Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images available at The Internet Archive)
_The Story of Bruges_
'I do love these ancient ruins;
We never tread upon them but we set
Our foot upon some reverend history.'
_Duchess of Malfi._
_All Rights Reserved._
[Illustration]
_The Story of_ Bruges
_by Ernest Gilliat-Smith
Illustrated by Edith Calvert
and Herbert Railton_
[Illustration]
_London: J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.
Aldine House, 29 and 30 Bedford Street
Covent Garden W.C._ _1909_
_First Edition, July 1901.
Second Edition, October 1903.
Third Edition, December 1905.
Fourth Edition, November 1909._
PREFACE
Few great mediæval towns possess so many memorials of the past, alike in
masonry and on parchment, as does 'the ancient town of Bruges.'
They have been indited by the patience of the scribe in breviary and in
charter-roll; they have been perpetuated by the art of the painter, in
gold and glowing tones, in portrait and in altar-piece; they have been
graven with an iron pen in wood and metal and stone; they have been
handed down by word of mouth through countless generations.
The municipal rolls go back to the year 1280, and included amongst them
are the annual accounts of the city from 1281 to 1789, almost complete;
those of the Collegiate Church of _Notre Dame_ to early in the eleven
hundreds; and there are, too, the rolls of _St. Sauveur_, of the old
Cathedral of St. Donatian, of the great Abbey of Dunes, and of many
other time-honoured corporations; whilst the Municipal Library and the
Library of the Diocesan Seminary contain together, no less than seven
hundred and thirty-four manuscripts, not a few of which were written in
the city itself or in its immediate neighbourhood.
There are buildings in Bruges which carry us back to the days of Baldwin
Bras de Fer, perhaps to a still more remote period; four of the seven
parish churches date from the twelve hundreds; the oldest of the civic
monuments to at latest 1280, and from this epoch until the close of the
Middle Age almost every year is marked by the erection of stately
edifices, of which very many have come down to us.
Lack of material will not hamper the future historian of Bruges, for the
history of Bruges has yet to be written. The present work lays no claim
to such title. It is but a bare outline, a mere sketch, and in this it
resembles, in some degree, the beautiful map at the end of the volume,
and many of the illustrations by which the book is adorned.
The artists who designed these fascinating pictures have succeeded by
means of a few skilful touches in laying before us a faithful reflection
of the beauty of Bruges, and, following in their footsteps, I, too, have
essayed to render my story of the men who created it alike faithful and
picturesque.
If my efforts have not been crowned with the same measure of success,
the fault lies not in the material, but rather in the manner in which it
has been handled; for the life's story of the builders of Bruges is no
less marvellous and no less alluring than are the monuments which they
reared.
E. G.-S.
BRUGES, _June 1901_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
_The First Flemings_ 1
CHAPTER II
_Earliest Bruges_ 9
CHAPTER III
_Arnulph the Great_ 21
CHAPTER IV
_Progress of the City_ 26
CHAPTER V
_The Murder of Charles the Good_ 38
CHAPTER VI
_Vengeance_ 57
CHAPTER VII
_Bruges in the Days of Charles the Good_ 75
CHAPTER VIII
_William Cliton_ 81
CHAPTER IX
_Dierick of Alsace and the Precious Blood_ 90
CHAPTER X
_Philip of Alsace and the Charter of the Franc_ 105
CHAPTER XI
_Baldwin of Constantinople_ 111
CHAPTER XII
_The Love Story of Bourchard d'Avesnes_ 122
CHAPTER XIII
_The French Annexation_ 136
CHAPTER XIV
_Peter De Coninck_ 144
CHAPTER XV
_The Battle of the Golden Spurs_ 153
CHAPTER XVI
_The Great Charter_ 164
CHAPTER XVII
_Louis of Nevers_ 172
CHAPTER XVIII
_Louis of Maele_ 195
CHAPTER XIX
_Bruges under the Princes of the House of Burgundy_ 210
CHAPTER XX
_The Great Humiliation_ 230
CHAPTER XXI
_The Terrible Duke and his Gentle Daughter_ 248
CHAPTER XXII
_The Final Catastrophe_ 268
CHAPTER XXIII
_The Architects and Architecture of
Bruges in the Fifteenth Century_ 306
CHAPTER XXIV
_The Painters and the Pictures of Bruges in the Fifteenth Century_ 334
CHAPTER XXV
_Modern Bruges_ 389
INDEX 411
GENEALOGICAL TABLES
PAGE
_I. Table of the Counts of Flanders from
Baldwin I. to Baldwin V. facing_ 36
_II. Table of the Counts of Flanders from
Baldwin V. to Baldwin VII.
