From the Béguinage LouvainFrom the Béguinage LouvainClick to view larger image.
From the Béguinage Louvain
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The Béguinage of Louvain is one of the most picturesque in Belgium. It is situated on either side of the Dyle, here a narrow stream, which winds through a labyrinth of crooked streets, and presently, after passing through a little bridge, disappears behind the hospital, which gives on the churchyard, where there are yew trees and a great stone crucifix. It is a very quiet, homely spot this Béguinage, full of old-world memories, and the widows and maidens who dwell there while away their lives in much the same way as their predecessors did in the thirteen hundreds.
There wereBèguinesBeguinesat Mechlin as early as 1207. At this epoch their cloister was in the centre of the town, but its exact site is not known. In 1259 they migrated to a spot beyond the ramparts, on the westernside of the city, between the Dyle and the Chaussée d'Anvers. This cloister was totally destroyed during the religious troubles of the fifteen hundreds. Towards the close of the century, when order was once more established, the Beguines, having obtained permission of the civic authorities, returned to the centre of the city and erected for themselves the cloister which they at present inhabit, and later on (1629-1647), the imposing temple in which they still worship. This Béguinage was again suppressed at the time of the French Revolution, and again re-established during the opening years of the eighteen hundreds, but only a portion of their property was restored to the community, and at present the greater number of the houses are occupied by private individuals.
Many other Béguinages still exist in Brabant, and, indeed, all over Belgium, but many more have been suppressed, and the buildings which once sheltered the religious are now used for secular purposes. The largest of the existing communities of this kind is that of Ghent, which numbers nearly a thousand members, and the smallest is probably that of Dixmude, which has only three.
The religious movement of which the Béguinage was the outcome brought forth also, about the same time, or perhaps a little later, several similar institutions for men. Of these the Beghards, or, as they were sometimes called, the Brethren of Penance, were the mostwide-spreadwidespreadand the most important. Their members were all of them laymen, and, like the Beguines, took no vows, observed no fixed rule of life, and were subject only to their own superiors, but, unlike them, they had no private property: the brethren of each cloister had a common purse, dwelt together under one roof and ate at the same table. They were, for the most part, of humble origin—weavers, dyers, fullers and such like, and were often men to whom fortune had not been kind—men who had outlived their friends, or whose family ties had been broken by some untoward event, and who, by reason of failing health or advancing years, or perhaps on account of some accident, were unable to stand alone. Each establishment was self-supporting; the members plied their wonted trades, and lived as best they could on the meagre product of their united toil. If, as Monsieur Pirenne observes, 'the mediæval towns of Belgium found in the Béguinage a solution of their "feminine question,"' the establishment of these communities afforded them at least a partial solution of another problem, which pressed for an answer—the difficult problem of how to deal with the worn-out working-man.
It should be borne in mind, however, that the primary object of all these institutions was not a temporal but a spiritual one. Their members, who for the most part had received so small a share of this world's good things, had banded together, not, in the first place, that they might be able to keep the wolf from the door during the few years of life that remained to them, but in order to ensure for themselves in the next world, as they confidently believed, an eternity of bliss. Nor, whilst working out their own salvation, were they unmindful of the spiritual welfare of their neighbours, nor, for the matter of that, of their temporal welfare either. The Celites, a kindred community to the Beghards, were wholly occupied in tending the sick and burying the dead—and, thanks to their intimate connection with the trade companies, they were able to largely influence the religious life, and to a great extent to form the religious opinion of the mediæval towns of Belgium, or, at all events, in the case of their working population, during more than two centuries. They did not, however, escape the fate which, sooner or later, overtakes all human institutions: before the close of the Middle Age they were, most of them, in full decadence. Not, as so often happens, that their life was crushed out by the weight of gold: though, as time went on, they acquired endowments, they never attained to wealth or anything like it; they waned with the waning of the cloth trade, and, when that industry died, gradually dwindled away. Their crazy ships were sorely tried by the storm of the fifteen hundreds. Some of them went to the bottom, some weathered its fury, but were so battered that they afterwards sank in still water; a few, somehow or other, managed to keep afloat till another and a fiercer hurricane at last dashed them to pieces.
The Brethren of Penance rapidly spread all over the Low Countries, and even penetrated into France and into the provinces beyond the Rhine. There were Beghards in Brussels as early as 1274, perhaps even at a still earlier date, and they observed no fixed rule till 1359, when they became Franciscan Tertiaries. They earned their livelihood by weaving cloth; indeed, until 1474, when the cloth trade was practically dead, no man could join the order unless he were a member of the Weavers' Company, and, naturally enough, they lived in the weavers' quarter behind the Town Hall. Their convent was situated in the street which still bears their name, or rather in theRue des Alexiens, a continuation of theRue des Beghards, and which at one time seems to have formed part of it. It stood at the foot of a steep hill, and the brethren called their homeMariendael, or Mary's Valley. Beghards and Beguines were everywhere renowned for their tender devotion to the Madonna—a devotion which they sometimes liked to emphasise in the mystical names they gave to their dwellings. Thus theBéguinage of Vilvorde, for example, was 'Our dear Lady's Consolation,' 'Onze Lieve Vrouw-ten-Troost,' 'Solatium Sanctæ Mariæ.'
