The Infrastructure of Solitude: The Marlagne Desert in Namur
(2024) Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America — Location: Chicago (21.March.2024)
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- Abstract
- In 1619, at the instigation of Archduke Albert and Isabelle, father Thomas de Jésus established the “Marlagne Desert” near Namur, Belgium. From the 1590s onwards, the Spanish discalced Carmelites had started to establish such ‘deserts’ as remote forested areas within which communities of friars could pursue eremitical vocations in emulation of the practice of the primitive order on Mount Carmel. Following the example of Bolarque and Las Batuecas in Spain, the Desert in Marlagne was built in a river valley, composed of a convent and hermitages, surrounded by a continuous wall. Dissolved shortly after the French Revolution, the desert saw its estate divided up, its convent demolished and its hermitages fell into ruin. Only the infrastructures remained: the enclosure and its gates, the main roads and the hydraulic works. This paper questions how topography, hydrography, trees... all collaborated in creating the Carmelite’s ideal of peace and quiet at Marlagne; as well as how the desert could be understood as a heterotopia (as defined by Michel Foucault). This will be done by using GIS software, enabling geographical and architectural data to be processed together, and on the basis of maps, plans, representations and in situ surveys.
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De Raedt, N., Pleitinx, R., & et al. (2024). The Infrastructure of Solitude: The Marlagne Desert in Namur. Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, Chicago. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/242843