Église des Soldats and Église du Dôme, Paris

Dear Mark and Amy,

Last Saturday, we took the day off to visit a special exhibit at Invalides, and then used the same tickets to see two churches which are connected, yet separate.  This all goes back to the days when the French monarchs thought they needed their separate place both to enter a church and to worship in it.  I know this had been a concern in many capital cities, partly for reasons of security, partly to maintain sharp divisions between social classes.  More than one aristocrat was assassinated during Mass.

At Invalides, a place devoted to the military, including a place for wounded and maimed veterans, prayer and religion generally had been very important.  After all, one wants to go into battle fully prepared to die, and at the same time, earnestly hoping for success in battle.  The king would join his soldiers in worship, he in his special part of the church and they in theirs--on opposite sides of the high altar.  These days, one can see through the glass which separates the two spaces (and now prevents voices in the one being heard by people in the other), but originally the Mass and singing could have been heard on both sides of the altar in earlier centuries.  I'll start with photos showing what visitors can read (I'm showing only the English).

The flags (emblems) seem (to me) inappropriate, each coming from an army defeated by the French.  I suppose it is a combination of nationalism and faith, but in ways that do not speak to us pacifists. 

The day was not hot, but the circulation of a bit of air felt good.  These windows had plain glazing, which admits more light than does coloured glass.

The top text reads, "Inter arma caritas" (In war, charity).  Below we read that the plaque is honouring the nurses who tended to the French soldiers during World War I, 1914-1918.

This is the first time I have seen a sign asking men to remove their hats in a church.  I wish all buildings had such signs, but then I'm getting old.

To the memory

of the 2,949 diocesan priests,

the 1,571 monks, 1,300 seminarians

fallen in the Field of Honour 1914-1918

and the 375 nuns who died while serving soldiers.

No need to repeat what the printed page says so well.

The dome is very light and airy, a magnificent expression of the return to older forms, clarity of lines, etc.

Below, we are looking from the dome through the gate (and glass), into the Soldiers Church.

Side 'chapels' hold other tombs of people unknown to me, even after I read their names.

The inlaid marble floors are so intricate.  I have to wonder how well they will endure the thousands of feet daily.

What's left of Napoléon lies here.  He was a significant transitional figure in French national history, but at costs in money and lives one can not fathom.  Forget the pain, glamorize to the best of your ability, and one develops legendary figures.  During his life, he was larger than life.  It required at least a generation before the powers that be allowed honours to be bestowed on him memory once again.

As I finish writing this blog, we are finally having some rain.  We got caught in out heavy cloudburst but managed to find a semi-sheltered side of a building for some protection.  The downpour was impressive.  We have nothing like it in Vancouver.

All for now, with love from us both,
Evan

Église Saint-Étienne-du-Mont and the 5e arrondissement

Dear Mark and Amy,

If I remember correctly, you stayed in the beautiful 5e arrondissement two years ago for about a week.  I revisted the area this afternoon, though not right where you stayed or hung out evenings, sad to say, because I still remember our lovely supper outside after going to Provins by train.

Yesterday (Sunday) Janice and I had lunch several blocks west of the Panthéon at a typical Italian place set up for tourists plodding their way from the Panthéon to wherever (the Tour Eiffel was in sight).  Tour buses passed by every few minutes, so I knew that a Sunday afternoon in late June would not be an ideal time to revisit the Panthéon.  The lineup was not impossible, but I was not in the mood for any lineup whatsoever, so I did what I had initially intended to do--visited the Church of St Stephen of the Mount.

You will remember it is a bit hilly in the 5th arrondissement.  The Panthéon and this church both take advantage of being elevated, though the church lost some of its view overlooking the city several centuries ago when smaller monastic buildings were torn down to make way for new (straighter) roads and much higher buildings.  The church was started in the late 1400s and completed in the 1600s, though people from each century thought it was their duty to 'improve' on things, often with bad results.

This is the front of the church (the Parthéon would be behind us and to our right, perhaps a block away).  I like the unusual bell tower, even though my eye keeps telling me it is off balance. In fact, they say that the church tower leans ever so slightly to the left.

Right over the central doors is a tympanum depiction of the stoning of Stephen.  I wonder if Saul/Paul is seated on the right.  Last week, I was reading Martin Hengel's Between Jesus and Paul (in translation from the German) because I have been wondering how ideas about Jesus developed so rapidly between the time that Jesus taught and Paul wrote.  Anyway, Hengel speculates that Stephen came from one group of Greek-speaking Jews, and was actually stoned by another such group, both groups likely consisting mainly of relatively recent immigrants to Aramaic-speaking Jerusalem.  

