Six of the Lesser Great Cathedrals: Bourges, Beauvais, Troyes, Tours,
Lyons, Le Mans
Every work of art truly beautiful and sublime throws the soul into
a gracious or serious reverie that lifts it toward the Infinite.
Art of itself is essentially moral and religious, since it
expresses everywhere in its manifestation the eternal beauty, or
else it is false to its own law, to its own genius.
--VICTOR COUSIN, _Du vrai, du beau, et du bien_.
Scattered over France are a number of cathedrals that would stand in the
first rank in any other land but one in which were such supreme churches
as Chartres, Rheims, and Amiens. It is convenient to group here six of
these lesser Great Cathedrals, since they will not fall properly within
the coming four chapters, which deal with the regional schools of
Normandy, Burgundy, the Midi, and Plantagenet Gothic.
According to the classification used by M. Lefèvre-Pontalis, there are
six schools of Gothic architecture in France. Their differences lie in
secondary characteristics such as ground-plan, ramifications of ribs,
and the form of piers, window tracery, and ornamentations. Of the
Ile-de-France and Champagne schools we have already gained some idea in
tracing the first steps of the national art, and in following its
highest development at Paris, Rheims, and Amiens. Of the six cathedrals
here grouped that of Beauvais belongs to the Ile-de-France Picard school
and that of Troyes to the Gothic of Champagne. But the four
others--Bourges, Tours, Lyons, and Le Mans--show the influences of two
or more schools and therefore fit more reasonably into this
heterogeneous chapter. In speaking of Gothic schools it is well to
recall that in the Flamboyant development there were no distinct
regional groups. A similar Gothic style was used in the Midi as in
Normandy, in Picardy as in Burgundy.
Though not of the greatest, these six churches are splendid monuments.
With hesitation one places such a cathedral as Bourges in a secondary
group. Had Beauvais and Le Mans been completed on the same scale as
their grandiose choirs, they would stand with the foremost. At Troyes
are windows, of the same epochs as the stones framing them, that for
splendor are second only to those of Chartres and Bourges. The cathedral
of Tours is the personification of the equipoise of Touraine's art, and
its storied windows are notable. The metropolitan church of Lyons
possesses a grave individuality of the most singular interest, and its
windows, too, are masterpieces.
During an astonishing century--roughly speaking from 1170 to
1270--France built about eighty Gothic cathedrals, and more than three
hundred fine churches. And the miracle is that each had its own distinct
personality, which etches itself clearly on the traveler's mind. Such
was the super-abounding joy of creation in the golden age of the
national art that no two churches are alike.
THE CATHEDRAL OF BOURGES[131]
One goes before the Lord's altar, one bends the knee, one stays
there in an attitude of prostrate humility, and _perhaps_, in it
all, one has not rendered to God a single homage. Why? Because
religion does not consist of inclinations of the body, or of
modesty of the eyes, but of humbleness of spirit, and not for an
instant has the spirit been one with those demonstrations of
respect and adoration.
One visits the hospitals and prisons, one consoles the afflicted,
one tends the sick and helps the poor, and _perhaps_ the very one
who displays in all this the most assiduity and zeal is he who
possesses the least Christian mercy. Why? Because he is carried on
by a certain natural activity, or an entirely human pity touches
him, or is it any other motive, except God, that leads him.--_On
True and False Piety_, BOURDALOUE (1632-1704; born in Bourges).
The cathedral of St. Étienne stands on a slight hill in the center of
Bourges, and is a landmark for forty miles over the Berry plains that
are the tranquil heart of France. The best architectural view of it is
obtained from the park once attached to the archbishop's palace and said
to have been laid out by Le Nôtre, master of this type of cold
distinction which is so eminently French. As the entire south flank of
the church is exposed to view there, the absence of a transept is what
first strikes the attention. Bourges is the only XIII-century cathedral
without the extended arms of the cross. Had it a transept it might
appear short, whereas now its four hundred feet of length make the most
imposing effect.
Bourges, Paris, Troyes, and Clermont are the only cathedrals with double
aisles about choir and nave. Bourges is exceptional in that the inner
aisle is twice as high as the outer--so high that it possesses its own
triforium and clearstory; so high that the pier arches around the middle
church rise to more than half the height of the edifice. Indeed, many an
English cathedral could stand under the pier arches of Bourges. Each
pillar is encircled by eight shafts--an arrangement that accentuates its
loftiness. It may be claimed that there is over-emphasis in a procession
of such giant columns about the interior of a church, and that there is
something spectacular in a colonnade of such stupendous arches.
Certainly the main clearstory is dwarfed by comparison, and the
contrast in height between inner and outer aisle is too violent. Bourges
must pass as a superb experiment rather than the restrained achievement
from which emanates a school. Subsequent architects preferred to take as
model the more classic division of Amiens' interior wall elevation.
None the less is this most original basilica magnificently and
romantically beautiful. Upon entering the church for the first time one
feels the gripping sensation of beholding a thing audacious and
gigantic. And yet the impression conveyed is not that of overweening
pride. There is reverence here. Bishop Durandus tells us that the piers
of a church are the bishops and doctors who sustain the temple of God by
their doctrines, that the length of a church representeth fortitude
which patiently endureth till it attain heaven; its breadth, charity;
its height, courage that despiseth prosperity and adversity, hoping to
see the gladness of the Lord in the land of the living. The windows are
hospitality with cheerfulness, and tenderness with charity. They are
Holy Scriptures which expel the wind and the rain--that is, all things
hurtful--but transmit the light of the true Sun--that is, God--into the
hearts of the faithful.[132] So wrote the wise old XIII-century Midi
bishop for whom the whole world and everything in it were symbols.
Sound doctrine, fortitude, and warm protecting hospitality--such are
qualities supremely understood of Bourges. There is awe in this church
and there is magic. Of the boundless imagination of dreams are certain
sunset aspects here, when from the wide western window of Jean de Berry
gleams of light strike athwart these vast arches of wonderland, across
these sixty big pillars of stone, and night-time hours--during the May
evening services of Our Lady--when the great church as in fearsome
meditation is shrouded in shadow.
[Illustration: _The Apse of Bourges (1200-1225)_]
Some four or five cathedrals have stood, in turn, on the same site which
was close by the Gallo-Roman city walls. For the early Christians
were despised as pariahs, and allowed to build only on the outskirts of
cities, until the edict of Constantine permitted them to exercise their
religion with honor. All over France churches are to be found abutting
on the ancient ramparts of towns. Of the early cathedrals of Bourges
only the core of the present crypt remains. From the Romanesque edifice
immediately preceding the present cathedral come its XII-century side
portals.
There are strong analogies between the ground-plan of St. Étienne of
Bourges and that of Notre Dame of Paris, especially if one recalls that
the cathedral of Paris, as first designed, possessed no transept.
Probably the plans of both were made at the same time, but the work in
the capital of the royal demesne started immediately in 1163; hence it
retained the galleries over the side aisles--a Romanesque
tradition--whereas, at Bourges the actual building began only in the
last decade of the XII century, when such tribunes were passing out of
vogue. Bourges thereupon undertook to modify its first design, and it
tried the startling experiment of making an inner aisle whose height
comprised both aisle and tribune.
