AWAY IN A MANGER

Twelfth-century Syrian nativity scene, one of the many treasures on the walls of the Cathédrale Notre Dame in Saint-Omer. 

Vocabulary

une mangeoire:  a trough, manger

emmailloter:  to swaddle, to wrap up

un maillot:  a jersey; shirt

un maillot de corps:  an undershirt

©2012 P.B. Lecron

CATHEDRAL CHARM

With a pair of shoes and a prayer

For the paralyzed and those who have difficulty walking, or simply for children learning to walk, the tradition among local believers is to place a pair of shoes on the tomb of Saint Erkembode in the Cathédrale Notre Dame in Saint-Omer, Pas-de-Calais. As soon as the shoes are collected and donated to charity, more appear. Saint Erkembode, known as the "saint qui fait marcher" (the saint who makes one walk) was a late 7th- and early 8th-century Benedictine monk originally from Ireland. He became abbot of the Saint Bertin monastery, and also succeeded Saint Omer as bishop of the diocese of Thérouanne. (What is now the city of Saint-Omer was originally a community called Sithiu, built around a church which had been founded by the monks Audomar (Omer) and Bertin in the 7th century.)

The diocese of Thérouanne was sizable, going from Ypres to the valley of the Somme River; Erkembode travelled it extensively attending to his pastoral flock, which probably accounts for his being associated with the effort of walking. He himself died paralyzed; thus the offering of shoes, a custom dating back to his death in 742, when the present cathedral was only a small primitive church. Shoes are also sometimes placed there for depressed people with the hope that it will help them step out of their depression, a sort of paralytic state.

©2012 P.B. Lecron

LET THERE BE LIGHT AND COLOR

Glimpse of stained glass in the Cathédrale Notre Dame in Saint-Omer.

photo courtesy of Marianne Lecron

KEEPING TIME SINCE 1558

Another marvel at the Cathédrale Notre Dame in Saint-Omer is its precise astronomical clock, working since 1558 with all of its original parts! It marks the hours, days, months, zodiac signs and the rising and setting of both the sun and the moon, as well as the position of the sun in relation to the earth. Only 25 of the clock's pieces actually move.  

The clock is mounted above the baroque-period royal entry on the north transept of the Cathedral. It was through this portal that Louis XIV triumphantly entered the Cathedral in April 1677 after important battles in the wars with Holland, winning Saint-Omer, Cassel, Bailleul and Ypres. (Ypres was eventually reattached by treaty to Flanders in 1713.) 

Wearing a turban topped with feathers, an automated figurine dressed in a military officer's costume of the Ancien Régime strikes the hours on a bell.

Vocabulary
un horloge astronomique:  an astronomical clock
un jacquemart or jaquemart:  an automated figurine in wood or metal which strikes or sounds the hours of a clock

©2012 P.B. Lecron