Notes for Coming of Age in America: Dawnlands

For 150 years (1347-1588) Calais was a possession of England, known as the Pale of Calais. When France regained this strategically important port they pulled down the old castle and built a powerful citadel to ensure the security of the city. Our interpretation of life in Calais in the early 1600s is that English influence is still prevalent, trading and commercial ties with England continue and the people speak an interesting blend of English and French, much like the people in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada, who speak Chiac, a French-English blended language with deep historical roots. 

Today, Sainte-Marie Kerque is a pretty little village or commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in the Hauts-de-France region of France. In January 2015 its population was about 1600 people. We selected this village for the birthplace of Etienne because of the 15th century Church of Notre-Dame, still standing and in use as well as its proximity to Calais. We hope the people of the commune feel complimented. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sainte-Marie-Kerque

The church of Notre Dame dates from the 15th Century. Modern day visitors comment that the church is calm, serene and very beautiful.  A cemetery is adjacent to the church, probably dating back many centuries.

We have assumed that Sainte Marie Kerque with its church of Notre Dame is the market town for the surrounding district and as such provides many services from a variety of artisan craft workshops, such as the shoemaker. The "bread and butter" for a French shoemaker was the sabot, also known as clogs, a wooden shoe carved out of a piece of wood although many sabots had wooden soles with leather uppers. It's probable that the country folk wore the wooden clogs and townspeople wore the combinations. Our shoemaker, Hubert Niel, is 50 years old and well-regarded in the community for his work. Like many artisans he inherited his craft from his father. In fact, the business was established by his great-grandfather, Vicelin Niel in 1472. The painting shows a typical shoemaker's shop in the low countries and northeast France. It gives a good look at the appearance of Monsieur Niel's shop and the shoemaker himself. There is even his wife, drawing off a little fortified wine from the cask! The painter, Quiringh van Brekelenkam, flourished in the late 17th century, living and working in Leiden, in the Dutch Netherlands. His father was a tailor and his work reflects an interest in daily life in the world of artisans. Scholars consider him a Dutch Baroque genre painter. 

 The Spanish captured Calais during the last phase of the Wars of Religion that had convulsed France for over 30 years. At this stage in the conflict, Spain, as defender of Catholic orthodoxy, was still trying to defeat the Dutch and English Protestants and in alliance with the die-hard Catholic League in France dethrone King Henri IV. Henri finally declared war on Spain in 1595. The primary theater was northeastern France where both sides engaged in inconclusive fighting and maneuvers. In the spring of 1596, King Henri was in the field lying siege to La Fere, a city near Amiens, held by the Catholic League. The new Spanish commander, Archduke Albert, took personal charge of the Spanish Army of Flanders and crossed the frontier, threatening to relieve La Fere. Archduke Albert caught everyone by surprise when he turned northward and marched on Calais instead. The Spanish forces approached the city on April 8, 1596. Time was pressing on the Spanish for the Dutch, the English and King Henri all mustered forces to save the city, although Queen Elizabeth only promised to help if she could get the city back under English control. The French rejected this offer. The Spanish pushed the siege vigorously and forced the city to surrender on April 14 but the garrison retreated into the citadel. The veteran Spanish soldiers and engineers stormed and captured the citadel on April 24 with immense destruction and loss of life among the defenders. It remained under Spanish control until 1598 when it was returned to France under the terms of the Treaty of Vervins, which finally ended the Wars of Religion.

Catholic French wedding traditions were most likely still rooted in the Middle Ages. For the wedding of Adam and Clemence we adopted the traditional three-part sequence of ceremony on the steps of the church with exchange of vows and rings, followed by mass in the church and a community celebration afterwards, at the local inn. The painting, Village Wedding (1650), by David Teniers “the Younger” (born 1610 in Brussels) gives a good feeling for the celebration of the wedding. Although it is Christmas Day, we have the weather mild enough for the wedding feast to occur outdoors. We see the bride dressed in a lace-collared gown at the center table with a cloth backdrop. That must be Monsieur Niel and his wife directly to her left. Adam must be the fellow in the brown hat and gray jacket sitting with his back to us. Jean-Paul must be the man standing with his plate held out for seconds at the table to the far right. The boy in the foreground with his own little “bench for a table” can only be Baptista. Art historians classify Teniers “the younger” as a versatile Flemish baroque genre painter. He was both the court painter for Archduke Leopold and developed the peasant genre and tavern scene depictions of daily life, following in the tradition of the Brueghels (he married into this family). Today experts regard him as the leading Flemish genre painter of his time.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Teniers_the_Younger

The registry at Notre Dame records the baptism of Etienne Valluy on June 28, 1600, listing the parents as Adam and Clemence Valluy, the date of birth of Etienne as June 24, 1600, that the child was legitimate and the godparents as Gervais and Edmee Valluy of Calais.

During this period in France, funeral customs carried on traditions well established during the medieval period, especially in rural catholic areas, such as Sainte Marie Kerque. Throughout Western Europe, in general, once a person died, the local women would come, prepare the corpse for burial, and then wrap it in a funeral shroud. Friends, relatives and neighbors would visit the family and watch over the body, often accompanied with loud keening, consumption of strong drink, and activities similar to the traditional “Irish wake”. Generally, the burial occurred two days after death. The body on a bier, borne by the chief mourners, followed by the family and neighbors, processed to the churchyard to the sound of the church bell.  Seasons permitting, the gravedigger would have prepared a spot, the priest performed the burial service, they lowered the body down and the gravedigger completed his task. Graves were not marked with any type of headstone or permanent marker. If the family had the means, they would commission a commemorative plaque or monument inside the church. The Niels chose not to do this for Clemence. Obviously, over the centuries, consecrated churchyards would get very crowded. The authorities, as a rule, disinterred a corpse after five years and placed the bones in the ossuary, usually a place in the catacombs beneath the church or a separate room or building.

