His Life
Van Crombrugghe as the educationalist and politician.
Constant van Crombrugghe's opinions and methods in the areas of politics (Church-State relations), education and social work were influenced by four factors:
- The early training he received as a member of a rich middle class family that formed part of the financial and political dynasty to which his mother belonged, the Spitaels of Geraardsbergen.
- The traditional, classical (Greek-Latin) and ultramontane education he received from the Fathers of the Faith in Amiens.
- The spiritual direction he received during those years from Louis Sellier, one of the Fathers of the Faith at Amiens, and from his granduncle and godfather, Canon J F G Huleu, Vicar General of the archdiocese of Mechelen and president of the major seminary.
- The equally ultramontane preparation for the priesthood which he received in the major seminary in Gent where he formed a close alliance with A Ryckewaert and closely collaborated with him during the 1820-30s.
After his ordination on 19th September 1812, CGVC was assigned for a short while as an assistant priest to the parishes of Mouscron, Kortrijk, and Heusden.
In September 1814 Bishop de Broglie, who had just returned from exile in France, named van Crombrugghe principal of the almost defunct Collège d'Alost. This was due to van Crombrugghe having been taught at Amiens by the Fathers of the Faith who were much admired by de Broglie.
Within eleven years he turned this school into one of the most renowned collèges in the Southern Provinces of the Kingdom of Netherlands. A number of well-known men in Belgian history including De Bracg [Bishop of Gent] and Dechamps [Leader of the Belgian Catholic Party] attended this school during the headship of van Crombrugghe.
The pedagogical principles to which Constant van Crombrugghe adhered were the cause of the school's success. They responded to the general desire for a return to tradition in education after the experimentation that took place during the French Occupation.
His theories of education were the antithesis of those promoted by the Enlightenment. He modelled the Collège d'Alost on his own educational experience at Amiens and offered a classical Christian humanistic education inspired by the traditions of 17th and 18th century writers and educationalists including François Fénelon and Charles Rollin. Thanks to the impetus of van Crombrugghe the school became well known for the textbooks produced by the staff, for example J J De Smet's "Histoire de la Belgique" published in 1821.
The school at Alost was also meant to foster vocations to the priesthood. When it became clear that its fees were too high and excluded a number of likely candidates for the priesthood, van Crombrugghe established a second boarding school (Tweede Kostschool) attached to the main collège.
The government of Willem I soon came to consider the Collège d'Alost a dangerous centre of ultramontane, pro-French and neo-Jesuit opposition and, after increasing harassment, the Collège was finally closed by the decrees of 14th June 1825. This decree virtually eliminated all Catholic run private and semi-private secondary and higher education in the Netherlands.
With the closing of the Collège in 1825, Constant van Crombrugghe became the spokesman for the Gent diocese on the Board of Directors for "Le Catholique des Pays-Bas", a newspaper founded to voice opposition to government policies. It was van Crombrugghe who drew up the statutes of the newspaper and, as the diocesan representative, influenced the positions it took in favour of the absolute freedom of the Church and education, and its call for religiously inspired education. At the same time van Crombrugghe was also the representative of the diocese of Gent in its discussions with the archdiocese of Mechelen.
In the face of growing government restrictions and the papal envoy, F Capaccini, who seemed to favour the king's point of view, the Bishops of Gent and Mechelen felt the need to develop a common stance vis-à-vis the king and government. Van Crombrugghe played a little known but important role as consultant, intermediary and "clearing house" of information in the final efforts to obtain a change in the attitude of the papal envoy with regards to the "Collegium Philosophicum" at Leuven. This College had been founded by the government for the purpose of preparing priests in sympathy with its religious policies.
Thanks to the concerted efforts of the dioceses of Gent, Mechelen and Luik (Liège), the papal envoy eventually changed his opinion. The papal envoy together with the Bishop of Liège then persuaded Willem I to lift the restrictions concerning the minor seminaries and attendance at the "Collegium Philosophicum" was made optional.
In 1829 van Crombrugghe became secretary to the new bishop of Gent, Van de Velde and a member of the diocesan council. For the next four years van Crombrugghe held considerable influence in the diocese especially as Director of Catholic Education for the two Flanders after the 1830 revolution.
With the rise of the liberal-catholics, many of who were former colleagues of van Crombrugghe from Alost, his power and influence diminished and, following his involvement in the 1833-1834 polemic between the lamennaisian liberal-catholic newspaper "Le Journal des Flanders" and the ultramontane "Le Mémorial du clergé", van Crombrugghe left the diocesan council for four years. He returned to the council in 1838 after the appointment of Delebecque as the new bishop of Gent.
After the 1830 revolution, Constant van Crombrugghe was elected delegate to the National Constitutional Congress from Alost. Through the numerous connections he developed while Headmaster at Alost, and through his influential role in the diocese, van Crombrugghe became the most influential of the nine priests elected as delegates from Flanders.
Through his quick intervention at the beginning of the Congress, he prevented the bishops from requiring the resignation from the Congress of the delegates who were priests. For their part, the bishops wanted to avoid national and international criticism which might arise from the involvement of the Church at the Congress.
Van Crombrugghe's and E Sterckx were instrumental in preparing the letter which Archbishop de Mean addressed to the Congress. It asked for absolute freedom of religion, public worship and education. These were the themes of the two speeches made by Canon Constant van Crombrugghe at the Congress.
