Temple of the Augustinians, Brussels

About

The former Augustine church (French: Église des Augustins) in Brussels was a baroque church that existed from 1620 to 1893. She had to make room for De Brouckère Square.

History: The Augustines settled in Brussels in 1589 at a place that since 1336 was involved by Franciscan brothers of the third order (the Broerkens van de Grecht, a reference to the Wolvengracht). After the defeat of the Brussels Republic, the old objections to the extraction of monasteries were largely dismissed. The brothers sold their monastery to the Mechelian Augustine Prior Hendrik Jaupen and entered the Augustine establishment thus created. The city marshal exempted the Augustines from excise duty in exchange for ordering mass celebrations in the city hall (a quarter of each year). They also served as firefighters and distributed bread to the poor (Wolf-grecht-bread, hence later Pain à la grecque), but their main contribution to urban life was the school they founded from 1603. In the Greek-Latin humanities there were already 500 pupils around 1650.

Through the intervention of Archduchess Isabella, the Augustines were given a new site in 1615...