On Sunday, I hiked up to the Petit Palais, which is in the 1st arrondissement. The weather is gradually cooling (and growing wetter), and I have made the permanent switch to long pants, but the walk was still worth the fresh air. There have been posters up in Paris for some time, advertising a temporary exhibit of the Comedie-Francaise on exposition at the Petit Palais, and the depicting a painting of Moliere in the costume of Julius Caesar; this looked worth visiting.
It was. The Petit Palais has managed to put together a semi-chronological, semi-thematic exhibit in five "Acts," which tells the story of France's national theater company, which originated as the troupe of Moliere. In 1658, his troop "font irruption sur la scene parisien" [erupted onto the Parisian scene], as the exhibit put it, and people are still talking about it. I had no idea, before I arrived in Paris, just how much of a legend Moliere is here, rather comparable to Shakespeare back home. For instance, since I arrived in Paris, I have seen advertisements for seven different productions of his plays (even attending one), and 9 of the top 10 most-performed productions at the Comedie-Francaise are his works (with Corneille's El Cid as a distant #7). There is a great deal we don't know about his life, but what we do know marks him as exceptional: several of his plays (notably Tartuffe and l'Ecole des Femmes) were controversial and scandalous after their performance. Moliere was the absolute ruler of his troupe throughout his career, writing, directing, and starring in its productions, and his death threw its existence into serious jeopardy (for this reason, it fused with several other acting companies in Ile-de-France, until, in 1680, it became the Comedie-Francaise).
Moliere continued to create controversy after his death, because he was buried in hallowed ground, even though he had not renounced his acting profession (he actually died the night after playing the leading role in one of his plays, ironically, titled Le Malade Imaginaire, or The Hypochondriac). The Comedie-Francaise continued to use his armchair as a stage prop until the late 19th century, and his watch and (what might be his) cap are also on display at the Petit Palais. There are a great deal of portraits and other paintings of Moliere (most of them posthumous). My favorite was "Molière et les caractères de ses comédies," by Edmond Geffroy, a painting which included more than fifty of Moliere's characters, and the playwright thoughtfully looking on at their antics.
There is, of course, more to the exhibit than the life and legacy of Moliere. There are paintings and models of the the theater itself; a room full of busts of the great playwrights, several rooms of paintings of the troupe's greatest actors, in costume, and various stageprops, etc. There was even a full-size marble statue of one actor, Talma, commissioned after his death in 1826, because the company considered the loss such a blow from the whole company.
I had wanted to visit the Grand Palais after the Petit Palais, more because of convenience than out of any real desire to see anything particular on display there; however, there was a two-and-a-half hour line, and I decided that I had better things to do (like study for Monday's Contemporary Arab World test). On my walk back to the dorm, however, I happened to pass by the entrance to the Conciergerie, a monument hadn't yet visited. I decided that I had enough time, and that checking out this Conciergerie, whatever it was, was worth the effort.
As it turns out, it was worth the effort (and the free student-rate admission). The Conciergerie is a 700-year-old building constructed by Philippe le Bel to house the Parlement of Paris, although its site as the seat of power and authority is much older, dating back to Lutetia in the time of Julian the Apostate; in the first decade of the 6th century, Clovis began building his royal palace there, after he moved his capital to Paris (he died in 511, before he got very far). Since then, the building has been used as the king's lit de justice, where the king himself legislated, and his royal edicts were registered. Since then, it has been used as a barracks and, famously during the Revolution, a prison. There, you can visit the rooms where Maximilien Robespierre and Marie-Antoinette passed their last days, respectively, as well as learn about the conditions of 18th-century prison life. I arrived five minutes before the start of the 4:15 p.m. daily tour, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in visiting the Conciergerie. Our guide was Spanish, but spoke French flawlessly, and knew her history forwards and backwards, something I've come to expect from French tour guides.
