From Antiquity through the Middle Ages

Vergil and his Roman fellow citizens knew where the Morini, one of the tribes inhabiting part of the territory of the Low Countries, were to be found: they were a people at the extreme end of the Empire or even the world (Aeneid 8.727: extremique hominum Morini). This region hardly ever formed a political unity, only a geographical and cultural one. It is situated along the Channel and the North Sea from Boulogne to Emden in the north, the southern border following an imaginary line from Boulogne to Trier, the eastern one from Trier to Emden. It covers the modern kingdoms of Belgium and the Netherlands, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, and a major part of northern France, including cities such as Arras (Atrecht), Boulogne, Cambrai (Kamerijk), Cassel, Douai (Dowaai), Lille, St. Omer (St. Omaars), Therouanne, and Valenciennes. It was forged into a political unity by the Burgundian duke Philip the Good (died 1467), with the exception of the prince-bishopric of Liege, which remained independent until the French Revolution.

Latin culture was introduced into the region by the invading and occupying Roman legions. For several centuries Latin was the only official language for administration, but there is no evidence that there was ever any literary output by a local author in antiquity, except for a few inscriptions and wooden tablets written by soldiers belonging to the cohors Batavorum (the cohort of the Batavians) or the cohors Tungrorum (the cohort of the Tungri) originating from this region. Whatever may have blossomed was completely eradicated, as was observed by the fifth-century author Sidonius Apollinaris in his letter to Arbogast, the governor of Trier: Quocirca sermonis pompa Romani, si qua adhuc uspiam est, Belgicis olim sive Rhenanis abolita terris, in te resedit (The splendor of the Roman language, if anywhere it still in some fashion survives, rests with you, for it has long since been effaced from Belgic and Rhenish lands; letter 4.17.2).

This letter was all too flattering: it took several centuries before the Latin language and culture could make a vigorous comeback, during the Carolingian era. Not unlike

In the rest of Europe, monasteries and cathedral schools were to become the main centers of intellectual life. Beyond a single important center in the northern part of the Netherlands (Utrecht), a host of abbeys and priories were founded in the south from the early eighth century onwards: Arras, Aulne, Cambrai, Douai, Echternach, Ghent, Lobbes, Marchiennes, Saint-Amand-les-Eaux, Saint-Omer, Stavelot, Sint-Truiden, and so on.

It was thanks to the activity of the scriptoria of these monasteries that classical authors were transmitted to posterity. It is obvious, however, that they chiefly took an interest in copying and studying manuscripts with a religious or devotional content. Even before Alcuin of York composed at Tours (ca. 800) his Life of Willibrord (the English missionary who became the apostle to the Frisians), an early copy (now at Stuttgart, Wrirttembergische Landesbibliothek, codex HB XIV.1) of which was transcribed at Echternach during the ninth century, the St. Truiden abbey had already generated two similar hagiographical works: the biographies of Eucherius and of the abbey’s founder, Trudo, this last one by Trudo’s fellow-countryman Donatus Hasbaniensis.

In that early period a somewhat higher cultural level was reached in the western part of the Low Countries, where Hucbald of St. Amand (ca. 840-930) bequeathed to his abbey a conspicuous number of books, among them Vergil, Seneca, Priscian, and also the Latin translation of Plato’s Timaeus by Chalcidius. He moreover brought off an amazing tour de force, treating in verse a theme that had been introduced by Synesius of Cyrene (ca. 370-413). His Ecloga de laudibus calvitii (Eclogue on the praise of baldness) is a philosophical eulogy of baldness, in which every single word starts with the letter ‘‘c.’’ Several centuries later it inspired the Dutch poet Janus Dousa, about 1577, to undertake a creative imitation in a caustic satire against a Franciscan friar. This Sacri calvitii encomium (Eulogy of the sacred baldness), however, he never completed.