The crypt of Bourges,[133] one of the most spacious in France, was begun
by Archbishop Henri de Sully (1184-99), brother of Bishop Eudes who
helped build the west façade of Paris Cathedral. When Henri died, the
decision was left to his brother in Paris, as to which of three
Cistercian abbots should be the succeeding archbishop in Bourges. The
nomination fell to St. Guillaume Berruyer (1199-1208) of the house of
Nevers, whose counts had built the admirable Romanesque St. Étienne in
that city. Guillaume had watched both Paris and Soissons' cathedrals
rising; he had been a monk in Pontigny, whose church was the earliest
Gothic venture in Burgundy, and he was abbot of Châalis, where the
church also was Primary Gothic. This holy Cistercian was loath to leave
his cloister, and always wore his white robe and fasted like a genuine
son of St. Bernard. In his face shone his purity of soul, and it is said
that his manner was merry.
Only a saint could have made the ambulatory of Bourges, a place apart
from the world's fret, fashioned for meditative prayer, its walls hung
with gospel parables of mosaic glass. It is thought that while the new
Gothic choir was building, services were held in the Romanesque
cathedral, which may have been partly open to the elements, since St.
Guillaume caught a chill in it while preaching, from the effects of
which he died in 1208. Ten years later, the first ceremony held in the
completed choir was for his canonization; without the usual process of
investigation the pope declared him a saint.
From 1236 to 1260, a nephew of St. William's, Blessed Philippe Berruyer,
was archbishop of Bourges and carried forward the nave; and the saint's
great-niece, the Countess Matilda of Nevers, contributed generously.
Bourges commemorated her saintly bishops in the clearstory of her inner
aisle. The window wherein St. Guillaume is pictured shows his niece as
the donor.
Never was monument set on a more majestic base than the choir end of
Bourges. There the crypt stands above the ground, owing to the slope of
the land. The chevet of St. Étienne is incomparable. In every part of
the edifice good mason work was done, save in the upper vaults, where
the necessity of economy led to skimping. It is apparent that, as the
eastern curve of the cathedral was rising, the architect modified his
plan. In his apse walls he inserted small chapels, each standing on two
columns and an engaged shaft and each roofed by a stone pyramid. Not
only does the circlet of little shrines add to the beauty of the chevet,
but each chapel serves the practical purpose of a buttress. That they
were afterthoughts is proved by the ambulatory windows not being set
symmetrically over the crypt windows. However, the chapels must have
been added during the building of the procession path, because the
latter's vaulting shows no sign of reconstruction.
The cathedral of Bourges is not well documented. Only by a study of the
stones themselves can it be dated. Its eastern end was building during
the first part of the XIII century; in 1266 the chapter contributed
toward the works, their donations being used probably for the completion
of the nave. At the end of the XIII century porches were added to the
side doors retained from the Romanesque cathedral. Work continued on the
west façade during the early part of the XIV century, but when, in 1324,
St. Étienne was dedicated, it had been completed in its main parts for
forty years.
This makes the west front of Bourges about a century younger than its
apse. The five deeply recessed portals correspond to its five aisles,
and the western towers are set clear of the aisles, as at Rouen; that to
the southwest is now braced by a flying buttress and detached buttress
pile. In 1506 the northwest tower collapsed. It was rebuilt by alms,
given as thank-offering for the privilege of eating butter during Lent,
hence its name Tour de Beurre. Such butter towers may be called the XVI
century's method of charity bazaar to raise money for church repairs.
During the heyday of Gothic, the fervent layman gave voluntarily, asking
for no return, and in that spirit rose the _clocher vieux_ at Chartres.
Compare that sublime monument with the elegant, mundane late-Gothic
"butter towers" of France, and you comprehend how inevitably the spirit
of builders reveals itself in the work of their hands.
Of the five western doors of Bourges, only the central one is wholly of
the XIII century (c. 1260-75). Its representation of the Last Judgment,
adjudged to be the best ever set up at a cathedral door, the _Dies Iræ_
warning in stone, is derived from Job, St. Paul, St. Matthew, and the
Apocalypse. In the upper zone Christ is enthroned; in the lower is shown
the arising of the dead from their tombs. Between these scenes is the
splendid panel of the Judgment, with the stately archangel as its
central figure, holding the scales of justice. To his left malign demons
seize on the damned to plunge them into the jaws of the Leviathan
described in Job. To his right the blessed ones smile with complacency
as they move toward Paradise, here represented by a
hieroglyphic--supposed to be Abraham's bosom, out of which peep some
little souls smuggled safely away.[134] St. Peter stands at the gates of
Paradise, holding the keys, a doctrinal symbol of his power to bind and
to loose, until in time popular fancy pictured him as the actual
gatekeeper of heaven. Among the elect is represented a king holding the
flower of sanctity, probably meant for St. Louis. Beside the king is a
cord-girdled monk--hence the name "cordeliers" for Franciscans--showing
how popular was the new Order.
The fall of the north tower caused the ruin of the portals near it, and
when rebuilt in the XVI century an iconographic error was made which
would have been impossible with the trained scholastics of an earlier
day--the mother of the Saviour was placed on his left, instead of in the
seat of honor on his right. In the fatal year 1562, when from end to end
of France the churches were mutilated, the Calvinists attacked the
portal images of Bourges and flung the carven stones into the breaches
of the town walls. They went so far as to mine the giant piers in order
that the great edifice might totter to its fall; but happily their
control of the city was cut short, or the tragedy of Orléans might have
been enacted.[135]
Bourges is a chosen spot for stained glass, second only to Chartres.
Students have made the study of its windows a lifetime enthusiasm.
Nowhere can the epochs of the vitrine art from the XII to the XVII
century be more easily studied. The school of St. Denis, however, is not
represented. Two small panels, now set in a window beside the south
portal, are earlier in date than Suger's windows; their flesh tone is
purplish; perhaps they are the oldest colored glass extant in France.
Of the XIII-century school of Chartres are the twenty and more lancets
in the ambulatory, legend-medallion windows ranking with the best ever
made. They repeat some of the themes used by the artists at Chartres,
such as the parables of the Prodigal Son, presented by the tanners, and
of the Good Samaritan, which latter lancet at Bourges is an exception in
having its story begin at the top. Ancient windows are to be read
usually from the bottom upward. The first window in the choir aisle, as
you enter it from the north, shows the beggar Lazarus despised and
suffering on earth, then carried by angels to Abraham's bosom, wherein
(in the topmost medallion) he sits cozily ensconsed, but Dives, the bad
rich man, is snatched by demons from his earthly scenes of plenty and
thrust into hell. The lancet which, at Bourges, is devoted to the
Apocalypse, is held to be a subtle commentary on the vision of Patmos.
To the fifth large window of the ambulatory, called the New Alliance,
the Jesuit fathers, Cahier and Martin, have devoted over a hundred
pages--a veritable treatise on symbolism--in their monumental study of
the earlier stained glass in this church. "Prophecies in action," our
friend Joinville called the prefiguring of the New Law by the Old, so
popular during the Middle Ages. New Alliance windows are to be found in
various cathedrals--their theme being the substitution of Gentiles for
Jews by the merit of the Cross.[136] The guild of butchers was the donor
of this abstract doctrinal window of Bourges.
