M38 - The City as a Broadcasting System

Author(s)

Janna Coomans (Utrecht University)

Keywords

Urban Health, Disasters, Community Politics

Abstract

Fire was as indispensable as it was dangerous in pre-industrial cities. The threat was especially urgent where building with wood and thatch was standard, including in the exceptionally urbanized Low Countries between 1300-1600. The history of fire offers insight into the ways communities deal with self-inflicted risk and how that, in turn, transforms them. Nearly every city was struck by a large fire at some point, with smaller incidents occurring almost yearly. Fire was extremely destructive in a society where capital resided in immovable properties and a wide variety of objects, without bank accounts and few forms of insurance. Yet even more than by disasters as such, transformation was created by the politics of preventing them. Firefighting expressed good citizenship and neighborliness, but was also a site of social unrest. Moreover, this range of aspects was reflected by various rituals and cultural-artistic expressions and commemorations of disasters. For example, woodcuts and paintings show orderly responses of burgers; processions celebrated relics miraculously unaffected by flames and reflected the prominent place of fire in the cultural imagination. Such acts and artworks uncover the complex educational and moral meaning of fires and their potential to strengthen local identity formation. It is this latter aspect that is the focus of this paper.

Author(s)

Kirstin Barnard (University of York)

Keywords

London, Neighbours, Late-medieval

Abstract

This paper will consider how the built, urban environment was used by residents to ‘communicate’ notions of neighbourliness. I will explore this topic within the context of London during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The idea that relationships with neighbours are complex and can come with various, and sometimes unclear, sets of obligations is recognised across disciplines. Further, the relationship of neighbour as a topic of study in its own right has been developing within medieval scholarship in the last couple of decades. Despite this, how contemporaries in medieval England understood what being a neighbour meant, and what was expected as a neighbour, is yet to be fully explored.

One way to address this lacuna within an urban context is to explore how neighbourliness was expressed through interactions with the built environment. Neighbours can be loosely defined as residents who lived in close proximity to one another. In this way, the structure of the built environment, whether ‘open’ or ‘secluded’, can impact how neighbours interacted. This approach has been used by Sarah Rees Jones, who identifies a language of neighbourliness within civic regulation of public nuisances and street cleanliness in later fifteenth century London (Rees Jones, 2016). This paper seeks to build on this work through the study of narrative records which survive for a range of ecclesiastical and civic courts. I will draw particularly on complaints made to the Assize of Nuisance between 1301 and 1431. The Assize functioned as a legal mechanism to allow freeholders to make complaints about the built environment that caused, or had the potential to cause, damage. The focus of this material is valuable in providing insight into the communicative nature of urban space. This in turn can provide further insight into neighbourly relations in later medieval London. This paper will consider this topic through the detailed analysis of several case-studies.

Author(s)

Eva van Kemenade (University of Warwick / University of Amsterdam)

Keywords

Popular Festivals, Spatial Politics, Early Modern Bologna

Abstract

This paper addresses the following questions: How were neighbourhood-based popular festivals used in the spatial politics of early modern Bologna? How did these festivals make use of the city’s streets in order to broadcast their message(s) to the wider urban community? The public messages of popular neighbourhood-based festivals will be analysed within the political developments of Bologna. From the late fourteenth century until the sixteenth century, this city underwent a drastic political change. Traditionally a self-governing commune, Bologna became governed under absolutist papal rule. The spatial strategies of both the communal and papal authorities had direct consequences on urban public life, in which popular festivals were an important element.

My paper analyses three neighbourhood-based organizations and their public festivities: militia’s, guilds, and parish churches. Although militia’s and guilds remain until thus far understudied in conventional histories of early modern Bologna, they formed the core institutions of organized popular life in the city’s neighbourhoods. Because their members were mainly of artisan and non-elite background, their street-based festivities were an important tool with which non-elite groups could publicly make their voices heard.

Finally, in the second half of the sixteenth century, the neighbourhood-based processions of the Corpus Domini, also called addobbi (from the Italian word addobbare, decorating), were introduced in Bologna’s festive life. Every year, a restricted number of parish churches was appointed to held that year’s addobbo. Space was a crucial element in this festival: during the procession, the streets of the parish were decorated with coloured drapes and paintings. The addobbi were also an occasion to carry out maintenance work to façades and buildings in order to embellish the outward appearance of that specific parish. My paper will demonstrate that the addobbi were a part of the spatial strategy of the newly installed papal rule. It was an attempt to replace the neighbourhood-based festivals traditionally organized by the militia’s and guilds, who had been important political players in the city’s communal era. With this, the pope attempted to expand its grip over the urban space of Bologna, its neighbourhood communities and its festive life.

Author(s)

Isabel Casteels (KU Leuven)

Keywords

Executions, Spectators, Spatial strategies

Abstract

The most defining aspect of premodern punishment was its public character. In the wake of Foucault, public executions have been interpreted by historians as theatrical

and spectacular events, with a focus on dramaturgical techniques used by the authorities. In the theater of punishment, the scaffold functioned as the stage. However, this interpretation overlooks the agency of execution audiences in the staging of executions. This paper shifts the perspective from the scaffold to the urban environment in which executions were staged and shows how the space surrounding the scaffold was a stage for a performing audience as well. Executions were not only manifestations of authority directed at disciplining the audience but also events during which the use of public space and the manifestation of justice was negotiated.

