CHAPTER IX

_Dierick of Alsace and the Precious Blood_

It was to the cities and to the people of Flanders that Dierick of Alsace owed his crown. When Ivan of Alost and Daniel of Termonde renounced their homage to William Cliton, they did so in the name of the burghers of Ghent. When Louis interposed on behalf of his kinsman, it was the burghers of Bruges who hurled back the proud reply,--'Be it known to the King and to all princes and peoples, and to their posterity throughout all time, that the King of France hath no part in the election of a Count of Flanders.'

When William persuaded Archbishop Simon to lay Ghent and Bruges under interdict, it was owing to the fear inspired by the people that 'no clerk was found hardy enough to proclaim it,' and when Dierick repaid him in his own coin by sentence of excommunication, the bolt was hurled by all the clergy of Bruges, assembled together in the Church of Notre Dame, in the presence of all the burghers.

The triumph of Dierick then meant the triumph of the people, the triumph of liberty, the triumph of nationalism as opposed to the centralizing and imperialist ideals of France. In a word, the triumph of all that was good in the great cause for which Bertulph and his comrades had died.

The new Count was a Fleming of the Flemings. He had been brought up amongst them; their habits and customs were familiar to him, his speech was their speech, his thoughts were their thoughts, and his ways were their ways. 'Men called him wise,' says an ancient chronicler, 'and he was all his life kindly, upright, loyal, brave, and great withal in the art of governing men.' Indeed, his whole career shows what skill and tact he possessed alike in conciliating the goodwill of his own opponents and in settling the disputes of others.

As early as May 31, Arnulph of Denmark resigned his claims in his favour (_see_ Wegener, note on p. 169), later on he purchased the acquiescence of another rival, Baldwin of Mons, by giving him his daughter to wife. Even William of Ypres in the end acknowledged his right to the throne, and was content to end his days obscurely as simple Lord of Löo. His first act as prince was to bring about peace between the Isegrins and the free landholders of the seaboard, and by his reconciliation with Hacket, whom he again reinstated in the châtelaincy of Bruges, the legal right of the Karls under his jurisdiction to the title of freemen was publicly acknowledged. Henceforth, until the Revolution, they were the _Francq Hostes_ or _Francons_ of the Liberty of Bruges. At his coronation, Dierick had solemnly sworn to respect the lawful rights and liberties of all his subjects, and he loyally kept his word. Throughout his long reign of forty years he always showed himself a good friend to commerce, a staunch upholder of popular institutions, and a generous supporter of the down-trodden and the oppressed. To him, says a Flemish writer, the greater number of the communes of Flanders are indebted alike for their origin and their development. During his reign were inscribed in the charters of the Flemish cities the germs of those rights and liberties which are to-day guaranteed by the Belgian Constitution.

Like all good and wise men of his day, Dierick was profoundly impressed with the truths of Christianity, and after the manner of his age, he on more than one occasion took up the sword of the Crusader. On his return from one of these expeditions, he brought back with him to Bruges a treasure which has had no little influence on the architectural, and artistic, and religious development of the city; a vial of dark, ruby-coloured fluid, which tradition said was some of the water in which Joseph of Arimathea had once washed the blood-stained body of Christ. The early history of this precious memorial of Our Lord's Passion is veiled in mystery, but from the day when Dierick of Alsace brought the famous relic to Bruges the thread of its story is unbroken. The circumstances which led to his possession of it are well known. It was the time of the second Crusade. Dierick, roused perhaps by the preaching of St. Bernard at Furnes, or possibly moved thereto by reason of his kinship with Baldwin, King of Jerusalem--they had married two sisters--resolved to serve under the banner of the Cross, and in the month of June 1147, along with the Emperor Conrad and Louis VII. of France, set out for Palestine; but the campaign was almost barren of results. What with the perfidy of the Greeks, and the pettiness and jealousy of the European leaders, it could hardly have been otherwise. The little that had been accomplished, however, was due to the courage and perseverance of Dierick, and by way of recompense King Baldwin bestowed on him the relic in question.

It was enclosed in a tube of crystal, with chains of silver and stoppers of gold, and Dierick received the gift on his knees from the hands of the Patriarch of

Jerusalem, but he said that a rough soldier like himself was not fit to be the bearer of so holy a thing, and hung it round the neck of his chaplain, Leo of St. Omer, who never parted with it, night or day, until on the evening of April 7, 1150, he returned with the Count to Bruges. Then, with much solemn pomp, the relic was consigned to the Court chaplains, who placed it in the old chapel which Baldwin of the Iron Hand had built, adjoining his palace in the Bourg, where it still remains, and is still preserved in the same crystal vial in which Dierick of Alsace received it. The burghers of Bruges have on more than one occasion been near losing their much-prized treasure, but somehow or other it has always come back to them.

During the troubles with Ghent in the days of Van Artevelde, the relic was one May morning being carried in solemn procession round the ramparts. Presently the band of monks and friars encountered a band of soldiers; the two processions became entangled, and during the confusion some one cried out, 'the Ghenters are upon us.' Panic followed, and when the panic was over the relic had disappeared. Three days later some nuns from the Beguinage saw something shining at the bottom of the stream which runs through their cloister. It was the reliquary of the Holy Blood. Then again, during the troublous times which closed the fifteen hundreds, when Calvinism triumphant held the town, and churches and monasteries were sacked, it was only through the prudence of Juan de Malvenda that the precious treasure was saved. Malvenda, who was one of the church-wardens of St. Basil's, secretly conveyed the relic to his own house--an old-fashioned, red-brick turreted mansion, still standing in the rue _aux Laines_ (No. 18), where he concealed it in the cellar till the storm had passed. Again, for over twenty years, from October 13, 1799, till April 20, 1819, the relic was hidden in the houses of various citizens, in order to preserve it from the fanaticism of the Jacobins. For the same reason the annual procession on the Feast of the Precious Blood had to be discontinued, and it was only resumed in 1819. This procession was first instituted in 1303, in memory of the deliverance of the town from the French by Breidel and De Coninck. At first it was of a grave and solemn character, the faithful of both sexes following chanting litanies and psalms. Little by little it grew spectacular. In 1395 the apostles and evangelists were introduced, the next year King Herod and his Court, in 1405 the Nativity, the tree of Jesse, and so forth. At length, in the fifteen hundreds, the profane and the sacred were mingled together, giants, clowns, jugglers followed, the corporation of Bruges thinking by this means to give the procession a popular character, and thus to draw visitors to their town.

