A whirlwind of fanaticism swept them away, and now their vast domain is what it was before the white-robed brethren settled there—a wilderness of shifting sand.
Bruges during the opening years of the sixteen hundreds was seething in misery. War had brought forth famine and pestilence, and the flight of commerce had left thousands of working men without any means of gaining their bread; but there was still gold in the city. The fortunes which had been made in trade, or at all events a certain proportion of them, remained after trade had departed, and the monastic immigrants, as we have seen, were not without resources, nor did the possessors of the mammon of unrighteousness suffer it to remain idle. They made to themselves friends with it. Churches and monasteries were restored; the monks and nuns from the country built for themselves new habitations; hospices and almshouses, Godshuisen (God’s Houses), as they are at Bruges picturesquely termed, were founded all over the city. Thus was work provided for those who were able to do it, and a permanent provision made for the aged and the infirm.
The buildings now erected in no way resembled the sumptuous palaces and stately guild halls of bygone days, but some of them are sufficiently picturesque. Take, for instance, the Carthusian Convent in the rue du Vieux Bourg, with its seven gables, and mullioned windows, and beautiful Gothic doorway surmounted by three niches, with statues of saints in the style of the Renaissance—it has recently been restored, and is now the local of a workmen’s club, the Gilde van Ambachten; or the Leper Hospital, at the end of the Marché au fil; or the Pest House on the Grand Canal adjoining the thirteenth-century Hospice of Notre Dame de la Poterie and there are a host of others equally interesting, and above all and everywhere the little Godshuisen with their quaint gables, and blinking windows, and picturesque doorways, often with a niche above them and the image of a saint. They are not the least beautiful feature in the architecture of this beautiful city, and the number of them is legion. Some are large enough to afford accommodation for thirty or forty inmates. These are generally built round a courtyard laid out as a garden. In others again there is only room for six or seven persons. Some are for women only, some for men, some for married couples; each Godshuis has its little oratory; all of them are comfortable and clean, and all are picturesque.
