Jumièges, A Small French Town on a Bend of the Seine River

“The past is never dead – it isn’t even past.” A good quote for our current wanderings in Normandy, through the Early and High Middle Ages. What’s left of those times has been acted upon by time and struggle, revolution, and wars. It’s reinterpreted and only partly preserved. So yes, the past is all around… but…the past is gone enough to be a source of wonder.

For instance, our first stop in Normandy, Jumièges. There’s a ruined cathedral. Here we are about 800 AD. Vikings just settling down and Charlemagne’s family on the rise. Almost no one could read. All the orderliness and skill of the Roman Empire had been forgotten. Those were days when you could really think that the Church was a force for good, for excellence, a way forward out of violence and anarchy. Hope and belief are encoded here. 

In these remains, no roof, no beautiful mosaic floor, no stained glass, no wooden benches or choir stalls, and some buildings that once existed are now completely gone. 

Much of what remains is broken, like the carved stone window frames just arabesques ending in air.

How did those people, with no cranes, gas engines, or electrical power tools, manage this stone building soaring 500’ high? Carved faces, birds, flowers…and all that stained glass that we can only imagine now? 

Think of the funding process, the political maneuverings, the power relations required for building this monastic complex; think of the cost of maintenance.

Well. Give them ten centuries of wealth and influence, of taking on the values of the richest and most powerful. These are human beings, not angels. Reality got farther and farther from the needs and expectations of most people. The Church disestablished, run out of town along with the nobles, by the French Revolution…which wasn’t angelic either, and couldn’t maintain its hope and sense of future.

So, use the cathedral for storage, and then for a quarry. Bring down the walls until parts of the complex are utterly gone and turn up later as building stone for places in town.

At last this decay was stopped, and eventually the cathedral remains came into the hands of the French government. An aesthetic choice was made:  keep it a ruin, an evocative glimpse of the past for the wondering visitor. Light flows through the outlines of walls, flowers and small trees take hold, and birds fly up like beautiful ideas. -- posted by Nancy