WE have said that Bruges never recovered from the blow which Maximilian had dealt her. She had no chance of doing so. Misfortune followed misfortune. Most of her foreign merchants had migrated to Antwerp, and once settled there they were loth to return. The discovery of America, and of a new route to the Indies, added to her discomfiture by forcing commerce to forsake its old paths and its old havens; the river, the source of her wealth, was rapidly filling with sand. As early as 1410 the navigation of the Zwyn, even as far as Sluys, had become exceedingly difficult; by the close of the century no great vessel could reach Damme, and before another fifty years had elapsed Bruges was altogether cut off from the sea. If a ship canal had been made, as Lancelot Blondeel suggested, from the city to Heyst, where there is deep water quite close to the shore, she might perchance have yet found salvation. But still poor, and weary from her conflict with Maximilian, she had neither the means nor the heart to carry out so vast a project.

Then, too, there were the troubles bred of the religious revolution and the tyranny of Spanish rule; the cruelty of Philip, and the cruelty of Alva, and the no less cruel retaliation of ‘the Beggars of the Sea,’ who on March 26, 1578, captured the city, and by the aid of Colonel Henry Balfour, a Scotch adventurer in the service of William of Orange, held it for six years.

During this period Catholic worship was strictly prohibited, many of the leading citizens were thrust into prison, amongst them the bishop, a large-minded and liberal man, who had done his utmost to stay Alva’s hand, and most of the clergy were driven into exile. Some of them fared worse still—were tortured, scourged, burnt at the stake in front of the Cathedral. Nor was this all. Sanctuaries were pillaged, altars cast down, art treasures innumerable were wantonly destroyed, the Church of St. Anne was razed to the ground, and Notre Dame was turned into a stable.

Two years later Balfour received his reward. It happened thus. About this time the Spaniards were threatening the city, and the Scotch colonel led out his troops to oppose them. Wounded in the conflict which followed, but apparently not grievously, for he was still able to keep his saddle, he turned his horse’s head towards Bruges. Presently his comrades saw him reel, and then, without a cry or any other sign, he fell back dead. They carried him home to the city, and buried him in the churchyard of St. Sauveur.

During these troublous times hundreds of the best and wealthiest families left the city, and when peace was at length restored in 1584, the population hardly numbered thirty thousand souls. If it had not been for the Church, Bruges would in all probability have gradually dwindled down to a mere village like Sluys or Damme, or even little Middelburg.

The action of Pope Pius IV., who, at the instance of Philip II. in 1560, had made Bruges an Episcopal See, saved her from this fate. Bitterly opposed as the measure had been by all classes of society—by the higher clergy, who feared that the presence of a bishop amongst them would lessen their prestige; by the monks, who knew that they would be shorn of revenue for the endowment of the new See; by the nobles, who regarded the great abbeys as the appanage of their younger sons; by the people, who believed that this step was the prelude to the installation of the Spanish Inquisition—it proved in the outcome the town’s salvation. And Bruges owed something more to the Church:—towards the close of the fifteen hundreds and during the opening years of the succeeding century, a vast immigration of wealthy families, who brought with them gold, and, better still, treasures of literature and treasures of art.

Many of the religious houses in the outlying country had been destroyed by the Ghent Calvinists, not a few in the immediate neighbourhood of Bruges by the burghers themselves, who, when the Gueux were threatening them in 1578, had caused all buildings within a mile of their walls to be razed to the ground, in order that the enemy might find no place for shelter. For fifty years after the settlement of 1582, even when the religious troubles were over, Flanders was the scene of continual warfare. Amid the coming and going of troops there was no guarantee of security outside the walls of the towns, and, as might be expected, the monks and nuns of the country-side flocked into the episcopal city. Amongst them were representatives of almost all the great religious orders—Benedictines, Carthusians, Dominicans, Augustinians, Carmelites, Capuchins, Jesuits, and, most noteworthy of all, Cistercians from the famous Abbey of St. Mary on the Dunes at Coxyde, and from the affiliated house called Ter Doest, at Lisseweghe.

