A Medieval Day: The Cathedral of Carcassonne; Michael Lonsdale at the Cistercian Abbey of Villelongue

July 7, 2013
A Medieval Day: The Cathedral of Carcassonne; Michael Lonsdale at the Cistercian Abbey of Villelongue

          Perhaps it was fitting that today, Sunday, was devoted to medieval influences.  Of course, Languedoc-Roussillon is jam-packed with medieval churches, abbeys and cathedrals, but it can be overwhelming to try to tackle that world, which resembles our own so little.  I have held off visiting the famous towns --Castelnaudary, and Albi, to mention two-- because staring at stones to stare at stones held less appeal than cycing or driving through the countryside.

          However, on Sundays I go to Mass, so I thought I would go in Carcassonne, to Saint Michel, the Cathedral at Carcassonne's center, and the town's largest church after Saint Nazaire, the church built inside the Cité, the walled city.

          Entering the cathedral a few minutes before the start of the 11 o'clock Mass, a little girl in a white caplet handed me a program.  I sat in one of the forward pews to get a better view.  All around me were walls and tall columns painted with stenciled repeats of the Cross of Rousillon-Languedoc and other symbols.  The painted symbols stood out against deeply-hued painted backgrounds, each column with a different motif: column beside column, pattern beside pattern.  The sight reminded me that, contrary to our vision of medieval castle interiors as being grey, medieval splendor contemplated bright color, even if the palette was limited to colors derived from vegetable and sources.

          The young woman in the caplet was one of several companions to "Elisabeth", a young girl who was celebrating her First Communion today.  The church was packed with people, several generations of families, children of retirement age escorting ancient parents, long-married couples.  I saw a Tahitian couple across the aisle, and behind me sat a Haitian couple, but most of the parishoners were from l'Hexagone.

          The church was not particularly noisy, but noisy enough that, a few minutes before the start of the service, the celebrant, a young priest wearing a black cassock, walked up to the microphone and uttered a long "Shhhhhhhhh....", and then another.  The church immediately became still.

          The procession down the main aisle began almost immediately after, with the priest (now in vestments) following the group of girls associated with the First Communion.  Everyone sat down and the service began.  Today marked a change in the liturgy: the mention of Saint Joseph, father of Jesus, who had been overlooked until now.  Otherwise, the Mass was like any other.

          Except that just before the homily, the priest said "And the children will now withdraw."

          And every child in the church --about twenty in all-- stood up and left their pews, accompanied by a Sunday school teacher.  The homily over, the children returned for the eucharistic celebration.

          The priest was assisted by two acolytes, who shadowed the priest at the altar.  The choreography was exact: all three bowed together, genuflected together, rose together.  The priest was handed a censer by one of the altar boys: he swung the censer twice to the left, twice in the center and twice to the right, then walked around the front of the altar table and repeated the motion, bathing the altar table in incense.  As the smoke rose, I was reminded that incense was purifying.  (Perhaps that is the origin of our exclamation "Holy smoke!")  This priest --serious, thin, and dark-eyed, his hair razored at the sides as if tonsured-- served the most perfectly choreographed Mass I have ever attended.  Watching him, I was reminded of an observation about the medieval world's dependence on display and symbols: in a largely illiterate world, dress and gestures stood in for words.  Even if the medieval parishioner could not read or understand the Bible, the panoply of the Church on display at Mass inspired awe.

          After the Mass, people gathered in the plaza outside the Cathedral, where the priest, his duties now completed, relaxed and chatted amiably with his flock.  Before I turned and left, I saw a woman of about sixty-five or more put a helmet on and throw a leg over motorbike.  I do not think she is unusual: the French love practical things --from freezing ice in plastic bottles (see yesterday's post) to motorbikes, and older people in France do not like making concessions to their age.

          After Mass I planned to spend the afternoon and part of the evening at Villelongue abbey.      Walking through Carcassonne last week, I saw a poster for a reading inspired by "Of Gods and Men", the film about the 1996 murder of seven Cistercian Trappist monks in their abbey at Tibhirine, Algiers during that country's last civil war.  Michael Lonsdale, who played Brother Luc, the doctor who ran the clinic at the abbey serving the Algerian community, would be reading, accompanied on the piano by Nicolas Celoro.

          I had to attend this performance: Michael Lonsdale --or Michel Lonsdale, as he is known in France-- is an actor whose films I grew up with: Lebel in Day of the Jackal, Hugo Drax in Moonraker, the hatter with the buttocks-exposing pants Buñuel's La Fantôme de la Liberté, Papa in Munich.  In Souvenir, with Christopher Plummer, he played the Mayor of Oradour-sur-Glane, the site of a Nazi massacre of the town's citizens in retaliation for a Resistance incursion; in Remains of the Day he was Dupont D'Ivry, a French politician attending a conference aimed at preventing World War II.   In 2010 he won a César (the French equivalent of an Academy Award) for his performance in Of Gods and Men.  He is an actor incapable of giving a frivolous performance.

          I gave myself more than enough time to drive to the abbey, which is now not only a tourist destination but a small inn.  I was the first to arrive, three hours before the performance.  After I paid for my ticket (15 Euros, about $20 USD), I entered the abbey.  To the right of me were a group of diners enjoying their lunch.  At the head of the table was Michael Lonsdale.  I did not ask for his autograph, and I did not say a word, although I saw him register my entrance.  Later I found out from the abbey proprietor that a group of visitors to the abbey (which had not yet closed in anticipation of the performance) had interrupted his lunch, asking Lonsdale for autographs and pictures.  "After that, he went into his room, and won't be out until the performance" she told me.

        The performance was held in the ruined chapel of the abbey.  About two hundred people attended, many of them snapping pictures. (My camera conked out as soon as Michael Lonsdale made his appearance on stage.)  Each of the eight readings --from Saint John and Saint Luke's Gospels, from the letters of one of the martyred monks, from the superior of Cistercian order--was associated to a piece of music by Liszt or Nicolas Celoro, who writes in a florid, pianistic style.  (Earlier Celoro told me his music was opposed to the ugly contemporary music created by Arnold Schonberg and his disciples, which he called brutisme -noise-music.)

          Lonsdale was Lonsdale: shambling, wise, quiet.  A devout,  life-long Catholic, he has lent his talents to raise money to help maintain monasteries and monks.  Born in 1931 in Paris, he was first raised in Jersey and London.  His family had relocated to Morocco (where his father planned to start a business), when France fell on September 1, 1939.  He only returned to Paris after the war, when, after a few years studying art, he switched to acting.  In 1962, Orson Welles cast him as the Priest in his film of Kafka's The Trial and he never stopped working since.  In 2012 he even lent his voice to a video game, 007 Legends, which reprised his role as Hugo Drax.

         Present for the performance were two Cistercian priests, slender young men in cream colored robes, as well as a French nun in a blue habit.  Seats were reserved by row, rather than individual seat; the earliest to reserve were seated closest to the stage.   There was a main aisle in the center which was kept clear.

          I had a good seat on the aisle in Row H, which became even better when out of nowhere a brindled Staffordshire terrier walked down the aisle and sat beside me.  The dog's heavy breathing was inadvertently comic:  I stroked its head several times (as did the man in the aisle seat opposite), hoping it would not pant so.  The dog, of course, could not help himself, and after a short rest, got up and walked down the aisle as the piano played, walked right up to Michael Lonsdale --and then turned right and left the building.  The tone of the performance was unaffected, although I know Lonsdale saw the dog.