and who shall throw a stone at him? How many of us, gentle reader, are of the stuff of which martyrs are made? If he believed that his life would be spared he was bitterly disappointed, but his cowardice gained for him this much--instead of burning him they cut off his head. With all his faults, he was a great artist. Let him rest in peace. As for poor Catherine, who had been arrested along with her husband, hers was a more terrible fate. On the 14th of July 1443 they buried her alive. Reader, before quitting Saint Gertrude's, go into the chapel, which skirts the north side of the choir, and there, on the north wall, you will find a white marble tablet, engraved with a Latin inscription. We have here the requiem of Abbot Renesse, and one likes to think that he wrote it himself. Read it, and perhaps it will make you forget the discordant notes of poor Beyaert's gruesome dirge. D. O. M. Viatorum in terris implorat suffragium et eorum in c[oe]lis sperat Consortium A. G. BARO DE RENESSE Sanctæ Gertrudis Abbas XX obiit 8 Martii 1785 _R.I.P._ CHAPTER XVII _Pictures and Painters_ In another volume of this series we have already said something concerning the origin and history of mediæval Flemish art. Within the limited space at our disposal anything more than a mere sketch would be impossible, and it would be superfluous and wearisome to repeat in the present handbook, which is in some sense the companion volume to _The Story of Bruges_, what has been there set down on the subject in question. We shall therefore content ourselves by adding here, by way of complement, a few notes (culled for the most part from Mr Weale's published writings) on the mediæval art corporations of the Low Country--those famous guilds of Saint Luke, of Our Lady, of Saint John, within whose ranks were formed all the great Flemish masters of the old national school, and by recounting as briefly as may be what is known of the five most noted Brabant painters of the Middle Age:--Roger van der Weyden, Dierick Boudts, Hugo van der Goes, Quentin Metsys, and Bernard van Orley. Men, all of them, whose names are intimately associated with Brussels or with Louvain.