Akademik

   In 1473, the Burgundian duke Charles the Bold founded at Malines (Mechelen in Brabant, now in Belgium) the seat of his High Court of Justice (or “Parliament”). Af ter 1482, the Habsburgrulers of the Netherlands, Duke Maximilian, Emperor Charles V, and the king of Spain Philip II, maintained this central institution as a court first, and for appeal in civil cases from sentences of the provincial courts. In the Spanish and Austrian Southern Netherlands, the Court of Malines remained in session un til 1796. In the Northern provinces, its activities ended in 1582, not to be succeeded by a central court until a high court was established in 1838. Important portions of the records of the council from the 15th and 16th centuries were published under the direction of Prof. Jacobus Thomas de Smidt (Chronologische lijsten der geextendeerde sententien en procesbundels, six vols., 1966–1988).