consult the records and find out how such a situation was handled in the past and which ceremonies were required, whenever such an occasion presented itself. In this way, these memorieregisters more closely resemble the Rats- or Stadtbücher of medieval German urban historiography, which quickly developed into the so-called Ratschroniken.20 Because the Ghent memorieboeken contrast the Ypres’ memorieregisters, in the sense that they are not a product of an autonomous historiographical activity but rather that of the Ypres town administration, we prefer the term memorieregisters instead of memorieboeken. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the authors of the urban chronicles, such as Olivier van Dixmude, Pieter van de Letewe, Joos Bryde and others, gleaned some of their data, and particularly the oldest data, from memorieregisters such as these. Unfortunately, only a few memorieregisters fragments had been published before the actual manuscripts were irrevocably lost in 1914. The very active nineteenth-century town archivist, Isidore Diegerick, for instance, published some fragments, but his imprecise or omitted references to the original sources make it difficult to accurately identify the origins of the published materials.21 And yet some of the fragmented content survives today. Indeed, various archival depots and libraries in Belgium contain altogether some twenty Ypres chronicles and yearbooks, all of which were composed or copied in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.22 These Ypres chronicles were hitherto considered to contain unreliable annotations relating to a period that significantly preceded the time in which they were written. Consequently, the chronicles were often shunned by historical researchers.23 Yet they contain abundant information regarding medieval times. Quite a few notes relating to the late Middle Ages that could be verified proved to be factual. This accuracy can only be explained if one assumes that they were (indirectly) based on the fourteenth- to sixteenth-century memorieregisters. We recently investigated a passage informing us about the reception of the crown

20 Van Bruaene, De Gentse memorieboeken, pp. 37–40; Henning Steinführer, Die Leipziger Ratsbücher 1466–1500. Forschung und Edition, (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2003). (Quellen und Materialien zur Geschichte der Stadt Leipzig, 1). 21 There is, for instance, a description of a number of joyous entries of rulers and (first) visits of bishops and other authorities from the end of the fourteenth century: ‘Joyeuse entrée de Philippe-le-Bon, duc de Bourgogne, dans sa bonne ville d’Ypres. Entrées solennelles de quelques autres personnages remarquables’, ed. by Isidore L. A. Diegerick, Annales de la Société d’Emulation de Bruges, 13 (1851–54), 265–86. These annotations had possibly been recorded in the ‘Register with annotations of sentences and events worthy of being noted down’: De Sagher, Notice sur les Archives communales d’Ypres, 263–64. Some extracts can also be found in: ‘Analectes Yprois ou recueil de documents inédits concernant la ville d’Ypres’, ed. by Isidore L. A. Diegerick, Annales de la Société d’Emulation de Bruges, 11 (1849), 173–264. 22 An incomplete survey can be found in: Reinild Moreels, ‘Een web van verhaaldraden. Een onderzoek van lokale Ieperse stadskronieken over de middeleeuwse stadsgeschiedenis: historiek, verwantschap en uitgave’ (unpublished master’s thesis, Catholic University of Leuven, 2000). 23 Octaaf Mus, who conducted much highly qualitative research on medieval Ypres and published extensively on the subject, used two of theses chronicles, mentioned hereafter in note 25, only at the end of his career: Octaaf Mus, ‘De eerste fase van het Iepers herstelprogramma na het beleg van 1383’, in Ieper Tuindag. Zesde eeuwfeest. Een bundel historische opstellen, ed. by Romain Vinckier (Ypres: Stedelijke culturele raad Ieper, 1983), pp. 129–80.

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prince John the Fearless, who was received with pomp and circumstance by the town of Ypres in 1398, when he returned to Flanders after taking part in the crusades against the Ottoman Turks.24 After being defeated at Nicopolis in 1396, he had been ransomed with the help of the Flemish towns, including Ypres. Information about this event found in some of those post-medieval chronicles is corroborated by the fragments handed down in the town accounts.25 The corroboration pertains to the date of the visit, the persons accompanying the Count of Nevers, the parade route through the town and the way it was decorated, and the gifts given by the town to the crown prince and his company. It is, however, obvious that these seventeenth- and eighteenth-century chroniclers did not base their writings directly on the town accounts. Indeed, the very precise date of the entry, the route by which the ducal visitors entered the city and some of the details regarding the decoration of the route are only found in the chronicles, and not in the town accounts. So it would seem that the information in the chronicles was not identical to that in the town accounts, but supplemented it, and that both records are complementary, rather than contradictory. A familial network of historiographers26 The line of thinking that suggests that the three above-mentioned urban chronicles, attributed to Olivier van Dixmude, Pieter van de Letewe and Joos Bryde, may have drawn from the medieval memorieregisters is not far-fetched. We know that one of the possible authors, Joos Bryde, once possessed some of those memorieregisters,27 as well as the urban chronicles attributed to Olivier van Dixmude,28 and certainly one attributed to Pieter van de Letewe.29 But Joos Bryde was also a close relative of Olivier van Dixmude and of Pieter van de Letewe. Pieter was married to Joos’ daughter and Olivier was married to 24 Paul Trio, ‘Feestelijke ontvangst in 1398 door de stad Ieper van Jan zonder Vrees, graaf van Nevers, na zijn gevangenschap door de Ottomanen’, forthcoming. 25 Bruges, Public Library, Ms. 601. For the description of this manuscript, see: Moreels, ‘Een web van verhaaldraden’, pp. 60–61. This manuscript possibly came from the Ypres monastery of the Carmelites or Augustinian Eremites, see: Ludo Vandamme, ‘De boekenliefde van een edelman: de getijdenboeken van Thomas-Lodewijk de Schietere de Lophem (1769–1824)’, Zilleghem. Handelingen van de Kring voor heemkunde en geschiedenis ‘Pastoor Ronse’, 24 (2003), 70–91 (p. 81); Alfons de Poorter, Catalogue des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque publique de la ville de Bruges, Catalogue général des manuscrits des bibliothèques de Belgique, 2 (Gembloux: Ducelot, 1934), p. 714. De Poorter wrote, however, that this manuscript is hardly a reliable source for historical research. For a comparison with some items on that subject in the city accounts: Brussels, Royal Library, Merghelynck, 32, vol. II, pp. 206–10: City accounts from 1 April 1398 to 30 June 1398. 26 See Addendum for more information about some (related) members of the family Van Dixmude and their political careers. For the Ghent data of Jan and Joos van Dixmude, extensively explained, see Demets, ‘“Toujours loyal”’. 27 At least three of them: De Sagher, Notice sur les Archives communales d’Ypres, pp. 261–63. 28 Olivier van Dixmude, Merkwaerdige gebeurtenissen vooral in Vlaenderen, i. 29 Pieter van de Letewe, ‘Episode de l’histoire d’Ypres’, p. 3. Considering the identical context in which it was created, it would appear as if the other chronicle attributed to Pieter van de Letewe also belonged to that person’s manuscript collection.

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his niece. Based on that constellation, we believe that Olivier van Dixmude,30 Pieter van de Letewe,31 and Joos Bryde,32 were indeed the main authors of the chronicles attributed to them. Without question, Joos Bryde is an interesting link between the chronicles attributed to himself, Olivier van Dixmude and Pieter van de Letewe and the memorieregisters. Further research of Joos Bryde is definitely warranted.33 It is, for instance, still unclear why Joos Bryde possessed registers in the first place, among which were several memorieregisters, since these appear to be documents created in the context of the urban administration. On the other hand, there is also the attribution by the nineteenth-century 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 (863–1436)’) to Jan van Dixmude, who is supposed to have died shortly after 1436.34 This attribution has been called into question.35 Recent research by Lisa Demets brought to light that this manuscript, which is currently kept in the Ghent University Library,36 originated only in the first quarter of the sixteenth century,37 as a predominantly faithful adaptation of the Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen (‘Excellent Chronicle of Flanders’). She also makes a very credible suggestion for identifying the ‘J(an). Dix(mude)’ who signed the manuscript in red ink in several locations.38 Indicative for this 30 And contrary to our previous beliefs: Trio, ‘The Chronicle Attributed to “Olivier van Diksmuide”’, p. 219. 31 For the arguments in favour of the attribution to Pieter van de Letewe: Pieter van de Letewe, ‘Episode de l’histoire d’Ypres’, pp. 3–4, though there is still room for further research. 32 See also the arguments in favour of the attribution to Joos Bryde: Olivier van Dixmude, Merkwaerdige gebeurtenissen vooral in Vlaenderen, i; Pieter van de Letewe, ‘Episode de l’histoire d’Ypres’, pp. 4–5. 33 Some information is already given by Pieter van de Letewe, ‘Episode de l’histoire d’Ypres’, pp. 3–6. 34 Jan van Dixmude, Dits de cronike ende genealogie van den prinsen ende graven van den foreeste van Buc, dat heet Vlaenderlant, van 863 tot 1436, ed. by Jean-Jacques Lambin (Ypres: Lambin, 1836), p. vi. 35 Already by Fris, who suspected that the author hailed from Bruges: Victor Fris, ‘Ontleding van drie Vlaamsche kronijken’, Handelingen der Maatschappij van Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent, 3 (1998), 135–71 (p. 137). See also Narrative Sources, ed. by Jeroen Deploige [accessed 7 August 2017]: ‘Cronike van Vlaenderen, 580–1440/1467 en continuaties’. 36 Ghent University Library, Manuscript G 6181. See http://lib.ugent.be/catalog/rug01:000810489 [accessed 12 August 2017], where it is dated in the sixteenth century. 37 Apart from the handwriting, mainly the dating of the watermark was decisive. The manuscript is also incomplete. On the basis of what might be missing, Demets suspects that the chronicle originally continued until the year 1440. 38 See for all of this: Lisa Demets, ‘The Late Medieval Manuscript Transmission of the Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen in Urban Flanders’, The Medieval Low Countries, 3 (2016), 123–73; Lisa Demets, ‘“Toujours loyal”, A Middle Dutch Chronicle of Flanders by Jan van Dixmude in Ghent (Early Sixteenth Century)’, The Medieval Chronicle 11, ed. by Sjoerd Levelt and Erik Kooper (Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp. 127-53. For additional information regarding the tradition of the Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen, see also – apart from the aforementioned work: Jan Dumolyn and others, ‘Rewriting Chronicles in an Urban Environment’. Some information on this manuscript, including the same identification of the adaptor/author with Jan van Dixmude, could already be found in: Ferdinand Van de Putte, ‘Notice sur les bibliothèques modernes de la Flandre Occidentale. Bibliothèque de la ville d’Ypres. Bibliothèque de M. Lambin, bibliothécaire de la ville d’Ypres’, Annales de la Société d’Emulation de Bruges, 2 (1840), 264–70 (p. 246); Olivier van Dixmude, Merkwaerdige gebeurtenissen vooral in Vlaenderen, pp. xxiii–xxv.

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conclusion was a manuscript of Jan van Dixmude who in 1520/21 completed a manuscript on natural sciences, including the origin of earth itself. It was, in fact, an adaptation and completion of the work Trésorier de philosophie naturelle. Des pierres précieuses (‘Treasure-chest of natural philosophy. Of precious stones’) by Jean d’Outremeuse (d. Liège, 1399).39 Indeed, it contains the same signature, this time at the end of a contemporary colophon which goes as follows: Desen bouc ghescreven ende wulhent by my Ian van Dixmude, den XIIIIen in hoymaent anno XVc ende twintich (‘This book written and completed by me, Jan of Dixmude, on the 13th of July anno 1520’), followed by the motto ‘Toujours loyal’ (‘Always loyal’) and, finally, the signature ‘J(an) Dixmude’. On the basis of this information, Demets concludes that it refers to a nobleman and squire who lived in Ghent, Jan van Dixmude (d. Ghent, 1553), lord of Schachtelwege and La Balghe. He was buried in Saint James’ church. His father, whose property he inherited after the death of his brother, was Joos van Dixmude (d. 1508), who was originally from Ypres but relocated to Ghent, where he was buried in the church of Saint Nicholas. Still during his Ypres period, Joos held various offices, including that of alderman, councillor and tutor. He was also bailiff for the castellany of East-Ypres for some years. His second marriage to Josine van Hole ( Joyce of Hole), the daughter of the Ghent patrician Lieven van Hole, is supposed to have caused him to move to Ghent. The fact that he was a knight of Jerusalem suited his noble status. He was a son of Pauwels (Paul) van Dixmude, who was a brother of the aforementioned Olivier van Dixmude, and consequently also related to the Ypres chroniclers Bryde and De Letewe. Joos’ marriage to Josine van Hole, would undoubtedly have made his political ambitions more concrete, and enabled him to obtain a seat on the Ghent bench of aldermen.40 Jan’s political career, which truly took off in 1539, was even more brilliant than that of his father. He married Jacqueline Dullaert, daughter of Giselbrecht (Gilbert), a veteran of Ghent politics.41 Lisa Demets manages to clearly indicate how the rewritten chronicle testifies to a kind of Ghent patriotism and to noble aspirations that suited the lifestyle and the attitude of the author.42 To what extent Jan van Dixmude based his adaptation

39 Demets, ‘“Toujours loyal”’, pp. 134-5. Brussels Royal Library, Manuscripts, II 2761. The Lapidarium of the Liège chronicler Jean d’Outremeuse is a natural-philosophical treatise, mainly on the creation of gemstones: Luc Schepens, ‘Outremeuse, Jean d’, pseudo-kroniekschrijver’, Nationaal Biografisch Woordenboek (Brussels, 1964), I (1964), pp. 739–40; Anne-Françoise Cannella, Gemmes, verre coloré, fausses pierres précieuses au Moyen Âge: le quatrième livre du ‘Trésorier de philosophie naturelle des pierres précieuses’ de Jean d’Outremeuse (Geneva: Droz, 2006), pp. 26–29. For information on this author and his chronicles, with extensive bibliographical references, see also: Narrative Sources, ed. by Jeroen Deploige [accessed 7 August 2017] 40 The genealogical data were mainly gleaned from the studies mentioned in note 51, supplemented with: Frederik Buylaert, Repertorium van de Vlaamse adel (ca. 1350 – ca. 1500), (Ghent: Genootschap voor Geschiedenis te Brugge en Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent, 2012), pp. 203–4 (‘Dixmude, Van’) and p. 363 (‘Hole, Van den’). (Historische monografieën Vlaanderen, 1). In any case, the genealogy clearly shows that the Ypres Van Dixmude family radiated noble allure. 41 Extensively explained in Demets, ‘“Toujours loyal”’, pp. 127-53. 42 Demets, ‘“Toujours loyal”’, pp. 127-53, but Van Bruaene and others mention a ‘point de vue Brugeois’; see f.i. Van Bruaene, ‘L’écriture de la mémoire urbaine en Flandre et en Brabant’, p. 160. See also note 35.

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of the Excellente Cronike on the work of his grandfather (see below), is hard to tell, since the latter has not been preserved.43 It is without doubt the same Jan van Dixmude who possessed a manuscript containing a copy of the complete Dietsche Doctrinale, a widely distributed rhymed textbook on secular ethics,44 now kept in the Ghent University Library.45 Inscribed on the front flyleaf of the Dietsche Doctrinale in a sixteenth-century hand is found the following indication of ownership: ‘Joha(n)nes Dixmuide est pr(oprie)t(ariu)s huius libra’ [sic]. This text fitted very well with Jan van Dixmude’s interests in historiography and natural history. The fact that these three manuscripts – two of which clearly display a personal touch – once belonging to the sixteenth-century Jan van Dixmude from Ghent, were finally returned to the Ypres region, is due to the fact that Jan’s firstborn son and main heir, also called Jan (d. 1554), returned to that area. The son’s marriage to Martine Keingiaert caused these manuscripts to end up with the latter family, from whom they were purchased in the nineteenth century by Jean-Jacques Lambin, archivist and librarian of the town of Ypres, an avid collector of rare books and manuscripts.46 Via the Ghent professor and bibliophile Serrure, the manuscripts finally made their way to the Ghent University Library and the Royal Library of Belgium. We know that yet another scion of the Van Dixmude family, Pauwels van Dixmude (d. 1473), lord of Schachtelwege and La Balghe, was the author of a Vlaemsche cronicque van de beghinsele van de lande van Vlaender ende andere etc. (‘Flemish chronicle about the origin of the Land of Flanders and others etc.’),47 which also described various events from Ypres’ history, such as the 43 Cf infra. In any case, the ‘Ypres’ passages appear to be absent in Jan’s work. 44 An adapted translation of De amore et dilectione Dei et proximi et aliarum rerum et de forma vitae by Albert of Brescia from c. 1240. For the history, content, meaning and function of this text, see [accessed 7 August 2017]; Frits van Oostrom, Wereld in woorden. Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur, 1300–1400, ed. by Arie-Jan Gelderblom and others, Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur, 2 (3rd edition, Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2013), pp. 137–41. 45 Ghent, University Library, Ms. 942. The manuscript can be consulted online at [accessed 7 August 2017]; Ada Deprez and others, Pretiosa Neerlandica. Schatten uit de Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde in de Gentse universiteit (Ghent: University Press, 1988), pp. 58–59; Willy E. Hegman, ‘De Gentse handschriften van de “Dietsche Doctrinale”’, Spiegel der Letteren, 24 (1982), 2–5. Both authors attribute it incorrectly to Jan of Dixmude fs. Jan, inhabitant of Ypres, alderman of that town in 1555 and married to Martina Keingiaert (cf also infra). 46 See all the notes Lambin added to the manuscripts with data regarding the date of acquisition, the previous owner and his name and/or ex-libris as the new owner. We hope to return to this later in more detail. In the meanwhile, see the catalogues mentioned earlier and furthermore: Van de Putte, ‘Notice’. On the intriguing figure of Jean-Jacques Lambin, himself an enthusiastic rhetorician and a champion of Dutch as the official language: Ferdinand van de Putte, ‘Biographie de Mr Jean-Jacques Lambin’, Annales de la Société d’Emulation de Bruges, 3 (1841), 145–70. Relatively recently, Marc Carlier published some innovative articles on Lambin, among others: Marc Carlier, ‘Jean-Jacques Lambin en Justin Van Damme als promotoren van het literaire leven in Ieper in de Hollandse tijd (1715–1830)’, Biekorf, 113 (2013), 427–57. 47 Information on this work can be found in a family history, written down at the beginning of the seventeenth century: Ypres City Archives, Acquisitions, 189. As can be read at the beginning of the manuscript, this also was part of the Keingiaert family’s inheritance, but it was later – in 1880 at the latest – acquired by the then town archivist of Ypres, Jules Cordonnier, whose collection was partly donated to the City Archives of Ypres only in the 1980s. On Cordonnier: Marc Carlier,

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tournaments of 5 March 1317 and 23 August 1338 on the Great Marketplace. Pauwels was a brother of the aforementioned Olivier and – like the majority of the male members of that family – actively involved in the town’s government. He held the offices of a treasurer, councillor, alderman, and tutor, among other positions, from 1433 until his demise. 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. The authors likely recorded a chronicle about the county of Flanders, in keeping with the Excellente Cronike, but with greater emphasis on Ypres. Elsewhere, it has been shown that such types of Flemish chronicles could simultaneously be urban in nature, as a result of which they can deservedly be called urbanized chronicles.48 Conclusion It would appear that during the course of the fourteenth century there already existed in Ypres a tradition to note down information on remarkable town events. This information could always be found in the registers in which mainly (criminal) verdicts and ordinances were taken down. It would appear that clerks of the urban administration may have had these memorieregisters in their private possession, the reason for which is not yet clear. The fact that the registers are now missing is but one reason why the loss of the Ypres City Archives is to be greatly deplored. Even so, enough clues remain to further trace these historiographical registers and accompanying protagonists. Tracing the historiographical registers of the late medieval towns in the county of Flanders, and possibly beyond, puts us on the way of understanding how the first historiographical activities to be labelled ‘urban historiography’ came into existence. We suspect that the Ghent memorieboeken, for instance, were first inspired by this type of historiography, or possibly even developed from it. In more recent Ypres town chronicles, of which only seventeenth- and eighteenth-century versions have been preserved, some of the information from the memorieregisters has been handed down. In this way, a hitherto limited number of expressions of the earliest Ypres urban historiography has been preserved. It may seem strange that such an origin for urban historiography has only been established for the city of Ypres and not, for instance, for Ghent or Bruges, especially when we keep in mind that the Ypres City Archives were completely destroyed in 1914, whereas the City Archives of Ghent and Bruges are widely renowned for their exceptional preservation of medieval urban administration. ‘Jules Cordonnier (1833–1893): leven en werk van een Ieperse stadsarchivaris’, Biekorf, 113 (2013), 5–45; Archievenoverzicht Stadsarchief Ieper, p. 20: see https://archief.ieper.be/archievenoverzichtstadsarchief [accessed 7 August 2017]. 48 Demets, ‘The Late Medieval Manuscript Transmission’, with an extensive description (codicological, editions and secondary literature, etc.) of the various manuscripts and a threefold division into clusters on the basis of several factors (authorship, ownership, public, positioning found in the content, etc.): from Ghent, from Bruges and undefined.

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However, it is striking that the latter City Archives precisely lack such (criminal) verdict books from the fourteenth century. These memorieregisters no doubt supplied some of the information contained in the three fifteenth-century urban chronicles attributed respectively to Olivier van Dixmude, Pieter van de Letewe and Joos Bryde, whose input as main authors is no longer questioned. A key part in this was played by Joos Bryde, a close relative of the Van Dixmude family, who himself made a limited contribution to the town’s historiography and who had in his possession some of those memorieregisters as well as some fifteenth-century chronicles. Around roughly the same time, other members of the Van Dixmude 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, and was brought to Ghent, even though it was a tradition dominated by a single family, that of the Van Dixmudes and their nearest relatives. The Ypres example shows that late medieval urban and urbanized historiographical production did not necessarily require the presence of a group of people with a distinct socio-cultural identity (i.e., a chamber or guild of rhetoricians) or socio-political identity (i.e., politically like-minded persons) to come into being, but that it could flourish equally well within a familial context.49 Just like fathers passed their trade skills on to their sons or close relations within certain late medieval occupational groups, something similar probably happened with regard to more intellectual occupations, such as the writing of urban and urbanized historiographical texts. Apart from the familial fostering of such interests and the provision of suitable education, an adequate collection of books must also have been passed on. It would consequently be worthwhile to check whether other such dynasties of urban historiographers manifested themselves in other late medieval towns of the county of Flanders and beyond, in the Low Countries.50 Addendum: The familial and political network of the Van Dixmude family51 Pieter (†before 1421), son of Denis, knight. Pieter married Kateline Go(e) dericx. Just like his father, Pieter held various administrative offices during the

49 See examples concerning the Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen in: Lisa Demets, ‘The late medieval manuscript transmission’. 50 Considering this conclusion, it might prove worthwhile to have another look at the meaning of the acrostic ‘Dj(c)smvvde’ in the Middle Dutch animal epic Reynaerts historie (‘Renard’s History’). It is interesting to know, in this context, that Olivier van Dixmudes wife was Willem’ine’ Bryde. Preliminary reading: Amand Berteloot, ‘Een acrostichon in Reynaerts historie’, Tiecelijn, 5 (1992), 3–6. Many thanks to colleague Remco Sleiderinck for pointing out this publication to us. See also: Van Oostrom, Wereld in woorden, pp. 323. 51 The existing genealogical literature on the Ypres Van Dixmude family, is not always reliable. It would require additional research to establish all the precise relationships between the different members of this patrician and (later) noble family. We would also like to remark that the Ypres family Van Dixmude had nothing to do with the family that supplied the lords of Diksmuide in the late Middle Ages, even though there are numerous mistakes in publications with regard to this subject. There is a handwritten and an identical printed family tree of the Van Dixmude family, based on

ypres as a historiographical breeding ground in late medieval flanders

period between 1391–1420, such as the office of councillor, alderman and once guardian of the town’s orphans.52 From the aforementioned marriage were born the following children, among others: – Colard, alias Nicholas, who became provost of the chapter of Saint Martin (1456–64), the most important ecclesiastical function in town at that time.53 – Olivier (†1459), who married Willemine Bryde (†c. 1449). She was a daughter of Joos Bryde, high-bailiff of the town of Ypres (1424–31), and Jolande Belle (d. 1420), fa Jan, lord of Boezinge and high-bailiff of Ypres. Olivier took part in some tournaments in Ypres. With regard to the town government, he alternately acted as chief, treasurer, councillor, alderman and several times a guardian of the town’s orphans, during the period between 1422 and 1458. – Pauwels (†22 March 1473 n.s.) was married to Kateline de Wa(e)le (†27 Oct. 1473). He held the title of lord of Schachtelwege (in Zillebeke) and La Balghe (in Wijtschate). From this marriage were born Joos (cf infra), Olivier and Joris. Pauwels held various administrative functions, including treasurer, councillor and alderman, in the period 1433–73. Several times he occupied the highest administrative function, that of voogd (tutor) of the city, comparable to a mayor. Three children issued from Pauwels’ marriage with Kateline de Wa(e)le, among whom was: Joos (†6 Oct. 1508), lord of Schachtelwege and La Balghe, knight of Jerusalem, bailiff of Ypres and bailiff of the feudal court of Ypres. He first married Kateline van de Woestyne (†1482) in 1461, a daughter of Olivier, lord of Beselare and Grammez. A second marriage followed in 1482, this time with the Ghent woman Josine van Hole (†20 June 1511), fa Lieven, a knight. During the period between 1462–73, Joos held various administrative offices in Ypres, such as alderman and archival sources preserved in the Ypres City Archives before 1914. The writing is that of former archivist Emiel De Sagher, who also did very reliable work as a genealogist: Brussels Royal Library, Merghelynck, 42 A: Ypres, 185: ‘Crayon généalogique, dressé sur titres, des quatre premiers degrés connus de la branche de la famille van Dixmude (de Dicquemue, Dickemue, etc., etc.) à laquelle appartenait sire Denis van Dixmude, époux en secondes noces de Catherine Paeldynck’. The genealogy has been incorporated, without modifications, in: Albert Bonaert, ‘Les premiers degrés des van Dixmude à Ypres, une généalogie inédite imprimée d’Arthur Merghelynck’, L’intermédiaire des généalogistes, 36 (1981), 97–104. With regard to the widely respected scholarly activities of Emiel de Sagher: Carlos Wyffels, ‘Emile Henri de, archivaris’, Nationaal biografisch woordenboek, 5 (1972), pp. 756–59. Most data for the political career of individual persons can be found in: Brussels Royal Library, Merghelynck, 8. About the noble character of the Van Dixmude family: Buylaert, Repertorium van de Vlaamse adel, pp. 203–04 (‘Dixmude, Van’) and p. 363 (‘Hole, Van den’). We would also like to thank Arnold Preneel, who was kind enough to show us his genealogical study (work in progress) on the Van Dixmude family. 52 For the administrative organisation of Ypres during the late Middle Ages, see: Paul Trio, ‘Bestuursinstellingen van de stad Ieper (12de eeuw – 1500)’, in De gewestelijke en lokale overheidsinstellingen in Vlaanderen tot 1795, ed. by Walter Prevenier and Beatrijs Augustyn (Brussels: Algemeen Rijksarchief, 1997), pp. 333–80. 53 Jacques Pycke, ‘Prévôté de Saint-Martin à Ypres’, ed. by Ursmer Berlière and others, Monasticon Belge, III: Flandre Occidentale, vol. 3 (Liège: Centre national de recherches d’histoire religieuse, 1974), pp. 931–89 (pp. 979–80).

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councillor, and he even became voogd in the latter year, thus reaching the top of the political ladder. From the year 1474 onwards, he held the office of bailiff of the castellany East-Ypres. Five children came from the marriage between Joos and Kateline van de Woestyne, among whom: Jan, who married Jaquemine Dullaert.54 One of their sons, also called Jan (†24 Sep. 1587), lord of Schachtelwege and La Balghe, would return to Ypres, where he married Martine Keingiaert (†13 Sep. 1614).55 Joos Bryde, son of Jacob. He was the cousin of Willemine Bryde, who was married to Olivier van Dixmude. We know that he was a councillor and an alderman in the period between 1446–48, and likely again in 1465. Around that same time, several other Brydes can be found in various Ypres administrative organs.56 Pieter van de Letewe (Letuwe) was married to Joos Bryde’s daughter. He enjoyed a full political career during the period 1453–87. This can be deduced from the fact that he alternately held such offices as treasurer, councillor, alderman and several times tutor of the town.57 Apart from the aforementioned relationships, the Van Dixmude family was also related by marriage to some prominent patrician – and even some noble – families from the Ypres region, such as the families De Belle, Paelding, De Vroede, De Brievere, Van Menen, Van Halewijn and De Voogd.

54 See the Ghent data provided by Demets, cf supra. 55 Whether this is the same Jan van Dixmude who took on various offices in Ypres during his banishment from Ghent between 1515–27, should perhaps be investigated in more detail. 56 Brussels Royal Library, Merghelynck, 6 and 42 A: Ypres no. 102 ‘Brijde’; Olivier van Diksmuide, Merkwaerdige gebeurtenissen vooral in Vlaenderen en Brabant, p. i; Pieter van de Letewe, ‘Episode de l’histoire d’Ypres’, pp. 5–6; Jan Jacob Gailliard, Bruges et le Franc ou leur magistrature & leur noblesse avec des données historiques & généalogiques sur chaque famille, 5 vols (Bruges: Edw. Gailliard, 1857–64), I, p. 44 and vol. III, pp. 231–02. Not mentioned in: Buylaert, Repertorium. 57 Brussels Royal Library, Merghelynck, 6 and 42 A: Ypres no. 328 ‘Letewe, van de’; Pieter van de Letewe, ‘Episode de l’histoire d’Ypres’, pp. 4–5. Not mentioned in: Buylaert, Repertorium.

The memory of Conflict The Social and Political Context of Urban Historiography

Laura Crombie

Records and Rumours from Tournai Jehan Nicolay’s Account of a Town at War and the Construction of Memory ‘Je, Johannes Nicolay, commissaire de la court espirituelle et humble serviteur au people, demourant en Tournay, non expert en arms, ne digne de moy ingérer à rédiger par escript les haultes enterprinse mémorables faits et glorieuses victoires de nobles corraiges pour les eslever en degré deu, ne aussy les mallefices, deshonnestez, lascetez, et insollences des pervers, villains, recrans, couards et rebelles pour les confondre à l’exigent de leurs vices; et par ainsy non habille à faire au Roy services agréables ne auz sien recommandables: néanmoins moy, confiant en l’example de la petite offrande de deux menus deniers mis par une povre vesve au trésor du temple de Dieu, quy bien le prit en gré, me suys enhardy de escripre aulcunes choses advenues en mon temps, tant entre les nobles comme entre aulcune pays et bonnes villes, et principallement de celles que je ay peu savoir et recueillir, faictes pour ou contre le Roy et les siens en la ville et cité de Tournay, au bailliage de Tournesis et à l’environ, depuis le vendredy XXIIIe jour de moys de may an mil quatre cens soixante et dix et sept, auquel, pour certaines causes, il pleust au Roy de France envoyer ses gens de guerre en so dicte cité. Et combien que ma principalle intencion soit de faire cest œuvre à l’honneur et loange du Roy, mon seul seigneur sur la terre, touttesvoyes je ne ay vollenté de scripre chose quy soit desvoyante de vérité. Et ceste collection ay empris de faire en fourme de Kalendrier Journal pour mémorial advertissant ceaulx quy, de ce jour en avant, s’employeront en fait de croniques universelles ou particulières du tamps présent, adfin que mieulx ils y puissent trouver et prendre ce quy leur servira à leur intencion et matère, seloncq le vray …’1



1 Jehan Nicolay, Kalendrier des Guerres de Tournay (1477–1479), ed. by Frederic Hennebert (Brussels: Aug. Decq, 1853), pp. 1–2.

Urban History Writing in North-Western Europe (15th–16th centuries), ed. by Bram Caers, Lisa Demets and Tineke Van Gassen, SEUH 47 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 97–114. © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.SEUH-EB.5.117870

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(‘I, Jehan Nicolay, agent of the spiritual court and humble servant of the people, resident in Tournai, (I am) not an expert in arms, nor worthy in my ignorance to draw up in writing the great enterprises, memorable acts and glorious victories of noble courage for the elevating to the proper degree, nor also (am I able to write about) the bad deeds, dishonesty, shortcomings and insults of evil, villains, weaklikngs, cowards and rebels to confound the existence of thier vices; and not also am I able to make agreable services to the King or be in tihs way recomendable: however I have been inspired by the small offering of two little coins given by a poor widow to the temple of God, which accepts it heartily, and so I have been so bold as to write to the things and the events of my time, so much the deeds of the nobles and the others in country and in towns, and principally of the things that I know and have collected, deeds for and against the king and his people in the town and city of Tournai, in the domain of the Tournesis and the surrounding area, from Wednesday the 23rd day of May in the year 1477 when, for certain reasons, it pleased the King of France to send his men of war to the said city. And so much that my principle intention is to make a work to the honour and praise to the king, my only lord on earth, and in all things I do not want to write things that are go against the truth. In this collection which I have undertaken to make in the form of a Kalendrier Journal to remember the things that happened, from that day onwards to be used in the making of universal chronciles of those of the present time, for the purpose that they will be found and taken to serve in my intention this matter accroring to the truth…’)

In thinking about urban historiography, about the recording of great events and about the construction of memory, the crises that struck Tournai in 1477–78, as recorded by Jehan Nicolay, present an excellent case study. Jehan did not reflect on past glories nor on the ancient foundation of his town. He was, despite his preamble, not overly concerned to praise his king nor to record royal events. Rather, his intention was to remember an extraordinary year for his town. Jehan constructed his narrative to depict himself as accurate and as a simple observer of war and violence, as one writing for the benefit of future generations. As will be shown, however, he was subtly setting up his own truth, a Tournasian truth, emphasising the suffering of his town as shown in inclusion and exclusion of details, and particularly in the inclusion of sexual violence. Jehan’s purpose in writing, and his intended audience, remain somewhat abstract, but his work can be seen as an effort to create a historical tradition and a ‘correct’ memory of 1477–78. To understand the construction of ‘true’ memory for 1477–78, background must first be offered on Tournai and the political situation in 1477, and on Jehan Nicolay himself. Attention will then turn to his method of gathering and evaluating evidence and his choices in constructing history for future generations.

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Tournai and 1477 The civic archives of Tournai were, once, exceptionally rich, but were destroyed in 1940.2 The destruction represents a challenge to any study of Tournai, but as Graeme Small noted in 2000, ‘much may still be attempted’, and indeed much has been attempted in the last decade.3 Tournai was, in early 1477, a French Episcopal City surrounded by lands ruled by the Valois Dukes of Burgundy with whom the city enjoyed peaceful and friendly relations. Tournai had been spared from much of the horror of the Hundred Years’ War. It had been besieged by an Anglo-Flemish force in 1340, but from then on the city was removed the physical onslaught of war. Though surrounded by Burgundian lands, Tournai took care to emphasize its loyalty to the French King, and acquired guarantees in 1436 and again in the 1470s that they would never be alienated, as Amiens and other towns had been in 1435. Yet Tournai was commercially and culturally an integral part of the civic networks of the Low Countries. Positioned on the River Scheldt, between the Hainaut town of Valenciennes and the Flemish centres of Oudenaarde and Ghent, commercial links to Burgundian lands were vital for Tournai’s economy. The town paid annual taxes to Philip the Good and had royal permission to mint Burgundian coins, to facilitate trade with their neighbours.4 Tournai was part of the same cultural networks as the towns of the Low Countries, shown through participation in events like crossbow competitions and drama competitions organized by the chambers of rhetoric.5 Tensions between France and Burgundy, or more accurately Louis XI and Charles the Bold, grew with the War of the Public Weal. Charles faced Louis in





2 Alexandre-Guillaume Chotin, Histoire de Tournai et du Tournésis, depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à nos jours (Tournai: Massart et Janssens, 1840); Amaury de la Grange, ‘Extraits analytiques des registres des consaulx de la ville de Tournai, 1431–1476’, Mémoires de la Société historique et littéraire de Tournai, 23 (1893), 1–396; L. P. Gachard, ‘Extraits des registres des consaux de la ville de Tournay (1472–90, 1559–72, 1580–81)’, Bulletin de la commission royale, 11 (1846), 327–473; Fréderic Hennebert, ‘Extraits des registres aux résolutions des Consaux de la ville et cite de Tournai (1477–1482)’, Mémoires de la Société historique et littéraire de Tournai, 3 (1856), 57–285; Léo Verriest, ‘La perte des archives du Hainaut et de Tournai’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, 21 (1944), 186–93. 3 Graeme Small ‘Centre and periphery in late medieval France: Tournai, 1384–1477’, in War, Government and Power in Late Medieval France, ed. by Christopher Allmand (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000), p. 145; Neil Murphy, ‘Ceremonial Entries and the Confirmation of Urban Privileges in France, c. 1350–c. 1550’, Structures and Legacies of Dynastic Power in Late Imperial China and Early Modern Europe, ed. by Jeroen Duindam, Sabrine Dagenhaus and Wu Boya (Leiden: Brill, 2014); Neil Murphy, ‘Henry VIII’s French Crown: His Royal Entry into Tournai Revisited’, Historical Research, 85 (2012), 617–31; Laura Crombie, ‘French and Flemish Urban Festive Networks: Archery and Crossbow Competitions Attended and Hosted by Tournai in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries’, French History, 27 (2013), 157–75; Robert Stein, ‘An urban network in the Low Countries. A cultural approach’, in Networks, Regions and Nations, Shaping Identities in the Low Countries, ed. by Robert Stein and Judith Pollmann (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 43–71. 4 De la Grange, ‘Extraits analytiques des registres…1431–1476,’ pp. 366–69; Gachard, ‘Extraits des registres… (1472–90, 1559–72, 1580–81)’, p. 341; Small, ‘Centre and periphery in late medieval France’, pp. 145–70. 5 Marc Boone, ‘Les Gantoise et la grande procession de Tournai; aspects d’une sociabilité urbaine au bas Moyen Âge’, La Grande Procession de Tournai (1090–1992), Une Réalité religieuse, urbaine, diocésaine, sociale, économique et artistique, ed. by Jean Dumoulin, Jacques Pycke, and Marc Boone (Tournai: Fabrique de l’Eglise Cathédrale de Tournai, 1992), p. 52; Crombie ‘French and Flemish

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the Battle of Montlhéry in 1465, but violence remained at a remove from Tournai. The death of Charles the Bold on the battlefield of Nancy on 5th January 1477 suddenly changed the diplomatic scene: Louis XI launched armies to take control of as much of Charles’ domains as possible, both the duchy of Burgundy in the south and the Burgundian Low Countries in the north.6 Louis’ actions were the start of a long war, important on a trans-national level as well as a local one.7 The aim of the present article is not, however, to analyse the wars beginning in 1477. Rather, the aim here is to consider historical writing and memory in this period of crisis, and use Jehan Nicolay as an urban commentator to analyse writing and the creation of history during crisis and uncertainty. Jehan Nicolay and the surviving Manuscript of the Kalendrier Frustratingly little is known about Jehan’s background or that of his family; sources that could have been used to analyse such details were destroyed in 1940. He was a poet, and was active with the puy d’escole de rhétorique of Tournai, a group similar to the chambers of rhetoric.8 That Jehan was an accomplished and confident poet is important in analysing his Kalendrier. Despite the traditional humility topos that begins his work, he was capable of writing of great enterprises and noble deeds, he chose to present his work as a simple truthful account. As we shall see, the Kalendrier manuscript included two poems, but the vast majority of the narrative is dry, even dull, with the carefully structured appearance of being factual and simply telling the truth. In some of his poetry, Jehan set himself up as an opponent of the Burgundian writer Jean Molinet. Molinet praised Burgundian victories of the 1470s, most famously in Journée de Therouenne (a celebration of Maximilian’s victory over French troops known as the battle of Guinegate in 1479) and also criticized Tournai in several of his works. In exchange, Jehan criticized the indiciaire as blinkered and biased, in contrast – we must assume – to his own true accounts.9 The only known copy of the Kalendrier is in Paris in a large and unilluminated early sixteenth-century manuscript, known as Recueil de Chroniques

Urban Festive Networks’, pp. 157–75; Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, Om beters wille, Rederijkerskamers en de stedelijke cultuur in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden (1400–1600) (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008), pp. 19–20, 29–31, 42–49. 6 Paul M. Kendall, Louis XI, the Universal Spider (London: Cardinal Edition, 1974), pp. 388–97. 7 Jelle Haemers and Frederik Buylaert, ‘War, Politics and Diplomacy in England, France and the Low Countries, 1475–1500. An Entangled History’, Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 23 (2013), 195–220. 8 Rimés et Refrains Tournésiens: Poésies Couronnées par le Puy d’Escole de Rhétorique de Tournay (1477–1491). Extraits d’un manuscrit de la Bibliothèque de Tournai, ed. by Fréderic Hennebert (Mons: Typographie de Hoyoi-Derely, Libraire, 1838). 9 Adrian Armstrong, ‘Cosmetic Surgery on Gaul: The Printed Reception of Burgundian Writings in France before 1550’, in Print and Power in France and England, 1500–1800, ed. by David Adams and Adrian Armstrong (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 13–26; Adrian Armstrong, Technique and Technology: Script, Print, and Poetics in France, 1470–1550 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 50–52.

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Tournaisiennes.10 There was an older copy of the Kalendrier in the possession of two successive canons of St Martin’s, though this is not mentioned by name in any civic or monastic inventory, and it is likely to have been lost in 1940.11 The Parisian manuscript is a collection of historical accounts, beginning with a short Chronique des sept aiges du monde [chronicle of the 7 ages of the world], followed by an account of the destruction of Troy, two chronicles (one in prose one in verse) on the foundation of Tournai, a fifth chronicle entitled de la fortification de Tournay durant la guerre des Flamens [of the fortifications of Tournai during the war with the Flemings] which is in verse. The two next items have become a little muddled at some point, they comprise a history of the siege of Tournai in 1340 and an account of the siege of Damietta (1249) by Saint Louis plus some poems in the middle. The Kalendrier des Guerres de Tournay is by far the longest single work in the Recueil and takes up over a third of the volume, from folio 144 r. until folio 321 v. Following the Kalendrier the last 117 folios contain a mix of prose and verse, possibly the original work of the manuscript’s compiler, Jean Blampain, about whom sadly little is known. A full analysis of this compilation, drawing as it does on universal chronicle, French glories and the suffering of Tournai in both 1340 and 1477 would be very interesting, but is beyond the scope of the present article. The compilation contains some later notes in a different hand, but it seems that the Kalendrier and the preceding chronicles were all copied out in the same deliberate hand, mostly in black ink with some rubrication of coloured letters and words, and few marginal annotations or corrections.12 The Kalendrier was transcribed and published in an excellent edition by Hennebert in 1853, thought he does not mention the few marginal notes he includes all of the text in its full and unabridged form, and for ease of reference all footnotes here refer to Hennebert’s edition.13 In the surviving version, Jehan sets out his reasons for writing (fols 144r–151r) and then offers two poems, one praising France, the other condemning ‘pervers, traitres Bourguegnons’ (‘perverse, treacherous Burgundians’). The deliberate placement of two well-constructed and well-written poems within the manuscript emphasizes Jehan’s literary ability – making clear that his simply style in the Kalendrier is a choice, not a necessity. It should, of course, be remembered that poems were often included in compilations of chronicles of historical documents as they were as much a part of the historical record as other texts.14 The next 10 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms. Français 24052. 11 The Kalendier could have been one of the unnamed ‘anciennes chroniques’ mentioned and not described in Victor Deflinne–Mabille, Précis historique et bibliographique sur la Bibliothèque publique de la ville de Tournai (Tournai: Imprimerie de Renard-Dosson, 1835), pp. 22–40; J. de Gaulle, ‘Notice d’une chronique inédite du XVe siècle, intitulée: le Calendrier des guerres de Tournay’, Bulletin de la Société Historique et Littéraire de Tournai, 2 (1851), 129–43; Léopold Devillers, ‘Nicolai (jean) ou Nicolay’, Biographie Nationale de Belgique, 15 (1899), 672–74. 12 A black and white reproduction of the manuscript and an overview is provided online, [accessed 29 October 2015]. 13 Kalendrier des Guerres. 14 Adrian Armstrong and Sarah Kay, Knowing poetry: verse in medieval France from The rose to the rhétoriqueurs (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 2011), p. 53.

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twenty folios contain what will be described here as a brief chronicle. It has no separate title, but covers the years leading up to 1477, from the destruction of Dinant and Liège onwards and includes a long, even gleeful, account of Charles’s death as retribution for the destructions of cities. There is no hint at where this information comes from, though as the next parts of the text recall amour et bien voelliance du roy Loys vers la fille du duc Charles, et de plusieurs divisions et maux du people de flandres (‘the love and good wishes of King Louis toward the daughter of Duke Charles, and the many divisions and malevolencies among the people of Flanders’) it is likely Jehan drew on French letters, even propaganda.15 From this, it seems plausible that Jehan intended to write a traditional chronicle of great events and wars taking place around his city. He may have been inspired to do so by previous chroniclers associated with St Martin’s abbey, most famously the blind fourteenth-century chronicler Gilles li Muisit.16 This monastic tradition was continued by Mathieu Grenet (d. 1503), who used parts of Jehan’s Kalendrier to write his own history of Tournai from the time of Caesar to the death of Charles VIII in 1498.17 Both Li Muisit and Grenet describe significant events in France, and indeed Europe, as well as providing some details on life in Tournai including processions and crossbow competitions. In his first twenty folios, Jehan follows a similar model, his account is full of rhetoric and is extremely lively and vivid. The short chronicle of the 1460s and 1470s probably had much the same audience as Li Muisit and Grenet, which is the educated churchmen of Tournai interested in the history of France and of their town. The style here, as in Jehan’s surviving poetry, is elaborate and draws on both biblical and classical traditions and examples. The Kalendrier does not. The Kalendrier begins not with Charles the Bold’s death or with victories of Louis XI. Rather on 23 May 1477 when the French garrison entered Tournai Jehan wrote ‘Je vendray donc maintenant au fait de mon Kallendrier, lequel je ay promis escripre et faire au commencement de ma narracion, comenchant ycelluy le vingt et troisième jour de May l’an de gracse mil quatre cens soixante et dix sept et du règne de Loys de Vallois, Roy de France, onzième de ce nom, le seisième. Et pour mon kallendrier mieulx illumine et aorner, je continueray de jour en jour, escripvant ce que je ay veu et sceu advenir en Tournay et a l’environ touchant la guerre, sans y adjouster aultre chose que la pure vérité des coses advenues, tant en la dicte guerre comme en plusieurs treves et abstinences de guerre quy ont esté accordées et conclude durant le terme de mon kallendrier et oeuvre.’18 15 Kalendrier des guerres, pp. 26–32. 16 Gilles le Muisit, Chronique et Annales, ed. by Henri Lemaitre (Paris: Renouard, H. Laurens, 1906). 17 Pieter-Jan de Grieck, ‘L’Historiographie à Tournai à la fin du Moyen Âge: le manuscrit-recueil de Mathieu Grenet (1452–1503) et ses sources’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, 84 (2006), 271–306; Amaury de la Grange, ‘Mathieu Grenet et son manuscrit de la bibliothèque de Lyon’, Annales de la Société Historique et Archéologique de Tournai, Nouvelle série, 5 (1900), 79–90. 18 Kalendrier des guerres, p. 46. Transl. ‘I will now make my Kalendreir, which I promised to write and to make at the start of my narration, beginning on the 23rd day of May in the year 1477 in the 16th year of the reign of Louis Valois, King of France, 11th of the name. And for my Kalendrier to be better illuminated and decorated, I will continue to write day by day of things that I have seen and know

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The Kalendrier ends on 11 June 1478, when the French garrison left Tournai. Jehan noted that they had been in Tournai for a year and 9 days, and in that time they had taken over 3000 prisoners ‘mais on ne peult jugier se ils avoint desservy ester pugny par la justice de Dieu’ (‘we cannot judge whether they deserve to be punished by the justice of God’).19 His account continues into 1479, and is followed by a copy of the 1482 Treaty of Arras, but his style after 11 June reverts back to a longer narrative account, as shown in his earlier short chronicle. Jehan’s style is, then, a clear and deliberate technique to draw attention to the exceptional year, recording ‘jour en jour’ with ‘pure verité’ the events of the year in which Tournai hosted a garrison, with the Kalendrier as separate to ‘narracion’. Towns were rarely if ever happy to accept garrisons as their bad behaviour was well-known, their arrival could stretch already limited resources and brought the potential for violence and disorder, and even their presence could be seen as representing a threat to civic autonomy and municipal self-governance.20 The year was exceptional, and it may be that Jehan was, like sixteenth-century observers of religious violence,21 motivated to write simply because he felt himself to be living in remarkable times that should be remembered. For Tournai, the changes wrought by the fear and uncertainty of 1477–78 were monumental. The violence and hardships were unprecedented for the town and it is likely, therefore, that Jehan wrote at least in part because he felt that what was happening around him should be recorded. Yet Jehan was a sophisticated author and had at least two other – conscious or unconscious – purposes in writing. The first was to set up a ‘correct’ memory of events. He was selective in choices of inclusion and exclusion and took care to create a narrative not just of daily horror, but of Tournaisian suffering. The focus on Tournai is clear from the outset, when he writes ‘Adonc fust la ville de Tournay déclarée ennemye de tous les pays voisins, et ne avoit al heure sy bon amy en Flandre, Haynau, Lille, Douay et ailleurs quy ne voulsist avoir mis la dite ville a destruction, sans memorer ne considerer les bontez, doulceurs, courtoisies et amistiés desquelles elle avoit tousiours usé envers eulx, se monsrans

that happened in Tournai and the surrounding area touching the war, without adding anything but the pure truth of events that happened in the war and in the many truces and abstinences in war that were agreed and concluded during the period of my calendar and work.’ 19 Kalendrier des guerres, p. 268. 20 Anne Curry, ‘English Armies in the Fifteenth Century’, in Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War, ed. by Anne Curry and Michael Hughes (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1999), pp. 39–68; David Grummitt, The Calais Garrison: War and Military Service in England, 1436–1558 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008), especially pp. 44–53; Christopher Allmand, The Hundred Years War, England and France at War c.1300–c.1450 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 84–99; Philippe Contamine, La guerre au Moyen Âge (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1980), pp. 45–46; idem, ‘The soldiery in Late Medieval Urban Society’, French History, 8 (1994), 1–13; idem ‘L’armement des populations urbaines à la fin du Moyen Âge: l’exemple de Troyes (1474)’, in La guerre, la violence et les gens au Moyen Âge, II: Guerre et gens, ed. by P. Contamine and O. Guyotjeannin (Paris: Ed. du CTHS, 1996), pp. 59–72. 21 Myron P. Gutman, Warfare and Rural Life in the Early Modern Low Countries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. 31–50.

