Week Two of France: Connivance with Canadian Friars, Le Corbusier, Revisiting the Legacy of Cluny, Refusals, Jacobins, and Roses

Whew, that's quite the post title! If I'm going to keep seeing this many cloisters in one week, I may need to reconsider my current plan of making the title a tiny summary of the post itself. Too long! 

But it's also been a very long week! In a good way, but still. (And making a five-hour drive on Monday didn't help...I'm slightly baffled that my past self thought that my current self would like to drive for five hours and didn't plan any stops along the way. My past self is usually pretty reliable, but she messed up the Venice lodging reservations and planned a five-hour drive. I'm looking forward to finding out what else she has in store for me.)

If last week was a three-cloister week (well, technically a four-cloister week, if we're counting both of the cloisters at Saint-Pierre) this week has been a six-cloister week, although that number depends on if we count La Tourette as a cloister or not, which is a dubious proposition. (And whether or not the second half-cloister at Dax counts. So maybe we count that and La Tourette as each being 'half a cloister', and say it was a five-cloister week). But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Last Sunday was the biggest culprit for number of cloisters visited. When I was in Paris at the Couvent de l'Annonciation, the priest I was talking to mentioned that if I'm interested in the modern uses of cloisters (which I very much am, that's going to be a main part of my thesis topic) I should go to the couvent in Lyon, which the friars use very regularly. While Lyon was not on my itinerary, I realized that it's only about two hours away from Paray-le-Monial, which was on my itinerary, and resolved to go there for Mass on Sunday and see if I could sneak into the cloister (as I hadn't been in touch with any of the friars there). 

I kind of think that something like that wouldn't usually work, but in this case, somehow it worked out perfectly. I realized during Mass that the cloister opens right off of the church and that parents were actually sending their kids out into it to get their wiggles out. I figured I could probably go into it, too, but that it would be better to ask permission first, just in case. And I was glad I did! Providentially, the Dominican I ran into on the steps of the church was from Ottawa and spoke very fluent English. He was just visiting the community in Lyon, but he told me "Just go and do your work in the cloister, and if anyone asks you, tell them I told you it was alright for you to be there! If there's fallout from that, I'll deal with it later." Incredibly kind! He then came and chatted with me about my research for several minutes, and told me about the cloister that the community in Ottawa has. I was glad that I had gotten his permission because no fewer than two other Dominicans came in while I was sketching, taking notes, and photographing and asked me what I was doing in a private area! But as soon as I said "Fr. so-and-so told me I could be here!" they were fine with it. 

And the cloister there was fascinating! It's an excellent example of asymmetry within symmetry (I think...a bit more analysis is needed. I was trying to take notes quickly and get out of there so that I didn't irritate the Dominicans too much, haha.) 

As I was driving back from the couvent in Lyon, I passed the sign for the turnoff to La Tourette, and decided "what's there to lose?" turned around, and headed up there. La Tourette is a Dominican couvent which was designed by the famous architect Le Corbusier. It's in what I believe is the brutalist style (I'm not an expert in architectural styles, sorry! I'm only just learning to tell Gothic, Romanesque, and Baroque apart, I haven't gotten to brutalist yet), and was designed and implemented in the middle of the 20th century. It also happens to have been Le Corbusier's last project. It was originally designed to be the studium (house of studies) for the southern Dominican Province in France, and was used as such for a while, but isn't anymore.

It's also one of the most hideous religious buildings I have ever seen in my life. In its favor, I will say that from the inside, the views of the countryside and the town below are quite beautiful, and the framing of those views is creative. Also, the use of color and texture within the building is really clever, especially the texturing of the concrete. I think I would actually admire it quite a lot if it wasn't meant to be a religious complex. However. When one purposely sets out to denude a religious building (like a church) of all religious symbolism (as was allegedly Le Corbusier's purpose) I think one is missing the point. And it makes me rather frustrated.

However, I think it'll be a really useful point of comparison with some of the other cloisters, because while it has an open space in the middle (and is constructed on a relatively square plan) that open space doesn't function like a cloister in many respects. It was making me think about passive vs. active functions of a cloister, which I think will be a fruitful analysis path to pursue. 

After my stop-off at La Tourette, I just barely made it back to Paray-le-Monial before the Basilica closed. The Basilica (properly the Basilica of the Sacred Heart) is not related to Dominicans in any meaningful way, but it is meant to be a tiny model of Cluny, and since that's pertinent to the comparative/Benedictine side of my research, I thought it would be a good place to visit. (And I was in Paray-le-Monial anyway.) 

The cloister was in some ways interesting and in some ways disappointing. The structure of it as a sunken garden--rather than being at the level of the cloister walk--was interesting, although one can still access the garden from the cloister walk, unlike at the Couvent de l'Annonciation. Additionally, there was a well in the middle, which I am hoping to investigate the originality of. However, it had recently been redone in a "let's use this cloister to teach you about medieval plant uses" sort of way, which is manifestly unhelpful in terms of authenticity (not that most of the gardens I'm seeing are 'authentic' to a medieval cloister garden, but I'd like them to at least not pretend that they are) because herbs and other useful plants would not have been planted in most cloister gardens. They would have been in the herb garden, as is right and just. 

As for the refusals in the title...I had been hoping to investigate the Monastery of the Holy Rosary and the Sacred Heart in Paray-le-Monial, which is home to some cloistered Dominican Sisters, but when I went, Sister Portress told me that if I came back the next day I could talk to the Prioress about it, but today wouldn't work. And that was the day I was driving five hours to Toulouse, so that wouldn't work. 

