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A double-sided mirror: the chronicles of Jean Molinet and Nicolas Despars. The discursive battle between the Burgundian-Habsburgian court and the urban elite in Flanders in the context of the Bruges rebellion of 1448 This article studies « a discursive battle » between two chronicles from the late Middle Ages which inform us about the Bruges rebellion of 1488. In their tale, two famous chroniclers, Jean Molinet and Nicolas Despars, want to convince their audience of the illegality of Maximilian of Austria's captivity in the city, due to the fact that the Habsburg prince did not adequately manage the affairs of his minor son (Philip the Fair). Jean Molinet would like, above all, to justify the repression of urban revolts and the authority of the Habsburg dynasty and intends to encourage his audience (the sovereign and his advisors) not to indulge in the excess of power. Nicolas Despars, for his part, defends the political traditions of the urban elite, i.e. the constitutionalism, the opinion according to which the sovereign must justify his politics vis-à-vis his subjects. In conclusion, the chronicles of Molinet and Despars deliver two completely opposed political ideals: their chronicles are also mirrors of reality – or rather a double-sided mirror. Thus, this article shows how the two chroniclers tried to influence the memory of urban revolts with a certain political goal.

Renaut de Montauban. Fragments from the Metz (Me) Municipal Archives Regarded as having been lost (again) for a century, these fragments from Renaut de Montauban provide us with 12 columns, each of 43 verses, or a total of 516 lines. They constitute the longest version of the passages under consideration (Renaut's return from his pilgrimage to the Holy Land and the moment when Renaut leaves the world to become a simple worker on the construction site of Cologne Cathedral). The study of their place within the manuscript tradition is only sketched out here. However, the particularly marked character of these texts makes them the only important known epic testimony of 13th Century Walloon.

The Martyrdom of Saint Lambert in the “Palude Diptych” and the Ceremonies held in 1489 in Liege Cathedral The representation of the Martyrdom of Saint Lambert in the “Palude Diptych” is an important work in the pictorial heritage of Liege. In order to explain its particular iconography, this study makes the first in-depth analysis of the political and religious context, as well as specific hagiographic and liturgical sources, of the town's cathedral. The painting was commissioned by the cathedral's cantor, Henri ex Palude († 1515), after he had presided over special ceremonies for the opening of shrines and the veneration of relics, which in turn led to the renewed veneration of Bishop Lambert's nephews, Peter and Audolet, who were both assassinated at the same time as Saint Lambert. An unusual man, Henri ex Palude, both a lawyer involved in peace negotiations between the Hornes and La Marck families and a canon responsible for liturgical ceremonies, was intensely devoted to Saint Lambert. After demonstrating that the painting was not placed in the Cathedral, the author suggests that it was conceived as an altarpiece for the altar in the cantor's cloister.

The Jeu de saint Nicolas: Questions of Money Money in Jean Bodel's Jeu de saint Nicolas has many functions. This quality of Saint Nicholas is in part used in the process of conversion, when it becomes an asset of the very young and the very old and can convert the Saracens at a time when sacrificing warriors has proved ineffective – wherever Nicholas is, wherever God and his angels are, money multiplies and saves lives. In symmetry, in an Arras tavern, where the game of dice is king – a game of chance in which God has no say – money comes and goes and only brings ruin and deception. The Jeu must be seen as a work inviting the people of Arras to participate in the crusading effort, to garner a different profit from money than that of the game and usury and to turn it into an instrument of salvation.

Is the autographic document a “non-reality” for the historian? A few thoughts on the autographic trails written at the end of the Middle Ages and the dawn of Modern Times. The impetus for this article came as a result of a striking realization. Even though philologists truly – and justifiably – sacralize the autographic source as the irrefutable testimony of an author's thought, historians place (too) little emphasis on the medieval autographic phenomenon itself. Is the question of a document's autographic character thus neglected, even discarded, by historians? Perhaps we should admit that this is not a problem at all. Several lines of thought are suggested in this article: How does each individual make use of the vocabulary at his/her disposal? Is the meaning of autograph “authentic” or “original?” What is the specific reality of an autograph? What are the concrete, inherent manifestations of an autograph? What is the status of its author (s)? How involved is the author in the execution of the written document? These are the questions that both the “autographophile” philologist and the “autographovore” historian must attend to since they drink from the same source, as each attempts to find a truth.

What was at stake between Royal Justice and the Jews under the Crown of Aragon? The field of law is one of the areas in which Jewish autonomy, particularly marked in the Crown of Aragon's territories, can best be observed. The Jews enjoyed privileges that enabled them to make their own decisions and have them applied while respecting the laws of the host State. Thus the Talmudic principle of Dina de Malkhuta Dina, formulated in the 3rd Century AD, was applied to its fullest and the Jews could thrive in the Aragonian diaspora. In a wider sense, the law seems to have been the emblematic field for the harmony that long characterized the relations between the King of Aragon and “his” Jews. It brought into play the king's authority, Jewish autonomy and, more widely, attempts to affirm the king's concurrent powers. We shall examine the ways in which the law was organized as far as the Jews were concerned, the underlying challenges and, finally, the occasional obstacles that disrupted the compromise.