Broceliande July 12

The University classes met in the wild on Thursday July 12 to visit the sites of Arthurian legend in Brittany, a topic of special interest to me. We dressed for a day of rugged hiking in the unseasonable chill and welcomed the stop for hot coffee in the town of Paimpont where we picked up our storytelling guide for the day. I nosed around the abbey, transported as usual by the realization that it was first built in the 7th century, with 12th and 16th century additions and renovations. A former forest brigand, Gueslin, held sway in the 11th century.


We made a photo stop at the Chateau de Trécesson, a 14th to 15th century fortified manor built during the war of succession in Bretagne by the Duc Jean IV on the site of a 6th century castle, complete with water filled moat. There is a legend of the White Lady who appears to believers, stemming from the story of a young girl killed by her brothers in the field beside the castle, buried alive for her alleged transgressions.

The 12th century Arthurian myths are based on the 5th century figure, who wielded enough power to hold at bay the Saxon incursions into England and then to take the battle to the Saxons on the continent. The stories weave heroes into the mystery of local phenomena, like the Fountain of Barenton, said to be the threshold of Merlin’s home. The mystery of this small spring is the contrast of its exceptionally cold water with the periodic release of bubbles from under the surface, giving it the appearance of boiling. I imagine the Science Babe could explain the phenomenon, but I can see why the locals turned to legend. There is a group of small school children with their teachers waiting their turn to see the fountain as we hike on.


The smallest church of the region boasts a décor and a modern tradition that blend the early Celtic, the Christian, and the Arthurian into an amazing whole. In order to get the troublemaker of a young ecclesiastic out of the way, the church sent Abbé Gillard to this backwater parish in 1942, where he served until his death in 1979. He oversaw the restoration of the little church built to honor Saint Onenne, a 7th century martyr, with paintings and stained glass windows that combined images of the last supper with the Round Table and the Grail. One corner of the front window makes a political statement: the bunny is shushing to indicate a secret beside the shield symbolizing Bretagne with 5 departments, though the southern one was governmentally assigned to a different province. The tourist traffic to the little church has increased exponentially, and tours troop through regularly. Only the most sacramental services are held here now, such as local weddings or baptisms. Local believers attend weekly services at a nearby community church.

When we settle beside a still pool to hear the story of the fairy sisters who chose to live under water rather than compete in the world of men, I catch sight of one of the school children stooping pensively by the seven sisters pond, a young Arthur awaiting the guidance of his Merlin.

My fellow French teacher/students, Christina, a Brazilian, and Stella, a Nigerian, are enrolled in the didactic classes rather than the linguistic and culture track that I chose, so we find each other at lunch and enjoy this day together. The camaraderie of this international group is priceless, though all are worn out. The pensive portraits are my Czech classmates Katerina and Alana, Spaniard Anna, and Villanova student, Dan.

Mont Saint Michel July 8

I have visited the Mont Saint Michel numerous times as a member or leader of a group, but this is my first personal tour. I left the main street up to the cathedral this time and discovered a whole network of winding pathways that connect the village clinging to the rocky hillside of the Mount. I found another walk along the ramparts with access to restaurants and an elegant hotel that I had never seen and felt foolish to have never delved further than the superficial here. The parish church of St. Peter is still one of my favorite spots, a dim quiet corner under the towering figure of Saint Michael. It was here that I first met Saint Roch and his dog, whose portrait I always take for Sue. Here too I met a Benedictine monk when inquiring about my chapelet honoring Saint Michael. I still have his mailing address from having sent him the beads.

The island offers a treasure of architectural history, from the primitive hermitage in the early centuries of this era up to the gothic marvel of the cathedral that towers above the sea as a landmark visible in a shimmering haze from far across the Norman plain. This place was home to centuries of Benedictines who preserved and carried on the work of book making. It also carries on the tradition of visions urging the dedication of a chapel to Saint Michael, whose first sanctuary was consecrated to him in Italy in 490 by the bishop of Siponto in a grotto on Mount Gargon. Monks brought relics from that site to the new Mount off the Norman-Breton coast in 709; those relics of Saint Michael disappeared in 1791 during the French Revolution. There is also a Saint Michael’s Mount off the Cornwall coast at Penzance, and the Tor of Glastonbury is crowned with the tower of a church once dedicated to Saint Michael.

The beheaded statue is a common sight in French monuments. During the French Revolution, the political power of the church sided with the power of the monarchy, putting all that represented Christianity in the line of fire of the revolutionaries. It was as foolish of them to find satisfaction in crippling the artwork as it was of the church leaders to lust for the trappings of temporal power. The legacy is a stark reminder of the role of faith in our lives, and the potential for abuse, a seemingly endless trail of new and twisted abuses in the name of faith down through the ages.

