The most appropriate reference point for situating Saint Leonard de Noblat isn’t a point but a line, that of the major medieval pilgrimage route from Vezelay, in Burgundy, to the relics of Saint James in Compostela, Spain. Follow it on foot, as a pilgrim did/does, proceeding at a steady pace of 14 miles (23 km) per day, and you’ll arrive in Saint Leonard de Noblat after a month or so, with another eight weeks to go before Compostela. With that as your line of reference, here’s the map to situate you.

That line, that pilgrimage along the Way of Saint James (Camino de Santiago), and more specifically the relics of Saint Leonard along the Way, is what earned Saint Leonard de Noblat a significant dot on the map.

My own approach was by car from Aubusson, of tapestry fame, 41 miles (66km) to the east. Courtney Withrow approached from Limoges, 13 miles (21km) to the west. We meet here in this 2-part article, where, in this part, I give an overview of town and its development and where, in the second part, Courtney tells of its 500-year-old paper mill Le Moulin du Got.

Doubly present on the UNESCO World Heritage List

So let’s forget for a moment that Saint Leonard de Noblat is well off the beaten path for most travelers. Instead, we’ll return to a time and a place where it was very much on the path of pilgrims. Thanks to that path, this town of 4500, whose historic center is preserved in its stone simplicity, is doubly present on the UNESCO World Heritage List:

– Tangibly, for its collegiate church that was a part of a dense constellation of medieval structures in France along the Way of Saint James;

– Intangibly, as part of religious processions and ceremonies known as Limousin Septennial Ostensions, organized every seven years to present and worship the relics of saints held in the region. (An ostension is a presentation of relics.) About 20 towns in the region—most within 25 miles of Limoges, along with several outliers—band together during the Ostensions to “translate” or move their local relics from town to town through the septennial year. The next Ostensions will take place in 2023.

Leonard, patron saint of prisoners

Nobiliacum (which morphed into Noblac and Noblat) was the name of the village overlooking the Vienne River that existed here in the Dark Ages before becoming fully associated with Saint Leonard through the veneration of his relics during the Middle Ages. Saint Leonard’s life story was written in 1030, nearly 500 years after his death, so it’s as much legend as biography. As word of it spread so did the appeal of visiting his relics and perhaps benefiting from their healing powers.

As the story goes, Leonard was born into aristocracy in the late 5th century during the time of Clovis, King of the Franks. Like Clovis, he was baptized by Saint Remi in Reims, with Clovis himself as his godfather. Become a pious adult, Leonard was given by Clovis the right to release prisoners that Leonard felt worthy of amnesty, hence his status as the patron saint of prisoners. Effigies of the saint present him holding shackles and/or chains, perhaps also with a fleur de lys to symbolize his royal connection. Leonard eventually chose to live as a hermit in the forest by the crossroads that would become Nobiliacum and that would eventually also bear his own name. Hermits took part in evangelizing a region by setting up shop in the forest near well-traveled roads. Miracles followed.

At the turn of the millennium, word was spreading throughout the region and beyond of the miraculous healing powers of a procession of the relics of Saint Martial of Limoges during an epidemic of ergot poisoning, an epidemic caused by grain infected with certain fungi that would strike the Limousin region. As the biography of Saint Leonard gained ground during the second half of the 11th century, other miracles of relief or cure would then be attributed to a procession of his relics, giving further credence to the power of ostensions. Funding from passing pilgrims and from feudal powers contributed to the creation of many churches through the 11th and 12th centuries along the pilgrimage routes of central and southwest France. The mostly Romanesque collegiate church of Saint Leonard de Noblat was a part of that movement. Today, still, it houses the saint’s relics, particularly his skull.

Massepain, the local pastry

Pilgrimages are intended to provide spiritual strength, but long-distance pilgrims, in addition to having sore feet, often had difficulties being suitably nourished. Two 13th-century entrances to a former pilgrim’s hospital still visible in town attest to the physical suffering of pilgrims.

My own visit to Saint Leonard de Noblat knew no suffering. In fact, while I spent some time visiting the old stones and the old bones of Saint Leonard de Noblat, my first encounter with the history of the pilgrimage to and through town came in the form of a pastry called massepain.

