1/2 The battered sculpture group.
An important wooden sculpture group is back in Boxmeer after fifty years. The Nepomuk Historical Society had been looking for seventeen years, until someone else finally discovered it in a most wondrous place.
Chairman Dick Jetten of the Nepomuk Historical Association is very proud that the sculpture group is back. “We’ve been looking for this for years. When you suddenly come face to face with something that you think is long lost, you feel very proud.”
Jetten explains why the sculpture group is so important. “That has everything to do with the miracle of Boxmeer.” For that we have to go back to the year 1400.
“According to tradition, the wine actually turned into blood.”
“During a mass, a priest doubted whether bread and wine really changed into the body and spirit of Christ. According to tradition, the wine actually turned into blood. A staggering event at the time.” Some blood dripped onto a linen cloth. That cloth with the drop of blood is still preserved. Every year, the Boxmeerse Vaart pilgrimage pays tribute to this Blood Wonder.
“The sculpture group shows the moment when the priest looks at the chalice and the drops of blood with his faithful,” says Jetten. That sculpture group was part of a large altar that once stood in the Peter Basilica in Boxmeer. In the 1970s, when the Boxmeerse Vaart was at its lowest point, the altar and the sculpture group disappeared from the church.
“No one knew where those images had gone.”
What happened to it after that is still a mystery. “We have been searching since 2000. No one knew where those images had gone,” says Jetten. Until a message came after many years. A collector had bought the sculpture group and discovered that it could well be the lost sculpture group from Boxmeer.
The wooden statues appear to have been in a garden center in Panningen in Limburg for a long time. “Among the petunias,” says Jetten. “That can’t be true, I thought. That something so important to Boxmeer is languishing and withering away among the plants.” Fortunately, the Historical Association was able to take over the sculpture group.
“The garden center has also been the rescue.”
The years in the garden center have left their mark. An arm has been sawed off. Another arm is broken off. The Historical Association has deliberately not had it completely renovated. “These traces tell the story of the image,” says Jetten. “The garden center may have left its mark, but it has also been the rescue. Because of the sad place where it stood, someone decided it didn’t belong there.”
The sculpture group is now in the Nepomukkapel and will be on display for everyone on Sunday, the day the Boxmeerse Vaart passes by.
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