Varkenmarkt 17 | Franciscan monastery (1996)

Monastic life was highly regarded in the Middle Ages. Many young men and women saw it as their ideal to withdraw from worldly life to devote themselves entirely to their Lord and Creator within the confines of the monastery walls. It is known that there were also monasteries in Gorinchem. Street names such as Broerensteeg and Zusterhuis are reminders of this.

The recovery of the found graves

The oldest mendicant order is that of friars minor (Fratres Minores) after the founder Francis of Assisi also called Franciscans mentioned. The order originated around 1210 in Italy, where Francis lived and died in 1226. The order soon spread over large parts of Europe. In 1242 such a monastery could be found in Middelburg and a few years later, in 1244, a monastery of Francis was mentioned in Utrecht. Franciscans, Dordrecht also had a monastery of friars minor. It is obvious that mendicant orders sought out urban population centres. The monks were completely dependent on alms and gifts from the citizens for their maintenance due to their vow of poverty. A very strict rule of poverty applied within the order. For example, even the monastery buildings and the associated grounds did not belong to the monasteries, but were considered church property. The monasteries had an extensive area as their jurisdiction, the so-called term area.

Current facade stone in Gasthuisstraat 25

Our Lady of Bethlehem

Gorinchem was within the sphere of influence of the Utrecht Franciscan monastery, so that the monastery was a term house of the Utrecht establishment. There are no less than two centuries between the two foundations. According to city historian Kemp, it was founded in 1454 and was known as "Onze Lieve Vrouwe te Bethlehem". The facade stone with the inscription "Dit is in Bethlehem" would later adorn the facade of the building Gasthuisstraat 25.

In his posthumous writings, city writer Cornelis van Zomeren is able to provide more details. According to this source, part of the monastery complex was completed in 1454. He literally writes: "...that this year the choir and the building on the north side were built...". The complex included a church building. On a panel from 1568 with a view of Gorinchem in the Gorcums Museum, the church of the Franciscans can be recognized by a tower with a spire. The added name provides certainty that it is the Franciscan church.

Gorinchem from the east, anonymous (1568)

According to the same author, the consecration of the main altar in the choir of the church took place in 1455. It was a beautiful altar with a depiction of the Descent from the Cross of Christ, with Mary, John and the founder of the Franciscans, Francis of Assisi. In the choir there were also life-size statues of St. Francis and of the H. Bonaventura, a prominent follower in the mid-13th century who led the Franciscans has given. The church must have had considerable dimensions, as is also evident from the rising tower in the painting. In addition to the main altar, there were two side altars. Despite the fact that the church belonged to a mendicant order, the interior contained several beautiful works of art.

Monastery Church

Where exactly the church stood cannot be determined today without excavation. On the map by Jacob van Deventer, dating from around 1560, a building is drawn along the current Bloempotsteeg. Whether this is the Franciscan church or the monastery is not clear. The monastery complex included a fairly large area, enclosed by Bloempotsteeg, Vijfzinnenstraat, Haarstraat and Arkelstraat. This area would have been largely undeveloped around 1450.

Detailed map of the area Varkenmarkt Jacob Deventer ca. 1558

H. van Hoogdalem already pointed out in a newspaper article in 1969 that the savings bank that was then under construction was located in the southernmost part of the monastery garden. There is evidence for the presence of a garden with trees. A regulation from 1517 dates back to which the city government prohibited handball at the monastery of the observants (Franciscans) and shooting starlings and other birds was also explicitly prohibited. The same charter mentions the Arkelstraat as the location of the observant monastery. In 1512, 21 monks lived there, of whom 17 were priests

Cemetery

Part of the monastery courtyard served as a cemetery. This resting place was brutally disturbed after more than four centuries by the construction work at the buildings of the Stichting Stadsherstel Gorinchem on the Varkenmarkt. When excavating the terrain behind the houses, coffins containing human remains were found. The coffins were entrusted to Mother Earth at a very short distance from each other. The graves were not covered by a tombstone. Presumably, each grave was recognizable by a raised area of ​​earth with a simple wooden cross. The bones of the exposed coffins were kept together per coffin. More than thirty coffins were found, but under the surrounding buildings and the Varkenmarkt will undoubtedly find more human remains. When planting the chestnut trees on the Varkenmarkt Graves had also been found, as well as during the construction of a bomb shelter during the Second World War.

