Household credit , social relations , and devotion in the early modern economy

This article explores the contingency between the membership and daily functioning of religious confraternities, and the access to and extension of informal credit by urban households. It thus seeks to answer the question whether seventeenthand eighteenth-century religious confraternities mattered in generating the requirements for market expansion based on interpersonal credit in the local economy of a small early modern town in transition. The analysis suggests that, in so far as confraternal socialization did produce new opportunities for household credit and access to the market, these were shaped by the hierarchical, patriarchal and disciplinary structures and moral categories of post-Tridentine associations.

It has almost become a historiographical trope to note how credit was near omnipresent in the low-cash economy of early modern Europe. 1 Not only did the poor and needy frequently resort to various types of loans, but so did the better offf households that needed to overcome cash-flow problems, sufffered from temporary fĳinancial bottlenecks, or simply wanted to reduce transaction costs.The widespread use of credit and debt involved a complex socio-cultural system of trust and obligation exemplifĳied by the dual meaning of the word 'credit' itself.Although Craig Muldrew already described this early modern reliance of market expansion upon the cultural and social maintenance of reputation in detail fĳifteen years ago, its potential implications for early modern economic history at large seem to appear only slowly. 2 Such implications nevertheless emerge when considering the economic history of the seventeenth-and eighteenth-century North Sea area.Most of the region was characterised by a rapid and profound expansion of market consumption and by rising levels of proto-industrial activity, and has consequently been described by Jan De Vries as undergoing an 'industrious revolution' prior to the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century. 3rom the vantage point of modern economic history, commercialisation (understood here as the general growth in economic transactions taking place in the market) endures the unfortunate tendency of being regarded as a largely autonomous and overriding development. 4Once unleashed, this expansion of market production and consumption increasingly replaced whatever moral economies had formerly governed social and economic life. 5The advent of the 'impersonal' market economy could thus ultimately place the 'Calvinist' Dutch Republic, 'imperial' England and the 'Catholic' Southern Netherlands on a similar trajectory towards modern economic growth.When seen from such a unidirectional perspective, the advent of diffferent processes of commercialisation in a diverse range of social and cultural contexts is hardly problematized at all.
Yet, if Craig Muldrew's account of commercialisation in sixteenthcentury England can be taken as a point of departure, then serious doubts concerning this linear interpretation of early modern commercialisation should be considered.According to Muldrew, market expansion depended on the availability of interpersonal credit -and this, crucially, relied on the establishment and maintenance of trust.
Credit ... consisted of a system of judgements about trustworthiness; and the trustworthiness of neighbours came to be stressed as the paramount communal virtue, just as trust in God was stressed as the central religious duty.Since, by the late sixteenth century, most households relied on the market for the bulk of their income, the establishment of trustworthiness became the most crucial factor needed to generate and maintain wealth. 6 Muldrew's view (traditional) ties of kinship, neighbourhood, and shared religion became far from redundant or obliterated when confronted with the advent of a rationalizing and depersonalizing market, but were, on the contrary, precisely the sort of social and cultural relations that underpinned market expansion in the fĳirst place. 7If the expansion of commerce in early modern Europe was indeed more tightly connected to the realm of the moral, religious and social than has thus far been considered, how then did the particular social and cultural -and more specifĳically the moral and religious -features of society afffect the possibilities for market expansion?
In considering the case of Flanders (Southern Netherlands), we are studying a society characterised far less by a politically powerful and Calvinist

RYCKBOSCH & DECRAENE RYCKBOSCH & DECRAENE
middle class than for instance the Dutch Republic, and recognisable much more by its political stability, its highly inegalitarian 'rentier economy', and its prominent position in the Catholic reformation.How did these 'traditional' social and cultural complexes, which determined the social ties in local economies, afffect the early modern processes of commercialisation and market expansion in this region?Did such traditional relational ties inhibit commercialisation, or rather buttress it?And how did they alter its character?
This study examines these relations by exploring the contingency between the membership and daily functioning of religious confraternities, and the access to and extension of informal credit by urban households.Whereas the latter serves -following Muldrew -as an inroad into studying the possibilities for market expansion in a cash-strapped economy, the former (religious confraternities) serves as an important aspect, and exemplary part, of the associational institutions in which trustworthiness could be generated and maintained.Thus we seek to answer the question whether seventeenth-and eighteenth-century religious confraternities mattered in generating the requirements for market expansion based on interpersonal credit in the local economy.Through an analysis of their social composition and functioning we will determine if late medieval and early modern religious confraternities can be considered as formal networks wherein trust could be established.Next, we will decipher if confraternity members were more likely to obtain informal credit from creditors belonging to the same confraternity than non-members.By doing so, we will try to 'measure' the way in which membership of a shared devotional association -through the existence of a collective identity, an 'imagined' community, or simply any form of sociability -facilitated the access of households to the early modern credit market.Finally, we will focus on the explanatory factors behind the degree to which morality, social status and economic trustworthiness overlapped and interacted in early modern urban life in the town of Aalst (Southern Netherlands).

