Ypres, Again, Like Arras,
Has Lent Its Name To Commerce, If Diaper Be Really Rightly Derived
From The Expression "Linen
Of Ypres." The Cloth Hall fronts on to
the Grande Place, and, indeed, forms virtually one side of it; and
Behind, in the Petite Place, is the former cathedral of St.
Martin. This is another fine building, though utterly eclipsed by
its huge secular rival, that was commenced in the thirteenth
century, and is typically Belgian, as opposed to French, in the
character of its architecture, and not least in its possession of
a single great west tower. This last feature is characteristic of
every big church in Belgium - one can add them up by the dozen:
Bruges, Ghent, Louvain (though ruined, or never completed),
Oudenarde, Malines, Mons - save Brussels, where the church of Ste.
Gudule, called persistently, but wrongly, the cathedral, has the
full complement of two, and Antwerp, where two were intended,
though only one has been actually raised. This tower at Ypres,
however, fails to illustrate - perhaps because it is earlier, and
therefore in better taste - that astounding disproportion in height
that is so frequently exhibited by Belgian towers, as at Malines,
or in the case of the famous belfry in the market-place at Bruges,
when considered with reference to the church, or town hall, below.
In front of the High Altar, in the pavement, is an inconspicuous
square of white stone, which marks the burial-place of Cornelius
Jansen, who died of the plague, as Bishop of Ypres, in 1638. The
monument, if you can call it monument, is scarcely less
insignificant than the simple block, in the cemetery of
Plainpalais at Geneva, that is traditionally said to mark the
resting-place of Calvin. Yet Jansen, in his way, proved almost a
second Calvin in his death, and menaced the Church from his grave
with a second Reformation. He left behind in manuscript a book
called "Augustinus," the predestinarian tenor of which was
condemned finally, though nearly a century later, by Pope Clement
XI., in 1713, in the Bull called Unigenitus. Jansenism, however,
had struck deep its roots in France, and still survives in Holland
at the present day, at Utrecht, as a sect that is small, indeed,
but not altogether obscure. Jansen himself, it may be noted, was a
Hollander by birth, having been born in 1585 at Akkoi in that
kingdom.
If Ypres is to be praised appropriately as a still delightful old
city that has managed to retain to a quite singular degree the
outward aspect and charm of the Middle Ages, one feels that one
has left one's self without any proper stock of epithets with
which to appraise at its proper value the charm and romance of
Bruges. Of late years, it is true, this world-famed capital of
West Flanders has lost something of its old somnolence and peace.
Malines, in certain quarters, is now much more dead-alive, and
Wordsworth, who seems to have visualized Bruges in his mind as a
network of deserted streets, "whence busy life hath fled," might
perhaps be tempted now to apply to it the same prophetic outlook
that he imagined for Pendragon Castle:
"Viewing
As in a dream her own renewing."
One hopes, indeed, that the renewing of Bruges will not proceed
too zealously, even if Bruges come safely through its present hour
of crisis. Perhaps there is no big city in the world - and Bruges,
though it has shrunk pitiably, like Ypres, from its former great
estate in the Middle Ages, has still more than forty thousand
souls - that remains from end to end, in every alley, and square,
and street, so wholly unspoilt and untouched by what is bad in the
modern spirit, or that presents so little unloveliness and squalor
in its more out-of-the-way corners as Bruges. Bruges, of course,
like Venice, and half a dozen towns in Holland, is a strangely
amphibious city that is intersected in every direction, though
certainly less persistently than Venice, by a network of stagnant
canals. On the other hand, if it never rises to the splendour of
the better parts of Venice - the Piazza and the Grand Canal - and
lacks absolutely that charm of infinitely varied, if somewhat
faded or even shabby, colour that characterizes the "Queen of the
Adriatic," there is yet certainly nothing monotonous in her
monotone of mellow red-brick; and certainly nothing so
dilapidated, and tattered, and altogether poverty-stricken as one
stumbles against in Venice in penetrating every narrow lane, and
in sailing up almost every canal. Of Venice we may perhaps say,
what Byron said of Greece, that
"Hers is the loveliness in death
That parts not quite with parting breath";
whilst in Bruges we recognize gladly, not death or decay at all,
but the serene and gracious comeliness of a dignified and vital
old age.
We cannot, of course, attempt, in a mere superficial sketch like
this, even to summarize briefly the wealth of objects of interest
in Bruges, or to guide the visitor in detail through its maze of
winding streets. Two great churches, no doubt, will be visited by
everyone - the cathedral of St. Sauveur and the church of Notre
Dame - both of which, in the usual delightful Belgian fashion, are
also crowded picture-galleries of the works of great Flemish
masters. The See of Bruges, however, dates only from 1559; and
even after that date the Bishop had his stool in the church of St.
Donatian, till this was destroyed by the foolish Revolutionaries
in 1799. In a side-chapel of Notre Dame, and carefully boarded up
for no reason in the world save to extort a verger's fee for their
exhibition, are the splendid black marble monuments, with
recumbent figures in copper gilt, of Charles the Bold, who fell at
Nancy in 1477 (but lives for ever, with Louis XI. of France, in
the pages of "Quentin Durward"), and of his daughter, Mary, the
wife of the Emperor Maximilian, of Austria, who was killed by
being thrown from her horse whilst hunting in 1482.
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