Dear Friend,

We sat on hard little vinyl chairs in the brightly lit and gaily decorated patisserie. The serveuse, impressed by the politeness of 10-year-old Clara and her cousin James, and the hungry enthusiasm of the little children, smiled indulgently. We asked about local specialties.

“Beurre,” replied the waitress. “Avec le beurre, tout est meilleur!” Yes, everything is better with butter!

As the textile industry declined throughout the 20th century, Mayenne’s fields of flax yielded to dairy cattle. And, indeed, the buttery local brioche and tarte tatin was delicious.

Fortified by this afternoon repast, we walked back along the cobbled street to climb steep steps up to Notre Dame de la Trinité. Standing on the perron of the cathedral, we looked out over the roofs of the medieval town to the river. The sun was beginning to wane. It cast a cool silvery light on the gently flowing waters of the Mayenne.

Inside the heavy wooden doors of La Trinité, all was still. The candles in front of statues of the saints burned without flickering, flames enclosed in sleeves of glass. Thick high walls, interlocking arches and vaulted ceilings, pillars soaring from the paved floor, retables and the altar, statues and tombstones, all are made of stone.

Captured in pale limestone and in grey, black and red-flecked marble, the passage of time seemed stopped.

The children stood at the entrance, momentarily silent and looking toward the elaborate retable above the altar in the nave. Gold-leaf covered the marble roping that twined around the bas-relief of God the Father and God the Son, the painting of Mary ascending into heaven, and the statues of the evangelist John and the apostle Peter. A huge eagle represented the word of God at the lectern.

At the very tip of the composition, the Paraclete spread its wings over the entire ensemble, turning its beaked head to look out over the congregation with one golden eye. The Dove is the third figure of the Trinity, representing God as pure Spirit. Curiously, this highly abstract notion is the only aspect of the Three-Personned God that is only expressed as a member of the animal kingdom. Here was matter for reflection, I mused.

Meanwhile, the Hebrew letters for “I am that I am,” Yahweh’s enigmatic self-definition, were carved and painted into the skirting around the base of the altar.

The children rustled.

“Be still and know that I am God,” commanded Clara, a devout child.

“Can I light a candle?” begged James, ignoring her.

“I want to see the lady with the dog!” clamored Dorothée.

Clara took her young cousins by the hand. First, she announced, we would walk all around the cathedral. The two littlest children followed meekly.

If the cathedral stones project a sense of solemn permanence and of the eternal, they also tell a tale of Laval through time. La Trinité was built with marble and limestone quarried from local deposits laid down millions of years ago in seismic shifts and slow transformations. A mere thousand years ago, the first small church was erected for the seigneurs of Laval.

Walking down the nave toward the main altar, we could see the decorated capitals of the 11th-century pillars, still holding up the rounded Romanesque arches of the roof. Strong geometric moldings run along the intersection of the vaulted roof and the sturdy wall. They contrast with the flowing, elaborate carvings of more recent construction, added as the church was periodically enlarged and embellished through the centuries.

When the first comte de Laval, Guy 1er, built his Chateau, there was already a thriving ecclesiastical institution nearby. The priory of Nôtre-Dame de Pritz is mentioned in a manuscript of 710, when it was a hermitage called Priscum Siccinum. The Latin words mean “the ancient dry land,” which may refer to its setting on the banks of the Mayenne as well as its great age – perhaps going back to the days of our own Saint Omer, for whom Courtomer is named. Omer was an evangelizing bishop, born in Normandy, who lived in the 600s.

Like the Chateau de Laval, the priory was situated at a ford over the Mayenne, convenient for giving alms in the countryside and as a stopping place for pilgrims, merchants and passersby. They would have been traversing the old Roman road from the Atlantic Coast to the Loire Valley.

But Notre-Dame de Pritz was beyond the protective circle of Guy of Laval’s castle walls. War, civil revolts, ambitious neighbors and marauding robber bands recurred with sad regularity. Then and for the next 550 years in France, heavy walls and iron-studded gates were a necessity. So, too, was a religious framework.

Apart from spiritual guidance, the medieval Church had taken over many functions of the old Roman Empire.

