Ernest Gilliat-Smith

It was not till the days of Charlemagne that art was born in the Low Country, and Charlemagne may be not inaptly said to have been its progenitor. When that monarch planted the outposts of Christian Europe on the banks of the Elbe he made the Low Country—a land then of marsh and wood, whose inhabitants had hitherto lived apart, forgotten by the rest of the world, on the edge, so to speak, of civilisation—the central province of his dominions, and, as such, it in due course became the centre of contemporary culture: the common intellectual mart of the Teutonic regions of the East and the North, the Latin provinces of the West and the South, of Ireland, of England, and of the land of the Scot. The bishops, satraps, scholars, merchants, courtiers, courtesans who flocked to Aix-la-Chapelle from all parts of Europe, all of them passed through the Low Country and were constrained to sojourn for rest and refreshment in the only hostelries which the land possessed—the convents and monasteries sparsely scattered amid its forests and fens. The traffic on the old Roman road across the CharbonniÈre was now greater than it had ever been before; the Meuse and the Scheldt for the first time became highways along which were towed huge barges heavily laden with foodstuffs for the provisionment of the Court, and thus, as Pirenne has it, 'on this soil, formed by the alluvial deposit of French and German streams, there gradually sprang up a civilisation of like nature with the soil itself, a civilisation made up of divers elements—Latin, German, French, in a word, a civilisation not so much national in character as European.'

Nor was it only thus indirectly that Charlemagne promoted the civilisation of the people of the Netherlands. The rapid progress which was at this time made in humanising these rugged folk was in large measure due to the Emperor's personal initiative: he brought artists from England, Italy, Constantinople, to decorate his palaces at Aix and NimÈgue, he established a school of art attached to the Court, he ordained that the churches should be adorned with mural paintings, and named inspectors to watch over the work and see that his orders were strictly carried out, and, most important of all, he charged himself with the task of providing foreign teachers for the novices of the few religious houses which at this time were established in the land, and where the culture of art and letters seems to have fallen wholly into disrepute. The scholars to whom the Emperor confided this task were among the most famous of their day. Men like his secretary and biographer, Eginhard—the architect of the dome of Aix-la-Chapelle—whom he set over the twin abbeys of Saint Peter and Saint Bavon at Ghent; and Arnon, one of the most brilliant disciples of Alcuin, who became abbot of Elnone by Tournai; and the Italian mechanician Georgius, who taught at Saint-Sauve, by Valenciennes; and the great Irish scholar Sedulius, who later on (840-855) lectured in the frescoed hall of Bishop Hartgar's new palace at LiÉge.

Nor was this policy unprofitable. A spark was enkindled which soon became a burning and a shining light. Clerks began to polish their rusty Latin, monks to busy themselves with history, in writing the lives of local saints, and by erecting in their honour temples not unworthy of the patrons to whom they were dedicated. Cloistered women, too, devoted their leisure hours to art: they adorned their refectories and chapels with frescoes, and their choir-books with exquisite miniatures and capitals cunningly devised, and, for the service of the altar, made marvellous vestures of gold, wrought about with divers colours. A specimen of their illumination has come down to us: in the sacristy of the old church at Maeseyck there is a copy of the Gospels, painted by two sisters, Saint Harlinda and Saint Renilda, who, about this time, ruled over the great Abbey of Aldeneyck, on the outskirts of the town. This is the most ancient piece of miniature work in Belgium. In a word, the ignorance and grossness which had so long disfigured the Church in the Netherlands completely disappeared, the soil teemed with religious houses, each of which was an active centre of literary and artistic life, and there was soon no more flourishing province in Christendom than the land between the Rhine and the sea. But the glory of it all was short-lived: after the Danish Terror there was nothing left of it but a memory. Unless the subterranean Church of Saint Guy at Anderlecht, as some maintain, be of this period, in Brabant, at least, no vestige remains of Carlovingian architecture. For more than sixty years thick darkness enveloped the land. Isolated efforts, indeed, there were: the monks of Lobbe maintained an obscure school; Bishop Stephen at LiÉge, and, at Utrecht, Bishops Radbod and Balderic, did what they could, in the midst of the barbarism and anarchy of the times, to keep alive the lamp of learning; but it was not until 953, when the Emperor Otho placed the ducal crown of Lotharingia on the head of his brother Bruno, that there was anything like an approach to a general Renaissance movement. Under Saint Bruno's firm and gentle rule discipline was re-established. Art and literature followed in its wake. Everachar the Saxon, whom he named to the See of LiÉge in 959, was the founder, or at least the restorer, of the Cathedral School there—a school which was renowned almost from its origin, and which, under his successor Notger, became one of the chief centres of learning in the West. The masters of LiÉge lectured in all parts of the empire—at Mainz, at Ratisbonne, at Brescia, and even penetrated into France; and students from all parts of Europe flocked to drink in knowledge in the famous school of Saint Lambert.

The literary and artistic movement inaugurated by Saint Bruno and the imperial bishops was no doubt accentuated by the monastic revival promoted about the same date by Gerard of Brogne. Great cathedrals and abbey churches now sprang up in rapid succession, cloisters were everywhere enlarged or rebuilt, bishops' palaces were adorned with sculpture and painting, and the little edifices of wood, which on the countryside had hitherto done duty for parish churches, were replaced by more substantial buildings of stone or brick. German in origin for the most part, it was naturally to German architects that the bishops of Lotharingia entrusted their building operations. Thus the style in vogue in the valley of the Rhine spread rapidly towards the west. With the architects came artisans of all sorts—sculptors, hewers of stone, painters, woodcarvers, founders of copper and of bronze. These foreigners founded schools in the country, a host of apprentices joined them, who made such progress in their craft that soon they were able to compete with their masters. Thus was there gradually formed a native school of architects and artists, of whose talent and technical skill the remnants of their work which have come down to us bear witness; and we know that in their own day their fame was so great that Abbot Suger had recourse to their aid for the work which at this time he was engaged upon in the Abbey of Saint-Denis.

They did not, however, at first form a new style. For something like two hundred years they were content to walk in the paths which their German masters had traced for them. Not only in architecture, but in painting, in sculpture, in wood-carving, in metal work, in embroidery, the school of the Meuse, as M. Pirenne aptly puts it, was the legitimate daughter of the school of the Rhine.

Indeed, as long as the Church in the Low Country remained imperial, German traditions prevailed. Even the main body of the cathedral at Tournai, with its dome and its turreted apsidal transepts, which was only commenced in 1030, is distinctively German in character, and so, too, was the cathedral at Cambrai,26 designed on similar lines, and this is all the more remarkable from the fact that it was not completed till nearly a hundred and fifty years later—some seventy years, that is, after the episcopate of Walcher, the last of the imperial bishops of this diocese.

The Church of Saint Nicholas

Of the buildings in Brussels and its immediate neighbourhood, which date from this period (950-1200), but few remain. Indeed, in the city itself there are only fragments. Foremost among the monuments which contain them note the Parish Church of Saint Nicholas in the Rue au Beurre, one of the oldest and perhaps the most interesting of the time-honoured sanctuaries of Brussels. The date of its foundation is not known, but it cannot be later, and may be considerably earlier, than the close of the ten hundreds. It is one of those old buildings which, by reason of their great age and thrilling memories, have attained individuality and almost become living things—a stalwart veteran who in the course of a long and honourable career has manfully endured an unwonted share of the trials and vicissitudes of life. It has gained many scars in wrestling with time and the elements, more in its conflict with man. It has been cast down and renewed, enlarged and curtailed, defaced and embellished, polluted and blessed over and over again; and though for the last fifty years it has been constantly threatened by municipal blockheads with total destruction, it still towers amid the nest of habitations which cluster round its walls and cling on to its buttresses, a picturesque and venerable pile in spite of its mutilations—not the least pleasing of the rare landmarks of old-world Brussels.

THE OLD CHURCH OF SAINT NICHOLAS, RUE AU BEURRE.

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It is not, however, its intrinsic beauty which renders this church so fascinating. It possesses in common with many ancient things, not only buildings, but often trees, pictures, furniture, and notably jewellery, another attribute: there is about it a certain subtle influence which at once lays hold of the spectator and convinces him that it has a story. It has, and a thrilling one which, if it were written, would fill volumes and keep the reader spellbound from the opening words of the first sentence to the end of the last page.

This church, dedicated to Saint Nicholas, patron saint of burghers and merchants, and situated on the fringe of the Great Market, hard by their Town Hall and Guild-houses, has been, from time immemorial, the distinctive church of the bourgeoisie, in the same way that Saint Jacques sur Coudenberg has always been the distinctive church of the Court. Its life is bound up with the life of the city. It is the cradle of its liberties. Its hopes, its struggles, its victories, its defeats are intimately associated with it. In this church the city fathers were wont to assemble in the early days when they had no town hall. Its steeple was the town belfry—we say advisedly was, for it exists no more—home of the 'work-clock,' which every morning called the craftsman to his toil and in the evening sounded his release; and of the shrill tocsin, which in days of terror summoned him to arms, and when he had triumphed shouted victory. Here, too, in a lower storey, was the archive chamber where were laid up the records and the title-deeds—the charters which the town had bought at such great cost of blood and gold. Thrice burnt down and thrice rebuilt, until the close of the seventeen hundreds, this ancient tower was the pride and the glory of the men of Brussels, who regarded it as the outward and visible sign of their privileges as citizens and their rights as men. Nor is this all, the Church of Saint Nicholas is possessed of a mysterousmysterious power of attraction. Why men should single out this particular church in preference to all others is a question hard to answer. There is no ostensible reason for it: it is not the shrine of some great and popular saint, no famous relics are treasured here, nor miraculous image or picture. They are drawn to it in spite of themselves. Wherefore, who shall say? Enter when you will, it is never without worshippers, and what a motley throng they are! Of course that sex which the breviary so quaintly and aptly styles devout is the most in evidence. Women in shoals are there—women of every age and every complexion, all sorts and conditions of women: from the grande dame of ancient date, demure, aloof, dowdy, who, to her very rosary beads, is invested with an air of distinction, to the market-woman with her milk cans or her basket of fresh vegetables; from the fashion plate of the demi monde, perfumed and painted, to the snuffy crone in foul rags, who in the same breath asks an alms and tells her chaplet. And the men, if there be fewer of them, are no less heterogeneous—that sleek, smug-faced tradesman is trying a deal with Saint Anthony, he has made him an offering and promised more if only he will promote his undertakings; the youth in glorious apparel is commending, perhaps, to Saint Joseph an affair of the heart, or—who can tell?—perhaps he has a thorn in the flesh of which he would fain be rid; the shabby, middle-aged, sallow-faced wreck who stands before 'Onze Lieve Vrouw,' works, when he is not too drunk, as a journeyman tailor, in politics he is a social democrat, and if you were to ask him his religion, he would tell you that he was a libre penseur, but the woman who loves him is sick and believes, and he has slunk in here to put up a taper for her in honour of the 'Salus infirmorum,' the old man with trembling limbs and palsied head, who is painfully making the way of the Cross, was in his day a dashing spark who could make women's hearts throb and sometimes broke them. He has drunk to the dregs of the joys of life and experienced the after-taste, but all this is ancient history; he has long ago made his peace with God, and is quietly waiting now for the great metamorphosis. And there are children too, not many—for the neighbourhood is one of theatres, cafÉs, public buildings—ragged urchins some of them, with bare feet and pinched faces. The streets outside are cold and wet, or they are hot and dusty, and where else should these waifs seek shelter but in their Father's house?

