Last modified: 2008-06-21 by ivan sache
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The municipality of Onhaye (3,124 inhabitants on 1 January 2007; 6,553 ha) is located 5 km west of Dinant and 10 km north of the border with France. Them unicipality of Onhaye is made since 1976 of the former municipalities of Onhaye, Anthée, Falaën, Gerin, Serville, Sommière and Weillen.
Onhaye is the place of a popular pilgrimage dedicated to St. Walhère, a saint officially recognized by the Roman Catholic church ins spite of no known canonization process. Walhère (Walter; in Walloon, Vohy) was born in Bouvignes in the beginning of the XIIth century. After his
mother's death, the canons of the abbey of Leffe educated him and sent
him to the Benedictine College of Waulsort. Walhère joined the secular
clergy since he did not want to abandon his father. A document dated
1163 lists him together with Priest Héribrand, he would later succeed,
and Vicar Fauchon, traditionally considered as his nephew. Walhère was
later appointed Dean of Florennes, as written in 1190. In 1199, Walhère went to Hastière, then depending on the abbey of Waulsort, to solve a conflict between monasteries. Brought back nightly to Onhaye on a small boat by a vicar, Walhère was murdered by the vicar who dropped down his body into the Meuse. On the next day, 23 June 1199, the body was found by fishers and woman tossing grass. On the place where the body landed
gushed forth a fountain that never dried up. People from Bouvignies,
Hastière and Onhaye, as well as the Abbot of Waulsort, showed up. The
body was placed on a cart headed to Waulsort but the horses refused to
move on. They were replaced by two heifers that immediatly took the
direction of Onhaye, climbed up and down the hills and stopped in front
of the St. Martin church, where the body was laid down. A chapel was
built to keep the saint's shrine.
St. Walhère is invoked against headache (because the nasty vicar hit
his head with an oar) and for the protection of cows.
Source: Saint-Walhère de Onhaye, by Monique Collard
Falaën is dominated by the ruins of the castle of Montaigle, watching
the confluency of the Molignée and the Flavion. The Belgian government
commissionned in 1867 the geologist Édouard Dupont to study the caves
(locally called trous, lit., "holes") located in the rocky spur of
Montaigle. He named each of them after the trees growing near the
cave's entrance; Trou du Sureau (Elder), Trou du Chêne (Oak), Trou de
l'Erable (Maple), except the lowest one, named Trou Philippe after the
name of the hermit who lived therein. Prehistoric remains were found in
all of these caves; Dupont described the Cro-Magnon civilization years
before the French paleontologists, but the French nomenclature was
adopted, though. The "Montaiglian" layer was later renamed
"Aurignacian", after the cave of Aurignac in the Pyrénées.
Remains from the Age of Iron (450 BP) were found on the plateau of
Montaigle in 1992 but the place bacame strategic only at the end of the
Roman Empire, when northern Gaul was threatened by the Germanic
invaders, until then maintained beyond the Rhine (limes, the border).
Around 260, military posts were hastily set up all along the basin of
Meuse. A small, non-permanent garrison settled Montaigle; built in the
beginning of the IVth century, a 2 m-wide wall surrounded a 3,400 sq.
m-area, settled in 370 by a big garrison of German volunteers, living
in wooden huts with women and children. Short after 450, the garrison
was disbanded and Montaigle was abandoned for the next four centuries.
A Merovingian cemetary (VIth-VIIth century) found in the hamlet of Foy,
on the northern bank of the Molignée, seems to indicate that the
inhabitants had moved down the valley.
Around 900, a first castle was built on the top of the spur, reusing
parts of the Gallo-Roman wall. It was ran by the lords of Faing,
probably close relatives of the Count of Namur, mentioned for the first
time in 1050; they were avoués (managers) of the abbey of Waulsort and lords of Montaigle. In the early XIIth century, Montaigle declinedand was transferred to Gilles of Berlaymont by Count of Namur Pierre of Courtenay; the new lord built a square donjon on the spur.
Guy of Dampierre, Count of Flanders and Marquis of Namur, purchased the domain and
castle of Faing in 1298 and granted them to his junior son Guy of
Flanders (aka Guy of Namur) as his apanage. Guy built a new castle,
mostly a residence but still a big fortress designed on a symmetrical
plan, as common at that time, with a 33 m-deep well. Pope Clement V
edicted in Carpentras on 6 July 1310 the Bull founding the chapel of
the castle. Guy of Namur was Regent of Flanders while his father was
prisonner in France and fought the war againt France, with a main
success in 1302 during the Battle of the Golden Spurs. Two days after
the battle, he listed Faing as a possible jail for a dozen of French
knights captured in Kortrijk. Engaged with Marguerite of Lorraine in March 1311, Guy of Namur but died before the celebration of the wedding. Anyway, the wedding contract lists the "chastel de Fainges, com dist de Maontaigle" (the castle of Faing, aka Montaigle), which is the oldest written joint mention of Faing and Montaigle.
The castle was
reincorporated to the personal domain of the Counts of Namur, who used
it mostly as the administrative seat of a Bailiwick. In 1455, Jeanne of
Harcourt, last heir of the Counts of Namur, died, and the castle was
incorporated into the Duchy of Burgundy, as was already done with the
County of Namur in 1429.
When Charles V decided to fortify the borders between the Low Countries
and France by setting up new fortified towns and revamping the old
fortresses, Montaigle was deemed not useful, being not located on a
main way of communication and being militarily obsolete. In summer
1554, King of France Henri II invaded the County of Namur via the Meuse
and Duke of Nevers was ordered to get rid of the local fortresses,
including Montaigle. Abandoned by its garrison relocated in Namur, the
fortress was plundered and burned, but not completey destroyed. The
fortress was never rebuilt and the Baillif moved to Falaën, even if the
name of Bailiwick of Montaigle remained. In the famous Croÿ's Album,
Adrien de Montigny pictures an abandoned amount of ruins, which was,
indeed, resettled from time to time in the XVI-XVIIth centuries and
partially revamped.
After the French Revolution, Montaigle had several owners. On 10 July
1827, the ruins were purchased by Césaire Colette Flavie du Rot
(1790-1865), from Ghent, who built there a summer house. Upset by the
looting of the ruins by the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages,
she sold them in 1854 to Count of Beauffort, the first President of the
Royal Commission for Monuments. The ruins were eventually purchased in
1865 by Emmanuel and Eugène de Marmol, members of the Archeology Society of Namur, who progressively secured the ruins, still owned by their
descenders.
The romantic ruins of Montaigle attracted several artists and poets,
followed by tourists. The ruins of Montaigle were registered as an
historical monument on 5 November 1965 and their neighborhood as an
historic site on 25 October 1946 and 11 September 1981; Montaigle was
registered on the Walloon Main Heritage's list in 1993.
Source: Les Ruines de Montaigle
Ivan Sache, 8 September 2007
Armoiries communales en Belgique. Communes wallonnes, bruxelloises et germanophones describes the flag of Onhaye as
Trois laizes transversales blanche, rouge et blanche (1-2-1) avec, au
centre, le buste de Mercure blanc du blason communal (Vertically divided white-red-white [1:2:1] with, in the middle, the
bust of Mercury from the municipal arms).
The municipal arms are De gueules au buste de
Mercure d'argent (Gules a bust of Mercury argent).
Pascal Vagnat & Ivan Sache, 8 September 2007