The Zacites or Brethren of the Sack were also established in Brussels at a very early date; they were never a numerous community, and in 1480, having dwindled down to seven aged brethren, their convent was suppressed by the civic authorities, and its revenues bestowed on the new Carthusian priory which the city was at this time founding at Scheut. As for the expelled Zacites, six of them were placed in charitable institutions, and the seventh, who was by profession a surgeon, received a small life pension. Their chapel still remains; it is situated in theRue de la Madeleine, and is well worth visiting—not so much on account of its architectural beauty, for it can never have been anything else than a very plain and unpretentious building, and, moreover, it has been spoiled by clumsy restoration; but it is interesting from its great age—it dates from the close of the twelve hundreds—and because it is the last remaining relic in Brussels of a very curious group of religious communities composed entirely of laymen.
The ardent spirit of mysticism, which had raised up in the course of the twelve hundreds the Beguines and the Brethren of Penance, waxed rather than waned as time went on, fostered and nourished by these institutions; nor is it surprising that some of their members, untrammelled as they were by ecclesiastical control, should presently have developed opinions not in harmony with the Christian faith. Amongst them, in the opening years of the thirteen hundreds, Sister Hadewych, who, in the vulgar tongue, wrote glowing prose and frenzied verse, in which she illustrated the Divine charity by profane comparisons, couched in the language of earthly and carnal love; and—unless she were the same individual, which is not unlikely—thefamous Brussels mystic, Bloemardine, who boldly proclaimed that man in this life could attain to such a state that sin would be impossible to him, and likewise progress in virtue, and that then he could give free rein to his passions without fear of incurring guilt. Crowds were captivated by her burning eloquence; even at Court she had numerous disciples; they gave her a silver throne, which, when she had sat in it, was said to be invested with miraculous powers; it was currently believed that she was attended by two seraphim when she approached the Holy Table; and it is significant of the trend of public opinion, that the opposition of Jan van Ruysbroek, himself a mystic, but of a very different order, and at this time the best beloved and most influential of the Brussels secular clergy—we shall have much to say of him later on—gained for him only the contempt and ridicule of the people, who made him the subject of ribald songs, which were howled after him in the streets.
Nor was Bloemardine the only devotee whom an extravagant mysticism had deprived of mental ballast: there were Beghards and Beguines all over the country who were the victims of like delusions; the wildest opinions were held and publicly proclaimed to be orthodox—opinions, some of them, which seem to have differed little from the religious and political opinions professed by anarchists to-day. Of course the people gave ear to them, in all the great towns of the Netherlands these fanatics had numerous disciples, and the violent outbreaks against the Jews, which occurred periodically all through the thirteen hundreds, were in great measure due to their teaching. The bulk of their adherents were among the most abject of the population—weavers, dyers, fullers and such like, who, underpaid and without resources, living from hand to mouth, were often compelled, when sickness came or whenwork was slack, to have recourse to Shylock, and sometimes they made him pay the penalty of his extortions. If to slay the Jew were no sin, why not thus obtain freedom? Why not wipe out the debt in the blood of the man whose fathers had shown as little pity to Christ as he himself had to them? A riot of this kind occurred in 1308, and it needed all the energy and decision of Duke John II., who, like most of the sovereigns of Brabant, favoured the Jews, to hinder a general massacre. Their houses were pillaged and wrecked, but they themselves escaped to the Castle of Genappe, which John had placed at their disposal; and he at last succeeded in quelling the mob which was clamouring round its walls for their lives.
After the great pestilence of 1348, when the poverty and wretchedness of the lesser folk had increased tenfold and the people had been lashed to frenzy by the preaching of the Flagellants, a more serious outbreak occurred. A certain Jewish convert was at this time one of the most trusted servants of Duke John III. Aware of the peril which threatened his compatriots, he commended them to his master's protection. 'Be of good heart,' said John, 'not a hair of their heads shall perish.' But it was beyond his power to make his words good. Prince Henry, in order to curry favour with the people, placed himself at their head, a score of Hebrews were cut down, and amongst them, despite his conversion, John's servant; and twenty years later the advent of the Dancers, a kindred sect to the Flagellants, was the signal for a fresh massacre.
