Sint-Martinuskerk — Blog — Medieval Badges

Eating Sandstone, Eating a Story: What’s Dust got to do with it?

It is an odd thing to do, isn’t it? To dig out dust from a brick of a church and eat it? Even more curious is the practice surrounding this belief when considering that the bricks of the outer church were not themselves miraculous, but simply close to the miraculous wooden statue of Saint Job. For the practice of eating this dust to make sense, certain beliefs must be held: first, that matter is or can be sacred; second, that the sacredness imbued in matter (i.e., in the statue of Saint Job) can be transferred to other matter through proximity or touch; and third, the proximal sacredness of certain matter can be transferred (i.e., consumed by pilgrims, transported) without losing its sacredness.

Pilgrim marks (from various centuries) on the exterior iron sandstone bricks of Sint-Martinuskerk. Photograph: Hannah Gardiner.

The possibility of infused matter in medieval settings of religion and popular belief might sound odd, naive, or even suspicious to a secular person in the twenty-first century. However, the beliefs underlying this practice remain culturally relevant and in use today. Think, for example, of a baseball that’s been struck out of the park in a professional game. There is no doubt when fans flail to catch this ball and erupt in excitement when it has been caught that matter can still be thought of as sacred. Not only has some part of the essence of the batter been conferred from the bat to the ball in the player’s hitting of the ball, the occasion of a home run acts as a sort of simultaneous ‘sanctification’ of the player and the baseball they hit. For the person who has caught the baseball, this object becomes treasured due to its participation in a personal story and a collective one. The individual’s act of catching has brought them closer to the event in a meaningful, almost religious way. This closeness and the newfound sacredness of the baseball do not dissipate when they leave the ballpark.

This analogy is not a perfect comparison of the intricacies of each scenario, but nonetheless invites us to look more closely and creatively at rituals of the past. It also illustrates how modern people continue to perceive and mediate objects through story. Unlike the iron sandstone bricks at Sint-Martinuskerk in Wezemaal, which were “touched” by the statue of Saint Job through their proximity to it, the baseball is “touched” by proxy by the baseball bat, which the player touches directly.[1] This baseball analogy nonetheless offers us an opportunity to meditate on an object considered that is sacred without having been physically touched by the person who made it sacred. This is likewise true of the bricks at Sint-Martinuskerk.

For both pilgrim and the baseball fan who catches a home run ball, their participation in this collective history does not depend on them. Both are invited into a communal story, and therefore an understanding of these objects as ‘sacred,’ because of someone else’s actions, which have made them so — either the player’s or the saint’s/the team’s or Christ’s.

So while eating dust from church bricks does indeed sound like an odd thing to do, so does willingly catching a cushioned cork covered in horse or cowhide from the sky, doesn’t it? It’s only when you if consider the stories in which they take part that neither one seems quite as ridiculous.

Written by Hannah Gardiner.

[1] Note: We still acknowledge the power of direct touch when we display clothing worn by celebrities in museums, preventing the public from the now destructive power of their own touch.

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views inside of Sint-Martinuskerk

View from the back of the church, facing the high altar. Photograph: Hannah Gardiner.

Statue of Saint Job. Anonymous, c. 1491–1610, stone, 177 x 87 x 43 cm. Wezemaal, Sint-Martinuskerk. Photograph: Hannah Gardiner.

View of the church organ from mid-church. Photograph: Hannah Gardiner.

Statue of Saint Mary of Magdalene. Anonymous, c. 1501-1525, stone, 169 cm (h). Wezemaal, Sint-Martinuskerk. Photograph: Hannah Gardiner.

View of ceiling with northern keystone with the coat of arms of the Lords of Wezemaal (top) and southern keystone depicting Our Lady and Child on a crescent moon (bottom). Anonymous, 1401-1500. Wezemaal, Sint-Martinuskerk. Photograph: Hannah Gardiner.

