“I am the bread of life...."

The dubious sculpture

You have to wonder what the sculptor of the statue pictured above was thinking.  Was it really just a case of not thinking things through, a tremendous case of oversight -- or was it a jab at the Catholic Church's pedophilia cover-ups?  Or merely a childish joke?

 

Covered up, eh?  As for reality being the metaphor, you can't get much better.  When the statue was installed, students at the school immediately  saw the humor in it, taking pics and posting them on Instagram.  The school wrote a note of apology explaining the situation (above) and then covered it up until a solution can be found.  I'm sure the Blackfriars Priory School is loving all the attention.

The cover up.

It's kind of a shame, really, because the Saint depicted, St. Martin de Porres (1579-1639), seems like a pretty decent fellow, known for a genuine commitment to the poor, having established both an orphanage and a children's hospital.

Born in Lima, Peru, he was the illegitimate child of a nobleman and a freed slave.  Though an unusually devout child, his mixed race prevented him from fully joining a religious order.  But when the Prior ignored the law due to Martin's unflagging dedication to healing the sick and caring for the poor, he was allowed to take vows as a member of the Third Order of Saint Dominic.  Unfortunately, not all the monks were as open-minded as the prior, and he suffered insults and harassment from his new "brothers".

There are several anecdotes that attest to his humanity: bringing an old man covered with ulcers to his own bed, saying that "Compassion, my dear Brother, is preferable to cleanliness" when he was criticized by a dubious brother.  Another time he was reprimanded by the Prior for bringing a dying Indian to his room and he responded "Forgive my error, and please instruct me, for I did not know that the precept of obedience took precedence over that of charity."  Zing!  St. Martin had certainly learned the true meaning behind Jesus rebuking the Pharisees when they criticized him for healing on the Sabbath.  He was thereafter given liberty to do as as wanted when it came to merciful acts.

There are reports he cured the sick merely by giving someone a glass of water, and that during an epidemic he worked tirelessly, even walking through locked doors into quarantined areas.  His alms could feed up to 160 people a day.  Other miracles have him levitating in ecstasy, light filling rooms as he prayed, a remarkable rapport with animals (he was a vegetarian), miraculous knowledge, instantaneous cures, and my favorite, bilocation.

Because of the miracles that occurred when he was invoked in prayer, his body was exhumed 25 years after his death.  His body was said to be incorrupt and to have given off a sweet fragrance.  Numerous pleas were sent to Rome for his beatification, and though his works were eventually recognized as heroic, he wasn't beatified until 1837.  He was made a saint in 1962.  He's often shown carrying a broom to symbolize his belief that all work was holy and he is also sometimes pictured with a dog, cat and mouse drinking from the same bowl, symbolizing peace.

He is the patron saint of mixed-race people, barbers, innkeepers, public health workers, and those seeking racial harmony.  His feast Day is November 3.  In Santeria he is venerated as Papa Candelo.

The Adelaide Blackfriars probably wanted to unveil something nice for Saint Martin's saint day, but unfortunately they, erm, blew it.

St. Fris: Photos at last!

For a tiny little town (pop. 391) just a few klicks away from the middle of nowhere, I've managed to pass through Bassoues three times in the last 15 or so years.  The first time, I was astonished to come across a statue of what appeared to be a soldier (shield, raised sword, spear) who turned out to be Saint.  This was St. Fris, a supposed nephew of Charles Martel, who led a small band of Franks to repulse a Saracen invasion at this very spot.

St. Fris holds a certain fascination for me because he was my introduction to the world of folk saints.  These are highly localized, their real names often unknown, their very existence quite often doubtful.  Their legends, however, often share mythical elements not only with each other, but with more well-known religious figures.  The hagiography of St. Fris, for example, shares details with St. James, of Compostela fame, in that after his death, his body was somehow miraculously encased in rock.

From within this rock, a spring appeared, with miraculous healing properties.  We see the same story at Rocamadour, with the legends of Saints Quiteria and Liberata; with the majority of what are known as Black Madonnas; with the hermit Dadon, who after his "furtive translation" (i.e. theft) of Saint Foy's remains, struck the ground with his staff and voila!  H²O!  The same story is found at Covadonga, in Asturias, in the story of Pelagius, who in 722 is said to have pretty much kicked off the Reconquista.

So, despite being a figure with an extremely limited geographical domain, he is nonetheless endowed with the powers over the forces necessary for the survival of what Julian Barnes calls the Ultimate Peasant: water, health, protection from attackers.  St. Fris is pretty much limited to the Gers:  he saturates Bassoues; there's a small cult at Vic-Fezensac (a town with a strong connection to another local element of folklore: the bull); and a small shrine at the cathedral in Auch.  Fris isn't even his real name; the legend states that when his uncorrupt body emerged from a rock being licked away as if it were salt, no one knew his name, so they called him St. Fris after his familial connection to the Frisian Islands. 

I recall being happily surprised in Asturias when I came across two hamlets, one dedicated to St. Sernin, and, more surprisingly, the "Saintes Puelles" (here called "Pueyes -- the Argentine "ll" and "y" share the same "zh" pronunciation so the changed spelling is fonetickly the same).  I mention this because I wonder if somewhere along the St James Way we can find either a hamlet named after Fris, or a chapel; would you give me a bust in a basilica maybe?

Anyhow, third time's a charm because as I recounted in a previous post, I never managed to get some photos in my first two visits.

So, without further ado, I present thee with the photographs:

This first is typical of regional architecture, thick walls of rough-hewn stone; small, round widows; often asymmetric facade; a single tower; spare to zero ornamentation.

St. Fris Basilica

St. Fris shrine at l’Étendard hill

This shrine is located at the site where St. Fris allegedly planted his flagpole/spear in the ground, his line in the sand, and with a rousing "into the breach" pep talk, rallied his troops to defeat a rear-guard of Moors as they fled south after being routed at Poitiers.

There's a cinematic quality to the story of St. Fris; it could make a good film.  St. Fris rallies his men and defeats the Moors, but one last arrow, let loose by a young, embittered hothead finds its mark and strikes the young champion.

Lakeside chapel dedicated the St. Fris

Fris' horse, suddenly without guidance, bolts, the dying Fris slumped in the saddle, bouncing brutally as the horse flees in terror.  It comes to a spot near a river.  The corpse of the young hero falls to the ground, is encased in rock and lays undisturbed for centuries, until a cow, licking away at the rock, reveals St Fris, apparently still magnificently mustachioed, for all representation of the saint feature long, Asterix-like facial-hair.

The chapel itself is unremarkable and also typical of the region. Unfortunately one cannot see inside.  The S.F. monogram under the bell is a nice touch.

Lakeside chapel: facade

Finally, here's a photo of the scared spring with reputed healing powers.

 

Sacred spring: St. Fris chapel

So basically, since the Middle Ages, pilgrims came specifically to see the relics of St. Fris or visited on their way to Compostela (probably this is what accounts for the legend that Fris' body, like that of St. James, was encased in stone).  Pilgrims would ether drink or bathe in these waters for their reputed healing powers, but it wasn't until 1890 that the village priest, one Abbé Blajan, had the chapel built and (not pictured), a small bathhouse where numerous miracles have been reported.

I can think of half a dozen similar fountains within a short distance from my home.  In my village the fountain was reputedly best for fevers and stomach troubles.  Dedicated to John the Baptist, the current rude structure is only made of mud but has stood since 1713 on the site of a much more ancient chapel.  In at least two neighboring villages there are chapels with healing springs.  All of these are positioned along the local tendrils of the St. James Way that converge upon St. Jean-Pied-le-Port, both the beginning of the "French Road" to Santiago and the last stop in France before pilgrims cross the Pyrenees to arrive at Roncevalles.

So, finally LoS has some photos from my own telephone to illustrate the places where St. Fris was struck and where his body came to rest.  I made a longish detour on my return journey after three-plus days on the St. James Way, following the same route as millions of pilgrims before me.

St. Fris was the nephew of Charles Martel, who in 732 had defeated the Moors at Poitiers.  As the Moorish army fled, their rear guard encountered a small group of Franks led by Fris; his legend is thus directly tied to the battle which is said to have stopped the until-then indefatigable advance of the Moors into Europe.

Ironically, later battles had Charlemagne, Martel's grandson, and thus Fris' cousin, allied with the Moorish Wali of Barcelona and Girona to combat his rivals in the Iberian peninsula.  The Wali received military aid and Charlemagne saw an opportunity to shore up his power and strengthen the Christian position in general.  In 778 Charlemagne was dealt his only military defeat at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass as his rear-guard was ambushed by Basques in revenge for Charlemagne's attack on Pamplona, a Basque capital, during his adventures in the Basque Country.  Fris' encounter reverses the roles, some wishful thinking to clean up an otherwise spotless military record.

In 824 a second battle occurred, where a combined Basque and Muslim army defeated a Carolingian expeditionary force.  Lots of shifting alliances, no?  The Carolingians had gone to quash a rebellion in that pesky Pamplona and met no resistance.  However, marching back with plunder, they were ambushed at Roncevaux pass and soundly defeated, much like Charlemagne 46 years prior.  The Basques were the true victors here, for the battle led directly to the establishment of the independent Kingdom of Pamplona.

