CHAPTER II

THE PERIOD OF FEUDALISM

Charles the Great died in 814. His son, Emperor Louis, was a weakling, and after his death the mighty empire of Charles was destroyed by internal troubles and civil war (840). Lotharius, the eldest son of Emperor Louis, endeavored to seize the empire for himself. To prevent this, both his brothers, Louis and Charles, leagued themselves against him and defeated him in the terrible battle of Fontanet, which has been characterized by contemporaries as a “judgment of God.” The peace that was later concluded between the three brothers led to the famous Treaty of Verdun (843), an event of the utmost importance in the history of Belgium.

The empire created by Charles the Great was divided into three parts: the central part, including the largest portion of Belgium, Holland, Italy, and the eastern part of France, was allotted to Lotharius, together with the title of Emperor; the western part of the empire, embracing the largest part of France, and Flanders to the west of the Scheldt, became the share of Charles; the eastern part, which included nearly the whole of Germany and certain parts of Austria-Hungary, was given to Louis. The Treaty of Verdun practically cut the territory of Belgium into two parts, separated by the Scheldt, and gave each of them to a different ruler. These two sections of Belgium remained separated during the Middle Ages, and were not reunited until six centuries later.

After the death of Emperor Lotharius (855) the northern part of his central territory, located between the North Sea and the Jura Mountains, was given to one of his sons, Lotharius II. That section which included the entire eastern part of Belgium to the Scheldt embraced peoples of very different race and origin: Frisians, Franks, Alamans, Walloons. As it was impossible to name the territory after its inhabitants--they were of too many different origins--it was named after its sovereign: _regnum Lotharii_, “Lotharingia,” “the realm of Lotharius.”

In 870 the Treaty of Meerssen, whereby Charles, King of France, and Louis, King of Germany, divided between them the realm of Lotharius II, ended the existence of that state. The second Treaty of Verdun in 879 finally settled the status of Lotharingia: the boundary between France and Germany was declared to be the river Scheldt, and the whole of Lotharingia was incorporated in Germany. Of course, all the parts of the former empire of Charles the Great were once again united by the Emperor Charles the Stout, but after all kinds of internal struggles, Lotharingia was again--and this time for many centuries--annexed to Germany in 925.

Belgium is thus divided into two tracts by the Scheldt: the western part, Flanders, belonging to France and politically influenced by that country; the eastern part, Lotharingia, which was a dependency of Germany. As in the establishment of the bishoprics, so here, no attention was paid to the racial differences of the inhabitants. Both Lotharingia and Flanders included peoples of different origin: Flanders had inhabitants of Teutonic origin in the north and inhabitants of Romance origin in the south; Lotharingia included Flemings in the east, the center, and the north, and Walloons in the south.

Thus, at the beginning of the feudal system, there existed no political and no linguistic unity in Belgium. Moreover, although Flanders formed a politically united body, Lotharingia was subdivided into several small principalities: the duchy of Brabant, including the actual provinces of Brabant and Antwerp, the county of Limburg, the county of Namur, the duchy of Luxemburg, the county of Hainaut, and two ecclesiastical principalities, Cambrai and Liège.

The absence of political unity was a consequence of the new political constitution of most of the countries of Western Europe in the tenth century--of feudalism, so called. In place of the former despotic and centralized power of the King there was now to be found the locally asserted rule of dukes, counts, viscounts, etc. These public officers who, in the ninth century, were still subordinate agents of the King, without any other power than that delegated to them by their master, had succeeded, partly through the weakness of the heirs of Charles the Great and partly on account of the invasions of the Normans in the ninth century and the incursion of the Hungarians in the tenth, in grasping more firmly their delegated powers and in making their military, political, and financial perquisites hereditary. Thanks to the custom whereby the King granted them a domain, called _beneficium_, as a reward for their services or to insure their loyalty, they had succeeded in getting a strong political foothold in their respective provinces, and had continuously developed their possessions and their influence. In the tenth century the dukes and counts, formerly officers of the King, had won for themselves an independent and hereditary position. The kingdom was now everywhere broken up into small principalities, practically autonomous, where the King no longer exercised his power and where the people were now dominated by local dynasties. The new political organization, called feudalism, existed, of course, in Belgium also, and contributed in a large measure to the complete absence of political and national unity throughout the country.

