CHAPTER III

THE RISE AND INFLUENCE OF THE COMMUNES

A new epoch opens with the twelfth century in the history of Belgium. The era is frequently called the “Time of the Communes,” because the internal political life of the country, from then on, was dominated by the development of the free cities (communes) and of their municipal institutions. And it has been said that “in the part played by the cities since the twelfth century lies the best of the history of the Netherlands.”

Until the rise of the communes, only two classes of people, the noblemen and the priests, were given any recognition. There remained, of course, the peasant farmers, but they had no political or social power. After the twelfth century, a new class sprang into existence--the burgesses (_bourgeois, burgers_), the citizens of the free cities--and the rise of that class exerted a tremendous influence on the political and social development of the nation. To the tyranny of feudalism it opposed the spirit of personal and collective freedom, and the social construction of the nation was materially influenced by the introduction of the new elements it represented.

The origin and development of the communes was mainly due to economic conditions: the Belgian cities of the Middle Ages were the daughters of trade and industry.

[Illustration: THE BELFRY OF GHENT On the right the Town Hall]

Beginning with the eleventh century many signs indicated a complete revival of trade, which had been nearly annihilated by the internecine struggles and the invasion of the Normans during the ninth century. At the end of the tenth century Flanders was already in touch with the Arab merchants trading in the Baltic; coins of the counts of Flanders are to be found in Denmark, Prussia, and Russia. The merchants of that time were traveling merchants, going from one town to another, and never remaining permanently in any one spot. All along the rivers wharves were established for discharging goods and wares, as well as winter quarters for the traders for the period during which the rivers were frozen. These were to be found at Valenciennes, Cambrai, Ghent on the Scheldt, Dinant, Huy, Liège, and Maestricht on the Meuse. Bruges became a central meeting-place for Flemish, Walloon, German, Frisian, and Anglo-Saxon merchants, and between the Scheldt and the Thames commercial intercourse was frequent. Little by little there grew up a special class who depended for a living on sale and purchase. A man became a merchant just as another became a knight, a priest, or a farmer. All those without land, the discontented “serfs” who succeeded in escaping from the domain to which they were attached, steadily augmented this early nucleus of the merchant class.

The invasion of England by William the Conqueror (1066) and the large numbers of the Flemings who participated in it strengthened the economic ties between that country and Flanders, between London and Bruges. In Bruges[9] vessels from all parts of Europe were loaded with cargoes for London: wine from France and Germany, stone from Tournai, cloth of gold and groceries sent by the merchants of Lombardy, wool and linen cloths manufactured in Flanders. The prosperity of the Flemish trade attracted the representatives of European commerce; fairs and yearly markets were established at Thourout, Messines, Lille, Ypres, and Douai.

Along with trade came the development of industry. On the Belgian coast the sheep-raising industry goes back as far as the early days of Roman occupation; woolen cloths were a special manufacture of the region. The more extensive the “polders”--the meadows wrested from the sea--became, the more the number of sheep raised on them increased, and consequently also the number of people connected with the wool industry. As trade developed the conditions of that industry, more and more people found occupation in the manufacture of woolen cloths. A special class of craftsmen was born. They deserted the countryside and settled down in the neighborhood of the merchants; trade and industry attracted each other. Flanders then became the seat of the cloth industry.

Another kind of industry was in process of development in Eastern Belgium, in the valley of the Upper Meuse. This was a mountainous region, filled with copper and tin mines along the banks of the river between Huy and Dinant. Here was developed a metal industry, whose products were shipped out on the river Meuse. After the tenth century the native mines were no longer sufficient for the needs of the country; the population of Huy and Dinant supplied its needs from the mines of Goslar in Germany. The products of the copper and tin industry were exported to France and England.

Brabant, the central part of Belgium, remained for a long time purely agricultural. In the middle of the twelfth century, however, a highroad was constructed between Cologne and Bruges, passing through Maestricht, Saint-Trond, Léau, Louvain, Brussels, Alost, and Ghent. Trade now flowed, not only from south to north by the Scheldt and the Meuse, but also from east to west along the new commercial road.

