The implacable Duke of Alva/Alba bloodily suppressing the Low Countries’ revolt against Spain claimed the head of Flemish nobleman and poet Jan van Casembroot.

Although Catholic himself, the Lord of Backerzele (English Wikipedia entry | Dutch) shared the umbrage of his countrymen at the Spanish King‘s punitive anti-heresy edicts: not only were they brutal, but they infringed the Low Countries’ constitutional rights.

Casembroot/Backerzele was among the 300 lords who in early 1566 set his hand to a petition demanding moderation of an immoderate Spanish crown. Known as the Compromise of Nobles, it was roundly rejected by Spain — and the growing boldness of Protestant evangelists along with the outbreak of iconoclastic attacks on Church symbols soon pushed events past any possible point of compromise.

Appointed by the beloved-of-Beethoven Count Egmont to quell such disturbances as governor of Oudenaarde, Casembroot was held to have made treasonably liberal concessions to the Calvinists — and three months after Egmont himself went to the block, Casembroot lost his head at Vilvoorde.

Several of his Latin verses have reached posterity, although seemingly not the further shores of the World Wide Web.

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