Saint-Géry and Magdalene Church

Parish Church of Saint-Géry and Magdalene
Oriented, Gothic pseudo-basilica, ascending to the end of the fourteenth century or the beginning of the fifteenth. The church is located in a bend of the climbing street and is still surrounded by a walled cemetery. The churchyard wall is built of brick on a sandstone base and has slabs of bluestone; bluestone fence pillars with crowning ball ornaments; To the right of the entrance is the monument to the fallen. The church was protected as a monument by Royal Decree of 25 March 1938.De double patron saint refers to the existence of two churches in Kobbegem in the fourteenth-fifteenth century: the Saint-Géry church near the current Torenhof, Torenhof no. 7, and the Mary Magdalene chapel on this site, see also municipal introduction. Initially, Kobbegem consisted largely of an agricultural domain, the proceeds of which came into the hands of St Bavo's Abbey in Ghent in the eighth-ninth century. This domain, the core of which was situated in the area south of the Molenbeek in the vicinity of the current Torenhof, also included a church, the Saint-Géry church, which had originated as its own church at the end of the eighth or the beginning of the ninth century. Around 1100, the Abbey of Affligem also gained a foothold in Kobbegem, more specifically in the undeveloped and uncultivated part north of the Molenbeek, which almost halved the municipality; this created a new residential area in the vicinity of the current Saint-Géry and Magdalene church; at the end of the fourteenth or the beginning of the fifteenth century, according to J. Verbesselt in 1356, a chapel dedicated to Mary Magdalene was built here. For years there was a strong competition between the two churches, a battle that was settled in favor of Saint Magdalene in the sixteenth century as the population around the Magdalena Chapel gradually gained importance, probably partly determined by its safer location across the Molenbeek in a period in which Kobbegem was ravaged by war and violence. There was a village shift from the old to the new church, worship as well as the patron saint were transferred here; St Bavo's Abbey retained the right of bequest until the end of the ancien regime. The old, presumably Romanesque Saint-Géry church was left in ruins after the religious turmoil.

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