Jan and Gertrude before the Ghent aldermen
The body of sources for this study consists of ten contracts and lawsuit adjudications recorded in the annual registers of the aldermen of the Keure and Gedeele.9 The city of Ghent had two benches of aldermen (schepenen) who recorded the final verdicts they pronounced in cases brought before them.
Although the boards acted together occasionally when important cases were under discussion (as we will see), in general each met separately in accordance with their distinct mandates. While the Keure issued urban ordinances, judged civil and criminal cases and punished offenders, the Gedeele focused on the cases that involved orphans, testaments, inheritance conflicts and the like. Chosen from the elite groups (powerful families and guild leaders), each board of 13 aldermen also registered private contracts for sales, loans and agreements of all kinds.10 For extra insurance and an extra payment, the clerk recorded the legal act in the aldermen’s annual register. Although the documents in these registers are predominantly from wealthy and middle-class citizens and therefore represent only a small fraction of all the economic acts of this large city, both sets of registers contain the ordinary acts of thousands of people. Each board recorded the documents separately in a series of registers, which survive from the second half of the fourteenth until the end of the eighteenth century. They are a rich resource for historians, but they are notoriously difficult to handle due to their quantity and the fact that no one has ever made an effort to index them systematically.11Three aspects of these schepenregisters make them extremely valuable for research on marital conflicts. One strength is that they provide insight into the civil aspects of marriage. While the registers of the episcopal courts only concern matters that interested the Church, city aldermen regulated economic and social matrimonial issues.12 The accounts of the episcopal court of Tournai (the bishopric to which Ghent belonged) record fines for adultery, clandestine marriage, divorces etc., evidence that allows historians to study moral attitudes, sexual deviancy and marital offences.13 The registers of the aldermen, on the other hand, include contracts about marriage gifts, verdicts in disputes between spouses and the like.
Second, historians have often used sources deriving from the repression of citizens who had broken marital law (such as remission letters, sentence books and bailiff or city accounts recording fines) to examine marital conflicts, which has turned unwilling brides and grooms into criminals because they were subject to punishment.14 In contrast, as Monique Vleeschouwers-Van Melkebeek has shown, the Ghent registers reveal the social aspects of marriage, such as the relationship between the couple and their parents after an abduction.15 A third advantage is that the registers feature women as well as men, and young people as well as authority figures. Many historians have already shown how fruitful research in the Ghent schepenregisters can be for understanding women and their legal capabilities, the history of orphans, domestic life and similar subjects.16 Our case study of two people suing their parents(-in-law) will add an interesting, albeit modest, contribution to the social history of the parent-child relationship. Because of their focus on clerical evidence, studies of �marital victims’ have minimised the efforts of young brides and grooms to defy their parents. In contrast, the Ghent schepenregisters include evidence of the attempts of sons and daughters to contradict their parents and evade the unfavourable effects of marriage practices.Where did the protagonists of our case study belong on the social scale? Simon came from a wealthy family that ranked among the high society of Ghent’s political elite.17 Some of his ancestors were part of a powerful broker family that had accumulated a rich patrimony within the town and its hinterland. He lived in the Sint-Michielsstraat, a main commercial street, and held the fief of Sint-Denijs-Boekel (south of Ghent). Born in the third quarter of the fourteenth century, he was an old man by the time his oldest son Jan sued him. He had established a notable reputation and had not yet finished his impressive career. A respected jurist and doctor of the law, Simon began his career in city administration in 1400 as a pensionaris, an official responsible for judicial affairs, one of the most important offices in the city.
He was later appointed by the duke of Brabant to the Council of Brabant, the highest court in that neighbouring duchy. Simon’s rapid rise in ducal office is illustrated by his appointment as president of the Council of Flanders by the Burgundian Duke John the Fearless in 1409. Simon’s talents as a jurist took him to the upper circles at the court of the duke, who also asked him to undertake important diplomatic missions abroad. His tenure as president probably ended in 1437, and he died on 8 March 1447.Simon’s children also belonged to the Ghent establishment. His wife, Catherine Van Lovendegem, a noble woman from the Ghent hinterland, gave birth to a daughter (Catherine) and three sons: Jan, Gerard and Steven. While Jan was named (together with Steven) as a squire in a list of noblemen joining the Ghent army to participate in Duke Philip the Good’s fight against the English at Calais in 1437,18 Steven was the only brother who held political office in his home town. He was alderman in Ghent in 1441 and 1445, and three times treasurer of the town. The close connection of the Van Formelis family and the court would turn out badly for Steven. He was held responsible for the (alleged) financial mismanagement of the town in the 1440s and was executed in December 1451 by rebelling craftsmen. We will return to this episode, because it is probably not a coincidence that Jan’s effort to undo his father’s marriage settlement also resurfaced in that year. The Formelis family clearly took the duke’s side, a position that resulted in the traumatic death of Simon’s son in a perilous period for the duke’s local sympathisers. Jan escaped the macabre dance because he had never held political office in his home town. However, his eldest son, also named Jan, followed his grandfather’s path to serve the Burgundian court.19
Less is known about Gertrude van Oostkerke. Her father, Jean de Strépy, was lord of Oostkerke (today, Oisquercq in French or Oostkerk in Dutch), a fief in Brabant (near Tubize, southwest of Brussels),20 which included a castle with the adjacent lands and buildings (Hof van Oostkerke), extensive lands (such as the Grootemeersch), woods (including the Bosch van Oostkerke) and annuities.21 The castle was demolished and today the only building with medieval architecture in Oisquercq is the church, perhaps the same church that hosted our couple’s official marriage ceremony.
Gertrude’s mother (Isabel of Voorde) also came from a noble family, based in the county of Flanders. In short, Gertrude belonged to an important noble lineage closely connected to the duke of Brabant. It was a respected family because it had jurisdiction over justice within the fief.22 Gertrude was also an attractive prospective bride for a family with noble aspirations because she was the eldest daughter of Sir Jan, who only had two daughters (the youngest was called Yolente) to the best of our knowledge. Perhaps Jan of Strépy had a strategic plan for the marriage of his oldest daughter. But suddenly Jan van Formelis appeared on the scene. Table 8.1 lists the main events of our case.TABLE 8.1
Chronology of events in the case of Gertrude van Oostkerke and Jan van Formelis
Chronology
Spring 1433
Abduction and marriage of Gertrude and Jan
1 July 1433
Jan sues Simon over the marriage gift
17 July 1433
Gertrude receives a marriage gift from her father
7–9 October 1433
Jan receives a marriage gift from Simon
2 June 1441
Separation contract of Jan and Gertrude
30 September 1441
Gertrude sues her stepfather over the conditions of her marriage gift
13 August 1450
Gertrude sues her brother-in-law over the validity of Simon’s marriage gift
12 November 1450
Gertrude proves that Simon had given a marriage gift before the wedding took place
16 March 1451
The aldermen nullify Simon’s marriage gift