In the late Middle Ages and the early sixteenth century people of high and low extraction alike split their sides with laughter at scenes of trickery and deception, when somebody inadvertently showed his bottom, or when their senses were misled by a cunning hero such as Ulenspieghel. Yet, throughout Europe from the sixteenth century onwards - in visual and theoretical representations of laughter, in the prohibition of comic manifestations of political and religious conflicts, as well as in civilization manuals based on Erasmus - moderation and restraint of laughter were imperative. In the Spanish Netherlands of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries this is supposed to have led to a strict culture with little laughter. This book contradicts this view. It pleads for the laughing body to be taken seriously as an influence on culture and society in its own right.