The Medieval Low Countries

This article presents a combined compositional and typological analysis for a group of ninety Viking-Age mounts found in Walcheren, the Netherlands. This new analysis is supported by data gathered using Handheld X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometry (HHpXRF). The new data sheds light not only on the character of the technology available at the time, but also allows us to formulate a new hypothesis of their purpose and cultural associations within a Viking-Age, North Sea world. Similar mounts have been found in other coastal areas of the southern North Sea, but not in great numbers, suggesting that production was more likely to have been local. Their compositional and typological characteristics matched those of certain forms of Viking-Age equestrian gear, but the relatively small size of these mounts allowed for the possibility that these items were more likely used on personal equipment. Although a question over the exact dating remains, the styles suggest that close ties existed between the Frisian, Viking, and Anglo-Scandinavian worlds between the ninth and eleventh centuries. This expression of identity should be considered in a context of continued intensive relations between Frisians, Vikings, and Anglo-Saxons.

Following the death in 1276 of Louis, the oldest son of King Philip III of France, two sets of rumors were in circulation. One rumor held that the prince had been poisoned by the king’s second wife Mary of Brabant, or by someone from her retinue; the other claimed that God had taken the heir to the throne in retribution for the king’s ‘sins against nature’. First one and then both claims were attributed to the prophetic authority of Elizabeth of Spalbeek, a holy woman from the county of Loon. In four separate inquiries between September 1276 and January 1278, various representatives of the Capetian court traveled to the Low Countries to interrogate Elizabeth. This article offers short introductions to the career of Elizabeth of Spalbeek and to the political context of the French court, and then presents the first English translations of key records of the probes and the slightly later narrative sources that recount these events. These texts are fully annotated in order to facilitate future analysis by scholars and students of this curious case, still poorly understood, in which palace intrigue, fear of sexual deviance, and female prophecy intersected.

As a widow, Margaret of Burgundy (1374-1441), former Countess of Hainault, Holland, and Zeeland, owned an extensive dower, which provided her with a substantial income. She supported her daughter, Jacqueline of Bavaria, in her battles for power. Margaret compared her own independent position as a dowager to that of her late husband, the Count. Still, there were clearly limits to the independence of a princely widow. Male family members did not hesitate to use financial pressure against her in times of conflict.

The jardinets (« gardens » or literally « shrubberies ») are artistic compositions representing the county of Hainault, through its idealized political hierarchy. This recurrent and powerful armorial garden takes the form of texts, images or performances. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries at least, it constitutes a symbolical transposition of the mental image people from Hainault have of their own county: a balanced and peaceful society, standing by its prince. To historians, it constitutes a pattern perceivable through both iconography and text. This article explores two different interpretations of the jardinets, as a representation of a social space and as a policy prescription.

This paper examines the individual religious and charitable endowments of foreign merchants with the parish in the mercantile city Bruges. Previous research often assumed the foreign merchants relied exclusively on the different friaries in the city for their religious needs. The different nations owned a chapel at one of the friaries and organized collective masses and memorial services for their members. Contact with the parishes was therefore not needed as the nation functioned as a parish in many ways. And yet, some merchants from various nations chose a parish institution for their personal religious or charitable endowment. By comparing the different endowments made by merchants from the German Hanse, the Italian city states and the Spanish peninsula within one city, this paper investigates the different types of relationship between some merchants and the parish community. The Italian and Hanseatic merchants in the fifteenth century combined their identity as foreign merchant perfectly with a high level of interaction with the local community. In the sixteenth century, the Spanish endowments were part of the integration process whereby the foreign merchants from Castile slowly integrated into the local elite. The paper thus clearly shows that the status of foreign merchant did not prevent close contact with the parish community.

In two little-studied Middle Dutch texts, the authors present their readers with the distaff and the activities of spinning and cloth-making as a metaphor for Christ’s Passion, and, as such, as a meditative object and activity. These texts represent the ultimate conjunction of ora et labora, but their transmission suggests that the meditative practice was not limited to religious communities. This article explores these texts in their broader cultural and religious context as tools for meditation and expressions of (religious) power relations between men and women in the transitional age between the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period.

The St Isabella Fort was one of a chain of fortresses from which the Spanish army besieged the city of Ostend (Belgium) from 1601 until 1604. The site was excavated in 1990; however, the excavated finds have not previously been studied. The analysis of the ceramic assemblage, which represents a typo-chronological horizon for the region, provides an opportunity to revaluate the site. It allows a reinterpretation of the functions of the excavated structures (e.g., what was formerly interpreted as the fort’s kitchen is more likely a refectory) and gives insight into the consumption choices made by the soldiers and those accompanying them. As such, this article contributes to the wider debate on military life at the turn of the seventeenth century.

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