Kevelaer Shrine

A market town on the Rhine plain

Kevelaer is a small town in the district of Kleve (Kreis Kleve), in North Rhine-Westphalia, a few kilometres from the Dutch border, in the fertile plain of the Lower Rhine.^[4] Nothing in this flat landscape of meadows and canals predestined the place to become a spiritual centre: before 1642, Kevelaer was merely a hamlet at a crossroads, on the road linking Geldern to Wesel. It is the pilgrimage that made the town: to this day, the urban fabric, the guesthouses, the shops selling devotional objects and the great square of chapels, the Kapellenplatz, are organised entirely around the shrine.

The context: the Thirty Years' War

The foundation of Kevelaer cannot be separated from its era: central Europe was then being torn apart by the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), a conflict at once political and religious that ravaged the German lands.^[5] The Lower Rhine, a Catholic borderland next to the Calvinist United Provinces, lived in insecurity, with troops passing through, plague and famine. It was in this climate of anguish that a Marian title such as Consoler of the Afflicted found an immediate echo: the first crowds came to Kevelaer seeking a consolation that the age denied them.

The voice at the wayside cross: Hendrik Busman

The foundation story, fixed very early and preserved in the shrine's archives, centres on a merchant from the Geldern area, Hendrik Busman.^[6] During the winter of 1641, while stopping near a wayside cross (a Hagelkreuz) on the Kevelaer road, he is said to have heard three times, over the course of a few days, a voice telling him:

"In this place you shall build me a little chapel." — Words heard by Hendrik Busman near the wayside cross, winter 1641^[7]

Busman, a modest man, set aside one hundred florins to obey this call.^[8] Whether this voice was interior or perceived outwardly belongs to a discernment that goes beyond the history of the place; the Church has never defined the exact nature of this call. What the shrine retains is the fact: a man of the people decided to build a chapel, and on 13 February 1642 he recorded his account under oath.^[9]

Mechel Schrouse's vision and the engraved image

The other figure in the foundation is Busman's wife, Mechel Schrouse. According to the account, in the spring of 1642 she had a nocturnal vision: a small chapel, and inside it an image of the Virgin she did not recognise.^[10] Shortly afterwards, soldiers passing through offered her small paper engravings depicting Our Lady of Luxembourg for sale; recognising the image from her dream, Mechel obtained it from a lieutenant.^[11]

This copper engraving, dated to around 1640 and probably printed in Antwerp, bears the Latin inscription "Vera Effigies Matris IESU Consolatricis afflictorum" — "True image of the Mother of Jesus, Consoler of the Afflicted".^[12] It shows the crowned Virgin, wearing a wide open mantle, holding on her left arm the Child Jesus, also crowned, holding the globe of the world.^[13] The image is a copy of the Consolatrix of Luxembourg, itself descended from the great shrine of Scherpenheuvel (Montaigu in Brabant) — a whole lineage of consoling Marian images thus passed from one to the next across the Catholic Low Countries.^[14]

1 June 1642: the image at the crossroads

The founding moment of the shrine is 1 June 1642: on that Sunday, Vicar Johannes Schink solemnly placed the image in a small wooden shrine erected at the crossroads, on the very spot of the wayside cross.^[15] The response was immediate. That same year, the faithful came in numbers to pray before the Trösterin; in 1643, the town of Rees on the Lower Rhine organised the first collective procession to Kevelaer — the beginning of a processional tradition that has never been interrupted.^[16]

Recognition: the Synod of Venlo (1647)

Popular devotion was very quickly submitted to the examination of ecclesiastical authority. Kevelaer then belonged to the Diocese of Roermond. In 1647, a synod convened at Venlo examined the events of 1641–1642 — Hendrik Busman recounting the facts there under oath — and officially recognised Kevelaer as a place of pilgrimage after two days of hearings; the eight healings reported until then were recognised as miracles according to ecclesiastical rules.^[17] This recognition, coming barely five years after the installation of the image, was exceptionally rapid: it sealed the passage from a spontaneous devotion to a shrine of the Church. Hendrik Busman, the merchant founder, died on 14 March 1649, having seen his humble chapel become a regional centre of prayer.^[18]

The call of the Oratorians (1646)

To provide pastoral care for a rapidly growing pilgrimage, the Bishop of Roermond, in agreement with the Archbishop of Mechelen, called to Kevelaer in 1646 a community of Oratorians of St Philip Neri.^[19] The choice was not accidental: the Oratorians of the mother house at Mechelen already had experience of the great shrine of Scherpenheuvel, whose image of grace was precisely the "mother" of that of Luxembourg on which the Kevelaer image was modelled.^[20] For more than a century and a half, these priests provided hospitality to pilgrims, preaching and the sacrament of reconciliation, and built up the shrine's archives — the Oratorium Kevelaeriense.^[21]

The secularisation of 1802

The French Revolution and the Napoleonic occupation of the Lower Rhine struck Kevelaer as they did all religious establishments on the left bank of the Rhine. In 1802, the French secularisation suppressed the Oratorian congregation; archives and treasures were dispersed.^[22] But, as at Manoppello under the Napoleonic suppressions, devotion survived the institution: the image remained, pilgrims continued to come, and custody of the shrine passed to the secular clergy.

