The Cluny Miracle

I know my own tastes may be a wee bit idiosyncratic. One of the things we wanted to do on this trip to Paris was to be completely on our own. The major reason we wanted to do this was so that we could follow our own schedule, see the places we love, and spend as much time doing the things we want to do as we like. Since reading Beowulf in high school, I have been interested in medieval history. There is a wonderful museum here off the beaten path on the edge of the campus of the university of Paris. No organized tour group would ever take tourists to such place. I have been to museums here and there that may have an artifact or two from the Middle Ages, but today at the Cluny Museum I hit the jackpot.

Georges-Eugene Haussmann was the civil engineer who rebuilt Paris between 1853 and 1870. To impose his “rational design” for the city, unfortunately many old buildings going back to the medieval period had to be demolished. Even so, their destruction unearthed a treasure trove of artifacts that told more about the history of this place than had previously been known. From Roman records scholars knew that on the Ile de la Cité, where Notre Dame now presides, stood a pre-Christian shrine. We knew that on this island the Romans found a primitive tribe known as the Parisi. We did not know, though, that on the same site archaeologists would find artifacts going back thousands of years. Some of these found their way into other museums in the city specializing in those pre-Christian periods. The artifacts from the medieval period that were unearthed, as well as many that came from the destruction of churches in the French Revolution and in Haussmann’s urban renewal, made their way to the Cluny Museum.

This museum is also of interest because it occupies a site that held a monastery in the late classical period that was instrumental in reforming the Catholic Church. From 950 to 1130 A.D. the monastery at Cluny was one of the most important institutions in the whole of Christendom. Few protestants today know, or even care, that the Church had a reformation before the Reformation. It started here.

Almost all of the pieces we saw on display today were examples of ecclesiastical art. Altar pieces, reliquaries, croziers, episcopal rings, statues, columns and other items all speak of the church. They do more than this, however. They show the transition from the classical art as perfected by the Greeks and Romans into the art forms that became known as Gothic. The church art of the eleventh and twelfth century absorbed not only the so-called Romanesque forms, the also borrowed from Celtic, Germanic, Frankish, and even Byzantine traditions. What became known as Gothic was not primitive art. It was, rather, an advanced art form that deliberately synthesized several different antecedents. Their art works was so expressive that Gothic art and architecture continued to be used in ecclesiastical and civic buildings up to the present day.

And, oh yes, they invented stained glass. The earliest reference we have to the stuff is a report that in 675 A. D. English bishop Benedict Biscop imported a gang of French workers to install some stained glass in the monastery of St. Peter, which he was building in Monkswearmouth. The first church to be completely glazed in stained glass is over on the north side of town in the church of St. Denis.

The photos here barely scratch the surface of all that we saw here today. If you come to Paris I hope you can visit this wonderful museum. No doubt it will enrich your understanding of art, and it may even enrich your faith.Read more