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Lessinois Good Friday
For more than five centuries, Good Friday in Lessines has been marked by special events. Although in the early days, around 1475, a play was apparently staged in St Peter's church at the time of the Passion, it was during the last quarter of the 17th century that the act was extended in a spectacular way by a procession, escorting the body of the Crucified One through the streets of the town, before placing it in the tomb, in one of the chapels of the church. No revolution or war interrupted the tradition, even if it became more discreet.
On the eve of the Second World War, the character of the tradition was reaffirmed and, despite the bombing of St Peter's Church on 11 May 1940, it continued until the reopening of the building to worship in May 1952, which allowed the austere magnification of what can be called the Lessinois Good Friday Trilogy: service, procession and burial. Since 1952, the ceremonies have taken place in the evening, with the procession going out into a town plunged into darkness, to the sound of drums and rattles, a funeral procession lit only by the torches of hooded penitents and the torches of young women, some two hundred people escorting the cross, Christ and Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows.
This tradition, born in the Middle Ages, never ceases to amaze believers or simple tourists who come to Lessines for the occasion, they draw what they wish from a tradition that has remained respectful of its history and its changes. The service starts at 7.30 p.m. in St. Peter's Church, followed by the procession through the old town and the burial at 10 p.m. in the church.
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Saint Peter
The edifice occupies the site of a primitive chapel replaced by a first Romanesque church before 1075, itself replaced by a second one at the end of the 12th century. Since then, the building has undergone more than a dozen campaigns of extensions, transformations and restorations.
Annihilated on May 11, 1940 by a few German incendiary shells, the church lived a real ordeal, with restoration work only beginning in early 1950 and leading to the consecration on May 22, 1952. Through his work, the architect Simon Brigode was keen to restore the original purity and luminosity of the monument, which had been listed since 1941.
If the tower and the light-floor of the great nave date back to the second Romanesque church of the 12th century, the major part of the building is Gothic, a style perpetuated throughout the various campaigns of work that took place between 1356 and 1817.
Some works of art and furniture saved from the 1940 disaster have found a place in the church while the last war damages were attributed late: large organ in 1989, baptismal font, side altars and 3 bells only in 2013.
Welcoming, luminous, historical and educational, the church of Saint Peter is only waiting for one thing: your visit!
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