So, though Fris's tale is probably a fiction, there is a possible historical basis for the story.

For the rest of St. Fris' hagiography, read my original post.

The Order of St. Hubertus (and other assorted Bavarians and Bohemians)

Screen shot of IOSH homepage

Back in 2011 I made a facetious post about "evil Masonic braumeisters".  A little jest to be sure, but strangely prophetic.  Five years on and we're in a bit of a constitutional tizzy over how to best go about replacing our recently-deceased Supreme Court Justice.  Doesn't look like the congressional Republicans are going to budge and will block any Obama nominee until he's out of office and can no longer press the issue.

We'll get to the fraternities and alcohol in a minute.

Scalia died at what appears to have been a meeting (perhaps merely informal), of the Order of St. Hubert, an aristocratic order of hunters founded by one Count Anton von Sporck in 1695, a man who is also said to have dabbled in Freemasonry.  The order promotes hunting and sportsmanlike conduct, in addition to respecting animals and minimizing their suffering; responsible hunters, in other words.  These are teachings handed down by their namesake.

Reading about St. Hubert (656-727 CE), I came across a passage about the vision he had one Good Friday; he'd skipped Church to go hunting, a pursuit in which he'd become immersed after the death of his wife.  He had retired from the world to hunt.

Chasing a stag (or hart) on that day, he was astounded to see it stop and turn towards him; a glowing crucifix appeared between its antlers and a voice said to him:  "Hubert, unless thou turnest to the Lord, and leadest an holy life, thou shalt quickly go down into hell". Hubert dismounted, prostrated himself and said, "Lord, what wouldst Thou have me do?" He received the answer, "Go and seek Lambert, and he will instruct you."

Hubert then sought out Lambert, Bishop of Maastricht, becoming his protege and successor.  Hubert embarked upon a life of piety and evangelism, becoming Bishop of Liège in 708 CE.  He laid down several principles for ethical hunting and wildlife management that are still highly-regarded among German-speaking hunters to this day.  He generally seems to have been a decent fellow and died peacefully in 727.

Drive Dull Care away with some Jäger shots

Hubert's vision of the hart made me think of the Jägermeister label; which I've been meaning to use in a post for years.  Finally the opportunity has arisen.  The Jäger label is indeed a reference to St. Hubert's vision.

But it does not only honor St. Hubert.  The label also represents the vision of St. Eustace, another patron of hunters.  Even the church says that Eustace is probably a spurious figure, as no evidence proves he ever existed, but his legend has become mixed with that of Hubert. 

This legend has it that Eustace was a Roman general.  Once, out hunting, he had a vision of a crucifix between a stag's antlers under pretty much the same circumstances as Hubert.  It seems Eustace's cult pre-existed that of Hubert, but it's possible they both have pre-Christian antecedents.  The stag (or hart, or hind) makes many appearances in various pagan mythologies.

According to the legend, after his vision Eustace converted to Christianity and baptized his family.  Eustace then went through a series of Job-like misfortunes, yet he always remained steadfast in his faith.  His patience served him well, for a time.  He was eventually restored to his position and reunited with his family.  But like many early Christians, the occasion arose where he refused to sacrifice to a pagan altar and thus he set the chain of events into motion that would lead to his martyrdom.  In this case he and his family were roasted to death inside a giant bronze bull (or ox) in 118 CE.

The refusal to sacrifice before a pagan altar is a common theme in the hagiographies of these early Christian martyrs.  St. Sernin of Toulouse (Hubert's birthplace) refused a pagan sacrifice and was killed by being tied to a bull (or ox) and dragged down the street until his head cracked open.  This road is now called the Rue du Taur and the site of his original tomb is a small church called Notre Dame du Taur.  The Matabiau quarter of Toulouse also takes it's name from this event and the big bell in a Toulouse-style carillon is known as the "big bull".

Anyway, Curt Mast, original distiller of Jägermeister, was an avid hunter and so named his drink appropriately; Jägermeister translates to "Hunting Master", a title familiar to Germans for centuries.

When the Nazis reformed the hunting laws in 1934 "Jägermeister" was applied to senior foresters, game wardens, and gamekeepers.  Hermann Göring, who was a particularly active hunter, was appointed Reichsjägermeister at that time, so when the drink was introduced in 1935, some people called it "Göring-Schnaps."  In addition to being an avid hunter, Mast was a local politician and joined the NSDAP on May Day, 1933.  He claimed it was political opportunism and a way to help his fragile business (he was never prosecuted after the war), but Mast did become pals with Göring, probably bonding over hunting. (source)

Now here's something I've just read and had already suspected:

Some historians have noted that Hitler and Göring’s hunting regulations actually had little to do with concerns for animal welfare and were merely part of a concerted attack upon the German aristocracy. Hitler and Göring had a dream of giving each of the Jägermeisters their own private hunting grounds as a symbol of their position of privilege within the Reich. Curt Mast became a Jägermeister and organised hunting parties for leading Nazi dignitaries at the Reichsjägerhof, Göring’s hunting lodge. Sensing an opportunity to rebuild his business interests on the back of his association with the new hunting fraternity, Mast re-branded the herbal liqueur that his company produced as the official drink of the hunt. (boldface added)

Göring's relationship to the Order of St. Hubert bears this speculation out:

In 1938, after Austria was absorbed by the German Reich, Herman Göring demanded membership on the Order [sic] and executed the Grand Prior when he was denied. At the end of the World War surviving members of the Order, were authorized by Halvor O. Ekern, chief political adviser of the US Armed Forces in Austria to use their sporting guns to provide winter food to the rural population, avoiding not only famine but helping to save the country from falling behind the Iron Curtain. (source)

The Order was Restituted on May 1st 1950 by Albert Franz Messany at the request of Chancellor Figi of Austria. In order to better reflect its new multi-national character it was redesignated as International Order of St. Hubertus.

Reichsjägermeister Hermann Göring --
1937 Hunting Exposition in Berlin

I wonder if  "helping to save the country" meant using their sporting rifles for more than hunting.  Could they have been re-armed in order to fight the Communists?  The aristocracy had a lot to lose to both the Communists as with the Nazis before them....

Despite the Nazi's attacks on the aristocracy and the apparent sympathy of Curt Mast, the hunting ethics espoused by Jägermeister, the Order of St. Hubert, and the Nazi reforms all kind of match.  There is an un-credited verse from a poem by outdoorsman Oskar von Riesenthal (1830–1898) on each bottle which the company translates as:

It is the hunter’s honour that he
Protects and preserves his game,
Hunts sportsmanlike, honours the
Creator in His creatures.

This is very much the same creed as the Order of St. Hubertus: "Honoring God by Honoring His Creatures". Jägermeister, as the story goes, was intended to go with "a toast with which every hunt would begin and end."

The symbolism of Hubert, patron of hunters is reproduced in the crests of various German hunting clubs to this day.  Thus it is so with the Deutsches Jägerverein, the Nazi-era German hunting organization.  Interesting how the swastika has replaced the cross.

http://www.rzmilitaria.com/viewitem.php?id=10066

Göring apparently took his role as Jägermeister seriously and sincerely threw himself into the reforms of German hunting laws.  This page shows a collector's one-of-a-kind Deutsches Jägerverein collar pin, custom-made for Göring himself, a collar pin with the antler/swastika motif we see on the flag above.  Göring posed for a painting wearing this collar pin and in his Jägermeister uniform, and this painting of him appeared on the covers of both Time and Life, in 1940 and 1939, respectively.

If Göring took his role this seriously, imagine his fury when he was refused membership in the Order of St. Hubert.  Furious enough to execute the prior, apparently.  This really is a medieval saga.  Whatever else you want to say about the Order, that their leader would die rather than admit Göring speaks volumes about their attitude towards the Nazis.  This was a microcosm of the tensions and conflicts in Nazi Germany, the uneasy relationship between the old aristocrats, the Church, and the Party.  Although anti-Bolshevism united them, the old guard must have resented this new Nazi power structure and the Church certainly couldn't have been happy with seeing a swastika replace the cross; this wasn't just a question of the hunting clubs.  It also reminds me that assassination attempts on Hitler were organized by aristocrats within the Army; Clause von Stauffenberg was one of the last conspirators, but a quick glance at the list of assassination attempts on Hitler between 1940 and 1944 -- and there are quite a few -- show that most were organized by members of the aristocracy, after the war began.  Before the war, there were also a few attempts on Hitler's life, but these did not seem to implicate the aristocracy.

I'm betting that when it was "restituted" in 1950, those Americans invited to join the Order of St. Hubert were neck deep in de-Nazification and anti-Communist activities.  Just a hunch.  Ambassadors, Generals, and "others", including the George Wood who established the American branch at the Bohemian Club in 1968.  It would be interesting to see what other groups the Order has links to, either within the arcane labyrinth of Catholic lay orders (Knights of Malta, Knights of Columbus, Opus Dei, the Jesuits....) or factions or within the intelligence community.