The Gothic architecture of the older sections looked so ancient, an effect that was probably enhanced by the very low level of lighting. To me, this seems very ironic; as I continue to learn, Gothic architecture, when it was new, was truly the architecture of shining light and brilliant color; it is only with age, wear, and the elements that Gothic stones have darkened, and their once-beautiful stained-glass windows grown black with spoilage. The windows of Philippe le Bel's Conciergerie were quite large, and kept the interior very well-lighted; now, the windows have been blocked with stone. The building got it's name under Charles V (rival claimant of Edward III of England for the throne of France), who as Dauphin, saw his ministers murdered before his eyes by Etienne Marcel, leader of an armed protest against royal royal. Worried by the possibility of another urban uprising, Charles V kept his distance from Paris, and installed a Concierge, or caretaker, who was in charge of Paris. Hence the name Conciergerie, to describe the building occupied by the Concierge. Charles V went on to do a fairly decent job getting the English out of France, avoiding open battle and simply launching siege after siege on the fortresses they had seized, eventually leaving them with only a few cities along the northern coast (Calais, Cherbourg, and Brest), certain regions of Guyenne (which the Brits could claim partially thanks to Henry II's marriage with Eleanor of Aquitaine two centuries before), as well as certain chateaux.
On Monday, I took a test in my Contemporary Arab World TD, and on Tuesday, I took a test in my Medieval History TD, then delivered an expose on feudalism to the professor of the CM. I really felt like visiting a museum on Tuesday afternoon, and the Louvre was closed, so I took a short walk over to the Sainte-Chapelle, which is, in fact, right next to the Conciergerie, as well as to the Paris courthouse (Palais de Justice, literally, Palace of Justice). The Sainte-Chapelle was constructed by Saint-Louis in the early 13th century, in order to house his relics, most notably (what was purportedly) the Crown of Thorns. After passing the heavy security check, and getting my (free!) ticket, I entered the Lower Chapel, in the midst of restored, and was quite impressed by the restored colors. I noticed that there was a staircase, and I investigated.
The staircase led to the Upper Chapel, which, when I entered, literally made my breath catch in my throat. I have never seen as beautiful stained-glass windows as those of the Sainte-Chapelle, which are absolutely bursting with color, thanks to the restorers' hard work. Each one of the main 14 windows depicts one or two books of the Bible, with the rose on the facade depicting the Apocalypse, and the window on the far end of the nave depicting the Passion. I peered at dozens upon dozens of panes, and had a great deal of difficulty making out what was what. People were seated in folding chairs along the walls; the room is chilly, but if one is dressed warmly enough (as I was), spending a half-hour or an hour just sitting with a friend or family member and looking at the stained glass together would be time well spent.
Before I sign off, I'll take a moment to mention my visit to the Lutetia Arenas, one of the relatively few remnants of Paris's Roman heritage (the Cluny Museum's frigidarium is another). We visited them two weeks ago; they aren't the Roman Colosseum, but they're legit, dating from the 1st century C.E. It's now a public park, more or less, and the clearing in the center is large enough for people to play pétanque, a French version of lawn-bowling, but too small for even little-league baseball. There are concerts held there occasionally, and you can still see the enclosures where animals (lions?) were kept. Nick and I had a debate over whether it would have been possible to escape; the walls are too high to leap up upon from the base of the arena, but it looks to me, anyway, to have scrabbled up the sides, if you were athletic (and desperate) enough. I'm not certain, though. In any case, the arenas are now being put to the good use of giving Parisian children a place to play.
~JD
"Les parlementaires sont donc plus indulgents que les juges de premiere instance. Mais leur attitude ne se modifie pas au cours du siecle: ils ne deviennent pas plus indulgents, a la difference de leurs collegues des juridictions sublaternes" [The members of the court of appeals were thus more indulgent then the trial judges. But their attitudes did not change in the course of the 18th century: they did not become more lenient, unlike their colleagues of subaltern jurisdictions] (Benoit Garnot, Crime et Justice aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siecles, p. 16).
Showing posts with label Saint-Louis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Saint-Louis. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Friday, November 11, 2011
Cluny Museum
The Cluny Museum is dedicated to the history and art of medieval Europe. The Cluny has collected some magnificent and sumptuous art objects originating from all over the western world: crowns, crosses, tryptics, stained-glass windows, seals, columns, etc. "Medieval" is a fairly fluid period -- there are some Gallo-Roman pieces from before the common era, and there are even some drinking vessels from the 17th century. I visited on the advice of my friend Guillaume, who told me that it was thanks to his visit to the Cluny that he began to appreciate and enjoy medieval history (note: the 1-euro audioguide isn't worth it).
