Brabantsche Yeesten

The Brabantsche Yeesten or Gestes de Brabant (lit. 'Brabantian Deeds') is a rhyming chronicle of some 46,000 verses written in the 14th and 15th centuries in the Middle Dutch language. It provides a history of the Duchy of Brabant, and the original five volumes were written by Jan van Boendale (c. 1280–c. 1351) of Antwerp; his text was later extended to seven volumes by an anonymous continuator.

Composition and authorship[edit]

Van Boendale's text was written between around 1318 and around 1350, commissioned for a member of the Antwerp patriciate.^{[citation needed]} It extends to 16,318 verses. Boendale's main sources were the Chronica de origine ducum Brabantiae of 1294 and Spieghel Historiael of Jacob van Maerlant.^{[citation needed]} Much of the text of the first three books are taken from Jacob van Maerlant almost verbatim.^{[citation needed]} The events in book five are from Boendale's own lifetime.^{[citation needed]}

Books six and seven, which extend the scope of the chronicled events to 1440, were written by an anonymous continuator. Some scholars attribute these books to Wein van Cotthem;^[1] others to Hennen van Merchtenen, amongst other candidates.^[2] Book six is dated 1432 and book seven is dated 1440; this latter date is also the approximate age of the oldest extant manuscripts of the text.^{[citation needed]}

Manuscripts and editions[edit]

There are seven extant manuscript copies.^{[citation needed]}

• Two 15th-century manuscripts are held by the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels (mss. IV 684 and IV 685).^{[citation needed]}

The text was first edited by Jan Frans Willems and Jean Henri Bormans beginning in 1839.^{[citation needed]}

Literature[edit]

• Jan Frans Willems: De Brabantsche Yeesten (3 vols., Brussels 1839, 1843, 1869). vol. 2 available online.
• Katell De Groote: Jan Van Boendaele, Brabantse Yeesten, XXIV. M.A. dissertation at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 2003.
• Reynaert, Joris (1 March 2019). "Hennen van Merchtenen en de Voortzetting van de Brabantsche yeesten (ca. 1430-1450): Een bijdrage aan de attributieproblematiek" [Hennen van Merchtenen and the Continuation of the Brabantsche Yeesten (c. 1430–1450): a contribution to the debate on attribution]. Nederlandse Letterkunde (in Dutch). 24 (1): 1–33. doi:10.5117/NEDLET2019.1.001.REYN. ISSN 1384-5829.

References[edit]

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Brabantsche yeesten.

• http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.ch/2011/04/brabant-chronicle.html