FURNES--THE PROCESSION OF PENITENTS
The traveller wandering amongst the towns and villages in this
corner of West Flanders is apt to feel that he is on a kind of
sentimental journey as he moves from place to place, and finds
himself everywhere surrounded by things which belong to the past
rather than to the present. The very guidebooks are eloquent if we
read between the lines. This place 'was formerly of much greater
importance.' That 'was formerly celebrated for its tapestries.'
From this Hôtel de Ville 'the numerous statuettes with which the
building was once embellished have all disappeared.' The tower
of that church has been left unfinished for the last 500 years.
'Fuimus' might be written on them all. And so, some twenty miles
north of Ypres, on a plain which in the seventeenth century was
so studded with earthen redoubts and serrated by long lines of
field-works and ditches that the whole countryside between Ypres
and Dunkirk was virtually one vast entrenched camp, we come to
the town of Furnes, another of the places on which time has laid
its heavy hand.
The early history of Furnes is obscure, though it is generally
supposed to have grown up round a fortress erected by Baldwin
Bras-de-Fer to check the inroads of the Normans. It suffered much,
like its neighbours, from wars and revolutions,[*] and is now one
of the quietest of the Flemish towns. The market-place is a small
square, quaintly picturesque, surrounded by clusters of little
brick houses with red and blue tiled roofs, low-stepped gables,
and deep mouldings round the windows. Behind these dwelling-places
the bold flying buttresses of the Church of Ste. Walburge, whose
relics were brought to Furnes by Judith, wife of Baldwin Bras-de-Fer,
and the tower of St. Nicholas, lift themselves on the north and
east; and close together in a corner to the west are the dark gray
Hôtel de Ville and Palais de Justice, in a room of which the judges
of the Inquisition used to sit.
[Footnote *: 'Furnes était devenue un _oppidium_, aux termes d'une
charte de 1183, qui avait à se défendre à la fois contre les incursions
des étrangers et les attaques d'une population "indocile et cruelle,"
comme l'appelle l'Abbé de Saint Riquier Hariulf, toujours déchirée
par les factions et toujours prête à la révolte.'--GILLIODTS VAN
SEVEREN: _Recueil des Anciennes Coutumes de la Belgique; Quartier
de Furnes_, vol. i., p. 28.]
[Illustration: FURNES. Grand Place and Belfry.]
Though some features are common to nearly all the Flemish towns--the
market-place, the belfry, the Hôtel de Ville, the old gateways,
and the churches, with their cherished paintings--yet each of them
has generally some association of its own. In Bruges we think of
how the merchants bought and sold, how the gorgeous city rose,
clothed itself in all the colours of the rainbow, glittered for
a time, and sank in darkness. In the crowded streets of modern
Ghent, the busy capital of East Flanders, we seem to catch a glimpse
of bold Jacques van Artevelde shouldering his way up to the Friday
Market, or of turbulent burghers gathering there to set Pope, or
Count of Flanders, or King of Spain at defiance. Ypres and its flat
meadows suggest one of the innumerable paintings of the Flemish
wars, the 'battle-pieces' in which the Court artists took such
pride: the town walls with ditch and glacis before them, and within
them the narrow-fronted houses, and the flag flying from steeple
or belfry; the clumsy cannon puffing out clouds of smoke; the King
of France capering on a fat horse and holding up his baton in an
attitude of command in the foreground; and in the distance the
tents of the camp, where the travelling theatre was set up, and
the musicians fiddled, and an army of serving-men waited on the
rouged and powdered ladies who had followed the army into Flanders.
[Illustration: FURNES. Peristyle of Town Hall and Palais de Justice.]
Furnes, somehow, always recalls the Spanish period. The Hôtel de
Ville, a very beautiful example of the Renaissance style, with
its rare hangings of Cordovan leather and its portraits of the
Archduke Albert and his bride, the Infanta Isabella, is scarcely
changed since it was built soon after the death of Philip II. The
Corps de Garde Espagnol and the Pavilion des Officiers Espagnols
in the market-place, once the headquarters of the whiskered bravos
who wrought such ills to Flanders, are now used by the Municipal
Council of the town as a museum and a public library; but the stones
of this little square were often trodden by the persecutors, with
their guards and satellites, in the years when Peter Titelmann
the Inquisitor stalked through the fields of Flanders, torturing
and burning in the name of the Catholic Church and by authority
of the Holy Office. The spacious room in which the tribunal of the
Inquisition sat is nowadays remarkable only for its fine proportions
and venerable appearance; but, though it was not erected until
after the Spanish fury had spent its force, and at a time when
wiser methods of government had been introduced, it reminds us of
the days when the maxims of Torquemada were put in force amongst
the Flemings by priests more wicked and merciless than any who
could be found in Spain. And in the market-place the people must
often have seen the dreadful procession by means of which the Church
sought to strike terror into the souls of men. Those public orgies
of clerical intolerance were the suitable consummation of the crimes
which had been previously committed in the private conclave of
the Inquisitors. The burning or strangling of a heretic was not
accompanied by so much pomp and circumstance in small towns like
Furnes as in the great centres, where multitudes, led by the highest
in the land, were present to enjoy the spectacle; but the Inquisition
of the Netherlands, under which Flanders groaned for so many years,
was, as Philip himself once boasted, 'much more pitiless than that
of Spain.'
