Praying in Ordinary Time 2021: 12, Cathédrale St-Jean, Perpignan

The Cathédrale St-Jean in the old town of Perpignan (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

During this time in the Church Calendar known as Ordinary Time, I am taking some time each morning to reflect in these ways:

1, photographs of a church or place of worship;

2, the day’s Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel).

This week my photographs are of cathedrals in European capitals or former capitals. This morning (10 June 2021), my photographs are from the Cathédrale St-Jean in Perpignan, now in France but once the capital of the short-lived Kingdom of Majorca.

Inside the Cathédrale St-Jean in Perpignan (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Cathédrale St-Jean, with its Gothic architecture, its wrought-iron bell tower and its cloistered cemetery, began as a collegiate church, the Collégiale Saint-Jean, or Collegiate Church of Saint Jean. However, when the short-lived Kingdom of Majorca moved its capital to Perpignan in 1276, the Kings of Majorca wanted a more impressive church for their new capital.

The original collegiate church had proved too small and King Sancho II of Majorca set about building a new church. At the time, the Palace of the Kings of Majorca was being built as a new royal residence on a hill to the south of the city.

King Sancha of Majorca laid the cornerstone when building work began in 1324. The original vision was for a grand, three-nave building, but only the choir was completed when the ‘forgotten and ephemeral’ Kingdom of Majorca collapsed in 1349 and the building project was interrupted.

Benedict XIII, the anti-pope based in Avignon, fled to Perpignan and tried without success to rally his supporters at a council here in 1409.

Further efforts to resume building works were disrupted by the plague and various wars, and building at St-Jean did not resume in earnest until later in the 15th century. When the new building project was set on foot, Guillem Sagrera (1380-1456) of Majorca, one of the great architects of the times, took control of the project.

A native of Felanitx in Majorca, Segrara’s masterworks include La Seu Cathedral and the Llotja dels Mercaders (1426-1447) in Palma de Majorca. He also worked at the court of King Alfonso V of Aragon in Naples, where he restored the Castel Nuovo, redesigning its plan and adding several loggias and the Barons’ Hall.

In Perpignan, Sagrera decided on a church in the Catalan Gothic style, with one nave of vast dimensions, and redesigned St-Jean in Perpignan in the same style as La Seu Cathedral of Palma de Majorca.

Sagrera died in 1456 in Naples. The vaulting in Perpignan was not completed until 1490 and the church was not completed until the end of the 15th century. The pebbled façade with brick foundations remained unfinished, and the new church was only consecrated in 1509.

Originally, the diocese was based in Elne, but the new church replaced the Cathedral of Elne when the bishop was moved to Perpignan, and from 1602 the bishops held the title of Bishop of Perpignan-Elne.

The cathedral’s western façade is a typically Catalan façade of pebble and brick, but it was never finished. The porch was added in 1631, the only remnant of a larger monumental ensemble. Philippe Barthélemy added the wrought-iron campanile in 1743.

When the cathedral was restored in the 19th and 20th centuries, the Gothic window of the façade was rebuilt, as it had previously been substituted with a simple rectangular opening.

The interior of the cathedral gives an impression of unity due to the harmonious proportions and the imposing character of the nave. This impressive nave is 80 meters long, 18 metres wide, and 26 metres tall. It is built with seven cross-vaults and has short transepts and a short apse.

There are magnificent Catalan, Gothic and Renaissance altar pieces in the side chapels and the treasures include le Dévot Crucifix, a 14th century wooden sculpture.

Some of the side chapels incorporate parts of an earlier Romanesque church. These chapels include the 15th century chapel dedicated to Notre-Dame-de-la-Mangrana, and the Chapel of Saint Eulalie and Saint Julie, patron saints of the diocese, which was painted by Jean-Jacques Melair in 1676. One of the side chapels includes the painted remains of the original organ case.

The elaborate furniture in the cathedral includes some real masterpieces, and the organ is listed as an historical monument.

On the south side of the cathedral, the cloister-cemetery of Saint John, or Campo Santo, dates from the early 14th century and is one of the oldest mediaeval cemeteries in France.

The cloister galleries were covered by a sloping roof supported by columns with sculpted capitals. Each funeral niche or recess, with a refined gothic design, is marked with heraldic shields bearing the coats-of-arms of the ruling and noble families of Perpignan.

Philippe Barthélemy added the wrought-iron campanile in 1743 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 5: 20-26 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 20 ‘For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

21 ‘You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder”; and “whoever murders shall be liable to judgement.” 22 But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, “You fool”, you will be liable to the hell of fire. 23 So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. 25 Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. 26 Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.’

The organ is listed as an historical monument (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary:

The Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary today (10 June 2021) invites us to pray:

We pray for the Church of the Province of Melanesia in the southwestern region of the Pacific Ocean and the Pacific Conference of Churches.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

The cloister-cemetery or ‘Campo Santo’ dates from the early 14th century and is one of the oldest mediaeval cemeteries in France (Photograph: Patrick Comerford; click on image for full-screen view)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

A photograph from Crete illustrating the website of a new parish in Paris

A photograph from Georgioupoli in Crete illustrating the new website of the Parish of Saint-Matthieu in Paris

Patrick Comerford

It is always a pleasure when another church asks to use one of my photographs, no matter what tradition or names may be used by the church.

I am unhappy when commercial or business interests want to use my photographs. I figure if they can afford to be in business, they can afford to pay professional photographers for their work, and I do not want to undermine anyone’s living.

