King Albert Park

If you stroll calmly through Albert Park, know that this place 500 years ago was not such a cheerful place to be. It was a gallows field. Here, Eligius Pruystinck was burned alive for heresy. In the 16th century, faith attacks were a hazardous endeavor. Eligius Pruystinck was a roofer. But he was also a key figure in a religious network known as "loïsme," named after 'Loy' or 'Eloy' from Eligius. On October 25, 1544, he was burned alive here in the gallows field at Papenmoer (now Albert Park). Almost two decades earlier, in 1526 to be exact, Eligius Pruystinck had gotten away with publicly wearing a penitential garment in Antwerp's Grote Markt, along with 9 others who were accused of adhering to Lutheran doctrine. They then had to walk with their penitential garment to the Church of Our Lady, remove their cloak there, and return home. But twenty years later, the repression for heresy was clearly of a different kind. Between 1523 and 1566, at least 1300 people would be executed as heretics in the Habsburg Netherlands. Charles V put strong pressure against the Reformation.

Dromos