Sint-Michiel

History

The Saint Michael’s church is the largest baroque church in the Netherlands. The Jesuits originally built it as a church for Our Lady Immaculate around 1650 as part of the Counter-Reformation. At the end of the 18th century it became a replacement parish church for the dilapidated Saint Michael’s church in the Tiensestraat. Only the baptismal font reminisces of the old church. As there are seven wonders of the world, the people of Leuven wanted seven wonders of Leuven. The Saint Michael’s church is one of them: the ornate facade with many sculptures seemed to be ‘an altar outside of the church’. The church is also located at the highest point of the city. From outside of the town the building rises up above the houses like a grand stranded ship. For more information, have a look at the extensive website made by Guido Abts: http://users.skynet.be/sky78949/index.html

Architecture

The church is 24 metres high (78,75 feet). The bottom 16 metres of the facade (52,5 feet) are very ornate. They depict the life on earth. The upper 8 metres (26,25 feet) are very plain and white. They represent heaven. The church has two aisles and five large altars. The marble altars have all, except one, ‘disappeared’ during the French Revolution. The envisioned dome that should have been as high as the church itself was never completed because during construction one of the pillars started to give way.

Interior

The original pulpit can now be found in the Saint Gudula cathedral in Brussels while the baroque pulpit of that cathedral ended up in Saint Michael’s church in Leuven. The allegorical representations of the confessionals and the communion are woodcarvings of exceptional quality. The painting of the northern altar is by Erasmus Quillinus and several artists from Antwerp painted the Calvary (19th century).

Annexes

The church was expanded with a baptistery that houses the remains of the Jesuit Lessius, a humanist that was consulted by many of his contemporaries (especially traders). At the front, on the right side, is a crypt with twenty tombs from around 1600. Some parts of the attic spaces are only accessible by a perpendicular spirals staircase.

Peace church

Some of the major works of the church can now be found in the City Museum (M-Museum). At the back of the church stand the sculpture of the ‘wayward’ Saint Michael by contemporary sculptor Ad Wouters. It depicts Saint Michael breaking his sword to forge a plough, thus expressing that ‘war’ is never a solution and that ‘peace’ should always be the main goal. This church is therefore open to peace initiatives of all kinds.

Organ

The monumental organ, the largest in Leuven, was built after the Second World War (by Van Loo) to replace an instrument coming from the closed Abbey of Herkenrode. Bombing during the Second World War destroyed the latter.