Wood remains from the boxes

Beeldenstorm

At the time of the beeldenstorm In 1566 the monastery on Arkelstraat was also targeted. In the legal documents of the Council of Troubles - the so-called Blood Council - there is mention of a certain Jacob Matthijsz. who "... having used great force on the monastery of the brothers of the Minnebroeders in Gorinchem..."These must have been anxious days for the superior, the guardian, and his Franciscans. According to the charges against Adriaen Dircksz. van den Heuvel, he had ordered the guardian to vacate the monastery church and to withdraw with his monks. They would then receive ample food. He said he spoke on behalf of the city council, but that was not true. The intention was to use the church of the Friars Minor for the preaching of the new doctrine by the preachers. After the unrest, peace returned to Gorinchem and the sober life within the monastery walls resumed its old course. But that would not last long, no more than the calm before the storm.

Martyrs of Gorcum, collection The British Museum, London.

In June 1572 the Geuzen gained access to the city. The clergy were captured, including the Franciscans with their guardian Nicholas Pieck, almost 38 years old and born in Gorcum. The servants of the Catholic Church were in the Blauwe Toren (Blue Tower) exposed to ill-treatment. They then went by ship to Den Briel, where eventually in the early morning of Wednesday 9 July 1572 seventeen priests and two brothers were hanged for their steadfastness in the faith. Among them Nicholas Pieck with eight priests and two brothers from the monastery on Arkelstraat. The Fathers expelled, the monastery empty. The States of Holland ordered mayors "...to demolish and demolish the convent and church of the gray monks there within fourteen days.", as Van Zomeren reports. Thus everything that reminded of the Franciscans from Gorinchem. Only the buried remained as silent witnesses in the monastery garden.

Varkenmarkt around 1965

Varkenmarkt

A few years later - on 4 August 1579 - the city council decided to level the monastery complex and issue it in lots for housing construction without paying attention to the graves. The proceeds from the lots were intended for the fortification works of Gorinchem. And so it happened that plots of land were sold by the city, usually to carpenters who built houses there. Incidentally, this sale only took place much later in the 90s, when the construction of the defences around the city was in full swing. On 3 October 1593, the carpenter Oth Ottensz. bought the plot on the corner of the Arkelstraat and the Haarstraat, once belonging to the territory of the Franciscans. A certain Adriaen Petersz. came into possession of a plot of land on 31 May 1595 "...laying at the Haerstraet on the spot where the Minrebroederen monastery used to be...". This designation does not mean that the monastery was there, but that the terrain came from the monastery. The evidence that the monastery was in those areas can be found in the archives, but it is not stated exactly where.

From a cemetery and a market for piglets to a cozy terrace...

The entire monastery domain was given out for the construction of their houses, with the exception of what is now Varkenmarkt called. The Franciscan monastery would have stood there, if the resolution of the city council of 2 June 1580 is to be taken literally. The board of directors then decided to designate that place as a cattle market, but that does not correspond with the human bones found at the time in the middle of the VarkenmarktUntil 1978 the weekly pig market was held there on Monday mornings. Now the Varkenmarkt mainly used as a terrace for the adjacent catering establishments.

In 1572, the establishment of Franciscans in Gorinchem came to an end. Under difficult circumstances, a Franciscan father resumed pastoral care in this city in 1628, and this would continue uninterruptedly until 1988. After the departure of Father H. van Eeuwijk OFM, the secular clergy of the diocese of Rotterdam took over this task.

The recovery of the graves

The results

The excavated coffins were located in an open area behind two buildings on the Varkenmarkt which were converted into a catering facility by Stichting Stadsherstel Gorinchem. The rear area was to be built over and for that purpose the area had been excavated 50-60 cm and nine concrete piles had been driven in to prepare for the new construction. During the excavation, workers found burials which were then reported to us. The excavation was carried out on Saturday 27 and Monday 29 April 1996 by a number of volunteers and was led by P. FIoore. With the aid of a small excavator it was possible to remove loose soil from the area.