This remarkable development of trade and industry was mainly responsible for the origin and growth of the communes. Of course, for many centuries episcopal residences (_civitates_), castles and manors (_castra_), churches and monasteries had been centers of civilization and an attraction for the population of the neighborhood. And under the protection of their walls were grouped many wealthy villages. The latter, however, would probably never have developed into cities except for the presence of a colony of merchants and craftsmen. These colonies established themselves in neighborhoods where they could find favorable conditions for trading as well as protection for their commerce. Naturally, therefore, they settled in the vicinity of castles and convents (the castles affording military and the convents moral protection), at the confluence of two or more rivers, along a commercial highroad, in the curve of a gulf, or at the mouth of a stream. In this manner the cities of Bruges, Ghent, Brussels, Louvain, Liège, Malines, etc., were born, for it is an interesting point of Belgian history that nearly all the cities originated during the Middle Ages, very few of them dating back to the Roman times. Those colonies of merchants and craftsmen grouped together in professional and religious associations were called “guilds,” and introduced an entirely new spirit among the people of the growing town. The unfree population dependent upon the convent, the church, or the castle had no means of changing its conditions of life, bound as it was by the numerous ties of feudal and other obligations. But the traders had to secure for themselves a certain degree of liberty, safety, and autonomy. The feudal régime or the rules of the manor were intolerable to them. The operation of the system was too tyrannous; it acted too much as a restraint on private liberty and would have rendered the free development of commercial and industrial enterprises impossible.

The guilds, therefore, formerly purely professional associations, soon began to meddle in politics and to become political organizations as well. Their members discussed in their guild-halls, built for their business meetings, the changes desired in the existing social, economic, and political conditions of the community, and carried on propaganda in support of their demands.

At the same time the members of the guilds began to build walls around the settlement, in order to protect the new city against attack from the outside. Such a fortified town was called _burgus_, _bourg_, “borough,” and the inhabitants were called _burgenses, bourgeois_, “burgesses.”

When the burgesses began to work for changes in the existing régime of the territory in which the town had developed, the princes and landlords to which that territory belonged naturally showed opposition. In some cases they resisted the demands of the guild, but the people were frequently induced to rebel and, by a revolutionary method, to wrest from their overlords the rights they demanded. In most cases the princes recognized the justice of the claims and granted the burgesses a new law, better suited to the needs of commerce and industry. This new law, the city law, different from the feudal law and the law of the manor, was called _Keure_ in Flemish, _charte de commune_ in French. It contained the political, social, and financial privileges granted by the landlord and the prince to the burgesses. When the city law was granted, the commune came into existence. One of the most important privileges of the commune was a special tribunal, called _échevinage, schepenhank_, composed of citizens and presided over by an officer appointed by the lord.

The commune possessed political and judicial autonomy and its inhabitants were personally free. A man from a neighboring country or a foreigner who had dwelt in the city for one year and one day became a burgess and enjoyed all the privileges of citizenship. Although politically autonomous, the commune still owed certain obligations to its lord. These were mainly an oath of allegiance and the duty of assisting the lord with its army of citizens. This latter duty sometimes created curious situations. At the battle of the Golden Spurs in 1302, when King Philip IV of France was defeated by the Flemish communists, the inhabitants of Louvain fought on the side of the French King against their Flemish brethren, because their lord, the Duke of Brabant, was a partisan of Philip.

Although the commune owed certain duties to the lord, it had also, as a politically autonomous body, some important rights: the right to have a special seal to be appended to the official documents issued by the commune; the right to build a city hall and a belfry, the belfry being a tower, usually erected in the market-place, where the bell that called the burgesses to arms was hung, and where the archives of the city were carefully kept in iron safes. As the commune exercised the right of life and death over its members, it erected as symbols of that right the pillory and the gallows, generally at the gate or outside the city wall.

