the Middle Ages that it seems strange so little notice has been taken
of her in Paris. Only think what a lovely dragon the sculptor of the
monsters upon the towers of Notre-Dame would have contrived! We have
only to look upon them to picture to ourselves the dreadful worm.
Maiden Margrete tho (_then_)
Loked her beside,
And sees a loathly dragon
Out of an hirn (_corner_) glide:
His eyen were ful griesly,
His mouth opened wide,
And Margrete might no where flee,
There she must abide.
Maiden Margrete
Stood still as any stone,
And that loathly worm,
To her-ward gan gone,
Took her in his foul mouth,
And swallowed her flesh and bone.
Anon he brast--(_burst_)
Damage hath she none!
Maiden Margrete,
Upon the dragon stood;
Blyth was her harte,
And joyful was her mood.[102]
The church of S. Marguerite is in the Rue S. Bernard, Faubourg S.
Antoine. The chapel of the Souls in Purgatory is a curious composition
by Louis, dated 1765; and still more curious was the burying, in 1737,
of the tomb of Antoine Fayet, one of the _curés_, because of the
indecent nudity of the white marble Angels, a piece of astounding
prudery in that peculiarly indecent period of French history. Some
pictures illustrative of the life of S. Vincent de Paul are remarkable
from the truthfulness of the portraiture; they were formerly in the
Lazarists' Church. A marble _Descent from the Cross_, designed by
Girardon, and sculptured by his pupils Le Lorrain and Nourrisson for the
church of S. Landry, found its way to S. Marguerite in 1817, where it
accompanies another _Descent_ painted upon wood, and very excellent in
its way.
SAINT-MARTIN DES CHAMPS.
Situated upon the east side of a square which lies between the Rue S.
Martin and the Boulevard Sabastopol is the Conservatoire des Arts et
Métiers, formerly the rich priory of S. Martin. As its name indicates,
it used to be surrounded by fields and gardens; now it is an oasis of
antiquity, built up upon every side but the square with huge modern
houses. Its old walls enclose a museum; its chapel contains hydraulic
machines, and its refectory is a public library. One of the twenty or
more turrets which surmounted the wall at intervals still remains; but
the chapel of S. Michel, which old Nicolas Arrade founded in the 13th
century as a tomb-house for himself and his descendants, the
chapter-house, the tower, the Lady-Chapel, and several statues of royal
personages, have all been demolished--not by Revolutionists, but by the
latter-day monks, who also saw fit to rebuild their cloisters, and
ornament them with handsome Doric columns. These acts of barbarism were
perpetrated some hundred and fifty years ago. But in spite of adversity,
S. Martin still gives us some idea of a conventual foundation, and in
Paris it is the only one which has survived improvements by friend and
foe. It still has its gate leading into a large courtyard, with church,
refectory, and a portion of the cloisters.
Although the priory ranked after all the abbeys of Paris, it was
well-nigh as important, and as rich. The prior enjoyed a revenue of
45,000 _livres_, and had the right of nomination to sixty benefices,
twenty-nine priories, and many curacies and chapels.
The legend of S. Martin bestowing half his cloak upon a beggar is well
known, and a frequent subject for painters. But he was given to other
works of mercy, and one, healing the leper, is said to have taken place
upon the site of this particular convent. S. Martin is the patron of
soldiers. Born in the reign of Constantine the Great, at what is now
Stain, in Hungary, Martin early became a Christian, but his parents
being Pagans, he was not baptized until comparatively late in life. His
father was a Roman soldier and tribune, and the son was enrolled in a
cavalry legion. Obliged to leave his native country for Gaul, we find
him in the year 332 quartered at Amiens; and here it was that he
performed the act which has made him so famous in literature and
art--the cutting of his cloak in two to clothe a starving beggar. His
namesake, Martin Schoen, gives him such a voluminous mantle that one
feels the act of cutting it in half to have been that of a
highly-practical mind--enough for you, and enough for me. But other
painters, on the contrary, depict the cloak as of such very small
dimensions that one can only marvel that the Saint did not give it all
to the beggar; for a portion of the garment could scarcely have
benefited either party. This act brought him, however, praise from
Heaven, and he hastened to receive baptism, being then twenty-three
years of age. At forty he left the army, and was elected Bishop of
Tours; and again we read of a similar story of clothing the naked, this
time with his sacerdotal vestment during the celebration of mass.