The context: confraternities in early modern Aalst
Aalst serves as a typical example of the rapidly commercialising urban economies within proto-industrial regions of the Southern Netherlands. 8ith approximately 8,000 inhabitants, Aalst was of no more than regional importance in the economic region of Inner Flanders.It was situated on the main land roads between the two larger cities of Ghent and Brussels, and on the river Dender, offfering access to the port city of Antwerp and providing important opportunities for the town to manifest itself as a secondary commercial hub.Within the city walls, urban cloth production had flourished from the thirteenth to the fĳifteenth centuries, but had declined spectacularly during the deep crisis of the Flemish economy at the end of the middle ages. 9It was replaced by the production of cheap linen textiles in the cottage industry throughout the surrounding countryside.The town itself nevertheless retained the fĳinishing and trading of rurally produced linen. 10uring much of the seventeenth and the fĳirst half of the eighteenth century, Aalst served mainly as a central place for its surrounding countryside and experienced a modest but continuous demographic growth. 11alst consisted of the single parish of Saint Martin.Ten diffferent confraternities were active within its jurisdiction during 1550-1800.Some of them did not leave any source material, so our analysis is limited to only six confraternities.Five were Post-Tridentine, established in the course of the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries (the confraternities of the Holy Altar, the Holy Barbara, the Devout Spirits, the Holy Death Struggle and the Holy Trinity). 12Only the confraternity of the Holy Catherine had been founded before the Council of Trent, in the sixteenth century. 13arious incarnations of late medieval and early modern associational life have so far been examined from the perspective of the social cohesion and social capital that they supposedly bring about. 14Especially the thorough influence of Renaissance Italian confraternities in the cultural, social and political spheres has been repeatedly emphasised. 15Yet on a wider scale, Katherine Lynch's recent synthesis has offfered a research agenda that proves particularly challenging to social and economic history.She has argued that 'while all communities existed to support and extend the religious observance of their members, the social purposes of confraternities appear as no less important, helping individuals establish and maintain networks of friendship and mutuality in ways not permitted through family or kinship alone'. 16It can be conjectured then, that the multitude of associations and confraternities prevailing in early modern social life allowed not only for mutual assistance and security, but also for the establishment of trust and creditworthiness within the socially diverse urban communities of the past. 17Such associations could thus serve as important sources of 'social capital', as existing or potential aid sources resulting from both institutional and informal relational networks.Such networks resulted from individual and collective investment strategies through which actors, perhaps unconsciously, produced and maintained social relationships. 18his view is not uncontested: the debate on the social efffects of (early modern) associational life has been marked by new and increasingly critical approaches that have challenged some of the presumed positive social efffects of (early modern) associational life in recent years. 19In refocusing attention on the fact that not every formal social network generates social capital, it has been argued that early modern associations tended to primarily redefĳine existing social and economic boundaries rather than to overcome them.Civil society could have inclusive as well as exclusive efffects according to gender, place and social class, on both macro-and micro-levels.
