Civic ceremony and religion in Bruges 1300-1520

Like many European towns during the later Middle Ages, Bruges witnessed a great expansion in all ceremonial, collective and public forms of devotion. Processions of relics, liturgical ceremonies, festive celebrations, religious endowments and guilds all proliferated. Why did this phenomenon occur? The proposed book seeks to provide answers to the question following several main lines of inquiry. The particular religious, political, social, and economic conditions in Bruges itself to be examined, using the rich and underexploited archives of the town. These issues also need to be set within a wider comparative framework. Did the town authorities in Bruges create a 'civic religion' and 'identity' in the same way that their counterparts in Northern Italy are said to have done? Civic management of local cults, processions and other ceremonies will be of particular interest in this book.
Unlike the 'city states' of Northern Italy, towns in the Low Countries were subject to princely rule. The ceremonial relationship between Bruges and its rulers will be another theme pursued in this book. Recent research into the use made by Burgundian rulers of court spectacles and urban ceremonies has emphasised the pressure exerted by the state on urban traditions, how these were made to serve a 'theatre-state' or communicate state power. This book proposes to test these assumptions, and examine other ways in which court and city interacted at a ceremonial level, particularly in the Entry ceremonies that princes made into Bruges.
All these themes prompt wider theoretical questions.
Firstly, a study of civic management of cults raises questions about the complex relationship between religious culture and social conditions, and how the one interacted with the other. The Bruges authorities had to deal with religious institutions and cults, all with their own traditions: these could not be manipulated at will.
Secondly, a study of the ceremonial relationship between Bruges and its rulers requires consideration of the relationship between 'ritual' and power, 'symbolic communication' and the exercise of authority. Anthropological theories can help to clarify thought on these problems. But the meanings that contemporaries attached to processions and religious symbolism also need to be fully explored. The wealth of material available in Bruges in both the civic and ecclesiastical archives helps to contextualise study of the nature and function of late medieval ceremonies.