S. Martin founded several churches and monasteries, and many more were
dedicated to him after his death. Marmoutier, near Nantes, was a very
celebrated convent; and in England there are a great many churches of
which he is the patron. S. Augustine, when he came to Britain, found a
chapel in the neighbourhood of Canterbury, which had been dedicated to
S. Martin as early as the 5th century, and there he baptized his first
converts. The church is certainly one of the earliest in England, and
the font cannot be later than the 11th century; but whether it be the
identical one at which King Ethelbert stood to be baptized in the 7th
century is considered doubtful. Still, though much restored from time to
time, the building retains numbers of Roman bricks incorporated into its
walls; and that Queen Bertha worshipped in a church upon the same spot,
or close by, is certain, tradition also pointing to a stone coffin in
which she lies.
To return to S. Martin, the legend relates that when he was entering
Paris, as Bishop of Tours, he met a wretched leper at the gate, and,
filled with compassion and love, he embraced him, and thus healed him of
his leprosy. This was the act which King Henri I. commemorated by
founding the priory in 1060. His son Philippe I. dedicated the church in
1067, placing the new foundation under the patronage of the abbot of
Cluny, of which monastery S. Martin des Champs was the third daughter.
Its domains originally consisted of several acres of land, which, as
time went on, became more and more valuable; and probably, in
consequence of its great wealth, it was governed by a long succession of
illustrious men; at first regular, and subsequently, titular abbots, of
which class was his eminence the Cardinal Richelieu.
It is owing to the cession of the last of the turrets, built by prior
Hugues IV. to the town in 1712, and to the erection of a fountain at
its base, that we now possess this fragment of the old wall. The
principal gate, dating 1575, and ornamented with statues of the two
royal founders, was unfortunately demolished at the same time.
The church belongs to two distinct periods. The nave was built about the
middle of the 13th century, and is without aisles or pillars. It is
lighted by pointed windows, and covered by a pointed timber roof. The
choir and apse belong to the middle of the 12th century, and are
peculiar in their arrangement. The choir is raised from the nave, and
round it on a lower level are double aisles, divided by clustered
columns which support the vaulting. Thus, the choir is approached from
the nave by steps in the usual manner; but to enter the apsidal chapels
one has to descend three or four steps from the nave. There are a few
fragments of tombs with effigies of the priors, and some mutilated stone
coffins. All the rest of the contents of the church have disappeared; it
is in fact, architecturally, an empty shell. The statue of the Blessed
Virgin sculptured in wood, and held in great veneration by the faithful
worshippers at S. Martin, was taken to S. Denis. The whole building has
been gorgeously decorated in colour, and, if restored to its proper use,
would be, after the Sainte-Chapelle, the most interesting church in
Paris; but the desecration grates upon our religious sentiments, and the
noise of the machinery in motion distracts one's nerves. The study of
architecture is not rendered easier by the rattle of a dozen or more
steam engines, compared to which the confusion of tongues must have been
a very small clatter.
Tradition gives Pierre de Montereau as the architect of the refectory,
which is a _chef-d'oeuvre_ of the 13th century. It is an oblong
building with seven tall, elegant, single-shaft pillars down the centre,
dividing it into two equal parts longitudinally. Upon the side walls are
an equal number of columns reaching about half-way down, and supported
by foliated corbels to match the capitals; the vault, springing from
these and the pillars, divide the length into eight bays. The windows
consist of two lights surmounted by a rose; but upon one side they have
been blocked up. The reading pulpit, which is built into the wall, is a
beautiful specimen of its kind. It is lighted from the back by three
little windows, and approached by a staircase in the wall, with open
arcading to give light upon the refectory side. The building has been
decorated with colour, and a painting representing S. Martin dividing
his cloak, mediævalized by M. Steinheil--the whole sufficiently
harmonious.
[Illustration: THE REFECTORY.]
