Non-professional groups

The wealthiest, most influential, social group in Bruges were the jousters of the White Bear. ²⁹⁰ Jousters could include noble visitors, and even the Dukes of Burgundy,²⁹¹ but were mainly rich townsmen. Such men had to be wealthy enough to own, or at least rent, jousting equipment for their annual competition.

290 Brown ‘Urban Jousts in the Later Middle Ages,’ 315-30; Abeele, Ridderlijk Gezelschap van de Witte Beer; Van den Neste, Tournois, joutes, pas d’armes, 123-158.

291 For example Charles the Bold spent £418 taking part in 1457, Brown and Small, Court and Civic Society, 225-227.

Information on jousters comes from sixteenth century lists, published by Van den Abeele,²⁹² and from the names of jousters given each year by Nicholas Despars in his chronicle, written in sixteenth-century Bruges based on now lost fifteenth-century attendance lists. ²⁹³ Such sources show that 32 crossbowmen, 3.6% of guild-brothers, and 20 archers, 3.2%, jousted at least once, not counting noble shooters, such as Anthony the Great Bastard and Lodewijk van Gruuthuse.

Shooters present within the White Bear show that both guilds had links to the highest level of festive culture in Bruges, and were wealthy enough to engage in an aristocratic sport with the nobility, just as nobles engaged in shooting.

Chambers of rhetoric were becoming more important all over Flanders through the fifteenth century. Little information on the Bruges chambers of rhetoric, the Holy Ghost and The Three Samaritans has survived. One membership list from 1442²⁹⁴ and another fragment from 1494²⁹⁵ are all that have survived for the Holy Ghost. For the Three Samaritans only part of a list from 1490 is extant, although some members can be reconstructed from sixteenth-century documents.²⁹⁶ Given the dates of these sources, few names from the shooters should be expected, and just 5 crossbowmen, and 1 archer, were in the Holy Ghost. Further circumstantial evidence for a close bond between shooters and chambers of rhetoric comes from

292 Van den Abeele, Het Ridderlijk Gezelschap van de witte beer.

293 Despars, Cronijke van den lande ende graefscepe van Vlanderen.

294 Van Bruaene, Om Beters Wille, 72-5; eadem., and L. Derycke, ’Sociale en literaure dynamiek in het vroeg vijftiende-eeuwse Brugge; de oprichting van de rederijkerskamer de Heilige Geest ca.

1428’, in Oosterman, Stad van koopmanschap en vrede, 59-96.

295 SAB 390/2 (inv.nr.B2) (archief Drie Santinnen) ; 390/1, (inv.nr.B1) (archief Drie Santinnen), 67r-77v. I am very grateful to Dr Van Bruaene for these references and her transcriptions.

296 Van Bruaene, Om Beters Wille, 32-4, 73-5; eadem.,’Sociabilite en competitie. De sociaalinstitutionele ontwikkeling van de rederijkerskamers in de zuidelijke Nederlanden,’ B.

Ramakers (ed), Conformisten en rebellen. Rederijkscultuur in de Nederlanden (1400-1650) (Amsterdam, 2003), 45-63.

the sixteenth century, for example the famous rhetorician Cornelis Everaert was a member of the Saint Sebastian guild.²⁹⁷

The archers and the crossbowmen maintained altars and devotional activities, as we shall see in the next chapter, but many guild-brothers chose to join other pious organisations. One of the wealthiest such confraternity was the Drogenboom, or Dry Tree, named for the Immaculate Conception, and dating from at least 1396.²⁹⁸ The confraternity was exclusive with only around 60,²⁹⁹ or perhaps 90, annual members.³⁰⁰ Membership lists, which survive from 1465, show an elite composition; at least ten percent of members were foreign merchants, like the Florentine banker Tommasso Portinari.³⁰¹ Members included Philip the Good, Charles the Bold, and their wives,³⁰² and 37 courtiers.³⁰³ The Drogenboom was prestigious, but membership was passive, with no annual obligations, and the membership list is largely undated, causing problems of identification. At least 19 (2% of the guild), perhaps 21, crossbowmen and 10 archers (1.3%), several with their wives, were in the Dry Tree confraternity. The higher number of

crossbowmen may again indicate their slightly more elevated status, but that both guilds could join this exclusive group is significant.