I was amazed by the condition in which some of the pieces have been preserved: one of the first items is a room full of the stained-glass windows, commissioned by Henry the Liberal, count of Champagne (yes, that's his name), dating from the 12th and 13th centuries, from Troyes France. Something as fragile as a pane of glass has survived for over 800 years on this violent planet! The oldest pane depicted Saint Nicholas, but a slightly newer pane pictured Saint Martin giving his cloak to the beggar, a recurring motif in my voyages.
The Cluny Museum, formerly a hotel, is attached to the ruins of a Roman Bath, the frigidarium, which contained the cold baths. It was cold out, and the poorly-insulated ruins were appropriately frigid. The frigidarium is now the home of the pilier des nautes, a 1st-century pillar from Lutecia (Roman Paris), which might be the oldest Gallo-Roman artifact with a legible inscription (there's a nice photo of a reconstruction online). Depicting Jupiter, Vulcan, and some other deities, it was a gift to the emperor Tiberius (r. 14-37 C.E.).
Many of the artifacts were elegant and well-made, but far fewer were truly interesting. Occasionally, though, I found real pieces of history -- an ivory plaque depicting Christ blessing the marriage of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto II to the Byzantine princess Theophano (c. 982), the cheery-looking Apostle, depicted as a Greek philosopher, which once decorated the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris (c. 1240s); the very graceful angelic sculptures of Poissy commissioned by Phillip the Fair for his grandfather Saint Louis; the 7th-century votive crowns from Visigoth Spain; the large iron canister once used to measure the dîme (tithe) in France; the reliquary owned by Saint-Louis, in which he kept the relics from three other saints; the Jewish wedding ring from Italy; the tapestry depicting a grape-harvest; the manual of medieval combat techniques; etc. I recognized, from my first visit to the Louvre, the elaborate and unique style of the enameled work in gold from Limousin and Limoges, which was kind of cool.
No, I did not neglect the museum's most famous piece, wall hanging known as La Dame à la Licorne, or the "Lady with the Unicorn." The work comprises six 15th-century Lyonnais tapestries, each one with the same woman, in a garden full of animals and other symbols, among which is always a unicorn. The first five tapestries depict the five senses; the woman is variously depicted with a bowl of fruit, with a harp, with rich perfumes, etc., and for touch, she is stroking the neck of the unicorn. The tapestries, first of all, really are quite beautiful, rich with color, and uniting the medieval themes of the garden of love, the bestiary, and allegory; the backgrounds bear the "thousand flower" motif, popular in the later middle ages. One of the great mysteries of the ensemble, however, is the sixth tapestry; a young girl is presenting the woman with the necklace which she is seen wearing in the other five tapestries, and on a tent behind them is embroidered the device A mon seul desir, meaning "to my one desire." Is this supposed to represent some sort of sixth sense? If so, what? In the high middle ages, the notion of love as the sixth sense was quite popular, but in the Renaissance, intellect was regarded as a sort of sixth sense. Have an idea? Send it in to the Cluny Museum!
~JD
"Le maintien a tout prix de l'axe economique des foires de Champagne aux ports d'Aiguesmortes peut etre considere juque sous le regne de Philippe VI comme le fondment meme de ce qu'on peut des lor appeler la politique economique officielle" [The maintenance at all cost of the economic axis between the faires of Champagne and the ports of Aiguesmortes can be considered to be the very foundation of what one might call the official economic policy, up until the reign of Philip VI] (Robert-Henri Bautier).
I was amazed by the condition in which some of the pieces have been preserved: one of the first items is a room full of the stained-glass windows, commissioned by Henry the Liberal, count of Champagne (yes, that's his name), dating from the 12th and 13th centuries, from Troyes France. Something as fragile as a pane of glass has survived for over 800 years on this violent planet! The oldest pane depicted Saint Nicholas, but a slightly newer pane pictured Saint Martin giving his cloak to the beggar, a recurring motif in my voyages.