The rest of the buildings are modern, or have been modernized; most of
the destruction having been perpetrated by the monks, who, like all
authoritative Paris of the last century, had Classicism on the brain. At
S. Martin, as at S. Nicolas des Champs, S. Germain l'Auxerrois, and S.
Séverin (not to mention other churches), Doric columns have taken the
place of the old work--they must have been sculptured by the hundred.
The chapel of the Virgin, the chapter-house, the old cloister, which,
according to Piganiol de la Force, had not the like in Paris, and the
statues of divers Kings and Saints, were all swept away to make room for
modern improvements; but the refectory was left intact, and having been
used as the library, the transformation of the convent into a museum has
affected it less than the chapel. As we pass into it from the outer
world of trams and omnibuses, with all the _va-et-vient_ of a great
city, we seem to be suddenly transported into the olden time--into a
world which, if not a better, was certainly a more artistic and a
quieter one.
SAINT-MÉDARD.
The French S. Swithin shares with his brethren on the opposite bank of
the Seine, _les frères Gervais et Protais_, a predilection for drenching
us on and after his _fête_ day; so that, what with S. Médard's 8th of
June, S. Gervais' and S. Protais' 19th June, and S. Swithin's 15th July,
we who live upon our respective sides of the ditch may reckon upon a
good three weeks of wet, over and above the forty days, if unhappily it
rains upon the earlier of those unlucky festivals.
S'il pleut le jour de Saint-Médard,
Il pleut quarante jours plus tard;
S'il pleut le jour de Saint Gervais et de Saint Protais,
Il pleut quarante jours après.
But if S. Médard was vindictive in his ways, he compensated us for his
downpours by inventing that handy instrument without which life would be
unbearable. The French say that an Englishman goes to bed in his hat,
clutching his umbrella, which is a polite way of reproving him for his
peculiar and insular practices; but how could he live without his
umbrella? and kind Médard, foreseeing the state of dampness to which our
northern atmosphere was leading us, turned to account an accident which
befel him. In was in this wise. On a certain hot day in a certain hot
summer, Médard and his friends went a picnicing, when suddenly a storm
disturbed their innocent junketings. All were thoroughly soaked through
from head to foot, with the exception of the host, who suddenly found
himself protected from the rain by the outspread wings of an eagle which
hovered over his head. This was the birth of the umbrella, which, as
everyone knows, is of French, and not of oriental origin. In Belgium the
rainy Saint is one Godeliève; in Germany the character is undertaken by
the Seven Sleepers, showing the wisdom of the Teuton in slumbering
through his miseries. Amongst the flowers, the moneywort is dedicated to
S. Médard.
At the commencement of the last century, Jansenist pilgrimages and
divers miracles took place at the little church, curing those suffering
from convulsions; young girls had fits which gave them "comical
twitchings of the nerves. Some would bark all night, and others leaped
about like frogs. Sister Rose sipped the air with a spoon, as your
babies do pap, and lived on it forty days; another swallowed a New
Testament, bound in calf. Some had themselves hung, others crucified,
and one, called Sister Rachel, when nailed to a cross, said she was
quite happy. In their holy meetings, they beat, trampled, punctured,
crucified, and burnt one another without the least sentiment of pain."
All this was done under Louis XV., and attested by thousands of
witnesses, until at last the archbishop, by means of a strong military
guard, put an end to the folly. Thereupon some wag wrote upon a wall:
De par le roi défense à Dieu
De faire miracle en ce lieu.
Large packages of the earth were exported to work miracles in the
provinces and in foreign countries. One of these marvellous cures is
related, scoffingly, in a song of the Duchesse de Maine:
Un décrotteur à la royale,
Du talon gauche estropié,
Obtint par grace speciale
D'etre boiteux de l'autre pied.[103]
The church of S. Médard is in the Rue Mouffetard, and originally the
ground belonged to the abbey of S. Geneviève. At first the monks only
erected a small chapel, which they placed under the protection of the
great Bishop of Noyon, who was the friend and chancellor of the early
Mérovingian Kings. In the 12th century the chapel is designated as a
church in the bulls of the popes, and up to the Revolution it was served
by the regular canons of the abbey.