Something about that period between the Order's dissolution by the Nazis and their Postwar rebirth intrigues me.  A group of powerful men which spread out to include Americans at the highest levels of the Postwar occupation.  It seems a bit strange that five years after the war's end, ambassadors and generals were joining the clubs of their recent enemies, and 16 years later creating an American chapter at the site of the most elite group of men in America, the Bohemian Club.

What intrigues me in this context about the Bohemian Club (despite the name -- remember the Order is of Bohemian origin) is its tangential connection to another German organization called the Schlaraffia.  It would appear that a number of American elite groups have their roots in German culture.

The Schlaraffia is a fraternal society founded in Prague (Bohemia) in 1859.  It is a German-speaking club founded by people much like the founders of the Bohemian Club, people involved in the arts and theater.  Like the Bohemian Club, their symbol is an owl and their philosophy is one of fun; once stepping into their "castle", they remind themselves to leave dull care outside.  The Bohemian Club was founded in 1879 and we know the Schlaraffia existed in San Francisco in 1884.  Is it possible that they are connected, that the Bohemian Club was inspired by the Schlaraffia?  The latter conduct their meetings in German, so perhaps the B.C. was created to make a more accessible organization?  (I'd be remiss not to point out that Terry Melanson first made me aware of these connections).

I almost feel apologetic bringing it up, but I'd also like to mention the Skull and Bones, founded at Yale in 1832 by William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft (father of the future president and no small shakes himself).

Skull and Bones doings are largely unknown, but there is talk of a rebirth initiation ritual which involves the candidate lying in a coffin and recounting their sexual history.  There are photos of Bohemian Grove encampments where a similar ritual is enacted, a man lying in a coffin-shaped array of candles prayed over by robed figures.  This rebirth ritual is a fairly well-known element in various Masonic Rites.  The Schlaraffia has three grades, which also brings to mind Masonic organization.  What interests me here though, is that like the Order of St. Hubert, the Schlaraffia, and the Bohemian Club, the Skull and Bones has a connection to the German-speaking world.  Founder Wm. Russell allegedly got his idea for the Skull and Bones after returning from a trip to Germany, where quasi-Masonic secret societies were quite popular, some of which are said to have modeled themselves on the Illuminati (a group I have purposefully avoided in my writings on this topic thus far).  The Bavarian Illuminati was founded in 1776 at Ingolstadt, about 360 KM from Prague, basically a stone's throw from Bohemia.

Interestingly, there is another order, The Bavarian Order of Saint Hubert, a Roman Catholic dynastic order of knighthood founded in 1444 or 1445 to commemorate a victory on Saint Hubert's day.  There doesn't appear to be a connection to this order and the International Order of St. Hubertus, despite the name, but if we're looking to complete a Bavarian/Bohemia axis, I suppose there's value in following up on this.  St. Hubert was in fact the patron saint not only of hunters, but soldiers as well, which is logical.  At least one historical military unit used the horns and cross imagery:  the Royal Bavarian Jäger Regiment Nr. 1 (again with the Bavarians!). Jäger units were elite light infantry and the word in this sense can translate to "Ranger", which has the sense of both the US Army's elite units and forest rangers.  Think Aragorn in Lord of the Rings: aristocrat, woodsman, badass soldier, Ranger.  The first Jäger units were indeed recruited from gamekeepers, hunstmen, and foresters, people with both a knowledge of the woods and firearms, and who were also closely linked to the aristocracy who appointed them.  The first units of this type were formed in 1632 in Hesse-Kassel and in the modern German army the term is still used for elite Special Forces.

Crest of the 1st and 2nd Battalions and the 2nd  Reserve Battalion - Royal Bavarian Jäger Regt. 1

So, a lot of elements to ponder.  My German history is piss-poor, so I have probably missed some interesting connections someone else might have easily picked up on.  I did, however, think of one other thing, which is almost embarrassing to include; but what the Hell....

The Church of Satan has a rebirth ritual involving sexual rites and a coffin, called the Ceremony of the Stifling Air. Anton LaVey obviously cribbed his work from pre-existing Masonic Rites (like he cribbed everything in the Satanic Bible, from John Dee to Ayn Rand and Ragnar Redbeard).  Interesting time the 60's, especially 1966 (666 get it?); the same year George Wood was appointed Grand Prior, Anton LaVey launched the Church of Satan, on April 30th, which in the occult world goes by the German name of Walpurgisnacht....

Which brings me back to the question....who the f--k is George Wood?

Be there with bells shells on

Conques as seen from St. Roch Chapel

Conques is a little village in the Aveyron whose greatest claims to fame are the relics of Sainte Foy and the monastery which grew wealthy around them.  This is a tiny town, yet it boasts a large and magnificent basilica in the Romanesque style, well-maintained and in a context so picturesque you may begin to wonder where the film crew is hiding.  In French -- as in English -- the word conque means shell and is descended from the Latin concha.  I giggle at this because in Argentina the concha refers to the female genitalia. My wife says it all the time when she's pissed off at say, an olive jar she can't open: "¡La concha de la lora!" Which literally means "The (female) parrot's shell!" but really means "Cunt of a whore!"  It's used where an American might say "God fucking damn it!" or some such.  Why not?

The metaphor is more clear when seen

When you see a conch, with its flesh tones and here smooth/there bumpy texture, not to mention the overall form, it's clear from whence the metaphor arrives.  Shell metaphors are not entirely lost in English, either: surely you've heard of the bearded clam?  It's not strictly feminine, for that matter.  A pair of masculine accouterments, depending on the region, can be referred to as "mountain oysters."  Curiously, there actually is a Modiolus barbatus, or "bearded mussel."  It is also known as the "horse mussel" or (getting so clever here) the "bearded horse mussel."  In any event, this isn't some term of modern perversion; the shell's connection with the vajayjay is of ancient provenance.

According to legend, Conques (Concas in Occitan) was named by its founder, a hermit named Dadon, who thought that the hills encircling the village resembled a shell.  Being a hermit, he may have been, uh, lonely.  Whether or not the origin story is true or not is beside the point. Maybe it does resemble a shell, which might partially account for why the area holds a special place in the hearts of pilgrims along the Saint James Way, which passes directly through the village. The symbol of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage is the shell. I recall a lecture in which the professor described the shell as a representation of the journey of the human soul; in this interpretation the road to Compostela would also be the journey of one's soul towards a state of plenary forgiveness, perfection and paradise.  It is more than metaphor, because in Roman Catholic doctrine, making this pilgrimage did in fact earn the pilgrim total absolution from his or her sins.

The magnificent reliquary of Sainte Foy

Dadon came to this wild place at the end of the 8th century but apparently didn't stay long.  Perhaps he left after he was joined by a group of Benedictines; it certainly would have messed with his plan to lead the hermit's life.  These monks founded the monastery which still exists today. 

The monastery would have probably drifted into obscurity if not for Sainte Foy. In 866 her relics were brought here from Auch in what has been called a "furtive translation"; stolen, in other words.  Once ensconced in Concas, the relics and the monastery soon came under the protection of the Carolingian monarchs.

St. Roch showin' some leg

At first, Conques was a local attraction, but over time it developed into an important destination for regional pilgrims; in the 11th century Conques became an important stopping point along the Saint James Way as well.  During the same period the village was becoming a monastic center of the highest importance, a status attested to by the quantity and quality of the cult objects in its treasury.  Conques is today a tiny village of less than 300 permanent residents but it still has the single largest collection of goldsmithery in France.  These relics are not just museum pieces; they are still used in religious processions and services.  The reliquary of Saint Foy in majesty is an important example of the style and iconography of the Romanesque and typifies images of the Virgin dating from this period, including contemporary and later "Vierges Noires" or Black Madonnas.

Pilgrims coming to Conques from long distances, even from beyond the Pyrénées, were first recorded in the mid 11th-century; this is an example of the growing popularity of pilgrimages which turned many local shrines into centers of international importance.  It was also in the 11th century that a kind of "cult of femininity" developed in the song and poetry of the the Troubadours and the theology of the Church. (See LoS: Women)  In addition to Pilgrims, the Way was also a major route for the Troubadours, whose voyages did much to spread the notion of courtly love, the cult of the Virgin, and the cults of obscure saints such as Sernin, Liberata, Quitteria, etc.  The patron of the Saint James Way is male -- St. Roch -- but the shell which serves as the Way's "logo" is a female symbol.  As a metaphor for the vagina, the shell evokes (among other things) maternity, sexual desire and original sin. 

The cult of the Virgin took off in the Romanesque period.  Hitherto a background presence, Mary rather abruptly swung into place as a central figure in the Christian narrative, a place she still occupies in Catholic France today (See LoS: The Virgin and the Cross).  Both in hymns and iconography, she changed from a distant and ethereal figure into something more earthy. Laced with liberal doses of conscious and unconscious sexual desire, worship of the Virgin was also inexorably linked with feminine concerns; praying for her aid in childbirth was common, and her symbolism at this time -- e.g. her foot crushing the serpent -- was an evocation of her perpetual Virginity, her exception from the pains of childbirth and the expiation of original sin.  The evolution of the Virgin into a more intimate and "earthy" interlocutor was almost certainly due to the influence of St. Bernard, a towering figure in the Medieval Church, both in theology and concrete affairs.  He wrote the Templar Rule and was instrumental in creating what would become Christendom's most powerful order; he whipped up internal pogroms against Cathar/Albigensian/Bogomil heretics and preached the Second Crusade against Islam.  He was instrumental in drumming up support for Pope Innocent during the schism beginning in 1130.  One of his disciples became Pope Eugenius III.  He was also one of the founders of the renewed Cistercian order.  A big deal to be sure.

