In August 1525 Dole's town councilors called a special meeting. There was only one topic for discussion: the 13-14,000 soldiers camped in the neighboring duchy of Burgundy. As the capital of the county of Burgundy (the Franche-Comté) and located a mere twenty miles from the duchy, Dole had faced such threats repeatedly during the previous half century. In 1477 French armies had besieged the town; in 1479 they had sacked it. Since the sack Dole’s residents had remained acutely aware that they were on the front-lines of any struggles between their Habsburg sovereigns and the kings of France. Such conflicts recurred frequently; in 1525 Francis I was preparing to stop any attempt by Emperor Charles V to enforce his claims to the duchy, ceded to Charles in the Treaty of Madrid. Both sides were mustering their armies, and Dole’s oligarchs waited to be overrun. In their response to this danger Dole's town council articulated a perception of their city's identity and circumstances that their deliberations had not previously stressed. According to the councilors, Dole needed to hire additional guards and to take special precautions "because in the duchy of Burgundy there are many soldiers ... and because it is necessary to guard this frontier city of Dole..." [1]

This book is about such tensions which the urban leaders of the two Burgundies?the duchy and county?faced repeatedly after the death in January 1477 of the last Valois duke who had united both provinces, Charles the Bold. It analyzes the attempts by those who lived in the new Burgundian frontier to adapt to their situation and chronicles their acceptance, successes, and failures while living in this frontier. It sees Burgundy’s leaders as striving to control this charged environment, although their actions may have had unexpected effects. It also proposes the counterpoint that this environment molded and sometimes controlled these leaders in ways which they embraced or of which they may have been unaware. Although this dialectic may seem to be a truism, it is one that bears repeating. Participants in a web of interests, alliances, and motivations, Burgundy’s urban elites dealt with the political realignments of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries?and attendant challenges to social, economic, and even cultural relationships?in what may seem a surprisingly fluid manner. This adaptability would create a Burgundian frontier zone, rather than a linear border, between the duchy and county that would last several generations, well into the sixteenth century.

As used by Dole's councilors, the term "frontier" was of relatively recent vintage, and the scope and specificity of a frontier would evolve throughout the early modern era. In this sense, "frontier" experienced a linguistic evolution similar to that of other French terms, such as patrie, which linked an individual geographic and emotional tie to a broader geopolitical entity. [2] Dole's magistrates would use "frontier" during the first half of the sixteenth century, albeit infrequently, to express their sense of being on the edge of something, particularly of a region or even a state. The elites in other key Burgundian cities, such as Dijon and Besançon, followed a similar pattern. Building on earlier military applications where a frontier marked the front line of a company of soldiers, fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Burgundians also used frontier to express a sense of both being embattled and forming a bulwark. In so doing, they repeated emotions exhibited elsewhere through different language and concepts. Burgundy's military insecurity was a recurrent theme in urban records from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries; visible manifestations of it can be found in the extensive fortification that most towns underwent at this time. This situation only enhanced the feeling among Burgundy's residents that they had a special identity and responsibility because of their location at the limits, although their sense could vary about what these limits were and what they signified.[3]
 
 

Frontiers and their Applicability in Early Modern Europe

The term "frontier" also carries a series of powerful associations for scholars of medieval and early modern Europe, perhaps explaining its increased use in recent literature.[4] Frequently, however, its meaning is more implied than stated, and its ambiguities as a term relatively unexamined. Rather than reuse "frontier" as an evocative synonym for "border" or "boundary," this book should also be read as an essay on the meaning of "frontier" as well as a reconstruction of Burgundian elite life and an analysis of the frontier’s impact on these elites during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The most elaborate and sophisticated discussions of the definition, meaning, and applicability of "frontier" belong to American historiography, particularly that of the United States and Latin America.[5] Many of these works have as their starting-point the "frontier thesis" developed over the course of historian Frederick Jackson Turner’s career and most dramatically expressed in an article which first appeared over a century ago. There Turner describes the existence of a frontier as a key factor in molding the American character, an argument that reinforced claims of American exceptionalism that were so powerful during his era. The independence frontier life demanded, the opportunities it provided for enterprise, the "composite [American] nationality" it fostered would become cornerstones of a specifically American intellect and mythology. Turner’s contributions are lyrically expressed, but his definition of a "frontier" remains more ambiguous. It appears in various incarnations: an edge of European settlement, a place of opportunity, or a zone of interaction.[6]

Perhaps it is this imprecision combined with the power of Turner’s vision that has led to continued attempts to define "frontier" and to assess its impact. Over the decades since the publication of Turner’s article patterns have developed in frontier analyses that make the assumptions underlying "frontier" clearer, despite criticisms found in the vast and growing "frontier" literature. To put it simply, a frontier begins when two overarching cultures, generally "native" and European, collide in a specific region. Although important nuances have been added to this rather bald schema by recognizing differences among Native Americans, for example, the essentially dualistic character remains. In large part, this dualism defines the frontier, because of the political, economic, social, and cultural negotiations it implies. This situation has led scholars to view the frontier as the point where nature and culture, historical and ahistorical meet; it forms rugged individuals, defines national character, and stimulates industrialization.

More recently scholarship for the United States and Latin America has rejected the progressivism such treatments imply. Instead, it has stressed the negotiations essential to frontier life. Of particular importance to leading scholars of this movement, such as Richard White and Patricia Nelson Limerick, has been reconstructing the social and cultural conditions that distinguished frontier life. In their work "frontier" continues to signify a discreet place and time, as in the older or more traditional literature, but it also becomes a series of distinct attitudes and practices. In the process they and other scholars have attempted to replace "frontier" with vocabulary that they see as a clearer statement of a frontier’s defining characteristics and as less culturally charged. "Middle-ground," "cultural contact zone," or even "inter-group contact situation" have been offered as replacements but have not been accepted outside of the academic community.[7] Whatever the term used or frontier's associations, the end of a frontier occurs when one culture—in the older literature it is generally "European" or "civilized"—dominates the other and forms a new synthesis.

European use of the concepts and vocabulary of frontier studies has been more limited. Traditionally "frontier" has been applied narrowly as "a fortified boundary line" or "a boundary or border region—a place where two groups confront each other."[8] As the second definition suggests, however, the geographic conditions, political tensions, and cultural interactions of the American frontier find echoes in European contexts. Such ideas have long been implicit in studies about European interaction with "foreign" peoples, such as Germanic tribes, Muslims, Turks, and other "Orientals."[9] Recent monographs have made the link with frontiers and frontier historiography more explicit. Although still embryonic, some studies on late-antique Gaul in particular have adopted the vocabulary and concepts of American frontier analysis. The emphasis in these works has echoed that of Limerick and White on cultural interaction and the development of a distinct frontier culture through repeated negotiations between cultural communities. In these studies, "frontier" is both a specific time and place, generally experiencing political and/or military tensions. Frontier is also a heuristic, standing for the hermeneutical processes that create and distinguish the first two aspects of a frontier.[10] Precisely because of these associations various times and places in medieval and early modern history might be profitably conceived of as frontiers: for example, Spain during the Reconquista or southern France at the time of the Albigensian crusades.

While these applications of "frontier" are relatively straightforward extensions of a well-developed concept, I would here like to suggest a reverse application. Rather than see a frontier as formed purely by the meeting of different political entities and cultures, this book argues that a frontier also develops when a previously united region is divided. The boundaries that are thus drawn have gradual effects, and it is precisely the gradual, generational nature of these changes that have been frequently ignored or slighted when discussing the Burgundies in the late fifteenth century. The frontier is the period when relationships, institutions, and attitudes are being renegotiated to reflect this division. It is also the place where this transition is occurring. Finally, in a more amorphous sense, frontier reflects an attitude; it is the willingness and ability to develop a hybrid zone or a "middle-ground," to borrow Richard White’s famous phrase. To put it in the dialectical terms which underlie many frontier studies, instead of a thesis and antithesis forming a single synthesis, the frontier in this case is the breakdown of synthesis into two theses, albeit ones with common elements. In this book the synthesis is Valois Burgundy, which effectively ended in 1477, and the theses are the duchy and county of Burgundy which grew increasingly distinct in the sixteenth century. The frontier is the period and place of this transformation: the eastern duchy and the western county, c. 1477-1540.

Although frontier development thus described reverses the traditional schema of many American and Latin American studies, the qualities frequently associated with frontiers in these works are still fundamental to understanding the Burgundian frontier. Each examines a term?"frontier"?which residents use to describe their time and place. Each grapples with its modern implications and associations. More importantly, each stresses the role of process and negotiation in understanding local society, especially its attitudes and actions when faced with political change. The residents of frontiers appear as anything but helpless pawns of central political institutions; they, too, can create the frontier and re-create a border. Through this process, these inhabitants integrate the border into a wide variety of other concerns: the family, business, law, and property, to name a few. Given that a political boundary can potentially affect all of these areas, a resident's perception of business interest, for example, quite possibly influenced his approach to the border. The residents' need and willingness to negotiate is another quality that is frequently noted as distinguishing frontiers and that also applies to the early modern Burgundies. While these circumstances have been seen as revealing a distinct "frontier mentality" for the Americans, in early modern Burgundy this mentality is more suggestive than definite. As this introduction will suggest and this book elaborate, however, "frontier" provides a useful heuristic device for appreciating the relationship between politics and society at various levels in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Burgundy.[11]
 
 

The Frontiers of Early Modern Burgundy

As in American historiography, the term "frontier" can be applied to various aspects of early modern Burgundy. Politically and geographically, Burgundy was a frontier in both the traditional and revisionist sense as described in the previous section. Socially and culturally Burgundy may also be seen a frontier in the sense described in recent socio-cultural and ethnographic analyses of American and Roman frontiers. In this second area, the connections are less clear and quantifiable, as they are in most frontier studies. These circumstances should not, however, detract from frontier’s value. It serves as a shorthand for the exchanges and interactions that this book will trace and for the transformations which occurred in the two Burgundies during this era. At the same time it reminds the reader that these events and attitudes are historically situated in a specifically Burgundian time and space. In this book "frontier" will be used in all of these ways. The remaining sections of this introduction will suggest how Burgundian circumstances can be seen as frontier-like and describe the national historiography which has most frequently guided interpretations of the early modern Burgundies and against which the use of "frontier" should be judged.

"Frontier" has been repeatedly applied to the early modern Burgundies in order to describe their military and political circumstances and with good reason. From 1493 to 1678 the duchy and county were divided politically and juridically between France and the Holy Roman Empire, a position that made these provinces potential victims of the rivalries between their respective sovereigns. Given these circumstances, scholars such as Henri Pirenne have described Burgundy as a "frontier state." In this case and many others, the term "frontier" is used almost synonymously with border when describing the duchy and county.[12] Implicit in this terminology is the assumption that such a border/frontier must demarcate distinct political units, such as nation-states, even if they were still embryonic in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Although the political and military significance of a frontier is most frequently developed, both old and new research has implied that, for this region, its location on this frontier might have had broader social and cultural significance. When discussing religious reform and witchcraft, historians who approach these topics from vastly different perspectives attribute an almost causal relationship to Burgundy's frontier nature, asserting that, because it was a frontier, Burgundy naturally had religious tensions and anomalies.[13] The cultural implications of a political and military frontier have been carried further by Lucien Febvre who argues that a frontier is a human construct, only existing "for soldiers and princes, and only then in time of war"?there is nothing innately natural about one.[14] For this reason, frontier formation reveals the process of and assumptions behind a burgeoning "national" identity. Building on traditional conceptions of nation-state formation, other scholars have focused on the social effects of Burgundy's tense position on the border between France and the Empire. As a frontier, did it act as a crucible for ideas that became current in France, or did it develop a counter-doctrine of its own? Was it a marginal or integral part of the French kingdom? (Such questions can easily be anachronistic given that half of "Burgundy"?the Franche-Comté?belonged to the Holy Roman Empire until the late seventeenth century.) Although these scholars are concerned with a wide variety of topics, such as national formation, popular religion, and social structures, each finds distinctive characteristics in the two Burgundies during the early modern era. These qualities are assumed to be the product of a frontier. The assumptions and connections which are thus made imply that the duchy and county of Burgundy would provide a fruitful environment for assessing the impact of political events on familial, communal, and intellectual frameworks.