The trouble which overtook the Jewish colony at Brussels in 1370 must probably be placed in a different category: it seems to have been the direct outcome of the bigotry and fanaticism, not of the Christians, but of some of the Jews themselves. Albeit, this should beborne in mind: we have only the Christian version of what took place. If some Hebrew scribe had recounted the story he would doubtless have given it a different complexion. The only official document which has come down to us anent this affair was drawn up some thirty years after the event; but since the redactors had themselves presided at the trial of the incriminated Jews, they must have been at least acquainted with the main outlines of the case, though possibly their memory may have failed them as to details. Doubtless they shared the prejudices and superstitions of the age in which they lived, but there is no reason to suspect their good faith, they were educated men of high social standing in the city of Brussels, and they seem to have enjoyed the respect and confidence of their fellow-townsmen. The following is the gist of the story of the famous Miraculous Hosts as they relate it. Towards the close of the year 1370 a certain Hebrew fanatic, one Jonathan of Enghien, furious at the numerous conversions which had recently taken place amongst his co-religionists, determined to show his contempt for the Christian faith by outraging that which those who believed in it held to be most sacred. To this end he purchased the assistance of John of Louvain, a Jew who had lately discarded the Hebrew faith. This man contrived to purloin from the Parish Church of Saint Catherine at Brussels sixteen consecrated wafers which, as had been agreed, he brought to Jonathan at Enghien, who forthwith summoned his friends, and in their presence made the Sacred Species the subject of his scorn. Three days afterwards he was found dead in his garden—slain by a dagger thrust. His widow, believing that this misfortune had come upon her on account of the stolen wafers, had them secretly conveyed to the synagogue at Brussels—perhaps that strangeold house in the Rue Ter Arken which from time immemorial has been called La Maison des Juifs—where soon a great throng of Hebrews assembled to examine the Christians' sacred bread; and some of them with the points of their daggers pricked the Hosts, whereat, so runs the legend, there spurted out drops of blood.
Dismayed at the prodigy, they took counsel as to how they might best be rid of 'this bread of evil omen,' and at last persuaded a Jewess named Catherine who had recently become a Christian, to carry it to Cologne. Hardly had she set out on the journey, however, than she was seized with qualms of conscience and retraced her steps, sought out the priest of Saint Catherine's, told him all that had happened, and restored to him the consecrated wafers which John van Loven had stolen six months before from his church.
Presently the matter was brought before Duke Winceslaus. Such of the Jews whom Catherine had denounced, and who had not already fled, were at once put under arrest, and in due course tried, found guilty, and sentenced, some to lifelong exile, others to be burnt at the stake, and all of them to the forfeiture of their estates. Accounts vary as to the number who suffered the death penalty—three, five and seven being severally mentioned.
As for the informer Catherine, she was kept in close confinement by way of precaution until the whole matter had been cleared up. Her prison, it is said, was an upper chamber above the baptistery of the Church of Saint Gudule, in which it was at one time customary to detain suspicious characters. It will be interesting to note that this cell is still in existence, and that the east wall is pierced by a little window giving on the interior of the north aisle, by means of which prisonerswere able to assist at Mass without leaving their place of confinement.
Saint Catherine's, Brussels.SAINT CATHERINE'S, BRUSSELS.Click to view larger image.
SAINT CATHERINE'S, BRUSSELS.
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Bearing in mind the punishments in vogue at this time—to be buried alive, for example, was the penalty due to treason, and the vintner found guilty of falsifying his wine was burned in the vat containing the adulterated liquor—the Hebrew fanatics, whose excesses we have just recounted, do not seem to have been treated with any extraordinary harshness on account of their nationality. If any Christian burgher had committed a like offence, no less severe a penalty would assuredly have been meted out to him.
The city of Brussels still contains a memorial in stone of this weird tragedy: the beautiful Sacrament Chapel which was added to the Church of Saint Gudule in 1535 was built as a shrine for three of the 'Miraculous Hosts.'30
But to return to Ruysbroek. His campaign in favour of orthodoxy had not promoted his temporal weal. Bloemardine, as we have seen, had friends atCourt, and it was perhaps owing to their opposition that he still filled, at the age of fifty, the humble post of vicar, or as we should say, curate, of Saint Gudule's, and that, in spite of his acknowledged worth, and the great name his spiritual writings had already made for him. But in truth his dress, his manner of life, his whole bearing was not such as to commend him to the friendship of the world of wealth and fashion, often then as now the shortest road to preferment. If he were not of the people, he lived amongst them, and fared as they did. Like them he was squalid, ill-housed, half-clad, very often hungry. What time he could spare from his pastoral duties he devoted to contemplation and to writing, not in Latin, but in his own rude native tongue, some of those marvellous mystic treatises which later on gained for him world-wide renown and the title of Father of Flemish prose. Union with God and to assuage the sufferings of Christ in His poor, this was his highest ambition: fat livings and comfortable stalls were things which he never thought of. Ruysbroek, however, was not destined to remain to the end of his days an obscure curate: in the year 1343 a circumstance occurred which caused him to change the scene of his labours, and presently he was called upon to fill a more responsible and dignified position. It happened thus.
