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The Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mary: Devotional Communication and Politics in the Burgundian-Habsburg Low Countries, c. 1490–1520

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 March 2010

SUSIE SPEAKMAN SUTCH  and
ANNE-LAURE VAN BRUAENE
SUSIE SPEAKMAN SUTCH*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Ghent University, Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 35, 9000 Ghent, Belgium
ANNE-LAURE VAN BRUAENE*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Ghent University, Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 35, 9000 Ghent, Belgium
*
E-mail: susiesutch@hotmail.com
E-mail: AnneLaure.VanBruaene@ugent.be
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Abstract

This article discusses the propagation of the devotion of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mary in the Low Countries around 1500. The central argument is that the secular goal of the promoters of the devotion was to create a large spiritual and emotional community in support of the Burgundian-Habsburg dynasty and its ideology of peace and territorial unity. To this end a whole array of old and new media was exploited. The article analyses the dynamics of this devotional communication and gives special attention to the role of miracles, vernacular theatre and the printing press.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 61 , Issue 2 , April 2010 , pp. 252 - 278
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010
HPT

W. Gs. Hellinga and Lotte Hellinga-Querido, Fifteenth-century printing types of the Low Countries, Amsterdam 1966

ILC

Gerard van Thienen and John Goldfinch, Incunabula printed in the Low Countries: a census, Nieuwkoop 1999

Liber authenticus

Liber authenticus sacratissimae utriusque sexus christifidelium confraternitatis septem dolorum beatae Mariae virginis nuncupatae (City Archives, Brussels, ms 3413)

NK

Wouter Nijhoff and M. E. Kronenberg, Nederlandsche bibliographie van 1500 tot 1540, The Hague 1923–61. All translations are our own

In 1482, at the age of twenty-five, Mary, duchess of Burgundy (1457–82), died after a fall from her horse. This human tragedy set in motion a chain of urban revolts that would last a decade and would have a profound impact on the political future of the Burgundian territories in the Low Countries. The conflict basically centred around the question of how to define rulership and, more particularly, how to define the relationship between the subjects and their prince in this highly urbanised region: would the Low Countries remain a loose personal union of territories and cities with strong regional and local privileges or would they be ruled as a unified territory by an autocratic prince? Mary's son and heir, Philip the Fair (1478–1506), was only a small child at the time of the duchess's fatal accident, but he was considered to be the prince naturel by all parties.Footnote 1 These parties, the county of Flanders in particular, did not agree, however, on who should assume the regency during the minority of the prince: Mary's ambitious but foreign widower, Maximilian of Austria (1459–1519), or a regency council with representatives from the nobility and the cities. Eventually, frictions between Maximilian and the Flemish regency council evolved into open war. In the following years, other Burgundian territories entered the war, factional strife broke out and treaties were constantly made and broken. Finally, Maximilian's overwhelming military force ended the conflict in 1492. Philip, still a teenager, was inaugurated in his various territories in 1494.Footnote 2

Maximilian's troops could conquer the Burgundian territories, but could the hearts and minds of its inhabitants be conquered as well? Far too little attention has been paid to the coordinated efforts that Maximilian of Austria (King of the Romans in 1486 and emperor-elect in 1508) and Philip the Fair made in the years following the wars to pacify urban society and to appropriate its institutions and its media for political and dynastic purposes.Footnote 3 It will be argued that the propagation of the devotion of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mary played a crucial part in this larger strategy. It may come as no great surprise that the court resorted to religious imagery to communicate with its subjects. In 1430 the Burgundian duke Philip the Good (1396–1467) had instituted the Order of the Golden Fleece, which from its very inception was successful in tying high-born nobles to the dynasty through an elaborate mix of biblical and chivalric symbolism.Footnote 4 Even more explicitly, devotion had already been used in urban contexts by other contemporary rulers in order to forge political allegiances. Medici Florence is an evident example, with among others the cult of the Magi.Footnote 5 Particularly relevant for the discussion is the institution – with the direct support of Maximilian's father Emperor Frederick iii (1415–93) – of the confraternity of the rosary in Cologne in 1475, in thanksgiving for the ending of the year-long siege of Neuss.Footnote 6 The devotion of the Seven Sorrows was directly inspired by the rosary devotion, but it was more overtly political and exploited an even greater array of old and new media to attract worshippers. The ultimate goal of this devotional interaction was to create within the Low Countries, and more particularly in their core regions (Flanders, Brabant, Holland and Zeeland), a large spiritual and emotional community that identified with the Burgundian-Habsburg dynasty and its ideology of peace and territorial unity. This strategy of creating political allegiance through devotional communication was successful, albeit temporary, because it tapped into real psychological needs and made clever use of existing urban networks.

Meditation: images and texts

Whereas the sorrowing Virgin had been an object of devotion for centuries, there can be no doubt that the institution of the cult of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mary was a deliberate act, undertaken by clerics with close ties to the Burgundian-Habsburg rulers.Footnote 7 The devotion was created by the cleric Jan van Coudenberge (d.1521), a secretary of Philip the Fair.Footnote 8 In a history of the confraternity of the Seven Sorrows that he wrote in 1519 at the request of Charles v (1500–58), Van Coudenberge relates how near the end of the rebellions against Maximilian of Austria, when the Low Countries were divided by civil war, many depressed people had found solace by meditating upon the pains and fears that the Holy Virgin had suffered for her only son (see Figure 1). Thereupon, Van Coudenberge had decided to commission copies of icons of the Virgin by St Luke that he put on display in the three churches with which he had a personal relationship as dean and pastor: the collegiate churches of Abbenbroek in Holland and Reimerswaal in Zeeland and of St Saviour in Bruges.Footnote 9 A poet was hired to compose a Latin verse describing the seven principal Sorrows of the Virgin: Simeon's prophecy (namely, that a sword would pierce Mary's soul), the flight into Egypt, the loss of the twelve-year-old Christ in the temple, the bearing of the cross, the crucifixion, the deposition and the entombment).Footnote 10

Figure 1.

Johannes de Coudenberge, Ortus, progressus et impedimenta fraternitatis beatissime virginis Marie de passione que dicitur de septem doloribus, Antwerp: Michiel Hillen van Hoochstraten, 23 Nov. 1519, title page (University Library, Ghent, Res. 1288).

Apparently, the new Marian devotion immediately attracted worshippers. This caught the attention of Petrus de Manso (Peter Verhoeven, d.1523), the confessor of the Windesheim convent of Thabor near Malines, the court's preferred city of residence.Footnote 11 After visiting the churches of Abbenbroek and Reimerswaal, De Manso wrote in Latin to his friend and patron Jan van Coudenberge, on 20 January 1492, proposing a more thorough but simply-worded explanation of each of the Virgin's Sorrows. In addition, after the contemplation of each sorrow, the devotee was encouraged to recite a Pater Noster and an Ave Maria. In De Manso's view, this devotional framework would be an aid to the believer's private veneration of the Virgin's Sorrows, and also a support for the spread of the devotion.Footnote 12

Thus, at this early stage, two clerics, one directly and one indirectly attached to the court, collaborated to devise a meditative devotion focusing upon the Virgin's compassion for Christ and with the stated aim of offering solace to distressed people. In fact, Van Coudenberge's later account of a general feeling of depression at the end of the wars was likely very near to the truth.Footnote 13 The wars indeed had a devastating effect on local economies and on the social fabric.Footnote 14 In these difficult times, people were looking for succour and there is evidence that the new medium of the printing press (first introduced in the Low Countries in 1473) was used extensively by those eager to supply this demand: in this very period, vernacular printed books on spiritual solace became very popular.Footnote 15 One of these, a handbook devoted to the new devotion of the Seven Sorrows, was printed in Antwerp by Gheraert Leeu (c. 1445–92) on 14 July 1492, two weeks before the wars finally ended.Footnote 16 Leeu's edition begins with woodcuts that reproduce St Luke's portraits of the Virgin that Van Coudenberge had had copied and hung in the churches of Abbenbroek and Reimerswaal. There follows a Dutch paraphrase of the explanatory texts De Manso had written in his letter to Van Coudenberge, supplemented by woodcuts illustrating each of the Virgin's Sorrows (see Figure 2).Footnote 17 Thus, as Leeu notes on the work's title page, even illiterate adherents can participate in the devotion's exercises, ‘since images are the books of lay people’.Footnote 18 Through the mediation of the printing press, the devotion of the Seven Sorrows was thus tied no longer to Van Coudenberge's personal churches nor to his own clerical clientele but could now be marketed to a large audience of literate and semi-literate believers.Footnote 19

Figure 2.

The first Sorrow of the Virgin (Simeon's prophecy) in Dit es een seer deuote salige ende profitelicke ghedenckenisse van den vij. weeden oft droefheyden onser lieuer vrouwen, Antwerp: Gheraert Leeu, 14 July 1492 (Royal Library, The Hague, 150 F 21).

