Travelogue 1205 – 27 August
Civil Acts

We have a poster on our wall from the last trip to Florence. It’s a sketch of Brunelleschi’s dome. It’s a reminder of the place. It’s a reminder of the spirit of the time. And it’s a reminder of the invigorating pace of civilization, once it’s been inspired.

I was listening to Heather Cox Richardson reading from Illinois Governor Pritzger’s statement after Trump threatened to send National Guard units into Chicago. It’s a momentous time, and a time of change. It’s not too unlike some of the periods in Florentine history, when the republic fought monarchs, when the republic fought itself. Perhaps America is not so exceptional after all.

Somehow men and women find the energy to stand against the chaos. I admire them. I might have had the reserves of energy once, or if I were young now. Perhaps I made one or two stands against chaos when I was younger, a few instances among the millions of unsung defences against chaos. Many people do it, you know.

At the moment, I’m just trying to recover from our trip to the beach. It requires a certain fortitude to travel with your family to the beach by public transit. It’s a trade of stress and strain for a couple hours peace, and clearly the kind of peace one can’t find amid the mundane, or we wouldn’t exert such efforts. It might just be the persuasion of an eight-year-old. Little Ren is a beach-lover. Her enthusiasm is infectious.

I tend to linger somewhere between boredom and sincere appreciation when I am at the beach. I am restless, and then I am resting. I am happiest staring up at the clouds, and then out to the reaches of the sea, as far as the wind farm out there, as far as the big ships that seem to drift asleep, as far as the curve of the Earth and what I cannot see.

I watch the people. The crowds are exhausting. But they are there, and undeniably a part of the beach experience, the boisterous boys, the families ceaselessly moving, the old couples calm, the children squealing. The dogs. The motion swirls around us, rising and subsiding like the sea’s waves, and yet it has its codes and its lines, its prescribed limits, and people commit to the roughly drawn circles of their agitation, and their commotion becomes channelled. Centuries of repetition have encoded their manners. It’s a wonderful thing, and it’s no less foundational than a vote in Parliament. Every civil act, conscious and sub, is in fact a stand against the chaos, every normalcy a sort of kindness to the neighbour, in the face of the malignancy of the raiders running through the halls of our public buildings, shouting orders in our capitals’ streets, performing for each other like pirates who had forgotten how to behave, smug in their coarseness, donning fancy hats for each other.

Travelogue 1204 – 22 August
Travelling the Rivers

Little Ren needs a piano. Rotterdam has surprisingly few music stores with pianos in stock. It’s summer; we are free to travel and search. We decide on a music store in Sliedrecht, a small town upriver from Rotterdam.

I love water; I love being on water. I chose a watery place to live, and yet I find so few opportunities in the day-today to be on the water. We have to travel today, so I decide we’ll travel by water. It’s a direct way to travel in this case, from the west of Rotterdam to the eastern suburb, and yet not the most efficient. In a car, we would be there in half an hour. By train, it might take an hour. On the water bus, it takes an hour and a half. But it’s a beautiful summer day, and it’s an adventure of sorts, standing on the deck of a boat that is chugging against the river currents, watching the choppy water created in our wake. The girls are delighted.

On our journey of some 25-30 kilometres, we travelled on three rivers: the Nieuwe Maas, the Noord, and the Beneden Merwede. And each time, entering a new river meant literally entering a new river. In other words, the river ran no further. The waters changed their names. This is the magic of the delta.

There is a spot in Dordrecht, right where three rivers meet, the Noord, the Beneden Merwede, and the Oude Maas. There is a fifteenth-century brick gateway into the city, at the Groothoofdspoort, with a small, domed tower and seventeenth-century adornments, including a lovely relief of the Dordtse Stadsmaagd, the Maiden of Dordrecht, sitting in the “Garden of Holland, a palm of peace in one hand and the shield of the city in another, so delicate as to appear terracotta. It’s a cute little building. More importantly, there are a few modest eetcafes there by the water, where you can absorb the rare sun and feel like a witness of the convergence of waters.

Travelogue 1203 – 20 August
The Rivers They Come and They Go

It’s been a watery summer. We have celebrated August with many visits to the canals, rivers, lakes and sea that define this little country.

I’m still learning about the complexity of the river system here. In most European cities, one river runs through town. It was often the original raison d'être of the town. The river has a name; the name has roots deep in the past, some fun etymology, something comforting. There might be another river, a tributary.

In this part of the world, rivers come and go. Near Brugge, for example, the Zwin River was created by a storm in 1134. At one time, Bruges was close enough to the sea to be a port city. Then it wasn’t. Then the Zwin appeared, leading the sea almost to the walls of the city. It started silting up almost immediately. Canals were built, and the Zwin itself became unusable. Et cetera. But the Zwin played its part in history, enabling Bruges to become the medieval treasure that it was.

In this area, you can peacefully motor your way upstream on one waterway, never deviating, only to find several kilometres later that you are on a different waterway. Past the confluence with that smaller river, the larger river changed names. The Nieuwe Maas, for example, which runs through Rotterdam and connects it to the sea, actually only flows for 24 kilometres, and never makes it to the sea. Further, it has only existed since the thirteenth century, when, yes, a storm flooded the region, and river courses were changed.