But churches and religious and voluntary organisations are in a different category. Often, they run on shoestrings. By agreeing to their use does not mean I share their beliefs or priorities, but it is only in sharing they we can learn to strive towards unity in the faith.

Recently I was delighted to respond to a request from Didier Vilanova of the Parish of Saint-Matthieu (Saint Matthew), a new, small Orthodox parish near Paris, to illustrate their website with my photograph of Saint Matthew in a fresco on a spandrel beneath the dome of the Analipsi Church in Georgioupoli, between Rethymnon and Chania in Crete.

The parish was formed in 2019, following a division in the former in Exarchate of Russian tradition the previous year.

The Orthodox Churches in the Russian tradition were unwilling to continue under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church in the 1920s and the 1930s, fearing the Church in Russia was under state control and being manipulated by Soviet politicians. They turned to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople, which offered full communion and administrative protection from 1931.

The best known institution in the archdiocese was the Saint Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute, founded in in Parish 1925 by Metropolitan Eulogius Georgievsky and sometime home of several well-known Orthodox theologians and writers of the 20th century, including Georges Florovsky, Alexander Schmemann and John Meyendorff. However, Vladimir Lossky did not teach taught at Saint Sergius, nor was he a member of the archdiocese, remaining loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate.

The Exarchate in Western Europe continued until 1965, and from then until 1971 it was known as the Orthodox Archdiocese of France and Western Europe and Russian Western European Churches of Diaspora.

The archdiocese was regularised by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1971, when its internal autonomy recognised by Patriarch Athenagoras. It became an exarchate or autonomous diocese with its own archbishop in new reorganisation introduced in 1999 by Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople.

But tensions between Moscow and Constantinople, and tensions over the demands to preserve Russian ethnic identity and the desire to give expression to the cultural diversity of the priests, people and parishes, always threatened the life of the archdiocese and its dependent dioceses.

These tensions increased when Bishop Basil (Osbourne) and a number of priests and parishes in the Diocese of Sourozh in Britain and Ireland transferred from Moscow to Constantinople in 2006.

Constantinople moved to dissolve the separate Russian diocese 2018, and priests, parishes and people were urged to join other parishes dioceses within the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The responses and divisions that followed became part of the divisions between Constantinople and Moscow over the future of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine.

When the Russian Church formed a new exarchate based in Paris at the end of 2018, a group of parishioners in Paris recognised the need for a new French-speaking parish that was loyal to the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The new Parish of Saint-Matthieu was formed Easter 2019.

The new parish welcomes a diversity of people in the Paris region, and says it wishes ‘to build itself in a spirit of overcoming the disturbances which agitate our Churches and in the continuity of the heritage of the great pastors of the ex-exarchate who worked for the French-speakers, such as Fathers Boris Bobrinskoy, Pierre Struve, Pierre Tchesnakoff, and so many others.’

Since September 2020, the parish has enjoyed hospitality of the Catholic Diocese of Nanterre in the Chapel of the Annunciation in the Church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste. It is at 158 Avenue Charles de Gaulle in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near the Pont de Neuilly Metro Station. The Divine Liturgy is celebrated on Sunday mornings at 10 a.m.

Saint Matthew depicted in a fresco in the dome of the Analipsi Church in Georgioupoli, between Rethymnon and Chania in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Praying that Notre Dame rises with Easter hope to continue its mission

Notre Dame this morning after last night’s fire (Photograph courtesy Phil Sutcliffe)

Patrick Comerford

I have been in France many times between 1979 and last year, and in Paris perhaps half a dozen times, if not more.

On one family holiday, I was persuaded – without much arm twisting – to go to Euro Disney, with the promise that I would have a day in Paris all to myself. And then, a few days later, we also decided to go back into Paris together again.

Two young boys wanted to climb the Eiffel Tower, see the Arc de Triomphe, and wondered did the hunchback actually live in the bell tower at Notre Dame.

Of course, I have visited each of these sites on many occasions. But there are many places I still have to visit in Paris – I have yet to visit the Louvre, for example. And there are some places that make me feel uncomfortable. Despite the beauty of Sacré Coeur and the breath-taking views if offers across the city from Montmartre, the story of the massacre of the communards and the triumphalism of right-wing French royalism make me feel uncomfortable about visiting the basilica.

I was sent to Paris by The Irish Times when I was a journalist; I have been there to visit protesters when I was an activist in CND in the early 1980s; I have stopped overnight to break long-haul flights; and there have been family holidays too. Like every priest, I suppose, I too have come to find my own favourite churches in Paris. But on each occasion, I have also visited Notre Dame, which expresses in stone the spiritual heart of Paris and of France.

On one visit to Paris some years ago, four adult family members stayed near Montmartre, and I went for a jog on the butte of Montmartre each morning. But when it came to visiting Sacré Coeur, I was perhaps too blunt with the oldest family member when I expressed my views about the basilica and what it represented.

The tables were turned later that day when we visited Notre Dame. This same elderly family member questioned what she saw as the ostentation of the cathedral, and was disturbed, at the same time, by the large number of tourists trudging through, taking in their 30-minute experience of Notre Dame as they moved on to the next site, without pausing for prayer or reflection, even as the Mass was being celebrated in a side chapel.

The cross shines above the altar through the smoke and dust in Notre Dame this morning

At the time, I was working for an Anglican mission agency, and I was asked what I thought was the mission of Notre Dame.

I looked around, and noticed the large number of confession boxes, each offering the sacrament of reconciliation to visitors in a different language – French, English, German, Spanish, Korean … there must have been 10 different languages in all.

