Highlighting the cenotaphs attached to the first columns of the nave.

The first two columns are adorned with monumental cenotaphs. On the right, looking towards the rear, is the monument with his white marble patron saint on top of Michael Angeliwenoni, who died in 1625, surgeon to Archdukes Albert and Isabella. He attended the funeral of his patient, Archduchess Isabella, Governess of the Netherlands.
Opposite on the first column to the south, we see another remarkable funerary monument of the Knight Charles de Bourgeois, a member of the Grand Council of Brabant, belonging to a prominent Brussels family that had been admitted to the Sleeus lineage. He married Adrienne van der Noot.
Charles de Bourgeois was commissioned by Archdukes Albert and Isabella to restore the bishopric’s churches, which had suffered the ravages of the Wars of Religion. It contains this beautiful Latin epitaph, full of puns, which translates as “Loved and renowned for his office, died on All Saints’ Day thinking of things even holier, deceased but not gone.”
At the top of the monument, there is an hourglass, a symbol of the passing of time and the life that escapes us, as well as the head of Charles de Bourgeois. The resemblance to the one painted in the cartouche of the 17th-century boat, placed under the great rose window in the south transept, suggests that he was the donor.
The texts of the cenotaphs are translated in the QR codes at the bottom of the monuments.