It's a bit like the experience of an American trying to figure London out for the first time. The same street changes names every mile or so. “Why?” the innocent tourist asks. “It’s the same street!” Well, yes and no. It has everything to do with history, and with communities. Each village or borough had its own story about that thoroughfare, and the connection with other throughfares is a separate story.

Here, the rivers and canals are so many, and some are so recent. They form one huge network, like a web, and each strand much be identified for the purpose of navigation and planning. Some names are organic, some are quite dry, like the “New Waterway” that does finally connect the Nieuwe Maas – by way of the Scheur, mixing waters with the Oude Maas – connect it to the sea.

Travelogue 1202 – 16 August
The Holy Blood

The Burg Square in Bruges is the site of the original fort (“burg”) that was the seed from which the town grew. That fort was built in the mid-ninth century by Margrave Baldwin I. Baldwin the Iron Arm, as he was called, was made first margrave because he was the son-in-law of Charles the Bald, grandson of Charlemagne and Emperor. Flanders became the first hereditary autonomous county in the splintering Carolingian Empire.

There were a lot of Baldwins in Flemish history. Later Baldwins would include: the True Beard; the Leper King; Baldwin IX of Flanders, who was also Baldwin VI of Hainaut, who was also leader of the Fourth Crusade and afterward Baldwin I as Byzantine Emperor (and, sadly, the last of the Flemish Baldwins).

There was another Baldwin, one not descended from the family of Flemish counts but from French nobility, Baldwin III of Jerusalem, king of that Crusader state. According to legend, he presented to Thierry of Alsace, Theoderic, the actual Count of Flanders, a vial of the Christ’s holy blood in reward for his service in the Second Crusade. That was in the 1140s.

In 1150 or so, the Sint-Janshospitaal was founded. In the same decade, the Chapel of the Holy Blood was built. It was built next to the “Oud Steen”, the residence of the counts, which stood on the site of the old “burg” and would become the City Hall. The building we see on that site today was built in the fourteenth century. The Basilica of the Holy Blood that we see today is a combination of the first chapel and a fifteenth-century addition, with significant nineteenth-century renovation.

The weekly veneration of the Holy Blood happens upstairs, in the fifteenth- and nineteenth-century chapel. You walk up a lovely sixteenth-century staircase, designed by William Aerts, before entering the upper chapel, which is small and ornate, tinted by the nineteenth-century stained glass and the nineteenth-century frescoes behind the high altar. The Holy Blood is presented in a side chapel, at a marble altar designed in the eighteenth century.

Two priests enter with the relic. You have been bid to sit before the altar by an impatient deacon, but you stand when they enter. One priest is old, one is young. The old man handles the relic while the young man recites a blessing in four languages. Then we are allowed to line up before the stairs up to the altar. One by one, we are allowed a moment before the relic.

The relic is a piece of cloth holding the blood of Jesus, contained in a vial that tests have determined is made of Byzantine rock crystal dating back to the 11th or 12th century. There is golden thread wound around the vial’s neck which is visible through the encasing cylinder. That cylinder dates to the fourteenth century. It is glass with golden coronets on each end. Altogether, it is a mesmerising object.

I don’t believe or disbelieve that the relic is authentic. I am not a practicing Christian. And yet, I was moved by the experience of the ceremony and by seeing the relic. I would classify my response as a religious feeling. Religious feelings are public and ritual, aesthetic and moral. They are shared, and they are significant only as communal and moral emotion. I was moved by a consciousness of the suffering in history, as acknowledged by the church in the story of the Passion.

There is an awful lot of ‘protesteth-too-much” atheism in the world these days, particularly in Northern Europe, and it faces off with a smaller, but perhaps more obdurate, “protesteth-too-much” religion. The standoff feels inauthentic; both camps have feet firmly planted in another era. If either group had actually arrived at their station, they would have little to be so anxious about, so strident over.

The awkward artificiality on both sides makes it hard to speak about religion. But I can say I caught a bit of it on my trip to Brugge. It is a healthy feeling, when left alone, not pressed into service of one agenda or another. I felt like I learned something important about the church, something hard yet to verbalise.

Travelogue 1201 – 12 August
Sint-Jans

Het Sint-Janshospitaal, the Hospital of Saint John, in Bruges was founded in the twelfth century. For almost eight hundred years, the hospital was open to all who needed help, the poor, the sick, travellers and pilgrims. Those inside were bound by their charter never to turn anyone away. It’s an impressive complex, brick buildings enclosing quiet cloisters and gardens. Even today, when tourists are free to explore – the hospital moved across town to a modern facility in 1977 and the complex became a museum, – the place has a quiet dignity.

