the town, is the principal architectural relic still left in Laon.
Like the cathedral, it is remarkable for its square east end. It is
cruciform in plan, and consists of nave and aisles, choir without
aisles, and transepts with chapels on the east side. Two towers are
placed in the angles between the transepts and nave. The general
foundation of the fabric is Romanesque work, but the choir and
transepts are of a rather ornate early first-pointed, much more German
than French in its character, and the western façade is one of the best
examples that I know of a middle-pointed front to a church of moderate
pretensions. The early-pointed work at the east is remarkable for the
very heavy character of its mouldings and string-courses, the use of
both round and pointed arches, and the very ingenious arrangement of
the chapels in the east wall of the transept, and of the buttresses
above them. Three chapels are formed under two bays of vaulting, so
that the vaulting shaft and buttress come over the point of the arch.
The church is well groined. The steeples are poor in character and
rather insignificant, but they appear never to have been completed, and
in the neighbourhood of the cathedral it was dangerous to venture upon
any but the most careful and noble work.
The west front is very ornate, and is marked chiefly by the fine
octangular pinnacles at the angles of the clerestory and by the large
sculpture of S. Martin in a quatrefoil which fills the gable. The
three western doorways are composed of a succession of small reedy
mouldings, and against the buttresses beyond the central doorway are
figures of saints considerably mutilated.
Almost the only other interesting church is a small building attached
now to an educational institution for boys. A priest told me it had
belonged to the Templars, and at any rate it is an octagonal building
with a small chancel on its eastern side, and a smaller circular
apse. At the west end there is a small porch. The whole is in a late
Romanesque style, and very small, the external measurement of each side
of the octagon being only about eleven feet.
Here and there are to be seen remains of houses and gateways, but there
is nothing of sufficient interest to require a special note here, and
the only other building I need mention is the very curious church at
Vaux-sous-Laon, a village at the foot of the hill below the citadel
and cathedral. This has a western porch or narthex, nave and aisles of
five bays, transepts and low central steeple, and a choir and aisles of
three bays, groined, and both loftier and wider than the nave. The east
end is square, and has a triplet and a large rose window above, very
similar in design to the east end of the cathedral. The columns are
cylindrical, with simply carved caps of bold design. The choir is all
first-pointed, the nave of earlier date and much simpler character and
not groined.
I must conclude this brief notice of Laon and its buildings with just
mentioning two of the existing buildings in the neighbourhood which
ought to be seen and examined. These are the magnificent granary of the
abbey of Vauclair near Laon, and the still more interesting hospital
for lepers of Tortoir: both of these are figured by M. Verdier in his
_Architecture Civile et Domestique_, and appear to be of rare beauty
and interest.
V
The cathedral of Rheims is most unquestionably a very noble, I might
almost say, a perfectly noble, piece of architecture, and nevertheless
it seems to fail in producing so great an effect on the mind as many
other French churches of smaller dimensions and less architectural
pretension. The truth is, that it is a work conceived and executed
at two periods and by two (if not more) architects; and though the
ground-plan, some portion of the walls, and a little of the sculpture,
of the first architect have been preserved, the general aspect of the
church at the present day savours more of the later artist than of his
predecessor. It was in the year 1212 that Robert de Coucy (a friend of
Wilars de Honecort) commenced the erection of the present cathedral,
and it was after his death and from _circa_ A.D. 1250 to _circa_ A.D.
1300 that the whole of the upper portion of the building, the western
portion of the nave from the ground, and the elaborate western façade
were in course of erection. There remains to us, therefore, little
of genuine first-pointed work, for it has been clearly shown by M.
Viollet-le-Duc that the lower stage only of the building was the work
of Robert de Coucy. He seems indeed to have contemplated a building
of greater height and grandeur than the present, since his work is
remarkable for the great size of the buttresses and the thickness
of the walls, which were diminished at once, and abruptly, by the
architect who followed him, and whose work is nevertheless amply solid
and massive for the existing edifice.
It will be seen from what I have said, that we must not go to Rheims
expecting to see a work of the best period of the thirteenth century.