The Cluny Museum, formerly a hotel, is attached to the ruins of a Roman Bath, the frigidarium, which contained the cold baths. It was cold out, and the poorly-insulated ruins were appropriately frigid. The frigidarium is now the home of the pilier des nautes, a 1st-century pillar from Lutecia (Roman Paris), which might be the oldest Gallo-Roman artifact with a legible inscription (there's a nice photo of a reconstruction online). Depicting Jupiter, Vulcan, and some other deities, it was a gift to the emperor Tiberius (r. 14-37 C.E.).
Many of the artifacts were elegant and well-made, but far fewer were truly interesting. Occasionally, though, I found real pieces of history -- an ivory plaque depicting Christ blessing the marriage of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto II to the Byzantine princess Theophano (c. 982), the cheery-looking Apostle, depicted as a Greek philosopher, which once decorated the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris (c. 1240s); the very graceful angelic sculptures of Poissy commissioned by Phillip the Fair for his grandfather Saint Louis; the 7th-century votive crowns from Visigoth Spain; the large iron canister once used to measure the dîme (tithe) in France; the reliquary owned by Saint-Louis, in which he kept the relics from three other saints; the Jewish wedding ring from Italy; the tapestry depicting a grape-harvest; the manual of medieval combat techniques; etc. I recognized, from my first visit to the Louvre, the elaborate and unique style of the enameled work in gold from Limousin and Limoges, which was kind of cool.
No, I did not neglect the museum's most famous piece, wall hanging known as La Dame à la Licorne, or the "Lady with the Unicorn." The work comprises six 15th-century Lyonnais tapestries, each one with the same woman, in a garden full of animals and other symbols, among which is always a unicorn. The first five tapestries depict the five senses; the woman is variously depicted with a bowl of fruit, with a harp, with rich perfumes, etc., and for touch, she is stroking the neck of the unicorn. The tapestries, first of all, really are quite beautiful, rich with color, and uniting the medieval themes of the garden of love, the bestiary, and allegory; the backgrounds bear the "thousand flower" motif, popular in the later middle ages. One of the great mysteries of the ensemble, however, is the sixth tapestry; a young girl is presenting the woman with the necklace which she is seen wearing in the other five tapestries, and on a tent behind them is embroidered the device A mon seul desir, meaning "to my one desire." Is this supposed to represent some sort of sixth sense? If so, what? In the high middle ages, the notion of love as the sixth sense was quite popular, but in the Renaissance, intellect was regarded as a sort of sixth sense. Have an idea? Send it in to the Cluny Museum!
~JD
"Le maintien a tout prix de l'axe economique des foires de Champagne aux ports d'Aiguesmortes peut etre considere juque sous le regne de Philippe VI comme le fondment meme de ce qu'on peut des lor appeler la politique economique officielle" [The maintenance at all cost of the economic axis between the faires of Champagne and the ports of Aiguesmortes can be considered to be the very foundation of what one might call the official economic policy, up until the reign of Philip VI] (Robert-Henri Bautier).
Monday, October 24, 2011
A Night at the Museum, a Day at the Basilica
It's been hectic around here! I literally just finished the rough draft of the transcrip of my 25-minute oral expose on critiques of absolute monarchy on Montesquieu's Persian Letters (to be delivered on Wednesday), and still in the middle of my expose on the Ministry of Finance under Louis XIV.
But let's talk tourism: in the past week, I returned to the Louvre, and paid a visit to some French royalty.
Twice a week, the Louvre holds "nocturnes," where the galleries are open at night, until 10:00 p.m. As a "young friend of the Louvre," I'm allowed to bring a guest during these nights, and I invited my friend Sherif, who lives in my dorm. Sherif is a 22-year-old law student from Egypt; he is fluent in French, having been taught in French-language school, and wants to continue his studies in the U.S. He needs to practice his English, and I need to practice my French, so we alternated fairly freely between the two languages, changing whenever it felt right, during our several hours together. We took the RER (the train in Ile-de-France) and Metro north from the dorm, and, after getting a little bit turned around in the 1st arrondissement, found the Louvre.
