Subterranean Church of St. Guy at Anderlecht

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he set out for Jerusalem the Golden. He loved God with his whole heart, of his penury he ministered to those who were poorer than himself, and he did what he could in his small way to sweeten and soften the hard lot of his neighbours. Even during his lifetime he was regarded as a saint: his anonymous biographer informs us that when Dean Wonedulph of Anderlecht and a company of pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem encountered him unexpectedly at Rome 'they fell down on their faces and adored him,' and when he lay dying in the hospice of the canons of Anderlecht, Heaven itself, so runs the legend, miraculously proclaimed his sancity. A heavenly light filled the room in which he lay, a white dove hovered over his head, and a voice was heard saying: 'Veniat dilectus meus ad percipiendam æternæ jocunditatis coronam.'

Strangely enough 'the poor man of Anderlecht' at one time seriously thought of embarking in trade. Satan, in the guise of a rich Brussels merchant, would fain have persuaded the saint, then sexton of Laeken, to enter into partnership with him, cunningly representing that by so doing he would soon make a fortune, and thus be the better able to help the poor, and Guy fell into the trap; but it was not God's will that His servant should imperil his soul in so hazardous a calling, and hardly had he started on his first journey down Senne, when his craft grounded on a sandbank in mid stream, and, notwithstanding all their efforts, the boatmen were unable to float it; and, worse still, when the saint himself vainly seized the barge-pole it miraculously adhered to his fingers, nor could he unclasp them until he had made a solemn vow to utterly eschew commerce.

'Mercatura raro aut nunquam ab aliquo diu sine crimine exerceri potuit,' shrewdly notes his biographer, who was most likely a clerk of Anderlecht, and that seems to have been the general opinion of the ecclesiastical authorities of the day. The Church looked askance at trade, the methods of the merchant were too nearly allied to the methods of the usurer, as she knew very well to her cost. When she wanted a loan she sometimes had to pay him fifty or sixty per cent. Yet, strangely enough, it was on Church land, and under the auspices of a collegiate chapter, that the most flourishing of the great commercial centres of Brabant gradually grew up: it was not by Lambert Longbeard's castle, but higher up stream, alongside the Church of St. Peter, that the wandering merchants who frequented Louvain first pitched camp.

At Mechlin