Measuring the role early modern religious confraternities played in the establishment and maintenance of an individual's creditworthiness, starts with the analysis of the nature and functioning of these institutions.In response to both the misgovernment of the (late) medieval catholic church and the threat presented by the broad reformation movement, the Council of Trent (1545-1563) had set out a renewed devotional framework, based on well-defĳined and universal Eucharistic devotional rituals, prayers and thoughts. 20Within the Catholic reformation, episcopal authorities soon operationalized religious confraternities as channels for spreading renewed catholic norms and values in the interest of religious, moral and social uniformity. 21Like most of their post-Tridentine counterparts elsewhere, the confraternities in Aalst were strictly devotional. 22While pre-Tridentine confraternities generally had a more exclusive, social and lay character, post-Tridentine confraternities usually aimed to include as many of the faithful as possible, and to gather them in one devotional community.Their devotional program had a strong focus on the religious responsibilities of both individual members and the collective.A common feature was, of course, the devotion to the patron saint and towards the community itself: the commemoration of deceased co-members and the salvation of the own soul as well as the soul of family members, close friends and fellow confraternity members by funding masses and requiems. 23Taking part in funeral rites and organizing prayers for departed souls were the most important activities of all studied confraternities.All preserved written statutes particularly stress the idea that a member's spiritual well-being was not only the responsibility of the individual but of the collective above all. 24his eagerness of confraternities to create a sense of brotherhood among their members translated into a desire to implement moral values of mutual respect, cooperation and uniformity as well.At least in theory, the confraternities active in seventeenth-and eighteenth-century Aalst constituted open and diverse communities based on values of brotherhood, friendship and equality.According to the reformed Catholic Church, post-Tridentine associations should be open to all Christians and should promote a universal form of brotherhood, the creation of 'imagined' ties of spiritual kinship centred on well-defĳined Christian values. 25All preserved statutes of post-Tridentine confraternities in Aalst explicitly confĳirm that men and women, married or unmarried, religious or lay, rich or poor could acquire membership status.The confraternity of the Holy Altar even formulated a strong dedication to unity and friendship within the framework of the association.Its statutes, drawn up in 1743, stated that since our clerical authorities established the Holy Sacrament of the Altar as a symbol of unity and love, with the purpose to unite all Christians following the Holy Command, it is stated that all brothers and sisters will unite themselves to honour our Lord's wish.For the sake of the practice of this great task all brothers and sisters should shun conflict and division, envy and trial, and should try to unite themselves in peace and forgiveness. 26ving up to these ideals was charged with an explicit spiritual meaning, since reciprocity and mutual respect among brothers and sisters supposedly contributed to an easy passage into the afterlife. 27o capture the actual impact of religious confraternities, the crucial question is if and how confraternities succeeded in implementing their ideal of unity and brotherhood among their members.In this respect, the confraternities of which sufffĳicient evidence has survived, were not only open communities in theory, but also in many aspects of their confraternal practice.Even though evidence on confraternity membership is scattered and incomplete for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it seems safe to say that membership was very widespread.The (incomplete) yearly lists of newly registered members of the fĳive post-Tridentine confraternities contain over 13,000 individual names of members. 28Between 1650 and 1800 an average of approximately 2,000 individuals joined one of the fĳive studied confraternities every 25 years.Considering Aalst's approximately 8,000 inhabitants and the fact that only registration lists of half of the confraternities have been preserved, it can be confĳidently argued that at least half of the adult population was involved in one or more religious confraternities.By and large, these confraternities were not small, exclusive clubs, but large, open associations.
Membership was not only widespread, it was also diverse.The religious confraternities in Aalst included both men and women.Women even dominated most post-Tridentine confraternities with the exception of the confraternity of the Holy Altar, representing 68 percent of all confraternity RYCKBOSCH & DECRAENE members.Membership was also diverse in spatial terms (see table 1).All examined confraternities recruited from the fĳive diffferent town districts in each sample year (1672, 1705, 1742 and 1791).Some confraternities were better represented in some districts than in others.For instance the Holy Altar in 1745 had a wider membership base in the Zoutstraat quarter (53 percent of households) than in the Kattestraat (38 percent of households).But these diffferences remained remarkably small.All studied confraternities attracted members from each part of town, without a clear pattern.The typically post-Tridentine eagerness to create and strengthen spiritual ties among all faithful seems reflected in this topographical spread, and demonstrates its capacity as potential horizontal trust builders.Furthermore, a preliminary analysis of immigrants in Aalst in 1742 suggests they were almost as well-represented among confraternity members as non-immigrants. 29About 64 percent of immigrant households leaving a probate inventory upon death included at least one household member who had joined a confraternity, whereas 70 percent of non-immigrants household acquired membership.At least for immigrants from those social strata with sufffĳicient wealth to belong to the probated segments of society, there do not seem to have been obstacles keeping them from joining the religious brotherhoods of Aalst.This striking diversity of confraternity membership in terms of gender, place of living and birth thus corresponds to the principal 'openness' that pervaded the ideas of brotherhood and confraternal friendship.
