7 feb

We drove around to see more churches. We had heard about the monolithic church in Aubeterre. To be honest, I had never heard of a monolith church. It turns out to be a church out of one stone, just like the latin word indicates. These churches are not created with rock, but dug out of rock.
Thinking of it, these people in Aubeterre might just have had a little too much time on their hands. Building churches is a time consuming work, and some of the larger cathedrals took centuries to be finished. But carving out the stones to build the outside of one church must be considerably faster than digging away the insides of a church out of a piece of rock. If only because there is less outside in a church than inside.
Think of Michelangelo who said a sculpture is always hidden in a piece of stone, it just has to be liberated from it. Can one look at a piece of rock and think, there is a church hidden there? It seems a rather odd thought to me, but that might be just me? I would also never think of David when I see a piece of marble.

And maybe, while hollowing out this church, the pieces of stone that were removed might have been used to create a church somewhere else. This way you get two for the price of one. They didn’t tell us this in Aubeterre, but it might very well be true.
I was puzzled though. I can imagine the blood, sweat and tears it took to create this church, but except for the appreciation of the sheer effort, there was not a whole lot in the church that I could appreciate. There were some high columns – our audioguide told us these were the highest columns in a monolithic church in Europe. But I have seen many more graceful columns in regular churches. In fact, I would argue that every column I have seen elsewhere was more graceful.
And why were all the walls so rough. At the time, there have been the most amazing sculptors working on the most beautiful or sometimes even bizarre images one can think of. A few hundred meters further up in Aubeterre is a wonderful Romanesq facade of a church from about the same period. Why were the walls of this church left so rough?
It was beautiful though, too. The cemetery in front of the church was amazing even, although this was also created by subtle lighting, spooky even, which must have been done by one of the thriller specialists of Hollywood.

I can see though that there is a good reason that there are not that many monolithic churches in the world. Which is no reason not to take a good look at the ones that are there and consider finishing them. Julie might have a splendid time at finishing some of those walls. And think of the appreciation of future visitors. It might have been a foolish endeavour, carving out a church, they might think, but at least they did a good job.