Abbey of Saint-Germain at Auxerre

The Abbey of Saint-Germain at Auxerre is the setting for a brief but sharply comic episode in the Shandy family’s French journey. The visit turns the authority of its tombs and their guide into a source of misapprehension and irony: the visitors arrive expecting illustrious bodies, only to find that rank, sanctity, and the meanings attached to them do not align with their assumptions.

The Visit

While dinner is being prepared, Walter proposes that he and Toby go to the abbey to see the bodies described by Monsieur Sequier. Toby readily agrees to see any body. Walter expects mummies and jokes that the visitors need not shave; then, reconsidering, he says that going bearded would make them more like relations. The party sets out with Corporal Trim supporting Toby by the arm and following behind.

At the abbey, Walter praises its magnificence to the sacristan, a young Benedictine, but explains that the visitors have come to see the bodies. The sacristan lights a torch kept ready in the vestry and leads them into the tomb of Saint Heribald, giving the visit the form of a guided presentation of the abbey’s history and relics.

Tombs and Reversals

The sacristan describes Saint Heribald as a renowned prince of Bavaria who wielded great influence under Charlemagne, Louis the Debonnair, and Charles the Bald, helping bring affairs into order and discipline. Toby, hearing of the prince’s public authority, assumes he must also have been a gallant soldier. The sacristan’s correction—that Heribald was a monk—upends Toby’s confident inference. Toby and Trim seek reassurance in one another’s faces but find none; Walter, by contrast, is delighted that the correction has discomfited them more than it has him.

Walter then asks about another tomb. The sacristan says it contains the bones of Saint Maxima, who came from Ravenna expressly to touch Saint Germain’s body. Walter interrupts by substituting Saint Maximus for Maxima and insists that the two were among the greatest saints in the martyrology. The sacristan corrects him: the woman came to touch the bones of Saint Germain, the abbey’s founder. Toby asks what she gained by doing so. Walter answers with a broad generalization about what any woman gets; the sacristan supplies the answer, martyrdom, bowing deeply as he speaks.

Comic Function

The abbey episode makes the visitors’ assumptions part of the comedy. Toby turns a prince’s political reputation into a military biography, only to discover that the celebrated figure was a monk; Walter’s confident correction of Maxima into Maximus is likewise undone by the sacristan’s account. The guide’s measured explanations and ceremonious bow provide a steady counterpoint to their guesses and jokes.

The sacred setting does not silence the Shandys’ habitual differences in response. Toby and Trim share their disappointment at the discovery about Heribald, while Walter takes pleasure in their discomfort; later, Toby’s question about what the woman gained meets Walter’s worldly quip and the sacristan’s solemn answer. The visit thus becomes less a straightforward inspection of relics than a compact scene in which expectation, mistaken identification, and competing registers of seriousness shape what the party sees.