Contenu du sommaire : Les mots de l'identité urbaine à la fin du Moyen Âge

Urban Proceedings, Evidence of Identity Awareness and Instruments for Political Decision-Making and Social Control in Flanders, Notably in Ghent (14th-15th centuries)The urban proceedings analysed in this article are documents held in the archives of towns of the County of Flanders, that were sent or received in the late Middle Ages. Notably in Ghent, these documents are evidence of the town magistrates' desire to preserve and make appropriate use of the memory of political, economic and legal acts that marked their relationships with other powers, both within and outside the town. The keuren of the 12th century, as instruments of political emancipation and documents that regulated relations with the county power, are parts of the construction of the town's identity, coloured with particularities. As for proceedings from the voluntary jurisdiction of the deputy burgomaster, drawn up by various offices depending on the social rank of the parties involved, these documents demonstrate the importance of written texts for establishing and maintaining the authority of the deputy burgomasters in the town and district, and for upholding the peace. Accounts in Flemish towns were created to meet the Prince's desire to control their finances for tax purposes, but are also a reflection of a general aspiration for greater transparency in the burgomasters' administration. Legal documents are proof that wide swathes of the urban population had access to the various levels of jurisdiction to defend their rights and interests. This article shows that administrative memory was built and used by urban authorities at various eras and for different reasons, depending on the milieus that authorities came from and their political aims.

The Power of Writing : Urban Chanceries and the Formation of Territorial States in Italy (14TH-15TH centuries)Interest in Medieval public writings, no longer viewed merely as sources of information but also as performative actions and discourse fields, came to the fore in Italy a few decades ago, with a focus notably on the ‘‘written revolution'' and the strong and substantial relationship between the government and writing during the communal period. In the past few years, Italian public writings from the late Middle Ages and early modern period have also drawn attention from academics and researchers. In Italy in the late Middle Ages, a wide range of phenomena – the production, preservation and scattering of writings, but also patterns in the diffusion of writings, and structural relationships between writing and the definition of power structures, between written memory and political identity – were deeply conditioned by the existing dynamics between the growth of changing territorial regimes and the city, with its very particular and weighty public, rhetorical and legal traditions. This article will focus on a few essential elements of this complex combination, with regard to the production and preservation of urban public writings, and the dynamics between the city, the chancery and the territorial state during the formation of larger and better-defined political regimes in Italy in the 14th and 15th centuries.

The Court Registry as a Tool for Representing Consular Identity and a Venue for Dialogue between the Town Authorities and the Royal Power (Brignoles, France, 1387-1391)For a long period of time, registries of communal court deliberations in the Medieval period were considered to be perfect examples of pragmatic literacy, transmitting all the decisions made by town authorities in exercising their functions. However, this conclusion is incorrect in the case of the first registry of deliberations preserved by the town of Brignoles in the heart of the Var region in Provence. Resulting from a choice among various potentially uninscribable decisions, this registry was a genuine tool for the town power's representation and communication, using specific vocabulary and topics to publicise a certain consular identity, while creating a venue for dialogue between the town authorities and the royal power that materialised the dynamics of their relationships, between conflict and conciliation.

Describing the Identity of ‘‘Communautéz de Ville'': The Example of a Few Towns in Langue d'Oïl (13TH-15TH centuries)The identity of urban communities is clear in the relationships that they maintain with territorial powers. From the time that the vernacular was used in practical writings, beginning around 1230, an increasing number of writings give proof of these relationships. Analysing these documents reveals a political identity whose main element is the assertion of the representative character of power exercised in the name of the community, which is a voluntary association. Its members are still the final audience for the Prince's discourse. In the French-speaking area, urban identity is conceived and expressed, according to practical documents, chiefly as the identity of a legal entity representing, within certain limits, physical persons. This expression of identity and this conception of the group are a general phenomenon, and something new.

The Sociogenesis of a Patriarchy : The Culture of Writing and Social Construction of Nuremberg, Circa 1500In the late 15th century, we note the production of a written discourse about Nuremberg that builds its collective identity as a unique town that combines the features usually attributed to other towns with its own characteristics. However, this discourse is also the subject of more or less radical forms of appropriation by the Council, which dominates single-handedly the town, as part of a process that eventually leads to the forming of a ‘‘patriarchy'' but which, for the period we are focused on, is just at the stage of the lasting formation of a dominant group. However, this sociogenetic dimension has been largely neglected given archive upheavals in the 19th century, which gave favour to the theme of a harsh opposition between the nobility and the patrician class. The case of Nuremberg shows how much all the material aspects of written documentation (including archiving procedures) must be taken into account in examining the social meaning that results from this documentation, because these aspects have effects on the historians that use the materials following periods of selective preservation procedures, which are never random but are socially determined.

Political Arguments and Urban Culture in the Controversy between Toledo and Grenada after 1492This article analyses two letters written in reaction to the downgrade in the city of Toledo's rank in favour of Grenada after the Spaniards conquered the latter city in 1492. These letters were sent by the Chancery of the Catholic Kings. Written by Alphonse Ortiz, the Cannon of Toledo, these two letters argued that the city of Toledo should take precedence on two complementary levels : on a strictly urban level, and on a religious one (given the primacy of the Toledo Bishopric). The article uses the perspective of urban rhetoric, which proves to be innovative in analysing the urban political discourse in Castile in the late Middle Ages. This episode of claiming precedence set forth all the arguments in favour of Toledo, and can thus be considered a paradigm of the city's argumentative rhetoric, using memory and history to defend its identity from a recently-conquered city.

Commerce, Culture, and Competition : Expatriate Life in Nantes, circa 1645In the first half of the 17th century, the growth of Nantes as an important economic centre on the Atlantic coast went hand in hand with an influx of foreign merchants. Dutch interest in Nantes hinged on lucrative wine, brandy, grain and salt exports, but the port city also served as a strategic transshipment station in a period of war when Spanish trade embargoes forbade direct shipping between the Republic and the Iberian peninsula. The prominence of the Dutch community in Nantes in this period invites a thorough examination of the Dutchmen's lives as expatriates, and sheds light on the varying levels of cooperation, competition, and outright friction between the French and their Dutch visitors.