We shall find a small portion of sculpture in one of the doors of
the north transept, and the plan and basement story of the building
throughout, of this early date, but the bulk of the structure and
almost the whole of the decorative features are purely middle-pointed
work of the end of the thirteenth and early part of the fourteenth
century. There is exquisite grace about most of this work, but an
entire lack of that stern character which makes Chartres the grandest
of French churches; there is prettiness where there should have been
majesty; and in parts a nervous dread of leaving a single foot of wall
free from ornament, which reminds one much more of the work of an
architect of the nineteenth century than of one of the thirteenth. The
west front, on which all the greatest efforts of the later architects
of the church were lavished, can thoroughly please none but those
who see in elaborate enrichment of every inch of wall the evidence
of art, whilst I need hardly say that to those who have studied the
best examples of architecture in whatever style, such elaborate
ornamentation is in itself an evidence of weakness. There is a kind of
sacredness about the simple breadth of wall and buttress which must be
reverenced by all who would produce really grand work. But for this the
later architects of Rheims had not the slightest feeling, and their
work seems therefore to me to be more really allied to the debased art
which followed it, than to the pure early work which had immediately
preceded it. As at Laon, so here, the original design was to have a
grand group of towers and spires, six for the three grand façades, and
a seventh over the crossing. Some of these spires were, I believe,
actually erected, and in lead; and whether this was the first intention
or not it is certain that the plumber’s work was in great request in
this church and city, as there still remains a very fine flèche on
the point of the apse roof of the cathedral, some good detail of lead
work on the roofs, and a much modernized leaded steeple in the church
of S. Jacques; whilst in the west front of the cathedral we see large
gurgoyles of lead simulating enormous animals. The interior of the
cathedral is very noble in its proportions (though the triforium might
well have been more dignified), and is remarkable for the immense size
of the capitals of the piers in the nave; they are very closely copied
from natural foliage, and fail to satisfy me that such work is the best
fitted for architectural enrichment. The decoration of the west end is
not confined to the exterior, the whole inside face of the wall being
divided into panels and niches filled with foliage and single figures.
The stone imitation of hangings in the lower part of this wall ought to
be recorded, though hardly without a protest.
On the south side of the cathedral is the archbishop’s palace which
still retains its thirteenth century chapel of two stages in height,
and good, though simple, character. It is a parallelogram of five bays
in length with an apse of seven sides.
And now that I have ventured to say so much in the way of criticism
upon what I believe most Frenchmen consider their most glorious church,
and without any attempt at a detailed account either of its general
architectural arrangements or its sculptures (the latter exceedingly
rich and suggestive), I must take my reader with me along the dreary
dirty road which leads to the squalid quarter of the city in which
still stands as a rival to the more modern cathedral the enormous
church of S. Remi. The exterior, with the exception of the apse, has
been much modernized, and presents accordingly but few features of much
interest. The south transept has been all remodelled in flamboyant,
whilst the nave is simple Romanesque, and the west end--recently almost
entirely rebuilt--is a singular agglomeration of anomalous work,
half classic or Pagan, and half Romanesque or Gothic and Christian.
In the apse we have flying buttresses supported on fluted shafts,
a clerestory of triple lancets, and a triforium also lighted with
three-light windows. The proportions of the buttresses, roofs, and
walls are however heavy and unskilful, and give evidence of the early
date of this nevertheless very grand attempt. It is on entering by the
transept, through a doorway covered with fine flamboyant sculpture,
that we see how grand the attempt was, and how fine the internal
effect. I think I know no church whose whole interior gives a greater
idea of spaciousness and size, whilst the beauty of the design of
the apse and the aisle and chapels round it is extreme. And indeed
the appearance of size does not belie the facts, for the dimensions
of the building are singularly fine. It has a Romanesque nave and
aisles (groined with a pointed vault) of thirteen bays, transepts,
and a choir of three bays with an apse of five. Round the apse is the
procession-path aisle, and opening into this a series of chapels,
whereof the five eastern are very noticeable. The Lady-chapel is of
three bays in length, with an apse of seven bays, whilst the other four
are very nearly circular in plan, and each of the chapels opens into
the aisle with three arches supported on delicate detached shafts.
The groining of each of the four smaller chapels forms a complete
circle in plan, with eight groining ribs, whereof two are supported
on the columns opening into the aisle. Each chapel is lighted by
three windows, recessed so much as to allow of openings being pierced
in the groining piers to admit of a passage all round the interior.
This arrangement (as well as the beautiful planning of the chapels)
is a distinct feature of the churches of Champagne. The chapels of
Notre Dame, Châlons-sur-Marne, are similarly planned, and in those
of the cathedral at Rheims it is clear that Robert de Coucy had the
same plan in his eye, though he gave up the triple-arched entrance
from the aisle; whilst at S. Quentin we see an almost similar plan
at a rather later date. The whole of the nave retains the original
very simple Romanesque arcades, and lofty groined triforia; but its
groining throughout is fine early-pointed work and of grand dimensions,
the width in clear of the vault being about forty-five feet. It is a
curious fact that in this nave the triforium compartment is absolutely
more lofty than that below it which contains the arch opening into the
aisle. In the choir there is a sort of fourfold division in height
such as I have described at Soissons and Laon, an arcade of pointed
arches being introduced between the clerestory and the triforium; but
as this arcade is in part a continuation of the lines of the clerestory
windows, and as there is no string-course to divide the stage in two,
the effect is better than in other examples of the same arrangement.