In retrospect, the two exhibits we visited were well-chosen; the history of the Louvre itself (built by Philipe II, called Philipe-Auguste, contemporary of Richard the Lionheart), and Ancient Egypt. I know a little bit of French history, so I was in the position, for instance, to explain a little bit about Philipe-Auguste, Louis XIV, Napoleon I and III, Louis-Philippe, and the other actors we encountered. Sherif, meanwhile, is Egyptian, and could give me a wonderful description of life in ancient Egypt, of its pharaohs, its scribes, its musicians, and its builders.
In the middle of our stroll through historic models of Paris and the Louvre, Sherif posed me a question that could never be asked in the United States. We had been discussing how Napoleon I seized power, and how, just as in contemporary Egypt, whoever controls the army controls the state (elections officially scheduled for November, right?). Sherif asked me whether it was in the United States, France, or Great Britain that human freedom had been born. I was, well, taken aback. We're so self-critical of ourselves in the U.S. that any claim that America invented human liberty cannot be openly supported by any but the most ultra-patriotic, who are not to be found where I grew up. So I found myself, first of all, explaining how untenable this opinion was, how, because, for instance, the author of the Declaration of Independence was a large plantation owner who sexually abused his slaves and kept his unrecognized illegitimate children as slaves strikes many as hypocritical. Then, with promptings by Sherif, I found myself describing the histories of contemporary France (1789, jacobine republic, Napoleon I, restoration, July Monarchy, Napoleon III, Franco-Prussian War and Paris Commune, 3rd Republic, Vichy, 4th and 5th Republics) and Great Britain (Magna Charta, the Civil War and Cromwell, the Glorious Revolution, the neutralization of the House of Lords just around 1900, the slow decline in power of the monarchs), with a nod towards the U.S. Constitution. I didn't say all of this to show off, nor am I now listing everything for the purpose of flaunting my knowledge; what I'm trying to get at is how enormous a question Sherif asked, and how impossible it was for me to begin to explain why I couldn't answer it, because history simply is so complicated. He told me how much he enjoyed our conversation, so I thought that I did the right thing, but what would you have said if you had been in my place? Oh, and this was all in French...
By this time, we were several rooms into the Ancient Egyptian collections, and I told Sherif that it was his turn to speak, and mine to listen (he switched to English). It was my turn to relax, and listen to an enthusiast. He explained to me how obelisks were erected, for instance, with the help of the flood of the Nile, about the introduction of the chariot in Egypt, about scarabs, and about the origin of the "curse of the Pharaohs." Concerning this last matter, because Egypt's kings' tombs were provided with all the necessities of life, they had large stores of food, which, after several millennia, had long rotted. When early archaeologists opened the tombs, they immediately got hit in the face with 3000-year-old toxic effluvia. And despite all of the excavations, Egyptologists believe that they have only uncovered around 20% of ancient Egypt's treasures.
The Louvre guards began to close the doors on us, so we hurried out, and, with a little bit of searching, made it back to the Metro station. That night, it suddenly got cold in Paris, and I was still in my shorts (although I had grabbed my gloves before leaving). The next day, it was in the forties (low of 6 degrees Celsius, for you non-Americans), and I had my hood up and my gloves on in the Bibliotheque Saint-Genevieve.
Luckily, it was sunny for my Sunday excursion to the Basilique Saint-Denis, located north of Paris, as far as you can get from the city while still riding the Metro. It was a beautiful day, and I wanted to take advantage of the weather while it lasted, seeing as the basilica and its crypt get notoriously cold in the wintertime. I foolishly forgot my camera, so no FB photos; you'll have to imagine the basilica with me (or just search Google images for visual aids).
