Politicians still painting world with heavy calligraphy of war
The Benedictine sisters of Maredret exist quietly and almost invisibly. If you visit their abbey, about 30km from the FrenchBelgian border, you won’t be allowed beyond the small shop and exhibition space where they display their artwork and crafts, and you won’t meet anyone except the elderly nun working a shift.
By contrast, around the corner at Maredsous, the order’s brothers have stocked their abbey with drawcards for day-tripping families: the crowds come to enjoy the monks’ beer and cheese, to take advantage of a pristine kids’ playground and to wander through not-so-quiet cloisters.
These are two faces of spiritual life in Belgium, where the presence and influence of the Catholic Church is still keenly felt in an otherwise secular state.
While Maredsous is more fun, there is a poignance to the seclusion of Maredret’s artistnuns that resonates strongly with the country’s history.
One of the community’s first projects after its establishment in the late 19th century was a series of medievalist illuminated manuscripts, completed in 1916. This anachronistic undertaking resulted in a remarkable fusion of the iconography of the middle ages with the devastating reality of the First World War.
Studied carefully, the scenes that decorate the manuscripts are a powerful protest against the cruelty of war. One in particular caught my attention: a depiction of soldiers in chainmail armour doing exactly what the German army did to Belgium’s martyr cities in 1914.
“The rape of Belgium”, referring to war crimes committed in Kaiser Wilhelm’s name, turned half the country’s population into refugees. Ironically, in the preceding decades, comparable atrocities had been perpetrated in the name of King Leopold – “the rape of the Congo”, resulting in an ethical and material debt many Belgians have yet to fully acknowledge.
In many cases, the ancient citadels that nowadays are touted as tourist attractions in centres such as Namur, Liege and Dinant were used as military bases by modern armies in the world wars. Many of the country’s picturepostcard villages and towns are
basically 20th-century reconstructions of places that were razed.
Belgians are war-weary; the
suffering wrought by the two great conflicts of the 20th century are deeply etched in their collective memory.
A number of people I have spoken to here attest that this, along with the resolution of Belgium’s linguistic-cultural
identity crisis, is a key reason for the country’s commitment to the success of the EU.
A reciprocal theory suggests that the British, who experienced comparatively less military action on home soil – a fact that does not reduce the trauma of Blitz bombings – developed a false nostalgia for the Second World War that was twinned with an inflated postimperial sense of importance and, indeed, served as leverage for Brexiteers.
Witness Nigel Farage encouraging “young people” to watch the film Dunkirk, presumably to see examples of patriotism. But young Britons voted against Brexit and they don’t buy into the jingoism of baby boomers; they also know that the role of the French forces should not be effaced.
The hawks on the other side of the Atlantic are also in full cry. President Donald Trump is following the time-honoured advice to make war abroad as a distraction from leadership failings at home, sending 4,000 more troops to Afghanistan.
It would appear the art of the antiwar nuns has no power against such belligerence. Perhaps their art is similar to their prayers; there is no doubt some effect, but its source moves in mysterious ways.