OLD ANTWERP--ITS HISTORY AND LEGENDS
While Bruges and Ghent were in their prime as centres of Flemish
commerce and industry a rival that was destined ultimately to supplant
and eclipse them both was slowly growing up along the banks of the
River Scheldt at a point where that important stream, which flows
entirely across Flanders, becomes a tidal estuary. From the most
ancient times the prosperity of Antwerp--which in French is called
Anvers, in Flemish Antwerpen--has been closely connected with the
river. According to the legends a giant named Antigonus once had a
castle where the city now stands and exacted a toll of all who passed
up or down the river. Evasion of this primitive high tariff was
punished by cutting off both the culprit's hands. Of course this giant
just had to be killed by the hero, whose name was Brabo, and who was
said to have been a lieutenant of Cæsar. Brabo cut off the dead
giant's right hand and flung it into the river in token that
thenceforth it should be free from similar extortions. The visitor
will find this legend recalled in the city's arms--which has two hands
surmounting a castle--and in many works of art. Brabo is said to have
become the first Margrave of Antwerp, and to have founded a line of
seventeen Margraves, all bearing the same name, but the deeds and even
the existence of these princes is as mythical as those of their
ancestor--or the famous legend of Lohengrin, which belongs to this
period of Antwerp's history.
Like London, Antwerp is situated sixty miles from the sea. In olden
days commerce was rather inclined to seek the more inland ports, as
being safer from storms and less exposed to sudden attacks. The size
of ocean-going ships was, moreover, slowly but steadily increasing
from generation to generation, and this increase favoured Antwerp,
which had a deep, sure channel to the sea, as against its early rival
Bruges, whose outlet, the little River Zwyn, was gradually silting up.
The fact that the town was situated just outside of the dominions of
the Counts of Flanders probably helped its early growth, for the
jealous men of Bruges might otherwise have obtained from the Counts
decrees restricting, and perhaps prohibiting, its expansion. As it
was, the great Counts ruled all of the left bank of the Scheldt from
Antwerp to the sea, and also the waters of the river as far as one
could ride into it on horseback and then reach with extended sword.
The Tête de Flandre, opposite the centre of the older part of the
city, marks the end of Flanders proper in this direction. As already
explained by the Professor, however, Antwerp is none the less
essentially a Flemish city in its art and architecture, its language
and literature, and for many centuries of its brilliant history, and
for these reasons deserves a place in this book.
Like the County of Flanders, the region surrounding Antwerp was an
outlying "march" or frontier district of the Empire, and its rulers
therefore derived their feudal title from the Emperor. About the year
1100 the Emperor bestowed the march on Godfrey of the Beard, Count of
Louvain and first Duke of Brabant. To the Dukes of Brabant it
thereafter always belonged until that title, with so many others,
became merged in those acquired by the Dukes of Burgundy and united in
their illustrious descendant, Charles V. On the whole, the Dukes,
being absentees, were easy rulers--the shrewd burghers seizing upon
their moments of weakness to wrest new privileges from them, and
relying upon their strength for protection in times of danger. From
time immemorial the burghers claimed a monopoly right to trade in
fish, salt and oats. Other trading privileges followed, and by the
time of the first Duke of Brabant the town was already an important
one, with a powerful Burg, or fortress, surrounding five acres of land
and buildings. Among the latter was the Steen, or feudal prison, a
part of which still stands close to the river and is used as a museum
of antiquities.
The early Dukes greatly extended the commercial rights and privileges
of the town, Henry III granting a charter that allowed its citizens to
hold bread and meat markets and trade in corn and cloth. Duke John I
granted rights in his famous Core van Antwerpen, dated nearly five
hundred years before the Declaration of Independence, that were
remarkable for wisdom and liberality. "Within the town of Antwerp,"
the charter read, "all men are free and there are no slaves. No
inhabitant may be deprived of his natural judges, nor arrested in his
house on civil suit." In 1349 Duke John III granted a charter that not
only confirmed all of its ancient privileges, but gave exceptional
rights and liberties to foreigners--causing many of them to come and
settle there. Among these was the right granted to any dweller within
the city to sue: citizens according to local customs, foreigners
according to the laws of their own lands. As at Bruges and Ghent all
these precious charters were kept in a box having many locks, of which
the keys were kept by delegates of the Broad Council of the city.
"This box," said Mr. Wilfred Robinson, in his valuable historical
sketch of Antwerp, "might only be opened in the presence of all the
civic authorities, while they stood around it bareheaded and holding
lighted tapers in their hands. Truly it must have been a quaint and
solemn scene!"
