Sainte Chapelle

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 September 4, I decided to pay a visit to the Sainte Chapelle in Paris. I had not yet done so, and it seemed like some kind of delinquency to depart from the French capital without having seen the royal chapel. 

 The Sainte Chapelle was built in the mid-thirteenth century by Louis IX, or Saint Louis. It was built to house the relics of the Passion that the French king had bought from Emperor Baldwin II of the Byzantine empire. These relics included the Crown of Thorns.

The chapel housed these until the French Revolution, when they were removed. Until 2019, they were kept at Notre Dame, and in 2024, they were restored after the repairs were finished on the church. 

Therefore, since the nineteenth century, the Sainte Chapelle has been deprived of its original reason for existence but was saved from destruction by its gorgeous stained glass windows, which reach to the ceiling nearly from the floor and minimize the existence of the walls to nearly nothing. 

Having seen that one needed to buy tickets to get in, I nonetheless cockily assumed I could just make my way down at 3:00 pm and buy a ticket at the door. I was wrong. 

By the time I managed to make it there from across town, they had closed the queue for those with no ticket, so I was out of options for that day. Not wanting to waste the time it had taken me to get there, I resolutely decided to take a look around to find something interesting to see. I came across an article online that suggested visiting the Shakespeare and Company bookstore, right across the street from Notre Dame Cathedral. There I went. 

This bookstore has been in its present location since the 1960s, and it bears the same name as a very well known anglophone bookstore in a different part of town that closed in the 1940s. It saw men like Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, T.S. Eliot, and James Joyce darken its doorway. In fact, Joyce used it as an office. 

Even today, the newer store that bears the same name is somewhat of a destination for anglophone readers in Paris, and when I arrived in front, there was a line to get in. Once in, I found the bottom floor quite crowded and stuffy; it is there that they have the books for purchase. But once I made my way up some narrow stairs, I found myself in a nice charming set of rooms, replete with old books not for sale but just there to be read. I sat down in a comfy chair and picked up a random book called Chaucer's World and started to read. This was a compilation of Chaucer's work categorized by theme (such as London, war, humor, etc.). I flipped to the section labeled "War," and I found some interesting chronicles about a planned French invasion of England during the Hundred Years War. The young, eager French king attends Mass at Notre Dame before the planned invasion, and I almost got chills when I looked out the window next to me and saw the church itself right across the river. 

After finishing with Chaucer, I went across the river to Saint Severin, a very beautiful Gothic Church within sight of Notre Dame. Personally, I found the gargoyles here to be much more prominent, and I include pictures of them.

The inside was also very beautiful, and I said some prayers inside before heading back. The church previously there was built a little after Notre Dame and was the parish church for the prestigious University of Paris. After being damaged by a fire, it was rebuilt in a later Gothic style. 

During the French Revolution, it was a storehouse for gunpowder and church bells that were melted down to make weapons.

I came back to the Sainte Chapelle on September 9, got in, and was able to see the inside. It was beautiful, and the stained glass windows were as striking as anticipated. 

The only smudge on the picture so to speak was that some of them were covered over for restoration as you can see in the pictures, but the restorers tastefully covered them with highly reflective glass to minimize the visual interruption. I took a zoomed in picture of one of the windows which depicted scenes from the Book of Genesis so you could see the Medieval masterpiece in detail.

This was the last major place I visited in Paris before setting out for Uganda. 

The African part of the gap year definitely is a distinct phase, and it marks the end of the first part in France. I am looking forward to what comes ahead."

To see all of Asher's dispatches from his journey click HERE