anglomedved

The fact that church buildings become unused and are sold off is inevitable, though sad. I have seen a dozen sold to private developers in my twenty-five years in Belgium. Most of them belonged to religious orders which have since died out – for the reasons see my last Sunday's posting 'Memories of pre-contraception Belgium'.

We spent a couple of hours today in Mechelen (also known as Malines or Mechlen), thirty kilometres north of Brussels, a delightful old town which is home to the principal Roman Catholic bishop of Belgium.

There, too, under the imposing shadow of the archiepiscopal cathedral of St Rombout, used to be a whole cluster of monasteries and seminar buildings, many of which have since become redundant.

Re-uses are varied, but one which made me angry was the conversion of a former Franciscan church into a hotel. It’s not the conversion per se that I object to, but the fact that key features of the old church, like mosaics over the entrance, the stained glass, or the high altar which remains behind a glass screen at the end of the atrium, are actively used a decorative elements and advertised as part of the attractions of the hotel. See: http://www.martins-hotels.com/en/hotel/martins-patershof.

This should not have happened. Why, I don’t know. But in any case, that is one bar I shall not be drinking at ...

But not all was bad, by a long way. There was the lovely beguinage church, which I will say some more about later.