So this past weekend, I went to France to partake in that most medieval of Christian pastimes: a pilgrimage… we walked from Notre Dame de Paris to Chartres Cathedral, a distance of about 90-95 kilometers. But I still have other posts to finish, that I don’t want to get completely behind on, so you’ll have to wait a bit to hear about it (or you can, you know, talk to me personally, on email and such. I still have email. And Facebook.)
Until then:
The Germans entering the symbol of France.
I’m compelled to link you to the intro sequence of what is probably my favorite anti-medieval medieval movie of all time: The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Disneyfied Victor Hugo could not be anything but anti-medieval, really, but there are still enough great moments in this movie that it remains a sentimental favorite. SANCTUARY! SANCTUARY! Who is the monster and who is the man??
(And if you want to see which classic Latin texts Alan Menken used in his score, check out this cool version of the final scene, which plays the score louder than the dialogue and provides subtitles. Dies irae, O salutaris hostia, and more.)
Part of the northern facade of Chartres Cathedral. If you want to learn more about Chartres, you could watch this documentary (in 5 parts) that I uploaded a few years ago. It has its sillier moments, and downplays some of the more robustly Christian symbolism for a more palatable “world spirituality” emphasis, but that in itself is not uninteresting, and they include lots of cool stuff about how medieval cathedrals were built and why they were built. It starts getting really good in the third section, so hang on through the more blah-blah spiritual-tourism parts.
Okay, now to go back to work on my Oxford post…!
Nerd In Deutschland 