There is a magic about this place that defies description and makes of it one of the wonders of the modern world.

Rennes, Capital of Brittany July 1-27

Rennes is the capital city of Bretagne, but the Bretonne character is complex enough that even this diverse city cannot be said to encompass all that is Brittany. Historically, there was even a language barrier between the inland Bretons and those on the north and west coasts of this western arm of France: the Celtic peoples linked to the sea spoke Breton, and the Rennois and inland inhabitants Gallo. When French became the language of the cities, the countryside still spoke Gallo or Breton, adding to the divergent cultures. Brittany nonetheless feels a cohesive region with a provincial cultural tradition within its national identity as French.

The sea on the north and south coasts exerts, of course, an enormous influence on the life of the coastal towns of Brittany, by shaping the professions and the cuisine, clothing, and family structure. The traditional finely embroidered gowns of the women of Finistère speak of fishermen’s wives with much time waiting. They say that the black dresses of the island women come from the mortally dangerous fishing conditions, which meant that they were virtually always in mourning for someone in the family.

Rennes is a modern city, with roots deep, deep into the past. The contrast seems stark to the newcomer, but to the local, living with the monuments and treasures of the past is a norm. From the presentations in the Brittany is Universal and Brittany in 1001 Images museum exhibits, it seems that Brittany sees itself as shaped by a history going back to prehistoric times, with stone age archeological remains to 4 million B.C., Neolithic cairns, and Megalithic stone henges, Bronze Age tools, and Celtic goddesses who blended seamlessly with the Roman. After enduring Roman rule and British immigration and the eventual merger with France, Brittany was the last of the duchies to come under the crown when the Duchess Anne married Charles VIII and later Louis XII ( the only Queen to two French kings.)


This 1930s mosaique exterior done by an artist named Odorico faces the Lycée Emile Zola. Zola is the writer who courageously stood up to the storm of public opinion that convicted Captain Dreyfus of treason in a trial conducted here in Rennes. Zola decried the blatant anti-Semetic smear, crying out for justice. His books were burned in the streets, but in the end, he is honored and Dreyfus was exonerated.

The categories in the 1001 images exhibit are self-descriptive: yesterday and today, earth, rock, legend, waterways, light, sound, scents, songs, dances, combats – here photos of the Black Tide as well as of war, mounts, wind, sea, isles, birds, cities, citizens. The photos of people are also telling of Breton identity, beginning with writers and poets, singers, musicians, painters, engravers, sculptors, factory workers, religious processions, and striking protesters. The exhibit ends on a global note, describing Brittany as “Open to the world, to the echoes of the cultures of the planet.”

This sense of Brittany as a close-knit community steeped in tradition is balanced by a recognition of that very openness to the wide world. The people are warm and friendly, delighted to hear even the roughest effort to speak French and effusive in their compliments for the French teachers’ rusty endeavors. Shopkeepers, waiters, regulars on the daily bus route to the university, ask about America and Americans, our ways in daily life, our work and the vastness of our continent with an eagerness to verify what they have heard.









Our courses at the University of Rennes give me an insight into the pedagogy of the French system and its reflection of the culture. We study phonetics and the methods of oral and written argument, with enriching courses in film and architecture, and a wonderful cultural study of 19th century romanticism. The international students are Spanish, Czech, Danish, Brazilian, Italian, Nigerian, Japanese, a delightful diverse group united by the common study of French.









Any temptation to simplify or to categorize the people of Brittany fails in the face of my own personal experience. My connection, my belonging to Brittany, comes from the Lessart family whose ties to the land are profound. Papa and Marylise and the Lefèbvre cousins still live close to the roots of their grandparents. But Christine went to Spain for a Master’s degree and stayed for a lifetime.

My new host family adds another dimension to my perception of the Breton people. Agnès was born to Breton parents in Morocco while her father was in the military, so she did not live in France until she came at age 18 for her university years. She traveled extensively and studied in England, where much like Christine, she married an Englishman. They moved back to Brittany eventually, but one of her daughters followed her mother’s pattern and moved to Iceland where she married and stayed. Certainly Brittany, a land steeped in ancient tradition, is open to the world!

Scriptorial de Mont Saint Michel: June 30, July 1

My host for the month in Rennes, Agnès Batt, joined the University of Villanova group in the reception hall of the Hotel Brest across from the train station in Rennes. She greeted me warmly and then asked with evident concern, “Would you mind terribly if we went away for the weekend? I have long-standing plans with a group of friends to meet at the Scriptorial of Mont Saint Michel at Avranches for a weekend writing workshop.” You can imagine my reply.

