The Spell of Flanders

Adjoining the Chapelle du Saint-Sang is the Hotel de Ville. This structure is a very fine example of Flemish municipal architecture, dating from the last quarter of the fourteenth century. Here the Counts of Flanders formerly took the oath to respect the rights and privileges of the city, this formality taking place in the last window to the right. Originally there were statues of former princes on the façade and six of these were coloured by Jean Van Eyck in 1435. All were destroyed during the Revolution. Part of the interior is still used by various government officials, while up-stairs the tourists usually visit the ancient Salle Echinivale, or Council Chamber. This was restored in 1895 and decorated with a series of twelve mural paintings representing notable scenes in the history of the city. Of these eleven are by Albrecht de Vriendt, and the last by his brother, Julian, the first artist dying just before his work was completed. As these pictures form an interesting epitome of the history of the city, the subjects are given herewith:

1. Return of the Brugeois from the Battle of the Golden Spurs at Courtrai in 1302.

2. Foundation of the Order of the Golden Fleece by Philip of Burgundy at Bruges in 1430.

3. Dierick of Alsace bringing the Holy Blood to the chapel of St. Basil in 1150.

4. The interior of the ancient Hospital of St. Jean.

5. Magistrates of Bruges renewing the privileges of the Hanseatic League.

6. Count Philip of Alsace granting a charter to Bruges (1190).

7. Magistrates visiting the Studio of Jean Van Eyck (1433).

8. The printing by movable type in Bruges by Jean Britto in 1446.

9. Count Louis of Maele laying the foundation of the Town-hall (1376).

10. Jacob Van Maerlant, father of Flemish poetry, born at Damme.

11. The Free-fair.

12. Opening of the new Zwyn canal in 1404.

One of the most interesting of the almost innumerable mediæval buildings in Bruges is the Palais du Franc which, with its many quaint turrets and gables, overlooks the fish market on the Quai Vert. The associations and history of this sumptuous bit of sixteenth century architecture date from the twelfth century—1190 to be exact—when Philip of Alsace granted a charter to the region stretching to the northward from the city to the sea, and from Aardenburg (now just across the Dutch frontier) to Dixmude. This wide tract of territory was called the Franc or Liberty of Bruges, and comprised ninety-one parishes and the towns of Ostende, Blankenburghe, Eccloo, Lissweghe, Aardenburg, Sluys and Dixmude. Of these only the first two are known to the tourists of the present day, while one must needs search the map very closely to find one or two of the others at all, but in the time of Philip all were busy centres of trade and industry. This was the hereditary land of the Karls, whose revolt against the attempt of Charles the Good to force them under the feudal yoke cost that monarch his life.

The charter was called the Keurbrief and laid the foundation for the administration of a code of justice that, rude as it was, meant liberty for those who otherwise would have been utterly at the mercy of any feudal lord or wandering knight. It was the Magna Carta of a large part of the Count’s dominions and even its stern eye-for-eye and life-for-life doctrine was tempered by equivalents in cash that might be paid. The life of a Karl was worth twice as much as that of a monk or priest, while for each injury there was an appropriate fine. He who broke a dyke must lose the hand that did the damage, besides forfeiting all his goods; for false weights the penalty was a fine of three livres for each offence. Fencing one’s property against game entailed branding with a red hot iron, or trial by the Count—who might confiscate the goods of the guilty party, but his life and liberty were to be safe. This cruel game law was not repealed for nearly three centuries, and must have entailed much hardship. On the whole, however, the charter was liberal for its day, and the country under it flourished exceedingly—a sure evidence of wise laws.

