Lotharingia: A Personal History of Europe's Lost Country by Simon Winder

Author:Simon Winder
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2019-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Nancy and Lorraine » Rebuilding the Rhine » Sperm by candlelight » Gilt and beshit » Adventures in tiny states » In the time of the periwigs

Nancy and Lorraine

I am usually quite meticulous about my notes but I have one small unplaceable sheet of paper. Mixed up with various bits of German vocabulary it simply says: ‘The ducal tombs much damaged, lids pushed open by fungus and mould – appalling photos of some white stuff, like billows of detergent!’ I remember the church as eighteenth century with a painted cupola (which does not narrow it down much) and that it was a longer walk away than I had thought, and that there were gloomy trees (again, these eliminate almost nowhere). There were many years when this mausoleum, wherever it was, must have been extremely important – great solemn ceremonies with black horses, stacks of crêpe, grim-faced dowagers, lines of troops, a sense of an old reign ending and a new one begun, silent capless crowds. But at some point the last person stopped caring and all sorts of chemical grotesqueries were allowed to convulse the remains of men and women who had once commanded armies or been middling players on the spinet.

This scribbled note struck me because it is in such strong contrast to the immaculate, beautifully maintained mausoleum in Nancy of the Dukes of Lorraine. This is tucked away in a corner of the Franciscan monastery built by Duke René II in 1487 shortly after he rubbed out Charles the Bold and it forms a striking contrast to the rest of the complex, which has become the last resting place of lots of statues: frightened, badly damaged marble refugees from other parts of Lorraine, forming a sort of royalist Island of Misfit Toys. Survivors of the devastating iconoclasm of the 1790s, they include such masterpieces as Ligier Richier’s tomb of the pious and powerful Philippa of Guelders, René II’s wife. Once maintained in a sumptuous layer-cake of contrasting marbles, propelled along through the afterlife by the songs and prayers of many generations of priests and choirs, she wound up with her bones and most of her tomb chucked away, reduced to an admittedly still superb recumbent figure, shown in extreme old age wearing her outfit as a Poor Clare – and looking oddly like Darth Sidious.

The circular main chapel of the Dukes of Lorraine is in fine shape however and reflects the dukes’ odd ability to keep going despite often mortal threats to their sovereignty. Simply looking at Lorraine on the map shows its problem, with part of its territory of Bar marooned in France and the three enclaves of Toul, Verdun and Metz entangled within its borders. Its political incoherence and status as an Imperial borderland made it a favourite destination for marauding armies to pass through from every point of the compass. Until the seventeenth century, the Dukes had stayed close to the French kings and thrived through being helpful and adventurous. Near the Franciscan church

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