Notre Dame des Victoires, Quebec City for Weathervane Wednesday

 Today's weathercock was photographed in Quebec City, Canada.

The narrow streets and tiny square, Place Royale, in front of the Notre Dame des Victoires church in Lower Quebec City made this weathercock very difficult to photograph!  I had first visited this church during our honeymoon in Quebec over 40 years ago.  But now the church is closed except on Sundays and special days for mass only.  We could not visit the inside of this historic church when we were there in May this year.

This church is very old, and it was erected between 1687 and 1723.  According to Wikipedia "The church is one of the oldest in North America."  In September 1759 the church was bombarded by the British before the Battle of the Plains of Abraham.  It was restored and reopened in 1816. There is a model of a ship hanging from the ceiling of the church - it is a model of the Brézé which was commanded by the Marquis of Tracy. 

The weathervane above the steeple is a three dimensional weathercock above a pointer and some very fancy cardinal points marking the directions in French. The weathercock is a very common weathervane for Roman Catholic churches.  Weathercocks are weathervanes with roosters. There was a papal edict in medieval times that cockerels should be displayed on each church in memory of Peter's betrayal of Jesus "I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me." Luke 22:34.  Many of the cocks or roosters ended up on top of steeples as weathervanes.

We took this interior photo in 1983
on our honeymoon in Quebec City

For the truly curious:

Notre Dame des Victoires at Wikipedia:    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre-Dame-des-Victoires_Church  

The parish of Notre Dame des Victoires:  https://www.notre-dame-de-quebec.org/notre-dame-des-victoires-church  

Click here to see over 500 more Weathervane Wednesday posts:  https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/search/label/Weathervane%20Wednesday   

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To cite/link to this blog post:  Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Notre Dame des Victoires, Quebec City for Weathervane Wednesday", Nutfield Genealogy, posted June 12, 2024, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2024/06/notre-dame-des-victoires-quebec-city.html:  accessed [access date]).