The development of the communes was not quite the same in the various sections of Belgium. In the principality of Liège, the cities of Dinant, Huy, and Saint-Trond obtained their privileges sooner than Liège itself. The charter of freedom for Huy dates from 1066. In the ecclesiastical principality of Cambrai the commune was established by violently revolutionary means in 1077. The merchants of Cambrai suffered from the tyranny of the officers appointed by the bishops, and a conspiracy was organized. On a certain day when Bishop Gerard left the town, the citizens ran to arms, under the leadership of the prominent merchants, and proclaimed the commune. But the bishop returned unexpectedly and his knights killed many of the people and pillaged the houses of the leaders. The supremacy of the bishop was restored for a long period.

In Flanders, the counts were sincere protectors of the communes; they regarded them as a mighty resource of their treasury and early recognized the claims of the _mercatores_. From the end of the eleventh century the main demands contained in the propaganda of the guilds were accepted and special privileges were granted to the cities. From the time of Count Charles the Good (1119-27), each city had its own _échevins_ (sheriffs), chosen from among the burgesses; the president alone, the _bailli_, was an officer of the lord, and responsible only to him. The house of the counts of Alsace (1128) owed its accession to the communes and therefore protected the cities in a special manner. They gave to all of them the same municipal charter, a copy of the charter of Arras, and both the Flemish and the Walloon communes of Flanders enjoyed identically the same privileges.

In the duchy of Brabant, the communes developed more slowly, owing to the fact that conditions for the development of trade and industry were not so much advanced here. From the time when the commercial highroad between Cologne and Bruges was constructed the municipal movement was

## participated in more actively by the princes. Here, also, the princes

came to assume the same sympathetic attitude as in Flanders, but there was no general organization granting the same type of constitution for all the cities. The privileges of each city were recognized and granted separately.

The existence of the communes exerted a powerful influence on the internal politics of the feudal lords of Belgium. The latter were forced to take the communes more and more into account and to change their political attitude in accordance with the wishes of the burgesses. The knights, almost ruined by the decline of the value of the land, rendered military service only when paid for it. The feudal troops were no longer sufficient in numbers. The princes were obliged to seek the aid of the cities, to beg for taxes in order to pay the loans they were now obliged to contract for the allowances of the mercenary troops which they were compelled to hire. The princes no longer governed alone; they had to respect and cultivate the friendship of the cities. Their subjects began to take part in the political combinations of the feudalists. As a matter of fact, war was no longer possible without the consent of the communes, and it resulted, therefore, that the burgesses, if in disagreement with their lord, instead of assisting him, appealed to foreign rulers and fought against their own prince. It may be said that, owing to these changes in political life, the communes had succeeded in breaking the régime of feudalism. This may be cited as a supreme instance of their importance in Belgian history.

No less important was the influence they exerted--mainly during the thirteenth century--in the development of the economic, industrial, social, intellectual, and artistic life of the country. During that period trade and industry were essentially prominent in the life of the people. On account of their excellent location, the Belgian seaports became the meeting-places of vessels from the North Sea, the Baltic, the Mediterranean, the Orient. Ever since the existence of the commercial highroad between Cologne and Bruges the trade of the former had declined more and more. Given a shorter route by land, it is, generally speaking, that which is selected by merchants by which to forward their goods. Ghent became the center of commercial relations between Flanders and Germany, and many privileges were granted to Ghent tradesmen. Antwerp also grew little by little into an important commercial center, being connected with the Cologne-Bruges road by means of the Scheldt, that joins that road at Ghent.

Bruges, however, remained the commercial metropolis. It was in direct contact with the sea. Located midway between the Sunt and the straits of Gibraltar, it stored goods arriving from the north and from the south. A new harbor was constructed at Damme and connected with Bruges by a canal, whose powerful moles have been immortalized by Dante in his _Divina Commedia_.[10] The market-place at Bruges was crowded as much as was the Piazza San Marco in Venice. Toward the middle of the thirteenth century Bruges was enjoying trade relations with England, Normandy, Gascony, Spain, Provence, and the Hanseatic cities. In the fourteenth century the development of the harbor reached its climax by the organization of a regular transport service between the Flemish port and Genoa and Venice.