The Keurbrief was administered by the Magistrates of the Franc in the Palais du Franc, which was therefore a sort of special court. The present edifice is not the one erected by Philip, or used by him for the purpose, but dates from the early part of the fifteenth century. Part of it is still used as the Palais de Justice, but that part of the present structure is for the most part modern. The most interesting portion of the edifice, and the only one shown to tourists, is the Court Room containing the magnificent Cheminée du Franc, or chimney-piece, erected in honour of the Ladies’ Peace negotiated by Margaret of Austria while Regent of the Netherlands in 1529. The work was executed from designs by Lancelot Blondeel, a painter of Bruges, and was completed in 1530. The fireplace itself is of black marble, surmounted by a frieze in white marble containing four bas-reliefs representing the history of the chaste Suzanne. One cannot but wonder what was the connection of thought that suggested this story in conjunction with the commemoration of the Treaty of Cambrai, but at all events here it is. The reliefs are of varying excellence, the one showing Suzanne about to be seized by her aged admirers being very sharp and clear, while the fourth which shows the culprits being stoned to death is rather indistinct.

The upper part of the monumental chimney is of oak and occupies almost the entire side of the room. In the centre stands Charles V, represented as a Count of Flanders, nearly life size and finely carved. At his right are statues of Maximilian and Marie of Burgundy, and at the left Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile—these being the Emperor’s ancestors on his father’s and mother’s sides respectively. On the throne behind the Emperor are the busts of Philip the Handsome and Joanna of Spain, his father and mother, and below these are the portraits in small medallions of Charles de Lannoy, who won the victory of Pavia where Francis I, the King of France, was captured, and Margaret of Austria, who negotiated the treaty. As the last mentioned portrait is almost invisible in the shadow of the Emperor it hardly seems as though the chimney-piece does justice to the loyal and talented woman whose successful diplomacy the entire work is intended to commemorate. As an example of sixteenth-century wood-carving, however, and as a most important historical monument, this chimney-piece is by no means the least interesting of the many things to be seen at Bruges.

Unlike most tourists, the Professor seemed to be in no hurry to inspect the famous Belfry, although we had passed it a score of times during our stay. Facing the Grande Place, and towering three hundred and fifty-three feet into the air, it could not be overlooked, while its loud chimes—which rang every quarter of an hour, and can be heard for many blocks around—insured that it could not be forgotten. Moreover, we more than once took our evening meal at a little restaurant just across the Place from it and saw its graceful octagonal parapet on one occasion outlined against the fast-flying grey clouds of a summer storm and the next day against the blue sky of one of the few perfect June days it was our fortune to enjoy. “Too soon,” he said, in answer to our inquiring glances—“the Belfry belongs to the period of Bruges’ splendour, while the buildings we have seen thus far date from the formative period when she was still little more than a fortress on a marsh.”

The original structure dates from the very early Counts of Flanders—possibly from the time of the first Baldwin—but was practically destroyed by a fire in the year 1280. It was then that the present edifice was begun, at a period when the commercial and industrial importance of the city was already very great. The city’s seal and archives were stored in a strong room within the belfry walls, where four wrought iron doors secured by ten locks and ten keys guarded them against abstraction by the emissaries of some Count who might desire to curtail the privileges of the city. Eight of these keys were kept by the deans of the eight leading guilds—the butchers, bakers, shoemakers, tailors, weavers, brokers, carpenters and blacksmiths—who thus virtually controlled the government. This room the Professor desired to see above all else in the old structure. We found the four wrought iron doors, but the archive chamber no longer contains archives or the city’s seal. It was a most interesting old room, nevertheless, and one that ought to particularly interest the builders of the elaborate burglar-proof and earthquake-proof vaults that extend below so many great banking houses in America. Alas! neither the four doors nor the ten locks rendered this ancient strong-room for the protection of the city’s liberties proof against the cunning and power of tyrants, and the precious charters it once held were gradually taken away, despite the stout handiwork of one Erembald, blacksmith, who received eighty-one pounds for forging the doors in the year 1290.

