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Staging the Court of Burgundy
In the course of the fifteenth century, the reputation of the Burgundian court rose to an unprecedented level, catapulted forward by ever growing territorial ambitions and accumulation of wealth. This reached a climax during the reign of Charles the Bold (1433-1477), the living embodiment of the pomp and pageantry of the Burgundian court and a generous patron of the fine arts. Rather than focusing on a single domain, this volume aims to shed light on Burgundian court culture as an organic whole, between the start of the reign of Philip the Good (1419) and the death of Mary of Burgundy (1482). It is intended to provide a forum for new research from the fields of History, History of Art, Literature and Musicology. With contributions (among others) from Wim Blockmans, Herman Brinkman, Barbara Haggh, Andrea Berlin, James Bloom, Till-Holger Borchert, Andrew Brown, Hendrik Callewier, Anna Campbell, Mario Damen, Sonja Duennebeil, Jonas Goossenaerts, Bieke Hillewaert, Andrew Hamilton, Eva Helfenstein, Jesse Hurlbut, Sophie Jolivet, Sascha Kohl, Sherry Lindquist, Jana Lucas, Samuel Mareel, Elizabeth J. Moodey, Klaus Oschema, Kathryn Rudy, Emily Snow, Olga Vassilieva-Codognet, Hanno Wijsman.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 2000
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July 6, 2021Long ago and far away, shortly after the death of Charles the Bold, when I was a humble student, the Burgundians were one of the special subjects available for those taking their final year in history . I was tempted to opt for that course but was dissuaded by a colleague's argument that the source material was not only in medieval French but was a particularly fiendish variety of it. Since I am famously consistently logical I instead took the option of the Crusades, the Mongols and the middle-east despite knowing neither Latin nor Arabic or any relevant language. Anyhow I was left with a vague uneasy feeling of unfinished Burgundian business, so I gladly bit into Bart van Loo's book and then this one.
It is a textbook, academic introduction to the subject and in contrast to De Bourgondiërs. Aartsvaders van de Lage Landen I found this one clear, uncluttered, and illuminating. It seems to me that as a non-expert in the subject if you really are going to read Bart van Loo's book it would help to read something like this in parallel.
The Burgundians, I get the feeling, exist in a nostalgic twilight, while they built up a lordship over the low countries of roughly the modern Benelux area, legally it was the creation of the Hapsburg Charles V, great grandson of the last Burgundian Duke, Charles the Bold. And the prosperous years that the region enjoyed before the beginning of the eighty years war presided over by that Charles' aunt and then his sister as regents probably have imparted a happy glow over the entire era which was frequently troubled by conflicts interspersed with periods of exhausted peace necessary for the combatants to recover before the next round began.
At the end of this book the authors describe the regions of the Burgundian lands as follows; there were 17 provinces which can be divided into 4 groups: Flanders, Brabant, Holland, and Zealand, which were densely populated, urbanised, commercialised, and industrialised. There traditions of political autonomy were the strongest. Artois and Henegouwen which were dominated by nobility and clergy. Gelderland, Groningen, and Overijssel, were the most recently absorbed and were characterised by independent towns. Namur and Luxembourg were still feudal.
To get to that point the authors have written eight chapters and an epilogue covering the years 1363 to 153oish. Each chapter covers a chronological period and is divided into subsections which mostly deal with political history but some focus on economic or social history or the power structures. There is a little on the cultural history of the region, while the ecclesiastical side I felt was barely mentioned.
It is clear that any ideas of centralisation have to be understood relatively in terms of a focus of attention around the person of the grand Duke, in a region which before the Burgundians was not unified and under them was only in the process of developing some kind of collective identity although as the author's division of the territories into four blocks shows, the lands ruled over by the Burgundians were very different from each other.
The text is supported by only one family tree, which feels a bit mean, many black and white reproductions of illustrations from Burgundian books of hours etc and a couple of tables, the reader needs to have their own mental map of the territory.
The authors picture is of a dynamic landscape, like a Brueghel painting, teeming with activity, migrants moving across the plains into the cities, energising their economies, ships bringing in barrels of north sea herring or Baltic rye to fed those people, foreign merchants from Italy active in Bruges then in Antwerp as bankers, also the occasional painter or administrator, political machinations and rebellions, and on the political level a slow shift out of the gravitational pull of France.
I might move to read The Waning of the Middle Ages again, I suppose the autumn might be the most appropriate time for it, or see what other Burgundian books I can find, perhaps looking more at the Northern Renaissance or the social history.
It is a textbook, academic introduction to the subject and in contrast to De Bourgondiërs. Aartsvaders van de Lage Landen I found this one clear, uncluttered, and illuminating. It seems to me that as a non-expert in the subject if you really are going to read Bart van Loo's book it would help to read something like this in parallel.
The Burgundians, I get the feeling, exist in a nostalgic twilight, while they built up a lordship over the low countries of roughly the modern Benelux area, legally it was the creation of the Hapsburg Charles V, great grandson of the last Burgundian Duke, Charles the Bold. And the prosperous years that the region enjoyed before the beginning of the eighty years war presided over by that Charles' aunt and then his sister as regents probably have imparted a happy glow over the entire era which was frequently troubled by conflicts interspersed with periods of exhausted peace necessary for the combatants to recover before the next round began.
At the end of this book the authors describe the regions of the Burgundian lands as follows; there were 17 provinces which can be divided into 4 groups: Flanders, Brabant, Holland, and Zealand, which were densely populated, urbanised, commercialised, and industrialised. There traditions of political autonomy were the strongest. Artois and Henegouwen which were dominated by nobility and clergy. Gelderland, Groningen, and Overijssel, were the most recently absorbed and were characterised by independent towns. Namur and Luxembourg were still feudal.
To get to that point the authors have written eight chapters and an epilogue covering the years 1363 to 153oish. Each chapter covers a chronological period and is divided into subsections which mostly deal with political history but some focus on economic or social history or the power structures. There is a little on the cultural history of the region, while the ecclesiastical side I felt was barely mentioned.
It is clear that any ideas of centralisation have to be understood relatively in terms of a focus of attention around the person of the grand Duke, in a region which before the Burgundians was not unified and under them was only in the process of developing some kind of collective identity although as the author's division of the territories into four blocks shows, the lands ruled over by the Burgundians were very different from each other.
The text is supported by only one family tree, which feels a bit mean, many black and white reproductions of illustrations from Burgundian books of hours etc and a couple of tables, the reader needs to have their own mental map of the territory.
The authors picture is of a dynamic landscape, like a Brueghel painting, teeming with activity, migrants moving across the plains into the cities, energising their economies, ships bringing in barrels of north sea herring or Baltic rye to fed those people, foreign merchants from Italy active in Bruges then in Antwerp as bankers, also the occasional painter or administrator, political machinations and rebellions, and on the political level a slow shift out of the gravitational pull of France.
I might move to read The Waning of the Middle Ages again, I suppose the autumn might be the most appropriate time for it, or see what other Burgundian books I can find, perhaps looking more at the Northern Renaissance or the social history.
September 28, 2024
Goed leesbaar, maar niet helemaal afgewerkt product; te weinig synthese en vooral systematiek (bijv. cultuur op een drafje; economie soms apart hoofdstuk, soms verwerkt). Epiloog is eerder een vooruitblik dan samenvatting.
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