facing_ 82
_III. Table of the Counts of Flanders from
Baldwin VIII. to Guy de Dampierre
facing_ 162
_IV. Table of the Counts of Flanders from
Guy de Dampierre to Marguerite of
Maele facing_ 208
_V. Table of the Counts of Flanders from
Philippe le Hardi to Philippe le
Beau facing_ 304
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
_The Belfry of Bruges (photogravure) Frontispiece_
_Godshuis on the Quai Vert_ 1
_View of the Quai Vert_ 12
_Palais du Franc and the Hôtel de Ville from River_ 13
_The Crypt of St. Basil's_ 16
_The Church of Notre Dame_ 19
_Charles the Good (from an old Bruges print)_ 38
_Angle of the Rue de l'Ane Aveugle_ 56
_The Porch of Notre Dame_ 79
_A Renaissance Gable_ 89
_Hôtel de Ville and Chapel of the Holy Blood_ 93
_The Minne Water Bridge and Round Tower_ 97
_Baptistry Chapel in the Crypt of St. Basil's_ 100
_Porch of the Chapel of St. Basil_ 101
_Godshuis in the Rue du Marécage_ 104
_The Palais du Franc_ 109
_Interior of Notre Dame_ 130
_Hospital of St. John and South Aisle of Notre Dame_ 132
_The Beguinage, with Tower of Notre Dame_ 134
_Old Houses on the Roya_ 151
_A Fourteenth Century Chimney_ 163
_Thirteenth-Century Iron Gates in Belfry_ 168
_Madonna and Niche_ 194
_Maele Castle_ 196
_The Hôtel de Ville_ 206
_Porte de Gand_ 219
_Old Houses at Damme_ 235
_The Church of St. Sauveur_ 238
_The Lepers' Hospital, Marché au Fil_ 241
_Old Roofs below the Belfry_ 255
_The Belfry from the Quai Vert_ 263
_Porte des Baudets_ 280
_Hôtel Gruthuise_ 287
_Kitchen in Gruthuise_ 290
_Chimney-piece in the Gruthuise Palace_ 292
_The 'Paradise' of Notre Dame and Gruthuise_ 307
_Hooded Fire-place in the Gruthuise_ 312
_Tribune of the Gruthuise in Notre Dame_ 314
_The Hôtel Bladelin_ 317
_The Ghistelhof_ 321
_Courtyard of the Hôtel Adornes_ 322
_Tomb of Anselm Adornes_ 324
_Van Oudvelde's Window by the Pont Flamand_ 328
_Quai du Rosaire_ 329
_Guild Hall of Archers of St. Sebastian_ 332
_Portrait of George Van der Pale_ 349
_Gerard David's 'Baptism of Christ'_ 359
_Memlinc's 'Adoration of the Magi'_ 377
_Memlinc's 'St. John the Baptist'_ 382
_Memlinc's 'St. Veronica'_ 383
_Bruges from the River Yperlet_ 392
_Godshuis, Quai des Marbriers_ 394
_Lancelot Blondeel's Chimney-piece in the Palais du Franc_ 399
_The Vlissinghe Tavern, frequented by Rubens_ 404
_Quai des Ménétriers_ 406
_Pont St. Augustin_ 408
_Plan of Bruges Facing_ 410
[Illustration: BRUGES]
The Story of Bruges
CHAPTER I
_The First Flemings_
It is not to the stalwart Celtic tribes which Cæsar found scattered
about the low-lying sandy plain which stretches along the coast from the
mouth of the Rhine to the Canche that this part of Europe owes either
its name or its greatness.
The Menapii and the Morini, the bravest of them all and the last to
withstand the Roman legions, were at length compelled to bend their
necks beneath the yoke of Rome's enervating and effete civilization, and
when, four centuries later, a whirlwind of Northern barbarism had swept
the land, only a handful of them, sparsely scattered, abject, cringing,
hidden away in forest and marsh, were left to tell the tale.
The civilization of Rome had been clean wiped out in that quarter of
Europe. Silence unbroken settled down on the land, and for two hundred
years the Latin-Celts of the Netherlands slipped out of the world's
memory.
It was not until the middle of the six hundreds that men began once more
to think of them.
The cause of their reappearance upon the stage of European history is
chronicled for us in a contemporary life of St. Amand, Bishop of
Bourges.[1] It happened in this wise.
Towards the close of the year 630, Amand, who had journeyed to Rome, was
one day praying before the tomb of the Apostles, when suddenly he heard
the voice of St. Peter bidding him be up and return to Gaul, where he
must preach the Gospel.
So impressed was he with the reality of the warning, that he at once set
out for the northern province, and presently reached Sens.
Here he was told that there was a country beyond the Scheldt called
Gand, where dwelt a wild people who had forgotten God, and who
worshipped trees, and that so rude was this land, and so fierce were its
inhabitants, that no missionary had hitherto ventured there. This must
be the field, said Amand, which St. Peter would have me till, and with a
small band of companions he landed on the further bank of the Scheldt.