Some fifty years prior to the charter last mentioned Duke John II
married one of the daughters of Edward I, King of England, and gave
that monarch the city of Antwerp as a fief. Edward III used the city
as a naval base, and in 1339 signed there with Jacques Van Artevelde a
treaty of alliance with the communes of Brabant and Flanders. The
Kings of England did not, however, retain their suzerainty over
Antwerp very long, for it next passed--once more by marriage--to the
daughter of Louis of Maele, Count of Flanders. The city sought to
resist, and Count Louis was obliged to besiege it and punished the
burghers severely for their disobedience. On his death it passed to
Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, along with the entire County of
Flanders of which it was then a part, and thereafter remained under
the Burgundian Dukes and their successors.
In 1446 Philip the Good--whose policy had proved so disastrous to
Bruges and Ghent--laid the foundation for the commercial greatness of
Antwerp by a liberal charter which he granted to the Merchant
Adventurers of England. The English merchants had already left Bruges,
where the River Zwyn was fast silting up, and now came to Antwerp and
established there a most extensive trade. They were followed by the
merchants of the other nations, and in less than seventy-five years
after the granting of the charter the population of the city had
doubled twice--from less than seventeen thousand to over forty--four
thousand inhabitants.
It was during this period that many of the most interesting structures
of "old Antwerp"--the portion of the city between the Steen and the
cathedral and north of the Hotel de Ville--were built. We spent
several interesting mornings tramping these quaint old winding
streets, some of which are still as mediæval in aspect as any to be
seen in Europe. The _Vielle Boucherie_, recently restored, dates from
the reign of Louis of Maele. In its time it contained stalls for
fifty-three butchers. The streets surrounding this quaint structure of
ragged brick are well nigh as ancient and interesting as the
"monuments" which one encounters here and there while exploring them.
The Steen itself dates, as we have seen, from the very earliest period
of the city's history, but is only a remnant of what it was. In the
days of the Spanish Inquisition this grim old structure became a place
of dread, and its gloomy dungeons--which the cheerful and smiling
guide showed us by candlelight, for two cents a head--were in constant
use for the entertainment of guests of the Margraves and their
successors, the Burgundian Dukes, for nigh on to eight centuries.
[Illustration: THE _VIELLE BOUCHERIE_, ANTWERP.]
In 1485 the rivalry between Antwerp and Bruges reached the point of
open war. The men of Bruges built a fort commanding the River Scheldt
at a point near Calloo, mounting on it no less than sixty cannon. The
Antwerp burghers met this challenge by building a similar fort at
Austruwel, and then attacked and captured the Flemish fort on April
23--St. George's Day. A yearly procession still commemorates this
victory in the long contest to maintain the freedom of the river. A
fleet of forty-nine merchant vessels that the Flemings had detained
came triumphantly up the river, and the conflict for supremacy between
the old sea gateway of the Netherlands and the new was settled once
for all--as far as poor Bruges was concerned--in favour of Antwerp,
the new maritime queen of the North.
The river itself seemed to favour the prosperity of Antwerp, as if
proud and eager to become the handmaiden of so valiant and beautiful a
city, for the western entrance of the Scheldt gradually deepened at
about this period--from causes that in those days no one tried to
understand. This gave the port a deep channel to the sea to
accommodate the growing draught of ocean-going ships. The discoveries
of Columbus and Vasco da Gama helped the port also. Until then Venice
had enjoyed a monopoly of the sugar trade of the East. Now it came
sea-borne to Antwerp, and the formerly profitable overland sugar trade
between Venice and Germany was ruined. This caused the Portuguese to
establish a factory at Antwerp. The Spaniards followed, while the
English and Italians enlarged their warehouses. Several great German
trading houses opened premises in the city, although the Hanseatic
League did not abandon Bruges for Antwerp until 1545--being the very
last to go.
While the decline of Bruges led the painters of that city to desert it
for its fast-growing rival on the Scheldt, Quentin Matsys, the
greatest of the early Antwerp artists, does not seem to have derived
much of his inspiration from the masterpieces of the Bruges school.
