ancient Roman Camp built by the army of Marius, and within its enclosure
the upper casing walls of a cistern remain intact. The remains of
another camp of Marius, which still goes by his name, lie on the hills
that overlook the town from the north. The impregnable nature of these
positions on the hills around Les Baux thus early singled them out for
occupation in times of war and danger, and, when the Phocean colonists
of Arles were driven from their city by the Visigoths, led by Euric, in
the fifth century, they found a refuge on these austere mountain slopes.
Two relics of the Roman times, that have aroused much discussion, stand
at the foot of the powdery cliffs of Baux. One of these is a huge block
of greenish sandstone, about twenty feet high, which has fallen from the
heights above. For years, the three life-size figures that are
sculptured on this stone were regarded in the country as representing
the three Saints, Marie, Martha, and their black servant Sara, whose
bodies were alleged to lie in the church by the sea at Les Maries. About
the middle of last century a tiny chapel, erected in front of the carved
monolith, was dedicated to the three Marys, and called “Les Tremaie.” On
close examination, it is discovered that the figures are dressed in
Roman garments, and although much mutilated and corroded by the weather,
they are unmistakable Roman work of either the first century before or
after the Christian Era. Below the figures is an inscription which is
undecipherable, containing only the characters
F. CALDUS
AE . POSUIT . P.....
The opinion of experts to-day is practically unanimous in making the
three figures represent Caius Marius, Julia Marii, his wife, and Martha,
the Syrian prophetess who accompanied them, and was carried about in a
litter throughout the campaign. If these deductions are correct, it
fixes the date of the monument somewhere about 100 B.C., and gives
further proof of the antiquity of Les Baux.
[Illustration: THE POSTERN
LES BAUX]
The other Roman monument lies at a little distance, and although smaller
is almost as interesting. It has attracted the attention of curious
archæological investigators, who have deduced a variety of origins for
this stone; some making it an ancient sacrificial altar, others a simple
monument to a man and his wife, probably Caius Marius and Julia.
Les Baux has finished its brilliant career, and it seems fitting that
its castle, churches, convents, and mansions should crumble and mingle
with the dust of centuries, vanishing from man’s sight along with the
jousts and tourneys, “Courts of Love,” gorgeous processions, Saints’ day
celebrations, picturesque midnight masses, and all the showy properties
of its once romantic stage.
MONTMAJOUR
V
MONTMAJOUR
Montmajour, or Montmajor as it is often spelt, stands upon a rocky
elevation rising out of the extensive flat plain of La Crau. Its
situation is unique, and was selected away back in the time when the
lands surrounding it were covered with water, and the only means of
access was by boats or rafts. Although the antiquity of the site of the
monastery built upon this erstwhile island is undoubted, the exact date
of the Church and Chapel which constitute the older parts of the group
of buildings there to-day, have been the subject of much debate and
controversy.
For years, nay for centuries, the famous Chapel of the “Holy Cross” was
regarded as a building of the eighth century, the exact date of its
construction being A.D. 779. The authority given was a Latin inscription
now almost illegible, setting forth how the church was built and
dedicated by Charlemagne to commemorate his great victory over the
Saracens, and further recording that the rebuilding by him of the Abbey
of Montmajour was another token of gratitude. Another inscription (more
legible) reads, “Many of the Franks who perished in the combat repose in
the chapel of the Monastery.... Brothers, pray for them.” The
inscription refers, of course, to the Saracenic invasions of Provence
A.D. 732 and 797, the earlier one repulsed by Charles Martel, and the
latter by his grandson Charlemagne. This inscription has, however, to be
ignored and regarded as the work of zealous monks at a much later date,
anxious to add to the lustre of their monastery, and not too scrupulous
in accepting traditions which gave this chapel a celebrity and antiquity
wholly undeserved.
[Illustration: CHAPEL OF S^{TE} CROIX-EN-JERUSALEM.
