Pibrac to Conques, France, Thursday October 30th

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A message from Joy this morning confirmed that the scholarship scheme would undertake to provide scholarships to needy form four students offered a place in a State school for forms five and six. Hooray! I wished that I was in Farkwa to tell the students.

The drive to Conques (Conk) through pouring rain had us asking if we were doing the right thing to start to walk at this time of year. The exciting first glimpse of snow was replaced with dismay as we travelled through areas so thick with it that the snow ploughs were at work on the roads. Corine ignored Michel’s request to stop for a snowball fight until it was too late and we had driven beyond the belt of white. Nevertheless, all the chatting in a warm lounge room and checking the weather on the internet, had not brought the weather to the fore as much as this.

We were crossing over hills topped with white, but clothed in yellow and brown autumn leaves, and along roads that followed the contours of the land. Corine called to us to look out to the right, and there, clinging to the side of the mountain, was little fairy tale village, with all the houses with curved pointed roofs. The towers of the abbey rose in the middle. A second later the car had taken a curve and that first magical view disappeared. It was Conques; the most enchanting village, in a really beautiful spot.

We left the car and walked up into the village. The rooves of the houses curved steeply near the point and out less steeply to the out edges. The tiles are made of rock, shaped into scallops of different sizes, allowing for the changing shape. The walls are made of a different stone, and in many there are wood beams between sections of stone. The buildings have been well preserved from the Middle Ages.

The Abbey of Saint Faith of Conques (Sainte Foy) was built in the twelfth century by the Teutons. Pilgrims on the Chemin de Saint Jacques de Compostelle have been passing Conques since the 11^th Century, so what with the natural beauty, the charming medieval town and the long history in connection to the walk, it was a wonderful place for us to start. Not even a gale could have dampened our spirits now.

Our lunch was in a lovely old building with tiny dining rooms up and down little flights of stairs. It was a different version of the melted cheese and potato dish that Corine had prepared for us yesterday, topped with a sprig of rosemary. We finished the meal off with dainty desserts and coffee.

Next, we booked in at the Abbey, where we would be staying tonight, and Nadine, the very friendly host, filled in our little ‘credential’ book. Just like diplomats, pilgrims carry a little card which recommends them to the care of others along the way. Of course, in the olden days that probably meant free board and lodging, but even now there are cheap rates that those walking the Chemin de Compostelle are able to access. Our room was up a wonderful stone spiral staircase, with the centre of each step worn away by the feet of many pilgrims over the centuries. I was a little disappointed at how clean and modern the facilities were, and especially that there were plastic cups wrapped in plastic, and sachets of soap in the bathroom, but even pilgrim expectations must have moved with the times. Neither of us would be wearing a long woollen cloak and sandals either, so the step back to the Middle Ages would only be in my head, and would not involve my body.

Our agendas for the walk were different, with mine to be open to whatever spiritual or self-revelatory or social experiences came along, and Keith’s firmly based in being keen to undertake a long walk through the French countryside for fitness and to enjoy the scenery. We both had interests in nature and history as further incentives. It was nearly five years ago that I had cut out the article on the Camino Santiago de Compostela from the Age newspaper, with the path leading gently through an autumn forest, and I could hardly believe that we would be actually on the way in the morning.

Michel's mother, Nicole, Michel, Corine, Keith and I spent the rest of the afternoon as tourists in Conques. The Abbey was reached by going down from the main road, onto the terrace that had been cut out to accommodate it. That had the effect of the church seeming to be so much taller from the inside than from the outside, since our notion of its height had come from standing on the road above.

There is a beautifully carved scene of the ‘Last Judgement’ above the door, with a myriad of characters representing the various possibilities, surrounding Jesus.Inside, the abbey is fairly simple and austere, with a gallery running around at a great height. It is a church for looking up in. There was an exhibition of calligraphy, a rewriting of the ‘Songs of St Faith’ in the Occitan language and in Carolingienne script. The nineteen sheets had decorative illumination of certain letters, done in the spirit of the 11^th Century. They also had some parts illustrated below in the form of a cartoon, with the idea being to make the ‘Songs of St Faith’, accessible to as many people as possible.

Saint Faith was a thirteen year old martyr, who was killed on the 6^th of October 303, when the Roman Emperor Diocletien had forbidden the Christian religion. She had been instructed in her faith and baptized by the bishop in her home village of Agen, in Aquitaine. When the Roman Governer, Dacien, came, the Christians were persecuted and expelled or fled. All except Faith and her sister, Alberte, and possibly that was because of their age or the fact that their father was a high official. Faith was called up before Dacien, and refused to deny her lord despite enticements and threats, and so he condemned her to be burnt alive. When she was tied to the stake and the fire was lit, it started to rain and the fire went out. She was then decapitated. The Bishop, and other Christians, inspired by her, returned and they too were martyred. Some Roman soldiers converted to Christianity because of Faith and the others, and they were also killed. Over the years a cult of St Faith built up, with many miracles, including the curing of blind people, being attributed to her. Her relics were brought to Conques at a much later stage, but the miracles then continued in her new home. The fate of Alberte, the sister, was not mentioned.

