"Yes, I know when I confessed in her presence that I did not yet know of
which Saint I might write the history, Madame Bavoil--dear Madame
Bavoil, as the Abbé Gévresin calls her--exclaimed: 'The life of Jeanne
de Matel! Why not?'
"But it is a biography that is not easy to deal with or that can be
lightly handled," said Durtal to himself, as he arranged the notes he
had collected by degrees as bearing on this Venerable woman.
And he sat meditating.
"What is quite unintelligible," said he to himself, "is the
disproportion between the promises made to her by Jesus and the results
achieved. Never, I really believe, have so many tribulations and
hindrances, or so much ill-fortune attended the founding of a new Order.
Jeanne spent her days on the high roads, running from one monastery to
another, and toil as she would to dig up the conventual soil, nothing
would grow. She could not even assume the habit of her Institution, or
at any rate only a few minutes before her death, for, in order to travel
with greater ease all over France, she wore the livery of a world she
abominated, and to which she appealed in vain in the name of the Lord to
take an interest in the formation of her cloister. Unhappy woman! She
went to Court--as her confessor Father de Gibalin bears witness, while
he testifies that he had never known a humbler soul--as others go to the
stake.
"And yet the Lord certainly commanded her to found this Order of the
Incarnate Word. He sketched the scheme, laid down the rule, and
prescribed the costume, explaining its symbolism, declaring that the
white robe of its maidens would do honour to that with which He was
mockingly invested in Herod's palace; that their red cloak would keep
in memory that which was cast over Him in the house of Pilate; that
their crimson scapulary and girdle would preserve the remembrance of the
stake and the cords dyed in His blood. And He seems to have mocked her.
"He solemnly assured her that after sorrowful trials the seed she had
sown should bring forth an abundant harvest of nuns. He expressly told
her that she would rank as the sister of Saint Theresa and Saint Clare;
those holy women appeared to ratify these promises by their presence,
and when nothing would come of it, nothing would work, when, quite worn
out, she burst into tears, the Lord calmly bade her be still and take
patience.
"Meanwhile, she was living amid a howling storm of recrimination and
threats. The clergy persecute her, the Archbishop of Lyon, the Cardinal
de Richelieu, aims only at hindering the completion of her abbeys on his
lands; she cannot even manage her Sisterhood, since we find her
wandering in search of a protector or an assistant; they are torn by
divisions, and their insubordination is such that at length she is
compelled to return in hot haste, and, with many tears, expel the
contumacious sisters from the cloister.
"It really seems as though no sooner had she built up a monastic wall
than it split and fell; nothing would hold. In short, the Order of the
Incarnate Word was born rickety and died a dwarf. It lingered in the
midst of universal apathy, and survived till 1790, when it was buried.
In 1811 one Abbé Denis revived it at Azérables in la Creuse, and since
then it has struggled on for better for worse, scattered through about
fifteen houses, one of these at Texas in the New World.
"There is no doubt of it," Durtal concluded; "we are far enough from the
strong sap which Saint Theresa and Saint Clare could infuse into the
centennial growth of their mighty trees!
"To say nothing of the fact that Jeanne de Matel, who has never been
canonized like her two sisters, and whose name remains unknown to most
Catholics, intended to found an order of men as well as women; she did
not succeed, and the attempts since made in our day by the Abbé Combalot
to carry her plan into effect have been equally vain!
"Now, what is the reason? Is it because there are too many and various
communities in the Church? Why, new foundations are set on foot and
flourish every day! Is it by reason of the poverty of the monasteries?
Nay, for indigence is the great test of success, and experience shows
that God only blesses the most destitute convents and abandons the
others! Is it, then, the austerity of the rule? But this was very mild;
it was that of Saint Augustine, which yields to every compromise, and at
need accepts every shade of practice. The sisters rose at five in the
morning; the diet was not restricted to Lenten fare excepting at the
Paschal season, but one fast day was enjoined in the week, and even that
was compulsory only to the Sisters who were strong enough to bear it.
Thus there is nothing to account for such persistent failure.
"And Jeanne de Matel was a saint endowed with remarkable energy and
really moulded by the Saviour! In her writings she is an eloquent and
subtle theologian, an ardent and rapturous mystic, dealing in metaphors
and hyperbole, in tangible parallels, passionate questionings, and
apostrophes; she resembles both Saint Denys the Areopagite and Saint
Maddalena dei Pazzi; Saint Denys in matter, Saint Maddalena in manner.
As a writer, no doubt she is not supreme, and the poverty of her
borrowed style is sometimes painful; still, considering that she lived
in the seventeenth century, she was at any rate not a mere scribbler of
vapid aspirations, like most of the prosy pietists of the time.