Franz Coudenberg and Jan Hinckaert, friends of Ruysbroek's, were near kinsmen, and each of them occupied a canon's stall at Saint Gudule's. They sympathised with the aspirations of the people, had, perhaps, been mixed up in one of their abortive attempts to obtain liberty, and on this or some other ground, early in the year 1343, Coudenberg was accused of treason to Duke John III., who, with a view, perhaps, to ridding the town of a dangerous agitator, offered him a tract of land in the Forest ofSoignes at a place called Groenendael, which for the last forty years had been the site of a hermitage now occupied by Coudenberg's friend Lambert, a solitary whose family name is not recorded, on condition that he should build a monastery there for five brethren, of whom at least two should be priests. Perhaps the offer was one which Coudenberg was not free to refuse, perhaps it was tantamount to a sentence of exile, which included within its scope Hinckaert and Ruysbroek as well. In any case, Coudenberg did not refuse it, and when early in the following year he withdrew to Groenendael, these men went with him. It was not, however, till five years later that the new community was regularly organised and that the brethren adopted a definite rule. On the 10th of March 1349 Pierre de Clermont, Bishop of Cambrai, clothed them with the habit of canons regular of the Order of Saint Augustine, and shortly afterwards they chose Jan van Ruysbroek for their prior. Not only did he know how to maintain discipline in his own monastery, but he was able to restore order in a host of others, and so great was his influence outside the cloister that within a few years of the founding of Groenendael a whole group of new religious houses sprang up—Rouge Cloître, Corsendonck, Sept Fontaines, Bethléem, Ter Cluysen—which owed their origin to one or other of his disciples, and though they were not at first submitted to Groenendael, observed the same rule and were intimately associated with it by ties of the closest friendship: for the brethren of every one of them Ruysbroek was 'the master.'
Meanwhile he did not discontinue his literary work, and as a man of letters no less than as a theologian and a reformer, Ruysbroek deserves to be studied. Writing in prose and in the vulgar tongue, he addressed himself in the first place to the people, for the art of reading was at this time sufficiently widespread, but in what hewrote there was no tinge of grossness or sensuality. His mystical treatises breathe the spirit of theImitation of Christ, of which indeed they may be said to be the prototype, and by reason of the loftiness of his sentiments and the purity and the beauty of the language in which they are expressed he merits to be placed in the first rank of the spiritual writers of the Middle Age. He himself used so say that he wrote under the immediate inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and a story related by his biographer and disciple, Hendrick Bogaerden, goes to show that at least in his own cloister such was believed to be the case.
Rouge CloîtreRouge CloîtreClick to view larger image.
Rouge Cloître
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It was Ruysbroek's custom to write as he walked in the forest, and one day having prolonged his ramble beyond his wont, the monks grew alarmed and dispatched one of their number to search for him, and presently this man discovered the Prior of Groenendael. He was seated beneath a linden tree with his tablets in his hand, and he was surrounded with rays of light. Perhaps the sun had suddenly pierced through a dark cloud, but the picture is none the less a pleasing one, and it shows in what estimation Jan Ruysbroek was held by his spiritual sons. Nor was it only in his own cloister or in his native land that Ruysbroek was regarded as a saint. In Germany, in Flanders, in Holland, wherever his books were read, his name was held in veneration, and Groenendael wasconstantly besieged by pilgrims, many of them from distant lands, who had come there for no other reason than to hold converse with its prior. Nor was his head turned by so much adulation. To the end of his days he remained the humble, gentle, unassuming priest he had been in the days when he was an unknown Brussels curate, and it was ever his delight to perform the most menial offices in his priory.
He died on the night of the 2nd of December 1381, in the eighty-ninth year of his age, and 'on that night,' note the chroniclers of Groenendael, 'the bells of the Church of Deventer, where dwelt his friend Geert Groote, were solemnly tolled for him by invisible hands, and another friend and disciple, the Dean of Saint Sulpice at Diest, dreamed that his soul had passed from this world, and after remaining in purgatory half an hour, was carried by angels to heaven'; and they also tell us that fifty years after his death, his body having been disinterred, was found to be still incorrupt, and that it was exposed in the cloister of Groenendael for three days and seen by thousands of people. Strange stories these, typical of the age in which they were first told.
