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 on 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 a sunny Saturday morning in August, I decided to pay a visit to the Cluny museum of medieval history in Paris. Having taken a medieval history class in my freshman year of high school, I found I had quite a liking for that period. I had heard from a classmate in my French class that the Cluny museum was worth a visit, so I decided to go ahead and pay it a visit.
The museum contains a very diverse, if a bit scantily labelled, collection of artifacts from Gaul and Europe at large. I will share a few pieces that I found interesting during my visit.
Towards the beginning of the visit, there was the gallery of kings. This contains heads of statues of the kings of Israel made in the thirteenth century, which were held at Notre Dame de Paris until the French revolution. The statues were beheaded during the revolution because the revolutionaries mistakenly thought they depicted the kings of France, and the heads are now housed at the Cluny museum.
Next, one can see excellent examples of Medieval stained-glass windows that were originally housed in the Sainte Chapelle, but which were removed following the nineteenth century restoration of the church. It is a wonderful opportunity to see the windows up close. They are right next to statues of the apostles that were damaged during the French revolution and not restored to the Sainte Chapelle because they were deemed too damaged.
Something that is, I suppose, quite common in art from around the world but which I find to be especially prevalent in Medieval art is the tendency to depict historical or biblical figures in ways that are heavily influenced by one's own contemporary surroundings. One example that struck me as rather odd and a bit funny was the picture I included of St. James the elder dressed as a late fifteenth century pilgrim to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Another example of this is a painting of Jesus freeing prisoners that looks remarkably more like fifteenth century Brussels than first century Palestine. 
Sacred art from the Middle Ages also can take the form of icons or carvings inside of a small cabinet-like structure which opens out with side panels that are themselves depictions of biblical scenes. I include one such image. 
Finally, no discussion of Medieval art would be complete without the tapestries. Tapestries are images made with wool and woven together using a loom. They were common throughout the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and France in the Middle Ages.
At the Cluny museum, the tapestries can take the form of sacred art (such as a long and elaborate depiction of the live of St. Stephen which is on display towards the end of the museum visit), or they can take the form of depictions of every day activities or mythical stories.
An example of the former would be the picture of the tapestry called The Wine Harvest which is simply a picture of medieval peasants harvesting their grapes and them processing them.
Probably the most famous example of a medieval tapestry at the Cluny museum is that called The Lady and the Unicorn. It is part of a set of six tapestries, five of which depict the five senses. The sixth is titled My Sole Desire, and it is significantly more mysterious. It was woven at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and they were only rediscovered in the nineteenth century. The Cluny has done extensive restoration work, and they are in wonderful condition now.
The tapestry titled My Sole Desire, supposed to depict a sixth sense has stumped art historians and critics for centuries in terms of its meaning. Some take it to mean that the lady sets aside the jewels (her desire) in a rejection of the pleasures aroused by the five senses. Some take it to be an expression of courtly love. But nevertheless, it remains a mystery."
To see all of Asher's dispatches from his journey click HERE
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