"And her works have met with the same fate as her foundations. They
remain for the most part unpublished. Hello, who was familiar with them,
only extracted a very mediocre _cento_; some others, as Prince Galitzin
and the Abbé Penaud, have explored her writings with better results and
printed some loftier and more impassioned passages.
"And this Abbess wrote some of genuine inspiration.
"Yes, but all this does not alter the fact that I do not see the book I
could write about her," muttered Durtal. "In spite of my wish to be
agreeable to dear Madame Bavoil, no--I have no inclination to undertake
the task.
"All things considered, if I did not so heartily hate a move, if I had
energy enough to go back to Holland, I would try to do honour in loving
and respectful terms to the worshipful Lidwina, who is of all the
female saints one whose life I should best love to write; but merely to
attempt to reconstruct the surroundings amid which she lived, I should
have to settle in the town where she dwelt, _Schiedam_.
"If God grants me life, no doubt I shall one day do this; but the plan
is not yet ripe. Put that aside, then, and since on the other hand
Jeanne de Matel does not captivate me, perhaps I had better think of
another abbess even less known, and whose career was one of more
tranquil endurance, less wandering and more concentrated, and at any
rate more attractive.
"Besides, her life can now only be found in an octavo volume by an
anonymous writer, whose incoherent chapters, in language as clogging as
a linseed poultice, will for ever hinder the world from knowing her. So
it will be interesting to work it up and make it readable."
As he turned over his papers he was thinking of one Mother Van
Valckenissen, in religion Mary Margaret of the Angels, foundress of the
Priory of Carmelite Sisters at Oirschot in Dutch Brabant.
This pious lady was the daughter of a noble house, born on the 26th of
May, 1605, at Antwerp, during the wars which devastated Flanders, and at
the very time when Prince Maurice of Nassau was besieging the town. As
soon as she could read, her parents sent her to school in a convent of
Dominican nuns near Brussels. Her father dying, her mother removed her
from that convent and placed her with the White Ursulines of Louvain;
then she too died, and at fifteen the girl was an orphan.
Her guardian again removed her to the House of the Carmelite Sisters at
Mechlin; but the struggle between the Spaniards and the Flemings came
close to the district watered by the Dyle, and Marie Marguerite was once
more taken from her convent to find refuge with the canonesses of
Nivelles. Thus her whole childhood was spent in rushing from one convent
to another.
She was happy in these retreats, especially with the Carmelites,
adopting the hair shirt and submitting to the severest discipline; but
now, on coming forth from the most rigid cloistered life, she found
herself in the midst of a gay world. This Chapter of Canonesses, which
ought to have inculcated the mystic life, was one of those hybrid
institutions not altogether white nor quite black, a cross between
profane piety and pious laity. This Chapter, filled up exclusively from
the ranks of rich and high-born women, while the Abbess, nominated by
the Sovereign, assumed the title of Princess of Nivelles, led a devout
and frivolous life, passing strange. Not only might these semi-nuns go
out walking whenever they thought fit, they had a right to live at home
for a certain part of their time, and might even marry after obtaining
the consent of the Abbess.
In the morning those who chose to reside in the Abbey put on a monastic
habit during the services; then their religious duties ended; they
doffed the convent livery, dressed in splendid attire, the hoops and
bows and farthingales and ruffs that were then the fashion, and sat in
the parlour where visitors poured in.
The unhappy Marie loathed the dissipation of a life which hindered her
from ever being alone with her God. Bewildered by the gossip and ashamed
of wearing clothes that were offensive to her, compelled to steal away
before daylight, disguised as a waiting-woman, to pray in a deserted
church far from all this turmoil, she at last pined away with sorrow,
and was dying of grief at Nivelles.
At this juncture a certain Father Bernard de Montgaillard, Abbot of
Orval, of the Cistercian Order, came to the town. She flew to him, and
besought him to rescue her; and this monk, enlightened by a truly divine
spirit, understood that she was born to be a victim of expiation, to
atone for the insults offered to the Holy Eucharist in churches. He gave
her comfort, and announced to her her vocation as a Carmelite. She set
out for Antwerp to visit the Mother Anne de Saint Barthélemy, a saintly
woman, who, warned of her coming by a vision of Saint Theresa, consented
to receive her into the Carmel of which she was the Superior.
Then obstacles arose, the work of the Devil. Having returned to her
guardian, pending her reception at the convent, she suddenly fell
paralyzed, losing all at once her hearing, speech, and sight. She
nevertheless succeeded in making it understood that they were to carry
her, as she was, to the convent, where she was left half dead. There she
fell at the feet of Mother Anne, who blessed her, and raised her up
cured.
Then her novitiate began.
