Violated Sanctuary
In the inner city of Amsterdam there is a small
courtyard, the last of its kind from the middle ages. It would be a secluded
place to live if it wasn’t so old, if it didn’t contain a hidden chapel from
the days when Catholics were forced to worship in secret, if it didn’t contain
history, if it wasn’t a place of notice, if it wasn’t beautiful. But it is all
these things and tourists tramp through clicking cameras.
This courtyard was a site we visited on our walking
tour of Amsterdam. Our guide briefly told us that the courtyard was one of the
last in Amsterdam, and to be quiet because people lived there. But told us
nothing of the actual place before we walked in, all I know I found out later.
I remember the entryway was a rather unassuming door in a white washed wall,
then a tunnel—dim in comparison to the bright day.
Upon emerging from the tunnel, the courtyard is
picturesque. Islands of green perfectly cut grass adorned with statues, and
trees, are surrounded by tall brick buildings. There is one wooden building,
dark—it is one of the oldest in Amsterdam and one of two wooden buildings in
the city’s center, another reason to see the courtyard. Looking left there is a
deep recess between two buildings, one white washed and the other red brick.
Religious pictures on the far wall, look like decorations a child pasted on a
doll house wall, unframed and surrounded by swaths of white. Central in the
courtyard is an old church. A brick facade rising to a steeple, and double
doors of a rich wood with swirling iron hinges. Now this church is the English
reformed church; when it was built it was a Catholic chapel and the courtyard
around it housed the Beguines, chaste women who cared for the sick and elderly.
And then there was the Protestant reformation and Catholicism was outlawed,
except for in private. And now we come to another attraction in this courtyard,
the Begijnhof Chapel.
Our guide said we were going into the Chapel, and
then turned away from the church. To the building across, a simple whitewashed
one. The ‘hidden church’ was built for the private Catholic worship.
We entered the hidden chapel and it seemed wrong to
take pictures, but everyone else was flashing their cameras filling the place
of seclusion with the click of shutters, and I wanted pictures too. An older
man with thinning gray hair, a gruffness about the edges, his stomach pushing
slightly at a red and white striped T-shirt, entered the chapel. He took a
candle in a red votive candleholder, lit it and set it beside other glowing
candles. He stepped around to the pew in front of the candles and knelt down to
pray. The cameras desecrated the place of worship. The place was not an out of
use historical building, it was a church and every lit candle was someone’s
prayer. Not only did the cameras violate the place, my camera prevented me from
absorbing its essence. I wonder if the use of cameras to remember has clouded
our memories, if we have lost some valuable skill and must work to get it back.
We left the chapel and returned to the courtyard.
Walking purposefully through the courtyard, someone, I think a dark-haired man
carrying a black shoulder bag pushed through one of two metal bars that formed
a gate. One was engraved with “Alleen voor Bewoners” and the other read “Residents
Only”. I don’t distinctly remember what the person looked like, and am even
doubting now whether it was in fact a man, I’ve since read that the houses are
still home to single women. What I remember most strongly is thinking: what
would it be like to live here in a private place with no privacy?
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