Christmas Travels: Leuven

Leuven's Grote Markt or central square

I know, I know -- Christmas travels in March? Yes, it's way late and probably a bit too late now, but I still wanted to write a little bit about the trip I made to the Low Countries over Christmas break. I was there about ten days total, most of that time spent in Belgium, with about equal parts sight-seeing and relaxing. While I love to travel and explore, it was also necessary to mentally relax and rest up, as well as appropriately celebrate Christmas. I'll spare you the details of the latter activities -- it mostly consisted of eating good Belgian food, drinking good Belgian beer, watching American movies at the seminary, and sleeping in. Rather than try to tell you about the whole trip together, I decided to break it down into several posts, so although it's much belated, I hope this little series will at least give you a taste of what these countries are like.

The home base for the trip was the American College -- besides the NAC, the only other American seminary in Europe. The NAC and the American College have a nice exchange program where the students of each can stay at the other for free; it allows us to cheaply visit Belgium once in a while, and their students can do the same for Rome. The American College is located in Leuven, Belgium, about 30 km east of Brussels. Leuven is the capital of the province Flemish Brabant and one of the more important cultural centers in the Flemish part of the country. Interestingly, it's also the international home to the world's largest brewer, Anheuser-Busch InBev, which made headlines in the States a few years back for buying out Anheuser-Busch. Belgium, as you may know, has only existed as a united country since 1830, when the southern provinces of the United Kingdom of Netherlands seceded and declared their independence. Today, the country remains culturally and linguistically diverse mainly because it was artificially comprised of sections of older cultural territories, most notably parts of Flemish-speaking (and mainly Catholic) Flanders in the north and east of the country and French-speaking (and mainly Protestant) Wallonia in the south and west. Since the cultural differences between Flemings, Walloons, and other groups that make up the country run deep and memories are long, relations between them have not always been peachy.

NAC men enjoying various Belgian delights

The world-renowned K.U. Leuven library

Modern-day Leuven is a testimony to this tension. Leuven has long been a university town, originally the home of the Catholic University of Leuven, founded in 1425 and the oldest university in the Low Countries. The university's language for most of its history was Latin, but after being refounded in the late 19th century, the modern languages of French and Dutch (a dialect of which, Flemish, is spoken in Flanders) were allowed. Due to the strength of French cultural influence at the time, however, French culture, French viewpoints, and the French language became the effective standard for the university, much to the displeasure of the still largely Flemish student body. In 1968, after much rancorous debate and student demonstrations, the university decided to split into two, with the Dutch-speaking contingent remaining in Leuven as the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and the French-speaking part of the university becoming the Université catholique de Louvain and moving to Louvain-la-Neuve, a planned city about 30 km to the south. The modern K.U. Leuven has over 30,000 students (more than a third of the town) and is a major force both in Flemish culture and in the larger world of European academia. It houses, for example, one of the best university libraries in the world and is a major research university with more than a dozen major disciplines and faculties.

Leuven's historical and cultural influence in northern Europe extends back to medieval times. Originally settled in the mid-800s by Vikings, the area was taken later that century by Arnulf of Carinthia, the King of East Francia and soon-to-be Holy Roman Emperor. It became an especially important city in the 11th century as it was the major industrial center and effective capital of the Duchy of Brabant, well-known especially for its very fine linen. By the mid-14th century, Brussels had become the premiere city of the area and Leuven, in an attempt to assert its independence from the area's aristocracy, reorganized itself to make the guilds a powerful rival to the town's rich families. Leuven slowly transitioned from a center of industry to a center of learning after the founding of its university in the early 15th century, with famous scholars such as Desiderius Erasmus, Cornelius Jansen, Gerardus Mercator and Andreas Vesalius all spending some time there.

The impressive town hall, or stadhuis

The medieval beguinage, now university housing

In modern times, the town was heavily damaged during both World Wars, although remarkably the exquisite stadhuis, or town hall, escaped such harm, as did other medieval buildings. Today the town is well-known for its friendly and youthful population as well as for some of the best medieval architecture in the area. Besides the town hall, a highlight of this is the quite well-preserved beguinage, the housing of the Beguines, a semi-monastic community of lay women who flourished for a time in the Low Countries during the Middle Ages but later ran afoul of the Church because of their questionable theology and uncertain existence between consecrated and unconsecrated life. Today, the beguinage serves as housing for the university.

Interestingly, the town is also home to the relics of Blessed Damien of Molokai, a 19th century Belgian priest who ministered to lepers on the island of Molokai in Hawaii. Desiring to be a priest and missionary from a young age, Damien left his homeland to serve as such in Hawaii. Responding to a pastoral need recognized by his superiors, Fr. Damien volunteered to minister to the leper community in Kalawao County, Molokai, Hawaii, which had been quarantined there by King Kamehameha V. He served there for more than 15 years, building churches and homes and helping to establish a sense of hope and pride in the community, before dying of leprosy himself in 1889. He is considered a "martyr of charity," and is known as the Apostle to the Lepers as well as the patron of lepers, HIV and AIDS patients, and outcasts. He will be canonized a saint here in Rome on October 11 of this year.


So, that's it for Leuven. In the next installment of this series, I'll write a bit about the places we visited in Belgium.