ABSTRACT
Flanders was undergoing economic and social changes that would soon transform all of Europe. These changes affected people in Flanders deployed the norms of violence available to them. They also introduced new players on the political field with their own set of interests and imperatives, whose use of violence brought new norms of violence in their wake. It is in the prologue and the first few chapters of Galberts text that we get the clearest picture of Count Charles as Galberts ideal and of the norms of violence that Galbert associated with this ideal. Charles makes it clear that his goal is to stop Borsiards violence. In any case, the only way to explain the story of the Stratens responsibility is to conclude that the Erembalds had acted throughout according to widely understood and shared norms about the legitimate use of violence.
