HANDELINGEN VAN DE KONINKLIJKE COMMISSIE VOOR GESCHIEDENIS/BULLETINS, VOL. 190, 2024
Jean-Marie Yante, « Dénombrer et évaluer pour mieux partager. Documents préparatoires au partage des Terres communes aux duchés de Bar et de Luxembourg (1602-1603) » (p. 1-113).
In the sixteenth century, the management under the dual sovereignty of Barrois and Luxembourg of lands in the north of Lorraine and others that had belonged to the county of Chiny, multiplied the opportunities for disagreement. The status of condominium had largely contributed, as early as the thirteenth century, to the prosperity of the Common Lands around Marville and Arrancy, but modern states in a phase of consolidation do not adapt well to the institutional and legal particularities inherited from the Middle Ages. The division of these territories, the search for acceptable solutions for areas of debate and the elimination of enclaves require a precise evaluation of the various components. This was the task assigned in 1602 to the officers appointed by the sovereigns present, the Archdukes Albert and Isabella for the Netherlands and Duke Charles III of Bar-Lorraine. A detailed questionnaire is prepared for them. The declarations relating to the various villages and hamlets, drawn up with the help of the local courts, are synthesized into an Estat abbrégé. The Musée Condé, in Chantilly, keeps files of this vast operation. The aim is not to attempt a systematic exploitation of this exceptional material, but, by way of example, from the declaration of Arrancy, the most populous locality, to identify some facets of its population (from a professional and heritage point of view), its terroir and its development. In a second phase, a certain number of data are extracted from the Estat abbrégé and lead to some observations, mainly statistical, at the level of all the terroirs concerned. The partition took place in 1602-1603, with the exception of Marville and a few villages in the surrounding area, which remained undivided until 1659-1661.
Marieke De Baerdemaeker & Jo Tollebeek, « Brusselse faience in het Broodhuis. De inventaris van de collectie Evenepoel door Guillaume Des Marez (1911) » (p. 115-158).
Faience produced in Brussels in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries regained interest in the late nineteenth century: private collectors discovered the historical ceramics, their pieces were exhibited, studies on ceramics history were published. A key role in this was played by Albert Evenepoel, who built up an important collection of Brussels faience. On his death in 1911, he bequeathed this collection to the new Brussels Municipal Museum, opened in 1887. The historian Guillaume des Marez, who, as city archivist also served as curator of the museum, made the first inventory of the collection. This inventory, which marked the museumisation of Brussels faience, also bears witness to other aspects of the new appraisal of Brussels ceramics: it illustrates the aesthetic appreciation of this heritage as well as the doubts concerning the authenticity of many pieces.
Guy Vanthemsche, « ‘Colloque singulier’. Les audiences de Jean Rey, ministre des Affaires économiques, auprès du roi Baudouin (1954-1958) » (p. 159-234).
This article reproduces and comments on the notes drawn up by the Minister of Economic Affairs Jean Rey (1954-1958) after his audiences with King Baudouin. Confidential one-on-one conversations between the sovereign and his ministers are always kept secret; consequently, the content of this so-called “colloque singulier” is very rarely known, both to contemporaries and historians. The notes kept in Jean Rey’s private archives, deposited in the archives of the Université libre de Bruxelles, therefore provide a very rare insight into such conversations. They provide numerous new elements on the policy of the socialist-liberal government led by Achille Van Acker (in particular on its economic policy carried out by this coalition), on the concrete dynamics of the “colloque singulier”, as well as on the personality of both the sovereign and the minister.
Michèle Galand, Hommage à Jean-Marie Duvosquel (p. 401-403).
