WISH I COULD TELL Mr. Ostrowski: “I went to Saint-Wandrille and now I know the correct way to sing Gregorian Chant.” The first part is true. In 2024 we went on a pilgrimage. But I’m afraid I am not much help for the second part. One of the main reasons I don’t post here frequently is that I’m intimidated by the quality of the writers in this blog. I just sing. I’m a mom and mostly, I am listening to my students narrate history books or telling them to come for lunch or being police-judge of their fighting for little toys. At the same time, my family did make a pilgrimage to Fontenelle Abbey, where Dom Joseph Pothier served as abbot. Like many Benedictine communities, the Abbey has many names. It is often called Abbaye Saint-Wandrille (after its 7th-century founder, Saint Wandregisel). Fontenelle refers to its physical location, in Normandy, France.
“Neumatic equivalence” ?
“Mensuralism” ?
“In campo aperto” notation ?
“Teutonic” plainsong dialect ?
I am quite glad there are scholars who can write about that. I just sing what our choirmaster asks us to sing. I love looking at the chant manuscripts in the middle of the CAMPION MISSAL, but I am too busy corralling the little girl who still needs “Mass training”. I’m grateful there are people figuring out those other things—so we can sing correctly! 😊
But this spring, between Mr. Ostrowski writing about Saint-Wandrille and Mr. Haas writing about sacred music pilgrimages, I thought I should share about our pilgrimage to some of the places where the Politics of Plainchant was fought.
I write as a pilgrim who has sung at Church all of her life. My husband is an educator at heart, but he has historical tendencies, and he reads Mr. Ostrowski’s blog faithfully. He put together this itinerary that started at Saint-Wandrille. I asked him why he wanted us to go, to what seemed to me an obscure abbey. It was near Rouen (where Saint Joan of Arc) was burned at the stake, so why did we visit this place and skip most of the more famous city?
He said he wanted to visit Dom Pothier.
(1)
What I remember most about our visit that day in 2024 was that our son got sick. We were in the middle of walking the gardens when he started complaining. By the time we were finished, there was vomit on the ground and my husband was carrying him around.
Everything ended up O.K., but that’s what I remember most. (A mother’s heart.)
(2)
To visit Saint-Wandrille, we rented a car and drove north from Paris. The plan was to visit the Monet garden on the way back, so we only had a half-day. It was our first trip on our weeks-long pilgrimage. Our route took us over a spectacular bridge. When you look at maps, you will see that there are only smaller towns in the nearby area. The big city nearby is Rouen.
The area is shaped by the Seine River, which of course, is the same river that shapes Paris a few hours away. This is the Fontenelle River! It meets the Seine right near this spot next to the Abbey.
In this map, you can find Saint-Wandrille and “the Abb. de Fontenelle” at the top center. You will see the drawing of the bridge that crosses the Seine. You can also see where the Fontenelle River meets the Seine.
Other historical Abbeys and Monasteries, Churches, and Museums dot the area in this map. But we only had time to try to visit Dom Pothier and go to Holy Mass.
(3)
European roads tend to follow the land, so a few curves led to a smaller town. Maybe that’s why my baby boy got sick? Imagine being neighbor to this wonderful place?!
A girl can dream … dream of relocating from Los Angeles to the small town of Saint-Wandrille-Rançon! Who’s with me? Gregorian chant down the street!
Since this place is not on the tourist map, parking is on the street. Curve around the walls and park on the gravel near the river. The posted sign has a map and basic information. The monks don’t allow picnics, riding your bike, loud phone use, fútbol soccer, or smoking. The monks allow dogs!
We were not a “tour group”, but we made sure to leave a little contribution when we left. Otherwise it is free to visit. Look carefully at the map to find the ghost structure of the former Church building in the green garden.
(4)
My one suggestion in this post for musical pilgrims is this: If you visit an Abbey, go to Holy Mass.
Wake up early, since Masses
tend to be early morning-time.
Wake up early, since you’re
in a new place.
Wake up early and pray
with the monks.
Our Church is on Firm Foundation:
(5)
At this point, my memories are a bit lost. I don’t remember the specific “Mensuralism” the monks chanted. I can’t tell Mr. Ostrowski about the correct way to sing! I’m so sorry! But the chant was lovely. The Mass was Novus Ordo, con-celebrated. The solemn ceremony was interrupted to celebrate the anniversary or retirement or birthday of a older monk. It was really special for my children to see the celebration of a lifetime spent in an enclosed prayerful space. Maybe it was the first time they had seen what this vocation—monastic life—is all about. Except for that interruption, for those of us who live in both the Novus Ordo and the Traditional Latin Mass, it felt home. It felt like home because it was reverent. It felt like home because even though we don’t understand French, the monks were serious, the music fit, and my children were in the same quiet awe of our FSSP parish. Okay, who am I kidding? Our Mass in a tent for a few post-COVID years, so every single holy space in France was simply otherworldly!
Reflecting now two years later, it’s hard to describe what it meant to be in this Holy Mass. It was during a time when we heard rumors that Pope Francis was going to put more restrictions in the TLM. Every Mass on this trip was a reminder that we might lose ours. Today are important statements being still made about all of this from the monks of Solesmes (Novus Ordo). Fontenelle (Novus Ordo) and Fontgombault (Vetus Ordo) both belong to the “Solesmes Congregation”.