The basilica houses the necropolis of the kings of France; that is, it houses the bones of royal and noble families whom the modern state of France recognizes as French. Valerie, from EDUCO, had told me that Charlemagne was buried there; in fact, he isn't (he's in what's now Germany, in his old capital), but I did see several of my old friends, such as Francois I, who shares a prominent crypt with his queen, Claude de France; the crypt is decorated with Ionic columns, and was built under Henri II, in 1545. I saw Charles Martel and Pepin the Short, Carolingians, before descending into the Bourbon vault. Charles Martel was wearing a crown, holding a scepter, and wearing a royal cloak, just like all of the kings, even though he was never king in his lifetime -- he was Mayor of the Palace, meaning that he controlled everything, while the long-haired Merovingian king was nominal king of the Francs. Down among the Bourbons, one can find the preserved heart of Louis XIV alongside a fragment of Henri IV's body (which fragment is unspecified). As of 2004, Louis XVII's heart has also been on display (they wanted to verify that it was actually his). I could only think that the hearts were far more shriveled and unhealthy-looking than the sheep hearts that I handled in AP bio with Miss Gray, and even grayer and uglier than the crocodile hearts I had to understand in my Verts class at Cornell.
There is also an ossuary; behind two walls are a pair of caskets, with bones of various men and women with royal pretensions scrambled up inside. This, naturally, is not what is show to the public; instead, they are presented with a chronological list of all of the ossuary's residents, categorized by rank. There were enormous gaps in the chronology; for instance, the earliest bones were those of Dagobert (d. 638), Merovingian founder of the basilica; the next bones were those of Charles the Bald, Charlemagne's grandson, and thus a Carolingian, who died in 877. All of this disorder is the cause of the Revolution; during its more radical phase, the Revolutionary government disinterred all of the kings, in order to rid itself of all physical remnants of France's monarchical past. Although I believe in historical preservation ("that belongs in a museum!"), at the same time, I sympathize with the anti-royal cause. Can such a necropolis exist without engendering the illusion of the legitimacy of monarchy? Would I have visited the basilica if it had been filled with commoners rather than kings? Is this kind of history-by-political-leaders dangerous? Are palace intrigues, assassinations, and royal squabbles important to the study of history? But can we understand the past without some kind of a grasp of political leadership?
Ascending again, I found more royal propaganda, a pair of statues of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, commissioned during the Restoration of the monarchy, by Louis XVIII. Although the body in Louis XVI's coffin is a guillotined man, there is good reason to believe that the body is not that of Louis XVI; again, this is not written anywhere, and I know of it only by listening to one of the museum employees. There are a few more royal couples whom you may remember from my adventures in the Loire: Louis XII and Anne de Bretagne (married at the Chateau de Langeais, remember?), and Henri II and Catherine de Medicis. I also saw the tomb of Clovis, the Francish king who converted to Catholicism at the behest of his wife, around the year 500. Dagobert, called the founder of the basilica, received a rather special monument of his own, a fantastically-sculpted marble monolith depicting his soul, in the form of a naked baby wearing a crown and standing on a napkin, being presented before Christ. I really had to hunt to find the remains of Louis IX, a.k.a. Saint-Louis. Because he was canonized as a saint, his body was broken into tiny pieces, and sent to reliquaries around Europe; the basilica has retained the tip of one of his finger-bones, which has been placed in a chapel, rather than among the other royal tombs. Thanks to Professor Long's class on religious violence, I have read a section of the Compte de Joinville's account of Saint-Louis's failure of a seventh crusade in the late 13th century. Saint-Louis contributed greatly to the basilica, ordering a great deal of new tombs. He also initiated the burning of Talmud manuscripts (after a rigged trial between a rabbi and a formerly-Jewish monk, much resembling the Ramban's experience in Barcelona not too long afterwards), but, to his credit, he did found the Sorbonne, where I am studying.
Whew, I need to get to bed! I'm exhausted!
~JD
"Des 840, il est pratiquement impossible de retirer leurs honores aux fonctionnaires et le synode de Coullaines, en 843, officialise la pratique" [Since 840, it was practically impossible for the Carolingians to collect their royal land-revenues from their bureaucrats, and the 843 Synod of Coullaines made the practice the legal norm] (Jean-Philippe Genet, Le monde au Moyen Age, p. 57).
But let's talk tourism: in the past week, I returned to the Louvre, and paid a visit to some French royalty.
