Gothic in the Midi
The giant struggle we have witnessed is but the beginning of a long
and complicated historical crisis in which men will have to make
their choice between the unlimited augmentation of power (by force,
riches, and success) and a forward-moving moral progress (by
justice, charity, and loyalty). If we live always in exterior
things, if we are always in movement, we become, little by little,
incapable of recollection and fecund meditation.
--GUGLIELMO FERRERO, 1917.
It has been said that the Midi adhered long, if not always, to
Romanesque architecture, even when employing the Gothic vault. Gothic
art was not an indigenous development in the south, but was brought in
the wake of political events, when central France and Languedoc became
one with the royal domain. It proceeded, in part, from the architecture
of southwest France, and in part from the classic Ile-de-France Picard
region.
The realization of the local type of Midi Gothic was Albi's fortress
cathedral, which comprises a wide unaisled hall covered by twelve bays
of diagonal vaults whose span is sixty feet--the width of Amiens' nave
being merely forty-five feet. The buttress are disguised as walls
between the side chapels, the windows are long, narrow lancets, there is
no triforium, and the roof is flat. Ogival art such as this has retained
all the grand simplicity of Romanesque.
The chief care of the Midi architect was to avoid the flying buttress;
he had inherited Rome's admiration for wide, unincumbered interiors, and
its aversion to showing the structural skeleton. His warm sun precluded
the use of wall inclosures that were composed entirely of stained glass,
which fragile screens would have necessitated wide-spreading
buttresses. He seemed to disdain sculpture. And yet, during the
pre-Gothic day, Languedoc had excelled in that important branch of the
builder's art, as Moissac's wealth of imagery and Elne's lovely cloister
show.
Various causes led to the nudity of sculpture in the later churches of
the south. The Gothic cathedrals of the Midi were erected after two
generations of the Albigensian strife had impoverished the race. The new
mendicant Orders of Francis and Dominic advocated austerity; the best
Gothic of Provence is the Dominican church of St. Maximin. The building
material available in some of the central and southern provinces did not
lend itself to ornamentation; the lava of Auvergne, the granite of
Limousin, and the brick of the Toulouse region are unyielding to
sculpture.
The chief Gothic churches of the Midi were built in the second half of
the XIII and the first part of the XIV centuries. First there rose in
central France the sister cathedrals of Clermont and Limoges--northern
Gothic infused with the regional spirit. Directly derived from them are
the cathedrals of Toulouse and Narbonne. Albi Cathedral was not begun
till 1282. The choir of Bordeaux, built by the first of the Avignon
popes, is a classic of Rayonnant Gothic, and so is that jewel of
Carcassonne Cité, the whilom cathedral of St. Nazaire. St. Sauveur, at
Aix-en-Provence, the cathedral of Rodez, and Béziers' fortified church
were the work of the successors of the apogee period of Gothic. At
Montpellier, Mende, La Chaise Dieu, and Avignon, the XIV-century popes,
all of whom were meridionals, built Gothic halls and chapels.
Memorable and interesting as are the Gothic monuments of the Midi, the
traveler carries away the impression that the inmost soul of these
central and southern provinces lingers most happily in the venerated
shrines of Our Lady and St. Michael at Le Puy, in such churches as Notre
Dame-du-Port, St. Sernin, St. Trophime, in the sculptured portal of St.
Gilles, and in Maguelonne's isolated cathedral of St. Peter.
CLERMONT-FERRAND[206]
Si c'est un aveuglement surnaturel de vivre sans chercher ce qu'on
est, c'en est un terrible de vivre mal en croyant Dieu.... La
conduite de Dieu, qui dispose toute choses avec douceur, est de
mettre la religion dans l'esprit par les raisons, et dans le
coeur par la grâce.--PASCAL (1623-62; born in Clermont).
In mediæval reckoning that mountainous, central province of France which
was called Auvergne was counted in Languedoc. Therefore, to place the
cathedral of Clermont in this general group of Midi Gothic is
permissible. It is a daughter of Amiens, of the northern French type,
and yet it belongs in a marked degree to its own volcanic region of
mountains and storms. In it is the endurance and sturdy individuality of
Auvergne, the inmost heart of France, where the Romanesque work may be
said to be indigenous, so directly does it derive from the local
traditions of Rome grafted on those of Gaul, and scarcely touched by
those of Byzantium.
The chief Gothic church of Clermont has in it much of Romanesque
austerity. The black lava of which it is built sets it apart among
French cathedrals. "A pious fear of God makes itself felt in this spot,"
wrote a son of Clermont, Gregory of Tours, of the cathedral governed by
Bishop Sidonius Apollinaris, Gallo-Roman and "last zealot for Latin
letters." And though not a stone of the present edifice is of historian
Gregory's day, one often murmurs in its precincts, "_Terribilis est
locus iste_," and one often experiences in this abode of Jehovah the
Lord, _un frisson d'âme à la Pascal_. In Clermont, where even the serene
Gothic art could not free itself of the fire-torn mountains around, the
somber soul of Pascal first experienced religion. That he should
overstress the fall of man and original sin, what wonder? But Jansenist
in temperament though he was--overwhelmed by man's nothingness and God's
grandeur--the mystic Pascal was no rigid pessimist. Cathedral and man of
genius both preach the resurrection after the fall, both have the upward
surge of hope, even as the fearful summit of the Puy-de-Dôme, standing
over Clermont, outsoars the storm clouds hiding its base, to rear its
head in sunlight.
For all its soberness, the cathedral of Clermont has the true Gothic
sweep of the spirit _au-delà_. Happy the traveler who first approaches
it at sunset, coming slowly across the mountain-walled plain, out of the
Forez hills of rushing torrents where is set the Chaise Dieu. The
cathedral crowns the foothill around which has settled the city, and as
it stands silhouetted against a bluish haze of mountain--the extinct
crater, the Puy-de-Dôme--it fulfills the ideal of a church crowning a
city.[207] Seen from the town, the massed volcanic hills are
sufficiently near for their woods and villages to add picturesque
details to the ever-changing views, yet not so close that they hang
oppressively over the city. Other views of the cathedral can be gained
from the foothills around Royat, whose small, sturdy church was
fortified to bar the valley into the huge mountain behind it.
Lava stone is dusty black, therefore on closer inspection Clermont
Cathedral has somewhat the aspect of the smoke-stained churches in
manufacturing centers. The gray-black Volvic stone is of better effect
within the church, though at first that interior may strike a chill.
Lava does not lend itself to sculptural decoration. However, the
essential lines of Clermont are of such masterly proportions, of so
grand a simplicity, that deeper and deeper grows the influence of this
church on those who frequent it. The diagonals etched black against the
white vault panels fall with peculiar ease and vigor on the tall dark
piers. The slenderness of those clustered columns is not foolhardy,
since lava has much resistant force. The single aisles of the choir and
the double aisles of the nave rise to half the height of the church, and
we have seen at Bourges and Le Mans that when pier arches are above the
average height there is given to an edifice a note of exotic beauty.
Like Amiens, the height of this church is three times greater than its
width. Its vista is closed imposingly; the imaged windows of its high
apsidal chapels appear symmetrically behind the arches that surround the
sanctuary.
The story of the chief church of Auvergne interests the archæologist.
The crypt belonged to the previous Carolingian church, and so did the
two western towers until the XIX century. M. Viollet-le-Duc removed the
ancient belfries, extended the nave by two bays, and built the present
towers, whose sky-pointing spires are superb in the general view of
Clermont, but whose details can be criticized, as, for instance, the
blocking of corner niches by pinnacles when the purpose of a niche is to
hold a statue. Modern Gothic is too often a cold, hard imitation. The
stair approaches here lack the old-time amplitude of the triple portals.
The XIII-century cathedral of Clermont was practically the first Gothic
monument raised in Auvergne, which province adhered stubbornly to its
own exceptional Romanesque architecture. The first stone was laid in
1248, in the same year that Cologne Cathedral was begun. The founder,
Bishop Hugues de la Tour, had attended the dedication of the
Sainte-Chapelle at Paris, and then had returned to Clermont to begin
his own cathedral. That same year he started out as a crusader, in the
train of Louis IX, but as he died in Egypt the work on the church was
not continued seriously till 1253, when St. Louis helped to raise to the
see of Clermont his friend Guy de la Tour, nephew of Hugues. Belonging
to a feudal family of great possessions, the new bishop, too, was able
to be munificent toward his cathedral.