After manual planing, the plane was measured, drawn and photographed. The plane and thus also the top of the crates, was located on the eastern side at approximately 1.10 m + NAP. On the western side, the plane was slightly lower, at approximately 0.85 + NAP. Thirty wooden crates were visible in the ground. Except for two crates, all the lids of the crates had already disappeared with the excavation and groundwork. The lid of crate l seemed to have been roof tile-shaped. The lid consisted of two wide planks that lay folded in the crate. The contents of the crates had been filled with sand that had been played in over time.

Drawing of graves found

The high groundwater level also caused only low-lying coffins to be full of water. The good quality of the wood of the coffins suggests that the groundwater level was not very variable. There were also two buried wooden barrels on the site that could be dated to the middle of the 18th century based on the pottery found in them. The barrels were therefore not related to the cemetery but belonged to the bourgeois houses that were built later on the levelled monastery site. The coffins were all buried in an east-west direction. The burials were placed in seven north-south rows. The rows are indicated on the drawing.

As carefully as possible, the skeletons were collected and administered per grave. Here and there a grave was cleaned a bit and detailed photos were taken, this was not possible for every grave due to lack of time. Small bone material from hands and feet was not collected separately. The posture of the deceased was not recorded in detail because the skeletons were not prepared before being cleared. Due to the rapid manual collection, skeletal parts may have been lost. An actual excavation was therefore not carried out.

Some graves

Evaluation results

The thirty-one burials of the Varkenmarkt are clearly part of a larger cemetery or churchyard that apparently belonged to the Gorcum Franciscan monastery where citizens were also buried. Earlier finds of burials on the current square of the Varkenmarkt and further south under the bank building on the Bloempotsteeg suggest that there was either a larger cemetery or at least two smaller cemeteries located close to each other. During the time of the monastery, people were buried both in the church and in the monastery garden or courtyard. The burials investigated appear to have been buried in an open space, as no remains of a church building or monastery ambulatory were found. No gravestones or tombstones were found. The graves will have been simply marked with a wooden cross or name board. Some graves cross others, which indicates that the cemetery was probably in use throughout the entire monastery period. The locations of the graves were certainly not fixed. The locations were only known approximately, possibly due to the positioning in rows. Especially after the disappearance of the grave markers, carelessness could occur and older resting places could be affected. This partly explains the presence of empty and cluttered graves. However, the occurrence of the isolated cluttered graves and the empty grave cannot be explained directly. The ordered pattern in clear north-south oriented rows gives no indication of the size of the cemetery. It is clear that the burials extend further under the current buildings.

Six skeletons were examined in more detail.1 PM Floore, AJ Busch & H. Strattmann
Archaeological research of the cemetery of the Franciscan monastery on the Varkenmarkt in Gorinchem; Rotterdam; 1998. Download (0,77 MB) It turned out that at least two of all individuals found were female. At first glance this seemed a strange conclusion. But often a part of a monastery site was also set aside for the graves of citizens, probably strictly separated from the burial place of the deceased residents of the monastery.

Citizens were also buried in the monastery church: a certain Adriaan Jans van Heijnsberg bequeathed 21 guilders to the Friars Minor on 1533 May 14, on condition that he was buried in their church.2Judicial Archives Gorinchem, inventory number 60, folio 53v.

Conclusions

The burials found at the Varkenmarkt are part of a larger cemetery that extended as far as the north side of the Varkenmarkt up to the Bloempotsteeg. They can be dated between 1454 and 1572. All burials were with the head facing west. The cemetery was arranged in north-south rows that were probably in an open space and not within a church building or cloister. Although there was a Franciscan monastery, the burials of at least two women show that the site was also available for burials of lay people.

The burials that were investigated were hastily recovered due to lack of time. Many details, especially regarding the burial ritual, could not be determined. It is recommended that future interventions in the soil around the Varkenmarktto carry out archaeological research, however limited.