Trois Pèlerinages (Three Pilgrimages) - Part 1

What is the hope at the center of our journeys, our private pilgrimages? Where do we find our own cathedrals? Not realizing at first they were pilgrimages at all, I’ve followed three different paths in recent days, walking with others on their own searches for a time, finding myself always curious, occasionally bewildered or even incredulous, sometimes amazed and moved.
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Last weekend was Canadian Thanksgiving, and on Friday morning we took off with two close friends for an overnight trip, four hours to the north, above Quebec City.

Our first stop, on Friday, was at the shrine of St-Anne-de-Beaupré, the oldest continuous site of Catholic pilgrimage in North America, which is celebrating its 350th anniversary this year. The first church in honor of St. Anne, the patronne of Quebec and mother of Mary, was built here in 1658. A succession of buildings was erected on the site where miraculous healings were believed to have taken place. The present basilica was begun after a fire destroyed the former one in 1922; it was consecrated in 1976.

St. Anne’s twin spires rise incongruously above the flat land and suburban landscape beyond the sprawling city of Quebec. The village of St. Anne-de-Beaupre is small and reminded us of a western frontier town, with a couple of inns for the pilgrims, a cluster of houses set close together and nearly touching the winding main street, and a few flat-roofed buildings devoted to the sale of tacky religious and Quebec souvenirs, from painted plaster casts of the Last Supper to moose and polar bears in plush fake fur. These are dwarfed by a great square with trees, a tall fountain, and a towering gilded statue of the crowned saint holding her daughter, the baby Mary, in front of a huge cathedral of carved and decorated grey stone. Encrusted with detail inside and out, the basilica welcomes thousands and thousands of pilgrims every year – and as we stood there, astonished, busloads arrived and disgorged passengers who also stood and gaped at the sight, blinking after their long journeys to the shrine from all over North America. I had absolutely no idea anything like this existed in the province, and certainly not outside of the major cities. We were about to see evidence, once again, of how close Quebec Catholicism remained to the Middle Ages - even in the mid-20th century.

After we passed through the heavy doors covered with copper low-reliefs and into the glittering vestibule, the splendor of the cathedral's interior was even more stunning. I tried to suspend my incredulity about shrines, relics, and the veneration of saints in favor of cpnsidering the devotion and craft that had gone into the building's construction and decoration. How on earth had all of this happened in rural Quebec? The same way it did in Europe: through the donations of thousands of individuals and parishes, and the money left at the shrine by pilgrims. It costs $4 to light a candle, and hundreds of them were burning. One doesn't have to be a genius to do the math; if every pilgrim leaves only $10  - a very conservative estimate - that would generate a huge sum each year.

The story of St. Anne’s life with her husband St. Joachim is depicted in mosaics on the vaulted ceiling and along the sides of the sanctuary. (If, like me, you are wondering where that came from, since St. Anne is never mentioned in the canonical Gospels: the story of her life is loosely based on the Apocryphal Gospel of James, written in 150 C.E. She was venerated in the Eastern Orthodox church as early as the 7th century, but no cult arose around her in western Catholicism until the 12th century.)

Along the walls, gold mosaics and contemporary stained glass tell the important stories of Catholic Christianity and of the cathedral's own history. The lower walls and stairwells are made of black marble striped with lines of tiny gold tiles; above them are walls of polished lighter cut stone with many holes that, on closer observation, are the remains of fossil shells. Every pew is carved with an animal and plant that represent the created world but are predominantly native species of the northern Canadian woods. The sides and back of the altar are surrounded by smaller chapels, each different, given like the windows by cities or individuals, and yet all carefully fitting into the overall design integrity; one, in dark green and gold with mosaics of stylized clovers and a carved dark wooden saint against dark green Vermont marble, was dedicated to St. Patrick. The leaded-glass windows, many also donated by local parishes, depict workers, priests and saints alike. Cities like New Haven and New Orleans are represented by pictures of metal workers and musicians; in one window I read the words "Les Abattoirs" (the slaughterhouses) beneath a portrait of a butcher holding a large knife!