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volloir complaire a cascuns et non volloir monstrer vengeance des intollérables vexations que journellement on faistoit a ses manans, subjects et bien voiellans.’22 We shall refer to such daily exactions in war shortly, but here we can also glimpse Jehan’s second purpose in writing. It is likely that Jehan had connections to Burgundy before 1477, and that he enjoyed, perhaps took for granted, years of peace. The arrival of war, and the arrival of a garrison, would have been a shock to Jehan and a shock to his town. Jehan was careful and deliberate in his style and intention in writing – he was no less careful in naming his work. In thinking of ‘calendars’ the most obvious connotation is ecclesiastical calendars which listed feast and prayer days, and remembrances throughout the year, helping to guide liturgy for any given community.23 One of the most detailed, the fourteen-century Le Kalendrier la Royne by Guillaume de Saint-Cloud is a detailed astrological treatise pulling together ‘secrés de nature’, writing of Hippocrates, Aristotle, and other ancient authors a vast range of knowledge.24 Even shorter Calendars, like those included in fourteenth and fifteenth century missals were valuable resources for their communities, linking saints of national importance to local figures and so helping to build a sense of civic identity, even civic piety.25 Almost all calendars, breveries, missals, books of hours or almanacs provide more than lists of saints’ days, providing details of practice and of identity, and even science, as well as some glimpses into contemporary events or ideas. Many such sources have been well studied by historians of science, and present fascinating and underutilized sources for other medievalists.26

22 Kalendrier des guerres, p. 48. Transl. ‘The town of Tournai was declared an enemy by all neighbouring lands, and had not a single friend in Flanders, Hainaut, Lille, Douai or elsewhere, all wanted to destroy the town, with no memory or consideration of the kindness, sweetness, courtesy and friendship that there had always been between them, in times when they were friendly to each other rather than wanting to have and show vengeance for the intolerable vexations that were daily made on subjects and residents.’ 23 Pieter F. J. Obbema, ‘Kalenders geven meer dan heiligendagen alleen’, Een School spierinkjes: Kleine opstellen over Middelnederlandse artes-literatuur, ed by Willem P. Gerritsen et al (Hilversum: Verloren, 1991), pp. 131–33; Padraig Ó Riain, ‘The Calendar and Martyrology of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin’, The Medieval Manuscripts of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, ed by Raymond Gillespie and Raymond Refaussé (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006), pp. 33–59; Faith Wallis, ‘Medicine in Medieval Calendar Manuscripts’, Manuscript Sources of Medieval Medicine, a Book of Essays, ed by Margaret R. Schleissner (London/New York: Garland Publishing, 1995), pp. 105–44. 24 Guillaume de Saint–Cloud, Le Kalendrier la Royne, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, 2872; José Luis Mancha, ‘Astronomical use of pinhole images in William of Saint-Cloud’s Almanach planetarum (1292)’, Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 43 (1992), 275–98. 25 For instance missal made in Paris begins with a calendar listing a saint for almost every day, with some astrological images: Missale ad usum ecclesiae Parisiensis, 1300–1310, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Latin 8885; French vernacular books: books published in the French language before 1601, ed. by Andrew Pettegree, Malcolm Walsby and Alexander Wilkinson, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill 2007). 26 Saskia von Bergen, ‘De middeleeuwse kalender ontcijferd’, Kunstschrift, 46 (2002), 14–21; Philipp C. Nothaft and Justine Isserles, ‘Calendars beyond borders: exchange of calendrical knowledge between Jews and Christians in medieval Europe (12th–15th century)’, Medieval Encounters, 20 (2014), 1–37; Hilary M. Carey, ‘Astrological medicine and the medieval English folded almanac’, Social

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Calendars were also becoming administrative records. The term can mean a list or register, as shown in a contemporary English source, the Maire of Bristowe is Kalandar begun in 1478. The Bristol document does not provide a day-by-day account of events rather it contains a collection of rights and charters as well as a chronicle of local events, much like the older London Liber Albus.27 Jehan made a choice in calling his work a Kalendrier. He chose to write in a dry and seemingly impersonal style, as part of his narrative strategy to strip away any decoration or celebration for most of the events around him. He seems to have wished for his work to be read; indeed the deliberately simple style may be part of such a wish. Rather than writing long prose or verse, he seems to have wished that his account be used for later writing, just as calendars could be used for religious remembrances. Jehan has deliberately chosen to write a Kalendrier, a simple record of facts and repertoire of knowledge, not a chronique or histoire. That his account covers just over a year may have been part of his choice, though of course this cannot be proven. As Jehan noted, he had taken it upon himself to write the things that happened in and to his town in his own times, to create a journal for remembrance. His intended audience was, then, partially his own monastic community, but more broadly it can be argued that Jehan was writing for future readers of Tournai and even for posterity in general, as the suffering of 1477 was worthy of remembrance. The Gathering of Evidence and Telling of Truths Jehan wrote, or at least he presented his work as if he wrote, a daily factual account of the suffering of his town. As we shall see, there is more depth and subtlety to the Kalendrier, but this conscious construction of narrative and presentation of himself as an impartial omnipresent narrator is important. His detached style can be seen in many short and impersonal entries. For instance on Thursday 7th August, ‘une bonne compaignie de la garnison de Tournay alla en plusieurs villaiges envers Courtray, dont ils remenerent en la dite ville grand quantité de butin et vingt trois prisonniers paysans’ (‘a large part of the garrison of Tournai went to many villages toward Courtrai, and they brought back to the town a large quantity of booty and 23 peasants as prisoners’).28 He sets out precise details of a violent event, with no obvious judgement or hyperbole, though there were, as we shall see, exceptions to this seemingly factual style. Many entries, like that of 7 August, appear to be simple and factual, as Jehan had access to a number of sources and utilized them carefully to present his

History of Medicine, 17 (2004), 345–63. 27 Peter Fleming, ‘Making History: culture politics and the Maire of Bristowe is Kalandar’, in Reputation and representation in fifteenth century Europe, ed. by Douglas L. Biggs, Sharon D. Michalove, and A. Compton Reeves (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 276–315. See also the contribution of Jenine de Vries in this volume. 28 Kalendrier des guerres, p. 113.

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account of war and violence as the truth and nothing more. We do not know when Jehan wrote. It seems likely that he was at least taking notes, if not writing full formal entries each day, as some entries are very short, but many fill several folios providing details on numbers of men and even names and places; a level of precision that would have been difficult to attain weeks or months later. In addition, there are almost no hints of what is going to happen in the Kalendrier, no teleological explanations of events. Rather the Kalendrier is constructed as a journal. It is not a personal journal, as the author never inserts himself into the narrative; rather it is constructed as the journal of a city going through an exceptional period. The construction of truth in the Kalendrier is built upon the use of recognized and referenced sources. In several places, Jehan copied out full official documents, including letters sent by Mary of Burgundy expressing her hopes for peace and neutrality. On 11 April 1477, Mary wrote to Tournai stating the residents of Tournai and surrounding ‘areas se soient tousiours et meisment pendant ces divisions… envers nous…en toute doulceur, amour et faveur’ (‘that they have always and still during these divisions…hold toward us…in all sweetness, love and favour’). She regrets that ‘pluiseurs pillories, robberies, destrousses, courses et semblables enterprinses et oultraiges sur les dits manans et habitant de Tournay’ (‘the many pillages, robberies, destructions, actions and other similar enterprises toward the residents and inhabitants of Tournai’). She hopes that trade and free passage between Tournai and her own lands will be restored, and damages to Tournai stopped and she will punish the criminals. She ends her letter by urging Tournai not to be drawn into war and to remain neutral.29 The inclusion of official sources – in full rather than paraphrase – links to Jehan’s intention to provide a full and ‘true’ account that could be of use to future writers and readers. As well as giving his text an air of authority, Jehan has also found a clever way to emphasize condemnation for the violence committed by rebels, and to emphasize his respect for Mary as legitimate countess of Flanders. So closely does Mary’s language mirror Jehan’s own preoccupations that it is tempting to see his own additions in the letter, yet de la Grange’s 1893 transcription of the now lost letter is almost identical.30 Like a good historian, Jehan has found a quote that sums up his own argument and allows him to represent himself as an impartial all-seeing observer, and to use Mary’s words and Mary’s despair to highlight the evils of the pillaging and rebellions being carried out by those who should be her subjects and to express hopes for Tournaisian neutrality. Other documents were paraphrased. On 13 August 1477 news reached Tournai that the king had been victorious against the Flemings, but the account is relatively short and does not add details of joy or giving thanks to God, in keeping with Jehan’s declared wish to depict ‘truth’ without adding anything for the ‘pure truth’ of events.31 That Jehan had access to these documents is, in 29 Kalendrier des guerres, pp. 39–42. 30 Grange, ‘Extraits analytiques des registres… 1431–1476’, pp. 384–86. 31 Kalendrier des guerres, pp. 126–28, 256–57, 270–77.

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itself, interesting, and may show that he had some connection to civic governance and civic officials. The long and detailed reporting of Mary’s hopes for peace, in contrast to this short account of martial success, show a subtle choice of inclusion and exclusion, and a careful crafting of history. Jehan does not provide detail on where he saw such official documents, but there is an implication in their inclusion that he had access to official networks of information. In other places, Jehan does more than simply copy out the records, he implies he had been present at, or had first-hand information about, significant events. On Thursday, 10 July 1477 Jehan de Chaumont, the king’s secretary, and other lords met with the four consuls of Tournai in the town hall. They discussed letters from the king and les grandes affaires du roy (‘the great affairs of the king’) and the war. The town was asked to provide a large sum of money, as they had given money to the duke of Burgundy while he was alive. The royal officials reminded the civic men that the king was their natural lord and that Tournai, like other towns of the kingdom, had to help him in his war. The townsmen gave no answer, and would not make any promises until they put the demands of the king before the commun de la ville.32 Recording conversations in a way that implies he was present allowed Jehan to depict himself as an all-seeing narrator, and helped his account appear as the full truth of all events in Tournai, as he set out in his prologue. Of course the full truth for the experiences of a town at war had to be more than official documents, and meetings of civic officials. Jehan also draws on other sources, and his reproduction of urban voices adds legitimacy to his account as an urban account of the violence of 1477–78. Popular voices are important in his conscious construction of memory. Jehan often records ‘voix courut’ or rumours without any explanation of who he heard talking or where he has heard them. Some rumours, but by no means all, turn out to be correct, others were, as would be expected, exaggerations, offering insight into the climate of fear growing inside Tournai. In recording the voice of the people,33 even in an edited and filtered form, there are hints in the Kalendrier of the work as a product of a social milieu and insight into wider experiences in Tournai, and the value Jehan placed on recording the public experience of 1477–78 as part of the ‘pure truth’. On 6 June 1477 Jehan reported that ‘environs dix heures devant middy, coureut voix en la dictie ville que les Flamens venoient en grande force devers la porte du Bruisle par divers quartiers, et de fait on les veit venir en grand nombre et fort approchier la dicte ville’ (‘At around 10 in the morning a rumour went around the town that the Flemings were coming in great number to the Gate of Bruisle, (the rumour was heard) in many parts of the town, and in fact they came in great number

32 Kalendrier des guerres, pp. 88–89. 33 For an excellent discussion of the means attached to vox populi and the challenges in analysing popular voices see Jan Dumolyn, Jelle Haemers, Hipólito Rafael Oliva Herrer and Vincent Challet, ‘Medieval Voices and Popular Politics,’ in their edited collection The Voices of the People in Late Medieval Europe: Communication and Popular Politics (Brepols: Turnhout, 2014), pp. 1–14.

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and great strength toward the town’).34Almost a month later, it was rumoured that a great number of people from Ghent and elsewhere were approaching the town. As a result, 100 French lances left the town to seek out the Flemings. The French host found the enemies without difficulty as the men were all on foot, but they returned with very little booty.35 As the fear and insecurity in Tournai continued, definite news seems to have been harder to come by and more and more credence was given to rumours. Early in the morning of 28th August 1477 a rumour was heard that the garrison of Lille were preparing to fight and to march on Tournai. The leaders of the French garrison again took 100 lances out of Tournai, but this time they found nothing.36 On the evening of 4 September a rumour was heard that Burgundians were at a nearby village (Marquain, about three miles west of Tournai) and so the garrison went out but found nothing. During the same night the watchers sounded the alarm and said that Burgundians were approaching, but no enemies could be found.37 The prevalence of such rumours, and the garrison’s willingness or take them seriously emphasized the growing climate of fear. Jehan’s inclusion of such rumours shows that he was part of his town, and able to report on matters discussed by civic officials as well as fear whispered in the streets. His inclusion of rumours, especially rumours that proved to be false, highlights Jehan’s wish to record the civic experience, and that civic fears were a valid part of the true account of 1477–78. Rumours were at their height in the late summer of 1477, but they continued across the period. On 8 August 1478 a rumour was heard that merchants and their goods – bringing much–needed wine, salt, butter cheese etc. – on their way to Tournai from France were being stopped in Douai by the lord of Fiennes, captain of that town. The goods arrived a few days later, and Jehan provides no further details on whether they had indeed been held up near Douai.38 More examples could be given – both of rumours being proved right and rumours that seem to have been there result of simple fear and misunderstanding. Jehan’s diligent recording of rumours, especially when he often decided not to include daily pillages, is revealing and give insight not just into his source but onto his intention. Jehan listened to his town, and was prepared to include much that he heard from fellow townsmen in his account, though it is of course likely he heard any number of other rumours that he did not include. All those that he does include are about the danger presented by enemies; none are about discontent with the French king or the garrisons. In this selection of sources and construction of memory we can see Jehan choosing evidence that helped him to depict his town as suffering, his town as loyal and his town as caught up in events it cannot control resulting in fear and instability.

34 35 36 37 38

Kalendrier des guerres, p. 59. Kalendrier des guerres, p. 85. Kalendrier des guerres, p. 121. Kalendrier des guerres, p. 125. Kalendrier des guerres, pp. 313–14.

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The Construction of History In gathering information from written and oral accounts, Jehan provided a narrative of life in a town surrounded by war. He was, of course, doing more than simply narrating the life of his town, he was using a range of sources and techniques to memorialize and to understand the suffering Tournai endured. In this, Jehan made sure to provide ample evidence for future writers – or for his own future works – but he does more than this. Jehan’s account of 1477–78 shows a wish to explain the horrors of war for present and for future Tournaisians, and perhaps himself, and violence is described in depth or glossed over as appropriate to this narrative of loyalty and suffering between 23 May 1477 and 11 June 1478. There are some thirty Kalendrier entries which could be summarized as ‘nothing happened today’, but each is slightly different and provides insight into the purpose of writing the Kalendrier: e.g. ‘Le dimance vingt huitiesme du dit moys se passa sans acte de guerre en ce quartier de Tournay quy venist a cognoissance, synon que en manière accoustumée le pueple du plat pays fut pillé et robbé’ (‘Sunday 28th (September), no act of war happened in the area around Tournai that came to our knowledge, but in the accustomed manner the people of the countryside were pillaged and robbed’).39 Such short entries are important for two reasons. Firstly they provide insight into Jehan’s purpose – he felt compelled to write something every day and wanted to provide a full account of the war. Even if a day’s account was simply: ‘Le joedy seiziesme du dit mots, ne fut faicte chose dont mémoire doibve estre faicte par scripture, car tousjours les compaignons de ung costé et de aultre faisoient courses au butin quy trop seriot longhe chose a tout escripre’ (‘Thursday 16th (October) there were no acts that should be remembered or put into writing, as is always the case one side or the other made raids for plunder which would be too long to describe’).40 Jehan is not just writing that nothing happened on 28 September and 16 October 1477. It is, of course, possible that these entries show simply war fatigue and draw on the classical topos of ‘too long to write.’ Yet it seems more likely that Jehan is subtly choosing what should and should not be recorded and so what should and should not be remembered. He is not saying that 28 September and 16 October passed without any hostilities – rather that the hostilities are as mundane as to be unworthy of recording and that his readers should remember the constant violence, rather than the minutia of individual raids and pillages. The exclusion of details is even clearer in an account of the Flemings in general, and Ghent in particular, in rebellion against Mary of Burgundy. Ghent, as the main opposition to Mary, often appeared as the very worst of Tournai’s enemies, and enacting the very worst sort of violence: ‘Quy voulroit ou poulroit prendre la payne et labour de escripre et énarre toutes les sédicions, comotions, tumultes, viollences et rebellions quy environ le tamps dessus dit furent faictes par le

39 Kalendrier des guerres, p. 141. 40 Kalendrier des guerres, p. 148.

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commun people’ (‘who would wish or could take the pain and labour to write and enumerate all the seditions, comotions, tumults, violence and rebellions that had happened in the said times (1477) of acts made by the common people’). This prolepsis-like devise is followed by a very long account of the inhabitants of Ghent coming together on their market place with banners and taking prisoner haults homes et notable personnaiges and then putting them to death in exécucion criminelle. They act against Mary ‘sans avoir consideration que elle estoit leur soverain dame naturel’ (‘without considering that she was their sovereign and natural ruler’). The accounts of 28 September and 16 October are a little subtler, but are using similar prolepsis to show violence is constant, but to avoid recording details that are not relevant to the narrative of Tournaisian suffering. Secondly, such short entries give a glimpse into the mundane horrors of war. Though the Kalendrier contains very little emotive language, such dry statements of pillage and death ‘en manière accoustumée’ or of plundering car tousjours are themselves evidence of the emotional devastation wrought by war and insecurity. These dual elements – of a wish to record the truth and a growing sense of uncertainty – run through most of the Kalendrier. In contrast to the majority of short, dry, entries, Jehan did write at length about particular acts of violence and warfare. In his choice of long and short entries, and in his inclusion or exclusion of official sources, it is tempting to see Jehan acting as a historian, evaluating his sources and keeping evidence as he saw fit. He uses official documents to show that he is truthful and reliable, but by using them selectively he is also creating his own account and adding his own morals, emphasising the importance of legitimate authority. And, like a good historian, Jehan provided some drama in a long account of a French victory on 30th June 1477. A Franco-Tournaisian expedition marched toward Saint Amand, but en route encountered and defeated a ‘grand nombre de Flamens de la ville de Bruges, du pays du Francq et pareillement de la ville de Courtray et plusieur aultres villes et villages’ (‘a great number of Flemings from the town of Bruges, from the Franc and especially from Courtrai and many other towns and villages’). The armies met in the morning, and the French forces comprised around 400 lances as well as the ‘piétons’ of Tournai against three or four thousand Flemings who also had a ‘grant quantité de artillery, de traits de pouldre et aultres instruments de guerre’ (‘a great quantity of artillery, of gunpowder weapons and other instruments of war’). The account is very detailed here; Jehan could have simply noted that a battle was won, but it would take too long to record, yet he wrote a long and detailed account emphasising the significance of this day. It is clear that his future readers, and indeed future generations in general, should remember 30 June 1477. Jehan does not explain where he gets his information, but he provides details on battle formations. The Franco-Tournaisian force was ‘mes en trois batailes’ (‘put in three battles’) with both horsemen and archers and the capture of nine or ten hundred Flemings. His numbers, like most contemporary battle accounts, are exaggerated, but his detail, even hyperbole, here is striking. He adds that ‘Dieu donne les victoires’ (‘God gave the victory’) to the Franco-Tournaisian host, and explains that even being well-armed and prepared is not enough to win as

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the French had no serpentines (cannons) and were small in number but ‘Dieu aidant en ceste victoire’ (‘God aided (them) in this victory’). After the battle the French returned ‘en grand triumphe’ with trumpets sounding and with much booty, including a Burgundian standard with the cross of Saint Andrew and thirty pieces of artillery among them an ‘excellent serpentine’ that was twelve feet long and bore the arms of Charles the Bold. Jehan’s account of the plunder of this encounter is far longer than most entries. As the host enter in ‘triumphe et victoire’ to ‘joyeuse melodye’ they carry some banners to the cathedral and present the most important ones there, with others distributed around Tournai. As they present the banners ‘les gens de guerre rendirent grasces a Dieu et a la Vierge Marye en son l’église’ (‘the men of arms gave thanks to God and to the Virgin Mary in her church’) while the bells pealed.41 In describing the battle of Bouvines, on 11 December 1477, Jehan’s account is again disproportionately long. He described the army leaving Tournai by the Coqueriel gate with a ‘grand nombre de piétons’ (‘a great number of infantrymen’) of the town, an army of some two thousand horsemen and fourteen hundred infantrymen going to the bridge of Bouvines. As above, the level of detail here was impressive and again Jehan did not reveal his sources, rather he acted as omnipresent narrator. He provided the names of commanders of various flanks, the position of the carts on the battlefield and the debates among the leaders, describing an impressive Franco-Tournaisian host facing a larger Flemish force. Jehan adds that the ‘Burgundians’ had ‘plus de deux cens femmes, les aulcunes ayan saces pour metre les meilleures baghes de la despouille des morts’ (‘more than two hundred women, some of them with sacks for the goods of those injured and killed’). Again the enemy had a large supply of gunpowder and the ‘Germans’ fired so many guns that ‘il sembloit ester nuyt’ (‘that is seemed to be night’) creating so much noise that it was impossible to hear. Despite their efforts, the FrancoTournaisian force ‘Dieu aydant’ (‘with divine aid’) was unhurt, no one was hit or killed by the volley but ‘comme Dieu le vollut’ (‘as God wished it’) the French lances withstood the Burgundian charge and won a great victory. Those of Tournai ‘se portèrent vaillamment’ (‘conducted themselves bravely’) with many gentlemen. The battle was well fought and a ‘grant triumphe’ for three reasons; numerous prisoners, the prowess of the infantry and the numerous banners that had been captured. The army re-entered Tournai the next morning, Jehan names the most important prisoners and some of the French lords who died and ends by writing that the battle had been fought vigorously and with faith in God.42 The level of detail here allows for a consideration of Jehan’s intention and his choices in when to represent and when to obscure the acts of war. He depicts the battle of Bouvines as decisive; he may have hoped that this violence could bring peace and emphasized that the Franco-Tournasian host, with divine

41 Kalendrier des guerres, pp. 81–84. 42 Kalendrier des guerres, pp. 172–74.

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will, overcame a dangerous enemy that was better equipped. There is more going on here than simple enthusiasm for French victories. These two entries are exceptionally long in contrast to the others and are far more vivid, indeed emotive, as Jehan praises these divinely aided victories, making clear that these were part of his true account. Such longer accounts are unusual. More common are short entries which set out the daily misery and suffering of Tournai. For instance that of November 22nd when: ‘le dit jour firent les Bourghegnons plusieurs pillories entour Tournay et vindrenet environs wit heures du viespre boutre le fue a Froymon, en plus de ung lieu, sans ce que nul yssit de la ville pour les reboutter’ (‘that day the Burgundians pillages all around Tournai and were found around vespers setting fires around Froyment, and in other places, but nothing was done from the town to repulse them’). Or the even shorter entry for the 12th March 1478 ‘vinrent aulcuns Bourghegnons emprès le happart de Tournay, et y prindrent ung homme’ (‘some Burgundians attacked areas near to Tournai, and captured one man’).43 Such accounts placed Tournai firmly at the heart of Jehan’s Kalendrier and emphasized again that he wrote about his town and a collective civic experience during 1477–78. So profound is this suffering that at the end of June 1478 Jehan added a comment not connected to an individual day – the only time he does so. He wrote: ‘Ce moys du juing fut moult dangereux et crainfit pour Tournai, sans oyr bonnes nouvelles du roy et sans espérance de mieulx avoir; assails de tous leez, et de nulluy souccourus, manachiez de chacun et de personne confortez, fors de Dieu.’44 While not particularly elaborate, such a note is interesting as it broke the dayby-day recording pattern set and observed by Jehan since 23 May 1477. The entry follows the long and depressing account of the events of 30 June, which was, Jehan reminded his readers, the anniversary of the French victory at Espiers, described above. Jehan recorded the Burgundians approaching, on the afternoon of 30 June 1478. The captain of Tournai sounded the alarm and went out in response, leading to the death of the lord of Gruertye and seven of his men. In the evening another attack came, led by Anthoing de Lannoy with artillery who inflicted a great deal of damage around the Porte de Sainte Fontaine and set fire to the suburbs and to the Hospital of Saint Anthony, which had not been burnt since the death of the duke of Guelders in the battle the year before. It seems that the violence of the end of June 1478 and the anniversary promoted Jehan to take stock of what he had witnessed. He noted that ‘la guerre avoir demouré longtempts en Tournai; et fist ce did feu grand et irreparable dommange aux bonnes gens’ (‘The war had lasted a long time for Tournai; and this brought many fires and great and irreparable damage to good men’).45

43 Kalendrier des guerres, pp. 162, 217. 44 Kalendrier des guerres, p. 277. Transl. ‘This month of June was very dangerous and damaging for Tournai, without hearing any good news of the king and without any hope; assaulted in all places, saved or helped by no one, threatened by all and comforted by none but by God.’ 45 Kalendrier des guerres, pp. 276–77.

r ecor d s a nd rumours from tourna i

Finally, in considering Jehan’s construction of history and his wish to show the ‘true’ horrors of 1477–78 it is interesting to consider his account of sexual violence. Sexual violence as a metaphor for violence against society is a common trope, and one Jehan seems to be tapping into, to add emphasis to the suffering of urban society in war.46 On 16 June many residents left Tournai to seek food and supplies in the area outside the walls, as a truce had been signed the day before, yet Jehan records that ‘che jour prindrent et ravirent les Bourghegnons plusieurs feme do Tournay’ (‘this day the Burgundians took and ravished many women of Tournai’).47 The exact meaning of ‘ravirent’ could be debated, as this could mean the women were kidnapped and taken back to Burgundian lands, but the implication is surely still sexual violence. The account here is, as with most of Jehan’s accounts, short and dry, but this is the first direct reference to violence against women and only women in the Kalendrier. A month later, on 14th July, during another truce, Burgundians are recorded as causing many acts of damage around Tournai including, Jehan records: ‘Et en la meisme matinée, furent faictes pluseurs viollences et desrisions aulx femes allées au bois de Breuze, entre lesquelles les viestures de deux, ce est assavoir de mère et de fille, furent coppées sy courtes que ells estoient descouvertes et desnuées.’48 There is again lack of clarity about what precisely has gone on in the woods. The violence inflicted on women in a time of truce is again important, especially if contrasted with the bloodthirsty women of the Burgundian army ready to rob the dead. In his accounts of open war, references to ‘pillage and ravishment’ are present but poorly defined and never linked to women and to women only. It is no coincidence that the first two clear references to violence, presumably sexual violence, against women occurred after more than a year of war and during periods of truce, when the women should have been safe. In each case, there are other acts of violence going on, but it seems that there is a symbolic significance to their recording and remembering of these likely rapes. In both events the truces, as well as the women, are being violated and the women taken to represent civic society more generally. In open war, it could be argued, rape was almost accepted. In analysing The Hundred Years War, Wright observed that rape and abductions of women were

46 Alison Ramsey, ‘On the link between rape, abduction and war in Christine de Pizan’s Cité des Dames’, in Contexts and Continuities: Proceedings of the IVth International Colloquium on Christine de Pizan, ed. by Angus J. Kennedy et al., 3 vols (Glasgow: Glasgow University Press, 2002), pp. 693–703; Mireille Vincent-Cassy, ‘Viol des jeunes filles et propagande politique en France à la fin du Moyen Âge’, Le corps des jeunes filles de l’Antiquité à nos jours, ed. by Louise Bruit Zaidman et al. (Paris: Perrin, 2001), pp. 117–40; Laura Crombie, ‘War and the non-combatant’, in The Hundred Years’ War, ed. by Anne Curry (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming). 47 Kalendrier des guerres, p. 270. 48 Kalendrier des guerres, p. 289. Transl. ‘And on the same morning, many acts of violence and damage were inflicted on women who had gone to Breuze woods, among them were two, a mother and a daughter, whose clothes were cut short and they were unclothed and stripped.’

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‘customary’ with numerous soldiers confessing to ‘violation of women’ and ‘raping women and deflowering virgins’.49 War brought violence and women inevitably suffered as did the rest of society, but they, and others, should have been safe during truces and during brief windows of peace. Rape is, of course, negative in and of itself, but in this representation of sexual violence Jehan made clear these acts of violence are all the more unacceptable as they take place in periods of peace. The entries are short, but it seems that Jehan is emphasising the evil of violating both the truce and the women, adding some memorable details so that the suffering of Tournai would be remembered. Jehan’s work is about an exceptional year for his town, the horrors of war and the inconvenience of a garrison. It can be summed up as a record of suffering – physical and emotional – endured by Tournai in 1477–79 and the impact war had on the town. Jehan presented himself as a simple writer seeking to present the truth. It is likely that he wrote because he felt that events around him should be remembered – but this does not mean that he simply recorded everything he saw or heard. In crafting a narrative and in considering carefully what was and was not worthy of being remembered, Jehan was acting as a stylish historian drawing attention to the evils of war and the suffering of the innocent. He draws his information from a range of sources and presented himself as an omnipresent narrator to inspire confidence on the part of his readers that he was indeed telling the truth. The Kalendrier is an account of civic experiences; it is a careful construction of the memory of conflict and has been put together so that things worthy of being remembered will be known in years to come.

49 Nicholas Wright, Knights and peasants: the Hundred Years War in the French countryside (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK; Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 1998), p. 73.

Tineke Van Gassen

The Diary of Ghent Between Urban Politics and Late Medieval Historiography The Diary of Ghent is a curious document which describes in detail the developments in the city of Ghent during the rebellious periods in the second half of the fifteenth and first quarter of the sixteenth century.1 This manuscript has already been studied by several generations of historians because of the rich information it contains about urban life in Ghent, and especially about the uprising against the Burgundian duke Philip the Good in 1447–53.2 It has always been considered as a kind of urban historiography, but not as a ‘typical’ city chronicle like the well-known examples from Italy or the German empire. This more ‘pure’ form of urban historiography is thought not to have been written in the late medieval Low Countries, although numerous other expressions of urban identity existed in this highly urbanized region.3 Various scholars have tried to define ‘urban historiography’ by identifying some essential features concerning, among others, the time-frame, the spatial elements, the commissioners and the themes.4 A lot of these characteristics are discernible in the Diary, such as the almost exclusive attention being paid to the urban setting and institutions. The







1 The manuscript is preserved in the State Archives of Ghent (hereafter SAG), Fonds Gent, no. 158. Edition by Victor Fris, Dagboek van Gent van 1447 tot 1470 met een vervolg van 1477 tot 1515, 2 vols (Ghent: C. Annoot-Braeckman, 1901–04). Although this is not a diary in the strict sense of the word, I will use that term to refer to the document as it is commonly known this way. 2 See for example the detailed study of Jelle Haemers, De Gentse Opstand 1449–1453. De strijd tussen rivaliserende netwerken om het stedelijke kapitaal (Kortrijk-Heule: UGA, 2004). 3 Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, ‘S’imaginer le passé et le présent: conscience historique et identité urbaine en Flandre à la fin du Moyen Âge’, in Memoria, communitas, civitas. Mémoire et conscience urbaines en Occident à la fin du Moyen Âge, ed. by Hanno Brand, Pierre Monnet, and Martial Staub (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2003), pp. 167–80; Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, ‘L’écriture de la mémoire urbaine en Flandre et en Brabant (XIVe–XVIe siècle)’, in Villes de Flandre et d’Italie (XIIIe–XVIe Siècles). Les enseignements d’une comparaison, ed. by Élisabeth Crouzet-Pavan and Élodie Lecuppre-Desjardin (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), pp. 149–64. 4 Elisabeth Van Houts, Local and Regional Chronicles (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995), pp. 42–50; Regula Schmid, ‘Town Chronicles’, in Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, ed. by Graeme Dunphy (Leiden: Brill, 2010), II, pp. 1432–38; Lisa Demets and Jan Dumolyn, ‘Urban Chronicle Writing in Late Medieval Flanders: the Case of Bruges during the Flemish Revolt of 1482–1490’, Urban History, 43 (2016), 1, 28–45.

Urban History Writing in North-Western Europe (15th–16th centuries), ed. by Bram Caers, Lisa Demets and Tineke Van Gassen, SEUH 47 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 115–136. © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.SEUH-EB.5.117871

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Diary reports contemporary events, so it applies Gegenwartsgeschichte instead of Vergangenheitsgeschichte.5 This attention to a very select time-frame heightens the journalistic character of the report. Scholars have pointed to the urban administration in order to contextualize its social environment because of the number of official documents incorporated into the narrative, however, without specifying the concrete original circumstances and the nature of the document.6 This article aims to trace the origin and use of the so-called Diary of Ghent in order to contribute to the larger debate about urban historiography. On the one hand, I aim to reconstruct the originating context of the document, thereby paying attention to its production, authorship, and function. Therefore, I will examine the composition of the manuscript, discuss the political goal of the first and main part, and explain the continuation and further use of this Diary in the sixteenth century. On the other hand, and based on this reconstruction, I will question its significance in the broader perspective of historiographical genres in cities in the late medieval Low Countries. An in-depth analysis of the various parts of this Diary reveals that the boundaries between historiographical and political-administrative genres were much vaguer than previously assumed. In order to situate the Diary in its originating context, it is necessary to give a brief overview of the political situation in Ghent during the later Middle Ages. The county of Flanders was a highly urbanized region and Ghent was an important centre for the textile industry. Being the biggest city in the southern Low Countries with roughly 65,000 inhabitants around the middle of the fourteenth century, Ghent played a major role in the representative institutions of the county of Flanders.7 From the beginning of the fourteenth century, the craft guilds challenged the power of the local oligarchy and acquired political influence in the city government. As a result, the regime of the ‘Three Members’ was introduced and embodied an institutional consolidation in which political power was divided among the weavers, the patricians (‘poorterij’), and the 53 small craft guilds (‘kleine neringen’).8 Due to their active political role, the members of the guilds participated in negotiations between the cities and the





5 Franz–Josef Schmale, Funktion und Formen mittelalterlicher Geschichtsschreibung , eine Einführung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1985), pp. 24–26. 6 The main text of the document was already published by Antonin G. B. Schayes, Dagboek der Gentsche Collatie, bevattende een nauwkeurig verhael van de gebeurtenissen te Gent, en elders in Vlaenderen, voorgevallen van de jaren 1446 tot 1515 (Ghent: L. Hebbelynck, 1842), and in a better way edited and analysed by Victor Fris, ‘Ontleding van drij Vlaamsche kronijken’, Handelingen der Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent, 3 (1900), 135–71 (pp. 157–71); Fris, ‘Onderzoek naar de bronnen van den opstand der Gentenaars tegen Philip den Goede (1449–1453)’, Bulletijn der Maatschappij voor Geschied- en Oudheidkunde te Gent, 8 (1900), 212–43 (pp. 237–39); for the edition: see footnote 1. 7 Walter Prevenier, De Leden en de Staten van Vlaanderen (1384–1405) (Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, 1961), passim. 8 Marc Boone, Gent en de Bourgondische hertogen, ca. 1384 – ca. 1453. Een sociaal–politieke studie van een staatsvormingsproces (Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, 1990), p. 281. The shape of this political system would remain unchanged for almost two centuries.

The Diary o f Ghent

ruler.9 However, in the fifteenth century, through their political participation, the guilds often contested the count’s supremacy.10 In the course of the fifteenth century, the Burgundian dukes strived to centralize political power, diminishing the influence of the cities considerably.11 This led to increasing tensions between Ghent and the duke which provoked urban uprisings.12 Composition of the manuscript The Diary of Ghent should be seen in this background of urban rebellion, with Ghent and other cities continuously striving to preserve or restore their former power. The manuscript contains more than 300 folios and immediately shows a certain versatility in content, but also in terms of codicology and palaeography. In addition to the main narrative parts, several other administrative documents were incorporated. The six hands present in this manuscript and the diverse types of texts included already point to the different roles this document played at various stages over time.13 An overview of the content of the different parts will promote a better understanding of the further analysis of the meaning of this document. On the first folio, the manuscript opens with a poem in rhyme mocking the peculiarities of people living in the different regions of the Burgundian Netherlands. The poet calls the inhabitants of Brabant conceited and haughty, the people of Holland are tremendously fond of good food and drink, idiots and fools live in Zeeland, persons from Guelders are alert warriors and robbers, and lastly, Flemish people are shrewd merchants and dice players.14 It is difficult to determine whether this poem might have been intended to be read out loud or even sung. Similar types of public poetry were widespread in the late medieval Burgundian Netherlands.15 This specific text is only found in the Diary manuscript,

9 The regime of the Three Members and the corporate participation have sometimes been given the label ‘democratic’ in older historiography: Henri Pirenne, Les anciennes démocraties des Pays-Bas (Paris: Flammarion, 1928). However, the grip of old patrician families on political power in the city remained strong and many social groups in society were excluded from political participation: Raymond Van Uytven, ‘Plutokratie in de “oude democratieën der Nederlanden”. Cijfers en beschouwingen omtrent de korporatieve organisatie en de sociale structuur der gemeenten in de late middeleeuwen’, Handelingen van de Koninklijke Zuidnederlandse Maatschappij voor Taal- en Letterkunde en Geschiedenis, 16 (1962), 373–409. 10 Jan Dumolyn, ‘Privileges and Novelties: the Political Discourse of the Flemish Cities and Rural Districts in their Negotiations with the Dukes of Burgundy (1384–1506)’, Urban History, 35 (2008), 5–23 (pp. 5–8). 11 Jan Dumolyn, Staatsvorming en vorstelijke ambtenaren in het graafschap Vlaanderen (1419–1477) (Antwerp: Garant, 2003), pp. 5–13 and 233–45. 12 Jan Dumolyn and Jelle Haemers, ‘Patterns of Urban Rebellion in Medieval Flanders’, Journal of Medieval History, 31 (2005), 369–93 (pp. 378–82). 13 Besides these six hands, there are a few others who made annotations in the margins, for instance, Jacob de Meyere (see below), but also nineteenth century archivists Louis-Prosper Gachard and Victor Vander Haeghen. 14 About this poem: Jan Frans Willems, Belgisch museum voor de Nederduitsche tael- en letterkunde en de Geschiedenis des Vaderlands, 2 vols (Ghent: F. en E. Gyselinck, 1838), II, pp. 315–16; Cornelia Catharina van de Graft, Middelnederlandsche historieliederen (Epe: Hooiberg, 1904), pp. 4–5. 15 Jan Dumolyn and Jelle Haemers, ‘Political Poems and Subversive Songs. The Circulation of ‘Public Poetry’ in the Late Medieval Low Countries’, Journal of Dutch Literature, 5 (2014), 1, 1–22.

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t i n ek e van gassen Table 1: Composition of the manuscript the Diary of Ghent (SAG, Fonds Gent, no. 158)

Fols

Content

Date

Hand

–

On the first folio: poem about characteristics of people in the different principalities

–

1

1r–192v

Part 1: Focus on urban revolt against duke Philip the Good

1447 – August 1452

1

July 1453–70

1

1477–1515

2

229r–236r Second part of the inventory of urban artillery by Daneel Croeselin

July 1489 – January 1490

1

237r–238r Inventory of urban artillery by Jan van den Abeele

October 1456

3

July 1489

1

1477–78, 1484

4

1525

5

12th and 13th c.

6

192v–218r Part 2: Starting with the battle of Gavere until the war efforts of duke Charles the Bold 218v–226v Part 3: Opening with the death of duke Charles the Bold until Joyous Entry of future emperor Charles V

241r–252r

First part of the inventory of urban artillery by Daneel Croeselin

254v–303v Fragments of city accounts of Jan Van Coppenhole,transcribed by his son Pieter 304r–307r Petition from Ghent to governess Margaret of Austria –

Four old charters of the count(esse)s of Flanders

although the genre of people’s characteristics of a certain geographical area being the object of derision is strongly comparable to De properheden vanden steden van Vlaenderen, a poem with striking surnames for the inhabitants of cities in Flanders.16 The recording of the poem in the Diary-manuscript illustrates the versatility of literary and administrative genres. The main text begins after the poem, and we immediately recognize two different cursive handwritings. The first hand (dating from the 1490s) describes the events since the Ghent revolt against the Burgundian duke Philip the Good, that is from 1447 onwards, and continues until the year 1470. A closer examination of the first hand makes clear that this section was originally written by two different intellectual authors but copied by one hand who is therefore the copyist and continuator of an earlier version that has been lost. A second hand (dating from the first half of the sixteenth century) completed the Diary starting in 1477 and continuing until 1515, a period characterized by revolts and civic strife after the problematic succession of Mary of Burgundy, who died in 1482. As a result, in these two palaeographic units we can distinguish three different sections on the level of content and there are some stylistic differences between them. The intellectual author of the first part starts with the ducal proposal of

16 Antoon Viaene, ‘De properheden van den steden van Vlaenderen 1380–1400’, Biekorf, 77 (1977), 129–33.

the Diary o f Ghent

Fig. 1: Fragment Diary of Ghent (SAG, Fonds Gent, no. 158, fols 132v-133r)

a semi-permanent tax on salt that provoked the Ghent revolt against Philip the Good. The speech in which the ducal representative requested this tax forms the beginning of his story which continues until the peace negotiations in Lille (August 1452). The second part briefly relates the end of the revolt with the military confrontation in Gavere ( July 1453) and continues until 1470, without really going into detail about certain political events. The last political event registered describes how Charles the Bold became partially involved in the Wars of the Roses. After an interval of seven years, the second hand completed the Diary by narrating events beginning with the death of duke Charles the Bold and ending with the Joyous Entry of the future emperor Charles V in 1515.17 He is very selective in providing information: the death of the Burgundian duchess Mary is mentioned in only one sentence in contrast to the murder and funeral of the local politician Jan van Dadizele which is described more in detail.18 Moreover, the Flemish Revolt against Archduke Maximilian, whose regency for the under-age Philip the Fair (1482–94) was contested by a broad league of cities in the Low Countries, is only dealt with summarily. At the end of the narrative part, two lists of artillery of the city are included. A first inventory of the military arsenal dates from 1489 and is written in two

17 Folios 219 until 226 are of a slightly different paper format, however, without interruption to the text. The foliation, which is not contemporary, is consecutive. 18 Fris, Dagboek van Gent, II, pp. 255–57.

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12 0

t i n ek e van gassen Table 2: Ratio between original text by the author and transcripts of records

12500

Number of lines

10000

7500

5000

2500

0 Part 1 (1447-1452)

Part 2 (1453-1470)

Original text author

Part 3 (1477-1515)

Copy document

parts by the first hand. Between these parts a list from 1456 has been copied by a third hand. The function of this part can be related to the revolt against Maximilian. After this, there are the extensive accounts from the receiver Jan Van Coppenhole about the repayment of extortion in Ghent between 1477 until 1479, transcribed by his son Pieter in 1484. This section was not part of the manuscript from the outset since it has its own foliation. There follows a copy of a petition from the Ghent aldermen to the governess Margaret of Austria in 1525, in which Ghent asks that the heavy financial charges on the city be reduced and its part in the required aid to emperor Charles V be dismissed. The final section of the Diary consists of two folios where four old charters from the count of Flanders to Ghent are transcribed from Het Roode Bouck (‘The Red Book’), the main administrative cartulary of the city before 1540.19 These last parts were also written by different hands, and it is not clear why they were transcribed or when they were bound together in this manuscript. This article will mainly elaborate on the narrative parts, paying less attention to the later administrative additions. By reading the ‘historiographical’ sections, two characteristics of the text immediately attract attention. The first is the neutral reporting style of the anonymous authors, which is exceptional in a medieval text about revolt and uprising. The text was written against the background of escalating political tensions; however, a clear political position is not noticeable, although 19 Oude Gheluwen bouck, alias Rooden boeck: City Archives of Ghent (hereafter CAG), series 93, no. 3. It concerns privileges about the jurisdiction of Ghent and about the digging of the canals of the Lieve and to Vinderhoute. The originals can be found as CAG, series 94, no. 15 (1191), 64 (1251), 67 (1251), and 98 (1274). They are copied in the register respectively on folios 146r–148r, 135r–v, 13r and 135v–136r, and 115r. Probably, this section was later inserted into the manuscript.

