For centuries pilgrims came to Diegem to invoke Saint Cornelius, above all against convulsions in children and against the ‘falling sickness’ (epilepsy), but also against gout, paralysis and whooping cough. Offerings in money and in kind were so plentiful that the church of Diegem was among the richest in the area; they probably also made the stone spire possible.
A confraternity since 1462
A deed of 16 May 1462 already mentions the lands of the ‘bruederscap van Sente Cornelys van Dyeghem’. Its members came from dozens of villages, from Anderlecht and Aarschot to Mechelen and Zaventem. A 19th-century register even lists King Alfonso XIII of Spain (1890) and several princesses. As there was no proof that the confraternity had ever been canonically established, official permission was obtained from Rome in 1819.
How the pilgrimage was made
You walked three times around the outside of the church praying, then three times inside, attended Mass, venerated the relic, made your offering and had the sick person or the whole family enrolled in the confraternity. Then came a novena of nine days, with the saint's litany and water from the St Cornelius spring. For those who could not come themselves, the little pilgrimage flag was proof that someone else had made the journey. Sometimes you had to be nine; those who could not gather nine people could call on the pupils of the girls' school.
The great days were Easter Monday and Easter Tuesday, and the saint's feast on 16 September, which from 1713 was celebrated on the following Sunday. Every first Tuesday of the month there was a Mass at 10 o'clock for the members of the confraternity; that tradition still exists. The St Cornelius spring in the St.-Corneliusstraat, near houses 10 and 12, was blessed every year on Easter Monday; pilgrims took the water home for people suffering from convulsions or epilepsy. In 1899 the municipality closed the well and put a pump on it.
Pilgrimage flags already existed when the church was completed in 1543. Around 1700 the church had them printed by the thousand: 1,300 in 1699, 4,000 in 1703. A copper plate from after 1654, showing the new spire, Cornelius with a sufferer of the falling sickness at his feet and Catherine with her wheel, is still kept in the city museum of Bruges. The inscription reads: ‘S. Cornelis, patroon tegen de vallende sieckte tot Dieghem’.
Live offerings
Farmers offered piglets, pigeons, ducks, hens and rabbits, later sometimes pigs' heads too, and poured corn, wheat, oats and barley into a large grain chest at the back of the church. To relieve the pilgrims of their noisy gifts as they came in, parish priest Forneville had a ‘henhouse’ built beside the pilgrims' house in 1775, with a little sliding hatch into the church. After High Mass the sexton or a churchwarden called out the animals from a stone platform with an iron railing beside the north portal and auctioned them; the proceeds went into the offering box of Saint Cornelius. This happened for the last time around 1968.
From church feast to fair
In 1911 a Brussels journalist described the crowds on Easter Monday: anyone getting off the tram in Diegem had to push through the throng. Around the church the sick and the crippled sat on the grass, pilgrims circled the building in close rows, the women in their best clothes. An old woman sold little candles for two cents, the sexton auctioned rabbits held up by the ears, and then everyone went off to the fair with its street singers, a quack on a gilded carriage, sausages and plum tarts.
The Easter Monday pilgrimage, known locally as ‘Pasen-Diegem’, still draws visitors; the people of Diegem themselves traditionally go on Easter Tuesday. After High Mass the relic is venerated and one can still enrol in the confraternity. Around the feast days a three-day fair grew up on the market square, between church and castle. A second fair falls on the second Sunday of September.
The pilgrimage in art
The pilgrimage inspired many artists. Charles de Groux (1825-1870) and Constantin Meunier (1831-1905) painted the Easter Monday pilgrimage in Diegem, and Georges Eekhoud described it in his book Kermesses (1884). There are also prints by E. Duyck, Arthur Peeters, Decaux (1886) and P. Lauters, among others.