According to Van Coudenberge, the new devotion soon became so successful that it was decided to establish a confraternity with as few rules as possible and no admission fee, so that everyone could join. After gaining approval from his clerical advisors, his preceptor Frans van Busleiden (d. 1502) and his Dominican confessor Michel François de Lille (Michael Francisci de Insulis, 1435–1502), Philip the Fair, at that time still an unemancipated teenager, offered to be patron of the new prayer community.Footnote 20 The statutes of the confraternity were published by Gheraert Leeu in a second handbook, likely printed in the second half of 1492. This text explicitly refers to Philip the Fair's patronage on the title page, states the obligations and the benefits of the confraternity at the outset, and reprints the paraphrases of De Manso's explanatory texts again complemented by the same woodcuts.Footnote 21 The fact that Leeu's editions followed so quickly upon the respective initiatives taken by the devotion's promoters suggests that there must have been at least an incentive from the court to print them.Footnote 22 One piece of suggestive evidence is an undated letter from Leeu to Philip the Fair published in a Latin compendium on the confraternity, further containing Petrus de Manso's original letter and the office and mass that he composed.Footnote 23

In quick succession, between 1494 and around 1501, four more vernacular handbooks devoted to the Seven Sorrows were printed in the Low Countries.Footnote 24 On 12 September 1494 the Collaciebroeders (Brothers of the Common Life) in Gouda printed a reissue of Leeu's devotional manual of 14 July 1492, using both his type and his woodblocks.Footnote 25 In Delft meanwhile the printer Christiaen Snellaert brought out one dated 17 July 1494, which was reissued four years later (16 March 1498 n.s.).Footnote 26 Decked out with a title page showing a woodcut of the Mater Dolorosa under the title Vanden seuen droefheden ofte weeden onser lieuer vrouwen, this book presents an interesting co-mingling of the Leeu's two handbooks of 1492. While by and large it reprints Leeu's 14 July devotional text, with woodcuts from other sources, Snellaert also included the material on the brotherhood and its statutes from Leeu's second 1492 publication. Finally Henrick Eckert van Homberch brought out an undated handbook (c. 1501).Footnote 27 Also a reprinting of Leeu's 14 July 1492 manual, Eckert's version differs from it in two significant ways. First he omitted two sections of text and condensed two openings into one. Second, and more important, Eckert inserted at the end of this small volume a sequence of nine prayers addressed to Christ deriving from the mass of Gregory the Great, complemented by a woodcut depicting the mystery. This unusual departure from the tradition now established of illustrated handbooks devoted to the Seven Sorrows proved to be a sign of things to come, for in just a few years small volumes that combined Christ's Passion and the Virgin's Sorrows would begin to be printed.Footnote 28

Compassion: a political confraternity

The initiators of the confraternity of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mary did not have to look hard to find appropriate models for their undertaking. As is explicitly stated in the statutes of 1492, and repeated in Snellaert's edition of 1494, the direct model was the confraternity of the rosary. This confraternity had been founded by Jakob Sprenger (c. 1436–95) in the Dominican convent in Cologne in 1475, after the year-long siege of Neuss by the Burgundian duke Charles the Bold (1433–76) had been successfully raised by the emperor Frederick iii. Within seven years the confraternity could claim 100,000 members.Footnote 29 The memory of this episode must have had a strong but equivocal resonance at Philip the Fair's court, since the combattants in 1475 were his grandfathers. Yet, on the conceptual level, there was also a direct connection. Michel François de Lille, who collaborated from the outset in the conception of the Seven Sorrows confraternity, had directly contributed to the establishment of the rosary confraternity in his own convent in Cologne. During his years at the Sorbonne and at the Dominican convent of Douai, François de Lille had been a faithful disciple of Alain de la Roche (Alanus de Rupe, 1428–75), one of the strongest promoters of the rosary devotion and the founder of its first confraternity (Douai, c. 1470). But unlike De la Roche, François de Lille had clear ideas about how to market the rosary devotion to a large lay audience.Footnote 30 The success of the confraternity in Cologne, and of similar rosary confraternities established elsewhere soon after, was due in large part to its new, flexible model of association that defied the rules and expectations of traditional religious brotherhoods. Its attraction lay in the fact that it encouraged members to recite the rosary and meditate simultaneously on the life of Christ without prescribing a fixed manner, time or place to do so. In the same sense, it did not discriminate on the basis of gender or social status: anyone could become a member without charge. In dialogue with the changing devotional needs of the laity, the rosary confraternity introduced a new form of religious experience, which was at once collective and private.Footnote 31

The rosary devotion was successful in the Low Countries too: chapters of the confraternity were established, and very soon illustrated handbooks published in Latin.Footnote 32 Maximilian of Austria supported it, but he became even more engaged in the establishment of yet another confraternity, namely that of St George (1493) that sought support for a new crusade.Footnote 33 Philip's advisors must have realised that the popular rosary devotion was none the less somewhat tainted by its reference to a Burgundian defeat and that the overtly military devotion of St George patronised by Maximilian (an extension of the knighthood established by his father in 1468) was not likely to evince much enthusiasm within broad segments of the population of the Low Countries. Despite all efforts, in the eyes of a large section of his subjects Maximilian of Austria remained a foreigner, the antithesis of his son, the ‘natural prince’ Philip the Fair, and of his late wife, the tragic Mary.Footnote 34 Well aware of this fact, Maximilian continued to exploit the visual image of Duchess Mary after her death.Footnote 35 For the same reasons Maximilian's and Philip's clerical advisors promoted the devotion of the Seven Sorrows. The fact is that the devotion encouraged worshippers to fuse the image of the sorrowing Virgin Mary with that of the late duchess and, thereby, identify with both. The Burgundian heiress Mary had not only suffered a sorrowful death herself, but her only son Philip had endured ordeals such as being left motherless at the age of three and a half, being held hostage for a couple of years by the Ghent rebels and seeing his territories divided by rebellion and civil strife.Footnote 36 The devotion of the Seven Sorrows not only foregrounded Christ's Passion but also his childhood.Footnote 37 A vernacular poem (c. 1506/24), attributed to the rhetorician Hendrik Maes and entitled ‘Praise to the sorrowing Mother of our Lord’ supports this interpretation. The poet uses the terms ‘Lord’, ‘Mother’ and ‘Mary’ in a double sense, thereby referring both to the Virgin and Christ and to Mary and Philip of Burgundy.Footnote 38

In her essay on the visual imagery of the sorrowing Virgin, Carol Schuler argues that the Virgin Mary functioned both as a mediator and as a model for participation in the Passion of Christ. Through the Virgin the worshipper could feel compassion for Christ and, at the same time, could learn to express this compassion.Footnote 39 The confraternity of the Seven Sorrows brought this devotional technique of compassio from the heavenly to the political realm. This becomes very clear from a Dutch text of 1511, a privilege issued by Maximilian of Austria and his grandson Charles (the future Charles v) to the promoters of a chapter of the confraternity of the Seven Sorrows that had been instituted in Brussels in 1499. This privilege, which makes special mention of the support for the devotion of the regent Margaret of Austria, relates

how during the tribulation and discord that came to our Low Countries soon after the decease of … lady Mary of Burgundy … the devout confraternity of the Seven Sorrows of Our Blessed Lady the mother of God sprang up and arose, to which many good people immediately adhered in protection of us, Maximilian, of our children and for the common welfare of our territories.

Concurring with Van Coudenberge that through the intercession of the Virgin the wars in the Low Countries had come to an end, this text directly refers to the devotion's aim of compassio with the dynasty and its united territories, without referring to the Seven Sorrows in detail nor mentioning the Passion of Christ at all.Footnote 40

As the 1511 text continues, those who registered in the confraternity were not only desirous of heaven and of the protection of their own souls, but did so to support the princes and to promote common welfare, good understanding and friendship among the Burgundian territories, their cities and their subjects.Footnote 41 Indeed the confraternity differed considerably from most other confraternities in the Low Countries as its aim was not to offer to a relatively small group of laymen and laywomen a forum for religious sociability but rather – as an overtly political variant on the confraternity of the rosary – to create a large spiritual community that directly supported the dynasty and its ideology of peace and territorial unity.Footnote 42 In fact, as its promoters saw it, the confraternity formed one undivided community of worshippers, with, for practical reasons, chapters in different churches. It was no coincidence that these chapters were instituted in churches in the different core principalities of the Low Countries: in 1492 in Abbenbroek and Leiden in Holland, in Reimerswaal in Zeeland, in Antwerp in Brabant and in the Thabor convent near Malines, and, in the following years, in Bruges in Flanders, in Haarlem, Delft and The Hague in Holland, in Brussels in Brabant and again in Malines (a seigniory in direct possession of the dynasty).Footnote 43

It is not surprising that the religious institutions governed by Jan van Coudenberge and Petrus de Manso were among the first to establish a chapter of the confraternity. Furthermore, on 23 April 1493, the chapter in Bruges was solemnly instituted in the church of St Saviour (where Van Coudenberge was pastor) and was celebrated with a general procession, public preaching and a banquet.Footnote 44 Later that year, Philip the Fair showed his appreciation by appointing noble representatives in the Bruges chapter and consenting to have its chapel adorned in his name.Footnote 45 There is other evidence that the court was directly involved in the establishment of the chapters of the confraternity. Jan van Coudenberge was a member of the commission that in 1497 investigated the credentials of a new chapter in the church of St Rombout in Malines.Footnote 46 Most controversial was probably the institution of the Haarlem chapter in the monastery of the Carmelites that was traditionally patronised by the influential Brederode family which had taken up arms against Maximilian of Austria during the wars. In commemoration of its defeat, Maximilian had financially supported the monastery in the execution of a series of panel paintings (c. 1486/91), featuring the counts of Holland with Maximilian as last count.Footnote 47 The establishment of a Seven Sorrows chapter in this monastery (before or in 1494) can be considered a similar reminder of the supremacy of Maximilian and his dynasty.