The Diary o f Ghent

certain events are described in more detail than others. Secondly, the number of official documents included in the text is striking. The graph below shows that the first intellectual author incorporated the most records, almost 80% of his text.20 He must have had access to these documents, in contrast to the others. This poses some questions about his source material, inspiration and social networks. The political goals of the first part (1447–52) In the middle of the fifteenth century, a political crisis in Ghent emerged which led to a rebellion with a more radical and violent character.21 For his ambition to centralize political power in his lands, Burgundian duke Philip the Good was in constant need of money. Ghent resolutely disagreed with the ducal aspirations.22 Some urban middle groups together with a faction of the Ghent elite strongly resisted the increased Burgundian grip on urban politics. In fact, the main matters of dispute were not new, but were time-honoured points of controversy, such as the procedure for the annual election of the benches of aldermen, the issue of urban citizenship, the behaviour of Burgundian officers, and the jurisdiction over the ‘quarter’ of Ghent.23 The immediate cause for the outbreak of the rebellion was the demand of duke Philip the Good to introduce a salt tax, following the example of la gabelle in France. This semi-permanent tax would offer the duke more financial stability. Ghent reacted firmly against this proposal, but stood isolated within the county of Flanders. This formed the beginning of ‘the Ghent Revolt’ that would last for almost five years. In the summer of 1452, when the tension between Ghent and the duke had evolved into an open diplomatic conflict, supposedly neutral representatives of the French king were called in for their assistance during peace negations in Lille.24 This ‘dachvaert te Rycele’ took place in August 1452; however, the diplomatic contacts between the different parties had increased during the preceding months.25 The intervention of the French king in Flemish affairs was not unusual,26 since the duke of Burgundy was, as count of Flanders, a feudal 20 The measurements are based on the edition made by Victor Fris. 21 Haemers, De Gentse Opstand, pp. 384–85 and p. 429: he pointed out that the Ghent Revolt was not only a clash between urban versus ducal networks, but that urban networks were also mutually conflicting. 22 Walter Prevenier and Marc Boone, ‘1300–1500: The ‘City-State’ Dream’, in Ghent: In Defence of a Rebellious City. History, Art, Culture, ed. by Johan Decavele (Antwerp: Mercatorfonds, 1989), pp. 80–105 (pp. 93–103). 23 Boone, Gent en de Bourgondische hertogen, pp. 163–91. 24 For a detailed overview of this ‘trial’ and edition of the final sentence: Marc Boone, ‘Diplomatie et violence d’état. La sentence rendue par les ambassadeurs et conseillers du roi de France, Charles VII, concernant le conflit entre Philippe le Bon, duc de Bourgogne, et Gand en 1452’, Bulletin de la Commission Royale d’Histoire, 156 (1990), 1–54; see also Haemers, De Gentse Opstand, pp. 341–51. 25 Boone, ‘Diplomatie et violence d’état’, pp. 10–12. 26 For instance in 1401: Marc Boone, ‘Particularisme gantois, centralisme bourguignon et diplomatie française. Documents inédits autour d’un conflit entre Philippe le Hardi, duc de Bourgogne et Gand en 1401’, Bulletin de la Commission Royale d’Histoire, 152 (1986), 49–113.

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vassal of the French king, and the Parlement in Paris was the highest court of appeal.27 This was also the reason that Ghent was hopeful and pleased that the ‘neutral’ French ambassadors became involved in the negotiations. This meeting turned out to be a criminal trial in which Ghent had to account for its behaviour rather than peace talks between equivalent interlocutors. This meant a disappointment for Ghent whose deputies in the beginning believed in a positive outcome. Moreover, the result was actually already fixed in advance.28 The protagonists of this meeting were the three parties involved; each sent their own delegation. The French mediators were people with close ties to the French royal network, with at the top Louis de Luxembourg, count of Saint Pol. They had a hidden agenda: king Charles VII had set his mind on the recovery of the cities near the Somme, previously transferred into the possession of the Burgundian duke, and the French deputies had to bring up this point during the negotiations.29 The Burgundian duke only arrived for the final judgement in the proceedings, but his delegation was already present before and included traditional Burgundian confidants.30 The Ghent delegation consisted of representatives of the Three Members, however, with a larger share from the poorterij. The patrician elite was often on better terms with the ducal networks and the most radical ringleaders of the guilds were left at home. This was probably a conscious strategy to conciliate the duke in favour of a clement judgement.31 The choice of the prestigious Parisian lawyer Jean de Popincourt may seem a bit strange from this viewpoint since he was described by the Burgundian historiographer Chastelain as the man who ‘estoit l’un des homes du monde qui plus haioit le duc de Bourgogne’.32 Because this ‘dachvaert te Rycele’ is the last event registered by the first intellectual author, I will argue that this Diary initially may have been composed 27 Wim Blockmans, ‘La position du comté de Flandre dans le royaume à la fin du XVe siècle’, in Actes du Colloque de la France de la fin du XVe siècle. Renouveau et apogée (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1985), pp. 71–89 (p. 79); and Serge Dauchy, De processen in beroep uit Vlaanderen bij het Parlement van Parijs (1320–1521): een rechtshistorisch onderzoek naar de wording van staat en souvereiniteit in de Bourgondisch-Habsburgse periode (Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, 1995). 28 Evidence for the bribery of the French ambassadors by the duke was found in the Burgundian accounts: Boone, ‘Diplomatie et violence d’état’, p. 15. It was part of the Burgundian political culture: Marc Boone, ‘Dons et pots-de-vin, aspects de la sociabilité urbaine au bas Moyen Âge. Le cas gantois pendant la période bourguignonne’, Revue du Nord, 70 (1988), 471–87; Wim Blockmans, ‘Patronage, Brokerage and Corruption as Symptoms of Incipient State Formation in the Burgundian-Habsburg Netherlands’, in Klientelsysteme im Europa der frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Elisabeth Müller-Luckner and Antoni Maczak (München: Oldenbourg, 1988), pp. 117–26. 29 The head of the mission was the flamboyant count of Saint Pol, Louis de Luxembourg, an acceptable diplomat for both the Burgundian duke and the French king; the others were Louis de Beaumont, maître Guy Bernard, and Jean Dauvet. For more background information about them: Boone, ‘Diplomatie et violence d’état’, pp. 24–26. 30 The Burgundian delegation is only partially known, with chancellor Nicolas Rolin as head: Boone, ‘Diplomatie et violence d’état’, p. 27. 31 About the composition of the Ghent delegation: Boone, ‘Diplomatie et violence d’état’, p. 30. 32 Oeuvres de Georges Chastellain, ed. by Kervyn de Lettenhove, 8 vols (Brussels: Heussner, 1863), II, pp. 332–33. During the reign of the French king Louis XI de Popincourt was one of the strongest supporters of his anti-Burgundian policy: Boone, ‘Diplomatie et violence d’état’, p. 46.

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as a preparatory document for these negotiations. In fact, the whole first part leads to this culmination point of diplomatic arguing. Was this Diary written to provide the Ghent representatives with the necessary information for this gathering and did it function primarily as intelligence to press the delegation to make the most of this difficult writ of summons for the city? Different elements in the text provide evidence for this hypothesis. First, the chronological structure of the narrative supports the assumption that the document may have been created for the Ghent representatives. The start of the Diary with the proposal of the salt tax corresponded with how this event was experienced by contemporaries as the key factor for setting off the revolt. As the revolt progressed, the report became more detailed and clearly builds up to the events in Lille.33 It served as an overview of what had happened during the rebellious years. In fact, they wanted to acquire a survey of all the regime shifts, and those were so numerous in the preceding few years that it was hard to remember them all. Second, the discourse of the author points to diplomatic activities. Although the original text by the author only covers 20% of the whole, the neutral tone of the narrative is surprising in a time of high political turbulences. For instance, notwithstanding the immense irritation and indignation at the city council about Burgundian policy in the city, the author is at no point negative about Philip the Good. At a certain time, the dissatisfaction took on such proportions that Ghent reproached the duke’s counsellors for having badly informed him and for having acted against the urban privileges. However, the text never mocks him and refers to him as ‘onsen harden, gheduchten heere ende natuerlicken prince’.34 The discourse about what had happened in the city since the beginning of the uprising is particularly interesting. It remains an administrative description at all times, and the closest the Diary comes to a coloured report is when the misgovernment by urban leaders is mentioned.35 The Diary admits that ‘bad things happened’ in the past, as in the case of corruption by aldermen who had acted against the urban and princely privileges, but also stresses that these former

33 For a detailed overview, see Tineke Van Gassen, ‘Te vindene tghuent dat men gheerne ghevonden hadde. Het documentaire geheugen van een middeleeuwse grootstad: ontwikkeling en betekenis van de Gentse archieven’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Ghent, 2017), pp. 309–54 (p. 323). 34 Lawyer Jean de Popincourt started his extensive plea titled: ‘Le regime et gouvernement qui longtamps a esté ou pays de Flandres contre les anciens droitz d’icelluy pays et contre raison et justice en grant grief de la chose pubtycque [sic] et de la marchandyse sur laquelle le dit pays et principalement fondé’, which was basically a list of grievances of Ghent, with the classic complaints about the heavy tax burden, Burgundian officers with no connection to the county, and misuse of privileges by the ducal government. In this Ghent charge against the duke which was set up as a defence for their own behaviour, it is remarkable that the duke is never personally reproached and bad government is evidently blamed on bad advisors. Fris, Dagboek van Gent, II, pp. 105–30 and Haemers, De Gentse Opstand, pp. 345–48. 35 For instance, the public reading of different crimes committed by urban servants, ranging from malpractices in the public building sector (as in misappropriation of stock to build private houses) to the personal enrichment by city officers, dates from the first of November 1451. Fris, Dagboek van Gent, I, pp. 132–35.

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governors were judged, condemned,36 and that the city council is really striving for good governance, a classic medieval argument of the bonum commune.37 The respect for urban privileges is strongly valued throughout the text. The report is not sensational, in the sense that if the author described tumultuous gatherings by the people or the many executions that took place during the preceding few years, it never gives the impression of approval or disapproval. This tone can be explained by the will of the Ghent negotiators to act reasonably, thereby admitting that some crimes were committed and avoiding radical or simplistic political statements, but rather giving a decent and appropriate overview in order to achieve a lenient verdict. Table 3: Date of transcribed records in the first part of the Diary of Ghent

Older documents

10

1447

 1

1448

 0

1449

 1

1450

 4

1451

41

1452

66

A third argument for the assumption that the Diary could have been a preparation for the negotiations in Lille is the high number of official documents incorporated into the narrative structure of the text. The inclusion of official records had to make the argument more juridically convincing. Documents are lined up

36 Different examples in the Diary can be found where the stress is on how the city made efforts to fight corruption. For instance, a committee was appointed to examine the forms of corruption that had taken place (6 November 1451): ‘waren gheordonneert XII personen, uut elcken leden viere, omme te besouckene alle corruptien ende ongherechticheden die gheschiet mochten wesen’, and a few weeks later they delivered a report that unfortunately is not preserved: Fris, Dagboek van Gent, I, p. 148 and pp. 182–83. About this ‘November committee of inquiry’: Haemers, De Gentse Opstand, p. 210. In February 1452, a similar investigation took place, which resulted in a long list of names of people who had acted outside their authority or had enriched themselves at the city’s expenses; for instance, ‘Hier naer volghen vele diversche persoonen die int regement geweest hadden van deser stede, scepenen van der kuere ende andre offitien gheexeerceert hadden, te vele diveersche tyden daer zy groote ghiften af ontfanghen hadde contrarie haren eede’ (Fris, Dagboek van Gent, I, pp. 285–94 and, II, pp. 240–49; for some unknown reason Diary-hand 1 split this list up and transcribed it in two parts without following on each other. Another example occurred during the meeting in Lille. Then, an act against the misuse of urban privileges was promulgated by the Collatie. Because this text is incorporated in the Diary, we can assume that this was sent to the negotiators in Lille; obviously, the timing was no coincidence: Fris, Dagboek van Gent, II, pp. 82–90. About the content of these stipulations against corruption: Haemers, De Gentse Opstand, p. 327. 37 More generally: Eberhard Isenmann, ‘The Notions of the Common Good, the Concept of Politics, and Practical Policies in Late Medieval and Early Modern German Cities’, in De Bono Communi. The Discourse and Practice of the Common Good in the European City (13th–16th C.), ed. by Élodie Lecuppre-Desjardin and Anne-Laure Van Bruaene (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 107–48 (pp. 130– 45); Dumolyn, ‘Privileges and novelties’, pp. 13–17.

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in a story and connected to each other in a meaningful way which demonstrates the deeper political insight of the author. As the revolt continued, more official records were incorporated. Consequently, the Ghent delegation could read earlier correspondence and be informed in detail about old privileges. In fact, all the documents transcribed were available in the city administration or archive.38 Letters were the most frequent source, for instance, correspondence with the French king, the Burgundian duke and their mediators. Many documents are also related to internal urban affairs, such as new ordinances (‘voorgheboden’) and the public announcement of decisions taken by the city council (‘collatie’). A lot of correspondence with other cities from the county of Flanders was incorporated, presumably, to give an overview of the diplomatic contacts that were maintained in the previous few years. Some older documents, that were retrieved from ‘t secreet – the treasury of the city where the important charters were stored – in the Belfry during a gathering, were also transcribed in the Diary. This took place in a context of public reading, not coincidentally with specific attention to the old pardon letters of duke Philip the Good promulgated after earlier uprisings.39 What is also significant is that the dual communication strategy of the city council is revealed by the documents copied. Letters sent by the Burgundian duke were translated in a different way to the people, readable in the public announcements by the city council. The tone of the letters to the French ambassadors is humble and modest, showing a willingness to submit themselves to the ducal wishes. To their own backers they keep reiterating that they will not tolerate any violation of urban privileges.40 That the urban government 38 In the Diary 123 official documents are counted. Only verbatim copies are considered here, although the reports of the collatie could be paraphrased by the intellectual author of the first part. Documents are primarily classified according to their diplomatic form (e.g. if a received letter is read aloud during a public speech, that document is still categorized as a letter). Under juridical affairs are comprehended interrogations, convictions, and lists of banished people. Under ‘Negotiations (pre-Lille)’ is the correspondence in the build-up to the trial in Lille (refused peace proposals, a few letters and the act of armistice) classified. ‘Varia’ includes oaths, pamphlets, and letters of safe-conduct. 39 Fris, Dagboek van Gent, I, pp. 195–210; some older Latin charters were translated into Middle Dutch. About the ritual aspects of this event: Peter Arnade, Realms of Ritual: Burgundian Ceremony and Civic Life in Late Medieval Ghent (New York: Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 110–11. About the value of these remission letters dating from 1432, 1437 and 1440: Marc Boone, ‘Urban Space and Political Conflict in Late Medieval Flanders’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 32 (2002), 4, 621–40. 40 The lettre de soumission which was sent to the French ambassadors (15 July 1452) almost contained a full confession by the city in which they completely agreed on the tenor by the French ambassadors: ‘Nous les dits échevins, doyens, conseylliers et tout le commun peuple de la dicte ville de Gand, désirans de tout nostre cuer la dicte pacification et retourner en la bonne grâce de nostre dit Seigneur et prince naturel, avons esté et sommes contens de tout le contenu et effect de la cédulle cy dessus incorporée et transcripte, et tous et chascun les articles contenus en icelle voulons et consentons et accordons, et nous sommes soubmis et obligiez, soubmettons et obligons par ces présentes, tout ainsy et par la forme et manière que contenu et declaré est en la dicte cédulle […] Premièrement, qu’ils recognoissent et confessent avoir mesprins et grandement offensé envers mon dit Seigneur et sa seigneurie, qu’il leur desplaist et s’en repentent, luy requéront mercy, et supplieront en toute humilité que son plaisir soit de leur pardonner et remettre en sa bonne grâce.’ Then, the tone of the announcement to the people was slightly different: ‘Item, ‘t saterdaechs den XVen dach der voorscreven maent, dede men ‘t volc te gadere up dese naervolghende poynten: De procureur van den Coninc heeft gheseyt dat men de beterynghe doen zal met pennynghen ende

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t i n ek e van gassen Table 4: Official documents in the Diary of Ghent (part 1)

20

Varia

Meeting in Lille

Negotiations (pre-Lille)

List of aldermen

Juridical affairs

Report Collacie

Public speeches

Charters

Urban ordinances

Sent letters

0

Received letters

10

communicated differently to the duke as compared to their own supporters once again indicates that this text was meant purely for internal use by the political delegation in Lille and initially did not reach a broader audience.41 These different elements – the composition of the Ghent delegation, the chronological structure of the text, the discourse about the duke, the reporting style about internal urban affairs, and the inclusion of official records – all support the claim that the first part of the Diary served as intelligence in the build-up to the negotiations in Lille. This document had to inform the members of the delegation thoroughly because a solid knowledge of the recent past would form the basis for successful negotiations. The delegation in Lille made the Ghent arguments in a self-controlled way hoping to moderate the duke’s demands. It served as a practical political memory, almost as a mnemonic tool during the negotiations. It was not a collective social memory in the sense that it was a commonly shared interpretation of the past among the citizens; rather it was an operative instrument serving to achieve a contemporary political goal for a small group of individuals. anders nyet. Item, dat men onderhauden zal de rechten, prevylegien, vryheden, costumen ende usaigen van deser stede.’ Fris, Dagboek van Gent, II, pp. 62–67 (quotations from pp. 65, 66 and 62); Haemers, De Gentse Opstand, p. 323. 41 This links up to the statement of Van Bruaene in which she argues that an ‘official urban memory’ had as its the purpose to influence the total or a part of the urban community, which is in this case to inform and prepare a select group of negotiators and politicians: Van Bruaene, ‘S’imaginer le passé et le présent’, pp. 168–69. That the Diary could have had a political function was already suggested by Hannes Lowagie, ‘The Political Implications of Urban Archival Documents in the Late Medieval Flemish Cities: The Example of the Diary of Ghent’, in Writing and the Administration of Medieval Towns: Medieval Urban Literacy I, ed. by Marco Mostert and Anna Adamska (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp. 209–18 (pp. 213–14). He argued that the Diary could have been composed as a rebellious manual. In this far-reaching interpretation, he suggested that the document served as a way to pass on knowledge about urban rebellions to the next generations.

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There now remain two unanswered questions: was lawyer Jean de Popincourt a possible reader of this preparatory document?42 It would seem logical that the delegation let their legal counsel read this information. This jurist appeared later on also as a lawyer for the city, but it is not certain if he was able to read this Dutch document. Or perhaps there could have existed a lost French version? A second question is why were all the pleadings, responses and rejoinders at the trial itself also copied in the Diary? For what reason were these juridical documents copied if the Diary was only a preparatory document? Or was it continued in order to be exhaustive in the end?43 The possibility that at first a draft version existed that was rather a collected folder of relevant documents which was after the trial reworked and revised into one text can also not be excluded. Starting from the hypothesis that this negotiation file was written as a commission of the city council, the material scribe can be situated in the urban administration. Since the present document is a copy of an earlier lost diplomatic piece and therefore not an autograph, the original author cannot be identified by palaeographical analysis. However, we can point to some readers and users for whom this document was composed, and to some possible authors. To do so, chronology is very important: the moment it became clear that official negotiations would take place, the Ghent leaders decided to prepare themselves. The meeting in Lille was in full swing around the middle of August, the same moment when the annual investiture of the benches of aldermen took place. However, the decision to draw up the Diary must have been taken in advance, and can be situated in June 1452 when the contacts between the different parties intensified in the build-up to the proceedings in Lille.44 On 22 June 1452, the French king informed the Burgundian duke that the count of Saint Pol, Louis de Luxembourg, would become head of the negotiations and in the meanwhile the different parties agreed on an armistice. The radical three-captains regime45 was already abolished at that time and replaced by five captains.46 Because Ghent was involved in a military campaign and wanted to avoid further slaughter at the hands of the Burgundian troops, a chief captain (opperhoofdman) was appointed who mainly had a military task and was assisted by counsellors.47 For

42 He was lawyer at the Parlement of Paris from 1444 until 1455. In 1472 he was promoted to président of the Parlement. For more information about this man: Online Database Paris au Moyen Âge by Marc Nortier [Accessed 7 July 2015]. 43 The final sentence by the French ambassadors which closed the meeting in Lille is not incorporated into the Diary, probably because the Ghent delegation had already departed before the judgement was pronounced. 44 For an overview of these diplomatic contacts: Boone, ‘Diplomatie et violence d’état’, pp. 8–11. 45 About this episode from December 1451 until April 1452: Haemers, De Gentse Opstand, pp. 235–87. 46 From the end of April until mid-June 1452: Haemers, De Gentse Opstand, pp. 288–93. 47 Jan de Vos was appointed on 19 June 1452 as chief captain and assisted by Jan van den Hende, Gillis van Apeltrin, Jan van Deynse, Jan de Leeu, and Lieven Dwingelant, chosen on a parochial basis. However, around 2–3 July, he was already replaced by Jacob Meeuwszone, who was advised by Lievin van den Damme, Arnold van der Speten, and Jan van Deynse, a return to the Three Members division. About these regime shifts: Haemers, De Gentse Opstand, pp. 309–11 and 318. Generally stated, these were more moderate-minded people.

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the commission of writing the Diary, we probably have to look at the activities occurring during the chief-captaincies of Jan de Vos and Jacob Meeuwszone. Under the latter, Ghent wrote a lettre de soumission to submit themselves to the French ambassadors and sent Jan van der Eecken on a negotiation mission to the duke in Wetteren,48 which makes it plausible that the commissioning of the Diary can be situated around this time. Supposedly, the Ghent delegation in Lille had knowledge of the preparatory dossier. It is not inconceivable that during the meeting in Lille, the negotiators made annotations in the original lost document’s margins and underlined certain passages because it functioned as a practical instrument. This was probably done by the technocrats, namely the three members of the urban administration who accompanied the delegation on the Dachvaert: Gillis Baudins, master Hestin Ghiselins and Gheerolf Van Ooteghem.49 These individuals certainly possessed the qualifications and abilities to compose such a preparatory document.50 In the city accounts, we can read, for example, that master Hestin Ghistelins was paid for ‘writing an instrument as a notary for the use and benefit of the city’.51 Also clerk Janne van Duermelaer, who was not a member of the delegation, received reimbursements for writing work related to the trial in Lille.52 After the meeting in Lille, where Ghent refused to accept an agreement, a military confrontation became inevitable. The delegation went back to Ghent to inform the city authorities, which stirred up the rebellion.53 The verdict of the French ambassadors sentenced Ghent by default on 4 September 1452.54 Almost one year later, the battle in Gavere meant a humiliating defeat for the Ghent troops and a glorious victory for the Burgundian duke. Philip the Good had won the struggle and seized the ideal opportunity to publicly affirm his stronger position and in the meanwhile abolish the regime of Three Members.55 The verdict of Lille served as Vorurkunde for the peace treaty of Gavere on 28 July 1453.56

48 Haemers, De Gentse Opstand, p. 323 (respectively on 15 and 16 July 1452). 49 About the composition of the delegation: Boone, ‘Diplomatie et violence d’état’, p. 30. 50 Walter Prevenier, ‘Ambtenaren in stad en land in de Nederlanden. Socio-professionele evoluties (veertiende tot zestiende eeuw)’, Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis van de Nederlanden, 87 (1972), 44–59 (pp. 48–51). 51 CAG, series 400, no. 17, fol. 207r: ‘Item ghegheven meester Hestin Ghiselins van zijnen dienste van diversschen acten ende eenen instrumente bij hem als notaris ghemaect in de oorbuer van der stede.’ 52 CAG, series 400, no. 17, fol. 260r: ‘Item ghegheven Janne van Duermelaer up zijnen dienst van zekeren scriftueren bij hem ghemaect anclevende der dachvaert te Rijssele.’ In 1452–53 Hestin Ghiselins and Janne van Duermelaer were both clerk of gedele, see in the same account on fol. 318v. 53 From now on the report is superficial. The author is very vague about the concrete fight in Gavere and the immediate aftermath. 54 In this sentence, the French ambassadors included the lettre de soumission by Ghent (15 July 1452) as a vidimus: Boone, ‘Diplomatie et violence d’état’, pp. 27–29. 55 Wim Blockmans, ‘La répression de révoltes urbaines comme méthode de centralisation dans les Pays-Bas Bourguignons’, in Milan et les États bourguignons: deux ensembles politiques princiers entre Moyen Âge et Renaissance (XIVe–XVIe s.), Publications du Centre Européen d’Études Bourguignonnes, 28 (1988), 5–9. 56 Boone, ‘Diplomatie et violence d’état’, p. 5. The penalty clauses for Ghent are almost exactly the same.

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Continuations and use of the document in the sixteenth century Defining medieval authorship is a hard exercise. The distinctions between original authors, continuators and copyists are often subtle and difficult to make, especially if there is only one manuscript preserved of which the first and most important part is not an autograph.57 However, an equally important question in this respect is why other persons felt the need to transcribe and complete the text they had found. Apparently, someone in the civic secretariat found the Diary-text and deemed this report about the Ghent revolt to be valuable and interesting. No precise indications for whom or for which purpose this manuscript was transcribed and supplemented could be found. If it was transcribed on the personal initiative of an employee in the civic administration, this may be considered as an expression of historical consciousness and therefore even as a kind of urban historiography. The historiographical continuations of the Diary are less political in tone and contain more faits-divers. For instance, the second part mentions a severe winter, loose women at the pillory, a large granting of indulgences in the Saint John’s church, and a flood.58 This part, still written by hand 1, is structured by the annual investiture of the new benches of aldermen which took place in August, and therefore has a kind of annalistic structure which also resembles the Ghent memory books.59 The third part, written by the second hand, pays attention to large political events, but also to processions in the city, the demolition of a bridge and injured people, and the viewing of the northern lights which caused commotion in the city.60 Given the nature of these news facts, it appears very plausible that these scribes based themselves on older, maybe annually completed, documents that possibly do not exist any longer because it seems unlikely that a scribe from around the 1490s could remember these types of events himself from the years 1450s and further. The same applies to writing in 1515 about the 1470s. Furthermore, these sections are written in one continuous handwriting, without giving the impression that the author himself would have annually supplemented his work. An additional detail that supports the assumption that the first hand did not write the second part from his personal knowledge, but copied an older text (or worked from a collection of older documents), is the presence of transcription mistakes. The last registered large event from part two is the war in which Charles the Bold is involved as an adversary against Richard Neville, count of Warwick, in the revolt against king Edward IV of England, 57 About definitions and terminological problems concerning these concepts: Tjamke Snijders, ‘Work, Version, Text and Scriptum. High Medieval Manuscript Terminology in the Aftermath of the New Philology’, Digital Philology. A Journal of Medieval Cultures, 2 (2013), 2, 266–96. 58 Fris, Dagboek van Gent, II, respectively on pp. 184, 188, 209, and 214. 59 Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, De Gentse memorieboeken als spiegel van stedelijk historisch bewustzijn (14de tot 16de eeuw), Verhandeling der Maatschappij voor Geschied- en Oudheidkunde te Gent, 22 (Ghent, 1998). 60 Fris, Dagboek van Gent, II, respectively on pp. 268, 274, and 285.

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as part of Wars of the Roses. Instead of Warwick, hand 1 copied consistently Vaernewijck, a common Ghent family name, which demonstrates his lack of insight into political history.61 Historians have always focused on the narrative parts of the Diary, but some indications about its authorship can also be found in the attached lists of the military arsenal of the city, which was spread over different towers and depositories. The inventory of the siege equipment from 1489–90 is written in two parts. The second part was initially the beginning of the inventory as the introduction is longer and more detailed.62 It is not clear why these sections were split up and bound in reverse order in the manuscript. This inventory of urban artillery was definitely made during the conflict and war against archduke Maximilian of Austria,63 and maybe in this context the Diary was dusted off as ‘old Ghent war report’ and transcribed.64 The material scribe of this inventory is hand 1; who identifies himself as Daneel Croeselin in the introduction. Daneel Croeselin made a versatile career through different functions: he was elector on behalf of the duke (herekiezer) in 1489 and clerk of the aldermen of the Keure in 1487–89. In the aldermen year of 1490–91 he was clerk of the receiver of the artillery; while he exercized this position he probably wrote the inventory.65 In

61 Fris, Dagboek van Gent, II, p. 227, in the original manuscript on fol. 209v. Moreover, it shows also that hand 1 is not always very attentive or meticulous; he made many mistakes in the transcription of French documents related to the trial in Lille. Probably, he was not able to understand French. In the edition of the manuscript, Fris made corrections to the original documents: Dagboek van Gent, I, pp. X–XIII. 62 SAG, Fonds Gent, no. 158, fol. 229r: ‘Dit es ‘t ghuent dat bevonden es in ‘t Engienhuus van deser stede by my Daneel Croeselin voorseit. Ende omme te wetene elcke sorte van den engienen, ende alderande artylderien groot by groot ende cleen by cleen, mids boven den voorghenoumden quartieren, so hier naer volght ende ghescreven staet.’ On fol. 241r the more extensive introduction, which was initially the first part: ‘Dit naervolghende es den inventaris van den bussen, engienen ende diesser ancleeft toebehoorende deser stede van Ghendt, by Daneel Croeselin, secretaris van scepenen myn heeren van der kuere in de zelve stede, uut laste ende bevele van heere ende wet, gheinventoriert ten steden, plaetsen ende quartieren, die ghestaen, gheleghen ende rustende zyn in ‘t ronde up de uutcanten, mueren, poorten, vesten ende bolleweercken der voornoumder stede, metgaders den busmeesters de zelve engienen hebbende te bezorghene, elc in ‘t quartier hem gheordinert; welken presenten inventaris ghemaect es ghelyc ende in alder manieren als hier naer volght. Ende verclaert wert in ‘t scependom Mer Jan van den Kethulle, her Martin Lynesoons ende haren ghesellen. Actum den XVIIIen in Hoymaent LXXXIX.’ Fris rearranged the inventory of artillery from 1456 copied by another hand, which in the original manuscript is between the above mentioned parts, for chronological reasons first in his edition (Dagboek van Gent, II, pp. 291–95). Thereafter the inventory of Daneel Croeselin starts with the part on fol. 229r and then 241r (Dagboek van Gent, II, pp. 295–324). 63 About this conflict named the ‘Flemish Revolt’ see: Jelle Haemers, De strijd om het regentschap over Filips de Schone. Opstand, facties en geweld in Brugge, Gent en Ieper (1482–1488) (Ghent: Academia Press, 2014). 64 A comparable example is the book of guildsman Jan de Rouc about the Ghent revolt in 1477, which was ‘rediscovered’ by his son during the uprising of 1540: Jelle Haemers, ‘Social Memory and Rebellion in Fifteenth Century Ghent’, Social History, 36 (2011), 4, 443–63 (pp. 455–62). 65 Polydore-Charles Van der Meersch, Memorieboek der stad Ghent. Van ‘t j. 1301 tot 1737, 4 vols (Ghent: C. Annoot-Braeckman, 1852), I, p. 353; CAG, series 400, no. 29, fol. 431r and no. 30, fol. 351v; CAG, series 20, no. 7, fol. 169v. Jelle Haemers, ‘‘Ende hevet tvolc goede cause jeghens hemlieden te rysene’ Stedelijke opstanden en staatsvorming in het graafschap Vlaanderen (1477–1492)’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Ghent, 2006), II, p. 1019.

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1491, he was banished for having delivered Ghent artillery to the enemy; however, in 1492 he already received a pardon and returned to Ghent.66 This quick return can be explained by the regime shift in the city after the peace of Cadzand. Besides his dubious profile in the city, we do not know a lot about this man. Based on a palaeographic study of the charters of voluntary jurisdiction that were authenticated before the bench of aldermen of the Keure, it Fig. 2: Signature of Daneel would theoretically become possible to match the Croeselin (SAG, Fonds SintBaafs, charter 2624) handwriting with the scribe of the Diary, since urban 67 clerks signed these acts with their handmark. However, in reality the writing of the text was frequently contracted out and a city clerk put his signature on the act afterwards. Moreover, the registration of this act in the city register was often done by another hand. This makes it very complicated to identify with certainty a name with a corresponding hand. In the year that Daneel Croeselin was clerk of the Keure, two acts of voluntary jurisdiction with his handmark can be found; unfortunately, the writing of these acts and their transcripts in the register was done by four different hands, one of which resembles relatively closely Diary-hand 1.68 Furthermore, the possibility that these lists were copied from an earlier existing version of this inventory of which Daneel Croeselin was the intellectual author, and therefore not hand 1, cannot be excluded. However, because Diary-hand 1 dates from around 1490, it is plausible that we can identify him as Daneel Croeselin.69 During his career as artillery clerk, he probably copied an old diplomatic dossier. The further afterlife of the manuscript deserves attention too. From the sixteenth century onwards, more historiographical production has been preserved for the city of Ghent, some of it showing apparent resemblances with our Diary from the point of view of style and substance. Or writers used it as source of information, as for example the Bruges humanist and chronicler Jacob de Meyere did.70 On the first folio in the Diary, we find a note in his hand and further on in the manuscript there are several annotations with page references to certain

66 CAG, series 212, no. 1, fol. 103v and CAG, series 400, no. 31, fol. 12r. 67 I would like to thank Thérèse de Hemptinne for her palaeographic expertise. 68 SAG, Fonds Sint-Baafs, Charters, 2624 (29/02/1488) and 2624 (14/03/1488, photo-fragment) noted in the register of the Keure: CAG, series 301, no. 59, respectively on fol. 55r (most resembling Diaryhand 1) and 64r. 69 Following the same reasoning, it would become possible to identify hand 3 as Janne van den Abeele who wrote the inventory of urban artillery in 1456. However, this possibility can be excluded because this handwriting dates from the sixteenth century, and this hand is just copying the inventory including the name of the then scribe. 70 Victor Fris, ‘Notes sur les oeuvres de Jacques De Meyere’, Bulletin de la Commission Royale d’Histoire, 84 (1922), 245–303; Antoon Viaene, ‘Jacob De Meyere’, Handelingen van het Genootschap voor Geschiedenis in Brugge, 89 (1952), 5–13.

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excerpts from his own work.71 He was well-informed and used a lot of different sources to write his studies about the county of Flanders, the first edition of which appeared in 1538 as Compendium Chronicon Flandriae. Jacob de Meyere received a classic humanistic education, studied at the Sorbonne, and was a friend of Erasmus.72 Meyerus, as he called himself, was also very interested in the work of jurist Filips Wielant and the Mémoires of Philippe de Commynes. He was a scholar with a critical humanistic mindset and consulted the Diary before 1538 at the city administration. He was probably less confident with the Ghent administrative entourage, however, he must have known that this document existed and someone who could gain him access to it. A next clue in the reconstruction of the life of the Diary can be situated during the Ghent revolt in 1539–40 against emperor Charles V when negotiations between the conflicting parties took place in which inventories played a crucial role. An inventory from March 1540 produced by the city administration served as instrument of justification and verification during the negotiations.73 The Ghent delegation made lists of their old privileges which had to prove why they had the right to refuse their contribution to the required aide of the emperor. Moreover, chronicles and history reports as well were used to legitimize their political standpoint.74 The Concessio Carolina (30 April 1540), imposed by emperor Charles V to punish Ghent for its uprising, had important archival implications. He confiscated all the old privileges and rights of the city in order to undermine its power claims. During that operation, he also confiscated the Diary and all the documents were brought to the Chambre des Comptes in Lille. In 1837, state archivist Louis-Prosper Gachard arranged an exchange and the Diary was given to the State Archives in Brussels, to return to Ghent shortly thereafter.75 This trajectory is also part of the evidence for the claim that the Diary would originally have been preserved at the city administration.

71 On the first unnumbered folio of the manuscript we read: D’oorloghe van Ghent, Meyer 301, Chron(icon) fl(andria) 118, Hic liber videtur diarium vocaris a. Meyer fol. 313 sq. The designation of this manuscript as a diary can probably be traced to this note. 72 Victor Fris, Essai d’une analyse des Commentarii Sive Annales Rerum Flandricarum (Annales Flandriae 1561) de Jacques de Meyere. Examen des Sources des Annales Flandriae (Ghent: Librairie Scientifique E. Van Goethem, 1908), pp. 124–29. 73 Ghent decided to send a delegation consisting of different people with pro-Habsburg affinities to mollify the emperor and to get the most out of the negotiations for their city, almost a similar strategy as that of a century before. 74 Inventaire des titres et documents produits par ceux de Gand, contre le procureur-général de l’Empereur, in which Ghent referred to chronicles used as historical information during the negotiations: Employent les histoires et cronicques dudit temps à la vériffication des xxvii, lxvi et autres articles de l’escripts desdits de Gand, CAG, series 94, no. 948 and a contemporary transcript in Den rooden bouck met de riemen, CAG, series 93, no. 6, fol. 32r–34v, edited by Louis-Prosper Gachard, Relation des troubles de Gand sous Charles-Quint, par un anonyme; suivie de trois cent trente documents inédits sur cet événement (Brussels: M. Hayez, 1846), Appendice, no. CXCIV, pp. 352–57. 75 Fris, Dagboek van Gent, I, pp. IV–V and Marc Boone, ‘‘Le dict mal s’est espandu comme peste fatale’ Karel V en Gent, stedelijke identiteit en staatsgeweld’, Handelingen der Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent, 54 (2000), 31–63 (p. 57).

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Genre debate In order to evaluate the significance of the Diary as a documentary genre, I searched for similar documents. The following examples are also poised on the boundaries between historiographical and administrative genres. They show that preparatory documents existed and were part of Burgundian political culture. They illustrate that these types of negotiation dossiers and intelligence works were common practice. However, the comparable documents can mainly be found in the archives of the Burgundian dukes and not in an urban context. For instance, the register compiled by diplomat Jean d’Auffay in 1477 reveals how administrative officers at the ducal court were engaged to defend Burgundian interests when the French king Louis XI was trying to profit from the weakness of the dynasty. It is a dossier in which the personal writings of Jean d’Auffay are interwoven with many copies of letters, often with a detailed archival reference to the repository of the originals, which were spread over the different Chambres des Comptes of the Burgundian territories. The jurist made use of chronicles too, to strengthen the historical justifications for Burgundian claims.76 A similar document is an autograph by Filips Wielant, generally known for his legal treatises and historical works about the county of Flanders. One manuscript was produced specifically for negotiations in which he participated as delegate of Philip the Fair and his son Charles regarding the French claims via the Parlement of Paris on the county of Flanders.77 An example that directly links us back to Ghent is the text by the hand of Lodewijk van Schore.78 This jurist was a confident of emperor Charles V during the Ghent uprising in 1540. He had commented extensively to Charles about the rebellious and chaotic situation in the city and his chronicle-style report interspersed with official records would later form the juridical foundation for the definitive punishment of Ghent (the Concessio Carolina). His Discours des troubles advenuz à Gand was also not meant as a historiographical product, but rather as intelligence to inform the emperor. Comparable to the case of the Diary, historians have long interpreted this text to be a purely historical work. Van Peteghem confirmed the suspicions that the 19th century archivist Gachard had already expressed, namely that this was not historiography, but ‘diplomatic fieldwork’ composed by someone for the network very close to the emperor.79 76 Kathleen Daly, ‘Jean d’Auffay: culture historique et polémique à la cour de Bourgogne’, Le Moyen Âge, 112 (2006), 603–18. 77 Jos Monballyu, ‘Een autograaf van Phelips Wielant (1441–1520). Met voorbereidende aantekeningen voor zijn ‘Receuil des Antiquités de Flandre’’, Lias. Sources and Documents Relating to the Early Modern History of Ideas, 10 (1983), 165–73 (p. 167). 78 Lodewijk Van Schore, Discours des troubles advenuz en la ville de Gand 1539. Edited in Analecta Belgica, 3, by C. P. Hoynck Van Papendrecht (who incorrectly ascribed this text to a monk Jean d’Hollander) (Den Haag, 1743), II, pp. 280–484. 79 Paul van Peteghem, ‘Lodewijk van Schore, president van de Raad van State en van de Geheime Raad (1540–1548)’ (unpublished licentiate’s thesis, Ghent University, 1972), pp. 78–84 and 111–22; LouisProsper Gachard, ‘Communications’, Compte Rendu des Séances de la Commission Royale d’Histoire, ou Recueil de ses Bulletins, 3 (1861), II, 200–02.

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An additional similarity is that the text of Lodewijk Van Schore was later on copied by people who were interested in it for historiographical reasons.80 Unfortunately, similar examples from an urban perspective in the Low Countries were not found, although these must have existed or have perhaps not yet been identified as such. For instance, the Continuation of the Brabantse Yeesten is a chronicle that was possibly written in the margins of political discussions between cities. The text is very detailed concerning the litigation between Brabantine cities about a conflict concerning staple rights on oats, fish, and salt.81 Maybe the chronicle was used in the court to emphasize old rights. It would be interesting to investigate further the link between this passage in the chronicle and the political activities of the composers.82 A document that is often named in comparison to the Diary is the Kroniek van Peter van Os about ‘s-Hertogenbosch. He was an urban clerk and collected also many official records as pieces of evidence in his chronicle, parallel to the creation of a cartulary. His motivations are not completely known; however, the editors suppose that the chronicle was compiled for internal consultation at the administration. Possibly, it was an instrument to support urban aspirations when Burgundian state formation processes affected the city, which is relatively similar to the Diary.83 The study of the Diary shows how a strict typology of administrative or historiographical genres is not always profitable nor leads to a better understanding of them. The term cartulaire-chronique84 is the description that at first sight fits relatively well the nature of the Diary; however, that label ignores the specific diplomatic and political context in which the document was written. Moreover, this genre is mostly to be situated in religious communities during the high Middle Ages. The German Rats- or Stadtbücher are also a genre the Diary has often been compared to. That documentary type emerged in city chancelleries where privileges, legal acts and lists of political officials were recorded. Besides official information, they also contained more and more information about events 80 For example: Royal Library of Belgium (Brussels), Ms. 16.882, fol. 2r–158v, a copy in the possession of a certain Claissone, probably descendant of a Ghent family; and Ghent University Library, Ms. 2543, fol. 541r–809r, a remarkable seventeenth-century memory book in which also the oldest inventory of city charters (from 1432, on fol. 175r–225r) and fragments from the chronicle of Jan van de Vivere (fol. 320r–412r) are transcribed. 81 About this Groot Stedenproces (from January 1433 until April 1434): Robert Stein, Politiek en historiografie: het ontstaansmilieu van Brabantse kronieken in de eerste helft van de 15de eeuw (Leuven: Peeters, 1994), pp. 245–46 and 289–90; Astrid Houthuys, Middeleeuws kladwerk. De autograaf van de Brabantsche Yeesten, Boek VI (vijftiende eeuw) (Hilversum: Verloren, 2009), pp. 288–92. 82 Bram Caers, ‘Vertekend verleden. Geschiedenis herschrijven in vroegmodern Mechelen (1500–1650)’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Antwerp, 2015), pp. 24–25 and 200–35. 83 Kroniek van Peter van Os. Geschiedenis van ’s-Hertogenbosch en Brabant van Adam tot 1523, ed. by Annemarie van Lith-Droogleever Fortuijn, Jan Sanders, and Geertrui Van Synghel (Den Haag: Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis, 1997) and Cultuur in het laatmiddeleeuwse Noord-Brabant. Literatuur – boekproductie – historiografie, ed. by Arnoud-Jan Bijsterveld, Jan van Oudheusen, and Robert Stein (’s-Hertogenbosch: Stichting Brabantse Regionale Geschiedbeoefening, 1998). 84 María Milagros Cárcel Ortí, Vocabulaire International de la Diplomatique (Valencia: Universitat de València, 1997), p. 36.

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in the city. Through these notes, these ‘urban books’ could develop into real city chronicles and displayed urban image-building.85 Comparable to the Ghent Diary, the artillery of German cities was often enumerated in these books to show off their military strength and resources.86 So the historical descriptions in these Rats- or Stadtbücher are not completely cleared of some political recuperation aimed at the contemporary present. Nevertheless, the same conclusion applies: a historiographical label does not match with the diplomatic negotiation dossier that the Diary initially was. For the second and third part a comparison with these German types is worthwhile. We must not forget that at the same time other historiographical and administrative genres circulated in late medieval Ghent that also expressed citizenship, political interest, and historical consciousness. For example, the popular genre of the memory books in Ghent, that were structured by the annual lists of benches of aldermen with annotations about events happening in the city during that year and to which the second and third part of the Diary resemble to a certain extent.87 Furthermore, cartularies were widespread. Although often seen as a strict administrative genre, they were also instruments of urban memory and were both held by official institutions (as in the city administration) as well as in private ownership by prominent figures or families who were interested in possessing copies of urban privileges.88 There also existed variants of the Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen with local, Ghent affiliations.89 The Diary has no concrete link with any of these documentary genres. However, it is important to understand that a wide range of the late medieval urban community (ranging from official institutions to certain social groups and individuals) was interested in ownership of written documents revealing historical and political aspects of the city. Judith Pollmann recently suggested to see early modern chronicles not as a historiographical genre or expression of identity, but to approach them as archives and collections of information.90 A chronicle is then a deliberate compilation of data and information which were considered to be important enough to remember. This approach has consquences for studying early modern cultures 85 There is already a lot of literature about this topic; see for example the work of Heinrich Schmidt, Die deutschen Städtechroniken als Spiegel des bürgerlichen Selbstverständnisses im Spätmittelalter (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1958) and the anthology by Peter Johanek, Städtische Geschichtsschreibung im Spätmittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit (Cologne: Böhlau, 2000). 86 Francis R. H. Du Boulay, ‘The German Town Chronicles’, in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Richard William Southern, ed. by Ralph H. C. Davis and John M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 445–69 (pp. 452–55). 87 Van Bruaene, De Gentse memorieboeken. 88 Tineke Van Gassen, ‘City cartularies in late medieval Ghent: a sign of urban identity?’, in Medieval Documents as Artefacts. Interdisciplinary perspectives on codicology, palaeography and diplomatics, ed. by Eef Dijkhof et al. (Hilversum: Verloren, forthcoming 2019). 89 Lisa Demets, ‘The Late Medieval Manuscript Transmission of the Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen in Urban Flanders’, The Medieval Low Countries, 3 (2016), 123–73. 90 Judith Pollmann, ‘Archiving the Present and Chronicling for the Future in Early Modern Europe’, in The Social History of the Archive: Record-keeping in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Liesbeth Corens, Kate Peters en Alexandra Walsham, thematic issue Past and Present, Supplement, 11 (2016), 231–52, in particular p. 235.

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and history writing on three different aspects: the political context, the public reception and the usage of this knowledge. This point of view can be applied on a variety of sources, ranging from regional chronicles to family histories, mémoires, and urban historical accounts. This approach also allows us to surpass the boundaries from the ongoing genre-debate and to provide an explantion on the different forms late medieval and early modern historiography has taken. They are in the first place a composition of text, data and other information; a selection the contempories wanted to remember. Conclusion This contribution has shed light on the complex originating context of the Diary of Ghent. The document was created in the entourage of the urban government and administration, initially with a political goal, namely the preparation of the negotiations with the Burgundian duke and French ambassadors. The Diary supported the particular claims of the Ghent delegation in the peace negotations of Lille in August 1452. In this way, it informs us about the diplomatic customs of an age, about interests and strategies behind the scenes. Later on, it was read and continued by employees at the civic secretariat and evolved into a historiographical document. Considering the composition of the manuscript, its multiple authorship, and its sequel during the sixteenth century, it is clear that we are dealing here with a case-study leaning towards different historical issues, from the discussion about creating a memory in light of a political present, to the influence of political relations on writing history and more generally on reading and writing practices in an urban environment in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Labelling the Diary as ‘urban historiography’ would only partially explain its origin, purpose, and further use. The oldest section is not to be considered as a purely historiographical report in which official records were inserted, but rather as a diplomatic dossier. This manuscript reveals how strict definitions of ‘genres’ are inadequate to understand the meaning and purpose of this document, which changed over times. Because of the hybrid and versatile profile of such a document, it is not inconceivable that more similar types exist, but still need to be identified as such.