I made a quick calculation. It was a leap year. If each priest in each confession box heard only three confessions a day (say morning, noon and afternoon), then over the full 366 days that year Notre Dame would have been instrumental in reconciling at least 10,980 people with God, with the Church and with their own souls. And that is probably a low estimate, a very minimalist calculation.

I thought of the mission agency I was working with at the time. If it could state in its annual report that it reconciled 10,980 people, if not more, with God, with the Church and with their own souls each year, it would have no problem in fundraising in parishes and dioceses throughout the Church.

This has been the mission of Notre Dame for over 850 years … over 9 million people, at lowest possible calculation. This is the mission of every cathedral. Notre Dame is the same age as Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, and both share the same dedication and patronage, as does Saint Mary’s Church, Askeaton. Last night, during our Lenten Evening Prayer in Saint Mary’s Church, Askeaton, we prayed for the priests and people of that other Saint Mary’s Church, Notre Dame in Paris, and for the people of Paris.

Cathedrals are the mission of the church in cities, where the stranger meets Christ, where Christ welcomes the unwelcome, where beauty shrines through the grime and dirt of everyday life. Their liturgy and their visible beauty hide a more beautiful, inestimable truth they hold as a treasure for the life of the Church and in the life of society.

This morning, a much-shared image on social media was a photograph of a cross glowing above a side altar through the dust and smoke of the charred cathedral.

For the sake of 9 million people over the next 850 years, I hope Notre Dame recovers quickly from last night’s disaster. Easter always offers the hope of new life.

The Rose Window … one of the lost glories of Notre Dame

The Forteresse de Salses: a French chateau saved after losing its military role

The Forteresse de Salses crouches like a wild beast beneath the Corbières Mountains (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018; click on image for full-screen view)

Patrick Comerford

The Cathars left many castles throughout Rousillon and Laguedoc, the hills are dotted with Cathar castles, built on rocky outcrops in the 12th century and places of refuge in the 13th century for a persecuted sect that was finally wiped out in the Albigensian Crusades launched by Pope Innocent III.

I saw many of these strongholds in the hills and mountains around Perpignan. However, instead of visiting the Cathar castles on my last day in the south of France, my friend Cathy took three of us to visit the Fort de Salses, also known as the Forteresse de Salses, an impressive and massive Catalan fortress 25 minutes from where she lives in Sainte Marie la Mer and 20 minutes from Perpignan, off the road to Narbonne.

The Fort de Salses does not stand out in the same way as the hilltop Cathar castles. Instead, this fortress is almost in a hole instead of being on a hill.

When we arrived, the only tour was in French, with some snatches of English. But even with my paucity of French, I could understand much of what the guide was saying and her introduction to the history of this place.

This architecturally magnificent building is not a typical French chateau. It was built by the Spanish strictly for military purposes, there are no elegant rooms or beautiful works of art. The chapel is virtually bare, and there are no galleries, furniture or tapestries on display.

Instead, what we saw is a testament to the ingenuity of the people who built it. Everything is carefully thought-out and designed from the ventilation to the water supply, plumbing and ventilation.

The Fort de Salses was built at the end of the 15th century to guard what was then the frontier between Spain and France. Its layout and architecture were innovative at the time and today they are a rare example of the transition between mediaeval castles and the fortresses of a later period.

The costly building project consumed one-fifth of the Spanish crown’s annual budget (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The fortress was built between 1497 and 1504 by the Catholic monarchs of Spain, Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon, with the purpose of defending the border with France, especially after the last French incursion had destroyed a nearby village.

Ferdinand and Isabella commissioned Francisco Rodriguez de Madrid, captain-general of the King’s Artillery, and the great Spanish architect and engineer, Francisco Ramiro Lopez, to design the fortress near the Castle of Leucate, built by the French almost a century earlier.

The fortress stood at a strategic defensive position between Catalonia and France, and on a site with a source of spring water, which was important in the event of a siege. But the building project was costly, and consumed one-fifth of the Spanish crown’s annual budget.

Ramiro designed an innovative fortress that looks like a hybrid between a castle and a fortress, linking mediaeval military architecture and the modern style of fortification. They were inspired by the traditions of military building in Spain, Italy and Burgundy.

This new design of fortress was capable of resisting modern artillery, and could house a garrison of 1,500. It was designed on a massive scale – 110 by 84 metres – to deter potential attackers.

The ditch is 12 to 15 metres deep (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The fortress came under siege throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, with the first siege in 1503, a year before the building work was completed. A peace agreement between Charles V and Francis I in 1544 gave the fortress some good decades of relief and peace.

The Thirty Years’ War brought a change of ownership. During the last siege in 1639, the French captured the fortress after 40 days of resistance by the Spanish. The Spanish recaptured the castle in 1640, but it was finally claimed for the French crown, along with neighbouring Perpignan in 1642 and has remained a French possession ever since.

Within less than 20 years, the two kingdoms signed a new peace agreement, and with the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659. Under the treaty, Rousillon became French and the Spanish border was pushed south to the Pyrenees. The castle was left in the middle of French territory, but without any military function or strategic role.

The chapel was dedicated to Saint Sebastian, and although it is bare today apart from the former altar and pulpit, the altar bears the emblem of the Louis XIV as the ‘Sun King.’

The bailey or central courtyard is laid out around the well (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018; click on image for full-screen view)

The guided tour brought us through the parade ground, along the parapets and the towers, and into the governor’s chamber, the dining room, the inner courtyard, the stores and the stables.

