THE BREVIARY OF
GERAARDSBERGEN

The building, designed in thirteenth-century style by the architect Jean-Baptiste de Bethune (1821–1894), was financed by the industrialist Desclée family. The first manifestation of the abbey was the founding of an abbey school, followed shortly afterwards by a school for artistic and decorative crafts in line with medieval principles. Just as in the case of their predecessors, a number of Maredsous monks departed for Brazil and the Congo as missionaries. The abbey also wanted to engage with the intellectual work of monks from the celebrated French congregation of Saint-Maur, set up a library to that end, and appointed a group of monks as researchers.

Dom Columba Marmion (1858–1923), the third abbot, was prolific author of spiritual works. In its turn, Maredsous established other monasteries or helped in their foundation: the Abbey of the Monastery of St Benedict of Olinda in Brazil (1884), St Anselm-on-the-Aventine in Rome (1890), St Andrew’s Abbey, Zevenkerken, in Bruges and Keizersberg Abbey in Leuven (1899), Glenstal Abbey in Ireland (1927), the Monastery of Gihindamuyaga in Rwanda (1958) and Quévy Abbey in Hainaut (1969).

Tourism took off in Maredsous after the Second World War, and the abbey launched its own brands of beer and cheese, sales from which presently represent the most important source of revenue for the abbey’s community of some thirty monks. This also provides employment for numerous people in the region. More than half a million people visit the abbey each year, which makes it one of the most popular locations in Wallonia.

The books that came from Beuron Archabbey formed the basis of the collection and were supplemented by library acquisitions or donations, such as from the English Seminary in Bruges and foundations of former Benedictine abbeys including Saint-Hubert. In particular, the Maredsous Library aimed to offer the monks study and work tools in three specific domains. Liturgical works were first and foremost; religious practice led the monks to study the liturgy and to make it accessible to the faithful. A second field of research was the Bible. 1950 saw publication of the Bible de Maredsous in French, and nowadays it has been published in several languages. The third domain was history and patristics (the study of works by Early Christian writers designated as the Church Fathers), studied by a variety of monks. Results from these fields of study and from researchers worldwide are published in La Revue bénédictine.

These volumes were donated in 1912 by Count Paul de Hemptinne (1851–1923), who was closely associated with Maredsous. Up until 1909, his brother Hildebrand (1849–1913) had been the monastery’s second abbot, and two of his sons became monks there – Dom Pie (who died in 1907) and Dom Jean (later Bishop of Lubumbashi). His sister was the abbess of Maredret. It was at the request of the monk-historian Dom Ursmer Berlière (1861–1932) that Paul de Hemptinne donated these precious manuscripts – after all, they had originated in a Benedictine monastery.

It is quite probable that the Hemptinne family had purchased the manuscripts from a public auction held on 11 and 12 December 1866 concerning the library of Charles Welvaert (1797–1866), a pastor in Gentbrugge. Welvaert was an eminent bibliophile who frequented the most prestigious of book auctions and who, for his own part, had inherited the library from his brother Christophorus Bernardus Welvaert (1783–1864), who had been a priest and dean in Ypres. Page 13 of the sales catalogue listed nine manuscripts that had originated from St Adrian’s Abbey in Geraardsbergen, lot 14 of which was described as follows: ‘Breviarum Manuscriptum, anno 1200. 4 beaux vol. in-fol. demi-rel. maroq. rouge. Manuscrit sur parchemin avec plusieurs miniatures et majuscules coloriées et rehaussées d’or’ (4 fine volumes in folio, half-bound in red Morocco leather. Manuscript on parchment with several miniatures and coloured and gilded capitals).

‘Breviarum Manuscriptum, anno 1200. 4 beaux vol. in-fol. demi-rel. maroq. rouge. Manuscrit sur parchemin avec plusieurs miniatures et majuscules coloriées et rehaussées d’or’

These are definitely the four volumes of the Breviary. However, how did they come into the Welvaert brothers’ possession? Christophorus, the elder of the two, had been vicar in Geraardsbergen between 1815 and 1820. It would seem likely that the manuscripts came into his possession during that time; he might have obtained them from the abbey’s former monks, some of whom had become secular priests and still held manuscripts. After his death in 1864, the Breviary and other documents ended up in the library owned by his brother Charles, where they were afforded a special place. In 1866 the four volumes together with the rest of Charles’s library were auctioned and, consequently, when they were donated to Maredsous Abbey in 1912, the Breviary once again found itself housed in a Benedictine abbey.

