The arrival of Rome in the Netherlands….
The 80 year war of independence of the Netherlands from Spain has also been a religious war as the consequence of the reformation. The “geuzen”, the fighters who, in the beginning under Willem of Oranje, started to fight the Spanish, were Calvinist groups. One of their goals was religious freedom in the Netherlands. Philipp II, the spanish king, was a catholic hardliner who could not accept religious deviants in his reign. What is scarcely mentioned is that the supporters of the reformation were a minority. While the southern part of the Netherlands in what is today the state of Belgium never embraced reformation and stayed catholic, even in the northern provinces, the catholics were in majority. Towns like Antwerp and Amsterdam were predominantly catholic. After their official victory in 1648 the calvinist winners and rulers of the seven provinces did exactly what they had fought against during the war: suppress everything what was different. That not only included the catholic majority, but also other protestants like lutherans, or remonstrants and anabaptists. For almost two centuries believers of other religions had to keep a low profile. Catholic church service was only allowed in clandestine churches. As Jan Blokker called it: “There was only a gradual difference (between the treatment of the members of the other religion): no catholics have died on a protestant pyre”.
The cemetery of Oudenbosch
Already in the 80 year war catholic monasteries had been sacked and the protestant disapproval of ornaments in churches led to the iconclasm, numerous works of art in the churches were destroyed or carried away. After 1648 the intolerance against other religions led to the conversion of catholic into protestant churches. This also happened in the little village of Oudenbosch in North Brabant, about halfway between Brussels and Amsterdam. On March 3, 1649, the Catholics had to give up their church to the Protestants; only in 1684 they got permission to build a replacement church in a barn. Only in July 1799, the original church was reassigned to Catholics by the French occupiers. This reassignment was based on the number of parishioners.
One of the mansions in Oudenbosch
The area around Oudenbosch had been hit hard by the 80 year war. Subsequently two waves of the pest all but wiped out the local population. Only around 1825 the local economy started to grow again. Oudenbosch is located on the transition between sand and marine clay, and the soil turned out to be favorable for tree nurseries. But also brickworks and sugar mills were found in the area. The village had a harbour and traffic to Zeeland and South Holland, among others, was easy. In 1854 a station on the new railway line between Antwerp and Rotterdam was opened. The local economy begun growing. The owners of the local enterprises started building stately mansions in the main street of the former village, some fine examples of which still can be seen.
In 1842 the ambitious and energetic Willem Hellemons became pastor of the predominantly Roman Catholic population until his death in 1884. Pastor Hellemons had studied in Rome. He was very excited about what he had seen there and in particular the churches and tried to turn Oudenbosch into little Rome. He initiated the building of the basilika H.H. Agatha and Barbara built between 1865 and 1892. It was inspired by two roman churches: The dome was modelled on St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, and the facade after San Giovanni in Lateran. The church, which is a 16:1 copy of the original in Rome, was built by architect Pierre Cuypers who also built the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
The interior of the cathedral and a believer in his tenue
The cupola
Prayer in times of Corona
Hellemons also found separate catholic boarding schools for girls and boys in Oudenbosch. Today the buildings of the St. Louis Institute, the boarding school for boys, still line the grande cour in the heart of Oudenbosch. It was run by the Congregation of the Brothers of Saint Aloysius Gonzoga, better known as the Brothers of St Louis.
The grande cour
The Vincentius building of the Saint Louis boarding school has been built in 1843, inspired by Roman architecture and completely white plastered. There were classrooms on the ground floor.
Many of the buildings still show signs of neglect
The first floor was a dormitory. The wing on the north side was built in 1900. In 1909 the construction on the south side expanded. At the entrance are the inscriptions Custodi innocentiam (keep the innocence) and Castitas ni floreat institutum pereat (If purity does not flourish, the institution will perish). We will see how well these inscriptions predicted the future of the school.
Until 2003, the buildings were part of the boarding school. In 2014 they were turned into apartments.
The front building was built in 1923 to a design by architect Bennaars. Above the front door are beautiful tile pictures. The ground floor with the entrance, reception rooms and a visiting room with wooden walls and stained glass panels was called the “Box”. The upper floors were sleeping areas with wooden chambrettes and sanitary facilities. The dormitories were later converted into smaller rooms for the youngest students and single bedrooms for the older students. The front section remained in use until 1996 as a boarding school. Later they were converted into offices and apartments.
The entrance of the St. Louis institute
The Chapel at the head of the grande cour dates from 1865. Remarkably it was planned by Th. Horschutz. The art teacher at the institute. and Josephus Boosten, a brother. The chapel is, like the Basilica, modelled after St. Peter and San Giovanni in Rome. After serving 144 years as a church it is today used for concerts, parties and receptions.
The first thing to discover in Google after searching for the institute of St. Louis in Oudenbosch are numerous victims of abuse searching for fellow sufferers. In the 1960s brothers who taught at the school assaulted students at school and in summer camps. The children were told to never talk about what had happened since that would in particular hurt the parents terribly. Many of the victims had been scarred for a lifetime. They only came up with their story many years later, after the school was closed, culprits long gone and it had turned out that the cases were widespread.