After the end of the war, the local governments asked the French king for permission to demolish fortresses that were useless and costly to maintain. The French-built Castle of Leucate was demolished in 1664, but the higher cost of demolishing the Spanish-built Salses saved the structure from destruction and oblivion.

Louis XIV turned the castle into a prison in 1682-1683. His military engineer, Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban (1633-1707), had refortified the Palace of the Kings of Majorca in Perpginan. At first, Vauban proposed demolishing the fortress, but this proved to be too costly a project, and he began partially restoring it between 1691 and 1700.

After serving as a gunpowder magazine, a prison, and and infantry garrison in its post-war life, the Château de Salses was listed as a French historical monument in 1886 and decommissioned as a fort three years later, saving the fortress from destruction.

The Forteresse de Salses was handed over to the Department of Fine Arts in 1930, and then to the Ministry of Culture’s Heritage Department.

During the Spanish Civil War, the fort was used as a refuge. Since 2000, a number of well-known artists have created works for the fortress. Today, the Château de Salses house the Museum of History of Salses, and is visited by about 100,000 people each year.

The arcades around the bailey seen from the Chapel of Saint Sebastian (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

A lost mediaeval cathedral and tales of Hanibal, Helen and artists in Elne

Elne was the centre of a diocese from the sixth century and the cathedral was built in the eleventh century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

Earlier this week, I had explored the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Perpignan. But this was not the first cathedral of the diocese, and so on Thursday evening [17 May 2018], after an afternoon by the sea at Collioure, three of us made our way up through the hills and narrow streets of Elne to visit the Cathedral of Sainte-Eulalie-et-Sainte-Julie.

From its lofty, fortified site, Elne (Elna) dominates the narrow plain of Roussillon between the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean. This was the first capital of the former province of Roussillon, before the provincial capital was moved to Perpignan.

Elne is the oldest town in Roussillon and successive civilisations have left their traces here. Numerous archaeological researches have shown that the surrounding countryside has been occupied since Neolithic times.

As Illiberis, the place is first mentioned in the history of Livy. This is the Iberian city where Hannibal pitched camp after he crossed the Pyrenees in 218 BC, and here he negotiated his safe passage through Gaul on the way to Italy.

However, in the first century AD, Pliny said this was no more than ‘a modest vestige of a hitherto great city.’

In the fourth century, Illiberis became Castrum Helenae, named after Saint Helen, the mother of the Emperor Constantine. Constans, the son of Constantine, was assassinated within the walls of the city in 350 AD.

When southern Gaul was divided in 462, Elne became one of the ‘seven cities’ of Septimania.

A bishopric was established in the city in the sixth century, and the first-known Bishop of Elne, Dominus, is mentioned in 571 in the Chronicle of John of Biclarum. The Bishop of Elne attended the Council of Toledo in 599, and the bishops of Elne called many synods.

When the Arabs crossed the Pyrenees in 719, Elne was one of the first towns they attacked. When the Counts of Roussillon achieved independence, Perpignan became the capital of the county, but Elne remaining the Episcopal city.

The Bishop of Elne called the Synod of Toulouges in 1027, which upheld the ‘Peace and Truce of God.’

A view of the rooftops of Elne from the balcony behind the cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The present cathedral of Sainte-Eulalie-et-Sainte-Julie was built later in the 11th century and the high altar was consecrated in 1069. The Romanesque cloister was built in the 12th to 14th centuries. The cathedral and the cloister are rich examples of elaborate mediaeval ornamentation.

During the Aragonese Crusade instigated by Pope Martin IV, Elne was plundered in 1285, the cathedral was set fire and the people of the town who had taken refuge inside the cathedral were massacred by the French troops of Philip III.

During the later Middle Ages, Elne was increasingly overshadowed by the growing prosperity of nearby Perpignan. The Counts of Roussillon moved their seat from Elne to Perpignan.

The people of Elne revolted against French rule in 1472. The town was besieged yet again, was conquered and the leader of the revolt, Bernat d’Oms, was beheaded in 1474. Elne and the rest of Roussillon were returned to the Kingdom of Aragon in 1493.

Entering the cloisters at the cathedral in Elne (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Later Bishops of Elne included members of the Sforza and Borgia families, including Cardinal Ascanio Maria Sforza (1494-1495), Cardinal Caesar Borgia (1495-1498), and Cardinal Francisco Lloris y de Borja (1499-1506). After becoming Bishop of Elne in 1495, Caesar Borgia decided to raise the taxes on the clergy, resulting in an uprising in 1497. After the clergy complained to the king, these taxes were halved the following year.

The episcopal seat was transferred to Perpignan finally in 1601 under a Papal Bull issued by Pope Clement VIII.

Elne came under siege from the French again in 1641, and after the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 it was formally ceded to France. The mediaeval ramparts were partly destroyed in 1680 on the orders of Louis XIV.

The artist Etienne Terrus and the sculptor Aristide Maillol lived in Elne in the 20th century and the studio of Terrus, which was visited by Henri Matisse and André Derain while they were painting in Collioure, and Terrus is associated with the birth of the Fauve movement.

Elne is now agricultural town but it also attracts about 70,000 visitors each year.

The studio of Etienne Terrus in Elne was visited by Henri Matisse and André Derain (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

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Lost in the colours of Collioure in the mid-May sunshine

The harbour and chateau at Collioure seen from the small island of Saint Vincent (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

Collioure is half an hour south of Sainte-Marie-la-Mer, where I am staying this week, and another half an hour from Perpignan too, and another 30 minutes would bring us across the border at the Pyrénées and into Spain.