The literary and religious revival which Jan Ruysbroek had inaugurated did not die with him. The brethren of Groenendael and of the neighbouring monasteries at Rouge Cloître and Sept Fontaines continued to busy themselves with spiritual writings, which were largely read by the people, and amongst which may be found the flower of Flemish literature of the end of the Middle Age; and Geert Groote, the most famous of Ruysbroek's immediate disciples, in founding shortly before Ruysbroek's death the congregation of the Brethren of the Common Life, had placed at the disposal of fourteenth-century mysticism an organisation no less active than the Béguinage had been two hundred years before.Groote, who belonged to a rich burgher family, was born in the year 1340 at Deventer in Holland. Having read at Cologne, at Paris, at Prague, he took orders and soon obtained preferment. But his relations with theGottesfreundeof Cologne and, too, the books of Ruysbroek—it was not till later on that he became personally acquainted with their author—gradually inclined him to mysticism, and on his recovery from a dangerous illness in 1373 he resigned his rich livings, bestowed the greater portion of his patrimony on the Carthusians of Arnheim, and bade farewell to the world. For a time he lived in strict seclusion, devoting himself wholly to meditation and to books, and it seems to have been during this period that he made the acquaintance of Ruysbroek. But for a man of Geert's exuberant energy a hermit's life was impossible: he had found a pearl of great price and he yearned to make it known. Moreover, he was consumed with indignation at the worldliness of the Church, and presently he was wandering from village to village and town to town calling men to repentance, proclaiming the beauty of Divine love, and bewailing wherever he went the decadence of ecclesiastical discipline and the degradation of the clergy. The effect of his preaching was marvellous; thousands hung on his lips; the towns, says Moll, were filled with devotees; you might know them by their silence, their ecstasies during Mass, their mean clothes, their brilliant eyes full of sweetness. From amongst these a little band attached themselves to Groote, and became his fellow-workers—they were the first 'Brethren of the Common Life.' Of course the reformer was opposed by the clerks whose evil lives he denounced, but the cry of heresy was vainly raised against a man no less zealous for purity of faith than he was for purity of morals, and whose success in combating error had gained for him the surname ofMalleus Hereticorum. The best of the secular clergy, to escape the contagion of the prevalent disorders, sought refuge within the ranks of his society, which in due course was approved by the Holy See. Geert Groote, however, did not live long enough to perfect the work he had begun. He died in 1384, and his mantle fell on the shoulders of his henchman, Florence Radewyes. This man founded two years later the famous Augustinian monastery of Windesheim, which henceforth became the centre of Geert Groote's association, and to which later on Ruysbroek's houses were also affiliated.
The confraternity of the Common Life resembled in several respects the Béguinage and the Brotherhoods of Penance, now decadent. The members took no vows, neither asked nor received alms, and earned their daily bread; but their houses were more closely knit together, and brothers and sisters alike busied themselves exclusively with educational work and literature, and in the case of priests by preaching.
When Groote began his campaign learning was at a low ebb. The fame of the schools of Liége had long since become but a memory; save for a few clerks here and there who had read at Paris or Cologne, there were no scholars in the Netherlands; even amongst the higher clergy there were some who knew nothing of Latin, and the burgher was quite content if, when his children left school, they were able to read and write. Groote and his friends determined to change all this; their efforts were crowned with success, and success came quickly; the schools which the Brethren of the Common Life founded all over the land became so many ardent centres of spiritual and intellectual life. Amongst the famous men whom they educated, or who served in their ranks, note Thomas à Kempis, Gabriel Biel, and the Dutch Pope, Adrian VI.; in a word, awidespread literary and religious revival was the outcome of their endeavour, and it had not yet begun to wane in the days of Philippe l'Asseuré.
Such was the moral complexion of the Low Country when her art reached the acme of its magnificence, and what a marvellous conglomeration of anomalies and contradictions that moral complexion must have been—an inconsequent medley of coarseness and refinement, of luxury and restraint, of avarice and generosity, of cruelty and compassion, of heroic virtue and crying vice, and with it all a rampant spirit of vulgar commercialism, which somehow or other was not incompatible with the culture of literature and music and art, nor, stranger still, with a firm conviction of the reality of spiritual things.
The God whom the men of Brabant worshipped was no vague personification of nature or natural forces, no hazy abstract conception of righteousness, order, law, but a personal God, a living, loving, life-giving God, who was the founder and father and friend of the human race, the creator and master of heaven and earth, and of all things therein contained—almighty, eternal, immense, incomprehensible, infinite in intelligence, in will, and in all perfections. The saints whom they adored were no vague, shadowy heroes who lived only in the memory of the great things they had accomplished when they were on earth. They had passed through the valley of the shadow of death, but death had no dominion over them: their hand was not thereby shortened, they were still mighty to save. Nay, the virtue in them was now greater than it had been in the days of their sojourning: if by their charity and their sweetness they had then been able to soothe the sick and console the afflicted, they could now bestow health and joy. If they had then reclaimed the desert and taught the husbandman how to tend his flock and tohandle his plough, they could now ward off pest and murrain and assure him a bountiful harvest. So great was their love for the children of earth that no request was too trifling to claim their attention, and such was the efficacy of their intercession that no boon was beyond their power to confer. They held the first place in the heavenly court, they were the ministers and the intimate friends of the Most High, and He delighted to manifest His glory in them. Even their bones, and the clothes that they had worn, and the things that they had touched, were believed to be endowed with miraculous powers. They were always close at hand, and sometimes when the days were evil and the people needed heartening, they appeared to them in visible form all glorious in shimmering raiment and attended by cohorts of angels.
