*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Belgium History of Belgium. Founding of the modern state by that name in 1830. Belgium’s history is intertwined with those of its neighbors: the Netherlands, Germany, France and Luxembourg. For most of its history, what is now Belgium was either a part of a larger territory, such as the Carolingian Empire, or divided into a number of smaller states, prominent among them being the Duchy of Brabant, the County of Flanders, the Prince-Bishopric of Liege and County of Luxembourg. Due to its strategic location and the many armies fighting on its soil, since the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), Belgium has often been called the “battlefield of Europe” or the “cockpit of Europe.” It is also remarkable as a European nation which contains, and is divided by, a language boundary between Latin-derived French, and German Dutch.
...The ports and textile industry of Belgium were important back into the Middle Ages, and modern Belgium was one of the first countries to experience an Industrial Revolution, which brought prosperity in the 19th century but also opened a political dichotomy between liberal businessmen and socialist workers. The king set up his own private colonial empire in the Belgian Congo, which the government took over after a major scandal in 1908. Belgium was neutral but its strategic location as a pathway to France made it an invasion target for Germany in 1914 and 1940. Conditions under the occupation were severe. In the postwar period Belgium was a leader in European unification, as a founding member of what has become the European Union. Brussels is now host to the headquarters of NATO and is the de facto capital of the European Union. The colonies became independent in the early 1960s.
Politically the country was once polarized on matters of religion and, in recent decades, it has faced new divisions over differences of language and the unequal economic development. The ongoing antagonism has caused far-reaching reforms since the 1970s, changing the formerly unitary Belgian state into a federal state, and repeated governmental crises. It is now divided into three regions, Flanders (Dutch speaking) in the north, Wallonia (French speaking) in the South, and bilingual Brussels in the middle. There is also a German-speaking population along the border with Germany, and German is the third official language of Belgium.
Prehistory. On Belgian territory Neanderthal fossils were discovered in Engis in 1829-30 and elsewhere, some dating back to at least 100,000 BCE. The earliest Neolithic farming technology of northern Europe, the so-called LBK culture, reached the east of Belgium at its furthest northwesterly stretch from its origins in southeast Europe. Its expansion stopped in the Hesbaye region of eastern Belgium around 5000 BCE. The Belgian LBK is notable for its use of defensive walls around villages, something which may or may not have been necessary because of the proximity of hunter gatherers.
So-called Limburg pottery and La Hoguette pottery are styles which stretch into northwestern France and the Netherlands, but it has sometimes been argued that these technologies are the result of pottery technology spreading beyond the original LBK farming population of eastern Belgium and northeastern France, and being made by hunter gatherers. A slightly later-starting Neolithic culture found in central Wallonia is the so-called "Groupe de Blicquy", which may represent an offshoot of the LBK settlers. One notable archaeological site in this region is the Neolithic flint mines of Spiennes.
Farming in Belgium however failed to take permanent hold at first… In the third and late fourth millennia BCE, the whole of Flanders shows relatively little evidence of human habitation…
The population of Belgium started to increase permanently with the late Bronze Age from around 750 BCE. Three possibly related European cultures arrived in sequence. First the Urnfield culture arrived (for example, tumuli are found at Ravels and Hamont-Achel in the Campine). Then, coming into the Iron Age, the Hallstatt culture, and the La Tène culture. All three of these are associated with Indo-European languages, with specifically Celtic languages being especially associated with La Tène material culture, and possibly Halstatt. This is because historical Greek and Roman records from areas where this culture settled show Celtic placenames and personal names.
However it is possible in Belgium that especially in the northern areas the Hallstatt and La Tene cultures were brought by new elites, and that the main language of the population was not Celtic. From 500 BC Celtic tribes settled in the region and traded with the Mediterranean world. From c. 150 BC, the first coins came into use, under the influence of trade with the Mediterranean.
