Last week was BC’s Fall break, and many of our group went to France, including us Ramages. After Italy, France is perhaps our favorite country to visit. It has so much culture, so much Catholic history, so much good food, and so much else to offer. Being in France one experiences the joie de vivre, “the joy of living.”
We had planned to visit the prehistoric caves at Lascaux in the south of France, but the trains all got booked up and we “had to” stay in Paris most of the trip except for a day trip to Chartres and our last day in Toulouse. Here are some highlights of the trip, and then you can enjoy the pictures that hopefully tell the story better:
- Jen and I commemorated our very first date in the same restaurant in Chartres, 6 years and 2 kids later
- Visiting Toulouse and its Eglise des Jacobins, where we knelt before the tomb of St. Thomas Aquinas and prayed for his intercession
- Getting to browse Notre Dame cathedral without a tour group and without an agenda. Lots of time soaking in the stained glass and ornate colored wood carvings on the inside, and figuring out the figures and gargoyles carved on the outside. Getting to walk around the grounds meditatively with our family, enjoying the scenic Seine river and the church’s famous flying buttresses.
- Walking through the Rodin Museum and its lush gardens lined with statues. I was never interested in modern sculpture before, but I developed a fascinating with this 19th-century impressionist sculptor once I learned that some of his key works were inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy. The gardens also offer a great view of the Eiffel Tower with The Thinker in the foreground.
- The astounding stained glass in Sainte Chapelle, a chapel virtually encircled in glass and built by St. Louis to house the crown of thorns.
- The Cluny medieval museum in Paris where you can see alot of great pieces up close instead of being 100 feet below them. The museum was built on Roman baths, which also gives you an indication of Paris’ place in world history.
- Eating “fast food” crepes, croque monsieurs, croque madames in Parisian parks, and eating a few nice meals in Parisian restaurant.
- The Eiffel Tower, sparkling gloriously in the night at the top of evening hours
- Musee D’Orsay, where we got to spend quality time in front of Van Goghs, Monets, and Rodins among others
- The Louvure: we spent 7 hours in this place with 2 kids! It boasts collections from Egypt, Rome, Greece, ancient Mesopotamia (biblical period and earlier findings), the Renaissance, and more. Best of all: we got to skip the hour-long security line twice because we had kids.
I have so many pictures relevant to my teaching and to the faith from this trip, I feel sorry for my students who are going to get inundated with all of my glorious illustrations inspired by this trip! Thanks to Benedictine College for offering us the opportunity to be over here, to teach great material, and to be with great students, to be students ourselves for a semester.
-
- Chapel of St. Denis in Notre Dame. Dedicated to an early Roman/French martyr with icon of the Greek St. Denis (Dionysius the Areopagite) in the background
-
- Slaughter of the innocents carving in Notre Dame
-
- Wood carving of Christ’s baptism, one of dozens and dozens of ornate works adorning the choir encircling the apse of Notre Dame
-
- Notre Dame interior view sans stained glass
-
- Detail of a door pillar from Notre Dame’s facade with scenes from creation. Notice Adam with his head on his hand having a rib extracted (left) as well as Eve whose bottom half of the body appears to be a snake. Very interesting to think about what this piece is trying to say about the nature of the Fall.
-
- Notre Dame facade in background
-
- Notre Dame side view from along the Seine river
-
- Notre Dame’s flying buttresses on its back side
-
- The Three Shades, standalone statue from Rodin’s Gates of Hell with figures looking down at the damned
-
- Detail of Rodin’s Gates of Hell, with Dante’s Paolo and Francesca in their last adulterous embrace–lips not even touching as they were murdered in the act
-
- Making an offering in St. Severin
-
- Gargoyles adorning St. Severin church in the Latin Quarter of Paris–it’s like a mini Notre Dame without all the crowds
-
- Sacre Coeur in Montmartre viewed from the bottom of the funicular at night
-
- Eiffel Tower sparkling in the night
-
- Decapitated heads of statues in the Cluny Medieval Museum in Paris; during the revolution, Frenchmen cut off the heads of statues on the facade of Notre Dame, thinking they were French kings instead of the saints they were in reality
-
- One of the great joys of France–stopping at random street vendors to have freshly-made crepes and croque monsieurs. This is the French equivalent of stopping for a gyro in Greece, a slice of pizza in Italy, or a kebab in Turkey–all of which I love!