This book will make such an assessment and, in the process, offer a reinterpretation of the development and meaning of "frontier" when applied to early modern Burgundians. During the fifteenth century it was possible to think of the duchy and county of Burgundy as united territories. Not only did they share sovereigns, but they had many economic, jurisdictional, social, and cultural ties. Residents married, inherited, and worked across the two provinces, and their lords supported these policies. The Burgundies were not yet a frontier. Beginning in 1477 a border was reinstated and reinforced between the duchy and county though a series of treaties between the kings of France and the descendants of the Valois dukes, soon to include the Holy Roman Emperors. Because of these attempts to divide the Burgundies, the eastern duchy and western county would become a frontier. One characteristic of this frontier was that trade, marriages, and property acquisitions would continue between the two provinces despite the political border; the eastern duchy and the western county formed a geographical unit, and commercial, social, and institutional networks would continue to reflect this condition. The repeated lobbies for amnesty and neutrality by Burgundy's residents in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries stress the abiding value they placed on these links. Over several generations, however, these residents gradually redefined and re-created what it meant to be Burgundian. This transformation appeared in a series of social, economic, and political realignments as well as in their own descriptions of "Burgundianness." During the first half of the sixteenth century, they relinquished their bonds to the other Burgundy, although both groups of Burgundians used similar strategies to develop new social and economic connections. In the process they closed the frontier and transformed the duchy of Burgundy and the Franche-Comté into two border provinces.

The dynastic complexities within fifteenth-century Burgundy itself could have easily led to the development of a Burgundian political frontier without the extinction of the Valois dukes. Beginning in 1363 with Philip the Bold, the Valois dukes of Burgundy had personally united disparate lordships into a powerful conglomeration called "Burgundy," a title derived from their ancestral seats of power, the duchy and county of Burgundy. Through advantageous marriages and pragmatic politics, the dukes of Burgundy amassed territories stretching from the English channel to the Alps, almost rebuilding the Carolingian Middle Kingdom out of independent provinces and fiefs of France and the Holy Roman Empire. When linked to their extensive wealth, the dukes' carefully cultivated reputation bolstered their international prestige to the point where they could mediate as the "grand dukes of the West" between France and England in the Hundred Years' War. Despite these holdings and the dukes' reputations, Burgundian political stability and identity were more products of faith than fact. The dukes united these lands through a recently formed personal union, and the territories disintegrated when the last duke, Charles the Bold, fell in January 1477 on the battlefield at Nancy, leaving only an unwed, teenage daughter as heiress.[15]

After Charles' death sovereignty over the duchy and county was disputed, and the Burgundies became frontier provinces. King Louis XI of France claimed all ducal holdings, including both Burgundies and territories within the Empire, as appanages of the French crown based on the original grant of the duchy to Philip the Bold by King John II of France. Arguing from Salic law, Louis refused to acknowledge Charles' daughter, Mary, as heiress. He also supported his claim through similarities in language and culture; if Mary married outside of French dominions, her subjects would be unjustly forced to abandon their natural culture. His planned marriage between his son and Mary, who would bring these lands as dowry, was presented as the perfect solution.[16] Mary had other ideas. After initial confusion and rebellions in her northern provinces, she married Archduke Maximilian I of Austria, son and heir of Emperor Frederick III, and Mary and Maximilian began reconquering Charles the Bold's territories. A series of revolts, occupations, and broken treaties appeared at an end when the Treaty of Senlis (1493) set an eastern border between France and the Empire roughly bisecting the duchy and county. France took the lion's share of the old ducal lands, but Swiss towns and the Empire also claimed sections.[17] In this partition, the duchy returned to the French crown while the county retained its imperial ties. Some cities and regions, such as Besançon, in the heart of the county, managed to preserve a nominal independence, although generally under French or imperial protection.

Although the Treaty of Senlis apparently confirmed the border status of both the duchy and county and discouraged interaction between the two provinces, connections continued and neither ruler truly yielded his claim to the other's lands. Into the 1530s invasions were staged, raids supported, and "the question of Burgundy" reappeared in treaties between France and the Empire. After the tumult immediately following the Treaty of Madrid, however, the claim to the duchy figured less prominently explicitly in the war aims of Charles V and his descendants. Moreover, by c. 1540 the Treaty of Madrid had been nullified in practice, and the residents of the duchy and county appear to have reached a new equilibrium based on their legal and administrative separation. This equilibrium was apparently accepted by Emperor Charles V, who previously had fought to regain his Burgundian inheritance. In 1544, Charles V marched his army to Meaux, the gateway to Paris; in the terms of his withdrawal the duchy of Burgundy was not mentioned, a striking and significant omission given the stridency with which Charles had earlier asserted his claims. This omission signals the declining importance of the "question of Burgundy" in imperial policy, the closing of Burgundy's political frontier, and the development of an effective boundary between both provinces. The 1559 Treaty of Câteau-Cambrésis would further ratify the earlier divisions.

The Burgundian frontier was, however, far more than a royal or imperial construct. The jurisdictional systems and claims in the two Burgundies would go through their frontier stage as well, which is could be expected given the connections made between juridical attributes and royal/imperial authority and presumptions well into the seventeenth century. Sovereignty was based in this era on a personal tie between sovereign and subject, which enhanced the amount and complexity of negotiations in a frontier.[18] Expressed frequently in Burgundy through citizenship, a ruler's sovereignty could be carried by these citizens across political boundaries, thereby negating one purpose of such barriers. With sovereignty linked to jurisdictional attributes, authority was also exercised in various fields that could surpass the border, such as commerce, taxation, and ecclesiastical relations. In addition, the units that organized jurisdictions?bailliages, bishoprics, and towns, among others?could overlap and breach any supposed political boundary. Although the process of regularizing these claims is beyond this book's scope, their existence and the jurisdictional assumptions on which they are based influenced the Burgundian frontier. The areas where their jurisdictions overlapped may even be seen as microcosms of the larger juridical projections of the Burgundian frontier. Moreover, Burgundian re-creation of these institutions suggests the Burgundy's residents were well aware of the difficulties, and opportunities, these jurisdictional zones presented. Their willingness to accept such ambiguities could also mark their acceptance of the frontier itself, while challenges to and realignments of this system signal changing Burgundian attitudes to the frontier.

This is note to say that this jurisdictional blend was unique to the early modern Burgundies or purely the product of their frontier. Certain aspects of it would, however, influence the Burgundian frontier and particularly the response of Burgundy’s urban elites to it. Like many regions in France and the Holy Roman Empire during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Burgundy was an administrative and judicial puzzle whose pieces often overlapped. The personal nature of Burgundian unity under the Valois dukes contributed to this situation, as did the dukes' sporadic attempts to regularize and centralize their provinces' institutions. Under the first three Valois dukes there were few coherent, long-term attempts to reconstitute local administration and customs in both the Low Countries and the two Burgundies. Instead, the process of adapting existing arrangements to ducal needs was more piecemeal. When a judicial body was needed for the county in the early fifteenth century, John the Fearless patterned it on that existing in ducal Dijon; when Besançon's residents rebelled against their archiepiscopal overlords, Philip the Good parlayed his protectorate into increased direct taxes and a greater military presence in that city.[19] Only under Charles the Bold, the last of the four dukes, were attempts made to bypass existing administrative hierarchies and centralize his government. When Charles tried to prohibit appeals to the Parlement of Paris and other external courts, it resulted in the imposition of a new and complex administrative structure based in Malines that attempted to bind the duchy and county, the Low Countries and the two Burgundies. When Charles died, only four years after these offices were established, residents of the duchy and county faced governmental claims by two competing administrative and judicial hierarchies. Partially established and equally legitimate jurisdictional systems would contribute to the juridical frontier of early modern Burgundy, where competing laws, claims, and courts that were answerable to varied authorities coexisted.

Even within the royal or imperial systems, regional and communal courts in the Burgundies often had conflicting, albeit legitimate, duties and privileges. This situation would add further complications to the negotiations that were required in Burgundy's frontier.[20] For example, in the duchy during the reigns of the Valois dukes there were royal enclaves, such as Autun, Chalon, and Langres, which royal officials administered but whose revenues were assigned to the dukes. When the French king and Burgundian duke cooperated, the system benefited both, but during the shifts of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, appointments to such offices and distribution of their revenues became more problematic. In each region, too, there were allods and enclaves based on earlier notions of feudal tenure, such as those lands held in the northeastern county by the house of Chalon. The largest city in the county, Besançon, itself had a different law code than that of the county which surrounded it and a different legal relationship with its overlord. As citizens of an imperial free city, its residents enjoyed privileged legal status with the Emperor when compared to the county's inhabitants; debates between Besançon's governors and the county's administrators about the extent of these rights would continue until the conquest of the county and Besançon by King Louis XIV of France in 1678.

Perhaps the greatest complication in this jurisdiction melange came through the influence of Langres' bishopric and, especially, Besançon's archbishopric. As was frequently the case in medieval and early modern Europe, their prerogatives—particularly those of Besançon's episcopal court, the officialité—brought them into conflict with the royal, imperial, seigneurial, and communal jurisdictions in the region. In addition, their administrative and jurisdictional prerogatives both divided and united the two Burgundies, and, by inference, their sovereigns. Given that their rights breached the political boundaries of and between the Burgundies, these ecclesiastical institutions could be seen as divisive. By bridging any political border between the two Burgundies, however, they forced all of those associated with them?who comprised a large part of Burgundy's politically active population?to continue to be preoccupied with circumstances in the neighboring Burgundian province as well as other territories where these bishoprics had jurisdictional and administrative claims. Given the many rights and dependent lands belonging to these ecclesiastical offices, it is not surprising that the dukes of Burgundy, kings of France, and Emperors believed that control over the bishoprics was one key to consolidating the region.[21]

As thus described, Burgundy differs little from many, if not most, regions of France and the Empire during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. What marks Burgundy as a judicial frontier is not purely the interaction and tensions between various jurisdictions, but the alterations which the administrative framework, personnel, and laws themselves were undergoing at this time and the consequences of these changes. Between 1450 and 1550 the duchy, the county, and the region's leading cities codified their laws. At various stages both the duchy and the county also shared judicial and financial institutions; even when their administration was separate, these institutions had similar foundations and procedures established under the Valois dukes. In both provinces during the frontier era of the early sixteenth century, when the duchy and county were reestablishing independent administrative identities, the number of regional officials boomed and important royal and imperial grants were solicited which established the bureaucratic outline of the region for several centuries. Finally, despite the increased French and imperial administrative complexity and incipient centralization, privileges prevented much structural change in the two Burgundies until the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

The frontier period in the early modern Burgundies also saw similar alterations but on a smaller scale: in administrative and judicial personnel and in their re-creation of Burgundian society and conceptions. While the Burgundian frontier certainly did not cause such developments, the ways they were enacted and the coincidence in time suggest that they were subject to similar pressures and reflected similar interests which related to the frontier's establishment and closure. In particular, the two Burgundies were not divided provinces until decades after the treaties which described them as split. Under the dukes both regions shared many laws and lawyers; several decades after Burgundy was divided, legal officials from either province could and did serve or act as prosecutors in the other region's courts. The imperial county retained its essentially French administrative structure with baillis and a Parlement based in Dole, and well into the 1520s relations were cordial enough between jurists in the county and the duchy that emissaries from Dole could travel to Dijon in order to copy royal grants and letters patent for their archives. Even when administrators stopped living in one Burgundy and serving in another, they still assumed that their counterparts would be familiar with procedures and personnel in both provinces. By the 1530s, however, their institutions differed enough and the tradition of cooperation was distant enough that such interaction was rare. As treaties, customs, and institutional accountability further differentiated the two Burgundies in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this interaction became almost unheard of. The period from 1477 to c. 1540 in Burgundy was not then unique because there were overlapping jurisdictions and itinerant officials, but because of the apparent acceptance of their intraregional exchanges, of their willingness to work with and even take advantage of the situation. This jurisdictional flexibility and the conditions that allowed for it are two of the "frontier" aspects of the early modern Burgundies.