Celtic and Roman periods. When Julius Caesar arrived in the region, as recorded in his De Bello Gallico, the inhabitants of Belgium, northwest France, and the German Rhineland were known as the Belgae (after whom modern Belgium is named), and they were considered to be the northern part of Gaul. (The region of Luxembourg, including the Belgian province of Luxembourg, was inhabited by the Treveri, who were probably not strictly considered to be Belgae.) The distinction between the Belgae to the North and the Celts to the south, and the Germani across the Rhine, is disputed. Map: Roman province of Gallia Belgica, ca. 120 AD
Caesar says that the Belgae were separated from the rest of Gaul by language, law and custom, and he also says that they had Germanic ancestry, but he does not go into detail. It seems clear that Celtic culture and language were very influential upon the Belgae, especially those in modern France. On the other hand, linguists have proposed that there is evidence that the northern part of the Belgic population had previously spoken an Indo European language related to, but distinct from Celtic and Germanic, and among the northern Belgae, Celtic may never have been the language of the majority.
The leaders of the Belgic alliance which Caesar confronted were in modern France, the Suessiones, Viromandui and Ambiani and perhaps some of their neighbours, in an area that he appears to distinguish as the true "Belgium" of classical times. Concerning the territory of modern Belgium, he reported that the more northerly allies of the Belgae, from west to east the Menapii, Nervii, and Germani cisrhenani, were less economically developed and more warlike, similar to the Germani east of the Rhine river. The Menapii and Germani lived among low thorny forests, islands and swamps, and the central Belgian Nervii lands were deliberately planted with thick hedges, in order to be impenetrable to cavalry. There is also less archaeological evidence of large settlements and trade in the area. According to Tacitus, writing a generation later, the Germani cisrhenani (who included the Eburones) were in fact the original tribe to be called Germani, and all other uses of the term extended from them, though in his time the same people were now called the Tungri.
Modern linguists use the word “germanic” to refer to languages but it is not known for sure whether even the Belgian Germani spoke a Germanic language, and their tribal and personal names are clearly Celtic. This is in fact also true of the possibly related tribes across the Rhine from them at this time. Archaeologists have also had difficulty finding evidence of the exact migrations from east of the Rhine which Caesar reports and more generally there has been skepticism about using him in this way due to the political motives of his commentaries. But the archaeological record gives the impression that the classical Belgian Germani were a relatively stable population going back to Urnfield times, with a more recently immigrated elite class who would have been of more interest to Caesar.
*illustration, left, surviving Roman city walls in Tongeren. The western and southern Belgae flourished within the Roman province of Gallia Belgica, along with the Treveri. Gallia Belgica originally included six regional capitals, four of which are today in France… only one, Tongeren, was in modern Belgium.
The northeastern corner of this province, including Tongeren and the area of the earlier Germani, was united with the militarized Rhine border to form a newer province known as Germania Inferior. Its cities included… Later, Emperor Diocletian reconstructed the provinces around 300, and split the remaining Belgica into two provinces: Belgica Prima and Belgica Secunda… Christianity was also first introduced to Belgium during the late-Roman period, and the first known bishop in the region Servatius (refer to Irish Monks, in References) taught in the middle of the 4th century in Tongeren.
Early Middle Ages. As the Western Roman Empire collapsed during the 5th and 6th centuries, Germanic tribes invaded and established themselves. One of these peoples, the Franks, settled in Germania Inferior, and proceeded to expand into a new kingdom covering all of Belgium and much of France, under the rule of the Merovingian Dynasty. Clovis I was the best-known king of this dynasty. He ruled from his base in northern France. He converted to Christianity. Christian scholars, mostly Irish monks (refer to Irish Monks, in References), preached Christianity to the populace and started a new wave of conversion.
The Merovingians were short-lived and were succeeded by the Carolingian Dynasty, whose family power base was in the eastern part of modern Belgium. After Charles Martel countered the Moorish invasion from Spain (732 -Poitiers), the King Charlemagne (born close to Liege in Herstal or Jupille) brought a huge part of Europe under his rule and was crowned the “Emperor of the new Holy Roman Empire” by the Pope Leo III (800 in Aachen).
The Vikings raided widely throughout this period, but a major settlement that had caused problems in the area of Belgium was defeated in 891 by Arnulf of Carinthia in the battle of Leuven.