Arguably, the ultimate goal of the promoters of the devotion of the Seven Sorrows was to offer devotees a political confession to adhere to, in the sense that worshippers who took up the practice of meditating on the Seven Sorrows also subscribed to the political ideal of peace and territorial unity in the Low Countries under the guidance of the Burgundian-Habsburg dynasty. At first sight, however, it was much more about numbers than about deep conviction. It was amazingly easy to become and remain a member of the confraternity. Members did not have to contribute financially; indeed the statutes specifically stipulate that no fees whatsoever were to be paid. One only had to meditate (or let someone else meditate for him) upon the Sorrows and to recite seven Pater Nosters and seven Ave Marias twice a week. Occasionally omitting to do this was no sin, but devotees who attracted new members were rewarded with extra indulgences. In fact, one did not even have to be alive to benefit from the confraternity's merits: the statutes allowed the registration of deceased persons (on the condition that a living person performed the spiritual exercises).Footnote 48 The concern for numbers is manifest in the only extant membership list, namely the register of the Brussels chapter, where the cumulative total of members was noted annually. In its first year (1499) the register listed 6,085 new members, both living and deceased (members of the dynasty and other nobles not included) although formal registration was not even mandatory.Footnote 49 However, arithmetic went hand in hand with the efforts to build what Barbara Rosenwein recently called an ‘emotional community’, in the sense that through its simple spiritual exercises the devotion encouraged modes of emotional feeling and expression.Footnote 50 The theme of the sorrowing Virgin not only aroused fear and pain but also provided comfort and assurances for the future: worshippers knew that the compassionate Virgin would look after mankind.Footnote 51 Since, in the particular case of the Low Countries, the Virgin had given a clear sign of her compassion by ending the wars, the devotion very cleverly encouraged the private experience of the mixed emotions of fear and joy to create a stronger emotional bond with the dynasty.

As was the case with the rosary confraternity, the Seven Sorrows devotion combined private and collective religious experience. With the promise of gaining extra indulgences, the brothers and sisters of the confraternity were encouraged (but not obliged) to attend mass on the days respectively following the feasts of the Purification and the Assumption and, in particular, the mass of the Seven Sorrows, to be held around the feast of the Annunciation.Footnote 52 While the devotion was becoming accepted by more and more church institutions and religious orders,Footnote 53 the liturgy was elaborated through the composition of many divine offices.Footnote 54 This movement was closely monitored by the court. Philip the Fair instructed his preceptor and counsellor Frans van Busleiden and his confessor François de Lille, among other learned men, to evaluate these offices and masses with a view to selecting one to be set to music. They chose as most suitable that written by Petrus de Manso. Thereupon, in around 1495, a competition was sponsored to find the best musical setting. A jury principally headed by Busleiden and François de Lille selected the plainchant setting composed by Petrus Duwez, who by this time had been a singer in the Burgundian-Habsburg chapel for nearly thirty years.Footnote 55 From then on, therefore, the devotion not only benefited from consecrated altars and chapels dedicated to the veneration of the Sorrows. Sung offices including a mass approved by the court also assured the public worship of confraternity members on specific feast days associated with the Virgin.Footnote 56

Polemics: reinforcing the community

On the feast of the Annunciation (25 March) 1494, a play in Dutch on the Seven Sorrows was staged on the marketplace of Malines. Together with many townsmen, Philip the Fair and his court were present. The play, that included tableaux vivants with scenes taken from the Old Testament, lasted for five hours and was probably conceived as a dramatised sermon with two expositors explaining each sorrow. According to Jan van Coudenberge, the audience was extremely moved. People cried exceedingly out of compassion with the Virgin, no one was bored or unruly – not even young Philip – no one desired the play to end. Everyone – Philip included – insisted on a new performance. The new staging, a few days later (3 April), brought a huge influx of spectators.Footnote 57 Unmistakably, thus, the first performance of a play on the Seven Sorrows had been intended to create and enforce an emotional community, this time by encouraging public expression of extreme devout feelings. Whereas adherence to the confraternity made one a member of a large virtual emotional community through meditation and prayer and thus largely through private feeling, the shared experience of the audience of a Seven Sorrows play made this emotional community more direct, more palpable and more real.Footnote 58

At the same time, the play made it clear that not everyone supported the new devotion: it not only explained the Sorrows but also carefully rejected the arguments of its opponents. It has to be underlined that at least from 1494 onwards (approximately coinciding with the beginning of Philip the Fair's independent rule), the devotion became the object of intense polemics. Some theologians and priests raised objections to the biblical justification of the nature and number of the Virgin's Sorrows. In 1494 François de Lille wrote a Latin polemical treatise, comparable to a defence he had written in 1476 for the rosary confraternity,Footnote 59 refuting these objections and defending the devotion and the confraternity.Footnote 60 Beginning at around the same time attempts were made to have the devotion receive ecclesiastical recognition and to have the statutes of the confraternity gain apostolic approval. Efforts were made to procure the approbation of local religious authorities and bishops, particularly the bishop of Utrecht to whose diocese the collegiate churches of Abbenbroek and Reimerswaal belonged. With this goal in mind letters were written in Philip's name to Bishop David of Burgundy.Footnote 61 Likewise, letters were written to Pope Alexander vi to solicit confirmation of the confraternity and its statutes. In his bull dated 26 October 1494, the pope ordered an investigation of the confraternity,Footnote 62 although this was not carried out until February 1497, by Paulus de Porta, dean of the collegiate church of Renaix (Flanders), residing in the university town of Louvain.Footnote 63 On 13 February 1497 De Porta issued letters patent granting apostolic confirmation of the confraternity and its original six statutes.Footnote 64 Significantly, however, and in response to the entreaties of the confraternity's founders, he included an additional statute, one that permitted donations to be made for the benefit of the divine office of the Seven Sorrows celebrated on its feast day, of the yearly masses to be said for the souls of deceased confraternity members, of the maintenance of chapels and altars dedicated to the devotion, but again stipulating that no fees be allowed for enrolling in the confraternity or upon leaving it. The more strongly worded condemnation of anyone trying to make financial profit from the confraternity was now the seventh and final statute.Footnote 65

Despite papal confirmation of the confraternity's statutes, or perhaps because of it, opposition to the devotion was not quelled, but rather persisted. Whether the court's political exploitation of the cult had something to do with the polemics remains unclear. In any case, opposition seems not to have deterred the spread of the devotion. From its beginnings, its promoters had used a whole array of interrelated media to attract worshippers such as paintings, Latin poetry, vernacular meditation texts, woodcuts, preaching, processions, supplemented by divine offices and religious music. In this new polemical context, two new media became prominent – miracles and vernacular theatre – which may well have been largely responsible for the devotion's continuing success among large segments of the population. At the same time, regional differences in the uses of these media reveal the distinctions in religious culture between, on the one hand, the large cities of Flanders and Brabant and, on the other hand, the smaller towns of Holland and Zeeland. Around 1500 Brabant and Flanders were characterised by a well-developed public sphere with an emphasis on civic ritual.Footnote 66 There, and to a lesser degree in Holland, the new medium of vernacular theatre was successfully turned to account.Footnote 67 Miracles meanwhile were the most effective medium for propagation in Holland and Zeeland, where the privileged spaces for devotional experience were the convents, the parish churches and the private homes of the laity.Footnote 68

Manifestation: the miracle cults

Michel François de Lille's treatise in defence of the devotion of the Seven Sorrows, the Quodlibetica, includes an account of three miracles said to have occurred at the collegiate church of Abbenbroek sometime before August 1494.Footnote 69 During the years 1495 and 1496 he received further reports of other miracles that had been effected by Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows both at Abbenbroek and at Haamstede in Zeeland.Footnote 70 After François de Lille's death in 1502, Jan van Coudenberge became the recipient of similar reports.Footnote 71 Around this time, the church of St Hippolyte in Delft (Holland), with its miraculous statue of the sorrowing Virgin and Christ (a pietà), developed into a regional pilgrimage centre.Footnote 72 All these reports were published in three Latin miracle books, respectively in c. 1501, 1510 and 1519, as well as in one miracle book in Dutch in 1503.Footnote 73 In addition, the miracles were celebrated with processions and incorporated in vernacular sermons held in the mother churches on special feast days (for example, the Feast of the Miracles in Delft on 1 October expanded to a thirteen-day celebration in 1514).Footnote 74 They were proclaimed in other devotional centres too, such as the church of St Saviour in Bruges.Footnote 75 The proclamation of the miracles, both in print and orally, was clearly intended to strengthen support for the devotion and counter attacks upon it.Footnote 76 Although most miracle narratives are simple stories of illness and adversity, some also unambiguously prescribe modes of devotion or warn detractors.Footnote 77 For example, a woman, struck by paralysis, faithfully followed the rules of the confraternity, and was delivered from her affliction on the day that she read with even more dedication a vernacular book of meditations on the Seven Sorrows.Footnote 78 Another woman, who suffered from frequent falls, promised to visit the church of St Hippolyte in Delft and to meditate daily according to the rules of the confraternity. This was effective until she started to neglect her spiritual exercises.Footnote 79 Another woman was punished with a burning tongue after she had openly criticised the devotion.Footnote 80 The intended audience of the printed miracle collections (most of them in Latin) cannot have been very large. Yet the church wardens of St Hippolyte used the printing press on a much broader scale to advertise the Delft cult. Between 1506/7 and 1514 at least 2,650 single-leaf prints with images of the sorrowing Virgin and a short caption referring to the local cult (available in three versions) were distributed to devotees, probably both as a souvenir of their offerings to the miraculous statue and as a means to facilitate their meditations at home.Footnote 81

The development of the miracle cults in Holland and Zeeland was not only supported by François de Lille and Van Coudenberge through the publication of the miracle collections but also more directly by the rulers themselves. Margaret of Austria (1480–1530), who was regent (1507–15) in the Low Countries during her nephew Charles's minority and who seems to have been as active a promoter of the devotion as her late brother Philip the Fair, visited the church of St Hippolyte in Delft in 1515 and offered a golden heart to be kept near the miraculous statue.Footnote 82 In the same year, Dirck Adamsz van der Burch (d. 1531), the local chaplain of the altar of the Seven Sorrows, was appointed princely chaplain.Footnote 83 Yet, despite this encouragement, the evidence for Delft suggests that both administrators and devotees (mostly women) considered the miraculous cult of the Seven Sorrows before all else as a local or, at the most, a regional devotion and, thereby, inevitably lost touch with its original message of territorial unity.Footnote 84 It has to be underlined that miracles were unstable and tricky media.Footnote 85 In the case of Delft, the miracles guaranteed the cult's overwhelming success until about 1520, but at the same time they allowed worshippers to both collectively and privately appropriate the devotion's rationale.Footnote 86 In this respect, from the court's point of view, reliance on vernacular theatre proved to be a much more sophisticated strategy.