Geographically, the Burgundies were also more of a frontier than a border according to both early modern and modern definitions. Dramatic geological change or forms have been frequently seen as signaling a "natural" border or frontier.[22] Early modern political theorists would eventually see the Rhine, the Alps, or the Pyrenees as imposing such political divides, and, from the seventeenth century, French cartographers began producing detailed maps of the kingdom to reflect this sense, concentrating especially on territorial limits. Based on those standards, however, early modern Burgundy was a frontier rather than a border in both its geography and its residents' perception of that geography's significance. The geographical boundary between the duchy and county was quite permeable. Unlike the Vosges, which separated the Low Countries and the Burgundies, the river Saône may have symbolically divided the duchy and county, but in practice it was more a roadway than a barrier. Merchants from both provinces used it to transport goods from north to south, and it was easily crossed. Looking from its banks either to the east towards the county or the west towards the duchy a traveler would see miles of fertile plain and rolling hills. Rather than dividing the duchy and county the Saône acted as a center marker in a large valley that comprised the eastern duchy and western county and where most of both province's inhabitants lived. This zone is Burgundy's geographic frontier and the region this book discusses.

Similar physical units may be found within smaller geographic areas, although they endure for a shorter time than geophysical formations. In this sense, part of a province, several villages, or a village and its surrounding countryside may all at different times have their frontiers, although it is beyond this book's scope to develop such a general rule. Instead I will argue that towns in the early modern Burgundies had their "frontiers" as well, mediating zones where neighborhoods and crafts, rich and poor, oligarchs and beggars interacted.[23] Distinctive architectural monuments or spatial arrangements could mark the end of a parish or neighborhood, and more varied residents and greater links to other parishes often distinguished the areas around these sites when compared to the sections further inside parish boundaries. Given this combination of geographic and social distinctiveness, these urban zones can be seen as fostering similar qualities and negotiations as the Burgundian frontier, albeit on a much smaller scale. Such urbanization can also surpass city walls. The city itself and its rural hinterlands relate much like frontier provinces and their connections as seen in the early modern Burgundies; each exhibits a distinct society, culture, administration, and identity while simultaneously sharing in and interacting with that of the surrounding regions. This situation is not unique to early modern Burgundy, echoing that found in many modern interpretations of the early modern city. The crucible-like character of these cities has attracted scholars to urban history and led them to assert the city's pivotal historical role. In many of these works the city is depicted as consisting of various "cells" within and between which there could be confraternity or opposition. Distinct yet integrated, the city encapsulates many characteristics of a frontier region within a confined and, in theory, defined space[24]

Because of these characteristics and the regional significance of urban centers, this study focuses on Burgundy's three leading cities—Dijon, Dole, and Besançon—to assess the development and significance of Burgundy’s frontier. Dijon and Besançon were located roughly in the heart of the duchy and county respectively, while Dole was approximately equidistant to both and closest to the political divide. Each city encompassed within its walls representatives of most social groupings, experienced the results of this mixture, and functioned within a day's ride of the new border. As administrative, judicial, and commercial centers, they affected situations in and attracted people from both provinces. All were seats of regional courts, and their leading citizens often combined local and royal or imperial duties, a complicated balance given the conflicting claims to authority by the institutions involved. Because of the similarities between these towns, comparison between them especially raises questions of motivation and identity. For example, in 1477, Dijon and Dole, the two provincial capitals, had armies at their gates. Both cities were organized around like institutional and economic foundations. Their leading families had similar local status, social aspirations, and financial and moral bases for their power. As Charles the Bold had died unexpectedly, neither was prepared for a siege. Yet Dijon surrendered to the French representatives within a week, while Dole continued to fight until 1479, when it was sacked and burned to the ground. To pose the question through the eyes of the county's residents, why did Dole remain loyal to its dynasty while Dijon betrayed it? Motivations reappear, because each city would end the frontier period in different political circumstances. Dijon became the capital of a Burgundian duchy united to France, Dole the capital of the county and part of the Empire, and Besançon maintained its precarious position as an imperial free city. These differences highlight the importance of choice for residents in the Burgundian frontier, especially the wide variety of concerns that might be more readily expressed in this environment.[25]

Because of these variations, it is also clear that in the early modern Burgundies towns were more than geographic phenomena. They were human creations and, as such, the relationships of individuals and groups within them may have shared in the inconsistencies and situational responses found in the individuals that comprised them. The concepts of class, strata, or rank, all of which contain an implicit boundary, are useful and sometimes accurate means of imposing some analytical order on these relationships. On the other hand, the boundaries of these classes, strata, and ranks are often more permeable and negotiated than their rhetoric implies, a situation which has been increasingly recognized. "Frontier classes" (classes frontières) is one term that has been used to describe the individuals who failed in such negotiations. Although this phrase is most frequently applied to those who lived on the economic and social peripheries, its implications are more complex. By describing certain social groups as "frontier," this term suggests that areas of actual and perceptional interaction existed between these "frontier" populations and other, more acceptable ones. To some extent the mainstream had enough in common with these "frontier classes" that they could interact with them and place them on the borders. Based on these linguistic implications and social relations in early modern Burgundy, I will contend that the social groups in Dijon, Dole, and Besançon had "frontiers" in relation to each other. These frontiers were the subjects and situations in which they were willing to compromise with other urban residents, other Burgundians, or distant kings and emperors. Because they were flexible in certain areas, Burgundy's residents were able to cope with and even to re-create their environment: the Burgundian frontier, in a more traditional sense. In particular, the cities of the duchy and county of Burgundy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were undergoing widespread social and cultural changes. The greatest flexibility and malleability coincided with the end of the ducal era. As such, it is likely that this social situation contributed to the Burgundy's relatively easy transition to a frontier. Its continuation and development may even be seen as distinguishing Burgundy's frontier era from that which followed. In this way, a social "frontier" may reflect and re-create a political boundary.[26]

Central to many of these urban relationships were family alliances. As such, family relations, structures, and attitudes are central to this study and, by implication, the Burgundian frontier. Whether defined as a nuclear household, a lineage, or a broad kinship network, the pivotal role of concepts and assumptions about family and household in many early modern fiscal, political, and social structures has become an historical truism. During the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the French crown acknowledged the political significance of the family when it instituted laws investing the male head of household with exclusive control of his household and, in certain circumstances, his lineage. This policy reflected and enhanced embryonic absolutist theories while protecting the noblesse de robe on which the crown depended for its officials. Similar laws supporting a patriarchal vision of society were enacted at roughly the same time throughout provinces on the French borders and in the Holy Roman Empire. Although such legislation occurs outside of this book's chronological scope, the impulses for these laws were developing in the early sixteenth century but were tied to a seemingly more flexible view of patriarchy. Patriarchy by its very definition implies that some unit based on a genetic tie must exist and, in this case, serve as a social and political regulator.[27] In early modern Europe, this patriarchy was carried further, to those enjoying a symbolically infantile relationship, such as servants.

The Burgundian experience reinforces these interpretations and reveals the effect of a frontier setting on their interactions and re-creations. Burgundy's leaders used famille to denote these familial and patriarchal bonds and saw this word as encompassing lineage, household, or immediate kinship groups. Whatever the variant, they endowed the term or the role with responsibilities, privileges, attitudes, and assumptions which other Burgundians shared. Urban oligarchs embraced paternal roles in the wider community and based their authority to do so on principles similar to those which supported their status within a family: the value of order, authority, hierarchy, and tradition.[28] Familial relationships also supported judicial and administrative structures. Patronage based on extended households and marriage connections permeated government and business; devolution and venality of office in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries merely codified practices which had existed during previous eras.[29] The broad scope of elite interests assured that this family connection, both in theory and in practice, would spread beyond households and city walls into the neighboring countryside and even bordering provinces. Marital alliances, trade partnerships, administrative appointments, and properties were all important concerns of these families which could bypass political boundaries and were thus subject to revision in Burgundy’s mercurial political climate.

In this situation reorganization of familial concerns could reflect the impact of broader political alignments, while its stability questions the influence of treaties and dynasties on local society. For this reason, this book focuses on social formations in early modern Burgundy: residence patterns, parish organization, patronage networks, professional affiliations, and noble affinities, among many others. The social relationships which linked the individual, a group, and other groups are essential to this picture, and the fluidity of Burgundy's environment in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries complicated these relationships by providing access to new social avenues and offering unexpected opportunities for reformulation.[30] While Burgundian society had strong institutional and psychological frameworks, compartmentalized and regimented structures did not trap early modern Burgundians, despite the many regional studies which imply by their organization and emphasis that institutional changes determined Burgundian response and attitudes. Obligations of office and patronage could constrain oligarchs, but individual elites had some freedom in choosing their clients and allies and determining the support they would give to various projects. The repeated transfers of and challenges to sovereignty during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries increased opportunities for this choice, and Burgundy's urban leaders willingly exploited these situations. In so doing, they negotiated a careful balance between individual, familial, and social spheres in which the rules frequently fluctuated. The sheer variety of options distinguished Burgundy's frontier era, and the establishment of more consistent and confining social patterns marked its end.[31]

For Burgundy's urban leaders the region's frontier characteristics and the reformulations which accompanied them were particularly immediate, affecting as they did the composition, definition, and aspirations of the urban elites. For this reason, as well as those previously stated, this book focuses on the impact of frontiers on and the frontier formations involving Burgundy's urban elites. In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, however, many seemingly imprecise factors determined oligarchical status, and they continue to complicate modern analyses of this era. Many researchers can sense and name a community's "urban elite," although the qualities that mark membership are often far more elusive. Burgundy's elite is no exception to this rule, and the lack of single guide to elite status?such as a list of bourgeois?demands a more integrated approach to determining its leading families. Most scholarship on France, especially about the sixteenth century, stresses the growing dominance of a legal class and the increasingly "official" nature of elite status. Even within this framework, debates have arisen as to the relative importance of its political, legal, and social standing and the gradations within the elite itself.[32] Given that one of the two Burgundies, the county of Burgundy, was part of the Holy Roman Empire, imperial historiography should be seen as offering additional means of solving this problem. German scholars stress the pluralism of elite ruling groups in the Holy Roman Empire and distinguish between varieties of urban elites based on their participation in the civil service (Beamtenbürgertum), citizenship (Stadtbürgertum), and commercial status (Wirtschaftsbürgertum).[33] In the case of the duchy and county of Burgundy, the perspectives offered by both the imperial and French historiographic schools can provide insights into elite formation and elite relationships among themselves, within their communities, and with their rulers. Within the patriciate local and regional officials may be distinguished, but they generally were interrelated and worked closely together. Although participation in civic government often marked one stage in becoming an elite figure in Burgundy, making elite formation contingent on officeholding falsely opposes legal professionals and merchants in this era. In late fifteenth-century Burgundy some prominent citizens intentionally avoided regional or urban office. Even those who served might hold positions that poorly reflected the scope of their activities and influence. By the later sixteenth century, however, this situation had changed in both Burgundies, reflecting the increased stratification for which that era is known.[34] Contemporary practice cannot even provide a ready guide towards elite definition; their use of honorifics and other verbal marks of status was erratic, and registers of bourgeois were not kept in any of the three towns studied here until at least the middle of the sixteenth century.[35]

Attempting to resolve these dilemmas, I have devised a definition of the Burgundian urban ruling class that tries to balance these concerns and incorporates four characteristics: (1) traditions of political participation in royal, ducal, or city government in the duchy or county; (2) established lineage in either the city or region; (3) wealth in land or other forms of property, and (4) marriage connections. Although the chief elite lineages generally combined all four characteristics, a family could still exercise great influence if it was missing one or even two. These individual's names and connections can be found most readily in town council minutes, records from regional offices, marriage contracts, and wills, all of which have been analyzed here. While such sampling methods may seem haphazard, they offer the only means of determining until the late sixteenth century who local residents considered to be their leaders and with whom these leaders felt they should ally. When supplemented with a wide variety of other sources, these records have provided approximately 150 oligarchical lineages and 1,500 individuals covering five generations that form the basis for this study.[36]

Within this oligarchy there were gradations which are here termed primary and secondary elites to emphasize the gradations that existed even within the ruling communities. The primary group often had longer ties to the town or region, firmer and more extensive networks, and greater wealth and prestige than secondary families or individuals. Primary figures would become regional, royal, or imperial officials, travel outside of the Burgundies, and even attain noble status; while some secondary lineages might move into these ranks, more frequently they would fill the local positions and roles vacated by the primary figures. The boundaries between these two groups, however, were more fluid than they may at first seem. Sons or younger brothers might spend years as secondary figures before moving into the urban limelight, and each of Burgundy's main towns had lineages in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries that began as craftsmen and advanced from mastery to lordship, sometimes in as few as two or three generations.[37] I would like to suggest that, when combined with other circumstances in the late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Burgundies, this experience gave the provinces' urban leaders a "frontier" perspective. Given that in the fifteenth century many of Burgundy's oligarchs had begun their career as secondary figures or even middling artisans and attained regional prominence, they clearly were adaptable, determined, and opportunistic. These same qualities helped them navigate, exploit, and reform the Burgundian frontier. Although officeholding would increasingly become the cornerstone of elite status, in the late fifteenth century Burgundy’s oligarchs were still willing and able to use mercantile connections to secure their place or even to rebuild familial stature under new overlords. As society in the sixteenth century was developed where these qualities became less valuable, other characteristics grew to distinguish Burgundy's urban elites. This transformation was one component of Burgundy's closing frontier.

