Urban history (c. 500-1500)

Adriaan Verhulst's The Rise of Cities in North-West Europe (1999) is the last comprehensive work written by a single author on the urban genesis and spatial developments of cities in the medieval Low Countries. Since then monographs specialised studies and articles have been published on various cities and towns while urban archaeologists have carried out numerous excavations. Much new knowledge has been gained yet many gaps and the need for comparative overviews remain.Twenty-five years after Verhulst’s synthesis The Rise of Cities Revisited takes a fresh look at the origins and developments of cities and towns in the Low Countries between the tenth and the sixteenth centuries critically assesses progress made in scholarship and outlines future directions for research. The chapters of the book are written by senior and junior specialists from various fields including medieval history historical geography economic history archaeology and building history. The Rise of Cities Revisited presents a state of the art and provides scholars with tools to study this complex subject in future.

Die Beschäftigung mit der Memoria dem mittelalterlichen Totengedenken zieht sich leitmotivisch durch die Forschungstätigkeit von Thomas Schilp 19. Oktober 1953 – 28. September 2019). Angeregt durch die Arbeiten von Otto Gerhard Oexle zur mittelalterlichen Erinnerungskultur erschloss er mit seiner ihn auszeichnenden Sorgfalt im historischen Sehen und Denken sowie in der präzisen und gleichzeitig interdisziplinären Analyse der uellen immer weitere Dimensionen dieses alle sozialen Schichten und alle Bereiche des täglichen Lebens umfassenden Phänomens. Dabei war für ihn von zentraler Bedeutung – wie auch in diesem Band – die Art und Weise wie die Konstituierung unterschiedlichster gesellschaftlicher Gruppen zur Gewährleistung des Totengedenkens erfolgte. Seine Forschungen verdeutlichen auf verschiedenen sich durchdringenden Ebenen eine von heutigen Denkformen unterschiedene Auffassung gesellschaftlichen Lebens. Dabei rücken die neue Leseart von Bildern die Interpretation von Tönen und Klängen (wie beispielsweise Schlag und Geläute von Glocken) als akustische Zeichen sowie ephemere Erscheinungen wie etwa die mittelalterlichen Lichtinszenierungen in Kirchen immer stärker in den Blickpunkt seiner Ausführungen. Thomas Schilps früher Tod ermöglichte es ihm nicht mehr die begonnene umfassende Monographie zum Thema Stadt und Memoria fertig zu stellen. Dieser Band vereint eine Auswahl von Aufsätzen welche die Dimensionen seiner intensiven Beschäftigung mit Formen mittelalterlichen Denkens und Handelns reflektieren.

Textile industries were one of the driving forces of the urbanisation process in medieval Northwest Europe and nowhere was their impact so profound as in Flanders where almost all larger and smaller cities were involved in manufacturing woollens from the 12th to the 16th century. Ypres the third city in the county was perhaps the most important concentration of industrial labour and capital in this period. In their heyday in the 13th and 14th centuries Ypres woollens were exported all over Europe and Ypres entrepreneurs and textile workers were able to adapt in very flexible ways to changes in demand. This book investigates not only what the impact of cloth manufacture was on urban society it also tries to unravel the social mechanisms of industrial development in late medieval cities. It focuses on social inequalities and on the often difficult relationship between the various stakeholders in the urban cloth industry: merchants entrepreneurs guild masters and skilled and unskilled workers. Through the analysis work practices wage levels investment strategies gender issues and political aspirations it unravels how urban industries in the pre-industrial era shaped social relations in the city how they moulded the urban fabric.

Ceccholo making a claim against Nello for the payment of unpaid land rent. Jacopo Giovanni and Turi appealing for an exemption from tax. The long queue of claimants that formed in front of the communal palace was an everyday scene in fourteenth century Lucca. What is remarkable is the enormous ubiquity of such claims. In this Tuscan city of only twenty thousand people an average of ten thousand claims were filed at the civil court each year. Why did local residents submit claims to the commune in such numbers? And what effect did this daily accumulation have on the development of the commune?

In the fourteenth century Italian communes the established public authorities that governed the populace underwent a shift toward becoming oligarchic regimes. The communes’ character as a form of government in which power was held ‘in common’ by ‘the public’ seemed be on the verge of disappearing. At this time political leaders and judicial magistrates began to rely on their own discretion when rendering their decisions a practice that was recognized as legitimate even when such decisions deviated from positive law. By the beginning of the fifteenth century this shift in the underlying logic of the legitimacy of rulings became entrenched in the jural and political character of the commune portending the advent of the modern era. Based on the archival records from law courts and councils this book elucidates the process of the emergence and shaping of a new form of justice and the transformation of the commune by focusing on everyday practices that unfolded in the spheres of civil and criminal justice by inhabitants who raised claims and the governors who heard them.