The main street of Oudenbosch
In the beginning of the 19th century Italy was an assembly of numerous separate states. In the center, the papal state occupied a territory the size of the Netherlands. With the rise of a national identity the red shirts under national hero Guiseppe Garibaldi started to conquer the separated states to unify the country during the resorgimento. The papal state, which separated southern from northern Italy, was in the way of national unification. In 1860, Victor Emanuel II, king of Sardinia, conquered a part of the papal state. Pope Pius IX only retained Rome and surroundings, and was afraid to lose all his territory. However, the papal army was small, badly organised and unable to defend the papal state. The pope called for young catholic men around the world to come for help. Under the command of a french general the "Regiment of papal Zouaves" was found in 1861. From 11.000 volunteers who turned up eventually, 3100 came from the Netherlands.
The journey for the volunteers began in Amsterdam where they had to register with the Catholic authorities. After they were inspected for physical fitness they were forwarded to the central departure point in Oudenbosch, which served as main collection and departure point between 1864 and 1870. The main reasons that Oudenbosch was selected were the space available in the St. Louis institute, the good rail connections and the network pastor Hellemons had built up during his student days in Rome. He had met the future Pope Pius IX and when this Pope made his appeal for help in 1861 to fight against the Italians, Hellemons wholeheartedly supported this. Since that time some neighbourhoods in Oudenbosch have Italian names like Velletri, Monte Libretto and Albano, which refer to the places in Rome, where the papal Zouaves had their barracks.
The Lourdes grotto in the park in Oudenbosch
Although there were some successful battles the Zouaves eventually could not stop the overwhelming manpower of the red shirts of Garibaldi. In 1870 the Italian army occupied the remaining papal state, the pope retired as prisoner into the vatican and the Zouaves returned to their countries after receiving the papal benediction. According to dutch law, a man who takes service in a foreign army loses dutch citicenship. After returning to the Netherlands, many of the former Zouaves lost their Dutch citizenship and were not eligible for any support. Congregations were formed to help the returning men. Some became mercenaries and continued to fight for other employers.
The new religious freedom in the Netherlands in the 19th century led to the building of more catholic churches and the formation of monasteries.
One of the most important sites of pilgrimage in the catholic world is the grot in the French town of Lourdes. In 1925 an imitation of that site was built in the little town of St Willebrord not far from Oudenbosch. Next to an enormous church a scale 1:4 imitation of the grot in Lourdes was built.
The imitation of the Maria grotto of Lourdes in St. Willibrord
These places are surrounded by a park for processions, which also imitates the park in Lourdes, and a ditch, which symbolizes the river Gaves of the French town. However, in the meantime, the park and the kreutzweg built in 1932-1934 fell into disrepair. Only two of the 14 stations are left. In 2010 park and kreuzweg were renovated and statues of the villages’ pastors were added.
After the French revolution monasteries had a difficult time in France. The monks looked for new places to set up their order. Close to the border to Belgium, between the states of De Moeren and the Pannenhoef, a Trappist monastery, complete with an estate, consisting of cultivated land, forest and heath was found on land donated by a a believer. Since the new monastery was found by monks from France the new project got the name ‘Maria Toevlucht’. Eventually a church, monastery, sheds, bakery, washery and forgery were built. The community reached their biggest extent in 1950, when 80 monks lived here. Interesting enough the liturgy was in Latin until 1960, when a slow process of translation into Dutch started. A translation of the psalms was only available by 1975. In this time ZEN meditation and Yoga was introduced into monastery life.
The church of the monastery Maria Toevlucht
In the Netherlands and Belgium the Trappist monks are mainly known for their ability in beer brewing. However, Trappists only exist from 1892, when the monastic order of the Cistercians split into two independent orders, that of the ‘Ordinary Maintenance’ and that of the 'Strict Maintenance'. The latter became Trappists. Ideals of this order are an extremely frugal life (including vegetarianism), manual labour, and minimal contact with the outside world. Economic independence was guaranteed by clearing wasteland, clearing forests and draining swamps. For a long time cattle breeding for milk and beef were the basis for the economy of the monastery. In 2011 the breeding of cattle ended. The monastery land was turned over to nature conservancy Natuurmonumenten and the monastery started to use the farm buildings for beer brewing. Upon its introduction in 2019 the heavy dark beer ‘Zundert 10’ immediately won the golden medal of the Dutch Beer Challenge.
However, even all the changes introduced into monastery life could not prevent the community from becoming smaller. Although the precinct of the mnastery is guarded like a military camp, today, guests are welcome and can participate in the tranquillity of monastery life complete with meditation and vegetarian food.
Cattle on the former monastery land
The Netherlands have a long lasting heritage of religious fragmentation. Even the reformed church split up between more orthodox and more liberal groups. The different religious groups caused the so called “verzuiling”, the formation of pillars of religious groups supporting their members and these only which split society, politics and even economics for much of the 20th century. Only with the liberation movement in the 1960 and 1970ies the influence of the churches diminished. It is questinable whether this is a lasting development. The frontier between christian and islamic groups is toughening and it can only be hoped that ways are found to increase the mutual understanding.
Lanes on the estates around Maria Toevlucht
Sources:
Jan Blokker, Waar is de tachtigjarige oorlog gebleven? Rainbow, Amsterdam 2013
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