The tympanum of the Basilica of Sainte Foy

The pilgrims' patron, St. Roch, is recognizable by a plague sore or wound on his inner thigh, a kind of gash that never heals, which bleeds but never bleeds out. Roch is often pictured daintily lifting his garment to reveal this wound.

Roch was said to have born to a mother who'd been barren until she prayed to the Virgin. When he caught the plague, he retired to live in a forest, where his dog helped him to heal by licking his wounds.  In the forest he was sustained by a miraculous spring. Miraculous springs are all over Marial legends, a survival perhaps of Celtic traditions:  sacred groves, springs and high places are associated with any local Virgin of note.  LoS has recounted numerous examples of such springs associated with:  the Virgin; many obscure saints such as the aforementioned Quitteria and Liberata, (sisters and Virgin Martyrs of the distant pagan past whose cult stretches from Aquitaine to northern Portugal -- essentially along the St. James Way); and even male saints such as St. Fris, who also exhibits many of the characteristics of the Virgin. Upon his death, St. Fris' body was swallowed up by a rock; when it was later re-discovered, a miraculous spring appeared from within the rock.  The body was incorrupt.

This echoes the story of St. James.  When brought ashore in Iberia, a massive rock closed around his relics; this rock was then taken to Compostela.

One of the seven sisters of Quitteria and Liberata (there were nine in total) was named Euphemia, or Eumelia.  Cornered by pursuing Roman soldiers, she threw herself from a cliff to avoid capture.  Where she fell, the rocks opened and swallowed her whole; a spring immediately appeared on the spot.

Picturesque, you say?

I've had occasion to write about "the Milky Way" before; I'll here reiterate that, like Rome, Compostela held significance way before the Christians adopted it. The pilgrimage to Compostela was a Celtic tradition that symbolized the journey of the soul from birth until death, following the sun until it sank into the sea at the end of the known earth. Unlike today, the Celtic pilgrimage did not end in the city itself, but at the beach and into the very ocean -- following the Sun towards death as it disappeared beyond the horizon at a significant westerly point. Perhaps this ocean terminus is why the shell is the Camino's symbol -- the journey is the destination. As previously stated, the medieval mind, attuned to a more visual language as opposed to the written word, recognized the shell to represent the soul's journey through life. Think of Botticelli's "Birth of Venus"; the goddess is being birthed from the waters riding a shell. The goddess of erotic love is here a bit demure, but she surfs a giant shell, a vagina basically; "con" in French is the rather commonplace translation of the English "cunt". The root of course the same as concha. So it's not just the Argentines who make the link between the shell and the female sex. It's found in the Latin roots.

The basilica today

A small tower at the cemetery is marked with this pair of circles inscribed with a star.  I took a compass reading and it's not oriented towards any of the cardinal points. 

Ostensibly, the cult at Conques is centered around Sainte Foy, a.k.a. Santa Fe, a.k.a. Saint Faith. Faith personified. Faith was first associated with the city of Agen, where she was martyred during the reign of Diocletian for refusing to sacrifice to Pagan gods.  This was said to have occurred in the 3rd century. In the 9th century a monk stole her relics and brought them here. Legend has it that where he fell, exhausted, he struck his staff upon the ground and the water broke: a spring sprang and he survived. Today a small chapel stands at this spot.  The sexual imagery is inescapable. A man wields a phallic staff and, driving it into the ground, causes life-giving waters to erupt from "mother" earth. 

St. Fris is said to have created a spring when he planted his standard in the ground.  His cult, which is highly localized in the Gers and almost unknown outside a few scattered places, developed around the same time as that of Saint Faith, that is to say when the nameless monk stole her relics.  Fris, Roch, Sainte Foy, the Virgin, all associated with healing waters.  Even today, the Pyrénées are dotted with towns built around thermal spring; cures effected at these spas are reimbursable by the national health insurance.  No coincidence then that Lourdes, another Pyrénéen town, one of the most famous pilgrimage sites in Catholicism -- is based around its healing waters.  The modern pilgrim still honors these saints by carrying symbols of the masculine and feminine powers and the sexual union behind the miracle of life, as well as the source of the sin he or she is trying to expiate:  the modern pilgrim carries a staff, to which they usually attach a shell.  All in the name of the Holy Faith.

----

And I was going to do more with this when I began months ago but its been sitting around as a draft for so long I'm just gonna ding the bell and hand it off to the runner who takes it straight to the presses.  Then a sniff of cocaine, a Tom Collins, and a few hours of stimulating talk before the fireplace with my manservant Jacky.

El Mano de Dios

I've already written directly about Gauchito Gil and San La Muerte, two of the more popular Argentine folk saints.  Both have widespread and fervent cults, with thousands of devotees, roadside shrines ranging in size from small altars to sculpture gardens and even centers of pilgrimage:  holy cities, so to speak; despite all this, despite the many attestations of miracles, the Catholic Church does not recognize these saints.

San La Muerte and Caspar, the dead baby.

This may be understandable, at least in the case of San La Muerte, aka Saint Death or Holy Death.  An imposing figure, a skeleton, often robed and wielding a scythe, sometimes leaning forward in his throne, he is basically a sainted Grim Reaper.  Although some pray to him as one would with any other saint, for matters of love (red), money (gold) or other worldly powers and concerns, he is suspected to be the patron of more sinister worshipers, and nefarious deeds have been discovered and ascribed to his influence.  His cult is strongest in northeast Argentina, especially in Corrientes.  Some speculate the cult is a product of the encounter between Guaraní ancestor worship, which included the veneration of bones, and the influence of Jesuit missionaries in the 1760's; but fact is, nobody know exactly when or how it started.

A similar figure is, unsurprisingly, also worshiped in Mexico.  I say unsurprisingly because death, skulls and skeletons are a common Mexican artistic motif and Todos Santos (All Saint's Day), or the Day of the Dead, is one of Mexico's most rambunctious and widely-celebrated religious traditions.  Death is mourned and celebrated with drink, fireworks and feasting at the local cemetery.   The image of the mother is also an important motif in Mexican culture and the national patroness is La Virgen de Guadalupe, an image ubiquitous in Mexico and wherever Mexicans live.  She is the heart and soul of Catholic Mexico.  Not surprising that death is, unlike in Argentina, a woman:  La Santisima Muerte.  This would be an interesting area of study; the respective gender of "Saint Death" in Mexico and Argentina and why such a similar figure appeared in both countries.  I wonder if it could be something as secular as the fact that both countries are the largest producers of cultural products in Latin America:  music, television, literature and especially cinema.  Not sure why this would be, but for some reason the possibility came to mind.

Anyway, pictured above is my red San La Muerte.  I had actually first purchased a flashier gold statuette, but my mother-in-law knocked it off a table while tidying up, and it broke into pieces.  She's a psychoanalyst and my wife is as well; my wife is always trying to tell me that many of my accidents are not that at all, but unconscious reflections of inner desires or aversions.  So it's ironic that her mother, who disapproves of these things, "accidentally" broke it.  The iconoclastic mother-in-law.

In writing this I learned that Guatemala also has a skeletal death saint, El Rey San Pascual, who seems to be pretty much the same as Argentina's San La Muerte.  The three death saints I've discussed are believed to have their origins in pre-Colombian religion; indeed, the syncretism between non-Christian religious beliefs and Catholicism is a Latin American-wide phenomenon.  African traditions have blended with Christianity to produce Candomblé (Brazil), Voudon (Haiti) and Santería (Cuba) to name but a few.  In countries with a fewer African Americans, such as Guatemala and Mexico, this process took place with Native American beliefs.  The Catholic Church has always been tolerant of the syncretism, up to a point.  Indeed, allowing the use of "pagan" traditions was first applied to European Christianization and even has a name:  Interpretatio Christiana.  This has become a point of contention in countries once dominated by Catholicism but now rife with various Protestant and Evangelical sects, which seek to eliminate pagan traditions from Christian belief and practice.  In Guatemala, this has led to riots on several occasions; one notorious brawl took place of the steps of the cathedral in Chichicastengo.  

