Southern Netherlands Research Articles

Bevochten eendracht? Beklonken tweespalt!

It is highly regrettable that a history of the Netherlands seen from five focal points starts with the year 1650. Could this be a nineteenth-century interpretation of Dutch history, to consider the Dutch Republic as the starting point of our past? The years 1500 or 1550 — or an even earlier date — would have been a far more appropriate starting point. Despite the fact that the Dutch pride themselves on being very European-minded, they often neglect the history of the Southern Netherlands and Belgium. This negligence has to do with the tendency of the Dutch to overestimate the importance of their own culture: Many historians believe that the entire world is fascinated by the (contemporary) history of the Netherlands. Within the series, the lack of coherence between the cultural and the political history of the country is striking. The authors and the publisher are also to blame for the inconsistency between the content and the illustrations. This review is part of the discussion forum IJkpunt 1650.

The independent prognostic value of comorbidity among men aged < 75 years with localized prostate cancer: a population-based study.

To investigate which prognostic factors apply in patients with localized prostate cancer diagnosed after the introduction of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing, as comorbidity has significant prognostic value for patients who were diagnosed with localized prostate cancer in the 1970s. Patients and methods Using the Eindhoven Cancer Registry, we assessed a population-based cohort of patients aged < 75 years with localized (T1-T3M0) prostate cancer diagnosed between 1993 and 1995 in a defined area with 2 million inhabitants in the southern Netherlands (n = 894). After a mean follow-up of 2.9 years, overall survival was modelled by Cox regression analyses. Comorbidity was the most important prognostic factor, especially for those aged < 70 years; at 60 years old, patients with one concomitant disease were twice as likely to die than those with no comorbidity (95% confidence interval, CI, 1.0-4.3), whereas the hazard ratio (HR) was 7.2 (3.1-16.6) for two or more diseases. This was not caused by a reduced use of curative treatment for these patients. At the age of 74 years, comorbidity was no longer a significant prognostic factor. Poor differentiation of the tumour was also an important prognostic factor at all ages; this became increasingly apparent 2 years after diagnosis (HR 3.4, CI 1.5-7.7). Conclusion Comorbidity had a decisive influence on the prognosis for patients with localized prostate cancer. Because this effect was stronger in younger patients the assessment of comorbidity seems most important when evaluating the risk of early death.

Gregory T. Clark, Made in Flanders: The Master of the Ghent Privileges and Manuscript Painting in the Southern Netherlands in the Time of Philip the Good. (Ars Nova: Studies in Late Medieval and Renaissance Northern Painting and Illumination.) Turnhout: Brepols, 2000. 24 color pls. + 234 b/w figs. + 104 b/w illus. + 499 pp. Euro 136. ISBN: 2-503-50878-2. -

Gregory T. Clark, Made in Flanders: The Master of the Ghent Privileges and Manuscript Painting in the Southern Netherlands in the Time of Philip the Good. (Ars Nova: Studies in Late Medieval and Renaissance Northern Painting and Illumination.) Turnhout: Brepols, 2000. 24 color pls. + 234 b/w figs. + 104 b/w illus. + 499 pp. Euro 136. ISBN: 2-503-50878-2. - Barbara Butts and Lee Hendrix, Painting on Light: Drawings and Stained Glass in the Age of Dürer and Holbein. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Trust, 2000. xiii + 186 color illus. + 119 b/w illus. + 330 pp. $125. ISBN: 0-89236-578-1. - Volume 54 Issue 4-Part2

