In the late Middle Ages, quite a few mythological stories about the Trojan War circulated in the Netherlands. They have long been dismissed by historians as bizarre historical excesses and often ignored. Neerlandica Wilma Keesman (UvA) researched these Troy sagas in the Netherlands. She discovered why it was so important, not only for monarchs of the time but even for entire cities, to have a link with a Trojan hero.
The Trojan War is one of the most important events in Greek mythology. The most famous account of it - though not written down until centuries later - is the Illias by the Greek writer Homer (c. 800 BC – ca. 750 BC). The war, according to Homer, started with a quarrel between the gods. The ancient Greeks saw the Trojan War as the end of mythological times and the beginning of history. A real primal event.
To legitimize their level of civilization and position of power, many powerful cities of antiquity invented for themselves a mythological link with one of the heroes of this war. The most important example is that of the Roman poet Virgil, who wrote a story that showed that the Trojan hero Aeneas made a long journey after the war to eventually land in Italy, where his descendants founded the city of Rome.
But even after classical antiquity was long gone, European monarchs and cities, following a good Roman example, used a mythological link with the Trojans to legitimize their position of power. Many histories therefore opened with the fall of this city and the subsequent adventures of its own Trojan ancestor.
This also happened in abundance in the Netherlands. For example, Duke John I of Brabant (that of the beer brand) traced his own family tree back to Trojan blood in a number of genealogies around 1270, via Charlemagne and the Merovingian kings.
Find bloodlines
In the Middle Ages, the Trojan War was seen as anything but a myth. It was a historical fact, but the Middle Ages – through the strong influence of the Christian faith – had a decidedly different conception of history than we have today. History was explained as the succession of four world empires, namely the Babylonian Empire, the Medo-Persian Empire, the Greco-Macedonian Empire, and the Roman Empire, the last of which was the most important. After all, Jesus Christ was born in the Roman Empire.
Troy had been designated – through Aeneas – as the mother city of Rome and had to be the mother city for anyone who wanted to follow that example. The Merovingian kings – Charlemagne and also the later emperors of the Holy Roman Empire – all saw their empire as a succession to the mighty but fallen Roman Empire. So there was quite a bit involved in having a bloodline with a Trojan hero. Trojan blood has traditionally meant election, sovereignty, and supreme secular power. Duke John wanted to legitimize his power and possibly even lay claim to the Holy Roman Imperial Crown (which was vacant from 1246 to 1273).
In the end, almost all of Europe laid its own origin in Troy. The Troy sagas became one of the first joint European origin histories. Thus all Europeans, the princes first, were like Trojans a chosen people. The God-sent cultural conquerors of the barbaric condition in which Europe once found itself.
Vulnerable tradition
This helps to explain why the Troy myths were also so popular in the Netherlands. The Trojan War was the first non-religious subject for which the nascent printing press in the Netherlands was used. The many reprints indicate how eager the stories were. The old Brabant Troy saga was spread until the sixteenth century. This interest in Troy was often directly linked to one's own origin from the city. Because cities also legitimized their position of power with an appeal to Troy. Such as Bruges, which placed itself on a par with Rome and other Trojan daughter cities.
History or myth?
The city of Troy actually existed and was located near present-day Hisarlik in Turkey. Several layers of buildings have been discovered, indicating that the city is very old and has been destroyed (and rebuilt) several times. Traces of great destruction have been found in the twelfth century BC – probably by war – in the archaeological layer called VIIa, which roughly corresponds to the traditional dating of the Trojan War according to Homer. In its time, Troy was an impressive ruin. Many historians see the Illias as a literary story in a historical context. But researchers cannot yet agree on the actual relationship between the two.
To compete with the Brabant rulers and the Burgundian kings who ruled over Holland, the Dutch counts created their own Troy saga in the fifteenth century. The Dutch counts would descend directly from the Merovingians, who again had a bloodline with Troy. The Dutch people have previously been jokingly said that they descended from the giants chased out by Brutus – a great-grandson of Aeneas and the first legendary king of Great Britain.
Due to the political fragmentation and the accompanying power struggles, there were even more Trojan legends circulating in the Netherlands than in neighboring countries, according to PhD student Wilma Keesman in her dissertation. It is precisely the multitude of Dutch sagas that made the Troy tradition vulnerable here. Printers were selective; printing small, local Troy sagas was more economically risky and so didn't happen. Stories were combined and the original meaning of the myths slowly disappeared due to the Dutch Revolt and centralization policy.