Day 20: Bruges

Today we went to Bruges! We went to the archives and, uh...

So, funny story: I was working on these journals the night before, and I never noticed when my roommate with the key walked upstairs. By the time I decided to look at a clock, it was 1am. I frantically checked my room only to discover I was locked out. I knocked on the door, but to no avail. I kept checking every hour, and I was finally let into my room at 5:30am. As a result, I was very tired. My friends back home thought it was hilarious.

I have the greatest of friends.

Even though I've pulled all nighters practically every day in high school and college, I somehow couldn't manage to make it through the parts of the day where we were sitting in one place for an extended period of time. "But Anna, that's practically any day in class!" Well, you're right. When we went to the archives, we were able to sit in the director's office and view documents that date back to the Middle Ages. Guess what happened.

What I do remember is that the archives building used to be a sort of courthouse and that different parts of the building were constructed at different time periods (I think the main part was from the 16th century, while additional wings were from the 17th century). The archives also has to work hard with restoring documents, as quite a few have been damaged either by time of through accidents during the wars.

Bruges itself is a beautiful city. It was very wealthy and had many liberties as a city of the Middle Ages, so Bruges was able to have many beautiful buildings. An example of this is the belfry tower where the documents used to be kept, which is the highest one in the area. Another building in Bruges is the Huis Ter Beurze, which can be considered the first stock exchange in existence.

Wikipedia: home of epic pictures of buildings.

Bruges had a distinct position in society, and there was a fear of merchants taking away that power. There was an increasing eagerness to establish a policy of its own within the city. When the conflict between France and England led to enforcement of boycotting the English market, a major uprising began with an intent to persecute and kill all representatives of the French king on July 11, 1302. This happened at night, so how did the citizens of Bruges tell who was a representative of France? The leaders of the uprising prepared a Dutch phrase to test the citizens: only those who spoke Dutch natively would be able to say it correctly. This phrase was, "schild en vriend," which means, "shield and friend". The professor had a few of us try and say it and needless to say, I failed. Using this phrase was a very effective way to determine who was and wasn't of French origin. The two guild leaders who conducted the uprising are immortalized today with a statue.

This uprising caused major anger in Paris, and the French king prepared an army of knights to attack Flanders. This caused some concern since at the time, nothing could stop an army of knights. They had heavy armor, and they were on horses to boot. The people of Flanders decided to take advantage of knowledge that they had and the French didn't: the geography of the region. They led the army of knights into an area that they knew would get very muddy with a rain. When the army charged, the horses sank in the mud and got stuck. This made it very easy for the citizens to come in and attack the now vulnerable French army. This struggle, called the Battle of the Golden Spurs, was the first time in European history that an irregular army defeated an army of knights.

Jan van Eyck also spent some time here due to the affluence of the area. It is said that van Eyck was chosen by the Duke of Burgundy to paint the Princess of Portugal. The Duke was apparently so pleased that he gave van Eyck enough compensation for him to visit Jerusalem, where he supposedly got a lot of inspiration from.

There was a very interesting hotel we stopped by. The hotel was apparently situated on top of where an old castle used to be and when they started digging for the foundation, they found some remnants of this castle. We were fortunate enough to be able to visit these castle ruins. It was pretty cool!

Bruges became wealthy due to tourism, and so they invested heavily into modern art. Sometimes it worked out well, and other times, well...it didn't.

The archives building was a very short stop for us. Even so, there was significance to it: this place was a model for the city hall in both Brussels and Leuven, both built by the same architect.

Our final stop on our city tour was the Basilica (look up name). Religion was very important back in the day, and there was constant competition among churches. The churches were either built very tall or had something spectacular in the church, such as a painting or a sculpture. A popular thing to have was a relic, which is a certain object with a high symbolic meaning. This usually comes in the form of a body part of a saint (which totally isn't creepy at all). Bruges claims to have the blood of Jesus Christ in this basilica, brought to them by crusaders. This chapel was built specifically to house this blood, and a Holy Blood Procession takes place every few years.

What a major stroke of luck that the object was open for veneration today! I'm not all that religious, and I'm definitely not Catholic in the slightest, but it was still amazing to see the vial with the supposed blood inside it.

Bruges was very fun! I'd like to come see it again sometime.