What are we to think of these stupendous windows? The quality of the glass is excellent, the scheme of colour glorious. It would be interesting to know if the cartoons were submitted to Peter van Wyenhoven[34] before they were executed, and if so, what he thought of them. These vast pictures, with their Renaissance accessories and their figures mutilated by the mullions and the Gothic tracery, through which we are constrained to peep at them, should be utterly out of harmony with the architecture and the architectural scheme of ornament which they were designed to complete, but, somehow or other, they are not. In those days there were giants in the land. We pigmies must be content to admire their works, and not presume to imitate them.
All this applies, and in a more marked degree, to the stained glass of the Lady Chapel. The subjects here depicted are, The Presentation of Our Lady, her Espousals, the Annunciation, and the Visitation; and in each case, below, with patron saints, we have the donor or donors of the window: Ferdinand III. and his wife Eléonore, the Emperor Leopold I., the Archduke Albert of Austria and his wife Isabel of Spain, and, lastly, the Archduke Leopold of Austria. These windows are designed in the style of Rubens, and they were for a long time attributed to him, notwithstanding that one of them bears the signature T. van Thulden, legibly written, and the date, Aº 1656. This man, we now know, designed all these windows, and we also know that he received 400 florins for his trouble. His colouring is even more glorious than the colouring of Van Orley or of Haeck, and he sinned more boldly than did either of them against the canons of correct taste.
Within the walls of this ancient temple which the Dukes of Brabant raised to the glory of God and in honour of a saint of their own house, endowed for their souls' behoof with gold and broad acres, and richly and lavishly adorned with their own magnificent effigies, many of them found a resting-place. Before the high altar is a white marble slab, bearing this inscription:—Brabantiæ ducum tumulus; and within the vault beneath, lies John II., who died on the seventeenth of October 1312, and alongside of him his duchess, Marguerite of England, daughter of Edward I. Here, too, are the ashes of Catherine of France, the child-wife whom Charles the Bold, aged six, married in 1438, and buried seven years later, and the ashes of her infant nephew, Joachim, the eldest son of Louis XI. then Dauphin, born and died at the Castle of Genappe on the fifteenth of December 1459, and whose little body was escorted to the tomb by dean and chapter and all the crafts' guilds, every man of them bearing three lanterns, an honour reserved for the children of kings. In the same vault sleep Archduke Ernest, grandson of Philippe le Beau, and sometime Governor-General of the Low Country, who died at Brussels in 1596; and at least two scions of the ducal house, whose shields were barred with a bend sinister:—that magnificent prelate Jean de Bourgogne, son of Jean sans Peur and Marguerite Bonzele, a lady of Bruges, whose bones lie in the cathedral there, in the Chapel of the Seven Dolours; and his nephew, Corneille, Lord of Beveren, whom men called Grand Bâtard de Bourgogne: he was the first born of Good Duke Philip's numerous progeny, and strangely enough his mother's name was Marie Corbeau.
In his early days Jean de Bourgogne had followed the profession of arms, and at this time his love affairs were almost as many as those of his half-brother Philip, whom in many respects he resembled. Later on he took orders, and became Provost of Bruges; in 1438, thanks to Philip's influence, he was named Count-Bishop of Cambrai, and as such was a prince of the Empire invested with sovereign rights. This post he held for forty years, and though he seldom visited his episcopal city, and resided for the most part at Brussels—Brussels, it should be borne in mind, was at this time in the diocese of Cambrai—he is described in contemporary documents as a wise and merciful ruler who never failed to do justice to his subjects and was exceedingly charitable to the poor. He died at his country house near Mechlin in 1478, full of years and honours.
Very different was the brief career and tragic end of poor Corneille. He seems to have been a youth of brilliant parts and of a singularly sweet disposition, and to have inherited alike the sterling qualities and the tumultuous passions of his father's race. Of his courage and skill in warfare he gave proof on more than one occasion, and if he had not had a natural aptitude for government, Philip would hardly have named him, young as he was, and in those troublous times, his lieutenant in the duchy of Luxembourg. Endowed with tact, with the charm of address, and, too, with the charm of personal beauty, he knew how to make himself beloved by all with whom he came in contact, too well, sometimes, as more than one woman learned to her cost. He possessed yet a rarer gift, he was able, like his father, to command respect in spite of unworthy actions, and notwithstanding the circumstances of his birth, and the fact that he was Philip's favourite son, he succeeded in winning the goodwill and affection of the Duchess herself, and of the Count of Charolais.
Death came to him in a fearful form and suddenly. He was slain by the men of Ghent at the Battle of Rupelmond in the Pays de Waes on the 16th of June 1452, and he fell flushed with victory, and with the foe in full flight. 'The day and the honour and the glory thereof were Duke Philip's,' says a contemporary writer, 'and yet it was a black day for the house of Burgundy, for Fortune, who is no respecter of persons, directed the pike of some damned disloyal villain into the mouth of Messire Corneille, and being thrust upwards it pierced his skull, and his brain fell through his palate, and so he died. And the good Duke grieved for his bastard, and made great mourning for him, for he loved him much, and so did the Count of Charolais (Charles the Bold), and Messire Anthoine, his brother; and he took Wouter Leenknecht, the leader of the rebels, who had been brought in wounded, and hanged him on a tree, but the death of a hundred thousand rebels would not have assuaged his grief, and thus the day ended. And the body of Messire Corneille was sent to Brussels, where the Duchess gave it most honourable burial in the Church of Saint "Gudile," for she loved him much on account of his good virtues; and Duke Philip founded a daily Mass for the repose of his soul, and ordained that every morning his tomb should be sprinkled with holy water, and that the anniversary of his death should be celebrated solemnly with bells and torches, as is wont to be done at the obits of the princes and princesses founded in this church; and to defray the cost thereof he presented the chapter with 700 golden crowns of 48 gros Flemish.'
The last of the princes of Brabant to be placed in this vault was Louis Philippe, eldest son of King Leopold I. He died on the 16th of June 1834, and when the vault was opened for his interment, some interesting relics were found: on the coffin of Duke John a sword in an enamelled scabbard and a crimson velvet toque embroidered with precious stones; on the coffin of Archduke Ernest, his heart in a silver casket enclosed in a little coffer of oak, and scattered about on the pavement a number of mouldering bones. The crypt needed repair, and these objects were accordingly removed, but they were replaced when the work was done, and there they still remain.
When the Church of Saint Gudila was sacked in 1576, the beautiful fourteenth-century monument which had been originally erected in memory of Duke John II. and his spouse, was utterly wrecked. The present cenotaph of black marble on the gospel side of the high-altar was erected to their memory in 1610 by their descendants, Albert and Isabel, who were themselves laid to rest when their time came in the Sainte Chapelle des Miracles. The monument on the opposite side of the chancel with the recumbent effigy of a knight in armour is the monument of the Archduke Ernest. The only inscription which it bears is his motto—— Soli Deo gloria. The memorial brasses and marble slabs inscribed with the names of the other princes who are buried in 'the crypt of the Dukes of Brabant' disap peared when the pavement of the choir was renewed in the course of the seventeen hundreds.
The mention of these mighty dead naturally suggests another mausoleum of the Dukes of Brabant, not in Brussels itself, but hard by: the Parish Church of Tervueren, an interesting old building of the twelve, thirteen and fourteen hundreds, in which lie buried the princes of the second dynasty—Duke Anthony, whose bones were brought here from the battlefield of Agincourt; his first wife, Jeanne of Luxembourg, who died at Tervueren on the 12th of August, 1407; and their two sons, poor little hunchbacked Jean, the hapless spouse of Jacqueline, and Philippe de Saint-Pol.