DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18326096
title: Goswin Arnould de Wynants' Mémoires contenant des notions générales de tout ce qui concerne le Gouvernement des Païs Bas (Vienna, 1730) (Copy conserved in the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library, Antwerp)

description: Transcription (generated with Transkribus, manually corrected and tagged) of an undated copy of Goswin Arnould de Wynants' Mémoires contenant des notions générales de tout ce qui concerne le Gouvernement des Païs Bas, initially written in Vienna in 1730 (239 images). Wynants was a member (since 1717) of the High Council for the Austrian Netherlands, an advisory organ to Emperor Charles VI (1711-1740). Trained as a lawyer in Leuven, he had been an attorney and councillor (judge) at the Council of Brabant before. Wynants describes the institutional and constitutional, but also commercial and judicial organisation of the provinces of the Spanish (from 1713 on, Austrian) Netherlands, from the late Middle Ages on. The work is written in an informal style, and is addressed at his second son. However, numerous references to doctrine (mostly the canon lawyer Van Espen), print source publications (e.g. Butkens, Du Lauri), manuscripts and archival pieces make it an exceptional guide through the Southern Low Countries in the early eighteenth century. The reasoning is legal-institutional throughout the work, with an emphasis on the application of legal maxims to specific situations. Wynants illustrates how the High Council acts as a 'censor' for relevant decisions the sovereign has not delegated to the governor-general. I refer to a generic chapter on Wynants (2023) and a longer article on his treatment of jurisdiction and taxation (2025). The latter contribution includes a discussion of the various versions and copies of the manuscript found in Antwerp (Conscience Heritage Library), Ghent (Ghent University Library) and Brussels (KBR).

THe XML-document is the transcription of a copy, not an original. A draft of Pierre Delsaerdt's annotated transcription of the original (Belgian State Archives, Manuscripts, 829, provisional version 1989), kept at the HHStA (Vienna; SB NL Elisabeth Kovacs 40-11) has been consulted. This was useful to resolve issues (e.g. words or syllables partially obscured by a fold in the bound volume), but the reader ought to keep in mind that I transcribed a... copy, whereby the (unknown) copiist has made grammatical and spelling errors, simplified or inverted formulations or made mistakes in dates. Evident mistakes in dates (where the chronology does not fit) have been corrected, using Delsaerdt's transcription of the manuscript kept at the Belgian State Archives, as well as the latter and the copy kept at Ghent University Library.

The transcription has been tagged in Transkribus, which can be consulted in the Transkribus PDF in this dataset. I used the following categories:

(1) Person (e.g. Archduke Albert, Archduke Leopold [Wilhelm], Duke of Arenberg and Aarschot, Mary of Burgundy, Charles V, Philip II, Prince Eugène) [orange](2) Place (e.g. Mons, Antwerp, Malines, Ireland, Vienna) [purple]. A visualisation of the Mémoires' spatial reach can be consulted here on Google Maps.(3) Institutional concept (e.g. loi fondamentale, souveraineté, emploi, fief) [blue](4) Organisation (e.g. Conseil Privé, Conseil d'Etat, Conseil Suprême, Gouverneur Général) [green](5) Date [dark blue](6) Treaty (e.g. Barrier Treaty, Peace of Rastatt, Peace of Utrecht, Peace of Westphalia) [orange]

The tags have been extracted and added as an appendix to the Transkribus PDF.

Within Transkribus, links have been made to Wikidata. Unfortunately, they can only function when the documents are integrated into Transkribus Sites, which is not yet the case. The scanned version of the copy transcribed here can, however, be accessed on the Conscience Library's server (cf. infra). 

Alongside the XML and PDF files, I have also attached a MS Word version of the transcription, which may be more convenient for the reader. PDF and Word file alike allow for simple text searches in the corpus, e.g. "Sa Majesté" (285 occurences), "Placcard" (55), "Conseil Privé" (54), "Possession" (23), "Commerce" (23), "Etats de Brabant" (44), "Flandre" (103), Zypaeus, Zaman, François L'Honoré, [Jean] Dumont, Cicero, Lamoignon, Hovines, Bergeyck, "Parlement de Paris", "Cour de Rome"...

My thanks go to the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library (City of Antwerp, especially dr. Marie-Charlotte Le Bailly), which graciously allowed me to consult the document. The copy transcribed here can be accessed digitally on the Library's server. I was assisted in 2020-2021 by two research students (Max Van den Bosch and Leen Elewaut) in training a manual HTR-model. They operated with the Research Group Contextual Research in Law (CORE) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Department Interdisciplinary Studies of Law). I am equally grateful to the Stichting tot Uitgaaf der Bronnen van het Oud-Vaderlands Recht (OVR), which awarded me the 2020-2021 OVR Chair (at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, collega proximus Prof. dr. mr. H. de Jong) and supported the effort by granting the remained of the chair's budget as a one-off subvention for Transkribus credits.

Comments and suggestions are welcome at frederik dot dhondt at vub dot be.