The foreground of Bosch's Death and the miser

One of the very few representations of Hieronymus Bosch placed in an internal setting is the Death and the miser. The image is painted on a long, narrow and thinned panel which had originally formed part, as the outside of the left wing, of a triptych (fig. i). The painting shows a bare and narrow, woodenvaulted room where a naked man is seated in a testered bed. Death, aiming his long arrow at the dying man, enters the room at the left. An angel props the man upright and urges him to recognize the emanating crucifix in the gothic arched window.1 The depiction is derived from a scene from one of the mortality books which, under the title Ars moriendi ('the book that educated all of Europe', as Mâle put it), circulated throughout the late Middle Ages in most of the countries of the continent, having originally appeared in manuscript form. From the middle of the fifteenth century, they were published as block-books, initially in Germany and the Southern Netherlands and later, too, in the Northern Netherlands. The prototype of th t Ars moriendi is the struggle between Heaven and hell for the soul of the dying man, usually described and illustrated in five pairs of contrasting chapters, and concluding with the portrayal and illustration of the 'blessed death'. They were written in Latin for the clergy or in the vernacular for the lay public. The first Dutch Ars moriendi block-book dates from circa 1460. The depiction on Bosch's panel, featuring an angel and devils, is clearly inspired by an illustration in one of the Artes moriendi. There the dying man knows that his end is approaching and he resigns himself to his fate; amidst the ritual of dying, he lies naked on his back, his countenance looking, as it must, upwards to Heaven. In all these mortality books, he is twice admonished about attachment to worldly goods {Avari tia); first in chapter nine and then again in chapter ten. In the former, entitled Temptacio djaboli de avaricia , the dying man is shown, being tempted by the devil of avarice, as the title states. His riches are illustrated by costly representations of worldly pleasures, which he is being called upon to conserve; for example, a cellar containing many casks of wine and a steed with an attendant groom. Chapter ten is entitled Bona inspirado angeli contra avariciam (Inspiration of the angel against avarice). The angel warns him with the words: 'Protect yourself against the putrid and deadly words of the devil, for he is nothing but a liar. ... In the end everything he does is deceitful.' The figure of Christ on the Cross is an abiding feature of the illustration included in this chapter, serving to remind the stricken mortal of the extreme detachment from worldly things with which Our Lord approached His death. A little devil at the foot of the bed poses the question: Quid faciami (What am I to do?) A choice example of this particular illustration is the woodcut included in a block-book published circa 1450 in Cologne (fig. 2). Standing beside the devil is the good angel, who, pointing to the crucifix, has come to console and support the dying man, who

Senecan Drama From the Northern and Southern Netherlands: Paganization and Christianization1

Senecan Drama From the Northern and Southern Netherlands: Paganization and Christianization1

Philip IV at Fraga

Philip IV at Fraga

Léonard du Bus de Gisignies (1780–1849), Belgian Commissioner-General in the Dutch East Indies: A Reassessment

In his speech of throne of October 17, 1825, the Dutch king William I expressed his concerns on the extremely loss-making Dutch colonial enterprise of that moment. The aftermath of the closing down of the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) in the 1790s and the transfer of the company's indebtedness to the state, threatened to bring about the loss of the Dutch first-rate position on the international colonial forum. Moreover, the fiasco of the so-called liberal interlude of the enlightened Governor-General G. van der Capellen and his often frivolous politics in Java during the period 1816–1826, deeply disillusioned the king. Therefore, William officially announced the appointment of a commissioner-general, a representative provided with extraordinary power and authority who was only supposed to give account direcdy to the king himself. He also informed the States General of the appointment of the governor of the province of SouthBrabant in the Southern Netherlands Leonard du Bus de Gisignies as his commissioner-general on August 10 of the same year.

Two unusual new dinoflagellate cyst genera from the Bunde Borehole, Maastrichtian type area, southern Netherlands

Maastrichtian and Danian deposits from the Bunde Borehole in the Maastrichtian type area contain the morphologically unusual dinoflagellate species Spumadinium felderorum gen. et sp. nov. and Lasagniella herngreenii gen. et sp. nov., both of which have archeopyles formed by the loss of several paraplates. In S. felderorum the paraplates forming the operculum or opercular pieces appear to be the third and fourth precingulars (3″–4″) plus the first and second anterior intercalaries (1a–2a). This suggests that Spumadinium, although having a wall resembling some cribroperidinioids, is a cladopyxiinean. L. herngreenii is unique in having up to eight wall layers, separated and supported by buttresses. The archeopyle is also a combination type but formed by loss of one apical (3′), three anterior intercalary (1a–3a) and three precingular (3″–5″) paraplates. Thus, Lasagniella is assignable to the Peridiniales. The distinctive morphology and restricted ranges of the two genera make them useful stratigraphic markers for the Upper Maastrichtian–Danian.