Tiny fragments of very old stone carvings remain on the walls inside and outside the abbey. There were many more examples, particularly of capitals from columns in the museum, and the ones that appealed to me most had a primitive, almost pagan look to them. I read that in the Middle Ages, devils and other fantastical creatures were regularly depicted in religious art works, as we had seen with all the gargoyles on old churches. The museum displayed enormous tapestries that were produced here, in an industry that flourished in the 16^th and 17^th Centuries as a result of the limiting, and finally the banning, of Flemish tapestries in France. The industry foundered in 1685, when the Huguenots (Protestants) were expelled, since the skilled workers and artisans were Protestants. The tapestries depict mostly religious themes and Mary Magdalene in particular, but freely cross into the dressing and social settings of the time of their creation. In one, Mary Magdalene is dressed in a very nice outfit and is receiving friends, as if she is at a garden party. She provided a bit of scope because sometimes she is depicted in the ‘before’ situations and sometimes in the ‘after’ ones, when she has repented of her sins and set off on a pure life of devotion. The size and the colouring of the tapestries is remarkable, but once Keith had started pointing out the exceptionally long leg on one person and other aspects of physiology and scale that are quite inept, it was impossible not to see the artistic limitations of the weavers.

The treasury is housed in a specially built chapel in the cloisters. There are many gilded and precious stone encrusted reliquary containers, crosses and other items, but the piece de resistance was the statue of St Faith. A fairly squat and gilded maiden, she has been altered over the centuries. A list told of the age of her arms and hands, of her pointy knight’s shoes, of her jewel encrustation and of her vivid blue eyes that stare forever upward. This statue has none of the fine sculpturing of other depictions of St Faith, and is unlike other depictions of Christian saints, but its very solidity seems a reminder of her unwavering faith.

It was quite late when we emerged, and the mist had started to come down, wafting through the narrow streets and over the mountains. It had seemed so highly appropriate that Nicole, Michel and Corine should have been the ones to start us off on our way, and that we should have been privileged to hear from Nicole how her faith had deepened through adversity. We were wished a good walk, and then they returned to the car for the long drive back to Toulouse.

We looked through the souvenir shops and bought some postcards, and finally the cold drove us back to our room. We had the timetable of the Abbey, and dinner would be at seven, with prayers in the church at 8.30. At five to seven we descended and waited in the entry with the other pilgrims. We had only seen three up to this point, but there were about twenty people who sat around a large dining table to listen to one of the brothers explain how the Abbey at Conques was a kind of outstation for the Benedictine Order. He was very welcoming and led the singing of the ‘Song of the Pilgrim’, which was in Latin. Each of us introduced ourselves and said where we came from. Everyone else was French except for a young woman from Quebec. The brother disappeared and the hosts, Nadine and Jacques, took over, creating a friendly family atmosphere. We were able to join in the conversation at our end of the table, in between the three courses of the meal, and glad that the topics were fairly mundane.

Suddenly Nadine noticed the time and urged us all to hurry, with only five minutes to go before prayers. By the time we raced through the misty rain to the church, two brothers had started. They sang a service between them, with one leading and the other responding. The church was dimly lit and only about eight of the pilgrims were there. After some time, one of the brothers came to the front and said in French that the pilgrims setting off the next day, should come forward. I was not sure what was required, but another pilgrim indicated to me that we should join the two men who had already gone out the front. Each of us gave our first name and where we were from, and we were given a blessing for our journey. Our little pilgrim’s passport, our ‘creanciale’, had been signed, officially conferring the title of pilgrim on us. And that was that. We followed one of the brothers in a little procession to the area in front of the piano, and he said that we could walk around the church if we wished while he played. He played from the heart, and his notes echoed up into every space in the building. It was a continuous flow of tunes that included Greensleeves, and that generally had a medieval sound to them. It felt as if music filled every space in my head. A second before nine o’clock, he played his last note and the bells rang the hour. The spell was a little broken when the brother walked down to the organ and started to play. It was beautiful too.

We had been curious about the unusual windows. Where we had expected to see Medieval stained glass depicting saints or bible stories, we were surprised to see opaque glass and unusual patterns of lines. In 1994 Pierre Soulages, a painter, was commissioned to do the windows, not to repair them but to develop a concept for all the windows in the church. He wanted to use diffuse light and translucent glass to imply the light of enlightenment, without allowing for any outside distractions, and he used no images, in contrast to the modern world, which is saturated with them. He wanted to create a pathway to meditation, using lines as in a Zen garden, or in the sand. They were windows that needed time and peace to interact with. No wonder they had not impressed so much during the day as they did now.

Finally we left the church, and slept.