In 1254, when St. Louis was returning from his unsuccessful crusade, he
paused in Clermont, to replenish his depleted treasury. Ten years later
he presented windows to the cathedral, on the occasion of his son
Philippe's marriage there to the daughter of Jaime el Conquistador of
Aragon. The lights in the Lady chapel show the fleur-de-lis and the
donjons of Castile, and are apparently the work of Paris craftsmen, who
controlled the vitrine art of the later XIII century. That unskilled
local workers set them in place would seem to be indicated by the
armature bars which do not follow the contour of the medallions, as was
then the custom. In the choir's clearstory are the single figures and
grisaille that were in vogue during the next century.
Jean Deschamps made the plan of Clermont Cathedral. He may have studied
in the north, since certain traits of Picardy appear here, but the
spirit of the work is regional. His windows do not fill the entire upper
space between the active members. Under Bishop Guy de la Tour he
directed the building of the cathedral for almost forty years, till
1287. Perhaps he designed the cathedral of Limoges, in west-central
France, since its plan and details closely resemble those of Clermont.
Bishop Aymar de Cros, who carried on the works in Auvergne's capital,
was another of the schoolmen who were builders of churches; such was his
intellect that St. Thomas Aquinas willed to him his manuscripts in the
hope that his _Summa_ might be completed.
Under Bishop Aubert Aycelin de Montaigu a new master-of-works took
charge--Pierre Deschamps (1287-1325), the son probably of Jean who had
made the plans. He erected the four westernmost bays of the choir, the
transept, and the easternmost bay of the nave in its lower parts. From
1340 to 1359 the master-of-works was Pierre de Cabazat, who added three
more bays to the nave, and was employed in those same years in making,
with Hugues Morel, the abbey church of La Chaise Dieu in the Forez
mountains across the plain from Clermont.[208] An Avignon pope, Clement
VI, was the patron who undertook that gaunt granite structure, as full
of sorrow as the times that produced it. Clement had been abbot at La
Chaise Dieu, so naturally he contributed toward the erection of the
cathedral of Auvergne as did his successor at Avignon, Innocent VI (d.
1362), a former bishop of Clermont.
The city was fortunate to have one of the notable D'Amboise family for
its prelate in the late-Gothic day, Jacques d'Amboise (1505-16), who as
abbot of Cluny had built at Paris the stately residence called the Hôtel
Cluny. Close to his Auvergne cathedral he set up the Fontaine d'Amboise,
now on the Cours Sablon. The eloquent Massillon was a later bishop of
Clermont (1717-42); he founded its town library and bequeathed his
fortune to the sick poor of the Hôtel Dieu. Before the French
Revolution had turned to violence and destruction, in Clermont Cathedral
gathered the people, with hearts beating high with generous desire for
reform, for the blessing of their National Guard banner, embroidered by
a community of nuns. With all too tragic swiftness came the day when in
the same church were lighted bonfires for the destruction of vestments
and missals. Among the precious things then wrecked was a portrait
statue of Louis IX, made while his friend Guy de la Tour was bishop.
Only by chance did the cathedral itself, riddled with bullets, escape
annihilation.
The see of Clermont has gone by various designations; so ancient is this
city that it has been called successively by five different names. Here
where is more Celtic blood than in any other region in France, save
Brittany, the Celtic hero, Vercingetorex, inflicted on Cæsar his sole
defeat. When Gaul became Christian, Clermont continued to be important.
Her first bishop, St. Austremonius, was one of the seven whom Gregory of
Tours says were sent into Gaul in 250 by Pope Fabian, with St. Denis of
Paris, St. Martial of Limoges, St. Saturninus of Toulouse, St. Just of
Narbonne, St. Trophimus of Arles, and St. Gatien of Tours. At the close
of the V century Clermont's bishop, the celebrated Caius Apollinaris
Sidonius, poet and scholar, son-in-law of an emperor, made his stand for
Latin culture against Teutonic submersion. Dearly he loved his own
enlightened Lyons, but of Clermont he said, "Such an horizon would make
a stranger forget his native land." A generation later another
outstanding Gallo-Roman bishop of Clermont was St. Gall, uncle of
Gregory of Tours, who was so just to all that even Jews marched with
lighted tapers at his funeral. Some twenty-six of Clermont's bishops
have been canonized.
The third cathedral of the city, and that which immediately preceded the
present one, was consecrated in 946 by Bishop Étienne II. Clermont had
suffered grievously by Saracen invasion, followed by the Northmen
inroads. After the second Norman sacking the ruined houses smoldered for
a month, and in the streets corpses lay unburied, for the population in
terror had fled to the countryside. The bishop called back his flock to
remake their homes. In his new church was a precocious use of ambulatory
and radiating chapels, a disposition which was to lead to the chief
beauty in the Gothic cathedrals of the land, but which made its
appearance in the Ile-de-France only in the XII century. Bishop
Étienne's Carolingian cathedral became the prototype for the
Auvergnat-Romanesque school.
In the good Étienne's church prayed the first crusaders when by papal
bidding there gathered at Clermont a mighty council at whose tenth and
last session was preached the First Crusade. Nature herself seemed to
have prepared the people's minds for some vast enterprise, for all the
chroniclers of western Christendom describe the sublime shower of astral
stars, thick as snowflakes, which whirled in the sky. So in this same
primeval Auvergne, some six centuries earlier, at the break-up of Rome's
empire before the invading Barbarians, there had for three years been
earthquakes and fiery volcanic eruptions.
Tradition says that the momentous gathering of 1095 took place in what
is now the Place Delille and the adjacent Cours Sablon. Many of our
building friends were present--Bishop Odo from Bayeux, Bishop Ives from
Chartres, Bishop Hoël from Le Mans, the abbots Geoffrey of Vendôme,
Jarenton of St. Bénigne, and St. Hugues of Cluny, and from Spain came
the great Bernardo who ruled the see of Toledo. For the people of
Clermont to-day, November 28, 1095, is as vivid a reality as any of the
revolutions of yesterday. A statue of Urban II stands outside the
cathedral. Even so he stood, said a witness, as one having authority,
high above the vast throng, on one side of him the stunted Peter the
Hermit of Picardy, and on the other the Norman-Italian Bohemund of
Taranto, a veritable Greek god in build and feature. From end to end of
France Urban journeyed to arouse the people. Now he used persuasion, now
invective; sometimes he appealed to idealistic motives or propounded
colonial policies very like modern ideas. Europe had good cause to be
apprehensive. The Almoravids had advanced into Spain. The Seljukian
Turks were a menace more serious than the Saracens. Urban understood the
peril and raised his voice in warning. "Cease to be a terror to peaceful
citizens," he exhorted the gathered barons. "Turn your arms to the
defense of the soil trod by the King of Kings, of the tomb over which
rose the sun of the Resurrection.... The great cities of Asia Minor have
fallen a prey to the Mussulman, who has planted the crescent by the
Hellespont, whence he menaces Europe.... Nation of the Franks, set
beyond the mountains, nation cherished and chosen of God, as clearly
your high deeds prove, nation distinct from others by your situation, by
your faith, by your respect for Mother Church, to you I address my
plea.... Who should right these wrongs but you who have received from on
high agility of body, the training of arms and grandeur of soul?...
Cease these mutual wars!... Jesus Christ died for you. You should be
willing to die for him." And a great answering cry rose from the hundred
thousand gathered there, "God wills it," to be the rallying call of the
crusades.
Thus in the heart of France a French pope initiated the cosmic ventures
which were to change European ways of life, ventures in which Frenchmen
played a leading part so that to this day a European is called a Frank
by a Mohammedan. One can easily see in the crusades only their failures
and their crimes, one can sneer at them with Voltaire--who sneered at
Jeanne d'Arc. Europe's aggression was needed then to save Christianity
from Asiatic immobility. The benefits of the crusades outweigh their
delinquencies.
_Gesta Dei per Francos_ a monk called his chronicle of the First
Crusade. And while those feats by God through the men of France in the
East went on, other feats for God were ventured in France, the raising
of Gothic cathedrals, sister movements that gave wings to the soul,
purifying and molding the faith and the genius of those virile and
faulty generations. Already the movement was stirring. On his way to
Clermont, Urban II had seen Verona Cathedral building and S. Ambrogio's
at Milan. He had blessed S. Abondio at Como. In France he blessed the
new choir of St. Sernin at Toulouse and the material gathered for the
cathedral at Carcassonne. Cluny's new choir he dedicated, and various
other Romanesque churches. Before the Second Crusade set out Suger had
built St. Denis.
