On your way, you should pass the little statue of Geertruyt (Gertrude) van Oosten which stands adjacent to the Oude Kerk. Buried in the Oude Kerk were Jan Vermeer and Antony van Leeuwenhoek, both born in Delft in the same year and whose lives crossed at several points. We discuss them later. Before going any further on our walk, I want to talk about Gertrude.

Gertrude van der Oosten, Venerable, as she is listed in the Catholic encyclopedia, was born in humble circumstances in Voorburch, Holland in 1330. She was, from childhood, very pious. She moved to Delft, engaging in works of charity. She gained acceptance into the Beguinage of Delft. Beguines(women) and Beghards (men)were part of a religious movement which emerged during the turmoil of the Middle Ages. In the years during and after the 200 years of the Crusades, say from the First Crusade (1095-1099) to the Ninth Crusade (1271-1272) there had been multitudes of women widowed and orphaned by these wars. Gradually many came together in groups and by the beginning of the thirteenth century the Beguinages were forming.

It was largely an urban phenomenon. Single women sought the protection afforded them in the Beguinages. These women, although they were not bound by the vows of the full religious, were still desirous of a spiritual and religious life. Joining this way of life, Gertrude was able to devote herself to worship, prayer and contemplation. It was a period of strong mystical yearnings, expressed in the lives of many of these pious women. Gertrude appears in some accounts of women mystics of the Middle Ages, but she is not a major figure. She has not achieved the same level of fame as the great Hildegard von Bingen (born in 1098), for example, but she was sufficiently important to be included in the Catholic encyclopedia. It tells us that her name derives from the hymn she sang, "Day breaketh in the East" ["Het daghet in den Oosten"] which was believed to be her own composition. I have found no other mention of this aspect of her life. Her songs may not have been written down. How literate was she? It was not necessary for her to have had musical training. In church or out, songs and music could be learned by rote.

We are told that she received the signs of the stigmata and that she possessed the "gift" of prophecy. Gertrude is also credited with influencing the decision to build the Nieuwe Kerk on its present site. The history of the Kerk, as given in the booklet published by the Reformed Congregation of Delft and enlarged in the excellent displays in the Nieuwe Kerk, tells us that in 1331 a beggar had a vision of a wondrous church; Jan Col or Kol had given him food and he also saw the vision; each year for thirty years thereafter brilliant lights were seen shining on this spot. Later thinking suggests that they might have been caused by marsh gas fires. Jan Col/Kol constantly strove to have a church built there. Two holy Beguines, who also saw the lights, supported this movement; one was Katharina van Koudenhove; the other was Gertrude. The fact that she had received the stigmata probably had a strong effect on the town council and they agreed to build a church. Gertrude died at Delft on January 6, 1358.

While Gertrude was living a quiet and sequestered life as a Beguine and a mystic, the life going on around her had been anything but quiet. It was a time of considerable turmoil in Europe and the Low Countries were not exempt. The Crusades of the thirteenth century, for example, culminating in 1291 in the loss of Acre, the last Christian stronghold, had only ended roughly 40 years before Gertrude's birth. The Low Countries were affected by many external and internal struggles between different economic and political forces.

The Counts of Holland, the most powerful state at the time, held court on the site of the present Stadhuis. During the thirteenth century, one building was given two brick towers, which were used as prison towers. These were in place during Gertrude's time. She would have known the canals, which were built during the eleventh century; land was always being reclaimed and the water was needed for the brewing and textile industries.

As these public works needed continual maintenance, gradually an administrative structure took shape.

When Count William IV died in 1345 without a male heir, struggles for supremacy of power broke out. Two groups, the Kabeljauwen (Cods) and the Hoeken (Hooks) sprang up. [No, I don't know how they acquired their names! It seems to have vanished into history. However I have belatedly found a reference in Delaissé to the effect that the hooks were to catch the [cod]fish, which at least makes sense.] These groups ebbed and flowed through the next century or so but in the main the Cods, chiefly bourgeois, supported one contender [pro Burgundians] and the Hooks, mainly nobles, [anti-Burgundians] supported the other. Delft supported the Cods. Gertrude was spared the violent and successful attack against Delft carried out in 1359 by Albrecht van Beieren [born in Munich in 1330, the same year as Gertrude]. He decreed that all walls, towers and gates be destroyed. There had been a town moat but it was filled in. It was not until 1394 that Delft was allowed to build gates again and 1448 before the town was permitted to rebuild the walls and towers. An important canal was built in 1359, however, which linked Delft to the Maas River and contributed to the growth of the town.

As we move into the fifteenth century, Holland developed what became a thriving sea trade and with it came a wealthy merchant class.

