Charter of Kortenberg

The Charter of Kortenberg (Dutch: Keure van Kortenberg) is an agreement signed and sealed on September 27, 1312, in the abbey of Kortenberg by John II, Duke of Brabant and representatives of the cities of Brussels, Antwerp, 's-Hertogenbosch, Tienen and Zoutleeuw. Creation of the document is of historical and political importance because it retains agreements between inhabitants of a territory with a ruler who had absolute power. This reflected the start of a current that would later be labeled by historians as Brabant's Constitutionalism because residents without control had claimed rights and powers, and had them recorded in writing, which are somewhat comparable to what have come to be called civil and political rights centuries later. In this process, the first simple rules were created for what would develop into a legal order that is now called democratic rule of law.

The charter was valid for the entire duchy of Brabant, for the rich and the poor. From this charter originated an early kind of parliament, the "Council of Kortenberg" an assembly of lords.

The control organ, a precursor of the later "Estate assembly" (namely, the first estate was the clergy, the second estate was the nobility, and the third estate was the municipalities) gathered in the Kortenberg Abbey and elsewhere with ups and downs until 1375.

From 1332 on the council was extended by two more members, so that there were 16 Lords; Antwerp got a second member and the Walloon Brabant town of Nivelles (Dutch: Nijvel) also got a member. In 1340 documents were sealed with a special seal on which a tree was planted on a small hill. The seal bore the words "SIGILUM COMMUNE : CONSILII DE CORTENBERGHE" which was the common seal of the Council of Kortenberg.