A short history of Belgium

by Léon van der Essen

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.

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.