The Collective Identity of Philip the Bold’s Mourners and the Ideology of the Common Good

  • Abstract:

    Philip the Bold (1342-1404) was a French prince, duke of Burgundy and count of Flanders. His tomb, finished in 1411 and now in the Musée des beaux-arts de Dijon, is most famous for its set of 41 mourning sculptures. These figures have caused some confusion for scholars because, despite being highly individualised, no one has been able to determine their individual identities. This paper will argue that this is because their identity is a collective one. Drawing on Christine de Pizan’s descriptions of and eulogies to Philip as well as the political rhetoric within Philip’s own patent letters, this paper will argue that in the early Burgundian state to mourn the death of a duke was a means to represent and enact an idealised, loving relation between lord and subject. By being represented as mourned by a diversity of classes on his tomb, Philip was represented as a lord beloved by all for ruling for the ‘common good.’ This was a political ideology that was conditioned by the relatively even and delicate balance of power between the duke and the Flemish towns under his control in the wake of the 1379-85 Flemish rebellion. Philip was a ruler who depended on wider allegiance of a broad diversity of urban and noble elites than his forebears and successors. His rhetoric of the common good is an appropriation of the middle-brow ideology of his urban Flemish subjects and is used to make him appear to be a ruler who operates through dialogue and consent. It is also a set of ideals that finds form in Philip’s actual funeral and in the mourners of his tomb, who form a collective identity of diverse classes and personalities, without expressing the loyalties of any particular set of classes or factions.