The reception the new comers met with was not one calculated to inspire
confidence. The natives, men and women alike, showed unmistakable signs
of hostility, and at length, in a wild outburst, seized upon Amand
himself and plunged him into the stream. This so terrified his
companions that they, all of them, drew back in fear of their lives. But
Amand, nothing daunted, went on with the work he had undertaken, and in
course of time won the confidence of the natives, many of whom he
baptized.
For thirty years he wandered up and down this forlorn district, enduring
all manner of hardships, preaching and teaching wherever he went.
Presently he was joined by other missionaries. Here and there churches
and monasteries were built. The land around soon began once more to be
brought under cultivation, and, beneath the shelter of their walls,
villages and little towns gradually sprung up. Bruges, St. Omer,
Thorhout, Tronchienne, each of them claims as its founder one or other
of the missionaries who at this time were evangelizing the country; and
at Bruges they still show the rude chapel on the banks of the Roya in
which St. Amand baptized his first neophytes.
It was not, however, to this remnant of resuscitated Celts that the
Netherlands owed the important part they played later on in the
civilization of Europe. A race ignorant alike of the refinement and the
corruption of Roman civilization, and which, because it was barbarous
itself, had never had its spirit crushed beneath the heel of barbarism,
a race which hailed from the same fatherland from whence came our own
ancestors, akin to them in habit of thought and speech and blood,
animated by the same intense passion for liberty and hatred of
servitude, by the same reverence for woman and love of home, by the same
keen admiration for the brave and the true, was destined to build up
that marvellous stronghold of mediæval freedom, culture and commercial
enterprise called Fleanderland, the land that is of the Fleming, of the
exile, the land whose hospitable shore had given to the victorious
Viking a haven for his ships and a foot or two of solid earth on which
to pitch his tent.
How or when the first Flemings came here are subjects wrapt in mystery.
Perhaps the same upheaval which, in the middle of the four hundreds,
drove our own Saxon forefathers from their old homes in Jutland and
Friesland and Sleswicke-Holstein to seek new homes in Britain, impelled
also the Saxon Flemings to the northern shore of Gaul. Be this as it
may, all along the coast line of the Netherlands were scattered, at a
very early date, settlements of men of Saxon origin, of this there can
be no doubt, who possessed in a very marked degree the qualities and
characteristics of their race. They were chaste, proud, daring,
avaricious, given to plunder. Mutual responsibility was the basis of
their social system; the Karl, or free land-holder, the pivot on which
hinged their entire political organization. Like all Saxons, they had a
horror of slavery. Courage for them was the queen of virtues; freedom
dearer than life; vengeance but the cultus of filial piety, and family
ties the most sacred of all.
These were the dominant tones which coloured all their institutions. At
the uproarious banquets at which in Fleanderland, as elsewhere, the
Karls assembled to deliberate on public affairs, to choose their
leaders, and deposit in a common hoard the _gulden_ destined for an
insurance fund in case of shipwreck, fire or storm, the first goblet
drained was in honour of Woden, for victory, and the last to the memory
of those heroes who had fallen on the battlefield.
When, after the carnage of _Fontanet_ (A.D. 841) all Europe was overrun
by robber bands, who killed, burnt and harried at will, in those rude
days when 'not to be slain,' as Stendhal says, 'and to have in winter a
good leathern jerkin, and,' in the case of a woman, not to be violated
by a whole squadron, was, for very many, the supreme sum of human
happiness, and all the world were seeking in feudalism a refuge from
anarchy such as this, and patiently accepting even the right of
_marquette_ as something less horrible than the horrors which they would
otherwise have to endure,[2] these hardy sons of the North, almost alone
among the peoples of Europe, retained their independence. Again and
again the feudal lords endeavoured to reduce them to serfdom, and again
and again their endeavour proved abortive.
In Fleanderland at least they preserved their liberty, living under
their own laws and their own elected chiefs; a nation of free men,
practically independent of the sovereigns who nominally ruled over them,
until, at all events, the advent of the House of Burgundy.
Of this stock was the real founder of Bruges--Baldwin of the Iron
Hand--first Count of Flanders.
His coming was in this wise.
It was the time of the break up of Charlemagne's artificial empire--A.D.
850--and strong men on all sides were gathering up the fragments and
laying the foundations of great houses, sometimes of kingdoms. The Danes
were everywhere harrying Neustria, and the old Frank king, Charles the
Bald, unable to purchase peace by the strength of his own arm, was
buying it at the best markets he could, with gold and concessions.
