Utrecht celebrates St. Martin de Tours

(Amersfoort) On November 11 the Archdiocese of Utrecht celebrates the feast of the patron saint Martin of Tours. Every year, the Metropolitan Chapter of Utrecht organizes a special meeting of the clergy and partners of the Archdiocese of Utrecht. At the meeting vespers is sung. In various parts of the country, children sing with a lantern along the streets. The children receive a snack as a reward. This evening will not be easy, considering the weather.

St. Martin, was born in 316/317, the son of a Roman officer. Martin enlisted in the army at 15 years of age and served in Gaul in the Imperial Guard. St. Martin abandoned the Roman military to serve in God's army as a priest and bishop of the early church. Today, America celebrates Veteran's Day and the charism of St. Martin.

St. Martin's Cathedral, Utrecht, or Dom Church (Dutch: Domkerk) was the cathedral of the diocese of Utrecht during the Middle Ages. Once the country's largest church and only cathedral, dedicated to Saint Martin of Tours.

The first chapel dedicated to Saint Martin in Utrecht was founded around 600 by Frankish clergy under the patronage of the Merovingian kings but was destroyed during an attack of the Frisians on Utrecht shortly thereafter. The site of this first chapel within Utrecht is unknown. Saint Willibrord (died 739), the Apostle to the Frisians, established a second chapel devoted to Saint Martin on (or close to) the site of the current Dom. This church was destroyed by the Normans in the 9th century during one of their many raids on Utrecht, but was reconstructed by Bishop Balderik in the 10th century. During this period St. Martin's came to be the principal church (or minster) of Utrecht, see of the bishop. The church had its own small territorial close (known as an "immunity") and was led by a chapter of Canons, who generally belonged to the nobility.

The church was repeatedly destroyed by fires and then rebuilt. A church in Romanesque style was built by Adalbold, Bishop of Utrecht, and consecrated in 1023. This building, also known as Adalbold's Dom, was partially destroyed in the big fire of 1253 which ravaged much of Utrecht, leading Bishop Hendrik van Vianen to initiate the construction of the current Gothic structure in 1254. The construction of the gothic Dom was to continue well into the 16th century. The first part to be built was the choir. The Dom Tower was started in 1321 and finished in 1382. After 1515, steadily diminishing financing prevented completion of this building project, of which an almost complete series of building accounts exists. In 1572, the Iconoclast Fury swept across much of the Low Countries, justified by the Calvinist belief that statues in a house of God were idolatrous images which must be destroyed. As a result, many of the ornaments on both the exterior and interior of the Dom were destroyed.

In 1580 the city government of Utrecht handed the Dom over to the Calvinists in the city. From then on Protestant services were held in the Dom with one brief exception during the French invasion of the Netherlands in 1672/1673, when Catholic masses were again held in the old cathedral. A year after the French retreat, in August 1674, the still unfinished and insufficiently supported nave collapsed during a thunderstorm. Over the subsequent centuries, much of the enormous building fell into further neglect. The pitiable state of the Dom led to some small restoration activities in the nineteenth century, followed by major renovations in the early twentieth century with the aim of returning the Cathedral to its original state. However, the nave was never rebuilt.

The Catholic Church of the Netherlands remained strong within Utrecht following the Reformation but was obliged to worship discretely in hidden chapels (schuilkerken). One of these chapels, St. Gertrude's, later became the principal cathedral of the Old Catholic archbishop of Utrecht.

History of St. Martin's Cathedral