I awoke this morning and looked outside my window to see a sky of grey sea salt – almost uniformly colored, yet with a slight kernalization. At least it meant the rain was going to hold off. Over the last few days, the radiant sun and abundant wind had given way to cooler temperatures and intermittent rain. A welcome change, in some ways, as working in the glaring sunlight tends to sap my energy quickly. Saturday’s main task was preparing for the Jazz concert to be hosted that night. The reception hall needed to be cleaned of cobwebs, tables (barrels with a circular top placed over them) wiped and kitchen stocked with wine from the cave. In addition to wine and jazz, there was also to be food – greens, tomatoes, spicy red peppers with garlic, country pâté, thinly sliced ham, onion tart, melon slices, blood sausage and chèvre. Its preparation was commencing in the kitchen, so I joined in the fun. Roll the dough, cut it into small circles, brush each mini tart pan with olive oil, artfully form the dough into it, fill with sautéed purple onion and a mixture of milk, crème fraîche and eggs. Wash, de-stem and cube an entire crate of tomatoes. Carry the prepared items to the small kitchen beside the reception hall and listen as the band setup their equipment. The group consisted of three members – acoustic guitar, bass (one of those electric jobs on a tripod with nothing more than a neck and strings) and drums – two small hand drums (which my friend Tim O’Brien could easily identify, but for which I have no names). Maëlle artfully arranged the food items on the plates, the band played, the guests ate and drank and a grand time was had by all.
But today’s job was not so light. Bernard loves roses and has many of them planted throughout the property. He even has them planted, in the Burgundian style, at the ends of many rows of vines. We had roses in the yard when I was growing up, but I don’t remember doing much with them except to prune them back in the fall and cover them with straw. Today’s task was to prune all of the dead-heads from the myriad patches and throw the remains in the field beyond the vines. An important task, as it allows the new buds to break out into the sunshine and produce a new flowering in several weeks. And also, a great time to think.
On Sunday, Catherine was kind enough to offer me her car in order to get away from the vineyard for a while. Chateau la Sabine is quite isolated – the nearest town is several miles away and only has a café, grocery, pharmacy and post office. I decided to set out for Fontfroide Abbey. The abbey, named after the well of cool water around which it was built was magnificent. Built in the 11th Century for a Benedictine community which later converted to be a Cistercian community, it at one time housed 200 monks in addition to many peasants who had taken the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, but were not monks and could therefore work in the abbey farms. During the slaughter of the Cathars, the abbey was spared, as it sided with the pope. A slight historical aside: The Cathars were a heretical branch of the Catholic church that flourished in the 12th and 13th Centuries. They believed that all matter was evil and therefore Jesus could never have been both of the flesh and the Son of God. The church, obviously, deemed this highly heretical. And so the pope, being the kind, benevolent father figure that he was, commenced a war against the Cathars and killed them all – men, women and children. The area where I am currently staying is the heart of the Cathar country.
Another event which adds to Fontfroide’s luster and fame was the election of their former abbot as pope. Another historical aside: In the 14th Century, Philip the Fair, King of France was able to use his cunning to get the pope (who was a former French cardinal) to relocate the papacy from Rome to Avignon, in the south of France. Pope Benedict XII (former abbot of Fontfroide) was the third pope of Avignon and famously commenced the building of the papal palace which still stands in Avignon today. Several popes later, a schism occurred, with popes sitting in both Rome and Avignon (and at one point there were actually three popes), but when the dust settled, a single pope remained in Rome. The ‘Babylonian Captivity’ was over.
Fontfroide never produced another pope (although one of the brothers became the papal legate for the process of persecuting the Knights Templar) and eventually the Black Plague reduced the number of brothers to less than 10. During these days greed took over and the abbey would have seemed to be more of a chateau with several lords, than a religious community. Even those who have taken vows of poverty can be tempted by riches. The abbey was disbanded during the French Revolution and was repopluated with monks in the mid 19th Century. They were eventually driven out my law changes and the abbey sat empty for several years. In the early 20th Century, it was in danger of being lost forever. At this point in history, many buildings in France were being sold to rich Americans, who had them disassembled, shipped to America and reassembled in various forms (two such examples are the St. Joan of Arc chapel on the Marquette campus in Milwaukee, and the Cloisters – a branch of NYC’s Metropolitan Museum which is a conglomeration of at least four abbey cloisters and other architectural items from Europe which have been built into a single building in Washington Heights, Manhattan). Luckily, a rich Frenchman come forward and bought the property. Although he made quite few non-historical changes to the buildings, it was also his work that saved the complex from falling into ruin.
As the wispy mist swirled among the vines and mountains and I continued to clear away the dead rose heads in order to give way to the new, I thought about transformations – of me during my sojourn in Europe, of the lives of my friends and family, and of this world. And I wonder what tomorrow will bring.
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