De Tuin van Heden.***

 

Sint Godelievesabdij, Bouveriestraat, Brugge.

Last Friday, a visit with a friend to Sint Godelievesabdij in Bouveriestraat, open to the public for a month until September 12. I had read that it is ‘a hidden gem’ and this phrase rather under-sold it! It is truly magnificent both in its immense structure; its atmosphere which provides an almost mediaeval ambience, and the beauty of the various rooms and spaces which suggest the Benedictine nuns have recently departed. [They left in December 2013.] The magazine [produced by ToerismeVlaanderen] provided with the free entry is in itself a splendid catalogue of the history of the place and contains many nudges to the reader to consider the various features such as the silence, and the beauty, and to imagine what might be the future of this place. This opening up to the community is part of Open Monumentsdag but it is more than that. It is a huge exercise in consultation in which ideas from as wide a community as possible are sought so that local opinion in particular can be considered as long-term decisions are made on the future purposes of this august space.

Depiction of the strangulation of Godelieve.

Sint Godelieve was born in 1050, an aristocrat married at a young age to Bertolf van Gistel who treated her very badly and eventually had her strangled with her own scarf by his servants who dumped her body in a nearby pool. The Bishop of Tournai canonised her on 30 July 1084. She was buried in the church at Gistel and the daughter of the murderer, Bertolf, born blind but who had gained her sight through a miracle attributed to Godelieve, built Ten Putte Abbey on the spot where she had been murdered. It is now one of the oldest Flemish women’s abbeys. Godelieve’s scarf which ended her life, became her virtual trademark, then called her attribute and it always appeared on any representation of her in paintings and sculpture. There are numerous examples of women saints adorned with scarves in the Bouveriestraat abbey and Sint Godelieve would have been instantly recognisable to the illiterate peasants in the Middle Ages.

The sisters of Sint Godelieve are Benedictine nuns and they live chiefly in silence, devoting their lives to prayer and meditation. They follow the rules of Saint Benedict [480-547 A.D.] praying seven times a day and eating no meat. Their motto is Ora et labora/ pray and work and their days were spent working in the garden, producing all the food needed for the inhabitants of the abbey, and also in contemplation and in religious celebrations. But as the attraction of the monastic lifestyle has waned, so

 the number of sisters has declined until the last five sisters finally closed down this venerable institution on December 23rd 

Abdij Ten Putte, Gistel.

2013. At its height there would have been at least a hundred sisters living there. The original Abbey in Bouveriestraat was begun in 1626 when the first six sisters moved into the modest two room building known as Het Fountainken given by Henricus vanden Zype, Abbot of the Capuchin monks in the same street. The sisters fled from Ten Putte Abbey after Protestants had attacked it and wandered hopefully in search of a home for nearly 50 years before finally settling in Brugge, though over the ensuing centuries they had to leave several times fleeing violence, from the effects of the French Revolution when the Abbey and its contents were sold at public auction and again during the two twentieth century World Wars. Frankly the history of these sisters and their Abbey needs a book to retell in its entirety!

Choir stalls in the Church.

The Abbey now, empty but redolent of its holy past, has most of the furniture and accoutrements from the past four hundred years [excepting those lost at the State-initiated public auction] The main rooms currently on view are St Godelieve’s Baroque church; the Abbess’s Room [the Mother Superior’s office]; the seventeenth century kitchen; the Sewing Atelier [established in 1663]; the Recreation Room and the Chapter House. In addition to the hard work cultivating mainly vegetables and herbs for the vegan community, the nuns also earned income by repairing, washing and ironing liturgical textiles from the numerous churches and convents in Brugge and this continued into the twentieth century. The Recreation Room was used for guests’ dining, [near the Refectory but separate from it]; singing classes for the sisters and Bible classes; a silent space for reading and contemplation while gazing at the garden beyond. The Recreation Room was also used for the training of novices.

Order of service board showing particular
responsibilities for nuns when seven only
remained in the Abbey.

The Chapter House with its democratic seating around the walls to enable all to contribute, was a place for discussion on order and discipline in daily life; the entry of new sisters; special celebrations and commemorations and news from the bishop. The principle of silence was suspended here. The wooden interior of this room was destroyed in WW1 and eventually restored by the carpentry shop of the Zevenkerken’s Abdij in Sint Andries.

There is a wealth of furniture, utensils, books and cupboards, part both of the old and recent every day monastic life and, essentially, all made for the place where they remain. The kitchen has recipe books lying open to be read but its essentially enchanting feature is the Delft tiling. ALL the walls are covered, floor to ceiling in hand-painted Delft blue and white tiles depicting 46 different scenes of children’s games like flying kites, blowing bubbles, bows and arrows plus older games long since forgotten. It is a delight to see and suggests both the temporal innocence of the nuns and their inevitable childlessness.

Well in the Garden of Remembrance.

The exceptional
garden, a square in the centre of the Abbey buildings, is named here as de Tuin van Heden, a Dutch play on words to describe The Garden of Eden but also to suggest The Garden of the Present. It is a place of beauty and reflection and was also a garden of remembrance as sisters who died were buried here until the French Revolution. This earlier conjunction of the dead and the living was more comfortably accepted in the past than perhaps today. In addition to this splendid central garden are other green spaces; the orchard and the vegetable garden; the herb garden with culinary and medicinal plants; the bee hives among flowers; the modest farm with chickens and a cow, the main home farm being in Gistel. There was also an outside oven where bread was baked and a brewery for the beer supply, safer than water often. The whole enterprise was aimed at self-sufficiency within silent and graceful surroundings pervaded by a deeply

religious ambience.

More Delft  tiles decorating a fireplace in the earliest
part of the Abbey.

Archway approach to part of the extensive gardens.

Whip and top

Bowling hoops

Catapults?

*** De Tuin van Heden.

A play on the Dutch to mean both

The Garden of Eden               and            The Garden of the Present.

Sint  Godelievesabdij is a must to see now and a place to keep in focus as decisions are made for its future use as it is transformed from a monastery, a sacred space, to ................ whatever is decided. 

An indication of the former size of the Abbey community.