This characteristic can also be found in the regulations on the fĳinancial duties of confraternity members. 30In exchange for membership a donation was expected at the day of registration, as well as one annual gift to the confraternity.The size of these donations was to be decided individually, according to a member's personal choice and devotion. 31Poor people were explicitly exempted from this fĳinancial duty.The confraternity of the Holy Barbara was the only confraternity in which a strict entrance fee of six pence was demanded of aspirant members. 32n short, the studied religious confraternities were open associations on at least a normative level.The question nevertheless remains how this dedication to the principle of equality and the rather low fĳinancial entry requirements related to the actual social composition of these confraternities.Were the early modern confraternities able to unite both rich and poor?In order to gain information on the socio-economic position of members, we have traced the names of newly registered confraternity members in the housing tax lists in four sample years (1672, 1705, 1742 and 1791). 33These housing taxes were based on an estimation of the rental value of each house, which provides us with an indication of each household's relative socio-economic position. 34The results largely confĳirm the expectations: all studied confraternities were demonstrably socially diverse.None of the six confraternities examined here focused on one social stratum in particular.There were apparently no confraternities that were composed of the rich, the middling groups or the poor alone: each and every confraternity included members from all quintiles of the socio-economic hierarchy.Figure 1 demonstrates this visually by expressing the share in the total number of confraternity members identifĳied in each year that belonged to each quintile of the population. 35As could be expected given the huge popularity of post-Tridentine religious confraternities in early modern Aalst, they were not at all exclusive.Each confraternity included a fair share of members from the poorest 20 percent of households.Although the top two quintiles (the richest 40 percent) were somewhat overrepresented -constituting approximately 50 percent of the members -they did not dominate the confraternities quantitatively throughout the period under consideration, but of course this is highly dependent on the specifĳic sample of registration lists available for each sample period.At least for the confraternity of the Holy Barbara -the only association for which we have a continuous series that spans the four sample years -this trend holds (fĳigure 2).
Even though confraternity membership was socially heterogeneous, the average confraternity member was still slightly better offf than their fellow citizens who did not belong to a confraternity (table 2).The value of houses occupied by confraternity members was systematically higher than the average and median values for the rest of the urban population.Throughout almost the entire period studied, the brotherhood of the Holy Barbara gathered the wealthiest members.Given its large recruitment base, it is little surprising to learn that the members of the large confraternity of the Holy Altar were not particularly better offf than the average citizen in 1742.Despite such minor diffferences among the confraternities, the general pattern is clear.The religious confraternities in Aalst were socially mixed associations.The idea of unity and fraternity apparently enabled the religious confraternities of Aalst to maintain a socially diverse membership.While entry to the studied post-Tridentine confraternities was open to all socio-economic strata, board membership was harder to obtain.Despite their outward openness, internal hierarchies were not at all absent from confraternal praxis.Not only did gender boundaries intersect the confraternal community, there was also a dividing line between the confraternity board and the regular members.Figure 3 shows the relative socio-economic position of the board members compared to total membership.It is immediately clear that board members came predominantly from the better-offf parts of society.It seems that the internal structure of the religious confraternities quite aptly respected the socio-economic pecking order of the wider urban social structure.The reasons for this selective board composition may be diverse.It is quite possible that only the better-offf inhabitants of Aalst were willing or able to devote the time necessary for taking up the responsibilities that came with board membership.Yet it might also be the case that only the richer social strata possessed the required social status to obtain such a (presumably) prestigious position.Or maybe they were the only ones interested in the potential benefĳits of active involvement in confraternity life.Board membership at least offfered the potential for enhancing someone's status, which is perfectly exemplifĳied by the prestigious position board members occupied in the confraternal processions.
It is clear that early modern religious confraternities succeeded in their aim to unite people regardless of their gender, place of birth and social rank.If, and how, these confraternities evinced the moral ethics of brotherhood and respectability within these diverse segments of community life remains hard to uncover.It is plausible that, especially in the larger confraternities with over 1,000 members, most members joining the confraternity were passive members at best, while the involvement and prestige of the select group of board members will probably have been much higher.Maarten Van Dijck and Paul Trio suggest that corporative life after Trent weakened due to the massive number of confraternal members and the lack of collective gatherings. 36However, it is not clear whether the experience of a shared devotion as well as the collective desire to have an honourable and easy passage into the afterlife required face-to-face social gathering in order to remain strong.Given their impressive sphere of influence and the strong emphasis on the role of confraternities as guards of the moral and spiritual well-being of the faithful, it is not unlikely that religious brotherhoods did have their share in shaping and creating the cultural and moral categories in which someone's creditworthiness was conceived .As early modern credit relations had a clear moral signifĳicance it is worthwhile questioning the way in which the religious institutions at hand intertwined with other segments of community life, such as credit relations.Therefore, the next section examines how devotional groupings afffected the way in which an individual's creditworthiness was governed and structured.

Credit relations
The social composition of confraternities as both open and hierarchical renders the idea of religious associations as potential generators of social trust between heterogeneous social strata plausible.Yet the actual impact of belonging to this ideological community on the social and economic relations in which individuals continuously engaged, remains harder to uncover.