Persuasion: vernacular theatre

Since the middle of the fifteenth century, popular theatre in Flanders and Brabant had been increasingly dominated by the chambers of rhetoric, gilds, mainly of laymen devoted to the practice of the vernacular art of rhetoric.Footnote 87 Some of these became intensely engaged in the promotion of the devotion of the Seven Sorrows. The play staged twice in Malines in the spring of 1494 was performed by the local chamber, the Peony.Footnote 88 It was written by their playwright Hendrik Maes, a canon of the collegiate church of St Rombout (d. 1512), who in 1497 would become one of the initiators of the chapter of the confraternity in this church.Footnote 89 On 4 July 1494 a play on the Seven Sorrows was performed, likely by the local rhetoricians, in Leiden in the churchyard of St Peter where a chapter of the confraternity had been established in 1492.Footnote 90 In 1495 one of Antwerp's chambers, the Marigold, staged a similar play.Footnote 91 In the following years many other chambers of rhetoric in Brabant, Flanders and to a lesser degree Holland staged plays on the Seven Sorrows, increasingly so in small towns. None of the play texts are extant, but there is evidence enough that different compositions circulated. In 1497 Seven Sorrows plays were performed in Brussels, Bergen op Zoom (Brabant) and Gouda (Holland).Footnote 92 In 1499 a Seven Sorrows play extending over no less than two days was staged in the Flemish town of Aalst.Footnote 93 On Annunciation day 1502, the chamber of rhetoric of Blankenberge (Flanders) performed tableaux vivants and a play in praise of the devotion.Footnote 94 Plays were also staged by the rhetoricians of Tielt (1508, 1513) and Roeselare (1512) in Flanders.Footnote 95 Although there is little information on the particulars, it is evident that the local clergy was often involved. In 1518/19 Br Anthony, a Carmelite, was remunerated for his direction of a play on the Seven Sorrows in the market place of Geraardsbergen (Flanders).Footnote 96

There is more information on the large Brabantine cities of Antwerp and Brussels where chambers of rhetoric not only staged plays on the Seven Sorrows but were also involved in the establishment and the maintenance of chapters of the confraternity. In 1492 a chapter of the confraternity was instituted in the church of Our Lady in Antwerp. The choice of Antwerp as a stronghold of the devotion was not surprising since the city owed its rapid economic rise in large part to its unconditional loyalty to Maximilian of Austria throughout the wars.Footnote 97 Although the exact circumstances of the establishment of this chapter are unknown, in all likelihood the chapel of the Antwerp artists' gild of St Luke was selected from the outset as its seat. According to gild sources, a chapter of the confraternity in this chapel was officially recognised in 1495.Footnote 98 Moreover, given Van Coudenberge's initial plan to promote the devotion by putting copies of the icons of the Virgin painted by St Luke on display, it is very likely that board members of the Antwerp gild of St Luke seized quickly upon this opportunity to give their chapel more grandeur.Footnote 99

The artists' gild of St Luke shared its chapel with Antwerp's principal chamber of rhetoric, the Gillyflowers. Footnote 100 In the early 1490s this chamber frequently competed in literary competitions outside Antwerp, thereby forging networks that would be very useful to the court after the conclusion of the wars. In 1493 the chamber was one of the participants at a meeting in Malines of the Dutch-speaking chambers of rhetoric presided over by Philip the Fair where the ambitious plan (which never really materialised) for a princely chamber of rhetoric was unfolded.Footnote 101 For this occasion the chamber had crafted a wagon with a wooden citadel of Antwerp on which St Luke painting the Virgin's portrait was seated.Footnote 102 In the same year, the chamber attended the bilingual competition organised by the Brussels chamber, the Lily. It was also closely involved in the festivities surrounding the visit of Maximilian of Austria and Philip the Fair to Antwerp in 1494.Footnote 103 In 1496 the Gillyflowers received official permission from Philip the Fair to organise a large interregional theatre competition,Footnote 104 which was attended by chambers from Brabant, Flanders, Holland and Zeeland. In this way, it brought into practice the ideal of cultural unity in the Low Countries (or at least of its core territories).Footnote 105 The Gillyflowers must have been more deeply involved in the spreading of the devotion of the Seven Sorrows than the scarce sources reveal, since the printer Govaert Bac (d. c. 1515), one of its deans, was responsible for two Latin publications relating to the cult.Footnote 106

While relations between the Antwerp rhetoricians and the court are not exactly clear, more information is available for the Brussels chambers of rhetoric. Since the 1480s its leading rhetoricians had had many contacts with court officials such as the maître d'hôtel, memorialist and poet Olivier de La Marche (c. 1426–1502).Footnote 107 Representing respectively the city and the court, these men collaborated on the organisation of entry ceremonies and numerous other public court festivals.Footnote 108 In 1493 the Brussels Lily attended the meeting of chambers of rhetoric in Malines presided over by Philip the Fair and organised a bilingual (Dutch-French) rhetorician competition. Although the Lily honoured the Virgin Mary as its patron, there are no indications that the chamber was from the outset involved in the promotion of the devotion of the Seven Sorrows.Footnote 109 This changed in 1497, when two of its leading rhetoricians, Jan Smeken (d. 1517) and Jan Pertcheval (d. 1523), received the commission to write a new play on the Seven Sorrows.Footnote 110 According to Jan van Coudenberge's later account, this play, like the one written by Hendrik Maes in 1494, was wildly popular.Footnote 111 In any case, the rhetoricians of the Lily intensified their involvement by establishing, in early 1499, a chapter of the confraternity of the Seven Sorrows in the Church of St Géry in Brussels (see Figure 3).Footnote 112 Besides being highly successful among the Brussels population within the first years of its institution, the chapter boasted the formal membership of rulers, high nobles and courtiers such as Philip the Fair, Maximilian of Austria, Margaret of Austria, Jan van Coudenberge, Frans van Busleiden and Olivier de La Marche. Philip the Fair gave to the chapel a beautifully crafted bench as an enduring reminder of his devotion.Footnote 113 In 1507 the Lily merged with another Brussels chamber, the Violet, to create the Garland of Mary, which continued to promote the devotion of the Seven Sorrows by recruiting new members. One of its initiatives was the organisation of an annual procession whose explicit aim was to pray for the dynasty and its territories and ‘to bring the people to a more fervent devotion’. During the procession, the crowd was instructed in rhetorical verses on the nature and meaning of the Seven Sorrows.Footnote 114 These continuing efforts were rewarded with the privilege of 1511 from Maximilian and his grandson Charles. The princes decided to reinforce their patronage of the devotion by recognising the Brussels chapel of the confraternity as a princely chapel, and by according to the rhetoricians of the Garland of Mary the status of princely servants in the duchy of Brabant.Footnote 115

Figure 3.

Liber authenticus sacratissimae utriusque sexus christifidelium confraternitatis septem dolorum beatae Mariae virginis nuncupatae (City Archives of Brussels, ms 3413, fo. 2r).

Chambers of rhetoric were able to address large audiences of townsmen and townswomen with their vernacular plays on the Seven Sorrows. The evidence suggests that, at least in the case of the plays written by Hendrik Maes and by Jan Smeken and Jan Pertcheval, the content had been approved by the court. Unfortunately, since the play texts have been lost, it is impossible to assess how, and to what extent, religious instruction and dynastic propaganda were interwoven. However, other rhetorician plays from the same period have survived that are emphatically ‘Burgundian’ in tone and propound precisely the message that can be ascribed to the lost Seven Sorrows plays.Footnote 116 At the same time, by their active interregional contacts (especially in the 1490s), chambers of rhetoric brought into practice the ideology of peace and unity in the Low Countries and, given their broad social recruitment and large audiences, made it palpable to large segments of the population.Footnote 117 Moreover, the first chambers of rhetoric in Holland and Zeeland (c. 1480–90) were instituted precisely in those milieus that supported this political ideology.Footnote 118 Engaging some chambers of rhetoric for the propagation of the devotion of the Seven Sorrows, therefore, was one of the court's cleverest and most innovative strategies. Yet this medium was not without its risks. In the long run, as had happened earlier with the miracle cults, the court and the clergy lost their grip on the vernacular theatre, in this case because it proved to be as effective in spreading Reformation ideas as it had been in promoting a highly politically charged Marian devotion.Footnote 119

In the early 1490s many people in the Low Countries were war-weary and longing for spiritual solace. A few clerics directly and indirectly belonging to the Burgundian-Habsburg court seized upon this mood and created a devotion that offered ordinary believers the opportunity to meditate privately upon the pains and fears of the Virgin and to find assurances for the future. The princes soon realised the political benefits of this devotion, since – besides enhancing Marian piety – it pleaded for peace and territorial unity and even encouraged people to identify with the sufferings of the ducal family, in particular those of the late Duchess Mary of Burgundy and her only son, Duke Philip the Fair. Under the patronage of Philip a confraternity of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mary was established that borrowed its flexible model from the Cologne rosary confraternity and that was instituted in many churches in the different Burgundian core territories. At the same time controversial and comfortingly simple, the devotion's ultimate goal was to create a spiritual league that would underpin the ruling dynasty. After having redeemed the inhabitants of the Low Countries from the purgatory of civil war, the Virgin of the Seven Sorrows became the patroness of a new emotional community of men and women who had previously had little in common apart from their prince. At least indirectly, the devotion seems to have contributed to a new spiritual climate. Philip the Fair's rule (1494–1506) and the regency of his sister Margaret of Austria (1507–15) were generally perceived as a Golden Age of peace (both internally and externally) and prosperity.Footnote 120 Precisely for these reasons, the devotion was rekindled in the early seventeenth century by the Archdukes Albert and Isabella (1598–1621) in their attempt to heal the southern Low Countries after the trauma of religious war and division.Footnote 121

The cult of the Seven Sorrows was remarkable in its objectives but even more so in its extensive exploitation of communication techniques. The devotion's rapid and overwhelming success around 1500 was due, on the one hand, to the use of a whole array of traditional and new media, including paintings, Latin poetry, vernacular meditation texts, woodcuts, preaching, processions, divine offices, religious music, miracles and theatre, and, on the other hand, to its promoters' ability to make use of existing urban networks, such as those of the early vernacular printers and of the chambers of rhetoric. It is important to stress that this was no one-way communication and that some of these media – miracles and theatre in particular – allowed for constant input and appropriation by ordinary believers. In the end, the devotion of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mary reveals much about the vibrant but paradoxical religious culture of the Low Countries on the brink of the Reformation: increasingly elaborate public ritual went hand in hand with a growing privatisation of devotional experience. Yet even these individual acts of piety were often inextricably bound up with politics.

