Amiens, Rouen, Riems, Bourges, Chartres⦠the celebrated colossi of Gothic ecclesiastical architecture in France, those peaks rising from the northern plains of France that pilgrims and casual explorers from the world over come to gaze at in reverential awe. There they stand straining their necks, overwhelmed by the superhuman scale of the medieval structures, the sheer space-invested harmony of the architectural arrangements, the virtuoso performances of light and colour on stone and wood, the huge blocks of nothingness trapped in immense vaults magically distilled into spiritual meaning, into the deeper otherness that human beings seek as a foil to the constantly debilitating effects of an always overbearing reality.
But there are other cathedrals whose names are not to the fore, a kind of B-list who cluster around the legendary icons, but never, despite their own unique wonders and treasures, seem to join that list of famous names. There are reasons for this, since a number of them find themselves in towns of little interest to the traveller, provincial places which have not geared themselves to tourism or visitors en masse. With their trickle of the curious and the determined these somehow secondary cathedrals can be especially rewarding, for one can have the place almost entirely to oneself, especially on a weekday in winter when you may find yourself alone but for a reservedly watchful priest or official.
Of course the learned and the scholar who seek out the lesser known sites, and the completist who must see everything, will know these cathedrals well and they are of course the subject of many studies and investigations by notables down the years. This is a process which constantly refines itself, an endless paring down of the subject to reveal the shining tool the scholar is satisfied with, which he prepares to lay in the ground wrapped in the cloth of his name, until it is snatched from its premature preservation to be vigorously reshaped by a later enthusiast.
But for those of us who are not concerned with academia and rafts of details, but who wish to undergo an aesthetic experience which moves us and makes us realise again with an unforeseen refreshing youthfulness what life can so suddenly offer when habitually things seem so predictable and moribund, then to enter one of these lesser trumpeted cathedrals without expectation, is a privilege to be savoured for a lifetime.
Soissons forms one of three points in a triangle of cathedrals, its sisters being Noyon roughly to the North and Laon to the East, a convenient planting that lures the traveller into thinking he can visit them all one after another, perhaps in a day.