In an economy in which income and wealth were distributed highly unequally over households, the ability to obtain credit was crucial in order to overcome life-cycle bottlenecks or to sustain productive investments.This ubiquity of credit was all the more pertinent since cash was scarce.In 1670-1680 barely more than half of all after-death inventories from Aalst mentioned the presence of any cash in the household -even disregarding those cases where ready money had been spent on settling small debts prior to drawing the inventory.Considering the social bias of these sources, it is safe to say that at this time more than half of all households in Aalst did not possess any ready money at all.As the eighteenth century progressed the proportion of monetised households rose slowly, to 64 percent in 1710-1715, 71 percent in 1740-1745 and 78 percent in 1789-1795. 37Such creeping monetization might have gradually relieved the pressure on the short-term credit market, although almost all households remained submerged in webs of credit and debt throughout the entire period under consideration.
Unfortunately, only a fraction of all credit transactions has been recorded, since many transactions were concluded informally without written proof.Yet when a parent passed away while at least one of the children was still under-aged a complete overview of a household's credit and debt was recorded.In that case, probate inventories with detailed listings of a household's material possessions, fĳinancial wealth, land and credit were usually drawn up -although less frequently so for the poorer social strata of urban society. 38In some cases, these sources give a small glimpse of the complex social networks and relations that governed access to credit in a poorly monetised economy.
Upon her death in Aalst in September 1677, Joanna Callebaut, a rich, old spinster nicknamed 'Joanna the honorable', had quite a number of outstand-ing debts. 39Most of these were for goods she had bought from a nearby retailer, for the delivery of grains and beers, for medical expenses, and for costs incurred in the maintenance of her rural estates, which she leased out.Although she was certainly not poor and managed to live comfortably offf her rural property, she was, like any early modern household, occasionally in need of short-term interest-free cash loans in order to overcome temporary cash-flow problems.Three such outstanding interest-free loans are evident from Joanna's inventory.One of these was a loan ( 'geavanceerd geld ') from a distant relative, but the two others, Christiaen Van Cotthem and the widow of Jacques De Craecker, were not obviously related.However, over the course of the previous years, all three of them had joined the confraternity of the Holy Trinity. 40Although this does not necessarily imply that this confraternity played a causal or decisive role in the decision of Van Cotthem and De Craecker to extend informal credit to Callebaut, it is not unlikely that the regular socialization and devotional uniformity imposed by the workings of the confraternity had fostered the ties of trust between these individuals.
We have made an attempt to measure this role of the religious confraternities in engendering the creditworthiness and trust among their members.From the multitude of credit transactions in the Aalst probate documents, we have selected only those that mention the names of both creditor (those supplying fĳinancial capital) and debtor (those demanding capital) and those that concern identifĳiable types of credit during two sample periods: 1672-1679 and 1745-1749. 41While almost all households acted as a debtor sooner or later, the richer social groups pre-dominantly acted as creditors (Figure 4, see bars 1 and 3).The frequent need for credit was thus -not surprisingly -much more equally spread over society than the ability to supply it.This fĳinding is further amplifĳied when we look at the total sums involved (Figure 4, see bars 2 and 4).Although the debtors belonging to the top quintiles of the taxed population clearly borrowed more money than their counterparts from the lower quintiles, this efffect is more pronounced for creditors.In both sample periods, the creditors from the richest 20 percent of the population accounted for over 85 percent of all credit extended.Given the discrepancy between the social profĳiles of debtors and creditors, it should not come as a surprise to learn that the vast majority of credit in Aalst was extended 'downwards.'In both sample periods, 73 to 76 percent of recorded transactions involved credit provided by a creditor who was richer than the debtor (based on the housing tax).This was especially the case for the more formal types of credit, such as bonds or annuities, while largely informal credit was more often exchanged between social peers: 44 to 48 percent was even extended 'upwards' (i.e. from poorer to richer).It is especially in this domain that we would expect day-to-day socialization and relations of trust built within the sphere of civil society to play a crucial role.

RYCKBOSCH & DECRAENE
Confraternity members were clearly over-represented among those supplying credit in Aalst.Only 27 percent of taxed households in 1672 was identifĳied as a member of a religious confraternity, while 57 percent of the creditors could be identifĳied as such (table 3).This over-representation holds for all confraternities studied in 1672 and 1742.At least partially this fĳinding can be explained by the disproportionately higher degree of confraternity membership among the richer inhabitants of Aalst.The efffect nevertheless persists when controlling for the efffect of socio-economic position -for instance by examining each decile group (each groups consisting of 10 percent of the population, when ranked from poor to rich) in the tax hierarchy separately.Within each social layer represented in the tax records, confraternity members were over-represented among the creditors.This suggests that, generally speaking, confraternity members were more inclined to act as creditors than non-members, regardless of their socio-economic position.