To reach the bells one mounts a steep, dark staircase which is said to contain four hundred and two steps, although we did not count them. The chimes are claimed to be the finest in Europe, and comprise forty-nine bells weighing in the aggregate fifty-six thousand, one hundred and sixty-six pounds. They were cast by George Dumery in 1743 and are noted for their soft tone. The tambour which operates the chimes that ring every quarter of an hour weighs nineteen thousand, nine hundred and sixty-six pounds and is pierced by thirty thousand, five hundred square holes in which are fixed the pegs that pull the strings commanding the hammers hanging outside the bells. By altering the position of these pegs the tunes can be varied, but the programme played while we were in the city was as follows:

At the hour: “Rondo, 15th sonata,” by Mozart; at the quarter past: “Le Carillon de Dunkerque,” a popular air; at the half: “The Day of Happiness,” by Mozart; at the three-quarters past: “The Three Drummers,” a Flemish popular air. The official bell-ringer is M. Toon Nauwelaerts, a native of Lierre, where his ancestors have been bell-ringers for more than a hundred years. Although a young man, M. Nauwelaerts won an international competition of bell-ringers organised by the city of Bruges in 1911.

The view from the summit of the Belfry is one of the most superb in Flanders, especially if the visitor is so fortunate as to have fallen on one of those days when the clouds roll in great fleecy masses of dazzling white that form a wondrous background for the grim grey tower of St. Sauveur and the tapering red spire of the cathedral. As one looks down upon the sea of tiny red-roofed houses far below he is transported in fancy to the time, centuries ago, when watchmen peered off across these very parapets day and night to sound the alarm of an approaching foe, or announce the approach of their mighty Count or some noble visitor. In so doing he can realise what the old Belfry has meant to the city on the Roya. “For six hundred years,” wrote M. Gilliodts, one of the city’s learned archivists, “this belfry has watched over the city of Bruges. It has beheld her triumphs and her failures, her glory and her shame, her prosperity and her gradual decay, and, in spite of so many vicissitudes, it is still standing to bear witness to the genius of our forefathers, to awaken alike memories of old times and admiration for one of the most splendid monuments of civic architecture which the Middle Ages have produced.”

The best time of all in which to study and admire the external aspect of this noble structure is when the sun is sinking to rest and its rays fall slantingly across the sombre pile of tawny brick, touching up its projections here and there with high lights that contrast sharply with the deep shadows behind them, and listen—as did so often our poet Longfellow—to the wonderfully sweet chimes as they ring the quarter hours:

“Low and loud and sweetly blended,Low at times and loud at times,And changing like a poet’s rhymesRing the beautiful wild chimesFrom the Belfry in the marketOf the ancient town of Bruges.”

The Halles themselves, of which the Belfry is the chief ornament, are notable for their considerable size, forming a rectangle one hundred and forty-three feet broad and two hundred and seventy-six feet deep. The archeological museum in one wing—which is in course of removal to the Gruuthuise Palace—enabled us to see the interior of the structure, the extent of which indicates the volume of business that was transacted there when Bruges was known as “the Venice of the North.” The great commercial activity of Bruges during the period of its prosperity, from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, was due primarily to the fact that the Counts of Flanders decreed that it should be the sole port of entry for the entire country. The burghers quickly perceived the priceless value of this privilege, and by their enterprise and liberality made the city the foremost metropolis in Europe in the volume and variety of its international trade. With London its relations were especially intimate and cordial, each city granting to the merchants of the other privileges that in those days were almost unheard of. For example, the merchants of Bruges in time of war were granted forty days of grace in which to dispose of their property and provide for their personal safety. On one occasion, while a war was actually going on, they were given a special truce of ninety days in which to traffic freely with the subjects of the King of England. The reason for these unusual favours was that Bruges was the great market where the wool of England, on which the prosperity of the country depended, was disposed of. Not infrequently the archives record instances where the Kings of England treated with the chief magistrates of Bruges on terms of complete equality, as if with a sovereign power.