[Illustration: _Notre Dame du Port at Clermont-Ferrand. Typical
XII-century Church of Auvergne's Romanesque School_]
In Clermont, though the cathedral of 1095 has been superseded by the
present Gothic structure, there is intact a venerated sanctuary where
Urban had a votive Mass chanted on the eve of the historic council.
Every morning one can see the men and women of the city gather in the
crypt of Notre Dame-du-Port to beg a blessing on their working day. They
may not be able to put into words what it is each feels in that
subterranean chamber impregnated by the petitions of those of their race
who have gone before them, but each knows that here his prayer has
plenitude and patriotic aspiration. A _custodia matutina_ in Notre
Dame-du-Port, _usque ad noctem_ in the cathedral. One fears God in the
cathedral, one loves God in Notre Dame.
Notre Dame-du-Port is a masterpiece of the Romanesque school of
Auvergne.[209] When it was built lava stone was not in use for
construction, but solely for decorative purposes. So curiously alike are
all the pre-Gothic churches in this province that one architect might
have planned them. The venerable crypt of Notre Dame-du-Port was built
in the XI century. The Romanesque church above it was constructed during
the XII century and has all the Auvergnese traits: a central tower in
two stories set on a barlong which forms a kind of upper transept, a
compact apse with snug absidioles whose exterior walls are decorated by
colored volcanic stones in marquetry designs, a western narthex, and a
principal span covered by a half-barrel vault undivided by transverse
arches and buttressed by side aisles surmounted by tribunes, which
meant that light entered the middle vessel indirectly. Auvergne, like
Burgundy, attempted to light her upper church by a clearstory, but found
the experiment hazardous and gave it up. Her churches have stood intact
through centuries of harsh winters. The very mortar lines were made
means of decoration; wide bands of red mortar were found to be effective
with blocks of black lava.[210] In the volcanic soil of Auvergne were
elements that rendered mortar as resistant as stone. The local
Gallo-Romans had used the polychrome lava as decoration.
The interior apse of Notre Dame-du-Port is a gem of masoncraft. Around
the tiny processional path stand engaged pillars that are decoration and
buttresses, too. The regional skill in sculpture appears in the capitals
of the main piers, where the story is related with animation, even if
the figures are too squat and the heads too large. The armor indicates
that the work was done early in the XII century. The doorjamb images at
the southern entrance of the transept were sculptured in the years when
St. Thomas Becket came to Clermont wearing the white robe of the
Cistercians who had given him hospitality in France. Crowds gathered
every day to receive his blessing, for all Christendom held him to be a
saint defending right and liberty. A cast of Clermont's archaic portal,
whose charm is exceptional, with its seraphim of the mystic triple
wings, has been placed in the Trocadéro Museum at Paris. When this side
entrance was completed, Richard Coeur-de-Lion was making over his
claims in Auvergne to his lifetime rival, Philippe-Auguste, which
cession was to lead, in time, to the erection of the Ile-de-France
Picardy cathedral of Clermont.
Some of the most admirably sculptured capitals in Auvergne are at Mozac,
a suburb of Riom.[211] The nave of Mozac's abbey church was built from
1131 to 1147 by a brother of Peter the Venerable, who made Cluny's nave,
and of the doughty abbot, Pons de Montboissier, who erected Vézelay's
portico of paradise, all three of them belonging to a feudal family of
Auvergne. The small abbatial holds a priceless treasure, the reliquary
of St. Calmin, which an abbot presented in 1168. Its fourteen panels of
Limoges enamel are ornamented in gold. A bold attempt was made to rob
the church of this national heritage, so it is now protected by electric
bells and every kind of burglar alarm.
"_Clermont le riche, Riom le beau_," so ran the old saying. Riom, the
small but proud rival of the capital of Auvergne, was a town of
magistrates who built themselves Gothic Renaissance houses as individual
as the pre-Gothic work of the province. The church of St. Amable has a
Romanesque nave and an early-Gothic choir. Jean, Duke of Berry, had Guy
and André de Dammartin design the XIV-century Sainte-Chapelle for his
palace at Riom. Its brilliantly cold stained glass was commanded for the
wedding, in 1389, of sixty-year-old Duke John and the thirteen-year-old
heiress, Jeanne de Boulogne. Froissart has described the curious union.
Each window panel has a single statue under a canopy; the prophets and
apostles carry appropriately inscribed scrolls. A XV-century window,
representing the Bourbon dukes, Jean II and Pierre II, patrons of
Moulins, contains a St. Marguerite so similar to one in the "Book of
Hours" which Jehan Fouquet painted for Étienne Chevalier that the window
is thought to be designed by the great _primitif_ of Tours.
It may be to artists of Jean de Berry's entourage that we owe the most
entrancing Madonna of Flamboyant art, the _vierge à l'oiseau_, an image
in the regional stone which stands at the trumeau of the XV-century
church of Notre Dame-du Mathuret. One student after another has
discussed the date of this exquisite figure, so purely French in
essence, whose simplicity is as ample and unaffected as the best
XIII-century art. Work as exceptional as this is of no date or school,
but is due to some unrecorded individual genius. In that same
late-Gothic day the spirit of St. Louis and Joinville lived again in
_The Very Joyous, Pleasing and Diverting History of the Gentle Lord of
Bayard, written by the Loyal Servitor_.
The serrated foliage of the Madonna's crown proves the sculpture to be
late-Gothic. M. Gonse places it midway in the XIV century, M. Vitry
early in the XVI, and M. Enlart thinks that it could not have been
produced before the XV century. MM. Mâle, Palustre, Merimée, and others
have discussed it. In the ideal innocence and dignity of the Virgin is
Michel Colombe's charm. The legend was that in Egypt the infant Jesus
modeled images of birds, then breathed on them, imparting life. This is
the mystic moment which the unknown master of Riom chose to render;
there is a brooding reverence in the young mother's face as she gazes at
her Son, who ponders in a divine wonderment at a bird about to fly from
his hand.
THE ROMANESQUE CATHEDRAL OF LE PUY[212]
Into whatever country you carry war, remember that children, women
and churchmen and the poor are not your enemies.--(Dying words of
BERTRAND DUGUESCLIN, killed near Le Puy, 1380).
Le Puy is hoary with history. Perched high on basaltic rocks near the
source of the Loire, picturesque beyond description, it stood on the
great pilgrimage route from Italy to Compostela, the _Via Francigena_ by
which French art and poetry passed into Spain and penetrated to Italy,
along whose pilgrim roads are found portal images of the Round Table
heroes and the sculptured tympanums of France.[213] The cathedral is
built near the top of the town's hill, and above it on the hillcrest has
been set a mammoth statue of Our Lady cast from cannon taken at
Sebastopol. In the immediate suburbs rises another mass of volcanic
rock, a needle some two hundred and fifty feet in height. The oldest
part of the chapel crowning that extraordinary little basalt mountain
dates before the year 1000. The sanctuary is trefoil, like the
early-Christian churches at Rome, and like St. Laurent at Grenoble.[214]
At the end of the XI century St. Michel d'Aiguille was enlarged
irregularly. From time immemorial a shrine dedicated to the Archangel
has crowned the pinnacle: "In the presence of angels I shall sing my
psalms."
The approach to the cathedral of Le Puy, while less difficult than the
precipitous needle of St. Michel, is equally romantic and solemn. You
mount the hill by the Street of Tables, so called from the days of
pilgrimages, when the merchants' booths lined it. As you climb, the way
changes to a broad flight of steps, more than a hundred, and up and up
you mount, with the polychromatic façade of the cathedral rising before
you on high. Then suddenly, almost before you are aware of what has
happened, you pass right under that western front of the church,
ascending always, climbing under the cathedral's western bays. Formerly
you could have mounted right into the very sanctuary itself, coming to
it through the pavement. To-day the stairway branches, and you enter the
church at the side. Never was there such an approach to the House of
Prayer as this, never a more sublime and grandiose conception than the
shadowed stair over which hangs the façade. Halfway up, where stand red
porphyry columns and doors of chiseled bronze, is carved, "If you do not
fear crime, fear to cross this threshold, for the Queen of Heaven wishes
a devotion without stain."
