Visiting the Middle Ages Powerhouse Abbey at Cluny in Burgundy with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Middle Ages Powerhouse Abbey at Cluny in Burgundy with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

After our visit to the Hospices de Beaune, my husband Laurent and I visited what remains of Cluny Abbey.  The Abbey was closed in 1790 as a result of the French Revolution and was later dismantled from 1798 to 1823.  Only one tower and transept, or arm that crosses the nave, remain.  Before Saint Peter’s Basilica was built in Rome, Cluny Abbey was the largest building in Christendom.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04073a.htm), the Cluny Abbey complex covered twenty-five acres total and the church itself measured 555 feet in length.  Our Michelin touring guide also noted that there were five naves across in the church, two transepts, five bells, two towers, and 301 windows before it was destroyed.

At the founding of Cluny Abbey in 910 C.E. by William, Duke of Aquitaine, the monks followed the Rule of Saint Benedict, which stipulates that poverty is a requirement for monastic life. The only way rich nobles could enter into the life of Cluny Abbey was to donate their land and riches to the abbey.This donation impoverished the monks in theory, but made Cluny Abbey wealthy.  Over time, the enormous wealth of Cluny Abbey made it easy to forgo the Rule of Saint Benedict and allowed the name of Cluny to become associated with excess and ostentation.

Cluny Abbey also deviated from the Rule of Saint Benedict by centralizing control over subsidiary monasteries.  The Abbot of Cluny was answerable to the pope only and had 314 houses under his direct control in the twelfth century and 825 in the fifteenth century according to the Catholic Encyclopedia.  Cluny’s huge library and its researchers made it an intellectual and artistic center hors pair as well.

The grandeur and power of Cluny expressed itself in its architecture even in what remains of it.  The Cluny Museum harbors the surviving tower of the Cluny Abbey complex.  Inside this tower, the columns supporting the barrel vaults go straight up without a triforium or clerestory windows to break up the view.  The result is that viewers may feel dwarfed and perhaps disoriented by what feels like a ninety-foot look up to the ceiling.

Outside the tower reflects the earthbound interests of Cluny Abbey as well.   The tower has a square base with each corner line meeting at an arid point without any decoration or ornament.   You do not want to dwell on celestial concerns when you look at this tower; earthly concerns at this intellectual center would have seemed to be more enticing.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Laurent Paget Photography

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Visiting the Hospices de Beaune - the Site of the World's Most Famous Wine Auction with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Hospices de Beaune - the Site of the World's Most Famous Wine Auction with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget 

Laurent and I wanted to go to Beaune, but wanted to take country roads to get there instead of the highway, so we could see more of the scenery.  We found ourselves following the Canal du Centre, which links the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.  The Canal du Centre was opened in 1792.

Tranquil houses with cascading red geraniums lined our route along the Canal du Centre.  Men were out fishing.  A few canal trip boats were starting to wheel their way down the canal with tourists snapping photos.  We wheeled our way into Beaune and parked outside the ramparts, so we could walk into town.

We entered the world famous Hôtel Dieu, or Hospices de Beaune, and admired the ceramic tile roof of knotted geometric designs just as it opened.  We were able to visit the site with a map and audio, but the explanatory panels and labels inside were more than adequate for doing this I thought, but you had to be able to read French to understand them.

The Hospices de Beaune was founded in 1443 by Nicholas Rolin (1376 – 1462), Chancellor of Burgundy, and his wife Guigone de Salins (1403 – 1470), who held her own lands, property, and money.  The building itself is a museum now.  However, modern buildings and associated hospitals continue to provide medical services today.

Nicholas Rolin and Guigone de Salins chose to build a hospital to thank God for the bounty they had received on earth and to ask for their entry into heaven.  The portraits of the two that the Flemish artist Rogier van der Weyden (1403 – 1470) painted of them on the reverse side of his Last Judgment Altarpiece (1443 – 1451) shows them to be wearing simple, dark clothing.  Nicholas Rolin and Guigone de Salins appear to be consulting a Bible with fine drapes and furnishings to their backs.