References

1 For his biography see Jean-Marie Cauchies, Philippe le Beau, le dernier duc de Bourgogne, Turnhout 2003.

2 W. P. Blockmans, ‘Autocratie ou polyarchie? La lutte pour le pouvoir politique en Flandre, d'après des documents inédits, 1482–92’, Bulletin de la Commission Royale d'Histoire cxl (1974), 257–368; M. J. van Gent, ‘Pertijelike saken’: Hoeken en Kabeljauwen in het Bourgondisch-Oostenrijkse tijdperk, The Hague 1994; Jelle Haemers, ‘ “Ende hevet tvolc goede cause jeghens hemlieden te rysene”: stedelijke opstanden en staatsvorming in het graafschap Vlaanderen, 1477–1492’, unpubl. PhD diss. Ghent 2006.

3 For preliminary insights see Keesman, Wilma, ‘De Bourgondische invloed op de genealogische constructies van Maximiliaan van Oostenrijk’, Millennium viii (1994), 162–72Google Scholar; Catrien Santing, ‘ “I never promised you a rosegarden”: de hofcultuur van Maximiliaan i en de Bourgondische Nederlanden’, in Rita Schlusemann and Paul Wackers (eds), Die spätmittelalterliche Rezeption Niederländischer Literatur im Deutschen Sprachgebiet, Amsterdam–Atlanta 1997, 143–74; Susie Speakman Sutch, ‘Jan Pertcheval and the Brussels Leliebroeders (1490–1500): the model of a conformist rhetoricians chamber?’, in Bart Ramakers (ed.), Conformisten en rebellen: rederijkerscultuur in de Nederlanden (1400–1650), Amsterdam 2003, 95–106; Serge ter Braake and Arjan van Dixhoorn, ‘Engagement en ambitie: de Haagse rederijkerskamer ‘Met Ghenuchten’ en de ontwikkeling van een burgelijke samenleving in Holland rond 1500', Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis ix (2006), 150–90; and Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, Om beters wille: rederijkerskamers en de stedelijke cultuur in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden, Amsterdam 2008, 53–76. Maximilian's cultural politics in the Holy Roman Empire have received far more attention. See, among others, Jan-Dirk Müller, Gedechtnus: Literatur und Hofgesellschaft um Maximilian I, Munich 1982.

4 Françoise de Gruben, Les Chapitres de la Toison d'or à l'époque bourguignonne (1430–1477), Louvain 1997, 3–11.

5 Richard C. Trexler, ‘Lorenzo de’ Medici and Savonarola, martyrs for Florence', Renaissance Quarterly xxxi (1978), 293–308; Lorenzo Polizotto, Children of the promise: the Confraternity of the Purification and the socialization of youths in Florence, 1427–1785, Oxford 2004, 53–106.

6 Anne Winston-Allen, Stories of the rose: the making of the rosary in the Middle Ages, Philadelphia 1997, 65–80; Henri Saffrey, Dominique, ‘La Fondation de la Confrérie du Rosaire à Cologne en 1475: histoire et iconographie’, Gutenberg-Jahrbuch (2001), 143–64Google Scholar; Anne Margreet W. As-Vijvers, ‘Weaving Mary's chapelet: the representation of the rosary in late medieval Flemish manuscript illuminations’, in Kathryn M. Rudy and Barbara Baert (eds), Weaving, veiling, and dressing: textiles and their metaphors in the late Middle Ages, Turnhout 2007, 41–79.

7 A very valuable art-historical analysis of the development of the cult of the sorrowing Virgin is Carol Schuler, M., ‘The Seven Sorrows of the Virgin: popular culture and cultic imagery in pre-Reformation Europe’, Simiolus xxi (1992), 5–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also her ‘The sword of compassion: images of the sorrowing Virgin in late medieval and Renaissance art’, unpubl. PhD diss. Columbia 1987. Older, less reliable surveys on the cult's origins are Delehaye, Hypolite, ‘La Vierge aux sept glaives’, Analecta bollandiana xii (1893), 333–52Google Scholar; Stephan Beissel, Geschichte der Verehrung Maria's in Deutschland während des Mittelalters, Freiburg-in-Brisgau 1909, 406–15; Augustin-Marie Lépicier, Mater dolorosa: notes d'histoire, de liturgie et d'iconographie sur le culte de Notre-Dame des Douleurs, Spa 1948; and Émile Bertaud, ‘Douleurs (Notre-Dame des Sept)’, in Dictionnaire de spiritualité, Paris 1937–65, ii. 1686–701.

8 J. Fruytier, ‘Coudenbergh (Jan de)’, in Nieuw Nederlandsch biografisch woordenboek, Leiden 1911–37, vii. 333–4; J. Stellingwerff, ‘Een Vlaamse vredesbeweging uit 1482: een versleten maar uniek manuscript’, in Het oude en het nieuwe boek, de oude en de nieuwe bibliotheek: liber amicorum H. D. L. Vervliet, Kapellen 1988, 63–4.

9 On the icons of Reimerswaal and Abbenbroek see Tim Graas, ‘Verloren gegane Lukas-Madonna's te Reimerswaal en Abbenbroek’, in Christelijke iconografie: opstellen over iconografische aspecten van het Nederlands kerkelijk kunstbezit, The Hague 1990, 12–26.

10 Johannes de Coudenberge, Ortus, progressus et impedimenta fraternitatis beatissime virginis Marie de passione que dicitur de septem doloribus, Antwerp: Michiel Hillen van Hoochstraten, 23 Nov. 1519 (NK 1212). A Dutch translation is available in Jacobus Stratius, Onse L. Vrovwe der seven vveeen: met de mirakelen, getyden, ende misse der selver: insgelycks den oorspronck, ende voortganck der broederschap, Antwerp: Guilliam Lesteens, 1622, 181–263. For a factual account of the development of the Seven Sorrows devotion, based upon the printed sources and upon the Liber authenticus, see Pérégrin-Marie Soulier, La Confrérie de Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs dans les Flandres, 1491–1519, Brussels [1912], and (less reliable) J. A. F. Kronenburg, Maria's heerlijkheid in Nederland: geschiedkundige schets van de vereering der H. Maagd in ons vaderland, van de eerste tijden tot op onze dagen, Amsterdam 1904–11, ii. 257–79, and Ad. Duclos, De eerste eeuw van het Broederschap der Zeven Weedommen van Maria in Sint-Salvators te Brugge, Bruges 1922.

11 F. De Ridder, ‘De devotie tot O. L. Vrouw van de vii Weeën, haar onstaan’, in Handelingen van het Vlaamsch Maria-Congres te Brussel, 8–11 September 1921: IIe Boekdeel: Maria-vereering, Brussels 1922, 92; J. Fruytier, ‘Verhoeven (Petrus)’, Nieuw Nederlandsch biografisch woordenboek, vii. 1243–4. On the Thabor convent see Ernest Persoons, ‘Prieuré du Mont-Thabor à Malines’, in Monasticon belge, VIII: Province d'Anvers, Liège 1993, ii. 581–9.

12 F. Ridder, De, ‘Brief van Petrus de Manso over de vii Weeën van Maria’, Mechlinia ii (1923), 23–30Google Scholar. See also idem, ‘Petrus de Manso, en de Staties der vii Weeën’, Mechlinia i (1922), 116–22. His ‘De devotie’, 93, and ‘Petrus de Manso’, 118, also refer to De Manso's ties of friendship with Michel François de Lille, but no corroboration of this has been found.

13 The 1492 statutes of the confraternity also invoke the sorrowful times (‘desen droeffeliken tijden’) and the motive of solace as reasons for its establishment. See n. 21 below.

14 Eric Gelaen, De, ‘De gevolgen van de opstand tegen Maximiliaan van Oostenrijk voor het Vlaamse platteland’, Handelingen van de Koninklijke Geschied- en Oudheidkundige Kring van Kortrijk xl (1973), 183–243Google Scholar; Haemers, ‘Ende hevet tvolc’, 500, 504.

15 Herman Pleij, ‘De laatmiddeleeuwse rederijkersliteratuur als vroeg-humanistische overtuigingskunst’, Jaarboek de Fonteine xxxiv (1984), 90.

16 The Treaty of Cadzand was concluded on 29 July 1492.

17 Dit es een seer deuote salige ende profitelicke ghedenckenisse van den vij. weeden oft droefheyden onser lieuer vrouwen, Antwerp: Gheraert Leeu, 14 July 1492 (ILC 888).

18 ‘Ende oec op dat die leeke lieden die niet lesen en konnen/ die personagien aensiende/ hem daer inne oec sullen mogen oefenen// Want die beelden sijn der leecker luden boeken.’

