Honor, Vengeance, and Social Trouble

Peter Arnade, Walter Prevenier

Description

Among the more intriguing documentary sources from late medieval Europe are pardon letters-petitions sent by those condemned for serious crimes to monarchs and princes in France and the Low Countries in the hopes of receiving a full pardon. The fifteenth-century Burgundian Low Countries and duchy of Burgundy produced a large cache of these petitions, from both major cities (Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, and Dijon) and rural communities. In Honor, Vengeance, and Social Trouble, Peter Arnade and Walter Prevenier present the first study in English of these letters to explore and interrogate the boundaries between these sources' internal, discursive properties and the social world beyond the written text.Honor, Vengeance, and Social Trouble takes the reader out onto the streets and into the taverns, homes, and workplaces of the Burgundian territories, charting the most pressing social concerns of the day: everything from family disputes and vendettas to marital infidelity and property conflicts-and, more generally, the problems of public violence, abduction and rape, and the role of honor and revenge in adjudicating disputes. Arnade and Prevenier examine why the right to pardon was often enacted by the Burgundian dukes and how it came to compete with more traditional legal means of resolving disputes. In addition, they consider the pardon letter as a historical source, highlighting the limitations and pitfalls of relying on documents that are, by their very nature, narratives shaped by the petitioner to seek a favored outcome. The book also includes a detailed case study of a female actress turned prostitute.An example of microhistory at its best, Honor, Vengeance, and Social Trouble will challenge scholars while being accessible to students in courses on medieval and early modern Europe or on historiography.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Christian Church
• Middle Ages
• Historiography

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 04 juin 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780801455766
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

HONOR, VENGEANCE, AND SOCIAL TROUBLE

HONOR, VENGEANCE, AND SOCIAL TROUBLE

PARDON L E TT E RS I N T HE BURGUNDI AN LOW COUNT RI ES

P e t e r A r n a d e a n d W a lte r P r e v e n i e r

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS Ithaca and London

Cover illustration: Delivery of a pardon letter just before an execution. Courtesy of Bibl. Nationale, Paris, Ms fr. 17527, fol. 54.

Copyright © 2015 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2015 by Cornell University Press First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2015

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Arnade, Peter J., author.  Honor, vengeance, and social trouble : pardon letters in the Burgundian Low Countries/Peter Arnade and Walter Prevenier.  pages cm  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 9780801453465 (cloth : alk. paper)  ISBN 9780801479915 (pbk. : alk. paper)  1. Netherlands—History—House of Burgundy, 1384– 1477—Sources. 2. Benelux countries—History—To 1500—Sources. 3. Sociological jurisprudence—Benelux countries—History—To 1500—Sources. 4. Pardon— Benelux countries—History—To 1500—Sources. 5. Crime—Benelux countries—History—To 1500— Sources. I. Prevenier, Walter, author. II. Title.  DH175.A76 2015  364.6'3—dc23 2014030529

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Co nte nts

Acknowledgments vii List of Abbreviations ix

The Forgiving Prince: Pardons and Their Origins 1. Social Discord: Disputes, Vendettas, and Political Clients 2. Violence, Honor, and Sexuality 3. Marital Conflict 4. Actress, Wife, or Lover? Maria van der Hoeven Accused and Defended People and Their Stories

Bibliographical Note 231 Index 235

1

23 79 121

173 222

A c k n o w l e d g m e nt s

Much of this book is about networks—social, familial, and institutional—and about the tug of “vrienden en magen”— friends and family. So it is fitting that we acknowledge the academic and per sonal help and support we have received while researching and writing this book. We owe a great deal, first of all, to our collaboration itself as authors, the result of both a friendship and a scholarly commitment to the history of the Burgundian and early Habsburg Netherlands. Conversations and work sessions between us took place globally: from San Diego to Los Angeles, from Ghent to New York City and Princeton. Second, we are indebted to our institutions, which provided much needed academic support. For Peter Arnade, these are California State University San Marcos and most recently, the University of Hawai‘i at M¯anoa; for Walter Prevenier, they are the Uni versiteit Gent and its libraries, and also, as a visiting professor, the Universi ties of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles, and Columbia University. Peter Arnade additionally thanks the Renaissance Society of America and the American Philosophical Society for grantsinaid that provided crucial summer research support. The pardon letters themselves are housed at the Archives Départementales du Nord, Lille, where we have been welcomed repeatedly and allowed to take digital photographs. For permission to reproduce illustrations from their collections, we thank Willy Van de Vijver, archivist of the city of Mechelen; Clotilde Herbert, librarian of the Bibliothèque Municipale in Cambrai; and Hendrik Defoort, librarian of the Ghent University Library. We also thank Marc P. Anderson, rights and permissions manager of Cambridge University Press (New York), for the reuse of a map from a book published in 1986. Ad ditionally,research queries were cheerfully and helpfully answered by a number of scholars, including Tim Bisschops, Marc Boone, Marie BouhaïkGironès, Frederik Buylaert, Guy Dupont, Jelle Haemers, Katell Lavéant, Jelle Koop mans, John Marino, Jeroen Puttevils, Peter Stabel, and Maarten van Dyck. Earlier drafts of this book were greatly improved by the critical readings offered by Anne Lombard and Martha Howell, both of whom sharpened our

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prose, helped to clarify our arguments, and pushed us to pay close attention to matters of gender and family. Elizabeth Colwill offered extensive feedback and scholarly guidance that helped us to rethink the book’s focus. We thank the students at Columbia University (2011), the University of California Berkeley (2004) and Los Angeles (2008), and California State University San Marcos (2011) with whom we shared certain pardon letters and lively discus sions about them. We also had the opportunity to present our research in guest lectures in classes offered by Claude Gauvard and Elisabeth Crouzet Pavan in Paris and Tim Soens in Antwerp, and at many international semi nars and colloquia as well. Little did these fifteenthcentury supplicants for a pardon know they would have a global, cosmopolitan afterlife centuries later. The two anonymous readers for Cornell University offered much appreciated guidance in how to recast our book and strengthen both its structure and its arguments. We are indebted to the fine and invaluable help of our copyeditor, Gavin Lewis, and to Susan Specter, our talented produc tion editor. We also thank John G. Ackerman, the longserving director of Cornell University Press, for his support of our work. We dedicate this book to our friend Martha Howell, not only for her customary support and for her exacting eye for getting it right, but for something more important: years of friendship and scholarly excellence in the field of Low Country and early modern history. Without her help, our work would have been harder; without her friendship and generosity, we would be all the poorer.

ADN, Lille arr. ChampionCNN

cant. dépt. Lancien

PetitDutaillis

prov.

A b b r e v i at i o n s

Archives Départementales du Nord, Lille arrondissement Pierre Champion, ed.,Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles(Paris, 1928) canton département Eugénie Lancien, “Inventaire analytique manuscrit,” 2 vols. (unpublished inventory of holdings of ADN, Lille, 1927–28) Charles PetitDutaillis,Documents nouveaux sur les mœurs populaires et le droit de vengeance dans les PaysBas au XVe siècle(Paris, 1908) province

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