At the heart
of the European Union lies the bureaucratic tyranny of Brussels. And what lies at the heart of that old
city? Ironically, Christianity.
Christian
Brussels
The
foundation of Brussels is a
little chapel built by a holy man named Gaugericus (Géry/Gorikshallen):
‘Saint
Gaugericus of Cambrai built a chapel on the island around the year 580; hence
the name Brussels, which derives from the Old Dutch Bruocsella, Broekzele
or Broeksel, meaning "marsh" (bruoc / broek) and
"home" or "settlement" (sella / zele / sel)
or "settlement in the marsh" ’.
This island
that he settled forms the Central
Quarter of Brussels today. It is
well to recall a little of St
Géry’s life to understand why his name has survived there for 1,400 years:
‘St.
Magneric, the successor of St. Nicetas in the bishopric of Triers, coming to
Yvois was much delighted with the sanctity and talents of St. Gery, and
ordained him deacon; from that moment the saint redoubled his fervour in the
exercise of all good works, and applied himself with unwearied zeal to the
functions of his sacred ministry, especially to the instruction of the
faithful.
‘The
reputation of his virtue and learning raised him to the episcopal chair of
Cambray and Arras, which sees remained united from the death of St. Vedast to
the year 1093. This saint continued his labours in that charge for thirty-nine
years, and entirely extirpated out of that country the remains of idolatry.
Lest through the multitude of affairs he should in any degree forget that the
sanctification of his own soul was his first and most essential duty, and that,
without attending to this in the first place, he could hope for little fruit of
his labours for the salvation of others, and could not expect that God would
make any account of them, he was careful to season them with assiduous
recollection, prayer, and self-examination; but from time to time he betook
himself to some retired solitude, there to attend to God alone and to recommend
to him, by fervent prayer, the souls intrusted to his care. Among other
miracles recounted of him, it is related by the author of his life, that at
Yvois a leper was healed by being baptized by him; which aptly represented the
interior cleansing of the soul from sin. St. Gery was called to eternal rest on
the 11th of August, 619, and was buried in the church which he had built in
honour of St. Medard.’
How did
Brussels transform from the beautiful sanctity of St Géry to the ugly
totalitarianism of today? To answer
that, we must widen our view.
Belgium: Microcosm of the West
The
Christian history of Belgium and the rest of the Low Countries surrounding her
began much like Brussels, with the arrival of Christian ascetics, the monks and
nuns:
‘The
monasteries established by such key missionary figures as St. Martin of Tours,
St. Columbanus, Sts. Willibrord and Boniface were bulwarks against both
worldliness and the real physical dangers of the medieval world . . . . places
such as Luxeuil, the Dom School in Utrecht, Fulda and the countless other
monastic centers established by Irish and Irish-inspired missionaries were
centers of learning, albeit often on a humble scale, which produced a profound
awareness of sanctity in the monastic aspirants which came to them in great
numbers. The youth of the lay nobility,
too, were often sent by their pious parents to monasteries to receive their
education at the hands of monastics so as to insure that the Christian vision
of reality was further promoted in the realms by its future rulers. The early monastic foundations of Europe were
spiritual schools, the forerunners of modern colleges and universities.
‘ . . . vast
amounts of land, often the best in the kingdom, had been given over to the
monastic ideal by pious members of the nobility, many of whom retired to the
monastic state themselves and became monastic founders. One example is that of St. Iduberga, who
after the death of her husband, a prominent leader of the Frankish nobility,
turned her entire estate at Nijvel into a monastic compound, complete with
imported Irish missionaries, schools for the youth and a scriptorium for
producing much-needed books. . . . one
of the most prominent features of Frankish spirituality is the phenomenon of
whole extended families of saints among the nobility which maintained the
ascetic ideal in monasteries and good Christian government in the world.
‘ . . . As
Frankish society became saturated with the Christian ideal, however, the
intensity of the Christian calling had to compete with the formalized
institutions which, although nominally Christian, were in fact fast becoming
corrupt and infected with the spirit of worldly ambition. The desire for a rational, all-encompassing
“system” which the first Franks were so enamored with in the form of the Roman
Empire, began to develop within Western Christendom and eventually found
expression in the Papacy and its legalistic idealism in the place of true
repentance and heartfelt bearing of the Cross of Christ’ (Thomas J. Hulbert, Saint
Herman Calendar 2000: Saints of the Low Countries, St. Herman of Alaska
Brotherhood, Platina, Cal., 2000, pgs. 2, 10, 17).
Belgium,
like the rest of Western Europe, has gone from a high level of spiritual
development internally and externally to a brutalizing rationalism and power
politics and an obsession with economic expansion and innovation. This spiritual decay is illustrated well enough
in the famous figures through the centuries that have sprung from the soil
of Nivelles (Nijvel):
‘St Gertrude of Nivelles – Convent cofounder
(7th century)
St Wilfretrudis of
Nivelles
– Abbess and niece of Gertrude (7th century)
Pippin of Landen, Mayor of the Palace of Austrasia under the Merovingian kings (7th century)
Gertrude of Nivelles, Pippin's daughter
and abbess of the Nivelles monastery (626–659)
Johann Tserclaes, Holy Roman Empire general in the Thirty Years' War (1559–1632)
Louis-Joseph Seutin, doctor and surgeon
(1793–1862)
Jules Louis Guillery, lawyer and
politician (1824–1902)
Henri Delmotte, novelist
(1822–1884)
Didier Theys, racing driver (b.
1956)
André Lotterer, racing driver (b.
1981)’
From holy
abbesses to race car drivers: A greater
contrast would be difficult to think up, but it is indicative of the loss of
the ‘savor of Orthodoxy’ in the West that St Seraphim Rose, one of the founders
of the St Herman Brotherhood mentioned above, often spoke and wrote about. And perhaps nothing shows that more clearly than
the current statistics
from Belgium, which indicate that only about 5% of the population attend church
services each Sunday.
Euro-Babel
There is
little surprise, then, that Brussels has come to be the home of most of the
European Union’s institutions. Its
secularity made it the
most attractive location for atheistic technocrats:
. . .
The rest is
at https://www.geopolitika.ru/en/article/tragedy-brussels-and-west.
And also at
this page:
https://katehon.com/en/article/tragedy-brussels-and-west
--
Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us
sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema to the Union!
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