The Frankish lands were divided and reunified several times under the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties, but eventually were firmly divided into France and the Holy Roman Empire. The parts of the County Flanders stretching out west of the river Scheldt became part of France during the Middle Ages, but the remainders of the County of Flanders and the Low Countries were part of the Holy Roman Empire, specifically they were in the stem duchy of Lower Lotharingia.
Through the early Middle Ages, the northern part of present-day Belgium (now commonly referred to as Flanders) was a Germanic language-speaking area, whereas in the southern part people had continued to be Romanized and spoke derivatives of Vulgar Latin.
As the Holy Roman Emperors and French Kings lost effective control of their domains in the 11th and 12th centuries, the territory more or less corresponding to the present Belgium was divided into relatively independent feudal states, including:
- The Duchy of Limburg
- The Prince-Bishopric of Liège (the territory over which the bishop ruled as a lord, which was smaller than the diocese)
The coastal county of Flanders was one of the wealthiest parts of Europe in the late Middle Ages, from trading with England, France and Germany, and it became culturally important…
13th-16th centuries. In this period, many cities, including Ypres, Bruges and Ghent got their city charter. The Hanseatic League stimulated trade in the region, and the period saw the erection of many Gothic cathedrals and city halls. With the decline of the Holy Roman emperors’ power starting in the 13th century, the Low Countries were largely left to their own devices. The lack of imperial protection also meant that the French and English began vying for influence in the region.
In 1214, King Philip II of France defeated the Count of Flanders in the Battle of Bouvines and forced his submission to the French crown. Through the remainder of the 13th century, French control over Flanders steadily increased until 1302 when an attempt at total annexation by Philip IV met a stunning defeat when Count Guy (who had the support of the guilds and craftsmen) rallied the townspeople and humiliated the French knights at the Battle of the Golden Spurs. Undaunted, Philip launched a new campaign that ended with the inconclusive Battle of Mons-en-Pevele in 1304. The king imposed harsh peace terms on Flanders, which included ceding the important textile-making centers of Lille and Douai.
Thereafter, Flanders remained a French tributary until the start of the Hundred Years’ War in 1337. In Brabant, skillful work by the duke of that territory and the Count of Hainaut-Holland foiled various French manipulations. Paris’s influence in the Low Countries was counterbalanced by England, which maintained important ties to the coastal ports.
Flanders faced the difficult situation of being politically subservient to France, but also reliant on trade with England. Many craftsmen emigrated to England, which also came to dominate the wool-shipping business. Flemish cloth nonetheless remained a highly valued product, and it was highly dependent on English wool. Any interruption in the supply of that invariably resulted in riots and violence from the weaver’s guilds. On the whole though, Flemish trade became a passive one. Flanders received imports from other areas of Europe, but itself purchased little abroad except wine from Spain and France. Bruges became a great commercial center after the Hanseatic League set up business there and the Italian banking houses followed suit.
A few towns in the Low Countries dated back to Roman times, but most had been founded from the 9th century onward… From early on, the Low Countries began to develop as a commercial and manufacturing center. Merchants became the dominant class in the towns, with the nobility largely limited to countryside estates.
By 1433 most of the Belgian and Luxembourgish territory along with much of the rest of the Low Countries became part of Burgundy under Philip the Good. When Mary of Burgundy (his granddaughter) married Maximilian I, the Low Countries became Habsburg territory. Their son, Philip I of Castile was the father of Charles V. The Holy Roman Empire was unified with Span under the Habsburg Dynasty after Charles V inherited several domains.
*(Jody Gray) I'm ending here; I will probably refer back to the next period, the Burgundy period (the 15th and 16th centuries) in future research...
https://books.google.com/books?id=p9gGAU3InGUC&pg=PA6&lpg=PA6&dq=irish+monks+belgium&source=bl&ots=pBsjt_j_u0&sig=M_QRf_3jz1Sh8dcSN35VoGHWQIY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjM3auNlJXTAhVCQpoKHSACAQsQ6AEIRjAJ#v=onepage&q=irish%20monks%20belgium&f=false Belgium: A History. Iron Baldwin: The Counts of Flanders (pg 7). The advent of the Vikings or Norsemen, who raided and settled the coastal area of Flanders in the 9th and 10th centuries, led to the development of the powerful counts of Flanders, a product of defensive feudalism. The Frankish kings granted these counts land and authority for their assistance in containing the Norse threat. Though technically vassals, by the 11th century the counts of Flanders had become for all practical purposes independent.
