[A transcriber's note is after the text.]
_The Story of Brussels_
_The Mediæval Town Series_
ASSISI.* By LINA DUFF GORDON.
[_4th Edition._
BRUGES.+ By ERNEST GILLIAT-SMITH.
[_3rd Edition._
BRUSSELS.+ By ERNEST GILLIAT-SMITH.
CAIRO.+ By STANLEY LANE-POOLE.
CAMBRIDGE.+ By CHARLES W. STUBBS, D.D.
CHARTRES.+ By CECIL HEADLAM.
CONSTANTINOPLE.* By WILLIAM H. HUTTON.
[_2nd Edition._
EDINBURGH.+ By OLIPHANT SMEATON.
FERRARA.+ By ELLA NOYES.
FLORENCE.+ By EDMUND G. GARDNER.
[_8th Edition._
LONDON.+ By HENRY B. WHEATLEY.
[_2nd Edition._
MOSCOW.* By WIRT GERRARE.
[_2nd Edition._
NUREMBERG.* By CECIL HEADLAM.
[_4th Edition._
PERUGIA.* By MARGARET SYMONDS and
LINA DUFF GORDON. [_5th Edition._
PRAGUE.* By COUNT LUTZOW.
ROME.+ By NORWOOD YOUNG.
[_4th Edition._
ROUEN.+ By THEODORE A. COOK.
[_2nd Edition._
SEVILLE.+ By WALTER M. GALLICHAN.
SIENA.+ By EDMUND G. GARDNER.
[_2nd Edition._
TOLEDO.* By HANNAH LYNCH.
[_2nd Edition._
VERONA.+ By ALETHEA WIEL.
[_2nd Edition._
VENICE.+ By THOMAS OKEY.
_The prices of these (*) are 3s. 6d. net in cloth, 4s. 6d. net in
leather; these (+) 4s. 6d. net in cloth, 5s. 6d. net in leather._
[Illustration: GEORGE ZELLE, PHYSICIAN. Painted by Bernard van Orley,
Brussels, 1519.]
_The Story of_ Brussels
_by Ernest Gilliat-Smith_
_Illustrated by Katharine Kimball
and Guy Gilliat-Smith_
[Illustration: Monogram]
_London: J. M. Dent & Co.
Aldine House, 29 and 30 Bedford Street
Covent Garden, W.C. * * 1906_
_All Rights Reserved_
PREFACE
Probably there is no quarter of Europe more thickly studded with
mediæval towns than that embraced by the Flemish provinces of
Belgium--the old Duchy of Brabant and the old County of Flanders.
Curious places they are, some of them, little changed from what they
were at the close of the fourteen hundreds; and some of them, so
modernised that hardly anything is left to prove their identity but
their geographical position and their names.
All of these cities, however, have this in common, and this it is which
makes them so interesting: we know something of their general history,
and something too of the intimate lives of the men and the women who
inhabited them, five hundred years ago--how they were lodged and
clothed, what they drank and ate, the way in which their food was
dressed and their tables served, something of their distractions and
their business pursuits, how they loved and hated, what they thought of
this world, and what of the next.
These things are set forth by three distinct classes of contemporary
witnesses:--Pictures, a host of them, minutely detailed, with almost
photographic accuracy; furniture of every description--ecclesiastical,
domestic, personal; written documents of various kinds--chronicles,
private letters, books of devotion, guild registers, town accounts. Many
of these have been carefully examined, and a very considerable number of
them printed; also, especially in recent years, some of the most
accredited Belgian historians have busied themselves by writing
monographs of their native towns, or treatises on their ancient
municipal institutions: notably Pirenne, Vander Linden, Wauters, Henne,
Piot, Van Even. From their works and from other sources, ancient and
modern, I have gathered the material for my Story of Mediæval Brussels,
in the following pages, and which necessarily includes, for the two
cities were intimately connected, a considerable portion of the Story of
Mediæval Louvain. To this I have added some notes on Brabant painters
and pictures, and also on Brabant architecture, with descriptions of the
chief mediæval monuments in Brussels and in the neighbouring towns, and
such information as I have been able to obtain concerning the great
masons who built them.
Constrained by the narrow limits of this volume to curtail and compress,
I have been content to set down facts, clearly I hope and coherently,
but for the most part without comment or criticism.
Intended as it is for the general reader, I have done my utmost, and my
first care has been, to make this pocket-book readable. I cannot venture
to hope that I have escaped all error; but I think that upon the whole I
have been able to outline a sufficiently faithful sketch, which I trust
may be of some service to those into whose hands it may fall.
