Sint-Hermesbasiliek
Church · Flanders
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Ronse's Sint-Hermesbasiliek is a late-Gothic church whose 79-metre tower was rebuilt after English soldiers burned the town in 1424, finished by 1526. Beneath it lies a Romanesque crypt consecrated in 1089, holding the relics of Saint Hermes, brought to Ronse in 860 and long invoked against nervous illness. Each year the 32 km Fiertel procession, held since 1090, carries them through town; the church became a basilica in 2019.
A five-year restoration finished in February 2025 reopened the stairway linking the church directly to its crypt, closed off since the French Revolution and reachable for two centuries only through a separate street entrance. Of the crypt's original twenty-four Romanesque monolith columns, fifteen survive, carved with dice-shaped capitals; the rest were later replaced with drum columns topped in cabbage-leaf capitals. The belief that Saint Hermes cured nervous illness traces to ergotism, a poisoning from fungus-infected rye that caused seizures and hallucinations medieval pilgrims mistook for madness; Ronse bakers kept clean grain as a closely guarded secret, giving pilgrims a genuine, if accidental, remedy. The wooden reliquary carried each Fiertel dates to 1584 and underwent its own restoration at Belgium's Royal Institute for Art Heritage alongside the building work.
What you see
The church's masonry shows the story of the 1424 fire in its walls: Romanesque stonework in the north transept gives way to Gothic brick raised during the rebuilding.
Practical
Each Trinity Sunday, some Fiertel participants now cycle sections of the 32.6 km route rather than walking it.
romanesque cryptpilgrimage routebasilica