Zijaltaren als liturgisch venster op laatmiddeleeuwse samenlevingen: Altarenpatronen van vijf stedelijke parochiekerken uit de Noordelijke Nederlanden (ca. 1550) onderling vergeleken

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries many lay groups and individuals in Western Europe founded side altars and chapels in the parish churches of their towns. For this article, five town parish churches in the Northern Netherlands were selected to carry out a survey of altar patterns in their interiors on the eve of Iconoclasm and Protestant Reformation, c. 1550: the St. Stephen in Nijmegen, the Buurkerk in Utrecht, the St. Bavo in Haarlem, the Old Church in Amsterdam and the St. John in ‘s-Hertogenbosch. The aim was to assess to what extent the altar topography of medieval churches can be read as a ‘liturgical window’ on the socio-economic and cultural dynamics of latemedieval cities. In order to achieve this, the historical context was first analyzed, including some aspects of the political history of the towns, the social positions of the lay groups, their use of liturgy and the altars, the relations between the lay groups and specific saints, the importance of the location of the altars in the churches and the relations between the lay people and the clergy. This article brings together the ground plans of the buildings and the altars they contained, as well as additional sources such as foundational charters, descriptions of the altars and their saints. Among the founders/users of the altars, six categories are distinguished, and their relations made visible. In their ‘altar patterns’ the five selected churches reveal great differences between the towns where they were located. This method involving altar patterns as a mirror of cultural dynamics offers great opportunities for the study of medieval urban dynamics of Western Europe