Such are the devotees who frequent this mysterious shrine; and the visible objects of their devotion—the likenesses of the ghosts who haunt it, are no less varied than are they. Some of them are Neo-Gothic conceptions of the school of Saint Luke—tall, emaciated figures with gilded locks and pale, meek faces; others are of the time of the Renaissance, and are full-blooded, fleshy, human; others again are as old perhaps as the church itself, and these are the most interesting.

For how many centuries, for example, has the 'Man of Sorrows' sat by the western doorway silently asking of those who enter, 'Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?' A strangely pathetic figure this. The sculptor who modelled it must have had this text in his mind, 'There is no beauty in Him,' and this, 'The Lord has placed upon His shoulders the iniquity of us all.' The statue is of carved wood painted after life, but time and maybe the flare of tapers have rendered it almost black. It is quite nude save for a loin cloth, but someone, perhaps scandalised at this, has thrown a mantle of purple velvet now faded and moth eaten, over the shoulders. A relic is let into the instep of the left foot, which is defaced and partly worn away by the lips of innumerable troubled souls who have found consolation in their own sorrows by pitying the sorrows of Christ. For the rest, the church is not without charm from an Æsthetic point of view—the axis of the choir is probably more decidedly inclined to the north-east than that of any other church that the visitor will call to mind: this and the divers styles of architecture in which it is built renders it at least picturesque. Moreover, though the stained glass which once glowed in its windows has long since disappeared, and though whitewash and plaster have effaced the frescoes and carving with which its walls were formerly adorned, the interior is still bathed in glowing tints: it is rich in old oak furniture, in objects of marble and copper and brass, in easel paintings and in devotional statues resplendent with colour and gold, and there are flowers too and red lamps, and withal and always a host of flaring tapers. But let not the reader be disappointed. There is much in this church which is tawdry, trivial, vulgar, which transgresses in a flagrant degree the canons of good taste; its splendour, it cannot be denied, is not always the splendour of truth. We have here the lustre of colour which, like charity, covers a multitude of sins, the fascination of old-world memories and the glamour of the picturesque. Added to this there are a few genuine works of art, notably some good pictures, which even the most fastidious need not be ashamed to admire; but since they are all of more recent date than the Middle Age, they do not come within the scope of these pages. And what, perhaps, it will be asked, has this farrago of modern idolatry for which space has been found to do with the Middle Age? This much—call it idolatry if you will, we have here mediÆvalism undiluted. The credulous folk who flock to the Church of Saint Nicholas are silly enough to believe, like their fathers in the thirteen hundreds, that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to say anything definite as to dates in the case of a building like the Church of Saint Nicholas, which has endured so many vicissitudes and suffered so much at the hands of restorers, but there can be little doubt that the great oblong columns which support the vaulting of the nave, and perhaps too the walls of the aisles, or at all events some portions of them, formed part of the original structure. But whether these things be old or new is a matter of little moment. The burghers' church is doomed. The decree has gone forth, and as soon as the leases of the old houses which cluster round it fall in, it is to be sacrificed to the demon progress. A street has to be enlarged or straightened, or the site is needed for a cab-stand or a public-house, or for some purpose equally objectionable. Death indeed sits close to our old friend, hence this disquisition. Albeit, he has so often escaped by the skin of his teeth that it is hard not to believe that means will even yet be found for still further prolonging his days. One thing is quite certain. If this piece of vandalism be carried out, it will be for the indelible shame of the whole city. A disgrace alike to the authors of the crime, and to those who by their indifference or their lack of energy, have connived at it. In Belgium there is a permanent Government commission for the preservation of ancient monuments, and a private society likewise exists, of which the raison d'Être is similar, yet it seems that neither of these bodies have as much as thought it worth their while to lodge a formal protest.

More important from an architectural point of view than the Church of Saint Nicholas is the Church of Notre-Dame de la Chapelle. The foundation stone was laid by Duke Godfrey Longbeard in 1134, and though the greater portion of the existing structure is of more recent date, some interesting fragments still remain of the original building, notably the little Chapel of the Holy Cross and the beautiful faÇade of the south transept, which is pure Romanesque and richly adorned with sculpture. The plans were modified as the work progressed, and the rest of the south transept, the north transept and the chancel are in the style of the Transition. A nave and aisles were also added at this period, but they were destroyed by fire early in the fourteen hundreds, and rebuilt in the course of the century in the style then in vogue.

The collegiate Church of Saint Michael and Saint Gudule was commenced by Duke Henry I. in 1170, and the eastern wall of the ambulatory, with its Romanesque windows, date from this period. It took the men of Brussels five hundred years to complete this beautiful building, and hence it contains specimens of every style of architecture, and is on that account none the less interesting. We shall have something more to say of each of these churches in another chapter.

The civil architecture of this period is represented only by some fragments of the fortifications with which Lambert Balderick surrounded the city in 1040. They are scattered about here and there in various parts of the old town. There is a picturesque bit of wall for example in the garden of Saint Gudule's Presbytery, another piece has been incorporated into a house in the Rue des douze ApÔtres, there is more in the Steenporte, and, most important of all, a tower some sixty feet high between the Halles Centrales and the Church of Saint Catherine.

This picturesque relic, which is called 'la Tour Noire,' was discovered when some old houses were demolished in 1887. At first the Corporation was for pulling it down, but fortunately Brussels at this time had a burgomaster who was not only an artist and an archÆologist of repute, but also an enthusiastic amateur of mediÆval architecture. After a long fight, M. Buls, who is still living though he has now withdrawn from public life, succeeded in saving the old tower, and thanks to his indefatigable efforts, it was later on restored by the town.

The Crypt of Saint Guy at Anderlecht

La Tour Noire.

LA TOUR NOIRE.

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It is not, however, in the city itself, but in the suburb of Anderlecht, a mile and a half beyond the line of the outer ramparts, that the most interesting specimen of Romanesque architecture is to be found. Here we have no mere fragment, more or less defaced, but something complete in itself, something which has never been tampered with, something older, too, than any of the buildings of which we have just spoken, older, indeed, for the matter of that, than any other building in Brabant. In a word we have here an antique jewel of rare beauty, which has never been re-set nor re-cut: the subterranean Church of Saint Guy at Anderlecht remains to-day what it was when the builders planned it.

The earliest archives of the collegiate chapter of Anderlecht have disappeared, destroyed, no doubt, when the Flemings invaded Brabant under Louis of Maele, and hence the date of its foundation is not certainly known. Some chroniclers mention the year 800, others 914. Tradition says that it goes back to an epoch when there were only two other chapters in Brabant, the Chapter of Saint Berlinda, a niece of Saint-Amand, erected at Meerbeck towards the close of the six hundreds, and the famous Chapter of Nivelles, founded by Saint Gertrude, a daughter of Pepin of Landen, in 645; and we know from the Anderlecht Life of Saint Guy, the earliest life that has come down to us, that a dean and canons were certainly established there early in the ten hundreds. In any case there can be no doubt that this foundation was a very old one, and in all probability the present subterranean church is the church in which the first canons of Anderlecht were wont to perform their devotional offices.

True, it is said in the anonymous Life of Saint Guy, written most likely by a canon of Anderlecht in the opening years of the eleven hundreds, that about the time when his relics were first translated (1076) the canons of Anderlecht decided to build a new church, and from this, M. Schaeys, in his Histoire de l'architecture en Belgique, concludes that the present structure dates from this epoch, but the style of the architecture denotes a much earlier period, and the MS. account of what took place, in spite of the passage in question, which, read with the context, has clearly another meaning than that which M. Schaeys attributes to it, rather confirms than contradicts the evidence of the architecture.

The writer informs us that at this time the church at Anderlecht, by reason of its great age, was almost a ruin; some of the walls had actually fallen down, and others were in imminent danger of doing so. The clergy and the people therefore decided with one accord to sell the rich gifts which for years past pilgrims had been offering at the shrine of Saint Guy, and with the fund thus realised to build a new and more spacious church. If, then, the present crypt, which only measures forty feet by forty-eight, was the outcome of this decision, the former structure must indeed have been one of exceedingly narrow dimensions.

Although 'the poor man of Anderlecht' had during his lifetime been regarded as a saint, he was not publicly honoured as such until some forty years after his demise. About this time (1054) what our author calls a basilica, no doubt a small mortuary chapel, had been erected over his grave, and as it adjoined the church it now became necessary to pull it down in view of the proposed building operations. Hence the question arose, What should be done with the saint's body? The matter was referred to the bishop of the diocese, Gerard II. of Cambrai, 'who had succeeded the Lord Lietbert of blessed memory'—this fixes the date, Gerard received consecration in 1076—and he ordained that the body should be disinterred and provisionally laid to rest in the centre of the church until the new building should be ready for its reception.