Ma Cheri knew many sacred tunes from her daily attendance at mass. Of course, attending mass was not a participatory activity in this period. The priest performed the mass. Worshipers gathered, standing or bringing their own stools, listened, genuflected, received communion in one kind, bread only and departed with the priest’s blessing. Madame Niel also absorbed a rich tradition of French folk music, called chansons, inherited from the Renaissance and Medieval periods. Sometimes, one of the villagers might accompany her on his hurdy-gurdy or lute, a musical instrument used by the common folk. In addition to bawdy tavern songs, she knew dance tunes, folk ballads and other variations of the traditional chansons.

David Teniers “the Younger” came from a dynasty of painters. His father, David Teniers, “the elder”, (1582-1649), was taught by his older brother and then studied under Rubens in Antwerp. Their paintings often showed the common people at work and play.  In fact, it is easy to confuse the work of the father and the son. The painting we have shown here of men bowling in a village street, is by David Teniers, “the Younger”, but it could easily be his father’s work. These paintings provide a wonderful window into the world of the 17th century in the borderlands of France and Belgium, at that time known as the Spanish Netherlands.

When wars go on for a long time they fade into the background of everyday life, until some singular act of violence claims our attention. The Eighty Years War that began with the Dutch Revolt in 1566 was still going on in these years. In fact, in 1607 the Dutch navy inflicted a devastating defeat on the Spanish fleet at Gibraltar. By 1607, the Netherlands had divided into the protestant north, where the Dutch had a de facto independence as the Dutch Republic, while Spain maintained control of the southern catholic area, solidified by their capture of Antwerp in 1585. After that event, the war continued as a series of sieges conducted by the Spanish to solidify control of the south. In 1601, Archduke Albert lay siege to the military base at Ostende, a mere 60 miles up the coast from Calais, the last protestant stronghold in the south. After monumental ruin, devastation and loss of life, Ostende surrendered in 1604. Subsequently, the war was at a stalemate. Spain was essentially bankrupt and often unable to pay its soldiers, leading to frequent mutinies. Under these conditions, it is easy to see that renegade mercenaries, in between campaigns, would go on raids to fatten up their purses and not respect national boundaries while doing so.

Decades of warfare made life difficult for the folk who lived in the region. One never knew when robbers, roving bands of pillaging soldiers, the passage of armies or raids by cavalry, would interrupt their daily round. As in modern times, thinking in particular of Vietnam era photo journalists, it was up to artists to capture this on canvas. One of the original “war artists” was the Flemish baroque painter, Sebastiaen Vrancx. Vrancx (1573-1647) was born and lived in Antwerp. He studied painting under the same master who taught Peter Paul Rubens. Although known primarily for his battle scenes, his work juxtaposes scenes of war, pillage and raids with daily life in the small towns and villages of the Spanish Netherlands. He filled his paintings with a large cast of characters and realistic details, such as robbers plundering the dead on the edge of battlefields, the terror of a raid on a quiet village, the ubiquitous cats or people answering nature’s call in the corner. He captured the tension that clearly existed in a society surrounded by war, the idea that while living daily life you never know when the proverbial “drone strike” will hit, changing your life forever. Such was the scene in Sainte Marie Kerque when a roving band of unpaid mercenaries crossed the border and descended on the village, resulting in the death on Hubert Niel.

 When ongoing wars start to dominate the conditions of daily life, the language of war seeps into daily conversation as slang and metaphor. Some examples from modern life are, “how are we doing on the “work front”, “nuke it”. “drone strike”, and in football, “the line of skirmish” and “the long bomb”. The Eighty Years War in the Netherlands bequeathed a trove of words based on sieges, the dominate form of warfare in that time. Many of these persist today, such as, “the teen besieged his parents for permission”, “he gained the outer works”, “breaching the citadel”, “no quarter”, “advertising bombardment”, and “digging out”. The Siege of Ostende (1601-1604) was a high profile event that surely helped in this process of word assimilation. The Flemish painter, Cornelis de Wael (1592-1667) who specialized in panoramic battle scenes, painted the Siege of Ostende. He was born into a family of painters in Antwerp but immigrated to Italy in 1619, where he was instrumental in promoting Flemish painting techniques and integrating them and the artists into the Italian artistic scene. In addition to battle scenes, he produced still lifes and landscapes.

An alert reader might wonder about the missing wheelbarrow. On that wintry day, January 22, 1608, when Armel brought Madame Niel and Etienne to the inn, instead of unloading the barrow, she ordered him home and said she would keep the barrow, after all, her husband had built it. Armel reported this to Adam who shrugged, considering it the least of matters. He and Armel built a new wheelbarrow that winter.

Throughout Adam’s Story, we have simply referred to the priest as the priest. During these years, there must have been a priest in charge of Notre Dame in Sainte Marie Kerque but from our station in Belfast, Maine, we have not been able to access any historical record for verification. We have assumed that a long serving priest, whom we codenamed Father Deschanel, served throughout the storyline.

The priest recorded the baptism of Clara, daughter of Adam and Kathrin Valluy, on January 9, 1609. The godparents were Martin and Sophie Geller.

The artist, Michiel or Michael Sweerts, was a Flemish painter and printmaker. He was born in Brussels in 1618 but left his native area for the life of an itinerant painter, based mostly in Rome. Like many of the Flemish painters, he did a series based on the seasons. The peasant family is part of his allegory of winter series. He died in 1664 while traveling in the east.