Lyon Churches

So, as may be apparent, there's a lot of learning for me that doesn't happen until I sit down to write about the places I've visited. I'm not sure about the usefulness about most of this knowledge, though some of it is quite fun. Like, for instance, funicular. Without any context clues, I would assume that this had something to do with maybe fungus or maybe cuticles but t actually means "a cable railway in which a cable attached to a pair of tram-like vehicles on rails moves them up and down a steep slope; the ascending and descending vehicles counterbalance each other." (wikipedia again)

Which is precisely what I rode up to Notre Dame de Fourviere, a church on a hill that has the two oldest funicular lines in the world. Fourviere, by the by, is the site (maybe sight... oh English, how you continue to thwart my pretense of education and intelligence) of the Roman settlement that grew to be Lyon. Lyon, also by the by, has interesting history that you can read here. Anyway, Lyon picked the Virgin Mary as its patron saint (which is really is almost cheating to me- it's just one step below saying, "Are you sure we can't pick Jesus as our patron saint? I mean, He's the best, isn't He?") and you get the Basilica up on the hill the same time Sacre Coeur is being built it Paris, and for the same reasons.

I did like the church, especially its mosaics.

The main church upstairs,

the one that sits in the shadow of a huge statue of Mary,

Really, sometimes I think the French are diverting my attention. Like, "Here, be distracted by a HUGE STATUE OF MARY."

 is much more formal than the smaller chapel downstairs

which hosts many different statues of the Virgin Mary and her first baby boy. I could talk again about the way the church and the world in general is connected, but I think I'm just going to put up a couple of pictures and hope that you like them as well as I did.

Down the hill is the cathedral of the city which is overshadowed physically and in popularity by the basilica because, well, because the basilica is on a hill and the cathedral is not. It's still significant though- it was founded by Saint Pothinus and Saint Irenaeus and Saint Irenaeus is one of the four doctors of the western church often represented in sacred architecture. Also, it was made the primary church in Gaul, which is what France was called by the Romans and people like the pope who talked like the Romans even four hundred years after the Western Roman empire fell. I think. Ugh, history face palm!

It struck me as an empty church- not much decoration at all, which threw me off guard. I'm used to every free space on the wall filled with carvings representing this saint or depicting that biblical story.

 It was actually a bit of a relief to find a quiet church with a tiny crowd. I took pictures of the choir stalls, because I just can't get away from them,

and of the astrological clock, from the 14th century.

Here's a video of it ringing which seems like it would be lame at the beginning but actually turns out to be kinda cool.

And that's about all I can muster for these churches. Notre Dame de Fourviere has Byzantine aspects and reminded me quite a bit of Notre Dame de la Guarde and the cathedral is another one of those Gothic churches with twists- you've got Romanesque aspects in the choir and in the apse.

See? Gothic peaks up top and Romanesque curves below. 

There are all sorts of fun stories associated with any church- in this case, if you've got the time and the googling skills, you can learn about the marriage of King Henry IV of France to Marie de Medici of the Medici family of Florence who were particularly powerful (but the only reason I know about them is because Galileo initially names the moons of Jupiter after his patron Count Medici). Nothing here blew me away, which I feel quite guilty about. I mean, ostensibly, the only thing to make Sacre Coeur or Notre Dame more interesting is the fact that they're in Paris. But really, despite the parallels, I was much more excited for the churches in Paris. And Lyon is an interesting step on the ladder of my European journey, but that's all.