M. Thiollier has shown that the Romanesque school of the Velay region
was an intermediary between Burgundy, Auvergne, and the Midi, with the
meridional influences the strongest. Le Puy's choir, transept, and two
bays of the nave were erected in the XI century, and of that date is the
cloister walk that touches the church. The transept has a tribune at
each end. Beyond the chevet stood a tower of which the actual one is a
replica. As all the level space available was covered by these
structures, it became necessary, when they wished to lengthen the nave
in the XII century, to build out from the hill a vast masonry foundation
as a platform. It is under those westernmost bays that mounts the
stairway of Wonderland. Each bay of the nave is covered by an oblong
cupola set on an octagonal base, of a type found again only at Poitiers,
in the church of St. Hilaire. At Le Puy the side aisles buttress the
cupolas.
No one should miss seeing a XV-century fresco discovered under
whitewash, in 1860, in the library off the cloister. The Liberal Arts
are symbolized by women of the type of Anne of Brittany with bombous
foreheads, and at the feet of each sits a disciple. Thus Aristotle, with
the sensitive face of a scholar, is seated at the feet of Logic, and
Cicero learns of Rhetoric.
[Illustration: _Le Puy in Old Auvergne_]
The cathedral of Le Puy has been venerated and visited by practically
every ruler of France from Charlemagne to Francis I. This ancient city
was almost chosen as the meeting place for launching the First Crusade.
Urban II paused here in 1095, and the bishop of Le Puy, Adhémar de
Monteil (1087-1100), accompanied him to Clermont, and when the pope's
great rallying speech was ended it was Bishop Adhémar, his face shining
with enthusiasm, who first stepped forward to take the cross. Urban
appointed him the spiritual chief of the expedition, and his skill in
military strategics proved of use since he had been a knight before
becoming a churchman. This good man died in the grievous days at
Antioch, worn out with his efforts to check disorders in the crusaders'
camp. To Adhémar de Monteil has been attributed the _Salve Regina_
called in the olden times the anthem of Puy. To Le Puy's famous shrine
St. Louis presented a thorn from the Crown he had obtained from
Constantinople, and on his way back from his first crusade he deposited
in the church the curious image of a black Virgin given him in Egypt.
THE CATHEDRAL OF LIMOGES[215]
Bien me sourit le doux printemps,
Qui fait venir fleurs et feuillages;
Et bien me plait lorsque j'entends
Des oiseaux le gentil ramage.
Mais j'aime mieux quand sur le pré
Je vois l'étendard arboré,
Flottant comme un signal de guerre.
Quand j'entends par mont et par vaux
Courir chevalier et chevaux
Et sous leur pas frémir la terre,
Et gens crier: "A l'aide! A l'aide!"
De voir les petits et les grands
Dans les fossés roulers mourants.
A ce plaisir tout plaisir cède.[216]
--BERTRAN DE BORN (1140-1215).
Although in plan, in the mode of construction, in the covering of
chapels and various details, the resemblances between the cathedrals of
Clermont and Limoges are such that it is thought the same Jean Deschamps
designed both, the cathedral of St. Étienne at Limoges possesses its own
individual character because of the fine-grained, compact granite of
which it is built and the unusual talent of its masons. M.
Viollet-le-Duc considered the apse of Limoges one of the most scientific
of Gothic constructions. The very beautiful leaf foliage is as crisply
cut as when it came from the master's hand. Full of character are the
profiles of the molds used in the triforium for decorative effect.
Because of the enduring quality of their building material, the
Romanesque edifices of Limousin lasted so well that there was little
temptation to tear them down in order to substitute Gothic churches.
Till the Revolution, Limoges kept its great pre-Gothic abbatial of St.
Martial, and its cathedral was, like that of Clermont in Auvergne, an
isolated example of Gothic. Like Clermont's chief church, the western
bays of Limoges were not built till the XIX century. The general aspect
of St. Étienne is Rayonnant. Its Flamboyant Gothic additions were held
in rigorous restraint. When Bishop Aimeric de la Serre (1246-73), a man
of wealth, determined to remake his church, he willed his fortune to the
enterprise. As Bishop Aimeric had just died, the first stone was laid on
June 1, 1273, by Hélie de Malemort, doyen of the chapter. For over fifty
years they built steadily till under Bishop Hélie de Talleyrand the
choir was completed in 1327. A second period of work, from 1344 to the
end of the century, resulted in the south arm of the transept whose rose
is Rayonnant, whereas that to the north is Flamboyant. In its tendency
to eliminate the horizontal line Limoges is eminently a church of the
XIV century. The shafts before the piers rise unbroken from pavement to
vault-springing; the pier arches at the apse curve are very pointed. Yet
there is no geometric dryness in this interior. Plain wall surfaces
above the main arcade and around the triforium and clearstory add to its
robust aspect.
In 1370 the Black Prince sacked Limoges and left little but the
cathedral standing. Froissart recounts that "there was no pity taken of
the poor people who had wrought no manner of treason ... more than three
thousand persons of all ages and both sexes were slain that day ... and
the city clean brent and brought to destruction." It took time and
treasure to repair the devastation. Only from 1458 to 1490 were the two
easternmost bays of the nave erected.
The fourth period of energy at Limoges, from 1515 to 1530, created a gem
of Flamboyant Gothic, the transept's north façade, which is called the
Portail de St. Jean, as it stood near a church dedicated to the Baptist.
Bishop Philippe de Montmorency began it, and his successor, César de
Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, completed it, as their carved armorials bear
witness. Because it stood on the emplacement of the old Romanesque
transept, it was somewhat too narrow. To obviate that impression the
corner buttresses were offset at an angle. The wooden doors of this, the
main entrance to Limoges Cathedral, are of the Renaissance. They
represent the stoning of St. Stephen, and the first Christian missionary
of Limousin, St. Martial, to whom an early local martyr, St. Valérie, is
presenting her decapitated head. The ring of St. Valérie gave symbolic
investiture to the dukes of Aquitaine.
Limoges was active in the Renaissance days. Her bishop, Jean de Langeac,
erected an elaborate _jubé_ between choir and transept, a rood loft
which is one mass of hanging keystones, channeling, bas-reliefs, and
arabesque panels, with six big statues of the Virtues made in 1536 by an
artist of Tours named Jean Arnaud. It is plain to see that the
Renaissance was in full swing. The Labors of Hercules were set forth,
and Bacchus was placed beside Ambrose and Augustine. Perhaps the huge
_jubé_ and the episcopal tomb both came from the studios of Tours, where
had settled the earliest artists of the transalpine Renaissance. The
master hand that made the bishop's tomb, says M. Mâle, followed Dürer,
but his eight Apocalypse panels were an improvement over the designs of
the German. Unfortunately the bronze recumbent figure of the munificent
prelate whose pride it was to adorn his church was melted up for pennies
in 1793. There are two other notable tombs in the choir's procession
path--that of a bishop-builder, Raynaud de la Porte--the only funeral
monument in France that represents stone curtains drawn aside by
angels--and the tomb of his nephew, Bernard Brun (d. 1350). Three of the
Avignon popes were natives of art-loving Limousin.
The Revolution robbed Limoges of the noble abbey church of St. Martial,
which had been dedicated by the pope of the First Crusade in 1095. St.
Martial had formed the center of the Château section of Limoges, ruled
by its own counts with a totally different administration from that of
the Cité division, where the cathedral stood, and whose civic master was
the bishop. Many a feud had Cité with Château. The abbatial of the
"apostle of Aquitaine" would tell us the story had not blind passion
laid it in ruins.
For three hundred years no effort was made at Limoges to complete its
cathedral's nave until, through the enterprise of Monseigneur Duquesnay,
the first stone of the sorely needed western church was laid in 1876 and
the structure finished in 1888. It was joined, by means of a narthex or
forechurch, to the ancient tower which had been built isolated before
the Romanesque cathedral of St. Étienne. In its three lower stories, now
hidden by cumbersome masonry propping, save on the east side, the tower
belonged to the cathedral which Urban II blessed in 1095 when he
dedicated St. Martial's abbatial. Its four upper stories, mainly of the
XII century, were begun by Bishop Sebrand-Chabot while the overlord of
the province, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, was on his crusading venture. In
this very region, at the castle of Chalus near Limoges, the Lion-hearted
met his death in 1199.
The dialect of Limousin was considered the purest form of Provençal by
the troubadours. Here in the west center of France, Coeur-de-Lion's
troubadour friend, the malignant breeder of dissensions, Bertran de
Born, had his castle of Hautefort south of Limoges. He excited Henry
Plantagenet against his sons, and spurred on the sons to rebellion.