The shrine today (Diocese of Münster)

A change of jurisdiction completed the reordering of the place: in 1821, the shrine passed from the Diocese of Roermond to the Diocese of Münster, to which it still belongs today.^[23] The pilgrimage office (Wallfahrtsleitung) is now run by the diocesan clergy attached to the parish of St Mary in Kevelaer, under the authority of a rector. The continuity of custodianship — first Oratorian, then diocesan, without interruption of devotion — gives the place its stability.

The Kevelaer ensemble is not a single church, but a group of buildings arranged around the Kapellenplatz, each born from a stage of the pilgrimage. They can be read as the growth rings of a single tree.

The Gnadenkapelle, Chapel of Grace (1654)

The heart of the shrine is the Gnadenkapelle, the Chapel of Grace, erected in 1654 around the site of the original shrine.^[24] It is a hexagonal building topped with a cupola, open to the square through a wide bay: pilgrims can thus see the image from outside, and a passage behind the altar allows them to contemplate it up close.^[25] Its architectural model was explicitly the shrine of Scherpenheuvel — the same one again — whose chapel of grace inspired the centralised plan.^[26] The altar was consecrated in 1663 by the Bishop of Roermond.^[27]

It is there, and only there, that the small engraving of the Consolatrix Afflictorum is displayed. All the interior decoration, executed between 1888 and 1892 by the Münster painter Friedrich Stummel (1850–1919), converges upon it.^[28] A motto painted there sums up the meaning of the place:

"All this beauty must point to the most beautiful of all." — Inscription in the Chapel of Grace, decoration by Friedrich Stummel^[29]

The Kerzenkapelle, Candle Chapel (1643–1645)

The first true pilgrimage church was the Kerzenkapelle, the Candle Chapel, built from 1643 to 1645 by Hendrik van Arssen, on the model of the shrine of Zand near Roermond.^[30] Erected in the midst of war, in poverty, it was built without a steeple and topped with a simple lantern. Its nave measures 32 metres long, ten wide and fifteen high.^[31] Completed on 20 November 1645, it could only be solemnly consecrated after the Peace of Westphalia, on 2 May 1649, by the Episcopal Vicar Johann Sternenberg of Münster.^[32]

Its name comes from the votive candles that processions deposit there: a great central candle commemorates the first procession from Rees in 1643. The Kerzenwallfahrt — the offering of candles and long painted tapers by pilgrim communities — has become one of the most characteristic customs of Kevelaer.^[33]

The Marienbasilika (1858–1864)

In the 19th century, the crowds outgrew the capacity of the old chapels. It was decided to erect a great church capable of receiving the multitudes: the Marienbasilika, St Mary's Basilica. To the designs of the Cologne architect and diocesan master builder Vincenz Statz (1819–1898), it was built from 1858 to 1864 in a vigorous neo-Gothic style, in red brick.^[34] The church was consecrated on 3 July 1864 in the presence of seven bishops.^[35] Its western tower, 90 metres high, was only completed in 1883–1884, under the direction of Hilger Hertel the Elder.^[36]

The interior is among the most colourful in the Rhineland: Friedrich Stummel and his pupils painted the choirs and transepts around the turn of the century, and a restoration completed in 1991, inspired by the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, restored all their brilliance.^[37] The basilica also houses an exceptional instrument: the great Seifert organ, built by Ernst Seifert in 1906–1907, with 133 stops, presented as the largest German Romantic organ in the world.^[38]

"A mighty basilica in neo-Gothic forms was erected to the designs of Vincenz Statz." — Heritage note on the Marienbasilika of Kevelaer^[39]

The Beichtkapelle and the Forum Pax Christi

One last building completes the ensemble: the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament (Sakramentskapelle), erected in 1860 and long used as the Chapel of Confessions for Dutch pilgrims.^[40] In 1999, the forecourt in front of it was covered with a glass roof, and the whole space took the name Forum Pax Christi — a sheltered place where the ministry of reconciliation is now concentrated, which remains, together with adoration, one of the two great reasons for the shrine's existence.^[41]

The growth of the crowds

The history of Kevelaer is first of all that of a steadily growing attendance, which the archives allow us to quantify. As early as around 1700, certain feast days gathered more than 15,000 visitors.^[42] The 19th century saw numbers soar with modern transport:

These figures make Kevelaer one of the great shrines of northern Europe, comparable in its flow to the most frequented Marian pilgrimages.^[43]

Processions and devotion to the Trösterin

The characteristic form of devotion at Kevelaer is the parish procession. From across the Rhineland, Westphalia and the Netherlands, whole communities come on foot or as groups, banners at the fore, to deposit a candle and entrust their sorrows to the Trösterin der Betrübten. The pilgrimage season, traditionally opening in spring and culminating around the Marian feasts of summer, still structures the life of the town. The title Consoler of the Afflicted gives the place its particular tone: people do not come to Kevelaer primarily for a spectacular prodigy, but to be consoled.

