The Brabantsche Yeesten or Gestes de Brabant (lit. 'Brabantian Deeds') is a rhyming chronicle of some 46,000 verses written in the 14th and 15th centuries in the Middle Dutch language. It provides a history of the Duchy of Brabant, and the original five volumes were written by Jan van Boendale (c. 1280–c. 1351) of Antwerp; his text was later extended to seven volumes by an anonymous continuator.
Van Boendale's text was written between around 1318 and around 1350, commissioned for a member of the Antwerp patriciate.[citation needed] It extends to 16,318 verses. Boendale's main sources were the Chronica de origine ducum Brabantiae of 1294 and Spieghel Historiael of Jacob van Maerlant.[citation needed] Much of the text of the first three books are taken from Jacob van Maerlant almost verbatim.[citation needed] The events in book five are from Boendale's own lifetime.[citation needed]
Books six and seven, which extend the scope of the chronicled events to 1440, were written by an anonymous continuator. Some scholars attribute these books to Wein van Cotthem;[1] others to Hennen van Merchtenen, amongst other candidates.[2] Book six is dated 1432 and book seven is dated 1440; this latter date is also the approximate age of the oldest extant manuscripts of the text.[citation needed]
There are seven extant manuscript copies.[citation needed]
The text was first edited by Jan Frans Willems and Jean Henri Bormans beginning in 1839.[citation needed]