The bishop's instructions, our author avers, were duly carried out, and in the last paragraph of his narrative, he informs us that 'the elevation of Saint Guy' was made by Bishop Odard on the 24th of July, 1112. It would seem, then, that from the earliest times there have been two churches at Anderlecht, an upper church and a lower church; that the former, having fallen into a ruinous state, was pulled down in the year 1076 and rebuilt on a larger scale, and that the new structure was completed in the summer of 1112, certainly not later than that date. Further, that the lower church, which no doubt had been more solidly built than the upper building, seeing that it was intended to support a superstructure, was still in 1076 in good repair, and that hence it was left standing.

That this was 'the church' where the relics of Saint Guy reposed during the interval which elapsed between the disinterment of 1076 and the 'elevation' of 1112 there can be no doubt whatever. Not only do the terms employed by the writer render this point certain, but we have the additional evidence of the empty tomb which still stands in the centre of the crypt. As to the date at which this interesting building was constructed the style of the architecture points to the eight hundreds. In form it is distinctly reminiscent of the early Christian basilica: it consists of an apsidal nave of three bays and double aisles, those which are adjacent to the nave are separated from it by cylindrical columns with capitals, which recall the Tuscan order, and from the outer aisles by two great square shafts without capitals, around each of which are clustered four columns similar to the columns of the nave. There is also a series of half columns of like design at intervals round the walls. These, and the piers, and the pillars of the nave support the vault, which is a simple cross vault without ribs. Each of the outer aisles is pierced in its west wall by a small round-headed doorway which opens on a staircase leading to the upper church, and the building is dimly lighted by six narrow slits of windows, which are likewise round-headed. The original high altar has disappeared, but there are two side altars which are of great antiquity, probably as old as the church itself—huge oblong blocks of stone without ornament or inscription. Hard by to each of them is a small chamber built in the thickness of the wall. It has been suggested that one was a baptistery, the other a vesting-room. In the centre of the inner southern aisle is the tomb of Saint Guy, an oblong mass built up of stone covered by a granite slab rudely carved with a double cross, floriated with vine leaves. The monument is pierced by an aperture neither broad nor high, just large enough for a lean man to crawl through if he felt so inclined, as many did at one time—the edges of the opening are worn away by the countless pilgrims who, in days of yore, thus gratified their devotion. Strange as they seem to us now, practices of this kind were common enough in the Middle Age: when in the eleven hundreds the bodies of the saints were 'elevated' from the crypts in which they had hitherto lain to the temples which about this time were raised above them, and there laid up in gilded shrines, the empty tombs in which they had so long reposed still continued to be the objects of popular devotion. Sometimes the coffin was left open, in order that the saint's clients might stretch their own limbs in the place where his body had lain, sometimes an opening was made in the side of the tomb large enough for a man to peer through, or through which he might even thrust his head. Sometimes it was larger still, and women with sickly children would then place them for a moment within, and pray that God, through His servant's merits, would make the weakling strong. They as firmly believed in the virtue of these sticks and stones as the men of JudÆa believed in the virtue of the cloths and handkerchiefs which the Apostles had touched, or of 'the shadow of Peter passing by.'

Of course the present upper church is not the church which the canons of Anderlecht built with Guy's treasure. That was pulled down in 1460, as the Anderlecht archives bear witness. The present structure was commenced then, and not completed until well into the fifteen hundreds. We shall have something to say about it presently.

Nivelles

A little further afield, in the ancient town of Nivelles, there is another and very noteworthy specimen of Romanesque architecture. Nivelles was in former days a far more important place than it is now. It gradually grew up beneath the shelter of the great abbey which, as we have seen, Saint Ita and Saint Gertrude had founded in 625; and if so far as concerns its material welfare it was inferior to the great cities of Brabant, it excelled them all in the dignity of its social standing, for the little town was an ecclesiastical fief held directly from the Emperor27 by an abbess who bore the illustrious title of Lady Princess. To this exalted office no mere plebeian could aspire, nor patrician either for the matter of that, unless she had the right to a scutcheon with at least sixteen quarterings. The abbess lived in almost royal state in a palace adjoining her minster, and the white-robed canons and the Augustinian nuns, who formed the chapter of Nivelles, and dwelt, the former in a cloister hard by the church, the latter, apart in the town, were submitted alike in spiritual and in temporal things to her jurisdiction. Even the lay aristocracy shone with an additional lustre reflected from her magnificence. What rights and privileges they enjoyed above their fellow-citizens were theirs not in virtue of noble birth, but as members of the household of Saint Gertrude. Their fathers were serfs on the abbey domain who had risen to positions of trust, they were men who had bartered their liberty for a servitude freer than freedom itself, had entered a great monastic family and become participators in its immunities, and these their descendants continued to enjoy for years after the days of bondage had ceased. The Hommes de Sainte Gertrude like the Hommes de Saint Pierre owed their title to distinction to the servile condition of their ancestors.

Though the rulers of Brabant had for years past encroached on her privileges whenever they had an opportunity of doing so, the abbess was still a grande dame, with ample means to support her high position when the end came in 1793, but the power which she then wielded, though still considerable, was only the shadow of what it had been in the palmy days when she was not only in name but in fact 'the Lady Princess of Nivelles.'

Nivelles never seems to have attained to anything like commercial pre-eminence. In the days when the fabrication of woollen goods was the staple industry of the Netherlands, her manufacturers perhaps did as well as their fellows in other small towns of like standing, but certainly no better. Later on, when the cloth monopoly was lost and men turned their attention to linen, she did indeed make some reputation for the excellence of her cambric, but she lost it after the riots of 1647, when her weavers migrated in a body to Cambrai and Valenciennes. Henceforth, until its suppression, the custom of the household of Saint Gertrude was the mainstay of her prosperity, and when that source was cut off by the French revolutionists in 1793, she very soon became what she is now, a little market town with a population of some ten or eleven thousand souls.

Nivelles is situated partly on the side of a hill and partly on the fringe of an emerald valley made fertile by the river Senne. Here there are snug homesteads nestling amid orchards and surrounded by well-tilled fields, and rich pasture-lands enclosed with hedges thick and high. There are woods too on the rising ground beyond, and here and there a windmill or the steeple of some village church. The landscape is one most pleasant to behold, and if only the fields were less carefully tilled and the cottages and farm buildings were not so numerous nor so well cared for, it might easily be mistaken for an English scene in one of the home counties.

The little town itself is tranquil, dreamy, clean. In its narrow, winding streets there are some curious old houses with high-pitched roofs and crow-stepped gables, and here and there are some curious old buildings with mullioned windows and Gothic doorways, which one is quite sure, if they are not now the homes of nuns, were at one time, and of course there is a sprinkling of those clean, comfortable-looking, substantial dwellings which are always to be met with in quiet nooks and corners in the country towns of Belgium. Sometimes they have courtyards in front, separated from the street by cunningly wrought iron railings and paved with cobble-stones, on which stand palms in tubs, or bay trees fashioned like umbrellas. Sometimes stretching out behind there is a trimly-kept walled garden of which the passer-by occasionally obtains a refreshing glimpse through some half-open door. They were built for the most part about a hundred and fifty years ago, and are the homes of local professional men or the winter abodes of the neighbouring country gentry, who, reckoning their incomes by hundreds, rather than thousands, are rich enough not only to vegetate comfortably and in a manner befitting their station, but to give alms with no stinted hand, and withal and always to keep very respectable balances at their bankers.

The most interesting feature of the town of Nivelles is, of course, the old Minster, with the exception, perhaps, of Tournai Cathedral, the finest Romanesque church in Belgium. It is a noble pile three hundred and twenty feet long, with three towers at the west end, single nave-aisles, strongly-marked transepts, and an unusually long rectangular choir built over a crypt. Within, however, it is disappointing, for the interior was so completely transformed in the course of the seventeen hundreds that no vestige of the original work was left visible. Efforts are now being made to repair the mischief. The beautiful crypt, which had been completely filled up with earth and rubble, has been excavated and restored, the walls of the choir and transepts have been stripped of the bastard Renaissance ornament with which they were disfigured, the bays which had been bricked up have been opened, a timber roof has been substituted for the plaster ceiling, and it is proposed, as soon as funds are forthcoming, to completely restore the whole church.

The restoration, it is pleasing to note, is being carefully and conscientiously carried out, but though every available fragment is being utilised, so much of the old work has disappeared that, alas, there is no hope of adequately repairing the havoc wrought by the ill-judged generosity of the canons of Nivelles in 1754.

En revanche, save for 'the golden stain of time' and the great tower, a child of the fourteen hundreds, without, the Church of Nivelles remains to-day what it was when Pope Leo consecrated it in 1047 in the presence of his imperial nephew. Not the only association this of Saint Gertrude's Abbey with Leo IX. Its bells, so runs the tale, were solemnly tolled by invisible hands when on the night of the 19th of April 1054 the soul of the great reformer passed out of the world. Whatever may be thought of this beautiful legend, it at least bears witness to Leo's popularity.

So glorious is the exterior of this grand old building, that did the journey from Brussels to Nivelles take as many hours as it does minutes, the sight of it would be ample compensation, and, too, there are cloisters as old as the church itself, in style pure Romanesque, so vast that forest trees flourish in the garth, without making it appear crowded. The south, the east and the west sides have suffered considerably from over-restoration, but the north colonnade is still intact, and built over it is all that remains of the ancient monastery. We have here one of those silent, old-world nooks which are still redolent of the incense of the Middle Age.

The Church of Nivelles is not only interesting on account of its architecture: Pepin of Landen is buried here in the centre of the nave, and beside him his wife, Saint Idenberge, and their daughter Begga, whom the Beguines regard as their patron saint. Here, too, are the mortal remains of another of Pepin's daughters, Saint Gertrude, foundress of the abbey. They are treasured in a shrine of copper gilt, adorned with sculpture and bas-relief, and encrusted with precious stones, a veritable triumph of the goldsmith's craft, designed by Jaquemon, monk of Anchin, and wrought by another Jaquemon, a townsman of Nivelles, with the assistance of one Nicolon, who seems to have been a citizen of Douai. The names of these men are meet to be had in perpetual remembrance.

For the moment this marvellous piece of metal-work is laid up in the sacristy. Presently, when the restoration of the chancel is completed, it will be restored to its former position above the high altar.

