St. Servatius on the River Maas

The city of Maastricht is about as far south as you can go in the Netherlands.  In fact, you can practically walk to Belgium from the west of Maastricht, and it would be a very quick train ride to Germany on the east.  The city has been a stronghold on the Maas River since antiquity, and in the fourth century, St. Servatius brought Christianity to southern Holland and established the center of his bishopric in Maastricht.  St. Servatius still looms over the art and culture of the city.  This is a photograph of Bishop Servatius flanked by angels.  They adorn one end of the twelfth-century golden shrine that once contained his remains.

From Noord-Holland province it takes about three hours to get to Maastricht, and so I had to leave around 7:00 in the morning.  This is St. Servatius' Bridge, leading from the train station across the green-gray Maas to the old city.

With such long travel time both ways, I had to force myself to stay on a strict schedule so that I could see everything I wanted to and not find myself once again sprinting to catch a train or to slip into a church before they locked the doors.  This is the Vrijthof market square.

On the other side of the square stands the spectacular Basilica of the Savior and St. Peter, better known as St.-Servaas.  To the left is the red tower of St.-Janskerk, built in the Gothic period and then taken over during the Reformation.

 

Construction began on the present church of St.-Servaas 1000 years ago.  It is one of the oldest churches in the Netherlands, and it reminded me a little of Italian Romanesque churches with their severe stone walls, heavy towers, and rounded arches. 

The city still feels very medieval--much more so than any other city I've visited in the Netherlands.  I walked around the back of the basilica and through an archway in a massive Romanesque wall.  Behind a metal grill, a carving of the Madonna and Child sat in a shrine, the stone badly deteriorated from centuries of rain.  I said hello (in Dutch!) to a nun who was also walking through the gateway, probably just leaving the adjoining Convent of St. Charles Borromeo.

Here is the fifteenth-century entrance to St.-Servaas, guarded by gargoyles and saints.

The basilica today uses the vaulted corridors of its cloister as a museum to display the church's treasure--gold and silver liturgical objects for the altar, embroidered silks for wrapping relics, St. Servatius' crucifix and silver key, and lots and lots and lots of fragments of bone, teeth, and clothing enclosed in precious reliquaries.

This gold and silver bust contains relics of St. Servatius, and every few years the people of Maastricht carry it through the streets in an elaborate procession.

Nineteenth-century restorers painted the statues of prophets and saints on of the portals to the basilica in the colors they thought were original.  Although it probably isn't very accurate, I really liked getting a sense for how the entrance to the church may have looked in the Middle Ages.

The tympanum over the door has scenes from the legend of the Madonna's death.  The apostles gather around her deathbed in the lower left, in the lower right angels help her rise to everlasting life, and at the top Christ crowns her Queen of Heaven.

Here is the interior of the basilica.

Steps to the left of the high altar lead down to the crypt and St. Servatius's tomb.  There were two candles burning before the iron grate which separated his sepulcher from the crowds of pilgrims who once came to ask the ancient bishop of Maastricht to work miracles.

There isn't evidence of much devotion at the tomb today, but the deeply worn stone of the entrance bears witness to an important cult that thrived for hundreds of years.

Leaving St.-Servaas, I walked through the gardens growing alongside the old city walls.

This impressive gate is part of the thirteenth-century fortification for the city.

The Basilica of Our Dear Lady, or Onze Lieve Vrouwebasiliek, also looks like like a fortress.  It towers over the narrow square where it stands, and its heavy walls are as old as St.-Servaas.  Photography was not allowed inside, but I don't think I could have taken a successful picture anyway because it was very dark.  Romanesque churches did not have the technology to create huge Gothic windows, and the dust and grime on the stones in this church made it even darker.  Inside, the air even smelled "old"--heavy and musty.

Fortunately I didn't see the "no photography" sign until after I had taken some pictures of the famous cult image housed in the church!  This is a fifteenth-century statue of the Virgin known as Our Lady of Maastricht, "Star of the Sea."  Believed to work miracles, the Madonna and Child wear metal crowns and often a brocade veil.  The Virgin holds a potted lily and carries a long rosary over one arm.