19 The few marks of ownership in the extant copies and the narratives of some of the miracle stories suggest that women formed the privileged audience of the vernacular meditation books: see n. 73 below.

20 De Coudenberge, Ortus, sig. Bir; Stratius, Onse L. Vrovwe, 194–6. On these clerics see Felix Nève, ‘Busleiden (François)’, in Biographie nationale, Brussels 1866–1986, iii. 204–5; E. H. J. Reusens, ‘Franchois (Michel)’, Biographie nationale, vii. 232–4; and André Duval, ‘François, Michel’, Dictionnaire de spiritualité, v. 1107–15.

21 Hier beghint een goede oefeninghe ende een seer deuote meditacye van sonderlinghen vij. ween onser sueter vrouwen ende moeder gods marien, Antwerp: [Gheraert Leeu, 1492] (ILC 887). This text is not dated, but its content and the condition of the woodblocks suggest a publication date after 14 July 1492, when the other Leeu text appeared. In December 1492 Leeu was mortally wounded in a workshop fight. Since both the Ortus and the Quodlibetica (see n. 60 below) are unclear about this point, there has been some discussion about the year of institution of the confraternity: Soulier, La Confrérie, 9; Duclos, De eerste eeuw, 26–7. It is most probable that the establishment of the confraternity and the publication of the statutes more or less coincided: there are no traces of the confraternity before the second half of 1492, and the first Leeu edition does not mention it.

22 Koen Goudriaan, ‘Een drukker en zijn markt: Gheraert Leeu (Gouda 1477–Antwerpen 1492/3)’, Madoc vi (1992), 204. On Maximilian of Austria's relations with the printing press see M. F. Müller, ‘Die Deutsche und Niederländische Druckgraphik in der zweiten Hälfte des 15. Jahrhunderts und die Publikationen Kaiser Maximilians i.’, in Der Aufstieg eines Kaisers: Maximilian I. von seiner Geburt bis zur Alleinherrschaft, 1459–1493 (25. März-2. Juli 2000), Vienna 2000, 133–41.

23 Confraternitas dolorum beatissime virginis marie Autore domino Philippo archiduce austrie duce burgondie brabantie etc. novissime erecta, [Antwerp: Govaert Bac, not before 1493] (ILC 611), sigs b1v–b4v.

24 The book whose incipit reads ‘Hier beghinnen onser lieuer vrouwen ween oft bedroefnissen die si leet ende haers gheminden sone’, [Leiden: Hugo Janszoon van Woerden, 25 May 1498–26 July 1500] (ILC 892) is not a Seven Sorrows but rather a rosary handbook: Schuler, ‘The Seven Sorrows’, 20 n. 56.

25 Van de seuen droefheden ofte weeden Onser lieuer vrouwen, Gouda: Collaciebroeders, 12 Sept. 1494 (ILC 890).The Collaciebroeders appear to have had a close relationship with Gheraert Leeu even after he left Gouda. They likely acquired two of Leeu's types (as well as some of his woodblocks) either as a gift or through a bequest: HPT, i. 88, 93.

26 Vanden seuen droefheden ofte weeden onser lieuer vrouwen, Delft: [Christiaen Snellaert], 17 July 1494 (ILC 889); Van den seuen droefheden ofte weden onser lieuer vrouwen, Delft: [Christiaen Snellaert or Hendrik Eckert van Homberch], 16 Mar. 1497 (ILC 891). The Collaciebroeders' Seven Sorrows manual postdates Snellaert's by only two months. Although their small volume is a reprinting of Leeu's dated 14 July 1492, they imitate Snellaert's by producing a title page that contains a woodcut of the Mater Dolorosa with, above, the title reproducing exactly the same wording that Snellaert had used.

27 Dit is die ghelikenisse vanden beelde van onser lieuer vrouwen ende haren lieuen kinde …, Antwerp: Hendrik Eckert van Homberch, [c. 1501?] (NK 4263).

28 Seven Getijden der passien ons heren met die seven weden onser vrouwen, Delft: Henric Pietersz. Lettersnijder, 12 Dec. 1510 (NK 1002); Ghetijden der passien ons heren Ihesu Christi ende der seven weeden Marien, Delft: [Cornelis Cornelissen, early sixteenth century] (NK 4234). See M. E. Kronenberg, ‘Verzamelband met enige onbekende noord-Nederlandse Postincunabelen’, in Huldeboek Pater Dr. Bonaventura Kruitwagen O. F. M., The Hague 1949, 237–45.

29 Anne Winston, ‘Tracing the origins of the rosary: German vernacular texts’, Speculum xlviii (1993), 619; Saffrey, ‘La Fondation’, 146–51.

30 Winston, Stories of the rose, 67–8; Saffrey, ‘La Fondation’, 149–51.

31 Winston, ‘Tracing the origins’, 629–32.

32 On the confraternities see Kronenburg, Maria's heerlijkheid, iii. 338–44. With the exception of Douai, it is not clear if the first confraternities in the Low Countries (Lille and Ghent) preceded the one in Cologne: Paul Trio, Volksreligie als spiegel van een stedelijke samenleving: de broederschappen te Gent in de late Middeleeuwen, Louvain 1993, 53–5. One of the most prolific printers of the very small illustrated rosary books was Gheraert Leeu who brought out several between 1484 and 1489. He was also responsible for printing both the Latin and Middle Dutch translation of the treatise by François de Lille in defence of the rosary devotion: Quodlibet de veritate fraternitatis rosarij seu psalterij beatae mariae virginis, [Gouda: Gheraert Leeu, 1483–11 June 1484] (ILC 999); Van Marien rosencransken, Gouda: Gheraert Leeu, 9 Mar. 1484 (ILC 1000).

33 Winkelbauer, Walter, ‘Kaiser Maximilian i. und St. Georg’, Mitteilungen des Österreichisches Staatsarchivs vii (1954), 523–50Google Scholar. See Confraternitas sancti Georgij per summum pontificum et inuictissimum romanorum regem approbata, [Antwerp: Govaert Bac, not before 1493] (ILC 1558).

34 Beatrijs Van Vlaenderen, ‘Verhalende bronnen en mentaliteitsgeschiedenis: het voorbeeld van een anonieme, ongedateerde kroniek over de jaren 1477–1482: “Die wonderlijcke oorloghen van Keyser Maximiliaen” ’, Handelingen van de Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent xxxviii (1984), 67; Jean Devaux, ‘Le Role politique de Marie de Bourgogne au lendemain de Nancy: vérité ou légende?’, Le moyen âge xcvii (1991), 389–405; Cauchies, Philippe le Beau, 25–9.

35 Mireille Madou, ‘Marie et l'héritage de Bourgogne’, in Bruges à Beaune: Marie, l'héritage de Bourgogne, Paris 2000, 104–6.

36 Cauchies, Philippe le Beau, 5–23.

37 This seems to have been one of the reasons for the objections raised against the devotion: see n. 76 below.

38 ‘Lof alder bedruckste moeder ons heeren’: Jan van Stijevoorts refereinenbundel anno 1524, ed. Frederik Lyna and Willem van Eeghem, Antwerp n.d., ii. 228–33, 291 (the final stanza contains the acrostic Maes), and Gilbert Degroote, ‘Diets-Bourgondische letteren te Brussel’, Dietsche Warande en Belfort (1952), 410.

39 Schuler, ‘The Seven Sorrows’, 13–14.

40 Liber authenticus, fo. 29r.

41 Ibid. fo. 29v.

42 On confraternities in the late medieval Low Countries see, among others, Trio, Volksreligie, and Brown, Andrew, ‘Bruges and the Burgundian “theatre-state”: Charles the Bold and Our Lady of the Snow’, History lxxxiv (1999), 573–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 The Leeu edition from the second half of 1492 refers on the title page to the chapters in Antwerp, Abbenbroek, Reimerswaal, Leiden and the Thabor convent. On the chapters in the church of Our Lady in Antwerp and in the Thabor convent, which were confirmed later, see also F. Ridder, De, ‘Stichting eener broederschap van OLV van vii Weeën te Antwerpen en te Mechelen: einde der xve eeuw’, Mechlinia iii (1924), 19–21Google Scholar, 74–9. The Antwerp confraternity is in all likelihood the same as the one held in the chapel of St Luke, that was confirmed in 1495 according to the sources of this gild: De liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde, onder zinspreuk: ‘Wt ionsten versaemt’, ed. Ph. Rombouts and Th. Van Lerius, Antwerp–The Hague n.d., i. 51; Floris Prims, ‘De St. Lucasgilde en de zeven weeën’, Antwerpiensia (1939), 36. On the chapter in the church of St Peter in Leiden see Herman Brinkman, Dichten uit liefde: literatuur in Leiden aan het einde van de Middeleeuwen, Hilversum 1997, 84–7. On the chapter in the church of St Saviour in Bruges (1493) see Duclos, De eerste eeuw. On the chapter in the convent of the Carmelites in Haarlem (before or in 1494) see Liber authenticus, fo. 19r. On the chapter in the church of St Hippolyte in Delft (1503) see G. Verhoeven, Devotie en negotie: Delft als bedevaartplaats in de late middeleeuwen, Amsterdam 1992, 43–50. On the chapter in the church of St Jacob in The Hague (c. 1515) see Stratius, Onse L. Vrovwe, 120–3. On the confraternity in the church of St Géry (1499) see Liber authenticus. On the new confraternities in Malines, respectively in the church of St Rombout (1497–8) and in the church of St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist (1512) see Chan. em. Steenackers, ‘La Confrérie de Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs à Malines’, Mechlinia vi (1927), 97–103. See also Kronenburg, Maria's heerlijkheid, iv. 440–3 (with also some other, less reliable references).