According to the Golden Legend, a book of hagiographies compiled by Jacobus de Voragine in around 1259–66, Adrian had been a Roman officer at the imperial court of Nicomedia situated in present-day Turkey. The story goes as follows: impressed by the courage shown by a group of Christians who were persecuted and martyred, he declared himself a Christian and was imprisoned alongside them and subjected to gruesome torture. His young wife, Natalia, was present at his martyrdom, comforted him in his suffering and, after his death, retrieved one of his severed hands. She fled to Argyropolis, near Constantinople, to escape an imperial official who wanted to marry her. Adrian appeared to her en route, whereupon she turned back to Nicomedia to die together with other martyrs. Adrian and Natalia were jointly venerated. Although none of the story can be historically verified, it spread far and wide throughout Europe thanks to the Golden Legend.

The church had various altars and a choir, as well as a chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, where the abbots were interred. The silver reliquary containing St Adrian’s remains, made in 1423 under the prelate Willem van Ideghem (Guillaume de Vorde), was placed on display in the middle of the choir. As a memento, pilgrims would buy a pilgrim’s badge, a small metal portrait of Adrian in relief. They believed that the badge had protective powers and would pin it to their clothing or fix it to the wall at home. For example, three different types of pilgrim’s badge depicting St Adrian have been discovered in the Enclosed Gardens of Mechelen: religious retable cabinets created in around 1530 by Augustinian nuns. Badges bearing the saint’s image have also been found in archaeological excavations in Zeeland, Dordrecht, Rotterdam, Egmond aan Zee, Zwolle and Canterbury.

People prayed to St Adrian in Flanders, northern France and Germany, and he is the patron saint of Lisbon. He is usually shown holding a sword in his hands, with a lion at or below his feet and accompanied by an anvil. In Geraardsbergen, St Adrian was venerated in particular as protection against the plague and sudden death. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Geraardsbergen was known as Adrianopolis: St Adrian’s city (fig. 4). Pilgrims flocking ‘ad sanctum Adrianum in Flandria’ (Johannes Molanus, Indiculus sanctorum Belgii, 1573). There was a great influx of pilgrims throughout the year, but most of all in summer.

The history of St Adrian’s Abbey can be found in a variety of chronicles and texts which report the close ties between the County of Flanders, the Burgundian court and the abbey. For example, the Duke of Burgundy Philip the Good was extremely benevolent in respect of Adriaan Kimpe, prelate to Geraardsbergen Abbey from 1440 to 1455. He appointed him as an advisor and the abbey acquired a special protected status. It was under Kimpe’s successor, the prelate Nicaise de Frasne, and at a time when the abbey was flourishing and influential as never before, that the Geraardsbergen Breviary was created either as a commission by the abbey or as a gift to it. The French king Louis XI (1425–1489) and his wife Charlotte of Savoy visited the abbey several times and were lavish in their financial donations. Apart from several occasions when they donated large sums of money, in around 1480–83 they also commissioned a workshop in Ghent to produce a Vita of St Adrian, richly illuminated by particularly skilled miniaturists, including among them the Master of the Older Prayer Book of Maximilian I (Vienna, Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. ser. nova 2619).

Apart from the Geraardsbergen Breviary, the most famous illuminated manuscript was the great twelfth-century Bible of Geraardsbergen Abbey, only fragmentary parts of which have been preserved, including parts in Oslo and loose folios in foreign collections. We know of a few beautifully illuminated, fifteenth-century missals and breviaries in which Adrian is depicted or in which the saint’s feast days (4 March, 27 May and 26 August) have been included in the calendar. Also to have come from the abbey is a book of hours dating from c. 1450, now held at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. An illuminated missal, commissioned by Abbot Jan de Broedere in around 1520, was auctioned at Christie’s in London on 13 June 2002 and is now in the possession of the antiquarian bookshop Les Enluminures. Ghent University holds a copy of Opera by Hugo van Sint-Victor decorated with pen and ink drawings, and the Royal Library of Belgium contains a two-part, fifteenth-century breviary with gilded initials. The aforementioned beautifully illuminated Legend of St Adrian shows its commissioners, Louis XI and his wife, praying before St Adrian’s Altar and encircled by a splendid decorative border of rosary beads made from mother-of-pearl and coral. We know of barely a handful of works that are beautifully illuminated manuscripts – a mere fraction of what the abbey library once held.