Of all the religious communities to which Bruges now offered an asylum, this was the mightiest and the most renowned. It was unsurpassed alike in wealth, in learning, in numbers, in dignity of life, in dignity of tradition, in spiritual and temporal achievements. St. Bernard was its founder. Some of the holiest and wisest men of the Middle Ages had been numbered among its members; the abbey at Coxyde was magnificent; its church was, perhaps, the most beautiful in the land; thanks to the patient toil of its monks, as one of their abbots used to boast, the barren dunes which surrounded it had become a fertile garden.

BRUGES FROM THE RIVER YPERLET
BRUGES FROM THE RIVER YPERLET

A whirlwind of fanaticism swept them away, and now their vast domain is what it was before the white-robed brethren settled there—a wilderness of shifting sand.

Bruges during the opening years of the sixteen hundreds was seething in misery. War had brought forth famine and pestilence, and the flight of commerce had left thousands of working men without any means of gaining their bread; but there was still gold in the city. The fortunes which had been made in trade, or at all events a certain proportion of them, remained after trade had departed, and the monastic immigrants, as we have seen, were not without resources, nor did the possessors of the mammon of unrighteousness suffer it to remain idle. They made to themselves friends with it. Churches and monasteries were restored; the monks and nuns from the country built for themselves new habitations; hospices and almshouses, Godshuisen (God’s Houses), as they are at Bruges picturesquely termed, were founded all over the city. Thus was work provided for those who were able to do it, and a permanent provision made for the aged and the infirm.

The buildings now erected in no way resembled the sumptuous palaces and stately guild halls of bygone days, but some of them are sufficiently picturesque. Take, for instance, the Carthusian Convent in the rue du Vieux Bourg, with its seven gables, and mullioned windows, and beautiful Gothic doorway surmounted by three niches, with statues of saints in the style of the Renaissance—it has recently been restored, and is now the local of a workmen’s club, the Gilde van Ambachten; or the Leper Hospital, at the end of the MarchÉ au fil; or the Pest House on the Grand Canal adjoining the thirteenth-century Hospice of Notre Dame de la Poterie and there are a host of others equally interesting, and above all and everywhere the little Godshuisen with their quaint gables, and blinking windows, and picturesque doorways, often with a niche above them and the image of a saint. They are not the least beautiful feature in the architecture of this beautiful city, and the number of them is legion. Some are large enough to afford accommodation for thirty or forty inmates. These are generally built round a courtyard laid out as a garden. In others again there is only room for six or seven persons. Some are for women only, some for men, some for married couples; each Godshuis has its little oratory; all of them are comfortable and clean, and all are picturesque.

The inmates are left very much to themselves, the oldest inhabitant generally acting as superior. Each inmate or married couple, as the case may be, in addition to his or their apartment, receives a monthly pension varying in amount from house to house, but in no case very large. Many of the inhabitants, however, are able to do a little work, others, perhaps, have children who are in a position to contribute to their support. Your true Fleming is rarely lacking in filial piety—it is one of the most pleasing characteristics of the race—and thus these old people are able to rub along, not perhaps in affluence, but for all that with a good roof over their heads, without enduring the pangs of hunger, and, no small boon, in the enjoyment of their liberty.

Thus was Bruges transformed in the seventeenth century, thus did she become what she still is—a vast conglomeration of religious houses and charitable institutions, a city of nuns and friars. The ÉvÊchÉ had taken the place of the Court, the monk of the merchant; commerce had fled, and charity was doing what she could to supply its place.

Thus, thanks in great measure to the initiative of the Church, the evil days were tided over. When, later on, in the following century, the wars and rumours of wars had passed away, and the ‘pastoral folk’ of the Franc were enabled to obtain some profit from their former avocations, Bruges to a certain extent participated in their prosperity; but though she on more than one occasion essayed to revive her commerce—notably in 1722 by the canalization of the river Yperlet, with a view to putting herself in communication with Ostend—her efforts in each case proved abortive. Flanders had become, to quote the words of a seventeenth-century historian, famosum antiquitatis sepulchrum, and her capital was constrained to live on the reputation of its former glory.

Let us not, however, shed too many tears over the commercial decay of Bruges. If her prosperity had continued she would hardly have remained what she still is—the fairest city in Northern Europe.

