In the year 1587, 430 years ago, France was torn and bleeding. For more than a quarter century, religious wars pitting Catholics against Protestants, involving torture, famine, massacres, assassinations and calls to regicide, had been the cause of near 3 million deaths.
In the same year, across the English Channel, Queen Elizabeth I signed the death sentence of her cousin Mary Stuart, fervent Catholic and the once Queen of France, married to King François II, who died in 1560 after having reigned for only two years. On February 2, 1587, she is beheaded, accused of plotting against Queen Elizabeth. An inept executioner has to make three attempts before succeeding in chopping off her head.
It was a violent year in violent times, a year marked by fanatical religious violence, at once close to us and very far away.
How would you like to touch it, actually hold it in the palm of your hand, trace it with the tip of your finger, sense the subtle vibrations of that time?
Walking through the fields and woodlands of le Perche, my new region where I have my new home, I met someone who has done just that.
He is what the French call a “poêleux,” an amateur archeologist with a passionate interest in local history, who spends all his free time with his “poêle à frire,” his frying pan, slang for the metal detector that accompanies him on all his nature walks.
Here, the two go together, nature and history, in a country where they are inseparable. Once the Roman province of Gaul, later a mosaic of duchies and kingdoms, then the united Kingdom of France, and finally the Republic that it is today, France is an ancient civilization whose soil is rich with treasures of the past.
François, the “poêleux” I met on a trail that was once a Roman road connecting what are today the cities of Chartres and Le Mans, began prospecting when he was 15 year old. Back in those days, he was the class troublemaker who always ended up in the corner. Not meant for the very long and very sedentary French school day, which can stretch from 8 in the morning to 6 pm, he had a hard time concentrating on the subject he loved best, History.
Today, at age 30, he is making up for lost time, pursuing his interest in that subject while he learns the techniques of archeology.
During summer vacations at the shore, I’m sure many readers, have noticed lone men, heads bent, walking along the beach with metal detector in hand, on the lookout for spare change, a watch, a piece of jewelry inadvertently dropped in the sand. They are scavengers in a situation where one man’s loss is another man’s gain.
But what about a coin minted in 1587, one that has been buried beneath the earth for over 400 years?
First there is the beep of the metal detector. François hones in on the area and circumscribes a clod of earth. The next step is to remove it “cleanly” and carefully.
Then the most delicate step in the process begins, the one where François becomes what he describes as a “natural surgeon,” un chirugien de la nature. With the utmost care, he begins to break down the clod, scraping gently, bit by bit, holding his breath, holding his hand steady, still unsure of what he will find, hoping as all “poêleux” hope, that soon he will hold a piece of the past in his hand.
Piece, add an accent and you have the French word for coin, “une pièce.” François has quite a collection, including a fine specimen from 1587 and others dating back to Roman times. Once the coin is extracted from the soil, it must undergo a cleaning process. It is important that the coin retain its original appearance, and the patina must be preserved.
The safeguard and preservation of these coins have become part of François’s passion. Though never a reader in high school, he has become one now, subscribing to specialized journals on the subject, keeping abreast of recent finds and new technologies in his field. Each object he finds is a “piece” of history with the power to deepen his interest in the past.
All “poêleux,” he tells me, are on the lookout for the “big find,” a rare gold coin (François has yet to find one), a hidden treasure, or an even more ancient piece of France’s Celtic past. He explains that yes, they are looking for treasures, but even more so, he and his fellow “poêleux” are searching for what I would translate as the purity of our personal pasts, the kind of surprise and wonder we felt as children, too often absent from adult lives.
This sensation, François has known it over and over again, and not only with coins. In a region where American fighter pilots were shot down during the 1944 Normandy invasion, he has often come across bullets from the Second World War.
These finds belong to a more recent past and are easily identifiable, right down to the year and the plant where they were manufactured.
There are curiosities as well, a copper match box, a piece of art deco jewelry, a fine piece of enamel and gold filigree; lead musket balls, a tiny bell, thimbles, rings and brooches, a solid silver bust of a crucified Christ.
When François holds a piece in his hand for the first time, he connects immediately with the past, sometimes he connects with a person long gone, touching what no one else has touched, in some cases, for hundreds of years.
For a nature and history lover like himself, claims François, there is no better way to spend his time. Once in a while, there is the adrenalin of a find, but mostly there is the calm and beauty of nature, hills to climb, valleys to explore, always with the permission of the landowner in a country where “treasure hunting” is strictly regulated.
Living in a region rich in limestone fossils, François collects them as well and has promised to show me his collection. I’ve already shown him mine, pieces of Sharp and Broad Mountains, fossils engraved in schist, rocks of Pottsville conglomerate, hundreds of millions of years old, pieces of a prehistoric past, pieces of my past that remain dear to me.
