The York Research Database

This article analyses the inter-urban festive networks around Tournai as evidenced by archery and crossbow competitions to show the relationship between towns developing and declining over the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Such festive networks will also be placed in the context of other cultural, commercial and political interactions to add depth to an understanding of the connections between towns on the borders of French and Burgundian lands. Archery and crossbow guilds appeared across northern Europe in the early fourteenth century as defenders but also as prestigious socio-devotional groups; their great competitions are first documented in 1328 and became some of the most spectacular urban festivities. Yet, rather than describing spectacles, the events and attendance patterns are analysed here to shed light on festive and cultural networks between Tournai and her neighbours.