Constant Philippe Serrure (Antwerp 1805 – Moortsele 1872) enrolled as a law student at the University of Leuven/Louvain in 1826, when he had already become acquainted with the leading Flemish intellectual Jan Frans Willems, for whom he had acted as secretary. As a student, his interest went out mainly to history and Dutch literature rather than law. He helped reorganize the university library, collected old folk songs and sayings, and studied medieval texts. He also eagerly informed foreign scholars and men of letters (such as the English bibliophile Richard Heber and the Dutch poet Willem Bilderdijk) of his findings.

As a result, the legal career that Serrure began after his studies only lasted a short time. In 1833, he became archivist of the provincial archive in East Flanders. Three years later, he took up a post as professor at the University of Gent, where he initially taught the history of Belgium and medieval history, and later also Netherlandic language and literature. This allowed him to pursue his interest in Flemish culture – largely in the frameworks, popular at the time, of journals and societies. In 1832, along with Auguste Voisin and others, Serrure became a member of the editorial board of the re-founded Messager des Sciences historiques. In 1834, he was one of the founders of the first Flemish-language periodical in Belgium, the Nederduitsche Letteroefeningen (“Flemish Literary Exercises”). Five years later he was the co-founder of the Maetschappy der Vlaemsche Bibliophilen (“Society of Flemish Bibliophiles”). Between 1839 and 1871, he published no fewer than twelve literary and historical text editions in the publication series of the Maetschappy. As well as this, he produced countless editions of varying sizes – not always equally critical in nature – in his own journal, Het Vaderlandsch Museum voor Nederduitsche Letterkunde, Oudheden en Geschiedenis (“The National Museum for Flemish Literature, Antiquities, and History”, 1855-63). Alongside Flemish texts, there was also the language itself: among other things, Serrure devoted himself to the study of dialects.

None of these activities gave Serrure a leading role in the Flemish Movement, which emerged in independent Belgium and soon formulated not just a cultural but also a political programme aimed at bringing about a shift in power relations in a country that was dominated by French-speaking elites. Serrure was and remained primarily a historian, philologist, and book historian. A bibliophile himself, he also built up an impressive library of his own – books, manuscripts, and documents – which would prove of great philological value.

There was yet another field in which Serrure displayed his erudition: that of numismatics. From his student days on, Serrure had shown an interest in coins and medals and had started his own “national” collection. Soon he was also cataloguing the collections of others (the best-known result of this work was the Notice sur le Cabinet monétaire de S.A. le prince de Ligne, 1847), and here too, the result was a society and a journal: in 1842 Serrure was one of the founders of the Société royale de Numismatique, and he served as a member of the editorial board of the Revue de la Numismatique belge from 1846 to 1850. He also became a member of similar societies in St Petersburg, London, and Berlin, and his son and grandson followed in the footsteps of his numismatic interests.