Unlike the gentle Valérie who carries in her hands her own head with
right Christian pride since she lost it to witness to the planting of
the Cross, Bertran de Born, sower of discord, is represented swinging
his severed head by the hair like a lantern. So Dante saw him in the
ninth chasm of hell herded with the malicious ones who had abused the
attribute of reason: "I made the father and the son rebels to each
other," he wailed. "Because I parted persons thus united, I carry my
brain, ah, me! parted from its source. Thus the law of retribution is
observed in me."[217] And equally merciless has been the law of
retribution for Limoges, than which no other city has suffered more from
pillage, pest, and fire. Froissart tells us that during centuries the
frontier lands of Limousin and Gascony exercised brigandage as a
_métier_.
Like the three lower stories of the tower, the crypt belonged to the
XI-century Romanesque cathedral of Limoges. On its groin vault was
painted a Byzantinesque Christ surrounded by the symbols of the
Evangelists. The cathedral has recently lost by theft some precious
enamels. From father to son in Limoges passed the skill in this
beautiful art craft. St. Eloi was apprenticed to a goldsmith in Limoges
in the VII century. At Le Mans is the XII-century plaque of Geoffrey
Plantagenet, at Mozac an unrivaled Limousin reliquary, and Jean, duc de
Berry, prince of amateurs, once possessed the best XIII-century work of
Limoges enamel, the gold King's Cup, now in the British Museum. In St.
Pierre's at Chartres are the splendid Apostle plaques of the XVI century
by Léonard Limosin. The earlier method had been to sink the enamel like
a jewel in cells or _cloisons_, hence the name _cloisonné_, but the
Renaissance artists used no inclosing ribbon of metal.
The only ancient windows remaining in the cathedral's clearstory are the
two at the apse end, which a canon, Pierre de la Rodier, presented. When
he became bishop of Carcassonne he built the south chapel that opens
from St. Nazaire's nave (1323-30). In the cathedral chapels are some
XV-and XVI-century lights, and fragments of earlier glass. On the same
river, Vienne, which at Limoges is crossed by two noble XIII-century
bridges, lies Eymoutiers, some thirty miles to the west, between
Clermont and Limoges. Its remarkable collection of windows is entirely
of the XV century; each panel contains a single figure in an
architectural setting.
French writers claim that between Eymoutiers and Limoges took place the
apparition of the Infant Jesus to St. Anthony of Padua which became a
favorite theme with painters, but the Italians insist that Padua was the
privileged spot. Limoges city has its St. Anthony tradition. In its
square, they say, while the saint was preaching in 1225, his audience
was untouched by a rainstorm that inundated the other townspeople. As we
have seen that the building of great churches was preceded in most cases
by a spiritual regeneration, it is not extreme to think that the fervor
roused in the Midi by the great son of St. Francis had much to do with
the laying of the corner stone of Limoges Cathedral in 1273.
THE CATHEDRAL OF BORDEAUX[218]
Celuy qui, d'une doulceur et facilité naturelle, mépriseroit les
offenses reçues, feroit chose très belle et digne de louange: mais
celuy qui, picqué et oultré jusques au vif d'une offense,
s'armeroit des armes de la raison contre ce furieux appétit de
vengeance, et aprèz un grand conflict s'en rendroit enfin maistre,
feroit sans doubte beaucoup plus. Celuy là feroit bien; et celuy
cy, vertueusement: l'une action se pourroit dire bonté: l'aultre,
vertu; car il semble que le nom de la vertu présuppose de la
difficulté et du contraste. Nous nommons Dieu bon, fort, et
libéral, et juste, mais nous ne le nommons pas
_vertueux_.--MONTAIGNE (Mayor of Bordeaux from 1581 to 1585).
While Bordeaux has the warm fertility of the Midi, there is much of the
north in the big commercial city. And its cathedral of St. André is
typical of the dual temperament. The nave is the aisleless, wide hall
preferred by meridionals, the choir has the procession path with its
circlet of chapels loved by the north. Excepting Le Mans, Amiens, and
Rheims, it is the longest cathedral in France.
Bordeaux was an important city in the wide possessions of the dukes of
Aquitaine. In 1137 Aliénor, the daughter of the last William, was wedded
in its cathedral to the prince who immediately ascended the French
throne as Louis VII. When she left him after fifteen years and wedded
Henry Plantagenet the rich city on the Garonne passed under English
rule. In all the vicissitudes of the three hundred years that followed,
from 1154 to 1453, Bordeaux' self-interest kept her faithful to her
masters beyond the sea, the chief customers in her wine trade. Bordeaux
remained French, however, in race and in the expression of race,
architecture. Aliénor's second husband, Henry II of England, was, like
herself, more French than English; of his thirty-four years' reign he
passed only twelve in England, and his son, Coeur-de-Lion, was another
Anglo-Frenchman.
The hardy, domelike vaults carried on diagonals that span the nave of
Angers' Cathedral (c. 1150) have been considered the earliest extant
examples of the Gothic of the West. And yet it is possible, thinks M.
Brutails, the erudite archivist of the Gironde, that the vaults of the
same type which were built over the nave of the present cathedral of
Bordeaux antedated the notable ones of Angers. In Bordeaux occurred one
of the premature isolated examples of Gothic ribs under the south tower
of Ste. Croix. During a revival of builder's energy, from 1052 to 1127
(under the eighth and ninth dukes of Aquitaine), Ste. Croix and St.
Seurin were reconstructed and St. André begun. It seems more reasonable
to suppose, however, that Anjou, where first the cupola church of
Aquitaine met the diagonal ribs of northern France, should have been the
cradle of that phase of the new architecture which we call Plantagenet.
The nave of St. André is a difficult page to read, Romanesque, Gothic,
and Renaissance as it now is. The Romano-Byzantine church here which
Urban II blessed in 1096 exists only in vestiges in the lower walls on
either side of the wide hall. Originally the church had side aisles, but
they were obliterated when the XII century spanned the entire width with
Angevin diagonals. The side walls were then made into two stories, a
lower wall arcade surmounted by a window story, such as we have seen in
the cathedrals at Angers and Angoulême. In 1437 an earthquake caused the
collapse of the masonry roof of the four westernmost bays, which were
recovered by a Flamboyant Gothic vaulting rich with supplementary ribs.
The west front of St. André never was developed, as the church abutted
there on the ancient ramparts. The main entrance was the Porte Royale in
the north flank of the nave, whose statues, made in the golden hour of
St. Louis' reign, were used as models by Viollet-le-Duc when he refilled
the empty niches of Notre Dame at Paris. There can be no clearer
exposition of what qualities were lost in Rayonnant Gothic than to pass
from this apogee portal to the smoother, more conventional images at the
northern entrance to the transept; in the rugged apostles, full of
character, is the touch which all time recognizes as genius; in the
aristocratic churchmen of the XIV-century door is mere talent. To the
nave of Bordeaux a XVI-century archbishop, Charles de Grammont, who
initiated here the Italian Renaissance, added an elaborate buttress.
That miniature façade is called the _contrefort de Grammont_.[219]
Under Archbishop de Mallemort (1227-60) St. André superseded St. Seurin
as the cathedral of Bordeaux. As late as 1259 it lacked a suitable
chevet. Gascony was in chaos in those years when Henry III, builder of
Westminster Abbey, sent the Earl of Leicester, Simon de Montfort (son of
the leader of the Albigensian Crusade), to straighten out the
disorders. That strong administrator, who was on the constitutional
liberal side in English politics, was frustrated by Midi corruption.
Only as the XIII century closed was built the present splendid choir of
Bordeaux Cathedral, a classic work of Rayonnant Gothic before that phase
turned to geometric rule. How technique cramped and killed inspiration
can be seen in the later Rayonnant church of St. Michel. At St. André,
it is true, the capitals are slight and the profiles not overvirile.
Decadence is foreshadowed, but not yet is the art academic and
wiredrawn. The Midi appears in the clearstory and triforium, which do
not fill the entire space between the shafts. The partiality of the
meridional for unencumbered interiors had something to do with making
the procession path thirty feet wide. Most grateful is the traveler for
a curving aisle around the sanctuary after having sojourned among the
cupola and hall-like churches of Anjou and Aquitaine. Bordeaux' choir
possesses some good stained glass of its own period, and some of its
buttress statues are among the best imagery of the XIV century. Mary
Magdalene, carrying her vase of ointment, appears as a chatelaine of the
Middle Ages with the bandeau under her chin then fashionable; Aliénor of
Aquitaine could not have been very unlike her.
