Henk 't Jong

Medieval history is something that doesn't come up all that often in everyday life in the Netherlands, and Floris V (1254-1296), contemporary of Edward I of England, is probably the only one of the Counts of Holland who ever gets talked about. He did all the things that good monarchs are supposed to do — reforming inefficient administration, granting charters, encouraging agriculture, trade and the development of peat-digging, quelling unruly subjects, winning territory from his incompetent neighbour the Bishop of Utrecht, building castles, and so on. But what we all remember him for is his grisly murder in the marshes between Naarden and Muiden in June 1296. So much more satisfactory than dying accidentally in a tournament like most of his male relatives.

In this potted biography, Henk 't Jong doesn't spend too much time on Floris's economic and social policy, but rather focusses on his relations with his nobles and with the other important regional powers of the time, in particular Flanders, Brabant, England and France. He looks at how he kept the Zeeland barons in order, and how this eventually created a situation that led to the botched plot in which Floris was killed.

't Jong doesn't have much time for romantic conspiracies in which the barons were avenging their slighted honour: as he sees it, it's pretty clear that it was a straightforward coup, financed by Edward, to get Floris out of the way after he rather unwisely (but profitably) switched his alliance from England to France. Edward was holding Floris's young son hostage, so removing Floris was an obvious move.

Floris was eventually buried with the rest of his family in the abbey at Rijnsburg, which was destroyed in the Eighty Years' War. Archaeological excavations there in 1949 revealed human remains that were proudly claimed as those of the Counts, but forensic tests in the nineties made it clear that the bones are far too old. 't Jong has his fun mocking the Rijnsburg local history enthusiasts for their chagrin at this, and for the spectacularly ugly Floris-monument they put up to get their own back on the forensic scientists.

But there's another claimed grave-site: immediately after the murder, Floris's body was taken to Alkmaar and kept in the church there for nine months until the turmoil had died down and it was safe to move it to Rijnsburg. Alkmaar church still has a curious tomb-like structure, an empty wooden box with a gravestone on top of it, with an inscription that claims that Floris's internal organs were buried under that stone when his body was embalmed. This may well be true, but both the box and the inscription can reliably be dated to the end of the fifteenth century, and there is no record in any of the chronicles prior to that date that could confirm the story, so 't Jong concludes that it was most likely invented as a publicity stunt at a time when Alkmaar was looking for funds to pay for the rebuilding of the church. (There was a blood-miracle in the church at about the same time.)

The book comes with a lot of illustrations, including 't Jong's own heraldic drawings and plans. Rather oddly, most of them appear once in the text where they belong, in black and white, and a second time in a colour plate section in the middle of the book. Perhaps too much of a good thing.… (mere)