In the context of the repression of heresy during the Reformation and the turbulent years of the Dutch Revolt, public executions came to be explosive events. In order to map out the uses of urban space by execution audiences, this paper first draws on narrative accounts of executions found in contemporary chronicles written by members of the urban middle class, often present in the audience themselves, who comment extensively on the uses of space by execution audiences. Audiences resisted the authorities’ expectations by, for example, assembling long before or after the actual execution took place, or by not showing up at all. Sometimes, audiences gathered in front of the prisons where condemned were held or blocked the way from prison to the place of execution. In response, it will be argued, authorities increasingly tried to regulate audiences and their access to executions in order to be able to continue carrying out executions at all. The Antwerp city magistrate even went as far as to execute in secret in fear of an interfering audience.

Indeed, the spectacular staging of executions was only effective, or indeed possible, if audiences agreed with the justice being carried out and were willing to perform a compliant role in the ‘theater of punishment’, in which the space the audience occupied was as much part of the stage as the scaffold.

Author(s)

Hannah Serneels (Leuven University)

Keywords

Medieval, Popular Politics, Political Space

Abstract

An important, and often maybe overlooked part of any political communication instigated by commoners in premodern cities, took place during meetings. Ranging from small private gatherings up to almost fully public large-scale assemblies, meetings were omnipresent in the political culture of late medieval cities. While the latter are well-known in current research, far less attention has been given to the informal political gatherings that were less monumental, but perhaps equally (if not more) important for the political culture of urban commoners. This paper explores the wide range of gatherings in the city, specifically focusing on how commoners interacted with space when holding political meetings. During the late middle ages, such meetings have always been on the edge of legitimacy. They were alternately banned by urban governors, who saw them as a threat, or granted as a right for urban craft guilds. Nevertheless, cases from several cities in the southern Low Countries will show that commoners cleverly adapted their strategies of meeting and assembling to the changing legitimacy. I will argue that they were well-aware of possible dangers and opportunities of open and secluded communication, and used these to their advantage. As such, the analysis of how commoners dealt with spatial specificities of their meeting sites – and how they chose their sites accordingly – contributes to the literature on the functions of space in late medieval political communication. It shows the utility of looking beyond the large-scale, monumental and highly symbolical acts of communication, and putting the focus on more everyday practices and uses of space. Shifting the view from the center, market squares and official buildings power towards taverns, hidden sites outside the city walls, and monasteries will allow us to re-evaluate the extent of the political space in the late medieval city. In doing so, we can work towards a more diverse picture of the variety of channels the ‘broadcasting system’ of the premodern city could include.

Author(s)

Nathan van Kleij (University of Amsterdam)

Keywords

Built Environment, Communication, Legitimacy

Abstract

Political and legal procedure in the fifteenth century took place in the open and enclosed realm. Municipalities tried to structure movement between more or less accessible spaces in order to strengthen the logic and reliability of social-legal messages. The communication and proclamation of sentences and decisions before a larger public was a key part of legal and political procedures. At the same time, aldermen had a desire to secure confidential elements, using devices such as partitions and locks.

This paper will show that distinct spatial and built characteristics made a difference in giving shape to access and communication flows, notably visible in the use of town halls and their direct environment. Based on a study of five cities in the fifteenth-century Low Countries, I analyse how both officials and non-officials used the spatial and built characteristics in order to articulate their arguments. Municipalities had an interest in the town hall as a site of both publicity and secluded meetings, in order to structure and claim transparency and legitimacy. This is for example the case during public trial, when aldermen literally move from the closed council chamber to the public courtroom, eventually proclaiming their verdict from the building’s doorsteps or balcony. Though less privileged in access and ability to shape civic buildings, visitors to the town hall used the same spaces to express their opinion. By opening doors or raising voices they sought audiences beyond walls. This was often considered disruptive by governmental agents, which is why it is acknowledged and recorded in documents such as criminal verdicts.

In engaging with specific buildings, this paper will argue that built environment of town halls influenced how historical actors made or contested claims to legitimacy. In turn, I show how the desire for publicity – by both municipalities and other city inhabitants – shaped the buildings’ material environments.

Author(s)

Rosa Salzberg (University of Trento)

Keywords

Mobility, Hospitality, Inns

Abstract

Venice was one of the largest and most mobile metropolises in early modern Europe; the capital of a vast empire and a hub of trade, travel, and transit moving in all directions. As it was also a city without walls, Venice’s governors had to make use of a variety of urban spaces to communicate information and legislation to migrants or travellers passing through. This paper examines some of the most important sites of urban mobility in Venice at this time, especially spaces of hospitality, transport, and control. Starting at the urban periphery, I will track how points of passage such as customs stations, checkpoints, and lazzaretti acted as vital sites of communication with people arriving in Venice, through the work of intermediaries such as boatmen, porters, and customs officials. I will then move towards the centre of the city, where inns located around the core political and commercial districts functioned as crucial sites of surveillance and communication, looking particularly at the role of innkeepers and their staff in this process of mediation. Finally, I will also explore how Venetian authorities sought to prevent the transmission of illicit or undesirable political messages in these kinds of hybrid public-private spaces, and how both mobile and more sedentary members of urban society made use of this broadcasting system to transmit alternative views.