"Chichi" has a very strong syncretic religious culture.  I witnessed a ritual in nearby Utatlán, at the end of a long, incense-filled, tunnel-like cave under a Mayan temple complex.  I also saw what was clearly a fertility ritual before a stone idol called Pascual Abaj; this sits atop a hill closer to Chichi than Utatlán.  I photographed this ritual at the friendly urging of the man performing it, and made extensive notes on the precise actions he performed.  One day I'll dig up this notebook and photos to share here on LoS.  I was also personally blessed by a curandero in Nebaj, a bit farther north, at a shrine hidden in a cornfield.  It involved lots of prayers and the burning of various materials we picked up at the local market.  What bound all three of these rituals was the free intermingling of the names of recognizable Catholic saints with Mayan gods.  Syncretism in action.  There was also a Day of the Dead in the Guatemalan town of Todos Santos; this was an emotional experience for me, having not long prior lost my father, and I danced and drank all night with a family who must have sensed my grief, as I was welcomed into the kitchen periodically throughout the night to warm up, rest and drink bowls of a delicious gruel that kept me going and helped absorb the copious amounts of alcohol I imbibed -- which in this town, is a big part of the ritual observance.  I feel privileged to have witnessed and participated in these rituals so I am eager to meet some practitioners of Afro-Catholic religions.  My only concern is to avoid becoming a gawking tourist; I need to participate, but I do not want to contribute to the "touristification" of these rituals.

I used to say that my only further use of psychedelics would be to try ayahuasca with a shaman to guide me, but ritual ingestion of ayahuasca, aka yagé, has unfortunately become a kind of drug tourism, the Quechua and Aymara-speaking regions treated like some kind of New Age Amsterdam, a New World Kathmandu.  William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg wrote an excellent book on their search for the drug, entitled The Yagé Letters.  A detailed and often hilarious account, it doesn't get into folk saints, but it does  describe a serious series of psychic and spiritual investigations.  It has also undoubtedly helped spawn the kind of zonked-out pilgrimage to the hinterlands I used to undertake without understanding the potential deleterious effects this can have on a spiritually rich but financially impoverished people.  Some will end up selling their religion to the highest bidder and others will become hucksters, with either no real knowledge of the shamanic role or just jiving the gullible and saving the real traditions for themselves.  This is, not in the specific context of spiritual tourism but tourism in general, why I turned a bit cold towards traveling in parts of Mexico and Guatemala, not for lack of "authentic" experience, but for contributing to the kind of human interactions that reduces everything to an exchange of goods and services for cash.  I realize tourism can be an important economic boost for a country, and if anyone needs a boost it's Mexico and Guatemala, but I'm kind of leery of the whole "Gringo Trail" these days.  I'd still like to experience the Afro-Latin-American traditions though.

 

But back to my collection of figurines, next pictured is Gauchito Gil.  I've discussed his story before, but it's worth repeating that before his murder, he'd enlisted in the war against Paraguay to escape the wrath of a local police chief, jealous of his affair with a wealthy widow.  After his return, he refused to fight in the Argentine Civil War and fled from the authorities into the pampa, more or less forced into the role of a bandit.  Gil was eventually captured and killed by the police, but not before he informed the gendarme who was about to cut his throat that his dying son would recover; he did, and the grateful policeman spread Gauchito's cult as thanks and penance.  Gil's roadside shrines are painted red and red banners hang from them or fly overhead.  His cult, like that of San La Muerte, is strongest in the north, in Corrientes, but it has spread throughout Argentina and into neighboring Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Chile.  He even has a Facebook page.  But who doesn't?  Even San La Muerte is social media savvy.

Before Gil's throat was cut, he was hung upside down on a tree typical of the pampa.  This recollects Old World sources such as the crucifixion of Jesus (not to mention Mithras and Osiris) and also the self-sacrifice of Odin, who hung upside down on the Norse axis mundi named Yggdrasil, an ash tree to Gil's algarrobos.  Argentina has strong connection to Italy, so it's more likely that the upside down Gil was inspired by Italian pitture infamanti, portraits of criminals hung by their heels upon a tree, a way to humiliate condemned men, especially those deemed traitorous.  When the Roman populace rose up against them, Mussolini and mistress Clara Petacci were dragged from their home, hung by their heels by an angry mob and beaten to death.  The hanging by the heels part always intrigued me; perhaps I jump too quickly to conclusions in seeing a connection.  But this practice was almost surely based on the Roman predilection for crucifying the condemned upside down if an extra dose of humiliation was required.  The pitture infimati in turn became the model for the The Hanged Man, the 12th card of the Tarot's Major Arcana.  In the Tarot, the hanged man is usually hung from either a tree, or a leafy tree-like Tau, the man's body cross-like, his face serene, seemingly out of place in a less than serene predicament.  He also has a nimbus around his head, like a saint or a martyr.  This may be because the crucifixion is a prelude to illumination, as in Odin's case, or resurrection, as in the case of Jesus.  For that matter, in Gil's case as well, for while the man died on the tree, his cult was also born; the man became the saint, his power to intercede on behalf of the powerless announced.  Tarot-designer A.E. Waite doesn't see The Hanged Man as a martyr and it's not generally interpreted in this light, but the cardcould easily have formed the basis of Gil's iconography.  A position usually reserved for reviled criminals but who was, in Gil's case, a saint.

I mention the bit about Gil refusing to fight and the story about being drafted because this element also plays into the story of La Difunta Correa.  Legend is that circa 1840 a woman named Correa set off to rejoin her husband, who'd been drafted to fight in the Argentine Civil War.  (Other versions of the tale have her fleeing into the pampa because she had her child out of wedlock, while others yet have her fleeing the sexual advances of corrupt officials -- a common element in the "virgin martyr" category of saint; there are dozens of examples in the "official" canon).  She died of thirst on the way and, when some gauchos came across the body four days later, her baby was still able to suckle at her breast.  The gauchos buried her and saved the baby.  So both Saints' tales involve the gaucho, still a powerful symbol of freedom, men who live beyond the confines, and law, of the city, in the wide and wild pampa, with their own code of justice, symbolized by the gaucho's knife.  The tango, another symbol of Argentine society and a powerful erotic dance, is said to have been born in the brothels, evolving from the milongas which were first danced by pairs of men, imitating the movements and gestures of a knife fight.  Both stories also attest to the heavy weight these Civil Wars put on people's hearts, as brother fought brother and tore the people apart.  Some versions of Correa's story also involve unjust officials whose actions set in motion the Saint's martrydom.  So we have two massively popular cults, very death-centered, plus the worship of death itself, all three of which seem to have grown most rapidly in the years following the Falklands/Malvinas War.  This war is a big part of contemporary Argentine consciousness, the outline of the islands instantly recognizable on signs in countless cities reading "Las Malvinas son Argentinas!"  The Malvinas are Argentinian!  This war also brought down a brutaldictatorship and with its exit came countless revelations of a long reign of terror effectuated by the police and the military:  kidnappings, murder, horrifying detention centers, theft of children, the stuff of nightmares.  It's a scar on every family, and my own is no exception.

Below is the latest addition to my collection.  La Difunta Correa's cult is centered in Vallecito and was first spread by cattle drivers -- gauchos -- and now more by truckers.  Roadside shrines are apparent because devotees leave bottles of water to represent her "eternal" thirst.

There is a Catholic antecedent to this story, by the way.  There is a story in Jacobus da Vorigine's Golden Legend about a barren couple, a Roman Governor and his wife, who had their prayer for a child granted to them by Christ, via Mary Magdalene's intercession.  The governor and pregnant wife then set sail for Rome to meet St. Peter, but the wife died en route, during childbirth.  Making land, the governor found he could not bury the body, so he covered it with his cloak and left the doomed baby by her breast.  He returned two years later, shocked to find his child still alive, having suckled at his mother's breast the whole time, her body incorrupt.  Mary Magdalene, who'd accompanied him, then resurrected the wife!

La Difunta Correa

I don't have a figurine for this last saint, but my mother-in-law, the iconoclast, told me about him when she gave me La Difunta Correa:  Miguel Ángel Gaitán.  Miguel was a baby who died in 1967.  In 1973 a violent storm unearthed his coffin and his corpse was found to be incorrupt.  This is a pretty common first step towards sainthood.  A saint specific to the Toulouse region, Germaine of Pibrac, is such a saint.  And of course the incorrupt body of the Roman Governor's wife precedes the story of Gaitán and La Difunta Correa. The locals made four attempts to shelter the coffin but each time a tomb was erected, it was later found demolished.  This is actually quite a common motif in legends surrounding miraculous images of the Virgin.  It was then decided simply to place the coffin in a chapel, but even then, the lid was found to have been removed; after this went on for a while the boy's mother decided to put a glass lid on the coffin and today, the little mummy receives thousands of visitors yearly and answers prayers.  This too is not unheard of in "official" Catholic saints.  I've seen plenty of saints in glass coffins; in Cortona, Italy, where I stayed for 3 months back in 1990, the dried cadaver of an obscure local saint, Saint Margaret of Cortona, was placed upon the parish church's altar.

A bit out of place, but it just occurred to me that the story of Correa is also a strong symbol of a mother's love for her child, which recalls what I said about the role of the mother in Mexico, but also the role of the Virgin.  The incorruptibility of the body is an indication of spiritual purity, itself linked to sexual purity.  For the Virgin is free from original sin, an innocent not corrupted by the carnal pleasures responsible for the Fall and thus, the aging and infirmity-prone corporal bodies from which Adam and Eve were originally free.  Makes the Christian Science concept of sin as a kind of disease seem a bit less innovative; the incorrupt bodies of the pure are the other side of the doctrine that sin causes corporeal corruption....