While Burgundy's urban leaders partook of and were intimately affected by all of the preceding frontier forms, they also were in a position to remake these zones in a more sympathetic image.[38] While this process of re-creation will be developed throughout this book for the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, circumstances during the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had prepared these elites for their more pivotal role. The Valois dukes' southern subjects, especially those from the duchy and county of Burgundy, always enjoyed a special place in the ducal dominions as the residents of the dukes' earliest patrimony. Even when the ducal court settled in Brussels during the 1420s, the dukes still maintained their Dijon palace and made special efforts to have their heirs born there. Throughout the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the duchy and county continued to supply most of the dukes' courtiers and administrators, even when Philip the Good relocated his financial offices to the north and Charles the Bold attempted to centralize his administration in the northern city of Malines. Burgundian jurists interacted frequently as officers in the Parlement, Grand Conseil, and the Chambres des Comptes and formed powerful alliances.[39] Many leading families of the ducal court itself originated as Burgundian bourgeois, and many lineages would endure into the following century. Given the importance of ducal pensions and offices to the Burgundian urban elite, political dislocations within their area of potential profit might be considered a disaster.

On the other hand, the urban elites benefited from of their physical distance from the ducal court by the middle of the fifteenth century. Under Charles the Bold the duchy and county were increasingly treated as peripheral territories; Charles did not even make his first entry into Dijon until 1474, seven years after he became duke. Thus, the leading citizens, administrators, and nobles of the southern duchy and county functioned in relative autonomy when it came to regional government and socio-economic ties. During the ducal era they formed marriage and mercantile alliances between the two territories, accepting Burgundian administrative machinery and its benefits but using them for their own purposes. One of these aims was regional peace, a point they had debated with Charles the Bold even before the death of his father, Philip the Good. The leading families of Dijon, Dole, and Besançon had felt the effect of war for decades in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Every lull in the Hundred Years' War meant special watches and preparations to shelter villagers fleeing the unemployed mercenaries of the Grandes Companies and Écorcheurs.[40] At the same time Philip the Good and, especially, Charles the Bold demanded citizen forces, foodstuffs, cartage, and cash towards maintaining their forces, levies for which the ducal servants and urban nobles that comprised Burgundy's upper echelons were liable. Such requisitions led to vociferous complaints by regional elites, complaints that their increased expectations of regional autonomy only exacerbated.

Charles the Bold's death thus became a mixed blessing for Burgundy's urban leaders. Although his lack of a male heir left all of his territories more vulnerable to conquest, it gave Burgundy's urban elites a greater opportunity to renegotiate their status in relation to their ruler(s), to put into practice the independence which they had earlier asserted. One aspect of this influence appeared regularly during the sixteenth century in treaties between France and the Empire. Despite antagonism between their sovereigns, the French kings and the Emperors, which would endure throughout the early modern period, Burgundy's urban leaders were repeatedly able to enact treaties of neutrality between their provinces. These acts apparently restored the legal relationships between residents of the duchy and county to those of the ducal era. The elite influence that these documents suggest, however, can be viewed in a different light. Although they allowed for continued intraregional social and economic ties, the fact that these treaties were even necessary marks a decline in the relative independence of Burgundians compared to that under the dukes. Residents of the county might tout the privileges of their "free county"?a literal translation of "Franche-Comté"?but these remained only privileges, not innate rights. Royal grants, which could be retracted at any time, attempted to govern interactions between the duchy and county, but their control of and appreciation of Burgundian circumstances was weak, although such grants remained necessary to ensure the legality of continuing regional interaction. Thus, immediately after the ducal era, elites in both the duchy and county faced a fluid and at times paradoxical environment in which to negotiate their status, but negotiation was possible; by the later sixteenth century royal or imperial dependency minimized their flexibility.

Despite these circumstances, Burgundy's urban leaders would retain their sense of independence, a sense that was closely linked to their perception of what it meant to be Burgundian. Throughout the analysis of family, society, and ritual that follows, conceptions of Burgundian identity in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries will emerge from the interaction of apparently disparate elements. "Identity" is a term frequently discussed and difficult to define satisfactorily. An apparently inward process, identity formation often depends on the interpretation of external symbols by external subjects: the observers of a procession, the residents of a neighborhood, or the chroniclers of an era or event. Marchers and neighbors depend on the perception of others, at least in part, for their self-perception. Moreover, the process of internalization itself is highly personal; one might even say highly subjective. In fact, the more an individual internalizes an identity the more complex and unique it becomes, and the more problematic to analyze. Because of these processes, possibilities for misinterpretation or reinterpretation abound, although all involved may share certain cultural assumptions.[41]

In the past historians and literary scholars have tried to analyze these readings in terms of popular and elite or public and private dichotomies, distinctions which have been increasingly discredited except in particular circumstances for the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Despite this situation, no satisfactory linguistic alternative has been offered to express these new and, at times, paradoxically ambiguous self-perceptions that have been described. This problem reflects the difficulties in making identity concrete?linguistically or otherwise?and the differences between modern and early modern approaches. Although scholars might find it uncomfortable, ambiguous readings and identities were accepted, if not embraced, by Burgundy's urban leaders. While at various times they identified themselves primarily according to familial, legal, professional, corporate, or geographic ties, a mixture of all of these perceptions formed Burgundians. For example, when rendering a verdict a judge was not purely a transmitter of impersonal law. The law itself was a human creation, despite medieval and early modern claims for its divine origin. The judge interpreted the law based on his education, knowledge of the case, and assessment of the testators; he might be gauging the verdict's impact on a balance of power within the town council or parlement, sending a warning to a rowdy neighborhood or craft, preserving royal or imperial dignity, and/or placing an individual in debt to himself. Such identification became more complex during Burgundy’s frontier era when Burgundy itself was being delineated and its components defined. As such, residents in Burgundy’s frontier articulated an identity as Burgundians that reflected their commonalties while simultaneously suggesting the differences that would contribute to the frontier’s transformation into a border.[42]
 
 

National Identity and Burgundian Perceptions during a Frontier Era

Implicit in many analyses of "the frontier" are its relation to some form of nation or nation-state and its influence on regional or even national identity. The early modern Burgundies are no exception. For that reason, this section will briefly describe the way Burgundy was used in this era and will be used in this book, the assumptions about that identity which guide this analysis, and the influence of "national" narratives on the historiography of the early modern Burgundies.

Certainly all of the circumstances described in the preceding section contributed to the distinctive cultural and psychological identity of Burgundy's urban leaders in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. As subjects, officials, urbanites, and patriarchs, Burgundy's oligarchs fashioned an identity based on the interactions and situational responses that survival within Burgundy's changing political environment required. At times these negotiations could even lead to divisions within the family where one branch served the French kings and another the Emperors. This flexibility should not be taken for granted. During the sixteenth century aspects of this earlier relational identity became progressively obscured. This re-created identity, and its attendant social and cultural forms, gradually appeared objective and natural, divinely ordained and therefore unchallengeable. Like the old "Burgundianness," the newer Burgundian identity derived from the interaction of personal, familial, official, pious, and communal concerns, to name a few, but it was less malleable and, perhaps, less creative than its earlier incarnation.

Flexibility remained the longest in the elites' use of the word "Burgundian" as self-identification.[43] What it meant to be Burgundian was a lively topic during the sixteenth century, expressed through a quasi-religious "faith of Burgundy." It is found among the heirs of the old Valois dukes, when Mary and Maximilian's grandson, Emperor Charles V, willed that he be buried with his ancestors in the ducal sepulcher at the Chartreuse de Champmol, just outside Dijon, if he ever regained these ancestral lands. His aunt, Margaret, who governed the county of Burgundy for almost two decades, repeatedly pleaded that "Burgundy" not be abandoned and that imperial policy focus on the consolidation and reconquest of this patrimony.[44] Certainly Burgundy’s significance was not based on its fiscal value to Mary and her heirs; it is likely that the duchy provided less revenue than Flanders, Holland, Brabant, Artois, or Hanault, and the county’s fiscal contribution was insignificant.

Within the duchy and county, the urban elites of both provinces shared this emotional attachment and labeled themselves as Burgundians, but the meaning behind the label varied as the decades passed. The duchy's leaders would gradually develop a concept equating Burgundianness with true Frenchness and endorsement of appropriate royal activities and attitudes, an ethos that would underlie their support of the League during the Wars of Religion.[45] The county's elites were particularly strident in their Burgundianness, often calling those in the duchy "Francoys" when they opposed the county's interests as perceived by its governors and "Bourgognons" when they did not. In 1562, a chronicler from the county made this distinction explicitly when he portrayed "Burgundians" and the French king as mortal enemies: "You do as your predecessors did at other times when they took Burgundy and forced the Burgundians to say, 'Long live the King,' because the Burgundians would rather kill themselves than say, 'Long live the king,' or if they said it aloud, their heart said the opposite and hated the King more than ever."[46]

Because of the ambiguities in the word "Burgundy" and an implicit acceptance of modern national boundaries, the treatment of "Burgundy" in the historiography of this region under the Valois dukes and through the seventeenth century only enhances the troubles involved in clarifying Burgundian self-conceptions. In these works "Burgundy" has been used geographically or judicially to denote all of the provinces held by the dukes of Burgundy during most of the fifteenth century, the Flemish possessions, the duchy of Burgundy, and/or the county of Burgundy. Distinctions between the southern and northern provinces have often been blurred, and the Low Countries are often treated as embodying "Burgundy," especially after Charles the Bold's death.[47] While this situation may only seem unduly complicated, when geographical or judicial boundaries are projected onto self-conceptions, particularly those of early modern Europeans, misconceptions can easily arise. Broad geographical or judicial frameworks varied at that time; modern versions impose often anachronistic categories. As one of this project's goals is to uncover the meaning of "Burgundianness" for the residents of the duchy and county during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, following modern historiographical nomenclature would obscure the issue.

