Miscellaneous comments

coming around the corner to the cathedral

replacement bell tower

look at window

bosses in ceiling

altar

great facade

cloister

Pursuant to our visit to Bayonne ("jambon de Bayonne"!, e.g., HAM, what an American kid would consider normal ham) after our visit to St. Jean de Luz, I have a couple of questions as well as some fairly decent photos. First the photos of the cathedral at Bayonne...it had these great angels on either side of the high altar, no transepts, great bosses up on the ceiling, and a window design I've never seen before. And an enormous porch...photos are above; again, I can't seem to get them to go "left" when I say "left" or "right" when I say "right" or get text to wrap or anything, and I think it's a Google problem rather than a Lillie problem. So the cloister is much-admired and is, indeed, big and lovely. Hey, though, it pales in comparison with the cloister at Gloucester Cathedral in England. And the Cathedral itself could be English (we've been visiting too many of these bastide churches over here, and are both sort of hungry for English Cathedrals, or Notre Dame or Bayeux...); it's lovely. Those angels on the sides of the altar are lovely, too. The bosses in the ceiling sort of (this is stretching it..) remind me of those in York Minster (yes, yes, that's stretching at bit). The place is lovely, though. Problem is, we got there about 5:15 on Saturday and there was this sign outside which we ignored saying no visitors, service in session. There wasn't a service in session. And then a guy comes over and very autocratically tells us there are no visitors allowed because of the service (there was nothing going on, and if there were a service about to start, it was going to be a Mass with about 6 people in the congregation). So we sat down; I pointed out that, although they'd pegged us for tourists, they couldn't do anything if we acted like we were going to participate in the service. A bit annoying, actually.

The service wasn't to begin (I found out as we were leaving when I picked up the service leaflet) until 6:00 p.m., and people were starting to actually trickle in as we were leaving.

A couple of questions, though. The next day (Sunday) as I was driving to the Issigeac market there was a sung Mass being broadcast on the Culture channel (better than any of the French music channels, or, God forbid, the English music channels). Very bad acoustics, I trust, as I hope the organ and choir weren't as bad as they sounded, and I don't know where it was coming from. I realized they were referring to Jesus as "tu" and "toi" which is the familiar form of "you", which you use to children, your spouse, very close friends, etc., as opposed to the "vous" form which is more formal, but not necessarily all that formal. Was wondering why one didn't use the "vous" form, which indicates respect, for Jesus. Still haven't figured out what they do with God and the Holy Spirit. But when I got back, I looked at the Bayonne service leaflet. All the prayers use "tu" for Jesus, but prayers to Mary use "vous". Anybody out there know the explanation for this?

Cheers, Lillie