MONTMAJOUR]
It was early in the last century that the pretensions of the
inscription received their death-blow by the discovery of a hitherto
unnoticed dedication on the pediment of the porch. The reliability of
this find seemed to be confirmed by an ancient charter which attributed
the erection of the building to the Abbé Rambert, and its consecration
too, some three years later. This date obtained right up to the end of
the last century, when expert opinion demonstrated, by external and
internal evidences, that although standing on the site of a much older
chapel, the present one was not erected until late in the twelfth or
early in the thirteenth century.
This little chapel stands about three hundred yards away from the main
buildings of the Abbey. The hard rock all around it is carved out into
long shallow graves, which, with the exception of one, on the sloping
ground near to the larger church of the Abbey, have been opened--that is
to say, the heavy slabs of stone that formerly covered them have been
removed and the bodies have disappeared. This pillage and desecration of
the last resting-places of the brothers of the Monastery was the work of
the revolutionary mobs from Arles, who, not content with rich plunder
obtained in the Monastery itself, sought for any jewels buried with the
dead.
The Chapel of the “Holy Cross” was the mortuary chapel to this cemetery
in the rocks, and the sacredness of the spot made such wide appeals to
the religious superstitions of the age that many distinguished knights
and nobles sought the honour of resting their bones in the enduring
tombs cut in the hallowed rocks of Montmajour. The chapel is built in
the shape of a cross with equal arms, the ends apsidal, buttressed, and
half-vaulted. The square central tower is surmounted by a tiny cupola
immediately above a small bell-lantern tower. The chapel has but three
small windows, intended more to allow the light that was always kept
burning inside the chapel to shed its rays upon the graveyard outside
than to light the interior.
There are differences of opinion as to the original object of the
chapel, but it seems more than probable that the lantern in the roof was
designed to contain the beacon which it was the custom in the Middle
Ages to keep burning at night in memory of the dead.
There is no sculptured ornament in the interior of the chapel. The walls
are severely plain, but they doubtless were at one time covered with
Byzantine frescoes, in harmony with the general architectural style of
this building which stands in isolated dignity upon the rock above the
meres.
[Illustration: MONTMAJOUR.]
The Abbey of Montmajour, now in a ruined state, was in the Middle Ages a
“Benedictine” establishment of great importance and influence, with a
reputation for sanctity that drew thousands of pilgrims annually from
all parts of the world, across the shallow lagoons in boats and on
rafts, the only means of reaching it, until well on into the
seventeenth century. The work of draining La Crau began in the sixteenth
century, and gradually converted the swamp into a fertile plain; but
even as late as the eighteenth century the faithful had to make a part
of their pilgrimage by boat. The Abbey retained its great reputation,
and increased its power during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth
centuries, and the lofty modern buildings of the seventeenth century
testify to the wealth and ambition of the Order at that time. It,
however, suffered a gradual decline after the issue of an order of Louis
XVI., confirmed by Rome, suppressing its powers. This was only about
three years before the outbreak of the Revolution, which ended for ever
the long monastic career of Montmajour.
The approach to the Abbey, across rich low-lying meadows, dotted with
feathery trees, is romantic and full of charm, and the ancient buildings
stand out like a feudal castle, in strong relief against the sky or
distant hills, according to the direction from which it is approached. A
castle strongly fortified, for the machicolated tower built in the
fourteenth century rises from the most elevated portion of the rock to a
height of nearly ninety feet.
The older parts of the chapel or church, like the buildings at Les Baux,
are for the most part cut out of the solid rock. The earliest part of
the building is hewn in this manner, and in the lowest recesses of the
subterranean church there is a small cell about four and a half feet by
two feet, carved crudely out of the rocks, and containing a massive
stone seat. A small square hole cut in the wall serves to let a stream
of light into this tiny cell, which is known as the Confessional of St.
Trophimus, the apostle of Provence. This cell is at the end of a series
of narrow caves, one of which constitutes the sanctuary, the other
contains two tombs excavated in the rock near its face. The small arched
windows in the masonry which forms one side of these underground chapels
admit the bright light of day, and from them the occupants of the little
sanctuary or vestibule could obtain a magnificent view of the distant
countryside. As the vestibule was used by the brothers when waiting
their turn at the Confessional, these windows would serve to relieve the
monotony of many a tedious hour.
