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This paper analyses the hierarchy and ranking of the towns of the Duchy of Brabant within the Estates, the principality's representative political institution. It seeks to answer the question why social and economic changes in the urban landscape were not, or only partly, reflected in the political sphere. An analysis of a series of convocation lists of the Estates on the one hand, and subscription lists of charters on the other, make it clear that a distinction can be made between the towns and the so called liberties, and that a neat territorial hierarchy is applied between these two categories. Although the four "capitals" and three other important towns headed the urban hierarchy, both as regards attendance and the order in which they were placed, there was certainly space for other minor towns, both ducal and seigniorial, to participate in the political arena. The ranking of a town implied certain rights and (financial) obligations and was also expressed symbolically, for example in wine gifts and in seating arrangements at the meetings of the Estates. Whereas the formal political hierarchy within the Estates was quite rigid, other rankings of a military and fiscal character were subject to change. ; Este artículo analiza la jerarquía y el ranking de las ciudades del ducado de Brabante en su principal institución política representativa, los llamados Estados de Brabante El objetivo de este artículo es intentar buscar una respuesta a la pregunta de por qué los cambios sociales y económicos en las ciudades no se manifiestan de forma total o parcial en el ámbito político. El análisis de una serie de listas de convocatoria de los Estados demuestra que había una diferenciación entre las ciudades y las llamadas "libertades", y que además dentro de estas dos categorías se aplicaba una jerarquía territorial. Aunque las cuatro 'capitales' y otras tres ciudades importantes están en la cabeza de la jerarquía urbana, tanto en lo que se refiere a la participación como en el orden en el que están mencionadas, había espacio también para que otras ciudades más pequeñas participaran en el escenario político. El ranking de una ciudad llevaba consigo no sólo el disfrute de algunos derechos sino también el cumplimiento de algunas obligaciones, sobre todo de índole financiera, y que se expresaban simbólicamente, como por ejemplo en las donaciones de vino y en el orden de precedencia durante las reuniones de los Estados. Aunque la jerarquía política dentro de los Estados por lo general era bastante rígida, otros rankings como por ejemplo los militares y fiscales sí estaban sujetos a cambios.

ABSTRACT:This article discusses the material and spatial features of the tournaments on the Grote Markt, the central market square in Brussels, in the fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth century. It investigates how the tournament acquired meaning in the urban space where it was organized, and how the chivalric event in its turn altered that urban space. These Brussels tournaments, for which both archival, iconographical and narrative sources are available, show us the dynamics of an inherently courtly festival within an urban setting. Recent historiography has stressed that these tournaments, just like other urban festivals, for example joyous entries, demonstrate the submission of the town to the ruler. Indeed, the prince and his household used the public space of the Grote Markt and the facilities of the town hall to organize tournaments and festivities. However, they could not do this on their own. They needed the town government for the organization and logistics of the tournament and for its hospitality. Moreover, the town managed to put its own stamp on the architecture, both permanent and ephemeral, emphasizing the responsibilities that the duke had towards his town, as well as the long tradition of subservience and loyalty of the town to the duke.

In recent political and constitutional history, scholars seldom specify how and why they use the concept of territory. In research on state formation processes and nation building, for instance, the term mostly designates an enclosed geographical area ruled by a central government. Inspired by ideas from political geographers, this book explores the layered and constantly changing meanings of territory in late medieval and early modern Europe before cartography and state formation turned boundaries and territories into more fixed (but still changeable) geographical entities. Its central thesis is that analysing the notion of territory in a premodern setting involves analysing territorial practices: practices that relate people and power to space(s). The book not only examines the construction and spatial structure of premodern territories but also explores their perception and representation through the use of a broad range of sources: from administrative texts to maps, from stained glass windows to chronicles.

Intro -- Political Representation: Communities, Ideas and Institutions in Europe (c. 1200-c. 1690) -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- List of Illustrations -- Contributors and Editors -- An Introduction: Political Representation: Communities, Ideas and Institutions in Europe (c. 1200-c. 1690) -- Part 1: Top-down or Bottom-up? Princes, Communities and Representation -- 1 Assemblies of Estates and Parliamentarism in Late Medieval Europe -- 2 Political Representation and the Fiscal State in Late Medieval and Early Modern Castile -- 3 Forms of Political Representation in Late Medieval Northern Italy: Merits and Shortcomings of the City-State Paradigm (14th-early 16th Century) -- 4 Representation in Later Medieval and Early Modern Ireland -- 5 Speaking in the Name of: Collective Action, Claim-making, and the Development of Pre-modern Representative Institutions -- Part 2: Prelates, Nobles and Patricians: The Composition of the Representative Institutions -- 6 "The King wishes and commands?" Reassessing Political Assembly in Scotland, c.1286-1329 -- 7 Officers of State and Representation in the Pre-modern Scottish Parliament -- 8 The Nobility in the Estates of the Late Medieval Duchy of Brabant -- 9 Representation by Numbers: How Attendance and Experience Helped Holland to Control the Dutch States General (1626-1630) -- Part 3: Controlling the State: Ideas and Discourses -- 10 The Antwerp Clerk Jan van Boendale and the Creation of a Brabantine Ideology -- 11 Rituals of Unanimity and Balance: Deliberation in 15th- to 16thcentury Hainaut: A Fool's Game? -- 12 Speech Acts and Political Communication in the Estates General of Valois and Habsburg Burgundy c. 1370-1530: Towards a Shared Political Language -- 13 Parliament, War and the "Public Sphere" in Late Medieval England: The Experience of Lancastrian Kent

This scholarly collection on representation in medieval and early modern Europe opens up the field of institutional and parliamentary history to new paradigms of representation across a wide geography and chronology - as testified by the volume's studies on assemblies ranging from Burgundy and Brabant to Ireland and Italy. The focus is on three areas: institutional developments of representative institutions in Western Europe; the composition of these institutions concerning interest groups and individual participants; and the ideological environment of representatives in time and space. By analysing the balance between bottom-up and top-down approaches to the functioning of institutions of representation; by studying the actors behind the representative institutions linking prosopographical research with changes in political dialogue; and by exploring the ideological world of representation, this volume makes an key contribution to the historiography of pre-modern government and political culture.0

Stuart Elden's The Birth of Territory relies heavily on political theorists and lexical analysis; this chapter argues that the Church and clerics had an important impact Elden overlooked. Late medieval parishes and bishoprics had contiguous borders, fiscal and administrative procedures and powers, their own jurisdiction, and their own hierarchy. A bishop had, in a sense, his own territory. The chapter first discusses general ideas of geography and the specific Christian geography of two important mid-fifteenth-century clerics: (the later) Pope Pius II and Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa. It then highlights the importance of parishes and bishoprics as typical structural elements of ecclesiastical 'territories'. Finally, it provides detailed analysis of the territorial features of the creation of new bishoprics in the Low Countries in 1559.

Stuart Elden's The Birth of Territory relies heavily on political theorists and lexical analysis; this chapter argues that the Church and clerics had an important impact Elden overlooked. Late medieval parishes and bishoprics had contiguous borders, fiscal and administrative procedures and powers, their own jurisdiction, and their own hierarchy. A bishop had, in a sense, his own territory. The chapter first discusses general ideas of geography and the specific Christian geography of two important mid-fifteenth-century clerics: (the later) Pope Pius II and Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa. It then highlights the importance of parishes and bishoprics as typical structural elements of ecclesiastical 'territories'. Finally, it provides detailed analysis of the territorial features of the creation of new bishoprics in the Low Countries in 1559.