His first speech concerned articles 10 and 11 of the proposed draft constitution. Van Crombrugghe supported the call for absolute freedom of religion and spoke against any government prevention of worship in cases where public order might be threatened. Van Crombrugghe believed that the right to any prevention of worship by the government could be used in the future by a possibly hostile government as a pretext to eliminate worship.
The second speech concerned article 13 of the proposed draft constitution. He opposed the use of a system of preventive measures in order to safeguard education. During the debate on this article, the amendment proposed by van Crombrugghe and his group only narrowly avoided losing priority in voting. It was thanks to the quick action taken behind the scenes by Constant van Crombrugghe that his group's amendment finally became article 17 in the final text of the Constitution.
After the National Congress, Constant van Crombrugghe retired from public political life but continued to support the group of people that had made the constitution possible and helped to found their newspaper, "L'Union".
Van Crombrugghe as the Founder of Religious Orders
Through his two congregations of teaching religious founded in 1817, Constant van Crombrugghe hoped to "re-christianise" a "de-christianised" society through education and thus make it safe for the Church what he considered its divine mission to teach.
His two initial religious Congregations, one male and one female, were founded in response to the economic and moral distress of the poor caused by the 1817 famine.
On 6th March 1817, van Crombrugghe established the "Daughters of Mary and Joseph" at Alost. They ran a lace making school for girls and offered a form of primary education. In 1818 they opened another in Grammont but it was only in 1830-31, thanks to the sudden influx of two groups of women from Mouscron and Bellegem, that van Crombrugghe was able to move the congregation into the education of the middle-classes. In 1834 he divided the congregation. The sisters in Grammont became "The Sisters of Mary and Joseph." While the sisters at Alost, Mouscron and Bellegem remained "Daughters of Mary and Joseph". In 1838 he again divided "The Daughters of Mary and Joseph" into two autonomous groups. "The Sisters of Holy Joseph", whose mother house was in Bruges while "The Daughters of Mary and Joseph", whose mother house was in Mechelen, became known as "The Ladies of Mary".
Van Crombrugghe carried out all these changes in order to better meet what he considered to be the differing educational needs of the rich and poor and in order to respect the jurisdiction of the bishop of Bruges and the archbishop of Malines and to make better use of the talents of his individual religious. "The Sisters of Mary and Joseph" and "The Sisters of Holy Joseph" remained diocesan congregations while "The Daughters of Mary and Joseph known as The Ladies of Mary" obtained final papal approval in 1878. Today "The Daughters of Mary and Joseph known as The Ladies of Mary" have reverted back to their original name of 'Daughters of Mary and Joseph (DMJs).
On 1st May 1817, van Crombrugghe founded a group of male religious, "The Brothers of Holy Joseph" in his own home town of Geraardsbergen. These religious were also to offer a form of primary education to boys and young men from the poorer classes. This included training in a trade and rudimentary religious instruction. In spite of government opposition and the impossibility of obtaining civil recognition for the group, it was further developed in the 1820s.
In 1837 van Crombrugghe changed the name of the "Brothers of St Joseph" to "The Institute of the Religious of St Joseph or The Josephites". At the same time he arranged for them to take over the administration of the boarding school of Melle. The move to College Melle is a seminal moment as it created the second raison d'être for Josephite schools: the education of the Catholic boys belonging to the new ruling classes who would eventually become the future leaders within society.
The final stage of the development of the Josephites and their schools, during the life of van Crombrugghe, came with the acceptance of the offer made in 1842 by Cardinal Archbishop de Sterckx of Malines to take over a school being run by one of the Cardinal's priests. For van Crombrugghe, the move to Leuven not only offered a place for the initial formation of future Josephites but also, because of its location in Leuven, it would allow Josephites to follow the courses necessary for the priesthood offered by the Katholieke Universiteit te Leuven. This was important as Constant van Crombrugghe had decided to introduce priests into "The Josephites" and for the rest of his life he did his best to develop a "mixed" congregation of priests and brothers.
In later life van Crombrugghe suffered from increasing poor sight and a form of neuralgia originating from the sunstroke he suffered in 1857. Finally in 1863 van Crombrugghe retired completely from public life including his work with prisoners at Gent.
In that same year, however, van Crombrugghe tried to obtain papal approval for his "mixed" order of priests and lay religious but because of the disappearance of part of the constitutions sent to Rome for approval and also because of Rome's unwillingness to admit a novel form of constitution. At that time "The Josephites" were declared to be a lay congregation. However, in 1897 "The Josephites" gained approval from Rome to become a clerical (priestly) congregation.
All of the activities of Canon Constant van Crombrugghe seem to have had as their central purpose the "re-christianisation" of society through education. Although by nature, he was conservative, ultramontane and traditional in his opinions; he nevertheless used a wide variety of methods to achieve this one goal.
The writings of van Crombrugghe were very pragmatic. Whilst Headmaster at Alost he composed manuals for the use by the pupils: the "Manuel de la Jeunesse Chrétienne" and "Art épistolaire à l'usage de la jeunesse". One of his 1815 speeches at Alost against the educational policies of Willem 1 was published as "Sur l'éducation". In 1827 he wrote, with others, a pamphlet entitled "Réfutation des observations sur les libertés de l'Eglise" against the plans of Willem 1 to set up a State Church. Finally in 1839 van Crombrugghe published his "Règlement des Professeurs" which was a practical guide for Josephite teachers.
(Based on the text prepared by Guillermo C Garçia)