Honestly, I was very moved by the remains of this place and its charitable mission. Inside were many exhibits oriented to the work carried on there for more than 800 years, showcasing the medical work, explaining the medieval notions of hospitality and religion, making it real with recreations of the sounds that would have resounded in those halls, with images from centuries ago. One little video exhibit analyses the detail in one historical painting of the great hall that formed the heart of the hospital. Everything was in the open in that space, admission and diagnosis, beds and food, prayers and cleaning and even surgery. It is overwhelming to consider the work, the humanity, the suffering, the hope and despair housed in that great hall, day after day.

Also humbling was a little video of interviews with modern nuns from the order. Their words were very affecting. They were plain, simple words from women who loved their work. “No regrets” they said about their vows and their vocations. Regrets! I feel a sense of shame that anyone acting out such a vision of selflessness would feel a need to apologize. Their lives were given to the care of others. Religion moved them, and if many of us find religion suspect, the point is moot in the face of their commitment.

There is no denying that the monastics enjoyed a certain privilege and status in medieval society. It’s no accident that the hospital houses a collection of priceless works of art. I know nothing of the character of Hans Memling, but it’s sure he didn’t work for free. I forgive Sister Agnes her vanity, placing herself in paintings beside Mother Mary and Saint Catherine. She was the prioress of a great house doing God’s work. Her self-regard is not conclusive evidence against her competence, or can, with any seriousness, be held against her if she saved even one life.

Travelogue 1200 – 8 August
Memling’s Shrine

She led 11,000 virgins. She was a British princess on pilgrimage. She was slaughtered, along with all her entourage, by the Huns in Cologne. Their bodies were buried there, in the centre of modern Cologne, and there they remained until their discovery in the twelfth century. The bones unearthed entered the relic market, and St Ursula became very popular as the patron saint of young women. (The bones were probably from a Roman graveyard.)

I love the stories of Catholic saints. They are thousands of saints, and they are the superheroes of the Middle Ages. But there is a key difference between Catholic saints and heroes of Greek or Roman or Marvel mythology: they were human, born to live or die like anyone else, but were saved, sometimes martyred, and they effected miracles only incidentally, as an consequence of their holiness.

One can follow the story of St Ursula on the fifteenth-century relic shrine left us in Bruges, a product of the famous Flemish primitive, Hans Memling. Memling was a favourite of the sisters of the Sint-Janshospitaal. A particular fan was Agnes Casembrood, who commissioned the shrine, and who is portrayed on one of the short facades praying behind the Virgin and Child. She also appears, by the way, in one of the back panels of the huge Triptych of Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist, which is also housed at the Sint-Janshospitaal. She kneels there and prays under the tutelage of two tall women saints, one of which ohich is Catherine.

The relic shrine is a marvellous piece of work, carved in wood to be a miniature Gothic chapel to house the hospital church’s relics and then painted by Memling and his workshop. The shrine is wooden, but is gilded, and it features all the decoration common in Gothic architecture, pinnacles, finials, gablets, crockets, tracery, and statues in niches. Along both sides, you follow the story of St Ursula in Memling’s vivid colours, travelling to Rome, meeting the pope, and then besieged by the Huns in Cologne. The scenes are crowded with figures, and yet you have no trouble picking out Ursula and the pope and following the fundamental storyline. The shrine is not even a metre tall. The art of the miniature is in full glory in this period. The detail is wonderful.

Travelogue 1199 – 4 August
Our Lady

We spent a few days in Bruges (or Brugge, in the Flemish variation). I made a point of stopping by the Church of Our Lady straight away, to visit the Renaissance treasure hidden inside. Here is one of the very few Michelangelo sculptures to leave Italy during his lifetime.

During the years he was carving the David, 1501-1504, when he was young, Michelangelo also produced this lovely Madonna and Child. It may have been intended for an altar in Tuscany, but it was purchased by a pair of Flemish brothers in the cloth business, Jan and Alexander Mouscron, and shipped home to Bruges to embellish a funerary monument for their parents.

The sculpture is recognizable as Michelangelo’s, in the Carrara stone, in the polish applied, in the shape of the Virgin’s face, in the twisting pose of the Christ child. It breaks from medieval tradition in several ways, in its asymmetry, in the independence of the child, who seems to be ready to take a step, in the contemplative expression on Mary’s face. She is not looking at her baby, but down, presumably at the worshippers in the church where the sculpture was originally intended to be installed, on an altar above the congregation.

There is something of the great man’s character in the work, something of his complex character. Note his devotion to hard work in the fine detail and the high polish. Catch the tone of his religion in the way the pyramidal composition exalts the figures, in the cool detachment of the figures as they consider the boy’s fate. Note his pride in the illusion of simplicity in the challenging pose of the Christ child. His awe-inspiring competence is as much the subject and purpose of the piece as the religious subject matter. Michelangelo’s work is a kind of testament to and embodiment of Pico della Mirandola’s "Oration on the Dignity of Man".

It was a privilege to see this work. It is housed in the Church of Our Lady, the thirteenth-century church with the tallest tower in the city, and third tallest brickwork tower in the world, a lovely structure that also houses the elaborate fifteenth-century tombs of Mary of Burgundy and Charles the Bold.