The Story of Brussels

by Ernest Gilliat-Smith

The mother church of Louvain, like the mother church of Brussels, owes its origin to Lambert Balderick. They are both collegiate churches; the foundation of each of them dates, if not from the same year, at least from the same decade, and in each case the original building was destroyed by fire within a century of its erection. Thus far the two churches resemble one another, and here the resemblance ends.

When Lambert founded the Church of Saint Gudila, Brussels was already a place of some importance, and probably it was on this account that he chose to retain the lordship of the rising town in his own hands, and to endow his new chapter with lands beyond its limits. Thus the canons of Saint Gudila's had no shred of civil authority over the inhabitants of Brussels; the only jurisdiction which they possessed was a purely spiritual one; also, though Saint Gudila's was for many years the only parish church in the city, and even later on, when other churches were made parochial, it still held the first place, for some reason or other it was certainly not the church which the burghers most favoured, nor the one most intimately connected with their spiritual life.

It was otherwise in the case of Saint Peter's. When Saint Peter's was first built Louvain consisted of a fortress and a few farmhouses; the site of the new church was further up stream, in the centre of a tract of vacant land, for the most part forest and marsh, and it was on this swampy waste—the domain with which Lambert had dowered his new foundation—that the future capital of Brabant gradually grew up.

Of the nature of the ties by which the men of Louvain were bound to the Church of Saint Peter, of the duties thereby entailed, and their correlative rights and privileges, of how the former were presently evaded, and the latter to the end maintained in all their pristine vigour, of these things we have already spoken; and as we have already seen in a previous chapter, the old collegiate church was so completely identified with the city that proof that a man was un homme de Saint Pierre was held to be sufficient proof that he was a burgher and patrician of Louvain: without any further investigation he was at once admitted to all the rights of citizenship.

It is not to be wondered at, then, that the Louvainers regarded their church with feelings akin to veneration, or that when, in 1373, it was for the second time wrecked by fire, they grieved for it as for a friend, but no man thought of restoring it—not then, nor for many a long day afterwards. Louvain was in the throes of revolution, civil war had been raging almost continuously for more than ten years, and when at last the struggle ended with the triumph of Freedom in 1378, the fortunes of the city were at their lowest ebb. She had lost a third of her population, her commerce was almost destroyed, her staple industry gone, and she was honeycombed with debt.

With things in this plight the men of Louvain were in no position to saddle themselves with such a vast and costly undertaking as the reconstruction of their church. It was not till half a century later that they had the courage even to think of it, and then they made up their minds to act, and to act boldly. It happened thus. The founding of the University in 1421 had heralded, as all men believed, a new era. The issue showed they were not mistaken. Trade at once began to revive, and when the burghers had tasted the first-fruits of the harvest they dreamed that the Golden Age had returned, and forthwith determined to rebuild their church in such fashion that its splendour should dim the sheen of the noblest buildings of Brabant. This must have been somewhere about 1424, certainly not later, for in that year Plysis van Vorst was named 'master-mason of the new Church of Saint Peter.'

Although no document has as yet been discovered which states in so many words that Van Vorst drew up the plans of the new building, it may be safely said that he did so. We know that he was held at Louvain to be the first architect of his day, that the burghers desired that their new church should be second to none in the duchy, that they expressly summoned him from Diest, his native town, to superintend the building operations, and that he continued to do so till his death, which took place some fifteen years later. Van Vorst was a man of humplehumble origin. Starting in life as a mason's labourer, mixing mortar and carrying bricks, he presently became a mason himself, and rapidly rose to the head of his profession; and when, in 1418, the burghers of Diest determined to rebuild their ancient Church of Saint Plysis it was unanimously decided that the work could be put in no better hands than those of 'Meester Van Vorst.' Their confidence was not misplaced: the noble structure which Plysis designed for them, and at which he laboured for twenty years—it was completed by his pupil Matthew de Layens, of whom later on—is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful specimens of Brabant work which has come down to us. To visit Diest were a day well spent, if only for the sake of this grand old building, which is adorned without with ancient statuary, and within with a wealth of stained-glass windows, some as old as the church itself, some of the following century, and some of the sixteen hundreds.

