Auxerre - the Cathédrale Saint-Étienne - interior

The Rose & Lancet windows on the South Side

Lillian :  As promised, this post will be all about the inside of Auxerre's Cathédrale Saint-Étienne.
Audrey :  No photos of us dollies this time.  Let's start with some of the stained glass windows.

The Rose window on the North

Lillian :  Lots of blue & red glass in these windows depicting various biblical and saints' stories.

Lillian :  More blue around a rather grumpy looking Jesus surrounded by the animals & angel that represent the 4 evangelists - St Matthew / angel, St John / eagle, St Luke / bull & St Mark / lion.

Audrey :  Perhaps he is grumpy because the window needs some cleaning? 

Audrey :  This marvelous window shows Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc) - it is not as old as the others and is signed "Ed. Socard ... Paris 1914"

Lillian :  According to Auxerre's Office of Tourism's web site  "Joan of Arc came through Auxerre on two occasions. The first time was on 27 February 1429 ... she stopped off in Auxerre to hear the mass at Saint-Etienne Cathedral and to pray. The second time was on 1 July 1429: the Auxerre residents refused to open up the town to King Charles VII and Joan of Arc who were walking to Reims. They only agreed to offer supplies in exchange for money. They had negotiated with the lord of Trimouille, in return for a sum of money, so as to remain neutral in the conflict between the King, the Burgundians and the English. "

Audrey :  Here is a close up of the angel - lots of lovely blues & pinks.

Audrey : With all of that wonderful coloured glass in the windows you get pools of coloured light on the floor & walls - like this...

Lillian : Such intense colour in the glass was expensive - the ruby red was made using gold (gold chloride)  the blue was cobalt ... this web site has a list for the colours in glass.

Lillian : Architecturally this Cathedral is quite lovely inside - here we look along the nave into the sanctuary.   Lovely & lofty with lots of vertical lines, high windows and vaulting.

Audrey : What sort of vault are they?  And did you notice that some are red, some white?

Lillian :  Groin vaults, sometimes called Cross vaults ...

Audrey :  Let's use the 2nd name.

Lillian : OK, here we are looking up into that decorated vault - I think this is where the Sanctuary, which was built in the early 1200s, and the later (1300s) Nave meet.

Audrey : What about this vaulting? 

 Lillian : Oh dear - we really need an expert on all this architecture - but I think that is probably Ribbed Vaulting, it is very elegant with the those thin pillars.  I also think some of the window on the RH side needs cleaning.

Audrey :  There are some really old, Romanesque, Frescoes, which were very difficult to photograph as they are quite faint - guess I would be too if I were so ancient.   The people all in a row are all wearing bishops' hats and have their names written underneath, the one in the middle is St Romanus - next to him, in the yellow is St Etherius, Bishop of Auxerre - and the seated bishop on the edge is named as St Agnarius (might be a strange spelling of Ignatius).

    

  Lillian :  Some more frescoes and usually a saint holding a lamb is St Agnes but that saint has a beard, perhaps he is John the Baptist but I don't know who the other person is.

 Audrey :  Hmmm, I like that nice pointy version of a Bishops' hat. 

Let's finish with some more random photos of the Cathédrale Saint-Étienne - things that caught our fancy, though we are not quite sure what they are all about!

Lillian :  This column top is a bit naughty - seems not everything in a Cathedral is high-minded and spiritual.

Audrey :  There were some ancient tomb-stones set into the floor and we liked this bit of carving - bones all tied up like a gift for a dog - or pirate!

And finally - this chap caught in a strong up-draft - or perhaps he was an early experimenter in the effects of electricity.

Vézelay - Basilique Sainte-Marie-Madeleine

Lillian :  While we were staying at Avallon we went for a couple of day-trips - the first was to Vézelay.  Another ancient hill-top walled town, quite tiny and famous for its Romanesque Basilique Sainte-Marie-Madeleine.

Audrey:  Romanesque architecture is earlier than Gothic and is not as ornate.  

Lillian : Yes, the Basilique in Vézelay was mostly built in the 1100's.  It is one of the places in France where pilgrims start el Camino de Santiago or the way of Saint James - they all end up in Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain.

Audrey: The Basilique has two towers but they don't match - this is the Tour St-Antoine.

The Bell Tower is called the Tour St-Michel - it is at the front facade and was built rather later - 1230-40.

Lillian : Our people took this photo of the facade on their previous visit ...

and here is one more of Tour St-Antoine in the winter light.

 Lillian :  Light - the interior of the Basilique Sainte-Marie-Madeleine seems to be all about the light.  

It is white, lofty and filled with the sun-light that streams through the windows.

Audrey :  The windows are clear glass not stained - some have coloured glass round the edges but even then the colours are palest green or lemon.

Lillian :  The Wikipedia article talks about how the sun-light pools down the centre of the long nave at midday on the Summer Solstice - apparently on the Winter Solstice the light shines on the narrative capitals on the columns on the North side on the nave.

Audrey :  Those carved Capitals and the Tympanums are quite something - for lots more photos visit Jim Forest's sets on Flickr - Capitals &  Basilique  and this web site has great photos with fun descriptions ParadoxPlace.

Lillian : Apparently this capital depicts St Benedict's temptation ...     Audrey : That's one crazy looking demon!

Audrey :  Here is a knight on a rather too small horsey -

These elegant ladies (Judith & Holofernes) actually date from 1850 - they were carved during the restoration of the Basilique.  More about this carving here.

Lillian :  The Basilique had been quite neglected and it suffered during the revolution ...  Prosper Mérimée (in his job as Inspector-General of historical monuments - but he was also a novelist and wrote Carmen, the story that inspired the opera) ... Anyway, he appointed Eugène Viollet-le-Duc to oversee the restoration done between 1840 and 1861.  Viollet-le Duc also restored Notre Dame de Paris; the Vézelay Basilique must have been one of his first restorations ... he added the supporting flying buttresses to the exterior (see the photos above).

Audrey : But let's see some more of the interior - this capital makes the column into an unusual tree that bears mangoes and pine cones ...

This column had some rather random little carvings and people give the leaf a lot of patting.

Lillian : We've just one photo of a Tympanum - in the Narthex, the south-west tympanum.  

It depicts the Annunciation, the Visitation, Nativity & the 3 Wise Men.

Audrey : Now these carvings are from the 'Cloisters' which are part of the restorations / improvements? that Viollet-le Duc did in the mid 1800's.  The faces are such fun - the poor monk seems quite dismayed by the laughing gargoyle!

There are more gargoyles outside - just one row of heads.

Lillian :  Before we leave the Basilique Sainte-Marie-Madeleine we have to show you the pipe organ ...

 

 Doesn't look particularly interesting until you go round the back and see that it was designed to be Monk Powered.

 Pedals and a hand-rail - just one person to work the bellows.  I guess it would be like those Step Machines for exercising!

Audrey : Je fatiguée !