Beyond the Crisis of the Nobility. Recent Historiography on the Nobility in the Medieval Low Countries II

Abstract

The medieval Low Countries are not usually associated with nobility and knighthood, but historical research in the past decades has proven that they should be. This series of essays gives a historiographical overview of the recent literature on the nobility in the medieval Low Countries and links it with major international debates on the subject. The second of the three sections into which this survey is organised concerns the history of the nobility in the later Middle Ages, a period characterised by commercialisation, urbanisation and state formation. The intensity of these processes varied across the different principalities, but recent research suggests that, overall, the nobility showed great resilience to political and economic challenges and maintained its dominant position in late‐medieval society.