The expected relationship between confraternity membership and credit relations is not the same for all types of credit.The motivations and circumstances involved in the transactions difffered from type to type.Whereas annuities and (private) bonds were more formal in character and usually involved much larger sums, a lot of credit transactions concerned informal credit, which was often described solely as 'loaned money' ( 'geavanceerd gheld') .It is particularly in this area of informal credit that the relation with confraternity membership was strong.Table 4 shows the percentage in the total number of credit transactions that involved two members of the same confraternity split per credit type.It also shows the share of transactions conducted between family members.Given the fact that no detailed lineage information is available, this latter indicator should serve only as a rough proxy and certain underestimation, since it is based on the last name of the creditor or debtor being the same as the name of the deceased or his or her husband or wife.Family ties were particularly important for informal credit, while only the richest households of the urban society, regardless whether they were family members or friends, could provide large amounts of credit, e.g. through formal credit mechanisms.Informal credit however, often involved sums that were extended as a form of aid or temporary assistance, rather than as a rational and profĳit yielding investment for the creditor.The fact that no traces of the demand of interest were found for these informal cases of debt seems to confĳirm this.Table 4 suggests it is likely that the family had an important role to play especially in this area.However, confraternity membership also had its largest influence for this type of credit.In both sample periods the share of member-to-member credit transactions was larger for informal credit than for other credit types.
The quantitative analysis of the contingency between creditworthiness and confraternity membership is based on these informal credit relations.Tables 5  and 6 present the main results from cross-tabulating debtors and creditors in informal credit relations and membership of the same confraternity. 42Due to the relatively small numbers of credit transactions and membership ties, the results are not signifĳicant at the 10 percent level, although the relationship was slightly positive in both sample periods, with Cramer's V above zero for both sample periods.In fact, when expressed in terms of efffect size, the odds that a debtor who was a member of a particular confraternity, received credit from a creditor who was a member of that same confraternity, was 1.67 times higher, in 1672, than for a debtor who was not a member of that confraternity.Around the middle of the eighteenth century, this odds ratio was still 1.50. 43Even though it is not possible to produce more statistically robust results here, the evidence presented does cautiously suggest that confraternity members were somewhat more likely to turn to other members of the same confraternity in search of credit than non-confraternity members were (41 percent versus 29 percent in 1672 and 67 percent versus 58 percent in 1745).It appears that mutual membership of a religious confraternity was modestly interwoven with the ways in which citizens of early modern Aalst exchanged informal credit.The absence of a strong relationship belies some of the overtly optimistic assessments of the social capital created by early modern voluntary associations. 44At least three factors can help to account for this lack of strong interconnection between the exchange of informal credit and the membership of religious confraternities in Aalst.First, the function of these Post-Tridentine confraternities was primarily situated in the area of private devotion.This greatly limited the actual physical interactions within these confraternities.Based on the analysis of both the available account books and the confraternity regulations, it seems safe to say that -although the number of collective meetings could vary for particular confraternities -religious services and requiems were held on a more or less regular, monthly basis. 45Second, confraternity size was in most cases less suited for the formation of close-knit communities with an optimal potential for socializing and generating trust.In theory, all members were obliged to attend all religious gatherings.However, the size of the confraternities and the limited space available to hold religious services in front of the confraternal altars often made it impossible to follow this rule.While the confraternity board constituted an active core group, regular members were often passive at best.Third, alternative social institutions such as craft guilds, neighbourhoods, families and friends probably provided stronger social bonds in early modern towns .The social ties generated and maintained by confraternity membership were complementary at best to such everyday interactions in the context of neighbourhoods and families.Nevertheless, the previous analysis does point out that at least in some instances the mutual membership of a voluntary devotional organisation contributed to the generation of trust and creditworthiness which made the smallest wheels of commerce turn in the early modern economy.experience.When the poor household of Anthoine Herreman was in dire need of fĳinancial means some time before his death in 1748, he turned to his father-in-law for assistance, but also to Jean-Baptiste De Craecker, at the time one of the deans of the confraternity of the Holy Altar, which Herreman had joined in 1743. 46Although it was certainly not unusual for those in need of credit to turn to their better-offf peers for assistance, this was not the case in this instance, as De Craecker was only taxed at the 33 rd percentile in the housing tax of the town in 1745. 47It is striking that a lot of those serving as confraternal board members in the confraternities of the Holy Altar and Holy Barbara (the only two for which we have sufffĳicient information), served as prolifĳic creditors for a wide range of households and types of debt, including informal credit.This suggests that Anthoine Herreman was not alone in turning to his confraternity leadership in order to obtain (informal) credit, and that the status and social responsibility of the function of dean could foster credit relations.
