St. Martin's Church - Bergues

At the instigation of Count of Flanders Baldwin II the Bald, the already existing first parish church of 'Bergas' was converted into a fortified church (castral chapel) in 891.

In order to give the chapter church more prestige and fame, he had the remains of Saint Winocco transferred from Saint-Omer to Saint-Martin's Church in 899 or 900.

The place of worship was destroyed in the city fire in 1383 by troops of the French king Charles VI, and restored from the end of the 14th century with the proceeds of a special tax. In July 1558 the church was plundered and damaged by French soldiers on the orders of Marshal Paul de Thermes. In August 1566 and 1578 the church was again plundered , this time by the Geuzen, and in 1583 the Spanish troops of Alexander Farnese reduced the partially rebuilt church to ruins again.

At the instigation of Philip II of Spain , construction of a brand new church began on the same site in 1586. It was completed in 1611, although the furniture was still missing. It was a three-aisled hall church in Flemish late Gothic style with three separate saddle roofs, a transept, a richly decorated interior and a cross-ribbed vault supported on Corinthian-style columns . On the occasion of the millennium celebrations of Saint Winok , the choir and the western facade were reworked in neo-Gothic style in 1897, according to plans by Paul Destombes.

Like many other churches, St. Martin's saw its furnishings and art treasures plundered and sold publicly by the French Revolutionaries in 1789 .

In May 1940, the church was again hit by a major fire , this time as a result of German bombardments during Operation Dynamo . What remained of the tower was blown up by the retreating Germans in 1944. Until the evacuation of the furniture in 1939, the St. Martin's Church housed a number of seventeenth-century paintings by several Flemish Baroque painters such as Jan van Rijn (Jean de Reyn), Robert van den Hoecke and the Italian Guido Reni. Many of these art treasures are now in the Stedelijk Musée du Mont-de Piété.

The current church was rebuilt on the same site in the period 1955-1959 , but due to limited state subsidies, architect Paul Gélis was only able to realise one and a half of the planned three naves.

The original northern nave has almost completely disappeared, except for a few ruined walls of the chevet (now around a memorial garden ). Because the newly built tower became detached from the church , it was connected to the new transept of the rebuilt southern nave (now the main nave) by means of a gallery. The central nave, which was also destroyed, was rebuilt as a narrow (northern) side nave covered with four lower and one high saddle roof.

Of the historical church from 1595, only the southern portal (since 1959 the main portal), the southern transept and the chevet have been preserved in a simply restored form. The gable spire of this transept was protected as historical heritage in 1907.

In the new, sober interior, the yellow-orange stained glass windows by Max Ingrand once again accentuate the ochre-coloured wall of the regional light yellow brick. The contemporary Stations of the Cross in ceramic on the wall depicted in bas-relief is by Jeanne Champillou from Orléans.

Willem Vandenameele