After Nicholas Rolin’s death in 1462, Guigone de Salins managed the Hospices the Beaune.  The floor tiles in the Salle des Pôvres or Room of the Poor Ones honor the life and work of Nicholas Rolin and his wife Guigone de Salins.  Their heraldic shield of arms is a composite one.  The three golden keys on the right against a black background represent the Rolin family while the white tower against the black background represents the Salins family.

Their Hospices de Beaune has grown over time as other hospitals became associated with the Hospices de Beaune.  In November, the Hospices de Beaune holds a fundraising auction for the hospitals featuring wine from the region.  The auction is one of three social events of the season known as the Les Trois Glorieuses.

The auction for the Hospices de Beaune is the second of the Trois Glorieuses.  The other two events that make up the social season in Burgundy are the Paulée de Meursault and the banquet for the Confrérie des Chevaliers des Tastevin at Clos de Vougeot.  Workers and vineyard owners alike attend an upscale dinner at the Paulée while kings, queens, and the wealthy of the world attend the Trois Glorieuses event at the Clos de Vougeot.

With a few hours left for tourism, we decided to visit Cluny Abbey, that was the largest structure in Christendom until Saint Peter’s was built in Rome.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Laurent Paget Photography

Laurent Paget Photography

Laurent Paget Photography

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Enjoying a Burgundian Brunch by Autun Cathedral with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Enjoying a Burgundian Brunch by Autun Cathedral with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget 

Before and after our visit to Saint-Lazare Cathedral in Autun, my husband Laurent and I walked down the curving, narrow medieval streets and reviewed menus posted outside restaurants.  We passed the Rolin Museum and sat down on the benches outside it, not knowing that this was the childhood home of Nicholas Rolin (1376 – 1462).  Nicholas Rolin was the Chancellor Burgundy for more than forty years, and was appointed by Philippe le Bon (1396 – 1467), Duke of Burgundy.

Rolin is notable in French history for helping draft the Treaty of Arras (1435) that ended the hostilities of the One Hundred Years War (1337 – 1453) between Burgundy and the Kingdom of France.  King Charles VII (1403 – 1461) of France recognized the independence of Burgundy in return for Burgundy’s disbanding its alliance with the English.  (The English continued to battle in France, but were finally defeated in 1453 at Bordeaux.)  We would discover more about Nicholas Rolin as we toured around Burgundy.

Dinner preoccupied us at the moment and not history.  We chose to eat at an outdoor restaurant across the street from the cathedral.  The restaurant had a perfect view of the tower rising from the church.  Umbrellas over the dining area and flowers sitting atop the restaurant’s low stone wall made it appealing on a hot day.

We started our dinner with “Oeufs Pôchées au Vin Blanc Aligoté, Cèpes et Queues de Morilles.”  This dish was translated as “Poached Eggs with white wine, Cèpes, and Morels Sauce.”  That translation hardly did justice to this rarefied delicacy.  The poached eggs came in a small bowl with a whipped white sauce brimming over with wild mushrooms.  I could have eaten just this, but as the French say, “I had big eyes” when I ordered my meal.

Following the rich poached egg dish came “Brochette de Magret de Canard” – skewered and grilled duck breast.  This particular kind of duck breast comes from ducks raised for the foie gras industry.  Magret de canard meat is dense and has a thick lining of fat, which allows it to be grilled without drying out.

The duck breasts were skewered to look like little hearts. Saffron rice accompanied the duck breast along with a salad.  The salad dressing made of red wine vinegar and Dijon mustard helped cut some of the richness of the magret de canard.

For dessert, I ate France’s famous apple upside down cake called a tarte tatin.  The tarte tatin came with crème fraiche and vanilla ice cream on the side.  The warm tarte tatin reminded me of an apple sundae with the crème fraiche as a topping and ice cream. 

I took this meal to be ample proof of the Burgundian appetite for food and life.  After this day of tourism, it was time to go home and get ready to see more of Burgundy the next day.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting Autun Cathedral in Burgundy, France with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Autun Cathedral in Burgundy, France with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

One year my husband Laurent and I arrived in the Burgundian town of Autun during the church feast of Pentecost.  A concert was taking place in the Saint-Lazare Cathedral.  (Cathedral of Saint Lazarus).  The feast of Pentecost celebrates the ability of Christ to give the gift of tongues to his disciples.  The gift of tongues allows one to speak foreign languages to spread Christ's gospel far and wide.