There is much matter for careful study in the interior; among other
things may be noticed the remarkably fine and large corbels supporting
the groining shafts in the eastern part of the nave, adorned with
figures of the prophets bearing scrolls and still retaining traces of
their old colouring; and again, the very beautiful sculpture of some of
the early capitals near the western end of the nave, and on either side
of the great western doorway. In the windows of the apse are some small
remains of fine early glass.
Among the other architectural remains in Rheims is the church of S.
Maurice, consisting of a Romanesque nave and aisles, and a lofty
groined flamboyant choir, the west front of good character, having
small buttresses supported on shafts on each side of the central door,
and separating the western triplet of broad lancets above the doorway.
The rest of the church is very uninteresting.
There is also the church of S. Jacques, whose west front has the
unusual feature of a sham gable on either side of the real central
gable.[27] These gables are above the aisles, and completely conceal
their roofs and the clerestory. The nave is of early-pointed date, but
very much altered; only the two eastern bays appearing to retain the
original triforium and clerestory,--the latter a lancet with internal
jamb-shafts, which are continued into the triforium and form a portion
of the arcades of four pointed arches which occupy each bay,--an
arrangement very similar to that of the clerestory of S. Remi. These
two bays are groined with a sexpartite vault, which is slightly domical
in its longitudinal section. The alternate piers in the nave consist of
coupled columns of very solid character, and with very deep capitals.
Some of these columns are regularly fluted. The rest of the nave has
been much altered in the fourteenth century, whilst the choir is
flamboyant, with aisles of Renaissance style, but groined in stone.
The crossing is surmounted by a very large flèche of timber covered
with lead, almost completely modernized, but showing still some large
three-light windows of middle-pointed style.
The _Maison des Musiciens_, in the Rue de Tambour, is a well-known
example of excessively good domestic architecture of the thirteenth
century.
From Rheims I made my way by railway to Châlons-sur-Marne, where I was
rewarded by the sight of one of the most interesting churches I have
ever seen, that of Notre Dame, and of a cathedral of inferior interest.
It was the more gratifying to find such really fine work just on the
extreme borders of the country to which French influence extended, and
beyond which to the eastward the churches appear to be entirely German
in their style.
The points of resemblance between Notre Dame de Châlons and the church
of S. Remi at Rheims are too obvious to be overlooked. The planning and
the general design and detail of their chevets are precisely similar,
though the scale of Notre Dame is considerably smaller than that of S.
Remi. The former church has however the great advantage of being of the
same character throughout, wonderfully little damaged by time, and
singularly fortunate among French churches in being under the care of
a priest, M. Champenois, whose zeal and enthusiasm for his beautiful
church is equalled by the care and skill with which he has himself
carried out its restoration. It is the most conservative restoration
I have as yet seen in France; it could not be more conservative, and
hence it is impossible that it could be better. M. Champenois feels
that every stone is a deposit entrusted to him, and I would that we
saw signs of such zeal as his rather oftener in the French clergy.
Unfortunately, it seems to be too generally the case that they take
no interest whatever in the churches which they serve. They have been
taught to look to the government as the owner and restorer of all
religious buildings, and they have ceased to concern themselves about
either the security of their fabrics or the character of their fittings
and decorations. Fortunate indeed is it for us in England that the
State is not so careful for us as it is in France, for then we should
see here, just as we do there, a people utterly careless of the noble
buildings which surround them, in place of--as we do here--a people
whose love for their old monuments is enhanced and in part created by
the fact that they are themselves perpetually invited to help in their
restoration and repair.
The church of Notre Dame consists of a nave and aisle of seven bays
in length, transepts, and a very short apsidal choir (an apse of
seven sides), with an aisle and chapels planned like those of S.
Remi, beyond it. There are four towers, two at the west ends of the
aisles, and two in the angles between the transepts and the choir.
The triforium throughout is large, lofty, and groined. As at S. Remi,
the external effect of this church is much inferior to the internal
effect. It is rather too heavy and ungainly, and savours much of the
character of German Romanesque work. The four towers have the defect
of being almost exactly alike, of four stages, richly adorned with
round-arched arcades, and rising hardly at all above the level of
the ridges of the roof. The south-west tower retains its fine leaded
spire, with four tall pinnacles at its base, and a cluster of eight
spire-lights about midway: it is an exquisite example of lead-work, and
still more precious to us as affording evidence of the extraordinary
extent to which decoration was sometimes carried in the Middle Ages.
The pinnacles at the base still retain distinct traces of decoration
on the lead, each side having a large crocketed canopy, below which is
a gigantic figure, in one case of an archer with a bow. The whole is
done in white and black only, the ground being the dark lead on which
the white lines seem to have been marked by a process of tinning or
soldering. It is a kind of decoration which we may well attempt to
revive. A spire very similar to the other has recently been erected
on the north-west tower, and the western front is now therefore quite
in its old state, and singularly well does it look. I almost doubt
whether the addition of similar spires to the two eastern towers, for
which the Curé is now collecting funds, will really improve the look
of the church. With four steeples, it is well that two at least should
be pre-eminent, which is the present state of the case; whilst the
completion of the others would reduce all to the character of mere
turrets--a result not to be desired. The variety of string-courses
and cornices throughout the exterior of this church, all filled with
sculpture of foliage, gives a very ornate character to the external
detail.
