willy van ryckeghem

July is the month of national celebrations, the 4th of July in the US, and the 14th of July in France. What is so special about July 11th? July 11th is the official holiday of Belgian Flanders since 1973 and an unofficial holiday in French Flanders.

Willy van Ryckeghem We now turn to the remaining part of Gaul stretching from the river Somme to the Garonne. The principal tribes mentioned by Julius Caesar in his Battle for Gaul are the Aedui, who resided between the Loire and the Saone, the Sequani, who lived in Eastern France, the Bituriges on the river Loire, the Leuci who lived on the banks of the river Mosel, the Veneti, who occupied Brittany, the Santones, who resided in western France and the Pictones, who lived on the west coast near Bordeaux.

The town of Cassel is one of the earliest in the so-called Franco-Flemish Westhoek The Romans baptized it Castellum Morinorum after the Morini 1 tribe which occupied the north coast of Gaul together with the Menapii. Julius Caesar, in The Battle for Gaul, mentions that he put the Morini under the control of his client Commius, the king of the Atrebates. Caesar later

In this series of Gallo-Roman families, we covered in earlier papers families of Narbonne, Lyon and Auvergne. We now turn to Aquitaine. Julius Caesar begins his chapter I of the Battle of Gaul with the following slightly puzzling paragraph : "Gaul as a whole consists of three separate parts: one is inhabited by the Belgae, another by the Aquitani, and the third by the people we call Gauls, though in their own language they are called Celts.

The document Grandes Chroniques de France, which reposes in the Bibliotheque nationale de France in Paris, contains an illumination by the famous French painter Jean Fouquet showing how Frankish forces repulsed a Danish invasion of their territory in 515 AD1.

Willy van Ryckeghem When Baldwin I of Flanders died in January 879 at the monastery of Sithiu in Artois, the news travelled fast and in July of the same year the Annales Vedastini recorded that the Vikings had devastated Therouanne 'ferro et igne' (by fire and sword).

Willy van Ryckeghem. In the gallery of French national heroes, Jean Bart occupies a place of honor as "the King's Corsair". He entered the French King's service in 1672 at the age of twenty-two. He soon drew the attention of Colbert, the Minister of the Navy who entrusted him with the command of a flotilla of six ships. In 1677, he was able to capture twenty Dutch ships from a single encounter. In 1689, he was taken prisoner by the English and locked up at Plymouth, but he managed to escape. After his return to France, he was named captain of the King's ships. When the English blockaded Dunkirk, he managed to escape with a squadron. When in 1694, a blockade by the Augsburg League caused a grain shortage, Louis XIV decided to hire a flotilla of one hundred ships from Norway and he asked Jean Bart to escort them safely to France. Bart succeeded and was knighted by the thankful king afterwards. He died in 1702 at the age of fifty-two. His home town honored him with a statue on a square which is named after him.

If it is true that we all descend from Charlemagne, then his ancestors are our ascendants too. His ancestors go back to the Frankish Barbarians who crossed the Rhine in 355 CE after emperor Constantius II abandoned the countries of Gaul. The Franks besieged Cologne for ten months and occupied it in December of the same year. Forty-five flourishing cities, Tongres, Trier, Worms, Strasbourg, etc. were pillaged, and for the most part reduced to ashes. The original seat of their monarchy was in

The Anglo-Norman clan Comyn represented for a considerable time one of the most powerful families in Scotland, controlling the Highlands, Buchan and Moray. They were known for their insubordination against the kings of England and were leaders of the First War of Scottish Independence. They were also enemies of Robert the Bruce. Several died violently. After seven generations of barons, they changed their name to Cumming. The controversial Dominic Cummings is the clan's latest public figure in the 21st century.

In the 10th century, Brosella did not represent much more than a couple of houses next to a swamp. Nobody could have dreamt that this dreary place would one day become the capital of a united Europe. One would have thought that honor would have been reserved for Cologne or Liege or Maastricht. History has decided otherwise, but recent historians have paid little attention to the origins of Brussels .

Willy van Ryckeghem Around 1400, a fashion of La=nizing family names took hold in the Low Countries. La=nized first names had always been used at bap=sm, but never as family names. It was rare to inherit a La=nized family name from one of the parents. Most frequently, people adopted such a name in the course of their career. The fashion inscribed itself into the wider movement of humanism which characterized this period.

When after the death of his brother Adelolf in 933, the count of Flanders Arnulf the Great took over the counties of Therouanne and Boulogne, he was infringing on his young nephews' rights. They could hardly protest since they were still minors at the time. One of them, Arnulf of Boulogne, the rightful heir, would later bitterly contest this takeover until emperor Lothar intervened to reconcile him with his uncle.

