Sint-Leonarduskerk: A Gothic Pilgrimage Church in Brecht, Belgium
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Belgium
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Duchy of Brabant, Habsburg, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page21 sections
History
Sint-Leonarduskerk is a Roman Catholic church in Sint-Lenaarts, Brecht, Belgium, dedicated to Leonardus of Noblat and affiliated with the Diocese of Antwerp. The present Gothic church was built mainly between 1530 and about 1550, while its tower dates from 1436 to 1457. Its history began with a medieval pilgrimage chapel and continued through religious devotion, wartime destruction, repeated restoration, and the enduring veneration of Leonardus.
The medieval pilgrimage chapel
A chapel dedicated to Leonardus stood here during the Crusades, probably in the twelfth or thirteenth century. It depended on St. Michael’s Church in Brecht and initially had no right to celebrate Mass. In 1262, the Bishop of Cambrai authorized the appointment of a chaplain who could celebrate four Masses there each week.
Leonardus was traditionally associated with the liberation and protection of prisoners, and fetters and chains became his principal attributes. Pilgrims traveling from the Netherlands through Breda toward Santiago de Compostela passed the chapel, leaving offerings and donations. Their support brought the chapel unusually large revenues. In 1426, John VI of Burgundy, Bishop of Cambrai, ordered it to contribute 400 gold crowns toward the construction of a church in neighboring Brecht.
The settlement was first known as Houthoven. As devotion to Leonardus increased, the name Sint-Lenaarts gradually came into use, eventually replacing the earlier name. The chapel became too small for the number of worshippers it attracted, leading to plans for a larger church.
Construction of the church
On 10 July 1436, master masons Jan Stampaert and Claus van Haseldonck agreed with Hendrik van der Beke, the pastor of Brecht, to build a tower with a tall spire. Work on the tower continued from 1436 until 1457. The church itself was not begun until 1530 and was completed around 1550.
Antoon I van Lalaing, the first count of nearby Hoogstraten and acting governor of the Netherlands, and his wife Elisabeth van Culemborg supported the building project. Their names are also reflected in the church’s devotional imagery, including statues of Anthony of Padua and Elizabeth of Hungary, their respective namesakes.
War, damage, and rebuilding
During the separation of the northern provinces from the Spanish Netherlands, Sint-Lenaarts and Brecht became part of a conflict zone. Spanish forces destroyed Brecht and the surrounding area in 1584, burning both villages and driving away their inhabitants. Sint-Leonarduskerk was badly damaged but survived the fires. Around 1589, it provided temporary shelter for refugees returning after the fighting.
Strong winds brought down the church’s tall spire in the winter of 1713. A smaller spire was then installed, surrounded by four corner turrets. The church underwent a thorough restoration from 1875 to 1879 under provincial architect Eugène Gife, although the tower was excluded from that campaign. Louis Gife directed work on the tower in 1886 and 1887, and Jan Sel is also associated with the church as an architect.
Twentieth-century preservation and devotion
The church received legal protection as a monument in 1936. During the Second World War, from 1940 to 1945, fighting caused extensive damage to the tower, roofs, facades, doors, and stained-glass windows. Both bells were lost. The smaller bell, installed in 1843, was stolen in 1943; the larger bell, Leonardus, had been cast in 1643 and was damaged near the end of the war before disappearing.
Major repairs followed between 1946 and 1953 under pastor Edmond van Noten. Two replacement bells, cast by Michiels Jr. of Tournai, entered use on 23 January 1949. Interior restoration began in November 2007. The Leonardus reliquary bust is still carried annually in procession. The procession after High Mass on Whit Monday is known from the fifteenth century.
Pastor Philippus Wabbes, who served from 1906 to 1928, promoted the church’s beautification and donated the Sanctus Jacobus stained-glass window. In 1924, he wrote Some Things about My Parish, intending its proceeds to support church maintenance. The church and its monument status are listed by the Flemish Heritage Agency under relic number 12883.
Remains
Sint-Leonarduskerk is an east-facing, three-aisled cruciform basilica in Gothic architecture. A basilica plan has a taller central nave flanked by lower side aisles, while the transept forms the crosswise arm of the building. Brick and Brabant sandstone give the church its principal materials. Sandstone appears in the plinth, corner stones, buttresses, tower, crossing turret, and pinnacles.
Exterior and churchyard
Western tower
The square western tower rises about 36.58 metres. Bell openings pierce all four sides, and a smaller spire is enclosed by four corner turrets. Above the western entrance, whose gate has lily-shaped hinges, three statues occupy niches. Frans De Vriendt made the figures of Michael overcoming the dragon, Mary with the infant Jesus, and Leonardus holding fetters. Installed after 1885, they replaced earlier statues of comparable subjects.
Cemetery and memorials
A cemetery extends along the northern, eastern, and southern sides of the church. Its northern and eastern edges contain a devotional way showing the Seven Sorrows of Mary, a theme focused on seven episodes of suffering in the Virgin’s life. Grave monuments from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries commemorate local civilians and clergy. They include pastor Cornelius Antonius Lauryssen, who died at Sint-Lenaarts in 1870, assistant pastor Vissers, who served from 1911 to 1926, and Philippus Wabbes, who died in 1931. Wabbes’s monument identifies him as a knight of the Order of Leopold, Belgium’s highest order of chivalry.
Sacred Heart memorial
West of the church stands a bronze monument to the Sacred Heart, commemorating local victims of the First World War. Simon Goossens of Antwerp designed it, and the Brussels foundry Ed. Lesetre & Compagnie cast it.
