In Tonnerre stands a big hall, 90 metres by 18 metres on the ground and reaching to a height of 20 metres into the huge upturned ship of a ceiling. The long, tiled roof is easily seen from across the valley as you walk down from the hills into the town. Even now it is perhaps the largest solid slab of colour in the view; and back in 1295 when it was built at the request of Marguérite de Bougogne, it must have dominated the thoughts and vision of travellers approaching Tonnere even more than the churches of Notre Dame and St Pierre.
This is the Hotel-Dieu, and Marguérite ordered it to be built because the influx of pilgrims heading to Vézelay and Compostela who stopped at Tonnerre were sqeezing out the local sick and homeless from the existing places of refuge. The new hall doubled up as a chapel and a ward for the needy, so the forty or so people who could fit into the wooden alcoves down each wall could attend Holy Mass without leaving their beds. For some, I suppose, this was handy: their Last Rites on the spot.
Despite being a queen of Scicily, Jerusalem and Naples and sister-in-law to one of the most revered French kings, Saint-Louis, Marguérite seems to have been genuinely concerned about the needy, getting down and dirty with the sick and dying, St Jaques pilgrims among them. She even had her own accommodation built in a connecting wing so as to be on hand with the nursing.
Up the hill by the Notre Dame church, the tiny St-Antoine hospice carried on letting the fitter travellers stay for one night only and the nuns there issued pilgrims with food, drink and a stipend of five pennies to see them on their way.
Until 1650 the Hotel-Dieu was the only place in town for the ill; and right up until the twentieth century the complex remained a hospital and a place for caring for abandoned babies. Upstairs from the large hall the small rooms of the museum offer a disturbing mingling of medieval copes and altar cloths, saints' relics, kitchen furniture, Royal wills, wheelchairs and traction aparatus from before the First World War. The photographs of empty white beds are eerie enough, but that of an unconscious (one hopes) man about to have his lower leg sawn off by smiling, wax-moustachioed orderlies freaked me, and I had to leave.
It was't my constant conviction that my toes will freeze and break off that drove me out. Not this time. It was the fact that we were about to visit a Dr Letellier, an appointment kindly and without fuss arranged by our hosts at the Ferme de la Fosse Dionne on hearing that David had been walking for several days with a grotesquely swollen leg and a feeling "like knives slicing into me with every step".
David has a sweet nature. That's why mosquitos love him so much. All the other bite-induced balloonings had been conquored by the cream and tablets of the chemist in Bar-sur-Seine, but one on his ankle just kept on growing, trapped between the top of his boot and the clamp of his sock welt.
Dr Letellier prodded at lymph glands then gently laughed and promised me my husband wasn't going to die. It was most likely a spider bite, he thought, and if not walked on or constricted would probably sort itself out in a few days. But since we were pilgrims and on our way, he upheld the long traditions of Marguérite and ordered up an alcohol compress, cream and pills that were already taking effect by the next morning. But no five pennies.
22 May 2008
This is the Hotel-Dieu, and Marguérite ordered it to be built because the influx of pilgrims heading to Vézelay and Compostela who stopped at Tonnerre were sqeezing out the local sick and homeless from the existing places of refuge. The new hall doubled up as a chapel and a ward for the needy, so the forty or so people who could fit into the wooden alcoves down each wall could attend Holy Mass without leaving their beds. For some, I suppose, this was handy: their Last Rites on the spot.
Despite being a queen of Scicily, Jerusalem and Naples and sister-in-law to one of the most revered French kings, Saint-Louis, Marguérite seems to have been genuinely concerned about the needy, getting down and dirty with the sick and dying, St Jaques pilgrims among them. She even had her own accommodation built in a connecting wing so as to be on hand with the nursing.
Up the hill by the Notre Dame church, the tiny St-Antoine hospice carried on letting the fitter travellers stay for one night only and the nuns there issued pilgrims with food, drink and a stipend of five pennies to see them on their way.Until 1650 the Hotel-Dieu was the only place in town for the ill; and right up until the twentieth century the complex remained a hospital and a place for caring for abandoned babies. Upstairs from the large hall the small rooms of the museum offer a disturbing mingling of medieval copes and altar cloths, saints' relics, kitchen furniture, Royal wills, wheelchairs and traction aparatus from before the First World War. The photographs of empty white beds are eerie enough, but that of an unconscious (one hopes) man about to have his lower leg sawn off by smiling, wax-moustachioed orderlies freaked me, and I had to leave.
It was't my constant conviction that my toes will freeze and break off that drove me out. Not this time. It was the fact that we were about to visit a Dr Letellier, an appointment kindly and without fuss arranged by our hosts at the Ferme de la Fosse Dionne on hearing that David had been walking for several days with a grotesquely swollen leg and a feeling "like knives slicing into me with every step".
David has a sweet nature. That's why mosquitos love him so much. All the other bite-induced balloonings had been conquored by the cream and tablets of the chemist in Bar-sur-Seine, but one on his ankle just kept on growing, trapped between the top of his boot and the clamp of his sock welt.
Dr Letellier prodded at lymph glands then gently laughed and promised me my husband wasn't going to die. It was most likely a spider bite, he thought, and if not walked on or constricted would probably sort itself out in a few days. But since we were pilgrims and on our way, he upheld the long traditions of Marguérite and ordered up an alcohol compress, cream and pills that were already taking effect by the next morning. But no five pennies.
22 May 2008
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