During the concert’s final Alleluia chorus, tourists were allowed into the cathedral to admire the singing and the perfect acoustics in the high-ceilinged cathedral.  The masons who built Saint-Lazare knew more than just engineering it would appear.

The Saint-Lazare Cathedral at Autun was built between 1120 and 1146.  It is considered a Romanesque church and not a Gothic one for more than the dates of its construction. The cathedral’s ceiling is considered Romanesque for its single rib, barrel vaults that run the length of the nave or main aisle of the cathedral.  

Guidebooks often describe Gothic churches as having arches, which Saint-Lazare Cathedral does not have.

Other Romanesque features in Saint-Lazare Cathedral in Autun include the clerestory windows, which extend down from the ceiling to a blind triforium.  The triforium looks like a corridor than runs around the cathedral nave, yet is solid stone.

The triforium rests upon columns with sculpted tops that run along the nave.  The clerestory windows provide light, but it was not until the Gothic era that flying buttresses on the outside of a church allowed walls to be opened up for stained glass windows as at the Sainte Chapelle in Paris.

The high nave or main aisle makes it difficult to see the tops of the columns that are sculpted, but, in general, Romanesque churches are decorated with imaginary beasts on tops of columns.  Perhaps beasts like these Romanesque ones and Gothic gargoyles share the same function of scaring away evil doers.

Outside the cathedral on the west portico (covered porch), there is the famous Last Judgment scene art history students study in their introductory classes.  The tympanum, or semi-circle, above the doors features Christ as judge, sending the good to heaven and the evil to hell.  One sinner is forever doomed to having hands clasped around his head in hell.

Last judgment scenes figure on many Romanesque churches and probably served to remind parishioners that life is precious, especially when it is tied to the land.  Bad harvests are just as life threatening as the plague and war.  

The French historian Emmanual Le Roy Ladurie wrote in several of his books that the difference between aristocrats and peasants in the Middle Ages was that the aristocrats had stores of food that could tide them over bad harvests, war, and lawsuits whereas peasants were kept weak on gruel or died.

You had to be ready to have your soul weighed at any moment as the Last Judgment during the Romanesque Period when harvests were precarious.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Laurent Paget Photography

Laurent Paget Photography

Laurent Paget Photography

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Attending Dance Performances from India and Senegal (Africa) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Attending Dance Performances from India and Senegal (Africa) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I happily brought my young daughter Florence to all the free programs and activities for children that Madison (Wisconsin) offered to them when I lived there like the free zoo and year-round performances by entertainers, who came to perform at the Civic Center Auditorium.  I found out about this programming in the local newspapers’ print versions, which is probably offered online now as well.

My favorite venue for year-round children’s entertainment was the Olbrich Botanical Gardens and Bolz Conservatory, which offered a dance series for children and scavenger hunts that were fun and educational at the same time.

I took my daughter to the first of a fabulous dance series of programs for children called Children of the Rainforest at the Olbrich Botanical Gardens and had just as much fun as she did.  The first set of shows in the series was called Dances of India.  The show was made up of six dance sequences that used song, dance, storytelling, and poetry.  The dance sequences were called: Jungle symphony, Tippani, Mayur Dance, Ferris Wheel, Garba, and Village Mother.

The music of Anand Shankar evoked the rain forest as young dancers enacted elements of the jungle including the gentle and savage in the Jungle Symphony presentation.

The Tippani dance presentation featured a “functional” dance of India.  It is called functional, because it helps with work.  In this case, it is used to help women of the Saurastra to give them rhythm to their chore of beating the mud floor of a house during construction.

The Mayur Dance is the Peacock Dance and featured the peacock opening its feathers to dance.  Dancers gently informed children of the wheel of life in the Ferris Wheel dance.  Finally, the Village Mother dance taught about greed and the Earth’s resources. 

This dance series was such a loving way to teach children to love nature, other cultures, traditional art forms, and beauty. 