The town of Collioure (or Cotlliure in Catalan) is on the Côte Vermeille, and with its typical Mediterranean bay, Collioure attracted several Fauvist artists who made it their centre in the early 20th century.

André Derain, Georges Braque, Othon Friesz, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, James Dickson Innes and Tsuguharu Fujita have all been inspired by the colours of Collioure, its royal castle, mediaeval streets, and the lighthouse converted into the church of Notre-Dame-des-Anges.

Ninety-eight reproductions of works by Matisse and Derain are exhibited around the port and harbour in the very same place where they painted the originals in the early 20th century.

As the artist saw it … one of the many viewing points dotted along the seafront in Collioure (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The Spanish poet Antonio Machado, who fled to Collioure at the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939, is buried in the cemetery. The British novelist Patrick O’Brian lived in Collioure from 1949 until he died in 2000. His novel The Catalans graphically describes life in Collioure before major modern changes, and he also wrote a biography of Picasso.

At one time, Collioure was separated into two villages by the river Douy: the old town to the south named Port d’Avall or Le Faubourg, and the up-river port, known as Port d’Amunt, or La Ville.

The Château Royal de Collioure dominates the centre of the harbour in Collioure (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The Château Royal de Collioure (or Castell Reial de Cotlliure) is a massive castle that dominates the centre of the harbour.

The castle at Castrum Caucoliberi is known from as early as 673, indicating a town here had strategic and commercial importance, when the Visigoth leader, Kingg Wamba, laid siege to the castle to subdue a rebellion.

Girard II, the last independent Count of the Roussillon, bequeathed his land to Alfonso II, King of Aragon and Count of Barcelona, in the 12th century.

The Kings of Aragon, anxious to promote the prosperity of Collioure, granted the place privileges and tax exemptions. The Knights Templar built the castle around 1207 and integrated it to the royal castle in 1345.

A second castle was later built by the Kings of Majorca in the 13th and 14th centuries. In the 13th century, the castle was annexed to the Kingdom of Majorca, which included the domain of Montpellier, the counties of the Roussillon and Cerdanya, the Conflent and Vallespir, and the Balearic Islands. The Kings of Majorca travelled with their court, moving often from Maguelonne, near Montpellier, to Perpignan, to Palma de Majorca or to Collioure.

In the 16th century, after a brief occupation by Louis XI, the Spanish Habsburgs again occupied Collioure. Charles V and his son Philip II turned the castle into a modern, 16th century fortress and reinforced the castle defences and its surroundings.

During the wars between the Spanish Habsburgs and the French Bourbons in the 17th century, Louis XIII’s troops laid siege to Collioure and the Château Royal in 1642.

A French force of 10,000, including Turenne, d’Artagnan and the King’s musketeers, occupied the hills overlooking the town, while the French fleet blocked the port, the Spanish were forced to surrender, and Collioure was captured by the French under Maréchal de la Meilleraye.

A decade later, the town and the castle were ceded officially to France under the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659.

Because of the town’s strategic importance, the Château Royal de Collioure and the Fort Saint-Elme were strengthened by Louis XIV’s military engineer, Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban (1633-1707), who also built new fortifications at the Palace of the Kings of Majorca in Perpignan.

Collioure was besieged and captured by Spanish troops under General Dugommier in 1793-1794 in the last attempt by Spain to retake the city.

The castle had lost all strategic importance by the beginning of the 20th century, and was offered for sale at auction. It was turned into a men’s prison in 1939 and became the first camp in France holding refugees from the Spanish Civil War.

Strolling through the colourful streets of Collioure (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The castle now belongs to the local government and is one of the major tourist attractions in this region.

Collioure is overcrowded by tourists in the summer. But it was relaxed yesterday afternoon as three us strolled through the colourful narrow streets of Moré, the old fishermen’s neighbourhood by the harbour.

The beach is rocky but has some sand, and after visiting the Church of Notre-Dame-des-Anges with its converted lighthouse, we walked across to the small island of Saint Vincent, with its small chapel and views back across the harbour to the castle and Collioure. According to legend, this is where Saint Vincent was martyred in 303. The chapel was built in 1701 for the arrival of new relics of the saint.

Before we left, we lingered for a little while over wine and coffee by the harbour, enjoying the mid-May sunshine and the pastel colours of Collioure.

Lingering in the mid-May sunshine by the harbour in Collioure (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

St-Jean, a Gothic cathedral in the heart of old Perpignan

The Cathédrale St-Jean in the old town of Perpignan (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

One of the first places to visit during my strolls through Perpignan yesterday afternoon [16 May 2018] was the Cathédrale St-Jean, with its Gothic architecture, its wrought-iron bell tower and its cloistered cemetery.

The cathedral began life as a collegiate church, the Collégiale Saint-Jean, or Collegiate Church of Saint Jean. However, when the short-lived Kingdom of Majorca moved its capital to Perpignan in 1276, the Kings of Majorca wanted a more impressive church for their new capital.

The original collegiate church had proved too small and King Sancho II of Majorca set about building a new church. At the time, the Palace of the Kings of Majorca was being built as a new royal residence on a hill to the south of the city.

King Sancha of Majorca laid the cornerstone when building work began in 1324. The original vision was for a grand, three-nave building, but only the choir was completed when the ‘forgotten and ephemeral’ Kingdom of Majorca collapsed in 1349 and the building project was interrupted.

Benedict XIII, the anti-pope based in Avignon, fled to Perpignan and tried without success to rally his supporters at a council here in 1409.

