Chapel of Our Lady of Kerselare

Modest Huys painter in 1912 the Chapel of Our Lady of Kerselare. For centuries, the Chapel of Our Lady of Kerselare has been a popular pilgrimage site when Modest Huys painted it around 1912. A little under 40 years later, in 1961, the chapel would be destroyed by a fire. It immediately got a successor: a bold modernist new building. Kerselare became a pilgrimage site again, but this time for modern architecture. Unfortunately, the region, where devotion to Mary has always been very strong, still has not come to terms with it. Parishioners in the area speak derogatorily of the "concrete bunker," the "refrigerator," or, in the worst case, the "ski jump." As if Our Lady has heard them, the building is now plagued by concrete rot and worse. It all started at this site in the fifteenth century with a statue of Mary in an ordinary cherry tree. The sickly daughter of Baron Joos de Joigny was miraculously healed by the statue of Mary. In infinite gratitude, the baron promptly had a chapel built. To top it off, the baron was attacked by a crocodile during a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Again, Mary brought salvation. The baron had the embalmed crocodile hung up in the chapel of Kerselare. It would hang there for more than two centuries until it was replaced by a wooden specimen. That too vanished in the fire of 1961.

"Kermis te Kerselare" by Modest Huys hangs in the Mudel in Deinze.

Dromos