The interior presents a great ogival example of the best of fourteenth and fifteenth century church-building.
To-day, since the church belongs to the Protestants, much that stood for symbolism in the Roman Church is wanting, and the pulpit, which is an admirable work of art in itself, is placed in the middle of the choir surrounded by numerous tribunes, or seats in tiers, in quite a parliamentary and non-churchly fashion.
Behind the choir is a monument to Charles d'Egmont, Duke of Guelderland, who died in 1538, and whose tomb is at Utrecht. As a work of art this monument in the Groote[{334}] Kerk at Arnheim is much more worthy than such monuments usually are.
The duke is represented clothed in armour and reclining between six lions, which hold aloft his escutcheon.
The pedestal is ornamented with bas-reliefs representing the Holy Family, the twelve apostles, St. Christopher, and two other saints. On a pillar at the left of the tomb is suspended, in a sort of wooden cage, another figure of the same prince. The effigy is of painted wood and is amazingly lifelike, though smacking decidedly of the figures in a waxworks exhibition.
The chevet of this great church is quite worthy of consideration, though by no means as amply endowed as the French variety by which one comes to judge all others.
Altogether, except for the poverty of deeply religious symbolism in the interior, of which it has doubtless been despoiled since the Catholic religion has waned in its power here, the church is a lovely and lovable example of the appealing church edifices which one now and then comes across in Continental cities of the third rank.
The Catholic cult occupy the church of St. Walburge, a Gothic edifice in brick of the[{335}] fourteenth century. At the portal are two great symmetrical towers which are worthy of a far more important edifice.
The interior is entirely modern as to its furnishings and fitments.
On four pillars of the nave are placed, back to back, statues of the evangelists,—a species of decorative embellishment which, at all times since the fifteenth century, has been greatly favoured throughout Germany and the Low Countries. In France it is a feature but seldom seen, and, among the smaller parish churches, has almost its only examples at Vetheuil on the Seine below Paris, and at Louviers.