Mededelingen van het Cyriel Buysse Genootschap 11

[p. 128]

24

July 2, 1892

...

Flemish literature also furnishes its yearly contingent of books, not only books belonging to imaginative literature, but also to history and philosophy. M.J. Frederichs, already mentioned by me for his French writings, has printed an important monograph on a sect in the sixteenth century of Antwerp libertines of the most singular character, and their leader, who was a humble tiler like Wat Tyler, ‘De Secte der Loïsten of Antwerpsche Libertijnen (1525-1545)’; while M. Frans De Potter has written on the manners and customs of the Flemings in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and has printed a new volume of his great history of the streets and monument[s] of Ghent, and M. Stinissen, under the title of ‘Een Blik in de School der 16^de Eeuw,’ has compiled an interesting tractate on the pedagogues of the sixteenth century - Erasmus, Luther, Sturm, and Melanchton. M. Di Martinelli has related the annals of Diest, a little town in Brabant, at the time of the rising against Joseph II, in 1789; and a hale veteran, M.G. Bergmann, has recounted his personal reminiscences of the founder of the Flemish movement, Jan Frans Willems (who was his school companion and intimate friend), and also of King William I and the Belgian revolution of 1830. Further, I may be permitted to mention here the first volume of ‘Geschiedenis der Inquisitie in de Nederlanden,’ by the author of the present article, which traces back the history of the Inquisition, episcopal and Papal, in the Low Countries to the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries.

The contributions to philology consist of a new edition, revised and augmented, of the curious glossary of the patois of West Flanders, ‘West-Vlaamsch Idioticon,’ by the late Dean De Bo, and the first part of an analogous glossary for the Pays de Waas - to the north of Ghent - by Abbé A. Joos. MM. Nap. de Pauw and L. Gaillard have brought out a new volume of their edition of the ‘Istory van Troyen,’ the great poem of the famous Jacob van Maerlant, the fertile and courageous poet of the thirteenth century; while M.D. Stallaert has discovered and printed a joyous vaudeville

[p. 129]

of the sixteenth century, ‘De bervoete Broeders’ (‘The Barefooted Friars’).

The volumes of verse that have been published in Flemish are few in number and poor in quality, among them that of M. van Droogenbroek (whose pseudonym is Jan Ferguut), which is inferior to his previous efforts. On the stage some ten pieces have been produced, of which ‘Een Spiegel’ (‘A Mirror’), by M.N. de Tière, has obtained the triennial prize for Flemish Dramatic literature. A good many novels have as usual, been brought out; but I need only mention a too realistic book of M. Moortgat's and two fictions of the first rank by Mlle. V. Loveling, our best Flemish author, ‘Idonia’ and ‘Een dure Eed’ (‘A Terrible Oath’). Especially the last named, which originally came out in the well-known magazine De Gids of Amsterdam, has enjoyed a great and legitimate success, particularly in Holland, where good literature is more read and appreciated than in Flemish Belgium.

PAUL FREDERICQ
[tr. by Editor]