| The project s central aim is to examine the changes that took place with regard to the position of the nobility high, average and low in the Burgundian-Habsburg Netherlands, in the context of the process of state formation. We will concentrate on the Burgundian-Habsburg core territories, in the south (Flanders, Brabant, Hainault) as well as in the north (Holland, Zeeland), in the period between 1425 and 1525. We shall examine the problems from a double perspective; in the first place that of the prince or state. Secondly, developments will be examined from the perspective of the noble family. As it is impossible to study the entire group of nobles in a period of a hundred years, we concentrate on some cross-sections of the noble society in some specific years: the first around 1425, shortly before the integration of Brabant, Holland-Zeeland and Hainault into the Burgundian state; the second around 1475 coinciding with Charles the Bold s attempts to a systematic and rigid application of the system of feudal services, which resulted in a whole series of feudal registers; the third around 1525, during the regency of Margaret of Austria, just before the integration of Utrecht, Guelders and Friesland. A systematic comparison of these three populations should enable us to draw conclusions on patterns and changes, on regional differences and structural developments in the Burgundian-Habsburg period. The (dis-) connections between the cross-sections can be established relatively easily by genealogical research. In Leiden we have a team of four investigators working on this project. Antheun Janse is working on the nobility of Holland, Arie van Steensel on Zeeland, Veronique Flammang on Hainault and Mario Damen will focus on the nobility of Brabant. We have close contacts with Frederik Buylaert in Ghent who is working on the nobility of Flanders. We will try to collect all relevant data in a relational database in MS-Access which will be published on the internet when the project is finished. Our data will shed new light on the grey-area between nobility and urban patriciate and the complexity of their relationship. This may be helpful to historians of art and literature, who are interested in the social context of cultural phenomena. The simple contradiction between noble and bourgeois (burgerlijk) will certainly be replaced by a more complex and sophisticated model. |