Bram Caers and Lisa Demets

Opposing Reports on Loyalty and Rebellion Urban History Writing in Late Medieval Bruges and Mechelen There is a particular connection between the practice of politics and history writing in the Middle Ages. In the Low Countries for instance, the writing and rewriting of the chronicles of Flanders, Holland or Brabant were closely connected to shifting princely dynasties.1 The rise of urban historiography in the late medieval Low Countries may have been influenced by political evolutions as well. Until recently, urban chronicles were often solely associated with the Italian city-states or German imperial cities.2 These Italian or German urban chronicles were the model for analysing urban historical consciousness in other European regions. As a result, the alleged absence of these urban chronicles in the densely populated and urbanized Low Countries has puzzled many scholars.3 Fortunately, recent research tendencies turned to other manifestations of urban history writing in the cities of the Low Countries.4 For instance, urban historiographies from the







1 This has already been proposed by Robert Stein, Politiek en historiografie. Het ontstaansmilieu van Brabantse kronieken in de eerste helft van de vijftiende Eeuw (Leuven: Peeters, 1994). And recently again for Flanders by Frederik Buylaert, Jelle Haemers, Tjamke Snijders and Stijn Villerius, ‘Politics, Social Memory and Historiography in Sixteenth-century Flanders: Towards a Research Agenda’, Publications du Centre Européen d’Etudes Bourguignonnes (XIVe–XVIe s.): Mémoires conflictuelles et mythes concurrents dans les pays bourguignons (ca 1380–1580), 52 (2012), 195–215. 2 See for example the contribution on this topic to the series Typologie des sources du Moyen Âge Occidental: Elisabeth M. C. van Houts, Local and regional chronicles (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995). 3 Jan Romein, Geschiedenis van de Noord-Nederlandse geschiedschrijving in de middeleeuwen. Bijdrage tot de beschavingsgeschiedenis (Haarlem: Tjeenk Willink, 1932), p. 830. Bunna Ebels-Hoving, ‘Nederlandse geschiedschrijving 1350–1530. Een poging tot karakterisering’, in Genoechlicke ende lustige historiën. Laatmiddeleeuwse geschiedschrijving in Nederland, ed. by Bunna Ebels-Hoving (Hilversum: Verloren, 1987), pp. 217–42. 4 Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, ‘L’écriture de la mémoire urbaine en Flandre et en Brabant (XIVe–XVIe siècle)’, in Villes de Flandre et d’Italie (XIIIe–XVIe siècles): les enseignements d’une comparaison, ed. by Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan and Elodie Lecuppre-Desjardin (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), pp. 149–64. Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, ‘S’imaginer le passé et le présent: conscience historique et identité urbaine en Flandre à la fin du Moyen Âge’, in Memoria, communitas, civitas. Mémoire et conscience urbaines en Occident à la fin du Moyen Âge, ed. by Hanno Brand, Pierre Monnet and Martial Staub (Ostfildern: horbecke, 2003), pp. 167–80. Robert Stein, ‘Selbstverständnis oder Identität? Städtische

Urban History Writing in North-Western Europe (15th–16th centuries), ed. by Bram Caers, Lisa Demets and Tineke Van Gassen, SEUH 47 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 137–156. © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.SEUH-EB.5.117872

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Low Countries have long been overlooked because of the nationalist scope of the editions composed in the nineteenth century.5 These tended to focus more on regional chronicles and their ‘standard versions’, setting aside any textual variation that might point at a more local reception of the chronicles. While it was recognized that some of the regional chronicles were written in cities, and by authors that were undoubtedly part of the urban framework (e.g. Jan van Boendale, an Antwerp communal clerk, who wrote the regional chronicle Brabantsche yeesten in the first half of the fourteenth century), there has been little attention to the possible ‘urban’ character of regional chronicles. Cities in the Low Countries, as opposed to Italian city states and the imperial cities in Germany, were indeed firmly embedded in a regional context, but this did not prevent them from developing their own particular views of the past. With recent research unearthing a growing number of previously unknown examples of urban historiography, it has become increasingly clear that the ‘traditional model’ no longer applies to urban historiographical consciousness in the medieval Low Countries. While Elodie Lecuppre-Desjardin initially placed the shift to more locally embedded historiographies in the sixteenth century, and related it to the rising religious tensions of the time, more recent research pointed towards the fifteenth century as the main turning point.6 We agree that local historiography definitively took root in the fifteenth century, and would like to point at the fact that this coincides with the political unification of the Low Countries under the Burgundian dukes.7 In the ever-growing complex of Burgundian lands, especially the cities were looking for a way to legitimize themselves and the privileges they had accumulated over time. History writing may have served as a counterbalance to the dukes’ ambitions to centralize power. Regional chronicles provided an ideal way to reassess and confirm an existing regional identity within the personal union under the Burgundian dukes. In Brussels for example, the city magistrate







Geschichtsschreibung als Quelle für die Identitätsforschung’, in Memoria, communitas, civitas. Mémoire et conscience urbaines en Occident à la fin du Moyen Âge, ed. by Hanno Brand, Pierre Monnet and Martial Staub (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2003), pp. 181–202. 5 As was the case for the Ypres chronicles for instance: Paul Trio, ‘The chronicle attributed to ‘Olivier van Diksmuide’: a misunderstood town chronicle of Ypres from Late Medieval Flanders’, in The Medieval Chronicle V, ed. by Erik Kooper (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008), pp. 211–25. Equally, Mechelen’s local historiography was overlooked because it derives strongly from Brabantine regional texts: Bram Caers, Vertekend verleden. Geschiedenis herschrijven in vroegmodern Mechelen (1500–1650) (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Antwerp, 2015), pp. 22–26. The publication with the same title is in press (Hilversum: Verloren, 2019). On the problematic aspects of nineteenth-century editions for the German case see Tomaszewski’s contribution in this volume. 6 Around 2003, there was a polemic on the absence of urban chronicles in the Low Countries between Lecuppre-Desjardin and Van Bruaene. Elodie Lecuppre-Desjardin, La ville des cérémonies: essai sur la communication politique dans les anciens Pays-Bas bourguignons (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 71–76. Van Bruaene, ‘S’imaginer le passé et le présent’, pp. 150–51. 7 Robert Stein, Politiek en historiografie. Het ontstaansmilieu van Brabantse kronieken in de eerste helft van de vijftiende eeuw (Leuven: Peeters, 1994), p. 282. Sjoerd Levelt, Jan van Naaldwijk’s Chronicles of Holland: Continuity and Transformation in the Historical Tradition of Holland during the Early Sixteenth Century (Hilversum: Verloren, 2011), pp. 235–39.

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ordered a splendid copy of the Brabantsche yeesten with a continuation written especially for this purpose, to be presented to the duke.8 After the demise of the Burgundian duke Charles the Bold (1477), the centralizing model perfected by the dukes collapsed under influence of the cities. The new duchess, Mary of Burgundy, in part restored their former privileges.9 When Mary died in 1482, a succession crisis divided the Low Countries. The county of Flanders, and more specifically the three most powerful cities Ghent, Bruges and Ypres, revolted against Mary’s widower, Maximilian of Austria, the son of the Roman emperor Frederick III.10 These rebelling cities wanted to install a regency council to rule in the name of the under-aged duke Philip the Fair. Maximilian of Austria, father to the duke, claimed regency for himself, and succeeded in gaining support of cities in other regions, such as Mechelen and Antwerp. However, support was not clear-cut along regional lines: in Brabant for example, Brussels supported the claims of the rebellious Flemish cities. Within this political turmoil, the historiographical focus seems to have shifted to the cities, as there was no common opinion on the outcome even within the same region. It may not be a coincidence that many examples of urban historiography in the Low Countries took root exactly in this period of important confrontations between local and central levels of authority.11 However, the picture is even more complex. Within the opposing cities, there were factions siding with the archduke, and others rooting against him.12 Undoubtedly, this internal strife will have reflected on the historiographical texts produced in this time of political upheaval. In this article, we propose a nuanced view of late fifteenth-century history writing in the cities of Bruges and Mechelen which 8 On the commission and context of this version, see Stein, Politiek en historiografie. The manuscript is kept in the Royal Library in Brussels, Ms. 19.607. 9 She issued the so-called ‘Great Privilege’ to all her dominions, but equally issued several local charters to the different duchies, counties and cities: Wim Blockmans, Maria van Bourgondië 1477 (Heule: UGA, 1985). Jelle Haemers, For the Common Good. State Power and Urban Revolts in the Reign of Mary of Burgundy (1477–1482) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009). 10 Jelle Haemers, De strijd om het regentschap over Filips de Schone. Opstand, facties en geweld in Brugge, Gent en Ieper (1482–1488) (Ghent: Academia Press, 2014). Wim Blockmans, ‘Autocratie ou polyarchie? La lutte pour le pouvoir politique en Flandre de 1482 à 1492, d’après des documents inédits’, Handelingen van de Koninklijke Commissie voor Geschiedenis, 140 (1974), 3, 257–368. 11 There are ample examples of locally oriented historiographical texts written in this period: for Flanders, some well-known examples are for instance ‘Het Boeck van al 't gene datter geschiedt is binnen Brugghe’ (‘the Book of Everything that happened in Bruges between 1477 and 1492), the Diary of Ghent (see the contribution of Tineke Van Gassen), the book of the Ghent craftsman Jan de Rouc, the Ypres chronicle by Pieter van de Letewe (see the contribution of Paul Trio) and the Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen: Charles Louis Carton, Het boeck van al 't gene datter gheschiedt is binnen Brugghe sichtent jaer 1477, 14 Februari tot 1491 (Ghent: C. Annoot-Braeckman, 1859), Jelle Haemers, ‘Geletterd verzet. Diplomatiek, politiek en herinneringscultuur van opstandelingen in de laatmiddeleeuwse en vroegmoderne stad (casus: Gent en Brugge)’, Handelingen van de Koninklijke Commissie voor Geschiedenis, 176 (2010), 5–54. Paul Trio, ‘The Chronicle Attributed to Olivier Van Diksmuide’, pp. 211–25. Some of the more prominent ‘memory books’ also date from this period: Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, De Gentse memorieboeken als spiegel van stedelijk historisch bewustzijn (14de tot 16de eeuw) (Ghent: Verhandelingen der Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde, 1998), pp. 76–80. 12 Haemers, De strijd om het regentschap, pp. 165–66.



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will show that urban historiography could lead to differing opinions, within one city, and even within one text tradition. We will study two cases of urban historiography that can be said to have been closely linked to the political turmoil in the late fifteenth century Low Countries: the Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen (‘Excellent Chronicle of Flanders’) and the urban chronicles of the city of Mechelen. The comparison between the historiographical texts produced in these two cities is especially called for because they are traditionally said to occupy key positions on either side of the political spectrum. Bruges was considered to be firmly against the regency of Maximilian, and even captured the archduke in 1488, whereas Mechelen was an ardent supporter of Maximilian’s claims as the former seat of the central institutions and the residence of Charles the Bold’s widow, Margaret of York. Moreover, both cities had a rich tradition of regional and local historiography, and the preserved material shows variation on the manuscript level which allows for a nuanced analysis of disagreement between urban factions. Our case studies therefore not only underline the varied forms of urban history writing, but also the variety of different ideologies and discourses inherent to the city environment. While this has been attested and analysed on a political level, the connection between faction struggles and historiography is often more difficult to make.13 Our intention is to go beyond the detection of an ‘urban view’ on historiography, and to equally give attention to different voices within the city. Focusing on a generalized ‘urban’ audience does the complexity of the urban social stratification injustice. Instead, we will analyse micro groups of likeminded citizens often referred to as a ‘textual’ or ‘interpretative’ communities which are audiences sharing the collective interpretation of a text.14 This model allows us to analyse conflicts over the interpretation of a text. The chronicles circulating within these communities do not simply reflect a univocal interpretation of history on which all urban inhabitants would agree, but the intentions of a specific group within the city. We expect that political disagreement within the city is reflected in the urban historiographies. The studied manuscript versions can then be said to position themselves on either side of the divide between local ambitions and centralizing power.

13 Jonas Braekevelt, Frederik Buylaert, Jan Dumolyn, and Jelle Haemers, ‘The Politics of Factional Conflict in Late Medieval Flanders’, Historical Research, 85 (2012), 13–31. 14 Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretative Communities (CambridgeMass.: Harvard University Press, 1980). Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 522: ‘Groups of people whose social activities are centered around texts, or, more precisely, around a literate interpreter of them.’ We prefer this framework this specific article rather than the currently popular ‘social memory’, because ‘interpretative community’ implies a more equal attention for text and context whereas ‘social memory’ often (implicitly) favours context over text.

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The Bruges manuscripts of the Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen and the political discourses of the urban elite during the Flemish Revolt (1482–90) Although Ghent and Ypres knew some examples of urban historiographies commissioned by the city governments or written by prominent city officials by the fifteenth century,15 the mercantile town of Bruges oddly lacks a similar kind of urban historiographical tradition. Despite this absence, late medieval Bruges knew a rich urban literary culture through the activities of the so-called chambers of rhetoric. These cultural associations, typical for the Low Countries and the northern region of France, produced various kinds of literary output such as plays and poems, and were responsible for the organisation of urban public events such as processions and the princely Joyous Entries.16 For quite some time, Bruges only knew one chamber of rhetoric, the Holy Ghost (De Heilige Geest), founded on Maundy Thursday in 1428 and stationed at Saint Donatian’s church.17 In 1475, this chamber of rhetoric got competition from a newly installed chamber: the Three Female Saints (De Drie Santinnen). Perhaps not coincidently, only a few years later, a particularly ‘urban’ historiographical project took off in Bruges. Bruges’ most famous rhetorician, Anthonis de Roovere, member of both chambers, wrote a Middle Dutch continuation to one of the oldest Flemish chronicle traditions, the Flandria Generosa C.18 This confluence of events – the previously mentioned exceptional political situation of the 1480s and the competition between these chambers of rhetoric – resulted in the emergence of a historiographical project specifically focussed on the city of Bruges.19 Building on a regional chronicle (similar to the Mechelen case discussed below), Anthonis proceeded the history of Flanders with the violent encounter between Bruges and the centralising politics of the Burgundian dukes, Philip the Good: the Bruges revolt of 1436–38.20 Like the Mechelen chronicle (which ends

15 See for instance the contributions of Tineke Van Gassen on Ghent and Paul Trio on Ypres in this volume. 16 Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, Om beters wille. Rederijkerskamers en de stedelijke cultuur in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden (1400–1650) (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008). 17 Laurence Derycke and Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, ‘Sociale en literaire dynamiek in het vroeg vijftiende-eeuwse Brugge: de oprichting van de rederijkerskamer de Heilige Geest ca. 1428’, in Stad van koopmanschap en vrede. Literatuur in Brugge tussen middeleeuwen en rederijkerstijd, ed. by Johan Oosterman (Leuven: Peeters, 2005), pp. 59–96. 18 From 1466 onwards, he received the yearly allowance of 6 pounds from the Bruges city government to support his literary activities. Johan Oosterman, ‘Anthonis de Roovere. Het werk: overlevering, toeschrijving en plaatsbepaling’, Jaarboek de Fonteine, 37–38 (1995–1996), 29–104 (pp. 30–31). 19 On the dispute between the Bruges chambers after the Flemish revolt: Van Bruaene, Om beters wille, pp. 71–73. 20 Johan Oosterman, ‘De Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen en Anthonis de Roovere’, Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde, 118 (2002), 22–37. Jan Dumolyn, Johan Oosterman, Tjamke Snijders, and Stijn Villerius, ‘Rewriting Chronicles in an Urban Environment. The Middle Dutch ‘Excellent Chronicle of Flanders’ Tradition’, Lias, 41 (2014), 2, 85–116. Lisa Demets and Jan Dumolyn, ‘Urban Chronicle Writing in Late Medieval Flanders: The Case of Bruges During the

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with the death of Charles the Bold), Anthonis ended with a symbolic event: the unexpected death of Philip’s last direct successor, Mary of Burgundy, in 1482 and her burial in the Church of Our Lady in Bruges.21 This chronicle of Flanders by Anthonis de Roovere is a true ‘Flemish’ chronicle by scope and outlook, structured by the reigns of the Flemish counts and Burgundian dukes similar to the chronicle tradition it derived from, the Flandria Generosa. Nevertheless, Anthonis’ continuation almost exclusively focused on Bruges events or regional events with a direct impact on the city. He particularly elaborated on Joyous Entries or ducal weddings in Bruges, as he himself, as a rhetorician, was involved in the organization of most of these ceremonies.22 Furthermore, he also added lists of Bruges aldermen to his chronicle incorporating Bruges city politics within the history of the county. Therefore, his Chronicle of Flanders could be interpreted as a chronicle of Bruges as much as a Flemish chronicle. Embedding Bruges’ history within the history of the county relates to the specific political context of late medieval Bruges after 1477, and particularly to the political and cultural reception of Anthonis’ chronicle in Bruges after 1482. The chronicle’s autograph was lost, but this Middle Dutch Chronicle of Flanders, commonly known as the Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen (‘Excellent Chronicle of Flanders’),23 survived through a diverse corpus of late medieval and early modern manuscript copies and one print edition, extant in several copies.24 Seven manuscripts were written only shortly after 1482, in the period between 1485 and 1495, and are particularly connected to the revolt against Maximilian of Austria in Bruges.25 For instance, in the summer of 1485, a Bruges politician, patrician and castellan, Jacob van Malen, began to write his own manuscript version of the Excellente Cronike while confined to a cell in his own castle, the so-called ‘Tower of Burgundy’ (‘Den Thor van Bourgogne’) or the Little Castle of

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Flemish Revolt of 1482–1490’, Urban History, 43 (2016), 1, 28–45. For an overview of the rewriting process of the Flandria Generosa C and the Excellente Cronike during the fifteenth century see: Lisa Demets, Onvoltooid verleden. Politiek, historiografie en de handschriftelijke variatie van de Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen (unpublished doctoral thesis, Ghent University, 2019). Anthonis de Roovere died only a few months afterwards on 16 May 1482. Oosterman, ‘Anthonis de Roovere’, p. 30. Oosterman, ‘De Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen’, pp. 22–37. Most noteworthy is the description of the festivities organized for the marriage of duke Charles the Bold and the English princess Margaret of York. Johan Oosterman, ‘Scattered Voices. Anthonis de Roovere and Other Reporters of the Wedding of Charles the Bold and Margaret of York’, in Staging the Court of Burgundy. Proceedings of the Conference "the Splendour of Burgundy", ed. by Wim Blockmans and Anne Van Oosterwijk (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 189–95. Named after the 1531 print version by Willem Vorsterman: Dits die Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen (Antwerp: Willem Vorsterman, 1531). In sum, nineteen Excellente Cronike manuscripts were preserved, all dating between 1480 and 1550. Lisa Demets, ‘The Late Medieval Manuscript Transmission of the Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen in Urban Flanders’, The Medieval Low Countries, 3 (2016), 123–73. Mss. Bruges, Public Library, 436 and 437; Douai, Municipal Library, 1110; Brussels, Royal Library, 13073–4; The Hague, Royal Library, 132A13; Paris, National Library of France, Neerl. 106; New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, 435. On the link between the manuscripts and the Flemish revolt: Demets and Dumolyn, ‘Urban Chronicle Writing’, pp. 28–45.

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Sluis.26 This manuscript, currently preserved in the Municipal Library in Douai (Ms. 1110), narrates the history of the county of Flanders from its legendary origin until the rule of Mary of Burgundy. Jacob van Malen was imprisoned on 28 May 1485 in Sluis by the imperial troops of Maximilian of Austria.27 Jacob sided with the rebels leading the revolt in Bruges, a non-homogeneous group including craft guild members and city officials, but also prominent Flemish noblemen such as Louis of Gruuthuse and Adolf of Cleves. Through his manuscript, he shares his (and the rebels’) view on ideal state structure with a particular group of like-minded Bruges citizens. For him, a Flemish chronicle was the perfect and most obvious medium to share his view on Bruges’ history: the narrated events in his and the other Bruges manuscripts all explicitly focus on the relationship between the count of Flanders and the Bruges city politics. In sum, seven manuscripts show a similar connection to Bruges of which four can be directly linked to similar political and cultural networks.28 So, although Jacob states in his colophon that his writing was the product of a lonesome process, the similarities in content and style between his manuscript and these other Bruges manuscripts prove otherwise. The Bruges Excellente Cronike clearly was a collective enterprise. The production and reception sides of the Bruges Excellente Cronike manuscripts point to a distinct group of anti-Habsburg rebels representing the political and commercial elite of Bruges who frequently met during events organized by (religious) confraternities and chambers of rhetoric.29 These manuscripts thus clearly reflect a specific group within the larger faction of anti-Habsburg rebels in Bruges. The Flemish revolt against Maximilian of Austria was not carried by a homogeneous group or a singular social milieu in Bruges. As mentioned, prominent Burgundian noblemen, commercial elites, patrician families as well as lower craftsmen joined the revolt. The anti-Habsburg faction in Bruges cut through the social stratification of the city (and the other Flemish cities).30 However, the Excellente Cronike gives voice to an exclusively urban ‘elite’ view on Flemish history.31 For instance, the text distances itself from the violent outcomes of previous uprisings. In all narrated revolts, violent 26 Ms. Douai, Municipal Library, 1110 (henceforth Douai 1110), fol. 415v. 27 The story of his imprisonment was recorded in the Vorsterman print: Willem Vorsterman (ed.), Dits die Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen (Antwerp, 1531), fol. 227v. 28 Demets and Dumolyn, ‘Urban Chronicle Writing’, pp. 28–45. 29 More specifically the religious confraternity Our Lady of the Snow, and the previously mentioned chamber of rhetoric the Three Female Saints: Demets and Dumolyn, ‘Urban Chronicle Writing’, pp. 34–37. Strikingly, this audience resembles the bourgeois entourage of the famous Gruuthuse manuscript related to the Bruges ‘burgher’s lodge’ (‘poortersloge’): Jan Dumolyn, ‘Un idéologie urbaine "bricolée" en Flandre médiévale: ‘Les sept portes de Bruges’ dans le manuscrit Gruuthuse (début du XVe siècle)’, Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis, 88 (2010), 1039–84. Herman Brinkman and Ike De Loos. Het Gruuthuse–Handschrift: Hs. Den Haag , Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 79 K 10 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2015). 30 Braekevelt, e.a. ‘The Politics of Factional Conflict’, pp. 13–31. 31 For a comparison of the political discourses in the Excellente Cronike and the speeches by Willem Zoete, the main spokesman of the rebels, at the Estates General in 1488, see: Lisa Demets, Jan Dumolyn and Els De Paermentier, ‘Political Ideology and the Rewriting of History in Fifteenthcentury Flanders’, BMGN The Low Countries Historical Review, 134 (2019), 1, 73–95.

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upheaval is exclusively attributed to the common people who are consistently referred to as ‘the commune’ (tcommuun). This is a quite neutral designation.32 Although the Excellente Cronike does not use the same ornate and pejorative descriptions of the common folks as court chronicles, it does not support the commune’s (violent) rituals. The following example illustrates this attitude. In 1477, after the death of Charles the Bold, a general uprising emerged in the cities of the Low Countries. The most well-known example of repercussions on the former Burgundian establishment is the execution of the ducal councilors Guy de Brimeu and Guillaume Hugonet in Ghent.33 In Bruges, the previous city establishment was equally severely punished. The former Bruges burgomaster Jan Barbasaen was executed, and other city officials and noblemen such as Jan de Baenst and Anselmus Adornes were publicly humiliated. In the Excellente Cronike, the execution of the former burgomaster, Jan Barbasaen, is portrayed as an explicit demand of the commune alone: ‘The same day the lord Jan of Barbasaen was tortured at the desire of the commune’ (‘Item den zelven dach, zo was dheer Jan van Barbasaen overgheleet ende ghepijnt ter begheerten van den commune’).34 Subsequently, the Excellente Cronike narrates how many clerics, merchants and noblemen (among whom Louis of Gruuthuse) tried pleading in Barbasaen’s defense. Among Barbesaen’s defenders were his two daughters who were described as ‘sweet virgins’ (‘twee zoete maechdekins’). The Excellente Cronike narrates how the aldermen ‘shed a tear’, but the commune on the other hand was not appeased ‘with words’. The commune demanded ‘right and justice’ (‘maer tcommuun van Brucghe ne was met woorden niet te payene, maer hiesschen recht ende justicie’), and Jan Barbasaen was executed. Important to take into account while reading this passage is that the new duke-consort Maximilian of Austria tried to punish the main leaders of the 1477 revolt in 1481, and charged the new political elite, the faction around Willem Moreel and Maarten Lem, as the main agitators of these repercussions.35 Willem Moreel and his faction were arrested on 10 December 1481, according to the Bruges Excellente Cronike on false grounds: ‘And it has to be understood that these decisions were made as a result of false information which was subjective’ (‘ende es wel te verstane dat dese pointen waren inghestelt bij quader informacie ende dat partyelicke’).36 This faction would deliver the main leaders of the revolt against 32 John Watts, ‘Public or Plebs: the Changing Meaning of ‘the Commons’, 1381–1549’, in Power and identity in the Middle Ages: essays in memory of Rees Davies, ed. by Huw Pryce and John Watts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 242–60. Jan Dumolyn, ‘Criers and Shouters. The Discourse on Radical Urban Rebels in Late Medieval Flanders’, Journal of Social History, 42 (2008), 111–35 (p. 122). Jelle Haemers, ‘Social Memory and Rebellion in Fifteenth-century Ghent’, Social History, 36 (2011), 443–63. 33 Marc Boone, ‘La justice en spectacle. La justice urbaine en Flandre et la crise du pouvoir ‘bourguignon’ (1477–1488)’, Revue historique, 305 (2003), 43–65. Haemers, For the Common Good, pp. 228–47. 34 Douai 1110, fol. 342v. 35 Haemers, De strijd om het regentschap, p. 37. 36 Douai 1110, fol. 411v.

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Maximilian after the death of Mary of Burgundy. So blaming the commune for the violent outcome of the 1477 revolt could be an intentional strategy of this Bruges elite. Evidently, not all rebels would agree with this kind of scapegoating. This indicates that these Excellente Cronike manuscripts were not intended for lower craft guild milieus, but circulated in the more literate patrician and commercial ‘middle class’ circles (as a ‘textual community’).37 In Ghent, an important source for the outlook of the craft guilds sheds a different light on the events surrounding the 1477 revolt: the so-called Book of Jan de Rouc, a Ghent tick weaver.38 The preserved fragment legitimates the rituals of the craftsmen and the commune against ‘the aldermen and those ruling over us’.39 So although both texts had a direct link to the Flemish revolt, the discourses do not reflect a united rebel strategy. Social differences between the rebels were still at stake. The Excellente Cronike text illustrates how these Bruges rebel leaders wanted to legitimize their participation in the revolt. From this perspective, the regional scope of the chronicle is an important factor. In the light of this volume on urban historiography, it seems worthwhile to elaborate further on the motivation to write history in the shape of a Flemish chronicle. Despite the ‘urbanity’ inherent to the Bruges cluster of Excellente Cronike manuscripts,40 the chronicle cannot be defined as a typical ‘urban chronicle’ conform to the Italian or German style which (until now) has (perhaps falsely) functioned as the archetype for urban history writing in Western Europe. What could be the intention to write a regional chronicle which almost exclusively focuses on one particular city? First, the Excellente Cronike builds on the authority of the chronicle tradition it derived from: the Flandria Generosa. These Latin chronicles of Flanders trace back to a late twelfth-century dynastic genealogy. The Bruges rebels thus embedded their point of view on history in a widespread historiographical tradition typically related to the Flemish dynasty. As the Low Countries knew many regional chronicles by the fifteenth century, urban historiography often developed out of these regional chronicles: like the Mechelen case for instance (see below). From the perspective of regional political entities in the Low Countries, regional histories on Flanders, Brabant or Holland were ideal counter-discourses responding to the centralising politics of the Burgundian and Habsburg rulers.41 This concern for the violation of the local customs and privileges in each region, translated into the revolt after the death of Charles the Bold. Pressured by the cities, his daughter,

37 Demets and Dumolyn, ‘Urban Chronicle Writing’, pp. 34–40. 38 Haemers, ‘Geletterd verzet’, pp. 5–54. Jelle Haemers, ‘Social Memory and Rebellion in Fifteenthcentury Ghent’, Social History, 36 (2011), 443–63. Jelle Haemers, ‘Le Livre de Jan de Rouc. Mémoire collective et révoltes urbaines aux Pays-Bas méridionaux (XVe–XVIe siècles)’, Cahiers du CRHQ, 4 (2013), s.p. 39 Haemers, ‘Geletterd verzet’, p. 44. 40 The ‘urbanity’ of a chronicle is based on three determinants: the authors or scribes, the worldview, and the interpretative community: Demets and Dumolyn, ‘Urban Chronicle Writing’, pp. 30–34. 41 Counter-memory or counter-discourse as an interpretation of Foucault’s work: Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-memory, Practices. Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. by Donald Bouchard (New York: Cornell University Press, 1977).

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Mary of Burgundy, was forced to abolish the central institutions (the Parliament of Mechelen for instance), and to reinstall the regional jurisdictions of each county and duchy through the different regional privileges and the Great Privilege for all her dominions.42 These privileges issued by Mary of Burgundy were at stake in the conflict between Flanders and Maximilian of Austria. Integrating Bruges’ history in a regional chronicle should therefore be interpreted as an explicit political statement, especially in the context of the Flemish revolt. Furthermore, by emphasizing relations among the three major cities in Flanders (Ghent, Bruges and Ypres) rather than limiting the chronicle to events in one city, the Bruges Excellente Cronike corresponds to a particular concern of the anti-Habsburg rebels.The Flemish revolt was unusually successful, because of the intense cooperation between the different cities. This partnership resulted in the installation of a regency council over the under-age duke Philip the Fair. This council replaced Maximilian as a regent at two particular moments, from 25 June 1483 to 28 June 1485 and from 16 May 1488 to 30 October 1489.43 It consisted of noblemen related to the young prince and representatives from the three largest Flemish cities (Ghent, Bruges and Ypres; institutionalized in the so-called Three Members of Flanders, the representative institution that negotiated with the counts on matters of taxation, justice and politics). The importance of this interurban coalition for the rebel leaders is reflected in the discourse of the Excellente Cronike. The Three Cities (Ghent, Bruges and Ypres) appear as an actor in the earliest history of the county, long before these cities formed the ‘Three Members of Flanders’. The Three Cities are anachronistically depicted as an institutional entity maintaining the balance between the prince and his subjects.44 The importance of these intercity relations can be encountered in other contemporary sources. In the petition set up by the deans of the craft guilds for the new Bruges privilege issued by Mary of Burgundy on 30 March 1477, one item directly addresses the need for continuing ‘brotherly love’ (broederlike minne) between Ghent and Bruges.45 It seems that the course of previous revolts, where the cities were often isolated, made them perfectly aware of the higher chances of success when the revolt was supported by other Flemish cities. In Jacob’s manuscript as well as in other Bruges manuscripts of the Excellente Cronike, the theme of ‘brotherly love’ (broederlike minne) was used to address the relations between Bruges and Ghent in this specific period, and especially concerning the events after 1477.46 On 17 April 1477, Mary of Burgundy failed to

42 Wim Blockmans, ‘Breuk of continuïteit? De Vlaamse Privilegiën van 1477 in het licht van het staatsvormingsproces’, in 1477. Het algemene en de gewestelijke privilegiën van Maria van Bourgondië voor de Nederlanden (Kortrijk-Heule, 1985), pp. 97–125. Haemers, For the Common Good¸ pp. 11–17. 43 Haemers, De strijd om het regentschap, p. 35. 44 Demets and Dumolyn, ‘Urban Chronicle Writing’, p. 42. 45 Haemers, ‘Geletterd verzet’, p. 43: ‘Item, dat men broederlike minne houde tusschen die van Ghent ende deser stede, naer den brieven daer of zijnde in de tresorie van den previlegen van deser stede.’ 46 See also: Graeme Small and Jan Dumolyn, ‘Parole d’état et mémoire “collective” dans les Pays Bourguignons: les discours prononcés devant des assemblées représentatives (XVe–XVIe sciècle)’, Publications du Centre Européen d’Etudes Bourguignonnes (XIVe–XVIe s.), 52 (2012), 15–28.

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make her Joyous Entry in Bruges as the craft guilds occupied the marketplace. When the patricians and deans of the city read the new privileges and the duchess agreed to honour them, the people left the market in peace. The Excellente Cronike mentions that: ‘Both benches of Ghent with some noblemen came to visit the people of Bruges and promised in brotherly love to support Bruges with body and goods’.47 Similarly, when Bruges and Ghent joined forces in the subsequent war against France, the manuscript mentions that ‘between both cities was a great friendship and brotherly love’ (‘tusschen beede de stede een groote vrienscepe ende broederlike mine was’).48 Conclusively, apart from the emphasis on the historic ties between the Flemish counts and the city of Bruges, the mutual relation between the Flemish cities was another important determinant that prompted the choice to write a Flemish chronicle from a Bruges perspective. After the Flemish revolt, the Excellente Cronike manuscripts were multiply continued and adapted. Remarkably, the direct reception into the sixteenth century was of a far less ‘rebellious’ nature. In 1531, the Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen was printed in Antwerp by Willem Vorsterman. Vorsterman’s print was based upon the writings and compilation of a Bruges rhetorician Andries de Smet, who was a member of both the Holy Ghost and Three Female Saints and had been involved in the organisation of the Bruges Joyous Entry of the young emperor Charles V in 1515. Of course, the widely spread Vorsterman print of the Excellente Cronike does not have a rebellious undertone, and was published in honour of the inauguration of Charles V as Holy Roman Emperor, and his subsequent visit to the Netherlands. The regional form of the chronicle made it multi-adaptable.49 And thus, it even could be transmitted into a pro-princely Habsburg chronicle. Nevertheless, there are sixteenth-century examples of a ‘rebellious’ continuation of the chronicle as well. When the tension between the city of Ghent and the Habsburg emperor Charles V built up towards the Ghent revolt of 1539, the Ghent politician Jan van Dixmude wrote his own Excellente Cronike manuscript, currently known as the ‘chronicle of pseudo-Jan van Dixmude’.50 And at the very end of the sixteenth century, the Bruges burgomaster Nicolas Despars wrote his chronicle of Flanders, based on the Excellente Cronike. Despars added an explicitly negative portrayal of Maximilian of Austria referring to the contemporary politics of Philip II of Spain, Maximilian’s great-grandson.51

47 Douai 1110, fols 338r–v: ‘ende de voors. van beede de bancken van Ghend met meer notable, die quamen tvolc van Brucghe visenteren, belovende in broederlike minne die van Brucghe bij te stane met live ende met goede.’ 48 Douai 1110, fol. 344r. 49 Buylaert et al., ‘Politics, Social Memory and Historiography’, pp. 195–215. 50 Lisa Demets, ‘Toujours loyal. A Middle Dutch Chronicle of Flanders by Jan van Dixmude in Sixteenth-century Ghent’, in The Medieval Chronicle 11, ed. by Erik Kooper and Sjoerd Levelt (Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp. 127-153. See also the contribution of Paul Trio in this volume. 51 Frederik Buylaert, ‘Memory, Social Mobility and Historiography. Shaping Noble Identity in the Bruges Chronicle of Nicholas Despars (+1597)’, Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis, 87 (2010), 377–408. Jelle Haemers, ‘Un miroir à double face: les chroniques de Jean Molinet et de

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Urban historiography in Mechelen: two distinct text traditions Unlike Bruges, which was one of three major cities in the powerful county of Flanders, Mechelen did not directly belong to a larger region. Although completely surrounded by the duchy of Brabant, the city formed a seperate political entity independent from its neighbours. For centuries, it remained a seigneurial city-state of sorts, comprising not only the city of Mechelen, but also a handful of villages in its direct surroundings (and an exclave seigneurial estate around Heist-op-den-Berg). Mechelen’s history is dotted with short periods in which it resided under the rule of mightier princes (the duke of Brabant, the count of Flanders, even the king of France), but in the minds of its inhabitants and of its rulers alike, the city remained somewhat of an exception, which partly explains why it – despite its obvious military weakness – survived the ancien régime as a separate territory in the Low Countries.52 Mechelen’s political history as a geopolitical anomaly has had a decisive impact on its urban historiography, for two main reasons. Firstly, it functioned as a seat of power (1473–77, 1503 onwards) and as a court city (1477–1503, 1506–30) precisely in the period in which urban historiography in the Low Countries took root.53 The choice for Mechelen over wealthier or more important cities such as Bruges, Ghent or Brussels will have been a pragmatic one, balancing out the interests of the more powerful cities and regions, but it infused great pride in the minds of contemporary elites in Mechelen and as such will have formed a trigger for a historiography devoted solely to the city.54 But where to start with a Mechelen chronicle? Quite like in the Bruges case explained above, the basis for Mechelen’s urban historiography was found in regional chronicles, in the Mechelen case notably those written about the duchy of Brabant.55

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Nicolas Despars. La lutte discursive entre la cour Burgundo-Habsbourgeoise et l’élite urbaine du comté de Flandre dans le cadre de la révolte Brugeoise de 1488’, Le Moyen Âge. Revue d’Histoire et de Philologie, 118 (2012), 269–99. The most recent general overview of Mechelen’s history is Raymond Van Uytven (ed.), Geschiedenis van Mechelen. Van Heerlijkheid tot stadsgewest (Tielt: Lannoo, 1991). See in general: Dagmar Eichberger (ed.), Dames met klasse (Leuven: Davidsfonds, 2005). For a specific overview of Mechelen’s role as the seat of central authority: Louis-Théo Maes, Het Parlement ende Grote Raad van Mechelen (Antwerp/Rotterdam: C. de Vries-Brouwers, 2009). On the choice for Mechelen, see Walter Prevenier, ‘Mechelen rond 1500. Een kosmopolitische biotoop voor elites en non-conformisten’, in Dagmar Eichberger, Dames met klasse, pp. 31–42. The link between the political situation of the city and its historiography has been made in Caers, Vertekend verleden, pp. 15–26. This assertion was first made by J. Verbeemen, De vroegste geschiedenis van Mechelen. De waarde van de oudste Mechelse kronieken voor de vroegste geschiedenis der stad in het licht van de andere bestaande bronnen (Antwerp: Provincie Antwerpen, 1954), but has been finetuned by recent research: Caers, Vertekend verleden, pp. 60–68. Compare Bram Caers, ‘A message in silence. Conflicting chronicle reports on a Mechelen craftuild uprising in 1467’, in Culture historique: la cour, les pays, les villes dans les anciens Pays-Bas (XIVe–XVIe siècles). Rencontres de Leyde/La Haye (19 au 22 septembre 2013), ed. by Jean-Marie Cauchies (Neuchâtel: Centre Européen d’Études Bourguignonnes, 2014), pp. 109–24.

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The second reason why Mechelen’s special position in the Low Countries influenced its urban historiography lies precisely in the complex role it played in Brabantine chronicles. As an enclave in the duchy, strategically positioned on rivers leading from the duchy’s naval trade hub in Antwerp to inland centres such as Brussels and Leuven, Mechelen was often in conflict with the duke and its neighbouring cities. In fact, the Brabantine chronicles are littered with descriptions of conflicts with Mechelen, and it will be no surprise that the latter was not always portrayed in the fairest way.56 The choice for Brabantine chronicles, and not for Flemish ones for instance, was inevitable, as the latter did not deal with Mechelen in a consistent way, even if the city fell under the rule of the Flemish count from 1356 onwards. For chroniclers in late fifteenth-century Mechelen taking Brabantine historiography as their starting point, the main task was to rewrite their source in such a way that the predominantly negative portrayal of their home city was weakened, or reversed.57 Indeed, when compared to their Brabantine counterparts, the Mechelen chronicles follow the broad lines of the duchy’s history, but present an image of the city that is altogether more positive than that which we find in the source texts.58 Surprisingly, there are two separate text traditions of urban historiography dealing with the city of Mechelen, commonly referred to as ‘A’ and ‘B’.59 The ‘A chronicle’ is a lengthy prose chronicle dealing with Mechelen’s history from early medieval times up to 1477, the death of Charles the Bold. Recent research has shown that the text was probably written around 1500, by a certain Jan de Wilde.60 The sources in Mechelen contain traces of two men with this same name, possibly father and son. The first was a scribe or notary who is mentioned in city accounts in the 1460s, the second enrolled in Leuven university in 1485, but left no further traces. While it cannot be ascertained which of both was the author of the chronicle (quite possibly even, the younger Jan continued work of the older one), research has shown that the author can be linked to the vibrant scene of historiography in Brabantine Windesheim convents in the second half 56 A case in point is an episode in the Voortzetting (continuation) of the Brabantsche yeesten – Brabant’s most important vernacular chronicle initiated by Jan van Boendale in the first half of the fourteenth century) – that was taken out in a later stage because it was too negative in its portrayal of Mechelen. See Astrid Houthuys, Middeleeuws kladwerk. De autograaf van de “Brabantsche yeesten”, boek IV (vijftiende eeuw) (Hilversum: Verloren, 2009), for example pp. 284–91. Houthuys’ study is littered with examples of a critical, if not negative portrayal of Mechelen. Compare in general terms: Robert Stein, Politiek en historiografie. Het ontstaan van Brabantse kronieken in de eerste helft van de vijftiende eeuw (Leuven: Peeters, 1994). 57 Caers, Vertekend verleden, shows in chapter 5 how Mechelen chroniclers and later reworking scribes dealt with Brabantine chronicle material. 58 Aside from this, there is material that is specific to the city of Mechelen, that cannot be found in Brabantine historiography. This includes material on Mechelen’s patron saint, Saint Rumbald, which most probably was taken from a vernacular vita circulating at the time of writing. See Verbeemen, De vroegste geschiedenis, pp. 38 ff. and compare for mor recent insight: Bram Caers and Pieter Verhoeven, ‘Sint Rombout in een Mechelse stadskroniek. Laatvijftiende-eeuwse devotie geprojecteerd op het verleden’, Queeste, 23 (2016), 1, 1–21. 59 This division was first made by Verbeemen in 1954, who also attributed the letter denominations. 60 Caers, Vertekend verleden, pp. 38–47.

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of the fifteenth century.61 The main source for the Mechelen A chronicle, the Alder excellenste cronyke van Brabant, a version of which was printed in 1498 in Antwerp, quite possibly has roots in the same monastic circles.62 Even if the Mechelen chronicle may have been written by a cleric, or in a clerical context, it is definitely an urban chronicle in every sense of the word. It deals extensively – if not exclusively – with the history of Mechelen and it relates events from a Mechelen viewpoint. Also, the tone of the chronicle is that of Mechelen’s established elites. It speaks harshly of communal uprisings and displays a loyalty to central authority that is in line with Mechelen’s political position at the time of writing. A striking example of this loyal tone is the fact that the most recent communal uproar in the Mechelen, a revolt against the city magistrate and the newly appointed duke Charles the Bold in 1467, was censored out of the A chronicle. Descriptions in other sources show that the political elites did not manage the uprising all too well, and were even responsible for an escalation of the uproar. The fact that Jan de Wilde does not even mention the uprising, makes it plausible that his main intended audience were the political elites.63 The A chronicle has been preserved in over twenty manuscripts, dating from the seventeenth well into the nineteenth centuries.64 This is striking, as some of the other examples of urban historiography in the Low Countries show how an urban chronicle was sometimes confined to the city administration and restricted to one manuscript witness (see the case of Kampen in this volume, compare to ’s-Hertogenbosch).65 The broader reception of the Mechelen chronicle material – outside the city’s administrative circles, that is – shows that there was a keen interest among the city’s educated circles to get to know Mechelen’s history. At the same time, the large number of manuscript copies has also facilitated variation among copies, as there was no single ‘authoritative’ version kept in the city archives, at least not originally. Some of the earlier manuscripts of the Mechelen A chronicle (two certainly date to the sixteenth century) show interesting variants, or contain continuations, which shows how sixteenth-century Mechelen chroniclers dealt with their own history and tried to appropriate it for themselves or their audiences.66 It is striking, however, that all of these sixteenth-century manuscripts can be linked to the city’s established political elites. 61 Caers, Vertekend verleden, pp. 72–88. 62 See Jaap Tigelaar, Brabants historie ontvouwd (Hilversum: Verloren, 2006), pp. 150–66. The Alder excellenste cronyke van Brabant inspired urban historiography in ‘s-Hertogenbosch too, see A.-M. Van Lith-Droogleever Fortuijn et al. (ed.), Kroniek van Peter van Os. Geschiedenis van ’s-Hertogenbosch en Brabant van Adam tot 1523 (Den Haag: Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis, 1997). 63 This case has been dealt with extensively in Caers, ‘A message in silence’. On the uprising itself, see Hyacinthe Coninckx, ‘Une émeute à Malines en 1467’, Bulletin du Cercle Archéologique, Littéraire et Artistique de Malines, 3 (1892), pp. 300–24. 64 Verbeemen, De vroegste geschiedenis, pp. 3–9, provides an overview of the manuscript. Recent research has unearthed several more copies: Caers, ‘Vertekend verleden’, pp. 20–21. 65 For Kampen, see Bakker’s contribution to this volume. For ’s-Hertogenbosch, see the introduction to Van Lith-Droogleever Fortuijn et al. (ed.), Kroniek van Peter van Os. 66 This text variation forms the main subject of Caers, Vertekend verleden.

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The earliest surviving copy dates to the 1540s, and was made by Jan van Hanswijck (†1578), a land surveyor who on occasions functioned as a tax official for the city of Mechelen.67 He copied the chronicle and continued it with a description of events up to 1510. In his continuation, which deals with the politically troublesome times after the death of Charles the Bold, he continued and even intensified the loyal tone that is characteristic of most manuscripts in the A tradition.68 Later in the sixteenth century, probably in the 1570s, his autograph manuscript was in the hands of Gerardus Bernaerts (†c. 1583), a chaplain in Saint John’s church in Mechelen, who littered each and every one of the pages of the manuscript with notes, in the margins, between the lines as well as on added scraps of paper, which testifies to his ambition to rewrite the A chronicle entirely.69 Bernaerts was a member of an important family of butchers that wielded political power as well, through Jan Bernaerts, who was an alderman in the city magistrate. A second manuscript dating to the sixteenth century that contains interesting differences when compared to the ‘standard’ A chronicle, is a reworked version made in the 1590s by Jan van Wachtendonck, an alderman and mayor in Mechelen. From 1585 onwards, Jan van Wachtendonck had occupied various positions in the city’s administration, switching from mayor over alderman to treasurer and so forth. Alongside his brother, who has a similar profile, he apparently was firmly entrenched in the city’s political elite after the reconciliation of the rebellious cities in the Southern Low Countries under the Spanish crown in the late sixteenth century.70 Research has yet to provide a complete and detailed analysis of reception of the A chronicle in further centuries, but it is clear that for the sixteenth century, the A chronicle mainly appealed to an elite audience involved in or related to the Mechelen city council.71 Unlike the A text, which possibly has one (or two closely related) identifiable initial author(s), the B chronicle is in fact a collection of work of three authors, each with their specific profile and interests. It is generally assumed that a first author, Rombout van den Riele, wrote a short prose chronicle dealing mainly with events in the fifteenth century. A second one, Cornelis Vermeulen, is thought to have focused more on the sixteenth century and on events related to rhetorician contexts. The third author, Nicolaas Steylaert, compiled both parts into one continuous chronicle, adding a lengthy introduction on Mechelen’s older

67 Mechelen, City Archives, EE VI 1. On Jan van Hanswijck, see Caers, Vertekend verleden, pp. 97–101. 68 Earlier researchers believed that the continuation was a later addition of the author of the A chronicle, see Verbeemen, De vroegste geschiedenis van Mechelen, pp. 16–18. This assumption does not hold, see Caers, ‘Layered text formation’, and compare Caers, Vertekend verleden, pp. 81–88. 69 An example of his work process is dealt with in Caers, ‘Layered text formation’. 70 On the formation of these ‘new’ elites after 1585, see Judith Pollmann, Catholic Identity and the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1520–1635 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 138–42. On Wachtendonck’s position in Mechelen, compare Guido Marnef, Het calvinistisch bewind in Mechelen, 1580–1585 (Kortrijk-Heule: UGA, 1985), pp. 307 and Caers, ‘Vertekend verleden’, pp. 147–51. 71 An outline of the seventeenth and eighteenth–century reception is provided by Caers, Vertekend verleden, pp. 171–88.