Rebuilding Solomon’s Temple? The Architecture of Calvinism

During the autumn of 1566 a series of Calvinist churches or temples were erected across the Southern Netherlands. These buildings attracted the attention and curiosity of contemporaries because of their unusual appearance and the speed with which they appeared. The polygonal ground plan of these buildings as well as the use of the term ‘temple’ led some observers to associate them with the Temple of Solomon. The English merchant Richard Clough commented that in Antwerp the Reformed had ‘layd the fondasyonss of syche tempelles more lyker the tempell of Salomon then hoder wysse’. Another observer also described these round churches as being built in the style of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. These comments suggest that Calvinists were perceived (at least by some) as linking their reformation of religion with an appropriation, possibly a recreation, of Jerusalem in the West. The purpose of this paper is to examine this contention, setting the architecture against the tradition of medieval conceptions of the architecture of the Temple, and of Calvin’s and Calvinists’ ideas of the role and use of space in the Reformed religion.

F. Theuws, N. Roymans, Land and ancestors. Cultural dynamics in the urnfield period and the Middle Ages in the southern Netherlands

F. Theuws, N. Roymans, Land and ancestors. Cultural dynamics in the urnfield period and the Middle Ages in the southern Netherlands

Princely Pieties: the I598-I6I7 accessions of the Royal Library in Brussels

This article is concerned with one particular phase of the history of the ancient Royal Library in Brussels. It investigates how the Library developed during the first two decades of the reign of the Archduke Albert and the Infanta Isabella; an investigation permitted by the existence of an inventory compiled between 1614 and 1617. A substantial part of the article thus consists of an annotated transcript of the relevant parts of this inventory. On this basis, the article demonstrates that the accessions policy of the Royal Library in Brussels went through a significant transformation during the period in question: the Library changed from being a wide-ranging academic resource towards a more narrowly religious and recreational scope. However, as the article argues, this change was probably not caused by the Brussels Court of Albert and Isabella. Rather, it was due to the suppliers of the Library, the chief printing-houses and authors of the Southern Netherlands. Thus, whilst the 1614-17 inventory is of historical interest itself, it also offers important evidence of how a certain social group perceived the Brussels Court.

Princely Pieties: the 1598-1617 accessions of the Royal Library in Brussels

AbstractThis article is concerned with one particular phase of the history of the ancient Royal Library in Brussels. It investigates how the Library developed during the first two decades of the reign of the Archduke Albert and the Infanta Isabella; an investigation permitted by the existence of an inventory compiled between 1614 and 1617. A substantial part of the article thus consists of an annotated transcript of the relevant parts of this inventory. On this basis, the article demonstrates that the accessions policy of the Royal Library in Brussels went through a significant transformation during the period in question: the Library changed from being a wide-ranging academic resource towards a more narrowly religious and recreational scope. However, as the article argues, this change was probably not caused by the Brussels Court of Albert and Isabella. Rather, it was due to the suppliers of the Library, the chief printing-houses and authors of the Southern Netherlands. Thus, whilst the 1614-17 inventory is of historical interest itself, it also offers important evidence of how a certain social group perceived the Brussels Court.

Place, house, person

This is an interesting and important paper that argues in a reasoned and convincing manner for a new approach to an archaeology of houses. It uses as an archaeological case study the evidence from the southern Netherlands but the approach presented here has a much wider application and the results are directly relevant to a very large area of northern Europe. I originally heard this paper delivered as a lecture at a conference on settlement studies where it came amid a succession of papers debating detailed structural typologies of Iron Age long houses and others providing increasingly detailed scientific analysis of cattle byres. I had already made one abortive attempt to suggest there was a more interesting way of thinking about houses but this was most clearly demonstrated by the paper presented here.