E. G.-S.
BRUGES, _February 1906_.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I _In the Days before Brussels was Built_ 1
CHAPTER II _The Norsemen and Louvain_ 8
CHAPTER III _The House of Long Col_ 13
CHAPTER IV _The Making of the Duchy of Brabant_ 22
CHAPTER V _The Rise of Brussels and Louvain_ 31
CHAPTER VI _The Serfs of St. Peter_ 41
CHAPTER VII _The Greater and the Lesser Folk_ 47
CHAPTER VIII _The Coelveren and the Blankarden_ 58
CHAPTER IX _Peter Coutherele_ 67
CHAPTER X _The Peace of 1383_ 86
CHAPTER XI _Reform_ versus _Revolution_ 95
CHAPTER XII _Everard T'Serclaes_ 106
CHAPTER XIII _Liberty at Last_ 118
CHAPTER XIV _The Trials of Jacqueline_ 163
CHAPTER XV _Buildings and Builders_ 171
CHAPTER XVI _Buildings and Builders (continued)_ 256
CHAPTER XVII _Pictures and Painters_ 330
CHAPTER XVIII _Conclusion_ 358
INDEX 377
GENEALOGICAL TABLES
PAGE
_I. Table of the House of Long Col_ _facing_ 19
_II. Table of the Counts of Louvain_ _facing_ 30
_III. Table of the Dukes of Brabant from_ _facing_ 66
_Godfrey I. to John III._
_IV. Table of the Dukes of Brabant from_ _facing_ 120
_John III. to Philip II._
_V. Table of the Dukes of Brabant from_ _facing_ 359
_Philip II. to Philip III._
_VI. Table of the Dukes of Brabant from_ _follows_ 375
_Philip III. to Francis_
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
_Portrait of George Zelle, Physician,_ _Frontispiece_
_by Bernard van Orley (photogravure)_
_Heading*_ 1
_The Abbey Church, Forest+_ 5
_By the Dyle, at Mechlin+_ 7
_The Subterranean Church of St. Guy at Anderlecht*_ 37
_At Mechlin*_ 40
_Saint Peter's, Louvain*_ 43
_Cloth Hall, Louvain*_ 52
_Tailpiece+_ 57
_The Old Castle of Everard T'Serclaes at Ternath+_ 116
_Notre-Dame de Hal from Chapel behind North Transept*_ 123
_The Town Hall, Brussels+_ 147
_Old Houses near Saint Gudule's+_ 149
_Tailpiece+_ 162
_The Old Church of Saint Nicholas, Rue au Beurre+_ 176
_Le Tour Noire+_ 183
_Saint Rumbold's Cathedral*_ 199
_Notre-Dame au-delà de la Dyle+_ 202
_La Maison du Roi+_ 203
_Eglise Sainte-Gudule Pilastre Sculpté*_ 207
_The Steen of Antwerp*_ 209
_Quai de l'Avoine, Malines+_ 211
_From the Béguinage, Louvain*_ 236
_Saint Catherine's, Brussels+_ 245
_Rouge Cloître*_ 248
_Guild Houses in the Grand' Place, Brussels+_ 258
_Notre-Dame du Sablon+_ 261
_Notre-Dame de la Chapelle+_ 265
_Notre-Dame au-delà de la Dyle+_ 268
_Saint Michel et Sainte Gudule+_ 271
_Sainte Gudule--The Lady Chapel+_ 281
_St. Peter's, Louvain, Chapel of St. Charles*_ 295
_Interior of Mechlin Cathedral+_ 301
_Mechlin Cathedral+_ 303
_De Dijle te Mechelen*_ 307
_Notre-Dame de Hal Baptistery Gates*_ 311
_Hôtel de Ville, Louvain+_ 321
_Tête de Femme en Pleurs, attributed to_ _facing_ 333
_Roger Van Der Weyden, Brussels Gallery_
_'Pièta', attributed to Roger Van Der Weyden,_ _facing_ 335
_Brussels Gallery_
_'The Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus' by_ _facing_ 339
_Dierick Boudts, at Saint Peter's, Louvain_
_The Wings of the Saint Anne Triptych by_ _facing_ 347
_Quentin Metsys, in the Brussels Gallery (shut)_
_The Wings of the Saint Anne Triptych by_ _facing_ 348
_Quentin Metsys, in the Brussels Gallery (open)_
_The Central Panel of the Saint Anne Triptych by_ _facing_ 350
_Quentin Metsys, in the Brussels Gallery_
_From S. Rombold's, Malines*_ 357
_At Mechlin+_ 361
_By the Dyle at Mechlin+_ 364
_Guild Halls in the Market-Place at Brussels+_ 369
_Notre-Dame d'Hanswyck, Malines+_ 372
_Saints Pierre et Paul, Malines+_ 373
_La Porte de Hal, Brussels+_ 374
_Tailpiece+_ 375
_Plan of Brussels_ _follows_ 375
Those illustrations marked * are by G. GILLIAT-SMITH.
