Hendrik de Coster uit Oisterwijk

(Oisterwijk circa 1400 – Brussel 1446), medicorum minimus?

Samenvatting

Henricus Custodis de Oesterwijck (Oisterwijk circa 1400 – Brussel 1446), medicorum minimus?

This article offers a reconstruction of the life and professional career of Hendrik de Coster, doctor medicinae, better known as Hendrik van Oisterwijk, in Latin: Henricus Custodis de Oesterwijck.

Hendrik was born in Oisterwijk (North-Brabant) shortly before 1400 and died, presumably in Brussels, at the end of 1446. He became professor at the medical faculty of the newly founded University of Leuven in the spring of 1428. In this article the role of Walter Moliart – conservator of the privileges of this university, prior of the convent of Sint-Geertrui in Leuven and former pastor of Hendrik’s parish in Oisterwijk – and other relations who could have helped his career are developed. Hendrik’s tasks at the university and in the town of Leuven are also described. By 1430 his career was in trouble: as a teacher he was far less popular than his competitor Johannes de Wesalia, a well-known physician and astrologist. He succeeded in a comeback and remained a professor until 1442, when he became town doctor of Brussels. Six years after Hendrik’s death, his daughter married Willem Trabekier who came from an influential Mechlinian family. Hendrik is mainly remembered by his poem Carmen in laudem Brabantiae.