The only break in the XIII-century glass of the choir aisle is in the
axis chapel, where the windows--of the XVI-century Renaissance--belonged
originally to the Sainte-Chapelle of the ducal palace that once existed
in Bourges; other windows from the same source have been reset in the
cathedral's crypt. The small scenes at the base of each lancet--the
signatures as they are called--show that here, as at Chartres, the
larger number of these priceless treasures of art were donated by the
little people of the Lord--carpenters, weavers, coopers, money changers.
A window given by the stonecutters, in the choir aisle of Bourges, is
devoted to St. Thomas, the apostle, patron of builders. Bourges and
Chartres afford the best opportunity for a more intimate study of the
legends and symbols then most popular. Here, as at Chartres, the _Golden
Legend_ should be one's inseparable companion.
In the high windows of the middle choir the apostles are ranged on one
side of Sancta Maria, and the prophets on the other--another of the many
contrasts of the Old and New Testaments. The nave's clearstory is
chiefly XIII-century grisaille. The XIV-century artists, in their desire
for more light, gave up the profound colors of their mosaic-like windows
for that coldly elegant phase of the vitrine art, when the use of white
was carried to excess and each figure set in its own panel was pictured
like a statue with architectural niche and dais.
About 1370 Duke Jean of Berry, born connoisseur like his brothers
Charles V, Philippe of Burgundy, and the Duke of Anjou, presented to
Bourges Cathedral its immense western window. Before the Medici, this
Valois prince collected cameos and medals and bric-à-brac. Among the
twenty castles he built were those of Poitiers, Riom, and Bourges, on
which were employed the noted Flamboyant Gothic architects, the
Dammartin brothers. When the Sainte-Chapelle of the palace in Bourges
was destroyed (1759), the duke's tomb, which his nephew Charles VI had
ordered of Jean de Cambrai (1477-83), was brought to the cathedral. The
sarcophagus was once surrounded by alabaster statuettes, some of which
are in the Museum. The arrangement of mourners came from his brother's
world-famous tomb in Dijon. In his old age the spendthrift, unstable
Jean de Berry married the very youthful Jeanne de Boulogne, and kneeling
images of both duke and duchess have been placed on either side of the
entrance to the axis chapel of the cathedral. Apparently art-loving John
of France was in person the homeliest of men. The Revolution damaged
these images, which were restored by means of drawings made of them by
Holbein in the time when Bourges was a Mecca for the artists of Europe.
Some of Duke Jean's friends presented early XV-century windows to the
side chapels of Bourges Cathedral. His physician, Aligret, gave one.
The Hundred Years' War put a stop to the accumulation of art treasures
in the metropolitan church. When Charles VII, "the little king of
Bourges," as the English had dubbed him ironically, went with the
victorious Maid of Orleans to be crowned king at Rheims, his gentle
queen, Marie of Anjou, stayed in Bourges with her mother, Yolande of
Aragon. Marie's brother, then a youth under Jeanne's command, was to
become the good King René of history. To Bourges Jeanne herself came
later. She lodged with an estimable widow of the town who, years
afterward, during the inquest conducted for the Maid's rehabilitation,
bore testimony to the young girl's simple goodness. She told how
gallantly Jeanne mounted a horse and how adroitly she managed a lance so
that "everyone was in admiration of her, for no knight could have done
better."[137]
Then when "_Jehanne la bonne Lorraine_," as Villon called her, had given
France a new soul, when the blight of the Great Schism of the West was
over, and France accepted the same spiritual chief as the remainder of
Europe, there came about the energetic, happy, restless manifestation of
art which we call Flamboyant Gothic. Bourges then possessed a Mæcenas in
the person of a merchant (son of a tradesman of the city) whose ships
covered the sea. Jacques Coeur, from 1443 to 1452, built himself, in
his native town, the finest burgher's house in France, to see which René
of Anjou--great-nephew of Jean of Berry--came especially to Bourges. Its
walls were carved with quaint devices and images,[138] and, like Van
Eyck's, were the charming little angels painted on its chapel vaults. No
civic monument in the land excels it; it ranks as the best with Rouen's
Palais de Justice and the Hôtel Cluny at Paris.
The same merchant-prince built in Bourges Cathedral a private chapel for
his family, and beside it a rich Flamboyant Gothic sacristy. The
Annunciation window in the chapel (1450) is held to be the best glass of
its century, uniting the better drawing of the later day with a plain,
firm, general design. The face of the Angel Gabriel has been said to be
a portrait of Jacques Coeur. St. James is represented in pilgrim garb
because of the fame of his shrine at Santiago Compostela. It is thought
that Jacques Coeur donated the row of richly damasked windows in the
west façade beneath Jean of Berry's big sheet of glass, made fifty years
earlier. Colors have become richer and the figures show a tendency to
escape from the rigid attitude of statues, but not yet has absolute
congruity between the hues been achieved.
Jacques Coeur was not to be buried in the chapel he had prepared. He
served the same master who had let the Maid of Orleans perish at Rouen
without striking a blow to save her. With money provided by the
merchant-banker of Bourges, Charles VII had reconquered Normandy, but he
let the estate of his faithful servant be rapaciously confiscated
without a trial, and left him to languish in prison for two years before
being banished from the kingdom by the mockery of a law process. Jacques
Coeur died in exile in 1461, but his good name was exonerated, and his
son Jean, archbishop of Bourges, was buried in the cathedral's choir.
The merchant-prince's chapel passed with his mansion into the hands of
the Laubespine family, whose kneeling statues now adorn it.
With the XVI century there opened another golden period of the vitrine
art in Bourges. A local master, Jean Lecuyer, won fame. He made the
Tullier window (1532) in the tenth bay (south) of the cathedral. The
donor, Canon Tullier, and his father, mother, and various ecclesiastic
relatives, are being presented by their patron saints to a
distinguished-looking Madonna. The architectural background shows what
headway the foreign Renaissance had made in France, though the chief
figures are still true to French traditions. The colors are faultlessly
balanced and certain exquisite half-tones are noticeable. In the upper
panels, in a fair blue sky, are entrancing little angels giving a
celestial concert, fiddling, beating a drum, singing with all their
hearts, for this is the shrine built by St. William, who knew how to be
holy and merry as well.
The Tullier light has been called the loveliest of XVI-century windows.
And yet no one can deny that enamel painting on glass was a
deterioration of the art. The old masters had followed a sounder
tradition when they subordinated their windows to their architecture,
making them an integral part of it, and not merely isolated painted
pictures. Jean Lecuyer also composed the window (1518) relating the
lives of St. Stephen and St. Laurence in the cathedral's nave (south
side), and several brilliant lights in St. Bonnat's church. Even the
XVII century produced interesting work at Bourges; in the Martigny
chapel of the cathedral (north side of nave) the portrait of the donor
is as realistic as a miniature.
THE CATHEDRAL OF BEAUVAIS[139]
C'est alors que se constitue cette merveilleuse discipline, vrai
fondement de la culture intellectuelle et de la science, qu'est la
discipline scholastique.... Toute la connaissance est tournée vers
la science de l'être, vers la métaphysique, plus haut encore vers
la théologie; plus haut encore, vers théologie vécue, vers la
contemplation.--JACQUES MARITAIN.