297 N. Mosser, ‘Maria verklaard. Everaert als exegeet in Maria ghecompareirt byde claerheyt (1511),’ Spel en spektakel: Middeleeuws toneel in de Lage Landen. Ed. H. van Dijk, B Ramakers et al. (Amsterdam, 2001) 369-377.

298 A. De Schodt, ‘La Confrérie de Notre-Dame de l’Arbre Sec,’ ASEB, 28 (1876-7), 141-187.

299 Or perhaps 90, only 60 paid in this year, but around 30 were later shown to be in arrears. I am grateful to Dr Andrew Brown for this reference.

300 SAB, 505 gilde drogenboom, rekeningen.

301 Portinari, like the crossbowmen detailed above, was god-father to one of Anselmus Adornes children, Giernaert ‘De Adornes en de Jeruzalemkapel’, 23.

302 Charles joined as Count of Charolais, the reference is to ‘his wife my lady of Charolais’ ie.

Isabelle of Bourbon.

303 Brown ‘Bruges and the ‘Burgundian Theatre State’’, 578-9.

Other religious confraternities in fifteenth-century Bruges, such as the Hulsterloo and Rosebeke confraternities, were more active, as both involved annual

pilgrimages. The Rosebeke confraternity seems to have been of a higher social status, with links to the court, as shown by an endowment they received in 1452 from the courtier Jean de Wavrin.³⁰⁴ Membership lists begin only in the 1460s,³⁰⁵ but reveal that 18 crossbowmen (2%) and 10 archers (1.3%) were members of the Rosebeke confraternity, showing links between shooting guilds and other rich and powerful religious groups. The Hulsterloo confraternity was closely associated with the skinners, and drew many members from outside Bruges. ³⁰⁶ Membership records of the Hulsterloo confraternity begin in the 1420s, and continue undated to the end of the fifteenth century.³⁰⁷ Even with such drawbacks, 17 crossbowmen (1.9%) and 14 archers (1.8%) can be securely identified as Hulsterloo members.

Such overlap in membership makes clear that members of both guilds chose to interact with other devotional organisations, demonstrating that shooters were present in all levels of social groups, just as they were present at all levels of civic government.

One of the largest and most inclusive religious confraternities of Bruges was that of Our Lady of the Snow. Members included Charles the Bold, Hans Memling and bishops of Tournai, but also poor widows, as subscription was only 2 d a year.³⁰⁸ Levels of activity for members is questionable, as there were no annual requirements. The membership of guild-brothers in the Our Lady guild may indicate that some could not afford to join both a prestigious shooting guild and a prestigious devotional group; or even a genuine attachment to Our Lady. In all,

304 ibid., 577-8.

305 SAB, 505 gilde Roosebeke.

306 H. Brinkman, 'De Brugse pelgrims in het Gruuthuse handschrift', in J. Oosterman (ed.), Stad van koopmanschap en vrede (Leuven, 2005, 9-39, Schouteet, ‘de Broederschap van Onze-Lieve-Vrouw van Hulsterlo,’ 20-24.

307 SAB 524, gilde Hulsterlo.

308 Brown ‘Bruges and the ‘Burgundian Theatre State’’ 573-589 ; J. Toussaert, Le Sentiment religieux en Flandre à la fin du moyen âge (Paris, 1960), 481-3.

47 crossbowmen, 5% of the guild, were in this confraternity; a further 11 wives and 3 widows of crossbowmen joined on their own. In addition, 44 archers, almost 6%, of the guild were members, many with their wives while a further 2 archers’ wives joined without their husbands. The high numbers of shooters in the Our Lady Confraternity are significant in showing that the shooters were firmly tied to their local communities, and sought devotional activities, as well as social connections, outside the shooting guilds. Guilds members were fully integrated into their town, took advantage of all choices available to them; many had the status to join so called elite confraternities, but many chose to join inclusive ones too.