Twice a week, the Louvre holds "nocturnes," where the galleries are open at night, until 10:00 p.m. As a "young friend of the Louvre," I'm allowed to bring a guest during these nights, and I invited my friend Sherif, who lives in my dorm. Sherif is a 22-year-old law student from Egypt; he is fluent in French, having been taught in French-language school, and wants to continue his studies in the U.S. He needs to practice his English, and I need to practice my French, so we alternated fairly freely between the two languages, changing whenever it felt right, during our several hours together. We took the RER (the train in Ile-de-France) and Metro north from the dorm, and, after getting a little bit turned around in the 1st arrondissement, found the Louvre.
In retrospect, the two exhibits we visited were well-chosen; the history of the Louvre itself (built by Philipe II, called Philipe-Auguste, contemporary of Richard the Lionheart), and Ancient Egypt. I know a little bit of French history, so I was in the position, for instance, to explain a little bit about Philipe-Auguste, Louis XIV, Napoleon I and III, Louis-Philippe, and the other actors we encountered. Sherif, meanwhile, is Egyptian, and could give me a wonderful description of life in ancient Egypt, of its pharaohs, its scribes, its musicians, and its builders.
In the middle of our stroll through historic models of Paris and the Louvre, Sherif posed me a question that could never be asked in the United States. We had been discussing how Napoleon I seized power, and how, just as in contemporary Egypt, whoever controls the army controls the state (elections officially scheduled for November, right?). Sherif asked me whether it was in the United States, France, or Great Britain that human freedom had been born. I was, well, taken aback. We're so self-critical of ourselves in the U.S. that any claim that America invented human liberty cannot be openly supported by any but the most ultra-patriotic, who are not to be found where I grew up. So I found myself, first of all, explaining how untenable this opinion was, how, because, for instance, the author of the Declaration of Independence was a large plantation owner who sexually abused his slaves and kept his unrecognized illegitimate children as slaves strikes many as hypocritical. Then, with promptings by Sherif, I found myself describing the histories of contemporary France (1789, jacobine republic, Napoleon I, restoration, July Monarchy, Napoleon III, Franco-Prussian War and Paris Commune, 3rd Republic, Vichy, 4th and 5th Republics) and Great Britain (Magna Charta, the Civil War and Cromwell, the Glorious Revolution, the neutralization of the House of Lords just around 1900, the slow decline in power of the monarchs), with a nod towards the U.S. Constitution. I didn't say all of this to show off, nor am I now listing everything for the purpose of flaunting my knowledge; what I'm trying to get at is how enormous a question Sherif asked, and how impossible it was for me to begin to explain why I couldn't answer it, because history simply is so complicated. He told me how much he enjoyed our conversation, so I thought that I did the right thing, but what would you have said if you had been in my place? Oh, and this was all in French...
By this time, we were several rooms into the Ancient Egyptian collections, and I told Sherif that it was his turn to speak, and mine to listen (he switched to English). It was my turn to relax, and listen to an enthusiast. He explained to me how obelisks were erected, for instance, with the help of the flood of the Nile, about the introduction of the chariot in Egypt, about scarabs, and about the origin of the "curse of the Pharaohs." Concerning this last matter, because Egypt's kings' tombs were provided with all the necessities of life, they had large stores of food, which, after several millennia, had long rotted. When early archaeologists opened the tombs, they immediately got hit in the face with 3000-year-old toxic effluvia. And despite all of the excavations, Egyptologists believe that they have only uncovered around 20% of ancient Egypt's treasures.
The Louvre guards began to close the doors on us, so we hurried out, and, with a little bit of searching, made it back to the Metro station. That night, it suddenly got cold in Paris, and I was still in my shorts (although I had grabbed my gloves before leaving). The next day, it was in the forties (low of 6 degrees Celsius, for you non-Americans), and I had my hood up and my gloves on in the Bibliotheque Saint-Genevieve.
Luckily, it was sunny for my Sunday excursion to the Basilique Saint-Denis, located north of Paris, as far as you can get from the city while still riding the Metro. It was a beautiful day, and I wanted to take advantage of the weather while it lasted, seeing as the basilica and its crypt get notoriously cold in the wintertime. I foolishly forgot my camera, so no FB photos; you'll have to imagine the basilica with me (or just search Google images for visual aids).