At about the same time as Hucbald composed his Ecloga, bishop Radbod from Utrecht (died 917) produced a charming nature-poem on the swallow, De hirundine, which witnesses to his rhetorical schooling. Furthermore, an enhancement of the relatively limited knowledge of classical antiquity and the poor quality of local instruction was provided by Celtic scholarship. Towards the middle of the ninth century there arrived at Liege the learned Irish teacher Sedulius Scottus. He even had a fair knowledge of Greek, although the Proverbia Grecorum (Greek proverbs) in his Collectanea (Collected works) most probably stem from an Irish source. He was the very first author to write a ‘‘mirror for princes’’ (De rectoribus Christianis, Concerning Christian rulers), in verse, and his fame as a poet earned him the title of Maro Leodii (the Vergil of Liege).

The tradition of sound instruction continued at Liege. Trying to teach Latin to his pupils at the Cathedral School of Liege in an attractive way at the turn of the tenth century, Egbert of Liege wrote for them a manual in verse, the Fecunda ratis (Fertile ship), divided in two parts, the Prora (Prow) and the Puppis (Stern). It presents a strange mixture of proverbial, satirical, and other pieces, derived from biblical and classical sources (especially the Roman satirists) as well as from vernacular ones, amongst them the presumed ancestor of Little Red Riding Hood - De puella a lupellis servata (Concerning the girl preserved from the wolves). It was in that scholarly environment that manuscripts of classical authors were studied and copied, as is proved, for instance, by the extensive twelfth-century list of a Liege school library or by the surviving manuscript books and catalogs containing mainly classical texts originating from monasteries such as Lobbes, Gembloux, or St. Amand.

Classical authors who were almost completely unknown during the Middle Ages in the rest of Europe were read and imitated in the Low Countries. A prominent scholar in this respect was Ratherius of Verona, born in the Liege area and educated at Lobbes (ca. 890-974), three times bishop of Verona, but also bishop of Liege and abbot of Lobbes and Aulne. He not only had some knowledge of Greek, but was one of the very few people of the Middle Ages who read Plautus and Catullus. Similarly, the versatile writer Sigebert (ca. 1028-1112), a teacher in the neighboring school of the abbey of Gembloux, was one of the very few in the entire period from the ninth until the fifteenth century to have seen and used Lucretius’ De rerum natura (On the nature of things). One who was extremely well versed in classical Latin literature was Nivardus of Ghent, the enigmatic author of the Ysengrimus. This satirical work, which proved to be of central importance for the development of medieval beast-literature, was composed ca. 1148/9 in sophisticated elegiacs, showing a great familiarity in the first place with Ovid, but also with Vergil, Horace, Juvenal, Lucan, Statius, and others.

More than classical authors, however, it was writers of Late Antiquity who were most eagerly read in the twelfth century. The foundation for the prosimetric De planctu naturae (On the lamentation of nature) of the doctor universalis (universally learned) Alan of Lille (ca. 1120-1203) was supplied by the Timaeus of Plato, read in the Latin translation of Chalcidius, while the literary model was provided by Boethius’ De consolatione philosophiae (On the consolation of philosophy). A blend of literature and philosophy is equally present in Alain’s long allegorical poem Antic-laudianus (Against Claudian), which according to the prose prologue can be read on three levels: as a simple adventure, as a tale with a moral message, or in an allegorical way. It provides a reply to the In Rufinum (Against Rufinus, in which the hellish Furies conspired against Iustitia, justice), composed by Claudius Claudianus, the last great poet of classical antiquity, who was very influential not only in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance but even down to the twentieth century: he occupies a place of honor in the historical novel by Hella S. Haasse (born 1918), Een nieuwer testament (A newer testament, 1966).

