It will run through the beginning of the Capetian dynasty to nowadays and will focus on everything related to France and its history.
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Notre-Dame de la Garde basilica, in Marseille, Bouches-du-Rhône, France, seen from the Vieux port (old harbour)
Notre-Dame de la Garde (literally Our Lady of the Guard), is a basilica in Marseille, France. This ornate Neo-Byzantine church is situated at the highest natural point in Marseille, a 162 m (532 ft) limestone outcrop on the south side of the Old Port. As well as being a major local landmark, it is the site of a popular annual pilgrimage every Assumption Day (August 15). Local inhabitants commonly refer to it as la bonne mère (“the good mother”).
A minor basilica of the Catholic church, it is situated on a limestone peak of 149m (490 feet), on the walls and foundations of an old fort. Built by architect Henri-Jacques Espérandieu in the Neo-Byzantine style, the basilica was consecrated on 5 June 1864. It replaced a church of the same name built in 1214 and reconstructed in the 15th century. The basilica was built on the foundations of a 16th-century fort constructed by Francis I of France to resist the 1536 siege of the city by the Emperor Charles V. The basilica is made up of two parts: a lower church, or crypt, dug out of the rock and in the Romanesque style, and an upper church of Neo-Byzantine style decorated with mosaics. A square bell-tower of 41m (135 feet) is surmounted by a belfry of 12.5m (42 feet), which itself supports a monumental, 11.2m (27 feet) tall statue of the Madonna and Child made of copper gilded with gold leaf.
The stone used for the construction of the basilica, in particular the green limestone originating in the area surrounding Florence, was discovered to be sensitive to atmospheric corrosion. An extensive restoration took place from 2001 to 2008. This included work on the mosaics, damaged by candle smoke, and also by the impact of bullets during the Liberation of France at the end of World War II.
In Marseilles, Notre-Dame de la Garde is traditionally regarded by the population as the guardian and the protectress of the city.
Birth of purgatory
Medievalist Jacques Le Goff defines the “birth of purgatory”, i.e. the conception of purgatory as a physical place, rather than merely as a state, as occurring between 1170 and 1200. Le Goff acknowledged that the notion of purification after death, without the medieval notion of a physical place, existed in antiquity, arguing specifically that Clement of Alexandria, and his pupil Origen of Alexandria, derived their view from a combination of biblical teachings, though he considered vague concepts of purifying and punishing fire to predate Christianity.
While the idea of purgatory as a process of cleansing thus dated back to early Christianity, the 12th century was the heyday of medieval otherworld-journey narratives such as the Irish Visio Tnugdali, and of pilgrims’ tales about St. Patrick’s Purgatory, a cavelike entrance to purgatory on a remote island in Ireland. The legend of St Patrick’s Purgatory written in that century by Hugh of Saltry, also known as Henry of Sawtry, was “part of a huge, repetitive contemporary genre of literature of which the most familiar today is Dante’s”; another is the Visio Tnugdali.
Other legends localized the entrance to Purgatory in places such as a cave on the volcanic Mount Etna in Sicily. Thus the idea of purgatory as a physical place became widespread on a popular level, and was defended also by some theologians.
image: Image of a fiery purgatory in the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry
Pact allegedly signed between Urbain Grandier and the Devil, produced to court during the 1634 Loudun Possession Trial. This image from Dictionnaire infernal ou Bibliothèque universelle… by Collin de Plancy (1826)
The Loudun possessions were a group of supposed demonic possessions which took place in Loudun, France, in 1634. This case involved the Ursuline nuns of Loudun who were allegedly visited and possessed by demons:
Father Urbain Grandier was convicted of the crimes of sorcery, evil spells, and the possessions visited upon the Ursuline nuns, based on the words of possessed nuns. Until the Aix-en-Provence possessions of 1611, the words of the possessed nuns would not have been considered valid evidence.
Relief, describing the arrival of Huguenots in Prussia 1685, Johannes Boese
The Edict of Potsdam was a proclamation issued by Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia, in Potsdam on October 29, 1685, as a response to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by the Edict of Fontainebleau.
It encouraged oppressed Huguenots to immigrate to his nation by offering them numerous benefits. The edict gave French Protestants safe passage to Brandenburg-Prussia, offered them tax-free status for ten years, and allowed them to hold church services in their native French.
Les Vaudoises sont présentées comme des sorcières.
Auteur: Martin Le France (1451) W. Schild. Die Maleficia der Hexenleut’, 1997, S. 97 Public Domain
Depiction of Waldensian women as witches
Waldensians, Waldenses or Vaudois are names for a Christian movement which started in Lyons, France in the late 1170s.