Hengel is easier to understand than the inscription under the sculpture:

LAPIS TEMPLUM DOMINI

DESTRUIT

LAPIS ASTRUIT

which I am going to translate:  A stone destroyed the temple of the Lord; a stone builds [it].  (Cousin Alan would have come up with something better.   I'm taking the tack that Jesus once said people are the temple of God, and Stephen was stoned . . . best I can do.)

One of the church's excellent organists was practicing some absolutely terrifying modern work, playing it very softly, and over and over.  Notes were flying about in a most bewildering manner.  I had to wonder "why bother?" but the end result might be worth the effort. Maybe he was composing it?  I would have preferred to be here when Duruflé was still the head organist!

The graceful stone work is interesting here, being very different from that in other Parisian churches I have seen.

This 19th-c. window of the Last Supper offered lovely colour to the otherwise uniform colour of the stones.

The other saint that has been venerated here for centuries is Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris.  Although her tomb is here, her remains had been burned during the Revolution and thrown into the sewer.  (Before the Revolution, plans had been made for her remains to be buried in what is now the Panthéon, but it was not dedicated before the Revolution broke out, and most churches were secularized.)  Many pilgrims still come to this church to visit her elaborate tomb and offer prayers.  |In fact, the hill is named after her, the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève.  In the 1800s, it became fashionable to have words of thanksgiving to the saint be engraved in marble, the letters often the letters being painted in gold.  People then pay to have the plaque be mounted on one of the walls.  You can see several individual plaques in the next photo, and possibly hundreds in the next.

All cathedrals and mediaeval churches were once painted throughout.  This reminds me of what they used to look like.

This window recalls the time there used to be two churches, side by side on this general site.  The church on the far right was the old church for the Abbey of Sainte Geneviève.  This was supposed to be replaced by the Panthéon, but the switch was never made.  The Abbey was closed by the Revolution, and the old church eventually torn down to make way for a new road.  Only the old tower remains.

Here, I am standing behind the rood screen (choir screen), the only one remaining in Paris, a stone wall which clearly separates the area devoted to the 'choir' of monks/priests and the larger area for the laity.  Originally, there was a very real need to separate the two groups so that the monks would not be disturbed by the general buzz in the sanctuary during weekdays (monks had 8 Offices and at least 1 Mass daily).  In the 18th-century, most screens were opened up so that the laity could see what was happening.

 An elaborate side chapel.

I should have shown the other side of the cross.  This came from the church that used to be beside this present church.   When it was destroyed to make way for a road in 1802, they kept certain artifacts, like this cross.

These visible winding stone stairways fascinate me.  How I would love to climb them and get an entirely different view.  Several hundred years ago, one person asked to suggest how to improve the church.  He suggested that the choir screen and these stairs be removed.  Thankfully, he was not hired.

Now we are leaving the church and heading north, going downhill--always my favourite way to go.  When the church was built, no houses would have been as high as these, and even these only go up six floors because that is the law throughout Paris for housing.

It was hard, but I didn't stop at this Irish pub.  It would be a grand place to watch a British football game, or possibly World Cup next year?

I took this photo mostly for the name of the middle building, "Gaudeamus" (Latin:  Let us rejoice!).  How nice to have a restaurant with a Latin name just half a block from the former Abbey and the present church.

Guess which store was not open today.

You may not be able to read this price list, but the store apparently has some rather old wines.  So it is suggesting that if you have a birthday coming up, from a certain year, why not shell out big time and get a bottle of something from that year?  Since the store was closed, I couldn't ask about 1942.  Quite possibly, it was a wretched year for French wines, with the war, occupation, men gone, etc.

I never tire of these scenes, I don't know why.  I rather doubt that I would like to live in one of these buildings (who knows), but I like the roof lines, the ways some of the buildings literally lean backwards (at least it is that way on the front facade of some--but not all buildings).  Railings and balconies intrigue me, even though I'm not fond of heights.

I had to take this photo after all the time we spent on the Route du Vin in the Alsace.  This type of tour would provide far fewer calories.

Janice went to an art exhibit, but I'm only good for one museum a week, if that.  We came home, had a salad supper with the rest of the morning's baguette (stale!)  I opened a jar of rillettes de lapin (a spreadable rabbit pâté) and worked on some Camembert which is starting to give our kitchen a bad name.  I'll finish it at breakfast.  

I don't think we'll get back to the city until Wednesday, though I'm going there Monday for tea with Michel, the director of our quartet.  Janice is thinking that she will stop cataloguing around 2:00 Monday, so that I can process things and then we need to find shelf space for everything (yikes).

So that's all for today, with love from us both, wishing you were back in the 5e,

Evan