Church | XX | | Catholic Church
Animals are omnipresent in a church building but also outside it, like the cockerel as a weather vane or the gargoyles on the gutters. On a walk around the church, you will find a series of information signs, each explaining the presence of an animal in the vicinity.
This exhibition highlights the border correction signed in this church in October 1769. In his quest for conquest, the French king Louis XIV occupied Flanders, among other places, in the 17th century. The Treaty of Utrecht (1713) annexed the castellania Belle (now Bailleul Fr.) and the castellania Cassel to the French crown. The inhabitants of the present-day Heuvellandse villages of Dranouter, Nieuwkerke and Westouter thus became French subjects in one fell swoop. But in two stages, 1769 and 1780, they came back under the Austrian Netherlands.
This exhibition outlines the reason for the rise of Protestantism in the 16th century in the West Quarter in about 10 panels. The Geuzen movement was a spontaneous popular revolt against central government and church authority fuelled by exploitation, injustice, famine...
With the compiler of this exhibition, you will take a leisurely stroll through this church and get detailed information around the presence of the many animal images in this church.