While I was standing there people from the street came into the church to pray and add a candle to the rack of burning tapers in front of the "Star of the Sea"--flickering symbols for their petition to the Virgin and Child.  There is a gift shop in part of the crypt, and as I walked around inside, I could hear the Bach-Gounod "Ave Maria" being played on a CD for sale in the store.

These are silver votive offerings--gifts to the Our Lady of Maastricht in thanks for answered prayers.  Many are shaped like hearts, but others take a form appropriate for the blessing received--for example, a silver head in gratitude for a cured head injury or a silver anchor to commemorate a ship that made it safely on its voyage.

Photography was allowed in the cloister of the church, and you can see that heavy, dusty air as the rays of light shine in through the windows.

Here is a view looking back at the church from the cloister.

I went back across St. Servatius's Bridge to visit the art collection in the Bonnefantenmuseum.  The building is an old ceramic factory, well lit with huge windows.  The medieval holdings are not too big but very high quality.  I especially liked the wood carvings.  They are very expressive--the grief of the Lord's mourning disciples, the complicated folds of the cloth, and the crowded compositions surrounding crucifixion scenes.

To finish off the day, I went to TEFAF, a major art fair held every year in Maastricht.  A friend from school had given me a spare ticket.  Art dealers and galleries from all over the world set up "stands" in a huge community center.  I put "stands" in quotation marks because they were more like individual living rooms, what with fine oil paintings hanging on the walls and statues in the corners.  The numbers on all the price tags were very long with many zeros, as you might imagine, and so potential buyers were treated with great hospitality.  For museum curators and rich collectors who have come to buy, the vendors are stocked with bottles of wine, boxes of chocolate truffles, and comfortable easy chairs to sit in while discussing the details of how best to transport your new Ming Dynasty porcelain pot back home.

Anticipating guests who would be spending a fortune, TEFAF also spent a fortune on flowers.  There were barrels of fresh tulips and dogwood blossoms everywhere, and they had even embedded thousands of red carnations in the walls.  You may ask, "How many chocolate truffles were you offered?"  The answer is none.  Not even one.  The vendors sized me up pretty quickly, and knowing that I wouldn't be purchasing that fourteenth-century Italian panel painting I was looking at, they decided not to waste a chocolate on me!

Lille: A Day-Trip to France

A few weeks ago a couple in Church told me they were going to be driving to Northern France so that the husband could defend his thesis at the University of Lille.  Would I like to come along, they asked.  Actually, there's not much I'd rather do than go to France for the day!

The city of Lille is just over the Belgian border, about a three to four hour drive from the Dutch province of Noord-Holland.  The architecture has a strong Flemish character to it, and you can buy Flemish bread in the bakeries, but otherwise you feel solidly in France.  I speak French much better than I speak Dutch, which isn't saying much!  Actually, during the last couple weeks I've finally worked up the courage to buy chocolate and stroopwafels in Dutch, and I even spoke to a librarian at the Royal Library in Den Haag in Dutch, but if you were to hear how simplistic these sentences were, you would agree with me that my Dutch is pathetic!  I'm not fluent in French, but at least I don't have to continually revert to English after beginning a conversation!

My friends dropped me off near the main town square--the Grand Place--and my day of eating French pastries, visiting a French museum, and trekking across the city to visit French churches began.  This fabulous baroque building in front of the clock tower is the theater.  Close by I made my first stop at Paul P âtisserie.  I say "first stop" because I ended up making three stops at this delicious pastry shop during the course of the afternoon, and I'm not embarrassed to say that I usually bought more than one item each time!

The first pastry stop included a fresh baguette ...

... and a piece of tarte aux fruits rouges.  This was a wonderful creation--I think the berries had been baked into the creamy base of the tart.

Perhaps the only thing better than baguette and tart for lunch would be to eat them in the shadow of a Gothic church, like the Church of Saint-Maurice!

The facade has wonderful sculptures--although mostly restored, I think--with the church's patron saint over the main portal, and then a crucifixion group, gargoyles, angels, apostles, and prophets framed in ornate niches.