Actually, my first encounter wasn’t with a massepain but with Frédéric Rougerie, a founding member and master of ceremonies of the Confrérie des Compagnons de Massepain de Saint Leonard de Noblat, the order or brotherhood that protects and promotes traditional Saint Leonard massepain. Meeting me in the kitchen at Maison Coignac (22 Avenue du Maréchal Foch), a family-run pastry shop and bakery, one of many shops in town making massepain, he greeted me in full brotherhood regalia: a brown cape, the color of the full almonds that go into the pastry (and of Limousin cows); a neck baldric meeting at a patch of Limousin leather on which is attached, in locally-made Limoges porcelain, a reproduction of a massepain bearing the image of the arms of Saint Leonard; a large broach indicating an affiliation with other Limousin brotherhoods, and a pastry chef’s hat.

Calling massepain a pastry makes it sound fancier than it truly is. It’s simply a soft, dry, rustic biscuit made of three ingredients: almonds, egg whites and sugar. I resist translating massepain as marzipan since that risks calling to mind dense almond paste that’s often molded into animal-shaped confections. Marzipan it may be, but this one is so particular to Saint Leonard that it’s best to call it by its French name. Saint Leonard de Noblat is also known as the City of Massepain.

For pilgrims traveling on a poor diet of water, cabbage leaves and some root vegetables, almond-based biscuits were, says Rougerie, the equivalent of a high-protein sports bars. Almonds grow along the Mediterranean basin, so almonds and almond-based confections were known to southern travelers. However, the traditional recipe of the massepain of Saint Leonard practiced today wasn’t developed until 1899, when the local pastry maker Camille Petitjean learned a similar recipe from a Swiss monk who was passing through on the pilgrimage route. Petitjean sold them in town and in surrounding villages, and massepains soon became a staple of the sweet and rustic life in and around Saint Leonard.

Three ingredients go into the traditional Saint Leonard massepain: almonds (the full almond which is then finely crushed), egg whites (unbeaten) and sugar (caster). Despite its Mediterranean roots, the United States is currently the world’s largest almond producer, so many a Saint Leonard massepain likely contain California almonds. By its ingredients, the massepain is cousin to the Parisian macaroon, but it’s very much a country cousin. The macaroon doesn’t use the full almond fruit, its egg white is beaten, and its sugar is powdered, making it suitable for a highfalutin pilgrimage to Paris but not to Saint Leonard de Noblat.

Pilgrims make up only a tiny part of the clientele for massepain. The bulk is consumed by, well, everyone living in or passing through the region. Massepains can be enjoyed at aperitif-time with, say, a glass of pink champagne if you want to go upmarket with your downmarket pastry, in the afternoon with coffee or tea, even by a teething toddler. You name it, the simple yet versatile massapain can have its place.

Come mealtime, however, the traveler to the region inevitably opts for a hearty sit-down meal that may be inspired by the farmland of Saint Leonard de Noblat and the surrounding Limousin region, where you’ll see Limousin cattle, as well as Limousin lamb and Black Bottom pigs. Chestnuts and Limousin apples are also grown in the region.

Porcelain, Paper and Leather

While Saint Leonard now putters along as a largely off-track town in 21st century France, it maintains its attachment not only to its pilgrimage prosperity during the Middle Ages but also to its substantial period of prosperity as a hub for artisanal activity during the 17th and 18th centuries.

To understand the artisanal prosperity, your reference map would show the rivers running through the region, in particularly the Vienne River, which lent its name to the department or sub-region called Haute-Vienne or Upper Vienne. (Saint Leonard and Limoges are far upstream along the Vienne. Further downstream, the river makes a sharp turn north and eventually flows into the Loire River near Saumur.) The quality of its water and that of its small tributaries at this stage of its course encouraged the development two types of water-dependent manufacturing complexes: tanneries, treating hides for leather goods, and papermills. The Vienne also played a role in the development of the porcelain industry in and around Limoges.

Tanneries: By the 19th century there were about 20 sites for tanning hides in the area. The only one now in operation is Tannerie Bastin & Fils. Bastin is a 200-year-old tanner that opened the functioning Moulin Follet (Follet Mill) site in 1892 and has been owned by J.M. Weston since 1981. Weston, based in Limoges, uses leather made here for shoe soles.

Papermills: There were also some 20 paper producers in the heyday of artisanal paper production in the Saint Leonard area in the 18th century. Again, only one remains, the Moulin du Got, which Courtney Withrow tells about in the second part of this article.