The growth of Flemish commerce was increased by the liberal free exchange policy of the counts of Flanders, especially since the time of Baldwin IX (1202). There was no taking advantage of foreign trade, no heavy taxes, no stringent customs. Many privileges were granted to the “Osterlings,” the merchants from Germany. If a war broke out between Flanders and a Hanseatic city, the Osterlings were allowed a period of three months in which to leave the country and to put their belongings in safety. The same privileges were granted to merchants from Poitou, Gascony, and Spain.

Necessarily, also, Bruges became a center of financial operations: pawnbrokers from Cahors, Lombardy, Florence, and Sienna flocked to the city in large numbers and soon monopolized all credit operations. The Lombardic pawnbrokers, especially, invaded the whole country between the Meuse and the sea, and it is an astonishing fact that in small cities like Léau (in the neighborhood of Louvain) branch offices of the mighty banking houses of Paris were to be found. The important part played by the circulation of money is also proved by the many coin reforms of that time. The Belgian coins, owing to their excellence and high standard, were imitated in Germany by the Hanseatic cities.

At the time of the communes manufacture was even more important than trade. The Belgian provinces became essentially an industrial country: from Douai to Saint-Trond there is not a city which was not connected with the cloth industry. Belgian textures became unequaled in suppleness, delicacy, and beauty of color; they were to be found everywhere throughout Europe, and were exported even to the bazaars of the Orient by vessels from Venice, Marseilles, and Barcelona. It is in the south of Flanders that the art of dyeing seems to have reached the highest perfection. Ypres, Douai, with its famous _écarlate_, and Arras are especially entitled to mention in this particular. The cloth industry was soon introduced farther north, in Ghent and Bruges, and also in Brabant. Brussels, Malines, and Louvain early rivaled the Flemish cities.

The annexation of Walloon Flanders by France deprived the Flemish cloth industry of one of its sources of raw material, and it became necessary to obtain it from England. Since that time Flanders and England have been naturally dependent on each other and in this fact is to be found the reason for the close alliance between these countries, from a political point of view, especially in the fourteenth century. The commercial relations between Flanders and England were monopolized by a powerful association of wool importers, the Hansa of London, composed of Flemish tradesmen. After a while the cloth industry developed to such an extent that the supply of English wool was no longer sufficient: wool from Spain and Navarre was also employed.

[Illustration: THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH OF SAINT GUDULA, BRUSSELS]

Aside from the territory in which the cloth industry flourished, Belgium possessed also an agricultural region, far less developed, of which Hainaut was the center. Here the cities were merely large villages: Mons, Binche, and Ath cannot be compared with the cities of Flanders and Brabant. Namur and Luxemburg also were merely agricultural regions with no more than 8,000 and 5,000 population, respectively; whereas Ghent and Bruges had a populace of no less than 80,000, at least at the climax of their development.

In the valley of the Meuse, cities like Saint-Trond and Huy, where the cloth industry flourished in smaller degree, were unable to rival those of Flanders. The city of Dinant, on the Meuse, which, as stated before, was, from the end of the tenth century, engaged in the copper industry, may be singled out. The products of Dinant, called _dinanderie_, were exported throughout Europe. The merchants of Dinant had a storehouse in London and were members of the Hanseatic Association.

Finally, there remains the city of Liège in Eastern Belgium. This was a city of priests, the residence of the bishop-prince. It was filled with churches, convents, and chapels. The land was owned largely by religious communities. But the priests were more numerous than the burgesses.[11] There was no thought here of industry until the end of the Middle Ages, when this part of the country became the seat of collieries and ironworks.