In spite of her delicate frame, she endured the most terrible fasts, the
most violent scourging; she bound her body in chains with points on the
links, fed on the parings thrown out on plates, drank dirty water to
quench her thirst, and was so cold one winter that her legs froze.
Her body was one wound, but her soul was glorious; she lived in God, who
loaded her with mercies and communed with her sweetly; her probation was
near its end, and again, just when she became a postulant, she fell
dangerously sick. There were doubts as to her being admitted to the
Order, and again Saint Theresa intervened and commanded the Abbess to
receive her.
She took the habit, and then fell a prey to the temptation of despair,
which has assailed some Saints; after this came a sense of dryness and
desertion, which lasted for three years. She held out; she endured all
the tortures of the Mystical Substitution, bearing the most painful and
repulsive diseases to save souls. The Lord vouchsafed at last to
intermit the penitential task of suffering. He allowed her to breathe,
and the Devil took advantage of this lull to come upon the scene.
He appeared to her under the most hostile and monstrous form, breaking
everything, and vanishing in a trail of pestilential vapours. Meanwhile
a good man, one Sylvester Lindermans, had determined to found a Carmel
on an estate he possessed at Oirschot, in Holland. As is ever the case
when a convent is to be established, tribulations abounded. It seemed,
in fact, that the time was ill-chosen for transferring the Sisters to a
town in arms against the Catholics, across a country infested by bands
of armed Protestants. When the Mother Superior selected Marie Marguerite
to go forth and found this new House, she entreated to be left to pray
in peace in her little nook; but Jesus interposed; commanding her to
depart. She obeyed; exhausted, sick, and worn out, she dragged herself
along the roads, and at last arrived, with the Sisters accompanying her,
at Oirschot, where she organized the Convent as best she might in a
house which had never been intended to serve as a nunnery.
She was made Vicar-Prioress, and at once revealed a marvellous power of
influencing souls. Living the austere life of a Carmelite, which she
aggravated for herself by fearful mortifications, she was always
tolerant to others, and although she was known to murmur, so great were
her bodily sufferings, "Till the Day of Judgment, none can ever know
what I endure!" she was always gay, and preached cheerfulness to her
daughters in these words: "It is all very well for those who sin to be
sad; but we ought to have twice as much joy as the angels, since we,
like them, fulfil the will of God, and we, in addition, can suffer for
His glory, which they can never do."
She was the most indulgent and considerate of Abbesses. For fear of
giving offence to her flock by exerting her authority, she never gave an
order in an imperative form; never said, "Do this or that," but only,
"Let us do it." And if at any time she found herself obliged to punish a
nun in the refectory, she would forthwith kiss the feet of the others,
and entreat them to buffet her to humble her.
But it would have been too perfect if she and the angelic flock over
which she ruled could have lived the inward life in peace, and sunk
their soul in God. The Curé of Oirschot hated her, and, why no one knew,
he defamed her throughout the town. The Devil too, on his part, returned
to the charge; he appeared, in the midst of an uproar that shook the
walls and made the roof tremble, in the form of an Ethiopian giant, blew
out all the lights, and tried to strangle the nuns. Most of them almost
died of fear; but in compensation for their sufferings Heaven granted
them the comfort of incessant miracles.
The Mother enabled them to prove in her person the authenticity of the
incredible tales they had read during meals, of the Lives of the Saints.
She had the gift of bilocation, appearing in several places at the same
time, shedding a trail of delicious fragrance wherever she passed,
curing the sick by the Sign of the Cross, scenting out and discerning
hidden sins as a hunting dog puts up game, and reading souls.
And her daughters adored her, wept to see her lead a life which now was
one long torment. As a result of the intense cold, she became a victim
to acute rheumatism; for the Rule of Saint Theresa, which prohibits the
lighting of a fire anywhere but in the kitchens, if it is endurable in
Spain, is simply murderous in the frozen climate of Flanders.
"After all," said Durtal to himself, "this life so far is not very
unlike that experienced by many another cloistered nun; but towards the
approach of death the amazing beauty of this spirit was revealed in so
special a manner, and in wishes so remarkable, that it remains unique in
the records of the Monastic Houses."
Her health grew worse and worse. Added to the rheumatism, which crippled
her, she had pains in the stomach, which nothing could relieve. Sciatica
was presently engrafted on this flourishing stock of torments, and
dropsy, a common disease in cloisters of austere rule, supervened.
Her legs swelled and refused to carry her; she lay helpless on her bed.
The Sisters who nursed her now discovered a secret which she had always
kept, out of humility; they perceived that her hands were pierced with
red holes surrounded by a blue halo, and that her feet, also pierced,
lay of their own accord, unless they were held down, one above the
other, in the position of Christ's feet on the cross. At last she
confessed that many years before Jesus had marked her with the stigmata
of the Passion, and that the wounds burnt night and day like red hot
iron.