Agnes’ friend Marie joined us en route, and we met the others, Giselène, Marie and Gérard and their daughter Lila. The church at Avranches, one of many heavily damaged in 1944 and carefully rebuilt in the postwar decades, had a pair of utterly amazing fonts in enormous shells, indicative of the proximity of the sea. The display showing the reconstruction of the church included this photo of the fire that brought down the roof, a sad consequence of the unintended collateral damage in spite of conscientious attempts to avoid bombing the great monuments of the culture the Allies were trying to save. The bombing did spare the church, but the resulting fire in the night caught the roof. In the rebuilt magnificence of the sanctuary, we witnessed from a distance the solemn rites of a marriage, testimony to the resilience of human nature and the value that this culture places on its historical monuments.

The Scriptorial is a museum housed in a former fortress, a museum of precious documents originally kept in the monastery of the Mont Saint Michel. We visited the introductory educational exhibits explaining the origins of the Mont Saint Michel. Hermits sought solitude on the isle called the Tombe, with the little isle Tombelaine beside it, before the era of the Mont. Saint Aubert’s church was built in 709 at the behest of Saint Michael who thrice came to the monk Aubert in his dreams, insisting that he build a chapel on the rock besieged by ferocious tides of 15 meters and surrounded by quicksand. At the time of the first installation of the sanctuary in 709 there was a violent high tide and storm that besieged the island and inundated the nearby forest of Seissy, à la Atlantis. (It’s amazing to note that a similar inundation drowned a forest near St. Michael’s Mount off the Cornwall coast.)

We explored the origins of documentation, of paper, papyrus, and parchment and the making of ink. In 966 the chanoines of Mont Saint Michel were replaced by order of Richard I duke of Normandy with the Benedictines, who expended great effort in the establishment and maintenance of an extraordinary library. The illuminated copies they produced reached a golden age in the mid 11th century.

Finally we came to the manuscripts themselves. In awe, I entered the holy of holies, the darkened chamber reserved for the revolving display of original documents, lighted indirectly in their glass cases. The manuscripts in the current rotation for viewing included a 5th to 6th century description of the organization of the invisible world of spiritual beings in the 9 orders of angels by Denis l’Aréopagite, citizen of Athens converted by St. Paul, then an 11th century text by Aristotle. There was Saint Augustine versus Faustes from 1060 by the monk Giraud, and a treatise on the body and blood of Christ by Lanfranc de Panle arguing against Berenger of Tours. Bede the Venerable wrote a commentary on the gospels of Mark and Luke; this copy dates from 1040 to 1055.

It was the early 13th century copy of the Sic et Non of Abelard that brought me to my knees to get as close as possible to the book itself. This was the work later interdicted by the church, which on the basis of logic instead of faith in doctrine attempted to explain the seeming contradictions of the doctrine of early church fathers. Kneeling in amazement, I suddenly realized that this was Pierre Abelard’s debate plan, and Sarah joined me for a moment of contemplation. When I finally rose and moved on, I saw that beside Abelard was a 12th century manual for theology students, bought in Paris for 8 Parisian pounds and brought to the Mont by a young cleric named Jean Enete in 1320. Jim’s book where it belongs, beside Sarah and her debate manual. I caught my breath when I saw beside the theology student manual a 12th century treatise on Pythagorean math in musical intervals, Jennifer at Jim’s side. It seems as if all my children are represented here.

The exhibit calls the manuscripts witnesses who have escaped time. I soak them up, trying to hear the voices that each records. The most memorable is that of Frotmund, who in 1060 wrote at the end of his copy, “Frotmond the Well-Content, a brother that should be beloved for all time.” His cry to be heard and to be loved echoed as I read the list at the end of another 11th century copy: “Gautier, cantor, Hilduin, copyist, Ecoulant, wise interpreter of Scripture, Ermenald, Osbern, and Nicolas, 3 Bretons.” How urgent and how visceral the call of these voices from the past!

In the local parish church of Saint Pois, I note the Sunday Mass time and light a candle, then notice an unusual plaque. In addition to the common list of sons of the town who gave their lives for their country in the Great War with its amended list of casualties from the next war, there is a list of Victims of the War 1939-45. This list comprised mostly women or couples. I wish now that I had found the courage to ask the little old ladies later after Mass if they knew the stories behind the plaque. Instead, I googled the names and Saint Pois and 1944. I found no personal references, but did discover that the allied forces fought 5 days to free this village. This part of the country paid a heavy price for their freedom.

