Sunday, May 5, 2024

Dear Valued Customer,

The above snapshot shows our dogwoods in bloom this week at the Chateau. And I can't help but recall the following lines:
 

Lieue toy ma prochaine, ma belle amie, y viens.

Car deja est passe lhyver

La pluie est en allee y retiree. Les fleurs sont apparues en la terre

Le têpe de coupper les vignes est venu. La voiy de la tourtereulle est ouye en notre terre...

The verses are drawn from the first French translation of the "Song of Solomon," one of the oldest and most unusual books in the Old Testament.

Rise up, my closest one, my beloved fair, and come away.

For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;

The flowers appear on the earth; 

the time of pruning the vines is come, 

and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land…

As it was 3,000 years ago somewhere in the Fertile Crescent, so it is these days at Courtomer.

The first snowdrops thrust stiff leaves through cold earth in February. Then came the violet bells of fritillaria, downcast on long, slender stems. A month ago, swathes of daffodils and narcissus sprang up in the meadow grass. The long-lasting bluebells and delicate primevères, pale yellow cowslips, began to bloom under bare trees.

Spring begins on the ground. 

But suddenly, the lengthening days and the warmth of the sun drive sap up trunks, swell it out to the tips of twigs. The tiny first leaves of the oaks, translucent as an infant’s ear, appeared in early April. Like a green cloud lifting with the morning mist, greenery now clings to vines and drapes the grey and brown branches of trees.

Even before their leaves appeared, the young magnolias began to flower. The first subject we planted, almost 10 years ago, is in the parc near the tall sequoia. Not far is a cluster of arbres de judée. These bloom, brightly pink, along their bare trunks and branches. Just last week, a cluster of American dogwoods burst into bloom. By the end of May, the chestnut trees will be covered with tall spires of creamy white blossoms.

Lieue toy Aquilon, viens Auster

Souffle par tout mon jardin…

“Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden…” continues the poem quoted above.

At Courtomer, we too bid the cold north wind to depart and the gentle southerly breezes to tenderly sway branches and blossoms.

In 1530, when the verses above from the “Cantique des cantiques” were printed, it was the first time that the Bible could be read in French. Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples had begun by translating the Psalms in 1523, then the Evangiles, the Gospels, in 1525, and five years later, the entire Bible.

Like most humanists of the Renaissance, Lefèvre was fascinated by ancient texts and languages. But also, like most of his contemporaries, he was even more strongly drawn to the spiritual truth to be found in the sources of the Bible. Here were the answers to the age-old theological questions of free will and ineluctable destiny, of grace and sin, of how man comprehends the mind of God. On a more fundamental level, here were the keys of salvation, the manual of the virtuous life which every person in Christendom needed.

Although Lefèvre studied Greek and Hebrew, his translation of the Bible was a carefully orthodox, evangelical enterprise.  It is a translation of the Vulgate, the Latin version of the various books of the Bible. The Vulgate had been made from original sources by Saint Jerome himself for use in the early Church. More than a thousand years later, in the 16th century, it was still standard.

Lefèvre’s Saincte Bible: en françoys was an instant popular success.

«One can barely imagine with what ardor God fills the souls of the most modest among us to understand his Word,” he wrote a friend. The Church did not share his enthusiasm. All copies of his Bible were to be burned. Lefèvre’s patronne was Marguerite de Navarre, duchess of Alençon. Only the intervention of her royal brother, François 1er, saved Lefèvre from a similar fate.

Five hundred years ago, the lives of the family of Courtomer itself were touched by the evangelical currents and orthodox reactions that led to religious schism, Reform and Counter Reform, bitter civil war, tolerance and repression in the 16th and 17th centuries. 

The Song of Solomon was also a subject of some contention in those turbulent times. It is an exchange of ardent poems between two lovers, the “roy” and his “belle amie.” But most commentators, including Jewish scholars consulted by Jerome many centuries earlier, agreed with Lefèvre that the vivid imagery of loving embrace in gardens and beds represented a “tressancte marriage.” The “very holy marriage of King Solomon and Pharoah’s daughter” represented the union of God and his Chosen ones for the people of the Old Testament and of Christ and his Church for those of the Gospel.

The intensity and perhaps the strangeness of the poetry captured the Renaissance imagination. Palestrina, who wrote church music for the reforming pope, Pius V, set it to music, as did the French composers Nicolas Gombert and Jean Lheritier.

Some contemporary scholars have proposed that the Song of Songs is part of a ritual narrative taken from a Mesopotamian fertility cult. Desire for the beloved is an allegory of spring and its promise of a fruitful earth. 

Throughout the direst winter months, thrush, robins, blackbirds, a few kingfishers, various species of mésangeand finch, owls and faucon nest in the woodlands, in the marsh, and in overgrown hedgerows at Courtomer. With the first stirrings of spring, they begin to sing. 

And now, as happened in days of yore, the tourterelles du bois have returned from their winter quarters in warmer climes. 

We can hear them cooing from the trees.

From the ancient Middle East to Courtomer, passing through the humanist Renaissance, the Cantique des Cantiques sings of spring.

Next week, we will take up the story of those who lived at Courtomer while Lefèvre was translating the Song of Songs, with the marriage of Léonore and Artus.

                           A bientôt au Chateau, 

P.S. I enjoyed Nicolas Gombert's "Quam pulchra es," "How fair art thou" from chapter 7 of the Song of Solomon. It was composed in the 1530s. I hope you will, too.

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At Chateau de Courtomer, we are taking bookings for 2025 and 2026. We still have a few opening for the Chateau, Orangerie and Farmhouse for 2024. Soon, we hope to open our "petite maison," the gatekeeper's cottage.

Heather (info@chateaudecourtomer.com and +33 (0) 6 49 12 87 98) will be delighted to help you with your enquiries and dates. And Jane will be happy to preview the property on site. She can also act as your concierge.

English and French spoken.