So none of these miracles or stories, and even their specific details, are out of place among the enormous roster of Catholic saints, many so local that most people haven't even heard of them, even Catholics from the same country.  St. Fris, anyone?

People are hungry for religion, especially receptive to the idea that prayer and offerings can result in miracles; where poverty is endemic, sickness, education, money and success are concerns with more hopelessness attached to them than in much richer countries.  And in the last few decades, Argentina has slipped deeper and deeper into poverty and all its accompanying woes.  It is a country dominated by a profound sense of insecurity, for the future, for the hope of economic recovery and an end to corruption, the explosive growth of shanty towns and above all, crime.  This in a country already wounded by a recent war and a brutal dictatorship, many of whose criminal perpetrators are still alive.  I would only expect these cults and others like them to grow.  Everybody's looking for a miracle, to be touched by the Hand of God.  Or at least one of his deputies.

With folk saints, all the familiar elements of official Catholic saints are recycled and put into a more contemporary and familiar context -- not, for example, Roman Gaul, but contemporary Argentina.  And this will continue to happen, whether officially recognized or not.  In France, the current most popular "official" saints date largely from the 19th century; long enough ago that the historicity of the accounts is not an issue, but close enough in time and within familiar enough events to reassure the devoted that their saint knows exactly what they might going through.  As the times continue to change, we can expect periodic updates to the legends of existing folk saints, as well as the development of entirely new ones.  The age of miracles isn't over.  Evangelicals will speak in tongues and be slain in the Spirit like the apostles, the logical conclusion of the Protestant devaluation of the role of the priest as an intermediary, the belief that each man and woman can read the Bible for themselves and develop a special relationship with the Christ.  Catholics, still valuing the role of the priest, will continue to look towards even holier intermediaries, and if the old ones are found lacking -- because inevitably, poor people will remain poor, sick people will not recover and the sterile will remain childless -- new ones are just waiting to be found.

Magical Mystery Tour

The route....

You don't need to be a Romantic to be drawn into magic of the French Southwest, but driving through it may convert you into one.  In the space of an hour you can pass from picturesque villages nestled among sprawling vineyards to sublime mountain peaks, crowned by decaying castles, the silent sentinels of a bygone era.  In 2011 alone, France received nearly 80 million tourists.  Take a trip through the Southwest and it's easy to see why.  Whereas most tourists head directly to Paris, for good reason, one could easily skip the City of Lights altogether and spend weeks exploring the Aude and Languedoc-Roussillon and not have "missed out" on a great French vacation.  From hiking to mountaineering, canyoning to mountain biking, the region has you covered.  History buffs will be thoroughly satiated.  Amateur sleuths will find mysteries galore.  Foodies will have to be careful not to eat until they explode.  Thin mint, anyone?

I travelled through the Aude and Languedoc-Roussillon this week.  My itinerary was only a few hundred kilometers, but I saw enough to write a thick book....and what I saw was only a splinter from a massive oak.  Like I said, you can spend weeks exploring an area which can be crossed in a couple of hours.

My journey began at Saint Papoul.  I wanted to visit the Benedictine abbey (founded in the 8th c.) there in the hopes I might stumble across something which might increase my store of knowledge about Saint Sernin and the Saintes Puelles.  Papoul, or Papulus, was a priest who assisted Saint Saturninus (Sernin) in his efforts to evangelize the Gauls.  He's an obscure saint and there's not much that can be reliably said about him.  He was imprisoned for a while in Carcassonne and was killed during the Diocletian persecution, apparently beheaded.  He was also a cephalophore.  I can't find a detailed account, but apparently where he picked up his own severed head, a spring appeared.  The severed head is certainly a pre-Christian mytheme and recalls the rumours about Templar head worship.  The miraculous spring is also a familiar element.  Many of the Vierges Noires we have discussed are associated with sacred springs, as are many of the Virgin Martyrs; several among these latter were also cephalophores.  The cephalophore is not unique to France, but appears most frequently in French hagiography.  Sacred waters will reappear in this post.

In any event, we'd gotten a late start and only had a half an hour to explore the abbey; we decided to skip the visit and press on to out next destination, Saint-Hilaire.

Cloister of Saint Hilaire Abbey

Saint-Hilaire is about 50 minutes southeast of Saint-Papoul.  Like the abbey of Saint-Papoul, it was a Benedictine abbey founded in the 8th century as a dedication to Saint Sernin, a dedication changed in the 10th c. to honor Saint Hilaire (Hilarius), a fifth-century Pope.  The saint himself holds little interest to my researches, but the abbey is the site of Saint Sernin's tomb.  His sarcophagus is an exquisite Romanesque masterpiece and is carved to recount the legend of his martyrdom.  Thus it also features one of the very few depictions of the Saintes Puelles.  But France pretty much shuts down between 12 and 2, so again, I missed out.  I was able to enter the cloister, a tranquil place with a calming fountain at the center of the courtyard, but that was it.  The cloister is much like that of abbey of Saint Peter in Moissac (founded in the 7th c.) and that of the Dominican convent known as les Jacobins in Toulouse (early 14th c.), demonstrating a remarkable consistency in French monastic architecture.  A shame we missed out, but it was a fine day and a pleasant place to have lunch, a good way to ease into a long day of sightseeing.

Notre Dame de Marceille

Our next destination was Rennes-le-Chateau (RLC).  We had to pass through Limoux, a place I visited last year in order to see its famous Carnaval.  A chapel along the road caught my eye and so we popped in for a brief visit.  Lo and behold, my spider senses started tingling and indeed, the basilica is dedicated to Notre Dame de Marceille, a Vierge Noire I hadn't realized was there.  Apparently, the site is very ancient, with Paleolithic and Gallo-Roman remnants.  A church is mentioned as early as 1011.  It remains an important pilgrimage destination and has all the classic elements of Black Virgin stories.

At one time, in the quite remote past, a ploughman who cultivated his field on the slope of Marcellan saw his ox stop, as if halted by an invisible obstacle. He pushed it in vain, to urge it on, but it stood stock-still and resisted every prodding. The ploughman, who was amazed at first, suddenly felt the only other thing he could do was to call to Heaven for help. Then, somehow inspired by this plea for divine assistance, he began to dig the ground where the ox had stopped, only to find that it contained a statue. It was that of a wooden Madonna, brown and dark, with a celestial smile on her face. With great respect, he took the statue to the door of his house, where everyone in his family rejoiced at the sight of it. But their joy was short-lived: the following morning, the Madonna had disappeared. The ploughman returned to his field, and found the image in the place where he had discovered it the day before. Again, he rejoiced and carried it home, but in vain. It returned once again to the place where he had found it. He tried a third time, but to no avail. The statue returned to its hole in the ground.

Source

Compare this story to that of Notre Dame d'Alet; note also that in the vicinity of this basilica there is a village named Alet-les-Bains.....

The basilica is also built over the site of a Gallo-Roman well and a miraculous fountain reputed to cure blindness is located on the site.  This Virgin also appeals to newlyweds who leave their bridal veils to ensure a happy marriage.  It would be redundant to make a list of all the Vierges Noires whose legend involves the strange behavior of cattle, a miraculous insistence of where to be worshipped and the special place she holds in the heart of women seeking aid in matrimony and maternity.  For the general tourist, it's also an amazing basilica, beautifully appointed and covered from floor to ceiling with elaborate frescoes.  Score!  The place was officially closed but the door was unlocked, so I slipped in for some photos.  I later learned that in 2007, while the place was being renovated, someone snuck in and decapitated the statue and spirited the head away, along with Her mantle!  Nothing else was stolen.  Given it's proximity to RLC, I wonder if this was a symbolic act and can't help but recall the cephalophore mytheme of nearby Saint Papoul and the head wound of Saint Sernin.  The current statue, then, like so many others, is a replacement.

Baptismal font, Rennes-le-Chateau

RLC. I won't go into the history associated with this place, but for fans of the esoteric, the town is legendary.  The first book about RLC appeared in 1967 (L'Or de Rennes by Gérard de Sède), inspiring a long series of books speculating about the town and its famous church.  Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Da Vinci Code both owe their material to de Sède.  Countless books have appeared on the subject and the mysterious Priory of Sion.  It's a vast and complex story the center of which involves hidden treasures and the idea that the bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene continues to this day.  Gérard de Sède was involved in both surrealist and Oulipo groups and I think his work should be approached with this in mind.  De Sède's son Arnaud said in a 2005 interview that his father and Pierre Plantard invented the legend from whole cloth and created the documents "proving" the existence of the Priory of Sion.  It's a fascinating hoax, so well-constructed that despite Arnaud de Sède's statements and the rather extensive debunking, people still believe it's true.  The sheer number of books and websites devoted to the subject boggles the mind.  People believe what they want to believe.  It would be a great Ph.D. thesis to analyze how disinformation works in a a non-propaganda context, as fact and fantasy are mixed to create a viable and enduring story.  There are so many odd coincidences, everything begins to link up and "possible" become "probable" until so much stuff piles up that the "where there's smoke there's fire" mechanism kicks in and fabulism becomes accepted as history.  There are a lot of gold ingots found among the turds, however, and one can read these books with a critical eye and still glean some important insights into the region, like good literature is often more useful than poor history.