The movement was started partly in response to the schisms that had consumed the Catholic church in the 12th century and advocated a return to the vows of poverty and preaching of the Gospel as advocated by Jesus and his disciples in the New Testament. Originally a reform movement within the Catholic Church, the movement was declared heretical by 1215 and became persecuted by Church officials.
Saint Paul and Saint Thomas - AnonymousLimogesCirca 1220-1230Engraved and gilded repoussé copper, plaques of champlevé, enamelled and gilded copper, glass cabochonsH. 30 cm ; w. 14 and 15 cm. ; d. 6 and 6,5 cm
These plaques (the Petit Palais has two of the six surviving plaques), decorated with a low relief figuring the apostles Paul and Thomas, probably come from the abbey of Grandmont (Haute-Vienne) where they were parts of the decoration of the high altar.
The exceptional technical and aesthetic quality of these pieces illustrate the skill in working champlevé enamelled copper acquired by the craftsmen of Limoges in the 13th century.
Prayer attributed to Boukman at the vodou ceremony of the Bois Caïman/ Bwa Kayiman
Bois Caïman (Bwa Kayiman) is the site of a vodou ceremony presided over by Boukman Dutty and Cecile Fatiman on August 14, 1791 and which is considered as the starting point for the Haitian Revolution. Participants at Bois Caïman were also Georges Biassou, Jeannot Bullet and Jean François Papillon, all of which were leaders of the early Haitian Revolution.
Bois Caïman is located in the northern Morne Rouge region of Haiti, southwest of Cap Haïtien.
Left wing of the diptych depicts Etienne Chevalier with his patron saint St. Stephen; Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels, Right wing of the diptych.
The Melun Diptych is a two panel oil painting by the French court painter Jean Fouquet (1425-1480) created around 1452. The name of the diptych came from its original home in the Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame in Melun. The left panel depicts the patron Etienne Chevalier with St. Stephen and the right panel depicts the Virgin and Christ child surrounded by cherubim. Each wooden panel measures about 93 by 85 centimeters and the two would have been hinged together at the center. The two pieces, originally a diptych, are now separated.
Reliquary pendant of the Holy Thorn
Medieval, around AD 1340
From Paris, France
A thorn from Christ’s crown?
This reliquary is made of gold, with an exterior of amethystine crystal. The three principal leaves are richly enamelled in basse-taille (‘shallow cut’), with scenes divided into two registers by a decorative band. The scenes depicted represent episodes from the life of Christ, with one exception. In the lower register of one leaf a barefoot king kneels with his queen, praying to the Virgin and Child. It is likely that they commissioned the piece.
One side of the central leaf is not enamelled; it contains instead a miniature painted on vellum of the Nativity and the Annunciation to the Shepherds. It is very faded but when freshly painted it may have more closely resembled the brilliant colour of the enamels.
The purpose of the miniature is to conceal a relic of the Holy Thorn. The relic compartment is divided into seven, the central one reserved for a thorn said to come from the crown of thorns that Christ wore on the Cross. The thorn is still in place, with a small golden crown placed above it.
Who are the royal couple who ordered the reliquary to be made? There is no evidence to suggest their identities apart from the likely date of the object and its probable place of manufacture. The treatment of the figures of both the enamels and the illumination suggests a date slightly before the middle of the fourteenth century. The enamelling is very much in the fashion of Parisian metalworkers at this time. Given these stylistic attributions, the most promising candidates are Philip VI (reigned 1328-50) and his wife Jeanne de Bourgogne
Eglise du Val de Grâce
The church of the Val-de-Grâce was built by order of Queen Anne of Austria, wife of Louis XIII. After the birth of her son Louis XIV, Anne (previously childless after 23 years of marriage) showed her gratitude to the Virgin Mary by building a church on the land of a Benedictine convent.
The church of the Val-de-Grâce, designed by François Mansart and Jacques Lemercier, is considered by some as Paris’s best example of baroque architecture (curving lines, elaborate ornamentation and harmony of different elements). Construction began in 1645, and was completed in 1667.
During the French Revolution the royal symbols were effaced. The abbey, still a model of religious construction of the 17th century, was disestablished during the French Revolution and became a military hospital in 1796 at the order of the National Convention. In 1979 the hospital was moved to a new facility, built on the former kitchen garden of the Benedictines. Today, the abbey contains the museum and library of the of the Army Health Service, the school of the Val-de-Grâce, and hospital staff offices.