The crypt of the Church of the Monastery is sepulchral and gloomy.
Instead of a staircase a long passage descends with a gentle slope from
the west end of the church above, and leads to the underground chapel,
the reason assigned to this method of entrance being that it allowed of
elaborate processions passing from the ancient to the modern building
with effective decorum. At the end of this long passage there is a
spherically vaulted gallery with seven smaller chapels radiating from
it. A massive altar of great antiquity stands in the middle of the
centre chapel. Entirely free from all rich decoration, the whole place
reeks of the dark ages, a fitting symbol of a period when art was
struggling towards a new expression.
[Illustration: THE MONASTERY. MONTMAJOUR]
The crypt was probably built in the ninth or tenth century, and rebuilt
by the Abbé Rambart towards the end of the eleventh. The church above
was started by the same abbot, but was never finished according to the
original plan, for the west front is a hurried piece of construction
evidently intended to serve until some future date when the Abbey
banking account should be in a sufficiently flourishing state to give an
imposing finish to the building.
The tower of the Monastery, which gives it the appearance of a fortress,
was built in the middle of the fourteenth century, and possesses all the
characteristics of the most advanced military architecture of the
period. Its walls are built of smaller blocks of stone than is usual in
similar buildings of that time. The great hall on the ground floor was
used by the inhabitants of the Monastery as a storehouse, containing
also a cistern into which the water was collected from the roofs, the
overflow finding its way into exterior reservoirs.
The most modern part of the Monastery is to-day in the hands of private
owners, but in such a dilapidated condition that it is almost unsafe to
venture among its tottering walls. These buildings, erected during a
period of the institution’s greatest prosperity, suffered more at the
Revolution than the older parts of the Abbey. If the florid
eighteenth-century buildings were all removed, they would be little loss
to the place from an architectural point of view, for their features
strike a discordant note among the simple early Gothic surroundings.
The cloisters of Montmajour are not very unlike those of St. Trophimus
at Arles, and if the pillars and capitals of the arcade are less
interesting in detail than those of the more famous cloisters, they have
a more pleasing and less confusing effect in the mass. Round the walls
there are several very beautiful tombs with a variety of early styles of
arched canopies--pointed, round, and inflected.
Amongst these is the tomb of Geoffrey VI., a Count of Provence, who died
in 1063. He was a generous patron and friend to the Monastery, and in
the eleventh century conceded, along with other rights, the privilege of
claiming the first sturgeon which should be caught in the river between
Mourrade de Bourques and the sea. This typically feudal privilege was,
until the Revolution, enforced more by way of custom latterly, and a
great procession of holiday-making fishermen, with bands playing and
banners flying, accompanied by innumerable sightseers, came on rafts and
in boats to the Abbey with their offering. Masses were celebrated for
the soul of the good Count, a handsome pourboire given to the fishermen,
the sturgeon cooked and placed upon the already groaning
[Illustration: THE MONASTERY. AT MONTMAJOUR.]
board of the epicurean brothers, and everybody was contented and happy.
[Illustration: NEAR MONTMAJOUR.]
The Benedictine Monastery of Montmajour enjoyed so many other privileges
and bequests that it grew to be one of the richest and most powerful in
the whole of France. No wonder the laity were keen to swell its holy
ranks and enjoy its privileged security and bountiful board, its
immunity from taxation and public service. The amazing contrast to the
luxury of the Abbey’s latter days is the legend of the poverty and
homelessness of those for whom it was founded.
The story runs, or, as the troubadours say, it is told and said and
related, that when Villegis, King of the Goths, who had already
dispossessed the Romans of Arles of their last colony in Gaul,
surrendered to the Frankish conqueror Childebert, the latter, hunting
one day over his newly-acquired territory in the vicinity of Arles, met
with some hermits on a lonely mountain-side whose piety and poverty so
touched the victorious barbaric King that he founded for them the
Monastery of Montmajour.