The great procession of the Holy Blood has long since resumed its decorum, and thousands of strangers from all parts of Europe annually throng the town to witness it.

Like the Sainte Chapelle at Paris, and the old city church of St. Etheldreda (Holborn), the Sanctuary of the Precious Blood at Bruges consists in reality of two distinct churches, one set over the other. The lower storey, dedicated to St. Basil, was founded, as we have seen, by Baldwin, Bras de Fer, and is in all probability the most ancient building in the city. There can be little doubt that this chapel was originally the private oratory of the Counts of Flanders, adjoining their primitive palace. The four great columns which support the vault, the western and southern walls, and the annex, erroneously called the Baptistry Chapel, with the adjoining buildings,

none of which were originally included in the chapel but formed part of the Count's palace--these are the oldest portions of this most interesting structure. In 1095 Count Robert of Jerusalem, on his return from the Holy Land, placed here the relics of St. Basil which he had brought with him from Cæsarea in Cappadocia; hence the dedication. Later on, his nephew, Dierick of Alsace, in gratitude for some marvellous answer to prayer obtained through the intercession of the saint, restored and embellished the church; hence the erroneous tradition which makes him its founder.

Such as Dierick left St. Basil's in 1150, so it is to-day. It has recently been carefully and conscientiously restored, and it is perhaps the most beautiful and perfect specimen of Romanesque architecture in Flanders. During the work of restoration, when the pavement was renewed, an interesting discovery was made:--the vault in which had lain, since 1412, the mortal remains of Ian Van Oudenaerde, the architect who restored the belfry in 1396 or thereabouts, and who added the four beautiful turrets at the angles of its second storey. The _Porte de Ste. Croix_ and the _Porte de Gand_ are also his work, as well as the massive round tower at the head of the Minne Water. The nave of St. Basil's has from time immemorial been known as the Masons' Chapel. Here, until the Revolution, the members of the Guild of Masons were wont to perform their devotions and to celebrate annually, with great pomp, the feasts of their patron saints, and it was doubtless on this account that Ian Van Oudenaerde, that great Master Mason, was laid to rest in St. Basil's.

The upper chapel, which is probably the place where Dierick enshrined his priceless relic, was almost entirely rebuilt towards the close of the fourteen hundreds, and of the original Romanesque structure little now remains save the two round-headed bays which separate the naves. The work of reconstruction was not yet finished in 1482, but as during the following year the first stained window was put in, it would seem that it was at this time approaching completion.

Both the upper and lower chapel suffered much during the religious troubles under Philip II., and again at the time of the French Revolution. Indeed, when the _Septembriseurs_ had sated their fury on the old building, there was little left but the bare walls, and into such a state of decay had it fallen that when Napoleon visited Bruges in 1810, the civic authorities were thinking of pulling it down.

'That,' said the Emperor, 'shall never be,' when the question was mooted in his presence. 'When I look at those graceful minarets, I fancy myself in Egypt. To destroy a monument like that would be a sin crying for vengeance.' Thus the old church was saved. Presently it was restored to public worship, for from the time of the riots until 1818 the lower chapel had been used by the police as a prison for drunken and disorderly persons, and a place in which to confine stray

dogs, and during the same period the upper chapel, roofless, windowless, a veritable wreck, had served no purpose whatever. The present elaborate scheme of decoration was carried out in 1856 from the designs of two English architects, William Brangwyn and Thomas Harper King, and the old church is now gorgeous with colour and gold. But though the general effect is on the whole pleasing, the details are not happy. Thanks to the late Baron Béthune's _Lucas Schoolen_, native artists could by this time do something better, and it is much to be desired that the wealthy confraternity of the Holy Blood would undertake the redecoration of their chapel. The lower sanctuary was restored only two years ago and, as we have already noted, most successfully.

_La Noble Confrérie du Précieux Sang_ consists of a provost and thirty titular members, all of whom must be Flemings of noble, or, as we should say, gentle birth, in memory of Count Dierick and the thirty Flemish knights who in 1150 brought the precious relic to Bruges. In addition to these there are a certain number of honorary members of other nationalities, for the most part great ecclesiastics, amongst them Pope Leo XIII., whose name was enrolled in the 'golden Register' on May 5, 1844, at which time he was Nuncio to the Court at Brussels. In addition to these, some thousands of persons of every nationality and of all classes are united to the confraternity under the title of affiliated members.

The management of the confraternity, the churches, and all that appertains thereto, is entirely in the hands of the provost and titular members, who are laymen, but other members, of whatsoever degree, participate equally in the Masses and devotions which are celebrated in the Chapel of the Precious Blood.

We are indebted for the above details to the kindness of Canon Louis Van Haecke, chaplain-in-chief of _La Noble Confrérie_. If any of our readers should desire to know something more concerning this subject we would refer them to his interesting work--_Le Précieux Sang à Bruges_.