FYI France: Auxerre, online
A tour through the phenomenal "L'Abbaye Saint - Germain
d'Auxerre" site,
http://www.auxerre.culture.gouv.fr/
can give satisfaction to anyone interested in France and Europe,
the history, architecture, archaeology, and the motivations of
early Christian and medieval life -- or to anyone wanting to see
what information technology truly can accomplish, something
better than Infotainment bump 'n grind... or to anyone with a
little time to kill on a rainy afternoon, who simply wants to
explore something online which is beautifully done and really
interesting...
The site is available in English as well as in French. Its
graphics are done dramatically but simply -- stark contrasts
instead of all the quirky colors and designs which can distract
on a little screen, and spare iconograpy in place of
wordswhichconfuse -- and the site is filled with glorious
manuscripts and photos and other images, of this ancient abbey
which played such a central part in the earliest history of
Europe.
Touring through the website you get a sense, almost better than
you do on a personal visit, of the reasons why the early
Christians built their building, and decorated it as they did. On
an in - person visit it always is hard to keep your focus -- on
the rapid-fire French tour guide droning along from about 30
tourist heads away, in a busy modern French town with bus noise
and fire engine klaxons going off in the background, while you
are worrying about where the kids have wandered off to and where
you will have dinner, and the German tour is pushing by you and
the Japanese tour is waving their flags and flashing forbidden
photos -- and the architectural mishmosh of nearly 15 centuries
of subsequent French history is obscuring what you really wanted
to see of the earliest stuff...
It is a _lot_ easier imagining being a 6th century Christian
"believer" when you are alone -- just you and your little
computer and the Web, plus the tender guidance of a multitude of
French archaeologists and art historians and Web designers all
tailoring the presentation to your own hypertext whims -- the
relics need protecting so they may be worshipped, now the comte
de Nevers is rattling his sword again, the folks down at Ve'zelay
are running to Cluny for protection... no klaxons or kids or 19th
century renovations, yet... just you and the history...
This Auxerre Website -- of which the French are proud (it is a
feature of their Ministry of Culture's "Grandes Sites
Arche'ologiques" offering, along with "La Grotte de Lascaux", "La
Grotte Chauvet - Pont - d'Arc", "La Vienne Antique", "Vivre au
Bord du Danube il y a 6500 ans" and others) -- is organized
around five themes:
1) "15 Centuries of History" -- the story of "Germanus, the
Bishop of Auxerre", plus the chronology, dramatically presented
via the floor plans of the structure as it developed over five
historical periods -- with illustrated panels showing "before /
after" structural renovations (try imagining _that_ when you are
standing in the nave amid the tourist crowds), and pop - up
explanations of key terms ("What is an 'oblate'?"...), and
Burgundy cartography;
2) "The Carolingian Apogee" -- "intellectual influence",
"liturgy", and "architecture" -- the intellectual life of the
Carolingian Renaissance, and the crucial role played by the
School of Auxerre within it -- featuring wonderful online
manuscript illustrations and texts, both thumbnail and enlarged
to legibility: examples --
Haymo, Commentary on Ezekiel, Paris BnF lat. 12302 f1v
the description reads,
"Au registre infe'rieur a` droite un ange transporte le
prophe`te a` Je'rusalem. Il est ensuite repre'sente' dans
le temple de Salomon ou` il assiste a` des rites
d'idola^trie devant les statues de la Jalousie (a`
droite), d'Adonis (a` gauche) et de repre'sentations
d'animaux (en haut). Dans le temple a` gauche les
He'breux tournent le dos au Saint des Saints..."
also --
Heiric, Florilegium of John Scottus Erigena, BnF lat.
13953 f1v
Servius, Commentary on the Aeneid of Virgil, 4th c, BNF
lat. 7960 f154
Saint Je'ro^me traduit la Bible en latin, premie`re Bible
de Charles le Chauve, BnF lat. 1 f3v
and there are others.
