Expressing Civic Pride in Stone: Church Towers and Town Halls in the Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Low Countries

Architectural historians have long acknowledged that civic pride was an important catalyst for the erection of monumental architecture in the Middle Ages, however interpretations are often difficult to substantiate, because documentation for this period is erratic. Written sources are usually ambiguous or inarticulate: A commonplace is that a new project was to be an ‘ornament to the city’. Yet, buildings could convey multiple messages and represent various groups of the community. Monuments probably spoke for themselves; the society in which they were erected was likely well-aware of the power balances behind their construction. My aim is to consider architecture as a medium of discourse between cities and the various groups within the city. I will explore several case studies in the Low Countries in which this becomes more tangible. I will first briefly treat church towers and then turn to town halls, which are generally regarded as the prime markers of urban autonomy in the late medieval Low Countries. Both types of structures were an expression of the prosperity of their respective communities, however rather than merely articulating civic pride, they conveyed multi-layered meanings, challenging and acknowledging the existing power balance at the same time.