The Story of Bruges

Name: The Story of Bruges
Author: Gilliat-Smith, Ernest

Gilliat-Smith, Ernest

Bruges (Belgium)

Descended from a poor but illustrious family of the best nobility of
Champagne, and nearly allied to the royal house of France--a man of
great natural abilities, no less courageous than capable, and withal an
ardent lover and lavish patron of literature and the arts--it was no
mere vulgar flattery when Jacques Bretex, the troubadour of Arras,
averred that Count Guy de Dampierre was the most polished and learned
and generous prince of his day. His Court was one of the most brilliant
in Christendom; thither flocked musicians, artists, men of letters, from
all parts of Europe. His chief delight was to while away his leisure
hours with them--in summer-time in the woody glades of Winendael, and in
winter in the halls of his sumptuous palace at Bruges. It was thanks to
his generous patronage that in days when every French town boasted a
poet, in an age that was the age _par excellence_ of French minstrelsy,
this gentle art shone with the greatest _éclat_ in Flanders and in
Artois. But if French songsters like Adenez Leroy and Jacques Bretex
enchanted the ears of Guy's Court with pæans of his virtue and his
glory, plain citizens relished more the rude Flemish verse of the poets
of the people--verse bitter, caustic, passionate, instinct alike with
their hopes and their aversions, verse which, scorning the art of
flattery, did not hesitate to discover the source of all this
magnificence;--burthensome taxes and forced loans wrung from a
long-suffering people by a prince who contemned their liberties. The
bitter irony, for example, with which William Uuitenhove in his
_Reinæert de Vos_ (Reynard the Fox) bewails the progress which Master
Reynard has made in science, and the haste shown by men hungry for
riches to follow no other rule than that which he preached in his den,
or the no less bitter and energetic hymns in which Jacob van Maerlant
bewails the lot 'of the sheep wandering among the ravening wolves who
have become their shepherds now that pride and avarice have given to
every man who possesses gold the right to speak in the council chamber
of princes.'

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

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The Story of BrugesGilliat-Smith, Ernest

History

The Story of Bruges

Gilliat-Smith, Ernest

Bruges (Belgium)

Descended from a poor but illustrious family of the best nobility of
Champagne, and nearly allied to the royal house of France--a man of
great natural abilities, no less courageous than capable, and withal an
ardent lover and lavish patron of literature and the arts--it was no
mere vulgar flattery when Jacques Bretex, the troubadour of Arras,
averred that Count Guy de Dampierre was the most polished and learned
and generous prince of his day. His Court was one of the most brilliant
in Christendom; thither flocked musicians, artists, men of letters, from
all parts of Europe. His chief delight was to while away his leisure
hours with them--in summer-time in the woody glades of Winendael, and in
winter in the halls of his sumptuous palace at Bruges. It was thanks to
his generous patronage that in days when every French town boasted a
poet, in an age that was the age _par excellence_ of French minstrelsy,
this gentle art shone with the greatest _éclat_ in Flanders and in
Artois. But if French songsters like Adenez Leroy and Jacques Bretex
enchanted the ears of Guy's Court with pæans of his virtue and his
glory, plain citizens relished more the rude Flemish verse of the poets
of the people--verse bitter, caustic, passionate, instinct alike with
their hopes and their aversions, verse which, scorning the art of
flattery, did not hesitate to discover the source of all this
magnificence;--burthensome taxes and forced loans wrung from a
long-suffering people by a prince who contemned their liberties. The
bitter irony, for example, with which William Uuitenhove in his
_Reinæert de Vos_ (Reynard the Fox) bewails the progress which Master
Reynard has made in science, and the haste shown by men hungry for
riches to follow no other rule than that which he preached in his den,
or the no less bitter and energetic hymns in which Jacob van Maerlant
bewails the lot 'of the sheep wandering among the ravening wolves who
have become their shepherds now that pride and avarice have given to
every man who possesses gold the right to speak in the council chamber
of princes.'

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

The Story of Bruges

The Story of Bruges

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