When the famous relics of Aachen were exposed in 1447, so great was the concourse of pilgrims that it was impossible for the Estates of Liége to assemble. The patricians of Bruges attributed the victory of Rosebeke to the direct intervention of the Mother of God, and it was Saint Michael, the patron of Brussels, who obtained for the craftsmen of that city the great charter of 1421.
Whatever may be thought of the religious convictions of these people, that their art was profoundly influenced by them is a fact which cannot be denied: the remnant of their work which has come down to us bears ample testimony to it, from the stateliest sanctuary to the meanest wayside shrine and from the grandest municipal palace to the carved lintel of some poor workman's cot. Stories from the Old and the New Testament are sculptured on the façade of the Town Hall of Louvain, the original statues which peopled the niches of the Town Hall of Brussels were all of them the statues of saints, and on the highest pinnacleof that network of stone which forms its spire stands Saint Michael slaying the dragon, symbol of the ultimate triumph of good over ill. Nor are these things unusual, we find them over and over again throughout the Low Country.
This is all the more remarkable because the art of the period was in no sense hieratic: the masons and sculptors and painters of Belgium at the time of which we are writing were ordinary working men, members of one or other of the craft guilds, and the patrons who employed them were not as a rule ecclesiastics but, for the most part, plain tradesmen; and yet their art was nothing less than the solemn profession of faith of the burghers and the craftsmen who created it—their creed made manifest in piled up brick and sculptured stone, in oak, in cedar, in iron cunningly wrought, in the saffron sheen of hammered brass, in the glister of gems, the glow of silk and in the burnished splendour of gold: a harmony magnifical of perfect forms and perfect tints in honour of Him who is above all and in all and through all—the Alpha and Omega of the universe. Herein we have the secret of their success—the faith that was in them, their vivid realisation of things unseen. This was how it was that in an age overflowing with luxury, a nation of merchants and manufacturers, who from the very nature of their pursuits must have been for the most part occupied with sordid things, were able to produce an art wholly untainted by sensualism, an art so glorious and so nearly perfect that it has hardly ever been equalled and never yet surpassed. Thus it has ever been and thus it will ever be. The average man is too commonplace and too practical to be moved by an abstract notion. It needs something which he believes to be a living reality, something which he is convinced is immeasurably above and beyond himself to enkindle in him the enthusiasmnecessary to conceive and to carry out any really great idea. Art for art's sake is a formula which has sometimes hypnotised individuals of a sensitive and romantic temperament, but it has never yet converted the herd.
Some of us have been warring against the Philistines beneath an oriflamme emblazoned with this shibboleth for the best part of half a century, and what has been the outcome? A modicum of success in the matter of wall paper and a magnificent collection of pictorial bill posters. Nor can we begin to hope for any more solid results until we are at least as firmly convinced as were the sinners of Brabant in the fourteen hundreds of the truth of those words which Thomas à Kempis uttered, and which in one phrase sum up the philosophy of his great spiritual ancestor, old Jan van Ruysbroek—'Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas præter amare Deum et illi soli servire.'31
In an old collegiate church not far from Brussels there is a very curious mural tablet in memory of a certain canon who in his day was seemingly a man of some distinction. The inscription is undated and it runs thus:—
D. O. M.acmemoriæR.ad̃m. Dñi, D.FrancisciVanden Abeelequiex Curato 3æPortionis hujusinsignis Ecclesiæ dein PrimæPer 25 annos sedulus et laudabilisCanonicus-Curator fuit;Sedfuit:nunc cinis, ossa, vermisPutredonihilHæc sors mortaliumNasci, laborare, mori.Tu qui vivis, oculosDeorsum conjice,Et attende.
We, throughout many pages, have been hymning the glory of Brussels in the days of the Burgundian Dukes. That glory is among the things which have been. It was, but it has long since vanished. In thewords of Canon Abeele's epitaph—'Fuit; sedfuit: nunc ...nihil' in very large letters.