About two weeks later, I took my daughter to see an African dance troupe.  The introduction to this group in the brochure described various dances coming from different countries: Gumboot Dance (South Africa), Che Che Kule (Ghana – Twi people), Goombe (Liberia), Drum Call (West Africa), Kou Kou (Guinea), and Dounba, Dance of Joy (Senegal).

The Gumboot Dance was created by South African miners who wore big rubber boots to work accocrding to the brochure handed out.  Che Che Kule was a lot of fun.  It is a call and response game of Ghana that the audience participates in with response, but also with movement, song and rhythm.

Drum Call could have been the basis of an adult symphony orchestra.  It featured a Djimbe orchestra “using rhythms from 13^th and 14^th century West Africa” according to the guide.

My favorite dance had everyone in the audience up on their feet dancing.  This was the Dance of Joy from Senegal.  First, the dancers individually showed off their best moves and then everyone in the group was asked to get up and improvise based on the rhythms.  My daughter and I were the last people to leave this show; I like to dance a lot.

We especially went to the Olbrich Botanical Garden’s Bolz Conservatory to visit the tropical plant conservatory in winter.  They had several informative guides for visitors.  My favorite one was the one on Indian plants.  We liked looking at fish in the many ponds and trying to find plants that matched the drawings in the plant guide that was really a scavenger hunt.

The introduction to the guide and scavenger hunt said that 15% of the Earth’s people live in India.  The guide was also a pharmacopoeia and cooking lesson for adults.  The plants we had to find included pomegranate, scarlet ginger-lily, papaya, tamarind, fig, hibiscus, kumquat, lemon, angel-wing jasmine, coffee, coconut palm, banana, bamboo, black pepper, and acacia.

I always like learning new things and tried to impart that way of looking at the world to my daughter at Olbrich Botanical Gardens.  It was nice to learn things in the warm Bolz Conservatory in a Wisconsin winter, too; I thought that the Olbrich Botanical Gardens and its programs should have been headline news sometimes.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Learning about French Culture in Windsor (Canada) and In Detroit at Moliere plays, the art museum, and other activities by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Learning about French Culture in Windsor (Canada) and in Detroit at Moliere plays, at the art institute, and other activities with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Thanks to my high school’s French club in Detroit, Michigan, I felt like I made a trip to France every week for an hour before school started on Wednesday mornings.   The Club was open to students who had completed one year of French with a “B” or better average.

I was elected Social Chairperson for my ability to come up with activities to do on a weekly basis.  On easy planning weeks, we would play Milles Bornes™, the French card driving game, and learned all the vocabulary and insults that went with it.  We also played Parlor Games, the French play these at rallyes at home, like 21 Questions, Simon Says, Who am I? and I Spy in Franch.

We went to see Molière’s (1622 – 1673) Tartruffe with the third- and fourth-year French class that was performed by the drama department at Wayne State University.  Before going to see the play, we read the play in French, so we could understand what was being said.

When many of us became advanced French students, we wrote a play based on Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and performed it before the junior French classes and the high school’s drama classes in the school auditorium.  I was the lamppost lighter, who chose to light up the world or dim it.

Despite a heavy homework load, I arranged trips to the Detroit Institute of the Arts (DIA) to see: 

-the Detroit Industry Murals (1932 – 1933) by Diego Rivera 

-Martha and Mary Magdalen (c.1598) and The Fruit Vendor (c.1635 – 1620) by Caravaggio (1571 – 1610)

-The Wedding Dance (1566) by Pieter Breugel (1520 – 1569), called Breugel the Elder

-The Visitation (1640) by Rembrandt (1606 – 1669)

-Ruisdael’s (1628 – 1682) Jewish Cemetery (1654 -1655), Canal Scene (late 1640s), and Landscape (1665 – 1668)

-The Nigerian sculpture collection

-The medieval knight armor hall 

The DIA had docents at the time from the University of Michigan, who gave tours for free, if you reserved ahead of time.

Going to museums is a French national sport, so we planned several trips to the Detroit Institute of the Arts, which we traveled to by city buses.  We also visited the Detroit Zoo, the Botanical Garden, and the Aquarium and learned all the French vocabulary to describe what we saw.