Do. do. + are by KATHARINE KIMBALL.
[Illustration: Brussels]
The Story of Brussels
CHAPTER I
_In the Days before Brussels was Built_
The beginning of the story of Brussels, like the beginning of the
stories of most of the mediæval towns of Northern Europe, is shrouded in
mystery. Set at the time of its origin in a land of marsh and wood, it
probably takes its name, like so many German cities, from the natural
configuration of its site and the nature of the settlement from which it
was gradually evolved--_Bruk Sel_, the manor in the marsh. So, too, the
neighbouring towns:--Antwerp, at wharf; Tervueren, by the river Vuer;
Schaerbeek, by the heath stream; Aerschot, the home by the water; and
the sister city, the city whose history is so intricately woven with the
history of the capital of Belgium that it is impossible to disentangle
them, Looven, the wooded hill alongside the fen; and the province in
which all these places are situated: Brabant, from _Brac_, uncultivated,
barren, wild, and _Bant_, the frontier land.
The fierce tribes whom Cæsar found in this part of Gaul gloried in the
tradition of their German origin, but it is not to them that the towns
and villages and hamlets of Brabant owe their German names. The Nervii
and the Treveri, like the despised and hated Celts who surrounded them,
were compelled at last to submit to Rome's legions and to learn the
Roman tongue; they learnt it so well that when later on a whirlwind of
barbarism swept Latin civilisation from Northern Europe they had
altogether forgotten their own. Driven for the most part south into
those provinces which we now call Liége and Hainault and Namur, to this
day their descendants speak the time-honoured language of Rome, and to
this day German is the tongue of the offspring of the men who ousted
them. It was the Salic Franks, then, who, for the most part, were the
builders of the cities of Brabant, and they it was who gave them their
rough German names.
In the dark, troublous times which witnessed the birth of the new
civilisation and the making of the new towns, two figures stand out
pre-eminent--the figure of the hero, of whom later on, and the figure of
the saint. The bishop in his embroidered cope, who never failed to throw
the mantle of his protection about the downtrodden and the oppressed,
nor to vindicate the sacredness of the marriage vow and the sacredness
of human life: at his menace of retribution the half-tamed German chief
quailed as at the threat of a sorcerer, if he dared violate this man's
domain maybe he would stumble on the threshold and break his neck, or
perchance a worse thing might happen to him; the monk in his tattered
cowl, who going forth day by day from his hovel in the wilderness
gradually brought the land once more under tillage, or patiently sitting
at home in his cell, little by little gathered up what fragments
remained of human knowledge, and so saved what could be saved of human
culture; the consecrated virgin whose whole life proclaimed to a people,
who knew nothing of these things, the beauty of chastity and the beauty
of humility and the sweetness of self-denial; the layman whose heart had
been touched by the fire of Divine love, sometimes a son of the people,
sometimes the scion of a noble house, and who, attaching himself, often
in a menial capacity, to some church or religious establishment, had one
object in life--to serve God and His poor. Such were the women and such
were the men who in those dark and violent days poured some drops of
sweetness into the bitter chalice of existence; they were the chief
agents and the choicest and most perfect flowers of that great
institution which we call Christianity. Incalculable were the benefits
which they conferred on the human race, and the greatest of them all,
even from a human point of view, was this--to a people sitting in
darkness and in the shadow of death they brought back hope. In an age
when, for the vast majority of mankind, the sum of human happiness was
so slender, they reinspired men with the wish to live, or at all events
with the courage to endure existence, conjuring up before their
despairing eyes, 'a glorious pavilion of gold at the end of life's muddy
lane,' a vision of eternal beatitude which the weakest and the vilest of
them might one day enjoy. Thus Taine, epitomised, speaking of Europe
generally.[1]
[1] _l'Ancien Régime_, livre 1^er, ch. i. § 1.