The contemporary use of "Burgundy" and "Burgundian" may seem one way to circumvent these problems, but it was hardly less complex. In order to give the reader a sense of the early modern meaning, I have conformed to their usage and referred to both the duchy and county as "Burgundy." In the process, I will argue that this flexibility is not a sign of uncertainty, opportunism, or, especially, intellectual slovenliness, but reflects the fluid nature of elite identity at this time, a fluidity that enabled them to weather Burgundy's political storms. Other terms used by early modern Burgundians to denote identity share in the combination of ambivalence and certainty found in their treatment of "Burgundian" and reflect the adaptability which enabled Burgundy's elites to navigate and re-create the Burgundian frontier. "Citoyen," "habitant," "bourgeois," "homme de bien," and "honnorable homme," among others, all had varied emotional significance, and the legal status which some marked was not as firm as statutes could lead one to believe. Like, "Burgundianness," even citizenship could apparently be situational on the frontier.[48]

Treatments of this Burgundian identity often flounder on analyses which concentrate on the "failure" of its dukes to form an enduring, coherent territory. Almost a century ago Henri Pirenne's insightful and influential analysis of Burgundy concentrated on the legal mechanisms of a state and lamented Burgundy's lack of unitary "national" characteristics, such as shared language, geography, or symbolic structures. Burgundy became a political dinosaur, a cripple in the inevitable march towards modern nationhood. While the teleology and nationalism of this approach may be increasingly discredited, belief in the inherent validity of current national and administrative boundaries remains implicit in most twentieth-century regional studies, which focus on the duchy or county as autonomous entities.[49] When assessing the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Burgundian regional historiography has especially concentrated on legal sources and the administrative implications of the fragmentation of ducal Burgundy. Only recently have attempts been made to revise its social and cultural history at a regional level, to transform Burgundy from the decaying dominion that symbolized for Johan Huizinga the strengths and myriad weaknesses of the declining Middle Ages.[50] Moreover, because a "national" political mentality dependent on the existence of a modern nation has been a focus of many French studies, the duchy of Burgundy has been treated as a peripheral region and the county is often not treated at all. Even surveys of French and imperial history that are less concerned with national formation often portray Burgundy as an interesting anomaly, reinforcing its own perception as a region apart.[51] Studies of late medieval law, centralization, and rural relations stress Burgundy's differences: its retention of mainmorte, its exemption from the taille, and its maintenance of a Parlement beyond Parisian influence.[52] Such connections reveal anachronistic assumptions about the Burgundies' political futures. Imperial historiography is not blameless either, although there may be fewer causes for recrimination. In a recent survey of the late medieval German cities, Burgundy only figures in relation to its dukes, and, despite its position as an imperial city, Besançon is only mentioned once.[53] Even when presented as an institutional template for Austrian and, thereby, imperial dominions, the term "Burgundy" is used imprecisely, and such studies often concentrate on the Low Countries and the ducal court that existed there.[54]

In particular, both Burgundies are assumed to be "French" because of their language, their integration under the French Valois dukes, and their modern political destinies. Yet what is associated with Frenchness in the twentieth century, or in early modern Europe for that matter, may have little do with identity formation in earlier eras. Theories of identity based on language, administrative parameters, or the existence of a culturally distinct Volk are products of nineteenth- and twentieth-century national formation that lurk implicitly within many modern studies of earlier identities.[55] It should not be discounted that the county was part of the Empire and Besançon an imperial free city. As such, their leaders, when they looked beyond their province, looked north and east, not towards the western territories linked to the French crown. They identified with imperial struggles against the Turks, sent delegates to Worms to observe Luther, and trembled when the Peasants' War touched their province. Linguistically Francophone, politically Francophobe, and socially and culturally somewhere in the middle, the county of Burgundy was as much "Burgundy" as the duchy to which modern historians more frequently apply the term. It also represents an alternative vision of Burgundian destiny and Burgundianness in early modern Europe.

For provinces such as the duchy of Burgundy which became "French" during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, questions of identity, loyalty, legitimacy, and recognition are often subsumed into general discussions of "national" reconstruction after the Hundred Years' War. The French national narrative presumes a "late medieval crisis of order" which had to be solved and of which Burgundy's very existence under the Valois dukes was a symptom and partial cause. In the "order of nations increasingly aware of their growing national characteristics," Burgundy was one of the last feudal, thereby obsolete, orders.[56] Witness its inability to survive. Rather than debate the necessity of a solution for the "crisis of order," the implications of the word "crisis," or the teleological presumptions on which this crisis theory is based, I would like to suggest that, if such a crisis exists, it acts as a crucible, revealing forces, assumptions, and tensions that might remain hidden in more benign circumstances, much as the Burgundian frontier.[57] In the case of an event such as the Hundred Years War, Burgundy should not then be treated as a secondary player that only acts to assist or hinder "England" or "France." That interpretation is often based on anachronistic precognition and/or an implicit assumption that a failed political entity is somehow less worthy of study. Instead one might ask if the Hundred Years War enhanced French and English national consciousness, why did it not do the same for Burgundy?

Such omissions can be linked to presentism of many studies on early modern "states," as can other common approaches. Nation-state historiography for early modern Europe has often developed a false distinction between center and periphery. In the French interpretation, Paris, the king, or royal officialdom is the center, and the provinces and their residents begin on the periphery. The process of state-building involves the gradual binding of these peripheries to the center and the center's expansion.[58] While this model may have some validity for the duchy in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in the earlier era it imposes artificial distinctions.[59] Even those Burgundians who made their careers in distant courts retained extensive property, patronage, and family networks in the home provinces. In this sense, "frontier" as used in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries should not be seen as a synonym for "periphery," but as emphasizing regional unity, distinctiveness, and insecurity. Although Burgundians lived on a "frontier," they would only gradually redirect their activities and interests beyond it to anything that might be considered a "center."

Instead the situation in late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Burgundy may be better understood by applying interpretive techniques used for the Holy Roman Empire, which had no clear center or even a concept of unified sovereignty. Research on the Empire stresses the negotiated nature of early modern social, political, and even intellectual interests to a greater extent. Central to ruling both the Habsburg lands and the Holy Roman Empire were bargains reached with local figures addressing local concerns.[60] The imperial system was so vast and diverse that provincial and communal liberties were less threatened, leaving the county's residents to enjoy a relationship with their Habsburg lords that was quite similar to that they enjoyed under Philip the Good and Charles the Bold. Despite its possible fruitfulness, approaching the two Burgundies through imperial historiography would be revolutionary; Burgundian studies are traditionally oriented towards France, although the county of Burgundy owed its allegiance to the Empire until 1678.

These divisions that have plagued Burgundian historiography are in part the legacy of nation-state narratives developed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As such, they distort the environment and experiences of early modern Burgundians, particularly in their divided treatments of the duchy and county during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries and their assumption of French hegemony throughout both provinces. By reference to both French and imperial historiographic themes and methods I hope to begin a process of reestablishing the early modern balance in this region. Yet care must be taken in classifying Burgundian activities and attitudes as especially French or imperial. I will argue that precisely when such classifications become more plausible in the sixteenth century, they mark the end of the Burgundian frontier. By that time the duchy looks increasingly west to the French crown, while the county turns north and east to the Empire and the Habsburg archdukes.

Current discussions of nationalism and national identity do, though, offer valuable perspectives towards understanding pre-modern regional identity, despite their assertion that the nation-state and nationalism are modern phenomena. Concentrating less on the development of a state's bureaucracy, they focus on the interplay of this bureaucracy, socio-cultural formations, and individual motivations in creating identity and national identification. Whether they be Benedict Anderson's "imagined communities" or Anthony Smith's transformed ethnicities, the modern nations described in these works are human creations despite the suprapersonal characteristics with which they are endowed and which they are supposed to represent.[61] While the urban leaders of early modern Burgundy expressed more often the personal nature of their regional and supraregional relations, like the modern nation they gradually developed a concept of Burgundianness which was less dependent on personal ties to a single ruling house. The creation of this identity goes beyond the scope of this work, but the circumstances of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Burgundy highlight the createdness of this identity.

In modern studies of nationalism and nationality, ritual broadly defined is a key tool in constructing this identity. The modification of old rituals and the development of new transform perception by transforming memory. Through cemeteries and statues, parades and historical dramas individual experiences and foibles are shaped into a national consciousness which is intended to elevate the individual, to recreate and integrate this individual or his or her network into the larger national community.[62] Although the goals of early modern Burgundians were narrower than those of the creators of modern nation-states, they share some tools. While not denying the revolutionary role of modern media, I would argue that the place of ritual in constructing memory and identity was appreciated and applied by early modern Burgundians. Ritual was particularly salient in coming to terms with the events of 1477 and the Burgundian frontier. In the process, Burgundy's urban leaders would form an increasingly oppositional sense of Burgundianness that also appeared in regional social and economic ties.

Yet rituals may not be interpreted in the ways their creators intend. Modern discussions of nationalism in Asia, Africa, and Latin America frequently emphasize the creativity of the audience or participant and the dissonance which may develop between and within communities despite their shared national narrative. In so doing, however, national identity is not denied, merely reformed. The various meanings with which the national narrative is endowed and the ways it is imagined also become means of distinguishing between communities in the nation itself.[63] Similar transformations occurred in Burgundian narratives. Urban oligarchs and vineyard workers, merchants and bricklayers apparently embraced a Burgundian identity, although its characteristics varied. Burgundy's leaders would repeatedly attempt to re-create the perceptions of other social groups in their image, although their success was mixed. During various struggles in late medieval and early modern Burgundy opponents would identify themselves and their cause with true Burgundianness, thereby legitimating their claims. Rather than undermining the evocative power of Burgundian identity, these competing conceptions highlight its significance through the willingness of those involved to accept that a Burgundianness existed and to fight over its qualities. Moreover, the ways in which these rituals were staged and read, misread or ignored reveal assumptions about Burgundian society and its relationships, in particular its more hierarchical tendencies in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In contrast, during the frontier era of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Burgundian rituals were being renegotiated to reflect revised circumstances. The scope and form of their reformed rites suggest the extent to which Burgundy’s leaders were willing to recreate their world?and the degree to which they could actually do so.[64]
 
 

The Organization of the Book

The organization of this book essentially reflects its primary goal: to assess the effects of broader political processes on local communities. In this particular case, the communities are the urban elites of the duchy and county of Burgundy, and the political processes are the repeated battles and transfers of sovereignty that occur and are threatened for the approximately sixty years after the death of the last Valois duke that unified the two Burgundies, Charles the Bold, in 1477. In the process of this assessment four main themes will reemerge throughout this book. The first is the necessity of treating the duchy and county as the relatively unified territories that their elites perceived them to be, rather than following more modern political perceptions. The second is the mutually influential nature of Burgundian political processes. Local, familial, and even personal concerns reflect and act on broader movements. The third is that Burgundy’s urban elites were active participants in re-creating the two Burgundies during this period, and in the process laid the groundwork for the changes in Burgundian society that are traditionally seen as distinguishing Old Regime from late medieval society. The fourth and final theme is that the place and period where these transformations are occurring may be profitably known as the Burgundian frontier. This term is especially useful because of the meanings it evokes; not only does it stress the tensions that arise when political boundaries meet, it suggests the wide variety of possibilities—social, cultural, and economic as well as political and military—that exist in such a region.

The first section, chapters 2-4, reconstructs the networks and attitudes of Burgundy’s urban elites in various activities that are central to elite self-conceptions and status before and after the ducal era. Despite the variety of local studies, no detailed, synthetic treatment of Dijon, Dole, or Besançon during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries has been written, and I have supplied it when necessary, not from the belief that these categories determine the activities and attitudes of Burgundy's oligarchy but that they provide a context for their creative operations. Chapter 1 begins with the smallest units of Burgundian elite interest, the most immediate elements likely to be affected by Burgundy’s political shifts: the family, its alliances, its professions, and even its presentation. Chapter 2 examines the next outward stage of oligarchical interest and activity: their urban environment. After a description of each city and their basic urban structures, this chapter analyses the elites’ wealth and influence in relation to other residents, their connections with fellow parishioners and urban residents, and their place within the urban setting, Carrying these concerns beyond the city walls, chapter 3 studies how Burgundy’s urban elites re-created an elite status outside of their cities as landowners, seigneurs, and long-distance merchants. In the process it questions the naturalness of boundaries, whether they be geographical or man-made, and stresses the willingness of Burgundy’s oligarchs to revise or ignore such borders when it suited their purposes. The image that has guided the structure of these chapters is that of rain hitting a body of water. Like raindrops hitting a lake, each field expands until it intersects with others and a new ripple is formed without abandoning all characteristics of the old. Patterning itself on that raindrop's expansion, this book begins with the narrowest ripple?the immediate family?and follows its expansion and incorporation into the broader Burgundian lake.