It was doubtless the fame the Diest plans earned for him which decided the Louvainers to commission our mason to rebuild their church, and in the following year to name him City Architect. From this time until his death Van Vorst must have been a busy man. His civic appointment was no sinecure; he had not only to direct and supervise whatever building operations the city fathers had in hand, but also to purchase the building materials, which meant frequent journeys on horseback to the quarries at Afflighem and Roteslaer; the work at Saint Peter's, too, must have occupied much of his time, and we may be sure that he was often at Diest to see after the building operations there. Yet somehow or other, like most busy men, he found time for recreation. At times he seems to have amused himself by making models of divers architectural monuments, for we know that the city magistrates were so delighted with some of these productions that, on the 11th of December, 1434, they voted him a gratification of 13 golden florins. Again we learn from the city archives that, on the 29th of May 1425, he took part in the Corpus Christi procession, marching at the head of his guild, and we may be quite sure, though the fact is not recorded, that when the religious ceremonies were over Meester Plysis and his brother masons withdrew to their wonted tavern, and there regaled themselves, not on the every-day malt liquor—though Louvain, even in those days, was famous for its ale—but, as was usual on festive occasions, with a bottle or so of the best Rhenish.

Yet another little intimate scene which some entries in the city records have enabled us to reconstruct. It took place on the 20th of May 1439, when the great architect, for the last time, received the congratulations of his comrades. Less than four months later he went the way of all flesh.

It will be necessary to preface the story with a word of explanation. Louvain, at the time of which we are writing, was without a town hall: the old Town Hall in the Vieux Marché was destroyed during the Civil War, and the actual building in the Place Saint-Pierre had not yet been erected; its site was occupied by three or four dwelling-houses which had been ceded by their owners to the Corporation, and it was in this block of tenements that the Town Council met, and that all civic business was transacted. From the first it had been but a make-shift arrangement, the premises were small, and in every way unsuited to the purpose to which they were now put, and early in 1438 it was resolved to enlarge them. Van Vorst prepared the plans, and on the 31st of March in the following year the foundation stone was laid by Jacob Utten Liemingen, a member of one of the oldest patrician families of Louvain, and Franciscus Willemans, a man of the people, each of whom was that year burgomaster. The work was pushed on vigorously, and when on the 20th of May the two burgomasters made an official visit of inspection, they were so well pleased at the progress made that they presented the masons with a drink gelde of two golden Peters: all of which is duly noted down in the city accounts. And thus, without much stretch of the imagination, we can picture to ourselves, when their day's work was done, the worthy architect and his admiring comrades cheerfully proceeding with animated countenances to carry out the burgomasters' behest. Amongst them, no doubt, old John Kelderman, destined soon to take his place and to carry on for a brief span Van Vorst's unfinished labours; and young Matthew de Layens, the pupil of promise, who lived long enough to complete them; and, of course, that rollicking, scapegrace son, who bore his father's name and inherited some of his talents, whose skill in sculpture is still attested by the beams in the Town Hall, and whose frolics are duly noted in the account books of the city, as, too, are the fines they cost him. We can see them all seated round a long, narrow table in the snug parlour of some old-world inn, like the Vlissinghe of Bruges, for example; there is wine set before them, both white and red, the best, you may be sure, that money can buy, and on the hearth is an armful of crackling faggots, for the nights are still a bit cold, not a great roaring fire, but just enough to give the room a soul, and to take the chill off the Burgundy. And here we will leave 'Meester Plysis van Vorst' in his high-backed chair at the head of the board with his glass in his hand, and his comrades around him drinking his health at the expense of the taxpayers.