44 Duclos, De eerste eeuw, 35–7.

45 A. Van de Kerckhove, Geschiedenis van het Koninglyke Broederschap der Zeven Weedommen van Maria, door Philippus I, Koning van Spanien en 31en Graef van Vlaenderen, in St. Salvator's kerk te Brugge ingesteld ten jare 1492, Roeselare 1860, 231–3.

46 Steenackers, ‘La Confrérie’, 99.

47 Reindert Falkenburg, ‘Politiek en propaganda omstreeks 1490’, in Wim van Anrooij (ed.), De Haarlemse gravenportretten: hollandse geschiedenis in woord en beeld, Hilversum 1997, 67–72.

48 For the statutes see Hier beghint een goede oefeninghe.

49 Liber authenticus, fos 161r–223r. This number is comparable with the numbers for the rosary confraternities (Cologne had 8,000 in its first year, Augsburg 3,000): Winston, Stories of the rose, 80. In fact, in 1499, besides a few female and male convents that registered collectively, 1,921 individuals (laymen, laywomen, priests and beguines) took the initiative to be registered together with their living and deceased relatives and friends. Of these 49% were female. In the following years, the numbers were somewhat less impressive with on average 100–600 new members.

50 Rosenwein, Barbara, ‘Review essay: worrying about emotions in history’, American Historical Review cvii (2002), 821–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Schuler, ‘The Seven Sorrows’, 14.

52 For the statutes see Hier beghint een goede oefeninghe.

53 Van Coudenberge alludes to approbation by the Benedictine, Franciscan, Dominican, Carmelite and Augustinian orders: Ortus, sig. Bijv; Stratius, Onse L. Vrovwe, 204–5. Citing copies in the Liber authenticus, Soulier (La Confrérie 19, 27–8), provides translations of the letters patent of the provincial prior and vicar-general of the Carmelites, Jean de Nuys (Liber authenticus, fo. 19r–v) and the master of the Dominicans, Joachim Turriano (Liber authenticus, fo. 13r–v) dated respectively 20 April and 19 December 1494. He cites (p. 36) the letter from the vicar-general of the observant Franciscans, Olivier Maillard, dating to 31 March 1496, granting the confraternity participation in the spiritual benefits of his order.

54 These offices have as yet not been repertoried. See Barbara Haggh, ‘Charles de Clerc, seigneur de Bouvekercke, and two manuscripts: Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, ms 215–16, and Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, ms VI E 40’, Yearbook of the Alamire Foundation v (2003), 188, and ‘Du Fay and Josquin at the Collegiate Church of St Gudila’, Revue belge de musicologie lv (2001), 49. Van Coudenberge states that services honouring the Seven Sorrows including masses were celebrated in Rome, Cambrai, Douai, Deventer, throughout Holland as well as in other cities and provinces: Ortus, sig. Bijv; Stratius, Onse L. Vrovwe, 207; Soulier, La Confrérie, 20. Haggh cites a manuscript from the late fifteenth century written in western Germany for Augustinian use: ‘Charles de Clerc’, 188 n. 16.

55 Haggh, ‘Charles de Clerc’, 188–9, and ‘Du Fay and Josquin’, 49. In her forthcoming Princeton doctoral dissertation ‘The Lady of Sorrows: music, devotion, and politics in the Burgundian Netherlands’, Emily Snow explores this issue further.

56 It is also worth indicating the role that the printing press played in this regard. De Manso's office with a mass was printed on two separate occasions before the end of the fifteenth century: as an appendix to François de Lille's Quodlibetica by Thierry Martens (sigs Fir–F5v; see n. 60 below); and as an appendix to Confraternitas dolorum beatissime virginis marie (sigs c1r–c8v). The devotion's special feast day was the Saturday before Palm Sunday (ibid. sigs a4r, c1r).

57 De Coudenberge, Ortus, sig. Civ; Stratius, Onse L. Vrovwe, 222–3; Willem Eeghem, Van, ‘Rhetores Bruxellenses (15e–16e eeuw)’, Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire xiv (1935), 433–5Google Scholar; L. C. Michels, ‘De letteren in dienst van de propaganda voor Coudenberghes broederschap van de vii weeën’, in his Filologische opstellen, I: Stoffen uit de middeleeuwen, Zwolle 1957, 153–5; Speakman Sutch, ‘Jan Pertcheval’, 97. The Malines city accounts mention both performances and the presence of Philip the Fair at the first: Eugeen van Autenboer, Volksfeesten en rederijkers te Mechelen, 1400–1600, Ghent 1962, 151–2 (old style dates).

58 On the emotional techniques of rhetorician drama see Dirk Coigneau, ‘Emotion and rhetoric in rederijker drama’, in Elodie Lecuppre-Desjardin and Anne-Laure Van Bruaene (eds), Emotions in the heart of the city (14th–16th century), Turnhout 2005, 243–56.

59 Saffrey, ‘La Fondation’, 151–2. For Leeu's double publication of this treatise see n. 32 above.

60 Michael Francisci de Insulis, Quodlibetica decisio perpulchra et deuota de septem doloribus christifere virginis Marie ac communi et saluberrima confraternitate desuper institute, Antwerp: Thierry Martens [1496–7] (ILC 998). If this dating is correct, this must be a second edition since the Quodlibetica is mentioned in the letter of 19 December 1494 by the Dominican magister generalis Joachim Turriano (see n. 53 above). For a summary of François de Lille's arguments see Soulier, La Confrérie, 23–4. François de Lille's was not the only explicit measure taken to combat the opponents of the devotion and its spread. Van Coudenberge's letter to Charles is punctuated with references to these adversaries and their objections as well as to the steps that were taken on the confraternity's behalf to combat them: De Coudenberge, Ortus, sigs Biv, Biijr–v, B4v, Cijv–Ciijr, C4v–Dir; Stratius, Onse L. Vrovwe, 198–202, 217–19, 229–33, 241–5; Soulier, La Confrérie, 17–18, 40–1, 51–4.

61 De Coudenberge, Ortus, sig. Bir; Stratius, Onse L. Vrovwe, 197. While Van Coudenberge asserts that David of Burgundy was the first bishop to confirm the devotion (Ortus, sig. Biv; Stratius, Onse L. Vrovwe, 197–8), in fact the bishop's letter of 13 December 1494 rather validates the three first miracles associated with the church at Abbenbroek (see n. 73 below). For a transcription of the bishop of Utrecht's letter see the miracle books published by Henrick die Lettersnider (fo. 1r–v) and Govaert Bac (fos 6r–7r) cited in n. 73 below and Stratius, Onse L. Vrovwe, 7–13, and Soulier, La Confrérie, 26–7.

62 On the dating of this papal bull see Soulier, La Confrérie, 26 n. 1, and Duclos, De eerste eeuw, 25. While Van Coudenberge only mentions Pope Alexander's bull (Ortus, sig. Biijv; Stratius, Onse L. Vrovwe, 210), Soulier, La Confrérie, 25–6, gives a complete translation of it based on the transcription in the Liber authenticus, fos 15v–16r, which is embedded in Paulus de Porta's letter of 13 February 1497.

63 In 1498/9 De Porta was listed as chaplain at the princely chapel in Ghent: Marc Boone and Thérèse de Hemptinne, ‘Le Clergé séculier gantois en 1498–99’, Bulletin de la Commission Royale d'Histoire cxlix (1983), 410, 423, 425.

64 Liber authenticus, fos 15r–18r.

65 De Coudenberge, Ortus, sigs Biijv–B4v; Stratius, Onse L. Vrovwe, 209–16.

66 Peter Arnade, Realms of ritual: Burgundian ceremony and civic life in late medieval Ghent, Ithaca–London 1996; Elodie Lecuppre-Desjardin, La Ville des cérémonies: essai sur la communication politique dans les anciens Pays-Bas bourguignons, Turnhout 2004; Van Bruaene, Om beters wille.

67 On the developing public sphere in Holland at that time see Serge ter Braake and Arjan van Dixhoorn, ‘Engagement en ambitie’.

68 Koen Goudriaan, ‘Holland in de tijd van Leeu’, in Een drukker zoekt publiek: Gheraert Leeu te Gouda, 1477–1484, Delft 1993, 31–53; Brinkman, Dichten uit liefde, 256–65.

69 François de Lille includes the notarised authentication letter dated 9 August 1494, sigs Eiiijr–E5r. See also Soulier, La Confrérie, 15–6.

70 During these two years François de Lille received five letters from Abbenbroek and one from Haamstede: Verhoeven, Devotie, 58.

71 Between 1502 and 1519 Van Coudenberge received six letters from Delft, four from Abbenbroek, one from Reimerswaal, one from Den Haag and penned one as well regarding miracles that had occurred in Bruges.

72 D. P. Oosterbaan, ‘De Zeven Smarten van Maria te Delft’, Archief voor de Geschiedenis van de katholieke kerk in Nederland v (1963)1, 94–125; Verhoeven, Devotie, 58–62.

73 Miracula confraternitatis septem dolorum beatissime virginis Marie, [Antwerp]: Henrick die Lettersnider, [after 1500] (ILC A 78) (Soulier, La Confrérie, 65, and Verhoeven, Devotie, 58, 363 date this publication to about 1496); Dit sijn die miraculen van onse lieue vrouwe, Leiden: Hugo Jansz. van Woerden, 1503 (NK 1527); Miracula confraternitatis septem dolorum sacratissime virginis Marie, Antwerp: Govaert Bac, 1510 (NK 1525); Miracula confraternitatis Septem dolorum sacratissimae virginis Mariae, Antwerp: Michiel Hillen van Hoochstraten, 1519 (NK 1526). The only extant copy of the latter volume was destroyed during World War II; its contents are known thanks to Georgius Colvenerius, Miracula CCX confraternitatis VII dolorum sacratissimae Virginis Mariae, una cum Ortu et progressu eiusdem confraternitatis, Douai: Pierre Auroy, 1619. Stratius, Onse L. Vrovwe, is a translation of Colvenerius' volume.