Vernacular literature, Dutch and French, has been influenced by the classics almost from the beginning. In the second half of the twelfth century, Hendrik van Veldeke composed his Eneide, a free adaptation of the French Roman d’Eneas (Romance of Aeneas), based on Vergil and Ovid. A century later the Flemish poet Jacob van Maerlant (ca. 1225 - ca. 1300) imitated Walter of Chatillon’s Alexandreis in his Alexanders yeesten (Deeds of Alexander), whilst his Historie van Troyen (ca. 1264) goes back to Benoit de Sainte-Maure’s poem Roman de Troie (Romance of Troy), and his Wrake van Jerusalem (Revenge of Jerusalem) to Flavius Josephus’ Bellum Judaicum (Jewish war). The theme of the Les neuf preux (the ‘‘nine worthies’’), which from around 1300 rapidly spread in literature and art not only in the

Low Countries but all over Europe, appeared for the first time in his rather short poem Van neghen de besten (Concerning the nine worthies),

One of the sources for the principal poem of the famous court poet Dirc Potter (ca. 1370-1428), Der minnen loep (The course of love, 1411), a kind of introduction to love in four books, was Ovid’s oeuvre, especially the Heroides and Metamorphoses. A hundred years later Cornelis van Ghistele (1510-73) not only translated the comedies of Terence (1555), the Aeneid (1556), and Sophocles’ Antigone, but also composed a tragedy, Van Eneas en Dido (Of Aeneas and Dido, 1551). Dirk Volckertz Coornhert (1522-90) was interested especially in ethical texts: he translated Cicero’s De officiis (On duties, 1561), Seneca’s De beneficiis (On kind deeds, 1562), and Boethius’ De consolatione philosophiae (On the consolation by philosophy, 1585). With his De dolinghe van Ulysse (The wandering of Ulysses), a translation of the first 12 books of Homer’s Odyssey published in 1561, he opens the long series of Dutch translators of Homer.

Vernacular literature in French found a friendly home at the Burgundian Court, where classical antiquity became a constant source of inspiration for ducal aspirations, for decorations on tapestries, and for festivities. When Philip the Good founded his Order of the Golden Fleece in 1430, unlike most other founders of similar orders, he turned to classical mythology for his symbols, continuing in this way the interest of his grandfather Philip the Bold (1342-1404), who already in 1393 had bought two tapestries representing the story of Jason. At the request of Philip the Good, his chaplain Raoul Lefevre composed an Histoire de Jason (ca. 1460), in which the hero, Jason, displays all the qualities of a noble knight and at the end marries Medea. It was also for Philip that Lefevre compiled a Recueil des histoires de Troie (Anthology of the accounts of Troy, 1464), intended to replace the Historia destructionis Troiae (History of the destruction of Troy) by Guido delle Colonne (ca. 1287), the condensed Latin prose version of Benoit de Sainte-Maure’s Roman de Troie (Romance of Troy). Almost immediately, William Caxton, staying at that time at Bruges, started an English translation, which he completed at the request of Philip’s spouse, Margaret of York. He had it printed - the first book ever printed in English - most probably at Bruges, at the end of 1473 or the beginning of 1474. Back in England he also published an English version of the Histoire de Jason around 1477, while a Dutch translation appeared at Haarlem in 1485.

Still at the Burgundian court, Jean Mielot undertook the translation into French of Cicero’s famous letter to his brother Quintus concerning the duties of a governor, at the request of Philip the Good, who intended it for his son Charles. In 1462 Mielot also translated in 1462 the Romuleon of Benvenuto da Imola, a fourteenth-century Latin compilation of Roman history based on Livy, Sallust, Suetonius, Vergil, Valerius Maximus, and so on, an undertaking repeated more skilfully in 1466 by Sebastien Mamerot. Charles the Bold outdid his father in the liveliness of his interest in historical works recording the deeds of the great heroes of antiquity, and he enjoyed passing his leisure time listening to them being recited. He even had a medal struck by Giovanni Filangieri di Candida, representing himself as an ancient Roman. To him Charles Soillot dedicated his translation of Xenophon’s Hieron in 1467 in order to illustrate the dangers of tyranny. In 1468 Vasco de Lucena made a French version of

Quintus Curtius’s Historia Alexandri (History of Alexander), introducing some chapters taken over from the Latin version of Plutarch’s Life of Alexander translated by Guarino Veronese. Two years later he translated Xenophon’s Cyropaedia (The education of Cyrus), following the Latin version by Poggio Bracciolini (1470). Jean Du Quesne translated for Charles the Commentarii (Commentaries) of Julius Caesar.