My home church for the summer...

...is Notre Dame de Paris. My only real Catholic experience prior to this was one mass at Harvard, and they had a band, which Notre Dame certainly doesn't have. But what it does have is a fantastic organist who manages to improvise links between sections of the liturgy that sound like the very visible (and fragrant) clouds of incense filling the crossing at the same time.

I've been attending vespers there daily. It nests ritual within ritual, adding a regularity to my days that I had been missing. It also gives me a place in this strange city that is in some small way mine, and growing more familiar. The service is in French with a bit of Latin, but as a result of the liturgy it's nearly all singing and silence (or, rather, organ), which means I don't need to listen to anyone read or preach too much in French (my theological vocabulary is pretty small, but it's growing). One of my favorite parts about daily worship at the cathedral, though, is the opportunity to experience the structure as more than an artifact or historical object, which is the primary dimension of my class. Instead of just passing through it staring and snapping photos -- of which I am typically VERY guilty -- I can inhabit it for half an hour each day, trying it on, contemplating the centuries of people who have likewise stood and sat and walked and prayed in what they regarded as exceptionally sacred space. In a way the cathedral is an extension of the worship ritual, or maybe it's the other way around.

By now I can sing and chant in French and Latin along with everyone else (certainly better than the bemused tourists who find themselves in the nave by accident), and I can tell when the cantors mess up (which they sometimes do!). It's all beautiful ritual and vestments and seamless worship leading; even the incense is impressive when it rises through the crossing in a huge cloud from the wide burner in front of the altar as we sing que ma prière devant toi s’élève comme l’encens, et mes mains pour l’offrande du soir. On the downside it's almost too seamless, too businesslike, and a completely different group of people arrives for each mass or office every day.

The most interesting part of it is being able to immerse myself in unfamiliar ritual day after day, dwelling in a dramatic and dynamic architectural/liturgical demarcation of sacred space, repeating and repeating the ritual pour les siècles des siècles as we sing over and over, from age to age. Ritual is pretty powerful stuff -- as is inhabiting someone else's for a few days or weeks or months, no matter what your own theological convictions (or lack thereof) may be. And if it isn't even in your own language? Even more fun!

P.S. Happy Bastille Day. I think (hope?) someone's lighting recreational explosives a few blocks away.

One large chateau

On Saturday the two classes went to Vaux-le-Vicomte, a Versailles-era chateau in the countryside about an hour from Paris. Though it seems that only the ground floor of the chateau has been restored (along with the cellars) and half of that is an exhibit about the fall from political grace of Vaux-le-Vicomte's builder, the exterior was quite impressive, particularly the huge gardens. They feature sculpted shrubbery, optical illusions, and lots of fountains and other bodies of water. Just when you think you're close to the final fountains and can climb up to view the chateau from the rear, you realize that you actually have to walk all the way around "the skillet" -- a 3/4-mile-long canal. I bet the garden's designer is laughing in his grave thinking about all the people he fools. Because of course when you've walked around and enjoyed the view, the only way back to the chateau is to walk all the way around the water again.

After a lavish and delicious dinner in the restaurant in the former stables, we returned to the chateau for a candlelight stroll.

Tall pointy national symbols

If there were to be a faceoff between the Washington Monument and the Eiffel Tower... sorry, Washington Monument, you would lose. The Eiffel Tower is dramatic.

It's structural.

It's graceful.

And it's very large. (Although I suppose the Washington Monument is too.)

Official Gothic adventure #1: Saint-Denis

Yesterday my class, Age of the Cathedrals, went on our first of five site visits, this time to Saint-Denis, now a cathedral but formerly the church of the monastery in the town of Saint-Denis. It's a fifteen-minute train ride out from the center of Paris. The location is important because of its association with the martyr St. Denis, who upon his beheading is rumored to have picked up his head and walked all the way to Saint-Denis, where some poor villager finally took pity on him and buried him. In fact, here he is with his head in his hands right after his beheading on the north side of the cathedral.

The monks at Saint-Denis were in charge of his relics, and the original church structure was built to house them by Dagobert, a Carolingian or Merovingian king (I can't keep them straight). Because of St. Denis's importance to France, most of its rulers, even up to Louis XVIII, have chosen to be buried there. Thus it was politically and economically important that the twelfth-century abbot Suger chose to enlarge the Romanesque structure, converting it into the first truly Gothic one (arguably with the first flying buttresses) and ornamenting it with all sorts of glittery things.

The aisles, ambulatory, and choir are littered with ornate sarcophagi, and of course the crypt is full. The bones got all mixed up at one point, and a lot of them are no longer there. Nevertheless, here's some dead royalty:

Here's a reliquary, now empty, but it once hosted a nail from the Crucifixion and assorted saintly body parts (St. Denis himself was stolen by a bunch of German monks in the late Middle Ages):

Though little of it is from Abbot Suger's era (and a lot of it was destroyed during the French Revolution), here is a bunch of stained glass:

Thanks for the fun, Saint-Denis!

In which I become the photographer of Paris

On Tuesday I wandered down to the Jardins de Luxembourg after class. If I remember correctly, a sixteenth-century Medici queen got homesick for Europe and commissioned Italian-style gardens for her amusement, though they came out looking more French than Italian. They're laid out formally, French-style, with no walking on the grass allowed (or picking of flowers), and the yellow-white-blue color scheme was lovely. The gardens themselves were ringed by pots of pink geraniums, which seem to be a preferred form of decoration here. While I was there, several different people asked me to take pictures of them, some in French, some in English -- apparently I look honest enough to be trusted with others' cameras! Later I was befriended in the RER station by an old lady with a very thick accent who told me all about the visiting children's bands in the gardens all summer. (Yesterday someone even asked me for directions in the RER station -- fortunately I knew enough by then to give accurate ones, but three days ago that could have been me!)

Here are a few photos of the Jardins de Luxembourg. The big palace now houses the Senate.