Lordship, Chivalry, and Urban Society

Abstract Whereas the first three chapters focus on seigneuries as an arena for dialogue between lords and peasants, this chapter shifts the focus to what seigneurial lordship meant for lords. Just as elsewhere, control over a seigneurie was a source of prestige and noble status, but Flanders appears to have developed a distinct trajectory in the sense that nobility and noble titles were linked exclusively to seigneuries with extensive criminal prerogatives, thus leaving lords with less important seigneuries in the cold. This was closely linked with the rapprochement of leading lords with the elites of Flemish towns, up to the point that more and more city-dwellers became lords. As a result, seigneurial lordship in Flanders acquired a distinct urban inflection at the same time that chivalry as the military ethos of lordship dwindled.