Isn't it ironic that in France, one of the most un-religious countries in the world these days, every town and village is centered on a church, and every city has dozens of them? The city of Tours — pop. approx. 140,000, area 13½ mi²) — there are more than 50 churches and chapels. I think most of them stand empty most of the time — even on Sundays. By the way, churches in France are publicly owned (by the national government or local governments), with the exception of those built after 1905, the year France officially declared the separation of church and state. An article I just read says there are 32,000 churches, 6,000 chapels, and 87 cathedrals in France.
Paintings I photographed in the cathedral at Soissons in 2011
Meanwhile, the Paris newspaper Le Figaro reported last September that according to a 2021 poll, 51% of the French people they interviewed said that that they personally don't believe in God. When asked whether the Covid-19 pandemic had made them more likely to practice a religion, 91% said no. Asked in 2021 if they ever discuss religion with family members, 58% said no, compared to 38% who said no to that question when polled in 2009.
I think I read that this Virgin and Child I saw in Soissons cathedral dates back to the 11th or 12th century.
For all kinds of reasons people don't seem to need the church in their lives any more. I wonder if a time will come when it's needed again.
ReplyDeleteThose statistics are encouraging. Once free of the grip of religious endoctrination, people might see more clearly and be more responsible.
ReplyDeleteThe redeeming value of faith is those marvelous work of art it induced through ages like that beutiful statue of the Virgin and Child or the Soissons and Seniis cathedrals.
I didn't know the separation of church and state happened in 1905 in France. I think the separation has helped the US, but people still try to mix it up here. The Virgin and child remind me of Budda statues. The first photo is gruesome!
ReplyDeleteReligion seems to be a more private thing for French people than for so many Americans. And I agree with you, that painting is really gruesome.
DeleteThat wooden, front-facing, stiff, seated Virgin, holding the Christ child, seems to be maybe a style that was used often, in the Romanesque era. At our St Louis Art museum, we have a very similar one, from France, that You can see here
ReplyDeleteThe MET, in NYC,has this one, from the Auvergne.
The French have an interesting relationship with religion. Several years ago we were visiting French friends in the Basque region, very near the Spanish border. It was Palm Sunday, and across the border we could see people carrying Palm fronds. One of our friends said that The French and Spaniards are very different when it comes to religion; they're both mostly Catholic, but the difference is that Spaniards really believe it.
ReplyDeleteThat is interesting, Bob. It's cultural, for sure. And it must have to do with the way people are educated.
DeleteMy sentiments on religion line up with the French majority. The church was a wonderful patron of the arts, though. Ken thanks for your pronunciation help yesterday. Lordy, I need to hear more French speakers. As for accents, I can pretty much recognize a crisp, clear Parisian accent and definitely a Quebec province one, but after that I'm lost.
ReplyDeleteDear David, In French, Ken has no English or American accent. He might have an undefinable accent that his perfect fluency in the language makes it harder to spot. In my experience and for reasons unknown to me, Americans that I have known seemed to have very little or no English accent in French, compared to British or Irish people who don’t seem to lose their accent.
DeleteCHM, I wish I could agree with you about that. Here in the Loire Valley, people seem to recognize me as not French almost immediately. Whether it's because I don't look French, whatever that means, or because I don't sound French, I don't know. I definitely have a way of speaking French that is my own. And that's what I tell people. Je comprends le français et je le parle à ma façon. One man I talked to one the phone said to me: Ne perdez pas votre accent, c'est vraiment charmant. I think people out here in country have seldom met or talked with a foreigner who speaks French, especially not an anglophone, so they hear the difference between my accent and theirs very clearly and almost immediately. It wasn't like that when I lived in Paris, which is so much more cosmopolitan, with so many foreigners who speak French with their different accents. One old friend of mine from Paris days came to visit a couple of years ago. Walt and I had dinner in a restaurant her and her husband and daughter. After an hour or two of talking, she looked at Walt and told him that he had hardly any accent at all in French. In fact, I think you have less accent than Ken does.
DeleteMaybe each person detect accents differently?
DeleteI think that's true. Once I was in NYC, up at the top of the World Trade Center, and this eccentric man started talking to me. After we had talked for 15 minutes or so, he said he was good at telling where people were from in the U.S. by their accents. He said he was sure I was from the Midwest. Wrong! Well, I had lived in Illinois and in France at that time. In both those places, I consciously tried to shed much of my North Carolina accent. People are prejudiced against Southerners. One time in California, however, a man talked to me for a few minutes, and he said he had figured out, with no prompting from me, that I was a Southerner by the way I spoke English.
DeleteKen, I think sometimes all it takes is one or two words in a conversation. Or even an expression. Every once in a while I will accidentally drop in a "Texasism" and depending who's around someone will recognize it. When I would speak French, people would tell me occasionally I used "old words" - my teachers were middle aged back in the 1970s.
Delete