Flanders and the Low Countries 263that blood was produced. Acting out Christ’s Passion, they
chanted slogans and sang religious songs while carrying
banners and crosses, walking barefooted, wearing little
clothing or identifying religious garb. They were fairly
spontaneously organized, usually enacted in the context
of a crisis or were linked to prophecies about the end of
the world. Women performed these rites separately and in
private. In Italy, all social groups participated.
One revival in 1260, initiated by one Ranieri Fasani,
began in Perugia, in Umbria in central Italy, during an era
of conflict between the popes and the HOHENSTAUFEN
family and extensive wars among the Italian cities. It was
also a period important to the speculation of JOACHIMof
Fiore. Successful at least temporarily in several northern
Italian cities, the flagellants crossed the Alps, visited
PROVENCEand Strasbourg, then entered GERMANY,HUN-
GARY,BOHEMIA, and POLAND. North of the Alps the flagel-
lants quickly lost the support and tolerance of the clergy,
who were suspicious of their lack of clerical leadership
and heterodox practices.
Almost a century later, large numbers were attracted
to the flagellant and violently anti-Jewish enthusiasm of
1349, which took place chiefly in Germany and the Low
Countries against the background of the Black Death.
They earned the condemnation of Pope CLEMENTVI and
the University of Paris in 1349. In 1400 another wave of
religious enthusiasm occurred in Italy, called the Bianchi
movement for the white robes adherents wore. They too
moved in processions and some practiced flagellation.
Children took part in some of these later penitential
practices. More orthodox and allied with the clergy,
they fasted, listened to sermons, and prayed for peace
and the cessation of the violence raging through Italy at
the time.
See alsoANTICLERICALISM; CONFRATERNITIES; ESCHA-
TOLOGY; PLAGUES; PROCESSIONS, LITURGICAL.
Further reading:Daniel E. Bornstein, The Bianchi of
1399: Popular Devotion in Late Medieval Italy (Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993); Richard Kieckhefer,
Repression of Heresy in Medieval Germany(Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979); Gordon Leff,
Heresy in the Later Middle Ages: The Relation of Heterodoxy
to Dissent, c. 1250–1450,2 vols. (Manchester: University
Press, 1967).
Flanders and the Low Countries Medieval Flanders
consisted of two provinces in modern Belgium and the
modern departments of Pas-de-Calais and Nord in
France. In the ninth century Flanders changed from a
part of the Carolingian Empire to an autonomous princi-
pality. Related to the CAROLINGIANS, Count BALDWINI
Ironarm and his son, Baldwin II (r. 879–918), profited
from the chaos produced by the Viking and Scandinavian
invasions and the collapse of royal power to found and
solidify a region controlled by a local dynasty. It eventu-
ally expanded, in the south to the borders of NORMANDY
and up to the domains of the king of FRANCE.ECONOMIC SUCCESS
From the ninth century Flanders profited from an expan-
sion of agricultural lands with drainage and clearing of
forests. This charge led to considerable and early urban
development, all under the control of the count, who
dominated the towns and countryside with strong
fortresses supported by the country’s lucrative tax collec-
tions. The region became the main industrial and textile
center of northern Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries.
The urban growth that accompanied the increase in com-
merce and industry led to greater demand for the food-
stuffs to feed the towns, which were among the most
populated in Europe. Towns such as BRUGES,GHENT, and
Ypres imported grain from northern France and Germany
and large quantities of raw wool from England. Italian
MERCHANTSmade it one of the centers of the banking sys-
tem. All this yielded considerable prosperity among the
counts and the new urban patriciate who controlled this
industrial development.POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CONFLICTS
The expansion of commerce and textile activities primar-
ily profited a small group of inhabitants of the towns,
who controlled the wool trade and cloth exports, as well
as financial and fiscal activities. Underlying this patriciate
was the mass of specialized artisans necessary for the
complex production of cloth as well as other trades and
small business owners reaping benefits from the provi-
sioning of these towns.
The aspiration of the small-time merchants grew
strong for greater autonomy and political influence early
on. During a crisis of succession in 1127 brought about
by the assassination of Count Charles the Good (r.
1119–27), the king of France, Louis VI (r. 1108–37),
tried to impose his candidate as count, but the urban
patriciates managed to make the king withdraw and
imposed Thierry of Alsace (r. 1128–68) on him. At the
same time the towns profited from the rivalries of the
candidates to gain privileges for their guilds and their
newly formed communes and guarantees limiting taxa-
tion. The French monarchy, however, continued to try to
absorb Flanders throughout the 13th century, but with-
out complete success.
In the 14th century, Flanders was an important and
contested region between the king of France and the king
of England. As the outlet for the English wool trade, the
Flemish merchants and bankers had to maintain close
relations with England. The kings of France, in attempts
to integrate the country into their royal domain, led sev-
eral unsuccessful military expeditions to Flanders
between 1296 and 1328. King PHILIPIV the Fair was
defeated at the Battle of COURTRAI in 1302 but soon
managed to impose a heavy tribute on the county in