Commemoration of local legend. Brussels.
According to legend, in the plague year of 1348, a pious woman of Antwerp, named Baet Soetens, had a vision, in which she was instructed to remove the local statue of the Virgin & Child and take it to Brussels, as the people of Antwerp were no longer showing sufficient devotion to the statue. She thus set off down the River Scheldt, finally disembarking on the banks of the Senne in Brussels. Allegedly the boat was powered by the breath of angels but here she seems to have the help of a robust boatman. The statue was duly placed in a chapel in Brussels, where it was duly venerated until it disappeared in a wave of iconoclasm in the 16th century.
Commemoration of local legend. Brussels.
According to legend, in the plague year of 1348, a pious woman of Antwerp, named Baet Soetens, had a vision, in which she was instructed to remove the local statue of the Virgin & Child and take it to Brussels, as the people of Antwerp were no longer showing sufficient devotion to the statue. She thus set off down the River Scheldt, finally disembarking on the banks of the Senne in Brussels. Allegedly the boat was powered by the breath of angels but here she seems to have the help of a robust boatman. The statue was duly placed in a chapel in Brussels, where it was duly venerated until it disappeared in a wave of iconoclasm in the 16th century.