Collective memory and personal memoria. The Carthusian monastery of Scheut as a crossroads of urban and princely patronage in fifteenth-century Brabant

This article analyses the use of memoria with respect to the Carthusian monastery of Scheut, a few miles to the west of Brussels. The construction of this monastery around 1455 was first intended to preserve the memory of the battle of Scheut of 1356 and of those who had died there, many of them citizens of Brussels. The establishment of the monastery as a monument to the battle is the central theme of the first part of this article, and the importance of chroniclers in the process of commemoration will receive a special focus. Moreover, we will disentangle the trilateral relationship between the town, the court and the monastery. This relationship is further explored in the second part. We explain how a second memorial layer was created by courtiers and patricians, who wished to be remembered by the local monks and devout visitors. Especially the officers of the Burgundian and (later Habsburg) state were eager to become associated with the monastery, through a personalised memorial. Some of these officers were instrumental in establishing links between the monastery and its high-ranking, noble patrons, most of whom had feudal possessions in the duchy of Brabant. They played a crucial role during the three periods in which stained glass windows needed to be financed for the decoration of the new buildings, for the chapel, cloister and the new church respectively