Village Community and Conflict in Late Medieval Drenthe

406 Pages·2018·2.116 MB·English

by  Peter Hoppenbrouwers

Village Community and Conflict
in Late Medieval Drenthe
THE MEDIEVAL COUNTRYSIDE
General Editor
Phillipp Schofield, Aberystwyth University
Editorial Board
Laurent Feller, Université Paris
Paul Freedman, Yale University
Thomas Lindkvist, Göteborgs universitet
Sigrid Hirbodian, Universität Tübingen
Peter Hoppenbrouwers, Universiteit Leiden
Piotr Gorecki, University of California, Riverside
Sandro Carocci, Universita degli Studi di Roma
Julio Escalona, Consejo Superio de Investigaciones Cientificas, Madrid
Pere Benito i Monclus, Universitat de Lleida
Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book
Volume 20
Village Community and Conflict
in Late Medieval Drenthe
by
Peter Hoppenbrouwers
H
F
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
© 2018, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
D/2018/0095/15
ISBN 978-2-503-57539-1
e-ISBN 978-2-503-57540-7
DOI 10.1484/M.TMC-EB.5.112979
Printed in the EU on acid-free paper.
‘Lend me your mouth now, and I shall do the same for you
when it will suit you.’
(Saying from Drenthe according to the Report of 1557)
‘But this was precisely what I most like about village life, the way
we had to press our cheeks and chests against a living, freckle world.’
‘He sees me as a man who not so long ago must have seen this
village as he sees it now, a slow-paced commonwealth of habit,
custom and routine, of wasting time and sauntering, of indolence.’
(Jim Crace, Harvest)

Contents
List of Illustrations viii
Acknowledgements xi
Abbreviations xiii
Glossary xv
Chapter 1. Introduction: The Study of Medieval Village Society 1
Chapter 2. Law, Jurisdiction, and Courts of Justice 85
Chapter 3. Village Communities in Court 165
Chapter 4. Local Violence: Feuds and Feuding 205
Chapter 5. The Peasant Family and Intergenerational Property Transfer 279
Epilogue 335
Appendix. List of Villages and Districts 343
Bibliography 353
Index 371
List of Illustrations
Figures
Figure 1. Common seal of the Land of Drenthe, first known from 1262. 21
Figure 2. Musealization of rural Drenthe: the village of Orvelte. 32
Figure 3. The Reest brook between De Wijk and IJhorst. 35
Figure 4. Front gate of the noble mansion of the lords of Ruinen at Oldehave,
anno 1732. 78
Figure 5. Nobleman from Drenthe with dog, in sixteenth-century attire. 81
Figure 6. The Land Charter of 1412. 93
Figure 7. Fragment of the rochtbrief of Yde, 1490. 107
Figure 8. The St Magnus church of Anloo. 122
Figure 9. Fresco depicting the birth of Jesus in the north wall of St Magnus
church at Anloo. 124
Figure 10. Manuscript page of the Almelo codex. 129
Figure 11. Manuscript page of the ‘Systematic Redaction’. 130
Figure 12. Counterpart original of a verdict by the Etstoel, 31 August 1482. 132
Figure 13. Modern staging of a session of the Etstoel. 336