I was relieved that the review was extremely kind, calling the book an ‘excellent study…on a topic that most earlier literature has dealt with only superficially or in local studies.’ The most recent review I have seen was by another North American historian who knows far more than I do about Flanders, and whose book was one of the first to stimulate my interest in the guilds, Peter Arnade. I remember nervously waiting for the downloaded PDF to open, knowing that this was a reader who knew far more than I did about the Low Countries, and who would spot any errors or generalisations in a way not even my viva examiners would have. The first review of the book I saw appeared in History and was written by David Nicholas, one of the most influential historians to have written on medieval Ghent. Archery and Crossbow Guilds in Medieval Flanders, 1300-1500 by Laura Crombie Paperback 9781783273058 269 pages Such varied activities, and such varied membership (with one feast allowing a plumber to sit down to dinner with Anthony the Great Bastard of Burgundy, eldest natural son of Philip the Good duke of Burgundy), have, I hope, helped this rather niche sounding subject to engage a variety of different readers. The drama of competitions, the pomp of entrances, the civic pride bound up in sporting events, and the sheer excesses of their annual feasts were what attracted me to the guilds. From their first appearance in civic sources, the guilds were communities, they cared for their members, they built bonds in feasting and in conviviality, they maintained chapels, and they put on great spectacles that dominated civic space as few other events ever did. Guild-brothers continued to serve in war into the late fifteenth century, but they were never just soldiers or civic defenders. There are, of course, mentions of war and violence in the book, indeed chapter one is devoted to military service and to the early years of guild history and their links to civic defence, even civic autonomy, in Flemish cities around the year 1300. In studying archery and crossbow guilds I did not want to write a military history. Why would a woman choose to leave her most personal object to a guild whose public persona was both masculine and militaristic? Such bequests are far from uncommon, but this donation, to an institution run by a crossbow guild struck me as unusual. Here, to mark the new paperback, Dr Crombie looks at her book’s reception thus far.Īround 1500 Kerstine Gowaers a ‘zuster in het St-Jorisgasthuis’ in Ghent left her bed to the Hospital of Saint George, administered by the Greater Crossbow Guild of Saint George. A work of social, cultural, urban and community history it met first with great interest (review requests outstripped supply) and then considerable acclaim, and new reviews are still appearing. On 15 June 2018, almost exactly two years to the day (16 June 2016) after the publication of the original hardback, the Boydell Press published the paperback edition of Dr Laura Crombie’s study of the archery and crossbow guilds that grew up in Ghent, Bruges, Lille and many smaller towns around them.
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