Additionally, I wanted to see the Dominican Monastery in Lourdes, but after walking half an hour up from the town to their (rather rural, with sheep!) monastery, I was told "absolutely not" and sent back down to the town. I didn't mind that--it was a really lovely two days in Lourdes even without getting to see the cloister, although I felt a bit superfluous. 

I also was hoping to visit the current Dominican Couvent in Toulouse, and emailed Father Prior about it, but he said it was too busy of a time for them, with end-of-year academic things. Which is fine! I did go to Mass there in the hopes of sneaking into the cloister like I did at Lyon, but that didn't work out. (I was trying to honor Father Prior's statements, so I didn't exercise my full sneaking powers.) 

What I did get to see in Toulouse, though, is the Couvent des Jacobins, the Dominican couvent from before the Revolution, which has a really beautiful cloister, with pleasingly regular plantings. (I think it's my first completely regularly planted cloister, which says a lot.) 

One of my favorite things about that particular cloister is that it had a ruined fountain house! These are the kind of nerdy things I get excited about. If anyone reading this is considering a career in landscape architecture, beware...you'll end up going on and on about fountain houses. Maybe. 
The tradition of having a fountain house in the cloister, according to my research so far, originated with the Cistercians, who would have it often in the center of the side of the cloister closest to the refectory, so that the monks could wash up there before going to dinner. At some point either it migrated to being in the corner or I'm misremembering and it was always in the corner (a point to resolve at a later date, when I'm not in media res), but it's something that apparently ended up being in some Dominican cloisters as well. (I'm not shocked--the Cistercians had a fairly profound influence on Dominican architecture.) 
But the thing that made me so nerdily excited about this particular fountain house was that all that remained of it was the floor--basically, there was a paved octagonal bit in one corner of the cloister that didn't match the rest of the cloister. It took me a couple of minutes to realize what it was, but once I did, I felt like I had successfully won a treasure hunt. Interestingly, it also looks like the fountain house used to be the only entrance to the actual garden part of the cloister...the metaphorical possibilities for analysis are endless. 

The last cloister (or last two cloisters) I got to see belong to the Dominican Monastery in Dax--the Monastery of St. Dominic. The sisters there welcomed me enthusiastically--their superior (Prioress) actually picked me up at the train station! And she's actually been to Seattle, to my home parish there, and was telling me all about that. A connection I definitely wasn't expecting! 

Their true cloister is an interesting one--their Prioress tells me it's the "most beautiful in France", and I would tend to believe her! It's quite large, with lots of flowers around the edges, and instead of a four-square orientation, it's divided in two, although it still has a central fountain-type structure, as I've come to expect. Interestingly, it also has a separate fish pond underneath a bell towner (very cool!) with a palm tree opposite. It feels "heavy" in one direction with the bell tower and palm tree on that side--a bit unbalanced. The same (or similar) sort of tree makes up the central cluster of four trees around the central square of the garden as in the Couvent des Jacobins. The fact that most of the trees I've found in cloisters so far have been very thin and upright should make good fodder for analysis and thought. I'm starting to think that I've bitten off a bit more than I can chew with this thesis... in a good way! 

They have another "half-cloister" that welcomes guests, which I'm also planning on analyzing (although I'm writing this post before I do so, for reasons that are more and more unclear to me--I'm probably procrastinating) because although there are only two sides of an arcade around it, there is an arcade, and it's also in a four-square orientation. It's actually rather similar to the three-sided cloister at Saint-Pierre, although more open. It was recently redone by a local landscape architect, who tried to put in an African grass species, only to have it be the coldest and wettest spring in years. The resultant crop of weeds is the despair of the sisters, but they're hoping to get new grass seed planted this autumn. However, the redo was definitely more faithful to the spirit of cloister gardens in general than, say, the cloister at the Couvent de l'Annonciation, so I think that even though it's not complete, nor in the cloister, per se, it will provide a good point of comparison. 

As my time in France draws to a close, too, a few reflections on my time here... 

I've really enjoyed travelling through France for the two weeks I've been here, much more than I expected. Part of that is that I've done better with understanding French than I expected. If you had asked me, before I came, how much French I expected to understand, I would have told you zero spoken French, and maybe a tiny bit of written French. As it is, after two weeks here, I'm getting about 60-70% of written French, and 30-50% (depending on the situation) of spoken French! Enough to get the outlines of a conversation, understand what's going on, &c! Of course, that takes quite a bit of concentration, and it wears my brain down very quickly, and I still can't speak French, but it's something. I'm looking forward to getting to Spain, where I actually sorta kinda speak the language.

I attribute this rather remarkable 'language acquisition' to my four years of Latin in high school, and my Spanish studies, but I also think that I pick up language more naturally than others do, perhaps? It also helps that I'm going to Catholic Mass nearly every day. The Mass is nearly the same in every language, so since I have many parts of it memorized in English (and Latin), I can follow along in French, and it's a good way to pick up vocabulary and grammar. 

Okay, also, on a lighter note, French tacos are absurd but delicious. I had one in Toulouse that was ground beef, fries (pommes frites), goat cheese, carmelized onions, barbeque sauce, and ketchup, and it was one of the most delicious things I've ever eaten in my entire life. 

With that, I'll bid you adieu, and see you next week!