Op 21 januari 1539 trok Henrick Claus, inwoner van het Kempische dorpje Gierle en vader van 4 kinderen naar de schepenbank van zijn dorp. Niet om zijn ambt als schepen uit te oefenen -wat hij maar liefst 28 jaar lang deed, maar om beroep te doen op de bevoegdheid van de schepenbank op het vlak van willige rechtspraak. Hij trad namelijk op als crediteur bij een rentevestiging, waarbij zijn dorpsgenoot Gheerd Versant beloofde hem een jaarlijkse rente van 2 karolus gulden terug te betalen. Op 9 september 1545 deed hij hetzelfde, deze keer met Eloy Jacops als debiteur en een rentebedrag van 30 stuivers. Diezelfde Eloy Jacops zien we ook nog een keer voor de schepenbank verschijnen op 30 juni 1552, bij de verkoop van een stuk weiland aan Henrick Proest. Als dorpsschepen met jarenlange ervaring behoorde Henrick Claus zonder twijfel tot de elite van zijn dorp. Jaarlijks bekrachtigden hij en zijn collega-schepenen meerdere land-en krediettransacties, die inzake formele juridische kenmerken ogenschijnlijk weinig verschilden van * Deze bijdrage kwam tot stand dankzij het fwo -onderzoeksproject 'Haantjesgedrag'. Ik dank Tim Soens, Erik Thoen en Bas van Bavel voor hun kritische bemerkingen.

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Abstract‘Vulnerability’ and ‘resilience’ have recently become hot topics in historiography. The main focus is on systemic vulnerability: the reasons why certain societies were better able to overcome crisis. In this article I want to address another type of vulnerability – inspired by the insights of Wisner and Blaikie: social vulnerability, and the differentiated impact of crisis on different social groups. Based on a unique corpus of sources – the grain censuses drafted during the grain crisis of 1556/57 – and a reconstruction of household budgets, I will reconstruct vulnerable groups, the root causes behind their vulnerability, and their coping mechanisms. By doing this I will show how systemic resilience could go hand-in-hand with vulnerable people, thus adding more depth to a growing research strand.

In historiography, the functioning of poor relief has often been explained by focussing on a single prime mover, be it elite ambition to control labour (cfr. Lis & Soly), or the need for social groups to protect themselves because of growing urban anonymity (cfr. Lynch). Recently however, several researchers suggested that the functioning and extent of relief were characterised by outspoken regional differences. In this article we want to further explore this suggestion by using the potential of the Low Countries' countryside as an ideal laboratory to test the impact of regionally diverging social structures on the extent and functioning of relief. Not only did all its communities share the same relief institution, the poor table, it was furthermore characterised by the presence of all types of societies: from very commercial (coastal Flanders), over proto-industrial (inland Flanders), to communally organised (Campine area). By analysing poor table accounts for all three regions we aim to illustrate how the extent of relief was determined by the distribution of power and the level of social homogeneity within a given region.

Metropolis and Hinterland? A Comment on the Role of Rural Economy and Society in the Urban Heart of the Medieval Low Countries 1 tim soens, eline van onacker and kristof dombrecht Urbanity was a distinguishing feature of the medieval Low Countries, but even in its most urbanised core a majority of the population continued to live outside the city walls. In his new and encompassing synthesis of the history of the Low Countries in the later Middle Ages, Wim Blockmans emphasises the fundamental intertwining of urban and rural societies in this region, but also the existing historiographical gap between urban and rural historians. This contribution pleads for a reconsideration of the impact of urbanisation and urbanity on rural society as a whole, exemplified for instance, by the role of urban demand as a driving force in the rural economy or by the spread of an 'urban-modelled' civic life beyond the city walls. Although every village community was in one way or another connected to the urban world, villages were not entirely shaped by the latter and striking regional differences in both economic development, social cohesion and political organisation persisted well beyond the medieval period. In order to explain these differences the endogenous dynamics of rural societies have to be taken into account. Introduction: the urban shadow With his recent book, Metropolen aan de Noordzee, Wim Blockmans truly has created a monument for the urban society of the Low Countries in the later Middle Ages. According to Blockmans, 'urbanity' became the dominant feature of this region. It was urban, merchant capitalism that steered its economy, always looking for higher profits and favourable market conditions.