While the overlap between confraternal ties among regular members and informal credit relations emerges only in a relatively modest way, the hierarchical and formal relationship between board members and regular members seems to have exerted a strong impact on the possibility to enter into informal credit relationships. 48As the relation between board members and regular members was strictly hierarchical, and since it was here that confraternal life and credit relations intersected most strongly, the openness and heterogeneity in membership did probably not govern the trust and creditworthiness that informal lending relationships required.
It is important to note in this respect that the hierarchical and even patriarchal character of these religious associations had been signifĳ icantly strengthened since the Council of Trent.Tridentine regulations on confraternal activity encouraged frequent communion and devotion to the sacraments and promoted a strong ecclesiastical involvement in confraternity afffairs.While pre-Tridentine brotherhoods mostly functioned without clerical supervision, (post-)Tridentine confraternities were more regulated by Catholic reformers in order to redefĳine local celebrations and devotions. 49Whereas clerical authorities increasingly criticised most forms of overt sociability, such as the confraternal banquets, they underlined the importance of private, individualized devotion. 50Social activities in the strict sense became almost nonexistent within the confĳines of early modern confraternal life.While collective dinners were forbidden, given their propensity to lead to excessive drinking and eating, the main focus rested on maintaining and spreading individual devotional practices. 51he fact that religious associations did not engage in purely social gatherings did not mean that the brotherhoods studied here did not have socioreligious aspirations in a more 'worldly' sense.They had a clear disciplinary function far beyond what we would think of as "religious" today. 52Via a strict religious program or 'spiritual calendar' confraternities structured daily life according to the well-defĳined Christian value of salvation through praying.All statutes studied contain detailed rules concerning spiritual practices, but also include explicit disciplinary guidelines for members' social behavior in and outside of their homes.They all emphasised that one of the most important requirements of new members, whether male or female, was their good repute and impeccable behaviour. 53Drunkenness, gossiping, swearing and the use of indecent words was absolutely 'not done' during confraternal activities.Brothers and sisters guilty of indecent words or dishonourable actions were fĳined accordingly.When a member shamed him-or herself -and thus the confraternity -a second time, they were expelled from the association. 54ot only the behaviour of the members themselves was subjected to strict behavioural codes, but the disciplinary vigour of the confraternities reached deep into their members' private circle: husbands, wives, children and servants of a new candidate had to behave themselves as well.Although the account books have not left traces of actual enforcement of these regulations through fĳines or expulsions, this does not diminish the possibility of an implicit coercion emanating from the rules, which were always read out loud in front of each and every newly registered member.Post-Tridentine associations furthermore aimed to bring existing social bonds within the confraternal sphere of influence.Members had a duty to encourage family members, servants, neighbours and friends to join the confraternity. 55revious research has shown that the majority of confraternal members did indeed share membership with both female and male relatives. 56he opportunities for market access and fĳinancial survival that the post-Tridentine confraternities of early modern Aalst fostered and offfered to those in need, such as Anthoine Herreman, came about not necessarily in a spontaneous or egalitarian social practice.To the extent that these confraternities enabled and governed market access, it was informed by the same moral categories that determined their functioning: strong adherence to hierarchy and patriarchy, and dedication to internal discipline and self-control.

Conclusion
Religious confraternities are often considered crucial institutions for the creation of social capital in late medieval and early-modern society.Katherine Lynch has explicitly argued that social inclusion in both formal and informal associations could -in theory -provide the cohesion and day-to-day interaction necessary to sustain the inherent paradox of a community of households bent on both cooperation and competition. 57Through the development of devotional communities spanning disparate social layers of society full of ideals of fraternal equality, early modern religious confraternities potentially offfered opportunities for such socialization.Such interpersonal relationships also provided the backbone of the system of informal credit that according to scholars like Craig Muldrew was so important for the functioning of the early-modern economy.