-
- Interior of Chartres cathedral. This famous labyrinth on the floor represents the windy journey of the Christian life as it requires diligence and perseverance to attain our end
-
- Jen and Joseph outside our restaurant with the Chartres cathedral in the background
-
- Cafe des Arts right outside of the cathedral of Chartres where we had our first date. As I like to say, if I couldn’t win her over in this romantic medieval French setting, it wasn’t going to happen at all, ever.
-
- Ramage family at dinner on Halloween in the cafe where we had our first date 6 years ago
-
- Fra Angelico’s Coronation of the Virgin
-
- Giotto’s painting of St. Francis receiving the stigmata, with scenes from his life at bottom (I like the bottom left where he is holding up the church)
-
- The Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas by Gozzoli, with Averroes under his feet and adorers all around sitting at his feet to learn
-
- The picture everyone wants to see at the Louvre; don’t tell Leonardo this, but I really am not too interested in the Mona Lisa
-
- The Mystery of the Passion of Christ by Campi in the Louvre–a very busy but very thorough catechesis in one painting
-
- Cool icon in a special Cyprus exhibit in the Louvre. This is a photo of an icon of St. Mamas riding a lion
-
- Mythological winged lion dating from the era of Nebuchadnezzar II, king of Babylon who brought the Israelites into exile in 587 B.C.
-
- 9th-century B.C. Assyrian mythological beast, perhaps a griffin. If nothing else, this illustrates the type of religious climate Israel encountered in the first millenium B.C. and how far God had to go to reveal his true nature. No wonder he prohibited images of himself!
-
- 12th-century B.C. work with the Babylonian god Marduk (the horned serpent at bottom). Once again, highly illustrative for understanding the context of the biblical creation account and the nature of the serpent in Genesis 3
-
- The actual tablets of some Sumerian creation accounts from the 3rd millenium B.C.
-
- One of many Sumerian creation texts showing parallels to Genesis’ account but coming much earlier. Also very stimulating for thought about the nature of the biblical creation accounts.
-
- Law Code of Hammurabi, king of Babylon, famous 18th century stele with many fascinating antecedents/parallels to the later Mosaic law. Awesome for the biblical enthusiast to see!
-
- Early Christian mosaic of a child with the adder (Isa 11:8), in the Louvre
-
- Upside-down pyramid in the Louvre underground where the kids could run around and avoid some of the museum’s mass confusion
-
- In front of the Louvre with its pyramid-thing in the background
-
- Eiffel Tower sparkling at the top of the hour at dusk
-
- Relics of St. Therese of Lisieux, brought to Sacre Coeur church in Paris on the jubliee of a pilgrimage she made to the church on the way to Rome to petition the pope for entry into the Carmelites
-
- The Thinker. In its original context within Rodin’s Gates of Hell it was Dante contemplating the damned, but here it stands on its own.
-
- Rodin’s Fugit Amor
-
- Rodin’s Age of Maturity, in which he leaves youth behind and is dragged ahead by old age
-
- Rodin’s The Gossips
-
- Ugolino and his dead sons up close
-
- Ugolino, Dante’s infamous traitor and cannibal, on all fours in the middle of a pond amidst the gardens of the Rodin Museum
-
- Splendid view of The Thinker statue with Eiffel Tower in background
-
- Cloister of the first Dominican convent where you can walk the halls and stand in the chapter room where the first decisions of the religious order were made by its saints-to-be
-
- Gothic interior of the Eglise des Jacobins
-
- Humble tomb of st. Thomas Aquinas in the Eglise des Jacobins
-
- Exterior of the Eglise des Jacobins in Toulouse, site of Aquinas’ burial and first convent of the Dominican order
-
- In the Louvre, an Egyptian piece with the god Osiris (left), Anubis (right), and a deceased soul being passed between them (center). All are aboard a boat reminiscent of Charon’s underworld ferry in Greek mythology
-
- Rodin’s Ugolino in the Musee D’Orsay