We know indeed that her private palaces were suffered to fall into decay because their owners were too poor to maintain them, but if they had been never so rich the old buildings would have disappeared just the same. The art of the Middle Ages was abhorrent to the eighteenth century, and the Gothic palaces of Bruges would surely have given place to rococo mansions. Moreover, that same poverty which destroyed so much of her splendour not only endowed her, as we have seen, with a multitude of picturesque buildings, but has preserved for us what remains of her ancient domestic architecture.

On the 2nd of October 1670 the members of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament established in the Church of St. Sauveur—now the Cathedral—decreed that the three fifteenth-century stained-glass windows in their chantry—the central chapel of the ambulatory, immediately behind the high altar—should be forthwith destroyed, in order that the public might the better appreciate the new altar they had erected, which ‘was such an admirable imitation of marble.’

In 1739 a like act of vandalism, but on a larger scale, was perpetrated in the same church. The ancient stained-glass windows were at this time removed from the clerestory of the choir and replaced by white glass, and there were no less than thirteen of them. Similar outrages were committed in all the churches and public buildings of Bruges, and if only her private citizens had been rich enough to pull down and rebuild their dwellings there would have been little left by this time of the mediÆval city.

It is only fair to add that Bruges has long since learned to appreciate her old buildings. Many of them have been carefully restored, others are in course of restoration, the work has for the most part been accomplished with no little skill and taste, and, for the rest, it may be safely said that no other great mediÆval city has preserved so much of its old-world character. How long this will continue to be true is another question. Lancelot Blondeel’s scheme, or one no less nefarious, is at length being carried out; much havoc has already been wrought in the northern outskirts of the city; old houses have been pulled down, old timber has been felled; in despite of strenuous opposition, the course of one of the loveliest canals has been diverted, and its former bed filled in for the convenience of the jerry builder.

If the projected sea canal should fulfil the expectation of its promoters there can be no doubt that Bruges will lose much of her charm. She will no longer be a city of sleepy streets and of picturesque canals unfrequented save by swans, choked up with water lilies, and fringed with trees and flowering shrubs and dreamy old houses blinking at the water. She will become a second Ghent, a second Antwerp, and the knowing ones aver that all the profit will find its way into the pockets of Jews and Germans. The modern Fleming, it would seem, has little aptitude for commerce.

There is some consolation in this thought, and there is more in this—the scheme is a vast one, and Bruges moves slowly. It took her twenty years to restore the HÔtel Gruthuise. Twenty-five years ago she decided to restore the western faÇade of Notre Dame. Between that time and this the architect who was commissioned to undertake the work has submitted no less than twenty-five different plans. When the faÇade has actually fallen, and it is said that it cannot last much longer, perhaps those who are responsible for the delay will select one of them.

We may take it then that mediÆval Bruges will at all events last our day.

The following notes will perhaps be of service to those who wish to see the most beautiful and interesting spots in Bruges, and to examine its art treasures.

Let such an one, coming forth from his inn, which, if he be a wise man, will be either Le Flandre or Le Commerce—there are others cheaper but none so comfortable—unaccompanied by a guide, who would only irritate and confuse him, and keeping his eyes always open, for there is much to see, make his way as best he can to the Grande Place, and there let him feast his eyes on the majestic splendour of the Belfry, and fill his ears with the weird music which every quarter of an hour proceeds from it—

Next let him turn off into the street called Philipstock, proceeding along which he will presently descry, beyond the houses on the left-hand side, all that remains of the old Church of St. Peter, where Bertulph once celebrated the obsequies of Charles the Good. The first turning on the right leads, through a grove of sycamore and chestnut trees planted on the site of St. Donatian’s, to the Place du Bourg, one of the loveliest squares in Europe. The great Gothic building opposite is the HÔtel de Ville; the two-storeyed church of tawny brick hard-by, with a portal at right angles to it of dark grey stone carved into flamboyant panelling and enriched with statues of bronze, the Sanctuary of the Holy Blood; in the gabled edifice on the left, half Gothic and half Renaissance in style, glorious with colour and gold, and altogether beautiful, we have the last architectural effort of the waning prosperity of Bruges—the Maison de l’ancien Greffe, built in 1537. It now serves as a Court of Justice, has been carefully restored, and is well worth a visit. The justice-room, with its old oak and old brass, its stained-glass windows and its glorious chimney-piece, is perfect; so too the inner chamber, which serves as the magistrates’ private apartment. The HÔtel de Ville has also been well restored; the entrance hall is particularly fine, and the great hall above, with its ancient timber roof, and its excellent modern frescoes, not yet completed, is no less charming. In this building there are several interesting pictures of Bruges in days gone by and of the surrounding country. Of the beauty of the two churches we have already spoken. In the upper church there are some interesting pictures, there are more in the adjoining museum, and here too there are some fragments of ancient stained glass, the original designs of the windows in the upper chapel, some beautiful antique lace and embroidery, and the silver-gilt

