Bastards in the Belgian Manuscript Catherine Emerson Have you ever met French, German or Dutch people who insist that they are bastards? Their fellow countrymen would put them away. Belgians, on the other hand, have elevated bastardy to a way of life while also downplaying some of the rather unpleasant aspects associated with nationalism.1 This observation is incidental to Piet van de Craen’s analysis of Belgian national sentiment, and so the author does not pause to explain what it is about bastardy that makes it a more attractive self-image for Belgians than for other nationalities. Of course, part of the explication is linguistic: a bâtard (or a bastaard) is not exactly the same thing as a bastard, as the particular example of the mongrel dog (chien bâtard or bastaardhond) illustrates. A Belgian who proudly proclaims bastardy as a national ideal is probably not referring to the associated ideas of illegitimacy and roguishness that the term would suggest in English, but rather to ideas of hybridity and liminality as suggested by its use in animal husbandry. Such ideas are perhaps better suited to Belgian national identities than to those of the other countries mentioned by Van de Craen. As a bilingual society in a Europe where nation-states define themselves with reference to national languages, Belgium is certainly a hybrid society. This is particularly true in Brussels, an officially bilingual territory in a country otherwise divided into monolingual regions. The adoption of the zinneke, or mongrel, as a symbol of Brussels, is testimony to this feeling that Brussels is a mixed society belonging to both of the national linguistic cultures and thereby distinct from each of 1. Piet van de Craen, ‘What, If Anything, Is a Belgian?’, Yale French Studies, 102 (2002), 24–33 (p. 24). IJFrS 13 (2013) 2 EMERSON them. The biennial Zinneke Parade, which celebrates the artistic culture of Brussels, describes this relationship between the mongrel dog and the hybrid culture of the city on its website: Zinneke désigne en bruxellois à la fois la petite Senne, la rivière qui contournait Bruxelles pour éviter des inondations et un chien bâtard qui parfois terminait son existence dans la Senne. Par extension, le Zinneke est celui qui a des origines multiples, symbole du caractère cosmopolite et multiculturel de Bruxelles.2 One of the ironies of this national self-image is that the association between the Belgian and the bastard appears to predate the foundation of Belgium as a nation-state in 1830. Or rather, the nationalists who argued in favour of a coherent and enduring Belgian nation selected a period dominated by bastards as one of the founding moments of the national past. Although Belgium emerged out of the nationalist movements of the early nineteenth century, its existence had always proved a challenge to nationalism because of the linguistic diversity of its people and the absence of a unified history.3 One response to this, famously espoused by the father of Belgian historiography Henri Pirenne in 1900, was to argue that the nation had been on a trajectory towards unification from the end of the classical period, gradually coming together politically and culturally.4 A key moment in this journey was the unification of the territories that were to become Belgium and the Netherlands under the government of the French Valois Dukes of Burgundy in the fifteenth century.5 Although the dukes of Burgundy did not govern a territory 2. Zinneken Parade, ‘Zinneke, c’est quoi?’ (2012) <http://www.zinneke.org/-C-est-quoi- Zinneke-?lang=fr> [accessed 18 September 2012] (para. 3 of 3). 3. See Jo Tollebeek, ‘Historical Representation and the Nation-State in Romantic Belgium (1830–1850)’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 59.2 (1998) 329–53. 4. Louis Vos, ‘Reconstructions of the Past in Belgium and Flanders’, in Secession, History and the Social Sciences, ed. by Bruno Coppieters and Michel Huysseune (Brussels: Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 2002), pp. 179–206 (p. 185). 5. Henri Pirenne, Histoire de Belgique, 7 vols (Brussels: Lamertin, 1902–32), II (2nd edn, 1903), p. 156: ‘C’est au moment où les diverses principautés des Pays- Bas viennent d’atteindre à leur pleine autonomie politique qu’on les voit, par une BASTARDS IN THE BELGIAN MANUSCRIPT 3 that was identical to modern Belgium, the fact that their government gathered together many of the territories that later made up that country was considered significant by those seeking to argue that Belgium had a natural political and cultural existence. The policies pursued by the Valois dukes of Burgundy bolster an argument that Belgium is naturally unaligned to either France or Germany, since the dukes held territory from both overlords and at times were in confrontation with both. In this reading, therefore, contemporary Belgium is shaped by relations defined in the fifteenth century. Accepting for a moment that this is the case, we must recognize that the period was a particular moment in European