Nave, crossing, and choir
Large windows in the aisles, transept, and choir fill the interior with light despite their stained glass. Pointed arches, sandstone columns, and plastered painted walls shape the interior. Most of the windows date from 1948 to 1952, when Calders & Son of Antwerp produced them from designs by L. K. Crespin of Brussels.
High choir
The high choir contains a main altar with a tabernacle, the furnishing used to reserve the Eucharist, and a wooden retable, an ornamental structure behind an altar. The brass tabernacle door shows the seated Christ with Alpha and Omega and the tetramorph, the symbolic forms of the four Evangelists: a human or angel, a lion, an ox, and an eagle. The retable includes two carved scenes by Frans De Vriendt, marked “FDV”. They portray the Adoration of the Magi and the Sacrifice of Abraham, each with a Latin inscription.
At the altar’s right end, beneath a pinnacle, stands a polychromed statue of Anthony of Padua. On the left is Elizabeth of Hungary. The choir’s stained-glass windows present scenes from the Passion of Christ. The left window includes the Last Supper, the Agony in the Garden, Christ’s mockery by the high priests, and his condemnation by Pontius Pilate. The central window shows Pilate washing his hands and Veronica meeting Jesus, together with a memorial text for the postwar restoration. The right window depicts the Deposition, or Pietà, the Resurrection, Christ’s appearance to Mary Magdalene, and the Ascension.
Choir wall paintings and crossing
Two large anonymous frescoes on the southern choir wall date from around the transition between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. One shows the Tree of Jesse, representing Mary’s genealogy, while the other presents the Tree of David, representing Christ’s genealogy.
A triumphal cross hangs beneath the vault at the crossing, the point where the nave and transept meet. The symbols of Mark and Luke appear at the ends of its arms, while John and Matthew are shown on the crossbeam. A gray-marble offertory table, installed after the postconciliar reforms associated with the period following the Second Vatican Council, stands at the center.
Transepts and Leonardus devotion
Left transept
The left transept contains a white Neo-Gothic pulpit by P. Peeters. Its body carries high-relief figures of Leonardus and four early Church Fathers: Augustine of Hippo, Jerome of Stridon, Pope Gregory I, and Ambrose of Milan. High relief is sculpture that projects strongly from its background.
The same arm has a side altar with a wooden retable showing fifteen mysteries. Nearby are a polychromed wooden statue of the Virgin and Child and another of the Blessing Christ Child. The aisles contain a terracotta Stations of the Cross, a sequence of fourteen scenes of Christ’s Passion, made as monochrome high-relief panels by Hendrik Peeters of Turnhout.
Leonardus chapel
A separate Leonardus chapel occupies the eastern side of the right transept. Antwerp sculptor Jan Gerrits made its side altar and wooden retable in 1905. He also produced the Leonardus reliquary bust and the polychromed statue of Leonardus with fetters and chains in 1898. Above the altar, a fresco by Antwerp painter Charles Peeters shows episodes from the saint’s life and dates from around the transition between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The chapel preserves a Renaissance stained-glass window from 1544 depicting the Resurrection of Christ. Adriaan van der Noot, bailiff of Brecht and a former alderman of Antwerp, donated it with his wife Josina Daens and their three sons and two daughters. The family appears at the bottom of the window. A fourteenth- or fifteenth-century wooden trunk chest, made from a native tree trunk and strengthened with iron, was formerly used for church archives and weighs more than 100 kilograms.
Devotional objects
The chapel also contains a Mechelen enclosed garden, a devotional display in a broad glazed wooden case. It holds wooden figures of Leonardus, Augustine of Hippo, and Elizabeth of Hungary amid ornamental decoration. Above it is a Carrara-marble Sacred Heart statue by an unidentified sculptor from Ghent. Wooden statues of Barbara of Nicomedia, shown with a tower and sword, and Augustine with a burning heart stand beside it.
At the foot of the enclosed garden is a heavy sixteenth-century offertory box made from a hollow oak trunk and reinforced with thick iron bands. The chapel’s objects, together with the reliquary bust and the annual procession, preserve the church’s long devotional connection with Leonardus.
Side aisles and historic memorials
Left aisle
The left aisle contains a polychromed statue of Anthony of Padua made by Jan Gerrits in 1897 and colored by B. Beyens. It also has a statue of Saint Anne with the Virgin and Child by an unknown artist, and an 1888 white monochrome statue of Joseph of Nazareth with the infant Jesus by Jan Frans Deckers, an Antwerp sculptor and Academy teacher. Joseph’s face strongly resembles Deckers’s son Edward, who probably served as the model.
Right aisle
A two-part fresco on the west wall of the right aisle commemorates local soldiers killed in the First World War. Emiel Stoffels painted the upper section, after a design by Marcel Ganten, with Michael triumphing over a dragon. Antwerp professor Eduard Pellens painted the lower section, which presents portraits in laurel wreaths beside the words “Merciful Jesus, grant them eternal rest.”
The right aisle also contains a 1894 statue of Mary in prayer by Frans De Vriendt and a statue of Eligius of Noyon. An older stained-glass window from 1535 shows two episodes from Leonardus’s life: Clovis authorizing him to release prisoners and Leonardus departing for Aquitaine to preach.
Floor slabs
Readable historic grave slabs remain set into the church floor. They commemorate Magdalena Verdyck, who died in 1660 aged 31; Lenaert Verdyck and Maria Verdyck, who died in 1672 and 1661; Cornelies Iacob Verdyck Cornet, a member of the Brecht Guild of Saint Sebastian who died in 1668 aged 36; Ian Matys Hoefkens and Elisabet Cornelis Luycx, who died in 1673; and Catelyn Verdyck, who died in 1675 aged 55.
