medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
From: Diana Wright <[log in to unmask]>
> I have a different view of MM --
>It was an unbelievably cold day & we were almost alone in the cathedral... MM
appeared at some point & started talking to us about the cathedral. We are
hopelessly polite in such situations & desperately didn't want to be talked to
& it took quite a long time to get ourselves free.
that's interesting, and, i wouldn't have thought, typical of Malcolm.
he is really a rather private person (for being so public) and usually rather
reticent to volunteer his services, i think.
maybe it was time for his tour and no one had showed up so he was suffering
from Performance Withdrawal or something.
> My husband's uncle was head of a bomb squad at the end of WW2. He was
smuggled into the town of Chartres by the re/sistance when the Germans were
leaving, & into the cathedral which was windowless.
yes, they took them out early on, i think because of the traumatic memory of
the Reims experience in the First Collective Psychotic Episode.
there was some attempt by the Germans to force them to be replaced, but it
came to naught.
>His letter -- a copy of which we gave for the archives there
the Archives Departementales (mostly pre-1789) or the Archives of the diocese
(mostly post-1789)?
>-- described his joy at being there finally, alone, hearing the bombs go off
as the Germans blew up a nearby bridge
that would probably have been the 14th c. "Porte Guillaume", down on the
river, which had become something of a Trademark of the city.
its destruction was a particularly deliberate act of Vandalism, since the
"river" (just one branch of it really) at this point is all of about 30 feet
wide.
Before:
http://www.vintageviews.org/vv-3/architecture/pix/stl13_003.JPG
http://www.oldmapsbooks.com/WebPictures/2004/mar2004/mar26/mar26chartre-porteguillaume.JPG
After:
http://www.structurae.net/files/photos/1798/chartres/dsc01342.jpg
the friend in Chartres with whom i stayed in the winters of the '80s had a
house a few blocks away, down the rue de la Faubourg Guillaume, built by her
grandparents, who also happened to own the Café-Bar-Tabac in the foot of the
Porte Guillaume, destroyed in '44.
the retreating Germans also poisoned the well in the back garden of that house
on their way out of town.
as it happens, half of the duplex they lived in was also destroyed about the
same time, by one of a little string of bombs which hit the city --virtually
the only damage done to it in the whole war.
the stories differ as to what actually happened, but it looks like an allied
bomber was heading to bomb the tiny airfield (just visible on the plain across
the valley from the Bishop's Garden) in the run-up to D-Day, when it was set
upon by German fighters and released its bombs to facilitate getting away.
if you look for "new" houses and buildings you can still follow the "string"
of these several bombs through the city, from the Haute Ville, down to the
Faubourg Guillaume, my friend's house being, i think, the last one of them.
unfortunately, one of the first ones scored a direct hit on the city library
http://www.christophersbookroom.com/cc/mss/montescot44.jpg
destroying 800 or so manuscripts, quite a few of them middlevil.
i have it third hand from eye witnesses that during the fire there was a
"rain" of parchment and paper fragments all over town.
a distressing image.
> & then of dismantling the bombs which the Germans had left in that
glorious cathedral which were set to go off.
i didn't realise that they had "mined" the cathedral.
interesting, the near-misses the place has had, over the years.
the city was seriously besieged in the mid-16th c., at one point the walls
were breached in the _basse ville_, but it was saved by a miraculous
monstrance of the _camisia_ of the Virgin (the event commemorated by the
nondescript chapel of "Notre Dame de la Breche").
Jim Bugslag found a source which mentions that *one* canon ball from the
besiegers fired at the cathedral bounced and actually hit the Royal Portal.
if Condé's guys had taken and sacked the town, the Fame of Chartres Cathedral
would have been a wee bit more modest, i believe.
when they got hold of Etampes, not too far away, they did a pretty good number
on the windows and statues of the Royal Portal there, and surely something
like this scene would have happened
http://www.christophersbookroom.com/cc/towers/1836fire/1836fire.html
the rebuilding --if any-- wouldn't have been quite what was done after 1836.
c
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ghouls and tools of the Christian right :
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2005/03/21/schiavo_courts/story.jpg
"[Michael Schiavo] said U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who is leading a
charge to extend Terri Schiavo's life, is a 'little slithering snake'
pandering for
votes."
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/03/20/news_pf/Tampabay/Schiavo___Come_down__.shtml
Schiavo: 'Come down, President Bush'
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