WANTON DESTRUCTION OF THE BEAUTIFUL CATHEDRAL OF RHEIMS
DESECRATION OF THE SHRINES OF HUMANITY -- THE “ROYAL CITY”--CATHEDRAL
OF NOTRE DAME -- ART TREASURES -- CATHEDRAL A TARGET -- ANGER OF CROWD
STILLED BY PRIESTS--“SUPREME SACRIFICE AGAINST THE SPIRIT OF
MAN”--BEAUTY IRREPARABLY GONE.
If the destruction of famous buildings, shrines of humanity as well as
of art and religion, were but put down to the unavoidable accidents of
war, after the first poignant sense of the irreparable loss, one would
rather sorrowfully accept the smoking ruins as further evidence of the
horrible, if unavoidable, waste of war. But to have Louvain’s atrocities
justified, to have the destruction of towns systematically brought about
in a spirit of fiendish reprisal or as part of a propaganda of military
terrorism, this is what revolts the world. It is this demoniacal
barbarism, raised to the ultimate power for evil by modern mechanism,
that staggers civilization.
The sacking of Louvain had hardly ceased to be a matter of world-wide
outcry against such inexcusable barbarity when there came the official
report that the Cathedral of Rheims, one of the most glorious examples
of Gothic art in the world and an historic monument of first rank, had
fallen before the German guns in the bombardment of that historic city.
THE “ROYAL CITY”
Rheims has been a city of importance since the time of the Romans. The
cathedral, wherein for nearly 1,000 years the kings of France were
crowned, has been fittingly described as “the most perfect example in
grandeur and grace of Gothic style in existence.”
Hincmar, a mighty archbishop of the ninth century, once declared that
Rheims was “by the appointment of Heaven a royal city.”
The words are at once historical and prophetic. Here Clovis was baptized
by St. Remigius, and here in the cathedral in 1429, Charles VII of
France was crowned through the efforts of Joan of Arc.
According to the historians of art, Rheims is royal in another sense. In
no city in Europe have the life and thought of the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance found such perfect expression in architecture. From early
Gothic to Romanesque, and from Romanesque to Renaissance, the buildings
of Rheims reveal better than any records the city’s historical
development. Of all the buildings illustrative of their various periods
there were said to be no better examples than the cathedral and the
church of St. Jacques, fine monuments of early Gothic; the later Gothic
edifice of the archbishop’s palace, and, finally, the city hall, a
handsome work of the best period of French Renaissance.
CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE DAME
No one really knows who designed and built the cathedral. The first
stones were laid in 1211, and the building, with the exception of the
superb west façade, was completed in the thirteenth century. The façade,
which dates from the fourteenth century, was adorned with three
exquisite recessed portals containing, in a more or less good state of
preservation, over five hundred statues. Of the entire structure, we
read in “Cathedrals of the Isle de France”: “Nothing can exceed the
majesty of its deeply recessed portals, the beauty of the rose window
that surmounts them, or the elegance of the gallery that completes the
façade.”
[Illustration: THE CHRISTIAN WORLD!]
ART TREASURES
The interior, which was cruciform, was 455 feet long and 99 feet wide;
the distance from the middle isle to the highest point in the roof was
125 feet. Here in niches in the walls was another multitude of statues,
and in the nave and transepts were preserved valuable tapestry,
representing biblical scenes and scenes from the history of medieval
France. Here also hung a treasure of paintings, including canvases by
Tintoretto, Nicolas Poussin, and others, and some fine old tapestries.
In the treasury were reliquaries, one said to contain a thorn from the
Holy Crown, the skull of St. Remi and a collection of valuable vessels
in gold, the most remarkable in France. The treasures included not only
the coronation ornaments of various kings, but the vase of St. Ursula,
the massive chalice of St. Remigius, and countless crucifixes in gold,
silver and precious woods.
In the treasury was also preserved the Sainte Ampoule--the vessel in
which the oil used to anoint the kings of France was preserved--a
successor to the famous ampulla, which a dove was said to have brought
from heaven filled with inexhaustible holy oil at the time of the
baptism of Clovis, in 496. During the Revolution the sacred vessel was
shattered, but a fragment was piously preserved, in which some of the
oil was said still to remain.
CATHEDRAL A TARGET
The Cathedral of Notre Dame is now no more than an empty shell of
charred and blackened walls. The fire started between four and five
o’clock Sunday afternoon, September 20, 1914, after shells had been
crashing into the town all day. Over five hundred fell between early
morning and sunset.
The cathedral had been turned into a hospital for the German wounded, to
secure for the building the protection of the Red Cross flag. When the
first shell struck the roof everyone believed it was a stray shot, but
later in the day a German battery four miles away, began making the
great Gothic pile its target. Shell after shell crashed its way into the
old masonry and stonework that had stood the storms of centuries.