Her sufferings constantly increased. Feeling that this time she was
dying, she grieved over the pitiless macerations she had used, and with
touching artlessness begged forgiveness of her poor body for having
exhausted its strength, and so having perhaps hindered it from living to
suffer longer.
And she then put up the most strangely fragrant, the most wildly
extravagant prayer that ever a Saint can have addressed to God.
She had so loved the Holy Eucharist, she had so longed to kneel at His
feet and atone for the outrages inflicted on Him by the sins of mankind,
that she waxed faint at the thought that after her death what would
remain of her could no longer worship Him.
The idea that her body would rot in uselessness, that the last handfuls
of her miserable flesh would decay without having served to honour the
Saviour, broke her heart; and then it was that she besought Him to
suffer her to melt away, to liquefy into an oil which might be burnt
before the tabernacle in the lamp of the sanctuary.
And Jesus vouchsafed to her this excessive privilege, such as the like
is unknown in the history of the Saints; and at the moment when she died
she enjoined her daughters to leave her body exposed in the chapel, and
unburied for some weeks.
On this point there is abundant authentic evidence. More or less minute
inquiries were made, and the reports of medical experts are so precise
that we can follow from day to day the state of the corpse until it had
turned to oil and could be preserved in phials, from which, by her
desire, a spoonful was poured every morning to feed the wick of a lamp
hanging near the altar.
When she died--then aged fifty-two, having lived as a nun for
thirty-three years, and fourteen as Superior of Oirschot--her face was
transfigured, and in spite of the cold of a winter when the Scheldt
could be crossed in a carriage, her body remained soft and pliable; but
it swelled. Surgeons examined it and opened it in the presence of
witnesses. They expected to find the stomach filled with water, but
scarcely half a pint was removed, and the body did not collapse.
This autopsy led to the incomprehensible discovery in the gall-bladder
of three nails with black heads, angular and polished, of an unknown
metal; two weighed as much as half a French gold crown, within seven
grains; the third, which was as large as a nutmeg, weighed five grains
more.
The operators then filled up the intestines with tow soaked in wormwood,
and sewed the body up again with a needle and thread. And during and
after these proceedings not only did the dead nun give out no smell of
putrefaction, but, as in her lifetime, she diffused an ineffable and
exquisite perfume.
Nearly three weeks elapsed; boils formed and broke, giving out blood and
water for more than a month; then the skin showed patches of yellow;
exudation ceased and oil came out, at first white, limpid, and fragrant,
afterwards darker and of about the colour of amber. It filled more than
a hundred phials, each containing two ounces, several of them being
still preserved in the Carmels of Belgium; and her remains when buried
were not decomposed, but had assumed the golden brown colour of a date.
"A book might really be written on the life of this admirable woman,"
thought Durtal. "And then what a group of wonderful nuns were those
about her! The convents of Antwerp, Mechlin, and Oirschot swarmed with
saintly nuns. In the time of Charles V. the Order of Carmelites renewed
in Flanders the mystical prodigies which, four centuries before, in the
Middle Ages, the Dominicans had accomplished in the Monastery of
Unterlinden at Colmar.
"How such women as these carry one away and throw one, as it were! What
strength of soul we see in this Marie Marguerite! What grace must have
sustained her, that she could thus shed all the natural frenzy of the
senses, and endure so cheerfully and bravely the most overwhelming
sufferings!
"Well, now, shall I harness myself to a history of this venerable
Abbess? But then I must procure the volume by Joseph de Loignac, her
first biographer, the notice by the Recluse of Marlaigne, the pamphlet
by Monseigneur de Ram, the narrative by Papebröch; above all I must have
at hand the translation, made by the Carmelites of Louvain, of the
Flemish manuscript written while the Mother was still alive, by her
daughters. Where can I unearth that? In any case the search must be a
long one. No, I must set aside that scheme, which for the present is
impracticable.
"What I ought to do I know very well; I ought to put the article into
shape on Angelico's picture in the Louvre. I promised the paper at least
four months ago to the magazine which clamours for it every morning by
letter. It is disgraceful! Since I left Paris I have ceased to work; and
I have no excuse, for the subject interests me, since it affords me an
opportunity for studying the complete system of the symbolism of colour
in the Middle Ages. 'The Early Painters, and Prayer in Colour as seen in
their Works.' What a subject for thought! However, that is not the
immediate matter. I must not sit dreaming, but go to join the Abbé
Plomb; and the weather is clouding over again! I certainly have no
luck."
As he crossed the square he was lost again in meditations, captivated
once more by the haunting thought of the Cathedral, and saying to
himself as he looked up at the spires,--
"How many varieties there are in the immense family of the Gothic; and
what dissimilarities. No two churches are alike."
