Saint Roch, a versatile saint.

This statue of Saint Roch is a private donation to the city from the 1970s. And this is no coincidence: in that period, the local community tried to revive the Sint-Rochus celebration. Not in vain, because today the 'light blankets' on the eve of half harvest are an exceptional event. On that evening, the city is lit with tens of thousands of lights and candles.

Where does that annual celebration come from?

The last major plague epidemic in Aarschot raged for a very long time, from 14 September 1666 to 16 February 1667. The situation was precarious. The year before, grain stocks had gone up in flames. The plague master had succumbed and five grey sisters had lost their lives. In half of the houses the plague prevailed. The better-off citizens had left the city. At long last, the citizens promised to light the city with wax candles in honor of Saint Roch, the saint who had been invoked against the plague for centuries. One should not underestimate that a wax candle was very expensive in those times. So it happened and the plague week.

In the following years, this fact was resumed by the burning of candles in the city. But as it goes, this tradition disappeared until another horrific epidemic occurred. This time it was not the plague, but the cholera that hit hard just 200 years later, in 1866. The plague had already spread in Europe around 1830, and when Rome was struck, the then pope had called on the Catholics of the world to pray to St. Roch. In that period, a brotherhood of Sint-Rochus was even founded in Aarschot. And even now the plague could not be contained, until one remembered the miraculous salvation from the plague. The city was lit with hundreds of candles and lanterns and even now the cholera disappeared.

The 'light blankets' would be repeated during the following years, first in an atmosphere of piety, then it became a popular festival. But secularization was one of the reasons that this party waned and disappeared after the Second World War.

Until – as we said – the tradition was revived in the 1970s and is today the largest folk festival in Aarschot.

Jan Rymenams