The Story of Bruges

by Ernest Gilliat-Smith

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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