Asher Kaufman, age 18, set out on June 28 for a yearlong trip to help spread the Children's Rosary in Europe and Africa. He has been spending the months of July, August and the first two weeks in September in France. He grew up helping the Children's Rosary and participating in it. He now is helping to spread the Children's Rosary to more parishes and schools. He is also discerning a vocation to the priesthood and has applied to the seminary through the Archdiocese of Hartford. Please keep both his trip and his vocation in your prayers. He has been sharing dispatches from the trip. Asher has a love of history so his dispatches are often full of historical details.
"On August 23, I took the afternoon after my classes ended to visit the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Chartres. This is a very important church about an hour outside of Paris in the town of Chartres. It is another medieval Gothic construction, somewhere between classic and high Gothic architecture. Saint Denis, which I spoke of in another post, is early Gothic architecture, while the Chartres Cathedral comes a bit later, built between 1194 and 1220. This was when Philip II sat on the throne of France.
Philip II is notable for breaking the Angevin Empire in the Battle of Bouvines. It was a dramatic success for the French, and he succeeded in pushing the Holy Roman Empire, the English, and the Flemish out of French lands. As a result, King John of England suffered from a weakened political standing, leading to his being forced to sign the Magna Carta in 1215, a very important development for the idea of limited monarchy in Britain.
However, to return to the Chartres Cathedral, the story of the church begins in the early eleventh century. At this point, a large fire destroyed most of the cathedral at that time standing in Chartres. St. Fulbert of Chartres (who is a well-known figure in his own right, having helped to create the feast day on September 8 honoring the Virgin Mary) began an effort to rebuild the cathedral. He received much help, including donations from nobility and royalty. This church was Romanesque and built over a long period of time, but it too was mostly destroyed by a fire in 1194. Thus, the Cathedral we see now dates from then, when the reconstruction started.
It was important to mention St. Fulbert because it was him that established the School of Chartres, a very important Scholastic school of theology that helped to spark the twelfth century renaissance, a movement that saw the rise of Gothic architecture, renewed interest in translation of ancient Greek texts, and increased trade with the Middle East. Geometry, natural science, and mathematics saw fresh enthusiasm.
In 1260, King Louis IX (or Saint Louis) was present for the consecration of the cathedral. Further, it was in Chartres Cathedral that Henry IV was crowned king of France in 1594. Typically, Reims Cathedral was used for that purpose, but Reims Cathedral was occupied by the Catholic league that I mentioned in an earlier post. Recall that Henry was at that time Protestant and that there was a league of nobles (and nations) allied against him for that reason.
Modern history has seen Chartres Cathedral dodge several serious dangers, often due to the heroism of those who risked much to save it.
During the French revolution, the Cathedral managed to escape without much damage. A statue on the north porch was attacked by a crowd, but the townspeople of Chartres turned out in greater numbers to defend their cathedral, and the mob was turned back. After, the revolutionary government moved ahead with a plan to destroy it. They consulted an architect on where to place the explosives to blow up the building. He managed to rescue the church after advising the government that due to the immensity of the structure, the damage caused by such a tactic would be so great, the rubble so copious, it would take years to clean the streets. The government backed off and left the cathedral untouched for the rest of the revolution until Napoleon restored Catholic worship there.
In 1836, the Cathedral suffered a serious fire, much like Notre Dame de Paris did in 2019. The roof was destroyed, but the main structure and the stained-glass windows were unharmed. 
During the Second World War, a division of American troops found themselves trapped behind German lines after the D-day invasion of Normandy. They were in Chartres and suffering a bloody defeat in their attempt to liberate Chartres. An American colonel in command, a West Point-educated Texan by the name of Welborn Griffith, searched the cathedral for German snipers on the night of August 15, 1944. The Germans were in the habit of placing snipers in church steeples when the Allied armies would attack, so this was a natural place to search. They found no snipers.
The next morning, the Americans recommenced their attack, and German snipers went up into the Church steeples and began firing on American forces. The American troops began firing back. As they inched closer to the church, the Germans fled their sniper posts. The Americans, however, unaware of this, prepared to target the church steeples with howitzers; these certainly would have caused severe damage not just to the steeple but to the whole church when the steeple collapsed.
It was at this moment that Colonel Griffith arrived. Seeing the impending assault on the church and having seen no snipers the night before, he ran up and ordered the troops to hold their fire. The soldiers protested, and there was a lively argument. Finally, Colonel Griffith agreed to go into the church again and search the building. This he did, and, finding no snipers, he waved his arms from the steeple, shouted "No snipers!", and rang the church bells. At this, the Americans held their fire, and Chartres Cathedral was saved. Later that day, Colonel Griffith was killed in action in Lèves, a town not far away. The townspeople dedicated a plaque to him, and he was posthumously given the Purple Heart and the Silver Star. The French government admitted him posthumously into the Legion of Honor, the highest recognition they give, military or civil.
Chartres Cathedral is home to the Sancta Camisa, the tunic of Mary which has made Chartres an important pilgrimage site since the Middle Ages. I spent a long time in front of this tunic, praying and just sitting in awe of the relic.
After visiting the cathedral, I decided to walk down to St. Pierre Church, which I had heard from one of my classmates was quite beautiful as well.
St. Pierre (shown directly above) was built between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries in Gothic style. It was the church of the Abbey of Saint-Père-en-Vallée. During the French Revolution, the abbey was closed and the church used for the production of potassium nitrate. In 1803, the church was reopened as a parish church. It housed for a long time a plaque with images of the twelve apostles from the time of Francis I, but these are now in Chartres's museum of art.
I said a rosary in one of the side chapels and really came to quite like this church. The first thing that struck me about it was the silence one perceived upon entering. It was palpable, like a heavy blanket that envelops you and smooths over any rough spots underneath. There was, quite literally, no one here for much of the time I was inside. This was in stark contrast to the Chartres Cathedral or other famous churches like Notre Dame de Paris, where there is always a low buzz of people talking and the murmur of tour guides.
Not so at St. Pierre. The general appearance was quite charming; there was no recent restoration, no shining interior; on the contrary, the place had the feel of a long-neglected mansion, with plants growing up on the majestic flying buttresses and moisture seeping into the rib vaulted roof. I must say, I highly recommend visiting St. Pierre's if one goes to Chartres because it reminded me of what a monastery must have felt like in the Middle Ages; I could almost feel the years of prayer emanating from the stone walls from the monks who must have prayed, meditated, lived, and died in that church. I almost think I would not have been entirely surprised had I seen a medieval Benedictine monk turn the corner, praying his breviary, the Latin invocations drifting down the nave...
Next, I stopped at St. Aignan. This is another parish church of Chartres whose story dates back to the ninth century, but most of the current structure dates to the sixteenth century, and it was built in Renaissance style. It served as a hospital during the revolution. It has a simpler interior with very nice stained-glass windows. The chapel behind the High Altar has been closed to the public due to the danger posed by falling rock; the church has seen extensive work to stabilize the structure, and more work is on the way for the chapel. 
For a few years now, the church has been administered by the Fraternity of St. Peter, a traditional Catholic order dedicated to celebrating the Latin Mass. I spoke with the priest who was just stationed there. He seemed very interested in the Children's Rosary, and I gave him a Children's Rosary book.
I attended the evening Latin Mass there, and afterwards I had dinner near the Cathedral. 
I walked down to the train station to catch my train back to Paris. All in all, it was a lovely afternoon in Chartres. 
To see all of Asher's dispatches from his journey click HERE
No comments:
Post a Comment