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                            HEART OF EUROPE

               [Illustration: _The Cathedral of Reims_]




                            HEART OF EUROPE

                                  BY

                   RALPH ADAMS CRAM, LITT.D., LL.D.

                      F.A.I.A., A.N.A., F.R.G.S.

                              ILLUSTRATED

                               NEW YORK

                        CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

                                 1916


                          COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY
                        CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

                        Published October, 1915

                            [Illustration]




                                  TO

                               E. S. C.

                       WHO SOME DAY MAY KNOW THE
                            HEART OF EUROPE
             AND TO WHOM THIS BOOK MAY BE A DIM RECALLING
                   “OF OLD, UNHAPPY, FAR-OFF THINGS
                         AND BATTLES LONG AGO”

                               WHITEHALL
                            29 AUGUST, 1915


The author wishes to express his great sense of personal obligation to
Miss Gertrude Schirmer and Mr. Emil P. Albrecht for their kindness in
furnishing illustrations that otherwise could not have been obtained.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER                                                             PAGE

I. A SANCTUARY LAID WASTE                                              1

II. THE FORGING OF MEDIÆVALISM                                        15

III. FLANDERS AND BRABANT                                             37

IV. THE SPANISH NETHERLANDS                                           63

V. THE GLORY OF A GREAT ART                                           84

VI. AMIENS AND REIMS                                                 109

VII. THE BURGHERS AND THEIR BUILDING                                 128

VIII. COAL AND IRON                                                  149

IX. A TALE OF THREE CITIES                                           172

X. MARGARET OF MALINES                                               191

XI. THE FIFTEENTH-CENTURY PAINTERS                                   219

XII. GOTHIC SCULPTURE                                                238

XIII. THE ALLIED ARTS                                                256

XIV. ART IN THE RHINELAND                                            278

XV. THE FOREST OF ARDEN                                              296

XVI. EX TENEBRIS LUX                                                 310




ILLUSTRATIONS


_Reims_                                                    _Frontispiece_

                                                             Facing page

_The hall of the University of Louvain_                               12

_The chapel at Aix_                                                   30

_St. Bavon’s Tower, Ghent_                                            44

_The Quai aux Herbes, Ghent_                                          50

_Bruges, from the Quai du Rosaire_                                    54

_The Duke of Alva, Moro van Dashorst_                                 68

_Jumièges_                                                            86

_Laon_                                                                98

_Beauvais_                                                           106

_Amiens_                                                             112

_Reims_                                                              116

_The destroyed Hôtel de Ville of Arras_                              130

_The destroyed Cloth Hall of Ypres_                                  132

_Bruges, Hôtel de Ville_                                             134

_The Hôtel de Ville of Louvain_                                      138

_A chimney-piece from Courtrai_                                      164

_A canal in Malines_                                                 174

_The belfry of Bruges_                                               184

_The tower of St. Rombaut, Malines_                                  202

_A detail from the church at Brou_                                   216

_Our Lady, from the Tryptich at Ghent, Hubert van Eyck_              226

_A drawing of St. Barbara, Jan van Eyck_                             232

_A Memling altar-piece_                                              234

_Madonna and Child with St. Luke, Van der Weyden_                    236

_A head, now destroyed, from Reims_                                  242

_Three destroyed figures from Reims_                                 250

_Fifteenth-century Flemish tapestry_                                 262

_Worms_                                                              282

_Cologne_                                                            286

_Strasbourg_                                                         288

_Bacharach on the Rhine_                                             292

_Schloss Eltz_                                                       300




HEART OF EUROPE




I

A SANCTUARY LAID WASTE


Between the Seine and the Rhine lay once a beautiful land wherein more
history was made, and recorded in old monuments full of grace and
grandeur and fancy, than in almost any other region of the world. The
old names were best, for each aroused memory and begot strange dreams:
Flanders, Brabant, the Palatinate; Picardy, Valois, Champagne,
Franche-Comté; Artois, Burgundy, and Bar. And the town names ring with
the same sonorous melody, evoking the ghosts of a great and indelible
past: Bruges, Ghent, Louvain, and Liége; Aix-la-Chapelle, Coblentz, and
Trèves; Ypres and Lille, Tournai and Fontenay, Arras and Malplaquet;
Laon,