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This article examines the knightly population of Brabant around the middle of the fourteenth century. Recent historiography on the nobility of the Burgundian Low Countries treats knighthood as simply one of the traits of the nobility. However, this article argues that in fourteenth-century Brabant, the knights can be considered a distinct estate, while the nobility as such was not similarly visible. A summons of the year 1356 provides the research population, and the focus is on two Brabantine districts: Antwerp and ’s-Hertogenbosch. Through a prosopography, the knights are compared on the basis of lordship, office-holding, and military activity. It thus becomes clear that none of these elements on their own were the decisive characteristic of the Brabantine knightly estate. Rather, juridical authority, both contained in lordship and in certain offices, was the most common denominator.
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