PEDRO DE GANTE, VAN GENT OF NIET? Pedro de Gante-Pieter van Gent-is nog steeds de bekendste Gentenaar in Latijns-Amerika, in het bijzonder in Mexico. Daar wijdde hij zich als aller eerste missionaris gedurende 40 jaar aan de opvoeding van duizenden indiaanse kinderen. Hij verdedigde er ook hun rechten ten aanzien van de Spaanse onderdrukkers. Dit alles bleef niet onopgemerkt. Onlangs veroverde hij een plek in de Vlaamse canon, een tijd geleden eindigde hij 99ste op de VRT-lijst van De Grootste Belg en in Gent heeft hij een gedenkplaat aan het Oud Gerechtsgebouw waar vroeger het Recollettenklooster stond en een standbeeld op het Fratersplein voor het vroegere Kar tuizerklooster. Er blij ven echter nog steeds vraagtekens aan zijn naam verbonden, zoals: was hij inderdaad van Gent, en zo niet, waar werd hij dan geboren? Een opmerkelijk verhaal over een figuur met opmerkelijke connecties. Afb. 1. Plaket aan de gevel van het gerechtshof op de locatie van het vroegere klooster van de Minderbroeders of Recolletten. (Foto Frank Gelaude, april 2023). 'U moet weten, geliefde broeders, dat ik vanuit Gent vertrokken ben samen met twee andere broeders, Jan de Dekker en Jan van der Auwera, en dat ikzelf, Pedro de Mura, geboren te Iguen in de provincie Budarda, de derde was van dit gezelschap.'

After examining in an earlier paper the origin of animal family names, we now turn to two other categories of family names, those with colors and those derived from spices. The colorful names mostly go back to 1100 while the spicy names seem to find their origin much later after the creation of the United East Indian Company (VWOC) in the 1600's.

Willy van RYCKEGHEM When John the Fearless was captured by the Turks after the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396, Sultan Bajazet demanded a fabulous ransom payment of 200.000 Venetian gold ducats before releasing him. John's parents, Duke Philip of Burgundy and Countess Margaret of Flanders, were unable to raise such an amount, which represented the equivalent of two million livres tournois, the currency of Flanders at the time. Just to give an idea of the enormity of the amount involved, the annual income of the Countess Margaret from Flanders and Artois together was never more than 150.000 livres, i.e. one-twelfth of the required sum.

History is written by the victors and most accounts describe the event through the eyes of the English. In this paper I will attempt to look at the event through the eyes of the Flemish, many of whom fought (reluctantly) on the French side. We should not forget that Agincourt was situated in Artois, which was part of Flanders at the time as part of the inheritance which John the Fearless had received from his mother Margaret of Male.

Willy van Ryckeghem In November 880, rowing vigorously upwards the river Lys, the Northmen moved their headquarters in Flanders from Ghent to Kortrijk in preparation for an invasion of Saint-Omer. They chased away the Menapii and Suevi tribes, whom they disliked, and built a castrum to defend themselves in case of an attack 1. In January 881, they embarked for their favorite target of the abbey of St. Bertin, which they had already invaded twice, first in 860, and again in 877. It may have been a mild winter, and the river was not frozen that year. The river Lys traversing Kortrijk (Curtriacum)

Thanks to Beethoven's famous Egmont Ouverture, everybody is familiar with the name, but few know this family's history with all its extraordinary achievements as well as its tragic ending. A major (hagiographic) source is the family history itself which was presented to Lamoral of Egmont in 1559 on the occasion of his installation in Brussels. His wealthy mother Françoise of Luxemburg had started building two magnificent residences, one for herself and an even larger one for her son, known today as the Egmont Palace. Lamoral intended to decorate the walls of his new residence with his ancestors' portraita and had commissioned a chronicle in which their images would all bel included 1. When the construction of his palace was finally finished in 1564, Lamoral organized a splendid tournament on the square in front of the palace, now called le Petit Sablon, probably provoking the jealousy of the more austere Spaniards. Present Courtyard view of Egmont Palace 1 Genealogische Kroniek van het Geslacht van Egmont (1559), reproduced in the 1968 Yearbook of the Cultural Centre of Zottegem. The family name is derived from the place name Egmond-aan-Zee in W. Frisia.