The second section, chapters 5-7, reconstructs the effects of frontier life on the area most frequently seen as fundamental to elite status and mobility: their control of regional and local offices, particularly as jurists. In the process, the characteristics that were analyzed in the previous chapters are also reexamined in light of oligarchical judicial prerogatives and powers. Chapter 5 focuses on the context in which Burgundy’s urban elites were working, a context that was second nature to them but often seems incredibly complex to outsiders. It describes the structures and powers that came with the various royal, imperial, seigneurial, and local offices in both the duchy and county and traces patterns of officeholding among Burgundy’s urban elites. Included here are ecclesiastical appointments, valuable sources of power and prestige which these elites dominated. Chapter 6 asks what the appeal was of these various offices. In the process it stresses that, while there are many benefits, these appointments carried many hazards and responsibilities. These dangers were only accentuated during Burgundy’s frontier era. By focusing on discreet areas of public elite activity, chapter 7 suggests that urban elites acted as social arbiters, combining roles and relationships developed in the preceding chapters. The case studies given here show the complexity of elite motivations, particularly when the complicating factor of Burgundy’s frontier status is added to their considerations. The final chapter will suggest how these circumstances influenced Burgundian identity and how they led to Burgundy’s re-creation as a frontier and its transformation from a frontier to two, border provinces.
 
 

Endnotes

1. AMDole, 78 no. 5, 1525: my emphasis.

2. "Frontière" may have begun to be used in royal documents in the fourteenth century, but it was still rare in Burgundian records though the early sixteenth centuries; distinctions between older references such as marche and newer forms like près de la frontière and es extremités du royaume were also still minimal. See Colette Beaune, The Birth of an Ideology: Myths and Symbols of Nation in Late-Medieval France, trans. Susan Ross Huston (Berkeley: California, 1991); B.C. Southgate, "'Scattered over Europe': Transcending National Frontiers in the Seventeenth Century," History of European Ideas 16 (1993): 131-37; Georges Dupont-Ferrier, "Le Sens des mots 'patria' et 'patrie' en France au moyen âge et jusqu'au début du XVIIe siècle," Revue Historique 188 (1940): 89-104; Peter Sahlins, Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees (Berkeley: California, 1989), 1-9 & 20-49; Claude Gauvard, "L'Opinion publique aux confins des états et des principautés au début du XVe siècle," Les Principautés au moyen âge (Bordeaux: Taffard, 1979), 130-31; Robert Clémenceau, "Une Frontière ouverte: duché de Bourgogne et Franche-Comté sous le règne de François 1er," AB 27 (1955): 96-97; and André Ferrer, "La Thème de la frontière dans les cahiers des doléances comtois en 1789," Mémoires de la société d'émulation du Doubs 32 (1990): 45-66.

3. This perception would remain well into the sixteenth century and would become one aspect of League polemics in the duchy; see Mack P. Holt, "Burgundians into Frenchmen: Catholic Identity in Sixteenth-Century Burgundy,: in Changing Identities in Early Modern France, ed. Michael Wolfe (Durham: Duke, 1997): 353-54.

4. For examples, see Robert Bartlett and Angus MacKay, eds., Medieval Frontier Societies (New York: Oxford, 1990); Daniel Power and Naomi Standen, eds., Frontiers in Question: Eurasian Borderlands, 700-1700 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1999); Lawrence J. McCrank, Medieval Frontier History in New (Brookfield, VY: Variorum, 1996); E. William Monter, Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisition from the Basque Lands to Sicily (New York: Cambridge, 1990); Auka Jelsma, Frontiers in the Reformation: Dissidence and Orthodoxy in Sixteenth-Century (Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1998); Steven Ellis, Tudor Frontiers and Noble Power: The Making of the British State (New York: Oxford, 1995).

5. The literature on frontiers is far too numerous to cite here, but I have found the following works to be especially useful: John Mack Faragher, "Review Article: The Frontier Trail: Rethinking Turner and Reimagining the American West," American Historical Review 98:1 (Feb. 1993): 106-17; Stanton W. Green and Stephen W. Perlman, eds. The Archaeology of Frontiers and Boundaries (New York: Academic, 1985); Alistair Hennessy, The Frontier in Latin American History (Albuquerque: New Mexico, 1978); Lee Klein Kerwin, Frontiers of Historical Imagination: Narrating the European Conquest of Native America, 1890-1990 (Berkeley: California, 1997); Gregory H. Nobles, American Frontiers: Cultural Encounters and Continental Conquest (New York: Hill & Wang, 1997); David J. Weber and Jane M. Rausch, eds., Where Cultures Meet: Frontiers in Latin American History (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1994); Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (New York: Cambridge, 1991); and Richard White and Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Frontier in American Culture (Berkeley: California, 1994).

6. Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," AHR (1894): 199-227.

7. White, The Middle Ground; Nobles, American Frontiers, xii; Jack D. Forbes, as quoted in Klein, Frontier, 207.

8. Turner, "Significance," 200; Forbes, Ibid.

9. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978); Angus MacKay, Spain in the Middle Ages: From Frontier to Empire, 1000-1500 (New York: St. Martin's, 1977); Lawrence J. McCrank, Medieval Frontier History in New Catalonia. (Brookfield: Variorum, 1996); Mark S. Meyerson and Edward D. English, Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Medieval and Early Modern Spain (Notre Dame, 1999); D.C.A. Shotter, The Roman Frontier in Britain (Preston, Eng.: Carnegie, 1996); Gerard Delanty, Inventing Europe: Idea, Identity, Reality (New York: St. Martin's, 1995); also see note 3.

10. Drummond and Nelson, Western Frontiers; Ralph W. Mathisen and Hagith S. Sivan, eds., Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity (Brookfield: Variorum, 1996) are just two examples.

11. Klein, Frontiers of Historical Imagination, 30. Extremely useful for the idea of a "frontier mentality" have been Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., eds., Identities (Chicago: Chicago, 1995); F. Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Cultural Difference (Boston: 1967); Pierre Bourdieu, "L'Identité et la représentation: éléments pour une réflexion critique sur l'idée de région," Actes de la recherches en sciences sociales 35 (1980); Natalie Zemon Davis, "Boundaries and the Sense of Self in Sixteenth-Century France," Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality and the Self in Western Thought, ed. Thomas Heller et al. (Stanford: Stanford, 1987); Green and Perlman, The Archaeology of Frontiers and Boundaries; Randolph C. Head, Early Modern Democracy in the Grisons: Social Order and Political Language in a Swiss Mountain Canton, 1470-1620 (New York: Cambridge, 1995); Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Chicago: Chicago, 1992); Sahlins, Boundaries; Weber and Rausch, Where Cultures Meet; White, The Middle Ground. Charles Phythian-Adams supports his reconstruction of Coventry on similar premises, although "frontier" is not part of his considerations: Desolation of a City: Coventry and the Urban Crisis of the Late Middle Ages (New York: Cambridge, 1979).

12. Henri Pirenne, "The Formation and Constitution of the Burgundian State," American Historical Review 14 (1908-9): 477-79; Philippe Contamine, La Vie quotidienne pendant la guerre de Cent ans: France et Angleterre, XIVe siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1978), 13.

13. Edmond Belle, La Réforme à Dijon des origines à la fin de la lieutenance générale de Gaspard de Saulx-Tavannes (Paris: H. Champion, 1911), xv-xvi; William Monter, Witchcraft in France and Switzerland: The Borderlands during the Reformation (Ithaca: Cornell, 1976).

14. Gauvard, "L'Opinion publique," 128; Lucien Febvre, "Frontière: The word and the concept," trans. K. Folca, in A New Kind of History, ed. Peter Burke (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), 208-11 & 213-14. For Febvre, so-called "frontiers," such as the Rhine, are historical constructs taken as "natural" because they have been perceived as barriers for millennia.

15. The most complete survey of the Valois dukes' activities during the Hundred Years War is five-volume set by Richard Vaughan which analyzes the reign of each duke and culminates in Valois Burgundy (Hamden, CN: Archon Books, 1975). For Louis XI's relationships with the Valois dukes the most thorough and readable source remains Paul Murray Kendall, Louis XI (New York: Norton, 1971). Also useful are Joseph Calmette, Les Grands ducs de Bourgogne (Paris: Albin Michel, 1979); Christopher Cope, Phoenix Frustrated: The Lost Kingdom of Burgundy (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1986); J. Faussemagne, L'Apanage ducal de Bourgogne dans ses rapports avec la monarchie française, 1363-1477 (Lyons: 1937); A.G. Jongkees, "Charles le Téméraire et la souveraineté," Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden 95 (1980): 315-34; Werner Paravicini, "Charles le Téméraire: la fin de l'état bourguignon," Histoire 10 (19797): 15-22; and Christian Thevenot, Histoire de la Bourgogne ancienne (Dijon: Civry, 1981).

16. Paul Saenger, "Burgundy and the Inalienability of Appanages in the Reign of Louis XI," French Historical Studies 10:1 (Spring 1977): 1-26; Jean Marilier, "Les Dijonnais et la mort de Téméraire," Mémoires de l'Académie de Stanislaus (Nancy: 1976-77): 227-34; and André Leguai, "La Conquête de la Bourgogne par Louis XI," AB 41 (1976): 7-12. A direct male descendent of Philip the Bold?Jean, count of Anvers?was alive in 1477; see Claude Courtépée, Description générale et particulière du duché de Bourgogne 3rd ed. (Paris: Guénégaud, 1967), 1:219ff.

17. Bernard Mandrot has published key documents only found in the archives of Zurich and Bern: Les Relations de Charles VII and de Louis XI avec les cantons suisses (Zurich: J.J. Ulrich, 1881). For the shocked response of Swiss and Lorraine towns to Charles the Bold's death, see J. Schneider, ed., Lorraine et Bourgogne (1473-78) (Nancy: PU de Nancy, 1982), esp. #79. A list of those cities which opposed Louis XI in 1478 is in BMD, ms. 784, fol. 182.

18. Sahlins, Boundaries, 4-6 & 28.

19. Jacky Theurot, "Le Parlement de Dole et son impact sur la vie urbaine (XIVème?XVème siècles)," Mémoires de la société d'émulation du Doubs 38-39 (1981-82): 193-210; Claude Fohlen, ed., Histoire de Besançon (Paris: Nouvelle librairie de France, 1964-65), 1:504-15.

20. For the implications of changing financial and royal-ducal relationships in the duchy, see J. Russell Major, From Renaissance Monarchy to Absolute Monarchy: French Kings, Nobles, and Estates (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1995), 83ff.

21. For one example of this process, see Maurice Piquard, "Charles de Neufchâtel, archevêque de Besançon et la conquête de la Franche-Comté par Louis XI," AB 5 (1933): 260-63.

22. Peter Sahlins, "Natural Frontiers Revisited: France's Boundaries since the Seventeenth Century," American Historical Review 95 (1990): 1435-43.

23. See the sketch by Patricia E. Rubertone & Peter F. Thorbahn, "Urban Hinterlands as Frontiers of Colonization," in Green and Perlman, The Archaeology of Frontiers and Boundaries, 231-50. On the importance and complexity of communal interactions and networks, see Noël Coulet, Aix-en-Provence, espace et rélations d'une capitale (Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence, 1988), esp. books II and III; James R. Farr, "Popular Religious Solidarity in Sixteenth-Century Dijon," French Historical Studies 14 (Fall 1985): 192-214; and Mack P. Holt, "Wine, Community and Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Burgundy," Past and Present 138 (February 1993): 58-93.

