6 oct

The sight of St. Lazare from the campground is marvelous and changes often during the day. In the morning the church is still hidden under a layer of fog that the sun, not as powerful anymore as at its heyday in mid june, has a hard battle with. But that is compensated for at the sunset when the lit up cathedral gets painted orange and yellow, against a pink and pastel blue sky. The extra pleasure of glimpsing at the church, quite elegant in itself, is that we know of all the hidden treasures in it.
We missed the church yesterday, too much rain, but every other day we’ve been gazing at the Gislebertus sculptures and marvelling about his ingenuity and his sense of fun. I especially like his Judas, hanging from a tree after his suicide, with devils having a party in the background. Julie is the perfect guide. She normally has a very good eye for absurdities in buildings, but in this case has studied books about Gislebertus and knows where the most fascinating details are To be found. Someone peeking behind a door, a tongue sticking out, one of the throwers of stones at Stefane is extra mean and throws viciously with two arms, those kind of things. All brilliant fun, and we are not yet tired of it.
Today we also saw a brilliant 3D movie about the Last Judgment sculptures. It becomes clear what an enormous endeavour this whole work was. The depth of the work is amazing, lots of the sculpting was done just to create background or to improve the impression from seven eight meters down.
Read also a little in the letters of Bernard. What Gislebertus could do with sculpting, Bernard did with words. He obviously enjoyed writing. He liked playing with words, which makes it, even almost 900 years later, still a delight to read.
The tone of his voice, joyful, elaborate, never getting enough of the sound of it, is quite in contrast with his message, which is austere. I wrote earlier about his dispute with the abbot of Cluny. Bernard disliked their extravagance with passion. Listen what he has to say about the way the Cluniacans ate their eggs:
“Who could itemize all the ways in which eggs are maltreated? Or describe the pains that are taken to toss them and turn them, soften and harden them, botch them and scotch them, and finally serve them up fried, baked and stuffed by turns, in conjunction with other foods or on their own. What is the purpose of all this unless it to be to titillate a jaded palate?”
And he goes on and on, also about the use of sculptured capitals in churches. Well mainly in abbey churches, and also mainly about strange creatures. Bernard again: “What place have obscene monkeys, savage lions, unnatural centaurs, manticores, striped tigers, battling knights or hunters sounding their horns? You can see a head with many bodies and a multi-bodied head. Here is a quadruped with a dragon’s tail, there an animal’s head stuck on a fish. That beast combines the forehand of a horse with the rear half of a goat, this one has the horns in front and the horse’s quarters aft. With such a bewildering array of shapes and forms on show, onne would sooner read the sculptures than the books, and spend the whole day gawking at this wonderland rather than meditating on the law of God.”
Which is of course exactly what we are doing. But even Bernard thought decent sculptures, like those from Gislebertus, or especially those of Gislebertus, are useful in regular churches to educate the illiterate masses. He was mainly fulminating against fellow monks (Cistercians versus Benedictines) who should read and meditate.
But then again with what splendour did he fulminate. That might be the lesson for today, it is a sunday; that the things one does, one should do well. This is with passion and a lot of joy.