ARLES
VI
ARLES
It would seem that Arles has been an important city for over two
thousand five hundred years. History can give no authentic records of
its beginnings, but, as is generally the case with ancient towns in a
similar predicament, legend has taken in hand the task of supplying
details, and Arles has its legend, which bears on the face of it some
elements of probability. Massilia (now Marseilles) has evidence to show
that even long before the Phoceans founded their towns in Gaul,
Phœnician seamen, the pioneers of navigation, had discovered its
natural harbour, round which the town of to-day is built. Interesting
relics of these early traders are still in existence; and their
successors, the Phoceans, who undoubtedly were on the scene as early as
600 B.C., must have found on their arrival that the advantages of the
position had been fully appreciated by the earlier settlers, who had
built there a town of considerable importance, but which was then in a
declining state.
The inhabitants of Southern Gaul, a Celtic race, had even at that time
their capital at Arles, and the semi-historical legend runs that King
Nannos, or Nan, was giving a betrothal feast to which all his warriors
were invited, in order that his daughter might choose her husband from
among them--presumably the custom at this period.
When the feast was in full swing a stranger appeared upon the scene, a
handsome young Greek adventurer from Phocea. The Celtic King welcomed
him with an unsuspicious cordiality, and invited him to join the festive
board, which he did, much to the chagrin of the assembled company. The
King’s daughter fell in love with him at first sight and singled him out
for high honour, bestowing upon him her heart and hand, to the
discomfiture of the native warriors, although her father recognised in
her action the guidance of his country’s gods. The lucky Greek received
in dowry with his bride the lands lying around the spot where he first
landed.
He had not, however, a sufficient following of his countrymen with him
to populate his newly-acquired territory, so he had recourse to sending
his galleys back to his native land to gather in recruits. The
newcomers
[Illustration: THE ALYSCAMPS, ARLES.]
brought with them fire from their sacred hearths, a priestess and a
statue of Diana from Ephesus, where they called on their way, in
compliance to the commands of their oracles; and settled down in the
strange country, mixing and intermarrying freely with the native Gauls.
The colony grew and flourished; the quiet of their mercantile existence
varied occasionally by wars and skirmishes with surrounding tribes,
whose jealousy and cupidity was aroused by the rapidly growing
prosperity of the new colony.
[Illustration: THE TOWN HALL
ARLES.]
But some centuries later the Massilians were compelled to call in the
assistance of Rome to repel the increasing attacks made upon them and
their colonies by the vast hordes of Teutons, Ambrones, and other
Northern barbarians. The celebrated campaign of Marius was successful,
and gave the conquerors themselves a taste for colonising. The
flourishing state of Arles and Marseilles no doubt incited the Empire
builders to covet the favourable positions occupied by the Greek
settlers.
Cæsar, emulating and surpassing Marius in his campaigning zeal,
conquered all Gaul, and under him the first Roman colonies took a firm
hold upon the fertile regions in the valley of the Rhone. Arles became a
maritime town, which rivalled Marseilles itself. The Celtic inhabitants,
mixed strongly with the Phœnician element, were possessed of arts and
crafts almost as highly developed as those of the conquering Romans. The
city grew in importance until its population numbered 100,000. Traders
from all parts of the world flocked to its markets, everything being
brought to the city either by river-boats up and down the Rhone, or
across the lagoons on rafts, or overland on the backs of mules and
horses. The city could offer to its citizens every luxury known to the
age.
[Illustration: THE ARENA AT ARLES.]
The great amphitheatre, built or commenced during the reign of Claudius
Tiberius Nero, at the time when the power of Rome was at its zenith,
could accommodate nearly 27,000 spectators to witness the wild beast and
gladiatorial shows so popular in Rome at that period. It was constructed
in the early days of amphitheatres, and is perhaps one of the oldest
extant, and gives, together with the Arena at Nîmes, a more vivid
impression of the Empire’s strength and grandeur than any other Roman
monument in France. Although on a much smaller scale than the mighty
Coliseum at Rome (which was built at a much later date and replaced
earlier buildings in that city, could accommodate 100,000 spectators,
and was over 615 feet in length and 510 feet in width, as compared with
the Arena at Arles, 450 feet long and 351 feet wide), it gives some
notion of the important part the amphitheatre played in the life of the
Roman capital.