Porcelain: Fine bone china and hard-paste porcelain considered “Limoges” isn’t only made in the city of Limoges or by a single producer but by artisans and industry throughout the region who have access to the proper clay within the production zone.

The region was actually known for centuries for its enamel production prior to gaining an international reputation for its porcelain in the early 18th century. In Saint Leonard, the local star of fine porcelain production is Coquet, producer of the brands J.L Coquet and Jaune de Chrome. (Two years ago the company was caught up in revelations of The Daphne Project with respect to money laundering. Since 2019, Coquet has belonged to the Compagnie Européenne de Luxe et Traditions.) Porcelaine Carpenet, a family-run Limoges producer, is also located in Saint Leonard.

Saint Leonard de Noblat Tourist Office, Place du Champ de Mars, 87400 Saint-Léonard de Noblat. The tourst office website provides a list of hotels and B&Bs in the area. Note: This is not an area for luxury accommodations or haute cuisine.

Haute-Vienne Tourist Information. Saint Leonard and Limoges are within the department of Haute-Vienne. Americans on the Statue of Liberty tour of France (there are about 25 replicas in France, in addition to those in Paris) might head 12 miles southeast to Châteauneuf-la-Forêt, where one stands as the monument to the dead of the First and Second World Wars. Not much else to see once you get there, but a drive though Haute-Vienne countryside nonetheless.

Oradour sur Glane, the “martyred village,” is also located in Haute-Vienne, 28 miles (46km) west of Saint Leonard de Noblat.

© 2020, Gary Lee Kraut

Go to the second part of this 2-part article Saint Leonard de Noblat: 500 Years of Paper Production.

The post Saint Léonard de Noblat: Pilgrims, Prisoners, Pastries, Porcelain, Paper appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

I understand that only the pope is infallible and that his eyes can’t be everywhere, but the next time you’re printing up a poster to place in front of the most visited monument in the world’s most touristed city please consider sending it to me first to be proofread.

Though I am not one of your faithful, I have spent many precious moments with you and your sisters, each more lovely than the next, and so I will gladly provide my services free of charge in exchange for a few earnest prayers.

Rest assured: I am not mocking you—certainly not in the way that someone has recently ridiculed poor Corneille up on the hill near the scant relics of your beloved St. Geneviève, patron saint of this lovely city with the sad sky.

Forgive me then for drawing attention to your little mistake… but perhaps not too quickly, for as Corneille himself wrote:

Qui pardonne aisément invite à l’offenser.
He who forgives easily invites offense.

Respectfully yours,

Gary
May 19, 2013

P.S. Break at leg at the concert — or Merde, as the archbishop might say.

The post Dear Notre-Dame: A Letter for Pentecost Time appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

I love the clichés of seaside and countryside travel in southern European. Sitting in a seaside café I’ll let the whish of waves against a pebble beach draw me into a Mediterranean daze. And pausing by a bubbling fountain on a hillside village I slide easily into a “year-in-Provence-under-a-Tuscan-sun” frame of mind. But having arrived in Toulouse, the queen of southwest France, and taken a seat on its central square, I know that at heart I’m a city traveler.

I enjoy discovering a city rich in architecture, museums, street life, and cultural events, where the trick isn’t to see it all but to explore it at my own pace. And mine’s a pace that requires frequent sitting. As far as I’m concerned, a southern city is only as great as the cafés between the sights.

Call it sight-sitting, tour operators need not apply.

Any exploration of Toulouse naturally begins on Place du Capitole, the political, historical, and cultural heart of the city as well as of France’s landlocked Midi-Pyrénées region, which stretches north from the Spanish border. Lingering in any of the half-dozen cafés around the square provides a luxuriant introduction to the two characteristics that most distinguish Toulouse: the brick and the accent.

In a country otherwise associated with constructions in stone, Toulouse has conjugated its local orange-pink brick into a surprising array of religious and civil monuments, including the 18th-century façade of Le Capitole, the building that lords over the city’s central square, housing City Hall and the Toulouse Opera.

Anywhere you sit you’ll hear the song of Toulouse’s easily recognizable, if difficultly understandable, brand of a southern French accent. I asked several Toulousans to describe it and came up with the following Zagat-like description: “our registered trademark,” “a soft stuttered delivery ending in an open-ended Occitan song,” “bright and easy,” “a verbal reflection of the brick itself.”