Under the influence of such commercial and industrial conditions as we have recited, the life of the country people and the control of the soil were entirely transformed. After the twelfth century the old agricultural régime broke down and servitude became an exception; generally speaking, the peasant was thenceforward a free man, like the burgess. This important change came in connection with the crisis introduced by the new economic conditions of the twelfth century. At this time the value of money decreased rapidly and both the ecclesiastical and lay landlords found themselves threatened with bankruptcy. The methods of the old economic organization had to be changed if ruin was to be averted. New methods, therefore, were introduced by the Cistercian monks. The houses of this monastic order were very numerous at the beginning of the twelfth century; they constituted a class of an entirely new type. Most of their establishments were located among the marshes and heaths, which they were obliged to convert into fertile soil. For that work the monks alone were insufficient; they needed the help of so-called lay-brethren, who cultivated and fertilized the land. Round the monasteries themselves they established large farms, which became centers of new agricultural methods. The raising of cattle and the culture of corn were now their main business, and the crops were not merely intended for the consumption of the convent but a large part was sent to market to be sold. The peasants employed for this work were no longer “serfs,” but free workers coming from outside. Servitude did not exist on the territory owned by the Cistercians. The monks soon became wealthy capitalists, but they utilized their means in clearing the heaths of the Campine, the forests of Hainaut, and in creating the “polders” of the Flemish coast. At the end of the thirteenth century the clearing of the land was finished and the farms and “polders” were rented out to free farmers. That system was likewise followed by the other monastic orders, and the class of free farmers soon grew more and more numerous. The example given by the Cistercians was followed by laymen. A large part of Brabant, Hainaut, Flanders, and Namur was covered with heaths, woods, and marshes. The dukes and counts, seeing what had been accomplished, began to order this wild land to be cleared. Along with the clearing of the soil came the foundation of new cities. The Belgian cities whose names contain the suffix _-sart_, _-rode_, or _-kerke_[12] date from this time. In order to get workers enough for clearing the land, the princes sought to attract them by granting special privileges, such as complete personal freedom and cession of land subject to a very small payment. A new type of peasant was born in Flanders--the peasant who was a freeman and who also owned his land. The peasants of Hainaut, Namur, and Ardennes were, of course, less in touch with the modern spirit; the different commercial and industrial conditions operated to keep them longer in servitude. Since the thirteenth century most of the Belgian peasants have been free, whereas in Germany servitude appeared even at the end of the Middle Ages.

As to the literary life and the respective positions of the French and Flemish languages at this time, the next chapter, which deals with the political conditions of Belgium in the period of the communes, will show the increasing influence of France, both in Flanders and in Brabant. It will not be surprising, therefore, to find that France exercised an influence upon Belgium from a literary and artistic point of view also. Flanders, a fief of France, was the first to feel that influence, and to feel it in a greater degree than any other Belgian principality. As a spoken language, French made a strong advance in the thirteenth century, albeit the conquest was a peaceful one. The wealthy communes of French or Walloon Flanders, like Arras, became real centers of French literature and culture. The Cistercians spread the knowledge of French in the monasteries, their order being originally French. The aristocracy also took part in the movement, following the example of the princes. The counts were all of Romance descent. The house of Alsace came from France; Baldwin VIII and Baldwin IX were Walloons; the countesses Jeanne and Marguerite were educated in Paris; the counts of the house of Dampierre came originally from Champagne. The language of the court as well as the language officially used was French. The wealthy burgesses sought to imitate the noblemen, and it was necessary for the merchants to know French to enable them to visit the fairs of Champagne.

However, we know that some of the commercial acts were written in Flemish. Flemish was overwhelmingly the popular tongue in Ghent and Bruges, and public officers were obliged to know and speak it, as well as French and Latin. As before, the common people remained faithful to the Flemish language; it was the only one they spoke. Flemish was also the principal language spoken in Brabant. Here the dukes strongly resisted French political hegemony, and Brabant remained the most independent Belgian province. French was, of course, made use of by the dukes in their private and domestic affairs, but Flemish prevailed in all their relations with their subjects; it was the language used by public officers. If the aristocracy was Gallicized, it was merely a matter of custom and _bon ton_.