The amphitheatre at Arles, unlike that of Nîmes, was, if the evidence of
the height of the wall of the Podium enclosing the Arena is trustworthy,
used for the great fights of lions, tigers, elephants, and other
animals, as well as for combats between the gladiators--elaborate and
extravagant spectacles that riveted the attention and ministered to the
enjoyment of the Roman world for a period extending over seven hundred
years. The immense arenas at Arles and Nîmes are proof of the prosperity
of these two colonies. Many of the Greek traditions of the Arlesiens
were lost sight of and contemned by the
[Illustration: ARCHES OF THE ARENA.
NIMES.]
conquerors, but the refined and intellectual amusements of the Greeks
made a slight appeal to the tastes of the warrior race, who overthrew
them, and who built a theatre in Arles, in the first century, under the
strong influence of the Greek element in the colony, an influence that
had made itself felt also in the architecture of the Arena.
Arles has preserved much of this Greek influence up to the present day;
for beauty cannot die--it influences succeeding ages and fashions all
their work, and the sculptures found in Arles are in this respect
superior to those of Nîmes and other Roman provincial towns.
The Venus of Arles, which now rests in the Louvre, compared with that of
Nîmes, gives a forcible illustration of the different characteristics of
Greco-Roman from the more purely Roman art; a subtle difference to
explain, but easily recognised when face to face with the actual work.
The Venus, that should have been one of the most cherished glories of a
city, whose womenfolk have inherited the beauty of their Phocean
ancestors, is lost to it. Discovered in 1651 by two citizens in the
courtyard of their house, built on the site of the theatre, it was sold
to the town authorities for £60, and they, anxious to curry favour with
the “Grand Monarch,” presented it to him in 1683. Louis had the statue
restored and placed among his treasures in the Palace at Versailles,
whence it was removed in the last century to where it now stands in the
Louvre.
The Amphitheatre at Arles is built upon slightly rising ground, and the
practical builders took every advantage of the rocky foundations to save
themselves any unnecessary building, so that the lower galleries of the
edifice only exist on a part of its circumference. The modern buildings
that have sprung up and surrounded it prevent as good a view of the
ensemble as is possible at Nîmes. The interior galleries have stone
lintels instead of the Roman arch as in those of the latter. The
simplicity of the mouldings and carvings of the capitals is more akin to
the Greek than to the later Roman style of architectural decoration, and
although the building is not nearly so imposing as the Nîmes Arena, or
even that vast relic of the Empire at El-Djem in Tunisia, it has many
features that are distinct from either.
From the Rue Voltaire one looks up the broad flight of steps which lead
to the north end of this mass of masonry and sees superimposed stages of
arches; the
[Illustration: ARENA.
NIMES.]
lower series divided by simple square Doric pillars, the upper by
Corinthian columns, only a few of which still possess their capitals.
They are weather-worn and greatly damaged, and it is only by picking out
more or less perfect bits, here and there, that evidence of its original
beauty can be obtained. Internally, great galleries run round the inside
walls, and lead out by flights of steps and passages on to three great
ranges of seats. The original seating arrangements have undergone much
change, but the traces of the disposition of the Cavea can easily be
made out with a little trouble.
The high wall of the Podium is cased with smooth marble, upon the face
of which there is a cornice that in former times supported an extra
gallery, when the performance was not of a character too dangerous to
the spectators. The upper galleries, reserved for the common people and
slaves, have been roughly used, for during the eighth century, when the
city was threatened by an invasion of the Saracens, a large number of
the inhabitants took up their abode within the great ellipse; the arches
were built up, and four towers erected at the north and south, east and
west, turning the place into a vast fortress. Streets were formed in all
directions by the two hundred buildings that grew up, and a marketplace
and church were erected. Right on, until about a hundred years ago, when
it was cleared by the Mayor and municipality, this town remained a
squalid blot upon the city. Two of the four towers still remain.
[Illustration: ARLES]