Saints and bombs

Tonight we are parked in a vineyard, south of Moulin, eating our appetiser of salade caprese with the most amazing locally grown Ratafia aperitif that Pete tells me is about 18% alcohol. So if incoherence sets in it is definitely because of the grape. Today we came across Saint Bernadette. In the flesh. Albeit, in a coffin.

We drove past beautiful rolling hills to stop at a Bar-Tabac for our coffee. Bec keeps ordering cappuchino, and the baristas, in fine fettle, keep squirting half a siphon of whipped cream to top hers, for decoration. We are going to have to teach her how to say: Café au lait to go with her compleat French vocabulary collected to date which is: ‘Messy’, translated: Merci, thanks to Ian Bonney, her skilled language teacher.

With incredible cheek we drove into a delightful rural municipal campground at Varzy, helped ourself to their facilities and lunched beside their primetime viewing canal where half the population of Bourgogne were busy fishing.

Then on to Nevers, to see the blue, green and yellow porcelain that the town is famous for, a la Limoge. Again, our luck was in, and despite it being a Saturday, when most things are closed in rural France, we happened upon an exposition of the specialist ceramics in the veuille ville, which we just loved.

We followed that up with a tour of a studio of a nouvelles ceramics china painter using traditional means and inspiration, who spoke no English, but somehow we were simpatico. We chatted about china and painting and told him of the tricks of a friend of ours who once painted for Wedgwood. We’d likely still be waffling on, had Pete not turned up from his Cathedral photo shoot, scooting us along.

Which is how we found the body of Saint Bernadette. After our disastrous visit to Lourdes a couple of years ago, where half the population of the world was apparently on a pilgrimage to Bernadette at Lourdes, we had thought we had seen the last of the saint after whom I was named. Not so. We accidently came upon her remains in Nevers.

The Sisters of Charity of Nevers happened to have been in Lourdes at the time of Bernadette's apparitions, caring for poor impoverished marginalised waifs exactly like Bernadette, whose father, once a miller, was now unemployed, living in a dilapidated unused mill, unable to feed his family of four unfortunate young children. 

Bernadette, the eldest, was likely hungry and hallucinating at the time of the visions; she’d already suffered a touch of the cholera and her health, throughout her life, generally, was poor. The good nuns rescued her from the notorious publicity that ensued after her visions, and cast her as one of their ilk when she was but a sweet young thing, barely young enough to know yay from nay.

She moved to the mother house of the Convent of Saint-Gildard at Nevers, where she lived for thirteen more years, acting as a nursing assistant and sextant whenever she was well enough. She died in Nevers when she was 35, on Wednesday, April 16, 1879. 

Her body was found to be incorruptible, or so it is said. So, in 1925 it was moved to the Chapel of Saint Gildard, where it lies in state today in a glass case, the only touch of embalment being a little wax on her hands and face. So it is said. But, if that is really her, she’s a pretty little thing, smaller by far than my teeny great-aunts who were all under 5 feet with a beautifully fine-boned nose. And she looks incredibly peaceful, so one would think she died calmly.

We headed, then, into the centre ville for a long walk and found there another cathedral but as Bec and I are done with Cathedrals for the moment, we would not have entered except, from the entrance, we could see some amazing examples of leaded glass which drew us in. The glass windows were all new, the top section of the church having been almost completely destroyed by bombs in July 1944. But money was found in the 1970s and five leaded glass artisans were commissioned to fill the glass gap damage. And there were gaps everywhere.

And everywhere the glass artisans had their say. They produced contemporary works, cubist works, abstract works and pop art windows in leaded glass. The colours used are modern bright hues, the designs are artist-specific, and so astonishing it is to see modern-art glass dressing medieval churches that it will likely be a hundred years or more before this is considered real art. But we just loved it. The bright sharp modern colours brought pizzaz to that medieval space, giving it life, energy and effervescent spirit.

Vineyards as we're driving

Nevers porcelain 

St Bernadette, in repose

Red and modern glass 

Contemporary stained glass pieces