The early chronicles give a most romantic account of the life of this
painter, who was born at Louvain about 1466. According to these more
or less legendary stories he was at first a blacksmith, and changed to
a painter through love for a damsel whose father was a great patron
and admirer of that art. Another account has it that he took up
painting owing to illness, first colouring images of the saints such
as were then given to children during the carnival. Blacksmith he
certainly was, as his father had been before him, and the wonderful
cover for the well in front of the cathedral is his handiwork. It
seems probable, however, that he first learned the art of painting at
Louvain, probably as an apprentice to the son of Dierick Bouts. At
Antwerp he soon fell in love with a beautiful girl, who may have been
the model for some of his charming Madonnas. The story is told by one
old chronicler that the maiden's father opposed the match because the
young suitor was not a sufficiently skilful artist. On a certain
occasion Matsys, finding his intended father-in-law out, painted a fly
on one of the figures in a painting belonging to him. On his return
the owner of the painting started to brush the fly off and, seeing his
mistake, heartily admitted that the young artist who had painted it
merited all praise and gave his consent to the nuptials.
The museum at Antwerp is rich in masterpieces by Matsys, including his
greatest work, "The Entombment." This is a triptych, the panels
showing Herod's banquet with the head of John the Baptist lying on the
table, and St. John in the boiling oil. The "Madonna," in the same
museum, is one of the sweetest faces ever painted among the hundreds
of Madonnas that abound in mediæval art, and one cannot but feel that
it is the very face that won the heart of the artist and caused him to
adopt painting as his profession. Its resemblance to the face of the
Madonna now in the Berlin museum strengthens this theory. At Antwerp
also there are to be seen "The Holy Face," a companion painting to the
"Madonna" just mentioned, and the gruesome yet appealing "Veil of
Veronica," showing the livid face of the Saviour with drops of blood
from the cruel crown of thorns trickling down across it. The museum at
Brussels possesses another masterpiece, and the oldest dated picture
by this artist, "The Legend of St. Anne," which was completed in 1509
for the brotherhood of St. Anne at Louvain. He also painted several
strong and striking portraits, of which the best is that of Erasmus at
the Städel Institute at Frankfort. Matsys was one of the first Flemish
artists to present subjects of every-day life as well as religious
episodes and characters. "The Banker and his Wife," at the Louvre in
Paris, is the finest example of this kind. There are authenticated
works by this master in a number of European museums, while a
considerable number of his pictures have become lost or have not as
yet been identified.
[Illustration: "THE BANKER AND HIS WIFE."--MATSYS.]
Matsys is the greatest name in the history of Flemish art between the
masters of Bruges and the school of Rubens. It was his success that
made Antwerp the Florence of the North. Among Matsys' successors Frans
de Vriendt, better known as Frans Floris, was one of the most notable.
He was a member of the Antwerp guild of St. Luke at the age of
twenty-three, and produced a vast number of works, many of which can
still be seen scattered among the churches and art collections of
Flanders. He had over one hundred pupils, of whom Martin de Vos
achieved the greatest fame. As this painter worked after the
destruction of the image-breakers many of his religious subjects
survive to this day. The Antwerp museum contains no less than
twenty-three of his works, as against only four by his master. Both of
these artists, however, were profound admirers of the Italian school,
and the work of Floris especially--though vastly admired in his
day--is now looked upon as more Italian than Flemish, more imitative
than original.
This cannot be said of the next really great painter to appear in
Flanders, Peter Breughel the Elder. Born at the little village of
Breughel, near Breda in Brabant, about 1526, this artist studied for a
time in Italy--as did all of his contemporaries--and then settled at
Antwerp. Here he obtained the themes of many of his most famous
compositions. "In the port, in the tavern, in the fairs of
neighbouring villages," says Prof. A. J. Wauters, "meeting now a young
couple in the giddy dance, or a drunkard stumbling in his path, he
sought the humble spectacle of homely things, the noisy mirth of
rustic festivities, and was always in quest of every-day subjects,
which earned for him, at the hands of posterity, the surname of
'Breughel of Peasants.'" He later removed to Brussels, where he
received many commissions, particularly from the Emperor Rudolph II,
who greatly admired his work. Several of his chief masterpieces are
therefore in the Imperial Museum at Vienna, but the Royal Museum at
Antwerp contains four of his works, while several others are scattered
about Europe.
[Illustration: "WINTER."--PETER BREUGHEL.]
To the lover of Flemish paintings Breughel is one of the most
characteristic and charming of them all. His art is distinctively
Flemish, in subject, treatment and inspiration. Somewhat influenced
perhaps by Jerome Bosch, a Brabant painter of the previous century
renowned for his weird and eccentric conceptions, Breughel is never
conventional. His work is that of a humourist, a satirist who sees the
follies of the world but laughs at them. His pictures are admirable in
their colouring, execution and the grouping of the figures, and they
are especially interesting in their vivid portrayal of the every-day
Flemish life of the times in which he lived.