The only thing I have to say about this is that this kind of reverent Novus Ordo Mass is much, much rarer to find than local TLMs.1
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So while we found a wonderful Mass, we couldn’t find Dom Pothier. At the time we visited, the area where he is buried was closed to the public. If there was an exhibit inside, we didn’t find it because by this time, the little boy was getting worse. We had to go.
We wandered the enclosed area where there was a small cemetery and a chapel. A social media influencer might have been able to curate these images into a viral post, reel, story, or tweet. This busy mom? A photo dump.
First, this perfect chapel and its memento mori. But Dom Pothier wasn’t buried. We checked all of the tombstones for his name.
Then, textures to look for in your visit. Why textures? Well, my former choirmaster, Mr. Ostrowski, always tried to get us to blend. These textures on the path blend. The living plants here blend like our voices should blend together into one mat of green.
The non-living gravel blends here on the path, right next to the graves.
And if you’re don’t have a gravel-sized voice, then things are a little bit more difficult for you. But we have to blend! To be one voice united. In a similar way, a stone-mason (like a choirmaster) had to shape this stone here to make it fit and blend in and be level with all of the other stones on the ground.
Timbers and stones to last more than one lifetime.
And once inside the chapel, a very good place to pray. Abbots were buried here, but we didn’t find Dom Pothier here either.
I think I’ll stop this part of the photo dump here inside this little Chapel. This is a part of the Abbey that’s still in use today.
At peace.
(7)
Now the ruins. We wandered around the ruins of the former Abbey. The footprint of the building is still there for us to witness. It is like a ghost hovering above us pilgrims. The Gregorian Chant is like that. Even though some places ignore it, it stands there waiting for choirs to find this website and build it up again! The chant hovers above every Low Mass and every Novus Ordo.
This holy place was destroyed many times. It was destroyed in the French Revolution. The history is amazing to read about. The stories of the exile of the monks is worth reading, especially since it affects the chant itself. When the monks recovered the site, they rebuilt smaller and have left the main church structure in ruins.
The top of some of the remaining walls have protection on the top so water doesn’t get inside the walls. Maybe they’ll rise again?
Maybe there will be a great rebirth of this building after the destruction of that Revolution. Maybe it is a good reminder for us, that some places were once majestically Catholic, as a warning that we have to be the ones to maintain it.
Construction continues on other parts of the site. Maybe the walls will rise again?
No joke, someone found treasure in the walls. My children didn’t find any gold coins, but we did find the treasure of Vatican II.
The musical tradition of the universal Church is a treasure of inestimable value, greater even than that of any other art. The main reason for this pre-eminence is that, as sacred song united to the words, it forms a necessary or integral part of the solemn liturgy. (Sacrosanctum Concilium)
Will the correct Gregorian Chant bounce off these stone walls in the future? Will the Church rebuild and return to her ancient identity?
How many times was this Abbey rebuilt in Normandy? How many wars saw its destruction? The first paragraph here lists not a few, maybe this part of the building is from 1331.
What was in this empty niche? What statue was destroyed? Were there candles lit to a saint here? Did tired parents pray for their children here?
The list of abbots2 goes back to the founder, Saint Wandrille in 649AD. That’s hard to believe and wrap my head around. Six hundred forty nine.
(8)
Some say that St. Wandrille was the monk who helped introduce the thin-wafer host that we use for Holy Communion. Imagine that! When at Mass we knelt to receive Communion that day, that shape of the wafer-thin Host was determined by someone who once lived here!
How many organs have been rebuilt to play for Communion time? How different does it sound in a wooden structure like this one?
(9)
The end of any visit rightfully ends in the gift shop. We almost found Dom Pothier there!
The writers and academics who write in this blog about Gregorian Chant surely live so much more of this life than someone like me. My life as wife and homeschooling mother has different rhythms and a lot of little dishes washed. Like the Abbey, we have to rebuild the Gregorian Chant in our Churches. If they could see their Abbey destroyed and work to rebuild multiple times, so can we. To the writers of this blog: thank you for your work figuring out how to rebuild our choirs with Chant. It was a special visit for my family to experience a little bit of the life of these important monks who live where the books we sing from were put together. This day (abruptly) came to an end. As we drove away, this is what we saw.
What does a lifetime in an Abbey like this do to a person? What does a lifetime of daily chanting with brothers and sisters do to a human being? What does it do to the chant rhythms in this corner of France?
It is true that I would like to return to this dream someday. We would like to find the tomb—perhaps with assistance from this 1989 article by Monsignor Francis P. Schmitt, and taking into consideration that in 1962 his corpse was transferred—and pray for Dom Pothier and our Holy Church. And maybe next time I’ll find the solution to the Chant Wars.
Visit this place if you can.
1 Maybe it is harder for the Novus Ordo to be Vatican II.
2 Husband Note: The Abbey is so old, that around the year 1,000AD, an author was looking back at the previous three centuries (!) as “the good old days”. It was a time when there were no Viking raids. “That security was abruptly and forever altered, ‘with God’s permission and as the outrageous result of human perversity,’ by the arrival of the Vikings. To put that into perspective, one thousand years ago people were looking back at a time that was longer than the 250 years that the United States has been in existence!
