Like so many of the cities of Belgium, Furnes is a town of the
past. To stand in the great square, surrounded by buildings
which would delight the heart of any artist, is to travel back
through three centuries of time. Spain and the Renaissance
surround us, and we look instinctively towards the Pavilion for
the soldiers of Philip, or glance with apprehension at the door of
the Palais de Justice for the sinister form of Peter Titelmann the
Inquisitor. Around this very square marched the procession of
the Holy Office, in all the insolent blasphemy of its power, and
on these very stones were kindled the flames that were to
destroy its victims. But all these have gone; the priest and his
victim, the swaggering bravo and the King he served, have
gone to their account, and Furnes is left, the record of a time
when men built temples like angels and worshipped in them like
devils.
The immense square, with the beautiful public buildings which
surround it, speaks of a time when Fumes was an important
town. As early as the year 850 it is said that Baldwin of the Iron
Arm, the first of the great Counts of Flanders, had established a
fortress here to withstand the invasion of the Normans. After
that Furnes appears repeatedly with varying fortunes in the
turbulent history of the Middle Ages, until in the thirteenth
century it was razed to the ground by Robert of Artois. In the
next three hundred years, however, it must have entirely
recovered its position, for in the days of the Spanish Fury it was
one of the headquarters of the Inquisition and of the Spanish
Army, and there is no town in Belgium upon which the Spanish
occupation has left a greater mark. Since then, of no commercial
or political importance, it has lived the life of a dull country town,
and tradition says that there is plenty of solid wealth stored by
its thrifty inhabitants behind the plain house-fronts which line
its quiet streets.
From the centre of the square one can see all that there is to be
seen of Furnes. The four sides are lined by beautiful old houses
whose decorated fronts and elaborate gables tell of the
Renaissance and of Spanish days. Behind the low red roofs
tower the churches of St. Walburga and St. Nicholas, dwarfing
the houses which nestle at their base. In the corners of the
square are public buildings, small when compared with those of
Bruges and Ypres, but unsurpassed in exquisite detail of
design. Behind one corner rises the tall belfry without which no
Flemish town would be complete. On an autumn evening when
the sun is setting, when the red roofs glow with a deeper
crimson, and the tall churches catch the sun's last rays on their
old brick walls, there can be few more perfect pictures than the
square of Furnes.
The two oldest buildings in the square stand at the ends of the
eastern side. At the north end is the Pavilion des Officiers
espagnols, once the Town Hall, and, in the days of the Spanish
occupation, the headquarters of the army for the district. It is an
old Flemish building, solidly built, with high-pitched roof, and
windows framed in ornamental stonework, ending in a big
square tower with battlements and little turrets at its corners. A
short outside staircase leads up to the entrance. The whole
building gives the impression that in the days when it was built
the Town Hall was also the Fortress, and that the mayor had
duties more strenuous than the eating of dinners. At the other
end of the eastern side stands the old Halle aux Vins, where the
night-watchmen had their quarters, a fine old gabled house with
a loggia reached by a flight of steps in the centre, a row of plain
stone columns supporting the floors above.
Directly opposite is the north-west corner of the square, with the
Palais de Justice on the right and the Hotel de Ville on the left.
Both date from the Spanish occupation, but they are very
different in their style of architecture. The first is classical and
severe, the second has all the warmth of the Renaissance. The
Hotel de Ville is an elaborately decorated building, with two
exquisite gables and a steep roof surmounted by a little
octagonal tower. The loggia below, standing out from the
building and supporting a balcony above, is perhaps its most
charming feature, both for the beauty of its proportions and the
delicacy of its carved stone balustrades. Inside, the rooms are
as they were three hundred years ago, and the wonderful
hangings of Cordova leather in the council chamber are still
intact. Beside the Hotel de Ville the straight lines of the Palais
de Justice, with its pillars and its high narrow windows, form a
striking contrast. It was here, in the large room on the first floor,
that the Inquisition held its awful court, and here were the
instruments of torture with which it sought to enforce its will.
