By the end of the program I was too busy soaking up every sight, sound, and smell of Paris (and enjoying some British comedy at night) to spend much time blogging. Now that I'm home (whatever home is right now) it's catch up time.
Paris is wonderful, but France has much more to offer than the City of Lights. Back on the 25th of February we took a day trip out to Chartres, a small town a short train ride away from Paris. It was our first experience in France outside of Paris. Although Paris is undeniably French, France is not Parisian. It was nice to see what not-Paris looks like.
We arrived about an hour before our scheduled tour, so we used the time to explore. The main attraction in Chartres is of course the cathedral, but that's not all to see there. We decided to check out an older, smaller church, which we found after wandering through windy cobblestone streets and past an empty market place. The church was quite old, and seemed to be made up of bits and pieces of different centuries: romanesque here, high gothic there, a bit of neo-classical over there. Moss, lichen, and tiny flowers were growing all over the walls.
Inside we were greeted with breathtaking stained glass depicting scenes from the Old Testament. The chapel itself was modest and utterly free from the touristy trappings of Notre Dame de Paris or Sainte Chapelle. It was simply a place of worship, as it was always intended to be.
To show us around the cathedral, Notre Dame de Chartres, we had a wonderful old tour guide named Malcolm Miller. He’s the sort of old British scholar who I think sits by a fireplace at night with a glass of sherry in one hand and the writings of some medieval scholar in the other. He taught us to recognize saints' lives and Bible stories depicted in glass and stone, some obscured behind years of ash and dirt, some recently restored to shining brilliance.
Perhaps the greatest treasures at Chartres are the stained glass windows, many of which date back to the 13th century and are original to the building. We started our tour with a reading lesson: stained glass windows were meant to be read by the worshippers, bottom to top and left to right.
Each window contains scenes from the Bible, saints’ lives, and especially the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary. At first glance, and to the untrained eye, the figures are indiscernible one from the other, but dear Mr. Miller taught us how to recognize and understand some of the symbols. The windows ranged from very simple, widely known stories such as the raising of Lazarus, to fairly sophisticated biblical commentaries.
The best example of this was the Good Samaritan window (I don't know if it's actually called that, but that's how I remember it). One set of medallions shows the story of the Good Samaritan; another shows Adam and Eve being cast out of the Garden of Eden. How do the two connect? It's pretty cool if you ask me (then again, most medieval Christianity is pretty cool to me). Adam and Eve, and all mankind for that matter, are the man who was robbed and left for dead. We are all left for dead, so to speak, in this mortal world (remember that this is a medieval Catholic approach), robbed and beaten by that serpent Satan. The Good Samaritan, who cleans our wounds and provides a safe shelter for us, is of course Jesus Christ. Cool, huh?
Like many old churches I’ve seen here, the structure that now stands at Chartres is not the first place of worship that was there. When the Romans showed up back in the day they found pagans worshipping at a holy spring there. As the locals converted to Christianity they incorporated the sacred site into their new religion, and by around 830ish AD a cathedral was built (a cathedral is the seat of a bishop). Chartres really made it big though in the mid-9th century, when Charles le Chauve (the bald), grandson of Charlemagne, gave a relic to the cathedral: la sainte chemise, or a shirt worn by the Virgin Mary herself. This gift predates the widespread adoration of Mary associated with the Catholic church, but it made the cathedral a major pilgrimage destination (the relic has been carbon dated back to the 1st century AD; I'll let you make of that what you will). After a series of devastating fires followed by renovations, the cathedral at Chartres became the stunning flamboyant Gothic edifice that’s there now.
One of many highlights of the trip was being able to climb one of the towers. It was a long climb up a narrow spiral staircase, but it was worth every step. I’ve seen my fair share of flying buttresses and gargoyles and rose windows, but to be up there with it all, next to the bells and looking down on the whole town was took my breath away. Or maybe that was the dizzying climb up the seemingly endless spiral staircase. Either way, it was a transcendent experience.
On the way back a group of us decided to make a slight detour in the little town of Maintenon to see the Chateau de Maintenon (built for Madame de Maintenon, mistress and later wife to Louis XIV). The sun finally came out and it stopped raining. We didn’t really know where we were going, so we asked people on the street until we found it. Maintenon is a charming town, with a quiet little river and stone bridges and lots of trees. Not to mention the 17th century chateau AND Roman aqueduct. The sun was setting as we waited on the platform, wrapping up an almost ridiculously perfect day.