The towers and belfries of those he knew rose before him as in those
diagrams on which, irrespective of distance, the buildings are placed
all close together at the same point of view to show their relative
height.
"It is quite true," thought he, "the towers vary like the basilicas.
Those of Notre Dame de Paris are thick-set and gloomy, almost
elephantine; cleft almost from top to bottom by deep bays, they seem to
mount slowly and with difficulty, and stop short, crushed as it were by
the burden of sins, dragged down to earth by the wickedness of the city;
we feel the effort with which they rise, and we are saddened as we
contemplate those captive masses, all the more depressing by reason of
the dismal hue of the louvre-boards. At Reims, on the contrary, they are
open from top to bottom, pierced as with needles' eyes, long narrow
windows of which the opening seems filled with a herring-bone of
enormous size, or a gigantic comb with teeth on each side. They spring
into the air, as light as filigree; and the sky gets into the mouldings,
plays between the mullions, peeps through the tracery and the
innumerable lancets, in strips of blue, is focussed and reflected in the
little carved trefoils above. These towers are mighty, expansive,
immense, and yet light. They are as speaking, as much alive, as those in
Paris are stern and mute.
"At Laon they are more especially strange. With their light columns,
here thrust forward and there standing back, they suggest a series of
shelves piled up in a hurry, crowned merely by a platform, over which
lowing oxen look down.
"The two towers at Amiens, built, like those of the Cathedrals at Rouen
and at Bourges, at different periods, do not match. They are of
different heights, lame against the sky; another that is really
magnificent in its solitude, and putting to shame the mediocrity of the
two belfries lately erected on each side of the west front, is the
Norman tower of Saint Ouen, its summit encircled by a crown. This is the
patrician tower among so many that preserve a peasant air, with bare
heads, or coifs made narrow and square at the top, sloped somewhat like
the mouthpiece of a whistle, such as that of Saint Romain at Rouen, or
rustic, pointed caps like that worn by the church of Saint Bénigne at
Dijon, or the queer sort of awning which shades the Cathedral of Saint
Jean at Lyon.
"And in any case a tower without a tapering spire never soars to heaven.
It always rises heavily, pants on the way, and falls asleep exhausted.
It is, as it were, an arm without a hand, a wrist without palm and
fingers, a stump; or, again, a pencil uncut, having no point wherewith
to write up beyond the clouds the prayers from below; in short, it is
for ever inert.
"We must turn to the steeple, to the stone spire, to find the true
symbol of prayers shot up to pierce the sky and reach the Heart of the
Father, which is their target.
"And in this family of arrows what a variety we see; no two darts are
alike!
"Some are set in a collar of turrets at their base, held in a circle of
pinnacles, like the points of a Magian king's diadem; this we see in the
bell-tower of Senlis.
"Others seem to have about them the children born in their image, little
spires, all round them; some are covered with bosses, knobs, and
blisters; others pierced like colanders and strainers, in patterns of
trefoils and quaterfoils that seem to have been punched out; here we
find some that are covered with ornament, with teeth like a rasp, ridges
of notches, or bristling with spines; others are imbricated with scales
like a fish, as we see in the older spire at Chartres; and others again,
like that at Caudebec, display the emblem of the Roman Church, the
triple crown of the Pope.
"Out of this general outline, which was almost forced upon them, and
which they hardly ever tried to avoid, this pyramid or pepper-caster,
jelly-bag or extinguisher, the architects of the Middle Ages evolved the
most ingenious combinations and varied their designs to infinity.
"How mysterious for the most part is the origin of our cathedrals! Most
of the artists who built them are unknown; nay, the age of the stones is
rarely a matter of certainty, for the greater part of them have been
wrought upon by the alluvium of ages.
"They almost all cover intervals of two, three, or four centuries each;
they extend from the beginning, of the thirteenth century till the first
years of the sixteenth.
"And on reflection that is very intelligible.
"It has been accurately remarked that the thirteenth century was the
great period of cathedral-building. It gave birth to almost every one of
them; and then, being created, their growth was checked for nearly two
hundred years.
"The fourteenth century was torn by frightful disasters. It began with
the ignoble quarrels between Philippe le Bel and the Pope; it saw the
stake lighted for the Templars, made bonfires in Languedoc of the
_Bégards_ and the _Fraticelli_, the lepers and the Jews; wallowed in
blood under the defeats of Crécy and Poitiers, the furious excesses of
the Jacquerie and of the Maillotins, and the ravages of the brigands
known as the _Tard-venus_; and finally, having run so wild, its madness
was reflected in the incurable insanity of the king.