The cathedral of Beauvais derived directly from Amiens, and no
expression of the Gothic principle was ever carried farther. It consists
of a mammoth choir and transept. As the height of the edifice is three
times its width, the nave which now is lacking would need to have been
of enormous length. Instead of that much-needed nave, there nestles
under the truncated west end a modest little Carolingian edifice called
the _Basse-OEuvre_, built by the fortieth bishop of Beauvais, Hervé
(987-998). The small cubic stones and occasional courses of brick tell
of the antiquity of this, the best-preserved monument in France, dating
before the year 1000.[140] Most of the Romanesque churches of the Oise
copied it. Scarcely, however, had the Ile-de-France Picard Romanesque
school developed than the privileged region gave birth to the national
art.
In 1227 Beauvais planned a new cathedral, spurred on thereto by the
magnificent nave rising in neighboring Amiens. But the works were not
started till 1247, for the bishop, more a feudal baron than a pastor,
was for a time entirely engrossed in mercenary wars in Italy and in
quarreling with Blanche of Castile, the queen-regent. Finally Bishop
Milon began his cathedral in Beauvais on a scale beyond the resources of
the diocese. Despite his own and the chapter's generous donations, and
the exemption of workmen and all building material from taxes, the choir
was not finished till 1272, two years after the choir of Cologne.
Scarcely was it done when, in 1284, its upper vaulting fell; a few years
earlier a partial collapse had occurred. To remedy the disaster new
piers had to be inserted between the old ones, which explains the
sharp-pointed arches of the pier arcade. Only in the ambulatory, which
was untouched by the falling masonry, is the original vaulting to be
found. The required addition of flying buttresses was no improvement to
the symmetry of the exterior. Instead of being able to proceed to the
erection of a nave, forty years were wasted in repairs.
Then came the calamities of the Hundred Years' War when building
activities flagged all over France. Never again were profiles to be
virile. The apogee hour of Gothic was forever past. With English,
Burgundian, and French troops roving the country, Beauvais was kept on
the alert. In 1429, the citizens, roused by Jeanne d'Arc's success at
Orléans, expelled their bishop, who was in sympathy with the foe, and
was none other than the unworthy Pierre Cauchon, soon to sit as
miscreant judge at the Maid's trial in Rouen. Two years after Jeanne
had been burned, Beauvais was besieged by English troops, and so gallant
was the behavior of the women of the city, notably Jeanne Hachette, that
forever after was accorded to them the right to march in the place of
honor in all processions, directly behind the clergy. When the Duke of
Burgundy, England's ally, besieged the city in 1472 he burned the
episcopal palace, to which the two sturdy towers near the
_Basse-OEuvre_ originally belonged. Once more the women of Beauvais
fought side by side with the men, while the children and the aged
gathered in the cathedrals to supplicate Heaven for protection.
No city in the land had better cause to rejoice over peace and the
invader's expulsion than Beauvais. And nowhere did Flamboyant Gothic
take on nobler expression than in the stately transept now added to the
cathedral, a masterpiece worthy to be joined to the giant choir. On its
north front worked Martin Chambiges, who gave to Troyes and Sens their
admirable façades. Over-ornamentation was a pitfall for the late-Gothic
masters, but not for Chambiges, who kept Beauvais' strong lines of
construction unobliterated by lavish detail.
Flamboyant Gothic was essentially a decorative art. Therein only did it
differ from preceding schools, for it developed no new principles of
construction. Because of the flamelike undulations of its window
tracery, the Norman archæologist, M. de Caumont, who had brought into
use the name Romanesque, invented the equally useful term
Flamboyant.[141] Capricious, overladen, disturbingly restless, this
final phase of the national art may often be (it has been called more
terrestrial than celestial), it was inclined to exhibit its technical
dexterity; but none the less it was keenly alive and a vast improvement
on the over-formalized geometric Rayonnant Gothic to which it succeeded.
In both, the profiles were prismatic, fluid, and weak. Discipline which
made for robustness was forever lost.
A century before the characteristics of Flamboyant art developed in
France, they were in use in England, and there called Curvilinear or
Decorated Gothic. Window mullions undulated, arches were crowned with
reversed curves and sculptured finials, secondary, connecting ribs were
added to the vaulting, bases were elongated, there were interpenetrating
molds, hanging keystones, piers without capitals, and such new models
for foliate sculpture as the deeply indented leaves of parsley and curly
cabbage. When capitals were given up, the ribs died away weakly in the
piers. The Gothic of England had changed to its cold Perpendicular phase
by the time that the architects across the Channel adopted the features
called Flamboyant in France.
M. Camille Enlart has developed the idea that the last phase of the
national architecture was a product of the English occupation during the
Hundred Years' War, that from elements of decoration introduced by
England, the French composed a style which differed somewhat only from
that in vogue across the Channel from 1300 to 1360. In France, flowing
tracery and ogee arches were not used before 1375. France need feel no
diminution of her claim of leadership in Gothic architecture because she
adopted, for her XV-century traits, certain decorative details developed
first by others, since the Gothic of England was originally of French
derivation.
The theory of an English origin for French Flamboyancy is contested by
M. Anthyme Saint-Paul, who thought that from the same elements of
XIII-century Gothic one country developed its own Curvilinear style and
the other its own, Flamboyant Gothic.[142] M. de Lasteyrie agreed with
the thesis that there is a French origin for French late-Gothic
manifestations. That Flamboyant art is in part indigenous and partly of
foreign derivation is probably nearest the truth. Certainly sporadic
cases of florid features appeared in French art during the XIII and XIV
centuries, but it is clear that in various places long held by the
English there appeared the first or the fullest expression of
late-Gothic art.
Before the Flamboyant Gothic transept of Beauvais was finished, the
foreign Renaissance had arrived in France. And it showed here in the
richly sculptured doors. The sibyls, all ten of whom are represented,
are, as pagans, kept outside the church. With skilled gradation the
carving grows deeper and bolder toward the top of the doors, farthest
away from the eye. Jean Le Pot carved the southern doors in faultless
taste. He was a glassmaker as well, and in St. Étienne's church are his
windows beside those of his father-in-law, Engrand Le Prince, who, with
his sons Jean and Nicholas, made the north and south rose windows of the
cathedral and its splendid Peter and Paul window. Their tree of Jesse,
in St. Étienne's choir, is considered a masterpiece of color and design.
To-day a Le Prince window in any French city is a matter of civic pride.
The old saying ran: "The choir of Beauvais, the nave of Amiens, the
portals of Rheims, the towers of Chartres" make the most beautiful
cathedral in the world. One hundred and fifty feet high curve the upper
vaults of Beauvais choir. Beneath them could be set the belfries of
Notre Dame of Paris. As at Bourges, the lofty aisle possesses its own
triforium and clearstory, but here the clearstory of the central choir
has not been dwarfed as a result of the stupendous pier arcades.
Beauvais dared to make its upper windows eighty feet high. Think what
its interior would be had it retained the original stained glass! Its
towering choir windows would scintillate like those of Sainte-Chapelle,
since it was the Paris school that supplied XIII-century Beauvais.
Such a sweep of fragile glass was possible because the play of thrusts
and counterthrusts had been calculated to a certainty. Technically,
Beauvais is the extreme expression of the Gothic theory. It perfected
the pier by making it elliptical, widest where fell the greatest strain,
north and south. It is said that its error lay in certain false
bearings, that some of the intermediate buttresses were balanced half on
air without direct ground supports. That may have been temerarious,
since building material of perfect quality is required when chances are
taken. Certainly Beauvais pushed to its rigid consequences the law of
equilibrium, allowing no excess in the supporting members, but it was
not a builder's folly.