The boundaries between sacred and secular in the late Middle Ages traditionally perceived as separate domains are nowadays perceived as porous or non-existent. This collection on religious connectivity explores a new approach to religious culture in the late Middle Ages. In assessing the porosity of the domains of sacred and secular and of religious and lay the contributors to this collection investigate processes of transfer of religious knowledge literature and artefacts and the people involved.

Religious connectivity describes people in networks. This concept emphasises dynamics and processes rather than stability and focuses on all persons involved in transfer and appropriation not just the producers. It is therefore a fruitful concept by which to explore medieval society and the continuum of sacred and secular. By using the lens of religious connectivity the authors of this collection shed new light on religious activities and religious culture in late medieval urban communities.

Plus d’un millier de concours de tir sont organisés aux xv e et xvi e siècles dans le sud du Saint-Empire. Comme pour les Jeux olympiques modernes villes libres et résidences des princes rivalisent lors de compétitions d’arbalète et d’arquebuse. À travers des performances sportives des rituels symboliques des stratégies de communication la constitution de délégations aux couleurs de chaque ville ainsi que des descriptions poétiques c’est la hiérarchie des villes allemandes et suisses ainsi que leur influence dans les réseaux régionaux ou confessionnels qui sont réaffirmées. Cet ouvrage contribue à la fois à l’histoire des villes de l’espace germanophone et à l’histoire des sports avant la modernité.

Urban hierarchy means a new study approach that focuses on the reciprocal concurrence of relationships between urban centers their complementarity opposition support and ongoing collaboration. The goal is to go beyond the single analysis of a city and focus on the interaction between towns and cities and to distinguish their dynamics and the degree of specialization within a political framework. The final objective is to provide a comprehensive historical analysis as urban history requires open to the advantages of interdisciplinarity and the contributions of the international researchers that will take part in the session. The processes of urban hierarchization are not only vital for observing the dynamics of cities but also for studying in depth the response capabilities of the urban systems in the face of new challenges and stimuli. These aspects of the historical analysis of cities are still quite unexplored and therefore they will receive a great deal of attention in the book. The initial regional frameworks will not exclude small towns and rural centers since even though they may look less potentially relevant they might display greater specific development. Thanks to a renewed methodology and special attention to the empirical basis it is possible to improve our knowledge of the urban systems of European regions at the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Early Modern Era shedding light on some aspects of the medieval past that will also influence other scientific areas of humanities.

This volume is about literacy in the medieval towns of Denmark Norway Sweden and Finland and aims to understand to what extent these medieval urban societies constituted a driving force in the development of literacy in Nordic societies generally.

As in other parts of Europe two languages - Latin and the vernacular - were in use. However the Nordic area is also characterised by its use of the runic alphabet and thus two writing systems were also in use. Another characteristic of the North is its comparatively weak urbanization especially in Finland Sweden and Norway.

Literacy and the uses of writing in medieval towns of the North is approached from various angles of research including history archaeology philology and runology. The contributions cover topics related to urban literacy that include both case studies and general surveys of the dissemination of writing all from a Northern perspective. The thematic chapters all present new sources and approaches that offer a new dimension both to the study of medieval urban literacy and also to Scandinavian studies.

Gli scritti di Stefano Gasparri hanno contribuito in modo fondamentale allo sviluppo della medievistica in Italia ed Europa. La sua capacità di leggere le fonti con uno sguardo sempre nuovo e attento ci ha offerto originali interpretazioni degli intricati secoli medievali. Argomenti di rilevanza internazionale come la storia sociale culturale e politica italiana ed europea le origini di Venezia o le molteplici identità etniche delle gentes altomedievali sono sempre stati affrontati con fresca criticità e avvalendosi di discipline quali la paleografia l’epigrafia o l’archeologia.

Social inequality is one of the most pressing global challenges at the start of the 21st century. Meanwhile across the globe at least half of the world’s population lives in urban agglomerations and urbanisation is still expanding. This book engages with the complex interplay between urbanisation and inequality. In doing so it concentrates on the Low Countries one of the oldest and most urbanised societies of Europe. It questions whether the historic poly-nuclear and decentralised urban system of the Low Countries contributed to specific outcomes in social inequality. In doing so the authors look beyond the most commonly used perspective of economic inequality. They instead expand our knowledge by exploring social inequality from a multidimensional perspective. This book includes essays and case-studies on cultural inequalities the relationship between social and consumption inequality the politics of (in)equality the impact of shocks and crises as well as the complex social relationships across the urban network and between town and countryside.