LANCELOT BLONDELL’S CHIMNEY-PIECE IN THE PALAIS DU FRANC
LANCELOT BLONDELL’S CHIMNEY-PIECE IN THE PALAIS DU FRANC

reliquary studded with jewels—amongst them a splendid black diamond which once belonged to Marie, Queen of Scots—in which the Holy Blood is annually carried in procession through the streets in the month of May. This reliquary was the gift of the burghers of Bruges in 1614; the original reliquary was destroyed by the Protestants in 1578. The relic is exposed for the veneration of the faithful every Friday in the upper chapel from eight till eleven thirty, and the ceremony of Benediction which then takes place is singularly impressive.

The beautiful groined archway which pierces the Maison de l’ancien Greffe leads to a region where there are exquisite views: from the centre of the Great Fishmarket, the backs of the buildings of which we have just been speaking—they are no less fascinating than their faÇades; and from the Pont de l’Âne Aveugle the loveliness of the Roya, and the faÇade of the Palais du Franc where, in the great council chamber, is Lancelot Blondeel’s famous chimney-piece. The approach to this building is through the Palais de Justice in the Place du Bourg. Bearing to the right through the Little Fishmarket, most picturesque, we presently reach the MarchÉ aux Herbes, the Quai de Rosaire and the Dyver, where the scenery is no less charming. The great red house on the further bank of the Roya is the house where Malvenda hid the Holy Blood, and the majestic spire in the distance the spire of Notre Dame. Almost at the end of the Dyver there is a little street called the rue de Groeninghe, which branches off the main thoroughfare between two walled gardens. That on the left is the site of the ancient abbey of Eeckhout, a very peaceful place, where in summer-time there are roses in abundance and old-world herbs and flowers, and, on a crumbling wall, snap-dragon. The gabled house hard-by, with a little Gothic window, was formerly the residence of the provosts of Notre Dame; the picturesque group of buildings in the distance, which, amid thick foliage, cluster round its spire, is the old palace of Louis of Gruthuise; the garden beyond the narrow stream, the garden of the nuns of St. AndrÉ. Let the traveller linger awhile in this tranquil spot and, if he will, for twopence half-penny, refresh himself with a beautiful bunch of roses.

Continuing his walk along the rue de Groeninghe the tourist will presently see a wrought-iron grill at the end of an impasse which gives on the river. Let him approach it and look through the railings. Here there is a nook which strangers rarely find; many who have lived in the city for years do not know of it, and yet it is perhaps the most beautiful of all the beautiful spots in Bruges. To discover this priceless jewel is the main object of our journey. Here the Roya is often a rushing torrent. On one side of the stream, rising clean out of the water, is the oldest wing of the Gruthuise; on the other a walled garden with lofty trees spreading their branches over the river which, to the right, disappears beneath an archway piercing an old house, once part of the palace; in the near background, immediately facing the grill, is the choir of Notre Dame with its grove of flying buttresses, and beyond, towering high above all, the majesty of its steeple—the grandest and the fairest thing in brick or stone which the genius of man has yet created. It was from this lovely spot, or rather a few yards higher up stream, that Mr. Railton took the beautiful sketch of the HÔtel Gruthuise which appears on p. 287.