Nor was England the only country represented in the market places of Bruges during this period. The Doges of Venice often treated directly with the Burgomasters of the Italian city’s Flemish rival, while the powerful Hanseatic League established here their chief establishment for the Netherlands. The list of the “Nations,” as the groups of foreign merchants were called, makes curious reading at the present day. There were English, Scotch, French, Lusitanians, Castilians, Venetians, Genoans, Florentines; merchants from Aragon, Biscay, Lucca, Milan, Lombardy and Navarre. The German merchants from the Hanseatic towns of Lubeck, Hamburg, Cologne, Dantzig and Bremen numbered no less than forty houses in the year 1362, while the Italian and Spanish firms resident in the city were still more numerous. Many of these concerns were among the foremost trading and banking houses of the Middle Ages, with mercantile transactions extending into every part of the known world and strong enough financially to loan money to princes. When the Duke of Pembroke was captured by Du Guesclin in the Hundred Years’ War between England and France it was in Bruges that his countrymen borrowed the seventy thousand pounds demanded as ransom.

As befitted the first mercantile city in the world, business methods were more advanced at Bruges than anywhere else. It is claimed that the first insurance policies ever drawn up were devised and signed in Bruges about the year 1300. A form of registration of land titles was in use there as early as the fifteenth century. Its Bourse, or central exchange for merchandise of all kinds, is claimed to have been the first ever established.

In a single day in the year 1456 no less than 150 foreign vessels arrived at Bruges through its canals and the River Zwyn, and while these were, of course, small craft as compared to those of the present day there was then no port in the world that could boast of an equal quantity of shipping. Industrially, the town was no less important, having some fifty thousand artisans belonging to fifty-two different guilds.

The silting up of the Zwyn, rendering the approach and departure of shipping difficult and uncertain, started a downward movement that in less than a century destroyed all of this great activity and prosperity. Had it come alone it is probable that the sturdy merchants of Bruges would have found a way to overcome this adverse factor to their continued success, either by digging a new channel to the sea or by dredging, but misfortunes—as is their proverbial wont—did not come singly. In 1488, as a result of a conflict between the city and Maximilian, the stores and exchanges were closed for three months and all business came to a standstill. Seven years later it was said that nearly five thousand houses stood vacant and abandoned, no one caring either to buy or rent them. One by one the great merchants of the city closed their counting-rooms and went away; one by one the artisans departed. The last of the “Nations” to desert the declining city was the Hanseatic League, which stood by it loyally until 1516, when it removed its offices to Antwerp, by that time the acknowledged metropolis of the North.

The Minnewater, or Lac d’Amour, is—apart from its exquisite beauty—of interest as another memento of the city’s former commerce. This was the chief harbour for shipping, and, no doubt, was thronged with sailing craft, while its banks must have swarmed with merchants checking their arriving or departing cargoes, stevedores carrying bales and boxes to and fro, clumsy wagons and carts for transporting merchandise to the warehouses of the city and all the varied noise and bustle of a great seaport. It is strangely silent and deserted now, and the grass grows tall around the round tower built in 1398 by Jan van Oudenaarde, and the white swans float slowly and majestically beneath the black arches of the adjoining bridge which is eight years older than the tower. It is said that he, or she, who stands on the central arch of this bridge at midnight and expresses a desire will have the wish fulfilled, but we did not try it. Before leaving this charming spot, however, we went along the banks of the little lake to a point where, looking back, we had the round tower and the bridge in the middle distance, the lake in the foreground, and the towers of the city on the horizon. This view is, without doubt, the finest the old town affords.

The visitor to Bruges who is interested in the past should devote at least half a day to a pilgrimage to Damme, distant about an hour’s walk along the canal that leads from the new port of Bruges to the sea. In 1180 this now all but forgotten town was made an independent commune with two burgomasters, and for two centuries thereafter it enjoyed a great and increasing prosperity. It became the chief entrepôt for the great commercial city of Bruges during its period of splendour, and most of the leading merchants maintained offices there. Its warehouses were crowded with merchandise from every corner of Europe—wines from France and Spain, beer from England, wool from Scotland, silk from Italy, all manner of cloths and stuffs, spices of all kinds, metals of every variety known to the metal workers of those days, rare and precious goods of every description.