Of the remaining fragments of Romanesque architecture in the immediate neighbourhood of Brussels, most remarkable, perhaps, is the great square tower of the Church of Saint Jacques at Louvain, which probably dates from the beginning of the eleven hundreds. Within are some curious cylindrical columns, adorned with floriated capitals of good design and workmanship. The Abbey Church of Parc, hard by the same city, was commenced in 1225, perhaps earlier, but not completed till 1297. This building exists to-day, but it has been so frequently altered by successive abbots that no trace of the original Romanesque work is visible, save a little round-headed doorway alongside the main entrance and some narrow slits of windows in the chancel.

For the rest, in the villages and hamlets, which are so thickly sown in the country round Brussels, there are not a few churches or portions of churches which date from the period we have just been considering. It is impossible, however, within the limits of this handbook to give even a list of them. Those who are interested in this matter will do well to consult Mr. Weale's Belgium. Here will be found descriptions, with numerous historical notes, of the village churches in the neighbourhood of the chief towns of the kingdom and along the main lines. It was published nearly fifty years ago, and of course since then many archÆological discoveries have been made, and, alas, much ancient work has disappeared, but no other handbook with which we are acquainted contains in so small a compass such a vast mass of generally reliable information concerning the architecture and the art of the Low Countries.

Gothic architecture seems to have been first introduced into the Netherlands from France by way of Tournai. The stately choir, second to none in Europe, which that great church-builder, Bishop Walter de Marvis, added to his cathedral there during the second quarter of the twelve hundreds, was probably the first purely Gothic structure erected in Belgium. It is altogether French in plan and in method of construction, and it may well have been designed by a mason of the Ile de France. Men's minds were at once captivated by its beauty, and the new style spread rapidly throughout the land.

It could hardly have been otherwise: Tournai was not only the religious capital of Flanders, it was also the artistic capital of a very considerable portion of the Low Country; here was established a school of architects and sculptors, which at this time was among the most famous of the North; when the architects of Tournai adopted the new style it was bound to make headway. Flanders, Holland, Zeeland, without quarries of their own, and without native masons, were constrained to bring from Tournai, the nearest point where stone was to be had, alike their building material and their builders. These men had drawn their inspiration from beyond the Rhine, and perhaps, too, from Normandy, and had already attained in their craft a very high order of excellence. When fascinated, then, by the beauty of Bishop Walter's choir, they determined to follow the new French fashion; they showed themselves no servile imitators, but modified their old plans and their old schemes of ornament in such a manner as to suit the needs of the new methods of construction: thus they gradually evolved a distinct style of their own, and the flat apse, the octagonal towers, the round turrets, adorned with pilasters with capitals delicately carved on either side of the western gable, the high, narrow lancet windows, without mullions or tracery—all distinctive features of Tournai work, are to be met with over and over again, not only in Hainault and in Flanders, but even in Picardy and in Holland.

Less marked was the influence of the Tournai school on the architecture of Brabant. Brabant had quarries of her own, and builders, inferior, indeed, to the builders of Tournai, but for all that well skilled in their craft; and thus what Tournai was doing for the rest of Belgium Brabant was able to do for herself. Though at first her architects seem to have taken as their models the buildings which their rivals of Tournai were constructing in Hainault, in Holland, and in Flanders, even their earliest Gothic work is in no way lacking in originality. Witness, for example, the choir of the Collegiate Church of Saint Gudule at Brussels, one of their first efforts. As time progressed the distinctive features became more and more pronounced, and presently a style was developed more original and also more beautiful than anything produced at the same time by the Tournai school. Indeed, the Gothic architecture of Brabant of the fourteen, fifteen and sixteen hundreds, if it be equalled, is certainly not surpassed by the Gothic architecture of those centuries in any other land. So far as concerns civic buildings, Brabant certainly holds the palm. Neither France nor Germany nor England can show anything which can be compared, for example, to the Town Hall of Brussels or the Town Hall of Louvain, or even with the Gothic portion of the Town Hall of Ghent, which was designed by Brabant architects.

So great was the fame of the architects of Brabant from the commencement of the fourteen hundreds that their services were in request all over the Netherlands, and later on, in the days of the Emperor Charles V., in Germany, in France, and even in far-off Spain; and, strangely enough, some of their latest efforts are as nobly conceived and as carefully executed as in the days when their art was at its zenith.

Nothing could well be finer than the Parish Church of Saint Jacques at Antwerp, which was commenced in 1491 and not completed till 1694, the work having been discontinued from lack of funds in 1530, and not renewed, owing to the religious troubles, until 1602. This grand old building, which was designed for a simple parish church, has all the characteristic features of a great cathedral—triforium, clerestory, double aisles, ambulatory chevet, transepts, and a host of side chapels. The plans were drawn up by Herman De Waghemakere, a burgher of Antwerp, and an architect famous throughout the Low Countries, who not only designed many noble buildings, but begot two sons, Herman and Dominic, to whom he transmitted his talent, and whom he trained to his own calling. When he died, early in the fifteen hundreds, they were able to worthily continue the work at Saint Jacques' which the old man had so successfully commenced, until 1530.

At this time no portion of the church was completed, and the choir was not even begun. When, some seventy years afterwards, building operations were again resumed, the original plans were strictly adhered to, and it is worthy of note that the more recent work is as carefully and skilfully executed as that which was carried out under the eyes of old Herman himself.

This church is rich in stained glass of the fourteen, fifteen and sixteen hundreds, which, considering the period, is of a very high order. If the designs of some of the windows be faulty, the scheme of colour is in each case perfect. It has retained more of its old furniture—tapestry, metal-work, wood-carving and the like, than most churches in Belgium. It contains some good pictures—notably, in the Lady Chapel, an altar-piece by Rubens, which was placed here by his widow, and, in a vault beneath it, all that remains of 'this prince of painters and of gentlemen.'

In the sublime tower of Saint Rombold's at Mechlin we have another late creation, though not so late as the Church of Saint Jacques at Antwerp. The foundation stone was laid on the 1st of May 1452, and they seem to have worked at it intermittently until 1583, when the stones destined to complete it were carried off to Holland by the Prince of Orange, and employed by him to build the town of Willemstad. Even in its unfinished state it is a colossal building. At its base it is fifty-three feet wide without counting the buttresses, which advance on each side to a distance of nearly fifteen feet. Its actual height is over 320 feet, but if the spire had been added, of which the original plans are still in existence, it would have risen to the prodigious height of 544 feet, and would thus have been the loftiest steeple in Europe. This mighty tower was designed by Jan Kelderman, master-mason, of Louvain, not many months, perhaps not many weeks, before his death in 1445; at which time he was in all probability between seventy and eighty years of age. The foundation stone was laid under the direction of his son Andrew, and for over a hundred years one or other of his descendants busied themselves with carrying out the old man's designs.

A remarkable family, the Keldermans: architects, sculptors, painters, almost all of them, during many generations. The first of whom we have any record was Jan van Marsdale, sculptor, of Brussels, who, for some reason of which we are ignorant, adopted the family name by which his descendants are generally known. He was probably born some time during the second quarter of the thirteen hundreds, and died at Brussels not earlier than 1415. In his day he was an artist of renown, but nothing which can be certainly attributed to him has come down to us. We know that he was the author of the richly-sculptured tomb of FranÇois van Halen, which was placed in the first apsidal chapel on the south side of Saint Rombold's at Mechlin in 1415, and demolished in 1810.—Of this marvellous work of art there exists in Le ThÉÂtre SacrÉ du Brabant an engraving—and we know, too, that he was the father of the Jan Kelderman who designed Saint Rombold's tower. This man was a burgher of Louvain, and city architect there from the 7th of October 1439 till his death in 1445. He directed the building of the Council Chamber in the HÔtel de Ville, which had been designed by his predecessor, Plyssis van Vorst, and which still exists. Of his three sons, Rombold, the eldest, was a painter of glass, and one at least of his works has come down to us: a beautiful window in the old church at Lierre, the first on the north side—representing Godefroid Vilain XIV. and his wife, Elizabeth d'Immersule, donors, along with their patrons, Saint Peter and the poor man of Assisi. This window was painted in 1474, and the sum which the artist received for it was forty-two golden florins. Rombold was born in the year 1420. He married before 1447 Catherine van Voshem, whose sister Elizabeth was the wife of the famous painter, Dierick Boudts, and inhabited his own house in the Rue de Diest at Louvain, where he died on the 17th of March 1489. Matthew, Jan's second son, followed his father's trade, and he also busied himself with painting and sculpture: the indentures of an apprentice whom he undertook to instruct, in three years, in the art of painting are still in existence, and we know, too, that some of the carved beams in the Town Hall at Louvain are his work. For the rest, he in due course took to himself a wife, who presently bore him a son, whom he named Hendrick

Saint Rombold's Cathedral

Saint Rombold's Cathedral

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and trained to his own calling. No record of any work that he executed has as yet been found, but he seems to have done well in his profession, for in 1505 he purchased a house in the Cattle Market at Mechlin, hard by the Chapel of Saint Eloi, and here in 1521 he received Albert DÜrer, who in his journal notes that at Mechlin he was the guest of 'Maister Heindrich.'

Andrew, the youngest son of old Jan Kelderman, was a man more famous than either of his brethren. He was city architect of Mechlin, and supervised the carrying out of his father's design of Saint Rombold's tower for thirty years; and when he died, in 1485 or thereabout, it had risen as high as the bell-chamber. He was the author of divers beautiful rood-screens, amongst them that in the church at Bergen-op-Zoom, which he wrought in 1471 with the aid of his son Anthony, who, it will be interesting to note, dwelt in a house at Mechlin which is still standing—No. 13 Aux Tuileries.

This man, succeeding his father, directed the building of Saint Rombold's tower until he in his turn died, on the 15th of October 1512. He was the author of two famous buildings—the Town Hall of Middelburg, in the island of Walcheren, and, in his native city, the Church of Notre-Dame au-delÀ de la Dyle, and the father of two sons who were not unworthy of the family name, and each of whom set their mark on the family tower. The younger was aptly enough called after the saint with whom the Keldermans had been so long associated; honours were presently his, and wealth and a wide reputation, if he were not the greatest of his race, at least he was the most successful, of Rombold Kelderman II. we shall have much to say later on; the elder was named, after his father, Anthony, and though he died young, he lived long enough, but only just long enough, to design a monument which still

Notre-Dame Au-delÀ De La Dyle.

NOTRE-DAME AU-DELÀ DE LA DYLE.