The visitor to Antwerp cannot fail to observe the images of the
Virgin placed at the corners of nearly every street in the older
quarter of the city. These are said to be due to the Long Wapper, a
somewhat humorous but none the less grim and terrifying fiend who was
wont, many centuries ago, to play weird pranks upon the good people of
Antwerp after nightfall. He used to lie in wait for wayfarers upon
deserted by-streets in the uncanny hours between midnight and dawn.
Pouncing upon his terrified victims, he would carry them off,
sometimes never to return. Now and then he assumed the form of a lost
baby, to which, being found by some charitable mother, the breast was
given. Presently the good woman discovered to her horror that the
foundling was swelling and becoming heavy, and when she put it down
the Wapper assumed his own shape and ran off shrieking. At times he
peered into church windows and howled and gibbered at the worshippers,
and afterwards frightened them terribly as they went homeward, or,
stretching his body to an incredible length, he peered into the upper
windows of people's houses. Men feared to speak evil of the Long
Wapper, for something terrible was certain to happen to those who did.
At last it was found that he would never pass an image of the Virgin,
and that is why so many were erected that finally the evil fiend had
no more streets left in which to play his mad pranks and left Antwerp
for the lonely moors and dunes along the seacoast where he is still
said to be seen.
The place most frequented by the Long Wapper was a little stream which
came to be called the Wappersrui in consequence, and a bridge across
it the Wappersbrucke. Here he often strode out of the water with his
long thin legs extending far down into its dark depths like two black
stilts. Once he had reached the embankment he shrank instantly to a
diminutive size--usually taking the form of a schoolboy. These first
appearances were generally between daylight and dark, when the
twilight made it difficult to distinguish faces clearly, and he always
took the place of some boy who happened to be absent. A favourite game
of the boys, who were then returning from school, was called
shove-hat. In this game one boy tossed his hat on the ground and the
others shoved and kicked it about with their feet while its owner
sought to regain it. When it came the turn of the Long Wapper to throw
down his hat the first one to give it a kick broke his wooden shoe to
pieces and fractured his toes, for the hat proved to be a heavy iron
pot. Then the street echoed with a jeering "Ha, ha, ha!" but the
Wapper had disappeared.
His pranks upon grown-up people were apt to be far more serious in
their consequences than those just described. Often he paused at some
tavern door and joined the party seated there in a game of cards,
which invariably resulted in a violent quarrel in the course of which
one or more of the players was usually killed. On another occasion he
appeared in broad daylight selling mussels. Encountering four women
sitting outside their door at work he opened a mussel and offered it
to one of them. She tasted it, but it turned into dirt in her mouth.
Apologising, he opened another, which all could see was a sound, fine
mussel, and offered it to another of the women. No sooner was it in
her mouth than it turned into a huge spider. The women thereupon set
upon him, but he defended himself so rudely that two of them were
nearly killed, when he suddenly vanished, leaving only an echo of wild
laughter.
In the country to the east of Antwerp there are many quaint legends
still told at the peasants' firesides on stormy winter nights about
the Kaboutermannekens who in ancient times frequented that
neighbourhood. Near the village of Gelrode there is a small hill on
the sides of which are many little caves which were formerly the
abode of these fairies, the hill being called the Kabouterberg
to this day in consequence. There is a similar hill, called
Kaboutermannekensberg, between Turnhout and Casterle. They were also
called Red Caps or Klabbers, and were usually clad in red from head to
foot, and often had green hands and faces, according to those who were
so fortunate as to see them. These little gnomes or elves seem to have
resembled their kind as reported in the folk-lore of other northern
countries, being the willing and loyal slaves of those who treated
them kindly, and the bitter, and sometimes dangerous, enemies of those
who misused them.
Still another local sprite--this time a spirit of evil resembling in
some respects the Long Wapper--was known as Kludde. This fiend was
often met with after dark in many parts of Flanders, and even in
Brabant. At times Kludde would appear to the peasants as the dusk of
twilight was deepening into the intense darkness of night on the
Flemish plains, in the guise of an old, half-starved horse. If a
farmer or stable-boy mistook him for one of his own horses and mounted
on Kludde he instantly rushed off at an incredible speed until he
came to some water into which he pitched his terrified rider headlong.
This accomplished to his satisfaction he vanished, crying "Kludde,
Kludde!" as he went away, whence came his name.