At the hostel in Saint Pois, I wrote my reflections inspired by the Scriptorial and read them to the group Sunday afternoon. My essay, attached below, will join the others and the beautiful illuminated M painted by Gérard in the group’s printed booklet. We all grow when we hear and are heard.


Entendre les Voix, Pour Toujours

“Bienheureux Frotmond, un frère qu’on doit aimer pour toujours.”
1060
“Gautier, le chantre, Hilduin, copiste, Ecoulant, sage interpretre de la
Bible, Ermenald, Osbern, Nicolas, trios Bretons.” 11e siècle

Me voici à 16 kilomètres de Sourdeval dans le cimetière de St. Pois. J’y suis pour écouter les voix. Dans le Scriptorial du Mont-Saint-Michel, c’était la voix du frère Frotmond qui résonnait. J’écoute la chanson de la Messe pour entendre les échos des voix de Victorine et Eugène Dodard, d’Anna et Marcel Guezet, d’Odette et Paulette Toullier, de Denise Bréhier, et je me demande dans quelles circonstances ils étaient victimes de la guerre de 1939.

Le désir essentiel au fond de l’âme humaine, c’est la crie de Frotmond, d’être aimé pour toujours. Au moins d’être entendu, de ne pas être oublié.

L’âme d’Alphonse de Lamartine a crié ce désir avec une passion inoubliable :

Ô lac ! rochers muets ! grottes ! forêt obscure !
Vous, que le temps épargne ou qu’il peut rajeunir
Gardez de cette nuit, gardez, belle nature
Au moins le souvenir !

Qu’il soit dans ton repos, qu’il soit dans tes orages,
Beau lac, et dans l’aspect de tes riants coteaux
Et dans ces noirs sapins, et dans ces rocs sauvages
Qui pendent sur tes eaux.

Qu’il soit dans le zéphyr qui frémit et qui passe
Dans les bruits de tes bords par tes bords répétés
Dans l’astre au front d’argent qui blanchit ta surface
De ses molles clartés.

Que le vent qui gémit, le roseau qui soupire
Que les parfums légers de ton air embaumé
Que tout ce qu’on entend, l’on voit ou l’on respire
Tout dise : Ils ont aimé !

Le Saint Michel a tant voulu se faire entendre qu’il a percé le crâne d’Aubert. Cet été, pour moi, c’est l’apprentissage de l’écoute.

À la Lorraine, c’était la Pucelle qui donnait l’exemple. Elle entendait les voix du ciel, elle les écoutait, elle leur obéissait. Mes pieds suivaient son chemin en silence. J’apprends à me ralentir et à écouter.

Dans la solitude, je me perds, noyant un peu sans le soutien d’autres voix humaines autour de moi. Les voix lointaines des gosses à la plage me soulagent. Même en état de petite Tombelaine de Vous dans une mer de Tutoie, j’écoute et les voix me sauvent. Je veux mieux apprendre d’entendre les voix de la solitude.

Dans le Scriptorial face à Pierre Abélard, son Sic et Non du 13e siècle, je me trouve pour mieux voir aux genoux. La voix de celui qui avec la dialectique essayait de résoudre les contradictions des Pères de l’Eglise appelle une autre présence du passé. Je me trouve subitement rejoint de ma fille Sarah, celle qui était championne de dialectique. J’entends là dans le noir sa voix riante, sa joie d’étudier avec moi l’argument. Je peux presque toucher la douce peau de son visage là où était la petite tache de rousseur. Elle me sourit et m’embrasse avant de s’en aller. Un autre endroit sur ma liste où elle m’a trouvée assez ouverte pour l’entendre. Depuis sa mort à l'âge de dix-sept ans, elle m’a parlé plusieurs fois quand j'étais bien à l’écoute.

Avec regret je me lève et continue au prochain livre – qui est un manuel pour les étudiants de théologie. Bien sûr que son frère Jacques prend sa place à côté de sa sœur bien-aimée, lui qui vient de finir sa maîtrise en théologie. Sa femme à la voix d’alouette me chante du prochain livre, une étude de musique et ses fonds mathématiques. La famille est toute là.

La leçon de Sainte Jeanne et de Saint Aubert, c’est d’écouter et puis d’agir. La voix de la communauté chante à Dieu ce que les manuscrits nos crient :

Entends nos prières, entends nos voix
Entends nos prières montées vers Toi.

À nous l’écoute et l’action.

Sylvia Hyde
1 juillet 2007