City of Ghent - History of Ghent


History of Ghent

Luxury Woollen Cloth Brings International Renown

Ghent achieved its prosperity and the unstoppable growth that came with it through the production and trade of its famous woollen cloth. From 1100 to 1400, a good 60% of households earned a living from the industry. The processes of sorting the wool, washing, spinning and bleaching were the work of the semi-skilled and unskilled workers, women, children and people in the rural areas. The main processes, i.e., weaving, fulling (the process of felting the woollen cloth to make it thicker and smoother) and dying, were the work of specialists: men's work, which was done exclusively within the city.

The best wool came from England. Ghent's weavers went and sold their finished luxury cloth all over Europe: in the German Rhineland, at the French annual fairs in Champagne, in northern Germany and in the countries on the Baltic Sea, as well as via the western trade route along the French Atlantic coast in Spain and Portugal and even in North Africa. The return cargo consisted of wine, salt and other consumer goods. The wealthy patricians (then still known as 'erfachtige lieden' or 'viri hereditarii') who were the original owners of the land on which the city of Ghent developed and had become merchants, profited most from this trade.

As the gold rolled into their coffers, however, these enterprising merchants also began to aspire to political and economic independence from the count of Flanders. In 1180, Count Philip of Alsace built his fortress, the mighty Gravensteen, not so much to offer protection to his city, but to keep the proud Ghent merchant families under better control. De Utenhove, Borluut, Uter Volrestrate, Rijm and Van Sint-Baaf families together with another forty or so other families, had exclusive economic power in the city and on the bench of '39 aldermen' they also had the monopoly of local government, finance and the administration of justice. Self-confidently they built themselves large residences complete with turrets and crenellations, in defiance of the count's authority.

The English lithographer Thomas Boys produced a colour print of Bijloke Abbey in 1837.

This power-hungry upper class could not, however, afford to ignore the social needs of the populous city completely. They quietened any feelings of ill conscience as a result of usurious profits by building hospitals, such as the Bijloke, by giving alms and setting up charitable organisations.

They also devoted themselves to founding four typical urban monasteries on behalf of four mendicant orders, so called because the friars subsisted on donations: the Augustinians (Sint-Margrietstraat), the Carmelites (Steenstraat, now 'Patershol'), the Dominicans (Onderbergen, now 'Het Pand') and the Friars Minor (where the Court of Justice now stands). Unlike the Benedictine monks from the large abbeys, the activities of these city-dwelling friars revolved around preaching in the language of the ordinary people and missionary work with the urban population. For devout unmarried women and widows who were not prepared to part with their private property, Countess Joan of Constantinople founded two large beguinages around 1242: St Elisabeth at the end of Burgstraat and Onze-Lieve-Vrouw ter Hooie (Our Lady in the Hay) on Lange Violettestraat.