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history as well as a detailed description of the explosion of the Zandpoort – a Mechelen town gate and gunpowder storage – in 1546. Steylaert’s compilation is to be situated in the second half of the sixteenth century, which makes for the fact that most manuscripts with the compiled B chronicle date to the seventeenth century and later times. This gives the impression that the B chronicle is younger than the A chronicle, but it is highly likely that Rombout van den Riele wrote his part at the end of the fifteenth century, which would place him alongside Jan de Wilde and his A chronicle.72 His account of recent events differs strongly from that of De Wilde, as it was written not from the perspective of the established political elites, but rather from that of a middling class of well-off craftsmen. The uprising of 1467 for example, which was censored out of the A chronicle, is described at length in the B chronicle. Rombout van den Riele left no stone unturned to show how the magistrate and the established elites were responsible for the escalation of violence, and how they mischievously conspired to have the rebellious craftsmen executed.73 It is remarkable however, that the anger of Rombout van den Riele is aimed in first instance at the city’s elites, and not at the duke, who is depicted as an innocent victim of the evil plots of the Mechelen magistrate. The description, however, shows perfectly how the B chronicle stands in sharp contrast to the A chronicle in terms of its position in urban society. The reception contexts of the B chronicle have yet to be studied in detail, but the only sixteenth-century manuscript with (parts of ) the B text at least shows that the ‘lower’ initial position of the B chronicle in urban society may indeed have continued in its later reception, similarly to the elitist position and subsequent reception of the A chronicle. While all sixteenth-century manuscripts of the A chronicle can be linked to the city’s political elites, the sixteenth-century manuscript of the B chronicle may be situated in the context of the weavers guild.74 Because thorough research on the production and reception contexts of the B chronicle is lacking, we can use this manuscript here mainly as an indicative touching stone for the material from the A chronicle, to show that the overall elitist view of Mechelen’s history was indeed counterbalanced by the view of other members of urban society, if indeed their vision of the past apparently did not make it into ‘canonical’ historiography in later centuries.75 Seeing that both chronicles were initiated in the politically troublesome times after the demise of both Charles the Bold and his daughter Mary, it would be interesting to see how they position themselves with regard to the house of Burgundy and the entry of the Habsburg line into the dynasty. Strikingly though, the A chronicle in most manuscripts ends at the death of Charles the Bold, which apparently even by contemporaries was regarded as a crucial turning point. With Mechelen being loyal to Maximilian of Austria, contrary to rebellious cities such

72 This overview is based on Verbeemen, De vroegste geschiedenis van Mechelen, pp. 28–31. 73 See Caers, ‘A message in silence’, and compare Coninckx, ‘Une émeute à Malines’. 74 Mechelen, City Archives, Archief afkomstig uit het Rijksarchief Antwerpen, nr. 62. On this manuscript, see Caers, Vertekend verleden, pp. 161–70. 75 Caers, ‘A message in silence’, pp. 120–24.

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as Ghent and Bruges, there was ample material to continue the history up to the time of writing.76 That the author chose to end his history of Mechelen with the demise of the notorious duke, could therefore be meaningful.77 There is, however, a lengthy continuation written by Jan van Hanswijck, which seems to align nicely with the main themes of the A chronicle and the position it took in urban society. In the following, we will touch upon some examples of how the A chronicle deals with central authority and the shift of power between the Valois and Habsburg lines, which was not at all uncontested in the period of writing. Generally speaking, the A chronicle strikes a positive tone when talking about central authority, and more specifically the Burgundian dukes.78 Especially Charles the Bold is portrayed in a positive way. Charles is hailed as a successful duke who increased the prestige of the Burgundian lands by conquest and diplomacy, and who followed in his father’s centralizing ambitions by establishing central institutions for the Low Countries in 1473. That the seat of this ‘Parliament’ – in fact a high judicial court – was the small city of Mechelen, of course is the main reason for the positive portrayal of a duke who was not unequivocally lauded, to say the least. Unsurprisingly, it is the description of the first session of Charles’ Parliament in Mechelen that provides the most striking example of the positive portrayal of the duke, who is described as the most victorious and mighty prince in the world.79 It is worth pointing out that in the most likely source of the A chronicle, there is no mention at all of the first session of the Parliament in Mechelen.80 In the B chronicle, the description is very similar, but does not contain the appreciative epithets that Charles gets in the A chronicle. In the B text, the focus lies more on the fact that the Parliament was established in the city of Mechelen, of all the cities in Charles’ lands. According to the B chronicler, who insists on this up to three times, it was ordained by both the German emperor and the pope, that the Parliament had to be placed in Mechelen, ‘ende nergens elders’ (‘and nowhere else’).81 Here and elsewhere, the B chronicle shows a more pragmatic view of history, centred on the well-being

76 See in this regard: Caers, ‘A message in silence’, p. 114. 77 A hesitant attitude towards the recent past is not uncommon for contemporary chroniclers, see EbelsHoving, ‘Nederlandse geschiedschrijving 1350–1530’, p. 228. 1477 was quickly seen as a pivotal date in history, which becomes apparent from other chroniclers choosing it for their eind date, see Levelt, Jan van Naaldwijk’s Chronicles of Holland, p. 203. 78 The loyal tone of Mechelen’s A chronicle is discussed in Caers, ‘In fide constans? Politiek van herinnering in het Mechelse stadsbestuur’, De Zeventiende Eeuw, 29 (2013) 2, pp. 228–46. 79 Brussels, Royal Library, 13.733, fol. 67v: ‘Daer nae heeft hertoech kaerle als een victorioester ende machtichster prince der werlt selve in sijn parlement gheseten ende hem ghetoent in eenen hoghen setel, met gulden laken behangen, ende hij hadde dierbare clederen aen ende een gulde croen op sijn hoft, verciert met menigen costelijcken steen, soe dat sij menich dusent cronen wert was, ende allen die andere edel princen hadden oeck seer costelijcke habiten elc nae sijnen staet, dijer seer veel was, alsoe datmen dierghelijcken triumph in dese landen noet en sach’; transl. ‘After this, duke Charles sat in his own Parliament as the most victorious and mighty prince in the world, and showed himself in a high throne covered in gold cloth, swearing precious clothes and a golden crown adorned with many a precious stone, so that it was worth many thousand crowns. And all the other noble princes were wearing costly garments as well, each according to his own station, so that a similar triumph had never before been seen in this country.’ 80 See the digital text file provided by Tigelaar, Brabants historie ontvouwd, fol. cc3v. 81 Mechelen, City Archives, EE VIII, fols 48v–49r.

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of the common good, rather than on the glory of the dynasty. At the same time, however, including the approval of both the emperor and the pope increased the legitimacy of the Parliament in the description to contemporary readers. The installation of a new Parliament in Mechelen was of course unanimously appreciated, but all this display cost a lot of money. Charles’ reign was a costly one, not only because of his centralising ambitions, but notably because of his military campaigns to expand the Burgundian territories eastward and southward. Despite its overall loyal tone to the Burgundian dukes, the A chronicle must admit at one point that the duke’s ambitious politics came at a cost, which caused a ‘quaden roep’ (‘murmuring’).82 It is notable in this context that the chronicler introduces ‘officers’ to do the taxing, possibly avoiding to portray the duke as the main instigator of the opposition to the financial burden. In the B chronicle, this motif is explored further, and the ‘officers’ are named: apparently, it were Guy de Humbercourt and Guillaume Hugonet, two high political figures in the Burgundian administration who orchestrated the levy of taxes. Both accused of treason and corruption after the death of Charles the Bold and beheaded in Ghent in 1477, they were of course easy scapegoats to shelter the duke from any blame – incidentally in the same way as was the case in the Bruges reading of history described above. Indeed, according to the B chronicle, both ‘verraders’ (‘traitors’) purposefully held Charles tied down in the siege at Neuss, so that they ‘bij middelen tijde vander armer gemeijnte te meer schattinge mochten krijgen’ (‘in the meantime could tax the poor commoners more’).83 When three years later, the duke is entangled in his final and fatal siege, that of Nancy in 1477, the B chronicler states that they maliciously kept the duke at Nancy, while keeping all the money for themselves, because they had ‘een oprecht francoijs herte’ (‘a truly French heart’). With Charles’ troops shivering in the colds of winter, bereft of any money for food and supplies, the chronicler suggests, the two traitors were directly responsible for Charles’ death at the hands of the troops of the duke of Lorraine. Again, the duke is portrayed as an innocent victim of bad advisors. When we look at descriptions of the time after 1477, the basic patterns of difference between the A and the B chronicles continues. The A chronicle in most versions ends with the death of Charles the Bold, but Jan van Hanswijck, who wrote his version in the early 1540s, added a lengthy continuation dealing with events between 1477 and 1510. He apparently saw no reason to mention the uproars and unrest after the death of Charles the Bold, and the efforts of Mary of Burgundy to appease her lands with the Great Privilege. Instead, he continues the loyal tone of the A chronicle, stating even that Maximilian ruled over the Low Countries in peace, a definite understatement of the last quarter of the fifteenth century.84 No wonder then, that Jan van Hanswijck describes 82 Brussels, Royal Library, 13.733, fol. 68r. 83 Mechelen, City Archives, EE VIII, fol. 50. 84 Mechelen, City Archives, EE VI 1, fol. 69r: ‘alsoo heft hy die landen ontfanghen, met synder huysvrouwen, ende peyseleken gheregert.’ Transl. ‘and so he received the lands, with his wife, and ruled them in peace.’

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the capture of Maximilian in Bruges in a very unapproving way. The archduke goes there with good intentions, but is deceived: saying they want to keep him out of harm’s way, some Bruges citizens lure him into a house where he is captured.85 What follows is a lenghty description of how Frederick III descends on the Low Countries in anger to free his son, while Mechelen plays a pivotal role in being the loyal keeper of the archduke’s innocent son and heir, Philip. In this way, Jan van Hanswijck voices the opinion of Mechelen’s political elites, who aimed to have the city’s position as a central seat of government restored after the abolishment of Parliament in 1477. Their position proved fruitful, as the Parliament was re-established as a ‘Great Council’ by Philip the Fair in 1506. Bruges’ fate was altogether less appealing: Jan van Hanswijck rightly concludes that ‘die van Brugghe die syn alsoo ter ner gheghaen, dat haer eewelyc smerten sal’ (‘Bruges’ power and importance decreased in such a way, that they will regret their position forever’). Indeed, at the time of writing, Bruges’ role as the principal port and financial and economical hub of the Low Countries was shifting to Antwerp. The B chronicle on the other hand, uses a more emotional tone to describe the troublesome times after 1477. Continuing on the narrative of the ‘traitors’ in duke Charles’ administration, it spends a lot of time describing the hunt for and execution of corrupt officers throughout the Low Countries. Seemingly at the side of the call for urban particularism at first, the chronicle turns towards a more loyal tone when the archduke Maximilian is caught in the city of Bruges. From that moment on, Mechelen is portrayed as loyal to central authority, both in military support of Maximilian and his father, as in its role as the guardian city of Philip the Fair. Unsurprisingly, the chronicle describes proudly how Mechelen was rewarded for its loyalty by Frederick III, who granted the city the right to add the royal eagle to its coat of arms, as well as to bear the motto ‘in fide constans’. Conclusion Previous scholars have illustrated how the Burgundian unification awoke a regional historiographical consciousness in the Low Countries. In a similar way, we should add to this that the crisis of that same Burgundian complex at the end of the fifteenth century influenced a new historiographical tendency towards urban history writing. The Flemish revolt divided citizens in an intense way: even members of the same family found themselves on completely opposite

85 Mechelen, City Archives, EE VI 1, fol. 69r: ‘In desen twist soo es hy vermaent ghewest ende ghebeden van sommeghe, dat hy soude in eenich hof ghaen met synen edelen om vander straeten te syne, want hem int gheruchte vanden volke wat toe mocht comen, dwelc hy dede maer als hy daer in was, soo heftmen hem daer doen verwaeren.’ Transl. ‘In these quarrels he was warned and advised by some to flee in some house with his nobles, to be off the streets, seeing he might get hurt by the murmuring commune. And he did as he was advised, but when he was inside, he was locked in.’

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sides of the political spectrum. While the Bruges Excellente Cronike reflects the ideology of an elite literate group revolting to the regency of Maximilian of Austria, the various manuscripts also show the tensions between this very heterogeneous group of rebels. This elite audience of the Excellente Cronike refused to comprehend the violent rituals of the lower craft guilds. In Mechelen, the dominant urban chronicle tradition strongly roots for Maximilian, and takes a harsh tone on urban opposition elsewhere in the Low Countries. It therefore follows the political position of Mechelen in this time, having chosen the side of central authority as a seat of power and a court city to Charles the Bold’s widow, Margaret of York. At the same time, there is an alternative chronicle tradition in this same city, probably originating in middling groups of politically ambitious craftsmen, that is more critical of the political course followed by the archduke. While it is supportive of central authority in general, it strikes a more pragmatic tone, balancing out the ambitions and political claims of the dynasty while keeping in mind the well-being of the commoners. Seemingly appreciative of the wave of uproar that swept the Low Countries during the Flemish revolt, it turns to absolute loyalty when Bruges captures the archduke. In the end, a loyal position would be to Mechelen’s best benefit, even from the point of view of the rather more critical guildsmen. The late medieval cities can be defined by the profound economic, political and social heterogeneity of their inhabitants. Especially in times of crisis, when positions turned harsher, small fractures in urban society could quickly turn into opposing factions. While many cities in the Low Countries chose sides in the widespread uproar under Maximilian’s regency period, they were internally divided. A better understanding of the complex and nuanced position of various groups in urban society, especially in times of conflict, helps in the interpretation and analysis of the manifold forms of historiography produced in an urban context. The case studies presented in this contribution illustrated how fractured late medieval historiography can be. Texts do not present the historiographical position and outlook of a city, but rather of a group within a city or even individuals taking up their own position in urban society. Texts will have circulated among like-minded citizens, joined in ‘interpretative communities’ with a shared vision and appreciation of the past and ambition for the future. While this process is more obvious in the Bruges example, the Mechelen case too shows how the A chronicle continued to appeal to an audience situated in very similar circles, over the course of a century. Of course, the medium of the manuscript made it easy to rewrite and adapt text material, which makes it possible to think of chronicle versions functioning as a type of ‘written dialogue’ between different communities, each with their own interpretation of the past. In moving their attention from regional chronicles to more locally anchored forms of historiography, scholars should be aware of the fact that their texts may well have been part of an intricate network of different visions of (urban) history.

Materiality and Mixed Media

Marcus Meer*

Heraldry, Historiography and Urban Identity in Late Medieval Augsburg The Cronographia Augustensium and the Gossembrot Armorial The Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle (2012) also dedicates a brief entry to the place of heraldry in medieval historiography. Here, Peter Ainsworth stresses ‘the presence of heraldic motifs in chronicle illustration’, and acknowledges that heraldry was something ‘the chroniclers themselves were interested in and reported on’. Still, the role of heraldry in historiography is largely limited to its presence in the ‘decorative or iconographic programme’. Its main epistemological potential for historians, it seems to be suggested, lies in establishing a manuscript’s provenance by identifying the commissioning patron, owner or author. Only in passing Ainsworth adds that heraldic illuminations in chronicle manuscripts interacted with textual narratives, ‘blurring the distinction between chronicle and commemorative ordinary’.1 In this paper, I want to underline this particular commemorative function of heraldry in medieval historiography by analysing two pieces of urban historiography from fifteenth-century Augsburg. In a first part, I will discuss two manuscript copies of Sigismund Meisterlin’s Cronographia Augustensium, whose striking heraldic display tends to be neglected in favour of the chronicle’s textual narratives. In a second part, I will focus on the Gossembrot Armorial attributed to the patrician Hans Gossembrot, arguing that this ‘armorial’ must be considered a piece of urban historiography, too, since it contains an account of the Gossembrot family’s history communicated both by text and heraldry. The approach of this paper is thus meant to be complementary, considering



* I am most grateful to Torsten Hiltmann (Münster), who not only commented extensively on earlier drafts of this paper, but whose ‘Coats of Arms in Practice’ project, funded by the VolkswagenFoundation at Münster University, also provided me with the opportunity to do the research on this paper while working there as a research assistant in 2014/2015. Thanks are also due to Elmar Hofman (Münster) for his constructive perspective on the paper as an expert of medieval armorials, and to Katie Ball (Oxford) as well as Nelly Stavropoulou (Durham), who provided crucial corrections and suggestions to my English. 1 Peter Ainsworth, ‘Heraldry’, ed. by Graeme Dunphy, Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 773–75 (p. 774).

Urban History Writing in North-Western Europe (15th–16th centuries), ed. by Bram Caers, Lisa Demets and Tineke Van Gassen, SEUH 47 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 159–186. © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.SEUH-EB.5.117873

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on the one hand an at first sight historiographic manuscript with regard to its heraldic display, and on the other hand a seemingly heraldic manuscript in relation to its historiographic functions. In conjunction, the two examples will demonstrate that heraldic communication was part of a multi-medial array of commemorating the urban past not at all restricted to textual narratives.2 As part of the visual display of chronicle manuscripts and in the context of written accounts of the past, coats of arms were fashioned as commemorative symbols which called to mind established narratives of urban history. At the same time, heraldry was not bound to remain a mere representation of history. Heraldic display in urban historiography was itself able to communicate certain interpretations of the past that did not rely on text, and in this process also express the claims of an established urban elite to power in the medieval present. As a means of representing and communicating urban historical narratives, heraldry will emerge as a form of visual communication deeply involved in fashioning urban identity, both ‘communal’ and ‘familial’. Heraldry, History and Identity That ‘the past’ constitutes a vital element of any community’s identity now seems a commonplace among historians, anthropologists, sociologists and other scholars.3 Jan Assmann, for example, stresses the ability of ‘formative narratives’ – texts, images as well as rituals meant to recall or re-enact the past – to reassure the members of a community of their collective identity by realigning their norms, values, aims and actions in the present through the commemoration of a shared past.4 In the same spirit, medievalists have intensively investigated medieval historiography as a means of constructing and perpetuating such narratives,5







2 On the ‘multi-mediality’ of urban commemoration in the later middle ages, see more recently the overview by Mark Mersiowsky, ‘Medien der Erinnerung in der spätmittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Stadt’, in Stadt zwischen Erinnerungsbewahrung und Gedächtnisverlust, ed. by Joachim J. Halbekann, Ellen Widder, and Sabine von Heusinger, Stadt in der Geschichte, 39 (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2015), pp. 193–254. 3 Seminal studies include Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, ed. & trans. by Lewis A. Coser, The Heritage of Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Peter Burke, ‘History as Social Memory’, in Memory: History, Culture, and the Mind, ed. by Thomas Butler, Wolfson College Lectures, 1988 (Oxford/New York: Blackwell, 1989), pp. 97–113; James Fentress and Chris Wickham, Social Memory, New Perspectives on the Past (Oxford/Cambridge [MA]: Blackwell, 1992). 4 Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (München: C. H. Beck, 1992), p. 142. 5 E.g. Patrick J. Geary, ‘History as Memory’, in Writing History: Identity, Conflict, and Memory in the Middle Ages, ed. by Patrick J. Geary, Florin Curta, and Cristina Spinei, Florilegium Magistrorum Historiae Archaeologiaeque Antiquitatis et Medii Aevi, 10 (Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române, 2012), pp. 230–67; Bernd Schneidmüller, ‘Constructing the Past by Means of the Present: Historiographical Foundations of Medieval Institutions, Dynasties, Peoples, and Communities’, in Medieval Concepts of the Past, ed. by Gerd Althoff, Johannes Fried, and Patrick Geary (Washington, D.C.: German Historical Institute, 2002), pp. 167–92; Jacques Le Goff, History and Memory, European Perspectives (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992).

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and urban historiography is no exception.6 Granted, it was not necessarily a ‘communal’ identity common to all townspeople that manifested itself in urban historiography: town chronicles were first of all written ‘for the honour and benefit of communal leaders’.7 This observation is even more so true in the case of burgess families who sought to create literary monuments to their ‘familial’ identity in the form of family chronicles. Therefore, what manifests itself in urban historiography is an identity which the urban elite – from established patricians to ambitious merchant and guild families – wanted to fashion for themselves and tried to impose on the urban commune as a whole.8 It has also now become commonplace that heraldry, just like seals, for instance, must be regarded as an important expression of late medieval identity, individual and collective.9 That its prominent presence in urban historiography has been scarcely addressed so far thus becomes even more surprising. One reason for this neglect must lie in the focus on the written word that used to dominate the 6 Regula Schmid, ‘Town Chronicles’, ed. by Graeme Dunphy, Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 1432–38; Augusto Vasina, ‘Medieval Urban Historiography in Western Europe (1100–1500)’, in Historiography in the Middle Ages, ed. by Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis (Leiden: Brill, 2003), pp. 317–52; Städtische Geschichtsschreibung im Spätmittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Peter Johanek (Cologne: Böhlau, 2000); Urs Martin Zahnd, ‘Stadtchroniken und autobiographische Mitteilungen’, in Das dargestellte Ich: Studien zu Selbstzeugnissen des späteren Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Klaus Arnold, Sabine Schmolinsky, and Urs Martin Zahnd, Selbstzeugnisse des Mittelalters und der beginnenden Neuzeit, 1 (Bochum: Winkler, 1999), pp. 29–52. For Augsburg in particular, see also Peter Johanek, ‘Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsüberlieferung in Augsburg am Ausgang des Mittelalters’, in Literarisches Leben in Augsburg während des 15. Jahrhunderts, ed. by Johannes Janota and Werner Williams-Krapp, Studia Augustana, 7 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1995), pp. 160–82; Dieter Weber, Geschichtsschreibung in Augsburg: Hektor Mülich und die reichsstädtische Chronistik des Spätmittelalters, Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Stadt Augsburg, 30 (Augsburg: Hieronymus Mühlenberger, 1984); Paul Joachimsen, ‘Zur städtischen und klösterlichen Geschichtsschreibung Augsburgs im fünfzehnten Jahrhundert’, Alemannia, 22 (1894), 1–32, 123–59. Several chronicles of Augsburg have been edited as part of the Die Chroniken der deutschen Städte series, henceforth cited as CDS with reference to the respective volume number. The Cronographia, however, has not been included in the series. 7 Schmid, p. 1432. 8 On the notoriously difficult concept of ‘urban identity’, see for example Miri Rubin, ‘Identities’, in A Social History of England, 1200–1500, ed. by Rosemary Horrox and W. Mark Ormrod (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 383–412; Susan Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900–1300, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 157; Eberhard Isenmann, ‘Norms and Values in the European City, 1300–1800’, in Resistance, Representation, and Community, ed. by Peter Blickle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 185–215; Hans-Christoph Rublack, ‘Political and Social Norms in Urban Communities in the Holy Roman Empire’, in Religion, Politics and Social Protest: Three Studies on Early Modern Germany, ed. by Kaspar von Greyerz (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1984), pp. 24–60. 9 Laurent Hablot, ‘Les armoiries, un marqueur du rang dans les sociétés médiévales?’, in Rank and Order: The Formation of Aristocratic Elites in Western and Central Europe, 500–1500, ed. by Jörg Peltzer (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2015), pp. 245–70; Adrian Ailes, ‘Heraldry as Markers of Identity in the Medieval Literature: Fact or Fiction’, in Marqueurs d’identité dans la littérature médiévale, ed. by Catalina Gîrbea, Laurent Hablot, and Raluca L. Radulescu (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp. 181–91; Identität in Genealogie und Heraldik/Identity in Genealogy and Heraldry/La notion d’identite en genealogie et en heraldique, ed. by Rolf E. Sutter, Genealogica & Heraldica, 29 (Stuttgart: Pro Heraldica, 2012); Werner Paravicini, ‘Gruppe und Person: Repräsentation durch Wappen im späteren Mittelalter’, in Die Repräsentation der Gruppen: Texte, Bilder, Objekte, ed. by Otto Gerhard Oexle and Andrea von Hülsen-Esch, Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte,

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study of late medieval historiography before the ‘pictorial turn’ rediscovered ‘the visual’ as a medium for the communication of history in its own right.10 The potential of this rapprochement – as well as its simultaneous lack of interest in heraldry – is not least evidenced by scholarship on the historiography of late medieval Augsburg. Zita Agota-Pataki, for instance, promotes a renewed emphasis on visual matters with regards to the imagery in the manuscript illuminations of the Cronographia Augustensium, arguing that depictions of key moments in the city’s history contributed to a collective identity by calling to mind narratives of the urban past in which the cohesion and collaboration of the community was vital to its survival and success.11 Heraldry, however, is not taken into account as anything more than a mere means of ‘identifying’ the city depicted in the illustrations.12 Lieselotte Saurma-Jeltsch’s analysis of the visual in Augsburg’s historiography likewise mentions heraldry rather briefly: a collection of arms prominently displayed in one of the chronicle’s manuscripts, she argues, functioned as an iconographic representation of the many parts the urban community comprises, while the arms of the manuscript’s author were meant as a means of individual commemoration.13 Peter Johanek explores the embeddedness of Augsburg’s chronicles in a larger material context of commemorating the past, and in this effort also points to the ability of symbols to evoke historical associations.14 But while Johanek even hints at the importance the arms of the city had in the chroniclers’ elaborations on Augsburg’s past, he neither explicitly outlines a connection between heraldry and historiography, nor suggests that heraldry was able to function as means of conveying historiographical narratives itself.15 In fact, this lack of interest in heraldry is symptomatic of a more general neglect of heraldry in modern historical scholarship. Historians have long left heraldry to the expertise of dedicated heraldists who tend to be more interested in the description, systematisation and symbolism of all things heraldic. However, influenced by scholars such as Michel Pastoureau,16 in recent

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141 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), pp. 327–89. With regard to seals, see for example Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak, ‘Medieval Identity: A Sign and a Concept’, The American Historical Review, 105 (2000), 5, 1489–1533. For an overview, see Gerhard Jaritz, ‘Images’, in Handbook of Medieval Studies: Terms – Methods – Trends, ed. by Albrecht Classen (Berlin; New York: De Gruyter, 2010), ii, pp. 1520–23. With regard to urban historiography, see in the same volume also Graeme Dunphy, ‘Chronicles’, pp. 1714–21 (p. 1719). Zita Agota Pataki, ‘Bilder schaffen Identität: Zur Konstruktion eines städtischen Selbstbildes in den Illustrationen der Augsburger Chronik Sigismund Meisterlins 1457–1480’, in Identität und Krise? Zur Deutung vormoderner Selbst-, Welt- und Fremderfahrungen, ed. by Christoph Dartmann and Carla Meyer (Münster: Rhema, 2007), pp. 99–118. Pataki, pp. 110–13. Lieselotte E. Saurma-Jeltsch, ‘Die Wahrheit der Fiktion’, in Zwischen Mimesis und Vision: Zur städtischen Ikonographie am Beispiel Augsburgs, ed. by Lieselotte E. Saurma-Jeltsch and Tobias Frese (Berlin: LIT, 2010), pp. 1–33 (pp. 13–14, 23). Johanek, p. 162. Johanek, pp. 162–64. Michel Pastoureau, Traité d’héraldique (Paris: Picard, 2003). See also Maurice Hugh Keen, Chivalry (Yale: Yale University Press, 2005), especially chapters 7 and 9; Georg Scheibelreiter, ‘Wappen und adeliges Selbstverständnis’, in Wappenbild und Verwandtschaftsgeflecht: Kultur- und

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years things have begun to change:17 inspired by questions and approaches of cultural history, a ‘new heraldry’ tries to do justice to the ubiquity of heraldic signs in the middle ages by analysing heraldry as a means of visual communication involved in representing, perpetuating, contesting and altering the social and political structures of medieval society.18 And whereas heraldry often tends to be associated with the nobility, in reality this ubiquity was no less the case in the late medieval city, where heraldic communication was as omnipresent in the urban space as it was in urban historiography, to which I will turn now.19 Cronographia Augustensium The Cronographia Augustensium was commissioned by Sigismund Gossembrot (1417–93), a patrician who took great interest in education and edification, mentalitätsgeschichtliche Forschungen zu Heraldik und Genealogie, ed. by Georg Scheibelreiter (Vienna/Munich: Böhlau/Oldenbourg, 2006), pp. 123–41. 17 Heiko Hartmann, ‘Heraldry’, in Handbook of Medieval Studies: Terms – Methods – Trends, ed. by Albrecht Classen (Berlin; New York: De Gruyter, 2010), i, pp. 619–24 (p. 623); Laurent Hablot, ‘Heraldic Imagery, Definition, and Principles’, in The Routledge Companion to Medieval Iconography, ed. by Colum P. Hourihane (London: Routledge, 2017), p. 396. 18 E.g. Semy-de-Lys: Speaking of Arms, 1400–2016, ed. by Fiona Robertson and Peter N. Lindfield (Oxford; Stirling, 2016), [accessed 26 September 2018]; Heralds and Heraldry in Shakespeare’s England, ed. by Nigel Ramsay (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2014); Heraldry, Pageantry, and Social Display in Medieval England, ed. by Peter R. Coss and Maurice Keen (Woodbridge; New York: Boydell Press, 2002). In Germany, the journal of the Mediävistenverband dedicated an entire issue to the subject of ‘arms as signs’ (Wappen als Zeichen), see Das Mittelalter: Perspektiven mediävistischer Forschung, 11.2 (2006). At the University of Münster there is now the ‘Coats of Arms in Practice’ (Die Performanz der Wappen) project, see most recently Heraldic Artists and Painters in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, ed. by Laurent Hablot and Torsten Hiltmann (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2017). 19 For references to the ubiquity of heraldry in the medieval city, see Paravicini; Valentin Groebner, ‘Zu einigen Parametern der Sichtbarmachung städtischer Ordnung im späten Mittelalter’, in Stadt und Recht im Mittelalter / La ville et le droit au Moyen Âge, ed. by Pierre Monnet and Otto Gerhard Oexle, Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte, 174 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), pp. 133–51 (pp. 140–02); Michael Camille, ‘Signs of the City: Place, Power, and Public Fantasy in Medieval Paris’, in Medieval Practices of Space, ed. by Barbara Hanawalt and Michal Kobialka, Medieval Cultures, 23 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), pp. 1–36 (p. 12). For seminal studies on heraldic communication in the Italian communes, see also Peter Seiler, ‘Kommunale Heraldik und die Visibilität politischer Ordnung: Beobachtungen zu einem wenig beachteten Phänomen der Stadtästhetik von Florenz, 1250–1400’, in La bellezza della città: Stadtrecht und Stadtgestaltung im Italien des Mittelalters und der Renaissance, ed. by Michael Stolleis and Ruth Wolff, Reihe der Villa Vigoni, 16 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2004), pp. 205–40; Christoph Friedrich Weber, Heraldische Symbolik in den italienischen Stadtkommunen im Mittelalter (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2009); Christoph Friedrich Weber, ‘Eine eigene Sprache der Politik: Heraldische Symbolik in italienischen Stadtkommunen des Mittelalters’, Zeitschrift für historische Forschung, 33 (2006), 4, 523-64; Matteo Ferrari, ‘Héraldique et organisation de l’espace dans les communes de l’Italie du nord: Les enseignes des tribunaux’, in Estudos de heráldica medieval, ed. by Miguel Metelo de Seixas and Maria de Lurdes Rosa (Lisbon: Instituto de Estudos Medievais, 2012), pp. 397–414; Alice Cavinato, ‘Imaginary Heraldry and Self-Portrayal in Fifteenth-Century Siena’, in Semy-de-Lys: Speaking of Arms, 1400–2016, ed. by Fiona Robertson and Peter N. Lindfield (Oxford/Stirling, 2016), pp. 32–42 [accessed 26 September 2018]; Michel Pastoureau, ‘Stratégies héraldiques et changements d’armoiries chez les magnats florentins du XIVe siècle’, Annales, 43 (1988), 241–56.

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even establishing a ‘club’ of like-minded early humanists in Augsburg.20 In this context, Gossembrot encouraged the monk Sigismund Meisterlin to reassess the existing chronicles of Augsburg and compose a ‘better’ history of the city.21 Meisterlin finished a Latin version of this new chronicle in 1456 and dedicated a German translation to the city council in 1457.22 The chronicle became rather popular: of the Latin version, ten fifteenth- and sixteenth-century manuscript copies survive, while sixteen copies of the German translation were produced before it was eventually printed as well.23 The reason for this success may have been that Meisterlin’s chronicle was noticeably different from earlier Augsburg histories. Instead of establishing a genealogical link between the people of Augsburg and the heroes of ancient Greek and Roman mythology, Sigismund Meisterlin stressed the indigenous descent of the Augsburgians from the Germanic tribe of the Swabians. This heritage, Meisterlin argued, was much more dignified than claiming Roman or Greek heritage, since the Swabians had not descended from an ancestor such as Aeneas, a ‘traitor’ who had fled Troy when his hometown needed his courage most.24 It is striking, from the perspective of this paper, that over the course of this narrative the monk Sigismund Meisterlin makes no reference to heraldry. For those in the city who read, made, commissioned and kept copies of the Cronographia, however, heraldry did matter, as is evidenced by the iconographic programme in the chronicle’s illuminated manuscripts.25 Here, heraldry becomes a prominent feature, as the two copies which will be discussed in this paper illustrate: 2 Cod.

20 Karl Schädle, Sigmund Gossenbrot, ein Augsburger Kaufmann, Patrizier und Frühhumanist (Augsburg: Fr. Schoder, 1938); Katharina Colberg, ‘Meisterlin, Sigismund’, Verfasserlexikon, 1987, 356–66; Friedrich Blendinger, ‘Gossembrot (Gossenbrot, Cosmibrot, auch Begossenprot), Sigmund’, Neue Deutsche Biographie, 1964, 648–49. 21 See the dedication letters in Brigitte Ristow, ‘Untersuchungen zu Sigismund Meisterlins Widmungsbriefen an Sigismund Gossembrot’, Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur, 85 (1963), 206–52 (pp. 206–07). 22 Joachimsen, p. 4. For an edition of the Cronographia, see Sigismund Meisterlin, Cronographia Augustensium: Cronik der Augspurger: Nach der Handschrift 158/4 in St. Paul in Kärnten: Transkription des deutschen Textes, ed. by Hans Gröchenig, Beiträge zur Kodikologie und zu den Historischen Hilfswissenschaften, 13 (Klagenfurt: Armarium, 1998), ii. 23 Norbert H. Ott, ‘Von der Handschrift zum Druck und retour: Sigismund Meisterlins Chronik der Stadt Augsburg in der Handschriften- und Druck-Illustration’, in Augsburg , die Bilderfabrik Europas: Essays zur Augsburger Druckgraphik der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. by John Roger Paas, Schwäbische Geschichtsquellen und Forschungen, 21 (Augsburg: Wießner, 2001), pp. 21–29; Colberg, ‘Meisterlin, Sigismund’; Katharina Colberg, ‘Meisterlin, Sigismund’, Verfasserlexikon, 2004, 988. See also Albrecht Classen, ‘Meisterlin, Sigismund’, ed. by Graeme Dunphy, Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle (Leiden: Brill, 2010), p. 1099. 24 Meisterlin, ii, p. 10: ‘Das es kain Ere sey den burgern zuo Augspurg […] dz man spricht sy koment von Troyern he und dz es auch nit wol mit der warhait […] so doch Eneas ain flüchtiger man ist gewesen […] ain uerrätter seines vaterlands vnd ain böeser zaubrer.’ 25 On the illuminations of the Cronographia, see also Norbert H. Ott, ‘Zum Ausstattungsanspruch illustrierter Städtechroniken: Sigismund Meisterlin und die Schweizer Chronistik als Beispiele’, in Poesis et pictura: Studien zum Verhältnis von Text und Bild in Handschriften und alten Drucken: Festschrift für Dieter Wuttke zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. by Stephan Füssel and Joachim Knape, Saecula Spiritalia (Baden-Baden: Valentin Koerner, 1989), pp. 77–106.

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H. 1 (1457)26 was copied and illustrated by Hector Mülich (c. 1420–89/90),27 who was not only an avid collector of literature, but also merchant, alderman and for many years master of the grocers’ guild of Augsburg.28 This status renders his copy of the Cronographia a conspicuous literary product of Augsburg’s urban elite which bears witness to an explicit interest in heraldry. In contrast to other manuscript copies and in addition to heraldic sign depicted in the narrative’s illuminations and an initial dedication scene, Mülich also added an ‘armorial’, a collection of coats of arms representing the members of the so-called Trinkstube, a timocratic ‘tavern society’ of Augsburg’s elite.29 Cgm. 213 (1479-81)30 was copied and continued by the professional scribe Konrad Bollstatter (c. 1420/30–1482/83),31 which suggests that this manuscript was likely commissioned by someone who consorted with the political elite of Augsburg and may well have been a member of this elite themselves. In his copy of the Cronographia, heraldic display appears throughout the illuminations, illustrating the beginning of the chapters as well as an elaborate dedication scene. In both manuscript copies, the coat of arms of the city of Augsburg forms an important part of the illuminations. Its use is an excellent example for the ways in which heraldic signs were established as commemorative symbols that were seen to remember the past and thus to represent urban identity. The illuminations in Mülich’s manuscript of the Cronographia Augustensium suggest the municipal arms of Augsburg to have been the symbol of the urban community ever since its legendary beginnings. A need for better shelter, the chronicle explained, initially encouraged the Swabians to build houses, and at first the illumination in Konrad Bollstatter’s manuscript (Cgm. 213) appears to merely mirror this narrative (Fig. 1). In the background of archaic dwellings were depicted people are erecting a small settlement of wooden buildings. Yet there is one – central and essential – additional detail that was not mentioned in the text: a flag bearing the colours of Augsburg’s medieval coat of arms (red and white/silver)32 becomes

26 Augsburg, Staats- und Stadtbibliothek., 2 Cod. H. 1, [accessed 26 September 2018]. 27 Joachimsen, p. 4. Mülich also added a continuation to his copy of the Cronographia, edited by Weber, pp. 261–73. 28 Klaus Graf, ‘Mülich, Hektor’, Neue Deutsche Biographie 1997, p. 303; Werner Alberts, ‘Mülich, Hector’, Verfasserlexikon, 1981, 738–42; Birgit Studt, ‘Mülich, Hektor’, ed. by Graeme Dunphy, Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 1128–29. 29 On Augsburg’s elite, see Jörg Rogge, Für den Gemeinen Nutzen: Politisches Handeln und Politikverständnis von Rat und Bürgerschaft in Augsburg im Spätmittelalter, Studia Augustana, 6 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1996), pp. 184–209; Augsburger Eliten des 16. Jahrhunderts: Prosopographie wirtschaftlicher und politischer Führungsgruppen 1500–1620, ed. by Wolfgang Reinhard (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2015), pp. xiv–vi. 30 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm. 213, [accessed 26 September 2016]. A transcription of Bollstatter’s continuation is printed in Joachimsen, pp. 139–59. 31 Klaus Graf, ‘Müller, Konrad (genannt Bollstatter)’, Neue Deutsche Biographie, 1997, p. 447. 32 Eduard Zimmermann, Augsburger Zeichen und Wappen (Augsburg: Hieronymus Mühlberger, 1970), pp. ix–xiv.

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Fig. 1: The foundation of Augsburg in Konrad Bollstatter’s manuscript. Cgm. 213, fol. 43v.

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Fig. 2: The host of Augsburg on the right confronts the invading Amazons on the left. 2 Cod. H. 1, fol. 21r.

the centre around which the city is built, and the point of origin from where the history of the city of Augsburg is supposed to have begun. While there is an illumination of the same narrative in Hector Mülich’s manuscript (2 Cod. H. 1) as well, there is no flag bearing the heraldic colours of the city (Fig. 3). However, a different heraldic symbol may still be present: when in Mülich’s manuscript the heraldic colours of Augsburg appear for the first time (Fig. 2), the flag is also charged with the peculiar heraldic device of the pine-cone-like ‘pyr’. The pyr was in fact an ancient Roman symbol,33 and 33 Josef von Hefner, ‘Über das Augsburger Stadtwappen’, Jahrbücher des Vereins von Alterthumsfreunden im Rheinlande, 25 (1857), 1, 176–83; Ulrich Stoll, ‘Pinienzapfen und Zirbelnuß: Ein Beitrag zur Deutung der römischen Pinienzapfen und zur Geschichte des Augsburger Stadtwappens’, Zeitschrift des Historischen Vereins für Schwaben, 79 (1985), 55–110.

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Fig. 3: Left: 2 Cod. H. 1, fol. 17r, illustrating the foundation of Augsburg in Hector Mülich’s manuscript and displaying pyr-like objects on the battlements of the towers. Right: 2 Cod. H. 1, fol. 97v, depicting Augsburg during a siege, with another pyr-like object on top of the tower.

occasionally people in medieval Augsburg found Roman relics in the shape of a pyr in the ground of the city,34 which must have further strengthend the belief that the pyr was an ancient, traditional symbol of the city. Since the people of medieval Augsburg used these relics as landmarks to demarcate the (legal) boundaries of ‘their’ territory,35 the oval objects placed on the battlements of the urban fortifications in Hector Mülich’s depiction of the foundation of the city may well be a depiction of this function of the peculiar pyr (Fig. 3). While in fact it only began to appear on seals from the thirteenth

34 See the anonymous chronicle from 1469/70, CDS 3, p. 331, as well as Burkhard Zink’s chronicle, CDS 5, p. 327. 35 Zimmermann, p. x.

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Fig. 4: The armies of Augsburg and Rome engage in combat. 2 Cod. H. 1, fol. 42r.

century onwards (and still is the charge of Augsburg’s coat of arms today), the illuminations in the Cronographia suggest that this heraldic sign had been Augsburg’s symbol throughout all of its history. This is illustrated by the display of flags that decorate the narrative on the Roman conquest of the Germanic lands (and Augsburg) by using heraldic symbolism of the medieval Holy Roman Empire. While at first the Romans and alleged ancient Augsburgians are depicted fighting fiercely (Fig. 4) – their coats of arms opposing each other – a few folios later Augsburg is suggested to have accepted Roman rule: now the black imperial eagle is found next to the flag bearing Augsburg’s coat of arms, reigning over the city’s skyline in concord (Fig. 5).36 The allusions to imperial symbolism, playing on the idea of a continuity between the ancient and medieval Roman Empire, visualise Augsburg’s claim

36 See also Lieselotte E. Saurma-Jeltsch, ‘Das Bild der Stadt Augsburg in mittelalterlichen Handschriften’, in Städtische Kultur im mittelalterlichen Augsburg, ed. by Martin Kaufhold (Augsburg: Wißner, 2012), pp. 52–71.

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Fig. 5: Augsburg, with the banner of the city on the left and the imperial banner on the right. 2 Cod. H. 1, fol. 52r.

to a deeply historical relation with the Empire and its status as imperial city.37 In this status the urban elite took great pride, as is evidenced by the frontispiece in Mülich’s manuscript (Fig. 6), boasting the same heraldic connection of Augsburg and the Empire. As part of the iconographic programme which supports and reflects the formative narratives of Augsburg, the coat of arms of the commune were fashioned as a symbol that has always been part of Augsburg’s history. That heraldry and

37 Rolf Kießling, Bürgerliche Gesellschaft und Kirche in Augsburg im Spätmittelalter: Ein Beitrag zur Strukturanalyse der oberdeutschen Reichstadt, Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Stadt Augsburg, 19 (Augsburg: H. Mühlenberger, 1971), pp. 354–55.

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Fig. 6: The coat of arms of Augsburg, depicted with a double-headed crowned eagle bearing the Habsburg arms on its chest. 2 Cod. H. 1, fol. 5v.

history of the city were indeed intrinsically tied together in the mind-set of Hector Mülich is demonstrated by the very first sentence of his stand-alone

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Fig. 7: A visitor entering Augsburg through a gate with the city arms displayed above the archway. Cgm. 213, fol. 58r.

chronicle: ‘Drusus, a Roman, had a wall built for this city of Augsburg, and he gave it its coat of arms.’38 Two elements emerge as constitutive for the beginning of Augsburg’s existence as city in Mülich’s narrative. Firstly, the walls of the city,

38 CDS 3, p. 1: ‘Item Drusus, ain Römer […], der ließ dise stat Augspurg ummauren und gab ir das wappen […].’

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which not only separated the urban territorial and legal space from the outside world, but also had important symbolic meaning in visualising the distinctness and identity of the urban civitas as a community as opposed to the surrounding society.39 Secondly, it is the coat of arms of the city which equally becomes a visualisation of Augsburg’s identity as a sign that belongs to and identifies all its citizens. The joint effort of city walls and arms in representing the urban community is visualised in Konrad Bollstatter’s manuscript of the Cronographia, where the fortifications of the city display its coat of arms as a visitor is passing through the gates (Fig. 7). It is the coat of arms that makes manifest that it is the very city of Augsburg whose territory and jurisdiction the visitor is entering. What becomes apparent through this use of the city’s arms in the copies of the Cronographia Augustensium by Bollstatter and even more so Mülich, visually and textually, is a close connection of urban heraldry and history in the minds of the chroniclers and illuminators. When they described or depicted the city’s history, its coat of arms is part and parcel of their imagination. At the same time, it is the use of the heraldic sign in the context of the chronicle’s illuminations (and with regard to Mülich’s introductory sentence also texts) that perpetuated and reinforced this mental connection in the minds of the audience (or at least suggests it in the first place). In this way, the heraldic sign was turned into a mnemonic, commemorative symbol which called to mind the narratives of the city’s history wherever one would have encountered it: the coat of arms of Augsburg not only identifies the city, but also embodies its history. Yet heraldic display in historiography is not limited to passively evoking and representing historical narratives. Instead, coats of arms functioned as an active visual means of communicating certain interpretations of past and present, too. A paradigmatic example for this communicative ability of heraldry can be found in the dedication scenes that precede the Cronographia in the Mülich and Bollstatter manuscripts. Here, the iconographic display of the urban elite’s familial coats of arms not only expressed this elite’s self-perception in urban society, but also functioned as a visual narrative that located this elite within the urban past and present. In both illuminations (Figs 8 and 9) there is the chronicler Meisterlin kneeling and offering a book, the Cronographia, to the city council. Coats of arms next to each of the depicted people identify them as members of the most important families of Augsburg: Nördlinger, Langenmantel ‘of the Chevron’ (vom Sparren) as well as Langenmantel ‘of the R’ (vom R), Rehlinger, Riedler, Conzelmann and Frickinger in the Mülich manuscript, and – in addition to the aforementioned – the families of Welser, Hofmair and Gossembrot in Bollstatter’s later manuscript. These families belonged to the financial and political elite of patricians and merchants who regularly sent aldermen to the city council in the 39 Thomas Kühtreiber, ‘The Town Wall: Sign of Communication and Demarcation (the Example of Hainburg, Lower Austria)’, Medium Aevum Quotidianum, 47 (2003), 50–68; Martha C. Howell, ‘The Spaces of Late Medieval Urbanity’, in Shaping Urban Identity in Late Medieval Europe, ed. by Marc Boone and Peter Stabel (Leuven: Garant, 2000), pp. 3–19 (p. 7).

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Fig. 8: At the bottom centre are Augsburg’s arms, in the bottom left corner the arms of the Gossembrot family. The remaining arms, from left to right, belong to Langenmantel vom Sparren, Rehlinger, Welser, Langenmantel vom R, Hofmair, Riedler, Frickinger, and Nördlinger. Cgm. 213, fol. 12v.

fifteenth century. In addition, all of the families in the dedication scenes were holding important positions as mayors, sealers or tax officials in 1457, the year the

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Fig. 9: From bottom left to right the arms belong to the families of Nördlinger, Langenmantel vom Sparren, Langenmantel vom R, Rehlinger, Riedler, and Frickinger. The arms on the far right could be Conzelmann. In the centre is the coat of arms of Augsburg. 2 Cod. H. 1, fol. 4v.

chronicle was dedicated to the council.40 Exceptions are the families Frickinger and Hofmair, however, who had nevertheless occupied such positions before and often sat on the city council, too.41 Heraldry as part of the manuscripts’ iconography becomes especially telling in Hector Mülich’s manuscript (Fig. 9). Here the city arms were depicted much

40 See the corresponding entries for the year 1457 in Peter Geffcken, ‘Soziale Schichtung in Augsburg 1396 bis 1521: Beitrag zu einer Strukturanalyse Augsburgs im Spätmittelalter’ (unpublished Dr. phil. thesis, Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München, 1995), pp. 176–93. 41 Geffcken, ‘Soziale Schichtung’, pp. 142, 197.

