Under the supervision of Jean-Baptiste Santamaria

Between the classical feudal age and the rise of the modern state, the 14th and 15th centuries represent a pivotal period in the evolution of power relations and the formation of a structured “political society.” This transition was accompanied by increasingly abundant and diverse documentation, offering rich material for examining the concrete modalities of the exercise of power, particularly at the local level. In the Burgundian territories especially—marked by the development of a specialized administration and a strong dynamic of centralization of princely power—frequent tensions arose between a nascent political center and its local intermediaries. Tasked with “holding” the territory, these agents relied on networks of allegiance and patronage that often blurred the line between service to the chose publicque and the pursuit of one's singulier profit. The same was true of the urban ruling elites, where governance had taken on an oligarchic form. From the urban context, this dissertation aims to analyze the links between urban political society, the prince and his agents, the networked structuring of this society, and the ways in which it could undergo renewal.

The chosen case study is the bonne ville of Arras, renowned at the end of the Middle Ages for its rich tapestries (arrases) and its role in international diplomacy. Politically, due to its location and history, the capital of the county of Artois stood at the crossroads of two major influences: the French royal model and the Flemish model. My investigation focuses on the aldermen and urban and princely officers, along with their families. Drawing on a prosopographical approach, enriched by network analysis and a geographic information system, this research aims to reconstruct the profiles, trajectories, and interactions of these actors in order to better understand how political careers were built, how power was distributed and exercised, and how political sociabilities were organized within the urban space of Arras.