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,[20] 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.
[Illustration: FURNES
Grande 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 servingmen waited on the rouged and
powdered ladies who had followed the army into Flanders.
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.'
[Illustration: FURNES
Peristyle of Town Hall and Palais de Justice.]
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 ear 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.]
FOOTNOTES.
[Footnote 20: '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.]