According to Henry James, writing in the late 19th century:
The second church of Rouen, Saint-Ouen, the beautiful and harmonious...
offers within a higher interest than the Cathedral.
The second church of Rouen, Saint-Ouen, the beautiful and harmonious...
offers within a higher interest than the Cathedral.
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3Without, it looks like an English abbey, scraped and restored, disencumbered of huddling nieghbours
and sourrounded on three sides by a beautiful garden.
4Seen to this excellent advantage it is one of the noblest of churches... I can imagine
no happier combination of lightness and majesty, its proportions bring tears to the eyes.
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Stunning photos in general and of the stained-glass windows in particular. (Lumix?) It is interesting to see the Star of David in the rose. Never saw that before.
ReplyDeleteFor an abbey church, Saint-Ouen is of cathedral proportion itself. It style is more in the line of regular churches and that makes it very beautiful. I agree that it is one of the noblest of churches... But the diversity of the Cathedral is unique and magnificent.
As for the star of David, I found this in the section Use in the abrahamic religion in the Wikipedia’s Hexagram page.
DeleteThe hexagram may be found in some Churches and stained-glass windows. In Christianity, it is sometimes called the star of creation.
My mistake, on the rose it is a pentagram and not an hexagram (star of David). I’ll try to find the signification of the pentagram, if any. Sorry about this.
DeleteI took the six photos of the interior and stained glass in 2010 with my old Lumix ZS1 camera, which I still have and use once in a while. The long view of the church from the corniche is one I took with the old Canon Pro90 IS camera, which I donated to Emmaüs a few years ago.
DeleteI found this in the Wikipedia’s Pentagram page:
DeleteChristians once commonly used the pentagram to represent the five wounds of Jesus.
And also :
The North rose of Amiens cathedral (built in the 13th century) exhibits a pentagram-based motif. Some sources interpret the unusual downward-pointing star as symbolizing the Holy Spirit descending on people.
So, Lumix it was for the stained-glass windows and the interior. The long-view of Saint-Ouen is great. Did I take photos of same in 2010? I remember Saint-Maclou.
DeleteI remember taking a photo of you with Saint-Ouen in the background. Do you have it?
DeleteI haven't found any photos of yours from that day. I wonder what happened. You know, I don't remember going inside St-Maclou. I don't remember ever going inside St-Maclou.
DeleteI do have and have found photos you took on that July 2010 trip. I don't see any of Saint-Maclou in Rouen or of me at Saint-Ouen, however.
DeleteWas it on some other day when we (I) took photos of the cathedral. We’ve been several times in Rouen together. But, in 2010, I remember taking photos of the outside of St.-Maclou.
DeleteNow that my house is sold, I don’t know where exactly my digital archives are and I can’t check.
We were in Rouen together in 1998 and again in 1999, and then in 2010. I can't remember going there in the first decade of the 21st century except alone or with my mother and niece. Walt and I did go there once in 2002, when we were staying in Paris on the rue Mayet, and again in 2006 to see Marie-Jacques et Francis. Oh, it just occurred to me that we went to Rouen in 2001 on the way from Paris to Vouvray. We didn't take a shortcut.
DeleteGlorious photos, and very special to have the Henry James quote too. There can be such comfort in knowing that we share some of the same experiences with those from the past, and that generations to come may see the same.
ReplyDeleteHopefully!
DeleteI took a day trip by myself to Rouen, at the very start of our school year that Paris year. I had time left on my Eurail pass, and wanted to take advantage of it :) As with everything I saw that year, I wish that I had known more about what I was looking at all around me.
ReplyDeleteTalking about the pentagram in the rose at Saint-Ouen, I found another one, downward-pointing this time, as the one in Amiens, in another church in Rouen. It is the Saint-Patrice church where I went to a concert in the early ‘50s. This church has a tremendous collection of 16th/17th century stained-glass windows. If you like stained-glass widows, this church is worth the detour. As I recall, they’re not too high up you can’t see them well.
ReplyDeleteMy apartment in Rouen in 1972-73 was less than a five-minute walk from the église Saint-Patrice.
DeleteDid you have a chance to go in and look at the stained-glass windows? I bet at the time you weren’t interested in that kind of windows and not even yet the Gates’ Windows.
DeleteKen, your Rouen series has evoked fond memories of my year (1968-69) studying in Mont Saint-Aignan where the main campus of the University of Rouen is located. I lived with a family in La Maine par Maromme, a town even further out from the city. With no easily accessible public transportation available, I bought a Mobylette which served me well to get to campus and around the city.
ReplyDeleteI learned that the Allied bombing of Rouen during WWII caused the magnificent stained glass windows of the Cathedral to be blown out. The military targets were the bridges over the Seine less than a kilometer away, and to my knowledge there was no such thing as precision bombing during that war. I saw bomb craters in the forests near where I lived, some 5 miles or so north of the city.
I have much enjoyed this series on Rouen's churches and can recommend as worthy of a visit the rue de la Grosse Horloge as well as la Place du Vieux Marche (accent aigu) where Joan of Arc met her end. A great restaurant, la Couronne, is located on the square and had back in the day a 3-star Michelin rating--not sure if that's the case today.
That kind of bombing during WW2 also destroyed riverside districts in towns including Tours, Blois, and Gien along the Loire. Not to mention Le Havre, downriver on the Seine from Rouen.
DeleteSaint Ouen is indeed beautiful, I think it's the central tower that makes the church look so English Gothic. I found this on the net:
ReplyDelete"The west façade was never completed during the Middle Ages. The present structure was constructed between 1846 and 1851 in a Neo-Gothic style"
Thanks Bob for the notes on WWII bombing; I looked at the interior panorama and saw some modern windows. It's unfortunate so much history was destroyed in WWII. Dresden, in particular, comes to mind.
There was no military target whatsoever in Dresden...
DeleteBeautiful photos and interesting discussion today. I didn't see Rouen until I met our friend Marie on the Internet. I would have hated to miss it. I love the history, especially of Jeanne d'Arc.
ReplyDeleteThere is a painting by my grandfather in a flight of stairs in the Historial de Jeanne d’Arc near the Cathedral. You could see it in third position if you Google imagies La Dernière Communion de Jeanne d’Arc.
DeleteIsn't that the painting we saw in the tower called la tour Jeanne-d'Arc in Rouen in 2010, after our lunch with Evelyn's and my friend Marie-Jacques?
DeleteBeautiful painting, I was able to find this with little trouble on the net.
DeleteYes, it has been moved from the Tower to the Historial Jeanne d’Arc where it will be seen by many more people! The photo I referred to is truncated on both sides. I tried to make a link to a better photo, but couldn’t. The curator of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen had it in his office while they were making a frame suitable for an exhibit on Jeanne d’Arc. He told me he was amazed how my grandfather was able to make visible the red color of the cassock of the altar server through his white surplice.
DeleteBTW - For that exhibit, Rouen borrowed the Jeanne d’Arc from Blois.
Thank you for another excellent article. Where else could anybody get that kind of info in such an ideal way of writing?
ReplyDeleteI’ve a presentation next week, and I am on the look for such information.
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