Each county, each duchy, became a world apart, had its own politics and made war on the neighboring principality, or aided it in case of attack from others. So Flanders enjoyed friendly relations with Cambrai and Hainaut; Hainaut was on good terms with Namur and Luxemburg. Sometimes they fought one another: Brabant and Limburg were enemies for a long time. Later they became united under the same princes. The same phenomenon existed in the Northern Netherlands: Holland was friendly toward Cleves, but fought against Gueldre on account of Utrecht, against Flanders on account of Zealand, against Utrecht on account of Friesland, etc.

For the most part, Flanders or the western part of Belgium was a vassal of the French King; Lotharingia or the eastern part of Belgium was a vassal of the German Empire. The dependency of Lotharingia, however, was less definite than was that of Flanders to France, for the numerous principalities into which the former was broken up introduced more autonomy for the local dynasties and rendered intervention on the part of the Emperor more difficult. Flanders, on the other hand, as a more homogeneous territory, was more closely united with its feudal lord.

The ultimate fate of Flanders and Lotharingia depended, however, on the degree of independence that their princes would be able to win. In accordance with the general politics of all vassals, the counts of Flanders and the dukes of Lotharingia dreamed of but one thing, namely, of escape from the domination of their feudal lord. The result was that, after some centuries, both parts of Belgium were brought more and more closely together, and from this resulted that much-needed political unity, the only hope of a real independent Belgium.

The political history of the country in feudal times (the tenth to the twelfth century) must now be examined.

Annexed to the German Empire, Lotharingia became from 925 a sort of German province, especially during the reign of Emperor Otto I (962), a man of powerful personality. Otto clearly realized that no layman at the head of Lotharingia would be loyal enough to submit entirely to his own politics and he therefore appealed to the devotion and faithfulness of the bishops. These were to be the agents of the German influence and domination. In 953 Otto appointed his own brother, Bruno, as Duke of Lotharingia and obtained for him at the same time the archbishopric of Cologne. Having thus acquired control of both the political and ecclesiastical power, Bruno became the intermediary by whom not only the duchy but also the Lotharingian church was to be more and more Germanized.

However, the domination of the imperial German church did not succeed in breaking entirely the resistance of the local Lotharingian princes. Those princes had no affection for the Emperor, their overlord; they could not forget their old national dynasty, the Carolingians, who belonged to the country and were not foreigners, as were the German emperors. The people of Lotharingia supported those local dynasties which claimed descent from the old Carolingian national stock; the castles of the local counts of Hainaut, Louvain, and Limburg became centers of political influence, whose object was to check the domination of the feudal German lord. Since the tenth century the local houses of Hainaut and Louvain, of Namur and Luxemburg, had attempted to organize their political power. In the last quarter of the eleventh century, the Germanization of Lotharingia broke down as a result of the so-called “Struggle for the Investitures,” whereby the power of the Emperor over the church in Germany was destroyed. The bishops of the Empire, having to choose between loyalty to their feudal lord and obedience to the pope, were no longer political servants of the Emperor. The downfall of the imperial church meant the end of its influence in Lotharingia. The local princes threw off the feudal yoke and practically divided the whole of Lotharingia among themselves. And thus was witnessed the end of that large imperial province that for so long had covered the western frontier of Germany between the Rhine and the Scheldt. We hear no more of Lotharingia: another name appears in Belgian history, namely, Brabant. It was the Duke of Brabant, of the local house of Louvain, who, from this time on, gradually extended his political influence over the former Lotharingia, in that part of Belgium lying east of the Scheldt.

The German Emperor was now no more the lord of the Lotharingian princes: he was henceforth regarded as an ally or as an enemy, according to the circumstances. The Lotharingian principalities no longer played a part in events occurring on the other side of the Rhine; they no longer sent soldiers to the feudal imperial army; they followed the emperors no more in their expeditions against Italy; and, in the Lotharingian literature, there is to be found hardly a suggestion of a recollection of the existence of the Emperor.

