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The Rule of Law in Cities of the Medieval Low Countries: Community-Building in Context
Hague Journal on the Rule of Law
Urban communities were established in the twelfth and thirteenth century with the aid of legal concepts that comprised early notions of the rule of law. Cities were envisaged as “communes”, which referred to popular sovereignty. In a first period, urban citizenship was flexible and closely related to place of residence. From around 1220 this model came under increasing pressure. In order to safeguard the interests of the most affluent citizens, large guilds were established. Status determined rights, and there were significant inequalities even among citizens. Ideas of democratic democracy and the civic virtues of citizenship were fostering reforms after 1250. Existing urban governments were expanded to include councils and burgomasters. A framework of checks and balances developed because the commune, now considered as the body of citizens and residents, was seen as a force coexisting with metropolitan institutions. The medieval examples show that, in response to economic and even ...
REPREZENTACE A PRAXE SOCIÁLNÍ KONTROLY V POZDNĚ STŘEDOVĚKÝCH MĚSTECH (Representation and Practice of Social Control in Late Medieval Cities), 2023
Monograph: The book opens a little-explored topic in Czech historiography: the beginnings of institutionalized social control in late medieval towns. The presented interpretation of urban riots in the 15th and 16th centuries combines the approaches of modern urban historiography with extensive archival heuristics. A fundamental transformation of political communication is characterized in the book. The authors have formulated a hypothesis about a change in the policy of town councils. The aldermen began to replace negotiating a compromise with major guilds by controlling the entire town space. The assembled authors describe this change from different points of view, including the tools that town councils used for overall control. The transformations in Bohemian towns are interpreted as part of processes acting all over Europe, and on the contrary, the thesis about the difference in the development of the domestic environment as a result of Hussitism is weakened.
The strong urban growth of cities in western Europe between approximately 1000 and 1300 C.E. resulted from important migrations. These were movements primarily from the countryside into nearby new population concentrations, but probably also from regions further away. Historians have paid little attention to the process of social integration which must have taken place in these rapidly growing urban communities. However, the lifestyle experienced by those in small rural communities, where various types of domain laws bonded serfs, differed fundamentally from that in the new havens of freedom. The character of urban economic activity made people less dependent on natural conditions and more on social constraints, as will be explored below. People coming from various backgrounds had to adapt to new types of work and community life. Habitation was more dense, the size of the community larger and levels of social interaction much higher although less personal. Social positions and relations were rather fluid; new roles and behavioural standards had to be developed. Given the variety of social origins of the new town dwellers, and the rapid changes consequent upon the continuing expansion, the early cities must have been melting pots in which the limits of the newly acquired freedom were probed through processes of adaptation and conflict. New social structures emerged with new laws, new institutions and a new sense of community. As historians, we are best informed about the steps by which new relations became formalized. I would like to draw attention to the phase before institutionalization and legislation, during which more informal social structures must have prepared the paths towards new urban ways of life. In the very first stage, 'a particularized trust in persons of known attributes or affiliations' needed to be created, before the urban elites and the community as a whole could expect to be acknowledged by a form of generalized trust attributed to strangers with whom transactions were to be made. 1
Polity and Neighbourhood in Early Medieval Europe
Polity and Neighbourhood in Early Medieval Europe, 2019
One of the main goals of the research project that this volume derives from was to compare early medieval local communities’s operation both internally and with regard to their ‘worlds beyond’ in different European contexts. The second is to study the impact that supralocal powers and the state had upon the localities. Within that framework, a specific research has been carried out from the University of León on early medieval local communities in the Iberian North-West, with the aim to understanding how their economic functioning, their territoriality and their social structures were affected and modified by the overarching process of the emergence of the new kingdom of Asturias and its elites
2016
Date of receipt: 2 nd of July, 2014 Final date of acceptance: 8 th of October, 2015 abstract Seigneurial pressure, exerted on cities and towns and their municipal jurisdictions by the nobility, constituted one of the dominant traits of Castilian politics in the 15 th century. Notwithstanding the extent and intensity that this pressure might reach in general, few cities and towns were subjected to the (individual or coordinated) actions of important numbers of noblemen. This was the case of the city of Cuenca. This was one of the reasons explaining the relative success achieved by the city in fighting these agreesions. The presence of a significant number of noblemen, each of them seeking their own interest, lessened (relatively) their ability to depradate Cuenca's hinterland. This constriction (over the city and its jurisdiction) also influenced both elites and commoners to adopt a cooperative line of action. This way, Cuenca body politic laid out the key political traits of its communal political identity. These policies and marks of identity were observed throughout the years of civil war and, at least, until the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth I, when the pressure exerted by the nobility was reduced to a reasonable dimension. 1