Parades, knight fights, jousting, beer, and people in funny historical costumes that don't look remotely near Game of Thrones. That's the Ommegang, which takes place in Brussels every year from either the last Wednesday of June or first Wednesday of July (check your calendars) to the following Saturday. Not last Sunday, but the previous one, by this year's calendar.
I’ve heard the Ommegang is a pretty exciting festival in Brussels. The reason I wouldn’t know if it’s all that exciting is that something always comes up. The first year here, we didn’t know at all about the event. The second year, we were traveling somewhere. This year, I had every intention of hitting at least the parade but then bam, migraine. Story of my life.
This time though, I did at least get to catch the Renaissance Festival on the Saturday.
The story of the Ommegang
What really peaked my interest on the Ommegang, despite loving all the fabulous European historical costumes that aren’t remotely grimdark, was the history behind it. While I was making the tour for the Upper Town for Voicemap (find that here), I discovered all that weird and very Belgian tale.
A lady and a statue
Once upon a time, there was a little old religious lady named Beatrice Soetkens. She was an impoverished peasant, living in this swelling metropolis of Brussels. Lacking any kind of meaning in her life, she decided to find religion and make her own meaning out of it. So she had a vision of Mary, as one does.
“Dear Beatrice,” Mary said. “There’s a statue of meself over in Anvers, and I daresay they’ve been treatin it quite awful.” I imagine here Mary to speak somewhat like a cockney. Though she wasn’t at all English, she was a lowborn Aramaic-speaking Jew of the Roman Empire. And as everyone knows, poor people in the English-speaking world speak like cockneys because Monty Python.
So naturally, she and her husband (whose name has been lost in time), got in a boat and cruised down the River Senne (at this time, there was a River Senne), and some canals and some other rivers, and finally to the collegiate church in Antwerp where the mistreated statue was not being venerated. They grabbed the statue, put it on their boat and set sail.
Only the wind was dead.
The people of Antwerp weren’t fond of the idea that some Brusselaar couple coming down to whisk away their statue. They lined up on the canal with their pitchforks ready for a good old fashioned lynching. But then the wind picked up and off they went.
They would later recount how it was a miracle from God that allowed them to steal a statue from a church and bring it to Brussels.
The crossbowmen’s guild
At that time, just outside a much nicer castle than what exists now, there was a bit of a swampy area with really fine sand. The local chapter of the Hospitaliers had run out of their own land for cemetery space so they started burying bodies there. But sometime in the 13th century, they decided that was no longer necessary, so the duke handed over the land to the Crossbowmen’s Guild for premium practice range land.
The crossbowmen decided they needed a church. So, they built the first Church of the Sablon—Sablon being French for fine sand. Naturally, they needed a centerpiece for their new church, so when Beatrice came floating up the Senne, they volunteered their space to host such a fine award.
As an exchange, the crossbowmen promised they’d parade the statue around town each year in celebration, thus keeping Beatrice’s name and faith alive forever. This parade, first held in 1348, was called The Walkabout, or “Ommegang” in Flemish.
The Church of the Sablon
The Ommegang traditionally starts in front of the palace, goes by the Church of the Sablon, and finishes in the Grand Place.
The Church of the Sablon was upgraded a century after the first Ommegang. But their possession of the statue was a bit short lived. When the Calvinists came in, they burnt down a bunch of the Catholic Churches and smashed up all their statues (including the one Beatrice stole). Pair this with the traditional American story of “Us Calvinists were fleeing religious persecution… after we smashed up some people’s shit and they drove us out of town.” Puritans were basically the first American victim-monkeys.
The order of events
The Ommegang is composed of three parts. The parade, the show, and the Renaissance Faire. As I mentioned, I only made one of those, but I’ll do my best to describe the others.
The Renaissance Faire / Le Marche Renaissance
Not as big as the May Medieval Market in Cinquantenaire, the Marche Renaissance is still a pretty fun exhibition of the chad days of Europe. It starts on the Wednesday on to the Saturday, it features twenty or so crafts tents, a beer stand, and jousting lists and features both some HEMA combat, jousting and horseback bravado, and crossbow shooting.
The small HEMA contest is done by the same folks as at the Cinquantenaire (or at least shared many of the same folks), but again, it’s much smaller. However, unlike at the Cinquantenaire, it featured jousting.
HEMA
My favorite bits were naturally the HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) action. HEMA is something I wish I knew about growing up in Tulsa, where us "medieval enthusiasts" were just using our minds doing that in D&D and eventually resorted to whacking each other with foam and PVC pipes. There was an SCA group (Society for Creative Anachronism), and as it wasn't just sport, but almost a whole culture, it always seemed like something way too hard core that I didn't have time or money to invest in.
I'm not sure if HEMA was always a thing in Europe, but in the last few generations it's really picked up steam in the US as well and I feel I really missed out on a thing. We can largely thank social media for the revival, I think. In Europe, it's a bit different, because it can be dress-up and sport, because it's all local and part of the historic culture, while in the US you kind of have to take an extra step of creativity and invention. I never even knew people who did fencing, for example, until I met some Estonians in Georgia. Fencing wasn't a way of life for them, it was just a sport they competed in on an amateur level. Even in Georgia, traditional martial arts kind of fell out of practice in favor of more international fair like judo, but now, khridoli, is making something of a comeback outside the typical dance marathon it's inspired.
HEMA covers a wide variety of "games"—fencing, joustig, boxing, wrestling, sports fencing, and so on that are usually glossed over in favor of Eastern Martial Arts and Brazilian. At its most brutal, it's weaponized MMA without jujitsu, where people tend to use the traditional forms of their country and bash each other until they fall down. At its most refined, you've got fencing and other variations, which differ depending on weapons and cultural style with various systems of pointing (often depending on where a strike made contact). Sometimes it's just a bunch of playfighting and jest, which is often the case at festivals:
And shows of horsemanship:
But all and all, whether it's support or showmanship, it's usually a fairly entertaining show. Especially when it's not a fake castle background that I'm used to seeing in Colorado, but a real effing castle or palace. And here I'll do some white American complaining—we are alienated by our ethnic culture, and by our geographic culture, so it does't surprise me that we produce a lot of lost, alienated wackadoos who either go deep in religion and move to Russia to have 12 babies under a dictator play-preaching family values, shoot up schools, or attempt to assassinate a president or two. When a person isn't a part of something, especially when they feel like they're not allowed to be part of anything, the results make Jack a dull boy.
The Parade / Le Cortege
The parade happens twice, both on the Wednesday and again on the Friday. I know, shame on me for missing it both times! It kicks off pretty late, at 8:15, so it can be a bit difficult for those with youngins like myself. Charles V’s carriage (ridden by the ghost of the King) rides down to Sablon, where the main parade participants join in.
All the different traditional clubs of Belgium march through, from the Crossbowmen’s Guild to fencers to arquebusiers. They end up at Grand Place, which leads to the third phase of the celebrations.
The Spectacle
Once the parade arrives at the Grand Place, the real fun begins. That’s when all the troupes do their performances, from fire breathers to acrobatics to flag wavers to people profoundly bowing. It’s a real medieval style celebration.
Tickets start at around 40 euros, if I remember correctly.
So, if you’re planning a trip to Brussels, keep the Ommegang in mind for something really unforgettable for you and your family! Check the Ommegang website for more information.
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