Country Life

A local shepherd girl loses her head

Nymphs & Shepherds Edition

Putting the Clocks Back in the Grand Est

“After Langres, hang a right, then straight ahead until you reach 1743 AD”

It’s Autumn; I like Autumn; the rain had stopped, I had a spare afternoon on my hands, and the clocks were going back, so I decided to make a dash towards the distant Vosges mountains, far up into the infamous French “Diagonal” badlands between Dijon and Nancy.

There’s nothing up here but miles and miles of rolling fields and the occasional farm; a bit like Salisbury Plain but with trees and castles…….

Reynel is a quaint little hamlet which must be at least 150m from end to end, but other than that you’re pretty much on your own with a ball of string and a magnetised needle until you get to another small village, half an hour off the beaten track and 400 years ago in time.

It’s Grand Up North

Nobody has heard of Grand — there’s nothing there: no vineyards, no people, no money, just a massive Roman Amphitheatre and the largest mosaic north of the Alps, no river but 300 underground wells and an aqueduct, spread over 150 acres on a windswept plateau.

This mostly-unexcavated town is mid-way between the Roman hubs of Autun and Trier, and seems to have been primarily a religious and entertainment centre built around a sacred Spring, now beneath the medieval church.

The Amphitheatre is 148 metres (500 Roman Feet) from side to side, which makes it larger than Nimes or Arles and only slightly smaller than El Jem and the Colosseum itself. Good for 18,000 spectators (far larger than the population of the town itself) and set into the side of a small hill, leaving the Northern edge open, it must have attracted visitors from far and wide and provided a significant source of income for the town.

The Museum

[embed]Amphithéâtre de Grand - Wikipédia L' amphithéâtre de Grand est un amphithéâtre de l'époque gallo-romaine, situé à Grand, dans l'actuel département…fr.wikipedia.org

I am always far more fascinated by the smaller and more intricate day to day artefacts recovered from these monumental sites than I am by the structures and architecture. I wasn’t disappointed here, and the craftmanship of some of the tiny decorative items is absolutely astonishing — none of them more than 3 cm across, many of the jewellery items far smaller than that.

finger sized makeup pots and perfume bottles

a brooch, an earring and a set of dice

The Mosaic

At 320+ square metres it’s absolutely massive and speaks to the wealth and scale of the town during the Gallo-Roman period; that having been said, it’s not as elaborate or intricate as its smaller counterparts in e.g. Lyon or El Jem, but breathtakingly impressive nonetheless.

The obligatory local Saint

I am becoming quite intrigued by the back stories of early Christian martyrs, and St Blandine, St Symphorien and St Mammes set the bar quite high. But the local girl from Grand, St Libaire, cleared it without breaking a metaphysical sweat. To you and me she may have appeared to be a mere shepherd girl, but when in 362 AD the beastly Romans decided to execute her for refusing to worship the local river Goddess, she picked up her severed head and carried it over to the fountain in the centre of town and washed the blood off. As you do.

[embed]Libaire de Grand - Wikipédia Sainte Libaire, ou plus rarement Lievière, est une sainte martyre céphalophore lorraine. Elle est martyrisée à la…fr.wikipedia.org

Quite how that qualifies you to become a Saint I am not sure*, but in a religion made famous for turning water into wine, having a pet lion (St Mammes) and holding conversations with a burning bush, I am for the time being willing to suspend disbelief and conclude that God does indeed move in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. Good for you, Girlfriend!

• Christianity had already been legalised throughout the Roman Empire 50 years beforehand, but - then as now - news travels slowly in these backwood communities and both old habits and young shepherd girls die hard. Maybe don't go round upsetting the local business mafia by undermining an established money-spinner River Goddess franchise....

[embed]Edict of Milan - Wikipedia The Edict of Milan ( Latin: Edictum Mediolanense; Greek: Διάταγμα τῶν Μεδιολάνων, Diatagma tōn Mediolanōn) was the…en.wikipedia.org