In two of his blogs, dated July 21, 2013 and April 20, 2014, the genetic genealogist Michael R. Maglio presented the results of a pooled DNA analysis of presently living descendants of some of the best known companions of William the Conqueror. His reasoning was based on the assumption that these companions were either cousins from the House of Normandy or that maybe William had slept with their wives, só that their descendants might all share the same genetic material. Since William the Conqueror was a fifth-generation descendant of Rollo, the author then extrapolated the results back to the founder of the House of Normandy. His conclusion was that Rollo was a Dane of Norwegian stock, probably pleasing both sides of the ongoing argument about his geographic origin.

The French have a saying "Dites-moi qui vous fréquentez, et je vous dirai qui vous êtes" (Show me your friends and I can tell you who you are) 2. In the seemingly never-ending controversy over whether Rollo was of Norwegian or Danish descent, an identification of his associates can therefore help shed some light on his origins.

Willy van Ryckeghem The year 1566 was marked in Flanders by two singular but interconnected events: the revolt of the nobles in April which led to the gueux movement and the Iconoclastic Fury ("Beeldenstorm") in August. Both were directed against the religious repression by the so-called placards issued by the regent Margaret of Parma who was governing in the name of her halfbrother Philip II of Spain. We propose here to have a fresh look at these events and show how they differed from previous revolts in Flanders such as those of 1452 and 1487.

Willy van Ryckeghem "Behind an impressive, if bizarre, façade of courtly splendor and chivalrous festivities, Duke Philip the Good was an aggressive opportunist who, especially in the first half of his ducal reign, concentrated on the taste of attacking and swallowing up his smaller neighbors." Richard Vaughan, author of Philip the Good (1963).

When the recently widowed Philip of Alsace remarried with Matilda of Portugal in 1185, he took the French by surprise 2. After all, his first wife Isabelle had come with Vermandois, and he was expected to easily find another French heiress somewhere for his second marriage. An explanation is given by Eljas Oksanen in his recent book Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World 1066-1216 3. He suggests that the marriage was arranged by King Henry II of England: In 1183 Henry arranged a marriage between Count Philip and Matilda, the daughter of King Alfonso I of Portugal. Conveyed by Henry's own royal ship, the bride travelled to Flanders via England, and the king hosted a royal reception for the pair, spending some 300 pounds on the occasion.

In the perceptive introduction to her translation of Galbert's Murder of Charles the Good, the American historian J.B.Ross situated the murder in the climate of restlessness which characterized the period: Within this apparently stable and well-ordered society a ferment was at work. Restless individuals and groups could be found, both among the older noble classes whose appetite for aggression was thwarted by the reign of law and justice, and within the amorphous but vital communities of townspeople whose taste for liberties had received only slight recognition from the counts up to this point 1 .

If we want to understand the motivation of Count Robert II , who was to lead the Flemish contingent during the First Crusade, it is important to remember his father's earlier pilgrimage to the Holy Land between 1086 and 1090 2. Robert I the Frisian was then accompanied by no less than six hundred knights, a huge number, which suggests that he had more in mind than a simple visit to Jerusalem. His side-objective was clearly to establish a political connection with Alexis Komnenos, who had recently usurped the throne of Byzantium and was facing resistance from within and from without. We may also not forget that Robert the father had himself usurped the countship of Flanders in 1071, so he had a similar experience as the emperor of Byzantium. Alexis was so impressed by the six hundred Flemish knights that he asked the Frisian if he could borrow 500 of them to fight against Kerbogha, the Atabegh of Mosul, who was invading his territory. This was a clear 1 Henri Pirenne, Mohammet and Charlemagne, manuscript completed on May 4 th 1935 2 See my companion piece on this site : The Rehabilitation of Robert the Frisian (2020)

Though this book is mainly concerned with post-war inflation in OECD countries, the experience of less developed countries is by no means ignored. The role of structural factors is stressed, and the inter-relation between these and monetary causes is examined.

Most of the research into postwar inflation has concentrated on explaining variations over time in the inflation rate. Inter-country differences in average inflation rates have attracted less attention, although they are clearly important in the international adjustment process. There exist at least three major rival hypotheses for the explanation of inter-country differences in inflation: the monetary hypothesis: this is probably the oldest hypothesis. It relates international differences in inflation to the growth rates of money supply per unit of output. It was tested by Anna Schwartz for the period 1952-69 using a sample of 4o countries. The observations were located closely along a 45°-line: the simple correlation coefficient was as high as 0.97. The following conclusion, “that the key to understanding secular price change, now as in the past, is the behaviour of money stock per unit of output” is of course open to challenge, because of the assumed direction of causality. Many economists now take the view that the quantity of money is not something exogenously determined: rather it is an endogenously determined quantity that adjusts to expenditure decisions.2)