The interior was austere and dusky, except for the light coming in from the clear glass windows in the side aisles.  You could tell that we had crossed the border into France because the side altars were dedicated to the most popular French saints--St. Joan of Arc, St. Rita, and St. Th érèse of Lisieux.

From Saint-Maurice, I made my way to the Grand Place with its open square.  Right across from this statue balanced on top of a column I found a small outpost of Paul Pâtisserie!  This meant pastry run number two.

The raspberry tart was excellent, but the pistachio meringue on the right was one of the most delicious pastries I have ever eaten.  There were two green meringue cookies with pistachio-flavored buttercream sandwiched in between.

 While still eating my raspberry tart, I walked along narrow cobblestone roads lined with these elegant buildings to the Neo-Gothic Cathedral of Notre-Dame-de-la-Treille.

This is the brightly-lit nave of the cathedral.

Directly behind the high altar is a chapel enshrining the image that gives the cathedral its name--the statue of Our Lady of La Treille.  Like many statues believed to be miraculous, the Virgin of La Treille is wrapped in a long veil made from real cloth, and she and the Christ Child both wear crowns.

As I left, the midday sun was streaming through the windows and shining on to the chairs in the choir.

On my way to Lille's museum of art, I passed the eighteenth-century Jesuit Church of Saint- Étienne.  It was open, so I had to go inside for a minute.

Near the front of the church, in a place of special honor, is another image of the Madonna and Child believed to work miracles for the sick who come here on  pilgrimage.  She is called Notre-Dame de Gr âce, "Our Lady of Grace."

Housed in the Palais des Beaux-Arts, the museum occupies a prominent position on the large open square of the Place de la R épublique.  Since northern France is warmer than Holland, there were already lots of daffodils in bloom.

The museum had some nice paintings by Rubens and a wonderful collection of very expressive late medieval sculpture in wood.  I didn't give myself enough time to get through the whole collection, and I was more than a little annoyed when fifteen minutes before closing time, the guards started shutting heavy metal doors on rooms full of altarpieces and panel paintings that I still hadn't seen!

Statue standing guard over the Place de la République.

 Locked out of the museum, I went to visit three other churches before meeting my friends for a celebratory dinner in honor of the thesis defense.

 Sacré-Coeur is another Neo-Gothic church, probably from the nineteenth century.  The shape of the stacked arches, towers, stone saints, columns, and ornamented buttresses is really beautiful.

Sacré-Coeur means "Sacred Heart," and a bronze statue of Christ stands at the peak of a gable over the main entrance.  Framed against the rose window, he beckons the world to come receive the loving grace of his heart.

Saint-Michel was closed.  I waited outside hoping they would open the doors a little early for the 7:00 pm mass so I could see the interior but no luck.

My last stop was the Neo-Byzantine Church of Saint-Sauveur, which was also closed.  Then I went back to the Grand Place to wait for my friends.  It was at this point that I suddenly realized with a shock that I had not eaten a croissant yet.  "You're a glutton and a pig," I told myself.  "How can you even think about getting a croissant after the pastries you've already eaten?"  "But then again," another voice said, "How can you hold up your head knowing that you went to France and didn't eat a croissant?"  The other voice made a come back: "What will your friends think if you are greedily eating another pastry right before going out for a special dinner?"  That was a point well taken, but the pro-croissant voice still won.  I'll let you decide which voice was the angel and which was the devil on my shoulder!

While I waited, some kind of labor strike marched on the square singing.  It wouldn't really be France without labor protests!  Fortunately I had long finished my croissant by the time my friends arrived.  In fact, I would  have even had time for a pain au chocolat as well!  We went with their French family and friends to a little restaurant specializing in duck.  It was extremely difficult for me to make up my mind on the menu, but I finally decided to order roast duck with honey glaze and thyme along with fried potatoes.  The dish arrived with the sprig of thyme still glowing red on the edges and smoking.  I ate everything--even the burned thyme, and then for dessert I had French chocolate cake with whipped cream.  There wasn't much of an internal argument this time about the dessert!  It was a fabulous dinner--"magnifique!"