Guntfried and Gosfried, two Northern chieftains, had lately sworn him
fealty, and for the moment were exercising paramount influence over the
feeble will of their lord, whilst Rotbert, surnamed _le fort_, an
adventurer of obscure origin whom people had lately begun to talk about,
was at this time the strongest man along Loire, a freebooter, as some
said, from the forests of Germany, in whose veins ran the blood of
Charlemagne himself, according to others, the son of a butcher from the
shambles of Paris, matter of little moment. In days when a mighty hand
and an outstretched arm alone could lead to fortune, his reputation for
strength of will and thew was of far greater importance. This man, then,
it were politic to bind to the crumbling fortunes of the royal house, so
thought Guntfried and Gosfried, in all singleness of heart, and at their
instigation King Charles the Bald consented to receive his homage,
little thinking that he was thereby laying the foundations of a house
which would one day wreck his dynasty.
But the new vassal was something more than a strong man, he was a man,
too, of tact and address, and his influence soon became so great, and
the favours showered on him so large, that Guntfried and Gosfried,
jealous of the rival whom they themselves had set up, determined to
compass his overthrow.
To this end, supported by Louis, son of Charles the Bald, and by Judith,
his beautiful and accomplished daughter, they called to their assistance
the Flemish chief, Baldwin, son of Odoaker, a man of whose antecedents
we know nothing. Judith was at this time one of the most remarkable
women in Europe. Her career had been a strange and a stormy one. First
married, in his old age and as his second wife, to our own King
Ethelwolf of Wessex, it was to Judith, his step-mother, that Alfred the
Great was indebted for his earliest training.
When Ethelwolf died she had contracted an alliance with Ethelbald, a son
of the old king by a former marriage, and upon his death in 860 she
retired to Senlis, where she was living in queenly state under the
sovereign protection of its bishops when Baldwin saw her, became
enamoured of her beauty, and it would seem, with her own connivance,
carried her off for his bride.
King Charles was holding his Court at Soissons when the news of the
abduction and of his son's confederacy with Guntfried and Gosfried
reached his ears, and furious at the disregard shown to his parental
authority, he acted, for once, with energy and decision. Summoning the
nobles of his Court to his presence forthwith, he pronounced judgment
against the culprits in accordance with civil law, next obtained from
his complaisant bishops their excommunication, and marching in person
against the two conspiring vassals, surprised them at Meaux, and forced
them to lay down their arms. The plot then had for the moment failed.
Baldwin and Judith fled to the Court of Lothaire, and from thence to
Rome, where they sought the aid of that sturdy old Pontiff, Nicholas II.
Nor did they seek in vain.
'Your liegeman Baldwin,' he wrote to the King of France, 'has taken
refuge at the sacred threshold of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul,
and with earnest prayers has approached our pontifical throne.
'We therefore, from the summit of our Apostolic power, beseech you for
the love of our Lord Jesus Christ and of His Apostles Peter and Paul,
whose support Baldwin has preferred to that of earthly princes,
vouchsafe to grant him your pardon and to completely overlook his
offence, in order that, supported by your goodness, he may live in peace
along with your other faithful subjects; moreover, when we ask your
sublimity to forgive him, we are not only moved thereto by reason of the
charity we owe to all those who implore the pity and protection of the
Apostolic See, but we are impelled likewise by fear lest your anger
should drive Baldwin to ally himself with the Danes, the enemies of Holy
Church, and thus prepare new evils for the people of God.' This
effusion, however, does not seem to have made much impression on
Charles, and the following year Pope Nicholas wrote again, and with
vigour. '"Consider the times," says the Apostle, "for evil days are at
hand," and I say unto you that the danger which he announces is already
at your door. See to it, then, that you do not bring down upon your head
disasters yet more terrible. Have sufficient good sense to master your
spleen, and be not for ever deaf to Baldwin.' At length, not without
reluctance, and less from love of his daughter than from fear of his
redoubtable son-in-law and the Danes, Charles yielded to the Pope's
request. On the 25th of October 863, he received Judith at his palace at
Verberie, and shortly afterwards her union with Baldwin was celebrated
with great splendour at Auxerre. But though Charles had consented to
acknowledge the marriage, no argument could induce him to be present at
the ceremony by which it was made legal. 'I could not persuade the
king,' runs the letter in which Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims recounts to
Pope Nicholas the whole affair, and Hincmar had probably at this time
more influence with Charles than anyone else, 'I could not persuade the
king to go in person to the wedding, but he sent his ministers and
officers of state, and in compliance with your request has conferred the
highest honours on Baldwin.'
Thanks, then, to the intervention of the Pope, the main object which
Guntfried and Gosfried had in view was at length obtained. Whilst
Rotbert, who had been successively created Count of Anjou and Abbot of
Tours, was consolidating his power on the banks of the Loire, Baldwin
was being invested with still greater authority over the Northern
'Marches,' in the vicinity of the Lys and the Scheldt.
The first was the founder of the royal house of France, the second the
ancestor to whom all the Counts of Flanders traced their descent.