Our first trip was to Loches, an old town which hosts a medieval "donjon."

Unfortunately, "donjon" is a false cognate -- it actually means keep or tower. This massive building was the place people could flee when the rest of Loches was under attack. Not that this prevented it from having torture chambers. In fact, they had some very nice metal cages for keeping important criminals, and a different room where prisoners were kept in manacles.

Help! Help! I'm being repressed!

Besides the donjon, Loches also has a royal lodge and a pretty church. But what really interested me in this visit was the female history behind it. Although the site is predominantly one of war, two powerful French women, Agnes Sorel and Joan of Arc, spent time here. Agnes Sorel was the beautiful, intelligent "favori," or mistress of Charles VII. Rumor has it that she used her particular intimacy with the king to help him rule. The royal lodge, where her tomb lay until it was finally moved to the church about a year ago, is the same building where Joan of Arc came to meet Charles VII and urge him into war against the English. (The whole story goes that she managed to identify him, disguised, in a crowd, even though she'd never seen him.)

It's crazy to think that Agnes Sorel was probably present when Joan of Arc came. Two exceptional women trying to advise the king ... I wish I could have been a fly on the wall. But the next best thing is standing in the room where it happened.

The locals are none too pleased about Sorel's move from the royal lodging to the church ... someone even effaced the part of the sign which said she was Charles VII's mistress.

Another memorable trip was to Blois and Chenonceau. Chenonceau is fantastic because it's a princess castle ... sort of. Henry II stole it from a rich family to pay for their debts, and gave it to his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, who fell in love with it. But when Henry II died, his wife, Catherine de Medici, kicked Diane out. Who knew royal history could be so dramatic? 'Course, I would've kicked her out too -- the castle spans the river, so the view from every window is incredible.

Blois doesn't exactly have the Hollywood alure of Chenonceau, but it gives a lot more food for thought. Constructed in many phases, you can see the distinct differences between four types of architecture here -- medieval, early gothic, flamboyant gothic, and classical. It might be hard to believe, but architecture actually gets pretty interesting when you're actually looking at it. Words like "gothic" used to bore me to tears, but actually being able to see all the unfathomable details of the gothic, or the sheer power in the order of classical architecture, have helped me come to appreciate them much more.

Plus, there was a pretty sweet throne you could pose on inside.

I got a little too comfy in the throne ...

This blog entry is getting a little too long, so I'm going to talk about just one other visit --Fontevraud and the Deviniere. Neither of these are actual chateaux -- Fontevraud is an Abbey and the Deviniere is more like a really nice house (supposedly the place Francois Rabelais was born). But for all their more humble roots, both are quite impressive.

Rather than describing them to you, I'm posting a translation of a homework I did for Bucknell. After every trip, we're supposed to do a little write-up about what we learned. This time, I wrote a poem. Sorry about the choppiness of it ... I swear it was prettier in French (and I got a really good grade on it, ha ha). But you'll get an idea of what I experienced there, so here goes.

This picture was taken by Rachel Pellegrini. I think it demonstrates the silent power of Fontevraud's basic architecture quite well.

One step outside the shop,
the tickets, the knickknacks, the too long lines,
through a modern door in a wall too white,
I arrive at -- nowhere.

Of all the universal mysteries
whose contemplation moves the spirit,
Fontevraud manifests neither death nor love but
the power of the void
and of God, who hides in the unknown.

Today, the impressive clouds
swarm in the gray sky,
immobile, tranquil--
a swarm without menace but filled with grandeur.

It's damp, it's cold, but that doesn't touch
the birds who wrinkle the silence with their voices,
too weak to break it,
muted by the humidity.

Is there a city around us?
I think that I hear it,
and the voice of a guide explains it--
but it doesn't penetrate this place.

Robert d'Abrissel chose for its calm
Fontevraud -- a calm guarded by the order
of monks who didn't speak,
of nuns with the exceptional power
to direct a royal abbey.

The force of the sky is reflected
in the force of the architecture of the church--
the walls a light lemon-yellow,
thick, each rock distinct and perfect,
each round arch contrasting with the straight columns.

The space is big, empty, filled with light,
not decorated, made for contemplation.

Without the old partitions, it's completely open,
but one can imagine the people
of the city here only to see the wood and stones,
to listen to the religious music and converse with God.

Something remains of these antecedents
to our visit--four tomb statues,
two English kings and two English queens,
lying far from their high castles.

Their images are too small in a nave
of such grandeur--
their faces too calm
for a place this moving.
But once upon a time, these weak, powerful humans
loved this place of power.

What pretension for Henri II and
Aliénor d'Aquitaine
to choose here to be inhumed--
an abbey this large with such slender roots.

Where is the humility the founder imagined?
Is it in the simple cloister
with its white and grey floor?
The long, vaulted gallery
and the sober yard outside?

No, because, look!
underneath our feet, the traces
of the royalty who had the silver and gold
to pay for this building meant to love God.

Idolatry penetrated the virtuous rocks,
created false Gods and
symbols, mysterious now
but knowable,
contrary to the real Mystery.

(The "RB" is only
Réné de Bourbon, and the winged "L" Louise--
the coat of arms of France indicates their importance--
and thus I reveal the secret.)

Even the religious forgot sometimes
the reason for their silences.
Amongst the saints, the nuns are painted,
like weeds amongst the trees.

Maybe humility hides
in the past of Fontevraud--
in 1804, when Napoleon transformed it
into a prison for 1,600 people.

It's beautify and painful to think
of an abbey thus transformed.
The silence of religious contemplation
becomes the silence of personal contemplation,
and the feet of men and women loved by the world
become the feet of the most unhappy.

A reassuring thought--the building
remains unchanged in one way--
The kitchen and its numerous smoking chimneys.
(Because every living person
shares the same need to eat,
even the otherworldly nun and prisoner.)

Fontevraud, what a history you posses!
A history of a myriad of inhabitants
from two extremes of life.

How different it is from the story of the Devinière,
the story of one family,
and in this family, one man.

At the Devinière, one sees the wealth
of the family Rabelais
summarized in a pigeon coup.

Is that the goal of human life?
Some birds, their feathers, their droppings?
Evidently, François Rabelais didn't think so.
He writes more than these frivolities--

Writes of giants and their comic stories,
satirical, sometimes serious,
but certainly bigger than the everyday life
of the farm with some chickens one sees today.

It's difficult, seeing the herb garden,
the outdoor stairway, all these little things,
difficult to imagine the imagination of the man born here,
how big it is in comparison with his small bed.

Now, there are too many distractions
in the « Rabelais Museum ».
Lines of books, paintings,
paper statues for tourists.

The hillside houses, and the
bottles of wine are the details
of the physical life of this man.
But the intellectual life?
Of that, one never knows.

Is it possible, without
food, music, life
to really know Rabelais?

The silent contemplation of Fontevraud
can last forever -- it's base
is Eternity. But the base for Rabelais
is too noisy.

One must find a corner of the world
full of humans and their follies,
not this commercializable, this
dusty house,
never the real house of Rabelais.

(If you read all the way down, I'm impressed! I know it's a long poem. You should have seen how many spelling mistakes I had in it before I let MS Word do its magic ... I'm forgetting how to write in English!)