Behind the Palais rises the tall belfry, a big square tower from
which springs an octagonal turret carrying an elaborate
campanile. There is a quaint survival on this belfry, for upon it
the town crier has a little hut. He is a cobbler, and from below
one can hear the tap-tap of his hammer as he plies his trade.
But at night he calls out the hours to the town below, together
with any information of interest, concluding with the assurance
that he and his wife are in good health. The office has
descended from father to son from the earliest days of the
history of Furnes, and its holder has always been a cobbler. Till
early in last November the record was unbroken, but, alas the
fear of German shells was too much for the cobbler, and he is
gone.
Furnes is a town of contrasts, and though both its churches
were built by the wonderful architects of the fourteenth century,
there could hardly be two buildings more diverse. Behind the
line of red roofs on the east of the square rises the rugged
tower of St. Nicholas, a great square mass of old and weather-
beaten brick, unfinished like so many of the Belgian towers, but
rough, massive, and grand, like some rude giant. On the north,
behind the Palais de Justice and the belfry, stands St.
Walburga, with the delicate tracery of her flying buttresses and
her spire fine as a needle. There is something fitting in the
rugged simplicity which commemorates the grand old Bishop,
and in the exquisite fragility of the shrine of the virgin saint. The
double flying buttresses of St. Walburga, intersecting in mid-air,
and apparently defying the laws of gravity, are as delicate a
dream as the mind of architect could conceive, and they give to
the whole an airy grace which cannot be described. The church
was planned six hundred years ago on a gigantic scale, in the
days when men built for the worship of God and not for the
accommodation of an audience, and for six hundred years the
choir stood alone as a challenge to future generations to
complete what had been so gloriously begun. Only seven years
ago the transept was added, and to the credit of its builders it is
worthy to stand beside the choir. One wonders how many hundred
years may have passed before the vision of the first great architect
is complete. It is built for the most part of red brick, the rich
red brick of Belgium, which grows only more mellow with age.
Inside, the tall pillars of a dark grey stone support at a great
height a finely groined roof of the same red brick, lit by a
clerestory so open that one wonders how it can carry the weight
of the roof above. The tall windows of the transept, reaching
almost from the floor to the roof, with their delicate tracery,
carry on the same effect of airiness, while their light is softened
by the really beautiful stained glass which they frame. The richly
carved choir-stalls of dark mahogany and the fine organ furnish
an interior of which any town in England might well be proud.
And all this magnificence is in a little Flemish town of some
six thousand inhabitants.
One is brought suddenly face to face with the tremendous
difference which exists between the Protestant and the Catholic
conception of what a church is and what it is for. To the one it is
a place where men meet for mutual support and instruction, for
united worship; to the other it is a place where men meet God.
To the one some organized service is necessary; the other only
requires the stones on which to kneel. The one will only go to
church--in fact, he will only find his church open at certain
appointed times; for the other it is only closed with darkness. Of
course, I am using the words Protestant and Catholic to indicate
broad conceptions of religion, and not as defining definite
bodies of men; but even of those who call themselves by these
names what I have said is largely true. And this difference in
conception is reflected in the churches which they build. For the
one a simple building will suffice which will seat in comfort those
who may come; the other, though he alone should ever enter it,
will raise to heaven the mightiest temple which mortal hands
can frame.
Fumes still carries on a tradition of medieval times--the
strange procession which passes through its streets and across
the great square on the last Sunday in July. Its origin, in the
twelfth century, is unknown, though many legends are woven
around it. It is a long procession, in which are represented
many of the episodes in the story of the Christ, some in
sculptured groups of figures, some by living actors. Before each
group walks a penitent, barefoot and heavily veiled in black
gown and hood, carrying an inscription to explain the group
which follows. Abraham appears with Isaac, Moses with the
serpent, Joseph and Mary, the Magi, and the flight into Egypt.
Then come incidents from the life of Jesus, and the great
tragedy of its close. The Host and its attendant priests conclude
the procession. It is all very primitive and bizarre, but behind it
there is a note of reality by which one cannot but be moved. For
the figures concealed beneath the black hoods and dragging
along the heavy wooden crosses are not actors; they are men
and women who have come, many of them, long distances to
Furnes, in the hope that by this penance they may obtain the
forgiveness they desire.