"Thus it ended, as it had begun, writhing in the most horrible religious
convulsions. The Tiaras of Rome and Avignon clashed, and the Church,
standing unsupported on these ruins, tottered on its base, for the Great
Western Schism now shook it.
"The fifteenth century seemed to be born mad. Charles VI.'s insanity
seemed to be infectious; the English invasion was followed by the
pillage of France, the frenzied contest of the Bourguignons and the
Armagnacs, by plagues and famines, and the overthrow at Agincourt; then
came Charles VII., Joan of Arc, the deliverance and the healing of the
land by the energetic treatment of King Louis XI.
"All these events hindered the progress of the works in cathedrals.
"The fourteenth century on the whole restricted itself to carrying on
the structures begun during the previous century. We must wait till the
end of the fifteenth, when France drew breath, to see architecture start
into life once more.
"It must be added that frequent conflagrations at various times
destroyed a whole church, and that it had to be rebuilt from the
foundations; others, like Beauvais, fell down, and had to be
reconstructed, or, if money was lacking, simply strengthened and the
gaps repaired.
"With the exception of a very few--Saint Ouen at Rouen for one, a rare
example of a church almost entirely built during the fourteenth century
(excepting the western towers and front, which are quite modern), and
the Cathedral at Reims for another, which appears to have been
constructed without much interruption, on the original plans of Hugues
Libergier or Robert de Coucy--not one of our cathedrals was erected
throughout in accordance with the designs of the architect who began it,
nor has one remained untouched.
"Most of them, consequently, represent the combined efforts of
successive pious generations; still, this apparently improbable fact is
true: until the dawn of the Renaissance the genius of successive
builders was singularly well matched. If they made any alterations in
their predecessors' plans, they were able to introduce some touch of
individuality, inventions of exquisite beauty that did not clash with
the whole. They engrafted their genius on that of their first masters;
there was the perpetuated tradition of an admirable conception, a
perennial breath of the Holy Spirit. It was the interloper, the period
of false and farcical Pagan art, that extinguished that pure flame, and
annihilated the luminous truthfulness of the Mediæval past, when God had
dwelt intimately, at home, in souls; it substituted a merely earthly
form of art for one that was divine.
"As soon as the sensuality of the Renaissance revealed itself, the
Paraclete fled; the mortal sin of stone could display itself at will. It
contaminated the buildings that were finished, defiled the churches,
debasing their purity of form; this, with the gross license of sculpture
and painting, was the great stupration of the cathedrals.
"And this time the Spirit of Prayer was quite dead; everything went to
pieces. The Renaissance, so lauded afterwards by Michelet and the
historians, was the death of the Mystical soul of monumental theology,
of religious art--all the great art of France.
"Bless me! where am I?" Durtal suddenly asked himself, finding himself
in the ill-paved alleys which lead from the Cathedral square to the
lower town. He saw that, dreaming as he walked, he had passed the Abbé's
lodgings.
He turned up the street again, stopped in front of an old house and
rang. A brass wicket was opened and closed, and a housekeeper, shuffling
up in old shoes, half opened the door. Durtal was met by the Abbé Plomb,
who was watching for him, and who led him into a room full of statues;
there were carved images in every spot--on the chimney-shelf, on a
chest of drawers, on a side table, and in the middle of the room.
"Do not look at them," said the Abbé, "do not heed them; I have no part
in the selection of this horrible bazaar. I have to endure it in spite
of myself; these are offerings from my penitents."
Durtal laughed, though somewhat scared by the extraordinary specimens of
religious art that crowded the room.
There was every kind of work: black frames with brass flats, and in them
engravings of Virgins by Bouguereau and Signol, Guido's _Ecce Homo_,
Pietàs, Saint Philomenas--and then the assembly of polychrome statues:
Mary painted with the crude green of angelica and the acrid pinks of
English pear-drops; Madonnas gazing in rapture at their own feet, with
extended hands whence proceeded fans of yellow rays; Joan of Arc
squatting like a hen on her eggs, with eyes raised to heaven like white
marbles, and pressing a standard to her bosom in its plaster cuirass;
Saint Anthonys of Padua, clean and snug, as neat as two pins; Saint
Josephs, not enough the carpenter and too little the Saint; Magdalens
weeping silver pills; a whole mob of semi-divinities, best quality, of
the class known as "The Munich Article" in the Rue Madame.
"Oh, Monsieur l'Abbé, the donors are certainly terrible people--but
could you not, quite by accident, drop one of these objects every day--"
The priest gave a shrug of despair.
"They would only bring me more," cried he. "But if you are willing, we
will be off at once, for I am afraid of being caught here if I linger."
