Photographs by Jock Fistick for the IHT
Ivonne Janssens, as a medieval duchess.

Pining for power, modern Belgians return to the Middle Ages

Published: April 3, 2007

AARSCHOT, Belgium: During the week, Ivonne Janssens, 57, is a hospital cleaner. But come the weekend, she climbs the narrow steps of a three-story medieval tower and turns into a 14th-century duchess with a faux-emerald necklace, a linen headdress, a leather satchel full of fake gold coins, and a retinue of mercenaries to fend off invading French knights.

Her husband, Daniel Grandjean, a 50-year-old furniture maker with a pot belly and bushy beard, becomes an axe-wielding soldier-for-hire. It was he who convinced the council in this sleepy Flemish town to let the couple live part time in the 700-year-old Sint-Rochus tower, where guards once stood watch to prevent Aarschot, then built of wood and straw, from catching fire.

When not inhabiting the tower, the spouses sleep in a medieval-replica bed at home. They avoid eating tomatoes or drinking coffee because Columbus had yet to discover America in the Middle Ages and such foods were not available in what was to become Belgium. Carrots are also off the menu because they grow in the ground and the medieval church deemed them the food of the devil.

"I feel proud to be a duchess," Janssens says from the top of the tower, which is decorated with animal-skin rugs and swords. "If I had the money, I would pretend to live in those times all day long. This was a glorious period in the history of Belgium. It was far less stressful in the Middle Ages, because there were no phones and no vacuum cleaners."

Across this country of 10 million, a growing number of Belgians are trading in their jeans for suits of armor. They are rubbing stones together to make fire, eating their dinners out of cauldrons, re-enacting heroic battles and participating in mock hangings.

Janssens, leader of a group of medieval enthusiasts that calls itself the Order of the Hagelanders, says dozens of similar groups have sprouted up in the last two years: "We have doctors and lawyers, people from all walks of life. It has become a national passion."

Though the dates are disputed, many medieval scholars say the Middle Ages began in 476, with the fall of the Roman emperor Romulus Augustus, and ended in 1453, with the taking of Constantinople by the Turkish sultan Mahomet II.

Such is the devotion to the period that, in recent years, juvenile delinquents in Flanders have been freed to allow them to atone for their misdeeds by making a 2,000-kilometer pilgrimage on foot to Santiago de Compostela, in northern Spain, carrying backpacks and accompanied by a guard.

Herman Konings, a Belgian behavioral psychologist who studies national trends, attributes the medieval craze to excessive nostalgia for a more glorious past. The fad has emerged at a time when the country, divided between Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north and French-speaking Wallonia in the south, is experiencing deep anxiety about its identity.

Konings argues that little Belgium, better known for its beer than its heroic past, is fed up with being the laughingstock of Europe. This, he says, is prompting Belgians to hark back to a period when Bruges and Antwerp were trading centers that surpassed Paris and London, and Flemish "primitive" painters like Jan Van Eyck were the envy of the world.

"Throughout our history, we have been attacked by everyone, from the Romans to the Vikings to the Dutch," he says, explaining that Belgians are tired of being picked on. "The late Middle Ages was a time when we were mastering the world. So at a time of national doubt, they provide a great escape as well as a sense of security."

For Pol Malfait, an affable 53-year-old postal clerk from Ghent, the Middle Ages is not just a historical era but a state of mind. Every week, he becomes De Nevelaar, a 14th-century Flemish soldier who fought for the king of England against the French crown during the Hundred Years War and then became a full-time plunderer. His wife, Jeanne, a 49-year-old secretary, becomes a peasant woman.

"When I am a medieval plunderer, I can do what I want and I love the freedom," he says, showing off the chain-metal outfit he puts on before setting out on fictional rampages.

"You can be in big trouble if both you and your partner aren't into being medieval," he adds. "My wife doesn't mind if I dress up in medieval clothes at home."

Every weekend the couple and their friends - who call themselves the Gentsche Ghesellen, or Ghent companions - sleep in windowless tent encampments where they build benches from branches, bake bread, sing religious tributes to the Virgin Mary and drink hippocras, a wine drink from the 14th century spiced with ginger, cloves and pepper.

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