Hors du temps et dans le siècle

Le couvent dans les villes du Brabant méridional (XVIIIe-XXe siècles

Samenvatting

Out of Ages and Among People: the Convent in the Towns of South Brabant (18th-20th century)

In the eighteenth century, convents marked the city with their monumental imprint. City maps, guides for travellers, and the toponymy also provide evidence of the importance that people gave to convents. In 1784, twenty cities of the duchy welcomed 187 communities inside their walls. These convents exercised certain demographic weight although a decline began during the second half of the Enlightenment. More important however, was their financial weight. Around 1780, their estimated annual revenues were of the same order of magnitude as the alleged taxes by the States of Brabant or aids and subsidies granted by the duchy to its sovereign. The direct or indirect influence of the convents and their social action reached all segments of the society.

That is why the establishment of new communities was widely favoured by the civil authorities. However after 1750, as everywhere else in Europe, the sovereigns of the Austrian Netherlands intended to assert the prerogatives they felt were threatened. The rising tensions led to various measures to control the recruitment of the regular clergy and limit the extension of the ecclesiastical mortmain. The mendicant orders, obliged to live at the expense and to the detriment of the population, were particularly targeted. A certain anticlericalism revealed itself, particularly in the spheres of the power.
The suppression by Joseph Il of 159 convents in Brabant confirms this change of climate.

The invasion followed by the annexation to France meant that certain prohibitions now existed for all the religious communities. Despite a tight control of the authorities, firstly under the Empire and later under the Kingdom of the Netherlands, communities gradually recovered. True recovery however, occurred only in the second half of the nineteenth century. This is the beginning of a new and strong expansion, especially reflected by the multiplication of new communities, often with a more regional focus than the old ones. It is also accompanied by a shift from cities to suburbs. The Second World War marked a pause, followed by a continuous decline, particularly marked from 1970 onward.

The vagaries of time are not without consequences on the heritage of communities. Both under Joseph Il and under the French rule, confiscated property is reallocated for public purposes or sold to private individuals. in the twentieth century, the wave of property sales is instigated by the communities themselves. Lack of vocations pushes them to get rid of outgrown buildings, which are expensive to maintain. These properties are then assigned to secular, often cultural, purposes or converted into luxury hotels. Other properties were razed to make way for new urban projects. Sometimes only the toponymy remains, the memory of that glorious past gone forever.