And as they walked, talking of the Cathedral, Durtal exclaimed,--
"Is it not a monstrous thing that in the splendour of this Cathedral of
Chartres it is impossible to hear any genuine plain-song? I am reduced
to frequenting the sanctuary only at hours when there is no high service
going on. Above all I avoid being present at High Mass on Sundays; the
music that is tolerated infuriates me! Is there no way of having the
organist dismissed, and a clean sweep made of the precentor and the
teachers in the choir-school, of packing off the basses with their
vinous voices to the taverns? Ugh! And the gassy effervescence that
rises from the thin pipes of the little boys! and the street tunes
eructed in a hiccough, like the run of a lamp-chain when you pull it up,
mingling with the noisy bellow of the basses! What a disgrace, what a
shame! How is it that the Bishop, the priests, the Canons do not
prohibit such treason?
"Monseigneur, I know, is old and ill; but those Canons!--They look so
weary, to be sure! As I see them droning out the Psalms in their stalls,
I wonder whether they know where they are and what they are doing; they
always seem to me in a half unconscious state--"
"The high winds of la Beauce induce lethargy," said the Abbé, laughing.
"But allow me to assure you that though the Cathedral scorns Gregorian
chants, here, at Chartres, at the little Seminary, at the church of
Notre Dame de la Brèche, and at the convent of the Sisters of Saint
Paul, they are sung after the Use of Solesmes, so that you can
alternately attend that church and those chapels and the Cathedral,
since perfection is to be found in neither."
"Of course. Still, is it not horrible to think that the Hottentot taste
of a few bawling old men can pursue the Virgin even in Her sanctuary
with such musical insults? Ah, there is the rain again," said Durtal
with vexation, after a short silence.
"Well, here we are. We can take shelter in the church, and study the
interior at our leisure."
They knelt before the Black Virgin of the Pillar; then they sat down in
the deserted nave, and the Abbé said in an undertone,--
"I explained to you the other day the symbolism of the outside of the
building. Would you like me now to inform you in a few words as to the
allegories set forth in the aisles?"
And on seeing Durtal agree by a nod, the priest went on,--
"You are, of course, aware that almost all our cathedrals are cruciform.
In the primitive Church, it is true, you will find that some were
constructed of a circular form and surmounted by a dome. But most of
these were not built by our forefathers; they are ancient temples of the
heathen adapted by the Catholics, with more or less alteration, to their
own use, or imitated from such temples before the Romanesque style was
recognized.
"We need then seek in these no liturgical meaning, since that form was
not a Christian invention. At the same time Durand of Mende, in his
_Rationale_, asserts that a building of rounded form symbolizes the
extension of the Church over the whole circle of the universe. Others
explain the dome as being the crown of the Crucified King, and the
smaller cupolas which occasionally support it as the huge heads of the
Nails. But we may set aside these explanations, which are but based on
existing facts, and study the cruciform plan shown here, as in other
cathedrals, in the arrangement of the nave and transepts.
"It may be noted that in a few churches, as, for instance, the abbey
church of Cluny, the interior, instead of showing a Latin Cross, was
planned on the lines of the Cross of Lorraine, two _crosslets_ being
added to the arms.--Now, behold the whole scheme!" the priest said, with
a gesture that comprehended the whole of the interior of the basilica of
Chartres.
"Jesus is dead; His head is at the altar; His outstretched arms are the
two transepts; His pierced hands are the doors; His legs are the nave
where we are standing; His pierced feet are the door by which we have
come in. Now consider the systematic deviation of the axis of the
building; it imitates the attitude of a body bent over from the upright
tree of sacrifice, and in some cathedrals--for instance, at Reims--the
narrowness, the strangulation, so to speak, of the choir in proportion
to the nave represents all the more closely the head and neck of a man,
drooping over his shoulder when he has given up the ghost.
"This twist in the church is to be seen almost everywhere--in Saint Ouen
and in the Cathedral at Rouen, in Saint Jean at Poitiers, at Tours and
at Reims. Sometimes, indeed--but this statement needs verification--the
architect had substituted for the body of the Saviour that of the Saint
in whose name the church was dedicated, and the curved axis of Saint
Savin, for instance, has been supposed to represent the bend of the
wheel which was the instrument of that Saint's martyrdom.
"But all this is evidently familiar to you.
"This is less well known: So far we have studied the image of Christ
motionless, and dead, in our churches. I will now tell you of a singular
instance of a church which, instead of reproducing the attitude of the
Divine Corpse, represents that of His still living Body, a church which
seems to have a suggestion of movement as if bending like Christ on the
Cross.
"In fact it seems to be certain that some architects strove to represent
in the plan of their building the motion of the human frame, to imitate
the action of a drooping figure; in short, to give life to stones.