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proclaims his genius—the old Broodhuis at Brussels, now called La Maison du Roi. Some three days before the foundation stone was laid young Anthony was gathered to his fathers (December 5, 1515), and the guerdon which he would have received was paid into the hands of his widow.

La Maison du Roi.

LA MAISON DU ROI.

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There were other members of this talented family of whom the record of some of their labours has come down to us. Notably Matthew, a younger son of Andrew Kelderman, who worked at Antwerp Cathedral under Herman De Waghemakere from 1487 to 1498; his son, also Matthew, who migrated to Louvain, was named city mason there and directed the building operations of the Church of Saint Peter from 1503 to 1527; and Laurence, who plied his trade, for the most part in Brussels, helped to build the Maison du Roi, and was perhaps a nephew, perhaps a son, of the great architect who planned it. The city records from which these bald facts have been culled in comparatively recent years by those who have or have had the care of them, divulge something of the nature of an anecdote concerning Laurence Kelderman. We learn from certain entries in the town accounts of Brussels that in the year 1513 he was mulcted 30 florins for wounding one of the amman's serjeants, and the same document informs us too how it came about.

Kelderman and two other famous masons—Hendrick van Pede, the author of the Town Hall of Oudenaarde, and Ludwig van Beughem, who later on built for Marguerite of Austria the famous Church of Brow in Bresse—were at this time at work, most fortunately for them as it afterwards turned out, on the beautiful palace which the Count of Nassau was erecting for himself in Brussels with that gold, as all men believed, which he had wrung from the vanquished burghers of Bruges in 1490, and every evening it was their wont, when their work was done, to drink together at the Sign of the Star, a tavern of note in the Great Market, which seems to have been at this time much frequented by men of their craft. To this house of entertainment, then, on the 13th of February, at their accustomed hour they repaired, and each man having bade the drawer bring the liquor he liked best, they proceeded to pledge one another in bumpers, but their potations that night were not destined to be of long duration. Perhaps there was strife in the cups of some of their boon companions, certain it is that one of them drew his knife, and, as luck would have it, at the same moment the amman's serjeant walked in, who, fearing mischief or feigning to do so, forthwith disarmed the fellow; whereat our masons, enraged at this insult to a free citizen, hurled themselves on the officer of justice, wrenched away his sword, and in so doing inflicted on him a flesh wound. The offence, according to the strict code of Brussels, was no light one, and serious consequences would have undoubtedly followed had it not been for the Count of Nassau, who, loth to lose the services of such capable workmen, exerted his influence in their behalf, and thus they were quit with a fine. Later on we find the names of two of the delinquents again associated, but in very different fashion. When it was decided in 1532 to add to the Church of Saint Gudila a new Sacrament chapel, the MaÎtres de la Fabrique commissioned three architects to prepare plans for the proposed structure, and two of them were our friends of the tavern brawl, Hendrick van Pede and Ludwig van Beughem. Peter van Wyenhoven was the third competitor, his designs were adjudged the best, and he it was who constructed the actual building. Bernard van Orley, the famous painter, made the fair copy of his plans for him on two large sheets of parchment, and received for so doing, it will be interesting to note, £2, 10s. 9d., and the foundation stone was laid on the 8th of February 1535.

Eglise Sainte-Gudule Pilastre SculptÉ

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The plan of this chapel is exceedingly simple. It consists of a nave of four bays with a flat apse pierced by a vast window enriched with flamboyant tracery. The building is also lighted by five other windows of similar design and like dimensions, of which four are set in the north wall, and one in the last bay of the south wall. They are all of them filled with beautiful stained glass, which is as old as the chapel itself, and the picture which glows in one of them—the second on the north side—was designed and painted by Bernard van Orley. The shafts, or piers, or pilasters—it is difficult to know exactly what to call them—from which spring the numerous prismatic ribs of a rich and intricate vault, are strangely and elaborately fashioned. Below they are bold, octagonal columns, or rather half-columns. Higher up they break out into a mass of tabernacle work in the form of two canopies, which shelter saints, and when at last they emerge from behind the pinnacles and crockets, we find that they have ceased to be columns and are now slender reeded shafts, which presently spread out like palm leaves and become the ribs of the groining.

Though Van Pede's designs were not accepted, the Sainte Chapelle des Miracles is none the less a perpetual memorial of his genius: the cunningly wrought sculpture which it contains is almost all of it his handiwork. The honoured name of Kelderman too is linked with this building, but that association is now only a memory: the high altar which Peter Kelderman reared has long since been cast down.

But to return to Peter's more famous kinsman, old Anthony Kelderman's second son, Jonkhere Rombold van Marsdale, for thus the honest mason styled himself after Charles V. had ennobled him. Maybe he thought the ancient family name sounded more aristocratic than the name which his great-grandfather had adopted.

Though Rombold was undoubtedly an architect and artist of a very high order, and though he remained to the end of his career a man of energy and enterprise, and at last died in harness, full of years and honours, strangely enough his memory is not kept alive by any monument which he alone can be certainly said to have designed and carried to completion. In his early days he was largely engaged in completing the work of other men, or in adding to, or embellishing, or restoring buildings which already existed. Later on he entered into partnership with Dominic De Waghemakere, and henceforth most of his designs were not the outcome of his unaided genius. Together they planned many glorious structures. Some never got beyond paper, others were commenced and left unfinished, for they lived in troublous times; only a few were brought to completion, and of these but one remains, the Steen of Antwerp, spoilt by restoration.

Rombold Kelderman had honours, riches, renown. His career from this point of view was certainly a most successful one, but an untoward fortune seems to have dogged his steps in the matter of his craft, and this was so not only with his own creations but also with the buildings which he reared and the plans which he made conjointly with Dominic De Waghemakere.

Thus, for example, he was commissioned by Charles V. to transform the unfinished Cloth Hall of Mechlin into a place of assembly for the Grand Council of Brabant. He drew out plans; they were all that could be desired—the original drawings are preserved amongst the city rolls; somewhere about the year 1529 the foundation stone was laid, and at first the work was pushed on bravely, but before it was half finished came the troubles of Philip's reign and it had to be abandoned, but Rombold grieved not at it, he had long since paid Nature's debt.

Otherwise, and yet more deplorable, was the disaster which baulked the realisation of Kelderman and De Waghemakere's magnificent scheme for the reconstruction of the choir of Antwerp Cathedral.

During the two centuries which had elapsed since the commencement of this great church the ground around it had gradually risen by reason of numerous interments to a very considerable distance above the pavement; hence the church was always cold and damp, and in wet weather not unfrequently flooded. To remedy this, it was decided early in the fifteen hundreds, to erect a new choir with a crypt beneath it in such a manner that the pavement of the upper building should be on a considerably higher level than the ground outside. Kelderman and De Waghemakere prepared the plans, and in due course the Emperor himself laid the foundation stone. For nearly ten years they worked at the new structure, and then came the catastrophe which sooner or later almost always frustrated Kelderman's most strenuous endeavours: a fire broke out which wrought such havoc on the main body of the cathedral that the repairs absorbed alike the money and the material which had gradually been amassed for the building of the new choir. Thus was the ambitious scheme of these two great architects nipped, so to speak, in the bud, for ambitious scheme it undoubtedly was: if it had been carried out Antwerp would have possessed a cathedral vaster and, if contemporary witnesses are to be trusted, more beautiful than any other city in Christendom. Of this we have no means of judging, for though the plans were carefully treasured among the city rolls for some two hundred years, at last they mysteriously disappeared. There was reason to believe they had been stolen, and though every effort was made to trace them, from that day to this they have never been found; but of the vast proportions of the proposed edifice there can be no manner of doubt, the foundations still exist, and here and there they are visible. Moreover, a few years ago, there was discovered, hidden away in the archive chamber, a contemporary sketch of the ground plan, from which it appears that Kelderman's choir would have occupied a

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surface just twice as large as that covered by the actual choir including the ambulatory and the chevet. Now Antwerp Cathedral in its present state is not one of mean dimensions: it is somewhat longer than Westminster Abbey, without the lady chapel, and exceeds it in breadth at the transepts by over ten feet and at the nave by no less than a hundred.

Kelderman and his partner were happier, or perhaps it would be more apt to say not quite so unfortunate in their undertakings at Ghent. Here their endeavours were at least crowned with some measure of success. Early in the year 1518 the city fathers of Ghent commissioned our masons to erect for them a new Town Hall, as we learn from the contract passed between them on that occasion. The original deed is still in existence; it is very curious and interesting, and throws much light on the customs and methods of the builders of the day. In it Rombold and Dominic bind themselves to inspect the work three times a year—in April, in August, and somewhere about the Feast of Saint Bavo, at which last visit they promised to bring with them designs for sculpture, ironwork and so forth, to be executed by the workmen in winter time, when building operations were invariably suspended, and they also undertook to come to Ghent at any time throughout the year when their presence was deemed necessary, provided their travelling expenses were paid and they were given four, or at least three, weeks' notice. Moreover, the magistrates reserved to themselves the right to name other architects in place of De Waghemakere and Kelderman, in the event of their not giving satisfaction. They had no occasion to exercise it; the plans were perfect, Rombold and his partner performed their duties with the greatest assiduity, and the burghers began to flatter themselves that soon Ghent would be endowed with the grandest Town Hall in the Netherlands. Their expectations were not realised—the building progressed slowly, perhaps on account of the threatening state of the political atmosphere. On the 15th of December 1531 Rombold Kelderman died, and it was not yet half finished. Albeit, they did not lose heart; Dominic, in virtue of a clause in the agreement, named Laurence Kelderman to succeed his uncle; for four years longer the work dragged on and then at last it came to a standstill. Who could think of building operations amid the hubbub and whirl of rebellion? Or afterwards, when the riot was quelled, whilst Alva was begging for the destruction of the town, or whilst the city fathers with ropes round their necks were humbly sueing for pardon? It was not till the close of the century that the burghers were once more able to turn their attention to their unfinished Town Hall. Dominic had long since joined his partner on the other side of the stream, the art in which these men had so excelled was now almost dead, Ghent was beginning to be captivated by the spurious charms of the Renaissance, and in completing her Town Hall she followed the bent of her fancy. The new architects, however, left the work of their predecessors intact, and we have this much too to be thankful for: the original plans still exist. By a clause of the agreement of 1518 it was provided that in the event of the decease of both the architects before the completion of the Town Hall the plans should be restored by their heirs to the city magistrates; this clause was faithfully carried out, and the plans, along with the contracts, are still preserved among the city archives of Ghent.

