CHAPTER SIX

CRUSADER KINGS AND WARRIOR SAINTS: GERAARDSBERGEN

The last case of Southern urban chorographies discussed in the pres- ent study features the chorographical presentation of a border town in Flanders, on the fringes of power and influence. It thus provides a Southern example of urban chorography on the periphery of the Spanish Netherlands. An additional incentive for the selection of Geraardsbergen in East Flanders was that the city was not just part of the general compendia of Southern chorographers such as Jean Baptiste Gramaye and later Antonius Sanderus, but found her own, native historian in the person of Joannes van Waesberghe, a canon of the collegiate church of St. Omaars te Lilaar with a doctorate in Law and a keen interest in promoting the history of his hometown. With a study of, firstly Gramaye’s; secondly van Waesberghe’s, and lastly Sanderus’ treatments of Geraardsbergen, a diachronic approach to the chorographical surveys of the city becomes possible. Gramaye’s Gerardimontium Oppidum first appeared in his collection Antiquitates comitatus Flandriae in 1611; van Waesberghe’s Gerardimontium was published in 1627 and Sanderus’ Flandria Illustrata, which also cov- ered Geraardsbergen, appeared in 1641. All three texts were written in Latin. With the exception of Sanderus’ Flandria they were not trans- lated in the vernacular.1 In preparation for his chorographical survey of Flanders, Jean Baptiste Gramaye also visited Geraardsbergen, a city once among the most prominent and, indeed, most prosperous, towns in Flan- ders before the Eighty Years’ War; Geraardsbergen’s citizens had made their fortune in the late Middle Ages in the textile industry and

1 The Antiquitates were reissued in Brussels (Gebr. Tserstevens) and Leuven (Aegidium Denique) in 1708 under the same title. A Flemish translation of Gramaye’s text on Geraardsbergen has been published by the Geschied- en Heemkundige Kring Gerardimontum under the title: Jean-Baptiste Gramaye: ‘Gerardimontium Oppidum’ (1611). De oudste geschiedschrijving van de stad Geraardsbergen, Geraardsbergen, 2004. 208 chapter six particularly in tapestry weaving.2 The city developed a rich civic cul- ture, with a rederijkerskamer, a chamber of rhetoric, whose activities were not only intertwined with the civic calendar of Geraardsbergen, but were also closely connected with similar institutions across Flan- ders.3 Geraardsbergen bordered both Flanders, Hainaut and Brabant, and this sometimes precarious position had influenced the city’s his- tory and historiography. In its complicated past Geraardsbergen had been part of what was known as Imperial Flanders, an area which had been granted as a feudal loan to the expansionist Count Baldwin V of Flanders by the Holy Roman Emperor in 1050. The region was later renamed the “Land van Aalst” after its largest city and administrative headquarters. In 1166 it became fully incorporated into the posses- sions of the counts of Flanders. Geraardsbergen prospered in the Mid- dle Ages and became one of the centres of Flanders’ then flourishing textile industry. With the decline of this sector, the city’s fortunes also declined. As a strongly fortified place in a sometimes turbulent border area, it nevertheless remained of central importance to its overlords. The city did pride herself on having the oldest city rights in Flanders, granted by Count Baldwin VI in 1067. She could also pride herself on being an important religious centre, with the Benedictine Abbey of St. Adrian, transferred from Dikkelvenne to Geraardsbergen in 1096. The abbey, which hosted relics of the fourth-century warrior saint Adrian, became a centre for pilgrimage, and flourished particularly in the fifteenth century.4 While working on his survey, Gramaye might have visited the place at some time between 1608 and 1610. This was not the best time for Geraardsbergen, which had suffered substantially during the politi- cal upheavals and military campaigns of the second half of the six- teenth century. The city had undergone the Iconoclastic Fury of 1566, and was repeatedly plundered and occupied by Spanish and Orangist forces in the 1570s and 1580s. In 1580 most citizens had fled Geraards- bergen due to the war. A Protestant regime was temporarily installed.

2 For late medieval Geraardsbergen see Peter Stabel, De kleine stad in Vlaanderen: Bevolkingsdynamiek en economische funkties van de kleine en secundaire stedelijke cen- tra in het Gentse kwartier (14de tot 16de eeuw), Brussels (Paleis der Academiën) 1995, pp. 90–94. 3 Anne-Laure van Bruaene, Om beters wille. Rederijkerskamers en de stedelijke cul- tuur in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden (1400–1650), Amsterdam (Amsterdam University Press) 2008. 4 Saint Adrian was martyred in Nicomedia on 4 March 306.