In the vaulted undercroft, square mosaics with gold backgrounds depict more local flora and fauna, from pink lady’s slippers to robins; the central chandelier hangs from a ceiling boss that at first seems part of the blue and white mosaic decoration of the ceiling but revels itself to be a four-foot wide white snowflake. Semi-circular paintings tell the story of the encounter between the (adoring and accepting) native people and (benevolent, generous) French nuns and priests – entirely, of course, from the French Catholic point of view. (St. Anne is said to have been held in particular adoration by native converts to Catholicism, and an icon of a beloved native saint, Keteri Tekakwitha, dressed in fringed buckskin and carrying a rosary, hangs in a prominent place to the left of the main altar in the basilica.)

 

Masses and talks for pilgrim groups take place in this undercroft, where there is one of four purported relics of St. Anne, (the "Major Relic" - a wristbone - is in a marble reliquary in a special chapel to the right of the altar upstairs.) The undercroft also includes a chapel for meditation containing two polychrome statues of the crucified Christ, an altar where people leave photographs of their loved ones, and hundreds and hundreds of burning white candles arrayed on galvanized trays; the heat from this room hits you like a wall long before you reach the doorway.

Monseigneur Laval, the first Bishop of Quebec, is on the right; I don't know the name of the Native American chief holding the map of Nouvelle France. It was Laval who requested that the canons of Carcassonne send a relic of St. Anne to Beaupré: they responded by sending "the finger-bone of Saint Anne, which was first exposed for veneration on 12 March, 1670."

The true focal point of the cathedral is upstairs, though, around the painted statue of St. Anne holding Mary, an image that evolved over time from an Orthodox icon of Mary holding Jesus. The saints, with their gilded crowns, stand on a tall pillar, their feet in a huge cascading bank of fresh flowers. Below them is a circular place to kneel, continually filled with pilgrims in fervent prayer. Are their prayers answered? Some say so: on either side of the entrance to the main sanctuary are banks of crutches and prostheses left by pilgrims who say they walked away unaided, healed by the grace of God and the intercession of Saint Anne.

After we left the basilica, we walked across the street to a much older stone chapel which commemorates the earlier churches on the site. Inside, a woman with a mane of red hair and a flowing green dress was playing a violin, facing the altar. Her husband sat in the sun on the steps outside, working on a Sudoku. I walked with our friends around the back of the chapel where life-size statues enact the Stations of the Cross. When I returned, she was still playing, and J. was quietly sitting in the chapel behind her. “I’m terribly frustrated,” she had told him, in an American accent, during a brief pause in her playing. “I’ve been practicing to do for five months, but my bow is sticking and the trains keep going by so noisily!” The next day when we returned to the cathedral to take photographs in the early morning, we saw her again, in the same chartreuse gown, kneeling at the feet of St. Anne.

Please also take a look at a PORTFOLIO of St-Anne photographs, by J.

Next: Cap Tourmente

Comments

[FrScott]

Oui! I wait with 'bated breath (honestly) for the next two. (I did the violin thing above the grave of Seabury during those long nine years there. And I still do, 'though I am no longer "there".)

Blessings and thanks...

[dale]

(o)

[Kaycie]

I've always loved churches and cathedrals. Their histories fascinate me. This one sounds beautiful. There is something serene about such places; I always feel calmed and grounded after a visit, even though I'm not religious at all. I think it might be the sheer beauty and peace of cathedrals along with the reverence people around me display that give me such a sense a well being.

[marja-leena]

I'd vaguely heard of this cathedral but your descriptions of it amaze me, that Canada, and naturally Quebec has such a magnificent church. This sounds as awesome as many I've visited in Italy and Germany. Like Kaycie, I'm not religious but appreciate them for their awe-inspiring architecture, history, beauty and sacredness. The native saint surprises me. J's photos are gorgeous!

[pat thistlethwaite]

I particularly love your last paragraph - there is a story there somewhere.

[Fred Garber]

Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't St. Anne's birth of Maria a virgin birth also? I am looking forward to your other 2 pilgrimages.

[Rana]

Thank you for sharing this.

I'm particularly struck by the attention to local detail and environment in this cathedral - so many of our public buildings today seem so indifferent to such things, even taking pride in their rather sterile abstractions.

[Dave]

Sounds like a cathedral worth traveling hours to see.

There's a Church of the Blessed Keteri about forty miles from here, in a central PA farm valley. Apparently her sanctification is still pending.