Last week we had a break from Paris. We’d been to Chartres before and loved it and so, even though it is an easy day trip from Paris, we decided to stay overnight. John found reasonably priced accommodation in a former monastery right behind the cathedral. It was perfect: predictably basic, our room had large casement windows and a view of the spires. It instantly felt retreat-like, which is what we both actually needed, so we re-booked for two nights.
Our first view of Chartres as we walked up the hill from the railway station was through a ferris wheel. An interesting juxtaposition that had me pausing to take a photograph (the first of many). Why the fun fair? After a quick visit to the tourist centre we discovered that we had missed, by precisely one day, the illuminations of Chartres which now run from April to September each year. Over the weekend, the season had closed with a special Fête de la lumiere, parades and music, and a last hurrah for the coloured lights ( http://www.chartresenlumieres.com/).
Illuminations have taken off. Back in Canberra I have delighted in seeing old Parliament House bathed in pink, and when travelling across town check the current colour the tower on Black Mountain. Even better was Brian Eno’s spectacular lighting of the Sydney Opera House last year. As we wandered around the old town of Chartres over the next two days we saw evidence of the illuminations – from the large glass and metal boxes that have become semi-permanent fixtures to the discreet footpath lights that mark the night walk through the town. It must look amazing!
In the Middle Ages there were different attractions of course. In the ninth century Charlemagne’s grandson, Charles the Bald, donated a piece of cloth to the cathedral which was supposed to have been worn by Mary when she give birth to Jesus. It ensured that Chartres became a place of pilgrimage and thereby boosted the local economy. The Virgin’s veil was an effective fundraiser. Later Chartres emerged as the foremost scholastic school in Europe. The present, astonishing cathedral building dates primarily from the eleventh century. It is the last of a long line of buildings that had succumbed to pillage or fire. Whilst it suffered the standard re-dedication as a “Temple of Reason” during the Revolution, some citizens of Chartres saved it from planned demolition. If nothing else, argued the architect Morin, it would be very difficult to achieve. Indeed!
What do people come to see now? The building of course, the “most perfect” Gothic cathedral. And the glass. Chartres cathedral houses the most important collection of medieval stained glass in the world, including the famous Blue Virgin dating from the mid-12th century. And stone. The 12th Western Portals and the 13th century North and South porches: a remarkably intact ensemble of medieval sculpture. And, of course, for the contemporary spiritual seeker, the Labyrinth, the largest and best preserved from medieval France. And no, there is no evidence that medieval pilgrims circled round its paths on their knees (see http://www.labyrinthos.net/chartresfaq.html for some nice myth busting).
Pilgrimage is an oddly persistent human occupation. Moving in order to see better, more clearly, I think. The danger with modern tourism is, of course, that we see nothing, nothing at all, in the everything that we try to take in (a tendency typified by the pervasive phenomenon of taking photographs of artworks in museums rather than actually looking at them). A real pilgrimage, one that is open to discovery, seeing anew, takes courage. And here I think of a pilgrim I met today outside Notre-Dame de Paris. He wanted to look inside the cathedral but was not allowed in because he was carrying a large backpack. I offered, in a stumbling mixture of French and English, to mind his bag for a few minutes. He reached into his coat and pulled out piece of paper from his wallet. On it was written: “I speak only Czech.” We laughed and signed, and as we walked across to a seat where I could watch his bag he showed me the large scallop shell attached to his bag: “Santiago de Compostela” he said. I speak only Czech: it is a hell of a long way to Santiago from Paris.
On our visit to Chartres we saw the sign of the shell in front of the cathedral, and I think there were Camino pilgrims in the monastery-hotel. Were we pilgrims too? Perhaps in the way that Philip Larkin speaks of in his famous poem “Church Going” I could say that it “pleased me to stand in silence here” in that “serious house on serious earth”, recognising the hunger “to be more serious”. And in the gentle space of two days I did, I think, see some things more clearly.
The colour blue, or rather, all the colours of blue. I try to soak it in, to remember for later. And light, falling through the glass, sometimes sharply, sometimes softly, white, or glowing pink. Familiar Gospel stories told in pictures, considered, frame by frame, through the telescope of my camera. The four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, sitting on the shoulders of the prophets: interconnection, dependence. The angel that I’d photographed in 2006 still watching over the town from the green copper roof: fidelity, stability. Vespers with the Community of Chemin Neuf, their warm welcome, the hospitable liturgy. A song we know, the one we used for the blessing of St Bernard’s back home: Ubi Caritas et amor, Deus ibi est (Where charity and love are, God is there). I am singing “Alleluia!” in the cathedral that I first loved from a distance as an undergraduate history student at Sydney University more than thirty years ago. A feast of bread and duck paté shared in a park as the moon rises with my best and most patient friend. Two cranes circle the southern spire, consider the possibility of making their home here. The black sky etched against the cathedral’s soft gold stone. Sleeping in the light of a near full moon, watching it arc across the dome of the sky. The morning star.
And finally, there is an ordinary mass, with ordinary people, in the damp, quiet crypt, where we remember, with St Matthew, that we are les malades (the sick) and I am thankful, ever thankful, that Jesus says: “Je ne suis pas venu applier les justes, mais les pécheurs”, I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.
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