Jerusalem, but he said that a rough soldier like himself was not fit to be the bearer of so holy a thing, and hung it round the neck of his chaplain, Leo of St. Omer, who never parted with it, night or day, until on the evening of April 7, 1150, he returned with the Count to Bruges. Then, with much solemn pomp, the relic was consigned to the Court chaplains, who placed it in the old chapel which Baldwin of the Iron Hand had built, adjoining his palace in the Bourg, where it still remains, and is still preserved in the same crystal vial in which Dierick of Alsace received it. The burghers of Bruges have on more than one occasion been near losing their much-prized treasure, but somehow or other it has always come back to them.
During the troubles with Ghent in the days of Van Artevelde, the relic was one May morning being carried in solemn procession round the ramparts. Presently the band of monks and friars encountered a band of soldiers; the two processions became entangled, and during the confusion some one cried out, ‘the Ghenters are upon us.’ Panic followed, and when the panic was over the relic had disappeared. Three days later some nuns from the Beguinage saw something shining at the bottom of the stream which runs through their cloister. It was the reliquary of the Holy Blood. Then again, during the troublous times which closed the fifteen hundreds, when Calvinism triumphant held the town, and churches and monasteries were sacked, it was only through the prudence of Juan de Malvenda that the precious treasure was saved. Malvenda, who was one of the church-wardens of St. Basil’s, secretly conveyed the relic to his own house—an old-fashioned, red-brick turreted mansion, still standing in the rue aux Laines (No. 18), where he concealed it in the cellar till the storm had passed. Again, for over twenty years, from October 13, 1799, till April 20, 1819, the relic was hidden in the houses of various citizens, in order to preserve it from the fanaticism of the Jacobins. For the same reason the annual procession on the Feast of the Precious Blood had to be discontinued, and it was only resumed in 1819. This procession was first instituted in 1303, in memory of the deliverance of the town from the French by Breidel and De Coninck. At first it was of a grave and solemn character, the faithful of both sexes following chanting litanies and psalms. Little by little it grew spectacular. In 1395 the apostles and evangelists were introduced, the next year King Herod and his Court, in 1405 the Nativity, the tree of Jesse, and so forth. At length, in the fifteen hundreds, the profane and the sacred were mingled together, giants, clowns, jugglers followed, the corporation of Bruges thinking by this means to give the procession a popular character, and thus to draw visitors to their town.
The great procession of the Holy Blood has long since resumed its decorum, and thousands of strangers from all parts of Europe annually throng the town to witness it.
Like the Sainte Chapelle at Paris, and the old city church of St. Etheldreda (Holborn), the Sanctuary of the Precious Blood at Bruges consists in reality of two distinct churches, one set over the other. The lower storey, dedicated to St. Basil, was founded, as we have seen, by Baldwin, Bras de Fer, and is in all probability the most ancient building in the city. There can be little doubt that this chapel was originally the private oratory of the Counts of Flanders, adjoining their primitive palace. The four great columns which support the vault, the western and southern walls, and the annex, erroneously called the Baptistry Chapel, with the adjoining buildings,
