Procession of the Holy Blood

Every year on the Catholic holiday for the Assumption of Mary, Brugge celebrates with a parade. The parade is officially called the Procession of the Holy Blood. Basically, thousands of citizens of Brugge dress in historical costumes and act out biblical scenes and reenact the arrival of the Count of Flanders, who brought the holy relic to Brugge.

To recap the Holy Blood quickly, when Jesus arose from the tomb, someone (said to be Joseph of Arimathea) kept a piece of cloth with Jesus' blood on it. Then, it is said, that Count Diederik van den Elzas brought the relic containing the blood of Christ from Jerusalem to Brugge after the second crusade.

He's holding the real vial of the Holy Blood.

It was quite an interesting parade. We arrived at 2:30 for the 3:00 start and set up our chairs. We quickly realized that no one else was bringing their own chairs. They rent the chairs for 5 euro ($7.50ish U.S Dollars) Oh well, I'm pretty sure we were much more comfortable than they were. We had cup holders! AMERICANS!

Our chairs

Their rented chairs

Then it decided to rain...more like storm...but we were prepared. We had our gigantic golf umbrella with us. AMERICANS! It kept us and our chairs dry. Finally, after a few more rain episodes the parade finally started at 4:30! Yes, we had been waiting for 2 hours for this thing to start.

Me and baby still waiting

Below are a few photos from the parade. We didn't buy the parade guide book but figured out it began with Adam and Eve and went through ever major Biblical story until Jesus arose from the dead. Yes, in case your wondering...that is a lot of stories. Luckily, being raised Baptist, I have every Bible story engraved in my brain and was able to tell what story was which and what was coming next. The parade ended shortly before 6pm. I'm glad we experienced the parade but I'm not sure we'd do such a set-up next year.

Umm..yeah...I'm not really sure where they got the camels (maybe Morocco) but there were about 5 of them!

And then there were sheep.

We knew the parade was close to an end when we saw this scene.

Below is a video of the re-enactment of Palm Sunday. It's all in Dutch but you'll get the drift.

The vial of the Holy Blood is housed in the Basilica of the Holy Blood located in the Burg in Brugge. I've seen it several times and it's actually a very moving experience to see it. Whether or not you believe that it is actually the blood of Christ it is still worth seeing if you're here. A few times a week they have a mass for the Blood. During the mass you can actually go up and view the vial and the cloth inside.

When we were in Pisa we went to a church that claimed to have part of the crown of thorns that Jesus wore. It's amazing that all of these sacred articles are still around today!