Qualla: Malle

Malle: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ziyalistix, Public domain. On the afternoon of 25 June 1967, a tornado dropped out of a summer thunderstorm over Oostmalle and tore through the village in minutes. It destroyed the church. It completely destroyed 117 houses and severely damaged 105 more. The town had endured Croatian mercenaries in the 1620s, French troops in 1703, Cossack looters in 1814, two world wars that mostly passed it by - and then a freak supercell from a clear June sky did more damage in a single afternoon than four centuries of armies. The church was rebuilt. The houses were rebuilt. Ten years later, on 1 January 1977, Oostmalle and Westmalle merged into a single municipality. Malle had endured everything, and started over.

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Image: Ziyalistix | Public domain

Malle: A Name for a Courtroom

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit FrDr, CC BY-SA 4.0. The word Malle is older than any record of it. Etymologists have argued for centuries about what it means - an extended plain, a border marker, a stopping place - but the likeliest origin is judicial. A Mallum was a general court session presided over by a Frankish count, the kin...

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Image: FrDr | CC BY-SA 4.0

Malle: The Long Catastrophe

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sally V, CC BY-SA 4.0. The history of the Campine villages in early modern Europe is the history of being in the way. Oostmalle and Westmalle sat on the road between everywhere, and almost continuously through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries they were plundered, burned, or both. In 1542, troops...

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Image: Sally V | CC BY-SA 4.0

Malle: The Beer Monks of Westmalle

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Funkyxian, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1794, ten Trappist monks fleeing the French Revolution accepted an invitation from the bishop of Antwerp and settled in a Campine farm called Nooit Rust - never rest. They had been on their way to Canada. They stayed instead. The monastery was elevated to an abbey in 1836, and...

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Image: Funkyxian | CC BY-SA 4.0

Malle: Lourdes in Malle

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Verwimp, CC0. Viscount Leonard Pierre Joseph du Bus de Gisignies built the Chapel of Our Lady of Perpetual Help on the Herentalsebaan in 1837. Almost a century later, in 1930, a local devotion led to the construction of a Lourdes cave at the chapel - a replica of the grotto where Bernadette So...

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Image: Peter Verwimp | CC0

Malle: Now

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Queeste, CC BY-SA 4.0. Modern Malle is a regional economic center with about 15,600 people, home to ETAP Lighting, Ecover, and a handful of other companies that have outgrown smaller towns. It has three churches - Saint Lawrence in Oostmalle, Saint Paul and Saint Martin in Westmalle - and the annual Sa...

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Image: Queeste | CC BY-SA 4.0