The first count of Flanders was the Fleming Baldwin, called Iron Arm, who in 827 (I think I have a different date) abducted and married the 20 yr-old daughter of Charles the Bald, Judith. In the words of L.J.R. Milis, “a proven method for social climbing.” Ghent was Baldwin’s principal stronghold. The son of Baldwin and Judith, Baldwin II, who married the daughter of Alfred the Great of England, built the walls of Bruges and Ypres. He completed the transition begun by his father from a royal administrator to a territorial prince. His successors expanded Flemish territory to the south until checked by the duchy of Normandy, established by the Vikings under Rollo in 911. A manifestation of the interaction of these two territories is the fact that Matilda, the daughter of Baldwin V, became the wife of William the Conqueror, the duke of Normandy.
Strengthened city walls together with circular fortifications erected along the Flemish coast reduced the Viking threat, and in 891 Arnulf of Carinthia defeated the Norse at Leuven and ended their threat to Flanders. In addition to walls and fortresses, the counts of Flanders built the first new roads since the Romans and constructed canals as well. They began pushing into what was then called the “Merciless Forest,” and today the Flemish Ardennes, east of Ypres. And along the coast they began to reclaim land from marsh and sea as polders were constructed. The counts also granted the first charters to cities granting their citizens privileges and exemption from the power of local nobles.
In Ghent at the confluence of the Lieve and the Leie stands Gravensteen, the castle of the Counts of Flanders. In 867 Baldwin Iron Arm built his castle on this site. Baldwin’s castle was intended for protection against the Norsemen. Its replacement, which incorporated part of Baldwin’s castle in its keep, was begun in 1180 by Philip of Alsace, the Count of Flanders, who had just returned to Ghent from the Crusades… The castle was at that time intended to intimidate the unruly people of Ghent. It did not succeed. The people stormed the castle in 1302 at the time of the Battle of the Golden Spurs. It was stormed again in 1338 by the followers of Jacob van Artevelde. Until its restoration between 1894 and 1913 the former fortress was utilized as a prison and then, between 1797 and 1887, as a textile mill…
Gravensteen is particularly important as a cultural monument because almost all of the extant buildings in the Low Lands built before 1200 are churches. From this earlier period, Saint Servatius and Our Lady’s Church in Maastricht and Saint-Barthelemy in Liege are solid examples of the Germanic Romanesque style… Before brick was utilized in the 13th and 14th centuries, the low lying areas of Flanders without stone readily available relied on wood or even turf for building. As a result those buildings no longer exist.
Bruges. Bruges developed around a castle built in 865 by Baldwin Iron Arm. Charles the Bald (King of West Francia) had pursued Baldwin and Judith but reluctantly accepted their marriage out of fear that Baldwin would ally himself with the Northmen. He asked Baldwin and Judith to check the Viking advance by setting up a fiefdom at the Viking landing site or brygghia in the marshy land near the North Sea. The castle and the settlement it attracted became Bruges or Brugge. The city prospered because of its proximity to the estuary, Het Zwin, which at the time extended to Damme, and to which Bruges had access via the Reie. In the 13th century cloth manufacturing enriched the town… The relic of Christ’s blood is reputed to have been given to Dirk of Alsace, the Count of Flanders, by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, in 1147 during the Second Crusade… Baldwin of Flanders, who became the emperor of Byzantium, might well have transferred the relic to his daughters, Margaret and Joanna, who ruled Flanders during his absence.
Ghent. Ghent developed around the abbeys of St. Baaf and St. Pieter founded by St. Armand in the 7th century on a sandy rise above the Scheldt. Baldwin Iron Arm built his castle for defense against the Norsemen at the confluence of the Lieve and the Leie, just above their entry into the Scheldt, around 867. The name of the city might stem from the Celtic word for confluence ganda. The growing town was fortified during the 11th and 12th centuries. During the 13th century a canal was constructed to Bruges.