Inside the Cathédrale St-Jean in Perpignan (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Further efforts to resume building works were disrupted by the plague and various wars, and building at St-Jean did not resume in earnest until later in the 15th century. When the new building project was set on foot, Guillem Sagrera (1380-1456) of Majorca, one of the great architects of the times, took control of the project.

A native of Felanitx in Majorca, Segrara’s masterworks include La Seu Cathedral and the Llotja dels Mercaders (1426-1447) in Palma de Majorca. He also worked at the court of King Alfonso V of Aragon in Naples, where he restored the Castel Nuovo, redesigning its plan and adding several loggias and the Barons’ Hall.

In Perpignan, Sagrera decided on a church in the Catalan Gothic style, with one nave of vast dimensions, and redesigned St-Jean in Perpignan in the same style as La Seu Cathedral of Palma de Majorca.

Sagrera died in 1456 in Naples. The vaulting in Perpignan was not completed until 1490 and the church was not completed until the end of the 15th century. The pebbled façade with brick foundations remained unfinished, and the new church was only consecrated in 1509.

Philippe Barthélemy added the wrought-iron campanile in 1743 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Originally, the diocese was based in Elne, but the new church replaced the Cathedral of Elne when the bishop was moved to Perpignan, and from 1602 the bishops held the title of Bishop of Perpignan-Elne.

The cathedral’s western façade is a typically Catalan façade of pebble and brick, but it was never finished. The porch was added in 1631, the only remnant of a larger monumental ensemble. Philippe Barthélemy added the wrought-iron campanile in 1743.

When the cathedral was restored in the 19th and 20th centuries, the Gothic window of the façade was rebuilt, as it had previously been substituted with a simple rectangular opening.

The interior of the cathedral gives an impression of unity due to the harmonious proportions and the imposing character of the nave. This impressive nave is 80 meters long, 18 metres wide, and 26 metres tall. It is built with seven cross-vaults and has short transepts and a short apse.

There are magnificent Catalan, Gothic and Renaissance altar pieces in the side chapels and the treasures include le Dévot Crucifix, a 14th century wooden sculpture.

Some of the side chapels incorporate parts of an earlier Romanesque church. These chapels include the 15th century chapel dedicated to Notre-Dame-de-la-Mangrana, and the Chapel of Saint Eulalie and Saint Julie, patron saints of the diocese, which was painted by Jean-Jacques Melair in 1676. One of the side chapels includes the painted remains of the original organ case.

The organ is listed as an historical monument (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The elaborate furniture in the cathedral includes some real masterpieces, and the organ is listed as an historical monument.

On the south side of the cathedral, the cloister-cemetery of Saint John, or Campo Santo, dates from the early 14th century and is one of the oldest mediaeval cemeteries in France.

The cloister galleries were covered by a sloping roof supported by columns with sculpted capitals. Each funeral niche or recess, with a refined gothic design, is marked with heraldic shields bearing the coats-of-arms of the ruling and noble families of Perpignan.

The cloister-cemetery or ‘Campo Santo’ dates from the early 14th century and is one of the oldest mediaeval cemeteries in France (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018; click on image for full-screen view)

Climbing through the streets of Perpignan to visit the Palace of the lost Kingdom of Majorca

The Palace of the Kings of Majorca … built during ‘the triumph of the Gothic’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

The Palace of the Kings of Majorca (Palais des Rois de Majorque), with its fortress, crenelated towers, gardens, chapels, courtyards and horseshoe-shaped arches, stands above the city of Perpignan.

Two of us climbed up through the city streets yesterday afternoon [16 May 2018] to this star-shaped gothic fortress, with its panoramic views across the Roussillon plain, out to the Pyrennes mountains and down onto the terracotta roofs of the city below.

The forgotten Kingdom of Majorca existed for just seven or eight decades, from 1270 to 1349. Because of its short span and its sudden eclipse, the Kingdom of Majorca might easily be forgotten today. Indeed, Olivier Poisson has described it as the ‘forgotten and ephemeral monarchy’ of Majorca.

But the Kings of Majorca had palaces in Palma de Majorca, Almadaina and Belver, and Perpignan was strategically placed between the competing interests of the monarchies of France and Spain, and close to the continuing threats from Arab rulers in the Iberian Peninsula and across the Mediterranean.

The kingdom included the Balearic Islands – Majorca, Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera – as well the counties of Roussillon and Cerdanya and the territories that James I had kept in Occitania, the signory of Montpellier, the viscountcy of Carlat, in Auvergne, and the barony of Aumelas, in the area of Montpellier.

King James II of Majorca made Perpignan the capital of his kingdom in 1276, and Perpignan became an economic, politic and cultural centre in the Mediterranean during the Middle Age.

The Palace of the Kings of Majorca … the architects were Ramon Pau, Pons Descoyl and Bernat Quer, and the castle was completed in 1309 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

When James II began building his palace with gardens on the hill of Puig del Rey on the south of the Perpignan, it was arguably the most exciting period in the building programmes of European mediaeval monarchs, what was ‘the triumph of the Gothic.’ His architects were Ramon Pau, Pons Descoyl and Bernat Quer, and the castle was completed in 1309.

When James III was defeated and killed at the Battle of Llucmajor in 1349, and the Kingdom of Majorca was incorporated into the Kingdom of Aragon.

Almost a century later, the Palace of Perpignan was at the centre of efforts to heal the schism in the western church. The grossly anti-semitic Pope Benedict XIII, who is now regarded as an anti-pope, was one of the popes based in Avignon. But when he lost the support of France he was driven out of Avignon, and in 1408 he was forced to seek refuge in Perpignan and the protection of the Kings of Aragon.