24. Bernard Chevalier, Les Bonnes villes de France du XIVe au XVIe siècle (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1982), 311-12. Other excellent urban studies of late medieval France by French scholars that seek to trace the link between urbanism and particular modes of conceiving of and structuring the world include Coulet, Aix-en-Province; Jean Favier, Paris au XVe siècle, 1380-1500 (Paris: Hachette, 1974); Robert Favreau, La Ville de Poitiers à la fin du moyen âge 2 vols. (Poitiers: P. Oudin et E. Beaulu, 1978); Michel Hébert, Tarascon au XVe siècle: Histoire d'une communauté urbaine provençale (Aix-en-Provence: Edisud, 1979); Jean-Pierre Leguay, Un Réseau urbain au moyen âge: les villes du duché de Bretagne aux XIVème et XVème siècles (Paris: Maloine, 1981); Michel Mollat, Histoire de Rouen (Toulouse: Privat, 1978); Guy de Valous, Le Patriciat lyonnais aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles (Paris: A. & J. Picard, 1973); and Philippe Wolff, Commerces et marchands de Toulouse (vers 1350 - vers 1450) (Paris: Plon, 1954) and Histoire de Toulouse (Toulouse: Privat, 1974).

25. This situation also occurred in south-western Germany; Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Turning Swiss: Cities and Empire, 1450-1550 (New York: Cambridge, 1985), ixff. For further references see the excellent bibliographies in Thomas A. Brady, Jr. et al., eds., Handbook of European History, 1400-1600 (New York: Brill, 1994) and Wolfgang Reinhard, ed., Power Elites and State Building (New York: Oxford, 1996).

26. For the complexities of these barriers in the bonnes villes, see Chevalier, Les Bonnes villes, esp. 76-83; Nicole and Yves Castan, Vivre ensemble: Ordre et désordre en Languedoc (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles) (Paris: Gallimard, 1981), chpt. 5; Jean Favier makes a similar point for the Parisian "cadres" in Paris, 252. Robert Schneider argues that dominance of the urban bureaucracy was essential for elite rule, management, and Reformation: Public Life in Toulouse: From Municipal Republic to Cosmopolitan City (Ithaca: Cornell, 1989), 9.

27. . Sarah Hanley's work has extensively analyzed the implications of this development in early modern France. Among her many works, see "Mapping Rulership in the French Body Politic," Historical Reflections 23:2 (Spring 1997), 129-50; "Social Sites of Political Practice in France," American Historical Review 102:1 (Feb. 1997), 27-52; "Engendering the State: Family Formation and State Building in Early Modern France," French Historical Studies 16 (1989): 4-27; The Lit de Justice of the Kings of France: Constitutional Ideology in Legend, Ritual, and Discourse (Princeton: Princeton, 1983); and State Building in Early Modern France: Law, Litigation, and Local Knowledge (Princeton: Princeton, forthcoming). For further information, see Jean-Louis Flandrin, Families in Former Times: Kinship, Household and Sexuality in Early Modern France, trans. Richard Southern (New York: Cambridge, 1979), 118-29; Beatrice Gottlieb, "The Meaning of Clandestine Marriage," in Family and Sexuality in French History, ed. Tamara K. Hareven and Robert Wheaton (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania, 1980), 49-83; and Merry E. Wiesner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (New York: Cambridge, 1994), 30-35.

28. Barbara Diefendorf, Paris City Councilors in the Sixteenth Century: The Politics of Patrimony (Princeton: Princeton, 1983), xxv & conclusion; Joel T. Rosenthal, Patriarchy and Families of Privilege in Fifteenth-Century England (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania, 1991), 60-75; for the role of Roman law in forming ideas about and approaches toward patriarchy, see Donna Bohanan, Old and New Nobility in Aix-en-Provence: Portrait of an Urban Elite (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State, 1992), 63-76.

29. Jacques Heers, Parties and Political Life in the Medieval West, trans. David Nicolas (New York: North-Holland, 1977). The ways that urban oligarchs and the monarchy worked together to enhance the other's position through jurisdictional attributes and practices inform the work of William Beik and Françoise Autrand: Beik, Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-Century France: State Power and Provincial Aristocracy in Languedoc (New York: Cambridge, 1985) and Urban Protests in Seventeenth-Century France: The Culture of Retribution (New York: Cambridge, 1997); Autrand, Naissance d'un grand corp. Les gens du parlement de Paris, 1345-1454 (Paris: Sorbonne, 1981) and Aux origines de l'État moderne. Le fonctionnement administratif de la papauté d'Avignon (Rome, 1990). To my knowledge, no one has studied the familial expression of government in late medieval and early modern Burgundy, although Georges Chevrier suggested an outline in "Autorité communale et vie familiale à Dijon aux XIVe et XVe siècles," AB 16 (1944): 7-14; 17 (1945): 231-238 & 251-257 and "Le Régime matrimoniale dans la Bourgogne ducale," MSDB 27 (1966): 254-284.

30. My work builds on the concepts of nodes and nexuses found in the writings of Anthony Leeds; for a summary of his approach see Roger Sanjek, ed., Cities, Classes and the Social Order (Ithaca: Cornell, 1994), 39-40 & 169-80. For an insightful summary of the arguments for changes in and the periodization of urban society and culture in early modern France, see Philip Benedict, Cities and Social Change in Early Modern France (Boston: Unwin Allen, 1989), 27-35.

31. In this respect I am contributing to Ronald Weissman’s call for a redefined "Renaissance sociology" that focuses on social relationships rather than the individual or the group as an independent unit: "Reconstructing Renaissance Sociology: The ‘Chicago School’ and the Study of Renaissance Society," Persons in Groups, ed. Richard C. Trexler (Binghamton: CMRS, 1985), 40. Also see Eric Wolf, as quoted in "Introduction: The Analytic Strategies of Eric R. Wolf," Articulating Hidden Histories: Exploring the Influence of Eric R. Wolf, eds. Jean Schneider and Rayna Rapp (Berkeley: California, 1995), 5-7.

32. Many works have attempted to define the urban elites, situate them in their society, and trace their values and motivations; see Autrand, Naissance d'un grand corp; Thomas A. Brady, Jr. Ruling Class, Regime and Reformation at Strasbourg, 1520-1555 (Leiden: Brill, 1978); Jonathan Dewald, The Formation of a Provincial Nobility: The Magistrates of the Parlement of Rouen, 1499-1610 (Princeton: Princeton, 1980); Diefendorf, Paris City Councilors; René Fédou, Les Hommes de loi lyonnais à la fin du moyen âge: étude sur les origines de la classe de robe (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1964); Richard Gascon, Le Grand commerce et la vie urbaine au XVIe siècle: Lyon et ses marchands 2 vols. (Paris: SEVPEN, 1971); and Arlette Higounet-Nadal, Familles patriciennes de Perigueux à la fin du moyen âge (Paris: CRNS, 1983). These distinctions often underlie the debates over class versus strata; for a useful survey of these debates see Lynn Hunt and Jacques Revel, eds., Histories: French Constructions of the Past (New York: The New Press, 1995), 147-58. Robert Descimon goes so far as to divide the Parisian elites into eighteen categories, fourteen of which are based on appointments to office: "Paris on the eve of St. Bartholomew: taxation, privilege, and social geography," in Benedict, Cities and Social Change, 92. The tensions in urban and rural integration have been analyzed by George Huppert, Les Bourgeois Gentilhommes: An Essay on the Definition of Elites in Renaissance France (Chicago: Chicago, 1977); for a more satisfactory discussion of the adaptation and absorption of mores, see Kristen Neuschel, Word of Honor: Interpreting Noble Culture in Sixteenth-Century France (Ithaca: Cornell, 1989).

33. Heinz Schilling, Religion, Political Culture and the Emergence of Early Modern Society (New York: Brill, 1992), 62, 135-37, & particularly chapter 3. Also see Thomas A. Brady, Jr., "Patricians, Nobles, Merchants: Internal Tension and Soldiarities in South German Urban Ruling Classes at the Close of the Middle Ages," and Christopher Friedrichs, "Citizens or Subjects: Urban Conflict in Early Modern Germany," in Social Groups and Religious Ideas in the Sixteenth Century, eds. Miriam Usher Chrisman and Otto Gründler (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 1978), 38-58 & 159-69.

34. Many studies on early modern France distinguish between these two roots of the urban elite, anachronistically assuming that the distinction which is increasingly valid by the end of the sixteenth century, and especially during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is equally applicable earlier. Dijon's Godran family provide a telling contrast. Until the middle of the sixteenth century, the Godran family ran parish organizations, heavily endowed the city's churches, acted as a general supplier to the town, served as its representative in several embassies, and was labeled one of the city's richest families. Despite this extensive urban influence, they served relatively rarely on the town council and in regional office when compared with their fellow patricians.

35. Several excellent studies have benefited from detailed records of reception as bourgeois: Pierre Desportes, "Nouveaux bourgeois et métiers à Amiens au XVe siècle," Revue du Nord 64:252 (1982): 27-50; Christopher T. Friedrichs, Urban Society in an Age of War: Nördlingen, 1579-1720 (Princeton: Princeton, 1979); and Gerald Soliday, A Community of Conflict: Frankfurt Society in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries (Hanover, NH: Brandeis, 1974).

36. This definition is derived from parameters established by Lauro Martines, The Social World of the Florentine Humanists, 1390-1460 (Princeton: Princeton, 1963), introduction; Brady, Ruling class and regime, 3-53; and Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan, "Les élites urbaines: aperçues problématiques (France, Angleterre, Italie)," and Philippe Braunstein, "Pour une histoire des élites urbaines: vocabulaire, réalités et représentations," in Les élites urbaines au moyen âge (Paris: Sorbonne, 1997), 9-28 & 29-38. Their ideas have been modified to fit the Burgundian circumstances. Also see the definition given in Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. G. Roth and C. Wittich, trans. E. Fischoff et al. (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968), 1:29. Similar theories are found in Contamine, La Vie quotidienne, 145; Valous, Le Patriciat lyonnais, 25-28; and Schilling, Religion and Political Culture, 62. The specific characteristics distinguishing Burgundy's urban elites from the rest of their communities will be developed in each chapter as appropriate.

37. In Dijon perhaps the most successful example is that of the Cirey family, and their climb will be discussed throughout this book. Brady noticed similar stratification in early sixteenth-century Strasbourg; Ruling Class and Regime, 291-92. T. Scheider and H. Schilling have developed this theory for western European cities in general: Schilling, Religion and Political Culture, 138. Contemporary satire draws heavily on this division within the ruling group: Jean Alter, Les Origines de la satire anti-bourgeois en France (Geneva: Droz, 1966): 101. This split is also found within the legal community itself; see Fédou, Les Hommes de loi lyonnais, 311.

38. For a more detailed descriptions of this process see John W. Scott, "The Evidence of Experience," Critical Inquiry 17 (Summer 1991): 793.

39. Marie-Thérèse Caron, La Noblesse dans le duché de Bourgogne, 1315-1477 (Lille: PU de Lille, 1987); Henri Dubois, "Marchands dijonnais aux foires de Chalon-sur-Saône à la fin du moyen âge. Essai de prosopographie," Publications du centre européen d'études burgondo-medianes 27 (1987): 63-80; and Pierre Geoffroy, "Commerce et marchands à Dijon au XVe siècle," AB 25 (1953): 161-181.

40. Pierre Gresser, La Franche-Comté au temps de la guerre de cent ans (Besançon: Cêtre, 1989); J. Robert de Chevanne, Les Guerres en Bourgogne de 1470 à 1475 (Paris: Picard, 1934). Compared to Brittany, the other great appanage conquered by the French crown in the fifteenth century, the two Burgundies were relatively dependent; see Michael Jones, "‘Bons Bretons et Bons Françoys’: The Language and Meaning of Treason in Later Medieval France," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 5th ser., 32 (1982): 101.

41. The most recent studies of French national identity in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries concentrate on perceptions in leading clerical, legal, and royal circles: Beaune, The Birth of Ideology; Charlotte C. Wells, Law and Citizenship in Early Modern France (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1995); and David Bell, "Recent Works on Early Modern French National Identity," Journal of Modern History 68 (1986): 84-113. For the social implications of national definition in France and neighboring territories: Fernand Braudel, The Identity of France 2 vols. (New York: Harper and Row, 1988/1990); Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge: Harvard, 1992); James B. Collins, The State in Early Modern France (New York: Cambridge, 1995); Mark Greengrass, ed., Conquest and Coalescence: The Shaping of the State in Early Modern Europe (New York: Routledge, 1991); and David Potter, War and Government in the French Provinces: Picardy, 1470-1560 (New York: Cambridge, 1993).

