In the name of the valley - Ascetic seclusion

This blog post delves deeper into the history of the current park Klarenbeek. Not to be confused with the other Klarenbeek, which is located higher up north and is more near the city Apeldoorn than it is to Arnhem. I’ll have to admit my own confusion, as I has previously lived by some facts that apparently were in line with the history of the other Klarenbeek.

But now, a short history on Arnhem’s very own Klarenbeek.

Introduction

Klarenbeek is an urban park and historic estate situated on the southern edge of the Veluwe moraine. To refresh our memory: the Veluwe moraine is an ice-age earthen wall which slopes down into Klarendal. So Klarenbeek is high, Klarendal is middle, city center is low.

One of the oldest means of land use here was the monastery Monnikhuizen, founded during the high middle ages in the year 1342. It was of the Carthusian order (nl: Kartuizers) - of which seclusion is a core tenet - following the growing religious movement of the time towards ascetic purity and isolation.

A typical Carthusian monastery complex was organized around a central courtyard with individual living cells (nl: Kluizen) inclusing private gardens around its perimeter. The monks would live in quiet contemplation. Moving between seclusion, manual labor and translation work. Monnikhuizen became a spiritual and intellectual center in Gelre and attracted theological scholars like Geert Grote, Thomas a Kempis and Hendrik van Kalkar.

The monks, as with other people, needed a way to support their livelyhood. For which they had to reshape the landscape in order for it to be reliably productive for their needs. Their highest priority was to secure a steady source of potable water. As the site was situated on a slope, water from higher up the Veluwemassief would percolate into the soil until it hit an aquatard (an impervious layer of clay) and flow downward via the subsurface, until meeting a point of least resistance where the water could surface again. These point, the spring heads (nl: sprengkoppen)

The monks systemically excavated and regulated the spring heads along the northern slopes of the Bosweg. The excavation works created a brook which at the time was named Monikkenhuizerbeek and is now known as Klarenbeek.

I wish I could provide you with more interesting facts about the monks of Monnikhuize. But their legacy in Klarenbeek ends in 1572 during the eighty years’ war. The threat of plundering bands of raiders forced the monks to seek refuge within the city walls and, with their way of life uprooted, resettled Germany. A couple of years later, in 1579, Calvinists had taken political control of the city and a year later the monastery complex was dismantled and destroyed. The land confiscated by the public authority, leaving behind only subterranean ruins and remnant of the old boundary walls and scattered stone fragments of Monnikhuize.