Ex-Cathedra....part 1, Troyes

We spent the last few days in rural French towns or cities, each of which had either a cathedral or large church at their centre.

Three cathedral cities that we visited were Troyes, Chartres and Rouen in that order. The cathedrals in each of these places had remarkably similar histories of their development. In each city, the first christian churches had been built in about the 4th century and then there were various churches on the same sites up until the 11th-12th centuries, when the current cathedrals were built.

Troyes was the earliest built of these three and the cathedral was begun in the late 11th century. You can tell that it's earlier as the interior columns are much stouter and the external engineering features such as flying buttresses are less developed. It's still an impressive place though.

 

 

The nave at Troyes. There's a nice open airy feel to the church despite the massive construction, (the columns down the centre are about 3.5 metres in diameter). We enjoyed walking round and checking the side chapels etc. One special feature, that none of the other sites had, is a treasury, where you could view the various religious treasures that had been accumulated over the millenia, although some, (as you will hear later), have been lost or stolen.

 A lovely 1000 year old ivory chest, property of a long-dead noble.

A series of ceramic tiles showing holy images of one sort or another, of which these were a small proportion. Beautifully painted and then fired for posterity.

The treasure of treasures. This is a gold casket holding the face bones, the skull cap and leg bones of the cathedral's main man - Saint Bernard. I'm not sure if this is Saint Bernard "the dog nut", or another one. One curious thing about these bones, is that they are only the size of a child's, so perhaps this was St Bernard the midget!
Despite being a midget, this Saint founded the modern cathedral at Troyes and then joined the nearby Clairvaux Abbey in its early days and developed it into a Cistercian power base. He also helped found the Knights Templar. Clairvaux Abbey has just been restored but we didn't have time to visit as it was a few km away in the wrong direction. Henry I of England was also a benefactor of Clairvaux and he made a substantial donation to its upkeep. One of the gifts Henry received in return for his generosity, was one of St. Bernards fingers, (post mortem). I'm not sure which finger, or what happened to it afterwards, but it adds a new dimension to the expression "giving the finger".

This beautiful cross, in the Lorraine style, is of gold and precious stones. The gold metal sheets are nailed onto wood that is claimed to be from the true cross!
(Various estimations have shown however, that if all the fragments of the "true cross" that are claimed to exist, were put together, there would be enough timber to build Noah's Ark).

The treasury nowadays, only contains a fraction of the relics that were held before the French Revolution took place in 1789. With this huge upheaval, there was mass looting, (both by the new government and by opportunists), across all of France's religious sites and most holy relics were either destroyed, or if they included gold, silver or jewels, were melted down or otherwise stolen away. What is it that makes the same country's people vary between one time makers of beautiful objects and then out and out iconoclasts? Perhaps we should enquire of the Taliban or Islamic State?

The inventories of Clairvaux Abbey survived the revolution even if the precious relics didn't. There is also a large collection of manuscripts and these show some interesting items having been kept.

This is a typical account book that was kept at Clairvaux. The Abbey was part of the Cistercian franchise, that had abbeys and holdings right across Europe and in the 13th century the Cistercians had a combined annual income of around 1 million pounds. And that is a million pounds weight in silver not worthless pound notes. Imagine what that would be worth today.

The various account books listed all of the treasures held by the monks and these treasures included the heads of Saint Mark, Saint Barnabas and Saint Vincent, plus "milk and hair of the Virgin", (Mary, I presume), and objects of the passion as described in the various inventories as wood of the true cross, nails from the crucifixion, thorns from the crown of thorns, relics from the "eleven thousand virgins" and the "martyrs of the Theban Legion".

Historically neither of these latter two events is likely to have occurred, let alone their relics having ended up in Troyes. The legend of the 11000 virgins supposedly occurred when a noble Ursula, left Britain to have a continental holiday and then unfortunately, Ursula and her travel companions – said to be anywhere between 11 and 11,000 maidens depending on the account – found themselves in the city of Cologne in Germany, where they were cruelly massacred for refusing to copulate with and/or marry the invading Huns. Oh well, one way to ruin a holiday! Later historians suggest that the 11000 virgins was a translation error. Modern cynics would say that there have never been that sort of number of virgins in Britain anyway.

Anyway, these items were apparently still in existence and recorded in inventories carried out in 1504, 1640 and 1741! I wonder how they stopped the virgin's milk from curdling?

This was the oldest surviving book in the cathedral's collection and although it dates from about 1080 still looks brand new.

One thing, that each of the 4 towns that we stopped in had in common, was a wealth of medieval buildings. This is a typical street in Troyes where, although the original glazing has been replaced with modern double glazed windows, it still looks good and not too modern.

 This street took the prize though and was about 6 feet wide at the bottom but the roofs actually touched at the top. The street was very aptly named, the “Alley of the Cats”.
 

 A wider view of the Alley of the Cats showing the roofs touching.

The only downside to Troyes, was our encounter with a surly French waiter. This was a very unusual event as, (unlike the stories that are commonly told), the French people we met were very polite and amenable, and in some cases, such as the people we met in Pont de L'Arche, very friendly.

We sat down at a table in the square and the waistcoated, cravat wearing, (they all dress like this, it's their uniform), vulture soon arrived. Me to him - "une biere s'il vous plait", Iris - "do you have a cocktail menu". Waiter - "No"! Iris "Ok a glass of rose then please". He then departed, returned with the drinks, threw (literally) a beer mat onto the table, placed the drinks, and very unusually, presented the bill at this point. I took some pleasure in not giving him a tip, picking up each coin from his tray. Needless to say we moved on after the drink.

That's it for Troyes. We couldn't find the bus stop for our trip back to the campsite so we had an invigorating walk instead and the next day on to Chartres.