I was visiting in June, when the wind here hesitates between Atlantic (about 180 miles west) and Mediterranean (about 100 miles east). Arriving from Paris in the late afternoon at the tail end of an Atlantic drizzle, I took a seat within the cozy Belle Epoque interior of Le Bibent, joining a klatch of perfumed shoppers having tea.

By early evening the Mediterranean was asserting its rights on the Toulousan sky, so I later returned to Place du Capitole to see (seated, of course) how the color of the brick changes with the sky. To my eyes it never quite hits the pink note that has given Toulouse its nickname “la Ville Rose,” however it does have a bright terra cotta twinkle in the right light. I had an aperitif at Le Florida, one of the square’s most popular cafés and a clear reminder at that hour that Toulouse has France’s second largest university population after Paris.

From Place du Capitole, the view down rue de Taur toward the brick lacework of the bell tower of Saint Sernin Basilica is an open invitation to discover one of France’s greatest churches from the Romanesque era. On the morning of day two I headed down that road and began my sight-sitting day with coffee and a view of the basilica’s back end from a table beneath the linden trees at Café St. Sernin.

Begun in 1080, St. Sernin Basilica is the country’s longest church still in existence from the Romansque period, which preceded France’s passion for Gothic monsters. The basilica’s enormity was principally a response to the throngs of pilgrims that came to venerate the relics of the city’s first bishop. As a medieval tourist attraction it further benefited being situated along major pilgrimage routes to some of the most revered relics in Western Europe at the time, those of Saint James in Santiago de Compostella in northwest Spain. Hundreds, even thousands, of pilgrims might circulate through St. Sernin’s five naves on a given day in the 12th and 13th centuries.

St. Sernin is more than a one-seat sight, so after visiting the interior I read up these medieval pilgrimages with a frontal view of the basilica from a snack bar café table beneath the ancient elm overhanging the courtyard by the Saint Raymond Museum. The St. Raymond Museum’s collection of antiquities speaks of an even earlier time as it gives glimpses of local civilization under Roman rule and during the several centuries that followed. Descriptions in English aren’t sufficient to reveal the significance of the objects to those who don’t understand French, but their beauty is apparent.

Toulouse’s second great church is the Jacobins Church, designed in 1230 and as much a monument to southern France’s Gothic architecture as St. Sernin is to its Romanesque. The Jacobins was built as the mother church of the Dominican order of preaching friars that was founded in the early 13th century by (Saint) Dominic. Dominic made a name for himself by preaching against a religion called Catharism, which had developed and increasingly flourished in the region in the 12th century. Catharism was a Christian off-shoot with Eastern influences whose system of belief refused the hierarchy and sacraments of the Church of Rome. The Church, finding its authority undermined and considering Cathars as heretics, initially fought back with words. When words failed, Pope Innocent III, in 1209, called for a crusade against the heretics, launching the Albigensian War. The bloodletting was orchestrated by French noblemen while the Dominicans led the accompanying inquisition, and together they wiped out the Cathars, whose final hill refuges can be seen when heading toward the Pyrenees.

Lit by daylight through beautiful stained glass, the Jacobins Church is split into two naves by seven stone columns that blossom to the ceiling like palm fronds. The relics of St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) stand as the centerpiece in an otherwise attractively sparse church, yet nowadays, as with the relics at St. Sernin, those of St. Thomas are passed by with less interest than a third-rate Picasso.

No café gives an adequate view of the Jacobins, but the adjacent 14th-century cloister did just fine for me. A small entrance fee keeps it especially peaceful and calm as well as friendly, I found, since its rare visitors tend to smile at each other in passing as though they’d just discovered they belong to the same exclusive club of unhurried travelers.

Toulouse has three exceptional settings for art, beginning with the 14th- and 15th-century cloister and monastic buildings of another religious complex, the Augustins. This was the perfect place to end a day my day of medieval explorations. The brick walls and Gothic rib vaults serve as stunning backdrops for the Augustins Museum’s exceptional collection of medieval sculpture and religious painting.

Place Saint Georges, a block away, offers the cafés of choice for that area of the city—and, to judge by the crowds, for many other areas as well. On warm days and nights seats are so hard to come by that you’d think the city were about to stage an execution, as it did on this square throughout the 18th century.