To-day the very scene of all this mercantile activity has vanished. Gone are the busy warehouses, the docks and wharves, even the very harbour in which—according to ancient chroniclers—a score of ships of the largest size then built could anchor easily. All that remains is a diminutive Grande Place surrounded by several ancient edifices, and the ruins of a huge church. In the centre of the Place is a modern statue of Jacob van Maerlant, called “the Father of Flemish Poets.” Fame has surely never played any more astounding trick than that out of the great host who lived in this busy commercial town in the days of its prosperity—portly burgomasters, skilled in winning the plaudits of the populace; shrewd, far-sighted merchants grown rich from the commerce with distant lands; skilled artisans and craftsmen in a hundred guilds—all, all are forgotten, while an obscure poet, whom very likely many of those who knew him derided as a fool, is alone remembered as the one great man of Damme.

Facing the Grande Place is the ancient Hotel de Ville, which, in addition to being the most notable monument of the dead town, is also an estaminet where the living can get a little refreshment. The main floor of this edifice is divided into three large rooms. The first one is the estaminet, with its array of bottles and its beer pump contrasting most incongruously with the remaining vestiges of its ancient grandeur.

Adjoining this is a large, irregular and unfurnished room, bare of ornamentation save for two corbels, or Gothic brackets, which support the main rafters of the ceiling. These are of wood, elaborately carved. One represents Van Maerlant in his study, seated at a desk, with what M. Havard calls a “chaste Suzanne” bathing in a tub over his head. The other shows King David with his harp, and is embellished with sundry other figures.

The remaining room is by far the most interesting, for it was here that Charles the Bold publicly betrothed Margaret of York. The room, which is officially termed the Salle des Délibérations, or Council Hall, has a fine old fireplace said to have been restored during the seventeenth century. It is decorated with two female figures in hoop skirts and bears the motto “Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.” This quotation from Vergil (Æneid 6:853) sounds rather pompous and out of place in the council chamber of this now completely vanquished and ruined city, and must have seemed so even in the seventeenth century, but it may have been a survival of an inscription placed over the original fireplace in the days when Damme dared to close its gates even against the men from Bruges itself, and the puissant Counts of Flanders had to use force to compel it to open them.

It was in the year 1468 that this room in which we are now standing had its one great day and became, for a brief space, the setting of one of those splendid mediæval scenes that bards and novelists so fondly recall, and that—in our age of up-to-date inventions—the moving-picture men are so busily reconstructing and re-enacting. The Princess had landed at Sluys, near the mouth of the River Zwyn, where the Duke of Burgundy paid her a brief visit in secret—possibly to see what she looked like, for this was a marriage of state and intended to further his far-reaching ambitions. Probably if she had been as homely as a witch the wedding would have taken place just the same, but as the reverse was the case the preliminary inspection must have been very gratifying. The following day the royal lady and her company rode to Damme in a fleet of barges gorgeously decorated with gold, rich velvets and rare silks. Here she was lodged in this very Council Chamber of the Hotel de Ville, and here the Duke came in great state to perform the public ceremony of betrothal. The wedding ring was given in the presence of the English Bishop who had accompanied the Princess, and Charles announced that he would await her presence on the morrow at Bruges, where the wedding itself was to be celebrated in the Cathedral.

The wedding procession as it departed for Bruges the next day must have been another brave sight for the proud citizens of Damme. The bride, reclining in a litter borne by four white horses, wore a magnificent gown of cloth of gold, a crown on her forehead, a jewelled necklace, and a mantle clasped with precious stones. Around her pranced her ladies of honour, mounted on white horses gaily bedecked with crimson satin. Immediately behind this picturesque group came five decorated chariots bearing a score of beautiful ladies from the English court, and following these came the guard of honour, or escort, provided by the Duke—a squadron of counts, barons and knights, with their faithful squires, their horses covered with gold and silver, the riders resplendent in bright coloured velvet and rich lace. The good people of the Middle Ages dearly loved a pageant, and this surely was one to rejoice the heart of every citizen of Damme, for here was the pride of the chivalry of all Europe—fair ladies and brave men from oversea and from every corner of the great Duke’s wide dominions—thronging the Grande Place as the procession formed, and then falling into their respective places as the long line passed out through the city gate and proceeded on the straight, tree-lined grande route that led to Bruges.

CHAPTER V