At 4.30 some scaffolding around the east end of the cathedral, where
repairs were going on, caught fire and soon the whole network of poles
and planks was ablaze. Then the roof of old oak timbers caught fire and
soon the ceilings of the nave and transepts were a roaring furnace.
The blazing piers of carved woodwork crashed to the floor, where piles
of straw had been gathered in connection with the work of the field
hospital. As soon as this caught fire the paneling of the altars, the
chairs and other furniture were devoured.
Twenty wounded Germans would have perished by the efforts of their own
countrymen if several French army doctors, with their bearers, had not
carried them one by one at their own risk out of the church by one of
the side doors.
ANGER OF CROWD STILLED BY PRIESTS
There a grim scene was only prevented by the courage of the priests of
the cathedral. A crowd of about two hundred citizens had come out to
watch the terrible spectacle. As these Germans, in their uniforms,
appeared at the transept door howls of uncontrollable passion went up
from the crowd. “Kill them!” they shouted. Soldiers in the crowd
leveled their rifles, when Abbé Andrieux sprang forward between the
wounded men and the muzzles that threatened them.
“Don’t fire,” he shouted, “you would make yourselves as guilty as they.”
The reproach was enough, and amid fierce hooting and angry cries the
Germans were carried to shelter in the museum near by.
From the hills the flaming cathedral was an even more impressive sight
than in the streets of the town. From the yawning roof the red glare
poured up into the dark sky and its windows flickered with dancing
flames. So night closed down. Not for long was its stillness
undisturbed. At two o’clock German batteries opened fire again. Then
from windows that looked toward Rheims across the plain one could watch
the lurid sight of night bombardment.
At last daybreak came, a sad gray dawn, with cold, dispiriting rain
falling. When the shadows had lifted and enough light had filtered
through the low, lead-colored clouds for one to see across the plain,
the ravished city, with its ruined cathedral standing stark against the
background and a vast wall of smoke rising slowly from the still flaming
ruins, was as desolate a thing as the sun could well have found in its
journey round the world that morning.
“SUPREME SACRIFICE AGAINST THE SPIRIT OF MAN”
“Will not every artist, every writer, every lover of the beautiful,
unite with us in a protestation of horror against the infamous
destruction of Rheims Cathedral?” wrote Emile Hovelaque, French
Inspector General of Public Instruction, in a letter to the London
Times. “It was the cradle of our kings, the high altar of our race, a
sanctuary and shrine dear from every memory, sacred in every thought,
loved as our remotest past, an ever-speaking witness to the permanence
through change of the ideals, aspirations and dreams of our country.
“Can such deeds go unavenged? Will not the conscience of the whole world
rise against those nameless barbarians who shelled Red Cross flags
floating over that twice-sacred pile, who have committed this supreme
sacrifice against the spirit of man in seven hundred years? Those gray
cliffs of chiseled stone had risen above the furious tides of
innumerable invasions unhurt, spared by the most savage onsets.
Battered, by every storm of heaven and earth, the noblest sculpture of
the West remained until German culture came.
“And then, deliberately, methodically, slowly, the princes and captains
of an accursed race mangled the sacred pile until all had fallen.
Fairest and most human images in all the world, a forest of gigantic
columns, a vast vaulted canopy of stone, majestic walls and
heaven-stained glass--it was murder in cold blood, the murder not of a
life but of immortality. Forty-eight long hours the inexplicable crime
dragged out. Louvain first, now Rheims. What next?”
BEAUTY IRREPARABLY GONE
The artistic beauty of the cathedral of Rheims can never be restored, in
the opinion of Whitney Warren, the New York architect, who made a
thorough inspection of the structure.
Mr. Warren, who is a corresponding member of the Institut de France, was
given the privilege of visiting the cathedral. His investigation had no
official character, but the result of his observations was communicated
to Myron T. Herrick, American Ambassador to Belgium.
“That anything remains of the edifice,” said Mr. Warren, “is due to the
strong construction of the walls and vaults which are of a robustness
that can resist even modern implements of war.”
The building was not battered by the heavier guns, as had been feared,
but it suffered most from shrapnel fire. The famous rose windows, the
sculpture and other details of the façade that were ruined are, however,
just the examples of art that can not be replaced.
Statues, gargoyles, and other ornaments on the exterior of the cathedral
have been tumbled to the pavement and shattered, though at first glance
the outer walls of the cathedral do not show the ruin that has taken
place. These blackened walls yet stand as a monument to the glory of
France, but still more as a grim reminder of the barbarity of German
warfare.