Noblemen in an urbanised society: Zeeland and its nobility in the late Middle Ages

Steensel, Arie van

doi:10.1080/13044184.2011.646743

Cited by 5 publications

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“…Less than a quarter of the nobles in late-medieval Zeeland were actually active in state service, making it unlikely that state mechanisms of succession in office, rank, or political rights affected conceptions of kinship among the nobility. 91 Some evidence does point toward a greater emphasis on ancestry by noble families in the course of the sixteenth century, particularly among the lower echelons of the nobility, as ways of representing the lineage and creating a dynastic identity by high-noble families trickled down.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kinship, Property, and Identity

Steensel

2012

Journal of Family History

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The practices of marriage and inheritance and the representation of kinship among the medieval nobility are often studied separately, despite the argument that changes in conceptions of kinship accompanied the evolution of family structures, property transmission systems, and political organization. This article combines the practical and ideological aspects of kinship by analyzing its meaning for the nobility in late-medieval Zeeland. It demonstrates that the variety in power, wealth, and status among the noble families resulted in different reproductive strategies according to their standing and objectives. Regional institutions and property structures had a great impact on aristocratic family strategies in Zeeland, but did not result in different family structures or conceptions of lineage compared to the surrounding principalities.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kinship, Property, and Identity

Steensel

2012

Journal of Family History

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The transformation of an urban political elite: oligarchy and aristocracy in sixteenth-century Ghent

Baguet

2019

Urban History

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The composition of the political elites in sixteenth-century Ghent, one of the political and economic centres of the county of Flanders, changed from a relatively open elite group that included representatives from the craft guilds into a compact, aristocratic class. This article analyses the reasons for this transformation. First, the number of office-holders in the city council declined and power was increasingly concentrated in the hands of a smaller political elite because of interventions in the urban political framework by the Habsburg authorities in the wake of a fiscal rebellion (1537–40) and a Calvinist takeover of power (1578–84). Secondly, the once dominant position of the craft guilds on Ghent's two benches of aldermen was weakened by institutional reforms, a Catholic backlash against Calvinism and an economic recession. Thirdly, the growing wealth gap between rulers and the ruled, coupled with an influx of noblemen into Ghent City Council, gave urban politics a more aristocratic character. Consequently, a series of interconnected changes gave rise to a trend towards oligarchy and aristocracy on the city's benches of aldermen.

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

Steensel

2014

History Compass

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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.

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Noblemen in an urbanised society: Zeeland and its nobility in the late Middle Ages

Cited by 5 publications

References 9 publications

Kinship, Property, and Identity

Kinship, Property, and Identity

The transformation of an urban political elite: oligarchy and aristocracy in sixteenth-century Ghent

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

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