great influence upon the whole literature of the Netherlands.  Many would date their origin as far back as the early part of the twelfth century.  In Alost, the Catherinists claimed to have existed as early as 1107, on the mere strength of their motto, AMOR VINCIT.  At any rate, we are left entirely to conjecture with regard to the first beginnings of these literary guilds, which seem in many respects an imitation of the poetical societies of Provence.  Every poet of note was a participant in them.  In Flanders there was scarcely a town or village that did not possess its Chamber.  Brabant, Holland, Zealand soon followed in the movement.  One of the principal, the Fountain of Ghent, seems to have exercised a certain supremacy over the other confraternities of art.

The proceedings of these companies, protected at first by princes, were carried on with great magnificence.  They were in constant communication with each other throughout the country.  Their facteurs or poets composed songs and theatrical pieces, which were performed by the members.  They had a long array of officers, with princely names; and none was complete without a jester.  Their larger assemblies were accompanied with long festivities, the solemn entry into a town or village being styled Landjuweel (Landjewel).  The nobility mingled in them, incited by the example of Henry IV. of Brabant or Philippe-le-Bel.  The wealth of the Netherlands was displayed on these solemnities, and the citizens rivalled their monarchs in magnificence.  The burghers of Ghent and Bruges and Antwerp shone, on these occasions, in the gaudy pomp of princely patricians.  All were invited to take part and dispute the prizes awarded by fair hands.

It can scarcely be expected that these guilds, composed in many cases of mechanics, should give rise to works of the highest order of merit.  Their dramatic representations were rather gorgeous than tasteful, their attempts at wit little better than buffoonery, their humor mere personal vituperation.  Yet even in matters of taste they are not much inferior to the then more pretentious academies of other lands.  It was an age of long religious dramas, of tortured rhymes and impossible metres, when strange and new versification imported from France found favor among a people whose silks and linens and rich tapestries were destined to reach a wider circulation than all the poetical effusions of their guilds, the “Lily,” the “Violet,” and the “Jesus with the Balsam Flower.”

It was Philip the Fair who, wishing to centralize the scattered efforts of these societies, established at Malines, in 1493, a sovereign chamber, of which he appointed his chaplain, Pierre Aelters, sovereign prince.  With an admixture of religion, in accordance with the spirit of the Middle Ages, the sacred number was fifteen.  There were fifteen members.  Fifteen young girls were to form part of it, in honor of the fifteen joys of Mary.  Fifteen youths were instructed in the art of rhetoric, and the assemblies were held fifteen times a year.  Charles V. was the last chief of this assembly, which had previously been removed to Ghent.  In 1577 it greeted the arrival of the Prince of Orange, but this was its last sign of vitality.