Hard-by, on the bank of this same river, a little higher up stream, stands the Beguinage (see map), that most picturesque cloister where the quaint dwellings of the nuns—for each Beguin has her own home, her own purse and her own household—fringe a fair and spacious green planted with lofty elms, a very tranquil spot where the ghost of the thirteenth century still lingers. The convent church dates from the year 1245, but it has been so changed and spoiled by repeated restorations that little of the original building remains, and it can no longer, perhaps, be called beautiful. But, notwithstanding, it has a certain charm which is quite its own. It is so picturesque and so clean and so quiet and so comfortable, and with it all there is such a quaint, old-world atmosphere about the place that many a much more beautiful church is far less attractive. And the worshippers who frequent it!—the very precise and deliberate and ceremonious old ladies who totter across the green to church at intervals throughout the day—from angelus to angelus, and there let down their long black trains and put on their white choir veils, and presently, with much curtseying to one another and many genuflections before the high altar, together chant their breviary in feeble, quavering tones, whilst the old caretaker, in a secluded corner, calmly tells her beads or knits stockings.

The entrance to the Beguinage is by the Place de la Vigne, over a bridge which spans the Roya, whence there are beautiful views of that stream, of the Beguins’ little gardens, of their church, of the old lockhouse at the head of the Minne Water, of the lake itself beyond, and, in the far background, of those lovely wooded ramparts, where all night long in summer-time the nightingale intones his psalmody.

The canals of Bruges are all of them exceedingly beautiful. The great canal, which enters the city on the eastern side between the Porte de Gand and the Infantry Barracks, and divides it into two unequal parts, is interesting from end to end, and as there are roads on each side, and it is spanned by five bridges, there is no difficulty in exploring it. The most picturesque route is from the Bourg by the rue de l’Âne Aveugle and the terrace which skirts the backwater of the Roya—the Quai des Marbriers, as it is called, and the Quai Vert. Hard-by the spot where the main stream of the Roya—a vista here of ancient gables with the Poorters Logie and its charming tower in the distance—empties itself into the canal is the old tavern which Rubens is said to have frequented. It stands in the rue des Blanchisseurs, a narrow lane off the road which skirts the right-hand bank of the canal, and is called the Vlissinghe. A most interesting old place this, the tourist should not fail to visit it. The accompanying sketch is of the back of the house.

THE VLISSINGHE TAVERN, FREQUENTED BY RUBENS
THE VLISSINGHE TAVERN, FREQUENTED BY RUBENS

The Ghent Canal skirts the whole of the eastern side of the town, from the Minne Water Bridge, that is, to the old Porte de Damme; on its banks stand the Porte de Gand and the Porte Ste. Croix. From the high ramparts beyond the latter gate there is a beautiful panoramic view of the city and of the open country on the other side of the water.

There is also a canal which branches off from the Ghent Canal by the Minne Water Bridge in the opposite direction; it runs alongside of the ramparts as far as the Porte des Baudets, where it turns off into the open country. Its banks are for the most part well wooded, beyond the picturesque Porte des MarÉchaux they are high and steep, and from this spot too there is a beautiful view of the city.

Hard-by the hospital for incurable women, a vast and splendid modern building which stands on the banks of the Minne Water, a fourth canal enters the town. This is perhaps the fairest of all the Bruges waterways. The best points of view are from its bridges, which are all save one beautiful and all save one ancient. There are no less than six of them:—the Pont de la Clef, which separates the rue des Bouchers from the rue FossÉ aux Loups—Mr. Railton has given us a sketch of it; the Pont aux Lions, hard by the rue du MarÉcage and the Church of St. Jacques; the Pont des Baudets in the rue d’Ostende; the Pont Flamand, which connects the rue Flamande with the rue St. Georges;—this is the oldest bridge in Bruges, originally constructed by the Augustinian friars in 1294, it was rebuilt by the town in 1391—the Pont des Augustins at the end of the rue Espagnole, and the Pont de la Tour by the Place des Orientaux. The tourist will do well to visit all these bridges and also to follow the road which skirts the canal from the last bridge to its junction with the great canal, about five hundred yards further on. The gardens and houses on the opposite side of the stream are most picturesque. It was here that John van Eyck lived, though, alas! his dwelling has been swept away.

Quai des MÉnÉtriers

Of the Roya and of the beautiful backwater which connects it with the great canal, at the end of the rue des Dominicains, we have already spoken in a previous chapter. There are other streams too which wend their way through the city. It is impossible within the limits of this manual even to indicate their whereabouts, so numerous are they and so intricate is their meandering. The tourist will come upon them, in the course of his rambles, in the most unexpected places, and he will find them on that account none the less beautiful.

