Of Guide Books and Faith

We’re staying in the hilltop village of Montréal, in Burgundy, France. The nearest place of any size at all is Avallon: the nearest place that most people have heard of is Dijon, but that’s quite some distance away.

It’s a beautiful region, a bit short on theme parks (hurrah!) but long on scenery and history. It’s easier to read the guide books in French, generally, with a dictionary to hand, as the English translations tend to confuse rather than enlighten.

Here’s the castle at Thizy:

“Trevilliacum, Monregallis, Tisiacum, Annotum, our valleys do they resound again noise of the sabots of the funeral horse of the queen Brunehaut? To 12th century the abbots of Moutiers-St-John, come on their earths of Thizy to construct this imposing strong castle in the rock of Thizy.”

But actually, it doesn’t seem to much matter where you go – there’s something interesting in every direction.

Today we went to Vézelay, which is a World Heritage site and place of pilgrimage since the Middle Ages. Here's the main street:

A beautiful village on a steeply sloping hill with the huge twelfth-century church of Sainte-Madeleine at the top.

All round the church are statues of saints and in front of each one is a printed notice, addressing the saint. What interested me was their simplicity. In very straightforward French, and always addressing the saint in the intimate “tu” rather than the formal “vous” they explained what the saint had done and asked for his help. This is a fictionalised version but they were along these lines:

Saint Anthony, you were really helpful to poor people when you were alive and did a very good job looking after them so I hope that you’ll be willing to help us now. Pray for us.

I found the simplicity of these notices rather touching. I have not, of course, been brought up in any religion so I am rather torn between three thoughts:

The first one is hey, look at the magnificence of this church. If the Church was so bothered about the poor why didn’t it spend the money on helping them rather than building a posh building and leaving the actual helping to God?

The second one is, wouldn’t it be great to have a simple faith like this? “Prie pour nous” and to be sure that the saint would put in a good word for you with God: “Excuse me, God, but Mme Bertillon is having a tough time recently, could you lend a hand please?”

And the third one is, that having a belief in God and in the Afterlife must, in some ways, make one’s life so much easier.

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Tomorrow (Wednesday) we’re off to Paris again – the train’s at quarter to seven, from Montbard, thirty miles away – so it’ll be an early start, but I hope we enjoy it as much as we did last year. Meanwhile, Emily’s reading (she read four novels just on the journey to France), Stephen’s sleeping after doing all the driving, Gareth is mending one of the villager’s computers and I’m going to make some tea now.