The basilica houses the necropolis of the kings of France; that is, it houses the bones of royal and noble families whom the modern state of France recognizes as French. Valerie, from EDUCO, had told me that Charlemagne was buried there; in fact, he isn't (he's in what's now Germany, in his old capital), but I did see several of my old friends, such as Francois I, who shares a prominent crypt with his queen, Claude de France; the crypt is decorated with Ionic columns, and was built under Henri II, in 1545. I saw Charles Martel and Pepin the Short, Carolingians, before descending into the Bourbon vault. Charles Martel was wearing a crown, holding a scepter, and wearing a royal cloak, just like all of the kings, even though he was never king in his lifetime -- he was Mayor of the Palace, meaning that he controlled everything, while the long-haired Merovingian king was nominal king of the Francs. Down among the Bourbons, one can find the preserved heart of Louis XIV alongside a fragment of Henri IV's body (which fragment is unspecified). As of 2004, Louis XVII's heart has also been on display (they wanted to verify that it was actually his). I could only think that the hearts were far more shriveled and unhealthy-looking than the sheep hearts that I handled in AP bio with Miss Gray, and even grayer and uglier than the crocodile hearts I had to understand in my Verts class at Cornell.
There is also an ossuary; behind two walls are a pair of caskets, with bones of various men and women with royal pretensions scrambled up inside. This, naturally, is not what is show to the public; instead, they are presented with a chronological list of all of the ossuary's residents, categorized by rank. There were enormous gaps in the chronology; for instance, the earliest bones were those of Dagobert (d. 638), Merovingian founder of the basilica; the next bones were those of Charles the Bald, Charlemagne's grandson, and thus a Carolingian, who died in 877. All of this disorder is the cause of the Revolution; during its more radical phase, the Revolutionary government disinterred all of the kings, in order to rid itself of all physical remnants of France's monarchical past. Although I believe in historical preservation ("that belongs in a museum!"), at the same time, I sympathize with the anti-royal cause. Can such a necropolis exist without engendering the illusion of the legitimacy of monarchy? Would I have visited the basilica if it had been filled with commoners rather than kings? Is this kind of history-by-political-leaders dangerous? Are palace intrigues, assassinations, and royal squabbles important to the study of history? But can we understand the past without some kind of a grasp of political leadership?
Ascending again, I found more royal propaganda, a pair of statues of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, commissioned during the Restoration of the monarchy, by Louis XVIII. Although the body in Louis XVI's coffin is a guillotined man, there is good reason to believe that the body is not that of Louis XVI; again, this is not written anywhere, and I know of it only by listening to one of the museum employees. There are a few more royal couples whom you may remember from my adventures in the Loire: Louis XII and Anne de Bretagne (married at the Chateau de Langeais, remember?), and Henri II and Catherine de Medicis. I also saw the tomb of Clovis, the Francish king who converted to Catholicism at the behest of his wife, around the year 500. Dagobert, called the founder of the basilica, received a rather special monument of his own, a fantastically-sculpted marble monolith depicting his soul, in the form of a naked baby wearing a crown and standing on a napkin, being presented before Christ. I really had to hunt to find the remains of Louis IX, a.k.a. Saint-Louis. Because he was canonized as a saint, his body was broken into tiny pieces, and sent to reliquaries around Europe; the basilica has retained the tip of one of his finger-bones, which has been placed in a chapel, rather than among the other royal tombs. Thanks to Professor Long's class on religious violence, I have read a section of the Compte de Joinville's account of Saint-Louis's failure of a seventh crusade in the late 13th century. Saint-Louis contributed greatly to the basilica, ordering a great deal of new tombs. He also initiated the burning of Talmud manuscripts (after a rigged trial between a rabbi and a formerly-Jewish monk, much resembling the Ramban's experience in Barcelona not too long afterwards), but, to his credit, he did found the Sorbonne, where I am studying.
Whew, I need to get to bed! I'm exhausted!
~JD
"Des 840, il est pratiquement impossible de retirer leurs honores aux fonctionnaires et le synode de Coullaines, en 843, officialise la pratique" [Since 840, it was practically impossible for the Carolingians to collect their royal land-revenues from their bureaucrats, and the 843 Synod of Coullaines made the practice the legal norm] (Jean-Philippe Genet, Le monde au Moyen Age, p. 57).
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