Greater even than the threat of war in that period was probably the threat of the Plague- the Black Death. Gertrude's life coincided exactly with the period of the Black Death which raged through Europe from about 1347 to 1351. This scourge swept Europe wiping out rich and poor, secular and religious, saint and sinner. In fact, monasteries were particularly hard hit. Living in such close proximity seemed to facilitate transmission of the disease. The Low Countries were hit about 1349 but escaped lightly. We don't know whether Gertrude's small community was affected.

Had Gertrude been conscious of such things, what kind of tiles, if any, would she have seen? In Delft, probably none. In another section we followed Guido Andries and other potters from Italy to Antwerp thus making Antwerp a very important production point for tin-glazed pottery in the fifteenth century. But these developments were at least a century after Gertrude's death. After 1585 and the fall of Antwerp to Spain, potters came north to towns and cities in the Northern Netherlands, including Delft. These developments were 200 years after Gertrude's death.

In Utrecht, Christian church construction was begun in the eighth century by Willibrord, the first bishop of Utrecht. Utrecht grew and flourished and as the bishops gained in power, so did the wealth of the churches. Something better than packed earthen floors would have been required. De Jonge tells us that by the fourteenth century there were three active potteries in the Northern Netherlands, so we know that earthenware products were available for religious and household use. If Gertrude had travelled to Utrecht, she may have seen the square-cut floor tiles of red firing clay, both decorated and undecorated, which have been found in ecclesiastical buildings in and around Utrecht. The Centraal Museum in Utrecht has preserved part of one such floor which dates from about the middle of the fourteenth century. The Museum has placed this floor in a room with an appropriate Gothic-style setting In these and other fragments the designs include geometric patterns, animal figures, fleur-de-lis, the head of a man wearing a hood and a woman with a distinctive hair style. One set of fragments represents the earliest tiles with under-glaze decoration; the colours had been put on before the lead glaze.

If we send Gertrude on an imaginary visit to England what tiles might she have seen? Although we can only give one or two examples here, such a trip could have given Gertrude a much wider acquaintance with really fascinating tiles. In England we have a long religious history and a steady growth in power of the churches and the nobles. Tile mosaic floors were known in the thirteenth century mostly found in Cistercian Abbeys; similar tiles were found in European Cistercian Abbeys. Simple mosaic tile floors were made up of shaped pieces of plain colours arranged to make a pattern. These developed to the more complex inlaid tile mosaic. The design was impressed into the shaped clay pieces and filled with white firing clay, making two-toned tiles.

The most famous medieval inlaid tiles in England are those from the Chertsey Abbey, some now safely collected and protected in the British Museum. and which date from around 1250-1290's. These are large, thick, inlaid tiles, in different shapes and designs. Some depict the combat between Richard I and Saladin and another series deals with the story of Tristan and Isolda. They are beautifully drawn with fine decorative detail. These are considered superior to any others of the thirteenth century and set a standard of design and technical quality it would have been hard to equal. However, they would have been very expensive to make. Money was required to ensure artists and artisans of high quality. Cutting individual shapes was very time-consuming and so gradually gave way to the manufacturing of more regular square tiles. Square tiles could be made in quantities large enough to keep costs down.

We see another style of tile from that period in some tiles from Tring Church in Hertfordshire, now also to be seen in the British Museum. They are long rectangular wall tiles approximately 12" x 6" These depict stories from the childhood of Jesus. The tiles were covered with slip on which the decoration was outlined. The background slip was cut away, leaving the design highlighted against the darker base, here yellow against the brown background. This method is known as sgraffito. These developments both pre-dated Gertrude and continued during her lifetime.

So where lie the differences? History was simply unfolding at its own pace. The infrastructures in England were advanced; the wealth and the power of the church and nobility enabled them to create a more impressive environment. The era of Gothic architecture encouraged decoration details such as tile-floors. In Utrecht, powerful Dutch city though it was, and in Delft, the necessary skills and technology had not yet arrived. In all areas the Black Death created a serious shortage of both skilled and unskilled workmen so wages rose and even churches and noble families could no longer afford the "conspicuous consumption" that richly tiled floors represented. This economic circumstance would have slowed growth where tiles were already developed and prevented development elsewhere. Construction of Delft's two churches was later than that of churches in the other areas; the Oude Kerk in Delft would have had stone floors and the earliest Nieuwe Kerk was of wood and even less likely to have a valuable floor. Although the Counts of Holland held Court in the Stadhuis, part of which came to serve as a jail, was their standard of luxury adequate for tiled floors? We saw that wars of succession finally destroyed a great deal of the town, which would have retarded artistic endeavours.

Delft's flowering came later. Its delftware set the standard of excellence from the seventeenth century against which others had to be measured.

Before we continue our tour, I want to say one last word about Gertrude. I find Gertrude's little statue touching and sad. She died so young. She is a small and interesting part of Delft's history. The extract from the Catholic encyclopedia is already on the Web. I am adding my small tribute. Many might feel that it is unlikely that Gertrude's "gift of prophecy" could have covered her appearance, at least twice, on the Internet in the 20th century. Or could it?