An ornate Renaissance reliquary for a 7th-century saint has become a modern bone of contention in a small eastern Belgian city eager to attract more tourists.
Claude Eerdekens, the socialist mayor of Andenne near Namur, stunned the Church of St Begga recently with a plan for a new museum to house the silver-and-gold casket of its namesake, despite the fact the 102kg masterpiece had been kept in the church treasury for centuries.
The casket, richly adorned with bas relief images of the Apostles and Bible scenes, belonged to the city thanks to the 1796 nationalisation of Church property by invading French revolutionaries, he claimed.
But the church and Namur archdiocese argued it moved to Namur with the Andenne abbey nuns in 1787 and came back with them about three decades later.
“The reliquary was returned and entrusted to the church around 1820, after the establishment of the concordat between Napoleon and Pope Pius VI,” they said in a statement. “So the reliquary was not nationalised.”
Jean Sacré, head of the church treasury, told Belgian television that Saint Begga was a venerated local figure. Apart from founding the abbey, “this lady was not just anybody. She was the great-great-grandmother of Charlemagne.”
She might also have founded or inspired the medieval béguinage movement that built homes for lay women in the Low Countries. Historians differ on whether it was her or the 12th century Liège priest Lambert the Stutterer (bégayer means “to stutter” in French).
Eerdekens told the city council that “the church only had to agree with our argument and we could have presented you with a magnificent plan providing for the future of this treasure and a way for it to be visited by lots of tourists”.
The church and archdiocese warned against filing a lawsuit since the city would end up paying both the legal fees for the mayor’s suit and the church’s defence through the municipal budget for upkeep of historic buildings. “All this is absurd,” they said.
The Church of Saint Begga admits the reliquary could be better presented and protected, as could the many other valuable objects like centuries-old statues, vestments and liturgical vessels it also possesses.
But it wants the city to fund improvements in the church and in two existing Andenne museums rather than build a new one.
Sauvé said he hoped he could also open the casket and check the DNA of the bones inside. “The Church says that’s Saint Begga, a grandmother of Charlemagne, but that has not yet been scientifically proven.”
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