Joseph Kervyn de Lettenhove, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetJoseph Kervyn de Lettenhove
Belgian historian and noble
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Sint-Michiels, Flemish Region, Belgium
About Joseph Kervyn de Lettenhove
- Joseph-Marie-Bruno-Constantin, Baron Kervyn de Lettenhove (17 August 1817 – 3 April 1891) was a Belgian historian and politician. He was a member of the Catholic Constitutional party and sat in the Belgian Chamber of Deputies as member for Eeklo.
- In 1870 he was appointed a member of the cabinet of Jules Joseph d'Anethan as minister of the interior.
- However his official career was short.
- The cabinet appointed as governor of Limburg one Decker, who had been entangled in the financial speculations of Langand-Dumonceau by which the whole clerical party had been discredited, and which provoked riots.
- The cabinet was forced to resign, and thereafter Kervyn de Lettenhove devoted himself entirely to literature and history.He had already become known as the author of a book on Jean Froissart (Brussels, 1855), which was crowned by the French Academy.
- He was also a correspondent of foreign scientific societies, and preëminent in his own country as an investigator of the national antiquities.
- He made translations of some of Milton's shorter poems (1839) and edited the Lettres et négociations de Philippe de Commines (1867).He edited a series of chronicles: Chroniques relatives à l'histoire de la Belgique sous la domination des ducs de Bourgogne (Brussels, 1870–1873), and Rélations politiques des Pays Bas et de l'Angleterre sous le regne de Philippe II (Brussels, 1882–1892).
- He wrote a history of Les Hugenots et les Gueux (Bruges, 1883–1885) in the spirit of a violent Roman Catholic partisan, but with much industry and learning.
- Other works include: Histoire de la Flandre (1847–50) Jacques de Artevelde (1863) Histoire et croniques de Flandre (1879–80) Marie Stuart (1889)He died at Sint-Michiels near Bruges in 1891, the community in which he was born in 1817.
- One of his children was art historian Henri Kervyn de Lettenhove.
Read more at Wikipedia