74 Oosterbaan, ‘De Zeven Smarten’, 101–3.

75 Duclos, De eerste eeuw, 122–30.

76 One of the most remarkable miracles was that of Anna, a nun from the convent of St Clare in Delft. In 1510 the Virgin had appeared before her to express her special wish to be worshipped in Delft. However, she also declared to Anna that she preferred that the Seven Sorrows would only include her emotions at the scenes of the Passion. It is interesting that although this miracle was communicated in some detail to Jan van Coudenberge, the Virgin's suggestion for an alternative interpretation of the Seven Sorrows was left out in the published letter: Verhoeven, Devotie, 61, 206–10, 283–8.

77 Ibid. 155.

78 Stratius, Onse L. Vrovwe, 24–5, miracle no. 9.

79 Verhoeven, Devotie, 271, miracle no. 102.

80 Ibid. 253–4, miracle no. 55.

81 Ibid. 48–50. Prints referring to the Seven Sorrows in a series together with the Seven Joys of the Virgin were produced around the same period in Leiden: Kruitwagen, Bonaventura, ‘Nederlandsche prenten uit de 15e-16e eeuw’, Het Boek xii (1923), 198–201Google Scholar.

82 Oosterbaan, ‘De Zeven Smarten’, 119; Verhoeven, Devotie, 293–4. This was a variant on the hearts in wax and silver offered by ordinary devotees (Verhoeven, Devotie, 264, 274). In 1518 Margaret of Austria established a convent of the Annonciades dedicated to the Seven Sorrows just outside Bruges: De Coudenberge, Ortus, sigs Div-Diir; Stratius, Onse L. Vrovwe, 247–8; A. C. Schrevel, De, ‘Marguerite d'Autriche et le couvent des Annonciades à Bruges’, Annales de la Société d'Emulation de Bruges lxvii (1924), 108–25Google Scholar. She sent a golden heart to the confraternity in Brussels in 1518: Liber authenticus, fo. 264r. In the same year Margaret wrote to Jan van Coudenberge with the request to take care of the Bruges convent and to include her in the history of the devotion that he was about to write: De Coudenberge, Ortus, sig. Diir–v; Stratius, Onse L. Vrovwe, 250–1; Soulier, La Confrérie, 57. Margaret also exported the devotion to Brou near Bourg-en-Bresse, where she built a monastery and a burial church for herself and her late husband, Philibert of Savoy: M. Fosseyeux, ‘La Dévotion “sensible” et les confrères aux xvie et xviie siècles’, Revue d'histoire de l'église de France xxiii (1937), 321. See also Dagmar Eichberger, Leben mit Kunst, Wirken durch Kunst: Sammelwesen und Hofkunst unter Margarete von Österreich, Regentin der Niederlande, Turnhout 2002, 221–8.

83 Verhoeven, Devotie, 59.

84 Ibid. 138.

85 See, among others, Walsham, Alexandra, ‘Miracles and the Counter-Reformation mission to England’, HJ xlvi (2003), 779–815CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

86 On the revenues of the Delft cult see Verhoeven, Devotie, 164–7.

87 Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, ‘ “A wonderfull tryumfe, for the wynning of a pryse”: guilds, ritual, theater, and the urban network in the southern Low Countries, ca. 1450–1650’, Renaissance Quarterly lix (2006), 374–405, and Om beters wille.

88 Van Autenboer, Volksfeesten, 151.

89 Steenackers, ‘La Confrérie’, 99; Van Autenboer, Volksfeesten, 150–3. On Hendrik Maes see Emile Van Varenbergh, ‘Maes (Henri)’, Biographie nationale, xiii. 134–5; Eugeen Van Autenboer, ‘Maes, Hendrik, rederijker’, in Nationaal Biografisch Woordenboek, Brussels 1966–, ii. 498–9.

90 Brinkman, Dichten uit liefde, 84–7. In 1515 Jan van Coudenberge visited the church of St Peter and offered fragments of the holy cross.

91 Van Bruaene, Om beters wille, 69.

92 For Brussels see n. 110 below. For Bergen op Zoom see F. Caland, ‘De rederijkerskamer van Bergen op Zoom: historische schets uit haren bloeitijd van 1441 tot 1561’, De Dietsche Warande v (1886), 99. For Gouda see Retoricaal memoriaal: bronnen voor de geschiedenis van de Hollandse rederijkerskamers van de middeleeuwen tot het begin van de achttiende eeuw, ed. F. C. van Boheemen and Th. C. J. van der Heijden, Delft 1999, 261.

93 Van Autenboer, Volksfeesten, 152 n. 244.

94 Van Bruaene, Om beters wille, 282 n. 173.

95 Antonin Van Elslander, ‘De Mariavereering bij de Rederijkers’, Jaarboek de Fonteine iii (1945), 60.

96 Victor Fris,‘Uittreksels der stadsrekeningen van Geraardsbergen van 1475 tot 1658’, Bulletijn van de Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent xx (1912), 66.

97 Herman Van der Wee, The growth of the Antwerp market and the European economy (fourteenth–sixteenth centuries), Louvain 1963, ii. 103–4.

98 See n. 43 above.

99 On the gild of St Luke in this period see Maximiliaan P. J. Martens and Natasja Peeters, ‘Artists by numbers: quantifying artists’ trades in sixteenth-century Antwerp', in Molly Faries (ed.), Making and marketing: studies of the painting process in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Netherlandish workshops, Turnhout 2006, 211–22.

100 Van Bruaene, Om beters wille, 76.

101 On these plans see ibid. 63–4, 73–6.

102 De liggeren, i. 47.

103 Ibid. i. 49.

104 Eugeen Van Autenboer, ‘Een landjuweel te Antwerpen in 1496?’, Jaarboek de Fonteine xxix (1978–9) 1, 125–50.

105 Van Bruaene, Om beters wille, 76, 85.

106 That is his undated Confraternitas dolorum beatissime virginis Marie and the 1510 miracle book, referred to in nn. 23, 73 respectively. See also Van Bruaene, Om beters wille, 63, 68–9, 76.

107 On La Marche see Catherine Emerson, Olivier de La Marche and the rhetoric of 15th-century historiography, Woodbridge 2004.

108 Susie Speakman Sutch, ‘Dichters van de stad: de Brusselse rederijkers en hun verhouding tot de Franstalige hofliteratuur en het geleerde humanisme (1475–1522)’, in Jozef Janssens and Remco Sleiderink (eds), De macht van het schone woord: literatuur in Brussel van de 14e tot de 18e eeuw, Brussels 2003, 141–60.

109 Van Bruaene, Om beters wille, 69.

110 The attribution of the date 1497 is derived from Willem Van Eeghem, ‘Rhetores Bruxellenses’, 433. For an analysis of the elements that this play may have contained see Speakman Sutch, ‘Jan Pertcheval’, 98–101. In 1493 Pertcheval had made a Dutch translation of La Marche's Le Chevalier délibéré: ‘Dichters van de stad’, 150–3.

111 De Coudenberge, Ortus, sig. Cir–v; Stratius, Onse L. Vrovwe, 219–22.

112 In a letter dated 25 February 1499 the bishop of Cambrai, Henricus de Bergis, granted the special consecration of an altar in the Our Lady chapel in St Géry's church dedicated to the worship of the Brussels chapter in response to a petition to that effect from Jan Smeken, Jan Pertcheval and the prefects of the Lily chamber: Liber authenticus, fos 21r–22r.

113 Ibid. fo. 43v.

114 Ibid. fo. 29v.

115 Ibid. fo. 30v.

116 Degroote, ‘Diets-Bourgondische letteren’, 402–21; Samuel Mareel, ‘Voor vorst en stad: de literaire productie bij stedelijke feesten ter ere van het huis Habsburg-Bourgondië in Vlaanderen en Brabant (1432–1561)’, unpubl. PhD diss. Ghent 2007, 161–205.

117 Van Bruaene, Om beters wille, 192.

118 Arjan Van Dixhoorn, ‘Lustige geesten: rederijkers en hun kamers in het publieke leven van de Noordelijke Nederlanden in de vijftiende, zestiende en zeventiende eeuw’, unpubl. PhD diss. Amsterdam 2004, 67–77; Ter Braake and Van Dixhoorn, ‘Engagement en ambitie’, 181–3.

119 Anne-Laure Bruaene, Van, ‘ “Of the king's edict I do you no command”: vernacular literary networks and the Reformation in the Low Countries’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte xcix (2008), 229–55Google Scholar.

120 Wim Blockmans and Walter Prevenier, De Bourgondiërs: de Nederlanden op weg naar eenheid, Amsterdam 1997, 227–50.

121 Luc Duerloo, ‘Archducal piety and Habsburg power’, in Werner Thomas and Luc Duerloo (eds), Albert & Isabella, 1598–1621, Turnhout 1998, 272–3.

Figure 0

Figure 1. Johannes de Coudenberge, Ortus, progressus et impedimenta fraternitatis beatissime virginis Marie de passione que dicitur de septem doloribus, Antwerp: Michiel Hillen van Hoochstraten, 23 Nov. 1519, title page (University Library, Ghent, Res. 1288).

Figure 1

Figure 2. The first Sorrow of the Virgin (Simeon's prophecy) in Dit es een seer deuote salige ende profitelicke ghedenckenisse van den vij. weeden oft droefheyden onser lieuer vrouwen, Antwerp: Gheraert Leeu, 14 July 1492 (Royal Library, The Hague, 150 F 21).

Figure 2

Figure 3. Liber authenticus sacratissimae utriusque sexus christifidelium confraternitatis septem dolorum beatae Mariae virginis nuncupatae (City Archives of Brussels, ms 3413, fo. 2r).