Bavaria. John I, Duke of Brabant One of the persons theorised to be the basis for the Gambrinus character is John I (c. 1252–1294) of the Duchy of Brabant, which was a wealthy, beer-producing jurisdiction that encompassed Brussels among other cities. The brewers' guild in Brussels may have made the Duke an honorary member and hung his portrait in their meeting hall. In his 1874 monograph on Gambrinus, the Belgian political activist and historian Victor Coremans reported that references to Brabant and Flanders in Gambrinus legends seemed to be relatively recent. However, he also reports a similarity between the likeness of John I on his tomb and the faces in some illustrations of Gambrinus. John's name, too, has a hypothetical connection to Gambrinus: In Dutch he was sometimes known as Jan Primus, and in French as Jean Primus. Jan and Jean are renderings of John in Dutch and French, respectively, and Primus is Latin for "the first". The name Gambrinus might be a corruption of one of these names. Dutch and French were principal languages in the County of Flanders and the Duchy of Brabant, and Latin was a language used by scholars and learned people. John the Fearless Another presumptive Gambrinus, John the Fearless (1371–1419), was the Duke of Burgundy born nearly 80 years after the death of John I of Brabant. The large and powerful Duchy of Burgundy also produced beer, and was found to the southwest of Brabant. John the Fearless held several titles of nobility, one of which was Count of Flanders—a title he inherited in 1405. He is credited with introducing, or legalising, hops within the County of Flanders. Before they switched to hops, the Flemish, like many other Europeans, brewed beer with an herbal medley called gruit. The transition from gruit to hops throughout Europe in the Middle Ages was a piecemeal, region-by-region process that lasted at least 500 years. It took time for farmers to learn of the existence of hops, how to farm them, when to cultivate them, and their value in brewing beer. Brewers had to learn the favourable and unfavourable characteristics of hops, and how to use hops to craft commercially successful beer. Even in the Middle Ages beer was an international commodity, and major brewing cities developed distinctive styles and reputations. Brewers had to consider the marketability of their beer, and competition from imports. Furthermore, regulations limited brewing ingredients