Bruges possesses seven parish churches—Notre Dame, which claims precedence of all the rest; St. Sauveur, which is also the Cathedral—a finer but less picturesque and less interesting building; St. Jacques, a noble structure spoiled by Calvinist fury and seventeenth century restoration; St. Gilles, which suffered more than all, and has now renewed its youth and splendour; Ste. Anne, which dates from the opening years of the sixteen hundreds and which, with its carved oak, its old brass, its pictures, its stained glass and its polished marble, is a very pleasing specimen of the work of the period; Ste. Walburge, erected about the same date from the design of the Jesuit Peter Huyssens, a native of Bruges, who died in that city in 1637; and Ste. Marie Madeleine, a modern building which, if it were in London, would be called ‘handsome.’

All of these churches, save the last, are worth visiting, not only because of their intrinsic beauty, but on account of the beautiful and interesting objects which they contain. Pictures, wood carving, wrought-iron, brass, all these things shall here delight the eye—aye, and gold too and silver and precious stones, tapestry, embroidery, lace, if only the custodians can be persuaded to discover their hidden treasures.

Of the other sanctuaries of Bruges, the traveller should at least visit the Chapel of the Hospital of St. John (1473), which is rich in objets d’art, and possesses, amongst other treasures, a set of embroidered Mass vestments which date from 1633, and are all sewn with pearls, no less than seventy-three thousand of them, so it is said; the Chapel and Hospice of Notre Dame de la Poterie (1358), beautifully restored,

Pont St. Augustin

where there is a small collection of early Flemish pictures, some charming old oak furniture and sculpture, and several pieces of fifteenth-century tapestry; the Carmelite Church in the rue d’Ostende, built in 1688 from the designs of FrÈre Patrice de Saint-Hubert; here the dancing angels over the altar are spindle-shanked and ill-proportioned, the cupids which flutter about them have the faces of demons, and seem bursting with evil passions, the sacred figures carved on the confessionals are caricatures, the whole scheme of ornament is in the worst possible taste, but somehow or other, in spite of it all, this church is a very fascinating and a very devotional one; the proportions are good, it is rich in carved oak and sculptured marble, the colouring is harmonious, and the windows, amber-hued and pale green, with beautiful patterns traced in lead, are simply perfect; and of course there is the Jerusalem Chapel and the chapels of the Precious Blood, of all of which we have already spoken, and, if the tourist would go further afield, the stately thirteenth-century Church of Our Lady at Damme, and the no less beautiful shrine of Our Lady at Lisseweghe, which dates from the same period.

Damme is about three miles out of the city. It is situated on the banks of the Sluys Canal. There is a very good steamboat service, and the pleasantest way to reach it is by water. The Damme Town Hall dates from the end of the fourteenth century, and is a charming old building. Here, too, is a convent and hospital which dates from the thirteenth century, and there are some quaint old houses. When Bruges was at its heyday the population of Damme amounted to sixty thousand souls. The number of its inhabitants is now probably less than one thousand.

Lisseweghe is some five miles from Bruges. The pleasantest way to reach it is by walking or driving. About a mile short of the village, a little off the high road on the left-hand side, are the ruins of Ter Doest Abbey, well worth visiting. The great Gothic grange or barn dates from the close of the thirteenth century (about 1280), and is still intact, a stupendous building, 187 feet by 75 feet or thereabouts, and nearly 100 feet high from the ground to the ridge of the roof. Lisseweghe can also be reached by rail.

Of the other famous buildings of Bruges we have already spoken. By the aid of the map and the directions previously given, the reader will have no difficulty in ascertaining their whereabouts.

Bruges is a city of considerable size; its ramparts measure nearly five miles round, and it is hardly an exaggeration to say there is no spot within this magic circle devoid of interest.

The stranger who, having hurried through its churches and picture galleries in the morning, and whiled away an hour or so in its streets in the afternoon, fancies that he knows Bruges is vastly mistaken. For our own part, we have dwelt in this enchanted city for many years, and the sum of its loveliness, we feel very sure, has not yet been revealed to us.

PLAN OF BRVGES