The occupation of Oudenaarde and its vicinity by the protestants of the city of Ghent in the period 1578-1582 is disastrous for the Saint Laurentius church of Ename. As the villages around Oudenaarde convert to Protestantism, the church is desecrated and abandoned in the period 1578-1593. Depictions of the village around 1595 show that there are no houses anymore in the village centre. More than half of the population of the village leaves around that time, most of them going to the new Dutch Republic in the north.