Day 22 – Bar-sur-Aube to Clairvaux

Sunday 22/4/2018

Distance 15.3km Total Distance from Canterbury 552.9km

Once again I chose to have a lighter day, if not exactly a day off, on Sunday. I vacated my wooden tent and walked back into the town. It’s a smart little place, almost bustling. There were people out and about. The sound of church bells announced Mass. The church was very beautiful indeed with fine windows.

It dates in part from 12th century. Large and enthusiastic congregation. Liturgy done well. Leaflets for all with the words and music and good direction from choir mistress. Youngish priest. Nice ceremony of ‘presenting’ a baby, who will be christened in the coming weeks. God bless young Victoir. We will come to his namesake in a moment.

And I saw something I don’t think I’ve seen before – the altar servers went to the back of the church before Communion and led up in procession those who would receive, starting with those in the back row. But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all the other guests. (Luke 14:10) A little bit of liturgical choreography, very affecting.

At the end of Mass the priest chatted with the people. Young. He told me he served over 30 communities. He asked me to bless him as a pilgrim. I asked him to bless me as a priest.

Victor Hugo (1802-1885), who was born in Besançon, which I will reach later along the route, is one of the greatest literary figures in France. Think of  Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Nôtre Dame. Born into a Catholic family, he became less sympathetic to religion, and in particular Catholicism,as he got older. But even his late work from 1869, The Man Who Laughs, includes the lines Thanksgiving has wings and flies to its right destination. Your prayer knows its way better than you do, suggesting he retained a spiritual outlook. 

The quote at the top of this post is from an early work. In his youth he was a practising Catholic. In his youth he was also a royalist, but in later life he was a commited republican. What did not change during his life was his opposition to the death penalty and a concern for the welfare of prisoners and more generally for the oppressed working classes . At the same he expressed views about the role of women and about colonial empire building and slavery which would be considered quite un-PC today.

He wrote a novel called Claude Gueux in 1834. I haven’t read it, but you can read a synopsis of it here. It sounds grizzly – what we would call Dickensian. And the themes are related to what would come later in Les Misérables in 1862. And it is set in Clairvaux. And to  Clairvaux I went.  It was a short enough walk and included a long straight stretch through a wonderful forest. This was not the kind of forest I get lost in, and no hacking through the undergrowth. But it was a forest on a hill! Look.

We have heard of Clairvaux and St Bernard already. He it was who was the great friend, and perhaps even idol, of William of St Thierry.

The monastery was established in 1115, a daughter house of Cîteaux, and hence a Cistercian Abbey. The Cistercians were historically a reform of the Benedictines, moving back towards a more austere lifestyle. The Cistercians or Trappists are what we think of as an enclosed, silent order. When a man becomes a Cistercian monk he enters a particular Abbey which he does not then leave. In 1098 Robert of Molesmes had founded Cîteaux. Bernard became the charismatic leader of the reform movement. He was deeply spiritual and an effective leader and recognized for his wisdom  He founded Clairvaux and it grew. And it grew. And it grew. It was extended and rebuilt twice, in 1153 and again in 1708. It was huge, almost like a small village though enclosed by a wall. The monks farmed, keeping cows and growing wheat. They milled wheat and oil (from walnuts). They made bread and cheese. They forged iron. They had fish. They were self sufficient. Mostly they prayed, and they studied.

They still followed the Rule of St Benedict which prescribes a balance between work, prayer and study, and also emphasizes hospitality. Although monks move away from the world, they do not turn their backs on the world. And they are practical : If someone’s work takes them so far away that they cannot return to the chapel for common prayer, they should pray the office where they are… (Rule of St Benedict 50) I think that applies to pilgrims too. And it is why church bells are so important.

The abbey flourished and had a magnificent abbatiale or church.

I visited the abbey. I didn’t visit the church because it had gone. I would show you my photographs but I didn’t take any. To get into the abbey I had to deposit my passport and turn off my phone. And no cameras allowed. Clairvaux Abbey is now a high security, long stay prison. I had to go into a French state prison to see the buildings. Five of us had a tour. A large door opened, we were led in, and the door was locked behind us.