The public buildings in Brussels of this period—that is within the circuit of its ancient ramparts—can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and at least, so far as concerns decoration, they have entirely lost their pristine beauty. It is not to be wondered at. First came the fury of the Calvinists—that was towards the close of the fifteen hundreds; almost all the old buildings of the Netherlands endured many things at their hands; then the French bombardment of 1695, when the Grand' Place was shattered and fourteen churches and something like four thousand houses were burnt to the ground. 'An utterly wanton piece of destruction,' notes the contemporary author ofLes Délices des Pays-Bas, 'but in two years,' he continues, 'the city had risen from its ashes more beautiful than ever,' Hardly so, but still the men of Brussels had reason to be proud of their achievement: the Guild Halls in the Grand' Place date from this period. Too soon came the age of whitewash and plaster, when Gothic art was held in contempt. Much havoc was wrought then, throughout the whole country, more a few years later (1794), when the French revolutionists invaded the Netherlands. The cities suffered more from their antics than from those of any of their predecessors. Churches and convents were cast down, municipal buildings wrecked, and they carried off all the art treasures they could lay hands on. At last came the Gothic revival, and with it the restorer: he is hard at work still, and some say he has already wrought more havoc than all the iconoclasts put together, from the Gueux to the Sans-Culottes. Remarks of this kind are frequently made by little poets and by decadent painters who, because they have an eye for the picturesque, flatter themselves that theyknow all about architecture, and without any knowledge of the laws of construction or the principles of design, fancy that they are perfectly qualified to pass judgment on the work of professional experts who have devoted, perhaps, a lifetime to these subjects.
Guild Houses in the Grand' Place, Brussels.GUILD HOUSES IN THE GRAND' PLACE, BRUSSELS.Click to view larger image.
GUILD HOUSES IN THE GRAND' PLACE, BRUSSELS.
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Of course there have been mistakes: in the early days of the movement this was inevitable, and, even since then,and when there was less excuse, the most lamentable blunders have from time to time been committed, blunders which never ought to have been made, and which in some cases entailed mischief which is altogether past reparation.
Thus when theélitewere fascinated by the great name of Ruskin, and their fingers itched to lay everything bare, there was a veritable holocaust of frescoes.
Whatever may have been the case in other countries, the mediæval architects of the Netherlands never hesitated to conceal the natural appearance of their building materials whenever it suited their purpose to do so. Rough and unsightly walls they covered with plaster, which served as a ground work for coloured decoration, and if the hue of their stone was not to their liking, they had no scruple about painting it, for in their eyes no building was complete unless it glowed with rainbow tints. Though these things are now generally acknowledged, even at the present day there are restorers in Belgium—not very many, thank God, but still there are some,—who obstinately persist in ignoring them. It is not so very long ago since the mural paintings in Ghent Cathedral were ruthlessly sacrificed in order that 'the splendour of the true' might shine forth in all its glory, and the man who did this thing now has it in his mind to flaySainte Walburgeof Furnes, a church where distinct traces of mural decoration have been found; and who shall say how many frescoes lie hid beneath the whitewash?32But if a few men, here and there, have occasionally been found wanting in matters of this kind and in others no less serious, we nevertheless owe a very large debt of gratitude to the restorers, for if it had not been for their efforts many of the grand old monuments which now excite our admiration would by this time havefallen down, and, on the whole, the necessary task of restoration, always a delicate and difficult one, has been carefully and conscientiously carried out. And also this should be borne in mind, the works of art which the restorers have brought to light or preserved from destruction vastly outnumber those which have perished through their carelessness or ill-judged zeal; and in the case of frescoes we are practically no worse off than we were before, for they were all of them completely obliterated by whitewash. Of course this might have been removed. The operation is not an easy one, but it has been performed in very many cases with the happiest results, notably in the Church of Our Lady at Hal and in the Church of Saint Guy at Anderlecht, where some very remarkable and very beautiful mural paintings have been laid bare, and those at Anderlecht are almost in a perfect state of preservation. In Brussels itself there are no mural paintings save some faint vestiges in the Sablon and in Notre Dame de la Chapelle, and this is one reason why we said that the Burgundian buildings of the capital had lost their pristine beauty. Beautiful they are still, but for the most part they have been pitilessly scarified, and their beauty is like the faded beauty of death, cold, rigid, grey. Brussels, in a word, has lost her complexion, but he indeed would be a bold man who would set his hand to restore it.
Of the great ecclesiastical monuments of Brussels wholly constructed during this period only one remains—the church commonly known asNotre-Dame du Sablon, but which is in reality dedicated to Our Lady of Victories. It was originally the private oratory of the great military guild of Crossbowmen—the one mediæval guild of Brussels which still exists—hence the invocation, and as most of the brethren were, by trade, either carpenters or builders, there is little doubt that this structure is the handiwork of some of them, and it is not unlikely that the master-mason who designed it was himself a Crossbowman. Nor is this all. Not only does the church on the Sablon Hill owe its foundation to the members of this guild, thanks to their prowess it passed unscathed through the religious troubles of King Philip's reign. The Calvinists had sworn its destruction, but when on the night appointed they reached the church and found it full of armed guildsmen prepared, at all costs, to defend their property, they contented themselves with howling outside, and made no further attempt to wreck it. The Crossbowmen retained possession of their beautiful oratory, and continued to administer its revenues through a committee of four members, whom they annually elected for this purpose, until the close of the seventeen hundreds, and when those stormy days had passed, and order was re-established, it became what it still is, a parish church.
