Directory
Relics of the saints of the undivided Church, relics of the Lord’s Passion and of the Mother of God, ancient monasteries — including those now kept in Catholic and Anglican churches. Choose a country.
Check access arrangements on the church’s website before travelling.
Bruges
The relic was brought from the Holy Land in the 12th century. Veneration takes place daily at set hours; each year at the Ascension a procession passes through the city.
Brussels (Uccle)
The Church of Saint Job the Much-Suffering (1936–1950) was built by Russian émigrés in memory of Tsar Nicholas II, his family and all the victims of the revolution; it is dedicated to the saint whose feast fell on the Tsar’s birthday. One of the first memorial churches to the Royal Martyrs abroad; an active ROCOR church.
Ghent
Saint Macarius, Armenian by birth and by tradition Archbishop of Antioch, left his see to come as a pilgrim to the West; he died in Ghent on 10 April 1012 during a plague, having offered himself, it is said, for the city’s deliverance. The silver shrine with his relics (1616) is kept in the crypt of St Bavo’s Cathedral.
Liège
Saint Lambert, Bishop of Maastricht, was killed around 705 on the site of present-day Liège; the city grew up around his tomb. His relics are kept in the precious bust reliquary in the treasury of St Paul’s Cathedral.
Mons
Saint Waltrude († c. 688) founded the convent around which the city of Mons grew. Her relics rest in an 1887 shrine in the collegiate church (her head in a separate reliquary). Every year on Trinity Sunday the shrine is drawn through the city on the gilded “Car d’Or”.
Nivelles
Saint Gertrude († 659), abbess of the monastery founded by her mother, was venerated throughout Frankish Europe. The 11th-century collegiate church stands over her burial place; beneath it an archaeological crypt shows the remains of five churches of the 7th–10th centuries. Her shrine is carried round the town each year in the “Tour Sainte-Gertrude” procession.
Stavelot
Saint Remaclus († c. 673), Bishop of Maastricht, founded the Ardennes monasteries of Stavelot and Malmedy. His relics rest in a gilded shrine of 1268, a masterpiece of Mosan art, in the sanctuary of the parish church of St Sebastian.
Tournai
Saint Eleutherius († 531/532), first Bishop of Tournai, evangelised the Franks of the region. The shrine of his relics (1247), a masterpiece of Mosan goldsmith’s work, is kept in the treasury of Notre-Dame Cathedral (UNESCO) together with Nicholas of Verdun’s Shrine of Our Lady (1205).