3) "The Archaeology of a Monument" -- subtitled "a polymorphic
study... a tripartite orientation, at once archaeological,
architectural and historical" -- You can say that again: they
even count the tree trunk rings on the wooden beams in the crypt,
to establish chronology -- something which French specialists
call, wonderfully, "la dendrochronologie". "Reading the
building", studying the era's construction techniques, analyzing
the paintings -- also, digging through the stratigraphy and 15
centuries of written resources -- a quick online tour through
this section of the site can give any student or sceptic a fine
appreciation of just how complicated "history" can be now.
4) "The Abbey Today" -- le marketing -- the sales pitch at the
end, to get you to make the trek in person and see the site, and
the town, and its cafes, and its shops -- a very convincing pitch
in this case, with pretty pictures of old buildings and modern
museums and clock towers and nice gardens and the river Yonne...
Burgundy...
5) "A Pilgrim's Virtual Visit" -- the final and most impressive
part of this Auxerre site, I think -- a chance for a "virtual
walk - through" of the early Christian / Carolingian crypt, with
close - up detail and description of the paintings, architecture,
and structural detail to be found there. For impatient kids, for
future visitors wanting a preview or veterans wanting a reminder,
for anyone neither francophone nor anglophone if there are any
left out there?
All this without the use of a printed book.
An introduction, you might say... one to begin, or perhaps at
most later on to supplement, a study which eventually must lead
to the printed word to be complete?
It is interesting, though, that the men and women who actually
built the marvels at Auxerre, and who worshipped there, did not
rely so greatly on the printed word as we do now...
And here we are again -- not relying on the printed word but
instead enjoying, and learning from, images and paintings and
architecture -- online, via this Internet / WorldWideWeb thing.
And they will have sound, one day soon, at this online site: if
not songs of the period, which may have been lost, perhaps
Gregorian chant?, plus the birds in those pretty Auxerre gardens,
and the echoes of ghostly footfalls in the tiny corridors of that
ancient crypt.
And experiments are under way to bring even smells to the
Internet as well, now -- so... the musty odors of an old church,
the smoke of candles and the sweat of the crowd on a feast day,
the baking bread scents from the town outside -- all so much a
part of an Auxerre visit to pilgrims today as they were 1500
years ago, now once again perhaps to become part of that which
the printed book could not convey.
(Anyone who has visited Madurai will attest to the importance of
sounds and smells to the experience -- medieval European places
were closer to modern India's, than anything which the 19th
century cleansed and rendered antiseptic for us.)
So perhaps Victor Hugo, in this bicentennial year of his birth,
may be found to have had it backwards. Perhaps his "ceci tuera
cela" held true for only a few centuries.
Once Auxerre is fully online here, will the images and sounds and
smells thereby assembled any longer be the mere adjunct to a
printed description? Or will that relationship become reversed,
and the printed descriptions wither for lack of use as more and
more people, all over the world, come to know this chapter of
French and European history through its online multimedia
depiction, of which this site is such a fine representation?
Well, find me a "book" on Auxerre -- even now, already -- which
is this graphically impressive, this much fun to use, and this
inexpensively and easily accessed.
The Auxerre W3 site is wonderful: links to it should be provided
by any other site, anywhere -- francophone or anglophone or other
-- with interests in France or Europe or the Medieval histories
of either, and also by any which address distance learning,
online education, and really fine W3 conceptualization and
design. This is a site of which their Ministry of Culture
justifiably is proud, one of many outstanding websites being
designed now by the French.
--oOo--
FYI France (sm)(tm) e-journal ISSN 1071 - 5916
*
| FYI France (sm)(tm) is a monthly electronic
| journal published since 1992 as a small-scale,
| personal experiment, in the creation of large-
| scale "information overload", by Jack Kessler.
/ \ Any material written by me which appears in
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Copyright 1992- , by Jack Kessler,
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--hjlm--