Saint Paul’s, the Antwerp Dominican church, a revelation
Our Lady’s Chapel
A small church that is not a parish church. It may be part of a larger entity such as a hospital, school, or an alms-house, or it may stand alone.
An enclosed part of a church with its own altar.
and
Our Lady of the Holy Rosary
True to the medieval tradition in which Mary received the place of honour at the right hand side of the crucified Jesus, Our Lady’s chapel is to be found at the right hand side of the cruciform ground plan of the church, i.e. iconographically right of Jesus, who is the foundation of this house of prayer. It is remarkable how the praying of the Rosary got a tremendous boost due to political developments in (Christian) Europe. On 7th October 1571 the Europeans, the ‘Christians’, managed to stop the threat of the Turks, the ‘Mohammedans’, at the naval battle of Lepanto. Pope Pius V, who was a Dominican himself, ascribed the victory to the powers of praying the rosary. This gave rise to the feast of ‘Our Lady of the Holy Rosary’, fixed on the first Sunday of October.
