The Discovery of France (19 page)

Thirty years after Bernadette’s vision, the Church was still planting crosses on sacred sites. The aim of this cuckoo-like activity was ‘to give the cross the benefit of the respect and religious thoughts that were attached to the site’. Prayers to the local deity would be intercepted by the cross and redirected to Christian heaven. Supposedly absurd beliefs and practices would die out and the people would be persuaded to abandon their fetishistic cults and to worship a god whose son was born of a virgin.

There is plenty of evidence on the back roads of France that this spiritual war was being fought quite recently. Crosses commemorating missions at the end of the nineteenth century often stand at crossroads next to modern road signs, electricity substations and communal rubbish containers. Sometimes, a map-maker’s triangulation mark is embedded in the stone pediment of the cross. It is not usually obvious that these crosses are monuments to an ancient struggle. They are often assumed to have something to do with the ‘dechristianization’ of France by the Revolution and its subsequent reconversion to Catholicism. They seem to be a simple declaration of the fact that France is a Christian country, just as the whole road system seems to be oriented on the great Gothic cathedrals.
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The roadside crosses belong to the same long tale that leads to Lourdes. They usually occupy ancient sacred sites that belong to a different religious tradition with its own decaying network of monuments. The prehistoric ‘nail-stone’ at Laon Cathedral, which proved a man’s innocence if he could drive a nail into it, was sacrificed to urban improvements in the early nineteenth century, but a large menhir still leans against the cathedral of Le Mans like a stubborn
old relative ensconced in a corner of her daughter’s grand drawing room. Most of the monuments, brutalized by time and a continual process of desecration and reconsecration, are found in out-of-the-way places that hardly seem to be places at all. They stand along older routes that now exist only in a vestigial, disconnected state, interrupted by roads and railways and too erratic to be of use to high-speed travellers.

The stones themselves appear suddenly in the corner of the eye like figures in a landscape that seemed a moment before to be empty. On a small, muddy road near Flers in Normandy stands a prehistoric stone that was carved on all four sides into the shape of a Christian cross about three centuries ago. This is a typical ‘prehistoric’ site: the area is deserted but shows recent signs of picnics and more intimate activities. A concrete culvert suggests a spring or a small underground stream. Two tall oak trees stand next to the stone, about four feet apart. The oak was sacred to the Druids, and even in the nineteenth century, passing between two trees or through the hole in a trunk was thought to have magical effects, usually associated with fertility. Since trees on sacred sites were often replanted when they died, the two oaks beside the stone are probably living on the site of their prehistoric ancestors.

Stones like this have survived – when they were not smashed up and used for road-building – not because they were preserved by government commissions but because, until quite recently, they were objects of greater popular devotion than churches and cathedrals. They were associated with stories that were more familiar to most people than the Gospels. The carved stone near Flers is probably related to the bigger standing-stone five miles to the east on the other side of the village of Sainte-Opportune. This slightly stooping block of granite, which lies next to a willow and a boggy spring, was said to be the sharpening-stone used by the Devil or Gargantua in a ploughing competition with Saint Peter. According to another version, Gargantua fell asleep when he should have been mowing the field and when Saint Opportuna came and kicked him, he peevishly threw away his stone.

These religious monuments – even the enormous megalithic alignments of Carnac – did not appear on maps until the twentieth
century, though the map-makers often used prehistoric sites for their geodesic measurements and propped their instruments on the stones. By then, many of them had been vandalized by passing strangers and disturbed by treasure-seekers. Most are still undervalued as national treasures and some are still not shown on maps. One of the biggest dolmens in Europe, at Bagneux in the Loire Valley, was once used for feasting and dancing. It has since been engulfed by the suburbs of Saumur and was on sale in 2006 as part of a plot which includes two apartments and the cafe-bar ‘Le Dolmen’.

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T
HESE OBSTINATE STONES
may provide clues to the prehistoric past, but they can also be used as signposts to a more recent world.