What happened? The French Revolution happened. To simplify matters hugely, the French Revolution did for the French monasteries what the Reformation  and Henry VIII and Cromwell did for monasteries in England, Scotland and Wales (and Ireland). After the Revolution of 1789 the monks (few at that time) left Clairvaux and in 1810 Napoleon introduced a new penal code and Clairvaux became a prison and it still is. His penal code stayed in force until 1994. At its height as a prison Clairvaux had 3,000 inmates including women and children. The abbatiale was demolished. To this day it remains a prison for those with very long sentences, so drug offences, violent crimes and terrorism. Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, otherwise known as Carlos the Jackal is there, serving three life sentences.

The prison is under the joint administration of the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Culture. The tour guide gave an interesting overview of the various phases of construction of the abbey and then led us in further, with more opening of doors and gates which were again securely locked behind us. The abbey is enormous and the buildings have majestic proportions. The tour, for obvious reasons, does not bring you near to current inmates. The accommodation used for prisoners now is built on the sight of the demolished abbey church.

Large parts of the original abbey remain. When there were 3,000 prisoners it would all have been in use. As parts of the  abbey have been vacated by the prison service  several have now been restored, particularly the building which used to house the lay brothers (less educated men who were still monks but did more manual work). It is mostly bare stone and is done very skilfully. You are walking into buildings which must be very like they were in 1708, including the dormitory and eating area. Plans for restoration continue. The prison is due to close within the next ten years. It is not clear what will happen then though the hope is the Ministry of Justice might pass it all over to the Ministry of Culture.

The tour continues then to the original grand cloister a walled garden with the rooms of the monks in the upper storey. These were very big rooms! And here you see how the prison worked. The cloister garden was an exercise yard. The old ornamental fountain was replaced by ‘sanitary facilities’, now gone. The upper floor with the monks individual rooms was divided in the prison by a sort of mezzanine to make another floor. And here we are able to see the ‘chicken coops.’  These are individual wire cages with a bed and a bucket. Like a battery farm. They look medieval. But they were in use until the 1970s. Almost unbelievable. Hard to imagine an inmate in any way becoming rehabilitated. But in their day the chicken coops (that is what they are called in French) were seen as an enlightened advance on rooms for thirty men together which we also saw.

The final room we saw was another restored room of great beauty. I think it was the old refectory or dining room which during the prison years had been turned into a chapel for inmates. (3,000 people were obliged to go to Mass every Sunday.) It was beautifully finished, in stark contrast to the misery it had contained.

Where did I stay? Apart from the prison it is a tiny village. In the main street directly opposite the 12 foot outer wall is a convent of  the Sisters of the Fraternity of St Bernard of Clairvaux. Three ladies live there and I think Victor Hugo would approve. They live and breathe the ‘merciful precepts of Christ.’ They do not work in the prison. They accommodate and help the families of prisoners who have come to visit, often from very distant parts of France. When I was there, there were 3 women and four or five toddlers. They were safe and well and happy and relaxed in contrast to what must be very difficult family situations. It was lovely to see how the Sisters related to them. They were like grandmothers to the children  or even great grandmothers! The accommodation was simple but homely. My room included a cot and soft toy animals.

Above is the view from my bedroom. Note the outer wall on the street. I could easily have thrown a parcel in! Then a second wall. Then that is the outside of the great cloister. So the upper windows are covering the floor that had been divided in two, and contains the ‘rooms for 30’ and the chicken coops.

Above is the tiny chapel in the Sisters’ house.

Above is serious breakfast! They also supplied me with a sandwich for the road.

The Sisters are fascinating to talk to. Very dedicated to their work. They had worked elsewhere before coming here. Pierrette  had worked with lepers in Cameroon not far from where I had once lived. They explained there was never Mass on Sunday but sometimes they could get to Mass on a Wednesday. Before I set out I celebrated Eucharist with them, not for them on Monday morning. No vestments to be found. They sang the ‘Celtic Alleluia’. The wine was champagne – (not Mumm!). The sound of children having noisy breakfast outside added something. It is not a big house.