The most active patron of St. André's Gothic choir was the archbishop of
the city, Bertrand de Got, who in 1305 became Clement V, the first
Avignon pope. When he died, in 1314, the new choir was practically
completed. His image stands at the trumeau of the transept's north door
(the head and hand are reproductions), and around him are six prelates
who may be intended to represent the French bishops whom Clement raised
to the cardinalate. In technique these images may surpass the
weather-beaten apostles at the Porte Royale (c. 1260), but they are
their inferior in spirit. Five of the statues are studies from the same
model. Casts of the transept portal of Bordeaux are in the Kensington
Museum and in the Trocadéro. The Avignon popes were the chief art
patrons of the XV century, with the four Valois princes--Charles V of
France and his brothers at Dijon, Bourges, and Angers. No pontiff was
more munificent than Clement V. While he was bishop at St.
Bertrand-de-Comminges (Haute Garonne)[220] he renewed that small
cathedral, which consists of two unequal parts, a Romanesque façade,
donjon tower, and forechurch of the day when St. Bertrand had been
bishop (1073-1123), and an unaisled Gothic choir, begun by Bertrand de
Got, continued by him while pope and finished by Bishop Hugues de
Chatillon, who died in 1352.
The Rayonnant chevet of Bordeaux Cathedral and its transept, two of
whose towers are spire-crowned, compose an effective architectural
group, with a detached campanile in the gardens. In order to give
employment to the poor, Archbishop Pierre Berland, who had been a
shepherd's son, erected the graceful, isolated tower for bells to hang
in, "that God might be praised in the sky." And the same generations
built St. Michel's tower (1472-92), the highest beacon in southwest
France, mutilated mercilessly by M. Paul Abadie's restoration. The
lifeless church before which it stands is proof of how much needed was
the vim, even if often exaggerated and bizarre, of the late-Gothic
movement. M. Enlart considers Bordeaux and Bayonne[221] to be two of the
principal doors by which the English Curvilinear style entered France.
There its name is Flamboyant Gothic. And yet in this same Midi, M.
Anthyme Saint-Paul, who denies the English origin of French late-Gothic
architecture, claims to have found proof of his theory that already in
Apogee Gothic and in the Rayonnant hour were developing the
characteristics of the final phase. One cannot help but feel that the
English builders' partiality for exuberant decoration had something to
do with the making of such towers as St. Michel and the Pey Berland. The
landscape round Bordeaux is as rich in sky-pointing spires as Calvados
in Normandy.
When, in 1451, the English surrendered Bordeaux, the great Dunois,
Jeanne d'Arc's companion in arms, was received as conqueror in its
cathedral (where in 1376 the Black Prince had accepted the citizens'
oath of fealty to his father), and to the ringing of bells and cries of
"_Noël_," Archbishop Pierre Berland and the chief men of the town swore
to be loyal subjects of France.
Among the ancient churches of historic interest in Bordeaux is Ste.
Croix, rebuilt by Charlemagne when Saracens destroyed it, and again
remade (1099) as Romanesque according to the school of Poitou. Under its
tower, Gothic ribs were used early in the XII century. The church was
partly wrecked in 1179 and revaulted at the end of the XIII century. In
the sculpture of the rich façade is a certain Assyrian note. M. Brutails
complains that Abadie, the restorer, made of the frontispiece a
neo-Angoumois work and that the north tower is entirely of his building.
Memories of the great Emperor Charles haunt the former cathedral of
Bordeaux, St. Seurin. Fundamentally it belongs to the cupola type of
edifice, and though incessantly rebuilt up to the XV century, it
presents the aspect of a Romanesque church. The south portal (c. 1260),
sculptured with elaborate foliate ornament, has images of unequal merit.
In St. Seurin, says tradition, Charlemagne paused, in 778, with the
bodies of the heroes of Roncevaux to be buried at Blaye, his nephew
Roland and that paladin's comrade, Sire Olivier, and Archbishop Turpin
of Rheims, who fought pagans--_par granz batailles et par mult bels
sermuns_. On the altar of St. Seurin the emperor laid the horn that
Roland blew in his last extremity, the olifant which the Midi folk say
still echoes in the Pyrenean gorges:
Vient à Burdele la citet de valur,
Desur l'alter seint Sevrin li barun
Met l'olifant, plein d'or et de manguns,
Li pélerin le veient ki là vunt.[222]
(Came to Bordeaux the city of great price,
And on the shrine of Baron St. Seurin,
The olifant Charles laid, filled full with gold,
And to this day pilgrims can see it there.)
The XX-century pilgrims to the old city on the Garonne must remember
that the _Chanson de Roland_ was written a long, long time ago, and that
to-day the olifant of the paladin lives only in the pages of French
history, where its place is as secure as the standard of Jeanne d'Arc.
_À la peine, à l'honneur._ Without St. Seurin's church we might have
forgotten a proud page of Bordeaux' past.
TOULOUSE[223]
Ici, dans Toulouse, je sens palpiter
La prodigieuse histoire du libre Languedoc!
Et je vois Saint-Sernin, la grande église romane, ...
Et le rempart où la pierre écrasa l'oiseau de
Proie que je ne veux pas nommer....
À Toulouse vivante, à Toulouse qui chante,
J'élève mon salut et je dis: Ville sainte!
Au soleil à jamais épanouis-toi puissante!...
L'âme du Midi réfugiée en toi,
Chevaleresque et digne, tu as traversé les âges!
--Frédéric Mistral, at the _Jeux Floraux_ of Toulouse, 1879.[224]
If the influence of both the north and the south is felt at Bordeaux,
the unadulterated Midi reigns at Toulouse. It is eminently the capital
city of this fertile Languedoc, where art and luxury developed
precociously in the earlier periods of the Middle Ages. Here the
troubadour still sings in the regional tongue which might to-day be the
speech of France (instead of a dialect) had a genius such as Dante
written in the _langue d'oc_, the most gracious form of the Romance
language. It is spoken in Aragon and Catalonia--lands where the
architectural development followed the same trend as that of French
Languedoc.
Modern Toulouse is not a handsome city like the Bordeaux of to-day. Its
most imposing church is not its cathedral of St. Étienne, which is as
ungainly outside as it is irregular within. The nave and choir make no
pretense of following the same axis line, since they never were intended
to form one edifice; were the north wall of the nave extended down
through the choir, it would abut on the high altar.
The nave is of enormous span like that of Bordeaux Cathedral. It once
had side aisles, but the entire width of the edifice was thrown into one
hall when the church was remodeled in 1211. Simon de Montfort (whom
Mistral, as a patriotic son of the Midi, refuses even to name in his
verses) was besieging the city while the Angevin vaults of its cathedral
were building, and Count Raymond VI of Toulouse ordered that the works
should continue, war or no war.
The choir of Toulouse Cathedral belongs to the same current of northern
Gothic that produced Clermont, Limoges, and Narbonne. Begun in 1275, it
was inspired directly by Narbonne Cathedral, whose foundation stone was
laid in 1273. The plan is of the north, but the feeling is meridional.
After the death of the wealthy Bishop Bernard de Lille, the founder, the
chapter had not sufficient funds to continue building on the same
ambitious scale. Only in the XV century was the triforium level reached,
and it was not until the XVII century that the masonry roof was added.
Even then it was so skimped that the exterior aspect of the choir is
deplorable. At St. Étienne there seemed to be a fatality against
symmetry. When all hope was given up of replacing the Romanesque nave by
one of the same character as the choir, it was decided to make its
entrance more important; but instead of setting the new Flamboyant
portal in the center of the west façade, it was placed to one side. The
window dedicated to two sons of the Midi, St. Roch and St. Sebastian, is
attributed to Arnaud de Moles who made the celebrated Creation,
prophets, and sibyls of Auch Cathedral. Some of the grisaille in St.
Étienne came from the Jacobins.
There are few church interiors in Europe more stately and unique than
that of the brick abbatial in Toulouse, called the Jacobins', a name
given the Dominicans because their Paris convent was in the rue St.
Jacques. The house of wisdom is founded on seven pillars, Scripture
tells us.[225] So the Friars Preachers planted directly down the center
of their lofty hall church seven columnar piers that soar to an enormous
height. The easternmost one is set in the middle of the apse and on it
fall some fourteen ribs. The vault arches of white stone against the red
brick infilling are of striking effect. No mediæval pillars--save those
of the late-Gothic church of St. Nicolas-du-Port near Nancy--are higher
than the seven giants of Toulouse. In the desecration of the edifice
after the Revolution, its pavement was covered with soil, for the
stabling of horses, but within the last ten years excavations have
exposed the true bases of the piers.