From the middle of the twelfth century on, the national life of the eastern part of Belgium displayed more and more cohesion and individuality; little by little it broke down the geographical barrier of the Scheldt that the Treaty of Verdun had erected between Lotharingia and Flanders.

Meanwhile the western part of Belgium, the county of Flanders, had developed also in its own way. Assigned by the Treaty of Verdun to the kingdom of France, Flanders did not seek a separation from a country to which it was geographically attached and on whose territory were to be found the seats of its bishoprics and most of its monasteries. The political power of the house of Flanders dates from the time of Count Baldwin I, called Baldwin of the Iron Arm (879), an adventurous ruler, who violently took the daughter of the King of France, his lord, and made her his wife, notwithstanding the vehement protest of her royal father. That marriage brought to the count the rich possessions of his wife and furnished to his heirs an excellent pretext for meddling in the politics of France. The kings of France at the time of the first counts of Flanders were weaklings; moreover, the bishops of Noyon-Tournai, Arras, and Térouanne were not as loyal to their lord as those of Lotharingia were to the Emperor. The political conditions were thus quite different in Flanders, and at a time when the iron policy of Otto I and his heirs subdued the Lotharingian princes, the counts of Flanders succeeded in developing their independence and political influence without much opposition. Baldwin II (910) enlarged his domain by conquering the wealthy regions of Walloon-Flanders[7] and Artois and formed an alliance with England by marrying an Anglo-Saxon princess. Count Arnulf (918) took the title of marquess and tried--though vainly--to overpower the Duke of Normandy, who checked his advance in the south and with it the extension of Flemish conquest beyond the river Canche. Effectively blocked in their efforts to extend their power in the south, the Flemish counts next turned their attention to the north and the east. Successively the islands of Zeeland, the “Four Métiers,” and the county of Alost were subjugated, although already under the feudal authority of the German Empire. The result was that the Count of Flanders became at once a vassal of the King of France and of the German Emperor.

By the conquest of the county of Alost, Count Baldwin V was enabled to cross the Scheldt and to advance into Lotharingian territory. The marriage of his son with a princess of Hainaut resulted in uniting both Flanders and Hainaut under the same dynasty. Here again the barrier erected by the Treaty of Verdun was broken down, and for the first time political ties were established on both sides of the Scheldt, between the two parts of Belgium.

Coincident with the first signs of a tendency to union between Eastern and Western Belgium, Flanders began to come into closer contact with foreign countries and powers. As the daughter of Baldwin V was married to William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, many Flemish troops took part in the conquest of England by the Normans (1066), and these remained in the British Isles for purposes of colonization. Diplomatic and commercial relations between Flanders and England were the happy result. Under Count Robert (1070), Flanders came into contact with Denmark and with the court of Rome; a pilgrimage to Jerusalem undertaken by Robert brought him into touch with the Emperor of Constantinople, and the Count of Flanders happened to be the first prince of Europe to consider a crusade against the Turks.

In the twelfth century, however, the political expansion of Flanders came to a standstill. To the weaklings of the former period in France there had now succeeded kings of stronger character, whose policy led them to subdue their restless vassals and to centralize their own power. They sought, therefore, to check the expansion of Flanders and to dominate the powerful county, attaching it more closely to the French domain. The road to the south was thus no longer open for eventual conquest; the road to the east also was barred by the Lotharingian princes. The influence of the German Empire had practically disappeared in Lotharingia. Brabant and Hainaut now became the centers of a strong political life. It is a curious phenomenon of history that, when Flanders was threatened by the growing strength of France, Lotharingia became practically independent of the influence of the German Empire.