A day east of Lourdes – thirty miles as the crow flies or fifty miles by road – a cluster of hamlets lies just off the trans-Pyrenean road near the Col de Peyresourde, which is best known today as a regular obstacle on the Tour de France cycle race and as the pseudo-Himalayan setting for a James Bond film.

A group of stones stands on the hills around the hamlets. Some were brought by glaciers and landslides, others were placed there deliberately to complete a circle or a line. Above the village of Poubeau, a road spirals up and a track leads off through the remains of a wood to an open field. At this point, the village below is invisible and there is a magnificent view of the mountains. A six-foot-tall lump of granite stands in the field. It was known as the ‘Cailhaou d’Arriba-Pardin’ (the Stone that Came from God) and could be made to tremble very slightly. Next to it there was once a smaller stone, about three feet tall, in the shape of a penis, now buried in the earth. Girls and women would sit astride the phallic stone or kneel on a slab placed in front of it. This was quite a common activity in many parts of France and perhaps very common indeed, depending on the interpretation of phrases in official reports such as ‘too disgusting to describe’. On the eve of Mardi Gras, a fire was lit next to the stone and there were ‘obscene’ dances.

‘Fertility rites’ were still being performed in Poubeau in 1875 when an anthropologist came to investigate with a local guide:

When an iron cross was embedded in the stone in the 1810s, the cross was destroyed by lightning, which enhanced the stone’s prestige. When workmen came to remove it in 1835, they were attacked by villagers. Later, unexplained accidents occurred. A local priest was killed by a falling rock. Finally, in 1871, another priest erected the cross that is still rusting away on top of the stone. The villagers then supposedly abandoned the cult and merely processed to the stone on Rogation Sunday to ask it for a good harvest. However, blushing girls interviewed by the anthropologist in 1875 hinted that the stone was still not entirely celibate.

The Cailhaou Arriba-Pardin and its neighbours were the archivists and storytellers of the community. As well as the Cailhaou, there was the ‘peyre-hita’, which was still being ‘touched in a certain manner’ by local women in 1877. There was the group of stones on the pass where, some years before, Jesus had asked a shepherd for some food and was so annoyed by the man’s refusal that he turned him, his dog and his sheep to stone. There was also the ‘waltzing-stone’ near a bone-filled cave which once had a phallic appendage, the enormous ‘fire-stone’ by Peyrelade where the summer solstice was celebrated, and the amazing talking-stone just above Jurvielle at the source of a stream.

The talking-stone was the home of an
incantada
, which entered and exited by a door carved in the granite. Its whispered messages could be heard if one placed one’s ear on a little cavity.
Incantadas
were angels who, when war broke out between Good and Evil, had declared themselves neutral. In those days, God was merciful but wanted to keep his mercy a secret for the time being, and so he banished the angels to Earth. They had to keep washing themselves until they were clean enough to be allowed back into heaven. This was a particularly good place to do the washing. Clothes washed at the talking-stone came out whiter than white.

These cherished stones were not the numinous objects admired by neo-Druids. There was no ‘stone cult’, as priests and Romantic anthropologists believed. The stones were a normal part of daily life, marking the boundaries of the
pays
and embodying the life of the community: seasonal celebrations, storytelling, laundry, sex, and defiance of the authorities. They were spirits of the land who gave life to the landscape and made the physical world more interesting. The stones were a greater threat to the Catholic Church than the French Revolution: it was thanks to the spirits – but not the Church – that the local people had somewhere to dance, somewhere to celebrate the old festivals and somewhere secret where young people could find their way to the other side of virginity, watched only by the snowy peaks.

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M
ONUMENTS LIKE THE STONES
at the Col de Peyresourde marked the smallest of the concentric spheres within which people explored their world. Most spirits belonged, not to a pays, but to a particular site, and their influence rarely extended more than a few feet. In these tiny, magical universes, the intercontinental world of theological doctrine was meaningless. In 1890, at Bérou in Normandy, when a missionary preacher told his flock that there was only one Virgin Mary, a woman was heard to mutter, ‘Old fool! As if everyone didn’t know that the daughter’s here and the mother’s at Revercourt’ (two miles away).