M. de Lasteyrie has called its plan a _chef-d'oeuvre_ of lightness.
Though the architect pushed his technique to the extreme limit of the
law of thrust and counterthrust, he did not pass beyond the possible,
and had he employed the hard, resistant stone of Burgundy the history of
the cathedral church he built would not be a tale of disasters. What
brought about the collapse of Beauvais' vaults was the use of inferior
stone.
Sometimes one feels in the hardihood of this cathedral a trace of
everweening pride, as if its certitude of excelling tended to
virtuosity. The stupefying ascending lines, strong-willed and carried
out with science, seem as much to vaunt the enterprise of their builder
as pay homage to the Creator. Some of the lesser churches, that humbly
and tentatively reached out toward perfection, make a deeper appeal than
does stupendous Beauvais. Was man meant for the superlative on earth?
And one remembers that Bishop Milon de Nanteuil was a proud man of the
world, very unlike that true pastor of souls, Maurice de Sully, who with
unpretentious diligence raised Notre Dame of Paris. Such criticisms
would be silenced, perhaps, had Beauvais a nave from which could be
viewed its overwhelming choir. Truncated as it now is, it is necessary
to crane the neck in order to see its clearstory windows. So colossal a
thing should be led up to gradually; it cries out insistently for its
missing nave.
Fatality seemed always to pursue Beauvais. After terminating a noble
Flamboyant transept, the ambitious citizens were lured into the scheme
of a central tower, when a church of such height should have at its
crossing merely a slender spire. Instead of proceeding to build a nave,
they raised a lantern that lacked merely a few feet of the enormous
height of St. Peter's dome in Rome. It was a day of tower building in
France, and Beauvais, ever hopeful beyond its resources, thought to
outvie all others. On feast days lights were hung in its spire's open
stonework for the illumination of the entire countryside. For five years
only the giant beacon stood. On Ascension Day of 1573, just after the
congregation had left the church to walk in procession, the tower fell
with an appalling noise, covering the whole town with dust. Only one bay
of the nave has been built, its piers have disappearing moldings,
amorphous profiles, and no capitals whatever. Beauvais stands a massive
fragment, and there seems little chance that the truncated church will
ever be completed.
THE CATHEDRAL OF TROYES[143]
With travail great, and little cargo fraught,
See how our world is laboring in pain;
So filled we are with love of evil gain
That no one thinks of doing what he ought,
But we all hustle in the Devil's train,
And only in his service toil and pray;
And God, who suffered for us agony,
We set behind, and treat him with disdain.
Hardy is he whom death doth not dismay.
The feeble mouse, against the winter's cold
Garners the nuts and grain within his cell,
While man goes groping, without sense to tell
Where to seek refuge against growing old....
The Devil doth in snares our life enfold.
Four hooks he has with torments baited well;
And first with Greed he casts a mighty spell,
And then, to fill his nets has Pride enrolled,
And Luxury steers the boat and fills the sail,
And Perfidy controls and sets the snare.
Thus the poor fish are brought to land.
--COUNT THIBAUT IV of Champagne.[144]
Beneath the present choir of Troyes Cathedral are Gallo-Roman walls, and
a succession of edifices have stood on the same site. From the cathedral
of the V century started the bishop, St. Loup, "the friend of God," when
he went forth to check Attila the Hun, "God's scourge," and the
barbarian was touched by spiritual fear and retired. That same good
bishop of Troyes was the companion of St. Germain of Auxerre, on the
notable journey north, when they blessed the gentle child Geneviève in a
village near Paris, marking her as a vessel of election.
Probably the cathedral immediately preceding the present one was in
large part early-Gothic. Fire wiped it out, in 1188, and preparations
for a new basilica were started by the energetic Bishop Garnier de
Trainel, who went on the Fourth Crusade, and was among those, says
Villehardouin, who scaled the walls of captured Constantinople along
with his friend Nivelon, the bishop-builder of Soissons.
The first stone of the new cathedral at Troyes was laid in 1206 by
Bishop Hervé (1206-23), an able man who had been advanced by the
observant prelate of Paris, Eudes de Sully. For almost twenty years
Bishop Hervé worked on the choir, considered one of the best chevets in
France. During his episcopate Troyes was a brilliant center of European
trade and culture. Blanche of Castile and young Louis IX passed some
time in the city when Thibaut IV the Singer, related to the royal line,
was attacked by the clique of rebellious barons who plotted against the
boy king. There had been considerable romancing about the volatile,
inconstant Thibaut's admiration for Queen Blanche, who was a married
woman before he was born. His own mother, Blanche of Navarre, another of
the able women rulers of that day, gave generously to the new cathedral
of her capital city.
In 1228 a storm damaged the rising structure, necessitating years of
tiresome repairs. Pope Urban IV, as a native son of Troyes, contributed.
During the last forty years of the XIII century the transept was
building. It showed traces of English feeling derived perhaps from
Edmund Plantagenet, a son of the builder of Westminster Abbey, who had
married the dowager Countess of Champagne. His ward Jeanne, Thibaut the
Singer's granddaughter, inherited the countship of Champagne, the
kingdom of Navarre, and by marriage became the queen of France.
Slowly during the XIV and XV centuries, one bay of the nave was added to
another; the changes from the precise lines of Rayonnant tracery to the
undulating mullions of the Flamboyant day are easy to follow. The long
delays were caused by lack of funds and the repeated need for
consolidating the parts already built. The soil on which the church
stood was unsuitable, and from the first, security was jeopardized by
using the soft, native stone in those parts of the edifice which were
out of sight, in order to economize on the firm stone imported from
Burgundy.
Several times during the difficulties of reconstruction, the cathedral
chapter turned for advice to noted masters--to Raymond du Temple,
Charles V's architect, and to André de Dammartin, patronized by the
king's brothers of Berry and Burgundy. Work ceased altogether during
the English occupancy.
Then in 1429 the city opened its gates to Charles VII on his way to be
crowned at Rheims. Jeanne d'Arc, during her trial in Rouen, told of an
incident of their entry into Troyes. Some of the townspeople were
fearful lest the heroine of Orleans came of the devil, so they had a
holy preacher march out to exorcise her. Scattering holy water and
making repeated signs of the Cross, Brother Richard approached the Maid.
"Draw near without uneasiness," Jeanne assured him, in her pleasant
manner. "I won't fly away."
The city by its reception of the king evinced eagerness to wipe out the
infamy of the Treaty of Troyes, signed here in 1420 by Queen Isabeau of
Bavaria, wherein she repudiated her son Charles VII and gave France over
to the foreign invader. The people's renewed hope and self-respect
expressed itself in some of the most lovely Flamboyant foliage ever
chiseled--the deeply undercut leafage on the gable of the north portal
(1462-68).
