Tour of Cathedral St. Jean

We were privileged to have the opportunity to tour St. Jean Cathedral with Didier Repelin – the chief architect of Historic monuments in the Rhone region of france. He has done work in New York and has an international reputation in the field of Historic Preservation.

We met outside Saturday morning with other Americans living here and learned so many fascinating things about the cathedral. He began by telling us that the Lyonnaise are anti-fashion…. Paris is very fashion-conscious, but by nature, the Lyonnaise don’t care for fashion, or at least will test to see if the fashion remains a fashion or is simply a fad. So in building the cathedral, gothic architecture was the “fashion” for a while before Lyon decided to use the style for it’s cathedral and so it is a mature gothic style. It also has the style of the southern France buildings as well and so therefore is a great representation of it’s location – between Paris and the southern coast.

I could write a really long story of what we learned, but I will try to keep it short. Needless to say, the tour was wonderful! Mr. Repelin himself worked on the restoration of the cathedral so he knew it intimately and we felt his enthusiasm. The rose window above the entrance of the church is unique because it is not like typical ones where the supports look like spokes in a wheel. In this one, it is curvy and structurally should not hold up, but it has for about 6 or 7 centuries.

He remarked that there is a famous smiling angel on a cathedral elsewhere in France (and Ginny and I saw it!!) but there is also a smiling angel on the cathedral in Lyon. Sadly, many of the statues were “beheaded” during the revolution by people shooting the heads with a gun. The statues that were high on the building survived because the people were bad shots and this angel was one of the survivors. Also, the angels surrounding the door are playing instruments and because they were finely carved, Mr. Repelin could tell what notes they were playing…. and when he compiled the notes, he determined that they were the music to the opening of the liturgy of the church!

So much more… but then we went inside and were allowed to climb the stairs to the mid level where he said this was the level where the statue carvers typically had free reign to decorate as they pleased. So we saw self-portraits of the carvers, silly faces, dog faces, and some fascinating stuff. We got up close to the rear rose window to see how flexible the window was and how the medallions can be easily removed. I got some great pictures of the city from the top of the church. What a view on a beautiful day!

We also got to enter the area where priests dress. He showed us all the secret compartments where everything from the earliest times still sits in the drawers and cabinets because the revolutionaries didn’t find the loot.

We spent about 3 hours in the cathedral. I didn’t want it to end. I learned so many fascinating things about the church. We go to mass there often and I don’t think I will ever be able to concentrate on the mass again while in a place with such a fascinating history!

See photos of our tour.