The Holy Roman Emperor, Sigismund of Luxemburg, organised a European summit in Perpignan in 1415, in an effort to convince Benedict XIII to resign his office and put to an end the Western Schism at the Council of Constance.

The Emperor met Pope Benedict XIII at the palace in Perpignan on 20 September 1415. The council was also attended by King Ferdinand I of Aragon, delegations of the Counts of Foix, Provence, Savoy, Lorraine, the embassy of the Roman Church representing the Council of Constance, and embassies from the Kings of France, England, Hungary, Castile and Navarre.

The other claimants to the Papacy had resigned, but Pope Benedict XIII refused to resign or to recognise the Council of Constance. Eventually, the emperor left Perpignan on 5 November.

Inside the Chapel of the Holy Cross in the Palace in Perpignan (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Because of his stubbornness, the Council of Constance declared Benedict a schismatic and excommunicated him on 27 July 1417. The council went on to elect Martin V as the new pope on 11 November 1417. Benedict, who had lived in Perpignan from 1408 to 1417, now fled to the Peniscola Castle, near Tortosa, in Aragon. He still considered himself the true Pope, but he was recognised only in Aragon. He died at Peñíscola on 23 May 1423.

Perpignan was held by the Kings of Aragon until 1462, when the Palace was captured by the French. It was used as a barracks for three decades in the late 15th century.

The Spanish recovered Perpignan in 1493, and further changes were to the palace by Emperor Charles V, Philip II and their successors.

The Palace finally came back into French hands when the Treaty of the Pyrenees was signed in 1659. From then on it was a military barracks, and the significant French extensions included the massive red-brick walls built as fortifications by Louis XIV’s military engineer, Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban (1633-1707).

The General Council of the Pyrénées-Orientales bought the Palace and the gardens in 1958 from the French Ministry of Defence, although the Vauban bastions and the 19th century buildings and courts remain a garrison.

The palace in Perpignan has been in public ownership for 60 years (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The Palace of the Kings of Majorca has two chapels, one above the other: the lower is known as the Queen’s Chapel, while the upper chapel, the Chapel of the Holy Cross, has a pink marble Romanesque door.

The upper level includes the Great Hall, which was the seat of political power, the chapel and the royal residence. The position of the chapels in the heart the royal apartments, opposite the throne room, indicates the importance of the spiritual over the temporal. The plan of the palace was inspired by those of Majorca, and the main chapel has been compared with the earlier Sainte-Chapelle in Paris.

The walls are built with uncut stones and bricks bound with mortar, were coated with lime and painted. The doors, corridors, stairs and the main towers are all made of cut stone: ochre stone from Les Fonts, Baixas blue, sandstone, red marble from Villefranche-de-Conflent, and white and blue Marble from Ceret.

Walking through arches and courtyards in the Palace in Perpignan (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The benign neglect during centuries of French military control meant that much of the original architectural work of the palace was preserved. After the fall of France in 1942, and with Spain ruled by fascists, the buildings no longer had military significance.

The palace was handed over to the local government of the Pyrénées Orientales. A programme of repair and restoration began, and was completed by the local socialist mayor, a former member of the Resistance at the end of the 1940s. The restored buildings were opened to the public in 1958.

A free, three-day guitar music festival, the Guitares au Palais, is held in the Palace and the gardens each year in the last weekend of August. The programme includes traditional acoustic guitar, flamenco, classical music, gypsy music, pop music and jazz.

Looking across Perpignan from the battlements of the palace (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

A few days in the south of France, near Dali’s ‘Centre of the Universe’

The Castillet, the main city gate, is a 14th century fortress that survived when the walls of Perpignan were razed in 1904 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

I am staying in Sainte-Marie-la-Mer in the south of France for a few days, enjoying a few days in this coastal town near Perpignan until Saturday.

Although I have been to Paris half-a-dozen times or more in the past, this is my first time back in France since 2006, and my first time to visit the South of France.

I arrived at Perpignan–Rivesaltes Airport late yesterday, and I am staying in Sainte-Marie-la-Mer. My first impressions in Perpignan and on the road to Saint-Marie were of the vineyards, the bilingual signs in French and Catalan, and how the local flag, flown everywhere, is similar to the Catalan flag with its stripes of bright yellow and red.

Perpignan is Perpinyà in Catalan, the people of the city are Perpignanais(e) in French and Perpinyanés(a) in Catalan, and Sainte-Marie is known in Catalan as Santa Maria la Mar.

Perpignan was once the capital of the province and County of Roussillon, known as Rosselló in Catalan, and the continental capital of the Kingdom of Majorca in the 13th and 14th centuries, and later was part of the County of Barcelona.

Perpignan was besieged and captured by the French during the Thirty Years’ War in September 1642, and was formally ceded by Spain 17 years later in the Treaty of the Pyrenees. Ever since, it has remained a part of France, and it is the southernmost city in metropolitan France.

Perpignan was the Capital of Catalan Culture in 2008, and it is said that 34% of people in this area speak Catalan, and a further 21% understand it.

The Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí declared the city’s railway station is the ‘Centre of the Universe’ after he experienced a vision of cosmogonic ecstasy there in 1963. He claimed he always got his best ideas sitting in the waiting room there. His painting La Gare de Perpignan commemorates his vision there on 19 September 1963.

Some years later, he declared that the Iberian Peninsula rotated precisely at Perpignan station 132 million years ago, an event he commemorated in his painting Topological Abduction of Europe – Homage to René Thom (1983).

