Awakening Our Liturgical Imaginations with La Bretagne Mystique by Hippolyte Dominique Berteaux

The cover art is a sketch for a larger mural, La Bretagne Mystique [Mystical Brittany], that measures a colossal 25 by 68 feet and shows an entire liturgical procession. No complete photograph is available of the whole, as the mural is badly damaged and in storage at the Musée d’Arts de Nantes, France. This photograph on the following page offers a partial glimpse of the work in its former place in the museum’s grand staircase.

Even at the time of its creation in 1904, this mural offered a mythic and nostalgic perspective. Hippolyte Dominique Berteaux took as his theme the “pardons of Brittany,” the local processions for a parish’s patronal feast at which one could obtain an indulgence or “pardon.” We see the start of the procession on our cover with hesitant young acolytes flanking a confident lay crucifer garbed for pilgrimage. Two other sketches below fill in the later parts of the procession as it bends along the coastline.

Next we see young women in the traditional starched white

Date and photographer unknown, courtesy of Musée d’Arts de Nantes.

Hippolyte Dominique Berteaux (1843–1926), Finistère [coastal west Brittany]. 1904, charcoal, watercolor and gouache layered on canvas, then on cardboard. 54.5 x 78.8 cm. Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Paris. Public Domain. Photography: Fabrice Lindor.

Hippolyte Dominique Berteaux (1843–1926), Procession bretonne [Breton Procession], after 1904, chalk and gouache over charcoal laminated on tracing paper, then on cardboard. 45 x 105.5 cm. Musée d’Arts de Nantes. Public Domain. Photography: Cécile Clos.

headdresses of Brittany, and, then later, women in flowing capes, bearing a statue of St. Anne. Other parts of the procession are described on the Musée d’Arts website—some details of which can be seen in the photograph—as including drummers, four sailors carrying a miniature boat with full sails, women in black veils, old men, children with candles, and others carrying a reliquary in the shape of a cathedral.

As we use our imaginations to fill in the missing pieces, we are drawn further into the pageantry, emotion, and meaning of the procession. Romanticized though it may be, it awakens our imagination to the possible depths of the communal and spiritual traditions shown. This is liturgical catechesis in action: not requiring a full understanding, but simply offering us an invitation to participate and learn as we go. Ida Görres writes in our Reconsiderations, “Where those people encountered the reality of authentic liturgy, they very quickly felt that it spoke to them and they ‘had a capacity to respond.’” May we too find new capacity to encounter the liturgy with whole hearts, minds, and imaginations.