From the milking parlor to the Chateau…an old-fashioned dairy farm…and our Temple…
| Friday, July 10th, 2020
Dear Friend,
Pascal is an anesthesiologist. But Henry didn’t even ask him if he missed his old life in Paris. Pascal was too busy trying to keep a little calf away from its mother’s udder, as he squirted the last drop from her left rear teat into the shiny stainless-steel bucket. When Henry was little, we kept a small herd of Jersey milk cows. Until we bought a machine, I actually hand-milked them. And milking a cow takes concentration, as I would remind my children.
Pascal and Stefan bought a house and farm almost 20 years ago, on land in the hills to the north of the Chateau. It’s only about 15 minutes by bicycle, but up here we are in another world. From the lovely little commune of Ferrières-la-Verrerie, you look down into the rich, green valley of Courtomer. From the fields of Ferme de Bourse, their property, you can see the Chateau and our Protestant Temple.
Off to the pasture after milking. Pascal’s Brettone pie noir or Blackfooted Breton cows on a pretty morning in July.
The Temple was actually or partly how we came to know Stefan and Pascal. Unlike our French neighbors, staunchly – or at least nominally – Roman Catholic, German-born Stefan is from the Protestant tradition. He had rather hoped he and a group of friends visiting from Germany could hold a service in the Temple. I showed it to him.
“Ach!” he commented. We stood together in silence, looking up and through the roof. It soared heavenward at a steep and graceful angle, perforated like a lace curtain that let the sunlight through. Tiles had fallen down from the roof and lay scattered around the moss-covered floor in pieces. The trefoil windows had been bricked up. Around us were thick ugly cement walls that had been made by the old count and his “close friend and constant companion” – as my grandmother used to describe Wallis Simpson, before the latter became the duchess of Windsor. The count and his lady love had raised eyebrows and horses together at Courtomer. And they had transformed the Temple to stable four stallions.
Our Protestant Temple is a rare survival from the 17th century. The old count transformed it into stables for stallions, and built walls out of cinderblock to keep them from looking at each other or leaping out to find the mares.
The Grand Condé, dead at only 39, prince of the blood, famous and beloved general of Louis XIV, was also a leader of la Fronde, the rebellion of nobles against the king. His grandfather was first cousin to Henri IV, the Louis’ grandfather. Bust by Andre Couysecox in Louvre.
Now, the old Protestant Temple was almost a ruin. The Temple at Courtomer dates backs to 1622. This was the tail end of the Renaissance, with its political traditions idealizing the virtuous independence of Greek democracy and Roman republics. And the questioning, idealistic spirit of the times also questioned religion, resulting in Luther’s 95 Theses in 1517 and the Protestant Reformation. The independent-minded French aristocracy embraced the new ideas. Many, including peers of royal blood like Marguerite d’Angoulême, married to the duke of Alençon, welcomed such figures as Jean Calvin to their courts. The family at Chateau de Courtomer also became Protestant. It was the dawn of a new age of openness and tolerance – or so they believed.
But…
The independent attitude of the aristocracy threatened two important institutions in France. One, ancient and established, was the Catholic Church. The other, a rising power, was the centralized State under an absolute monarch.
The aristocracy didn’t just embrace ideas, it embraced revolt. When Louis XIV was a still a lad, a conspiracy of nobles had tried twice to kidnap him from the palace in Paris. The king, they felt, needed to be cared for and taught to value his true friends. His kingdom should certainly not be controlled by his widowed mother and her prime minister, both Italians! The dissatisfaction of the nobles with the growing power of royal officials came to a head in the “Fronde,” a four-year series of civil uprisings led by dashing figures like the Grand Condé – one of the handsomest men in history! – and the reckless and romantic Grande Mademoiselle. Both were cousins to the king of France. And though Louis forgave them, he was determined to break the independence of the aristocracy.
Louis XIV at 23, when he definitively took the reins of government into his own hands. He was 15 when he defeated the rebellion that was led by his older cousin, the Grand Condé. The portrait by Charles LeBrun, 1661.
Louis XIV is often called an absolute monarch, as if he were a hated tyrant. He was neither. By the time the Fronde had worn itself out, France was mostly united in its desire for one king and one sole source of authority, subject to France’s complex and sometimes contradictory laws. Openness, tolerance? Dangerous anarchy and treachery!
Religious differences were just as alarming. The 100 Years War between Catholics and Protestants had exhausted France even more than the revolts of the 1640s. Vast tracts of the countryside had been devastated. They produced neither food nor taxes. Protestants had murdered hundreds of Catholics in the 1560s in the towns of Nîmes and La Rochelle. The ghastly massacre of Protestants throughout France on the eve of the Saint-Bartholomé in 1572 lived in infamy. Henry IV had ended the fighting by converting from Protestantism to Catholicism in 1593. He issued an Edict of Toleration in 1598.
Yet if all was forgiven, all was not forgotten. New sparks of religious and political rebellion, as from a smoldering fire, sprang out. Where Protestants controlled cities, they drove Catholic practice underground. This was flouting royal authority, for the Edict guaranteed freedom of worship! The Protestant city of La Rochelle rebelled and joined forces with Protestant England. Meanwhile, fervent Catholic mystics scorned the formulaic confessions and absolutions doled out, they claimed, by priests. They sought a personal union with the divine, in which the role of the Church was secondary. And if God wasn’t so present in the Church, what about the monarchy? The king ruled by divine right, after all.
The theory of “absolute kingship” was based on three principles: “Un roi, une loi, une foi.” One king. One law. One faith.
Louis XIV reversed the Edict of Toleration in 1689, to great popular acclaim. Madame Deshoulières, known in her youth as an outspoken beauty and then as the “French Calliope” or muse of poetry, gushed:
Oui, si ta piété ne mettait pas d’obstacles
Tes jours fertiles en miracles
Nous forceraient à t’adorer.
If your piety were no obstacle,
Your reign of miracles
Would force us to adore you!
A hazy summer day in the pasture.
Much like Henry IV in 1593, the family at Courtomer took the pragmatic route. They quietly converted to Catholicism. Some of their more principled relatives, like the Duke and Duchess de la Force, resisted. They ended in prisons and convents. High status offered no protection – and in fact, was a liability. Aristocratic resistance to royal authority was dangerous.
The new edict called for all Protestant temples to be razed. Ours is intact because under the thick cement floor poured by the count and Madame de M… are buried the bodies of beloved officers of Louis XIV’s father, Louis XIII. Even the absolute king respected monuments to the dead – though their religion was now deemed unacceptable!
Watchful neighbors reported Protestant activity at the Temple, and brought a suit against the family at Courtomer. The family retorted that the funerary chapel was now being using as a dairy. And so began the decline of our Temple…until we put on a new roof.
Now, our neighbor Pascal is living the dream with his own dairy – and making delicious yoghurt for sale. He and Stefan also sell meat from their broutards, or steers, and plan to start making cheese. Rendez-vous at Ferme de Bourse!
Bien amicalement,
PS. I hope you’ll enjoy Henry’s account of his picturesque and delectable visit to nearby Ferme de Bourse, attached here.