NOBLES, PATRICIANS AND OFFICERS: THE MAKING OF A REGIONAL POLITICAL ELITE IN LATE MEDIEVAL FLANDERS By Jan Dumolyn University of Ghent In the county of Flanders the late medieval period was an era of important social mobility among the dominant classes, as a result of the format ion process of the Burgundian state. I argue that in the course of the later Middle Ages, and more specifically in the period of Burgundian domination (1384.... :1492), a regional political elite was made, as much as it made itself, in the county of Flanders, to paraphrase E. P. Thompson .1 Significant groups of the lower and higher nobil- ity, the urban and rural dominant classes who did not belong to the nobility and the new social group of princely officers, itself made up of noble and non-nob Ie elements, gradually integrated themselves in a 'power elite' on the level of the county of Flanders. They did this by forming social networks based on marriage alliances. They had common political and material interests and a common po- litical ideology stressing the service to the state and the 'common good'. To es- tablish empirically the early phases of such a 'political elite' from the integration of several previously distinct elite groups, I will use the following criteria. First, the careers of princely officers necessitated increased regional mobility, which led to the forging of connections between the different and previously more iso- lated urban and rural elite groups. This led, secondly, to a more profound social heterogeneity by means of marriages among the different elite groups. In turn this development, fuelled by the state format ion process, created larger social networks encompassing patricians, nob les and non-nob Ie rural elites. The fami- lies of mixed social origin adopted the ideology of the noble lineage, with a 'ge- nealogical consciousness'. Thirdly, I want to show that important layers of this composite political elite developed into what could be considered a new 'state nobility' whose political ideology was to defend the bonum commune or com- monwealth of the Burgundian state, abandoning the traditional autonomism of the Flemish urban political elites. The state formation process in Flanders The county of Flanders belonged to one of the most urbanised regions of West- em Europe. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Ghent, a leading textile industry city, numbered at least 60,000 inhabitants and Bruges, one of the prin- cipal commercial centres of medieval Europe, contained at least 40,000 people. 2 Between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, a very progressive and intensive agriculture and the exploitation of new lands in the coastal plain reclaimed from the sea had boosted the Flemish economy.3 Prom the eleventh century onwards a series of strong counts stimulated huther urbanisation to increase their rev- enues. They also gradually built up a centralised govemment structure with an