Notre-Dame Du Sablon.NOTRE-DAME DU SABLON.Click to view larger image.
NOTRE-DAME DU SABLON.
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Though there was a church on this spot early in the thirteen hundreds, and one seemingly of no meanproportions, for we learn from a contemporary register that in 1391 it was served by five chaplains, for some reason or other it was pulled down, or perhaps wrecked by fire, before the close of the century, and the actual building only dates from the fourteen hundreds. The church records were destroyed during the bombardment of 1695, and hence we possess little information concerning the details of its construction. The most ancient portion is the south porch, which was built about 1410. The choir must have been finished before 1435, for frescoes bearing this date were discovered here when the choir was restored about fifty years ago, and in all probability the best part of a century had elapsed before the whole building was completed, or rather before the building operations ceased, for the church is not yet finished, and in all probability never will be.
From first to last the original plans seem to have been scrupulously adhered to, save only that for some reason or other, probably from lack of funds, the idea of a tower was abandoned. This made no difference in the interior arrangement of the church: the great columns and arches at the west end of the nave, which were intended to support the projected tower, still exist, and it would not have appeared otherwise if the tower had been actually built. What was done was this—the roof of the nave was continued over the unfinished tower, and the outer walls were built exactly like the walls of the nave, and the church was made to terminate with a very elaborate western façade, which has only been completed recently, and thus, though the foundations and the lower stages of the tower still exist, as seen from the exterior, there is no indication whatever that such a feature was originally contemplated. The building is one of considerable dimensions, the plan is a Latin cross with a polygonal apse to the choir, and it measures213 feet by 121 feet at the transepts, and 85 feet at the nave, and is very nearly 60 feet high. It had originally double aisles, but the outer ones have been converted into fourteen side chapels, several of which in days gone by were the private chapels of some of the trade companies. Here we have a typical Brabant church of the fourteen hundreds. It is not, however, one of the best specimens of the period. The exterior is undeniably fine; the most captious critic could hardly quarrel with it; nothing could well be more beautiful than the choir and the south transept, with that cluster of outbuildings nestling in the corner between them, which give the required touch of the picturesque, and are not high enough to mar the buttresses or the tapering beauty of the graceful lancet windows. If we could see the interior without having first seen the outside, perhaps we should go into ecstasies, but after having feasted our eyes on so much loveliness without, the feeling which one experiences on entering the church is distinctly one of disappointment. The proportions are good and some of the essential features—the triforium, for example, the clerestory, the vaulting throughout—are excellent, but the details leave much to be desired, the moulding seems skimpy, there is an unusual dearth of sculpture and of ornament of every kind, the whole building is stiff, cold, naked. Surely that it should appear thus was not in the mind of the master-mason who planned it: he contemplated an elaborate scheme of coloured decoration, though perhaps it was never fully carried out. It was customary to secure for work of this kind the best artists of the day, men like John van Eyck and Roger Van der Weyden, each of whom there is documentary evidence to prove were 'illuminators of stone,' and naturally they demanded and received a high price for their services. But that something was done in thisdirection is quite certain: frescoes have actually been discovered in the chancel, and too, alas! wiped out, the illumination of the keystones of the vaulting still exists, and in other parts of the church there are some faint vestiges of mural painting, nor has the whitewash yet been everywhere removed. Doubtless, when this is done, more will be brought to light. For the rest, no lover of mediæval art will think of leaving Brussels without having first visited this most interesting building.
The Church of Notre-Dame de la Chapelle has been for many centuries33what it still is, a simple parish church, the parish church of a district which has never been a rich one, and which, when the foundation stone was laid, and for more than three centuries afterwards, was the poorest quarter of the city. In those days this stately structure towered high above the squalid huts of turf or wood which the weavers called their homes; fires were frequent then, and in the great conflagration of 1405, which destroyed fourteen hundred houses, the old sanctuary, where so many generations of downtrodden toilers had brought their woes and grievances to the throne of the Most High, was all but burnt down. The choir and transepts were not so injured as to be past reparation, but the nave and the aisles and the tower were wholly destroyed, and it was decided to rebuild them in such a fashion that the poor man's church should be second to none in the city. For something like fifty years they laboured at it, and when at last the work was completed, not even the great collegiate Church of SaintMichael and Saint Gudule was more lovely than the chapel in the weavers' quarter. Saint Gudule's was