The groans of the victims will never more be heard in the
torture-chamber, nor will crowds assemble in the market-place to
watch the cortège of the _auto-da-fé_; but every year the famous
Procession of Penitents, which takes place on the last Sunday of
July, draws many strangers to Furnes.
It is said in Bruges that the ghost of a Spanish soldier, condemned
to expiate eternally a foul crime done at the bidding of the Holy
Office, walks at midnight on the Quai Vert, like Hamlet's father
on the terrace at Elsinore; and superstitious people might well
fancy that a spectre appears in the market-place of Furnes on the
summer's night when the town is preparing for the annual ceremony.
The origin of the procession was this: In the year 1650 a soldier
named Mannaert, only twenty-two years old, being in garrison at
Furnes, went to Confession and Communion in the Chapel of the Capucins.
After he had received the consecrated wafer, he was persuaded by one
of his comrades, Mathurin Lejeusne, to take it out of his mouth,
wrap it in a cloth, and, on returning to his lodging, fry it over
a fire, under the delusion that by reducing it to powder he would
make himself invulnerable. The young man was arrested, confessed his
guilt, and himself asked for punishment. Condemned to be strangled,
he heard the sentence without a murmur, and went to his death singing
the penitential psalms. Soon afterwards Mathurin Lejeusne, the
instigator of the sacrilege, was shot for some breach of military
duty. This was regarded as a proof of Divine justice, and the citizens
resolved that something must be done to appease the wrath of God,
which they feared would fall upon their town because of the outrage
done, as they believed, to the body of His Son. A society calling
itself the 'Confrèrie de la Sodalité du Sauveur Crucifié et de
la Sainte Mère Marie, se trouvant en douleur dessous la Croix,
sur Mont Calvaire,' had been formed a few years before at Furnes,
and the members now decided that a Procession of Penitents should
walk through the streets every summer and represent to the people
the story of the Passion.
[Illustration: NIEUPORT. Interior of Church.]
Though the procession at Furnes is a thing of yesterday compared to
the Procession of the Holy Blood at Bruges, it is far more suggestive
of mediævalism. The hooded faces of the penitents, the quaint wooden
figures representing Biblical characters, the coarse dresses, the
tawdry colours, the strangely weird arrangement of the whole business,
take us back into the monkish superstitions of the Dark Ages, with
their mystery plays. It is best seen from one of the windows of
the Spanish House, or from the balcony of the Hôtel de Ville, on
a sultry day, when the sky is heavy with black clouds, and thunder
growls over the plain of Flanders, and hot raindrops fall now and
then into the muddy streets. The first figure which appears is a
veiled penitent bearing the standard of the Sodality. Then come,
one after another, groups of persons representing various scenes
in the Bible story, each group preceded by a penitent carrying
an inscription to explain what follows. Abraham with his sword
conducts Isaac to the sacrifice on Mount Moriah. A penitent holding
the serpent and the cross walks before Moses. Two penitents wearily
drag a car on which Joseph and Mary are seen seated in the stable
at Bethlehem. The four shepherds and the three Magi follow. Then
comes the flight into Egypt, with Mary on an ass led by Joseph,
the infant Christ in her arms. Later we see the doctors of the
Temple walking in two rows, disputing with the young Jesus in their
midst. The triumphal entry into Jerusalem is represented by a crowd
of schoolchildren waving palm-branches and singing hosannahs round
Jesus mounted on an ass. The agony in the garden, Peter denying
his Lord and weeping bitterly, Jesus crowned with thorns, Pilate
in his judgment-hall, the Saviour staggering beneath the cross,
the Crucifixion itself, the Resurrection and the Ascension, are
all shown with the crude realism of the Middle Ages. There are
penitents bearing ponderous crosses on their shoulders, or carrying
in their hands the whips, the nails, the thorns, the veil of the
Temple rent in twain, a picture of the darkened sun, and other
symbols of the Passion. At the end, amidst torches and incense
and solemn chanting, the Host is exhibited for the adoration of
the crowd.
[Illustration: FURNES. Tower of St. Nicholas.]
Much of this spectacle is grotesque, and even ludicrous; but there
is also a great deal that is terribly real, for the penitents are
not actors playing a part, but are all persons who have come to
Furnes for the purpose of doing penance. They are disguised by
the dark brown robes which cover them from head to foot, so that
they can see their way only through the eyeholes in the hoods which
hide their faces; but as they pass silently along, bending under
the heavy crosses, or holding out before them scrolls bearing such
words as, 'All they that see Me laugh Me to scorn,' 'They pierced
My hands and My feet,' or, 'See if there be any sorrow like unto
My sorrow,' there are glimpses of delicate white hands grasping the
hard wood of the crosses, and of small, shapely feet bare in the
mud. What sighs, what tears and vain regrets, what secret tragedies
of passion, guilt, remorse, may not be concealed amongst the doleful
company who tread their own Via Dolorosa on that pilgrimage of
sorrow through the streets of Furnes!
[Illustration: FURNES. In St. Walburge's Church.]
NIEUPORT--THE BATTLE OF THE DUNES