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larger than the arms of the aldermen. The aldermen seem to be holding the city arms, which therefore appear to be upheld by the city council in a joint effort. This symbolism may well be interpreted as a reminder of the greater good, the bonum commune, towards which the aldermen were sworn to strive in peaceful concordia, thus as a representation of central ideals of medieval urban government.42 Less idealistic is the interpretation that it is this exclusive group of aldermen who have received ‘to have and to hold’ the city represented by its arms. The gathered aldermen – represented by their arms pars pro toto for their entire family – emerge as the element that upholds the city, as warrantors of the iconographically implied ideals of unity and concord. In this way, the arms of the city and of the elite families incorporated into the illuminations expressed this elite’s claim to the top of the urban hierarchy and urban government. At the same time, the display of the urban elite’s coats of arms served as a heraldic extension of the chronicle’s historiographic narrative. The illuminations in Mülich’s and Bollstatter’s manuscripts suggest to record a historical situation in the city’s history, namely the dedication of the chronicle as well as the composition of the council at that time. Coats of arms were the means by which this historical information, that is the families who were participating in urban government, was conveyed: depicted as the constitutive element of the city and central authority of urban society, and identified by their coats of arms, this elite located itself at the end of the history outlined in the chronicle’s narrative. Through heraldry, their history as aldermen and mayors of the city was intertwined with the chronicle’s history of the city. The display of arms allows for the individual families to locate themselves within urban history, and thus to fashion their coats of arms as commemorative symbols which point to their participation in the city’s history and their pre-eminent place in urban society. This, of course, also entails a conservative function with regard to present and future. The past that is conserved in the heraldry of the dedication scene perpetuates claims to the same status in time yet to come, and provides a point of historical reference in case it were ever questioned. With the fundamental changes that altered Augsburg’s social structure at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century in mind, this display could also be interpreted as an attempt of the patrician elite to legitimise and defend their claims to power. Already in 1368 the guilds had forced the established elite to admit people from a guild background to political offices, including the mayor’s position.43 The following century then saw an influx of affluent guild families into the urban elite, while many ‘old’ patrician families

42 Eberhard Isenmann, Die deutsche Stadt im Mittelalter, 1150–1550: Stadtgestalt, Recht, Verfassung , Stadtregiment, Kirche, Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft (Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2012), p. 448. 43 Karl Bosl, ‘Die wirtschaftliche und gesellschaftliche Entwicklung des Augsburger Bürgertums vom 10. bis zum 14. Jahrhundert’, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften: Philosophisch-historische Klasse: Sitzungsberichte, 1969, 32–33.

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simultaneously disappeared.44 Heraldic display in the dedication scenes would then have served to identify and indeed communicate the claims of a perishing elite to urban government. However, this interpretation needs differentiating, as it is not only patrician families whose coats of arms were depicted. Frickinger and Nördlinger, although of course politically and financially successful, were non-patrician families.45 Hector Mülich, after all the author of one of the manuscripts of interest in this paper, did not belong to the patriciate either, but to a family of well-to-do merchants. The collection of coats of arms that is attached to Mülich’s manuscript of the Cronographia is apt to explore this issue further, as it underlines the necessity to take into account the permeability and changeability of medieval urban elites. The Mülich armorial, too, can be understood in the context of locating an urban elite within the city’s past, present and future. Like the dedication scenes, this ‘armorial’ demonstrates how a historical situation was communicated heraldically. Mülich’s introduction to the armorial furthermore hints at the pragmatics of the collected arms in urban visual culture, as it states that these arms were originally ‘painted on the table of the society in the year 1451.’46 The armorial thus seems to display arms of those families who were, at least according to Mülich, members of the so-called Herrentrinkstube. This ‘society’ was the place where the families of the established patriciate mingled with a select few families of merchant or guild background deemed to have risen to a quasi-patrician status.47 In Augsburg, admission to the Herrentrinkstube was thus synonymous with being part of the urban elite as well as de facto the requirement to sit on the city council.48 Following an illumination depicting a mounted soldier bearing a banner with the arms of the city (Fig. 10), the familiar arms of Langenmantel, Frickinger, Welser, Nördlinger, Hofmair and Gossembrot, but also those of other influential families such as Dentrich and Vögelin or Rem and Rudolf were depicted.49 In the same way as in the dedication scenes, the coats of arms in the Mülich armorial served as an extension of the chronicle which suggests to record and re-narrate a historical situation, namely the members of the Herrentrinkstube in 1451.50 The 44 Rolf Kießling, ‘Das Patriziat in Augsburg vom 15. bis ins 17. Jahrhundert’, in Bürgermacht und Bücherpracht: Augsburger Ehren- und Familienbücher der Renaissance: Katalogband zur Ausstellung im Maximilianmuseum Augsburg vom 18. März bis 19. Juni 2011, ed. by Christoph Emmendörffer and Helmut Zäh (Luzern: Quaternio, 2011), pp. 19–36 (p. 23). 45 Geffcken, ‘Soziale Schichtung’, pp. 142, 196. 46 2 Cod. H. 1, fol. 117v: ‘Anno domini 1451 hend dise nachgeschribne geschlecht auf der trinckstüben gemalt en der taflen gewesen wie sie hernach stan gemalet.’ 47 Rolf Kießling, ‘Das Augsburger Bürgertum im 15. Jahrhundert: Ein Versuch zur Bestimmung spezifischer Verhaltensweisen gegenüber der Kirche und ihrem Wertsystem’, in Die mittelalterliche Stadt in Bayern, ed. by Karl Bosl, Beiträge zur Geschichte von Stadt und Bürgertum in Bayern, 2 (München: Beck, 1974), pp. 163–86 (pp. 165–66); Bosl, p. 33. 48 Geffcken, ‘Soziale Schichtung’, p. 233; Pius Dirr, ‘Studien zur Geschichte der Augsburger Zunftverfassung, 1368–1548’, Zeitschrift des Historischen Vereins für Schwaben, 39 (1913), 144–243 (p. 149). 49 2 Cod. H. 1, fol. 118r–119r. 50 While proving the membership of particular families remains next to impossible, all families depicted in Mülich’s armorial have been around in Augsburg by 1451, and may thus well have had access to the Trinkstube, see Geffcken, ‘Soziale Schichtung’, pp. 139–53, 233–35.

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Fig. 10: Hans Gossembrot’s introduction to the Gossembrot Armorial, accompanied by a depiction of Augsburg’s coat of arms. Cgm. 98, fol. 1v.

‘armorial’, too, had a prospective dimension insofar it conserved this memory for the future. Similarly, the armorial also locates this collective of families, represented by their arms, at the end of the history outlined in the chronicle before, which – as in the dedication scenes – underlines their legitimacy by displaying their collective as the most recent ‘chapter’ of that history. In the Mülich manuscript it becomes furthermore apparent that coats of arms in urban historiography were by no means limited to act as commemorative symbols for the collective of the city commune or a collective of the elite’s families only. Hector Mülich manages to fashion the arms of his family as a commemorative symbol by locating it in the context of the grander narratives of urban history. He twice displayed his arms prominently in the manuscript:

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for the first time preceding the standard bearer in a page-filling depiction of the Mülich coat of arms,51 and then again within the armorial,52 alongside the arms of the other eminent families of Augsburg. While the Mülich family might not feature in the text of the chronicle, by means of their coat of arms Hector Mülich is at least able to record their eminent status as members of the Trinkstube for the future, thereby creating a monument to the family’s rise into the urban elite and thus their (historical) identity. Although the Mülichs were not a patrician family, through their admission to the Herrentrinkstube – Hector’s grandfather was a member already – they had achieved a comparable social status.53 The Mülich armorial can therefore be understood as an expression of the pride ‘upstarts’ such as the Mülichs took in their social standing. At the same time, it was a symptom of the jealousy with which they guarded their pre-eminent position within society from other aspiring guild and merchant families who desired the same ascension into Augsburg’s ‘high society’. When in 1479 other merchants of the city had established their own ‘society’ in opposition to the Herrentrinkstube, members of the latter began to refer to their society as the ‘better society’ (merere gesellschaft) in order to reinforce their social pre-eminence and exclusivity.54 Faced with the reality of a constantly changing urban elite, the Mülich armorial – just like the dedication scene in the Mülich manuscript – can therefore be interpreted as an attempt to consolidate the claims to power of an established elite against the aspirations of families neither patrician nor otherwise distinguished by means of heraldically intertwining the city’s past and the urban elite’s present, reassuring them of their status and indeed identity as a group. Gossembrot Armorial The Gossembrot Armorial55 is a second paradigmatic example for this use of heraldry in representing history and urban identity. In this case, however, this entails family history and family identity rather than a collective elite identity. Whereas the manuscript is still often referred to as the Augsburgisches Wappenbuch des Sigmund Gossembrot, this title is actually misleading. Firstly, the ‘armorial’ (Wappenbuch), which was completed c. 1469, is by no means limited to heraldry. As a matter of fact, while traditional definitions of the term assume ‘a collection of coats of

2 Cod. H. 1, fol. 117r. 2 Cod. H. 1, fol. 119v. Alberts, p. 739. Peter Geffcken, ‘Mehrer’, ed. by Wolfram Baer and others, Augsburger Stadtlexikon (Augsburg: Perlach, 1998), p. 258. 55 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm. 98 [accessed 26 September 2018]. For a description of the manuscript see Erich Petzet, Die deutschen Pergament-Handschriften: Nr. 1–200 der Staatsbibliothek in München, Catalogus codicum manu scriptorum bibliothecae Monacensis, 5.1 (Palm’sche Buchhandlung, 1920), pp. 172–73.

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arms’,56 such collections were often embedded in the context of manuscripts that incorporated a variety of genres, both textual and visual.57 The same is true for the Gossembrot Armorial: although there is a preface displaying the arms of Augsburg, an armorial of arms of the ‘old’ families of Augsburg, and a series of the coats of arms of families with whom the Gossembrots were interrelated, there is also text. This includes textual descriptions – the blazon – of the coats of arms depicted in the manuscript, and also a brief treatise on heraldic design. More important in the context of this paper is the fact that the Gossembrot Armorial also features a chronicle on the history of the Gossembrot family. Here, the chronicle’s contents correspond to the information conveyed by the heraldic display in a striking manner. Secondly, it is next to impossible that the author of this manuscript was actually the same Sigismund Gossembrot who initiated the Cronographia Augustensium. Indeed, it is far more convincing that the author of the armorial was Sigismund’s less famous brother Hans Gossembrot (b. 1416),58 who was, of course, nonetheless a member of Augsburg’s urban elite, rendering the Gossembrot Armorial an ideal source to witness the nexus of heraldry and historiography in the fashioning of the urban elite’s (family) identity. Again, the manuscript underlines the importance the city’s coat of arms had for the urban elite, as its contents are preceded by a large illumination of Augsburg’s coat of arms (Fig. 10) accompanied by a text explaining that ‘here is painted the coat of arms of the imperial city of Augsburg’.59 The introduction also states that the manuscript is meant to contain both ‘all old burghers’ arms of lineage’ as well as ‘the old arms of guilds’, while the armorial explicitly does not include ‘foreign or newly assumed arms’.60 The distinction between ‘burgher’ and ‘guild’ arms is reflected in the structure of the armorial, which indeed depicts the arms of ‘those of lineage’ (die von geschlechten) first, and the arms of ‘those of the guilds’ (die von zünften) second.61 Old age becomes the crucial criterion: 56 Pastoureau, Traité, p. 223; Steen Clemmensen, ‘Medieval Amorials: Types, Relations and Confounders’, in Estudos de heráldica medieval, ed. by Miguel Metelo de Seixas and Maria de Lurdes Rosa (Lisbon: Caminhos Romanos, 2012), pp. 27–42 (p. 27). 57 For advice on the definition of ‘armorial’ I am indebted to Elmar Hofman, whose PhD project on medieval armorials shows that strict genre definitions of ‘armorial’ taken out of their material context prove elusive. See, for example, Elmar Hofman, ‘Armorials behind the Schichtbuch: A Material and Visual Exploration’, in 500 Jahre Schichtbuch: Aspekte und Perspektiven der Bote Forschung, ed. by Henning Steinführer, Christian Heitzmann, and Thomas Scharff (Appelhans: Brunswick, 2017), pp. 123–43. 58 Schädle, p. 14. See also Helmut Zäh, ‘Das Geschlechterbuch von Hans Burgkmair d. J. und Heinrich Vogtherr d. J. im Kontext der Augsburger Familien- und Ehrenbücher’, in Das Augsburger Geschlechterbuch – Wappenpracht und Figurenkunst: Ein Kriegsverlust kehrt zurück (Luzern: Quaternio, 2012), pp. 11–18 (p. 12); Peter Geffcken, ‘Wappen- und Familienbuch des Hans Gossembrot’, in Bürgermacht und Bücherpracht: Augsburger Ehren- und Familienbücher der Renaissance: Katalogband zur Ausstellung im Maximilianmuseum Augsburg vom 18. März bis 19. Juni 2011, ed. by Christoph Emmendörffer and Helmut Zäh (Luzern: Quaternio, 2011), pp. 164–65 (p. 165). 59 Cgm. 98, fol. 1v. See also Johanek, p. 172. 60 Cgm. 98, fol. 1v: ‘[D]arnach gemalt aller alt[e]n Burger wappen von geschlechten vnd darnach der alten wappen von zünften vnd stat kain gast noch neü angenomen wappen.’ 61 Cgm. 98, 2v–6v, 7r–v.

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‘new’ arms were not deemed worthy of being collected in the manuscript. Arms, apparently, had to be old to be relevant – they had to have history. On the one hand, this of course reflects a central topos of antiquity crucial to arguments of ‘dignity’ and ‘honour’ in the historiography of families and cities alike.62 Coats of arms, it appears, were supposed to be warrantors of this antiquity, and thus carefully separated from ‘new’ arms.63 On the other hand, this relates to the aforementioned context of an established urban elite that, as expressed in the dedication scenes the dedication scenes and the Mülich armorial, was keen on preserving their distinguished social status in opposition to other affluent yet so far undistinguished families. After all, the distinction between ‘burgher arms of lineage’ and ‘arms of the guilds’ reflects the fundamental social distinction Augsburg’s elite made between the established patriciate and families with a mercantile or craft background who had climbed the social ladder, a distinction which had been codified in the aftermath of a revolt of the guilds against the patricians in 1368.64 When looking at the first section of arms, those of the ‘old’ families, it is striking that this collection of arms does not represent a historical situation at the time the armorial was compiled, as was likely the case with the dedication scenes and the armorial in the copies of the Cronographia. Rather than a historical record, the list of ‘old burghers’ arms’ in the Gossembrot Armorial is a historical construction. In the case of the arms of ‘those of the guilds’, the depicted families were still prospering in the years around 1469 when the armorial was made. Some of these families, such as Vittel, Pfister and Peutinger, were even admitted to the status of ‘burghers of lineage’ in 1538.65 A first exception is the Mangmeister family, who appear to have disappeared from the records in 144966 – twenty years before the armorial was completed at the earliest. This exception becomes the rule in the case of the arms of ‘those of lineage’. This collection of 52 families corresponds to a historiographic tradition in Augsburg according to which these families were once ennobled for their service and success in maintaining law and order

62 E.g. Klaus Graf, ‘Ursprung und Herkommen: Funktionen vormoderner Gründungserzählungen’, in Geschichtsbilder und Gründungsmythen, ed. by Hans-Joachim Gehrke (Würzburg, 2001), pp. 23–36. 63 See also Christof Rolker, ‘Heraldische Orgien und sozialer Aufstieg: Oder: Wo ist eigentlich “oben” in der spätmittelalterlichen Stadt?’, Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung, 42 (2015), 191–224 (pp. 217–18). 64 Dirr, pp. 149–51. A strikingly similar heraldic representation can be found in a printed depiction of the Flemish city of Ghent from 1524. Here, a social distinction between an already established elite, the patrician-like poorterie, and burghers from the crafts guilds was maintained by separating the coats of arms of the families from the poorterie from the coats of arms of the guilds (thus not the arms of guild families as in the Gossembrot Armorial), which had to give precedence to the arms of the former. See Frederik Buylaert, Jelle De Rock, and Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, ‘City Portrait, Civic Body, and Commercial Printing in Sixteenth-Century Ghent’, Renaissance Quarterly, 68 (2015), 3, 803–39 (pp. 812–14). 65 For arms and history of the family Vittel, see Paul von Stetten, Geschichte der adelichen Geschlechter in der freyen Reichs-Stadt Augsburg (Augsburg, 1762), pp. 220–21; with regards to the Pfister family, see ibid., pp. 170–01; for Peutinger, see ibid., pp. 188–90. 66 Geffcken, ‘Soziale Schichtung’, pp. 143, 197.

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in the city.67 Although in the Gossembrot Armorial the coats of arms are given as if these families still constituted the urban elite of Augsburg, in most cases the families had left Augsburg or had become extinct a long time ago.68 A prominent example is the Stolzhirsch family, whose arms are the very first depicted. They had left Augsburg in 1421/22.69 The Riederer family, to whom the second coat of arms belongs, disappeared at about the same time.70 Bitschlin appears to have ceased to exist in 1404,71 and so did Portner in 1429.72 The Gollenhofers died out in 1420,73 and the last evidence for the Liutfried family dates from 140674 – to name but a few on the first folio. In fact, from fifty-two families depicted, only seventeen were still around in 1469.75 The ‘armorial’ of ‘old’ families is therefore not a representation of any contemporary reality. It is not a historical record of the urban elite as was the case with the members of the Trinkstube in Mülich’s manuscript of the Cronographia. Hans Gossembrot’s armorial is a historical construction that suggests a continuity of the urban elite’s past and present where there was, in reality, none. It is thus best understood as a piece of memoria for those ‘old’ families who had once influenced the course of the city’s history. It is the coats of arms that call to mind the names and thus the memory of their armigers. In the Gossembrot Armorial, the memory of these symbols, entailing both the denotative names of their armigers as well as the connotative associations of their history and status, was carefully preserved. They were employed as commemorative symbols which not only evoked the names of the families of old, but by means of visual associations also called to mind the audience’s historical knowledge of these families’ deeds in the city’s history responsible for their status as members of the urban elite, as was expressed in their claim to an ennoblement in reward for their service to the city. This arrangement of arms of families who still did constitute the urban elite of Augsburg alongside the coats of arms of those families who once were part of this elite expressed a concept of history and community that transcended time.76 It is through heraldry that this interpretation of the past and the present was

67 See for example the additions of Wilhelm Rehm to Mülich’s chronicle in CDS 3, pp. 340–01, and the chronicle of Clemens Sender, CDS 4, pp. 9–10. 68 Cf. Geffcken, ‘Wappenbuch Gossembrot’, p. 164, who states that ‘some’ families had died out or moved away. In the chronicle of Clemens Sender (1536), it was mentioned that by that time only ten of these families still existed, see CDS 4, pp. 9–10. 69 Geffcken, ‘Soziale Schichtung’, pp. 221–28; Stetten, pp. 64–65. 70 Geffcken, ‘Soziale Schichtung’, pp. 177, 190, 228. 71 Stetten, pp. 74–75. 72 Stetten, pp. 83–85. 73 Geffcken, ‘Soziale Schichtung’, pp. 139, 196. 74 Geffcken, ‘Soziale Schichtung’, pp. 221–33; Stetten, p. 86. 75 Compare the information on the depicted families provided in Geffcken, ‘Soziale Schichtung’, pp. 139–54, and Stetten, pp. 74–75, 83–85. 76 The same was witnessed in the case of the aforementioned heraldic portrayal of Ghent’s poorterie, see Buylaert, De Rock, and Van Bruaene, p. 832. For the importance of the memory of the dead for community cohesion, see also Otto Gerhard Oexle, ‘Die Gegenwart der Toten’, in Death in the Middle Ages, ed. by Herman Braet and Werner Verbeke, Mediaevalia Lovaniensia Series I, 9 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1983), pp. 19–77 (p. 34).

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visualised and communicated to the audience. This interpretation was of course important to the family identity of the Gossembrots. It allowed Hans to locate the arms of his family among the ranks of all those ‘old’ families who had once been and still were among the most notable citizens of the city. And, of course, it allowed him to display his family arms in the first and foremost selection of ‘old’ and hence ‘worthy’ arms, which he lists as the families ‘of lineage’. For Hans Gossembrot, as for Hector Mülich, the armorial is an opportunity to locate his family, by means of his family arms, among Augsburg’s elite of present and past, and to fashion his family’s arms as a commemorative symbol which called to mind the status of the family qua its participation in the history of the city. In opposition to Hector Mülich, however, Hans Gossembrot stemmed from a patrician family. This may explain the explicit distinction between ‘burghers of lineage’ and ‘burghers of the guilds’. While the Gossembrot Armorial – to some extent – depicted a reality that was expressed in the Mülich armorial and the dedication scenes, that is an urban elite consisting of both established ‘old’ patrician families and merchant and guild families who mingled in the Herrentrinkstube and shared political power, it also allowed for Hans to preserve a distinction within this elite of patricians on the one, and distinguished guild and merchant families on the other side. Whereas a sense of belonging to the joint elite of the Herrentrinkstube emerged as a proud part of Hector Mülich’s identity, Hans Gossembrot’s identity as a patrician rested on a sense of pre-eminence even within this elite, demonstrating the multiplicity of urban identity, or indeed identities in late medieval society. The final example to demonstrate heraldry’s historiographic function in this manuscript comes in the form of two collections of arms which display the coats of arms of families related to the Gossembrot family through marriage (Fig. 11): on the one hand nine coats of arms of all women, i.e. their families, whom sons of the Gossembrot family had married (wien Gossenbroet hand gehept zeweibern), and on the other nine arms of men and their families who had married a Gossembrot daughter (wen Gossenprötin zemann gehebt).77 When this collection of arms is compared to the textual narrative in the family chronicle that is also part of the Gossembrot Armorial,78 it becomes obvious how coats of arms were indeed able to narrate history. A key concern of this family chronicle are the marriages of the Gossembrots, the children who sprung from them, and the places where deceased members of the family were laid to rest. These marital ties of the Gossembrot family outlined in the chronicle reflect the important names of Augsburg, many of which are already familiar from the sections on the families ‘of lineage’ and ‘of the guilds’: Bach, Miner, Stolzhirsch, Vögelin, Rudolf, Langenmantel ‘with the R’, Gerst, Dentrich, Hangenor, Arzt, Hemerlin, Rehlinger, Rader, Grander, and Schreg.79

77 Cgm. 98, fols 8r–v, 11v–12r. 78 Cgm. 98, fols 25r–31v. 79 Cgm. 98, fols 25–31r.

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Fig. 11: The coats of arms of families to whom male Gossembrots had marital ties. In the top left the arms of the Gossembrot family, followed by the arms of the families Bach, Miner, Hangenor and Schreg (plus an empty shield in the top right). Cgm. 98, fol. 8r.

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It is now striking that the list of arms of families related to the Gossembrots tells the same story: all but one of the aforementioned families’ arms (Rader) are displayed, and in return only two coats of arms displayed in the armorial (Müller and Eggensberger) are not mentioned in the family chronicle’s text. The display of coats of arms thus for the most part conveys the same information as the family chronicle. In a compressed form which leaves out names or dates, Hans Gossembrot was able to encode this historical information in the form of coats of arms, representing a crucial aspect of his family’s identity, his family history and the social relations it entailed, by means of heraldry. He demonstrated, through their coats of arms, the impressive list of established families linked to his own, which is therefore to be understood as a visualisation of the Gossembrots’ pre-eminent status in the city. The ‘who-iswho’ of Augsburg’s past and present that was represented by the coats of arms of ‘burgers of lineage’ and ‘families of the guilds’ featured in the lists of families who had granted the Gossembrot family the privilege of marrying one of their sons or daughters, thus acknowledging the Gossembrot family’s sufficiently ‘worthy’ status. It was in the visual proximity of this visualised history that Hans Gossembrot, finally, placed the arms of his family twice. They, too, were thus fashioned as a commemorative symbol supposed to be associated with this impressive history, as did the city or family arms depicted in the manuscripts of the Cronographia discussed earlier. Conclusions The analysis above demonstrates that the functions of heraldry in urban historiography went beyond merely identifying or commemorating the protagonists, authors or commissioners of town chronicles. Rather, in the Cronographia Augustensium and the Gossembrot Armorial, coats of arms were employed and established as mnemonic, commemorative symbols – similar to the ‘signs of memory’ or Erzähl-Male discussed by Michael Camille and Klaus Graf80 – which represented and commemorated the history of Augsburg and the Gossembrot family. The display of municipal heraldry incorporated into the illuminations of the Cronographia suggests that the arms of Augsburg have been part of the city ever since; they were presented as ‘witnesses’ to an urban history dating back to antiquity, a perception that was even further reinforced through their display in close proximity to the chronicle’s textual narratives. The same historical connotation of coats of arms is reflected in Hans Gossembrot’s reluctance to

80 Michael Camille, ‘Signs on Medieval Street Corners’, in Die Strasse: Zur Funktion und Perzeption öffentlichen Raums im späten Mittelalter, ed. by Gerhard Jaritz (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2001), pp. 91–117 (p. 94); Klaus Graf, ‘Stadt-Phantasien: Erzähl-Male und Sprichwörter’, in Stadtgeschichte(n): Erinnerungskulturen der vormodernen Stadt, ed. by Jörg Oberste and Sabine Reichert (Regensburg: Schnell + Steiner, 2017), pp. 13–32.

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incorporate ‘new’ arms into his ‘armorial’, as they were deemed to lack the dignity qua antiquity attributed to ‘old’ families and their ‘ancient’ arms. Still, heraldic signs were not only endowed with historical connotations expected to trigger associations with the past, but they also functioned as an active visual form of historiography. The Trinkstube armorial in Mülich’s manuscripts of the Cronographia as well as the dedication scenes found in his and Bollstatter’s copies represented and preserved a historical situation, thereby extending the historiographic narrative of the chronicle’s text. In the Gossembrot Armorial, coats of arms were even able to communicate a fictitious historical construction that suggested a supertemporal continuity of members of the urban elite, whilst at the same time providing a heraldic pedigree which testified to the Gossembrots prominent place within this elite. Indeed, in this ‘armorial’, family history was remembered by means of heraldic display just as much as by text. As commemorative symbols and visualisation of historical narratives, coats of arms were thus part of the communicative repertoire with which the urban elite created and perpetuated the formative narratives of their families and the city as a whole. In this process, coats of arms were also employed to express ideals of medieval urban government and communicate claims of the urban elite to the urban hierarchy by intertwining heraldry and history. The dedication scenes depict an exclusive elite as constitutive of urban society, locating and legitimising this elite in their present privileged position in Augsburg. The list of members of the Trinkstube represented by their respective coats of arms served the same purpose, reassuring this elite of their composition as a group. Similarly, the structure of the Gossembrot Armorial, spatially separating the arms of ‘old burghers of lineage’ and ‘those of the guilds’, allowed to visualise even finer distinctions within this elite. Last but not least, a desire to reassure one’s family of their status as members of this elite is expressed by Hector Mülich and Hans Gossembrot, who located their families within this elite by placing their arms in the context of other eminent families’ arms. By eternalising the social status quo, heraldic display and indeed heraldic historiography can finally be understood as a visual rhetoric that sought to safeguard the pre-eminent position of the existing elite within the urban hierarchy in the face of rapid change at the end of the fifteenth century. For the case of late medieval Augsburg, heraldry in urban historiography therefore emerges as a versatile means of visual communication that was vital to establishing and expressing ‘urban identity’: it represented and communicated formative narratives of the urban elite and in this process gave expression to their claims to pre-eminence in the urban hierarchy. Thus, further study of the nexus of heraldry and urban historiography is poised to add insightful nuances to our understanding of the means of commemorating history and perpetuating identity in urban visual culture.

Peter Bakker*

The Origin and Purpose of the Town Chronicles of Kampen Two urban chronicles from the Late Middle Ages are housed in the city archives of Kampen, both deliberately constructed historical narratives written during the late fifteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth century. These chronicles are aptly named, as the authors were town secretaries who worked for the aldermen, and the texts were, therefore, created in the context of the city council, like similar chronicles in Germany and Italy.1 However, there is no evidence that these chronicles were ever distributed or meant to be circulated, since the manuscripts show the authors’ original handwriting, and no other versions of them have been found. Also, there is no evidence to suggest that the authors were commissioned by the city council, so the narratives should be viewed as unofficial town chronicles. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Kampen was a prosperous town with a population of around 2000 inhabitants, situated on the estuary of the IJssel River. Its favourable location near the Zuiderzee and its use of the Rhine as a gateway to the IJssel had a positive influence on the economic development of the city. The city primarily traded in the Baltic Sea region, but traders from Kampen were also often seen in the Rhineland, Bergen, France, England, Flanders and Portugal. Kampen was part of the Hanseatic League during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, having rejoined in 1441. However, at the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth, the economy of Kampen faltered, along with decreased commerce in the Baltic region.2



* This article is based on my Ph.D. study on urban historiography in the Northern Netherlands in the Late Middle Ages. 1 Compare for the definitions of town chronicles: Johannes Bernhard Menke, Geschichtsschreibung und Politik in deutschen Städten des Spätmittelalters (Die entstehung deutscher Geschichtsprosa in Köln, Braunschweig, Lübeck, Mainz und Magdeburg) (Cologne: Der Löwe, 1958), p. 9; Heinrich Schmidt, Die deutschen Städtechroniken als Spiegel des bürgerlichen Selbstverständnisses im Spätmittelalter (Göttingen: Van den Hoeck & Ruprecht, 1958), p. 19. See for a recent approach of urban historiography: Peter Johanek, ‘Einleitung’, in Städtische Geschichtsschreibung im Spätmittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Peter Johanek (Cologne: Böhlau, 2000), pp. vii–xix. Regula Schmid, Geschichte im Dienst der Stadt. Amtliche Historie und Politik im Spätmittelalter (Zürich: Chronos, 2009). Lisa Demets and Jan Dumolyn, ‘Urban chronicle writing in late medieval Flanders: the case of Bruges during the Flemish Revolt of 1482–1490’, Urban History, 43 (2016) 1, 28–45. 2 Coenraad Arnold Tamse, ‘Bijdragen tot de economische geschiedenis van Kampen in de Middeleeuwen en de XVIe eeuw’, Kamper Almanak 1963–1964 (Kampen: Nutsspaarbank, 1963-1964), pp. 204–308.

Urban History Writing in North-Western Europe (15th–16th centuries), ed. by Bram Caers, Lisa Demets and Tineke Van Gassen, SEUH 47 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 187–204. © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.SEUH-EB.5.117874

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Kampen was the second most important city of the Oversticht in the Late Middle Ages, after Deventer. The Oversticht was part of the Prince-Bishopric of Utrecht (the Sticht), which in turn was part of the Holy Roman Empire. Geographically, the Episcopal principality was separated into two pieces: Nedersticht (corresponding to the province of Utrecht today) and Oversticht (corresponding to the provinces of Overijssel and Drenthe and the city of Groningen). A large part of the Duchy of Guelders lay between the Oversticht and the Nedersticht. The Dukes of Guelders tried to exercise influence on the adjacent Sticht via the selection of the bishop, as did the Burgundians and the Habsburg rulers during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The resulting tensions and conflicts impacted Kampen, as well.3 No single explanation can be given for the existence of an elaborate historiographical tradition in Kampen. One might expect such a tradition in Deventer or Zwolle, since both had well-known Latin schools and famous rectors such as Johannes Cele and Alexander Hegius.4 However, it is possible that Kampen’s economic prosperity attracted men with intellectual backgrounds who desired to become secretaries to the city,5 a theory supported by the high level of education that a number of the raden (aldermen) and the town secretaries attained. Additionally, the position of Kampen in the Hanseatic League and its relationship with the Hanseatic cities (for example, Cologne and Lübeck) in the German empire, where urban historiography already had a long tradition, may help explain Kampen’s two urban chronicles. Kampen’s oldest town chronicle, De Annalibus quaedam, dates from the late fifteenth century, making it probably the oldest surviving city chronicle in the Northern Low Countries.6 The second chronicle, Annalia ende andere copien, dates to the first half of the sixteenth century.7 Both chronicles were continued by different town secretaries during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Scholars have suggested that Annalia ende andere copien is a continued version of De Annalibus quaedam, but this is erroneous. First, the chronicles are physically separated from each other. Second, the authors were contemporaries, and it seems unlikely that two authors, knowing each other and working simultaneously on De Annalibus quaedam and Annalia ende andere copien, would write about the same period if they intended one text to be a continuation of the other. Therefore, the two town chronicles must have had different purposes.

3 Jules Edouard Anne Louis Struick, Gelre en Habsburg , 1492–1528 (Arnhem: Gouda Quint 1960), and Cornelius Antonius van Kalveen, Het bestuur van bisschop en Staten in het Nedersticht, Oversticht en Drenthe, 1483–1520 (Groningen: n/a, 1974). 4 Peter Bakker, ‘Onderwijzen zit humanisten in het bloed. Een onderzoek naar de invloed van het humanisme op de Latijnse school in Kampen ca 1450–1600’, Overijsselse Historische Bijdragen, 127ste stuk (2012), pp. 9–34. 5 Frantisek Graus, ‘Funktionen der mittelaterlichen Geschichtschreibung’, Städteforschung, 47: Städtische Geschichtschreibung im Spätmittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Peter Johanek (Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau, 2000) pp. 11–14. 6 Stadsarchief Kampen (‘City archives of Kampen’), Oud Archief (‘Old Archive’), inventarisnummer (‘inventory number’) 11, Liber Diversorum C, fols 248–86. 7 City archives of Kampen, Old Archive 12, Liber Diversorum D.

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In this article, I will argue that De Annalibus quaedam was written to help the town secretaries with their daily proceedings. The chronicle made it possible to place the administration within the context of certain events.8 Also, events from the past could serve as examples for the secretaries. However, Annalia ende andere copien had a completely different purpose, since it was written as a political treatise describing events and motivations, such as the town secretary’s preference for the emperor instead of the prince bishop of Utrecht. This could help show that choosing a strong ruler (landsheer) would result in stability, peace and tranquillity, qualities that were beneficial for the burghers of a town. In Das Kulturelle Gedächtniss, anthropologist Jan Assmann has made some noteworthy conclusions on history, collective memory and identity. Not only did he explain the shaping of identity or the lack thereof, but he also theorized how far collective or communicative memory would reach if it were not written down; he suggested no more than 80 to 100 years.9 One can wonder if chronicle writers were aware of this. Is it possible that authors recorded events for this reason, that they realized that it would be difficult to understand certain decisions with far-reaching consequences without knowing their historical context? The German historian Klaus Wriedt considers any text from an urban administration that includes historical notes, no matter how brief, to be historiography.10 In his view, a reference to the death of Charles the Bold in the Kampen accounts of 1477 is historiography. However, this definition might not hold in the case of Kampen, where among the city’s administrative documents are both a complete town chronicle and historical notes. The existence of both types of texts suggests that the medieval writers, or at least the town secretaries of Kampen, considered them to have different purposes. A town chronicle constitutes a conscious decision to write down and structure historical data. The records in the registers, on the other hand, should not be regarded as a deliberate choice to create a historiographical work or an entire text, even though these records were meant to record something noteworthy for later generations and, therefore, demonstrate a historical consciousness.11 8 See the latest research on the ‘archival turn’ and ‘record-keeping’ by Alexandra Walsham in the 230th volume of Past & Present: Alexandra Walsham, ‘The Social History of the Archive: Record-Keeping in Early Modern Europe’, Past & Present, 230 (2016), 9–48. 9 Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis, Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck, 1997); Jan Assmann and John Czaplica, ‘Collective Memory and Cultural Identity’, Cultural History/Cultural studies, 65 (1995), 125–33. According to Assmann, the definition of communicative memory according is as follows: “Through the practice of oral history, we have gained a more precise insight into the peculiar qualities of this everyday form of collective memory, which, with L. Niethammer, we will call communicative memory. Its most important characteristic is its limited temporal horizon. As all oral history studies suggest, this horizon does not extend more than 80 to (at the most) 100 years into the past, which equals three or four generations or the Latin saeculum”. 10 Klaus Wriedt, ‘Bürgerliche Geschichtsschreibung im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert‘, in Städtische Geschichtsschreibung im Spätmittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Peter Johanek (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2000), pp. 34–36. 11 Franz-Jozef Schmale, Funktionen und Formen mittelalterlicher Geschichtsschreibung (Darmstadt: Wiss. Buches., 1985), p. 12.



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De Annalibus quaedam is a consciously formed chronicle and, therefore, differs from simple historical notes. Nevertheless, Wriedt’s findings are important for this article, since there is a fine line between administration and historiography. Several historians concluded that during the Late Middle Ages historiography was used so following generations could learn from history.12 Catrien Santing steers us in the right direction regarding the purpose of De Annalibus quaedam: it served as an example book for aldermen.13 De Annalibus quaedam precise function can thus be found in the context of the city administration. De Annalibus quaedam Between 1467 and 1470, Jacob Bijndop began writing De Annalibus quaedam, starting his account with Adam. After Bijndop’s death in 1482, his successors (Anthonius Vrije van Soest, Henric Claessen, Reinier Bogherman van Dokkum and Johan van Breda) continue recording history until 1547; however, the period between 1518 and 1542 is not included.14 The town chronicle does not address Kampen’s origins. Its composition is reminiscent of annals; it describes each year, and the authors do not have a common approach for capturing the beginning of the ages until their own time. It does not seem as though the authors wanted to write a historical narrative, which is often the case in world chronicles.15 The authors recorded events year after year, sometimes concisely and sometimes in great detail. For example, there is a two-line entry on the dry summer of 1473 but a one-folio description of a shortage of food in 1481, including ensuing political decisions.16 The absence of a common approach for a historical narrative does not mean that the town chronicles of Kampen did not reveal political preferences. Naturally, the authors often wrote in favour of Kampen, as can be seen in the account of the conflict between Kampen and Zwolle. Since, during the Middle Ages, Zwolle was not located on the River IJssel, the city wanted to dig a canal to the river, which would have had a damaging effect on Kampen’s commerce. Therefore, Kampen resisted this idea. The authors of the chronicles view Kampen’s stance on the subject as legally correct and never side with Zwolle’s envoys. Another example of the political preferences in the town chronicle can be found in the manner in which the election of the Bishop-elect Rudolf van 12 Wriedt, `Bürgerliche Geschichtsschriebung’, p. 37, H. Keller and J. Worstbrock, `Träger, Felder, Formen pragmatischer Schriftlichkeit im Mittelalter. Der neue Sonderforschungsbereich 231 an der Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster’, Frühmittelalterlichen Studien, 22 (1988), p. 403. 13 Catrien Santing, ‘Tegen ledigheid en potverteren. De habitus van de laatmiddeleeuwse stadsburger’, in De stijl van de burger. Over Nederlandse burgerlijke cultuur vanaf de Middeleeuwen, ed. by R. A. M. Aerts and H. Te Velde (Kampen: Kok/Agora, 1998), pp. 48–50. 14 Peter Bakker, ‘De oudste stadskroniek van Nederland? Stadssecretarissen schrijven geschiedenis’, in Kamper Almanak 2012 (Zwolle: Zalsman, 2012), pp. 61–81. 15 Reginald de Schryver, Historiografie, Vijfentwintig eeuwen geschiedschiedschrijving van West-Europa (Leuven: Universitaire Pers, 1997) pp. 133–35. 16 City archives of Kampen, Old Archive 11, fols 258v and 265v–266r.

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Diepholt is described. In choosing a bishop for Utrecht, it becomes clear that Kampen, wishing to be free of Gueldrian influence, would rather have him than his Gueldrian opponent Zweder van Culemborg: ‘In 't jair ons heren M CCCC XXIV wort her Roloff van Diepholt postuliert tot eenen biscop van Utrecht. Korts dairnae lieten die van Utrecht her Roloff voirgenoemd ende koeren tot eenen biscop t' Utrecht toe wesen her Sweder van Kulenborch, in der tijt doemprovest t' Utrecht wesende. Vermits oirer parthije heren Sweder voirsegt gelaten ende verdreven, hebben sy her Roloff weder angenomen achtervolgende die irste postulacien. Hier uut verrees groit oirloch ende krijch op 't nije tusschen den Stichte ende Hollant mit den lande van Gelre, lange tijt durende. Voele van den hoicksparthije, uut Hollant verdreven, legen hier in der stat mit ons vedende ende oirlogende op den Hollanderen ende den Gelresschen.’17 The authors of De Annalibus quaedam were town secretaries between 1466 and 1553. These secretaries had several functions: town writers (scribes), notaries, archivists, representatives of the city and diplomats. Only one manuscript of De Annalibus quaedam has been preserved. Most of its content is in Middle Dutch, with some passages in Latin. It was written on paper and bound together with a town register that is part of a series written at the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth century. In order to understand the chronicle, it is essential to learn about this series of registers. Today these registers are known as Liber Diversorum A through E. De Annalibus quaedam is part of Liber Diversorum C. By reconstructing the different codices of the Liber Diversorum C, one can understand the town chronicle’s purpose. Codicological data from Liber Diversorum C The Liber Diversorum C is a miscellany; multiple registers have been collected in one binding, deliberately bound together by the town secretaries. The chronological order in which this was done is important, as it helps scholars determine when De Annalibus quaedam was added in relation to other pieces. Before reconstructing the registers of Liber Diversorum C, it is important to give some explanation regarding the names of the registers of Kampen’s town archive. The Remissorium contains the table of contents of several codices and was mostly written by Anthonius Vrije, town secretary of Kampen from 1485 to 1502. The Remissorium shows that at the end of the fifteenth century several registers existed, called Liber A through Liber E. Although Liber Diversorum A and 17 City archives of Kampen, Old Archive 11, 251v: ‘In 1424, Rudolf van Diepholt was chosen as postulate bishop of Utrecht. Not long after his election, Rudolf was relieved of his position by the clergy of Utrecht. They chose Zweder of Culemborg as the new bishop. Then, Zweder was deposed and subsequently banished together with his followers. Again, Rudolf was named postulate bishop. This resulted in another lengthy war between the Sticht and Holland and Guelders. Many Hoeken, who were driven away from Holland, came to the city (Kampen). They were with Kampen against the Hollanders and Guelders.’

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B for the most part are in accordance with Liber A and B, they are not the same registers. Liber D and E are included in the current Liber Diversorum C. The Liber Diversorum stage, therefore, is of a later date, as various of the Liber series were integrated into the three Libri diversorum. Liber Diversorum C consists of three parts that initially existed as separate codices: Schattinge, Tituli dominorum and Liber D. The binding in which De Annalibus quaedam currently resides consists of what were initially several codices and usage units. So, Liber Diversorum C is a codex that consists of three original codices, which are also three usage units originating from several production and usage units. Therefore, Liber Diversorum C is also a miscellany.18 Table 1: The production units of the Liber Diversorum C

Composition of the Liber Diversorum C Production Folios unit

Content

I

1–8

French letter on behalf of the French King about French pirates (kapers)

II

9–58

Schattinge (taxes): during bishop Rudolf van Diepholt (1434)

III

59–110

Schattinge: during bishop David of Burgundy (1457)

IV

11–150

Schattinge: during bishop David of Burgundy (1474)

V

151–227, 285, 287–98

Olt Officiatorium (descriptions of appointments)

VI

228–35

Valuatie and Ongelt (Coin validation and a list of expenses)

VII

236–47

Inventarium de litteris opidi (inventory of the city’s charters)

VIII

248–74/275, De Annalibus quaedam (the city chronicle) 283, 284 and 286

IX

276–82

Inventory of charters in the landskist in Deventer

X

299–325

Tituli dominorum and Remissorium (index of lords and rulers and index of registers)

XI

326–59

Liber D (examples/forma)

XII

360–65

Olt Ordinarius (old Ordinarius)

XIII

366–82

Renthen (loan letters)

During the tenure of Anthonius Vrije (1485–1502), two codices, Tituli dominorum and Liber D, were bound together as one. For the most part, Tituli dominorum was written during Peter Hendriks’ (1447–78) and Jacob Bijndop’s

18 The terminology for production and usage units is based on: Erik Kwakkel, ‘Towards a Terminology for the Analysis of composite Manuscripts’, Gazette du livre médiéval, 41(2002), 2–19.

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(1466–82) tenures as town secretaries of Kampen. The first original codex, the Tituli dominorum (X), is a list of secular and clerical lords in Europe and is divided into region/ place. It includes kings, bishops, dukes, counts, councillors and deputies. The Olt Officiatorium (V), which was added to the Tituli dominorum before Tituli dominorum and Liber D were bound together, contains the conditions for appointing city officials, and it was created during the fifteenth century. Simultaneous with the adding of the Olt Officiatorium, several other ‘usage units’ were added to the Tituli dominorum, Fig. 1: City archives of Kampen, Old such as the Inventarium de litteris operis Archive, inventory number 2118: Notarial (VII). After this addition, they all formed signature of Anthonius Vrije (Liber) one codex. During the tenure of Anthonius Vrije, the binding was taken apart. The Remissorium was written and added, together with Liber D. Later, (no earlier than 1510), the binding of the Tituli dominorum must have been demounted. The town chronicle was then added, as was the foliation of De Annalibus quaedam. The second initial codex is the Liber D (XI), which consists of papers likely used as examples for the secretariat. It is apparent from the Remissorium that Liber D was comprised of several notarial sample letters. This same Remissorium shows that the Olt Ordinarius and Liber E (XII) were attached at a later stage. This register was a separate codex, at least until the Remissorium was written. Presumably the Olt Ordinarius was originally either in a different codex, or it existed separately and was attached to Liber D at a later time. A note by Anthonius Vrije in the margin of the Remissorium explains that, at the time of writing, Liber D was located in the Remissorium. At a later stage, several other documents were added; however, it cannot be ascertained when this was done. The third original codex added is the Schattinge (II, III, IV), the taxes (schattingen) that had to be paid to the Prince-Bishops of Utrecht during the fifteenth century in Salland. This codex initially existed of three different parts, later combined in one binding. First, the Tituli dominorum (V, VI, VII, (VIII), IX and X) and Liber D (XI, XII) must have been combined into one binding, although the precise date for this cannot be determined. The terminus post quem is 1484, the year in which Anthonius Vrije was appointed. The terminus ante quem is more difficult to ascertain, but it must be between the writing of a poem in about 1510 and notes by the town secretary Reinier Bogherman in De Annalibus quaedam on folio 275, dating to around 1510–14. Therefore, Liber D presumably was added to Tituli dominorum either before or during these adjustments. Second, the Schattinge

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V

VII

VI

X

IX

Fig. 2: Tituli dominorum before 1510: its production and usage units19

III

II

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

X

IX

XI

XII

Fig.  3: Tituli dominorum, Schattinge and Liber D in usage and production units before the 19th century

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

Fig. 4: The Liber Diversorum C nowadays

(II, III, IV) were added. The date of the addition is difficult to ascertain, since no leads are present. It is hard to say if De Annalibus quaedam was added before or after Schattinge. Presumably, the town chronicle was one of the last quires to be added to Tituli dominorums binding, since Bogherman, the last author of De Annalibus quaedam, wrote on bifolia originally intended for the Olt Officiatorium.20 Lastly, The Renthen (XIII) and the Letter of the French King against piracy (I) were added. The latter appears to have been added during the nineteenth or twentieth century. They were probably placed in the codex as loose pages. Purpose of the Liber Diversorum C and De Annalibus quaedam Now that it is clear which production units comprise the Liber Diversorum C and how it came to take on its present form, it is time to study the way in which the different codices, production, and usage units relate to each other in terms of content. In this way, we can establish the secretaries’ purpose for binding

19 For a detailed explanation of this figure, see E. Kwakkel, ‘Towards a terminology’, pp. 2–19. Each rectangle equals a production unit, and each bar represents an usage unit. In this case, the encapsulating bar of all the production units indicates the binding of Liber Diversorum C before 1510. 20 City archives of Kampen, Old Archive 11, fols 284–298: Originally these seven bifolia were meant for the Olt Officiatorium. Bogherman must have had a shortage of leaves to write on, but because the town chronicle was already bound together with the Olt Officiatorium he could use these folios. Here Bogherman wrote down events that took place after 1543. Johan van Breda mentions an event of 1517 on folio 286.