Work on the cathedral was taken up with energy after Jeanne, carrying
her standard, had hallowed the streets of Troyes. As the XV century
closed, the nave's radiant late-Gothic windows were installed. They are
of the _Biblia pauperum_ type, and are surprisingly like big translucent
woodcuts. They tell the story of Daniel, Tobias, Joseph and his
brethren, Job--a window especially to be noticed--some parables, too,
and edifying legends. The scenes are set quite as they appeared in the
mystery plays, the costumes being not of Syria, but of the very stuffs
and damasks bought in their own international fairs. The same masters of
Troyes, Verrat, Godon, Lyénin, Macadré, who signed a rose window of Sens
transept, put their signatures here.
Bible stories such as these suit the layman's part of a church, for they
serve to hold the attention of the average man. In the choir of Troyes
are thirteen large windows of an earlier day, profounder in color and
more spiritual in suggestion. They are like a jeweled cloistral screen
around the Holy of Holies. In the upper central windows are the Passion
scenes, and on either side rise tier on tier of martyrs who witnessed to
the Faith--bishops, abbots, and a few important personages, such as Pope
Innocent III, Bishop Hervé, the builder, and the archbishop of Sens, the
learned Pierre de Corbeil. On one side of the choir Henry I, emperor of
Constantinople, of the house of Champagne, is pictured, and
Philippe-Auguste, suzerain of Champagne. And opposite in the fourth
window are donjons and fleurs-de-lys showing that the queen-regent,
Blanche of Castile, was generous here as elsewhere.
The upper choir windows of Troyes allowed more light to pass than had
their immediate predecessors, the lancets of Chartres. Their colors were
clear and bright; only such stone mullions were used as were absolutely
required for the support of the glass. The eight lateral windows of the
upper choir belong to the XIII century, the five at the eastern curve to
the XIV century. In the lower choir are various ancient windows,
liberally restored, the Tree of Jesse, of Byzantine character, being the
best. Two hundred years later another Tree of Jesse was made by
Lyénin,[145] for the clearstory of the nave. It gave Christian folk a
feeling of pride to record the Lord's high ancestry according to Isaias
and the Acts. This cathedral of Troyes was one of the first to glaze its
triforium, even before St. Denis' abbatial. The present triforium lights
are, in most part, modern.
By 1504 the clearstory windows of the nave were all in place. Among
their donors was represented a mayor of Troyes with all his family. The
golden-hued west rose was put up in 1546. And even into the XVII century
the vitrine art of this exceptional city maintained its high traditions
of five hundred years. In 1625 Linard Gontier made the _Pressoir_
window, the swan-song of good Renaissance glass. There is a translucent
picture of Our Lady in the nave's south aisle, with stars leaded into
holes that were cut out of an entire plate of glass; any apprentice who
could perform that difficult feat of glazing was promoted to be a master
craftsman.[146]
For the building of the cathedral's west front, the chapter, in 1506,
called on the noted late-Gothic master, Martin Chambiges, who had made
his reputation with transept façades at Beauvais and Sens. Together with
other artists, his son, Pierre (who won fame with Senlis' transept
façade, and who, in 1539, began the château of St. Germain-en-Laye),
carried on Troyes' frontispiece during fifty years, so that its
imagery--badly damaged by the Revolution--shows the ermine of Anne of
Brittany, the porcupine of Louis XII, and the salamander of Francis I.
Troyes, with its record of four hundred years, was, of all the
cathedrals of France, the longest in building.
In spite of its double aisles, its wide transept, its noble, deep choir,
and its astounding wealth of storied windows, it is clear when standing
before the Flamboyant Gothic front of this chief church of Champagne's
capital, that it is a cathedral of secondary rank. The flaw here is one
of proportion. With such width--and this is the widest cathedral in
France--the church should be thirty feet higher. However, no traveler
with harmony in his soul thinks of technical criticism once he steps
across the threshold and walks beneath the joyous terrestrial windows of
the nave and the seraphic lights of the sanctuary.
ST. URBAIN AND OTHER CHURCHES AT TROYES[147]
Madame, je vous le demande,
Pensez-vous ne soit péché
D'occire son vrai amant?
Oïl voir; bien le sachiez.
S'il vous plaît ne m'occiez;
Car, je vous le dis vraiment,
Quoique l'amour soit tourment,
Si vous m'aimez mieux vivant.
Je n'en serai point fâché.
--THIBAUT IV of Champagne, in lighter mood.
St. Urbain's famous collegiate church, a forerunner of XIV-century
Rayonnant Gothic, was founded by a son of Troyes, who sat in Peter's
chair, Urban IV. He tells us that "in the desire that the memory of this
our name might remain forever in the city of Troyes even after the
dissolution of our body," he began, in 1262, a church on the site where
his father's shop had stood, choosing for its tutelary the saint-pope,
Urban, who had succored the early martyrs in Rome. His father was a
prosperous shoemaker in the day when tradesmen gave princely gifts to
their parish churches. Urban IV himself had been a choir boy in Troyes
Cathedral.
He died before his church was finished, but his nephew, Cardinal
Pantaleone Ancher, continued the edifice, which was completed in 1276.
Urban's successor, Clement IV, also a Frenchman, patronized the new
works at Troyes. While the choir and transept were done by one
generation, many a century was to pass before the westernmost bay and
façade were finished.
[Illustration: _St. Urbain at Troyes (1264-1276)_]
In archæological circles St. Urbain is noted, Viollet-le-Duc being the
first to discuss its ingenuity. As construction it is a small
masterpiece, a model of elasticity, perhaps the lightest and most
fragile of all Gothic edifices. To an economy in stone we owe this
structural feat. Were the principle of equilibrium pushed a step
farther, metal, not stone, would be required. Ground supports have been
lessened, and flying buttresses attenuated to the last limit. Despite
its science, St. Urbain is not doctrinaire, but immaterial and
seductive. On first entering it Montalembert exclaimed, "_Quelle
délicieuse église!_"
The architect, Jean Langlois, here created the most elegant form of
Rayonnant window tracery. At his porch appears the first French arch of
double curvature, the earliest interpenetration of archivolts. We know
his name because in 1267 a papal bull summoned him to account for sums
advanced on the edifice, and Jean was not forthcoming, because he had
disappeared in the East, crusading. The chief church at Famagusta, in
Cyprus, begun in 1300--the only completed French-Gothic cathedral of the
XIV century--shows such analogies with St. Urbain at Troyes that
apparently Langlois' architectural influence had spread in the Orient.
M. Lefèvre-Pontalis has called Troyes' lantern church inundated with
light one of the most original monuments of the Middle Ages. Ten feet
above the ground its walls change to opalescent glass. No grisaille is
more exquisitely decorated with natural foliage outlines; set in the
expanses of the opal-tinted white glass are colored medallions of
extreme beauty. The lower row of lights around the choir are of this
character. Above them, and almost a part of them, are the choir's upper
windows--big prophets and patriarchs with the Crucifixion in the
center--transition windows between legend-medallion glass, and the XIV
century's single figures in a vitrine architectural frame. The arms of
France, Champagne, and Navarre appear in the borders of the choir
windows.
The transeptal chapel to the north of the choir shows in its quatrefoils
some interesting heads of men, women, and children. From the windows of
the south transeptal chapel some panels were stolen, but St. Urbain's
curé, Abbé Jossier, a learned enthusiast, was able, by sending
photographs all over France, to trace his lost panels in a private
collection, and it is to be hoped they may be returned.