However much we may regret the setting aside of the plans of Kelderman and De Waghemakere, it cannot be denied that they deserved the fate which overtook their labours, for they themselves had shown scant respect to the memory of their predecessor, John Stassins, an architect of no mean order, who, as early as 1481, had made plans for the new Town Hall, plans which were accepted by the city fathers, and which, until his death in 1517, he had done his utmost to realise. So much labour lost, Kelderman and De Waghemakere discarded them and cast down his unfinished building; but in Ghent John Stassins has his memorial: he it was who planned and reared Saint Bavo's stately tower, not the least beautiful of the many beautiful towers which still adorn the cities and the villages of the Low Country.

The mention of the tower of Saint Bavo's naturally suggests the church itself. Here we have perhaps the most beautiful of all the Belgian cathedrals, certainly the most interesting. Founded in the course of the nine hundreds, and not completed till the latter half of the seventeenth century, this time-honoured building contains specimens of almost every period of architecture. The crypt, or at all events a portion of it, is part of the original structure; it is divided into four naves and is the largest crypt in Belgium. Here lie the ashes of Hubert van Eyck and those of his sister Marguerite. The choir, of blue Tournai stone, severe, ample, stately, is of course Tournai work of the closing years of the twelve hundreds, all of it save the vault, which dates from four centuries later, and is so perfect an imitation of primary Gothic work that did we not know that the choir of Saint Bavo's, like so many early churches in Belgium, was originally covered with a wagon-head roof of timber, and were it not for the cathedral records which remove all doubt as to the period of its construction, it would certainly be assigned at latest to the opening years of the thirteen hundreds. For the rest, the fifteen ambulatory chapels are of the thirteen and of the fourteen hundreds; the tower, as we have seen, dates from the closing years of the latter period; and the nave and transepts, the aisles and adjoining side chapels were built in the middle of the fifteen hundreds.

That the western half of Ghent Cathedral was the work of a Brabant architect, is more than likely, for though there is no documentary evidence to show who was its author, it has all the characteristic features of the Brabant style. The position and character of the tower—lofty, massive, bold, proudly standing at the head of the church, with its lower stage as wide and as high as the nave and incorporated with it; the peculiar treatment of the triforium—not an arcade, but a simple gallery of sculptured stone; the triangular oculi in the gables of the transepts, and the vast windows, divided by great Y-shaped mullions, which light them, these and a host of other things too numerous to mention proclaim with no uncertain voice what manner of man made it.

In every age and in every land it has been the aim of Gothic masons to make their buildings, and especially their religious buildings, the incarnation of this mandate—Sursum corda. Almost always they succeeded, but often, and this is notably the case in England, their most successful efforts are cramped and narrow, or at all events from their great height seem so. The Gothic architects of Brabant set themselves a harder task, which, in spite of its difficulty, they not infrequently accomplished. Their churches should, indeed, sing Sursum corda as loudly as the rest, but they should add to it no less loudly this other refrain—In loco spatioso. The builder of the cathedral at Ghent in this respect triumphed magnificently: Saint Bavo soars like an archangel, and it would be hard to find a church which more emphatically preaches breadth. Not only is the building in reality broad and high, it looks so; nay, it has the appearance of being broader and higher than it actually is. In order to invest it with a large atmosphere the architect who designed it not only gave breadth to his ground plan but made all his openings broad, taking care that those most in evidence should be broader in proportion than the rest. Thus the surface covered by the nave and aisles is almost a perfect square. Indeed, the distance from north to south is slightly greater than that from east to west. Of this vast space the central avenue embraces, roughly speaking, two-fifths, the adjacent avenues each about one-fifth, and each of the outer avenues one-tenth. In other words, the nave is twice as broad as the inner aisles, and these bear much the same proportion to the outer aisles. Also, in order to give them greater breadth, he economised his openings, and in the case of windows reduced the intervening masonry to a minimum. Thus the nave, notwithstanding its great length, has only four bays—the object of this was no doubt to give breadth to the cross vistas—and consequently in its clerestory there are but eight windows, four on each side, and the same number in the walls of the outer aisles. In spite of the vast span of the arches, the several arcades have by no means a stunted appearance. They are too lofty for that, and also in the case of the central avenue the rich moulding which adorns them springs from the bases of piers without capitals, and thus we have a series of unbroken lines ascending from plinth to apex, which marvellously increases their height.

Arcades are often thus treated in tertiary Brabant work, and even too sometimes in buildings of the second period. Not that the architects who designed them despised capitals, or were ignorant of their Æsthetic value, but they knew where they could be suppressed with advantage and where they could be added with effect. None of their buildings are wholly devoid of them, and at Saint Bavo's they are numerous and highly developed, a very noteworthy feature in the scheme of ornament: alike in transept, nave and aisles, the ribs of the vault spring from them. They are all of like fashion: bell-shaped, considerably larger above than below, and adorned, but not over adorned, by closely clinging conventional leaves. They crown cylindrical columns, sometimes single, sometimes in groups of three, five, or more, which, though they are in reality of no mean girth, by reason of their great height and of the vast bulk of the piers to which they are in each case attached, seem slender, but not so slender as to suggest weakness. One feels quite sure that each stately shaft can easily carry the burthen which rests on its beautiful head.

As we have already remarked, there is no direct evidence to show who made the plans of the western half of Saint Bavo's, or at all events, of the nave, but the following facts are significant. It is undoubtedly the noblest ecclesiastical structure which Brabant produced in the first half of the fifteen hundreds; of the Brabant architects of this period the greatest was Dominic De Waghemakere, and he was constantly at Ghent during the early days of its construction busy with the new Town Hall. We suspect, then, with Monsieur Louis Cloquet, that Dominic at least had his say in the matter.28

Glorious, however, as these late Gothic buildings are—and there are others in Brabant no less beautiful, and how many, perhaps, still lovelier which exist only on parchment, never realised, or by the hands of iconoclasts cast down?—they are but the aftermath, the last and the loveliest flowers of a tree which when it produced them, was already almost dead. By a supreme and mighty effort it had forced the little life that was in it into one favoured branch, which thus clothed with fairest blossoms and with the freshness of their beauty still upon it, withered away like the rest. If we would contemplate the tree in its vigour we must go back to the fourteen hundreds, and more especially to the days of Philippe l'AsseurÉ—to the long peace of thirty years which followed the Treaty of Arras (September 21, 1435). Then it was that Gothic art in Belgium reached the zenith of its magnificence, then it was that she first became unrivalled in the abundance and in the quality of her fruit, that each day saw some great work completed or the foundations of some grand building laid. Many of these monuments have perished, but such of them as remain, though they have suffered much at the hands of enemies and of friends, bear witness alike to the genius of the artists who created them and to the public spirit and the devotion of the burghers and craftsmen who provided the funds with which they were built, and who, hard-headed, close-fisted, cautious men, as many of them were, counted it no loss to have invested so much of their capital in these unremunerative securities. In those days Brabant was rich and free, and possessed of the faith which removes mountains.

The years which immediately preceded the advent of the house of Burgundy (1384) had been throughout the length and breadth of the Netherlands evil. War everywhere and of every description, not only with alien foes, but province against province, city against city, class against class; the staple industry gone or fast going, and half the population swept away by famine and pestilence. Flanders, with its fields untilled and its dykes unmended, had become what it was a thousand years before—morass and jungle, the home of wolves which preyed on the meagre flocks that remained, and of vast herds of stag and boar which ravaged the scanty patches of grain which here and there the dwindled peasantry had made shift to raise; and though other provinces had suffered less, there was dearth and wretchedness everywhere. Yet of these same stricken fields some fifty years later Philippe de Commines was able to say, 'Ils se pouvoient mieulx dire terre de promission que nulle aultres seigneuries qui fussent sur la terre.' The geographical position of the land, the energy and enterprise of its people, the advantages resultant from the union of all the provinces under one prince, and, above all, the blessing of peace; therein lies the explanation.

In no quarter was the recovery more rapid, nowhere was the meed of prosperity so great as in the duchy of Brabant. Not only had Brabant suffered less than the other provinces, but its soil was naturally more fertile, and the burghers of the great towns, now that their long-standing strife had been settled, showed themselves more apt than their fellows in Flanders for example, in developing new industries and in adapting their methods of trade to the changing conditions of the commercial situation. Whilst the three bonnes villes of Flanders—Bruges, Ypres, and Ghent, were vainly striving to foster their dying industry to the no small detriment of their trade, by imposing exorbitant duties on foreign made goods, and at last by altogether prohibiting the importation of English cloth, the 'good towns' of Brabant found salvation in the development of new industries, notably the manufacture of linen and tapestry, or, as in the case of Antwerp and Bergen -op-Zoom, by enlarging the doors of their markets. Antwerp, indeed, found a gold mine in her free fairs open to all the world without toll or tribute, and, thanks to the liberal policy which she pursued in regard to aliens, presently succeeded in diverting to her shores the foreign merchandise which had formerly found its way to Bruges. Also, the towns of Brabant were directly or indirectly aided by the personal action of the princes of the new dynasty, who seem to have exerted their utmost endeavours to promote their welfare: Louvain was indebted to Duke John IV. for a boon not to be despised, for in planting his new university in the ancient capital, he practically gave to her a fresh lease of life; Mechlin was helped later on by that stern and gloomy Sovereign, Charles le TÉmÉraire, who made the city of Saint Rombold the seat of the national parliament; the interests of Antwerp were invariably pushed by the entire dynasty, often at the expense of Bruges; and Brussels, which for years past had been in reality, though not in name, the capital of Brabant, now that that duchy was held by a prince who was also Sovereign of each of the adjoining states, became, to all intents and purposes, the common capital of the Netherlands, the home of a prince whose revenues were larger and whose expenses were heavier than those of any other prince of his day, whose wont it was to astonish the world by the splendour of his feasts and pageants—advertisements, costly if you will, but, from the credit they gave him, well worth the money he paid for them, of a prince whose very economies—for if Philip knew how to spend, he knew too how to count and how to save—were a source of wealth to his subjects: the vast sums which he annually sank in building operations, or invested in precious stones and precious stuffs, in goldsmiths' ware, in sculpture, in pictures—so many gilt-edged securities which, if need be, could be turned into cash, and, if he had luck, at a profit—represented the sum of his savings, and much of it found its way into the pockets of Brussels tradesmen.