Next stop, Rennes-les-Bains.  This has been a spot for thermal cures for literally thousands of years.  The healing properties of its waters is almost certainly connected to the legends surrounding religious sites.  Whereas the claims that a spring can cure blindness (perhaps a metaphorical cure à la Amazing Grace:  "Was blind but now I see") are dubious, the healing benefits of thermal springs are real.  Thermal cures can be prescribed by doctors and are subsidized in part by the French health care system.  We stopped for an hour or so to soak in the warm waters collected in two basins by the side of the Sals River.  A lovely spot that, like every other place in the vicinity of RLC, has been brought under the umbrella of its mysteries.  Indeed RLB's former parish priest Abbé Henri Boudet, contemporary of RLC's Bérenger Saunière, wrote La vraie langue celtique et le cromleck de Rennes-les-Bains (1886), in which he argued that that all languages derived from English!  An earlier book from RLB (1832) by Auguste de Labouïsse-Rochefort also recounts a legend about the Devil's treasure.  Clearly, the roots of the hidden treasure story lie farther back in time than de Sède.

Just to tighten the circle a little further, there is a plaque at  the Marceille basilica honoring Boudet!  but then again, he was born, lived and died very close to all of these places....

Our next goal was to see the Gorges de Galamus.  On the way we passed through a wide, green valley with a solitary mountain at the far end.  Some memory stirred in me.  When we passed through the town of Bugarach, something clicked.  I'd read about this place in the NYT.  Apparently in the 60's this mountain, the Pech de Bugarach, became a favored destination of French hippies, a powerful place along the lines of Sedona or Taos in the American South West.  In 2012 things came to a head, many New Age types descended on the place, there were more visitors than normal and the rhythm only increased as the fateful day in December approached that would mark the end of the Mayan calendar....and the world.  Some believed aliens living inside would carry people away.  This is essentially a New Age version of the Rapture.  Curiously, the Nation of Islam also has some teachings about UFOs and mountains:

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said these planes were used to set up mountains on the earth. The Qur'an says it like this: We have raised mountains on the earth lest it convulse with you. How do you raise a mountain, and what is the purpose of a mountain? Have you ever tried to balance a tire? You use weights to keep the tire balanced. That's how the earth is balanced, with mountain ranges. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said that we have a type of bomb that, when it strikes the earth a drill on it is timed to go into the earth and explode at the height that you wish the mountain to be. If you wish to take the mountain up a mile [1.6 km], you time the drill to go a mile in and then explode. The bombs these planes have are timed to go one mile down and bring up a mountain one mile high, but it will destroy everything within a 50-square-mile [130 km²] radius. The white man writes in his above top secret memos of the UFOs. He sees them around his military installations like they are spying.

Louis Farrakhan.  Source

Apparently, these UFOs will destroy America, but spare the Nation of Islam.  These UFOs all come from within one great Mother Plane, the spaceship of God, another take on the Rapture.  At Bugarach, a group of Gendarmes and firemen were called in to block access to the mountain due to fears of Heaven's Gate-like mass suicides. 

Pech de Bugarach; note the two aliens disguised as horses on the right

This was all a pleasant surprise.  It is a beautiful place and not devoid of a sense of mystery, something I felt before I even realized where I was.  Lonely mountains are often Holy Mountains, it's almost hard-wired into the brain.  A holy mountain in New Mexico called Chimayo, for example, receives over 300,000 pilgrims each year and the sanctuary there is said to be built where a hot spring once flowed, revered by Tewa Indians for....its healing powers.  The Pech de Bugarach was considered holy long before the hippies took it up for the very same reason as the Tewa.

Hermitage of Saint Anthony

The road through the Galamus gorge is perhaps the wildest road I've driven, cut straight into the rock, a sheer drop off one one side, a sheer cliff on the other.  It's not as hairy as it sounds, but it's certainly impressive.  Near one end of the road there is a hermitage built into the cliff.  This hermitage was built in 1782 following a miraculous intervention by Saint Anthony to save a nearby village from the ravages of "sweating sickness."  It's a beautiful place and a guy actually rents it from the town of Saint Paul de Fenouillet.  I asked him about the recent events at the Pech de Bugarach.  According to him, there were lots of journalists and policemen, but not the multitude of New Agers depicted in the media.  Perhaps his perception the events were not the same as those of the journalists.  Perhaps the journalist exaggerated it all for a good story.  I'd first read about in the New York Times, so who can say?

Sculpture group

I was struck by a prominent image of Saint Anthony at Rennes-le-Chateau, so this correspondence was especially meaningful in the context, especially given that there is grotto on the site dedicated to Mary Magdalene.  There's also a crucifixion sculpture which includes a blindfolded woman gazing into a hand mirror.  I've discussed the hand mirror before, as a woman reflecting the Divine light of reason onto an allegorical scene of Liberty.  It's also used to represent Venus, who I've also discussed in a previous post.  A blindfolded woman is often used to represent Justice.  But the two elements together is very curious and I wasn't certain what it represents until I asked around to some friends.  I'll come back to her.

This grotto also houses a spring at which a reproduction of Saint Bernadette's vision of the Virgin Mary.  Healing waters, yet again....

Chapel dedicated to the Saintes Puelles

From Galamus we pressed on to Tautavel in the hopes that I could get into the chapel dedicated to the Saintes Puelles.  It was too late to get the key the day I arrived and the following day also proved fruitless, as the woman with the key was occupied at the parish church for a funeral.  As I drank my coffee I heard the death knell and laughed at my own selfishness.  Too bad this funeral cock-blocked me from seeing the Puelles, I'd thought.  Oh yeah, that and someone's family was grieving!  So basically, no Puelles.  But Tautavel is an impossibly charming village, with a lovely space to camp by the river, abundant vineyards with wine of high repute and a museum dedicated to prehistory.  Some of Europe's oldest prehistoric artifacts were found here and the 450,000 year old Tautavel Man, perhaps a subspecies of H. erectus, inhabited the area.  Again, one is struck by the long history of human presence in the whole region, which adds a sense of wonder to the presence of healing waters and springs, most certainly the reason why people settled in these spots to begin with.  The life-giving waters took on a spiritual dimension over time, which seems only natural and for me anyway, adds a positive dimension to Catholic veneration.  Which is exactly why some Protestant groups vilify Catholicism as being too pagan and thus dilutes if not negates Christian exceptionalism.  My own view is that this exceptionalism is born of insecurity.  If so much of the Christian story can be found in classical and pagan prototypes, the belief in an exclusive path to salvation is threatened, which is simply bad for business.  Jewish precedent is okay, but God forbid if Christianity takes something from legends of Attis, Dionysus, Horus, Isis, Mithra...

Day two of my voyage was more abbreviated.  We left Tautavel towards Perillos, which has only come to my attention sometime in the past few years.  Perillos is an abandoned town now part of the municipality of Opoul.  Perillos is a bit of blank to me, but some believe that it is an element of the RLC mysteries, or rather, that the RLC mystery is actually part of the Perillos mystery.  Is the tomb of Christ located there?  What is its connection to the Apocalypse (shades of Bugarach).  Dig this:

The "secret" of Perillos really isn't so much a secret. The locals near Opoul-Perillos, the "old guys", still remember... they have stories of "the tomb of God", a site they were told by their elders not to go to and play. There are locals who observe bizarre events in and around Perillos, but keep quiet. Our organisation is almost like a "confessional", whereby these people can finally say, in all anonymity, what they see and know, and we often don't even shrug our shoulders when they tell what they know their wives or husbands would claim as "idiotic". This includes seeing apparitions of God, straight out of the Old Testament. Inverted rainbows.

Source

Chateau de Perillos

The way I went in is along a long and empty canyon.  There is definitely a mysterious feeling as one approaches the place, but then again, knowing what I know, this could easily be chalked up to a Romantic imagination.  It has even been connected to Notre Dame de Marceille.  It all links up because well, they are linked.  Perillos is only a few minutes from Tautavel, and Galamus, and Limoux.  Find the connections, run with it, speculate a bit, write a colorful account....good for tourism, good for making money on the flourishing trade in esoterica of all sorts.  That said, Perillos is worth looking into and the Societé Perillos has a good website that I've consulted more than once during the course of this post to verify my impressions of what I'd seen.  A lot of the information seems deliberately cryptic, but the Societé itself has mentioned they want to discourage the kind of treasure hunters who dug up the area around RLC looking for buried treasure.

