Author

Frederik Buylaert

Abstract

In the late 1460s, Leo von Rözmital, a member of the high nobility of Bohemia, embarked on a‘grand tour’of Western Europe. He travelled from court to court through Germany, the Low Countries, England, France and the Iberian and Italian peninsula. Two members of his retinue, the Czech squire Václav Schaseck and Gabriel Tetzel from Nurnberg, kept an account of their impressions. When Von Rözmital and his companions visited the Low Countries in 1467, they were especially impressed by the splendour of the court of Duke Philip the Good, the ruler of the Burgundian Low Countries. In particular, their attention was captured by the court’s celebration of Shrovetide in Bruges, the second-largest city of the county of Flanders. During these festivities, Schaseck and Tetzel noted, the streets of Bruges were crowded with masked nobles. This was no exceptional occurrence; in Flanders, they concluded, the high-born preferred not to reside...

Published on Past & Present, Volume 227, Issue 1, May 2015, Pages 31–75, Published: 10 April 2015