The visit of John Paul II (2 May 1987)

The high point of the shrine's modern history was the visit of Pope John Paul II on 2 May 1987, during his pastoral journey to Germany.^[44] From eight to half past eleven, the Pope first prayed before the Gnadenbild of the Trösterin der Betrübten, offering his own rosary, kept since then near the image; he then celebrated Lauds at the municipal stadium before some 70,000 people.^[45] In his homily, he gave the pilgrimage its universal scope:

"The true centres of the history of the world and of salvation are not the busy capitals of politics and economics, of money and earthly power. The true centres of history are the silent places of prayer of men." — John Paul II, Lauds at Kevelaer, 2 May 1987^[46]

This visit, commemorated by a portal erected in 1989, confirmed the stature of a shrine that had grown from a regional devotion of the Lower Rhine into a place of prayer for the universal Church.^[47]

The eight healings of the Synod of Venlo

What turned Kevelaer from a roadside chapel into a recognised shrine were healings. The Synod of Venlo in 1647 retained eight of them as true miracles, after a swift but formal examination.^[48] The nature of the cases reported — paralyses, chronic wounds, long-standing infirmities — corresponds to the type of graces that the Mirakelbücher, the shrine's books of miracles, would subsequently record by the thousand: not cosmic prodigies, but deliverances of suffering bodies that had come seeking the consolation promised by the image's title.

Peter van Volbroek (1642)

The oldest case reported by the shrine's tradition is that of Peter van Volbroek, of Hassum, healed in 1642 of a paralysis following a pilgrimage to Kevelaer.^[49] Local tradition places this healing within the shrine's first year and counts it among the eight cases retained by the Synod of Venlo in 1647; the detailed particulars sometimes cited (exact date, duration of the infirmity) remain to be checked against the shrine's Mirakelbücher.

The Mirakelbücher

Unlike a shrine centred on a modern scientific investigation such as Lourdes, Kevelaer has chiefly preserved the written and material memory of graces received: the Mirakelbücher, registers kept by the Oratorians, and the countless ex-votos — marble plaques, crutches, votive paintings — accumulated over the centuries around the chapel. This documentation, partly dispersed during the secularisation of 1802, remains the cumulative testimony of an unbroken popular trust since 1642. The Church, here as elsewhere, carefully distinguishes authorised veneration from definitive certainty about each individual case. To be precise: what is venerated at Kevelaer is an image — an engraving —, not a relic; on the Catholic meaning of the veneration of images, see Why does the Church use images?, and on relics properly speaking, see Why venerate relics?.^[50]

Kevelaer is not a shrine of prestige built by a prince or a powerful order: it is the work of an obscure merchant who said he heard a voice, and of a woman who recognised an image in a dream. The place has kept the mark of this humble origin. What is venerated there is not a great work of art, but an engraving a few centimetres across; what is awaited there is not the extraordinary, but consolation. That is what the image's title promises, and what millions of pilgrims have sought there through four centuries of wars, epidemics and bereavements.

"Sancta Maria, consolatrix afflictorum, ora pro nobis." — Invocation by which John Paul II opened Lauds at Kevelaer, 2 May 1987^[51]

Ultimately, what the chapels of Kevelaer offer to those who cross the plain of the Lower Rhine is not a demonstration, but an encounter. All the architecture of the place — the roadside shrine, the hexagonal chapel open to the square, the great brick basilica, the candles of the processions — converges on a single invitation: to come and lay one's sorrows before the Consoler of the Afflicted. As the Pope recalled at Kevelaer, the silent places where people pray are, in the eyes of faith, the true centres of history.^[52]

Related Ignispedia articles

• Sanctuary of Manoppello — another shrine built around a small image of the face of Christ, kept by a religious family and struck by the Napoleonic suppressions.
• Sanctuary of Loreto — great Marian shrine-chapel, a classic stage of European devotion.
• Sanctuary of Monte Sant'Angelo — millennial pilgrimage shrine, another great centre of Catholic devotion.
• Why does the Church use images? — Catholic doctrine on the veneration of images (what is venerated at Kevelaer is an image, not a relic).
• Why venerate relics? — Catholic doctrine on the veneration of relics and the distinction between authorised devotion and definitive certainty.

Main sources

• Kevelaer, de.wikipedia.org — history of the foundation, the pilgrimage and attendance figures.
• Marienbasilika (Kevelaer), de.wikipedia.org — architecture by Vincenz Statz, tower, Seifert organ, Stummel paintings.
• Gnadenkapelle and Kerzenkapelle, wallfahrt-kevelaer.de — chapels of the shrine, dates and functions.
• Basilica of St. Mary, Kevelaer, catholicshrinebasilica.com — foundation story, image of the Consolatrix, 1864 consecration.
• Wallfahrt nach Kevelaer, wallfahrtsorte-wallfahrtskirchen.de — Oratorians, Synod of Venlo, secularisation of 1802.
• John Paul II, Lauds at Kevelaer (2 May 1987), vatican.va.