There was, therefore, as has been seen, no political unity in Belgium during the feudal period: east and west each developed in its own way and political conditions in each section were very strongly influenced by their powerful neighbors. There did exist, however, a common tendency toward autonomy and freedom, Flanders trying to escape from the influence of France and, to some extent, that of England;[8] Lotharingia struggling against the hegemony of Germany. That tendency, it must be admitted, is not a purely characteristic Belgian movement. At this period the feudalists were everywhere to be found fighting against the supremacy of the King and trying to win complete political independence for themselves.

The one essentially Belgian factor in the diverging existence of the east and the west, and which exerted a strong influence in favor of unification, was the common social, economic, and religious life.

A study of religious conditions in Belgium during the tenth and eleventh centuries reveals, even more clearly than a study of political events, the part played by both Germany and France in imposing their respective practices, and the ability of Belgium to incorporate and to modify the best elements of Teutonic and Latin civilization.

After the Norman invasions of the ninth century, which left Belgium covered with ruins and with many churches and monasteries burned, or abandoned by their terrified occupants, the ecclesiastical discipline suffered severely. The old prescriptions of the Benedictine rule were no longer observed and most of the monasteries became dependents of powerful laymen.

In the tenth century a revival of the discipline followed, thanks to the efforts of St. Gerard of Brogne, founder of the little monastery of Brogne, near Namur (923). Gerard excited so much enthusiasm by the sanctity of his life and the rigor of his discipline that princes and bishops united in asking him to restore the practice of ascetic life both in Lotharingia and in Flanders. The number of the monasteries to the north of the linguistic barrier, especially in Flanders, soon increased, whereas before they were mainly to be found in Southern Belgium. Belgium became a country of monasteries in the eleventh century, and ever since that time the people have shown that deep religious spirit that is one of the distinctive traits of the national character. The monks exerted a very strong influence on the minds of the rough feudalists, who thought mainly of war and robbery: one of the most powerful dukes of Lotharingia, Godefrid the Bearded, desired to be buried in the dress of a monk. The robber-knights, pursuing an enemy or a convoy of merchants, thought only of plunder; once in sight of the walls of a monastery, however, they would cease their pursuit and turn back. Carrying through the country the relics of their saints, the monks would often succeed in stopping private wars and murder. An example of the religious spirit is the great “procession” of Tournai, that attracted every year thousands of pilgrims and visitors, Flemish and Walloon together, and that acted as a unifying factor for both races of Belgium.

The Reform of Cluny found the French and German influence in serious conflict. The reform in question, by which it was hoped to reintroduce a very severe discipline in the monastic world, originated in French Burgundy (1004) and soon spread through the northern countries, especially in Flanders and Lotharingia. The monks of Cluny resolutely resented any interference of the temporal power in religious affairs. As a result they found themselves practically opposed to the system of the imperial and feudal church of Germany, dominated by the Emperor. The destruction of that system thus meant indirectly the destruction of German influence in Lotharingia. When the Struggle for the Investitures broke out, the Lotharingian bishops hesitated at first, but after a while nearly all of them took sides with the papal cause against the Emperor. Both in matters of politics and religion Lotharingia tended more and more to break away from Germany.

Hitherto only one monastic order had influenced religious life in Belgium, namely, the Benedictines. In the twelfth century other orders were born--the Cistercians and the Norbertins or Premontrés. The Cistercians, founded by St. Bernard in France, played the part, mainly, of clearers of wild land and of colonizers; they introduced new economic and agricultural methods and exerted a deep influence in economic life. The Premontrés were canons, rather than monks, who passed their time in study and in administering the parishes. But they, too, did much for the colonization of the country, and they transformed into fruit-bearing land the barren soil of the Antwerp Campine.

The number of parishes increased in the course of the tenth and eleventh centuries. New chapels were founded in cases where the nearest parish church was too far removed, or where a number of people sufficient for the formation of a new parish were to be found dwelling close together. Sometimes the establishment of a new parish was ordered at the instance of a wealthy landlord, and a chapel constructed on the domain of his manor, in order to gratify his desire for better opportunities for attending church. Each chapel was ordinarily granted the right to have its own parish priest, to whom was granted permission to baptize infants and bury the dead in the parish cemetery.