The Jacobins' church was founded in 1229 by a rich citizen and his wife,
who had vowed to devote a large portion of their fortune to God's
service, should their only daughter recover from a desperate illness.
The edifice, constructed with an audacious massiveness, as if for
eternity, has been allowed to fall into general decay, and now appears
more desolate than would a ruin of stone. Like alien images, gargoyles
protrude forlornly from the red brick walls, so inconsistent is brick
with the true Gothic spirit. The Midi was too wedded to classic
traditions to excel in the national art, which it never took completely
to its heart. There is little of the ogival style about these narrow
loophole windows, these diagonals unbraced by flying buttresses. Gothic
in the south has an accidental aspect.
[Illustration: _The Jacobins', or Dominicans', Church at Toulouse_
(_XIII Century_)]
To the greatest of Dominican churches the Avignon pope, Urban V, who
covered the Midi with his monuments, gave the body of St. Thomas
Aquinas, greatest of Dominican doctors. It was saved when the Jacobins
were sacked in 1562, and is now in St. Sernin, whose collection of
authentic relics is the richest in France--and some say in Europe.
Toulouse also had a Franciscan brick church, whose wall bordered on the
city ramparts, so that passages of defense were thrown from buttress to
buttress. That church of the Cordeliers (rich with memories of St.
Anthony of Padua) was burned in 1870, and its lovely XV-century cloister
now forms part of the Museum that is housed in the former convent of the
Augustinians. The graceful octagonal brick tower of the Cordeliers,[226]
saved from the wreckage, was modeled on that of the Jacobins', just as
the Jacobins' tower, in lessening stories, was designed probably by the
architect who made the top stories of St. Sernin's beacon. Artists have
preferred the Jacobins' belfry to its prototype.
The paucity of stone in the province caused the creation of a school of
brick architecture of which Toulouse was the center. One may prefer a
stone architecture, but one cannot deny the lovely tones of brown and
crimson madder acquired in time by these brick monuments of the Midi
that seem created especially for resistance and long duration.
Not the cathedral of Toulouse, but its monastic brick church of St.
Sernin, is the supreme religious monument of the city and the grandest
Romanesque edifice in France. Its date has been discussed by MM. de
Lasteyrie, Corroyer, Saint-Paul, and Jules de Lahondès. In the last
quarter of the XI century the monks began the choir of the present
church, which combined the characteristics of the Romanesque schools of
Burgundy and Auvergne. Those influences had passed south by way of
Conques, where the abbatial of Ste. Foi had been rebuilt a generation
before St. Sernin. In 1083 Cluny monks replaced at St. Sernin the canons
regular, and where Cluny reformed, building activities usually followed.
While the Toulouse monastery church was rising, its selfsame plan
appeared in the northeast corner of Spain in the cathedral of Santiago
Compostela, begun in 1082, too direct a copy to have been done by any
but St. Sernin's own architect or his favorite pupil. In Spain the works
went faster, so that Santiago Cathedral was completed long before the
abbatial at Toulouse, and, being constructed in stone, its interior has
not been marred by centuries of whitewashing.
"The entry of Urban II into Toulouse" is pictured by Benjamin Constant
in the Museum. In 1096, on his journey through France, preaching the
First Crusade, he blessed the unfinished choir and transept of St.
Sernin. The aisles around the transept form the most imposing part of
the church. As the XI century closed, the transept was continued and the
nave begun under the direction of a monk-builder, St. Raymond Gaynard, a
man of wealth before entering the cloister. He conceived the masterly
plan of five aisles. The side aisles were covered by a quarter-barrel
vaulting that serves the purpose of a continuous flying buttress.
Perhaps it was when the original architect of St. Sernin had proceeded
to Santiago Compostela that St. Raymond became master-of-works at
Toulouse. In 1119, a year after his death, another pontiff, Calixtus II,
blessed St. Sernin.
From 1120 to 1140 was made the south portal, which constitutes, with
Moissac's[227] portal and cloister, the chief works extant of the
Languedoc school of sculpture. That school needs a competent biographer
who will do for it what M. Paul Vitry has done for the
Region-of-the-Loire school, and MM. de Vasselot and Koechlin for the
imagery of southern Champagne.[228] The high-water mark of the regions'
sculpture was attained in the Annunciation group at Moissac, whose
ethereal elongated figures in clinging draperies rouse the imagination.
The monks of Moissac, being Cluniac and not Cistercian, found imagery
profitable to their souls. What were Bernard's thoughts as he gazed at
their haunting rendering of the Incarnation?
Puritan Bernard thundered against the bizarre grotesques carved in
cloisters. Up to 1140 they were popular, since the untrained
stonecutters found it easier to make a caricature than an image true to
nature. The invasions of the Barbarians had wiped out the sculptor's
art, and the men of the XI century had to rediscover it. While St.
Bernard sojourned in Toulouse he lived in St. Sernin's monastery, a
Cluniac house, and it is probable that he paused with the monks at
Moissac on the memorable journey he made into Languedoc to combat the
fast-spreading dualist heresy of the Catharists. He was accompanied by
Bishop Geoffrey de Lèves of Chartres, the builder of the most beautiful
tower in the world. Surely those enlightened men mused with spiritual
benefit before the _Ecce ancilla Domini_ at Moissac? But one very much
doubts if Bernard could have approved of four hundred carven capitals in
the abbatial at Toulouse.
Slowly the making of St. Sernin's nave advanced. At first it was built
story by story, but later the more usual procedure of bay by bay was
adopted. In 1217, from the roof of St. Sernin, the stone was thrown that
killed Simon de Montfort, who was besieging Toulouse. To the end of time
a character such as his will rouse both enthusiasm and detestation. His
personal morals were exemplary, his own troops adored him. The leading
men of Christendom regarded him as an instrument of Heaven and right
progress. The Midi execrated him, and does to this day, even as Ireland
execrates Cromwell, whom good Puritans consider a hero, for the
religious psychology of those two born leaders was curiously alike. With
God's name on their lips their troops felt righteous in butchering.
With the death of Simon de Montfort the Albigensian wars changed in
character. Simon's son, Amaury de Montfort, was incapable of retaining
the principality won by his father's sword, so he sensibly passed over
his claims to the king of France. The struggle henceforth was purely
political. Blanche of Castile's wise head solved the Midi tangle when
she married her son Alphonse of Poitiers to the heiress of the Count of
Toulouse, with the understanding that, should the young people die
childless, Languedoc fell to the French Crown. Alphonse gave the Midi,
says Molinier, the first intelligent administration it had received
since the better times of the Roman Empire. When he and his wife died,
returning from St. Louis' fatal crusade of 1270, the great southern land
became a part of France.
The Albigensian wars--for with reluctance one calls those years of
bitter strife a crusade--delayed the completion of St. Sernin, whose
main façade is gaunt and bare, and whose westernmost windows lack stone
casements. When the Midi came under French rule the monks attained
sufficient prosperity to erect the octagonal tower in five stories--each
of lesser dimensions than the one below it. The upper stories used the
miter arch so suited to brick. M. Enlart has called attention to the
affinity of the _clochers Toulousans_ and the Lombard steeples. At
present the underpinning of the tower obstructs the transept-crossing,
but propping is better than demolition, which is what M. Viollet-le-Duc
proposed in his blind enthusiasm for unity of style. The townspeople
indignantly protested and the supreme beacon of this patroness city of
art was saved.
A proud boast of Toulouse is that the first Dominican monastery was
established there, and by Dominic himself, the saint whom Dante called
"the messenger and familiar of Christ."[229] The Friars Preachers, like
the Franciscans (who, because of a new appreciation of their founder's
character, are found sympathetic by many who still call a Dominican a
"bloody sort of monk"), were agents for the quickening of the religious
fervor of the XIII century. Both Orders were protests against abuses
such as luxury, love of gold, and selfish privilege, which feudalism had
helped to foster in the clergy.