Brussels, then, at this time had a market in her midst for the product of her newly-developed industries: linen, tapestry, plate, and liquor of various kinds—ale, nut brown, pale, and black, 'swart-bier,' seemingly a sort of archaic stout, and wine from her own vineyards, some of it, amongst others, from that famous vineyard of which a portion of the site is now occupied by the Jardin Botanique. Hers was the profitable task of providing for the costly needs and costlier follies of the richest Court in Europe, of a Court of which not a few of its members less distinguished for length of pedigree than length of purse, sought, after the manner of nouveaux riches, to blind men's eyes to the newness of their shields by the glamour of their new wealth; for Philip would have none but capable officers, and in naming them did not restrict his choice to one class. He knew how to choose, and chose where he saw ability: there were great nobles at his council board, and beside them sat men of humble origin; and these were, amongst the most highly placed, the wealthiest and the most trusted, men like Chancellor Rolin, the son of a plain citizen of Autun, or Peter Bladelin, who, from a dyer of buckram, became Controller-General of Finance. Times had changed since the days when at Bruges and elsewhere 'men with blue nails' were debarred even from the rights of citizenship.

With a prince who could afford to be lavish, and whom policy and inclination alike prompted to expenditure, and a Court made up of new men and men of ancient race, whose pride compelled them, coÛte que coÛte, to emulate these mushrooms, gold was poured out like water, and Brussels flourished amazingly. Every public event and every private happening was made the excuse for a revel, and what revels they were! 'Convis et banquets' to quote the words of Philippe de Commines, 'plus grands et plus prodigues qu'en nul aultre lieu ... baignoiries et aultres festoyements avec femmes grands et dÉsordonnez, et À pÈupeu de honte;' but Philippe adds a saving clause: 'Je parle,' he says, 'des femmes de basse condition.' And what strange, fantastic, grown-up children were those who took part in them! The decoration of the great pavilion of wood, conveyed by water from Brussels to Bruges for the wedding of Charles the Bold and Margaret of York, in 1468, had occupied during many months hundreds of artists and artisans from all parts of the Netherlands, amongst them masters of the first order. One of the features of this marvellous construction was a tower forty feet high adorned with apes and wolves and wild boars, which, by mechanical means, were made to dance and sing, and in the great hall there were a host of other quaint creations, amongst them a whale sixty feet long, which was able to move about, several elephants, a pelican, from whose beak streamed hippocrass, and a female figure wrought in gold, with its breasts spurting wine. These strange mechanical toys were much in vogue in the fourteen and fifteen hundreds, and some of them have come down to us—'the oldest citizen of Brussels, the famous "mannikin" of the Rue de l'Etuve is still doing what he did in the days of Philippe l'AsseurÉ.'

Never before in the course of its history had the city of Brussels been so prosperous. Within the circuit of its ramparts now dwelt some sixty thousand souls—more than double the population of Louvain, and nearly double that of Antwerp. If Brussels were not the richest city in the Netherlands, it was at all events the city where the evidences of wealth were the most visible, and amongst them dissipation. When men can afford to indulge the wayward humours of 'Brother Ass' they not unfrequently do so, and the men of Brussels at this time rode him with an exceedingly loose rein. They drank of the joys of life to the dregs, and some of them were nauseated: suicides were more frequent than of yore, and so were religious vocations.

But it was not only by reason of human frailty that Brussels at this time sinned: the days which had passed had unchained a devil which still continued to haunt the town, albeit those evil days were now but a memory. The wars in which so many of the inhabitants had taken an active part, and the deeds of violence which had so often accompanied the revolutions and counter-revolutions incident on the struggle for freedom in almost all the great cities, had accustomed the people to horrors, and bred in their hearts a veritable lust for blood. Hence when strife arose the sequel was often death in some shape or other, and the chief effect which these crimes produced on public opinion was to fill men's minds with a morbid and universal dread of poison and of the assassin's knife. No one knew whom he could trust, friend looked askance at friend, and sturdy burghers abroad at night turned cold as they passed dark corners. The highest in the land were commonly believed to have had recourse to these methods in order to rid themselves of foes, or of friends whose existence was a bar to the realisation of their desires, and though these rumours were often groundless, the fact that they should have been so widely credited, and that those whose fair names were sullied by them should have in consequence fallen so little in popular estimation is in itself significant, and so, too, is what Chastelain says concerning a repast of which Duke Philip once partook in the hut of a peasant. Riding alone and at night from Brussels towards Hal he had lost his way in the Forest of Soignes, and the man in whose house he took refuge believed him to be an ordinary wayfarer; the meal which was set before him was a very humble one—cheese, black bread and onions—but at least 'he ate,' old Chastelain notes, 'without fear of poison.'

Here we have one side of the picture as contemporary chroniclers have painted it. Perhaps they put in the shadows too black, and maybe the scheme of colour is too glaring. Vice makes more stir in the world than virtue because it is something abnormal—a monstrosity, which from its very nature compels attention; and because, too, it is more interesting than virtue, men talk more about it, and write more about it, and in doing so they are often apt for the sake of effect to exaggerate its dimensions. All this should be taken into account, and also, there is another side to the picture.

It was not all frivolity and bloodshed in the 'good towns' of Brabant in the days of Philippe l'AsseurÉ; the gold which was so lavishly poured out was assuredly not all squandered on the pride of the flesh, and the pride of life, and the pride of the eye. Men were by no means devoid of public spirit, nor were they unmindful of the poor; splendid as were some of their own habitations, their splendour was eclipsed by the greater glory of guild hall and market and church. Somehow or other, too, in spite of their revels, they found time for serious business: never were the towns of Brabant so ably administered or the affairs of the duchy in such capable hands. It was an age of much literary and artistic activity, and the burghers showed themselves alike collectively and, when they could afford it, individually, generous patrons of letters and of art; also the Christian religion was still a living reality for all sorts and conditions of men, and though many failed to live up to its principles there were not a few, and some of them amongst the most highly placed, who were keenly alive to the ills which afflicted society and indefatigable in their efforts to correct them, efforts which were presently crowned with no small measure of success. For strangely enough the ebullition of evil which characterised this epoch was synchronal with one of those marvellous outbursts of religious fervour which occurred periodically in the Netherlands all through the Middle Age. Perhaps it was not so strange after all, for each was the outcome in some degree of the turmoil and wretchedness which, as we have seen, formed the keynote of the preceding period. These things act differently on different natures: some under their influence become devout, others seek relief in dissipation.

No people throughout the whole course of their history have continuously shown themselves more deeply impressed by sentiments of faith and Christian piety than the inhabitants of those lands which are now embraced by the kingdoms of Belgium and Holland.

We have seen how eagerly in the early days the nobles of Brabant and Hainault and Flanders helped on the work of Gerard of Brogne, how staunch they were later on in their support of the Cluniac movement, and to what excesses they were sometimes led by their intemperate zeal in furthering it. So, too, when Peter the Hermit preached his first crusade, nowhere did he find so many recruits as in this quarter of Europe, and in no other land did the sons of Saint Francis obtain a heartier greeting: they were received with open arms by all classes of the population; even the patrician burgher, who often warned off monks, for he dreaded their wealth and influence, opened alike his doors and his purse for the followers of 'the poor man of Assisi.'

Again, no cities in Christendom were so richly endowed with charitable institutions as the great commercial centres of the Low Countries. They were all of them served by religious, but, mark this, all of them, or nearly all of them, under municipal control. For the burgher would be master in his own house, and, to tell the truth, in spite of his faith and his good works, was something of an 'anti-clerical'—very keen to resent the interference of the clergy in his affairs, no less eager, whenever he could, to trench on their domain. He always read between the lines in interpreting the charter of his own privileges, but scrupulously adhered to the letter of the law when theirs were called in question.

Albeit, though now and again there was a sharp tussle, like that for the management of the schools, in which he proved himself the better man, as a rule his relations with the priesthood were fairly cordial: the secular clergy, cut off from their chiefs, whose Sees for the most part were in foreign lands, were too feeble to resist aggression; the great monastic houses were nearly all of them without the towns, and thus it rarely happened that their interests clashed with his; as for the Franciscan friars, in spite of their democratic tendencies and their sympathy undisguised for the toilers whom he so often oppressed, he could not afford to quarrel with them: the services which they rendered to the sick and the poor were not to be dispensed with, and also he found them a useful check on the secular clergy whose labours and whose profits they shared, and with whom, from the force of circumstances, they were naturally often at loggerheads.

This independence of spirit, this impatience of ecclesiastical control, was not peculiar to the patrician class. Outcome of the national love of liberty, it manifested itself in various ways in all classes of the urban population: the trade companies provided themselves with private chapels, and seem to have claimed the right of naming their own chaplains; a host of religious confraternities were formed, more or less free from ecclesiastical control, and, for those who were inclined to be more devout, numerous lay communities of both sexes, as we shall presently see, and, in at least two cities of Brabant—Tirlemont and LÉau—there were regularly constituted chapters of canons composed exclusively of married laymen.

The influence of these lay institutions—of these, so to speak, half-way houses between the world and the cloister, was far-reaching and profound. Their members were held in higher esteem than either the monks or the secular clergy; hand in hand with the mendicant orders they directed the current of religious thought.

Curiously enough, too, there seems to have been something in the temperament of these people which, in spite of their anti-clericalism, their phlegm, their commercial pursuits, rendered them strangely susceptible to the fascination of the interior life: in the spiritual complexion of the towns there was an undercurrent of mysticism which waxed and waned intermittently all through the Middle Age. Now it would flow so deep down and so sluggishly that it seemed almost to die away, and then it would suddenly swirl to the surface and become a rushing stream, which sometimes surged over the bounds of orthodoxy and produced the wildest extravagancies. Its normal rÔle was to do for the foolish things of the Gospel—for poverty, for purity, for meekness, what chivalry did for the pride of life and the pride of the eye, and what minstrelsy did for the pride of the flesh: surround them with a halo of romance; but it acted differently on different temperaments, and in divers times manifested itself in divers ways, according to the circumstances which called forth its energy and the various kinds of material with which it came in contact.