Church courts settled domestic and property disputes. They arranged and forbade divorce, legitimized “natural” children, punished sins and forgave offenders. Monasteries, cathedrals and collégiales preserved the skills of reading, writing, mathematics and record-keeping. They maintained schools, libraries and archives. Monks were artists and builders. They were the physicians of the time, healing the body as well as the soul. And the Church maintained an international network spanning the old imperial territories. It wielded considerable political power

Guy de Laval’s seigneurial chapel, founded in 1040, grew to a parish church and then a cathedral, despite bitter competition with the neighboring collégiale of Tugdal, war with the English, the challenge of Protestantism, a testy uprising against comte Guy XVII of Laval during a rebuilding campaign in the early 1500s, the murder of a priest – shot dead with a bolt from an arquebus while preaching in 1600—and the French Revolution. Fire and lightning twice consumed the belltower.

“Why did they fight with Tugdal?” asked young James, his eyes lighting up at the thought of so much tumult.

“He thinks Tugdal is a kind of monster,” sighed Clara. “Tugdal is a saint,” she informed him. He is the patron saint of Laval.

Tugdal, she went on, was from a princely and pious family in the British Isles. His mother Pompée also is a saint and so are two of his brothers. Further, his Uncle Riwal had led a group of Christians from Wales to the French Coast to escape the persecution of the fierce and heathen Danes, who had taken over their homeland. And in his turn, Prince Tugdal brought over a company of British monks to Christianize the pagan inhabitants of this new British settlement. He is one of the seven founding saints of Brittany.

Clara paused for breath.

“Why, here are Saint Tugdal’s bones!” exclaimed Bonne Maman. We rushed over to look at the plaque and the wooden statue of the saint. What was Tugdal’s skeleton doing in Laval, two hundred miles from the Brittany coast? “

We took up the tale. Saint Tugdal died in Brittany in 564, and his mortal remains were exhibited there for another 300 years. But by the end of the 800s, Vikings infested the Atlantic coast and inland waterways, looting monasteries, churches, farms and towns and carrying off slaves. A fleeing Breton bishop carried the bones of his sainted predecessor to the Mayenne, leaving everything there but Tugdal’s skull, which is in the cathedral of Chartres.

James’ eyes gleamed. He seemed to be reaching for an imaginary sword. These Norse raiders, les Normands who gave their name to Normandy, are his ancestors.

Meanwhile, Tugdal’s venerable bones awaited the foundation of the Collégiale of Saint Tugdal 400 years later. That institution then became the great rival of Notre Dame de la Trinité. It was the events of the French Revolution which finally wrested Tugdal’s bones from the canons who had prayed over them since 1407. The canons were dismissed, the gold and silver chassehousing the relics was confiscated, and the collégiale demolished. A “personne favorable à la religion” quietly rescued Tugdal’s bones. Several years later, he found his way to La Trinité. The ivory box that housed his remains inside the golden chasse can be seen in the nearby Chateau de Laval.

We made a mental note to visit the ruins of the Collégiale, where several coffins and a heart wrapped in lead have recently been rediscovered.

Meanwhile, we had not found the gisante, the recumbent statue, of Guyonne de Laval, last heir of this powerful dynasty, and who was related to the old family of Chateau de Courtomer. A protestant during the Religious Wars in France, as was the Courtomer family, she had nevertheless been interred with her Catholic ancestors.

But Dorothée was delighted to see another gisant, a 14th-century bishop in a long flowing robe. At his feet crouched a lion, its tasseled tail draped lovingly over one of the bishop’s legs.

“Voila, la petite,” said her Bonne Maman, “There’s your lady with a dog.”

On our way out to the dark street, we each lit a candle.

Next week, we discover more about nearby Laval and the Mayenne, and explore its fascinating connections with Chateau de Courtomer -- including the tumultuous Guyonne de Laval.


P.S. Heather and Beatrice (info@chateaudecourtomer.com) will be happy to speak to you about your own family vacation or special gathering at the Chateau. They can help arrange and recommend expeditions as well. Please feel free to call or write.

We look forward to hearing from you!