Profane and fierce were the men of Brabant, 'infinitos prædones, vulgo
dictus Brabantiones, qui nec Deum diligunt nec viam veritatis cognoscere
volunt,' as Aimoin has it, at the close of the ten hundreds; but for all
that they had their heroes, and amongst them, too, were saints. Men like
that mighty hunter, Hubert, Bishop of Liége (706-727), the apostle to
whose untiring zeal Brabant in great measure owed her conversion to the
Christian faith, and who, in the days of his stormy youth, before he met
the stag with the cross between its horns, and turned devout, dwelt in a
castle at a place called Tervueren, on the fringe of that mysterious
forest of Soignes, which still overshadows Brussels, and which still,
the peasant folk will tell you, he loves and protects: here he received
holy orders, here he sang his first Mass, here, worn out with travail
and fever, he died, with the fall of the leaf, in the year 727: no trace
of his villa remains, but St. Hubert's Chapel, in the royal park of
Tervueren, is said to mark its site, and on one of the walls of the
parish church hard by, there still hangs an old ivory hunting horn,
which once belonged, tradition says, to the huntsman's patron saint. Men
like 'that impious robber Adhilck,' lord of Hesbaye, surnamed the
Fierce, one of Charlemagne's ancestors, who, touched by the preaching of
Saint-Amand, shaved off his beard, took a new name, Bavo, which means
the mild, and changed, too, his manner of life, distributed all his
goods to the poor, went and hid himself in the woods of Beyla, there did
penance for seven years in the trunk of a hollow tree, which all that
time was covered with leaves and flowers, and at last withdrew to the
monastery which Amand had founded at Ghent, where he died in the odour
of sanctity, tended in his last moments by his friend Domlinus, a hermit
from the distant forest of Thor, whom, because Bavo desired to bid him
farewell, an angel conducted to his bedside. Presently they built a
church in his honour, and St. Bavo became the patron of Ghent. Men like
Rombold, the son of an Irish chief, who left his father's court and his
native land to become an evangelist, and wandering about Brabant,
preaching and teaching wherever he went, at last founded, on the banks
of the Dyle, a monastery, where he presently fell a victim to his zeal
and won the crown of martyrdom, and around which gradually grew up the
city we now call Mechlin; or women, like Pepin of Landen's daughter
Gertrude, who founded the Abbey of Nivelles and the town which clusters
round it; or her niece and disciple Gudila, who led the life of a
recluse in the castle of Ham by Alost, and whose bones three hundred
years after her death were translated to Brussels, and presently laid up
in the church which now bears her name; or poor little Halene, slain by
her own father, a Pagan chief, because she became a Christian, and whose
tomb you may still see in the old church of Forest, hard by Brussels.
[Illustration: THE ABBEY CHURCH, FOREST.]
Of these heroic men and women we know hardly anything for certain save
their names. They lived in that age of legend and mystery during which
Paganism was making its last stand against the victorious onslaught of
the new faith. If their actions were recorded by contemporary writers,
the manuscripts were destroyed by the barbarian hordes who scourged the
land in the course of the nine hundreds--and the biographies of later
writers, compiled as they must have been from hearsay evidence, and
after ample time had elapsed for the legends to grow, are little more
than a fascinating texture of folklore and myth--naïve and beautiful
fairy tales, of which the most that can be said of them is that,
perhaps, they are founded on fact.
But if there are no authentic chronicles of the lives of the early
saints of Brabant, we know that their lives were not lived in vain; the
bountiful harvest which was reaped by after generations bears witness to
the excellence of the seed which these men had sown, and to the care and
the diligence with which they and their successors had tended it; and
after all the ecclesiastical seal of canonisation has been in most
cases, especially in these early days, the outcome rather than the cause
of popular devotion. As Taine shrewdly notes, man is too envious and too
egoistical to lavish gratitude where none is due, and the estimation in
which they were held by the people is sufficient proof of their sterling
worth. We see them pale, shadowy, vague, like the white cloud which
hovered over the battlefield of Louvain, but the victors saw in that
white cloud, 'la benoite vierge Marie et Saint Lambert avec Monsieur
Saint Pierre semblant de vouloir secourir le peuple Chrétien,' and so
heartened were they by the vision that they put to flight the Pagan
host, and no less fruitful in results are the forgotten lives and the
forgotten labours of those great pioneers of civilisation who to-day are
for us but as beautiful phantoms.
[Illustration: BY THE DYLE, AT MECHLIN.]