[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL OF TOURNAI]

As for the economic organization, in ante-feudal times there existed an important difference between the country south and that lying north of a line drawn through Boulogne, Saint-Omer, Douai, Mons, and Maestricht. North of this line we find the system of isolated farms; south of the line the system of villages. But during the tenth century the landlords extended their possessions in farm lands as well as in the villages, and the same economic organization, directed by the same principles, prevailed throughout the country. Each domain was divided into two parts: a central part, including the manor of the landlord and that portion of the land exploited by himself by means of unfree “serfs” or agricultural laborers; and another part, surrounding the central domain, divided into small lots, given to free farmers.

The domain of the ecclesiastical landlords, bishops or abbots, was exceedingly well administered and the conditions of life of the people depending upon these landlords were very favorable; the ecclesiastical “serfs” frequently asserted that they preferred their servitude to freedom, as less burdensome than freedom itself. The ecclesiastical “serfs” were grouped in families, _familiae_, within whose limits justice was administered by the mayor of the community in the name of the abbot.

The lay landlords, on the other hand, were bad administrators. Dealing only with politics and war, they ignored agricultural problems; they did not come into contact with their laborers, and they left with their officers, _ministeriales_, the care of ruling and judging their servants. They preferred attendance at “tournaments,” which might be regarded as a sort of military training and as a means of learning the profession of bearer of arms. They undertook long and distant journeys in order to fight the knights of Vermandois, Champagne, and Picardy in France. And as a result both Walloons and Flemings came in contact with their French brethren in arms.

The upper landlords, the dukes and counts, gave much attention, however, to the colonization and the economic improvement of the country. Northern and Western Flanders and Northern Brabant were covered with sandy soil and marshes, and thick woods were to be found in some parts as late as the end of the eleventh century. In the early part of that century, the counts of Flanders began to engage the unemployed for agricultural purposes. They turned the unproductive parts of the country into fertile meadows, suitable for pasturing cattle. Canals and dykes were constructed in order to increase the productivity of the soil. In the course of the twelfth century a sturdy populace of land laborers was attracted into Germany by the landlords of the countries of Bremen, Holstein, Thuringia, and Silesia. It was the Flemings and the people of Brabant who colonized the right bank of the river Elbe and who turned the marshes of Eastern Germany into fertile soil. Many villages still remind us today of those Flemings, and are still known as _Flämingdörfer_.

On the Flemish seacoast the people were engaged in raising cattle, especially sheep and cows; another large element was employed in herring and cod fishing in the North Sea. These people were mostly of Frisian or Saxon origin; they were not descendants of the Franks. They spoke another language; they had other customs and laws; they were socially free men. When the French influence increased in Flanders, they alone retained their Germanic characteristics, and it was among them, in the fourteenth century, that were found the fiercest opponents of France.

As affecting the artistic life of Belgium in the tenth and eleventh centuries, we find the same influences at work which have been mentioned as operative in political and religious spheres. The Romance and Germanic ideas were absorbed, mixed, and transformed by the Belgian artists of that time.

Lotharingia, the eastern part of Belgium, possessed, of course, no cathedrals comparable with those of Worms, Speyer, and Mainz. However, the literary movement developed by the Lotharingian bishops was accompanied by an artistic revival. As most of the Lotharingian bishops were of German descent, the direction of the work was intrusted to German architects. The oldest examples of romantic architecture in the regions of the Meuse reveal German influence. Not only the architects, but also the sculptors, the painters, etc., were Germans, though sometimes recourse was had to Italian artists, who came over the Alps to seek their fortunes. The frescoes on the walls of St. James’s Church at Liège are the work of a painter called Giovanni.

The Lotharingian artists soon began to imitate the German methods and to use material native to the country. Supplies for walls and columns were no longer brought from Germany, but from the valley of the Meuse. Until the twelfth century, German traditions, however, prevailed in architecture, and at no time prior to the beginning of that period can there be said to have been any Lotharingian style.

