History

The Battle of the Golden Spurs (Courtrai, July 11, 1302) holds a special place in the Flemish historical conscience. The battle constitutes an indelible part of Flanders’ current-day identity as one of the autonomous regions of the Federal Kingdom of Belgium. July 11 is the Flemish national holiday, the Flemish flag (depicting a lion) features the coat of arms of the Count of Flanders who fought valorously at Courtrai, and the Flemish anthem commemorates the successes of the Flemish foot-soldiers: weavers, fullers, and peasants who against all odds beat the elites of the French cavalry using their basic wooden weaponry called goedendag (literally hello there).

The Battle of the Golden Spurs may be of great significance today in the minds of many Belgians, but on the long arc of history the battle remains a minor event. A mere two years later, the French cavalry would return to claim its ultimate victory in another battle. As is the case today, few people outside of Flanders were aware at the time of Courtrai 1302: it would have been just another conflict as far as they were concerned. There is, however, an exception to the rule: we do have one account of the battle that came down to us in a language other than Dutch or French. Surprisingly, we find this account in a literary masterpiece as important as Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy.

In Canto XX of Purgatory, Dante the pilgrim encounters Hugo Capet, the founder of the Capetian dynasty, a dynasty which would eventually engender the by Dante much criticized French king Philip IV the Fair. Philip was the very king who captured the Count of Flanders and in 1302 sent out his elite troops to the disobedient fief governed by the Flemish nobleman, a fief that by then was already an occupied territory. The fictionalized Hugo Capet treats Dante and the reader to what for his historic alter ego would have been a prophecy of times to come. His divinations contain an obscure, though very clear, reference to the circumstances leading up to the Battle of the Golden Spurs, all of this in the short span of a single terzina:

Ma se Doagio, Lilla, Guanto e Brugia
potesser, tosto ne saria vendetta;
e io la cheggio a lui che tutto giuggia.

If Douai, Lille, Ghent, and Bruges
but had the power, there would soon be vengeance -
and I beg this of Him who judges all. (Pur. 20, 46-48)

The four main Flemish mercantile cities of the time, Ghent, Lille, Bruges and Douai, are taken as a whole: they represent Flanders as such, and more specifically an economically and politically potent Flanders that would have caught Philip’s eye in the late 13th Century. Indeed, the verb potesser indicates that the fief of Flanders, with its thriving cloth industry, was becoming evermore powerful. Implied in the verse is therefore, according to recent commentators of the Commedia, the historic decision made by Philip IV the Fair to send occupying forces to the wealthy Flemish fief in order to re-establish French power. These are in other words the historical circumstances that would eventually lead to the uprisings known as the Matins of Bruges as well as the ulterior Battle of the Golden Spurs of 1302. The Flemish vendetta asked, or rather, prayed for by Hugo Capet, is of a divine or if you will prophetic nature within the fiction of the poem, as the 1302 battle still has to take place at the fictional time of Dante’s vision. It is clear, however, that this “vengeance” specifically refers to the historical circumstances that culminated in the Battle of the Golden Spurs: Dante, as he was writing his Commedia, would have already heard of the battle.

Dante’s source with regards to the battle would have been the Chronicle or Cronica written by his contemporary and fellow Florentine Giovanni Villani. Villani, who was living in Flanders at the time of the conflict, was a self-proclaimed eyewitness of both the Bruges uprisings and the battle: up to this day his chronicle remains the most complete historical source we have to work with. Without his chronicle, the stories of Jan Breydel (or Giambrida as Villani calls him) and Pieter de Coninck (Piero le Roi) wouldn’t have come down to us in such vivid detail. Villani’s stance, as was Dante’s, was a partisan one: both Dante and Villani take sides with the Flemish, against the much hated Philip the Fair of France. Villani writes in Book IX of his Cronica:

(...) e la più vile gente che fosse al mondo, tesserandi, e folloni, e d'altre vili arti e mestieri, e non mai usi di guerra, che per dispetto e loro viltade da tutte le nazioni del mondo i Fiaminghi erano chiamati conigli pieni di burro; e per queste vittorie salirono in tanta fama e ardire, ch'uno Fiamingo a piè con uno godendac in mano avrebbe atteso due cavalieri franceschi.

(...) and they were the vilest people in the world: they were all weavers, fullers, and members of other vile guilds and professions. They weren’t used to waging war. All other nations spitefully called the Flemish “buttered rabbits” for their cowardice. Nevertheless, their victories were daring and brave: one Fleming bearing one goedendag would have easily slain two French knights. (own translation, PV)

The relative lack of military valor on the part of the untrained and but lightly armed Flemish workers of the by then already world-renowned textile industry, adds to the exceptional nature of the achievement that was their victory over the elites of the French cavalry. Throughout his account, Villani underscores this fact, barely hiding his admiration for this most improbable Flemish feat. Dante, through the voice of his character Hugo Capet, shared Villani’s enthusiasm for the Flemish cause: he had of course his own reasons for disapproving of the megalomanic French King, and the humiliating Flemish victory at Courtrai clearly enjoyed the great Italian poet’s approval.