Landgoed Ducaet

Landgoed Ducaet lies in Kerkhoven, a hamlet within the town of Lommel, in the Belgian province of Limburg.

The estate's lands are recorded in the Land Registry under the name “De Ducaet” — “a piece of land situated in the "Bette Venne" marsh, known as the ducaet, west of the common watercourse, 1774, H.P. 33, 73r; coppice known as the Dukaat, 1834, Van Breugel, 22 min.”

The name itself has its roots in an act of commerce: when the estate changed hands in 1774, the purchase price was settled in gold ducats.

Those coins, in turn, trace their origin to Italy. In 1284, Doge Giovanni Dandolo — the forty-eighth Doge of Venice — ordered the striking of a new gold coin, the Zecchino, bearing the inscription:

Sit tibi Christe datus, quem tu regis iste ducatus. (“This duchy, which you govern, is dedicated to you, O Christ.”)

That final word, ducatus, would in time lend its name to the coin itself: the ducat. Weighing 3.5 grams and struck from gold of more than 23½ carats' purity, it remained in circulation for over five centuries — minted continuously from 1284 until the fall of the Venetian Republic in 1797. Such was the purity of the gold, and such the coin's longevity, that the ducat became a benchmark of international trade.

Adapted from "Van Vriesput tot Klein Duitsland – Acht eeuwen Lommelse plaatsnamen", Victor Mennen, 1992, published by the Museum Kempenland Society.

Featured quote:

“… In a number of villages there are fields or meadows named after a coin, perhaps because they once changed hands, or were leased, for such a sum. In Lommel, the ducaat survives still …”

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