Jaap Renaud

Jacob Gerard Nicolaas (Jaap) Renaud (Voorburg, 20 February 1911 - 25 April 2007) was a Dutch archaeologist and adjunct professor at Utrecht University.

Life

Family Renaud's father was a house painter supervisor. His grandfather was a school teacher, whom the young Renaud often visited. Together they would visit many castles near The Hague. Renaud would recreate these in his attic from the wood of cigar boxes, including the siege equipment. At the young age of 14 he already visited The Hague municipality archives to study the history of Binckhorst Castle and its inhabitants.

In the tradition of his family Renaud also became a school teacher, but during the Great Depression he could not acquire a fixed position. He married Hanna Maartense whom he had met at the (NBAS), a student movement for alcohol abstinence. Together they visited European castles by bicycle and tent. In 1938 Renaud gave his first lecture, treating medieval pottery.

Two publications were important for Renaud's early career. The first was about Binckhorst Castle, published in 1936. The other was about the construction history of Egmond Castle. These brought him into contact with the famous archaeologist A.E. van Giffen (1884-1973) from the University of Groningen, and Professor Engelbert Hendrik ter Kuile (1900-1988) from the (the national organization for the preservation of monumental buildings).

World War II

After the Dutch defeat in May 1940 Renaud was demobilized. He then got a job as a contractor at the Rijksbureau voor de Monumentenzorg.

During the war period Renaud learned a lot from the advice of architectural history Professors E. ter Kuile from Delft University and M.D. Ozinga from Utrecht University. He also learned a lot about masonry and other crafts from the overseers of the works in Rotterdam. In August 1963 Renaud was made a Doctor Honoris Causa of Caen University.

In 1965 Renaud was appointed as lecturer in the science of castles at Utrecht University. It was an appointment for one hour a week, made on the insistence of the NKS. Meanwhile, Reanud continued to work at the ROB. Therefore, the appointment generated more prestige than income, but prestige of course came in handy, when the NKS wanted to discuss preservation. In 1980 Renaud's position at Utrecht was upgraded to that of a professor. From 1971 to 1981 he was also connected to Delft University of Technology.

Active in retirement

In March 1976 Renaud retired as scientific employee of the ROB. He nevertheless continued to work on publications. First amongst these was Castellogica, a journal about castles that appeared from 1983 to 2000. He also stayed on for some years as professor in Delft and Utrecht.

Legacy

In 2019 Renaud's student Jean Roefstra summarized Renaud's work as follows: 'Renaud was one of the first Dutch archeologists who was convinced that investigation into the phenomenon castle castle required a broad approach. He thought that the castle had to be considered from a historic, archaeologic, typologic and literary perspective in order to understand the object in its entirety. This line of thought was the basis for the current integral and multidisciplinary approach of castle investigations.

In 2016 De Gast had concluded that Renaud had indeed been a savior for many castles. His work had also saved a lot of information that would otherwise have been lost, and he had been crucial for getting public support for conservation and science. On the other hand, from the 1960s onwards, his focus on construction history, and his failure to pick up on new scientific methods of archaeology led to suboptimal results. The possible explanation is that Renaud had been trained as a historian, not as an archaeologist.

Selected works Uit de bouwgeschiedenis van den Binckhorst (1936) Uit de bouwgeschiedenis van het slot op den hoef (1938)