history, distinct from the eras that preceded or followed it, and that this was particularly true when it came to the question of bastards. If Belgium is a country that accords bastardy a particular regard, the fifteenth century has been considered the golden age of the medieval bastard.6 In straight contravention of rules and laws that hindered children born outside of marriage from entering the church, Mikhaël Harsgor has noted an increasing tendency to appoint bastards to leading ecclesiastical positions from the late fourteenth century and throughout the fifteenth century. This tendency was mirrored by a growing number of illegitimate sons receiving high office in royal and ducal governments, to the extent that by the second half of the fifteenth century, Harsgor documents on average one bastard a year rising to a position of temporal or spiritual authority in Burgundy and Northern France. Harsgor comments that this presence of bastards in the highest ranks of society is emblematic of a social tendency found throughout the aristocracy, and that many more bastards were appointed to more minor roles. In Valois Burgundy in particular the bastard sons of the brusque transformation, passer sous le pouvoir d’une même dynastie, s’unir en une solide fédération monarchique et constituer, entre l’Allemagne et la France, cet État intermédiaire que les royaumes de Belgique et de Hollande représentent encore aujourd’hui sur la carte de l’Europe. Avec le début de la période bourguignonne se clôt la première partie de leur histoire et s’ouvre une ère nouvelle. Par la superposition de l’unité du souverain et du gouvernement à la multiplicité des régimes constitutionnels, elles sortent du moyen âge pour entrer dans l’époque moderne.’ 6. See Mikhaël Harsgor, ‘L’Essor des bâtards nobles au XVe siècle’, Revue Historique, 253 (1975), 319–54. 4 EMERSON dukes were so prominent in leading the administration that the historian has referred to the region in the fifteenth century as ‘une véritable bâtardocratie’.7 The reasons for this development are complex. Firstly, it should be recognized that intolerance of children born outside of marriage was itself a change from an earlier position and that this change had been fostered by a church anxious to exert its own authority on the social customs of marriage.8 Thus, the social ascendancy of bastards is in inverse proportion to the proselytizing power of Christianity. Consequently, the Reformation sees a reduction in both the recorded number and social prominence of illegitimate children as heightened religious morality made such evidence of relationships outside marriage less acceptable.9 Secondly, we should recognize that in the fifteenth century, the acknowledgement of a bastard in a family did not, as one might think, represent a rejection of marriage and traditional family ties. On the contrary, bastards played a role in securing the influence of their family in a world where the nobility saw their status threatened by an ascendant urban bourgeoisie. Officially recognized by their fathers, bastard children frequently took their fathers’ name and arms and were, therefore, able to represent the family in dynastic marriages.10 Noble families were thus able to multiply their alliances beyond the 7. Harsgor, ‘L’Essor des bâtards nobles’, p. 341. 8. Henri Regnault, La Condition juridique du bâtard au moyen âge (Pont-Audemer: Lescuyer, 1922), pp. 1–3. 9. Niethard Bulst, ‘Illegitimate Kinder – viele oder wenige? Quantitative Aspekte der Illegitimität im spätmillelalterlichen Europa’, in Illegitimität im Spätmittelalter, ed. by Ludwig Schmugge, Schriften des Historischen Koleggs Kolloquien, 29 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1994), pp. 21–39. On page twenty-seven, the author cites a figure of 1–3% of children born outside of marriage in France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though he points out that there are problems with underrecording of the phenomenon due to failure of parents to report the circumstances of their child’s birth and also to infanticide. Jean Meyer suggests, however, that this low figure represents a real drop in the number of children born, since there is no corresponding growth in the number of abandoned children. See Jean Meyer, ‘Illegitimates and Foundlings in Pre- Industrial France’, in Bastardy and its Comparative History: Studies in the History of Illegitimacy and Marital Nonconformism in Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, North America, Jamaica and Japan, ed. by Peter Laslett, Karla Oosterveen and Richard M. Smith (Colchester: Edward Arnold, 1980), pp. 249–64. 10. Claude Grimmer, La Femme et le bâtard (Paris: Presses de la Renaissance, 1983), p. 151. BASTARDS IN THE BELGIAN MANUSCRIPT 5 avenues which legitimate marriage afforded them. Bastards — that is, illegitimate children recognized by their fathers — became a social phenomenon of the upper classes: Plus une famille se dit d’ancienne chevalerie, moins elle se limite dans le nombre de ses bâtards.