Peter Hubert Evermode Backx

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Peter Hubert Evermode Backx (1805–1868), known in religion as Evermode Backx, was a Belgian Premonstratensian canon and the superior who restored common life at Tongerlo Abbey after the disruptions of the French Revolutionary era.[1]

Peter Hubert Evermode Backx (1805–1868) was a 19th-century abbot of Tongerlo Abbey, in Belgium.

Early life and vocation

Backx was born at Tilburg in the Kingdom of Holland on 10 December 1805. He entered clerical formation during the difficult decades in which the old religious houses of the Low Countries were recovering from confiscation and suppression. He was ordained a priest on 17 March 1832.

He joined the surviving canons of Tongerlo and received the religious name Evermode. Their abbey had been seized and the community driven out on 6 December 1796. The Belgian Revolution of 1830 created a more favorable civil setting, but restoration still required the gathering of scattered religious, the recovery of property, and the rebuilding of a stable common observance.[2]

Restoration of Tongerlo

The canons first resumed organized common life at Broechem in 1838. They chose Backx as superior in 1839, and on 1 July 1840 he led the community back to the historic abbey at Tongerlo. The regular celebration of the Divine Office and the common life of the Premonstratensian canons could then begin again on their ancient site.

Recovery of the abbey

Only part of the confiscated complex was initially available. Backx patiently recovered the remaining property, completing an important purchase in 1849. Under his government the community repaired buildings, restored its pastoral and liturgical rhythm, and laid the foundation stone of a new abbey church in 1852.[3][4]

Office and title

Backx is sometimes styled abbot because he governed an ancient abbey and was remembered as its second founder. More precisely, he served as superior while the abbatial dignity remained unrestored. His successor, Chrysostom De Swert, became the first abbot of the revived community in 1868. The distinction preserves the canonical history without diminishing Backx's decisive leadership.

Government and pastoral work

Backx governed for twenty-eight years. Material reconstruction was ordered to the community's religious end: prayer in choir, the solemn worship of God, priestly ministry, study, hospitality, and the Premonstratensian form of apostolic common life. His achievement was therefore not merely architectural or administrative.

The restoration also renewed a house whose history reached back to the twelfth century. By forming a stable generation of canons and securing their home, Backx made it possible for Tongerlo to resume the pastoral, educational, and missionary work for which it later became known.

Death and legacy

Backx died on 28 October 1868. The title “second founder” expresses the scale of his work: he did not found Tongerlo in law, but he restored its corporate life after a break that could easily have proved permanent.

His career illustrates the recovery of Catholic religious life in nineteenth-century Belgium. That recovery joined civil and financial perseverance to the specifically ecclesial work of renewing vows, common worship, obedience, and apostolic service. Tongerlo's continued existence is the clearest monument to his prudence and constancy.

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Born 10 December, 1805, at Tilburg, Holland; died 28 October, 1868. Ordained priest 17 March, 1832, he may be considered the second founder of the Norbertine Abbey of Tongerloo (Province of Antwerp, Belgium), which was established in 1128, or eight years after the foundation of the Præmonstratensian Order by St. Norbert. It had to suffer much from the Protestants during the second half of the sixteenth century, but the fatal blow was struck by the French Republic, which, on 6 December, 1796, expelled the religious, confiscated the abbey, and sold it to the highest bidder. At that time Tongerloo was at the height of its prosperity. After the suppression of the Jesuits, the abbot and community of Tongerloo had made all arrangements for the continuation of the "Acta Sanctorum" and the "Analecta Belgica" of the Bollandists, and four of its canons were cooperating with two of the former Bollandists in this gigantic publication. The catalogue of the Abbey of Tongerloo, made in 1796, gives the names of one hundred and nineteen priests and professed scholastics and of six novices. A large number of these lived in the abbey, others were attached to parishes belonging to it. Some were completing their theological studies in Rome or at the University of Louvain, one was President of St. Norbert's College in Rome, another was president of the college of the same name at Louvain. Under the French Republic and again, after the battle of Waterloo, during the reign of William I, King of the Netherlands, the expelled and dispersed religious were not allowed to form a new community, but better times came with the creation of Belgium as a separate kingdom, in 1830. Only sixteen of the one hundred and twentyfive religious were living at that time and nearly all were well advanced in years. The castle of Halmale near Antwerp was rented, and the first novice, Peter Hubert Backx, received the white habit and with it the name in religion of Evermode. Three more young priests and others who had finished their classical studies followed his example. In 1839 Evermode Backx was chosen superior of the revived community.[5]

Life and ministry

At the death of one of the proprietors onehalf of the dilapidated Abbey of Tongerloo was bought at a public auction and Abbot Backx led, amidst the rejoicings of the villagers, the young community to Tongerloo, 1 July, 1840. That very afternoon, the Divine Office was resumed with the first Vespers of the Feast of Our Lady's Visitation. On the following day, the venerable Chrysostom Raemakers, who had celebrated the last Mass on the day of the suppression, 6 December, 1796, sang a solemn Mass in one of the rooms improvised as a temporary oratory, the abbey church and other buildings having been pulled down.

Evermode Backx's first work was to repair what was left of the former abbey and to erect new buildings for the growing community. In 1849 the second part of the confiscated abbey was bought and in 1852 the first stone of a large church was solemnly laid by the papal nuncio, so that the abbey began to have the appearance of a large and wellordered monastery. After a strenuous government of twentyeight years Evermode Backx died, regretted by his spiritual children. The work was carried on with equal zeal by his successors, the Right Rev. Abbot Chrysostom De Swert (d. 1887) who sent some of his religious to found the priories of Crowle and Spalding, England; the Right Rev. Thomas Heylen, afterwards Bishop of Namur, Belgium, the founder of Corpus Christi Priory, Manchester, and of the Norbertine missions in the Independent State of Congo, Africa; and the Right Rev. Adrian Deckers, formerly Prefect Apostolic in the Congo. The catalogue of the Abbey of Tongerloo for 1907 gives the names of 78 priests, 8 professed scholastics, 4 novices, and 23 lay brothers, or a total of 113 religious, several of whom are engaged in parish work, 14 working in England, and 16 in the Congo missions.

VAN SPILBEECK, De Abdy van Tongerloo in Annales Præm.; Notices from various sources.

Martin Geudens.

References

  1. 1.Catholic Encyclopedia: Peter Hubert Evermode Backx — Detailed biographical chronology, offices, restoration work, and date of death
  2. 2.Tongerlo Abbey: history of the abbey — Official abbey history of the 1796 expulsion and the community's return to Tongerlo
  3. 3.Norbertines in the Merode region: nine centuries of history — Official regional Premonstratensian account of Backx, the property recovery, and rebuilt church
  4. 4.Tongerlo art and heritage inventory — Historical and material context for the restored abbey complex
  5. 5.1913 Catholic Encyclopedia: Peter Hubert Evermode Backx