This page sums up the Perillos "mystery"pretty well:

Apparently in 1995, one André Douzet found a model, allegedly made by or made for the priest Bérenger Saunière, of the areas associated with the passion of Christ, including the location of the tomb of Jesus and his uncle Joseph.  Thing is, it didn't match Jerusalem.  Douzet then recognized one of the features as a rock formation near Perillos.  The Seigneurs of Perillos were an illustrious family among whose number was once counted the Grandmaster of the Knights of Malta.  Our man Abbé Henri Boudet, contemporary of RLC's Bérenger Saunière, once directed the parish.  Saunière himself was known to have visited the area to have a look at local families' archives.  Douzet also came across a reference in local archives to a piece of land which prohibited anyone, including the Lords of Perillos, from collecting rocks, cutting wood or otherwise molesting it; it could not be sold, transferred or divided.  It was within the lands of the Lords, but they didn't own it, they merely guarded it.  Furthermore, cartographer Jacques Cassini, whose family made the first general maps of France, was known to have spent a year and a half there, yet his maps leave the site of the tombs blank.  Which means they either aren't there or he was looking for them and then kept it secret.  There are a lot of other details, but that's the general story.  Douzet claims to have found the tombs and some artifacts inside, yet in 2008 another researcher pronounced it was all a hoax.  Hoax or not, it is a lovely and wild spot and I loved it not for being the site of Jesus's tomb, but merely for the fact many believe it's true!

The rest of my journey was for the kids.  A human labyrinth in Trouillas, burro riding in Castelnou (another amazing village), a visit to the beach in Spain.  The last LoSian aspect of the trip was in Thuir, where there is yet another Vierge Noire, but alas!  This church too was closed.

Notre Dame de la Victoire

According to Ean Begg, Notre Dame de la Victoire is 50cm tall and made of lead, which accounts for her dark hue.  She dates from the late 12th century.  Apparently four statues were made from the same mould, two of which went to Spanish Catalonia and two to the Massif Central; both regions have dense concentrations of Black Virgins.  This statue replaced an earlier one, mentioned in the 10th c.  Like Notre Dame de Sabart, She helped Charlemagne defeat the Saracens; in this case by providing his exhausted troops with water.  Charlemagne apparently brought an image of the Virgin to a dry river bed and thrust his sword into the earth and a spring gushed up from the spot, which sounds very sexual to these ears.  A sword is planted and the earth gets wet, thus sustaining and bringing life to his troops.  This sexual/birth motif may be why, like Notre Dame de la Daurade, she is a patroness of childbirth.  Pieces of her robe, or a birthing belt are placed on the bellyof a woman in labor.  If I understand correctly, her feast day, October 7th, predates the defeat of the Ottoman Turks at Lepanto on the same day in 1571.  Like a lot of info from Begg, however, I'm careful about repeating that as fact.  For another example of a battle with Saracens which involves planting a phallic object in the ground, causing a spring to spurt out on the spot, see my discussion of St. Fris.

Castelnou

The conclusion of my voyage was a jaunt to the beach in Spain, then the long-ish drive home.  But there are any number of alternatives.  One could strike north for the arid beauty of the Corbières wine country, with a stop in Carcassonne on the road back to Toulouse.  The route between Perpignan and Andorra is magnificent, with two fortified cities I've yet to explore.  You get the picture.  I chose our route for it's convenience and it's mixture of history and pop-esoterica, sites never more than a half an hour or 45 minutes apart.  Drive a bit, explore a bit.  None of these places takes up too much time to explore.  I plan to return to Tautavel very soon, just camp and enjoy the river.  If I don't see the Saintes Puelles due to some reason or other, I'll only be able to conclude that there is a conspiracy of silence to keep me from seeing the chapel and exposing its secrets to the world!

But seriously, I do hope to explore Perillos a bit more, as there's talk in the air that it might be made off limits to protect it from treasure-seekers, even perhaps put under the control of the military!  This isn't as ominous as it sounds, as there is a large military base nearby which may in fact be contiguous with the abandoned town.

Bottom line is that if you want to travel in France, you've got something for everyone in this little itinerary, a logistically perfect little nugget.  I went to see many of the thing I've previously discussed on LoS, such as the sarcophagus of St. Sernin or the statue of the Saintes Puelles.  On that front it was something of a failure.  But I made a lot of little discoveries and connections to other areas of interest, all the while spending some good times with the kids, teaching them some proper camping skills and a little about history.  Cathars, UFOs, esoteric sects, what could be better?

I'm also going to look into this Boudet character.  His book is full of wordplay and puns.  Given that de Sède was involved in surrealist and Oulipo groups, this makes me wonder if de Sède had read this book and it influenced him to write his own book.  RLC research is rife with mystical toponymy, puns, double-entendre and decoding ciphers.  In 1991 a Flemish researcher decoded some of Boudet's book and was led to Limoux, more specifically the basilica of Notre Dame de Marceille, where he discovered secret vault by the river.  Some have speculated that an entire underground complex exists beyond a blocked-up tunnel from the vaults.  So that underground treasure people are looking for around RLC may just be slightly farther afield than thought.  If we think back to the legend of this particular Black Virgin, we recall that She was dug up from the ground.  Is it possible that this is the vault where She was found, and that the vault is the original chapel built to house Her?  Or, if it is indeed far older, could it have been a pagan temple or shrine and that the Virgin found there was in fact a pre-Christian idol?

Further inquiries in my library reveal that Saillens (Nos Vierges Noires) says the locals called her "our sibyl" and believes that to be the case, the pagan prototype being Cybele.  Cybele is a mother of the gods and is often associated with Attis, whose myth has many features later ascribed to the birth, life and death of Jesus.  In Vierges Noires, Cassagnes-Brousset notes that a nearby (how near?) archaeological dig uncovered a figurine of Belisama, a Celtic goddess the Gallo-Romans identified with Minerva/Athena.  This goddess was both warrior and healer, associated among other things with lakes and rivers.

Marceille is an ancient place with Paleolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze age articles found in the vicinity; a Gallo-Roman villa was located nearby.  Perhaps the vault was related to the villa, its location near the church coincidental, unless the basilica replaced a pre-Christian temple.  The current statue is a reproduction of the decapitated version dating back to the 11th c., yet the basilica was begun in the 14th.  Was the vault its original shrine?  Tradition holds that like so many other Vierges Noires, this wooden sculpture replaced an even older version.  As it turns out, this theory is discussed in some detail by the Societé Perillos.  I urge you to read that essay, if only for this curious detail:  She was originally inscribed with the words "Do not look at me, because I became brown." according to a text entitled Hommage au Baron Podenas.

Became?  Very curious, but we must be cautious, for I can find the Hommage au Baron Podenas  referenced anywhere else....bear that in mind as you read what follows.

There seem to be some curious traditions about eyes of this statue, which are indeed quite large.  The imperative to "avert your eyes" made me think of the blindfolded figure at Galamus and another curious detail popped up: both figures are smiling....tradition even has it that "he who sees the statue [ND de Marceille] smiling at him, is certain to obtain the grace which he came to beseech.”  A pal suggests the blindfolded figure is Synagoga, a figure usually paired with Ecclesia  to represent the replacement of Judaism by Christianity; the Jews cannot "see" that Jesus was the Christ.

Confirmation is to be found at the site itself, I'd neglected to read the sign.  This sign states that the group depicts Ascension of Christ and is called Christ and Humanity.  The woman standing represents hope for salvation, whereas the seated woman is blind to this opportunity.  Thus my friend is right, she is essentially Synagoga and the other woman, Ecclesia.  My friend also points out this page with a picture of the group, but it appears to be in white marble; a caption says the photos were taken at an unused church some years ago but the sculpture is now at the hermitage.  So the red version we see is either a copy, or it has been painted.  This latter possibility seems odd to me, but is is possible  One would then wonder why such a dark, earth-red hue was chosen.

Perhaps any explicit reference to Synagoga has been removed due to some interpretations of the figures as essentially anti-Semitic, although recent scholarship is apparently more nuanced.

The ensemble was a gift of local sculptor G.A. Grouille, not an especially common name and not usual for this area.  The verb grouiller, which I came across looking for the name, means to be full of something or to swarm.  Thinking I might have a pseudonym, I looked for clues in the name, but it doesn't help much.  It is a real name though, I just can't seem to find any other references to the artist.

I also recall that there was a Sator Square carved into a stone in a chapel at the hermitage.  This kind of word square is pre-Christian and consists of a series of five words written on a grid.  It is a palindromic acrostic.  Best thing is to follow the link and see it for yourself.  Needless to say, this kind of wordplay would have appealed to Boudet, or to de Sède.  Ostensibly it is Latin, but one of the words, "Arepo", may be Celtic in origin.  That would certainly have interested Boudet.  Could he have placed it there?  The possible translations that have been proposed include "The farmer Arepo has [as] works wheels [a plough]" and "The sower holds the works and wheels by means of water."  This seems to relate to elements of the Marceille legend, and the Sator Square is believed to have magical uses, including putting out fires, which just happens to be one of the properties of Notre dame de Marceille.

Leaving that question aside, I should also report that She was also stolen during the Revolution; the records of the case do imply a kind of conspiracy involving people who knew about, and used, the secret vaults.  Again, curious details.  Secret vaults, a theft, a later decapitation.  Little wonder she has excited so much interest.

There's certainly more to investigate here, but that may best be left for time and serendipity to work out.  My inquiries keep leading me to the same unique sources, which is a good enough reason to pause and look for other angles.

But for the moment, Daurade is tired out.  I'm sure I'll come across more in my further readings and travels that will lead me back to these speculations, but for now, I feel this is the post I was looking for, hopefully a return to productivity, if not form!