42. Among the works that have influenced my approach are Trexler, Persons in Groups; Caroline Ford, Creating the Nation in Provincial France (Princeton: Princeton, 1993); Mary Poovey, "The Social Constitution of ‘Class’: Toward a History of Classificatory Thinking," in Rethinking Class: Literary Studies and Social Formations, ed. Wai Chee Dimock and Michael T. Gilmore (New York: Cambridge, 1994), 15-56; and Orest Ranum, "Introduction," in National Consciousness, History, and Political Culture in Early-Modern Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1975). In response to Rogers Brubaker, I propose that an individual may be involved in many groups and the strength of their identification with groups may vary situationally: Citizenship and Nationhood, 36.

43. The literature on the "foy de Bourgogne" is vast; I have found the following to be especially useful: Yves Cazeau, "L'Idée de Bourgogne, fondement de la politique de duc Charles," Publications du centre européen d'études burgondo-medianes 10 (1968): 85-91 and "Le Sève bourguignonne du discours politique au XVIe siècle," Publications du centre européen d'études burgondo-medianes 21 (1985): 53-58; Henri David, "Charles 'le Travaillant' quatrième et dernier duc Valois de Bourgogne," AB 39 (1967): 5-43 & 65-86; and Jean Richard, "Inscriptions séditieuses dans les villes de Bourgogne," AB 41 (1969): 43-45.

44. Margaret of Austria to Emperor Maximilian I, 6 May 1512, Correspondance de l'empereur Maximilien Ier et de Marguerite d'Autriche, ed. M. Le Glay, 2 vols. (Paris: J. Renouard, 1839), 17:3-5. Also see Nov. 1513, 17:216-19; 14 Feb. 1514, 17:221-24, and 24 Feb. 1514, 17:225-29; and ADD, 2B90, 7 May 1537.

45. Holt, "Burgundians into Frenchmen," 345-70.

46. Sébastien Castellain, "Les Conseils à la France désolée" (1562), as quoted in Yves Cazaux, "Réflexions sur l'idée de Bourgogne," Publications du centre européen d'études burgondo-medianes 13 (1971): 34. Also produced in Dole during this era and expressing similar sentiments was BMDole, ms. 311, "Declaration du droict appartenant a la maison de Bourgoingne..."

47. Although guilty of this blurring on several occasions, Richard Vaughan provides the best synthesis of Valois Burgundy which allows for north-south distinctions without completely discounting the south. For examples of the more common approach in otherwise excellent works, see Christopher T. Allmand, "The Aftermath of War in Fifteenth-Century France," History 61 (1976): 344-67 and The Hundred Years War: England and France at War, c. 1300 - c. 1450 (New York: Cambridge, 1988); C.A.J. Armstrong, England, France, and Burgundy in the Fifteenth Century (London: Hambledon, 1983); Robert Boutruche, "La Dévastation des campagnes pendant la guerre de Cent ans et la réconstruction de la France," Études historique 106 (1947): 127-63; Philippe Contamine, War in the Middle Ages, trans. Michael Jones (New York: Oxford, 1984); Pierre Gresser, "Incidences archivistiques du rattachement de la Franche-Comté à la France," in Provinces et états dans la France de l'est: le rattachement de la Franche-Comté à la France (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1979), 149-83; and Marie-Rose Thielemans, Bourgogne et Angleterre: Rélations politiques et économiques entre les Pays-Bas bourguignons et l’Angleterre (Brussels: 1966).

48. When distinctions are necessary, these regions are called the "duchy" and "county" or, less frequently, "the duchy of Burgundy" and "the Franche-Comté." Both territories as a unit may be called "Burgundy" or, when clarification is needed, "the two Burgundies." The scope of "greater" Burgundy is thoroughly traced by Maurice Chaume, "Le Sentiment national bourguignon de Gondebaud à Charles le Téméraire," Mémoires de l'académie de Dijon 5th ser., 4 (1922): 195-308.

49. See Roland Fiétier, ed., Histoire de la Franche-Comté (Toulouse: Edouard Privat, 1978); Fohlen, Besançon, vol. 1; Pierre Gras, ed., Histoire de Dijon (Toulouse: Privat, 1981); Jean Richard, ed., Histoire de Bourgogne (Toulouse: Privat, 1978); and Jacky Theurot et al. Histoire de Dole (Roanne: Horwath, 1982). This separation can especially complicate studies of administrative personnel, whose functions, lineages, and wealth often any political border between the duchy and county; see Jules d'Arbaumont, Armorial de la chambre des comptes de Dijon (Dijon: Lamarche, 1881); Henri Beaune and Jules d'Arbaumont, La Noblesse aux états de Bourgogne de 1350 à 1789 (Dijon: Lamarche, 1864); Joseph Garnier, "Documents rélatifs à l'histoire des états généraux du royaume conservés aux archives municipales de Dijon," Bulletin du comité de la langue de l'histoire et des arts de la France 1 (1852-53); Jules and Léon Gauthier, Armorial de Franche-Comté (1911); S. Pidoux de la Madeurie, Les Officiers du parlement de Dole et leur familles 4 vols. (Paris: 1961); and Fleury Vindry, Les Parlementaires français du XVIe siècle, vol. 1 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1909).

50. . Johan Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages, trans. Rodney J. Payton and Ulrich Mammitzsch (Chicago: Chicago, 1996) and the counterpoint provided by Charles Commeaux, La Vie quotidienne en Bourgogne au temps des ducs Valois (Paris: Hachette, 1979). See the studies by James R. Farr, Authority and Sexuality in Early Modern Burgundy (1550-1730) (New York: Oxford, 1995), "Consumers, commerce, and then craftsmen of Dijon: the changing social and economic structure of a provincial capital, 1450-1750," in Benedict, Cities and Social Change, 134-73; and Hands of Honor: Artisans and Their World in Dijon, 1550-1650 (Ithaca: Cornell, 1988); Nicole Gonthier, Lyon et ses pauvres au moyen âge, 1350-1550 (Lyon: Éditions l'Hermes, 1978), "La Répression et le crime à la fin du moyen âge," MSDB 47 (1990): 115-30, and "La Violence judiciaire à Dijon à la fin du moyen âge," MSDB 50 (1993): 19-34; and Mack P. Holt, The French Wars of Religion, 1562-1629 (New York: Cambridge, 1995) and "Wine, Community and Reformation."

51. Yves Barel, La Ville médiévale (Grenoble: PU de Grenoble, 1975); Bell, "Early Modern French National Identity"; Bernard Guenée, States and Rulers in Later Medieval France, trans. Juliet Vale (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1985) and "Les Limites de France," in La France et les Français, ed. M. François (Paris: Gallimard, 1972); Jacques Le Goff, ed., La Ville médiévale (Paris: Seuil, 1980) and Jacques Le Goff and René Rémond, eds., Du christianisme flamboyant à l'aube des Lumières. Histoire de la France religieuse (Paris: Seuil, 1988); P.S. Lewis, The Recovery of France in the Fifteenth Century (New York: Harper and Row, 1976); J. Russell Major, Representative Government in Early Modern France (New Haven: Yale, 1980) and Representative Institutions in Renaissance France, 1421-1559 (Madison: Wisconsin, 1960); and J. Verdon, Les Françaises pendant la guerre de Cent ans: début du XIVe siècle?milieu du XVe siècle (Paris: Perrin, 1991). A valuable, recent antidote is Holt, Wars of Religion.

52. Chevalier, Les Bonnes villes; Georges Dupont-Ferrier, Études sur les institutions financières de la France à la fin du moyen âge (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1932); Guenée, States and Rulers; P. S. Lewis, Essays in Later Medieval French History (London: Ronceverte, 1985); Ferdinand Lot and Robert Fawtier, eds., Histoire des institutions françaises au moyen âge, 3 vols. (Paris: PUF, 1957-58); and Major, Representative Government.

53. Eberhard Isenmann, Die deutsche Stadt im Spätmittelalter, 1250-1500: Stadtgestalt, Recht, Stadtregiment, Kirche, Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft (Stuttgart: Ulmer, 1988).

54. Wim Blockmans and Walter Prevenier. The Promised Lands: The Low Countries under Burgundian Rule, 1369-1530, ed. Edward Peters, trans. Elizabeth Fackelman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1999) is the most recent and authoritative work on this subject.

55. E.J. Hobsbaum, Nations and Nationalism since 1780, 2d ed. (New York: Cambridge, 1992), chpt. 1. Also see P. Boerner, ed. Concepts of National Identity: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue (Baden-Baden: 1986).

56. One example of this approach is Richard W. Kaeuper, War, Justice, and Public Order: England and France in the Later Middle Ages (New York: Clarendon, 1988), esp. 171-83. Also see André Bossuat, "Le Rétablissement de la paix sociale sous le règne de Charles VII," Moyen Age 60:1-2 (1954): 137-62; Allmand, "The Aftermath of War," 344-57.

57. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, "The Crisis and the Historian," The Mind and the Method of the Historian (Brighton: Harvester, 1981), 288.

58. The center-periphery approach developed from the work of Andre Gunder Frank and Immanuel Wallerstein, both of whom focused on the mechanisms by which the center gained control over the periphery: Frank, "The Sociology of Development and Underdevelopment of Sociology," Catalyst 3 (1967): 20-73 and World Accumulation, 1492-1789 (New York: Monthly Review, 1978). Wallerstein’s classic statement is The Modern World System (New York: Academic, 1974). For a more recent discussion see Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood, introduction; R.D. Grillo, ed., "Nation" and "State" in Europe: Anthropological Perspectives (New York: Academic, 1980), 15-18.

59. Michael Wolfe delivers a telling critique in "Introduction: Becoming French in Early Modern Europe," in Wolfe, Changing Identities, 1-22, while Marc Greengrass offers a compromise in Conquest and Coalescence, 6-8. Also see Ralph E. Giesey, "State-Building in Early Modern France: The Role of Royal Officialdom," The Journal of Modern History 55:2 (June 1983), 191-207; Gerald E. Aylmer, "Centre and Locality: The Nature of Power Elites," in Reinhard, Power Elites, 59-77.

60. Gerhard Benecke, Society and Politics in Germany, 1500-1750 (Toronto: Toronto, 1974), introduction; Peter Blickle, Gemeinde und Staat im Alten Europa (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1998) and Blickle, ed., Resistance, Representation, and Community (New York: Oxford, 1996); Brady, Turning Swiss; Head, Early Modern Democracy; Isenmann, Die deutsche Stadt; and Peter Wallace, Communities and Conflict in Early Modern Colmar (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities, 1995). The bibliography in Blickle, Resistance, is quite useful.

61. While the literature on nationalism is vast and increasing daily, the following underlie many current debates: Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, 2d ed. (New York: Verso, 1991); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell, 1983); Hobsbaum, Nations and Nationalism; Anthony Smith, Theories of Nationalism, 2d ed. (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1983); and Anthony Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (New York: Blackwell, 1986). Also useful are Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (New York: Cambridge, 1996); Katherine Verdery, "Whither 'Nation' and 'Nationalism'?" Daedalus 122:3 (Summer 1993); and Klaus Reichert et al., eds., Nationalismus und Subjektivität (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1995).

62. See Pierre Nora, ed., Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia, 1996); John Gillis, Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton: Princeton, 1994), and Marjorie Ringrose and Adam J. Lerner, eds., Reimagining the Nation (Philadelphia: Open University, 1993).

63. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 6-7; Smith, Ethnic Origins, chpt. 3.

64. Two recent reinterpretations of ritual in early modern Europe emphasize the negotiated and relational nature of ritual practice: Susan Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Ritual: An Interpretation of Early Modern Germany (New York: Routledge, 1997) and Edward Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe (New York: Cambridge, 1997).