EATING SANDSTONE, Eating a stORY: PILGRIMS IN WEZEMAAL

Saint Job. Anonymous, c. 1400–1430, wood. Wezemaal, Sint-Martinuskerk. Photograph: Hannah Gardiner

The wooden statue of Saint Job at Sint-Martinuskerk (Church of Saint Martin) sits within a glass case elevated about five feet off the ground. Job is magnificent — he is handsome and captivating despite being small in size. Miraculously, despite fires, thefts, and the arduous passage of time, this statue of Saint Job remains housed in the village church of Wezemaal, Belgium, which saw its veneration by pilgrims in the late Middle Ages. I had a chance to visit the village church in May and see the wooden statue up close. This powerful work of art attracted thousands of pilgrims seeking out its healing powers, most notably during the syphilis epidemic. Peering down from his glass perch, Job’s face consoles me, as I imagine it consoled many before.

Sint-Martinuskerk is a historically, economically, and theologically interesting site, but my interest in it is one of body — and not just of Job’s. Job’s body in the Book of Job was sick and made well; many pilgrims going to Wezemaal were seeking the same form of redemption. There are pilgrim badges from the site that are round and gold and depict the apocryphal story of Job offering a scab from his body to musicians, only for that scab to turn to gold. As I’ve written about at length, when pilgrims attached these ‘golden scab’ badges to their own bodies, they aligned themselves to the body of Job (and typologically, to that of Christ), embodying his story of redemption and broadcasting the promise of their own.

More bodiliness was to be found in Wezemaal. And this time, a more intense form: that of consumption. Dr. Bart Minnen, the pioneering researcher on the cult of Saint Job in Wezemaal, was kind enough to show me around the church when I visited. The church is full of devotional works of Jobian art from the Middle Ages to the twentieth-century. I remained captivated by the wooden statue, but found myself increasingly curious about what could be found ‘behind’ it: pilgrim marks.

Visible only from the outside of the church are the marks pilgrims carved into the iron sandstone bricks of Sint-Martinuskerk. According to Dr. Minnen, pilgrims wanted to get as close as possible to the healing statue of Saint Job without touching it. They desired to take home something tangible that had, in some way, come in contact with the sacred object. These pilgrim marks are traces of one way they managed to do this. Pilgrims carved these marks behind Saint Job’s Choir, the south trancept, and the side chapel to its left. These areas of the church — the closest ones to where the statue of Job would have been — are the only ones affected.

Saint Job’s well, located across the gravel road from the church.

Like all sites of pilgrimmage, earth and dust in Wezemaal took on a sacred dimension. Bart Minnen explained to me that pilgrims often carved out dust from the church’s bricks in order to consume it directly or with other substances, such as the healing water of Saint Job’s well, which was located nearby. [1] To be sure, pilgrims did not desire to eat the dust for its own sake, but because of the sacredness it has been infused with by virtue of its proximity to the statue of Saint Job. I find this practice very intriguing. It seems of course similar to the participatory practice of pinning a pilgrim badge onto one’s body, but it goes even further than aligning the body to Job. The power of Job’s story is conferred onto matter in place, which is made almost Eucharistic in the pilgrim’s inviting of it into their bodies.

But why bother eating dust? What does this have to do with pilgrim badges? I explore these questions further in my blog post next week.

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[1] Note: information from this paragraph is a translated paraphrase of the information found on this phenonemon in “Devotie in een landelijke bedevaartskerk” in Den Heyligen Sant al in Brabant, volume 1, see page 120. My paraphrase has been supplemented by information Bart Minnen shared on tour at the site, but the ideas presented throughout this paragraph are entirely his own.

Works Cited

Minnen, Bart, ed. Den Heyligen Sant al in Brabant: De Sint-Martinuskerk van Wezemaal en de Cultus van Sint-Job 1000-2000. Volume 1. Averbode, Altiora Averbode, 2011.

Sint-Martinuskerk. Photograph: Hannah Gardiner.

My sincerest thanks to Bart Minnen for taking the time on a Friday morning to show me around Sint-Martinuskerk. His pioneering work on the history of the church is what has enabled me to ask questions about this past and glimpse into it myself.

Written by Hannah Gardiner.