To build and to abandon

AbstractThis article argues that the notion of cultural biography presents a key to understanding the social and cultural practices that created archaeological records of domestic architecture, as it brings the close and dynamic relationships between a house and its inhabitants to the fore. To do so it presents a case study of the construction, habitation and abandonment cycles of late prehistoric farmsteads in the southern Netherlands. After discussing typical biographies of farmhouses and the way these are affected by a transformation from a ‘wandering’ to a stable settlement pattern, the perspective is broadened through a comparison with burial practices. These witness a roughly contemporaneous shift from monumental and communal to short-lived and dispersed cemeteries. Finally, it is suggested that we view these contrasting patterns in terms of a transformation of the perception of farmsteads as places in the landscape and land tenure practices.

Ground penetrating radar images of selected fluvial deposits in the Netherlands

Ground penetrating radar (GPR) surveys have been carried out in order to characterise reflection patterns and to assess the method's potential for imaging palaeofluvial sediments in the Mass-Rhine former confluence area in the southern Netherlands. The results show that the deposits of meandering, braided and transitional river types produce characteristic radar facies. Representative examples of each of these river types were selected where the GPR data could be directly correlated with sedimentary information derived from exposures and detailed drilling, and geomorphological data could be supplied. Individual channels may be distinguished by the radar facies of their fills. The floodplains of the different river types also show a characteristic radar facies. In GPR data from the meander floodplain, parallel, dipping reflections represent point-bar structures, while irregular, intersecting small channel patterns that alternate with parallel continuous reflections are more typical in the braid plain. A transitional river type shows characteristics of both of these types. Typical examples of GPR sections recorded in each of the different fluvial palaeoenvironments are presented in an interpretative radar facies chart.

Comorbidity in patients with prostate cancer and its relevance to treatment choice.

To evaluate the prevalence of comorbidity among patients with prostate cancer in relation to tumour and patient characteristics and to assess if comorbidity was a determining factor in the treatment choice for patients with localized prostate cancer. Serious comorbidity was recorded in the Eindhoven Cancer Registry (according to a published list of such diseases) for all patients (2941) with prostate cancer newly diagnosed between 1993 and 1996 in the southern part of The Netherlands. Logistic regression was then used to assess which factors determined the treatment choice. The prevalence of at least one serious comorbid condition was 38% for patients aged 60-69 years, 48% when aged 70-74 years and 53% for those aged >/=75 years, the cardiovascular and chronic obstructive lung diseases being most frequent. Patients aged 60-69 years were more likely to be treated with radical prostatectomy for moderately differentiated tumour confined to the prostate, or when younger and diagnosed in a hospital with a high case-load. The presence of comorbidity had little influence of this choice. Comorbidity was common in patients with prostate cancer, but the decision of urologists in the southern Netherlands to use radical prostatectomy was determined largely by the patient's age and the urologist's experience.

Lateglacial environmental changes recorded in calcareous gyttja deposits at Gulickshof, southern Netherlands

Environmental changes were reconstructed from Lateglacial calcareous gyttja deposits at Gulickshof, southern Netherlands. Analyses of pollen, fresh‐water mollusca, stable isotopes and geo‐chemistry were performed and the combined evidence was put into a chronostratigraphic framework based on regional biostratigraphy and accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon dating. The pollen diagram showed vegetation development from the Bφlling interstadial into the Late Dryas stadial within 2.9 m of lacustrine deposits. Early in the Allerφd, around 11 900 BP, the composition of aquatic taxa and stable isotopes of calcium carbonate changed significantly. It appears that the final melting of relic ground‐ice and subsequent re‐establishment of the hydrological cell early in the Allerφd were responsible for these changes. Later in the Allerφd, around 11 250 BP, the disappearance of molluscs, changes in vegetation and isotope composition all point to colder climate conditions attributable to the Gerzensee oscillation. The combination of different lines of evidence in these types of deposits proves to be an excellent tool for unravelling climate and environmental signals.

