Inspiring Ideas. A Cross-Contextual Analysis of Political Thinking in Burgundian Flanders (1400-1520).

This dissertation finds out how political thinking inspired various social groups during negotiations on good governance in fifteenth-century Burgundian Flanders. By doing so, I question the overspecialisation of historiography. In recent years, scholarly perspectives on late medieval political thinking have persistently multiplied, which has resulted in an incredibly rich, dynamic, but also fragmented debate. Taking a difference stance, the general premise that underlines and guides the dissertation is that political thinking is best understood as a continuous conversation. Studying ideas in this way not only offers a more complete story but also reveals the many connections between the contexts, communities, source types and interlocutors of late medieval political thinking. To be precise, I study ideas on political communities, the reciprocal obligations of governors and subjects, the common good, power, justice and accountability. I do so across contexts and by means of divers sources that were drafted in, and around, the court of the Burgundian dukes, court rooms, town halls and the houses of craft guilds.

By means of this framework, the dissertation defends four major conclusions. First, I contend that the dukes, jurists, wealthy citizens, and craft guilds shared a frame of mind regarding good governance. Because this frame of mind was widely recognised throughout the fifteenth century, it helped to create expectations which were not entirely context bound. At the same time, social groups had the ability to voice, reshape, and enact ideas within context. Indeed, political ideas influenced how contemporaries thought about good governance over time and across varying contexts and were simultaneously invested with meaning by diverse groups in an inherently context-bound manner. Second, the dissertation illustrates how different points of view and similar ideas could - and did - go together in fifteenth-century Burgundian Flanders. This result relates to the third argument formulated throughout the dissertation. That is, the fact that dukes or craft guilds sometimes interpreted ideas in various, or even contrary ways, was one of the major strengths of political thinking. At no point did a multitude of meanings result in meaninglessness. Fourth, I assert that political thinking was a perpetual argument that did not reach an inevitable conclusion in the fifteenth century. A common thread throughout this dissertation is the ongoing debate over political power. Although the Burgundian dukes, jurists, urban elites, and craft guilds recognised similar expectations regarding good governance, they continuously debated the power and political competencies of diverse social groups. In new contexts, their arguments could take on different but not necessarily novel forms. Therefore, while the shared frame of mind regarding good governance remained in place throughout the fifteenth century, social groups’ ability to interpret ideas, their ongoing negotiations, and the dynamic late medieval power balance ensured that it was never carved into stone. Taken together, the dissertations shows that political ideas were not only imaginary or discursive but were made real in political practice. They were, in short, ‘Inspiring Ideas’.