In this article we approached the impact of early modern confraternities on the broader socio-economic fabric from an entirely new angle, through a (primarily) quantitative approach to the relation between the extension of credit and civil society.In contrast to the view of Lynch, our analysis suggests a minor impact of early modern confraternal life on the socioeconomic relationships of brothers and sisters.Although cases in which such confraternities might have played an important role can indeed be found, and confraternity members were more likely to obtain informal credit from creditors belonging to the same confraternity than non-members were, this contingency was not sufffĳiciently strong to produce signifĳicant statistical results.Apparently the existence of socially heterogeneous social institutions devoted to values of brotherhood and equality, did not -in practice -constitute a strong contributing factor to the generation of trust in the early modern urban economy.
Nevertheless, to the modest extent that confraternal socialization did, in some occasions, produce new opportunities for household credit and access to the market, it is important to note that these were in their turn shaped by the hierarchical, patriarchal, and disciplinary structures and moral categories of such post-Tridentine associations.The particularly frequent extension of credit by confraternity deans to their members, confĳirms that the internal functioning of these associations did influence the economic ties that were embedded in them.The mere fact that credit was ubiquitous and necessary for almost all economic activity, and therefore fĳirmly embedded in the social, does not automatically inform us about the precise ways in which such economic and social relations were structured.Not so much the social embeddedness of credit itself, but the character of the social institutions that governed access to it, determined the nature of trust, creditworthiness and market access in early modern communities.It goes almost without saying that the moral principles underpinning the post-Tridentine religious confraternities active in seventeenth-and eighteenth-century Aalst were far removed from the spontaneous, democratic and egalitarian aspirations that fĳigure so prominently in social science debates on the value of modern civil society for economic growth and modernity at large.Like Muldrew's analysis of England's sixteenth-century 'economy of obligation', these considerations call for a more integrated approach to the economic history of the Early Modern Period.The continued influence of social, religious and cultural ties upon the nature of commercialisation in the Early Modern Period implies that interpreting processes of (capitalist) market expansion as an autonomous force -which could be either hampered or fostered by social institutions but which derived its essential dynamic from the inherent (internal) properties of 'the market' itself -does not do full justice to the diversity of early modern economic experiences. 58arket expansion did not simply dismantle the traditional moral categories present in pre-industrial societies as diverse as sixteenth-century England, the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic or eighteenth-century Flanders, but was itself at least partly shaped by it.
Nevertheless, as the eighteenth century progressed the importance of credit in the daily functioning of the economy gradually diminished.More wages were paid in cash, retail purchases became increasingly impersonal and monetary, and the number of households possessing coins upon their time of death grew rapidly. 59The ascent of what Marx called the 'cash nexus', gradually diminished the immediate or obvious embeddedness of economic relations in the social structure of modern society.be excluded that some of these households were not fĳirst but second or third generation immigrants.30.MAA, CA , inv.nos.706, fo.6v; 660, fo.34r-35v; 652, fo.1v. 31.MAA, CA, inv.nos.652, fo.1v.32.MAA, CA, inv.nos.627, fo.11r.33.Whenever possible, individual confraternity members have been traced to their corresponding household position in the housing tax -but this is complicated by the fact that these fĳiscal records only list the heads of household, and not the other household members.This means that no women were mentioned unless they were not married but nevertheless had established their own household.Neither married women nor widows -usually listed by the name of their late husband -can thus be identifĳied in the fĳiscal records.Given the predominance of women among the confraternity members, this means that a large share of members cannot be identifĳied at all.This has been partly rectifĳied by using probate inventories as a roundabout way of establishing the link between tax records and membership lists (since they usually mention both the exact place of residence and the names of both husband and wife, which makes identifĳication a lot easier

Figure 4
Figure 4 Share of debtors and creditors belonging to each fĳiscal quintile (Q1 = poorest)

Notes 1 .
The authors would like to thank Bert de Munck, Bruno Blondé, Jord Hanus and Reinoud Vermoesen (University of Antwerp), Maarten van Dijck (Erasmus University Rotterdam), Jelle Haemers (KU Leuven), Anne-Laure van Bruaene (Ghent University), Tine De Moor (Utrecht University), Vanessa Harding (Birkbeck University, London), and the editors and referees of the Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History for their invaluable comments and suggestions on previous drafts of this article.The research for this article was partly funded by the Research Foundation of Flanders (FWO-Vlaanderen).Tine De Moor, Jan Luiten Van Zanden and Jaco Zuijderduijn, 'Micro-credit in late medieval waterland households and the efffĳiciency of capital markets in Edam en De Zeevang, 1462-1563', in: Simonetta Cavaciocchi (ed.), La famiglia nell'economia europea.Secc.XIII-XVIII/