In his short pontificate, 1262-64, Urban IV, besides creating this
enduring memorial, instituted the feast of Corpus Christi. He requested
a liturgy for his new feast from St. Thomas Aquinas, who composed the
_Pange lingua gloriosi_, the last stanzas of which are sung daily
throughout the Christian world, the familiar _Tantum ergo_. To Aquinas
is ascribed the _Verbum supernum prodiens_ hymn whose ending is the
lovely _O Salutaris Hostia_. Doubt and heresy have always been
instrumental in clarifying doctrine and in enriching the liturgy and
art. So in a later day was made, in reaction against the XVI-century
desecration of the Eucharist, such windows as the Wine Press of Troyes
and that of Conches.
In 1906, soon after St. Urbain's church had celebrated the completion of
its western portal, it became the scene of a conscientious objection on
the part of its parishioners, who protested against the taking of an
inventory, they deeming it an unlawful interference with their private
affairs. They sat in their church till the police broke in the doors;
even then they continued to sing canticles, and were expelled only by
having a hose turned on them. Six centuries earlier, St. Urbain's had
been the scene, on the completion of its choir, of a suffragette-like
demonstration by a community of nuns, who claimed part of the land on
which the church stood. They smashed various things on the premises,
and, it is whispered, even slapped a high dignitary's face. Apparently
St. Urbain's is destined to pass into history under various aspects.
For four hundred years the ancient capital of Champagne was an active
center of the stained-glass industry. Overpowering is the wealth of
storied windows to be found in its churches, the majority being of the
Flamboyant-Renaissance day. In the suburbs, and farther afield in the
hamlets of Champagne, there is the same prodigal display of colored
windows and interesting statues.[148] From father to son, from
generation to generation, was passed on the art skill of this ancient
city on the highway of international trade.
In Troyes there were so many churches that the old saying ran: "You
arrived from Troyes? And what are they doing there?" "_On y sonne._"
Next to St. Urbain's, for its wealth of art treasures, comes the
Madeleine church built about 1175, and reconstructed during the
Flamboyant enthusiasm when this city readorned almost every shrine it
possessed. Contemporary with its noted _jubé_, or rood screen (1508-17),
is the statue of St. Martha, one of the gems of French sculpture,
entirely of the national school, unaffected work as ample and robust as
the best period of the XIII century. St. Martha is represented, in this
church of Troyes dedicated to her sister, with the holy water by which
she exorcised the legendary Tarasque of Tarascon. She was the patroness
of housekeepers, and it is said that the servant maids of Troyes
presented to their church this memorial of the plastic genius of
Champagne.[149]
Champagne's special aptitude for sculpture appeared in the XIII-century
gargoyles of St. Urbain's church, each of which was almost a complete
figure. Later her imagery grew mannered for a few generations, with the
Madonna's face of a formal type, and an exaggerated throwing out of the
hip. The advent of Flemish realism, through the Franco-Flamand school at
Dijon, renewed the vigor of French idealism, and before the XV century
closed a truly French Renaissance had set in, retaining the equipoise of
the old school and quite free of Italian classicism.
Eventually the imported standards checked that renewed national
movement. It was not the big men of Italy's revival who came to
Champagne, but secondary artists whose work was often pretentious or
coldly abstract. From 1540, under the leadership of the Italian,
Domenico Rinnuccini, called Florentino, the foreign Renaissance
prevailed at Troyes. In the church of the Madeleine, besides its _jubé_
and St. Martha statue, is some of the best XVI-century glass. A window
of 1506 tells the life of St. Eloi, the goldsmith-bishop of Noyon; a
window dated 1517 is devoted to St. Louis; Jean Macadré I made a Jesse
tree; and there is the celebrated Creation in which God the Father wears
the papal tiara, significant of the reaction that followed Luther's
attacks on Rome. There are, also, two good XV-century windows, the
Lord's Passion and the Magdalene's story.
So vast is the accumulation of treasures in the sanctuaries of Troyes
that one can indicate merely a few of them. In St. Jean's
church--Flamboyant Gothic mainly, with a XII-century tower and a
XIV-century nave--is a Visitation (1520) by Nicolas Haslin, a meeting of
two pleasant dames of Troyes, wearing robes of Burgundian fullness, a
group in which there appears a first evidence of transalpine influence.
The reredos, from the Juliot studio, that led in the transition from
French Gothic art to the neo-classic standards, has conventional images
somewhat overgestured. In the flat eastern wall of St. Jean is a
_maîtresse vitre_ (1630) by the Gontier brothers, delicate in hue, yet
radiant, with half tones such as mauve, salmon pink, soft grays,
pomegranate, celadine green. Eagerly the Renaissance masters seized on
the new invention of _verre double_, which allowed them a fuller
palate. Their over-use of opaque enamel-painting on glass led to the
deterioration of the vitrine art, for the picture-painter soon swamped
the glazier and draftsman who had worked in subordination to the
architect.
In the church of St. Pantaléon, where Lyénin II worked, the windows are
in one or two tones, gray-brown with silver-stain yellow and flesh
color, a style better suited to domestic interiors or to civic halls
than to churches. The church boasts a statue of St. James and a Charité
by Domenico Florentino, and a St. Crespin group by a son of Troyes,
François Gentil, influenced by the Italian. To Gentil is attributed the
Christ at the column and the Christ bearing the Cross in the church of
St. Nicolas, where are also images of St. Anne and St. Joachim from the
Juliot studio, a St. Bonaventure from the same source whence emanated
the adorable statue of St. Martha, and more of the grisaille
picture-glass. In St. Martin-ès-Vignes the window of St. Anne (1623) is
attributed to Linard Gontier; in Ste. Sabine are some painted wood
panels, and a carved keystone of great beauty; in the hall of the
library of Troyes are thirty panels by Linard Gontier, made in
commemoration of Henry IV's visit in 1598.
CHÂLONS CATHEDRAL[150]
It so happens that in most of our communes the church remains the only
witness of the olden times and of departed generations. It thus becomes
a symbol, legible for the humblest, of the duration of our race, of the
persistence, through the dead, of a special group of French families on
a special corner of French soil. The village church gives the lesson of
lineage, of the solidarity of efforts, of the communion of men.--EDMOND
BLANQUERON, Inspecteur de l'Académie de la Haute-Marne, in the crusade
to save the churches of Champagne, notably Vignory, one of the oldest in
France (c. 1050).
The cathedral of Troyes and the church of St. Urbain belong to the
Champagne school of Gothic, to which we have devoted no separate chapter
because some of its monuments, such as St. Remi at Rheims and Notre Dame
at Châlons, we grouped with the Primary Gothic churches, and the
cathedral of Rheims with the Great Cathedrals, classifications used
solely for greater clarity.
From its inception, the Gothic of Champagne kept pace with the
Ile-de-France Picard school, and in certain characteristics even took
the lead of its neighbor. Gerson, Racine, La Fontaine, Gaston Paris, are
among the sons of this province whose Gothic art, formulated centuries
before them, displays qualities which embody aspiration, sublimity,
sanity always and just measure, a singular ease and grace, patience, and
science.
