Civic Cohesion in Turbulent Times: Galbert of Bruges, the Urban Community and the Murder of the Count of Flanders in 1127

This contribution will examine the nature of the urban community in early twelfth-century Flanders on the basis of Galbert of Bruges’ De multro, traditione et occisione Karoli comitis Flandriarum, an account of the murder of Charles the Good, the count of Flanders, in 1127. A clerk at the chancery of the Flemish counts in Bruges, Galbert wrote an insider’s perspective on an urban community in turmoil. His work was an attempt to come to terms with a disruptive episode in the city’s recent past and reaffirm its civic identity, towards the citizens themselves and in relation to its worldly overlords and neighbouring towns. This article thus explores a number of crucial aspects of citizenship in the high medieval Low Countries, e.g. who belonged to the urban community and who did not; which public actions were legitimate and which ones were to be avoided; what goals an urban community should pursue, who was to pursue them and through what means

Ritual Purity and the Influence of Gregory the Great in the Early Middle Ages

Unity and diversity form a theme which Gregory the Great addressed in his famous set of answers to Augustine of Canterbury. Augustine had asked the Pope: Even though the faith is one, are there varying customs in the churches? and is there one form of mass in the Holy Roman Church and another in the Churches of Gaul? To this, the Pope replied: My brother, you know the customs of the Roman Church in which, of course, you were brought up. But it is my wish that if you have found any customs in the Roman or the Gaulish church or any other church which may be more pleasing to Almighty God, you should make a careful selection of them and sedulously teach the Church of the English, which is still new in the faith, what you have been able to gather from other churches. For things are not to be loved for the sake of a place, but places are to be loved for the sake of their good things. Therefore choose from every individual Church whatever things are devout, religious, and right. And when you have collected these as it were into one pot, put them on the English table for their use. </jats:p