The church is of no importance, dating only from the 15th century. The
pillars are without capitals; but, as in many of the other churches, the
keystones and bosses are elaborately carved. Some of them represent the
Annunciation, the Visitation, the Descent of the Holy Spirit, and other
Scriptural subjects, besides monsters, griffins, and garlands of
foliage. In one of the chapels a little glass of the 16th century
remains; and a retable, upon which a Notre-Dame de Pitié is painted, is
also worthy of note.
In 1784 an architect named Petit-Radel conceived the idea of
transforming S. Médard into a modern temple of Jupiter, with not much
success. Doric and Corinthian columns, palms and personages, adorn the
sanctuary and the _chevet_. Better are the fragments of old glass which
are interspersed with the new in some of the windows; a S. Fiacre,
patron of cabs and coaches, a Holy Family, S. Michael, a Calvary, and
many Angels; but they are the merest scraps of former grandeur. The
chapel of the Virgin was built by the "artist" who mutilated and
distorted the choir, and is in the same grandiose style. The
academician, Olivier Patru, and Pierre Nicole, the theologian, were
buried at S. Médard.
SAINT-MERRI.
At the bottom of the Rue S. Martin, close to the Rue de Rivoli, is a
spot which, during the ages of faith, was much reverenced for its
miracle-working powers. In the 7th century, the whole district was a
forest, and doubtless the King and courtiers hunted there; for are we
not told that the Louvre, hard by, was in early days but a royal
hunting-box. As is well known, Paris, the Lutetia of the Gauls,
consisted only of the present Cité, the island upon which stands the
cathedral. All around were forests, well stocked with game (animals more
or less wild); and here and there, probably, small outlying settlements
which we should now call villages and hamlets.
In the midst of the wood stood a little chapel dedicated to S. Peter,
which was as much surrounded by trees and shrubs as the present church
of S. Merri is by streets and houses. Adjoining this chapel was a cell,
or hermitage, and it was there that S. Merri, and his disciple, S.
Frodulphe, sojourned when on their way from Autun to the shrines of S.
Denis and S. Germain. S. Merri was abbot of Autun, but he seems to have
been glad of a change to the great city; for so it befel, that instead
of returning to his abbey, he stayed in this little wooded retreat,
undisturbed by aught but the singing of the birds and the sighing of the
trees, for the space of three years. Then, on the 29th of August, about
the year 700, he died, and was buried in the chapel. Many and wondrous
were the miracles wrought at his tomb; and so famous did it become that
S. Peter's patronage was forgotten, and the church was looked upon by
the people as being under the exclusive protection of S. Merri.
About the end of the 9th century, a redoubtable warrior, Eudes de
Fauconnier, desiring to celebrate his part in the expulsion of the
Normans from the neighbourhood, erected a new church on the site of the
little chapel, or in its immediate neighbourhood. This was dedicated to
the two saints, S. Merri being placed before S. Peter. When this church,
in its turn, was demolished in the time of François Ier, the remains
of the founder were found in a stone coffin, the bones of his legs and
feet being still shod in his gilt leathern boots. The coffin was
re-buried in the choir, and an inscription placed upon a white marble
slab: _Hic jacet vir bonae memoriae Odo Falconarius, huius ecclesiae,
ora pro eo._ In the opinion of the abbé Lebeuf, this Odo was the famous
warrior who with Godefroi defended the city against the Normans in 886.
The surname _Falconarius_ may come from Odo having been made the King's
falconer, or from the kind of lance which he used, _falco_, because it
was bent; just as Charles, the grandfather of Charlemagne, was known by
the surname of Martel. The gilt leather boots denote a personage of the
9th century; similar _chaussures_ may be seen in miniatures of the
Carlovingian period. One of the monks of S. Germain des Prés, Abbon, has
celebrated the heroic deeds of Odo, and testified to the ability of the
surgical instrument makers of the 9th century:--
UNA DIES ISTUM VOLUIT SIC LUDERE LUDUM,
HIS DUCIBUS, GODOFREDO NEC NON ET ODONE;
BELLIGERI FUERANT UDDONIS CONSULIS AMBO.
