Origins The origin of the church goes back to the early 13th century when
Henry I, Duke of Brabant, recognised the
Noble Serment of Crossbowmen as a
guild and granted them certain privileges, including the right to use a plot at the
Sablon/Zavel (a piece of sandy clay land outside the city walls) as an exercise ground. Nearly a century later, in 1304, the Guild of the brothers and sisters of St. John's Hospital (, ) ceded to the Crossbowmen's Guild an area adjacent to the Sablon where the guild proceeded to build a modest
chapel dedicated to
Our Lady. This chapel became that of the Crossbowmen's Guild. Legend has is that the chapel became famous after a local devout woman named Beatrijs Soetkens had a vision in which the
Virgin Mary instructed her to steal the miraculous statue of ''Onze-Lieve-Vrouw op 't Stocxken'' ("Our Lady on the Little Stick") in
Antwerp, bring it to Brussels, and place it in the chapel of the Crossbowmen's Guild. The woman stole the statue, and through a series of miraculous events, was able to transport it to Brussels by boat in 1348. It was then solemnly placed in the chapel and venerated as the guild's patron. The guild also promised to hold an annual procession, carrying the image throughout Brussels. This developed into the
Ommegang, an important religious and civil event in Brussels' calendar, held on the Sunday before
Pentecost.
Construction Construction of the church, which replaced the chapel, is generally believed to have started around 1400. The whole construction process took about a century. The
choir was finished in 1435, as testified by murals from that date. Work was interrupted because of the troubles after the death of
Charles the Bold in 1477, but restarted by the end of the century. The
nave was built with seven
bays, the last two of which should have been surmounted by towers but were never completed. The
sacrarium built behind the choir dates from 1549. At the end of the 16th century, the church was sacked by
Calvinists and the Virgin's statue that Beatrijs Soetkens had brought was destroyed. In the 17th century, the prominent family of
Thurn und Taxis, whose residence was located almost opposite the church's southern entrance, had two chapels built inside it: the Chapel of St.
Ursula (1651–1676) to the north of the choir, started by the Flemish sculptor-architect
Lucas Faydherbe and completed by Vincent Anthony; and the Chapel of St.
Marculf (1690), situated south of the choir. At the beginning of the
French occupation in 1795, the church was saved from the anti-religious zeal of the occupiers and their supporters as the priest swore allegiance to the Republic. The church remained closed for a few years and was returned to religious service under
Napoleon, as a subsidiary of the
Church of Our Lady of the Chapel.
Renovation and Queen
Elisabeth praying to Our Lady of the Sablon Soon after the completion of the final section of the / in 1872, structures built against the church were removed. The church appeared so dilapidated after this removal that restoration works were launched immediately. The first works were entrusted, in 1870, to the local architect Auguste Schoy. He proposed a restoration project that was so radical that the Commission of Monuments at first refused to endorse it because it was considered too fanciful. Schoy's intervention was restricted to rather modest works: rehabilitation of the side
aisles on the Rue de la Régence; reopening of the pointed arch windows on the side of the /, which had been walled up in the 18th century for the installation of organs; and replacing the
rose window of the north portal with a pointed arch window. The site was then entrusted to the architect and then to his son Maurice. Jules-Jacques van Ysendijck was a disciple of
Eugène Viollet-le-Duc and led the work in accordance with the latter's principle of unity of style. From 1895 to 1912, he and his son implemented six construction phases by which they created a monument that had never existed. They added
turrets,
pinnacles and openwork
balustrades, covered the aisles with perpendicular
gables instead of the continuous gables parallel to the nave, and built
buttresses with pinnacles. From 1917 to 1937, the architect François Malfait directed the placement of 57 statues by 27 different sculptors. The church was designated a
historic monument on 5 March 1936. More recently, the
City of Brussels undertook a global restoration to bring back the church to its former glory. The entire restoration lasted fourteen years. ==Description==