Dominic de Guzman was a Castilian gentleman, a trained scholar, a man
whose luminous face won instant affection and respect. In the first
years of the XIII century he came north with the bishop of Osma on a
diplomatic mission relating to a royal marriage. As those two good men
journeyed through Languedoc amid the fearful havoc wrought by heresy,
the vocation of the younger priest took shape. Returning from Italy in
1206, he and the bishop of Osma laid aside pomp and comforts to
evangelize according to primitive Christianity. Only too clear was it to
them that heresy was fed by the unworthy priesthood of the Midi that had
lost the people's esteem. Two generations earlier St. Bernard had
lamented over the same evil. Innocent III rebuked the worldling prelate
of Bordeaux, and asked the bishop of Narbonne if he had a purse in place
of a heart. After ten years' heroic missionizing both before and during
the Albigensian Crusade, Dominic won papal sanction for his new Order in
1216. He was then a man of forty-seven. When he died, at Bologna in
1221, he left flourishing houses all over Christendom.
The function of his Friars was to teach again Christian doctrine in its
purity; hence it was only natural, when the Inquisition[230] was
founded, after the death of Dominic, that it should be intrusted to such
trained theologians. They were to be a kind of jury to ascertain whether
a case was heretical; if it was so decided, then the civic authorities
stepped in and took action, since heresy was a state offense.
The best minds of that day held the theory that the decline of religion
was a menace to law and order. The violent repression of heresy to
prevent the dissolution of society seemed then as necessary as the
repression of anarchy seems to-day. It had not always been so. "Slay
error, but always love the man who errs," was St. Augustine's maxim. St.
Ambrose and St. Hilary reprobated physical violence toward heretics.
Gregory VII had protested against the "impious cruelty" which had burned
a man of Cambrai for heresy. "Heretics are to be taken by force of
arguments, not by force of arms," said the vehement St. Bernard himself
on one occasion. Gradually a different outlook had taken possession of
men's minds, a change of view that was to cost the Church dear. Crusades
against the infidel were on every side, in the Orient, in the Balkans,
in Spain. When heresy took on so alien and perverse an aspect as the
Catharist errors, which were at root the negation of Christian standards
and a veritable antisocial menace, it needed but an incident to start a
crusade against heretics in France.
It should not be forgotten that had the Albigensians won the victory,
the south of France would have been placed outside the pale of western
civilization as effectively as was southern Spain under Moslem rule. Had
the Midi wars been conducted by civil authority many a partisan of
to-day would not hold them up as exceptional horrors, but, since all the
thinking of the Middle Ages was expressed in religious form,
unfortunately the term "crusade" was used for the embittered struggle in
the south.
THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE[231]
La vérité n'est point a nous, nous n'en sommes que les témoins, les
défenseurs, et les dépositaires.--MASSILLON.
So interwoven is the architectural story of Languedoc with the
Albigensian Crusade that to find the underlying significance of the
southern monuments it is needful to comprehend the trend of thought of
the Midi people. We have the unbroken testimony of five hundred years as
to what were the tenets of Catharism, the final form taken by the
Manichean heresy. They held that two principles, one good and one evil,
ruled the universe. In the third century Manes in Persia had woven a
curious tissue of beliefs, largely Zoroastrian with a tinge of Buddhism,
and had coated it all with a thin veneer of Christianity of the gnostic
type. The dualist idea and a complete rejection of the Old Testament
were leading Manichean doctrines. Manes was put to death in Persia, but
his teachings lingered on in the Orient, and after seven centuries crept
into Europe by way of the Slav countries of the Balkans. Without a
doubt, the intercourse of Europe with the Orient, through the crusades,
fostered the gnostic superstitions. The dualist heresy cropped out in
the north of France, but after the XII century was confined more or less
to Languedoc, where the Visigoths' Arian beliefs had prepared the soil.
From the XI to the XIII century these neo-Manicheans were called
Catharists. The local name Albigensian came into usage because in the
region round Albi, though not especially in that city itself, the new
ideas flourished. Toulouse was the heretic's stronghold.
It has always seemed illogical that many Protestants who revere the
Bible should be sympathetic toward the Midi heretics who reprobated the
Jehovah of the Old Testament as a vindictive assassin, the creator of
this the visible world, which is Hell. Life is a nightmare, they taught,
and suicide a virtue. Moses was sorcerer and thief (and the Ten
Commandments?). John the Baptist was a strong incarnation of the Devil
sent to combat the coming Christ. Baptism by water was reprehensible. On
this muddle of the Old Law was grafted some neo-Christian spiritism.
Christ was the God of good who created the invisible world of spirits.
He was a phantom being who never really lived on earth or suffered or
died. The Albigensian denied His human nature. Man's body, living or
dead, was Satan's (Jehovah's) creation and to be annihilated; respectful
burial of the dead was frowned on; marriage was sinful, since to
engender was to capture souls and imprison them in the material world or
Hell. Libertinage was preferable to marriage, since it did not pose as
virtuous. We find in an official recantation of his Albigensian beliefs
by a Midi lord that he promises to accept the Church's tenet that
marriage is not sinful, as was taught by his sect.
The Albigensian heresy was an anti-social peril. It is sophistry to say,
as has Molinier, that we do not know what they taught, or to call their
movement a step in freeing the human mind, as do certain modern
rationalists. They had two moralities, one for the people, or Hearers,
and a stricter code for the elect, or the Perfect. If a Perfect
relapsed, he had, after death, to pass through another existence, or
Hell, in another body.
This current of anti-Christian thought, flowing in from the East,
brought with it the over-rigid asceticism of the Orient, but in the Midi
few lived up to ascetic practices. There were minor divergencies in the
tenets according to the different regions, but always, East or West, the
heretics were one in their detestation of the Jehovah of the Old
Testament, and of the Church and her sacraments, especially that of Holy
Eucharist. The Church was held to be a prolongation of the abhorred
synagogue, and, like it, an incarnation of Satan.
No one can deny the crying need of reform in the Midi church. But the
Albigensians damned one half of the Creator's work--the visible
world--and the perfection which they preached was race suicide. When,
more recently, Mormonism struck at the root of the social fabric, the
United States government took immediate action. Had the Mormons
resisted, had they, for instance, murdered an ambassador from Washington
and war resulted, would we not think that the use of force by the
Federal government was legitimate?
From 1100 to 1208 Rome had sent one peaceful ambassador after another
into Languedoc. St. Bernard, who was loved all over Europe, was stoned
in the Midi streets. The Albigenses were aggressive wherever they
outnumbered the orthodox, and as most of the Midi lords held the new
tenets, it was the believer who was persecuted in Languedoc. Churches
were attacked and bishops flung into prison. Because the Count of
Béziers accepted a local council which had censured the heretics, he was
murdered by the people of Béziers in the very church and on the very
day where they themselves, forty years later, were massacred by the
northerners. "On all sides is the image of death," wrote the visiting
bishop of Tournai, in 1182, "villages are in ashes, churches in ruin,
and the inhabitants living like beasts." Long before the crusaders
arrived in Languedoc life there was a bloody feud, and like ravening
wolves the heretic lords warred one on another; their repeated divorces
were a flaunted scandal.
The Albigensian Crusade is no isolated page in the annals of the Midi.
Read of the anarchy in the south, previous to 1208, and then pass from
the XIII century to the gigantic duel between France and England in the
Hundred Years' War. You will feel no sense of dislocation. The crusade
methods were hideous, but not exceptional. In the later debacle,
Froissart relates as a matter of course the pleasant little jaunt of the
Black Prince, _fleur de toute chevalerie_, into Languedoc, in 1355,[232]
when he burned some seven thousand houses in the faubourgs of Toulouse,
when Carcassonne was twice sacked and burned, Narbonne wrecked, treasure
seized, and all ages and sexes butchered "till a line of fire and blood
stretched from Toulouse to the sea." And the Black Prince was succeeded
by avowed freebooters who gnawed France to the bone, the Grandes
Compagnies who, as said the harassed pontiff at Avignon, _mettaient tout
la Crestienté à combustion_. It was in the dire times of the XIV century
that the Midi churches fortified themselves.
War slackens architectural work in any period. A radical decay of
builders' energy in the Midi was not the result of the Albigensian
Crusade, since Languedoc erected its chief Gothic churches between those
wars and the Hundred Years' War, a period, moreover, that was controlled
by the newly functioning Inquisition. To generations torn by anarchy,
the methods of that tribunal, hateful though they appear to us, were an
advance in jurisprudence. Every leader of the day accepted them as a
progress. The civil courts were not to be able, for centuries to come,
to offer even such guaranty for justice. No balanced mind can read the
lives of such chief inquisitors as, for instance, St. Raymond of
Penafort,[233] and fail to comprehend that past history is not to be
read in the light of modern prejudices.