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together the chronicle. As already mentioned, the binding of several pieces to the codex was done deliberately by the town secretaries. The way in which all these pieces relate to each other and the chronological order in which the pieces were bound together is essential in understanding the purpose of the city chronicles in the eyes of the town secretaries. The addition of De Annalibus quaedam to the different production and usage units took place relatively late, no earlier than 1510.21 When studying the content, it becomes apparent that the pieces mostly deal with the daily activities of the town secretaries and the town council. The information on practical issues, such as the procedures surrounding the actions of the council as written in the Olt Ordinarius or the conditions regarding tenure described in the Olt Officiatorium, suggest that these pieces were bound together deliberately so that practical information could be found easily. Liber Diversorum C contains information that was useful for a writing chamber (the so-called schrijfkamer of the town scribes and secretaries) or an archive; it listed where urban privileges were kept (in the city administration), included an index of different urban registers, and a list of privileges present in the landskist in Deventer.22 The Schattinge are located at the beginning of the codex. These show the contributions made by Salland during the fifteenth century.23 The list valuatie by Jacob Bijndop, in which several coins and their values are described, is cited together with the ongelt, a city’s monetary registrar.24 Liber D contains template letters, also known as forma, so town secretaries did not have to remember specific phrasings. The Olt Ordinarius, part of Liber D, is a script for the town council, providing information as to what will take place on specific days. The Tituli dominorum and the Olt Officiatorium contain pieces that give insight into the administration and archive of the city, such as an inventory list of charters stored in the city archive. When all this information is combined, it gives an overview of the activities of the town secretaries and the town council. Liber Diversorum C offers new city secretaries a well-rounded summary of what is expected of them in Kampen and where certain records of privileges can be found. It also shows the duties of the town council. The town 21 See previous paragraph. 22 City archives of Kampen, Old Archive 11, fols 236–47, Inventarium litteris opidi (Originally named Remissorium privilegorium et litterarum opidi); City archives of Kampen, Old Archive 11, fols 319–25, Remissorium and City archives of Kampen, Old Archive 11, fols 246–82, Desse breve nae gescreven sint Qudes landes kijste to deventer opder gerwecamer, probably referring to Bishop Guy van Asperen (1301–1317). Compare: Jurjen Nanninga–Uiterdijk, ‘Landskist’, in Verslagen en Mededelingen VORG 19de stuk (1896), pp. 60–87. I think a lot of conclusions of Nanninga–Uiterdijk are incorrect. He probably misinterpreted the title. Instead of ‘Qudes’ Nanninga–Uiterdijk read ‘jndes’. This must be wrong, because the prefix ‘in’ in Middle Dutch is always combined with the dative case or accusative of the substantive ‘kiste’. The substantive ‘kiste’ is feminine. In this particular case it should have been ‘inder’ or ‘indie’ and certainly not ‘indes’. 23 City archives of Kampen, Old Archive 11, fols 9–150, Schattinge (1433, 1457 and 1474) (during PrinceBishop Rudolf of Diepholz and David of Burgundy). 24 City archives of Kampen, Old Archive 11, fols 228–35, Valuatie, ongelt, erffrenthen, lossrenten, Ongelt, costs made for dikes, an inventory of the town kitchen and the ‘waag’ and again lijfrenten, probably after 1475. Written in different hands: Jacob Bijndop, Henric Claessen and Anthonius Vrije.

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Fig. 5: City archives of Kampen, Old Archive 11, folio 319v: First page of the Remissorium in Liber Diversorum C contains the index (tabula) of Liber A.

chronicle was undoubtedly added with the purpose of painting a clearer picture of the archival pieces. Without historical context, it is difficult to understand why certain documents were written or why a peace treaty came about. People must have understood the importance of preserving legal documents, but perhaps they sometimes found it difficult to understand the circumstances surrounding their origin after 80 years or more. De Annalibus quaedam can shed some light on this.

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The Liber Diversorum C served as a reference for the town secretary to aid him with his daily activities. Earlier it was stated that Liber Diversorum C was not the only miscellany redacted during the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century. Liber Diversorum A and B consist of several original registers, including the aforementioned Liber A and B. The miscellany Liber Diversorum C can only be understood if one also takes into account miscellanies Libri A through D. The content of these can be extrapolated from the Remissorium, currently in Liber Diversorum C, written by Anthonius Vrije.25 It is confusing that the original Libri A through D are currently found in Libri Diversorum A through C. For example, Libri A and B are mostly placed in the current Liber Diversorum A. The first book described in this index, Liber A, contains mostly peace treaties, commerce treaties and documents outlining city liberties not only for Kampen, but also for other cities and the Hanseatic League. It contains mostly documents that explain how a political or religious situation arose during the fifteenth century, including peace treaties, foundation deeds of convents, nomination documents of drosten (‘bailiffs’) and schouten (‘sheriffs’), loans and debts. The pieces can be dated from the thirteenth century until the time of the town secretaries. The collection of texts helped the town secretaries to better understand the world around them. Originally the Liber B was bound in a white cover and contained several pieces on different subjects, mostly regarding commerce and the rights of the citizens of Kampen. It is remarkable that several pieces are defined as forma, meaning ‘as an example’.26 Besides their content, these pieces could be useful for town secretaries when drawing up similar legal documents, as standard phrasing could simply be copied. What applies to Liber B certainly applies to Liber C, which contains several example letters. It was a small registry with a little over 30 folios. Most of the letters were official letters that city civilians could ask the town secretaries to write, such as a subpoena, the appointment of a momber (‘legal guardian’), a waybill, purchase deed or prenuptial agreement. Finally, while Liber D was discussed earlier in relation to the developmental stages of the Liber Diversorum C because it was combined with the Ordinarius, with regards to structure, it resembles Liber C from the Remissorium. It is a small register of around 22 folios with several deeds regarding civilian matters. Studying the Libri of the Remissorium shows that the Libri contain pieces of a practical nature that were used by town secretaries during their daily activities as templates. They also contain political pieces such as the aforementioned treaties. However, they lack historical context; for example, no explanations are

25 City archives of Kampen, Old Archive 11, fols 319–25. 26 Compare: Milagros Cárcel Ortí ed., Vocabulaire International de la Diplomatique (Valencia: Universitat de Valencia 1997), number 82: “Un formulaire (lat.: formularium) est un recueil de formules destinées à servir de modèles aux rédacteurs des actes et, éventuellement, à contribuer à la formation des rédacteurs eux-mêmes” and number 83: “Un formule (lat.: forma; en Angleterre, aussi nota) est un acte modèle“.

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given as to why certain treaties were made or why citizens from different cities were at odds with each other. It is, therefore, plausible that the town chronicle was written for this specific purpose. Annalia ende andere copien Annalia ende andere copien differs from De Annalibus quaedam, both regarding its physical appearance and its contents. It is simply one loose codex, whereas De Annalibus quaedam was bound together with several other registers in the Liber Diversorum C. There are no codicological data that suggest that Annalia ende andere copien was ever combined with other codices. However, it does contain several letters, documentation and copies of diplomatic communication, such as a peace treaty with the Duke of Guelders, diplomatic correspondence with Zwolle and correspondence with chapters from Utrecht on the appointment of Philip of Burgundy as Prince-Bishop.27 The town secretary Johan van Breda (1508–40) wrote most of Annalia ende andere copien and describes himself as the compiler and writer of the town chronicle.28 His co-writers and successors are Heyman Brant Jr. (1515–ca. 1534), Geert /Gherrit Hermans (ca. 1534–56), Cornelis Meeus (1539–47) and Johan Rueper (1556–72). Like De Annalibus quaedam, the town chronicle was meant for internal use, predominantly for the town secretaries and the town council. Nothing suggests that the chronicle was intended to be printed or distributed.29 It does not contain an introduction or a prologue, but since the chronicle currently starts on folio nine, the original most likely had eight empty folios (one quire) on which Van Breda probably intended to write one. Even without a prologue or introduction, its contents give clues as to why the chronicle was written. One can only understand Johan van Breda’s historical account by taking into consideration the events that took place during the period in which he worked. During the first half of the sixteenth century, the Gueldrian wars took place. These wars originated in a political conflict between Guelders and the Burgundians. Both tried to use the Prince-Bishopric of Utrecht to expand their influence on the Northern Low Countries. Since Guelders lies between the Nedersticht and the Oversticht and since Kampen is situated in the Oversticht, the Gueldrian wars took a toll on Kampen. Van Breda uses copies of deeds to explain why Groningen and Drenthe belong to the Prince-Bishopric of Utrecht and not to the Duchy of Saxony or Guelders. Due to a treaty between Duke George of Saxony and Prince-Bishop Frederik of Baden, if there were a threat to the city Groningen or the county of Drenthe, the Duke of Saxony

27 City archives of Kampen, Old Archive 12, Liber Diversorum D fols 28, 113 and 136–41. 28 City archives of Kampen, Old Archive 12, fol. 12v. 29 This is common in the Holy Roman Empire. Compare: Frantisek Graus, ‘Funktionen der Spätmittelalterlichen Geschichtschriebung’, in Geschichtschreibung und Geschichtsbewusstsein im Spätmittelalter, p. 48.

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had promised to come to their aid. Kampen never agreed to this treaty. In 1514, the Duke of Saxony besieged Groningen, after it was taken by George’s vassal Count Edzard of East Frisia. George was hindered by the Duke of Guelders, Charles of Egmond, who tried to fortify his own position in Groningen, Drenthe and Frisia.30 Because of the possible threat posed by George and the Duke of Guelders to areas in Groningen and Drenthe (part of the episcopal principality of Utrecht), Van Breda writes about this subject. He draws on historical sources, mostly charters, to demonstrate that George’s claim, as well as the claim made by the Duke of Guelders, is unjust. It seems this was done in preparation for the transfer of the bishopric from the possession of Frederik of Baden to Philip of Burgundy (1464–1524), the illegitimate son of Duke Philip the Good. The Duke of Guelders would have seen this as a threat, which would motivate him to expand his power, causing him to violate the terms of previous treaties which were copied by Johan van Breda. With Philip of Burgundy as prince-bishop, the Sticht (Episcopal principality of Utrecht) had a powerful ally in the Burgundo-Habsburg camp against Charles of Egmond, Duke of Guelders. Kampen hoped this would lead to peace in the Sticht and the Duchy of Guelders.31 Over time it seems that the choice of Philip of Burgundy – or simply choosing a bishop to be the lord – may not have been the best choice. It is likely that the many failed negotiations with the Duke of Guelders were the reason for choosing the Holy Roman Empire, Charles V, as direct ruler.32 In 1528, Kampen was placed directly under the reign of the Emperor. At this point, a clear shift in point of view can be seen in the chronicle. By assuming Charles V as lord, a close connection formed between the city and the Holy Roman Empire. Events concerning the empire became of importance for the city of Kampen, and the city identified itself with the empire.33 The manner by which news was received and distributed changed; no longer did it only involve the episcopal principality of Utrecht, rather, it reached the entire empire. From this moment on, one would expect that the focus would no longer lay explicitly on just the Prince-Bishopric of Utrecht, but would shift towards the borders of the entire Holy Roman Empire. From 1525 on, an identification with the Empire seems to be present in the chronicle. This is remarkable, since Kampen was not placed under the direct rule of the emperor until 1528. Before 1525, this identification predominantly 30 Van Kalveen, Het bestuur van bisschop en Staten in het Nedersticht, Oversticht en Drenthe 1483–1520, pp. 272–78 31 City Archives of Kampen, Old Archive 12, fol. 28v: ‘om eenen uuter ende by den huyse van Bourgondien, dair toe te stellen om beyde die landen, in rust ende vrede te houden’ (to choose someone from the house of Burgundy to keep both countries (Sticht and Guelders) in tranquillity and peace) 32 City archives of Kampen, Old Archive 12, fol. 144: After the acceptation of Emperor Charles V as a landlord, Johan van Breda deliberatly mentions: ‘God geve geluck ende heyll ende meerder vrede ende welvaert dan duslange inden Overstichte geweest is’ (May God bring happiness and wellbeing and more peace and prosperity as has been for a long time in the Oversticht). 33 Heinrich Schmidt, Die deutschen Städtechroniken als Spiegel des bürgerlichen Selbstverständnisses im Spätmittelalter (Göttingen: Van den Hoeck und Ruprecht, 1958), p. 71.

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relates to the Sticht Utrecht; the succession of bishops, the Gueldrian wars and local conflicts were the main subjects in the chronicle. Even though the events recorded before 1525 are not all about the episcopal principality of Utrecht, the prince-bishopric does seem to be the centre of these descriptions. For example, in 1523 Johan van Breda mentions the war between the King of France and the emperor and the King of England. He describes this war from the perspective of the conflict between the Sticht and the Duke of Guelders. At the beginning, he states the cause for this war: the French king who undermines the property rights of the emperor regarding his domains in France and Italy. At this time, the Duke of Guelders had made an alliance with the King of France. One would expect that this would be mentioned. However, Van Breda concludes his account with the death of Jan II of Wassenaer and the Gueldrians being driven out of Frisia and Steenwijk (Steenwijk was part of the Episcopal principality of Utrecht).34 In other words, even though the war began against the King of France, who had an allegiance with Charles of Egmond, the war is considered relevant for the Episcopal principality of Utrecht because the emperor fights the enemy of the Prince-Bishopric of Utrecht. Johan van Breda offers the reader a broader context, namely why the imperial troops battle against the army of Guelders in Frisia. The victory of the army of Charles V is important to Kampen and the Sticht Utrecht and is, therefore, described by Johan van Breda. In this case, the main perspective remains with the episcopal principality of Utrecht and not with the Holy Roman Empire. On folio 143, Johan van Breda starts to include the empire in his historical account by giving a description of the aforementioned war between King Francis I of France and Emperor Charles V in 1525. Chronologically speaking, this seems to be three years too soon; Kampen became part of the Holy Roman Empire no earlier than 1528.35 How can this premature account be explained? Until folio 142v the primary focus is on the Episcopal principality of Utrecht, as manifest by the reporting on the ending of the conflict between the Duke Charles of Egmond and the Prince-Bishop Elect Henry of Bavaria. A copy of the resulting treaty is included in the account. This copy, on folio 136r through 141v, was added at a later stage, with Van Breda continuing on current folio 142v, which at the time came directly after current folio 135v. This method of working was not uncommon for Van Breda, as can be concluded from blank folios on which he only jotted down a topic, presumably intending to complete the narrativeat a later time. Examples of this can be found on folios 124v–125v, which only contain the ‘headline’ of the defeat at Genemuiden, as well as five articles from Zwolle meant for the Prince-Bishop of Utrecht on folio 128. This also applies to folio 135r and 135v. Two different types of ink were used on folio 135r. The first part was probably written down in 1524 and ends before the treaty was formed. In the second part

34 City archives of Kampen, Old Archive 12, fol. 123–24. 35 City archives of Kampen, Old Archive 2673.

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of 135r, which continues with the same ink on 135v and was probably written after 1528, Johan van Breda indicates that he is going to describe the treaty.36 Only half of folio 135v was written on by Johan van Breda, and he continues on current folio 142r, which at that time came directly after 135v. If Johan intended to copy the treaty himself later on, it would have been likely that he would have kept several folios empty. However, he added it by inserting several folios on which the treaty had already been copied. The same colour of ink as used on 135r and 135v can be found on folio 142r, where the war between the emperor and the King of France is narrated. That is why it is probable that this account was written down at the same time as the addition of the treaty. It is likely that this was not immediately added in 1525. Therefore, it seems probable that the succeeding historical events were also recorded later. Is it possible that they were written down after 1528? Plausibly, since only two folios were used for describing the events that took place in the intervening period. These events include the war between the King of France and the Emperor in Italy, the imprisonment of Pope Clemens VII during the siege by the Duke of Bourbon, the sack of Rome and the city of Utrecht choosing the Duke of Guelders as its ruler. It, therefore, seems very likely that the events from 1525 on were written down after 1528. After Kampen became part of the Holy Roman Empire, Johan van Breda resumes his writing on folio 142. He begins by describing the imperial history from 1525 and intertwines it with the history of Kampen. Overijssel (previously known as the Oversticht) among others is sold to Charles V. No longer are the ‘provinces’ separated from each other; rather, they all fall directly under the rule of one emperor. It is plausible that Johan van Breda wrote the first part of Annalia ende andere copien before the Empire ruled Kampen directly. If this was not the case, it would have been unlikely that he would have begun by explaining how the Episcopal principality of Utrecht got its possessions, as he probably would have started by narrating the histories of the different ‘provinces’ that became part of the empire. Thus a clear shift can be seen from folio 142 onwards with regards to the way Kampen perceived itself and who it identified with. This change becomes clear on folio 143v when Overijssel is placed under the direct rule of the emperor. As noted earlier, the main reason for taking on the emperor as lord was the continuing unrest caused by the Gueldrian wars, which the prince-bishops seemed unable to end. Another sign that the focus was no longer just on the Sticht of Utrecht is the fact that the Duchy of Brabant and the County of Holland play a larger role and are seen as part of the Holy Roman Empire.37 The identity of Kampen is enlarged and encompasses the entire Holy Roman Empire, but in particular the aforementioned areas: Overijssel, the Duchy of Brabant and the County of Holland. Before 1525, subjects concerning the empire, Brabant, or Holland are scarce. One would expect that the number of accounts of events taking place

36 City archives of Kampen, Old archive 12, fol. 135. 37 City archives of Kampen, Old archive 12, fol. 142v.

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beyond the borders of the Prince-Bishopric of Utrecht would increase after 1528. This, however is not the case. The number recorded events within the borders of the empire – but outside the episcopal principality of Utrecht – is limited.38 Regarding these historical accounts, it is not so much the geographical scope that changed, but rather the perspective from which they were written. Even though Johan van Breda maintains his preference for regional events after 1525, the way of reporting them is centred on the empire. After all, if the empire enjoys peace and stability, so does Kampen. The successor of Johan van Breda, the town secretary Cornelis Meeus (1539–47), continues in the same manner. The way in which Meeus describes the arrival of Charles V in the Northern Low Countries is an example of this imperial perspective. With this account, he emphasizes the victory of the emperor over the Duke of Guelders and the restoration of peace and stability that also includes France. He reiterates that it is time for the wars to end.39 God plays an important role in this, for He is able to give the emperor, and therefore the city of Kampen, a victory that increases the chances for peace, quiet and unity.40 This last part differs from the way Kampen was viewed before 1528. Kampen came to be under the direct rule of the emperor, and the prosperity of the city was, therefore, associated with the thriving of the empire.41 Peace and stability were seen as the pillars for the economic wellbeing of a city. Therefore, Annalia ende andere copien was written as a political treatise with the underlying purpose of obtaining peace and stability in the region through the involvement of its readers in the town government and administration. The town secretaries were the official representatives of the city and served as diplomats. It was their duty, along with the aldermen, to maintain Kampen’s peace and prosperity. Conclusion The city of Kampen produced two town chronicles with two different purposes. First, De Annalibus quaedam was written to understand the archives (and thus

38 However, certain events that take place after 1528 that are mentioned include the homage and acceptance of Emperor Charles V as landlord of the Oversticht (1528); the recapturing of parts of the Oversticht by the imperial troops (1528); the homage of Charles V’s stadtholder, Georg Schenck van Toutenburg, by Kampen (1528); the recapturing of the Oversticht and Guelders by the imperial troops (1528); the Bishop of Utrecht ending the revolt in the city Utrecht, after which the Bishop vows allegiance to the Emperor (1528); the failed siege of Tiel by imperial troops (1528); the recapturing of Napels for the benefit of the empire (1528); Luther and the Anabaptists (1519–1520, 1534–1535); the death of the Duke of Guelders and the transference of the duchy to Emperor Charles V (1538); a copy of a letter regarding the conflict for castle De Kinkhorst with the son of the late Roelof van Munster, Jasper (Compare: J. A. Mol, Vechten, bidden en verplegen, Opstellen over de ridderorden in de Noordelijke Nederlanden (Hilversum: Verloren 2011), pp. 235–68.) (1538); the peace between the King of France and the Emperor (1538); and an insurgency in Kampen caused by the Lutheran minded pastor Arend Graet van Keulen (1539). 39 City archives of Kampen, Old Archive 12, fol. 163v. 40 Compare: Graus, ‘Funktionen der Spätmittelalterlichen Geschichtschriebung’, in Geschichtschreibung und Geschichtsbewusstsein im Spätmittelalter, pp. 24–25. 41 Schmidt, Die deutschen Städtechroniken, p. 71.

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the daily proceedings) of the town secretaries. The town chronicle can be seen as more than an book of examples. The manner in which Liber Diversorum C is structured seems to indicate that the different registers have not been combined by accident. The several original books give insight into the daily actions of the town secretaries and the town council. Regarding the town secretaries, these descriptions include, amongst others, the drafting and archiving documents belonging to the city government and their relations with other powers. The relations with other urban registers is also present. The chronicle has its own place within the Liber Diversorum C, and at one time it existed on its own. It is probable that De Annalibus quaedam had a similar function with regards to the registers with which it was bound. It was not only meant as a didactic text for the town council, nor for the secretaries, but also as a way for them to understand the administrations and situations it describes even after 80 or 100 years. Annalia ende andere copien, on the other hand, is a political treatise that describes when the Prince-Bishops of Utrecht had difficulties keeping Charles, Duke of Guelders, away from the borders of the episcopal principality of Utrecht. For this reason, Johan van Breda starts by describing Groningen, the city that takes on the Duke of Saxony as its lord in 1505. However, according to the Kampen town secretary, from a historical perspective only the prince-bishop can lay claim to the city Groningen and the region of Drenthe. Next, Johan van Breda, describes the conflict between the bishops and Guelders and the resulting problems for the episcopal principality of Utrecht. Johan van Breda is consistently pro-Burgundy-Habsburg and anti-Guelders. This seems to be a prelude for choosing Charles V as lord in 1528 and calling for a strong ruler. The manner in which Annalia ende andere copien is arranged gives some insight into what Johan van Breda found important. By beginning with the justification for choosing Philip of Burgundy as lord and describing the threats of the Duke of Guelders, Johan van Breda shows that he wants stability in the region that favours the Episcopal principality of Utrecht and the Burgundy party. With Bishop Philip of Burgundy as lord, the Sticht could count on a strong ally, Charles V. At that time, Charles V was King of Spain and Lord of the Netherlands. Undoubtedly, the appointment of this prince-bishop would have led Kampen to hope for a strong ally against the Duke of Guelders, which would have increased the chances for a swifter realization of peace and stability in the region. The last part of the chronicle shows that this is the ultimate goal of the council of Kampen. After multiple changes of prince-bishops and many years of war did not result in peace and stability, the text says farewell to the Prince-Bishopric of Utrecht with the following words on folio 149v: adieu tgesticht van Utrecht (‘adieu Sticht of Utrecht’). A decision is made to immediately swear allegiance to Emperor Charles V. In doing so, Kampen hoped to acquire a strong lord to oppose the Duke of Guelders.42 In the end, they brought an end to the war and the threat of the Duke of Guelders. With great joy, Cornelis Meeus described

42 Compare: City archives of Kampen, Old Archive 12, fol. 142v.

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these events in his historical accounts. Besides mentioning a poem in honour of the emperor, he also articulates how people would have felt if there would be peace with France. From 1525 onwards, a shift can be seen in the perspective of the chronicler on his own surroundings and the political situation in the Episcopal principality of Utrecht, as he writes from the perspective of the Empire. It seems that the years 1525–28 were chronicled after 1528, the year in which Kampen came under direct control of the Empire. This did not mean that only reports on the entire empire were written down, but most of the narratives were told from the imperial perspective. No longer were they described in relation to their importance to the Prince-Bishopric of Utrecht or its point of view, but in relation to the emperor. Johan van Breda is able to vividly describe the diplomatic actions taken by several parties. In doing so, he never loses sight of the goals of the cities in the Oversticht and the city of Kampen in particular. Perhaps this chronicle was written in order to defend Charles V. This does not necessarily mean that Johan van Breda was an advocate for centralism or less autonomy. However, he was a supporter of peace, unity, protection and stability; above all else, he believed this was what everyone needed to strive for. The following quote illustrates this perfectly: ‘Dus en dient den steden anders niet dan vrede ende mogen ten ewigen tijden hier an exempell nehmen, want de heren van Utrecht die doch nyet dan hoir lijfftucht anden Stichte hebben willen `t soe niet ten hertten nehmen als `t behoirt. Ende de ridderscap lopen oick altijt achterwerts ende suecken hem selvest. Dus en is den steden tot geenre tijt anders beter dan altijt rust, vrede ende eendrachtticheyt te suecken, te maken ende te bidden all solde ’t heele landt dair over bedorven ende verbrant wordden. Ende datmen de steden well bewaere, wan ter anders nyet gesocht, noch practizeert wordt, dan den steden te bederven ende te benauwen.’43

43 City archives of Kampen, Old Archive 12, fol. 135: ‘So nothing else then peace, benefitting the cities and they may take example from this, because the lords of Utrecht, whose only concern is their own livelihood provided by the Sticht, will not take heed as should be done. And the Knighthood (Ridderschap) always walks backwards and looks for their own interests. So, are cities never better off than always seeking quiet, peace and unity even though the whole country (Sticht) would find itself in corruption and become looted. And that people protect the cities well, or nothing else will be strived for than the destruction and oppression of cities.’

Louise Vermeersch*

Printed Almanacs A Popular Medium for Urban Historiography and Religious Dissent? On 4 October 1582, Pope Gregory XIII promulgated a reform of the Julian calendar because it no longer matched the astronomical year cycle. This was of course a lucrative opportunity for printers to produce new almanacs. Also in Ghent, Gaultier Manilius printed a ‘reformed’ almanac for the year of 1583. This pocket-sized booklet contains a calendar with practical and historical annotations, followed by a prognostication written by Claude Garnier.1 Whereas it was completely normal to integrate all sorts of practical information such as market dates and weather predictions in such prints, Manilius also added historical annotations to this particular almanac.2 These annotations consist of biblical dates and profane history from both the past and more recent times and are listed next to the respective date. This results in an a-chronological sequence of historical events per month. Jeroen Salman suggested to call this type of chronicle a ‘date-chronicle’, in contrast with the prose-style chronicles that appeared during the seventeenth century in almanacs.3 Such historical annotations are rare among the other Ghent almanacs and secondary literature spends little attention to this specific addition in sixteenth-century almanacs. In his study on the almanacs of the northern



* I want to thank the anonymous referent, Dr Susie Sutch, and Prof. Dr Anne-Laure Van Bruaene for their useful comments on this paper. 1 Claude Garnier and Gualterus Manilius, Nieuwe Almanach ende prognosticatie, Vanden Jare Onses Heeren Iesu Christi, MDLXXXIII, Ghereformeert en[de] verandert, volghende de caulculatie, vande alder gheleertste astrologienen (Ghent: Gaultier Manilius, [1582]). (further referred to as ‘1582’) 2 I used the copy of the Ghent University Library, inv. no. BIB G.002481/–1, collation: [32]f, A–D8, 16°. To my knowledge, this is the only surviving copy of the almanac. It contains a title page; an introduction; a key to the symbols used in the calendar; information on when to sow and the water tides; a calendar that integrates information on positions of the sun and the moon, markets, astrological signs in relation to body parts, biblical references and historical annotations in the margins; the print concludes with a prognostication by Claude Garnier. This particular copy is bound with another almanac for the same year from Antwerp: Augustinus Girovanus, Almanack, ende prognosticatie vanden jare ons heeren MDLXXXII. Ghecalculeert op den gemeynen meridiaen der Nederlanden, ende der vermaerder coopstadt van Antwerpen (Antwerp: Peter van Tongheren, 1582). 3 Jeroen Salman, Populair drukwerk in de Gouden Eeuw: de almanac als lectuur en handelswaar (Zutphen: Walburg pers, 1999), p. 181.

Urban History Writing in North-Western Europe (15th–16th centuries), ed. by Bram Caers, Lisa Demets and Tineke Van Gassen, SEUH 47 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 205–223. © FHG DOI 10.1484/M.SEUH-EB.5.117875

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part of the Low Countries, Salman for instance does not elaborate on the development of the date-chronicles. Instead, he focuses on the more narrative historical accounts that first appear in 1597. Nevertheless, he briefly mentions some precedents of date-chronicles from Deventer, Delft, and Amsterdam, dated around 1570.4 The combination of printed calendars with historical information then seems to appear in the Low Countries during the late sixteenth century. A clear understanding of its early developments however, is lacking. For the most part, the historical annotations in the Ghent almanac relate to the new religious ideas of the Reformation and the open rebellion against the Spanish king in the Low Countries and are overtly partial to the rebel cause. This strong emphasis on the Reformation and the Dutch Revolt therefore suggests a connection between this type of almanacs and Reformation polemics. Indeed, the earliest examples of Dutch almanacs with date-chronicles are often bound with vernacular psalm translations and are very similar to the calendar of Manilius. Psalm translations were important devotional songbooks for the formation of the young Protestant church. Therefore, they were soon forbidden by the Catholic authorities in the Low Countries; even singing psalms was a rebellious act.5 I will illustrate how both genres, the historical almanacs and the psalm translations, were closely related to one another. Moreover, whereas Manilius may have found inspiration in other initiatives, his almanac clearly borrowed from this Protestant tradition. While an overall dissident discourse can be found in these date-chronicles, the selection and formulation of the historical events slightly differed in each one of them. In this respect, the alterations, omissions, and additions within this corpus, and more specifically in the Ghent almanac, can be seen as indications of a local adaptation of a Reformed historiographic tradition. It is significant that Manilius was inspired by these Protestant texts, since the calendar appeared during the reign of the radical Calvinist regime in Ghent (1577–84). In the context of the Dutch Revolt many cities supported the rebels and established a Calvinist regime. Yet, the Ghent Republic is thought by historians to have been the one with the most radical policies.6 I will argue that this specific almanac with its peculiar historical annotations was one of the

4 He did not include bibliographical data, which makes it difficult to identify these specific prints. Salman, Populair drukwerk, pp. 180–81. 5 Utenhove’s translation already appeared on the Leuven index of 1550; those of Datheen and D’Heere on the Antwerp index of 1570. Christiaan Sepp, Verboden lectuur: een drietal indices librorum prohibitorum (Leiden: Brill, 1889), p. 145 and pp. 245–66. Thesaurus de la littérature interdite au XVIe siècle: auteurs, ouvrages, éditions avec addenda et corrigenda, ed. by J. Martinez De Bujanda and others (Sherbrooke: Editions de l’Université de Sherbrooke, 1996), p. 81. For the subversive character of psalms, see Reid W. Stanford, ‘The Battle Hymns of the Lord. Calvinist Psalmody of the Sixteenth Century’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 2 (1971), 36–54. 6 Het einde van een rebelse droom: opstellen over het calvinistisch bewind te Gent (1577–1584) en de terugkeer van de stad onder de gehoorzaamheid van de koning van Spanje (17 september 1584), ed. by Johan Decavele and others (Ghent: Stadsbestuur, 1984). André Despretz, ‘De instauratie der Gentse Calvinistische Republiek (1577–1579)’, Handelingen der Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent, 17 (1963), 119–229. For similar contexts see Des villes en révolte. Les ‘républiques urbaines’ aux Pays-Bas et en France pendant la deuxième moitié du XVIe siècle, ed. by Monique Weis (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010).

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advocates of those policies. This consequently raises questions about the use of historiography by urban authorities during the Dutch Revolt. Moreover, it invites us to explore historical almanacs as a forum for urban history. This case study hence addresses two interrelated issues. First of all, it highlights the role of historical almanacs in the circulation of religious and political ideas during the Dutch Revolt. Various media through which the Reformation was disseminated in the Low Countries have been thoroughly looked at,7 but scholars have overlooked these vernacular calendars.8 Because they were hidden between the bindings of psalm translations, these prints have also received little attention in almanac research. When almanacs are taken into account as dissident media, historians tend to focus more on the accompanying prognostications.9 Neither did historians of Protestant songbooks include the historical almanacs in their analyses. Secondly, the combination of historical information with printed calendars illustrates how the printing press created new possibilities for urban historiography. An annotated almanac was presumably economically more interesting to the printing industry than elaborate prose chronicles.10 In their article on urban chronicle writing, Jan Dumolyn and Lisa Demets challenge historians to trace ‘urbanity’ not only in the thematic emphasis of chronicles, but also in the production context and the social environment of such texts.11 By starting from a certain characteristic, urbanity, instead of a specific format, a manuscript prose narrative that reflects urban self-consciousness, we can reconstruct a more diversified image of urban historiography. Although the content of the almanac does not specifically refer to Ghent history, the ideological message – notably support for the rebel cause – and its production context were closely related



7 Alistair Duke, ‘Posters, Pamphlets and Prints: The ways of disseminating Dissident Opinions on the Eve of the Dutch Revolt’, Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies, 27 (2003), 1, 23–44. Daniel R. Horst, De opstand in zwart wit: propagandaprenten uit de Nederlandse Opstand (1566–1584) (Zutphen: Walburg pers, 2003). Monica Stensland, Habsburg Communication in the Dutch Revolt (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012). Margit Thøfner, A Common Art: Urban Ceremonial in Antwerp and Brussels during and after the Dutch Revolt (Zwolle: Waanders Publishers, 2007). For an international synthesis, see Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 8 There are interesting parallels with studies on Great Britain, France and Germany. David Cressy, Bonfires and Bells: National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England (Gloucester: Sutton, 2004). Philip Benedict, ‘Divided memories? Historical calendars, commemorative processions and the recollection of the Wars of Religion during the ancient régime’, French History, 22 (2008), 4, 381–405. Alison A. Chapman, ‘Now and Then: Sequencing the Sacred in Two Protestant Calendars’, Journal of Medieval & Early Modern Studies, 33 (2003), 1, 91–123. 9 Jonathan Green, The Strange and Terrible Visions of Wilhelm Friess: The Paths of Prophecy in Reformation Europe (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015). The almanac of Manilius also contained such a prognostication, but this essay only focuses on the historical annotations. The prognostication also follows the principles of the Reformed religion. It condemns the superstitious reading of the universe and urges its readers to only trust in the word of God (1582, fol. [bviii]r). 10 Daniel R. Woolf, ‘Genre into Artifact: The decline of the English Chronicle in the Sixteenth Century’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 19 (1988), 3, 321-35 (p. 323). 11 Lisa Demets and Jan Dumolyn, ‘Urban chronicle writing in late medieval Flanders: the case of Bruges during the Flemish Revolt of 1482–1490’, Urban History, 43 (2016), 1, 28-45 (pp. 30–34).

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to aspirations of the city council. Furthermore, given the combination with an almanac, this genre was intended for a broad urban audience of primarily merchants, craftsmen and civil servants.12 In order to gain more insight into the aforementioned diversified image of urban historiography it is important to explore such ephemeral prints – pocket-sized publications and broadsheets – who reached a wide, often urban public. In the first part, I will discuss the Protestant tradition of historical annotated calendars in the Low Countries. The content and paratext of the selected calendars will subsequently be compared with the Ghent almanac. Finally, the results of this comparison will be related to the local context of production and consumption of the Ghent almanac. In search of Manilius’ inspiration: historical annotations in almanacs Before we turn to the Protestant almanacs, a short introduction to printed almanacs in Ghent and other printing centers is in order. Because of their intensive use and small value, sixteenth-century printed almanacs have rarely been preserved. Clear-cut statements about the unique character of the Manilius almanac are therefore difficult to make. Nevertheless, if we compare this print with other Ghent almanacs, for example the one that Gheeraert van Salenson produced in 1566,13 a similar lay-out can be observed.14 In both sextodecimo booklets all information is arranged in columns on one page per month. The Roman number indicates the date, followed by the dominical letter that allows one to use the calendar for several years. Next to these columns all sorts of information is crammed onto the page: saint days, weather predictions, and market dates. Little signs are used to specify the markets or indicate when one should sow, execute medical treatments such as bloodletting, etc. Although some of the preserved sixteenth-century almanacs were printed in Ghent, a far larger part of Dutch almanacs were published in the more important printing centre of Antwerp. As the public demand for this genre was steady, these prints were a cheap and safe investment. Calendars and prognostications were consequently precious goods for early modern printing shops who tried to establish monopolies on this genre. In 1558 for instance, Gaultier Manilius’ 12 Salman, pp. 359–62. 13 Pieter Catoir and Gheeraert van Salenson, Almanack en(de) prognosticatie vanden iare ons heere[n] M.d. En[de] LXVII. Gecalculeert en[de] ghepractiseert op de[n] meridiaen der seer vermaerder stadt van Ghendt by M. Pieter Catoir (Ghent: Gheeraert van Salenson, [1566]). 14 Frans Vandenhole, Inventaris van almanakken en kalenders (Ghent: Rijksuniversiteit Gent, 1979). Marijke Mortier, Inhoudsanalyse van de Gentse almanakken uit de 16de, 17de en 18de eeuw: het schetsen van een wereldbeeld (unpublished master’s thesis, Ghent University, 1981). Marijke Mortier, ‘Gentse Almanakken uit de 16e, 17e en 18e eeuw’, Spiegel Historiael 17 (2005), 2, 79–85. Some of the broadside almanacs are preserved in the city archives of Kortrijk; see Gustave Caullet, ‘Une collection d’almanach placards, (1560–1786): essai sur l’histoire et le commerce des almanacs à Courtrai’, Bulletin der Geschied- en Oudheidkundige Kring te Kortrijk, 2 (1905), 39–95.

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Fig. 1: ‘May’ in Claude Garnier and Gualterus Manilius, Nieuwe Almanach ende prognosticatie, Vanden Jare Onses Heeren Iesu Christi, MDLXXXIII, Ghereformeert en[de] verandert, volghende de caulculatie, vande alder gheleertste astrologienen (Ghent: Gaultier Manilius, [1582]). (Copy Ghent University Library).

Fig. 2: ‘May’ in Pieter Catoir and Gheeraert van Salenson, Almanack en(de) prognosticatie vanden iare ons heere[n] M.d. En[de] LXVII. Gecalculeert en[de] ghepractiseert op de[n] meridiaen der seer vermaerder stadt van Ghendt by M. Pieter Catoir (Ghent: Gheeraert van Salenson, [1566]). (Copy Ghent University Library).

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father Cornelius Manilius, signed a contract with the famous Antwerp printer Christopher Plantin concerning the Nostradamus Almanacs. Plantin would deliver these prints, and the Ghent printers would refrain from producing them.15 Later, the Antwerp printers came to dominate the almanac market, with or without a monopoly on such prints.16 An indication of the reach of this Antwerp production is the fact that the Ghent almanac is bound with an Antwerp almanac for the same year.17 This illustrates that almanacs were not restricted to local audiences. Nevertheless, despite this wide circulation of Antwerp almanacs, I was unable to find one with historical annotations that could have been an inspiration for the Ghent almanac. The search for similar date-chronicles however led to an interesting corpus of vernacular almanacs that are systematically bound with Protestant psalm translations. Throughout the sixteenth century vernacular psalm translations have been reprinted, adjusted and revised many times by several authors, which results in a long list of different editions. Eventually, the translations of Petrus Datheen would become the canonical psalmbook for the Dutch Calvinists.18 For now, the bibliographical work of Casper Höweler gives us the best indication of how many of those editions have been preserved with a historical calendar.19 According to his repertory of vernacular printed songbooks only six out of forty-two known psalm translation editions between 1566 and 1582 survive with a calendar, one lost edition was equally printed with a calendar.20 The combination with a calendar then, was not a standard feature of the psalm translations. Nevertheless, in the few cases that they are found with a calendar, paratextual analysis confirms that both prints were produced or meant to be used together.21 The fact that the translations are bound with the calendar first of all points in that direction. Of course, binding could always have been done at a later stage. This is probably the case with the 1570 calendar, which is bound with a psalm translation printed by the same printer two years earlier. Moreover, only two of the three surviving editions of the 1573 psalm translation are bound with the 1573 calendar. At least, these cases illustrate that readers or booksellers made the combination afterwards. Yet, in other cases, the title page 15 Anne Rouzet and Micheline Colin–Boon, Dictionnaire des imprimeurs, libraires et éditeurs des XVe et XVIe siècles dans les limites géographiques de la Belgique actuelle (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1975), pp. 134–35. 16 Stijn Van Rossem, ‘The Struggle for Domination of the Almanac Market: Antwerp, 1626–1624’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 106 (2012), 1, 63–98. 17 See n. 3 for bibliographical description. 18 Samuel J. Lenselink, De Nederlandse psalmberijmingen van de souterliedekens tot Datheen: met hun voorgangers in Duitsland en Frankrijk (Dordrecht: Van den Tol, 1983). 19 Casper A. Höweler and Fred H. Matter, Fontes hymnodiae Neerlandicae impressi 1539–1700 (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1985). 20 See annex, I will use the year of estimated production to further indicate the different historical calendars. 21 Paratext includes material aspects of a (printed) text as well as elements that surround the text such as bindings, typography, title pages, illustrations, introductions, etc. It are in other words the ‘means by which a text makes a book of itself and proposes itself as such to its readers’ see Gérard Genette and Marie Maclean, ‘Introduction to the Paratext’, New Literary History, 22 (1991), 2, 261–72 (p. 261).

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Fig. 3: On the titlepage ‘Midtsgaders eenen rijckelijcken Calendier historiael seer nut ende profijtelijck’ [With an extensive historical calendar, very useful and advantageous]. Petrus Datheen, De C. L. psalmen Dauids, wt den franchoysen dichte in Nederlantschen ouergheset, door Petrvm Dathenvm […] Midtsgaders eenen rijckelijkcken calendier historiael […] (Leiden: Andries Verschout, 1579) (copy Ghent University Library).

of the calendar confirms that both prints were indeed produced together. The 1567 calendar for example shares the same ornamental borders with the psalm translation, suggesting a unity.22 Eventually, in four cases (1569, 1574, 1579, 1581) it is simply mentioned in the title of the psalm translation, which states that this translation comes ‘together with a calendar’.23 The combination of a devotional songbook with a calendar is in fact not at all surprising. Catholic books of hours and bibles were already for a long time preceded by a saints’ calendar, for they structured prayer throughout everyday life and confirmed the cycle of the Christian year.24 In Geneva, Calvinists continued this tradition, yet, instead of saints, biblical and historical dates

22 Höweler, p. 23. 23 See annex. 24 The first Dutch Bible translations and books of hours often had calendars. August Den Hollander, De Nederlandse bijbelvertalingen 1522–1545 (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1997), p. 19. Peter J. Gumbert, ‘In plaats van zakagenda’s. Laatmiddeleeuwse kalenderhandschriften’, MADOC Tijdschrift over de Middeleeuwen, 17 (2003), 4, 215–22 (pp. 217–18).

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were listed in their calendars.25 This particular selection of profane dates can, according to Max Engammare, be traced back to the Calendarium Historicum Paul Eber published in Wittenberg in 1550.26 These Genevan calendars were also often bound with psalm translations and would become an inspiration for Huguenots and apparently also for the Dutch Protestant calendars.27 Especially the Dutch psalm translations of Datheen were primarily inspired by the Swiss context. He wanted to stay close to the French psalter to establish a uniform doctrine for both francophone and Dutch-speaking Calvinists.28 A comparison between the 1567 vernacular calendar and a Genevan calendar of 1563 learns that the early Dutch calendar is indeed almost a literal translation of this French version.29 Most translations are very literal, yet they sometimes contain little nuances. For instance, on 18 February the inauguration of the heathen feast of fools in ancient Rome is associated with the Catholic celebrations during Lent. When we compare both texts, the French one is more polemical by presenting the papists as ‘successors’ of the heathens in this and other traditions, whereas the Dutch version only compares the feast of fools with ‘the way in which one nowadays celebrates Lent, a very heathen tradition’.30 There are moreover significant omissions and additions to the Dutch calendar. Out of eighty-eight historical or biblical events listed in the Genevan calendar, only eight were not translated into Dutch, and three events were added.31 Typical Swiss dates such as the military successes of the Senon Gaul in 376 B.C. or the recent battle of the five Swiss Catholic cantons against the Protestant ones of Zurich in 1531 are for instance not listed in the Dutch translations. Next to those regional adaptations, the Dutch edition of 1567 also added interesting ‘updates’ such as the establishment of the Dutch Reformed church as well as the death of Calvin. The producers of these calendars apparently added subtle changes, intended or not, while translating them. While the early Dutch calendars were almost literal translations of the Genevan ones, the following paragraphs explore how they became more and more intertwined with the local political conflict in 25 Max Engammare, L’ordre du temps: l’invention de la ponctualité au XVIe siècle (Geneva: Droz, 2004), p. 128 and pp. 133–34. 26 Engammare, pp. 136–37. 27 Benedict, p. 388. 28 On the sources of the Dutch translation by Datheen, see Lenselink, pp. 518–19. 29 Kalendrier historial, où on peu cognoistre d’ici à 24 ans quand il sera Pasque, lune nouvelle, la letter Dominicale, & autre chose. ([Geneva]: Antoine Davodeau, 1563). This calendar is also bound with a French psalm translation: Clément Marot and Theodore de Bèze, Les pseames, mis en rime francoise, ([Geneva], Antoine Davodeau, 1563). 30 French translation, 1563: ‘Le 18 la feste des fols estoit celebree à Rome a quoy correspond le Karemeentrant des Papisces, qui se monsirent en cest endroit successeurs des Payens comme en pluseurs autres choses.’ Dutch translation, 1567: ‘Den 18 wert ooc tot Romen de feeste der sotten gehouden gelijc men nu den vasten avont viert, een rechte heydensche wijse.’ 31 Omitted: The circumcision of Christ, the purification of the Virgin, the foundation of Venice, the destruction of Rome by Alaric, the birthday of Saint John the Baptist, the victory of the Gauls of Senon over the Romans, the battle of the five Swiss cantons where Zwingli died, the feast of the holy convocation. Added: the death of Calvin in 1564, the beginnings of the Reformed community in the Low Countries in 1566 and the entrance of Noah in the ark.

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the Low Countries. I will argue that the Ghent almanac of 1583 is one of these local adaptations. Calvinist calendars and their local adaptations Just as with other historiographical genres in the late Middle Ages, we see a tendency to copy and adjust historical data in the Protestant almanacs.32 In order to clarify the particularity of the Ghent calendar, it will be compared with a Genevan French calendar of 1563, and five of the six surviving Dutch calendars, all bound with a psalm translation and dating to before 1582. Each of the Dutch historical almanacs is unique in its composition and formalities, yet all clearly borrowed from one another. My analysis focuses consequently on the addition, omission, or change of formulation of historical events within this corpus. As I have argued above, the historical calendars stem from a Reformed devotional context. Not only the fact that they are bound together with psalm translations, but also the selection of historical dates supports this vision. Many events in the calendar relate to doctrinal disputes between Catholic and Reformed confessions. The deaths of notorious predecessors such as Hus, Luther, Bucer, Zwingli, and Calvin are for instance mentioned in the Ghent almanac. Interestingly, it is much more neutral in its formulations than the other calendars. Instead of praising them as ‘devout’ and ‘wise’ servants of God,33 the Ghent almanac simply mentions their deaths. Nevertheless, it is clear that the almanac defends the Calvinist confession, because it refers to ‘the true faith’ when describing the beginnings of the Reformation in the Low Countries and Geneva.34 Also the selection of biblical events can be related to current doctrinal issues. It is not difficult to see the parallel between the destruction of the famous temple of Diane in 357 B.C. as mentioned in the Old Testament and the recent ‘war against the idols’ of the Calvinists. Three calendars not only mention the destruction, but also add the following phrase (as we can also read in the French calendar): ‘and this was the most splendid temple of the heathens’.35 In the Ghent calendar, as in the 1579 calendar, this part was left out.36 Also the recent iconoclastic riots that raged through the Low Countries in 1566 are simply mentioned by the Ghent calendar without further ado and the 1579 calendar does not mention it at all. The 1569 and 1570 calendars in contrast speak of a very wondrous and

32 For example the adaptations of aldermen lists: Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, De Gentse memorieboeken als Spiegel van stedelijk historisch bewustzijn (Ghent: Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde, 1998). See also Demets and Dumolyn, ‘Urban History Writing’, p. 33. 33 Calvin ‘vrome dienaer’ [devout servant] in 1569, fol. vir and 1567, fol. [9]r. Luther ‘Dienaer Gods’ [servant of God] in 1570, fol. [4]r; 1569, vir; 1567, fol. [9]r; 1563, fol. [7]r. Bucerus ‘een seer verstandig en godsvruchtig man’ [a very wise and God-fearing man] in 1569, fol. iiiv; 1566, fol. [5]v; 1563, fol. Aiiiiv. 34 1582, fols aviiiv–bir and biiv–biiir. 35 1574, fol. vir; 1570, fol. [4]v; 1569, fol. viv and 1563, fol. Aviiv. 36 1582, fol. biiir.