Above the station is a monument in Dali’s honour, and across the surface of one of the main platforms is painted, in big letters, ‘Perpignan Centre du Monde’ (‘Perpignan Centre of the World’).

I wonder whether he knew that this also an important centre for rugby in France?

On my way to Sainte-Marie-la-Mer late yesterday, three of us stopped to visit some vineyards, including Domaine Lafage, and later we had dinner in Canet-en-Roussillon (Canet de Rosselló), which is one of the earliest coastal resorts in the south of France and which is twinned with Maynooth.

I may not be at the centre of the universe, but there is a whole new world to explore now and when I leave on Saturday morning.

Visiting the vineyards at Domaine Lafage (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

An Irishman’s Diary: some Paris churches

Patrick Comerford

No Irish journalist or writer can resist a few days in the city where Oscar Wilde found exile, where James Joyce found a publisher for Ulysses, and where Beckett died. And those who love church architecture and church history are familiar with Notre Dame and Sacre Coeur.

But a recent visit to Paris was also an opportunity to visit some churches just a little off the main tourist trail, including St Eustache, where Vincent de Paul was once parish priest, where Colbert is buried, where Mozart attended his mother’s funeral, where Talleyrand spoke at the funeral of Mirabeau, where Berlioz conducted the first performance of his Te Deum, and where Cesar Franck and Liszt played the organ.

But my two favourite, off-the-beaten-track churches in Paris are St-Gervais-St-Protais in the Marais, and the American Cathedral on the Avenue George V, between Trocadero and the Arc de Triomphe.

Battered by Big Bertha

St-Gervaise stands on the rue des Barres, a winding, stepped and cobbled street that hums with the scent of flowers and incense.

Outside, this late Gothic building looks a bit battered – it suffered a direct hit from Big Bertha in 1918 – but inside it has some of the finest stained glass in Paris. The 17th-century organ is the oldest in the city, the simplicity of the chancel is a foretaste of the beauty of the liturgy, and in the side chapels, solitary monks or nuns sit or kneel silently before icons in meditation.

The church is home to the Monastic Communities of Jerusalem, founded in 1975 by Father Pierre-Marie Delfieux. The nuns and monks at St Gervais quote St Augustine: “If you want to know what we believe, come and hear what we sing.” Their liturgy, sung entirely in four voices, is based on the Roman rite, but draws on both Eastern and Western Christian traditions and is open to the spirit of church renewal and the call of ecumenism.

The men and women of this community have an unusual lifestyle for monks and nuns. Their cloister is the city, and as city dwellers they are concerned about the rapid, global expansion of cities, for “unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchers stay awake in vain” (Psalm 126: 1). They rent their housing to avoid the risks of becoming too settled or accumulating property. They are wage-earners, expressing solidarity with the workplace, but work only part-time, avoiding ambitions to succeed economically or socially.

The name Jerusalem is an apt choice, for not only do they speak of Jerusalem as the “mother of all cities”, but this is the old Jewish quarter of Paris. Two streets away, in rue Geoffroy l’Asnier, is the sombre Memorial to the Unknown Jewish Martyrs.

As old as Liberty

In a more fashionable area stands the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity, commonly called the American Cathedral in Paris, which was consecrated on Thanksgiving Day, 1886, a few days after the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty, France’s gift to New York.

The cathedral, one of the finest Continental examples of English Gothic Revival architecture, was designed by George Edmund Street (1824-1881), who at the same time was masterminding the restoration of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. The stained glass windows illustrate the canticles, the Te Deum and the Venite, and the artwork includes an altarpiece that was the last work of the pre-Raphaelite Edwin Abbey (1851-1911).

In many ways, the cathedral reflects the history of modern Paris. Mendelssohn's music was banned as “Jewish music” by the Nazis during the Occupation, and the cathedral was commandeered as a garrison church for the German troops. In a gesture of defiance at the service marking the liberation of Paris in 1944, the cathedral organist, Lawrence Whipp, who had been held in a German prison camp, played Mendelssohn’s Sonata as the postlude.

The cathedral replaces an earlier building on the rue Bayard, consecrated in 1864, but the congregation dates back to at least the mid-1830s, when Col Herman Thorn engaged an English clergyman for the first services in the garden of the Hotel Matignon. Today, Col Thorn’s home on the rue de Varenne is the official residence of the French Prime Minister.

Anglican presence

But the Episcopalian or Anglican presence in Paris predates Col Thorn, thanks to dissident clerical and lay members of the Church of Ireland. Thomas Russell – the “Man from God knows where”, who was executed after the 1803 rising – spent the previous Christmas in Paris, and attended Mass in the Jansenist Church. Before him, the Rev William Jackson spent his days of exile in revolutionary Paris in the 1790s canvassing support for the United Irishmen.

In the early 18th century, the Irish Nonjuror, Canon Charles Leslie (1650-1722), Chancellor of Connor, fled to Paris after he was deprived of his Church offices for refusing to take the new oath of loyalty to William of Orange after the Battle of the Boyne.

For many years, Leslie was the Anglican chaplain at the Jacobite court in St Germainen-Laye, but he returned to Ireland in his last days, and died at Castle Leslie, Co Monaghan. Over 13 pages of the British Museum library catalogue are devoted to his books and pamphlets, making him an early Irish literary and Anglican link with Paris.

Patrick Comerford

This ‘Irishman’s Diary’ was published in ‘The Irish Times’ on Monday 30 April 2001