Back to Exponent Menu Printer Friendly Page   LOCAL FEATURES Friday, August 30, 2002 Mont St. Michel, Avignon’s papal palace are treasures Two lesser-known sites provide visitors to France with history lessons…and awe By Lou Jacquet No Catholic from the United States who travels to France would think of missing the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris or the grotto at Lourdes where Bernadette Soubirous first saw the Virgin Mary in 1858. But two sites less well-known to Americans are familiar enough to European pilgrims and tourists to each draw more than a million visitors every year. The first is Mont St. Michel, a spectacular Benedictine monastery built on an island of rock at sea off the northwest corner of France near the town of St. Malo. The towering Gothic structure, often shrouded in mist, has been a pilgrimage site for eight centuries. Even today, it remains an awe-inspiring triumph of the human spirit and faith over nature. One gets a sense of how old Catholic roots are in France when one realizes that there has been a church on this island of Mont-Tombe (Tomb of the Hill) since St. Aubert built an oratory there in 708; by the 12th century, it had become the site of a Benedictine monastery renowned as a great center of thinking, crowned by a fortified abbey said to double the height of the original rock on which it was built. From the beginning, the site has had a natural defense in both its impregnable heights and the tides that, twice daily, made traversing the Bay of St. Michael a dangerous adventure until modern times. To speak of Mont St. Michel is in fact to refer to several realities: the rock formation itself, of course; the first real church, begun in 1017 in the Romanesque style and built over a 10th-century church now known as the Chapel of Our Lady Underground; a Gothic monastery built on three levels called La Mervaille (The Miracle) that was added to the north side of the church in the early 13th century, constructed in an astonishing 16 years; and the village that surrounds the foot of the great structures high above. If present-day visitors cannot quite step back in time, they can at least walk up the Grande Rue, the same impossibly narrow and steep street to the top taken by pilgrims in the 12th century. Today, it winds past the Church of St. Peter (itself an ancient structure now) up foreboding steps past wall-to-wall souvenir shops and restaurants amid a sea of pilgrims and tourists. A camcorder held by an Asian tourist whirrs, capturing the scene but not disturbing a pilgrim from who-knows-where climbing the steps on his knees. It takes most visitors a good hour to walk to the summit, breathless but triumphant; many others who had hoped to reach that elevation give up when they experience the difficulty of the climb. If the noisy crowds make this seem like a less than holy place, those who reach the cloisters on the top level of the monastery are rewarded with an ambiance largely unchanged for centuries. Here, monks walked in silence for hours beneath the double rows of low Gothic arches and contemplated heaven, their only possible view, through the open courtyard. They were so far removed from the world below that food and other necessities were hauled up on a rope operated by a huge treadmill-like wheel in which two monks walked to provide the leverage. It was a segregated society: monks lived at the highest level, the abbot entertained guests from the nobility on the middle level, and monks dispensed alms to the poor down near the gates. Below the fortified walls, villagers eked out a living in dire poverty. One thing has changed: Neither pilgrims nor visitors need worry about the tides any longer since a causeway built in the 1870s linked the island with the mainland. Other changes have been more subtle. While the monastery seems medieval in its impact, a closer study of the structure reveals many modifications made through the centuries. The famous Gothic spire with its statue of St. Michael which commands the bay was not added until the 1890s, for example, when much of the restoration work was done. Those improvements made it possible to visit these once-crumbling ancient buildings today. The monastery had been known throughout Europe by the 12th century, but had fallen into serious disrepair by the 15th and only a relative handful of monks lived there for much of its existence. At the time of theof the way in which the papacy had to be preserved by unassailable walls and military might in an era when popes still held temporal as well as spiritual power. These days, Avignon and its 100,000 residents are but a pleasant three-and-a half hour ride from Paris on the TGV (tres grande vitesse) high-speed train. Upon arrival, visitors discover that the word “palace” is something of a misnomer; this still-imposing castle, though the scene of extravagance and decadence during many of the years the popes resided there, is primarily a stone fortress built at a time when the survival of the papacy itself was very much in doubt. Pope Clement V had decided to move the papal court to that region amid much controversy in 1309. Seven French popes would reign there during the “Babylonian Captivity.” During their stay, the city of Avignon was purchased outright from Joanna, queen of Naples and fortified with the immense walls surrounding its environs. Walls and palace remain intact today. Next door to the papal residence, the 12th-century Cathedral of Notre Dame des Domes houses impressive works of art and the bodies of 157 cardinals and two popes. There is a human interest story here. What historians call The Palace of the Popes is really two separate structures built as the result of two widely divergent worldviews. The first section, built between 1334 and 1342 by Benedict XII, a Cistercian monk and theologian, is spartan and functional. The second section, built by Pope Clement VI between 1342 and 1352, reflected that Benedictine pope’s worldliness and artistic sensibilities. He was an aristocrat who lived like a prince. It was during his reign that much of the great artwork which once graced the now-bare walls was commissioned here; traces of that magnificence remains in wall frescos of hunting and the restored ceilings in the papal study. Unfortunately, the papal court at Avignon became “the gathering place for some of the worst members of medieval society and was called a sewer by Petrarch because of its filth, disease and prostitutes” (OSV Encyclopedia of Catholic History). The popes eventually returned to Rome, and the beleagured papacy grew in influence. Meanwhile, in Avignon, the one-time papal palace has become both a major tourist attraction and a convention center. The city of Avignon has installed high-speed electronics equipment and seating for hundreds in the great halls of the palace; large gatherings of business, industry, the arts and wedding receptions are held in the rooms where popes once made decisions that affected the world. Thus does France preserve its heritage while putting historical structures from the past to state-of-the-art use in this new century. Next: Conclusion of the series   Back to Exponent Menu Printer Friendly Page   Other Articles of 2002   Christmas letter from El Salvador missions thanks diocesan Catholics   Bishop shares views, discussion with Central students   ETC slates Christmas specials throughout the season   My Favorite Christmas Memories   Guidelines on religious ed homeschooling are issued   Local Catholic radio station targets Feb. 1 date   HMs end 98-years of service to Salem St. Paul Parish   Learn ‘language’ of young, youth meet speaker urges   Bishop Tobin: Meeting in D.C. on norms was ‘anxious, tense, difficult’   Priests must ask one another the tough questions, speaker says   Catholic death and funeral rites   Deacons mark 25th with Mass, dinner, memories   Diocesan Ministry Convocation Speaker: Global solidarity, not globalization, should be aim   Jusseaume inaugurated as sixth Walsh president   Diaconate marks 25th anniversary with Oct. 27 fete   New norms sent to priests, deacons on Communion under both kinds   Ashtabula parishes are ‘one Catholic community’   Jusseaume to become Walsh’s sixth president   Charismatic speaker: ‘Church being tested in faithfulness’   Lutheran/Catholic covenant event draws 140 to Walsh   Canton St. Joseph Parish observes centennial celebration   HMHP CEO Michael Rowan   Stewardship speaker: It’s about gratitude and thanking God first   Imagination is key to resolving crisis, priests told   War with Iraq? 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