Thus it peopled the forests with hermits, humble, harmless, prayerful folk, who, working out their own salvation as best they could alone with nature and with God, saw visions and dreamed dreams, always marvellous, often beautiful, sometimes grotesque—if they did nothing else for their fellow-men they at least put a little poetry into their lives—and it raised up too, false prophets, or, by assuring them a following, made false prophets possible—fiery zealots, some of them, who before they deceived others had first made dupes of themselves, and some of them mere impostors with one object—pelf.

To which class Tanchelm belonged who shall say? The only contemporary account of him which has come down to us was not written by his friends. Fool or knave, in this man we have a picturesque personality, and an interesting one, too, in several respects. He lived in those days of stress and whirl when the atoms which were presently to form the great communes of Brabant were striving to come together: we first hear of him at Antwerp somewhere about the year 1113. Who he was, whence he came, what his calling, no man could tell, but the women whispered it about that the mysterious stranger was a prophet, and at last Tanchelm broke silence and publicly proclaimed in the market-place that he was indeed a prophet, and more than a prophet—the incarnation of the Paraclete. Half the population believed him. Churches were consecrated in his honour. He lived in royal state, and when he came forth he was attended by a bodyguard of armed men.

Riot and bloodshed were the outcome, and in the midst of it he fled, disguised as a monk, to Rome, where, strangely enough, he was not molested. When the storm had had time to lull he set out on the homeward journey, but at Cologne he was arrested by the Archbishop, who, less complaisant than the Pope, or perhaps better informed, set him in gaol. Somehow or other he contrived to escape to Antwerp, where he did as he had done before, like results followed; Duke Godfrey meditating his arrest, the fanatic got wind of it, and again determined on flight; but as he was on his way to the wharf, whence he would have taken shipping for England, he was stabbed by a man 'full of zeal,' as an ancient writer has it. Thus did Tanchelm end his chequered career. His fate was not unmerited, for he himself had slain Alaric, Burgrave of Antwerp, but in the eyes of his disciples he was a martyr, and the sect which he had founded did not die with him.

It was not till the close of the eleven hundreds that religious peace was at last established throughout the length and breadth of the land, for the movement at Antwerp was not an isolated one. Heresy was everywhere in the air. The infection was carried from place to place by merchant and artisan, and fierce outbreaks were continually occurring, sometimes in one place and sometimes in another, all through the century. 'The social and moral disturbance provoked by the communal movement,' notes M. Pirenne, sufficiently explains this state of things,'29 and doubtless he is right; but the fewness and the incapacity of the parochial clergy must also be taken into account.

For six years the canons of Antwerp had vainly striven to bring back their wandering sheep. Not matter, perhaps, for wonderment. When the Tanchelm trouble began there was only one parish priest in the city, a man of loose life. At last they gave up the task in despair, and invoked the aid of a stranger—Norbert, the famous mystic of Laon, who had lately founded a missionary order which the world was beginning to talk about.

This man, who was born at Xanten on the Lower Rhine, of a rich and powerful family, had taken orders because he thought that for one of his brilliant parts and with his wealth and influence the shortest road to distinction was by way of the Church. And the Church did something for him: she assured him a lasting reputation, she presently set his name down in her register of canonised saints. That was not the kind of fame which Norbert had in those days looked for, but if earthly glory escaped him he had only himself to thank for it.

Shortly after his ordination he was named Court chaplain to the Emperor Henry V., later on he obtained a canon's stall at Cologne, and then one sultry afternoon he took it into his head to ride over to a neighbouring village. A storm arose, a flash of lightning struck him from his saddle, and when he came to himself he was a changed man. He resigned his prebend, bestowed his goods on the poor, and for two years, ragged and barefoot, wandered about France and Germany preaching penance. He spoke well, had the gift of address, the charm of personal beauty; he was all things to all men, as his biographer says of him, and he reckoned his converts by thousands.

But Norbert was not satisfied. Of all the sheep he had brought to the fold how many would have never strayed if the shepherds had been faithful! The care lessness and incompetency of the parochial clergy, that was the crying evil of the day, and he would do what he could to remedy it.

To this end he withdrew to the forest of Coucy, near Laon, with a little band of disciples, and presently there rose up in the midst of a secluded valley which Norbert called PrÉmontrÉ because, as he said, the place had been pointed out to him in a dream, a rude habitation with a church alongside of it and a few out-buildingsoutbuildings. It was the first home of the great Premonstratensian Order, an order whose members, whilst leading the lives of monks, devoted themselves, at the same time, to pastoral work and to preaching.

Such was the man and such were the men who now undertook to convert Antwerp, and thanks to their indefatigable labours the Ghost of Tanchelm was at last laid. Whereat the canons, loth to lose their services, ceded to them their own collegiate church and themselves migrated to the Chapel of Saint Mary, a very humble structure in those days, without the city walls, and it will be interesting to note it gradually grew into Antwerp Cathedral.

Two of the monasteries with which Norbert's White Canons were about this time endowed are still standing, and are still in the possession of the order: the Abbey of Tongerloo, in the heart of the Campine, founded by Duke Godfrey Longbeard in 1130, and the great Abbey of Parc, hard by Louvain, founded by the same Sovereign a few years earlier. This is a most picturesque and charming spot and is well worth a visit. Very little of the original work remains, but the Gothic cloisters date from the close of the fifteen hundreds and they are exceedingly beautiful, so, too, the chapter-house and a most delightful old water-mill of the same period; also there is a large and valuable collection of ancient manuscripts, amongst them the original charter of endowment signed by Godfrey Longbeard, and in the church and in the guest-house there are a few good pictures.

Beguines and Beghards

The national tendency to mysticism was fostered rather than thwarted by the new evangelists: when the people returned to orthodoxy they were more than ever inclined to the interior life, and soon the BÉguinage appeared—that manifestation par excellence, as a recent writer has it, of urban religiosity clothed and in its right mind.

In the early days of the eleven hundreds, perhaps even before Norbert began to preach, there were women in Belgium who lived alone, and without taking vows devoted themselves to prayer and good works. At first there were not many of them, but as the century grew older their numbers increased: it was the age of the Crusades, and the cities teemed with desolate women—the raw material for a host of neophytes. These solitaries lived, not in the forest, but on the fringe of the town, where their work lay, for they served Christ in His poor. Presently, somewhere about the beginning of the twelve hundreds, some of them, for the sake of mutual protection, grouped their cabins together, and the little community thus formed was the first BÉguinage.

Whence the name is hard to say. Various explanations have been suggested. Maybe it is derived from the old Flemish word beghen, in the sense of to pray, not in the sense of to beg, for the Beguine never asked alms; maybe from Saint BegaBegga of Nivelles, where, it is said, the first institution of this kind was established; maybe, again, from Lambert le BÉgueBÈgue, a zealot of LiÉge, who died in 1180, after having expended a fortune in founding on his own estate a church and cloister for women whom the Crusades had deprived of their natural protectors. The cloister has long since disappeared, but the church is still standing, it is dedicated to Saint Christopher, and is a very beautiful specimen of transition work.

The Beguine was only half a nun. The vows which she took were not irrevocable; she could return to the world when she would, nor did she renounce her property. If she was without private means she neither asked nor accepted alms, but supported herself by her spindle, or by taking in needlework, or sometimes by teaching the children of burghers. During the time of her novitiate she lived in the house of the 'Grand Mistress' of her cloister, but afterwards she had her own dwelling, and, if she could afford it, was attended by her own servants. The same aim in life, kindred pursuits and community of worship were the ties which bound her to her companions. There was no common rule, each BÉguinage fixed its own order of life, and was submitted only to the jurisdiction of its own superior, though later on many of them adopted the rule of the third order of Saint Francis. Nor were these communities less varied as to the social status of their members: some of them, like the BÉguinage of Bruges, only admitted ladies of noble birth; others, like the little BÉguinage of Louvain, were exclusively reserved for persons in humble circumstances; others, again, opened their doors wide to women of every condition, and these were the most densely peopled—several of them, like the Great BÉguinage of Ghent, numbering their inhabitants by thousands.

Such was this semi-monastic institution. Admirably adapted to the spiritual and social needs of the age which produced it, it spread rapidly throughout the land, and soon began to exercise a profound influence on the religious life of the people. By the close of the twelve hundreds there was hardly a commune in Belgium without its BÉguinage, whilst several of the great cities had two, or three, or even more, and, mark this, each of these institutions was an ardent centre of mysticism. There was a BÉguinage at Brussels before the year 1245. Witness a Bull of this date of Pope Innocent IV., authorising the Beguines of that city to recite the Divine Office, and by the close of the century it seems to have attained considerable prosperity. It occupied a large tract of land, says Wauters, between the ChaussÉe de Laeken and the Couvent des Dames Blanches, and contained several streets and spacious gardens. It possessed its own church, which, by concession of the Dean and Chapter of Molenbeke, was, in 1252, made extra-parochial, its own water-mill, granted by Duke John I, in 1290, and a hospital for sick poor, founded by the same Sovereign four years later. The community was suppressed at the time of the French Revolution, and no relic of it remains save the church—not the original building, but a reconstruction of 1657. It now serves as a parish church, and is dedicated to Saint John the Baptist.

The Grand BÉguinage at Louvain was probably founded early in the twelve hundreds. Two inscriptions rudely carved in stone, and now placed on each side of the northern doorway of the church, respectively attest that the cloistral buildings were commenced in 1234, and the church itself a year later. This structure consists of a long rectangular nave, with a clerestory, but no triforium, and single lean-to aisles, which are of the same length as the nave. There is no steeple, but a small bell turret marks the entrance to the choir, which is lighted by a huge east window filled with beautiful tracery. The interior is singularly plain, and, save for the capitals, rudely carved with foliage and grotesque figures, there is no sculpture, or at all events there is none visible, though doubtless if the plaster were removed from the walls some relics of stone carving or moulded brick would be brought to light. We have here a typical BÉguinage church of the latter half of the twelve hundreds. The Church of the BÉguinage of Bruges, for example, which dates from the same period, is almost a facsimile, and this type prevailed, at least in its main outlines, until the end of the Gothic period, and even in some cases until later.

From the BÉguinage Louvain

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