Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images available at The Internet Archive) _The Story of Bruges_ 'I do love these ancient ruins; We never tread upon them but we set Our foot upon some reverend history.' _Duchess of Malfi._ _All Rights Reserved._ [Illustration] _The Story of_ Bruges _by Ernest Gilliat-Smith Illustrated by Edith Calvert and Herbert Railton_ [Illustration] _London: J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd. Aldine House, 29 and 30 Bedford Street Covent Garden W.C._ _1909_ _First Edition, July 1901. Second Edition, October 1903. Third Edition, December 1905. Fourth Edition, November 1909._ PREFACE Few great mediæval towns possess so many memorials of the past, alike in masonry and on parchment, as does 'the ancient town of Bruges.' They have been indited by the patience of the scribe in breviary and in charter-roll; they have been perpetuated by the art of the painter, in gold and glowing tones, in portrait and in altar-piece; they have been graven with an iron pen in wood and metal and stone; they have been handed down by word of mouth through countless generations. The municipal rolls go back to the year 1280, and included amongst them are the annual accounts of the city from 1281 to 1789, almost complete; those of the Collegiate Church of _Notre Dame_ to early in the eleven hundreds; and there are, too, the rolls of _St. Sauveur_, of the old Cathedral of St. Donatian, of the great Abbey of Dunes, and of many other time-honoured corporations; whilst the Municipal Library and the Library of the Diocesan Seminary contain together, no less than seven hundred and thirty-four manuscripts, not a few of which were written in the city itself or in its immediate neighbourhood. There are buildings in Bruges which carry us back to the days of Baldwin Bras de Fer, perhaps to a still more remote period; four of the seven parish churches date from the twelve hundreds; the oldest of the civic monuments to at latest 1280, and from this epoch until the close of the Middle Age almost every year is marked by the erection of stately edifices, of which very many have come down to us. Lack of material will not hamper the future historian of Bruges, for the history of Bruges has yet to be written. The present work lays no claim to such title. It is but a bare outline, a mere sketch, and in this it resembles, in some degree, the beautiful map at the end of the volume, and many of the illustrations by which the book is adorned.