Tam Maiores quam Minores: Craftsmen, Merchants, and Burghers in Thirteenth-Century Bruges

From the first quarter of the thirteenth century onwards, Bruges was the leading commercial centre of Flanders. The simultaneous expansion of the city and its population increased social polarisation and created opportunities for the nouveaux riches to accumulate capital and penetrate higher social ranks. Contemporary sources divide urban society into maiores and minores or into burgenses and communitas. This terminology is often difficult to interpret. Through a prosopographical approach to the aldermen, burghers, merchants, and craftsmen of thirteenth-century Bruges, this article tries to overcome both the problem of unstable terminology for urban groups and the scarcity of sources in order to provide a clearer picture of the urban elites in a time of profound transformations.