By the 13th century Ghent had developed into the largest center for the production of woolen cloth in Europe. By the middle of the century 4,000 weavers and 1,200 fullers were engaged in its cloth making industry. A contemporary, Matthew of Westminster, wrote “All the nations of the world are kept warm by the wool of England made into cloth by the men of Flanders.” 30,000 workers belonged to its cloth making guilds. By the end of the century the turbulent city, whose workers and burgers were at continual loggerheads with the nobles, possessed 50,000 inhabitants and was larger than Paris. The counts of Flanders had granted charters to the city in 1180 and 1191. However, in 1212 the Council of Thirty-nine had asserted the rights of the burgers of Ghent against the patricians, the wealthiest merchants and urban nobles, who supported the count. The burgers established the election of magistrates, who had previously been appointed by the patricians. In 1302 workers from Ghent, led by Jan Borluut, contributed to the defeat of the francophile nobles in the Battle of the Golden Spurs.
*left off (pg 9). As feudalism declined in the 12th and 13th centuries, the prosperous cloth producing and trading towns Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres asserted their autonomy from the French kings.
(pg 12) “When they wanted to ingratiate themselves with the men of Ghent or of Brugge, the Dukes knew perfectly how to speak Dutch. When they wreaked their vengeance, when they chastised and humiliated, the language that made the Flemings tremble was always French.” -Pieter Geyl.
*(Jody Gray) I'm ending here; I will probably refer back to this book in future research... next, Philip the Fair, the king of France...
References -related information.
Irish Monks (Jody Gray) I did a Google Search: Irish Monks Belgium -evidently, referred to as Irish Monks (even though it appears they were never there) because Ireland was the origins of the "Mission to Christianize Europe"...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servatius_of_Tongeren Servatius of Tongeren. Born in Armenia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenia Armenia became the first state in the world to adopt Christianity as its official religion. In between the late 3rd century to early years of the 4th century, the states became the first Christian nation (301 AD). The ancient Armenian kingdom was split between the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires around the early 5th century.
Servatius was a widely travelled diplomat and a determined prosecutor of Arianism -a Christological concept that asserts that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who was begotten by God the Father at a point in time, is distinct from the Father and is therefore subordinate to the Father. Legacy. According to tradition the saint’s remains are buried in the Basilica of Saint Servatius in Maastricht, where they lie in a crypt dating from the 6th century. His tomb has been a place of pilgrimage for many centuries. Famous visitors include Charlemagne, Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor), Philip II of Spain and Pope John Paul II.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remaclus Remaclus. Born late 6th or early 7th century in the Duchy of Aquitaine; was a Benedictine missionary bishop. He grew up at the Aquitanian ducal court and studied under Sulpitius the Pious, bishop of Bourges. He became a monk in 625 and was then ordained a priest. He was the first to head the monastery of Solignac, France.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Hadelin Saint Hadelin d. Abt 690, born in Gascony, was one of the scholarly, mostly Irish monks, who preached Christianity and started conversion work in what is now Belgium under the pagan invaders…
Future Research - Links from "History of Belgium"
* Germanic language-speaking area, whereas in the southern part people had continued to be Romanized and spoke derivatives of Vulgar Latin.
under Philip the Good. (Duke of Burgundy from 1419-1467) When Mary of Burgundy, granddaughter of Philip the Good married Maximilian I, … Their son, Philip I of Castile (Philip the Handsome) was the father of Charles V. Holy Roman Emperor from 1519-1556.
Related Blog Posts
-Blog Post: The Congo Free State of Leopold II of Belgium. http://historicalandmisc.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-congo-free-state-of-leopold-ii-of.html -established by Leopold II of Belgium based on the “colonial trinity” of state, missionary and private company interests.
Blog Post: Noble Family, House of Flanders. Counts of Flanders and Counts of Boulogne.
http://gray-adamsfamily.blogspot.com/2016/04/noble-family-house-of-flanders-counts.html *
xxx
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