Jan-Baptist Verlooy

This position might have provided him with a degree of respectability which is proved by the fact that one of his grand children, Jan Frans Verlooy, referred to it when he applied to be a notary in the Chancery of Brabant in 1775.

Verlooy’s most influential study on this subject appeared only two years later: the clandestine Essay on the disregard of the native language in the Netherlands, (in Dutch: Verhandeling op d’onacht der moederlyke tael in de Nederlanden).

This phenomenon first occurred when the Burgundian dukes ruled over the Netherlands and it reached its climax in Brussels, where the native language of 95% of the population was and remained nonetheless Dutch.

In the spring of 1789, Verlooy founded with Jan Frans Vonck the secret society "Pro Aris et Focis" (for Altar and Hearth), in order to prepare a rebellion against the emperor.

In fact, it is Verlooy who made the proposal to Vonck to organise a secret society with the name Pro Aris et Focis tasked with the liberation of the Belgian provinces from Austrian Habsburg despotism.

They would simultaneously organise the rebellion in the cities and the emigration of patriots who would create an army willing to invade the homeland, which would also be the sign for a general revolt.

Verlooy justified his intentions in a Dutch pamphlet and gave an explanation of his project: “three million Belgians suffer slavery... among them not less than 700.000 are fit enough to fight and are dissatisfied; ... one could easily find 300.000 people willing to risk their goods and their blood for their homeland.

Verlooy was pleading for a kind of suffrage, based on ownership of property or tax assessment but which excluded few citizens of the right to vote, while allowing separated elections for the nobility and for the clergy.

Verlooy became Vice President of the Société Patriotique, founded to take the lead for democratic action, and signed immediately after Vonck, the famous Adresse from 15 March 1790 requesting better representation of the population in the States.

This Adresse would force him to run away and leave Brussels for Namur in the footsteps of Vonck, and afterwards to seek temporary shelter in Givet, Rijsel and Dowaai where he tried to reconcile the two main factions of the Brabant Revolution: the rather conservative Statists and the rather liberal Vonckists.

He was elected a provisory Brussels Deputy and became one of those tasked with visiting prisons to liberate those detainees who could be regarded as victims of arbitrariness or gothic and feudal laws.

When the foundation of a Belgian democratic republic seemed to be fruitless and as the policy of the French government proceeded from revolutionary intervention to annexation, Verlooy declared himself to be in favour of union with France.

While the French were at war with the whole civilised world of those days as well as demanding enormous efforts from the Belgians whose homeland they were simultaneously reshaping, Verlooy and his colleagues had the ungrateful task to protect their fellow citizens courageously and with dignity against the abuse and the atrocities of the new rulers.

Verlooy did not keep his function as maire of Brussels for long: he withdrew from public life as soon as he saw through the real nature of the new regime and because he was also experiencing health problems.

Appointed Judge of the Civil Court of the Department of the Dijle on 7 Frimair an IV (28 November 1795), Verlooy was forced to refuse this public function because of his health.

Schrant, reprinted the Verhandeling op het niet achten der moederlijke tael in de Nederlanden, door een Brusselschen advocaat, in defence of the linguistic politics of King William I of the Netherlands.

P. Hamelius mentioned him in his Histoire politique et littéraire du mouvement flamand (completed in 1894) and P. Fredericq did the same in his Schets eener geschiedenis der Vlaamsche beweging (published in 1906).

If Verlooy was a forerunner of the Flemish movement, his attitude towards the linguistic struggle was closely linked with profoundly democratic opinions and ideas.

Published works by Verlooy are, amongst others, the Codex Brabanticus and the Verhandeling op d’onacht der moederlyke tael in de Nederlanden.