IDEM ODO PRAETEREA OPPOSUIT SE SAEPUIS ILLIS
ET VICIT JUGETER VICTOR. HEN! LIQUER UT ILLUM
DEXTRA MANUS BELLO QUONDAM, CUJUS LOCA CINXIT
FERREA, PENE VIGORE NIHIL INFIRMIOR IPSA.[104]
S. Merri was made into a parish church in the 12th century, and in the
early years of the following century it became collegiate. It was called
the third daughter of Notre-Dame, a title given to churches which were
served by the clergy of the mother church, its chapter consisting of a
_chefcier_, who filled the position of the _curé_, six canons, and six
chaplains.
The present church was commenced in 1520 or a few years later, and
finished in 1642; the architects adhering to the original plan, without
any change of style, which is not often the case in churches that were
so long in course of construction. The beautiful west front is a mass of
rich ornamentation; its three portals, the pinnacles, corbels, niches,
etc., being carved with various conceits--animals, human heads, flowers,
vine-leaves, and so on, one little head having a cap such as is worn by
the peasants of Auvergne. The statues, large and small, are modern,
having been put in position in 1842, replacing those destroyed during
the Revolution. Those round the _voussure_ are copied from one of the
portals of Notre-Dame, and consequently are two centuries too early for
the church. Another blunder of the modern architect is the placing of a
demon in the centre at the point of the arch, where the Mediæval artists
invariably put the figure of Christ or of Our Lady. The lower part of
the tower is contemporary with the church, but the upper stories have
been rebuilt in the 17th century, and consist of Renaissance arches and
shafts. Upon the opposite side is a little turret of open woodwork, and
from the roof some old gargoyles stretch themselves out. The church is
cruciform; unfortunately it is partly hidden by the Presbytery and other
buildings. Indeed, like many Continental churches, it is so built about
by surrounding houses that one only gets a view of it here and there. It
is extraordinary that in such a city as Paris this is tolerated. At S.
Germain l'Auxerrois there is (or was, not long ago) an extraordinary
little wooden hut (presumably the dwelling of the sacristan) built in
between the buttresses of the east end, and completely filling up two
windows of the apse. The whole erection being in wood, it could easily
be taken down; for it is only supported on great wooden piles, and
approached by a sort of ladder. Such a state of things only exists in
Catholic countries, and the more Catholic--as, for example, Belgium--the
more complete is this sort of desecration.
The havoc made in the interior of the church by the 18th century
architects is deplorable. Windows have been destroyed, piers have been
stuccoed over, and pointed arches turned into round ones. The pillars
are late Perpendicular, or rather Flamboyant, shafts without capitals;
and round the nave, between the arches and the clerestory, runs a little
frieze of foliage and quaint birds and beasts, a feature which is not
common. All the bosses of the choir and apse are very richly decorated,
and the vaulting is good, but both the choir and the _chevet_ have been
sadly "improved." About 1753 the brothers Slodtz were commissioned to
convert the thirteen pointed arches of the choir into round ones, and to
encase the pillars in panellings of stucco, which was marbled and gilt,
the last bay being profusely decorated with golden sun-rays. One of
these unfortunate brothers, Michel-Angelo by name, designed the pulpit,
a mass of palm-tree decoration, surmounted by a female figure of
Religion; and to place this wondrous production, a whole bay of the nave
had to be demolished. The year following three chapels were destroyed to
make room for the new square, barn-like Chapel of the Communion; which,
besides being beautified by the Slodtz brothers' sculptures, was further
embellished with a picture by Charles Coypel. The modest sum paid to
these miserable, so-called artists, for hacking the church to pieces,
was 50,000 _écus_.
[Illustration: SAINT-MERRI; NORTH-WEST DOOR.]
The crypt is most interesting, and is said to have been a reproduction
of the original one which contained the tomb of S. Merri. It was used
for some time as a workshop by the cleaners of the church, and was the
depository of brooms, brushes and lamps. It has a stumpy central column,
from which spring the ribs of the vault, the capital being ornamented
with vine-leaves. It is square, and divided into four parts. A few
remains of recumbent tombs can be seen in the pavement; but of the
monuments of Arnaud de Pomponne, ambassador of Louis XIV., and of Jean
Chapelain, the author of _La Pucelle_, nothing remains. The crypt, with
its solid central pillar, resembles that in the Louvre of the time of
Philippe Auguste, which has lately been brought to light.