Sint-Martinuskerk: Weert’s Gothic Deanery Church in the Netherlands
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Netherlands
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Dutch, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page10 sections
History
Sint-Martinuskerk is the principal Roman Catholic and deanery church of Weert, in the Netherlands, dedicated to Saint Martin, the fourth-century bishop of Tours. Its present building developed through several Gothic construction phases, beginning with the completion of the choir in 1456. The church belongs to the Diocese of Roermond and remains a place of Roman Catholic worship.
Medieval construction
A church at Weert is recorded in 1056. The first completed part of the present building was its Gothic choir, finished in 1456. The earlier church continued in use afterward, although the physical relationship between that building and the new choir is not known.
Around 1500, the old nave was demolished and replaced with the present three-aisled Gothic hall church. In a hall church, the nave and side aisles are broadly similar in height, creating a more unified interior volume than a church with a much taller central nave. Sint-Martinuskerk was consecrated and returned to use in 1512, although work probably continued after that ceremony.
The medieval tower and later completion
Construction of the tower began in 1528 in the Kempene Gothic style, a regional Gothic tradition associated with the Kempen area of present-day Belgium and the Netherlands. Work stopped toward the end of the sixteenth century, probably because money ran short. The builders may also have stopped after reaching proportions they considered appropriate for the church and the surrounding townscape.
The church gained an important funerary association in 1568, when Filips van Montmorency, Count of Horne, was buried there after being beheaded in Brussels on the orders of the Spanish governor Alva. Horne was a Netherlandish nobleman executed during the political repression directed by the Duke of Alba. His heart was placed in a tin container in the priest’s choir. The burial place of his body remains uncertain, with the Paterskerk at the Biest and a chapel at Nijenborgh Castle identified as possible locations. Nijenborgh Castle was destroyed during the 1702 siege of Weert in the War of the Spanish Succession, a conflict over the Spanish throne that involved several European powers.
Changes to the interior
The church’s furnishings changed over time. In 1662, Jan van der Croon donated a Baroque screen for the fifteenth-century baptismal font. In 1790, the Baroque high altar by Kerrics was moved to the choir of the northern aisle. It was replaced in the main choir by a Neoclassical high altar designed by the brothers Moretti and Spinelli.
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century tower history
In 1887, dean Johannes Godefridus Custers decided to complete the tower, encouraged by Monsignor Rutten, dean of Maastricht. The project reflected renewed Catholic confidence in the Netherlands after Thorbecke’s constitutional reform had established equality among religions before the state. Weert’s improving economic conditions also supported the undertaking.
Architect Johannes Kayser designed the new upper elevation. The existing medieval masonry, almost 30 metres high, was extended by about 20 metres after the blunt medieval spire was removed. The completed tower reached 104.80 metres and was then the third-highest tower in the Netherlands, after the Dom Tower in Utrecht and the tower of the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft.
The nineteenth-century addition soon developed structural problems. In 1906, on the instructions of government architect Pierre J. Cuypers, the cross was shortened by 7 metres and nearly all its ornament was removed because the tower leaned almost 60 centimetres out of alignment. During an autumn storm in 1940, the high spire collapsed. One of the four corner pinnacles fell with it, several church vaults were damaged, and Hotel de Vesper on the Oude Markt was completely destroyed. The tower remained without an upper termination for almost two decades.
Church authorities held a competition for a new tower crown in 1951. Theo Verlaan’s winning design was constructed in 1960 after subsidy difficulties delayed the work. The project combined a new crown with restoration of the surviving medieval and nineteenth-century lower tower. The tower was designated a Rijksmonument, a nationally protected monument in the Netherlands, on 19 July 1967. It is also included in the Dutch national Top 100 of protected monuments, particularly because of its exceptionally detailed and colourful late-Gothic vault paintings.
Remains
Church layout and medieval fabric
Sint-Martinuskerk is a late-Gothic three-aisled hall church organized around a central nave, side aisles, a choir, and the tower. The building combines brick, natural stone, and tuff. Its hall-church form places the nave and aisles at approximately equal heights. In the Netherlands, it is identified as one of only two surviving late-Gothic examples of this type, the other being the Grote or Michaëlskerk in Zwolle.
The choir is the oldest surviving major part of the present church. It is Gothic and belongs to the construction phase completed in 1456. The building also retains detailed, colourful late-Gothic vault paintings extending across a large continuous area. These paintings are among the features that give the church its protected-monument status and its place in the Dutch national list.
The tower
The medieval lower tower is built in Kempene Gothic style. Its surviving lower structure was almost 30 metres high before Kayser’s nineteenth-century work added approximately 20 metres of masonry. Earlier forms of the tower measured about 47 metres, while the completed Kayser elevation exceeded 104 metres. The present tower is about 78 metres high, following the loss of the tall nineteenth-century spire and the construction of the later crown.
Kayser’s design had four corner pinnacles, each 9 metres high, connected by a balustrade with pointed arches. A very elongated openwork oak spire, covered with slate, rose between them. It was approximately 40 metres high and carried a tall wrought-iron cross measuring 17.80 metres, with gilded elements and a weather vane. The south-side stair turret received its present form during this nineteenth-century tower work.
Verlaan’s 1960 crown sealed the pointed-arch belfry openings with new layered wall surfaces and replaced the large corner pinnacles with smaller buttresses. A lantern-shaped structure rises from these supports and houses the carillon, a set of tuned bells played from a keyboard. Its plan is broadly square with chamfered corners, and a crown with a gilded cross forms the upper termination. The design has a pronounced 1950s character and uses fewer Gothic details than Verlaan’s later tower elevation for the Eusebiuskerk in Arnhem. Tuff deteriorated in parts of the tower and was replaced where necessary in 2005 with white Chinese hardstone, especially in the tracery of the carillon belfry openings.
Furnishings and memorial remains
The choir contains the Neoclassical high altar designed by Moretti and Spinelli in 1790. Kerrics’s earlier Baroque high altar stands in the choir of the northern aisle. Elsewhere in the church, the fifteenth-century baptismal font is enclosed by the Baroque screen donated by Jan van der Croon in 1662.
The priest’s choir contains the tin container holding the heart of Filips van Montmorency. A tombstone associated with him is also preserved in the church. Together, these objects connect the building’s interior with the sixteenth-century political upheavals that shaped Horne’s final years.
The organ
Above the entrance to the nave stands the main organ, built in 1942 by the Gebroeders Vermeulen firm of Weert. It has 43 stops distributed across three manuals and a pedal. The positive is enclosed in a classical organ case, while the pipes of the main and pedal divisions stand free. The swell division is recessed into the wall behind them. The instrument uses cone chests and electro-pneumatic action, with couplers connecting the manuals and pedal divisions.