As to the Romance literary movement, its productions were to be found in those regions where trade and industry tended to the increase of wealth. Luxemburg did not produce anything and Liège very little; in the latter city, moreover, the persons in the entourage of the bishop were largely German or Flemish. Romance literature flourished in Flanders, Brabant, and Hainaut; it was written in Picard, the original dialect that the writers themselves preferred, in opposition, so to speak, to French. The literature in question consisted partly of translations into the vernacular of Latin works written on science,

## partly of historical productions, and partly of poetry. The historical

_genre_ was much cultivated, but was more and more limited to castles and convents. Although the burgesses of the communes, eager to know as much as possible, found interest and pleasure in the historical writers (and it may be pointed out that the valuable chronicle of Philip Mousket was composed, about 1240, for the townspeople of Tournai), the citizens of the communes preferred the new _genre_ introduced in literature, the _poésie bourgeoise_, wherein animals played a large part as personages; the _épopée_ of _Rinehart the Fox_ is particularly famous.

The rich development of Romance literature in Flanders and Hainaut prevented to some extent the early birth of an original and independent Flemish literature. Flemish literature had modest origins: it consisted at first merely of translations from the French, but it is highly interesting to note that it was through the intermediary of Flemish translations that French productions were introduced into Germany. The _Legend of Saint Servais_ and the _Enéide_, composed by the Flemish knight, Hendrik Van Veldeke, following Latin sources, enjoyed an immense success and were promptly imitated in Germany. The French version of _Rinehart the Fox_ was adapted in Flemish by a certain William, who surpassed his model, localized the story to the neighborhood of Ghent and the country of Waes, and gave to his work a real Flemish color.

The spirit of the Flemish burgesses, ordinarily inclined to be jeering and satirical, nevertheless inspired the greatest poet of thirteenth-century Flemish literature, Jacob Van Maerlandt, called “the father of all the Flemish poets.” He founded in Flanders the didactical _genre_, adapted to the practical and sensible character of the nation. His object was to give to laymen access to the knowledge hitherto monopolized by the clergymen. His writings were in the field of natural history, politics and ethics, and sacred and profane history. He enjoyed great success and achieved the honor of seeing his works translated into French. Maerlandt, although he seemed to despise the French poets because he found their work too frivolous, was not a political writer. His greatness lay in the fact that he exercised a decisive influence on Flemish culture. He brought the Flemish language to the rank of a really literary language and developed it into an instrument capable of expressing the national genius. The soul of Flanders lives in Maerlandt’s poems.

There yet remains to be considered the artistic development during the early period of the communes. French influence was prominent in the thirteenth century in the southern and western parts of the country. Tournai, of course, remained the artistic center of Flanders, and it was through Tournai that Gothic art was introduced into Belgium, just as Romantic art had earlier been introduced through Liège. The new choir of the cathedral of Tournai (_ca._ 1250) is remarkably French in its plan and methods of construction. But, on the whole, the school of Tournai does not merely copy the French style. It possesses its own originality; its type is full of charm and elegance. Its influence, thanks to the use so frequently made of the stone of Tournai, is overwhelming in Flanders, especially in Ghent and Bruges and in Hainaut.

Brabant, on the other hand, has a style of its own, owing to the fact that it uses its own local materials, found in its numerous quarries. There is a wide difference between the style of St. John’s Church at Ghent and St. Gudula’s Church at Brussels, although their choirs are nearly contemporaneous. In the course of the fifteenth century the school of Brabant became dominant.

In another region--that part of Flanders near the sea and known as “maritime Flanders”--stone from Tournai was not used because of the difficulty of access, and here there is also to be found an independence of style. There brick was made use of in place of stone, and, although the inspiration of the architecture came from Tournai, the style of that school underwent some change, owing to the difference in the materials employed. The houses of Bruges reveal the ornaments in brick peculiar to that style.

An entirely rich and original style, a sign of the power and the wealth of the communes, is to be found in the civic monuments,

## particularly the town halls. Everyone is familiar with the hall of

Bruges and the magnificent hall of Ypres, a gem of beauty. With their wonderful belfries, their wide rooms, and the vast proportions of the edifices themselves, they symbolize in a wonderful manner the strength, the pride, and the glory of the Belgian cities in the Middle Ages.

[Illustration: THE SPLENDOR THAT WAS YPRES Now destroyed by the German bombardments (Cloth Hall, Hôtel de Ville, and Cathedral)]

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