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Size: 3 3/4" x 1 1/2"
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Size: 3 3/4" x 1 1/2"
July 11 is the feast day of Saint Benedict, the monk the French call Saint Benoît. July 11 is also the day in 1302 when the townsmen of Flanders beat the knights of the King of France outside Courtrai, a victory Flemings still celebrate as their holiday. St. Benoit was a liqueur mark registered at Courtrai, the French name for Kortrijk in Belgian Flanders, and this is one of its neck labels: a yellow and gold die-cut band with a plumed coat of arms, printed in the 1920s for a bottle it never reached.
The label is a die-cut paper band in the bow-tie shape made to wrap the neck of a bottle, with a pointed peak rising at the center above and below. A bright yellow border runs all the way around, lined inside with black and with a metallic gold rule that glints in the light, and gold scroll curls finish each end of the band. Two cream panels with a fine dotted texture carry the words LIQUEUR on the left and St. BENOIT on the right in bold black capitals.
The coat of arms fills the peak. A gold barred helm wears three white plumes, and leafy black-and-white mantling falls away to either side. The shield below is divided down the middle: the left half is black, crossed by a gold diagonal band, with a white D above it and a white W below; the right half is yellow with two chevrons stacked one above the other. Two small printed dots sit at the upper corners of the inner border. The reverse is plain unprinted paper, with the front lettering faintly showing through in mirror image.
It has never been applied to a bottle: there is no glue, no tearing and no bottle stain on the back. It measures 3.75 x 1.5 inches.
Nothing on this label names a town or a country, but the St. Benoit mark tells on itself. Other labels printed for it carry the words Marque Déposée, registered trademark, and the line R. C. Courtrai with a register number. R.C. is the abbreviation of registre du commerce, the commercial register Belgian firms printed on their invoices and packaging, and Courtrai is the French name of Kortrijk in the province of West Flanders. The French wording on this label is ordinary for Belgian commerce of the period, since French is one of Belgium's official languages.
St. Benoit is its own mark and should not be confused with Bénédictine, the famous liqueur of Fécamp in Normandy. The initials D and W on its shield belong to this crest alone.
On July 11, 1302, near Kortrijk, the civic militias and guildsmen of the Flemish towns met the royal army of France under Count Robert II of Artois, and the foot soldiers destroyed the mounted knights. Afterward the Flemings took about 500 pairs of spurs from the fallen French horsemen and gave them to the Church of Our Lady in Kortrijk, which is why the fight has been known ever since as the Battle of the Golden Spurs. In 1973 July 11 was formalised as the official holiday of the Flemish Community.
Courtrai grew rich on cloth and then on flax. The town sits on the river Leie, the Lys in French, and "Courtrai flax" became renowned as the best flax obtainable, sought after far beyond Belgium. Kortrijk's Texture museum, on the banks of the Leie, tells that story today.
Benedict of Nursia, Benoît in French, was born around 480 and died around 547. He founded more than a dozen communities of monks in Italy and wrote the Rule of Saint Benedict, the guide that shaped monastic life across medieval Europe and made him the father of Western monasticism. On October 24, 1964, Pope Paul VI proclaimed him the principal patron saint of Europe, and his feast is kept on July 11. The French have their own claim on him, too. The story at Fleury Abbey on the Loire is that more than thirteen hundred years ago its monks carried his remains north from Monte Cassino, the Italian monastery he founded, and the town that grew up around that abbey is still called Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire. Monte Cassino's monks dispute it to this day and say he never left Italy. A saint's name on a liqueur bottle borrowed centuries of that reputation in two words. Alexandre Le Grand, a wine merchant in Fécamp, Normandy, knew that trick well. In 1863 he worked out an herbal liqueur he sold as Bénédictine, on the story that its recipe came from a Venetian Benedictine monk, Dom Bernardo Vincelli, back in 1510. No one has ever turned up a solid record that Vincelli lived, but the legend stuck, and so did the D.O.M. on Le Grand's label, short for Deo Optimo Maximo, "to God, most good, most great," the dedication the Benedictine order put at the head of its documents.
This label was printed for a Belgium with some of the strictest spirits rules in Europe. On August 29, 1919, the Vandervelde law, named for Justice Minister Emile Vandervelde, banned the sale and serving of spirits in every place open to the public. Belgians could still buy spirits in shops for drinking at home, but only in quantities of at least two litres. The law stayed in force for more than sixty years.
Belgian beer lore has long credited the Vandervelde law with the rise of the country's strong beers, the story being that drinkers who could not order a gin in a café ordered a heavier beer instead. Beer historians have since picked that legend apart: beer strength barely moved between 1900 and 1930, and dubbel and tripel stayed rare until after 1950. The legend is still told in Belgian bars.
A neck label had one job. It was pasted round a bottle, and when the bottle was empty the label went out with the glass. Unused labels survive only as printer's or distiller's leftover stock.
Collectors of Belgian and European liquor labels, heraldry and coat-of-arms enthusiasts, anyone with family roots in Kortrijk or West Flanders, home bar decorators who want a real period label rather than a reproduction, and ephemera collectors who look for unused die-cut labels.
The label prints no country. The St. Benoit mark is tied to Courtrai (Kortrijk), Belgium, where it was registered, and the French wording fits Belgian commerce, where French is an official language.
It dates to the 1920s.
No. Bénédictine is a different liqueur from Fécamp in Normandy. St. Benoit is a separate mark.
They are the initials worked into the St. Benoit crest. Nothing printed on the label spells them out.
No. It was never applied to a bottle, and the back is clean, unprinted paper.
3.75 x 1.5 inches.
A narrow printed band pasted around the neck of a bottle, usually naming the brand, while a larger label on the body gave the details. This one's bow-tie shape and center peak were cut to sit on the curve of the neck.
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