Arguing with the Common Good. Inspiring Ideas in Burgundian Flanders (1487)
(2022) Negotiating Power. Political interactions in late medieval communities (1200-1600) — Location: Leuven (19.May.2022)
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- Abstract
- Political negotiations are shaped by inspiring ideas and by political actors in specific circumstances. But how did this exchange between the agency of ideas and their consumers take place in fifteenth-century Burgundian Flanders? To consider this question, this paper investigates the complex speech-act of arguing. By means of a political discourse analysis that is supplemented by digital tools, it investigates the practical arguments of two letters written by the rivaling factions of the Flemish Revolt (1482-1492). More specifically, the paper looks at how these factions used the idea of the common good to argue their opposing goals. As one of the most frequently recurring political concepts of the Late Middle Ages, the common good has a controversial reputation amongst scholars. Although historians have demonstrated that the concept played a vital role in many political negotiations, they have also classified it as a ‘meaningless cliché’. I suggest that the interpretations of the common good that were formulated in fifteenth-century Burgundian Flanders were diverse but not endless. What is more, the common good’s flexibility held great strength and was employed by contemporaries to argue their case. In the course of the fifteenth century, noblemen, jurists, urban elites and craft guilds had similar expectations about how political actors (broadly speaking ‘subjects’ and ‘governors’) were supposed to act. For example, it was generally seen as the obligation of the count and all kinds of local governors to establish peace, administer justice, defend the lands, and maintain privileges. These patterns of expectations were created by means of the agency of ideas and gave shape to a framework of the common good that was argued with throughout fifteenth-century Burgundian Flanders. How the factions of the Flemish Revolt used their agency to do so will be presented in detail. I conclude that the dual agency of ideas and their consumers were inextricably connected and mutually reinforcing. Put differently, to inspire was a busy two ways street through which various social groups continuously passed to argue with, and for, the common good.
- Affiliations
KU Leuven Research Group of Medieval History
Citations
De Boodt, M. (2022). Arguing with the Common Good. Inspiring Ideas in Burgundian Flanders (1487). Negotiating Power. Political interactions in late medieval communities (1200-1600), Leuven.