If the valley of the Meuse was the artistic center of Eastern Belgium, in the western part of the country--in Flanders--it was the city of Tournai which dominated artistic development. The cathedral of Tournai, the only large Romance basilica of Belgium, rivals the cathedrals of the Rhine in majesty and harmony of form. The plan reveals the work of an architect influenced by the German school. But in the architectural details are to be found motifs inspired by the large French cathedrals of Normandy. The double German and French influence resulted in the founding of a local school of architecture at Tournai, which exhibited great activity throughout Flanders. Tournai, the religious capital of Flanders, became also the artistic capital. The stone of Tournai was famous. Thanks to the Scheldt, material was easily transported, and in the locality where it was used it was, of course, architects of Tournai who drew the plans of the buildings. There existed also at Tournai a local school of sculptors, whose members were very active and who may be regarded as true artists.

There remains only the literary life in both parts of Belgium during the feudal period to be considered.

Dating from the ninth century, there were many to be found among the ecclesiastics and the upper classes who spoke both languages, Romance and Teutonic, equally well. In the monasteries Flemish and Walloon monks lived together, and in the Abbey of St. Amand, in Southern Belgium, there has been found, written by the same hand, the oldest poem of French literature, the _Cantilène de Ste. Eulalie_, and also one of the oldest products of Teutonic literature, the _Ludwigslied_. The bishops and abbots knew both languages; the abbots of Lobbes, a Walloon monastery in the tenth century, spoke both Flemish and French. In the diocese of Térouanne (later Saint-Omer) the bishops were obliged to know “barbarian,” i.e., the Teutonic language. During the eleventh century, many preachers were able to address the people of the Walloon and Flemish sections, and abbots who knew both languages were preferred. The lay princes were obliged at least to understand Walloon and Flemish, for Flanders, Brabant, and Limburg included people of both races. When the army of the crusaders started for the Holy Land, the Lotharingian prince Godfrid of Bouillon was appointed as their leader, because, according to the chronicle of Otto von Freising, “brought up on the frontier of the Romance and the Teutonic people, he knew both languages equally well.” During the twelfth century, the knowledge of French was regarded as a necessary element of perfect culture. On the common people, however, French civilization had no influence at all; they knew and spoke only Flemish.

The French influence was especially strong from a linguistic point of view; the German influence was overwhelming in the literary domain, especially in Lotharingia. The bishops were, generally speaking, the sole possessors of literary and scientific culture, and in Lotharingia most of them were strongly Germanized. The center of literary life in Lotharingia was the school of Liège, founded by the Saxon bishop Everachar. It became a center of study, where not only Germans, but also French, English, and Slav students were to be found. The curriculum of the school, known as the school of St. Lambert, included grammar, rhetoric, poetry, music, mathematics, and theology. This institution was the means by which many new ideas were circulated through France and Germany, as its teachers were in close touch with all the scientific tendencies of the time. In Western and Southern Belgium we find the influence of the school of Cambrai as paramount. Although a Romance region, Cambrai belonged to the German Empire, and was therefore a center of German influence. The dominating _genre_ in literature is history, and that is an especially Belgian _genre_; history has always been much cultivated in Belgium. The historical work of a monk, Sigebert of Gembloux, is recognized as the center of that

## activity.

The Struggle for the Investitures, which destroyed the power and the influence of the German imperial and feudal church from a political and religious point of view, destroyed also its influence in literary life. The schools of Liège were abandoned and, from the first quarter of the twelfth century on, students turned their eyes toward Paris.

In Flanders, literary influence, as was the case with artistic movements, was French rather than German. Tournai, the artistic capital, was also the intellectual center, and Tournai was a Romance bishopric. The school of St. Mary had only French teachers and contributed in spreading a knowledge of the French language among the Flemish clergy. Essentially theological and dialectical, however, the teaching of St. Mary was less important than the teaching of St. Lambert of Liège.

Thus, during the tenth and eleventh centuries, the civilization of Belgium was influenced by the culture of its powerful neighbors. Nevertheless, the elements of German and French civilization were not simply absorbed; they were transformed, adapted, and nationalized, and became a real part of the life of the nation.

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