From Champagne came the gracious arrangement of planting slender columns
and stilted arches at the entrance to radiating chapels. Champagne was
the first to use the pier composed of twin columns, first to employ a
passageway round the church at the level of the aisle windows, and to
place lancets side by side in each bay for the better lighting of the
edifice. The region was conservative in clinging to certain Romanesque
traits, such as apsidal chapels projecting from the eastern wall of the
transept. It employed, as did Normandy and Burgundy, a circulation
passage under the clearstory windows. Champagne's influence spread far
afield to Sens, Auxerre, St. Quentin, St. Denis, Metz, Toul, Ipres,
Tournai, Avila, León, and York.[151]
Lest these pages should become overloaded, we can merely touch on the
beautiful Champagne cathedral of Châlons-sur-Marne, an old city which
is another treasure house of colored glass. The most interesting windows
are in the small church of St. Alpin, whose apse celebrates the
Eucharist, the souls in Purgatory, the Corpus Christi procession, lately
mocked by the Calvinists. Its Manna in the Desert window is a symbol of
the Eucharist. In St. Alpin are the most successful examples of that
distinguished phase of vitrine art called _camaïeu_--of cameo or
chiaroscuro effect, using brown-gray hues, the yellow of silver-stain, a
pale blue for the sky, and an occasional single touch of superb ruby
red. One of the windows of Raphaelesque design represents St. Alpin,
bishop of Châlons, meeting Attila the Hun; another, dated 1539, is a
rendering of the Vision of Augustus, a theme most popular then.
Peter the Venerable called Châlons "great and illustrious." Guillaume de
Champeaux, one of the most learned men of the age, whose schoolroom was
really the beginning of the University of Paris, was bishop of Châlons
in 1115 when a young Burgundian named Bernard came to be consecrated
abbot of Clairvaux. In the monk of twenty-five, unknown yet to fame, the
great teacher was swift to recognize a supreme spiritual genius. In 1147
St. Bernard preached at the dedication of the Romanesque cathedral of
Châlons before Pope Eugene III, who had been one of his own Cistercian
monks at Clairvaux. The present tower to the north of the choir belonged
to the church that Bernard knew. The south tower, its mate, is of the
XIII century. The placing of belfries on either side of the choir was a
Rhenish trait.
In 1230 Châlons Cathedral was wrecked by lightning. Its reconstruction
began with the choir, under Bishop Pierre de Nemours, whose brothers
were building-prelates at Noyon, Paris, and Meaux. In 1250 work on the
nave was going on, and at the end of the century was built the
transept's excellent north façade. The XVII century erected the
unsuitable neo-classic west frontispiece, yet at the same time,
curiously enough, the two westernmost bays were constructed in perfect
imitation of Apogec Gothic. It remains an open question whether the
same Renaissance century made the apse chapels after a fire in 1668.
Some say they are of the XIV century, that the choir, as first built,
had no ambulatory, but that one was added soon after, with radial
chapels.
There is a noble purity in Châlons Cathedral, due in large part to its
soaring monolithic piers. No church is richer in tombstones, and its
stained glass is plenteous. In the eastern clearstory are three lovely
silver and blue XIII-century windows; the north rose of the transept is
early XIV century and the first window in the nave's south aisle is
another good example of that period. The same aisle shows a brilliant
XV-century light, ruby red in effect, and a window of 1509, wherein the
Blessed Virgin's life is explained by quaint inscriptions. Some
XII-century glass from Châlons Cathedral is in the Trocadéro Museum at
Paris.
Just as Champagne had proved herself a pioneer in the first days of the
national art, so she distinguished herself in later times when Rayonnant
Gothic turned to Flamboyant art. Among the few churches built during the
transition between those two phases is the cathedral-like
Notre-Dame-de-l'Épine, in the fields a few miles from Châlons-sur-Marne,
a link connecting St. Urbain at Troyes with the goodly array of
Flamboyant buildings that sprang up in the ancient capital of Champagne.
The interior proportions of Notre-Dame-de-l'Épine resemble those of
Rheims Cathedral, and its rood screen recalls the _jubé_ of the
Madeleine church at Troyes.
But _revenons à nostro matière_, as dear Joinville, seneschal of
Champagne, would say. The reason for the wealth of architecture and its
allied arts and crafts in the region of which Troyes is the center was
because the ancient city, so unnoted in to-day's activities, lay on the
mediæval highway of commerce, and under its enterprising rulers became
the scene bi-yearly of a fair to which all Europe flocked. To this day
we use Troy weight. The counts of Champagne safeguarded the visiting
merchants and fostered commerce by wise laws. Their money passed in Rome
and Venice as freely as in Provins and Troyes. Lavish and art-loving
were the Champagne rulers; one of them founded Clairvaux in lower
Champagne; another rebuilt the Cistercian church of Pontigny, just over
the border in Burgundy. They were indefatigable crusaders, some of them
winning thrones in the East. And their alliances constantly enriched
their stock with new qualities, as when Count Henry the Magnificent
wedded, in 1164, the daughter of Louis VII by Aliénor of Aquitaine. That
Countess Marie--the _suer comtessa_ to whom her half brother, Richard
Coeur-de-Lion, addressed his famous prison song--made of her court of
Champagne a school of good manners with all the ceremonial of the Midi's
_cour d'amour_. What M. Gaston Paris calls poet-laureates' work, _poésie
courtoise_, became the vogue, and the Countess Marie herself wrote in
the troubadour manner. She encouraged the best of the XII-century poets,
Crestien de Troyes (d. 1175), suggesting to him the romances of the
Breton cycle, Lancelot, Tristan, and Percival.[152] Through Crestien the
story of the Holy Grail spread over Europe. In him the trouvères new
ideals of chivalry met the Midi's refined gallantry, and the Celtic
themes which he versified brought what was needed of passion and
profundity.
All Europe then drew its poetic inspirations from the _matière de
France_, as France in her turn was enriching herself from the
inexhaustible _matière de Bretagne_. The XII-century French trouvères
were imitated by the German Minnesingers, by the early songsters of
England, Spain, and Portugal, and in Italy the precursors of Dante
preferred the use of the Romance tongues of France. In the fecund hour
wherein our modern civilization was conceived, France gave to the
Western World her architecture, her sculpture, and her poetry. At the
cathedral doors of Verona, Roland and Oliver were sculpted.
The international city of Troyes saw the creation of the Templars Order
at her Council of 1128, whither had come Hugues de Payns, a knight
related to the reigning counts. Taking part in the First Crusade, he
proved himself a true _prud'homme_ in Palestine by forming a band of
volunteer knights to escort unprotected pilgrims. At the Council of
Troyes he won recognition for his monk-knights. St. Bernard championed
them, drew up their rule, and gave them their white robe and red cross.
With the birth of the national art rose this great military Order and
with its decline it was stricken down. When the lust of gain replaced
aspiration, men no longer went crusading or built cathedrals.
The ancient city of Troyes is not only associated with epic
poetry--"history before there are historians"--but is linked with the
earliest two historians who wrote in the vernacular, Villehardouin and
Joinville. "_Mes lengages est buens car en France fui nez_," boasted the
Champagne poet, who tells us that God listened by preference to his
speech, since he had made it lighter and better than any other, of more
brevity, of nobler amplitude. Villehardouin's record of the Fourth
Crusade, the _Conquête de Constantinople_, possesses the same powerful
simplicity as the greatest of all chansons-de-geste, _Roland_. He was
born near Troyes, in whose convents lived two of his daughters and his
two sisters, and to whose churches he left property.