Toulouse is the rare French city that you can visit for a few days without bothering to have a peek at the cathedral. St. Etienne Cathedral, a 5-minute walk from Place Saint Georges, is noteworthy primarily as an architectural junk pile. I visited it out of a sense of investigative responsibility, but less duty-bound travelers should feel free, instead, to take a 5-minute stroll in the opposite direction so as to continue sight-sitting from a café on Place Wilson. A good part of late afternoon can actually be spent trolling for dinner menus on Place Saint Georges, Place Wilson, and nearby Place Victor Hugo.

On day three I left behind the monuments of medieval Toulouse to explore its unique assortment of brick mansions from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Toulouse counts dozens such mansions, so you shouldn’t hesitate to push open a large door, walk through the arched passageway, and glimpse the inner courtyard, where the height of a man’s wealth was measured by the height of the tower rising above the central staircase. The earlier of these homes reflect the remarkably rich period when the city flourished with the pastel trade, in which woad plants were cultivated in the surrounding region for a blue pigment then used in dyes throughout Europe.

The most impressive of these is the great Renaissance Hôtel d’Assézat (hôtel means a city mansion), begun in 1555, which was extensively restored in the 1990s so as to house the equally impressive private art collection of Georges Bemberg. The tremendous and eclectic collection of the Fondation Bemberg is especially rich in French Modernist works from the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Impressionists, Pointillists, Fauves, and an astounding grouping 35 works by Bonnard). I’m also particularly fond of the characters revealed the Renaissance gallery, whose works include Lucas Cranach’s seductive “Portrait of a Lady,” and his playfully erotic “Venus and Cupid.” My need for an artful sit, catalogue in hand, was easily satisfied at to the tearoom (open May-Oct.) on the porch overlooking the mansion’s inner courtyard.

That afternoon I strolled across the river to Les Abattoirs, the city’s former slaughterhouse (1831), which has been successfully and surprisingly transformed into a contemporary arthouse. Its collection is devoted to currents since 1950, particularly the works of French, Italian, and Spanish artists. As with the Augustins Museum, part of the distinctiveness of Les Abattoirs is the unusual experience of viewing art against a brick background.

A more stunning view of Toulousan brick, however, lay just ahead. I came up it while crossing over the Garonne River on the elegant bridge Pont Neuf (1544-1662) on my way back to the city center. It was about an hour before sunset and the high terra cotta riverbanks, the water, and the lovers along the riverside footpath all sparkled in a spectacular natural light show.

For the first time in several days I thought about following the river or some other path into the countryside. I knew that within a two-hour drive of Toulouse I would find a stunning constellation of market towns, goose farms, castle ruins, abbey churches, gastronomic hideaways, and assorted villages set high and low along the meandering rivers.

But I still had more city sight-sitting to do, from a bench along the river.

© 2005, 2008 by Gary Lee Kraut

Useful Links

Toulouse Tourist Office. The Tourist Office is behind City Hall, just off Place du Capitole. Postal address BP 0801, 31080 Toulouse Cedex. Tel 05 61 11 02 22.www.ot-toulouse.fr.

Midi-Pyrénées (regional) Tourist Office. www.tourisme-midi-pyrenees.com. 54 boulevard de l’Embouchure, 31022 Toulouse. Tel 05 61 13 55 55.

American Present Post in Toulouse. 25 allée Jean Jaurès. Tel. 05 34 41 36 50. https://fr.usembassy.gov/embassy-consulates/toulouse/.

Americans in Toulouse, a service and social organization for “English-speaking ex-pats living and sharing the good life in Toulouse, France.”www.americansintoulouse.com.

Hôtel d’Assézat/The Bemberg Foundation www.fondation-bemberg.fr.

Les Abattoirs/Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, www.lesabattoirs.org.

Culture, Sports, Festivals

High culture: The Théâtre du Capitole presents opera, ballet, operettas, and recitals by nationally and internationally known performers. www.theatre-du-capitole.org.

Rugby: Southwest France is rugby territory. The professional season runs mid-August through May. For information about the local team Stade Toulousain and its schedule of home matches see www.stadetoulousain.fr. Place Saint Pierre is home to a scrum of rugby café-bars.

Rio Loco: Each June a joyous festival of music, theater, dance, and exhibitions honors a great river and the culture along its banks. www.rio-loco.org.

Piano des Jacobins: Each September, an international piano festival in the cloister of the Jacobins Church. www.pianojacobins.com.

Toulouse les Orgues: Annual organ festival in the first two weeks of October. www.toulouse-les-orgues.org.

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