The principal entrance is by the south door of the nave. This has been
cruelly damaged, indeed nearly destroyed, but what remains is of great
interest, owing to its very close resemblance to the noble western
doorways of Rouen cathedral; the doorway is double, with eight shafts
in each jamb, the alternate shafts having figures in front of them,
as in the west doorways of Chartres; whilst the tympanum is similar
also, having a figure of our Lord, surrounded by the emblems of the
four Evangelists. Portions of archivolt enrichments and other sculpture
have been dug up in the neighbourhood of this doorway and carefully
preserved, and they appear to me, by their vigour and grandeur of
character, to be undoubtedly the work of the same artist, and possibly
portions of this once magnificent but now woefully mutilated entrance.
It is in the interior, however, of this church that the effect is
finest and the architecture most noble. The whole is very uniform
in character throughout, marked by great solidity of construction
and proportion, and by the boldness and distinctness of all its
architectural detail. The triforium throughout opens with two arches
enclosed within another, the spandrels being unpierced, and throughout
the church it is groined; nor must I forget to say, that at the present
day the spacious area it affords is turned to some account; for,
when I was there, on one side they were making the organ pipes, on
the other constructing the organ, and in another part the carpenters
were busy upon the organ case; and the Curé assured me that he not
only had the satisfaction of seeing everything executed in the best
possible way, but at the same time there was no inconvenience, and no
want of reverence, on the part of the workmen. The clerestory consists
throughout of lancet windows, the lower portions of which are filled in
with an arcade in the manner I have described in the choir of S. Remi,
at Rheims. The sculpture throughout this church, though almost entirely
confined to foliage, is very instructive, and at the same time a little
puzzling; for we see almost side by side work of the best Byzantine
character--almost rivalling the sculpture we see in Venice--and
distinctly thirteenth century French work, whilst the building itself
shows no corresponding diversity, and I can only suppose, either that
the sculpture was in hand much longer than the building of the church,
or that two sets of sculptors were at work, the one educated in a
Byzantine school, the other influenced by the more developed school of
the Île de France.
I have said enough, I trust, to induce others to examine carefully this
very interesting church; it is valuable as being a little in advance of
the most perfect period of the French pointed style, and as being much
more instructive, therefore, than a building which, like the cathedral
at Rheims, is in the main a little after the most perfect period, and
full, therefore, of symptoms of decline, instead of promise of advance.
From Notre Dame to the cathedral it is a descent from the finest early
first-pointed to commonplace middle-pointed, full of German character
in its detail. The west front and the whole of the apse have been much
modernized, and the finest remaining portion of the exterior is the
north transept front. The windows are geometrical middle-pointed of
four lights, and the flying buttresses on a large scale, double, and
surmounted by pinnacles. There is some good stained glass of late date
in some of the aisle windows.
Another church, dedicated, I think, to S. Alpin, has a nave and aisles
of six bays groined, without a triforium, and of the same date as
Notre Dame. There are transepts and a central tower, and a choir in
flamboyant style, and of a most unusual plan; the two arches east of
the tower diverge from each other, so that the width of the choir
gradually increases up to the point at which it is finished with an
apse of three sides. An aisle surrounds the whole, the windows of which
retain some very rich stained glass. This choir is the most remarkable
example that I have met with of a very late revival of, perhaps, the
earliest type of chevet. There are a great many altars in this church,
pews throughout with doors, and no sign whatever of any improvement.
In Notre Dame, where pews had disappeared and everything was being
restored, all the side altars had disappeared, and there was only one
altar left besides the principal altar in the choir.
And here I might well conclude these notes of French architecture. From
Châlons I went to Toul, and thence by Metz to Trèves, and I found,
as might be expected, nothing but German work. At Toul there are two
churches, the cathedral and S. Gengoult, both of some interest, and
with good cloisters; but it is very remarkable how we find here, not
only German detail, but the favourite German ground-plans also; S.
Gengoult is a cruciform church, with an apsidal chancel, and a small
apsidal chapel on each side opening into the transepts; whilst the
cathedral has an apsidal choir without aisles, and a square-ended
chapel on each side opening from the transepts. The window tracery
in S. Gengoult is perhaps the ugliest ever devised even by German
ingenuity, and yet of early geometrical character (_circa_ A.D. 1300),
and still retaining much very beautiful glass of the same date. The
nave of the cathedral has been recently seated with very smart fixed
open seats, of the kind which might have been erected fifteen or twenty
years ago in England.