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extraordinary destruction of images and add bible references that refer to the book of revelation. These verses describe the excessive wealth of the sinful city of Babylon that will be destroyed before the Second Coming of Christ.37 The historical perspective is furthermore used to underline the fact that Rome had introduced many novelties into Christian doctrine. Saint days are mentioned ‘for the sake of convenience’ since public life is structured around these days.38 Despite the Protestant critique of all forms of mediation between God and men, people simply used the saint days instead of a numeric system to indicate the days in everyday life.39 Nevertheless, the producers of these almanacs added comments about the historical creation of these feasts. The Ghent calendar states for example that the celebration of the purification of the Virgin was initiated by Pope Virgil in the year 541 and that the date of All Saints’ day was moved several times by the papacy.40 The emphasis of Protestant calendars on biblical disasters such as the Exodus, the Deluge, and Sacking of Jerusalem, creates “a chronological framework wherein current disasters can be understood as part of a larger history of divine punishment and redemption”.41 Also during the sixteenth century, the young struggling church had to deal daily with harsh persecutions. Since the historical events are listed according to date, instead of year, the calendar does not follow a chronological structure. This lay-out allowed producers to underline the parallels between current disasters and earlier ordeals, which could be comforting for a persecuted community. Religious refugees had a major impact on the formation of the Dutch Calvinist movement.42 It is consequently not a surprise that the calendars refer to stories of exile and persecution, which were so important to the Protestant identity. One of the calendars in the corpus was produced in such a community: the calendar of 1570, printed in Norwich by Anthonius de Solempne.43 All of the original additions here (in comparison with the other calendars) are related to the glory of queen Elisabeth, their ‘protectress’ and her struggle with the Catholic Earls in Northumberland.44 Another calendar with such a local focus is the one from 1569. It is the only calendar that lists executions 37 1569, fol. [viii]r; 1570, fol. [5]v; 1574, fol. [viii]v. Biblical reference: The Apocalypse of John 18.16. 38 As stated in the introduction of two editions: 1569, fol. [i]v and 1574, fol. [i]v. 39 Time Sanctified: the Book of Hours in Medieval Art and Life, ed. by Roger S. Wieck (New York: Braziller, 1988), p. 45. 40 1582, fol. aiiiiv and fol. bv v. Critique on All Saints’ day is also mentioned in 1574, 1570 and 1569. 41 Quote from Francesco Maiello, Histoire du calendrier de la liturgie à l’agenda (Paris: Paris Seuil, 1996), p. 164. 42 Andrew Pettegree, Emden and the Dutch Revolt: Exile and the Development of Reformed Protestantism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 3. 43 The calendar is briefly mentioned in Paul Valkema Blouw, ‘A printer in four countries: Albert christiaensz in Vianen, Sedan, Emden and Norwich (1565–1570)’, Quarendo, 26 (1996), 1, 3–36 (p. 30). And in Engammare, p. 162. For this refugee community, see ‘Select papers from the One-Day Conference ‘Dutch and Flemish strangers in Norfolk’, held at the Norfolk Record Office, Norwich on 15 March 2013’, Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Country Studies, 38 (2014), 2. 44 This conflict is known as ‘The Revolt of the Northern Earls’. Events listed in 1570 and not in the other calendars are: 4/11/1565: the queen grants permission to the strangers [=Dutch and Walloon communities] to reside in England, upon which the Dutch church is opened (fol. [7]r).

printed a lma nacs Table 1: Quantitative analysis of the content of the calendars. Thematic content calendars 1582 1579 1574 1570 1569 1567 1563 0

50

100

150

200

250

1563

1567

1569

1570

1574

1579

1582

Biblical

59

59

88

33

98

14

18

Profane history past

12

7

23

18

23

5

12

Profane history recent

7

6

13

14

35

10

21

Reformation

8

9

37

16

40

10

17

Dutch revolt

0

0

1

2

30

20

33

Other

2

7

8

7

5

1

2

in Flemish cities (Ghent, Oudenaarde, and Aalst). The Ghent almanac, however, does not have such a specific geographical focus in its selection of persecutions.45 Both the choice to remember a specific event as well as a particular formulation thus creates meaning and a legitimation for the Protestant beliefs. In this manner, the calendar could function as a polemical text in which doctrinal disputes about image worship, the veneration of saints, and others are dealt with. A second recurring theme in the date-chronicles is the Dutch rebel propaganda which gradually replaces the religious and biblical data. While the 1567 calendar only lists the establishment of the evangelical church in the Low Countries, the 1579 calendar from Leiden is already filled with anti-Spanish sentiment and references to the Dutch Revolt. A great portion of this Leiden almanac is copied word for word in the Ghent Almanac. Nevertheless, Manilius seems to have added quite a few events himself in comparison with the 1579 calendar. Out of 103 historical annotations in the Ghent almanac, nineteen cannot be related to any of the calendars in my corpus. Twelve of the events that do not appear in the other calendars relate to Spanish tyranny and military developments during the Dutch Revolt. This quantity and focus on the military conflict sets the Ghent calendar apart from the others.

17/11/1558: coronation of Elizabeth I (fol. [7]r). End of November 1569 (no exact date): uprising of Westmorland and Northumberland against the queen (fol. [7]r). 21/12/1569: Flight of the rebels of Northumberland and Westmorland (fol. [7]v). 45 1582 lists persecutions in Leeuwarden (fol. aiiiv), Nieuwpoort (fols biv–viir), Mechelen (fol. biiiiv), Brussels (fol. biiiiv), and Antwerp (fol. biiiiv).

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In contrast with the more detached formulations of the religious events, the Ghent almanac is very clear about its political position in the Dutch Revolt. If we compare for instance the renditions of the victories of the rebel party with the sieges of the Spanish, a clear bias is to be detected. While many clergymen were massacred during the siege of Roermond (1572), the calendar simply mentions that the city was ‘overrun’ by the Prince of Orange.46 Catholics in Roermond have commemorated this raid to this day as one of the most dramatic episodes in their history.47 In contrast, the Spanish invaded Rotterdam on 6 April 1572 and ‘murdered’ many citizens;48 Mechelen was ‘plundered’ on 2 October 1567 [sic].49 In Naarden, young and old people were murdered in spite of the promised mercy.50 Finally, the invasion of Alba is described as ‘the coming of the great Tyrant to the Low Countries without any resistance’.51 This evaluation of Alba’s actions in the Low Countries was present from the beginning of the Revolt and has long persisted in the historiography of the Low Countries.52 Spanish soldiers certainly plundered many cities, yet, as the siege of Roermond illustrates, the troops of the Prince of Orange were not that different in their behavior. With regard to the selection of historical events, Manilius borrowed altogether heavily from this Protestant calendar tradition. At first sight, they reflect an overall rebel historiography that focuses on the religious and political legitimation of the revolt rather than a local historiography. Not a single date relates explicitly to the history of Ghent. Yet, if we turn to the context of the date-chronicle, notably the actual calendar with practical information, we may revise this provisional conclusion. For not the alterations of the historical information, but the context in which this date-chronicle was integrated demonstrates the local adaptation of the Ghent almanac. It seems that instead of integrating a local urban discourse in the protestant date-chronicle, a local almanac was extended with a specific historiography that promoted the Reformation and the legitimacy of the Dutch Revolt. As illustrated above, Manilius follows the format of local almanacs such as the one from Salenson.53 All information is for instance listed in columns next to the calendar, while in the Protestant prints, this is added after the calendar in a separate list. A closer look at this practical information such as market dates equally 46 1582, fol. biiv. 47 Jozef Meerbergen, De martelaren van Roermond in 1572 (Roermond: Bisschoppelijk college, 1951). Peter Nissen, ‘De geschiedenis van de Kartuis van Onze Lieve Vrouw van Bethlehem te Roermond’, in Het geheim van de stilte. De besloten wereld van de Roermondse Kartuizers, ed. by Krijn Pansters (Zwolle: Waanders, 2009), pp. 62–77 (pp. 73–74). (see pp. 205–13 for contemporary recuperations of these events in martyrologia, paintings and news pamphlets). 48 1582, fol. [avi]v. 49 1582, fol. biiiiv Manilius made a mistake here, for Mechelen was plundered during the punitive expeditions of Alba and his son in 1572 instead of 1567. Raymond Fagel, ‘The Duke of Alba and the Low Countries, 1520–73’, in Alba, General and servant to the crown, ed. by Maurits Ebben and others (Weena: Karwansaray publishers, 2013), pp. 256–87 (pp. 277–84). 50 1582, fol. [bvi]r. 51 1582, fol. biiiir. 52 Judith Pollmann and Monica Stensland, ‘Alba’s reputation in the early modern Low Countries’, in Alba. General and servant to the crown, pp. 308–25. 53 See n. 14.

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reveals a local character. Whereas the other calendars merely mention the horse market in ‘Ghent’,54 this calendar specifies the individual markets within the city such as the one at Saint-Baefs and the Cauter.55 Another interesting indicator is the selection of saints that are omitted in the French and early Dutch calendars, but reappeared in later editions for practical reasons.56 Since the veneration of specific saints is particular to certain bishoprics, anonymous almanacs and books of hours are often localized by studying their calendars of saints.57 A comparison between the selection of saints in the Manilius calendar with the Catholic calendar of the Ghent-based printer Salenson and the Protestant almanac of Leiden could therefore identify a specific local selection. Whereas Manilius’ almanac mentions considerably less saints than the Catholic almanac of Salenson, the ones that are mentioned mostly correspond in both prints. The Leiden calendar by contrast clearly made another selection.58 Just as the almanac of Manilius is more specific on local markets, it also follows the local calendar of saints. As illustrated above, the introduction of some of the Protestant calendars underlined that these saints only appeared in the calendars because of their practical value. While the content of the historical annotations remained very close to the Leiden almanac, Manilius then added more local practical information. Yet, this information was not specific to Ghent, but to the entire bishopric. The target audience of the almanac was therefore local but not restricted to the city of Ghent. The Protestant calendar was altogether a dynamic genre. On the one hand, the Dutch calendars clearly borrowed from one another, gradually forming a regional tradition as they drifted away from the original Genevan calendars. On the other hand, there are subtle variations within the corpus. Engammare states that it were primarily the printers who took the liberty to alter the historical dates in the Calvinist calendars.59 These changes reveal local interests as well as a varying attitude towards profane and religious matters. In comparison with the five other Protestant calendars, the Ghent almanac contains more military rebel propaganda while being less fervent about religious doctrines and events. Another important difference is the fact that the Ghent calendar was not preserved in combination with a psalm translation. It seems that Manilius copied and slightly altered the Protestant date-chronicle and incorporated it in a local format. As a result, the Calvinist calendar migrated from the context of psalm translations into that of a local almanac. Manilius therefore created a forum through which a local audience was acquainted with a particularly partial historiography. This migration illustrates both the flexibility of the date-chronicle as well as the importance of paratext to assess the function of a (printed) text. Whereas 54 1567, fol. [9]r; 1569, fol. viv; 1570, fol. [4]r. 55 1582, fol. [avii]v and fol. biir. 56 The edition of 1567 and the original Genevan calendar (see n. 30) list no saints. The 1569, 1570, 1579 and 1582 editions do list saints, though still fewer than in a Catholic calendar. 57 Egied I. Strubbe and Léon Voet, De chronologie van de middeleeuwen en de moderne tijden in de Nederlanden (Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, 1991), pp. 42–44. 58 The three almanacs share thirty-three saints, yet seventeen saints only appear in the Ghent calendars against three that only appear in both the Manilius almanac and the one from Leiden (1579). 59 Engammare, p. 178.

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the combination with the psalm translations hints at a devotional understanding of this type of historiography, the case of the Manilius calendar offers another possible interpretation. The final paragraphs will therefore suggest that the combination of the polemical date-chronicles with a local almanac was also beneficial to the policy makers of Ghent. The urban character of the Manilius calendar then lies not so much in the actual content of the date-chronicle, but in the envisaged public and its potential to legitimize the local rebel regime. The local context of the almanac: calendar reforms and the Ghent Republic Even though the link between Manilius’ calendar and the Protestant date-chronicles helps to understand the printer’s decision to include certain historical data, it does not explain his motivations to combine his almanac with such historical information in the first place. For this we need to have a closer look at the production context, notably Ghent during the last years of the rebel regime. It seems that the print fits within the printing strategies of both the city council and of printer Gaultier Manilius. The motivation for early modern printers to publish a certain work is evidently influenced by the commercial value of the product. According to Salman, the calendar reform of Pope Gregory XIII generated a boost for the production of almanacs.60 In a competitive market, Manilius’ decision to add the date-chronicle may simply make his almanac more attractive than others. Urban chronicles at least underline how the reform created confusion among the people of Ghent. The Kempenare brothers, who kept an impressive manuscript diary during this tumultuous period, alert their readers that they will follow the new calendar from now on.61 In another, anonymous chronicle, the author explains how the old almanacs could still be used the following year by celebrating Christmas twice in a year. He also notes that many were confused about the exact date of Christmas and New year’s day.62 This confusion could explain the fact that the Manilius almanac is bound with another one from Antwerp for the same year, since the latter follows the old style. This could be useful for merchants, because many Protestant territories refused to implement the new Gregorian calendar.63 England was for instance the last country to accept the reform in 1752, which went hand in hand with notorious ‘calendar riots’.64

60 Salman, p. 165. 61 Philips De Kempenare, Vlaemsche kronijk, of dagregister van al het gene gedenkweerdig voorgevallen is, binnen de stad Gent, sedert 15 july 1566 tot 15 juny 1585, ed. by Philip M. Blommaert and others (Ghent: Hebbelynck, 1839), p. 309. 62 University Library Ghent, ms 159, fols 543v–544r. 63 Malcolm Freiberg, ‘Going Gregorian, 1582–1752: A summary view’, The Catholic Historical Review, 86 (2000), 1, 1–19 (p. 4). 64 Robert Poole, ‘“Give us our eleven days!”: Calendar Reform in Eighteenth-Century England’, Past and Present, 149 (1995), 95–139.

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Indeed, the combination of a pro-Calvinist date-chronicle and a calendar following the measures of the council of Trent might seem contradictory at first sight. However, the introduction of the almanac remains silent about this association with Gregory XIII and Trent. There, it is simply stated that because ‘his highness of Ghent’ had introduced the reformation of the Julian calendar, ‘we did not refrain from publishing how since the birth of Christ until this year, 1583, time has passed’.65 At that time Ghent had abjured the Spanish king, the ‘highness of Ghent’ therefore referred to the Duke of Anjou, who had chosen the side of the rebels against Spanish rule. Just like other Catholic sovereigns, he introduced the reform in his territories. Yet, he had to take into account local sensitivities regarding his Catholic profile.66 The acceptance of the Duke of Anjou as the new sovereign was therefore not without controversy in Ghent.67 The specific local political situation in Ghent and some other territories, in which a Catholic prince was sovereign of a Calvinist city, explains this paradox of a pro-Calvinist calendar that implements a contested papal decree. Instead of a paradox, the addition of the date-chronicle could be interpreted as a reflection of this tense compromise between both parties. It is however more likely that Manilius had commercial reasons instead of religious ones to add the calendar. For the printer produced other Protestant works, yet after the fall of the Calvinist regime, Manilius stayed in Ghent and published Catholic material.68 During the Calvinist regime, Manilius nevertheless worked regularly by order of the urban authorities, often in cooperation with another Ghent-based printer, Cornelis De Rekenare. The latter married Gaultier Manilius’ sister-in-law, Adriana Typins, who ran the printing shop of the Manilius family De witte duyve [the white pigeon]. It was this company that delivered the official municipal printed matter during the rebel regime while Gaultier himself established a smaller printing shop in the Breydelsteeg. After the fall of the Calvinist regime he worked as the official printer of Ghent.69 Given this relation with the local authorities, it is necessary to also consider the city council’s roll in the production of the almanac. 65 1582, fol. Aiv. 66 Jan Buntinx, ‘De invoering van de Gregoriaanse kalender te Gent’, in Pascua Mediaevalia: studies voor Prof. dr. J. M. De Smet, ed. by Robrecht Lievens and others (Leuven: University press Leuven, 1983), pp. 663–64. 67 On the day of his ceremonial entry into Ghent, anonymous pamphlets commemorating the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (24 august 1572) were for instance posted throughout the city. Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, ‘Spectacle and Spin for a Spurned Prince. Civic Strategies in the Entry Ceremonies of the Duke of Anjou in Antwerp, Bruges and Ghent (1582)’, Journal of Early Modern History, 11 (2007), 4, 263–84 (p. 266). It is striking that one of the events that only Manilius lists in comparison with the other almanacs is exactly this notorious massacre (1582, fol. biiir). 68 Valentijn Velghe, ‘De weerspiegeling van de politieke, religieuze en financiële cultuur in gedrukte pamfletten te Gent ten tijde van het Calvinistische bewind (1577–1584)’ (unpublished master’s thesis, Ghent University, 2014), pp. 41–44. Ferdinand Vander Haeghen, Bibliographie gantoise: recherches sur la vie et les travaux des imprimeurs de Gand: 1483–1850, 7 vols (Ghent: Vanderhaeghen, 1858–69), I, p. 208. Sylvie De Smet, ‘Sociaal-economische analyse van een beroepsgroep: de Gentse boekdrukkers (1450–1700)’ (unpublished master’s thesis, Ghent University, 1999), pp. 66–75. Anne Rouzet, Dictionnaire, pp. 135–36. 69 See n. 69.

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Occasionally, the city accounts shed light on print commissions by the council. However, for the almanac we have no financial records. Nevertheless, payments for almanacs return several times in the accounts and Manilius is mentioned as ‘sole deliverer of almanacs’ for the city council in 1612.70 These almanacs were very similar to the one he produced in 1582, yet this time, of course, without the calendar.71 Almanac printers were often official city printers, which also illustrates the indirect relation between the local authorities and such prints. The latter did not commission almanacs, but often stimulated the production of almanacs by placing steady orders.72 In the case of Amsterdam, almanacs sometimes even included extracts of ordinances and other announcements. Hence they could function as an extension of the urban information supply.73 Also in the introduction of the Manilius almanac, the introduction resembles the discourse of a local ordinance since the order is given to skip ten days in the calendar as a consequence of the calendar reform.74 Using the polemical almanac as a channel of information also fits within the policies of the urban authorities during the last years of the Calvinist regime. On the one hand, the magistracy put a lot of effort into the establishment of a Calvinist culture in the city. On the other hand, they constantly needed to legitimize their seizure of power and the continuation of the revolt. The Reformation movement had been present in Ghent from the first decades of the sixteenth century.75 Nevertheless, many citizens remained Catholic or were at least undecided about their faith. In addition to repressive measures, such as the suppression of the monasteries and confiscation of all its properties, the magistrates tried to replace the former Catholic cult by Calvinist manifestations of devotion. The general processions for example were replaced by ‘general days of prayer’. Interestingly, these formally resembled the processions that the people of Ghent were accustomed to.76 In the same manner, the historical annotations in the almanac could be seen as a minor change to a well-known concept.77 Almanacs were very useful and necessary for an urban audience, such as merchants and civil servants. The almanac thus became a vehicle for spreading the new religion through its Calvinist historical annotations. Without a doubt it reached a broader audience than the one for theological prints.

70 De Smet, p. 73. 71 Adrian Clais, Almanach ende prognosticatie, vanden iaere ons heeren M. DC. XXVII […] (Ghent: Gaultier Manilius, 1627). 72 Salman, pp. 365–66. 73 Salman, p. 253. 74 While the reform was issued by Anjou, each region and city implemented it at a different time. Archival material concerning this decision in Ghent is described in Buntinx, pp. 664–66. 75 Johan Decavele, De dageraad van de reformatie in Vlaanderen (1520–1565), 2 vols (Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, 1975), I, pp. 235–51. 76 Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, ‘De Calvinistische Republiek in Gent (1577–1584): Een samenleving onder hoogspanning’, in Protestantisme: aspecten van de Reformatie tussen Humanisme en Verlichting, ed. by Danny Praet (Ghent: Academia Press, 2014), pp. 37–57 (pp. 47–48). 77 As noted by Coigneau. Dirk Coigneau, ‘Literatuur en pennenstrijd’, in Het einde van een rebelse droom, pp. 91–103 (p. 100).

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The urban authorities not only needed to convince Catholics but also its battle-weary citizens. From 1579 on, the Spanish regent of the Low Countries, Alexander Farnese, booked several successes against the rebels. Especially from 1582 on, the prince of Parma gradually isolated the Ghent republic. Only on 5 July 1582, nearby Oudenaarde was reconquered, which was a major blow for the people of Ghent. It would be the beginning of the end for the Ghent Republic.78 When we look at the nineteen unrelated additions in the Ghent calendar, twelve refer to the Dutch Revolt, Spanish atrocities, and military defeats or victories. I suggest this selection reminded a besieged city of the righteousness of the rebel cause and the need for support. Whereas the additions to the date-chronicle do not relate specifically to Ghent history, they could serve polemical purposes in this specific local context. Conclusion The aim of this contribution was to explore an alternative genre of urban historiography, notably the printed historical almanac. In the Low Countries, this genre flourished in the context of the Reformation and the Dutch Revolt. While the early examples of date-chronicles are to be situated in the context of the polemical Dutch psalm translations, these texts gradually also included propaganda for the rebel party. The historical almanacs could then legitimize the rebel cause through the selection of biblical or historical events and biased formulations. Hence, they can be considered as a powerful vehicle to engage into religious and political polemics. Though a thorough research into this specific addition to sixteenth-century almanacs could reveal other precedents, the historical almanacs that are bound with psalm translations clearly form a separate corpus of texts that borrow from the same tradition. Manilius’ date-chronicle is related to this corpus, despite the fact that his almanac did not survive with a psalm translation. Once more, this particular genre illustrates the possibilities to tailor historical narratives to local and political preferences. However, this case study did not yield a straightforward answer to the question whether the almanac of Manilius, and more generally date-chronicles, can be described as ‘urban historiography’ or not. Several indications of a local adaptation have been analyzed. The content of the date-chronicle first of all did not contain specific references to the history of Ghent, yet other almanacs in our corpus clearly used this opportunity to add local history. Nevertheless, divergences from the other Protestant almanacs can be placed within local politics, especially the emphasis on Spanish atrocities could justify the continuation of the revolt in a battle-weary city. Secondly, elements that surround the actual date-chronicle such as the introduction to the reader and practical information (market dates and calendar of saints) refer 78 Herman Vanderlinden, ‘Het beleg en de val van Gent’, in Het einde van de rebelse droom, pp. 105–12 (p. 105).

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to a Ghent audience. Although this could be equally useful to the surroundings of the city. Also the lay-out is more similar to other local almanacs than to the ones bound with a psalm translation. Apart from a close reading of the almanac, the context in which this print could be produced and consumed was equally reconstructed. Given the close connection between the urban authorities and Manilius’ printing press as well as the discourse in the introduction, it is plausible that the addition of the date-chronicle was inspired by urban politics. Finally, the combination of the date-chronicle with an almanac is significant, since this practical instrument was aimed at an urban audience of merchants and civil servants. There are no ownership marks in the Manilius almanac, yet the fact that it was bound together with another almanac that follows the old calendar system at least suggests its practical use for interregional trade. We can conclude that not the historical narrative but the framework in which that narrative was integrated points at a local context. This framework or paratext gave meaning to the interpretation of historical data. In this case, the date-chronicle loses its original religious context and becomes urban propaganda when it is integrated in a local almanac. The role of the main producer, Gaultier Manilius, can consequently be best compared to that of a scribe or compiler of manuscripts. Hence the printed medium appeared to be flexible and adaptable to local contexts and did not foster a more standardized historiography than manuscripts. Many cases in this volume illustrate how historiography was combined with all kinds of texts and objects. The fact that the date-chronicles are combined with texts that are used in everyday life, such as psalm books or almanacs, allows us to reconstruct the historical culture of a popular audience. Including those hybrid forms of historiography will foster a more diversified image of urban historical culture and consciousness. Annex: bibliographical information calendars79 1567: Eenen kalendier historiael, met de jaermercten van diversche landen, steden ende vrijheden.In Nederlandtsche sprake overgheset. (s.l.: s.n., [1567]). Bound with: Petrus Datheen, Die psalmen des conincklijcken propheten Davids ende ander lofsangen/vvt den Fransoysche[n] dichte ghemaect door Clement Marot ende Theodore de Bese, in Nederlandtsche sprake ouerghesedt, door Petrum Dathenum. Ende door den selven, ten derdemael ouersien ende verbetert. Metgaders den christelijkcke cathechismo […] (s.l.: s.n., [1567]). (Both prints have the same ornamental borders on the title pages.) There are two copies: 1) University Library Ghent, BIB.BL.008366/– 1 and –3 2) Royal Library Den Hague, 1 B 13 [1] and [2], see See Höweler, p. 23. 1569: Petrus Datheen, De Psalmen Davids, ende ander Lofsangen/[…] Hier is oock byghevoecht: Eenen kalendier historial met de jaermerckten van diversche landen, 79 This list is based on the reportory Casper A. Höweler and Fred H. Matter, Fontes hymnodiae Neerlandicae impressi 1539–1700 (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1985).

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steden en vrijheden. Wederom oversien ende ghecorrigeert ([Emden]: [Willem Gailliart], 1569). Calendar is mentioned on title page of the psalm translation. There are 3 copies: 1) University Library Leiden, 1497 G 11 2) British Library, A.620.n. 3) Stifts- och Länsbibliothek Västeräs, Stiftsbiblioteket Teologi XV Biblar Nederländska 1569. See Höweler, p. 27. 1570: Eenen calendier historiael, eewelick gheduerende: waerin ghy vinden sult den opganck ende onderganck der sonnen, in alle maenden, met den jaermercten van diverseye landen, steden ende vrijheden (Norwich: Anthonius de Solempne, 1570). Bound with Petrus Datheen, De c.l. Psalmen Dauids, wt den Franchoyschen dichte in Nederlantschen ouerghesett door P. Dathenum, mitsgaders den Christelicken catechisme, ceremonien, en̄ gebeden (Norwich: Anthonius de Solempne, 1568). Bodleian Library, Arch A f. 33 (1) and (2). See Höweler, p. 26 (Höweler does not mention the binding with the calendar.) 1573: Kalendier ofte Almanack historiael. Met een corte taste om te kennen tot 24. iaer de hoochtyt van Paeschen, ende die Sondach lettere (Geneva: s.n., 1573). Bound with: Petrus Datheen, Psalmen Davids vvt den Franchoyschen dichte in Nederlantschen overgeset, door P. Dathenum […] (s.l.: s.n., 1573). (there is a third copy of this psalm translation without a calendar: University Library Amsterdam, inv. no. OTM: mini 6) There are two copies: 1) Forschungsbibliothek Gotha, inv. no. Cont. spir 8° 01099 and 2) Stadtbibliothek Trier, inv. no. Mu 289 8°. See Höweler, p. 30. 1574: Petrus Datheen, De Psalmen Davids ende ande Lofsanghen […] Midtsgaders een schoone kalendier Historiael met de jaermerckten van digeersche plaetsen. Ende vele geschiedenissen tot desen Jare 1574. Toe. Wederom overzien ende gecorrigeert. ([Emden]: [Goossens Goebens], 1574). Calendar is mentioned on title page of the psalm translation. There are 3 copies: 1) University Library Amsterdam, 205–F–29 2) Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz, VD16 ZV 1744 3) Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, ex. Hamburg. See Höweler, p. 32. 1579: Petrus Datheen, De C. L. psalmen Dauids, wt den franchoysen dichte in Nederlantschen ouergheset, door Petrvm Dathenvm […] Midtsgaders eenen rijckelijkcken calendier historiael […] (Leiden: Andries Verschout, 1579). Calendar is mentioned on title page of the psalm translation. University Library Ghent, BIB.BL.005738/–1. See Höweler, p. 38. 1581: Petrus Datheen. De Psalmen Davids mitsgaders eenen rykelyken calendier historial (Delft: Aelbrecht Hendricksz, 1581) Calendar is mentioned in title page of the psalm translation. No surviving copy. see Andrew Pettegree and Malcolm Walsby, Netherlandish Books: books published in the Low Countries and Dutch books published abroad before 1601 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), ref. 4283.

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Index of places, proper names and titles

Aalst: 215 Adalberg Meyer zum Pfeil (1474–1548): 38, 40, 41, 42–45 Adalberg Meyer zum Pfeil (jr.): 39 Adolf of Cleves: 143 Adriana Typins: 219 Albert of Brescia: 90 (n. 44) Alder excellenste cronyke van Brabant: 150 Alexander: see Lamprecht Alexander Farnese, Prince of Parma: 221 Alexander Hegius: 188 Amsterdam: 206, 220 Amtsbücher: see Stadtbücher Andries de Smet: 147 Annales Gandenses: 10 Annales lanuenses: see Caffaro Annalia ende andere copien: 187–204 (passim) Anonyme Chronik der Burgunderkriege: 36 (n. 62), 41–42 Anthoing de Lannoy: 112 Anthonis de Roovere: 141–42 Anthonius de Solempne: 214, 223 Anthonius Vrije van Soest: 190 Antwerp: 138, 139, 147, 149–50, 155, 205 (n. 2), 206 (n. 5), 208, 210, 215 (n. 45), 218, 219 Aristotle: 104 Arzt (family): 183 Augsburg: 9, 18, 23, 39, 159–86 (passim) Bach (family): 183, 184 Basel: 9, 18, 27–46 (passim), 52–59, Basler Annalen: 33, 36 (n. 52) Basler Chronik: see Christian Wurstisen Basler Chroniken: 27, 31, 35, 35 (n. 51), 36–38, 40–42

Beinheim Manuscript: 31, 38–42, 45 Belinus (mythical king of England): 72 Bergen (Norway): 187 Bern: 27, 28, 42, 48, 58–59 Berner Chronik: see Konrad Justinger. Bernhard Meyer zum Pfeil: 38–39 Bitschlin (family): 182 Black Book of Winchester: 71 Boeck van al ‘t gene datter geschiedt is binnen Brugghe: 76, 139 (n. 11) Bologna: 9 Bouvines (Battle of ): 111 Brabant: 16, 79 (n. 62), 80, 117, 134, 137, 148–50 Brabantsche yeesten: 80, 138, 139 Brabantsche yeesten (continuation): 134, 139, 149 (n. 56) Breisach: 54 Brennius (mythical king of England): 72, 77, 78 Breuze: 113 Bristol: 9, 15, 22, 66, 68, 70, 72, 73, 75, 76–78, 79, 105 Bruges: 8, 19 (n. 48), 21 (n. 55), 76, 79, 88 (n. 35), 91, 110, 131, 139, 140, 141–47, 148, 153–55, 156 Brussels: 132, 138–39, 148, 149, 207, 215 (n. 45) Brut: 72, 77, 80 Brutus (mythical king of England): 77, 78 Cadzand: 131 Caesar: 102 Caffaro: 9, 16 Calendarium Historicum: see Paul Eber

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Charles of Egmond, Duke of Guelders: 199–200 Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy: 42, 99–100, 102, 107, 111, 118, 119, 129, 139, 140, 142, 144, 145, 149, 150–54, 156, 189 Charles III of Bourbon (1490–1527): 201 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor: 118, 119, 120, 132, 133, 147, 199–204 Charles VII, King of France: 121–22 Charles VIII, King of France: 102 Chester: 66 Christian Wurstisen: 27, 52–53 (n. 24) Christopher Plantin: 210 Chronicle of pseudo-Jan van Dixmude: 147 Chronijcke van Ghendt: 76 Chronik der Mailänderkriege: 36 (n. 62), 41 (n. 93) Chroniken der deutschen Städte: 11, 12, 14, 20, 31, 38–42, 45, 63 [Chronique] de la fortification de Tournay durant la guerre des Flamens: 101 Chronique des sept aiges du monde: 101 Chronique scandaleuse: see Jean de Roye Claude Garnier: 205, 209 Clemens VII (Pope): 201 Coel (mythical king of England): 72, 75 Colchester: 70 (n. 29), 71, 72 75 Colchester Oath Book: 70 (n. 29), 71, 75 Colmar Colmarer Chronik: 56 Cologne, 14 Compendium Chronicon Flandriae: see Jacob de Meyere Conrad Justinger: 27 Constance: 9, 50, 52 (n. 22), 58–59 Constantine the Great, Emperor of the Roman Empire: 57, 75 Continuation of the Brabantse Yeesten

Continuation to the Mechelen A chronicle: see Jan van Hanswijck Conzelmann (family): 173, 175 Cornelis de Rekenare: 219 Cornelis Meeus: 198, 202, 203 Cornelis Vermeulen: 151 Cornelius Manilius: 210 Cosmas Ertzberg: 36 (n. 62) Courtrai: 105, 110 Coventry: 66 Coventry Annals: 73 Cronographia Augustensium: 159–86 (passim) Dagboek van Gent: 13, 70, 115–36 (passim), 139 (n. 11) Damietta (Siege of ): 101 Daneel Croeselin: 118, 130–31 David of Burgundy, Bishop of Utrecht: 192, 195 (n. 23) De amore et dilectione Dei et proximi et aliarum rerum et de forma vitae: 90 (n. 44) De Annalibus quaedam: 187–204 (passim) De properheden vanden steden van Vlaenderen: 118 Delft: 206 Den Bosch: see ’s-Hertogenbosch Dentrich (family): 177, 183 Desiderius Erasmus: 132 Deventer: 188, 192, 195, 206 Diary of Ghent: see Dagboek van Gent Diebold Schilling: 27 Dietsche Doctrinale: 90 Dinant: 102 Discours des troubles advenuz à Gand: see Lodewijk van Schore Dits de cronike ende genealogie van den prinsen ende graven van den foreeste van Buc, dat heet Vlaenderlant: 88 Douai: 104 (n. 22), 108, 143 Drenthe: see Oversticht Drusus (mythical origin figure for Augsburg): 172

in dex of p laces, proper na mes a nd titles

Duke of Alba: see Fernando Álvarez de Toledo Duke of Anjou: see Francis, Duke of Anjou Edward IV, King of England: 129 Edzard, Count of East Frisia: 199 Eggensberger (family): 185 Elisbeth Spyrer: 39 Elizabeth I, Queen of England: 215 (n. 44) Enea Silvio Piccolomini: 52–53 (n. 24) England: 63–80 (passim), 187, 200 Erhard von Appenwiler: 35 (n. 56), 55–59 Espiers: 112 Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen: 16–17, 79, 81 (n. 2), 88, 90–91, 135, 140, 141–47, 156 Fabyan’s chronicle: 74 Family chronicle of Markgraf Rudolf III. Von Hachberg-Sausenberg: 56 (n. 47) Fernando Álvarez de Toledo: 216 Filips Wielant: 132–33 Flanders (County): 10, 12, 15 (n. 32), 16, 18, 22, 81–83, 87, 88, 91–92, 99, 102, 106, 111, 116, 120, 121, 125, 132, 133, 137, 139, 140, 141–47, 148, 187 Flandria Generosa (C): 141–42, 145 Florence: 18 (n. 47); and see Giovanni Villani Flores historiarum: 77 Flores temporum: 35 France: 10, 12, 141, 147, 148, 187, 200–02, 204 Francis, Duke of Anjou: 219, 220 Francis I, King of France: 200 Frankfurt: 23, 39 Frederick III, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire: 54 (n. 34), 139, 155 Frederik of Baden, Prince Bishop of Utrecht: 198 Frickinger (family): 173, 174, 175, 177 Frisia: 199, 200 Froyment: 112

Galbert of Bruges: 16 Gaultier Manilius: 205–23 (passim) Gavere (Battle of ): 118, 119, 128 Geert/Gherrit Hermans: 198 Genemuiden: 200 Geneva: 211, 212, 213, 217 George, Duke of Saxony: 198, 199, 203 Georges Chastelain: 122 Gerardus Bernaerts: 151 German Empire: see Holy Roman Empire Germany: see Holy Roman Empire Gerst (family): 183 Geschlechterbücher: 23, 39 Gheeraert de Salenson: 208, 209, 216, 217 Gheerolf Van Ooteghem: 128 Ghent: 8, 8 (n. 6), 10, 12, 13, 19 (n. 48), 22, 89–92, 93, 99, 108, 109–10, 115–36 (passim), 139, 141, 144–47, 148, 153, 154, 205–23 (passim) Gilles li Muisit: 102 Gillis Baudins: 128 Giovanni Villani: 17 Gollenhofer (family): 182 Gossembrot (family): 159, 173, 174, 177, 180, 183, 184, 185 Gossembrot Armorial: 159, 178–86 Gouds kroniekje: 80 Grander (family): 183 Grandes Chroniques de France: 12 Great Domesday Book of Ipswich: 71, 72 (n. 36) Gregory XIII (Pope): 205, 218, 219 Groningen: 188, 198–99, 203 Guelders (Duchy): 112, 117, 188, 191, 198–203 Guillaume de Saint-Cloud: 104 Guillaume Hugonet: 144, 154 Guinegate (Battle of ): 100 Guy de Brimeu, Lord of Humbercourt: 144, 154 Haarlem: 70–71 Hainaut: 99 Hangenor (family): 183, 184

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228

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Hans Brüglinger: 35 (n. 51) Hans Conrad Meyer zum Pfeil: 39 Hans Eckenstein: 39 Hans Gossembrot: 159, 178, 180, 182–86 Hans Ludwig Meyer zum Pfeil: 39 Hector Mülich: 165, 167–68, 171, 175, 177–79, 183, 186 Heinrich II, Patron of Basel: 40 Heinrich Iselin: 36 (n. 62) Heinrich Ryhiner: 35 (n. 54) Heinrich von Beinheim: 39, 40 Heinrich von Lammespringe: 48 Heist-op-den-Berg: 148 Hemerlin (family): 183 Henric Claessen: 190, 195 Henry of Bavaria, Prince-Bishop-elect of Utrecht: 200 Henry VI, King of England: 71–72 Henry VII, King of England: 78 Hermann Weinsberg: 14 Hestin Ghiselins: 128 Het Boeck van al ’t gene datter geschiedt is binnen Brugghe: see under Boeck Heyman Brant Jr.: 198 Hieronymus Brilinger: 36 (n. 62) Hippocrates: 104 Hofmair (family): 173, 174, 175, 177 Holland: 70–71, 80, 117, 137 Holy Roman Empire: 8–9, 10, 13–14, 17, 18, 24, 28, 31, 48, 63–65, 68, 71, 80, 137, 169, 170, 187, 188, 199–202, 204 Iacopo Doria: 9 Ipswich: see Great Domesday Book of Ipsich or Little Domesday Book of Ipswich Italy: 9–10, 16, 24, 28, 63–65, 68, 80, 137, 187, 200, 201 Jacob Bijndop: 190, 192, 195 Jacob de Meyere: 117 (n. 13), 131–32 Jacob Meeuwszone: 127 (n. 46), 128 Jacob van Malen: 142–43 Jakob Twinger von Königshofen: 16, 20, 27, 35, 41, 47–61 passim, Jan Bernaerts: 151 Jan de Rouc: 145

Jan de Vos: 127 (n. 46), 128 Jan de Wilde: 149–50, 152 Jan Hus: 213 Jan II van Wassenaer: 200 Jan van Boendale: 80, 138, 149 (n. 56) Jan Van Coppenhole: 118, 120 Jan van Dadizele: 119 Jan van den Abeele: 118, 131 (n. 68) Jan van der Eecken: 128 Jan van Dixmude (d. shortly after 1436): 88 Jan van Dixmude (d. 1553): 88–90 Jan van Dixmude (d. 1554): 90, 147 Jan van Hanswijck: 151, 153, 154–55 Jan van Wachtendonck: 151 Janne van Duermelaer: 128 Jean Blampain: 101 Jean d’Auffay: 133 Jean d’Outremeuse: 89 Jean de Popincourt: 122, 123 (n. 33), 127 Jean de Roye: 13 Jean Molinet: 100 Jehan de Chaumont: 107 Jehan Nicolay: 20, 97–114 (passim) Jerusalem: 89, 93, Johan Rueper: 198 Johan van Breda: 190, 194, 198–204 Johannes Calvin: 212, 213 Johannes Cele: 188 Johannes Betz/Ursi: 36 (n. 62), 54–55, 56 John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy: 87 John Lackland, King of England: 77 Joos Bryde: 82–83, 86, 87–88, 89, 92, 93–94 Joos van Dixmude: 87 (n. 26), 89, 93 Joos vander Stoct: 22 Journal d’un bourgeois de Paris: 13 Journée de Therouenne: see Jean Molinet: 100 Kalendrier de la Royne: see Guillaume de Saint-Cloud Kalendrier des Guerres de Tournay: see Jehan Nicolay

in dex of p laces, proper na mes a nd titles

Kampen: 8, 18, 150, 187–204 (passim) King’s Lynn: 66, 74 Konrad Bollstatter: 165, 166, 173, 176, 186 Konrad Iselin: 36 (n. 62) Konrad Justinger, Berner Chronik: 48, 58 Konrad Schnitt: 35 (n. 55) Kronica von der loblichen Eydtgnoschaft, jr harkommen und sust seltzam strittenn und geschichten: see Peterman Etterlin Kroniek van Peter van Os: see Peter van Os Lamprecht: 56 Langenmantel ‘of the Chevron’ (vom Sparren) (family): 173, 174 Langenmantel ‘of the R’ (vom R) (family): 174, 175, 183 Leeuwarden: 215 (n. 45) Leiden: 215, 217, 223 Leuven: 149 Liber albus (London): 105 Libri di ricordanze: 13, 18 Liège: 89, 102 Lille: 103, 104 (n. 22), 108, 115–36 (passim) Lincoln: 73 Little Domesday Book of Ipswich: 70 (n. 29) Liutfried (family): 182 Lodewijk van Schore: 133 London: 9, 10, 10 (n. 11), 11, 18, 18 (n. 46), 65–66, 72, 79, 105 London chronicles: 65–66, 72, 79 Louis of Luxembourg, count of Saint Pol: 122, 127 Louis of Gruuthuse: 143, 144 Louis XI, King of France: 99–100, 102, 106, 107, 122 (n. 31), 133 Louvain: see Leuven Lübeck: 187, 188 Ludwich Kilchmann: 35 (n. 53) Lydgate: 72 Magdeburger Schöppenchronik: 48

Magister Berlinger: 40 Maire of Bristowe is Kalendar: 15, 22, 66, 72, 73, 75, 76–78, 105 Mangmeister (family): 181 Margaret of Austria, Governess of the Low Countries: 118, 120 Margaret of York: 140, 156 Marquain: 108 Martin Bucer: 213 Martin Luther: 213 Mary of Burgundy: 102, 106–07, 109–10, 118–19, 139, 142, 143, 145–46, 154 Mathieu Grenet: 102 Matthew Paris: 77 Matthias von Neuenburg: 52–53 (n. 24) Maximilian of Austria: 82, 120, 130, 137–56 (passim) Mechelen: 8, 21, 139–40, 141, 148–55, 156, 215 (n. 45), 216 Mechelen A chronicle: 149–55 Mechelen B chronicle: 149, 151–55 Mehmed II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire: 54 (n. 34) Mémoires [of Philippe de Commynes]: see Philippe de Commynes Memorieboeken (Ghent; also: ‘memory books’, ‘memorial books’): 12, 15 (n. 32), 18, 22 (n. 59), 22, 64, 67, 74, 82, 85–86, 91–92, 129, 135, 139 (n. 11) Memorieregisters (Ypres): 84–88, 91–92 Milan: 9, 79 (n. 62) Miner (family): 183, 184 Montlhéry (Battle of ): 100 Montpellier: 10, 17 Monumenta Germaniae Historica: 11 Mülich (family): 179 Naarden: 216 Nancy: 100, 154 Neuss (Siege of, in 1474): 154 Nicolaas Steylaert: 151–52 Nicolas Despars: 147

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Nicopolis: 87 Nieuwpoort: 215 (n. 45) Niklaus Gerung genannt Blauenstein: 35 (n. 56) Nikolaus Meyer zum Pfeil: 39 Nördlinger (family): 173, 174, 175, 177 Norfolk: 75 Northumberland: 214–15 Norwich: 66, 214, 223 Nostradamus: 210 Nuremberg: 23, 30, 31 (n. 23), 33, 39 Offenburgische Familienchronik: 36 (n. 61) Olivier van Dixmude: 66, 74, 81–83, 86, 87–89, 91, 92 Oudenaarde: 99, 215, 221 Overijssel: see Oversticht Oversticht (present-day Overijssel and Drenthe): 188, 198, 199, 201–02, 204 Paris: 13, 16, 21 Paul Eber: 212 Pauwels van Dixmude (d. 1473): 90–91, 93 Pauwels van Dixmude (d. 1508): 89 Peter Hendriks: 192 Peter van Os: 18, 134, 150 (n. 65) Peterman Etterlin: 41–42, 44, 53 Petit Thalamus (Montpellier): 10, 17 Petrus Datheen: 206 (n. 5), 210, 211, 212, 222–23 Peutinger (family): 181 Pfister (family): 181 Philip II, King of Spain: 147, 206, 219 Philip of Burgundy, Prince-bishop of Utrecht (1464–1524): 198, 199, 203 Philip the Fair, Duke of Burgundy: 119, 133, 139, 146, 155 Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy: 99, 115, 118, 119, 121, 123, 125, 128 Philippe de Commynes: 132 Pieter Catoir: 208, 209 Pieter Van Coppenhole: 118 Pieter van de Letewe: 82–83, 85 (n. 18), 86, 87–89, 94, 139 (n. 11)

Portner (family): 182 Portugal: 187 Rader (family): 183, 185 Ratsbücher: see Stadtbücher Rehlinger (family): 173, 174, 175, 183 Reinier Boghermann van Dokkum: 190, 193, 194 Rem (family); 177 René II, duke of Lorraine: 154 Richard Neville, Count of Warwick: 129 Riederer (family): 182 Riedler (family): 173, 174, 175 Robert Ricart: 73, 76–78 Roermond: 216 Rombout van den Riele: 151–52 Rome: 201, 212, 214 Rötteler Chronik: 56 Rotterdam: 216 Rudolf III, Markgrave of HachbergSausenberg: see Family chronicle of Rudolf III. von Hachberg-Sausenberg Rudolf (family): 177, 183 Rudolf van Diepholt, Bishop-elect of Utrecht: 191, 192 Rudolf von Ems: 56 Ryffische Familiengeschichte: 36 (n. 61) ’s-Hertogenbosch: 18, 134, 150 Sächsische Weltchronik: 35, 55–57 Saint Amand: 110 Saint Helena: 75 Sandwich: 73 Sandwich Custumal: 71 Schlettstadt (Sélestat): 42 Schreg (family): 183, 184 Shrewsbury: 66 Sigismund Gossembrot: 163, 180 Sigismund Meisterlin: 159, 164, 173 Sluis: 143, Sorbonne (University): 132 Spain: 206, 215–16, 219, 221 Stadtbücher: 12, 18, 71, 86, 134–35 Steenwijk: 200 Stolzhirsch (family): 182, 183

in dex of p laces, proper na mes a nd titles

Strasbourg: 9, 16, 27, 42, 47–61 (passim) Swiss Confederation: 8, 9, 10, 12, 17, 24, 27, 28, 35, 39, 40–42, 44–45, 63, 212 Switzerland: see Swiss Confederation Topography of Bristol: 77–78 Tournai: 8, 12, 20, 97–114 passim Trent (Council of ): 219 Trésorier de philosophie naturelle. Des pierres précieuses: 89 Utrecht, Prince-Bishopric of: 187–204 (passim) Ulrich Zwingli: 212, 213 University of Basel: 54 Valenciennes: 99 Valerius Anshelm: 27 Virgil (Pope): 214 Vittel (family): 181 Vlaemsche cronicque van de beghinsele van de lande van Vlaender ende andere: 90 Vögelin (family): 177, 183 Welser (family): 173, 174, 177

Weltchronik: see Rudolf von Ems Westmorland: 215 Wetteren: 128 Willem Vorsterman: 143 (n. 27), 147 William Asshebourne: 74 William Asshebourne’s book: 74 William of Orange: 216 William Reyne: 75 William the Conqueror, King of England, Duke of Normandy: 72 William Worcestre: 77 Winchester: see Black Book of Winchester Wittenberg: 212 Yarmouth: 66, 77 (n. 59) York: 73, 77 Ypres: 8, 12, 18, 20, 64, 66–67, 74, 81–94 (passim), 139, 141, 146 Zeeland: 117 Zurich: 57, 212 Zweder van Culemborg: 191 Zwolle: 188, 190, 198, 200

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