Flemish art and architecture, 1585-1700

This beautifully illustrated book provides a complete overview of the art of the Southern Netherlands from 1585 to 1700. The author examines the development of Flemish and specifically Antwerp painting, the work of Rubens and other leading masters, and the Antwerp tradition of specialization among painters as well as the sculpture and architecture of this period. A major moment of artistic culture has been magisterially sketched by one of its leading authorities.--Larry Silver, The Art Book Consistently rewarding ...a book that is going to transform how Flemish art is understood.--Jeremy Wood, Apollo Magazine As well as examining the output and influence of leading figures such as Rubens and Van Dyke, Vlieghe provides the historical, social and cultural context for the development of history painting and other specializations...This book will attract both the informed and general reader.--Alison Smith, Art Newspaper Essential for current study of Belgian art.--Choice

Trends in large-scale VOC concentrations in the Southern Netherlands between 1991 and 1997

Results of C 6–C 12 hydrocarbon measurements at three sites in the southern part of The Netherlands, a polluted region in Western Europe, are presented. The measurements were carried out over the period March 1991–February 1997. The concentrations at the sites, with 100–150 km distance between them, are quite similar and they are predominantly determined by large-scale transport. The concentrations in this part of the country are substantially higher than those observed at a coastal site in the north of The Netherlands, but much lower compared to the concentrations in cities and near streets. A distinct difference between the trends of aromatics and aliphatics was observed. The concentrations of the aromatic components display trends that are systematically 4–5% yr -1 lower than the trends of the aliphatics, which is possibly related to the increased use of catalysts in cars and, partly, to an enhanced atmospheric chemical activity. For the chlorinated species the trends are highly significant. The trend of 1,1,1-trichloroethane is in the order of 8–12% yr -1 downward while for tetrachloromethane an annual downward trend of 4–6% is found. These downward trends suggest that measures have been taken to fulfil the requirements of the Montreal Protocol to ban the production of these species in a few years time from now.

Fluvial incision and channel downcutting as a response to Late-glacial and Early Holocene climate change: the lower reach of the River Meuse (Maas), The Netherlands

Detailed fieldwork and new extensive 14C dating of residual channel infillings provide data for the reconstruction of the Late-glacial channel downcutting and incision history of the Venlo–Boxmeer lower reach of the River Meuse (= Maas) in the southern Netherlands. Within a period of 500–1300 yr after Late-glacial climatic amelioration, the Meuse responded to increased discharges and decreased sediment supply by adjusting the width/depth ratio of its channels. Two main phases of channel downcutting are followed by two main phases of floodplain lowering and narrowing, indicating net floodplain degradation by the fluvial system as a non-linear response to Late-glacial and Early Holocene climate change. Some 1300 yr after initial late-glacial warming, channels downcut rapidly during the Early Bolling (13.3–12.5 kyr BP) and adopted a high-sinuosity meandering style. Channel downcutting paused around 11.9 kyr BP, possibly in response to rising groundwater levels and/or the Older Dryas cooling event. Between 11.9 and 11.3 kyr BP a new floodplain was formed. Then, lateral erosion took place and initiated a first phase of 2.6 m floodplain lowering during the Late Allerod. Gradual climate deterioration during the Allerod progressively broke up soils and vegetation cover, from 11.3 to 10.9 kyr BP. The Meuse gradually adjusted to an increased ratio of sediment supply over transport capacity through higher width/depth ratios. Main channels became shallower and adopted a low-sinuosity pattern, finally culminating in a braided river system during the Younger Dryas. The final Holocene warming resulted, within 500 yr, in renewed rapid channel downcutting by a single low-sinuosity channel during the Early Preboreal, followed by a second phase of 1.8–2.8 m floodplain lowering. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.