Popular saints did not like to travel. Statues and figurines that were moved to a church from the place where they were miraculously discovered – a pond, a ditch or a tree trunk that had grown up around a woody niche and concealed the statue until the tree was felled – invariably returned by mysterious means to the place of discovery. These silent acts of resistance were the saints’ way of demanding a chapel of their own, even if it was inconvenient for mortal beings. According to a story that was still being told at the end of the nineteenth century, the people of Six-Fours, Reynier and Toulon tried to entice their Virgin with beautiful shrines but she rejected them all and had to be enshrined on top of the Sicié hill with a lovely view of the Côte d’Azur. Until recently, it was impossible to visit her
except on foot. Other Provençal Virgins made themselves so heavy while they were being moved that their human bearers had to give up the struggle and leave them where they had first been found.

The social and political development of France owes a great deal to the supernatural acts of inanimate objects. By stubbornly remaining on common ground, the saints not only helped safeguard gleaning and grazing rights, they also acted as a link between communities. And while the saints were rooted to the spot, their mortal devotees travelled great distances to seek their help and advice. A pilgrimage could bring together the inhabitants of a whole group of villages or of two divided valleys. In the hilly diocese of Le Puy-en-Velay in the Haute-Loire
département
, sixty-three statues of the Virgin Mary are still the objects of large annual pilgrimages. The diocesan guide talks appropriately of particular Marys ‘draining’ a particular region. Many of them occupy key geographical positions. They are often found along the line of watersheds, with splendid views in all directions.

The souvenir shops, the tour buses and the blundering amateur army of camper vans that now seem to spoil the high passes of the Alps and the Pyrenees are just a faint reflection of the pilgrim shantytowns that sprang up every year. The pilgrimage to Notre-Dame de Héas in a desolate part of the Pyrenees once attracted twelve thousand people at a time. The pilgrims arrived on foot, camped in fetid shacks, drank all night and told tales of Our Lady of Héas and how the masons who built the chapel were sustained by the milk of goats that mysteriously ran away before they could be eaten. At daybreak, mass was held and the priest’s assistant would beat the surging crowd away from the altar with a stick. Meanwhile, other pilgrims swarmed over the rock where the Virgin had appeared, hammering away like blacksmiths to dislodge a sacred fragment that would later be ground to dust and swallowed with holy water.

Many attempts were made to end these rowdy festivals. A righteous holiday crowd that could fill a small town was an obvious threat to order. Three times, between 1798 and 1800, policemen and soldiers came to stop up the sacred well of Saint Clotilde, which was built on the site of a dolmen at Les Andelys on the Seine. Every year, on 2 June, the town was invaded by a ‘savage horde’ of pilgrims from all over Normandy. They took off their clothes and slithered into
the water, holding onto their baskets and umbrellas – because Saint Clotilde also attracted thieves. After bathing, they snatched flaming branches from a bonfire and were sometimes badly burned. Children had been known to die after falling into the freezing waters of the healing spring. On the final attempt to close the shrine, two thousand stone-wielding bathers made the soldiers run away and then unplugged the well and wallowed in the water ‘with frenzied cries of triumph’.

Whatever their therapeutic value, these pilgrimages were vital to the wealth and happiness of many regions. While fairs were primarily attended by men, pilgrimages involved whole communities. They were a chance to exchange news, to see another place and to take a holiday, which is partly why the people of Lourdes always went somewhere else to be healed by the Virgin Mary. Before bicycles and railways, pilgrimages expanded and consolidated areas of trade, which might explain why so many Virgins appeared between regions that offered different kinds of agricultural produce. Just as fairs made it possible to improve livestock, pilgrimages – which some observers crudely described as ‘orgies’ – had a similar effect on the human stock. At the pilgrimage to Sainte–Baume in southern Provence, each village had its own defensive encampment in the woods, but lovers came in the night and the saint’s reputation for making marriages was never seriously threatened.