Talk:Seven Noble Houses of Brussels

Excessive orthodoxy
This meme suggests an entirely fallacious rigidity of membership of the clans. Although there may have been a family association in the founding years of Brussels, by the Late Mediaeval it was rather more a form of free association: you should in particular mention that the reason the Lineages were repressed by Philip II was because he was utterly unable to understand the relationships behind them in his day, which was one of a number of reasons which led him to a prejudiced position against the Flemish nobility, thence his refusal to accept their right to act as the representatives of the people, and finally therefrom the iconoclasm and Dutch Rebellion of 1568. Their authority then declined, but has not entirely disappeared, as the nobility remains a powerful political force in the Kingdom: they are as prevalent in national festivities as the political world. In the modern world, the practices continue in bodies like the Grand Serment, the rump of the Palace Guard, which still practice arbalestery in the Palace grounds, and, as you say, the Ommegang circles. A further residual element of these is the membership of the Cercle Royal Gaullois.

My copy of Puteanus is from the Belgian State Archive's original which is, interestingly, bound together with the Wetboek, the book of common law as understood by the population, and I affirm the links to Brussels alchemical heritage may be serious - I'm a member of the Warburg Institute's Esoteric Studies Reading Group, the most authoritative academic reference cirlce on the subject, and Belgian academics are fast becoming reference authorities on the wider subject. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.253.252.93 (talk) 10:20, 28 April 2016 (UTC)