Eglise Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet
by Michael Estabrook


I'm not religious, don't pray or attend church, don't even (if the truth be told) believe in God (but don't tell Him please). Yet I can never resist visiting the old churches and cathedrals whenever I get the chance.
In Paris across from my hotel, the Hotel Abbatial Saint-Germain, is Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, a venerable drab gray church begun in the thirteenth century, dedicated to its first abbot, the great Cistercian ascetic,
St. Bernard of Clairvaux. I wander in and am awe-struck as always by the antiquity, the quiet, heavy stillness, the beautiful, smooth statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary.
I purchase a booklet to learn this esteemed edifice's history, but I need more than that,
I need a relic. So I buy a religious medallion key ring to replace the fraying sailor's
knot I got from the Nantucket whaling museum twenty years ago. "Would you like the priest to bless it" the old counter-woman asks in halting English. "Why yes, that would be very nice." The priest is large and not well-shaven. He reads the blessing quickly in Latin from a plastic card, then touches my medallion with holy water, then hands it back to me. I say thank you, am strangely moved, and carry away my blessed medallion, clutched securely in my non-reverent hands.






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