Hesbaye

Coordinates: 50°45′N 5°18′E / 50.75°N 5.3°E / 50.75; 5.3
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Blooming fruit trees at Kerniel, a typical Hesbayean village in the municipality of Borgloon.
The natural regions of Belgium.

The Hesbaye (

Roman times, and specifically named in records since the Middle Ages, when it was an important Frankish pagus or gau, called Hasbania in medieval Latin
.

Location

Major parts of three Belgian provinces are dominated by the Hesbaye landscape, important for both tourism and agriculture, and by some definitions it stretches further:

Geographically, Hesbaye borders on several similar regions of rolling hills:

In contrast, to the north it borders on the flat sandy Kempen region. And over the Meuse to the southeast are the rocky hills of the Ardennes. In the west the plateau ends at the Dyle river valley, except to its south where a smaller extension of the plateau landscape stretches into Hainaut and between Brussels and Charleroi, sometimes referred to as the "plateau brabançonne".[5]

Dry and humid Hesbaye

The Hesbaye is often divided into two divisions based on stratigraphy, with the boundary running through Sint-Truiden, Borgloon and Tongeren in Dutch-speaking southern Limburg. The northern "Humid" Hesbaye (Dutch Vochtig Haspengouw, French Hesbaye Humide) has a higher water table due to the Tongrian and Rupelian clay-containing layers near the surface, and many springs.[5] It is by far the main fruit growing area of Belgium, as well as home to some of the most northerly vineyards in Belgium. The southern "Dry" division is somewhat more fertile and the ground water sinks more easily; in this region sugar beet, chicory, flax, rapeseed and grains (90% of which is wheat and barley) are cultivated.[6]

Name

In the oldest Latin documents the name of the pagus (country or territory) was typically Hasbania. As demonstrated in the collection of such records given by Ulrich Nonn, this was generally given in an adjectival form such as pagus hasbaniensis. Only a small number of such records added the Germanic word gau or gouw. Verhelst (p. 245 n.45) proposed that the small number cases of medieval Latin which include the "gau" ending are un-coincidentally in or near the old deaconry of Tongeren, which he proposed to be the historical core of the Hesbaye. Therefore, he proposed, the terms Hasbania and Haspengouw can not be assumed to have identical meanings in all records, even though in modern Dutch the form with "gouw" is now the only one, while in modern French the form without is the only one.

Latin continued to be use in documentation in the Belgian area into the early modern era, and it has been noted that spelling variations sometimes even included Hispania (or similar) which would usually refer to geographical area containing Spain and Portugal.[7]

History

The green stars show early medieval records of places which were in the pagus of Hasbania. The coloured areas are modern provinces of Belgium and the Netherlands.

In Roman times, Haspengouw formed the fertile agricultural core area of the

Merovingian Frankish kingdom of Austrasia
.

In the 8th century, Robert, who has been proposed as an ancestor of the Capetians, was described as a Duke or Count of Hasbania, implying that in his lifetime maybe it formed one large political area. In a grant of 741 some of his lands near Diest were described as being in the country of "Hasbaniensi et Mansuarinsi", the Hasbanians and the Mansuarini.

Later, Hasbania was mentioned in the division of territories between

River Dyle. Judging from the ancient catholic Archdeaconry of Hesbaye, it may also have stretched to the east of the Meuse.[8]

In the 10th century, smaller counties considered to have been within the pagus of Hesbaye included a County of Avernas (with its capital town in modern

Vliermaal played a role in a county also, for example in Hocht, because in later times it was a court town for the County of Loon. In the west an apparently short-lived and small county named Brunengeruz
was absorbed by the growing power of the westernmost county based in Louvain/Leuven.

In the early 11th century the County of Loon, with its comital seat in Borgloon first starts to appear in records. Along with Louvain, whose power indeed proceeded to expand beyond the region, these two counties proved to be lasting.

In 1040, the Emperor

County of Leuven
.

By the early 12th century, the

St Truiden
.

See also

  • Rida (River)

Notes

  1. ^ Liège Hesbaye Meuse area (Archived 2008-01-02 at the Wayback Machine) in Liège.
  2. ^ "Home". Destination Brabant wallon. Retrieved 25 March 2023.
  3. ^ "the Hesbaye namuroise". Retrieved 25 March 2023.
  4. ^ See Baerten, Verhelst
  5. ^ .
  6. ^ "Zeg nooit Vochtig-Haspengouw tegen Droog-Haspengouw". Vlaams infocentrum land- en tuinbouw (in Dutch). 22 July 2006. Archived from the original on 23 February 2014. Retrieved 10 July 2014.
  7. .
  8. ^ Verhelst (1984 and 1985) "Een nieuwe visie op de omvang en indeling van de pagus Hasbania" Handelingen van de Koninklijke Zuidnederlandsche Maatschappij voor Taal- en Letterkunde en Geschiednis"
  9. Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire, 43 (2): 468 and Baerten (1965), "Les origines des comtes de Looz et la formation territoriale du comté (suite et fin)"
    , Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire, 43 (4)

Bibliography

  • Nonn, Ulrich (1983), Pagus und Comitatus in Niederlothringen: Untersuchung zur politischen Raumgliederung im frühen Mittelalter
  • Verhelst, Karel (1984), "Een nieuwe visie op de omvang en indeling van de pagus Hasbania (part 1)", Handelingen van de Koninklijke Zuidnederlandsche Maatschappij voor Taal- en Letterkunde en Geschiednis, 38
  • Verhelst, Karel (1985), "Een nieuwe visie op de omvang en indeling van de pagus Hasbania (part 2)", Handelingen van de Koninklijke Zuidnederlandsche Maatschappij voor Taal- en Letterkunde en Geschiednis, 39

External links

50°45′N 5°18′E / 50.75°N 5.3°E / 50.75; 5.3