Posts

Showing posts with the label Britanny

37 Sainte Barbe chapel, Arradon, Britanny

Image
 This is a tiny charming chapel just down the road from the house we were renting near the beach last summer. It was built at the end of the sixteenth century. Sainte Barbe (Saint Barbara) is one of those "I was a saint before you were a saint" sort of people (from the point of view of an English Catholic) because she was martyred in the third century. Before her death she was tortured , but every morning her wounds healed miraculously, so eventually her father beheaded her. Then again she may not actually have existed because all the stories about her that we know of were written centuries later.  Her speciality was to guarantee to her devotees that they would not die without having had first the opportunity to go to confession and to have the final sacrament which they used to call "extreme unction" (these days it is generally called "the anointing of the sick"). The chapel has the simplest Stations of the Cross I have seen so far. It also has statues of...

35 Saint Michel church, Ile-aux-Moines

Image
Back to France: here is a very small church in Britanny. It is situated on the Ile aux Moines, which has only just over 600 inhabitants, but gets a lot of tourists in the summer, mostly cycling around the island before eating grilled fish in the restaurants. Anyway, the church has a lovely clock tower and some exquisite little features inside, and you can see from the noticeboard what parish activities are a priority. Information about the island in Breton Information about the island in French In English In Dutch