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The transformation of an urban political elite: oligarchy and aristocracy in sixteenth-century Ghent

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 August 2019

Jelten Baguet
Jelten Baguet*
Affiliation:
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, HOST Research Group, Pleinlaan 2, office 5C457, 1050 Brussels, Belgium/Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi, Dondena Centre for Research, Via Guglielmö Röntgen 1, 20136 Milan, Italy
*
*Corresponding author. Email: Jelten.Baguet@vub.be; Jelten.Baguet@unibocconi.it
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Abstract

The composition of the political elites in sixteenth-century Ghent, one of the political and economic centres of the county of Flanders, changed from a relatively open elite group that included representatives from the craft guilds into a compact, aristocratic class. This article analyses the reasons for this transformation. First, the number of office-holders in the city council declined and power was increasingly concentrated in the hands of a smaller political elite because of interventions in the urban political framework by the Habsburg authorities in the wake of a fiscal rebellion (1537–40) and a Calvinist takeover of power (1578–84). Secondly, the once dominant position of the craft guilds on Ghent's two benches of aldermen was weakened by institutional reforms, a Catholic backlash against Calvinism and an economic recession. Thirdly, the growing wealth gap between rulers and the ruled, coupled with an influx of noblemen into Ghent City Council, gave urban politics a more aristocratic character. Consequently, a series of interconnected changes gave rise to a trend towards oligarchy and aristocracy on the city's benches of aldermen.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 47 , Issue 4 , November 2020 , pp. 632 - 647
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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22 Note that the city council was renewed twice in 1579, in July and in August.

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32 Boone, Dumon and Reusens, Immobiliënmarkt, 86–9.

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36 These four ‘forced loans’ are extensively discussed in Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 457–67. For a critical discussion of the forced loan of 1492, see Boone, Dumon and Reusens, Immobiliënmarkt, 105–16.

37 GCA, Series FM79, no. 322.

38 Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen, 422–3.

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40 For rising grain prices, see Dambruyne, Mensen en centen, 57. For wage rigidity, see Ryckbosch, W., ‘Economic inequality and growth before the industrial revolution: the case of the Low Countries (fourteenth to nineteenth centuries)’, European Review of Economic History, 20 (2016), 16CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the increased fiscal pressure is discussed in P. Decelle, ‘“Datmen dinghesetenen danof zoude deportere”: beschouwing over het fiscale en financiële beleid van de Gentse schepenen in de woelige zestiende eeuw’, Ghent University MA thesis, 2010, 55–92.

41 I develop this point in my Ph.D. dissertation: J. Baguet, ‘De heren van Gent: Politieke elites en sociale verandering in de zestiende eeuw’, Vrije Universiteit Brussel Ph.D. thesis, 2018, 90–2. My claims are based on an analysis of the probate inventories (staten van goed) of the aldermen from the poorterij and the craft guilds.

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48 See Frederik Buylaert's contribution to this special section.

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51 De Clercq, Dumolyn and Haemers, ‘“Vivre noblement”’.

52 Claire's brother, Frans de Brune, was lieutenant-civil in the city: GCA, Series 332, no. 4/1.

53 Vander Meersch, Memorieboek, vol. III, 124. Other corporate families did not embellish their names with these titles.

54 V. Despodt, ‘“Dat du best was ic ende wat ic bem, dat sal tu werden…” Gentse grafmonumenten en grafschriften tot het einde van de Gentse Calvinistische Republiek (1584)’, Ghent University MA thesis, 2001, no. 1.3./150: ‘edele ende werde Antheunis van Wyckhuys, heere van Wyckhuys ende van Waelbrouck’.

55 https://id.erfgoed.net/erfgoedobjecten/74422, accessed 13 Jun. 2018.

56 Vander Meersch, Memorieboek, vol. III, 129.

57 ‘een radicale breuk met het verleden’: Boone, Gent en de Bourgondische hertogen, 76.