Calvary at Plougastel-Daoulas

In the middle of Plougastel-Daoulas, a market town on the peninsula across the Elorn estuary from Brest, stands one of the great calvaries of Brittany: a ten-metre stone stage crowded with 182 figures. It was raised between 1602 and 1604 as a vow of thanks for the end of the plague of 1598, which tradition says carried off a third of the peninsula's people. In Breton it is still called the Cross of the Plague, and the saints chosen for its altar niche, Sebastian and Roch, were the ones a frightened parish invoked against disease.

The construction is worth looking at before the figures. An octagonal core of yellow granite quarried at Logonna-Daoulas is braced by four massive arched buttresses, and on top of it the sculptor set statues in blue-grey Kersanton stone, a fine-grained rock that takes crisp detail and weathers slowly. The two colours give the monument its peculiar warmth. Three crosses rise from the platform, the central one with two crosspieces and the thieves on either side, while the four evangelists sit writing at their desks in niches on the buttresses, each with his emblem at hand. A short stair lets a priest climb onto the platform, which served as an open-air pulpit.

The 28 scenes are arranged by compass point: childhood and burial of Christ on the east, the Passion on the north, the Last Supper, the washing of feet and the road to Golgotha on the south, and death and resurrection on the west, where the risen Christ stands head and shoulders above the sleeping guards and the date 1604 is carved. The anonymous sculptor, known only as the Master of Plougastel, dressed his soldiers and musicians in the clothes of his own day, with drummers and horn players leading the procession. Look for the gaping mouth of hell on the west face, where the Breton legend of Katell Gollet, the girl who, legend says, gave herself to the devil, is given a place among the gospel scenes.

The calvary nearly did not survive the Second World War. On 23 August 1944, during the American advance on Brest, shells damaged many statues and brought down the crosses. John D. Skilton, an American officer who was a museum curator in civilian life, gathered the fragments and, back home, set up a fund that paid for the restoration carried out from 1949 by the sculptor Millet under the French monuments service; the horseman beside the crucifix is Millet's work. A further cleaning and repair followed in 2003–2004. The monument has been protected as a historic monument since 1889.

Getting there

The calvary stands in the centre of Plougastel-Daoulas, next to the parish church of Saint-Pierre. Brest is about 9 km away by road, and Brest Bretagne Airport (BES) is also roughly 9 km from the town.