Antwerp No. 6

A communication to BSI from Pol Herman (e-mail of 6 November 2025) informs: "Antwerpen, Sint-Petrus-en-Pauluskerk. This first Antwerp parish church seems to have disappeared after 836. So far, no archaeological traces of it have been found, and certainly not a baptismal font. Its history is shrouded in legend and hypotheses repeatedly presented as truth.
1) The prevailing version. The preacher of faith, Saint Amandus, was very active in the region around 640. According to legend, at the request of the Merovingian king Dagobert, he founded the first place of worship in Antwerp in Chanelaus, on an island near a castle. Chanelaus is usually located on the southern part of the natural rise on the right bank of the Scheldt, in the Kiel district. During the Middle Ages, a kill (a creek or tidal inlet) called Sint-Jansvliet was located there. It was filled up in the nineteenth century. The sanctuary was dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul. Here stood one of Antwerp's two ancient settlements, possibly dating back to the Gallo-Roman period. The ridge was primarily inhabited by Franks. Several historians mention that a Roman temple dedicated to Mars originally stood on this site. Further north, on the Werf peninsula along the Scheldt bend, the second settlement was located, where mainly Frisians lived. Because the native Frisian population refused to convert to Christianity, they were banished by the Frankish authorities and stripped of all their possessions. Their fields and houses were destroyed. The mounds on which they lived in groups were stripped of their parapets, which consisted of wooden stakes. According to the Vita of Saint Amand, almost no one remained in the region. However, in the "Vita St-Eligii," Andoënus writes that it was his friend Eligius who, around 640, came to preach the faith to the "Flandris" and "Snevi" in "Antwerpia," "Andverpis," or "Andoverpenses." Above seventh-century shrine was owned by nobles close to the Pepinids, the lineage of Charlemagne. 1round 695, they donated the church to the Abbey of Echternach to support the conversion of the Low Countries. Dated 726, there is a deed of gift from the Antwerp nobleman Rohingus (Rauchingus) and his wife Bebelina, through which they donate to Willibrordus, Bishop of Utrecht: "the church built within the castle of Antwerp (infra castrum Antwerpis), on the Scheldt River, which Bishop Amandus founded in honor of Saints Peter and Paul and other saints. In exchange for this church and all its belongings, we have given our hamlet of Tumme to the Reverend Firminus, abbot of the Quortolodara monastery." Rauchingus later appears in Willibrord's will, where he is mentioned as lord of Antwerp and donor of properties around Antwerp: "Rauchingus, Willibrord died in 739, donated or transferred to me a church built in the castle of Antwerp, above the Scheldt River in the region of Ryen, with its associated villages, named Bacualdus, Winnilnicheimo, and Furgalarus, and a third of the toll in that same castle of Antwerp." The Merovingian palace mayor, Charles Martel, put an end to the Frisian threat in 734. They disappeared from the Scheldt bend for good. In 836, the Vikings invaded Antwerp and destroyed the city. Records from Fulda Abbey mention "Antverpam civitatem" at the time of the Norman destruction. After the Vikings left, Echternach Abbey replaced the small church with a new chapel, but from now on dedicated to the Archangel Michael. However, as the city had to be rebuilt, the economic center of the inhabited center shifted a kilometer northward. Around the year 1000, the earthen ramparts around the Werf area were reinforced, and a new (northern) castle developped and new church(es) were built there. However, until 1124, St. Michael's Church "at Chanelaus" remained Antwerp's only parish church, baptisms were permitted only there. The castle chapel of the castle Steen was also served by the clergy of St. Michael's Church.
2) The more recent version. The Flemish government has launched the SYNTAR project, which aims to conduct a synthesis study of all archaeological finds. Knowledge is currently very fragmented, and no one has an overview of what was found, where, and when.
In SYNTAR 5, "The DNA of Urban Development: The Early Urban Settlement of Antwerp, Late 9th-11th Century," ISBN 978-9-0752-3059-8 (2021), Tim Bellens arrives at an alternative hypothesis, based on what has been excavated in recent centuries, but also on what has not been found.
Because a 9th-century Christian cemetery was discovered on Koraalberg, and because in principle a place of worship was present on a churchyard, he assumes that an early medieval chapel or church once stood on Koraalberg, which disappeared from collective memory, even before written sources were commonplace. He refers to the failed siege of Antwerp Castle by the Count of Flanders in 1055. At that time, a growing population (the "Ruienstad") had already been present there since the tenth century (and not from 1200 onwards, as is traditionally assumed). In that scenario, it's not impossible that the wooden chapel or church also went up in flames, and burials ceased there. The role of place of worship may have been taken over shortly thereafter by the construction of the Saint Walburga Chapel or Church, intra castrum. If the castral Saint Walburga Chapel already existed before 1055, both places of worship may have functioned simultaneously for a time. Is it going too far to equate this early medieval chapel on the Koraalberg with the small church of Saints Peter and Paul founded by Amandus, which the Echternach texts claim was donated by the local elite Rauchingus and Bebelina to Willibrord? In this context, the interpretation of this transaction in the written sources becomes interesting and significant. The chapel or church that was donated was located infra castrum Antwerpis, which is traditionally interpreted as "inside the fortification." However, the word "infra" allows the passage to be understood as "below" or "under" the castle. This leads us to the hypothesis that Saints Peter and Paul’s church was located not in but next to the castle, more specifically on the Koraalberg. If the Koraalberg had a place of worship, this tells us a great deal about that location. Perhaps early medieval, Merovingian Antwerp could be located there, and not near St. Michael's Abbey. So far, no clear archaeological evidence of an early medieval core has been found around the abbey. Didn't Amandus, by the way, stay on Chanelaus, "the island in the Scheldt"? If the castle area had a moat much earlier (as suggested by the still observable slope of the substrate towards the castle moat), whether of natural origin and/or a Roman fortification, then it might resemble an island, a piece of land surrounded by water. So perhaps one must not search far away to find Antwerp's oldest centre, it might lie directly beneath the medieval one: the castle area and its surroundings."