Once a wonder

Cluny Abbey was the Taizé of its day, and then some. Founded around the year 1000, it began as a fairly small and simple community, but with one great gift: precious relics of Peter and Paul. People began to visit on pilgrimage, and the community began to grow.

By the high middle ages it was an immense and significant monastery with an astonishing collection of sacred objects: the rod of Moses, a piece of the true cross and of the Bethlehem crib, some of the Blessed Virgin's milk (I do find it pays not to think too hard about some of these medieval ideas...) That resulted in the construction of the biggest church in the Christian world at the time: the great Abbey Church of Cluny.

Visiting it today would have been awe-inspiring if it weren't for the fact that it was torn down during the French Revolution. Iconoclasm, as usual, has a lot to answer for, in this case the destruction of a wonderful of the western world.

Still, the modern visitor centre is excellent, and the 3D movie they've created to help people experience the church as it might have been is extremely good. I enjoyed the visit, but in the end it was more tourist than pilgrims, so I moved on.

///crayfish.wearying.condoned