III
FLANDERS AND BRABANT
IN a study such as this tries to be, it is, of course, impossible to consider in any degree the history of those portions of the chosen territory that joined themselves to, or were by force incorporated in, the great surrounding states. The Rhineland, in spite of its minor vicissitudes of lordship, is and has always been Germanic, and its annals are part and parcel of those of the Teutonic Holy Roman Empire and of the German Empire that succeeded it. The marshes of the mouth of the Rhine early differentiated themselves both from Germany and from the Gallic provinces farther south; Dutch they were and Dutch they will ever remain; their history and their culture and their art are by themselves. The same is true of Champagne, Picardy, Burgundy, Bar, and of the lands between them and the Seine. This is France, and its history is the history of France even if its art takes enduring colour from a persistent quality in its people that is its own and not simply that of the Franks and Normans and Celts who coalesced around the old Île de France to the building of one of the great peoples and one of the great states in history. Each gave more than it received when it became a part of a state that was slowly building itself out of assembling races and peoples, but each was like the daughter of a house; however much she might bring to some alliance, of fortune or character or power, she became merged in her new family, forsaking her name and accepting that of her chosen spouse, together with his ambitions, his interests, and his fortunes. We may then consider the outlying lands of our central district as so many fair daughters who have allied themselves with suitors from neighbouring territories; remembering them with affection, taking pride in the dowries they have carried with them, but confining ourselves to the fortunes of the men of the line who have preserved the family name and defended its honour in the field. In this sense Flanders, Brabant, and Luxembourg are the three princes to whom was given the defence of the patrimony that has been theirs from the ancient times of the earliest beginnings of the house amongst the Gallic and Germanic tribes of the Rhine valley, the meadows and uplands of the Scheldt and the Meuse and the Sambre, and in the Forest of Ardennes.
As the Heart of Europe gradually became parcelled out between the great adjoining empires, each taking its colour more or less from the central influences, while in every instance contributing something in its turn to the sum that made up the varying greatness of both, the essential qualities of the original Belgæ seemed to concentrate in the little province of Flanders, which, during the whole of the Middle Ages, played a part in Europe strikingly disproportionate to its size, which was less than half that of the State of Connecticut, though it contained over 1,200,000 people and counted cities like Ghent with 250,000 population, Ypres with 200,000, Bruges and Courtrai with 100,000 each. At the same time London could boast only 35,000 citizens. In trade, industry, wealth, culture, and the standard of living Flanders was far in advance of the rest of northern Europe, while it was marked by a perfect passion for liberty not only for the state but for each individual member thereof.
Every portion of the land we are considering made its own contribution, early or late, to the great sum of mediævalism, but it would be impossible to consider, even superficially, the gifts of Champagne, Burgundy, the Rhineland. This book does not assume to be a history, it is only a sequence of notes on the lost or imperilled art of the Heart of Europe, with just so much of history as may serve to suggest what lay behind and gave this art its peculiar and unmatched quality.
The great elements that entered into this art and this civilisation that were pre-eminently the art and civilisation of Christianity were primarily two: northern blood and monastic fervour. To the worn-out vitality of the Mediterranean races came in the fresh vigour of the North, Lombard, Germanic, Norman, Frank, while the monastic impulse imparted by St. Benedict broke the spell of the Dark Ages, made possible the “false dawn” of Carolingian civilisation, and then, through its successors, the monks of Cluny in the eleventh century and the Cistercians in the twelfth, brought to perfection and to complete fulness of expression all the latent possibilities in the clean new blood that had been transfused into the hardening veins of an Europe already dangerously near dissolution.
These elements of new blood were chiefly supplied by the Franks (both of the East and the West), the Burgundians, and the Normans, the latter being descendants of the Vikings from the Baltic. The Belgæ were a subdivision of the Franks, and made up of several tribes, Trevii, Eburones, Nervii, etc. Generally speaking, they were Germanic, with a considerable Celtic admixture. The Cluniac and Cistercian reforms came from Burgundy, which is partially within the limits of our study, though later they received great accessions of strength from natives of Flanders, Brabant, the Rhineland, and Champagne. During the eleventh century Normandy was the spiritual centre, the dynamic force, of Europe, while in the twelfth century the leadership was assumed by the Île de France, as wholly under the inspiration of the Cistercians as Normandy had been under that of the Cluniacs. It was during these two centuries that the great burst of Norman and of Gothic architecture occurred in the Île de France, in Normandy, and in Champagne.
The contributions of the land we now know as Belgium were quite different; they were at the same time a product of mediæval culture and one of its causes, for they grew out of the deep and vital impulses beneath the whole epoch, while they seemed to determine many of its manifestations. The first of these, the Crusades, has already been referred to; the second, the great guild system, with its concomitant, the commune, and its result, a desire for personal, civic, and national liberty that became a passion, needs some consideration, since it is from this that came so much of the later mediæval art of Flanders and Brabant that is so priceless and so appallingly in danger of destruction.
Just how and why the Flemings should have become a nation of weavers, merchants, and traders is hard to say, but even in the tenth century, weaving had become so important an industry a charter was granted the guild of weavers by Count Baldwin. The supply of wool came overseas from England, where an important market for the finished wares was also found, and as a result a close community of interests sprang up between Flanders and East Anglia. Without natural protection of any kind, the land lying open to any invasion, walled cities became imperative, as well as unions for self-defence, and so came the great and rich and defiant cities such as Ghent and Bruges, Ypres and Courtrai. When the nobles and knights flocked off on crusade, the citizens remained at home, and they were not slow to seize the opportunity offered them of acquiring, almost without protest, the civil power that, elsewhere, under a dominant and universal feudalism, remained in the hands of the barons.
By this time the development of the guilds had reached enormous proportions, and the members were so numerous, so highly organised, and so defiant of molestation they were almost irresistible. In Ghent, for example, there were more than 50,000 enrolled craftsmen and artificers in the thirteenth century; in Bruges there were the four great trading guilds of wool merchants, linen merchants, mercers, and brewers, and in addition no less than fifty-two guilds of craftsmen. These guilds were not only for the protection of the interests of their members, they equally aimed at maintaining the highest possible standard in their products (so differentiating themselves sharply from the contemporary trade-union), while they demanded and received civic rights and privileges unheard of before and elsewhere. Finally they were military as well as civil in their nature, all the members being trained to arms and under competent military direction. The actual power they could exert is shown by the fact that at one time the weavers in Ghent put an efficient army of 40,000 men into the field. Every man was bound to answer the alarm-bell of his own guild on the instant, and so came the great bell-towers that stood not only as the source of warning and the rallying-place, but also as visible evidences of the liberty of the men who obeyed the summons from their great bourdons.
Never before or since has skilled labour occupied a more advantageous position than in Flanders in the thirteenth century; wages were high, life liberal and self-respecting, comforts and even luxuries common to all, while the high standard of workmanship made labour dignified and enjoyable, and close union of interests guaranteed the protection of all against the aggressions of the nobles and the feudal system.