Sometimes I had to stretch my imagination for activities to do like planning a baseball and picnic outing on Belle Isle.  Belle Isle is an island in the Detroit River between Detroit and Windsor, Canada. 

The island has a French name which reveals Detroit’s French heritage.  The name Detroit is derived from D’étroit, meaning “from narrows," because the Detroit River is indeed narrow.

On other occasions, I would contact the French consulate in Detroit to get films, posters, maps, and brochures for our club.  We all learned about Loire Valley Châteaux, Paris, the Côte d’Azur (French Riviera), and Normandy from these films. 

We organized dinner parties at club members’ homes and tried our hands at French onion soup, crêpes, and tarte tatin (apple, upside-down cake).  I was more of a taster than a cook then and was happy that several French Club members knew how to cook.  I am a good French cook now thanks to a lot of practice from both necessity and pleasure.

I liked organizing lunches in French restaurants in Windsor, Canada for about thirty to thirty-five people usually at a fixed price. 

 

The restaurants would have us arrive early and gave us a choice between two main dishes such as roast chicken or ratatouille.  We would start the meal with vegetable terrines and French onion soup.  Cheese, salad, and chocolate mousse or ice cream would follow the main dish.  Water or sodas accompanied the meal.  

Long walks around Windsor followed the meal down Oulette Street to the flower gardens by the Detroit River before boarding the Detroit-Canada bus to go back through the tunnel and our life in Detroit.

We danced to Jean-Michel Jarre music on the Boblo Ferry Boat as our last club activity before college.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Traveling around England, Scotland, and Wales with my mom and great-aunt by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Traveling around  England, Scotland, and Wales with my mom and great aunt by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget 

The British said “River Thames” and not “Thames River” I noticed as my mother and great-aunt purchased tickets for a boat and bus tour out of London when I was on a trip with them as an elementary student.

We took a taxi to Maidenhead, where we boarded the tour boat.  We stopped first at Stokes Poges and visited a church from Anglo-Saxon times called Saint Gilles that was more than 1,000 years old.  My great-aunt and I smelled the antique roses with many petals, whose perfume seemed all that much stronger in the misty air.

Back on the boat, we passed an English village, which looked mysterious due to the foggy mist.  This village called Bray on Thames harbors Michelin four-starred restaurants, but I was enchanted with Bray, because it looked like the drawings in my fairy tale books.

Finally, we arrived at Windsor Castle.  Windsor Castle was built around 1078 by William the Conqueror as a fortress high on a chalk cliff over the Thames.  As a child, my lasting impression of the place was of the Queen’s Gardens.  After admiring the flowers, we set out for lunch at the Castle Hotel in Windsor.

After lunch, we took the bus to Runnymede where the Magna Carta was signed by King John in 1215 to guarantee the rights and property of barons; American colonists knew of this document and used it as a precedent for the American Constitution. 

 

My maiden name is Ruth Pennington, and three Penningtons signed the Magna Carta.  I was pretty happy to learn this later in life when I thought about running for president one day.

From Runnymede we took the bus to Hampton Court.  The gardens there are fantastic as well, but under no condition was I allowed to go into the maze made up of towering Yew trees.

Earlier in the week, while my mother and great-aunt were watching the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace from the Victoria Monument, I walked across the street and into Saint James Park.  I started counting swans, because the Queen kept track of them. 

When I came back out of the park, the English policemen were on the scene and the whole tour group was rather agitated.  I just laughed at all the commotion and got back on the tour bus for the rest of the London city tour.  I had become a "lost child."

So, my time at Hampton Court was limited to photos in the garden in my double-breasted, blue coat with brass buttons.  My hair was in pony tails, because I had succeeded in taking down the bun my mother had sent me out into the world with earlier in the day.  

I wanted to see a castle a day, but I was quickly realizing that the gardens were the true treasures of the British Isles. 

The journal that my great-aunt and mother kept for me of this trip made me realize that it was my great-aunt, who made me love gardens so well.  

Her handwritten notes about how much she loved English roses are the best souvenir I have of the wonderful trip I took to the British Isles many decades ago.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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