Sint-Oedenrode is a moderately urbanized city and capital of the former municipality of the same name (since 2017 part of Meierijstad) in the province of North Brabant. The city is located in the Meierij of 's-Hertogenbosch. Sint-Oedenrode counts 17,928 inhabitants (August 1, 2013, source: CBS) and has an area of 64.25 km². The municipality has traditionally city rights since 1232, and was known as a "Vlek" (market town) in the past. Today it is still a large town. From southeast to northwest, the city is split by the river the Dommel.
Etymology
The following story is based on a popular belief (saga)
According to legend, Sint-Oedenrode owes its name to Saint Oda. The saga goes as follows: This woman was a mythical blind born Scottish, possibly Irish, daughter of king Eugenius VII, who around the year 700, along with a servant was sent on a pilgrimage on the mainland by her father. Oda was miracilously cured from her blindness after she visited the tomb of Saint Lambert of Maastricht in Liège. She decided she wanted to devote her life to the Christian god and become a nun. She returned to her father who had decided a husband for her. Oda did not wish to marry as was her father's wish. In a desperate attempt of not marrying, she decided to flee to the mainland. She started to travel from one place to another, wherever she could find silence for worshipping. Time on time she was disrupted in her worshipping by magpies, and she fled from the birds.
Eventually she arrived in Toxandria (Austrasia) in a little settlement called Rode (old Dutch word for a man made open place in the woods), where the villagers built her a hut on the heath and she settled as a hermit. After she died in 726 A.D. the villagers were getting pilgrims from the entire region, and started to call the place Sint-Oda's-Rode, which became Sint-Oedenrode in present-day speaking.
History
Prehistory and Roman times
The first traces of human presence date from the period between 10,000 and 9,000 BC. The first settlements whose remains were found during the excavation of the Dommel riverbank near the Hazenputten in the Vresselse Bossen, (Nijnsel), date from a period between 9000 and 8000 BC. In the Bronze Age the first farmers settled in and around Sint-Oedenrode. About the following era is not much known.
First records of the settlement called Rhode date from 500. Sint-Oedenrode was a small settlement on an elevated place near the river Dommel. The settlements on both riverbanks (Rhode and Eerschot) merged into one larger settlement.
In the 11th century the Lords of Rhode built a castle on the elevated area (during excavations in 2005 remains of the castle were uncovered, proving the early records to be valid). The Eerschot part of the settlement constructed the first church (the church has been rebuilt many times over the centuries; the early base can still be seen in the church which is nowadays named Knoptoren which means Bud Tower).
The settlement thrived and became an important place in the region. Sint-Oedenrode was granted city status in 1232 by the Duke of Brabant (at that time Hendrik I of Brabant). This promoted Sint-Oedenrode to the capital of Peelland (the name of the region in North Brabant).
County of Rode
The first reclamation took place in the early Middle Ages on fertile woodland along the Dommel. The oldest core and the original parish of Sint-Oedenrode is located in Eerschot, now part of Sint-Oedenrode. In this place were the Lords of Rode established before they moved further along the Dommel, where they built their castle "Rode". In the earliest period in the early Middle Ages, Sint-Oedenrode formed the core of the county Rode. There is no exact size of this county known, but following the Roois customary law, which applied to the corresponding places, there can still an estimation be made of the size of the county. The customary law of Rode was imposed for the so-called associates of Rode. This included Sint-Oedenrode, Liempde, Son en Breugel, Veghel, Erp, Schijndel, Stiphout, Lieshout, Aarle-Beek, Bakel, Deurne, Lierop, Tongelre, Nuenen, Gerwen and Nederwetten. They were able to appeal at the so-called main court in Sint-Oedenrode.
During this period, the inhabitants of these villages were therefore designated by the name Rodenaren and received their land rights by Roois law. The Roois law was in 1547 for the first time been put in writing. But part of the customary law, such as inheritance rights and Roois fief rights which are already mentioned in 1312, is according to historian Martin van Asseldonk possibly dating back to the days of the county.