"Such an attempt was made in the abbey church of Preuilly-sur-Claise in
Touraine. The plan and photographs of this basilica are to be found in
an interesting volume that I can lend you; the author, the Abbé
Picardat, is the Curé of the church. You will from them readily perceive
that the curve of the plan is that of a body leaning on one side, drawn
out and bending over.
"And the movement of the body is represented by the curve of the axis,
beginning at the very first bay and continued along the nave, the choir,
and the apse to the end, which bends aside to imitate the droop of the
head.
"Thus, even better than at Chartres, at Reims, and at Rouen, this humble
sanctuary, built by Benedictine monks whose names are unknown,
represents in its serpentine line, in the perspective of its aisles and
the obliquity of its vaulting, the allegorical presentment of our Lord
on the Cross. In all other churches the architects have to some extent
imitated the cadaverous rigidity of the head fallen in death; at
Preuilly the monks have perpetuated the never-to-be-forgotten instant
that elapsed between the '_Sitio_' (I thirst) and the '_Consummatum
est_' (It is finished), as recorded in the Gospel of Saint John. Thus
the old Touraine church is in the image of Christ Crucified, but still
living.
"Now, to look at home once more, we will consider the inward parts of
our sanctuaries. It may be noted incidentally that the length of the
cathedral figures the long-suffering of the Church in adversity; its
breadth symbolizes charity, which expands the souls of men; its height,
the hope of future reward; and we can then proceed to details.
"The choir and sanctuary symbolize Heaven; the nave is the emblem of the
earth; as the gulf that divides the two worlds can only be passed by the
help of the Cross, it was formerly the custom, now, alas, fallen into
desuetude, to erect an enormous Crucifix over the grand arch between
the nave and the choir. Hence the name of triumphal arch was given to
the vast space in front of the High altar. It may also be remarked that
a railing or screen marks the limits of these two parts of the
cathedral. Saint Gregory Nazianzen regards this as the border line
traced between the two parts--that of God, and that of man.
"There is, however, a different explanation given by Richard de Saint
Victor, as to the sanctuary, the choir, and the nave. According to him,
the first symbolizes the Virgins, the second the chaste souls, and the
third the married hearts. As to the altar, or, as old liturgical writers
call it, the _Cancel_ (chancel), it is Christ Himself, the spot whereon
His Head rests, the Table of the Last Supper, the Stake whereon He shed
His blood, the Sepulchre that held His body; and again, it is the
Spiritual Church, and its four angles the four corners of the earth over
which it shall reign.
"Now behind this altar we find the apse, assuming in most cathedrals the
form of a semicircle. There are exceptions; to mention three: at
Poitiers, at Laon, and in Notre Dame du Fort at Étampes the wall is
square, as in the ancient civic basilicas, and does not describe the
sort of half-moon, of which the significance is one of the most
beautiful inventions of symbolism.
"This semicircular end, this apsidal shell, with the chapels that
surround the choir, simulates the Crown of Thorns on the Head of Christ.
Excepting in Sanctuaries which are wholly dedicated to Our Lady--this
one, Notre Dame de Paris, and some others--one of these chapels, that in
the centre and the largest, is dedicated to the Virgin, to show by the
place that it occupies at the end of the church that Mary is the last
refuge of sinners.
"She, in person, is again symbolized by the Sacristy, whence the priest
comes forth as Christ's representative after putting on his sacerdotal
vestments, as Jesus came forth from His Mother's womb after clothing
Himself in flesh.
"It must constantly be repeated; every part of a church and every
material object used in divine worship is representative of some
theological truth. In the script of architecture everything is a
reminiscence, an echo, a reflection, and every part is connected to form
a whole.
"For instance, the altar, which is the Image of Our Lord, must be
draped with white linen in memory of the winding-sheet in which Joseph
of Arimathea wrapped His body--and that linen must be woven of pure
thread, of hemp or flax. The chalice, which according to the texts
adduced by the _Spicilegium_ of Solesmes, is to be taken now as a symbol
of glory, and now as a sign of opprobrium, may be regarded, by the most
generally received theory, as the figure of the sacred Tomb; then the
paten appears as the stone which served to close it, while the corporal
is the shroud itself.
"When I tell you further," added the Abbé, "that according to Saint
Nilus, the columns signify the divine dogmas, or, according to Durand of
Mende, the Bishops and the Doctors of the Church, that the capitals are
the words of Scripture, that the pavement of the church is the
foundation of faith and humility, that the ambos and rood-loft, almost
everywhere destroyed, figure the pulpit of the gospel, the mountain on
which Christ preached; again, that the seven lamps burning before the
altar are the seven gifts of the Spirit, that the steps to the altar are
the steps to perfection; that the alternating choirs represent on the
one side the angels, and on the other the righteous, combining to do
homage with their voices to the glory of the Most High, I have pretty
well explained to you the general meaning and detailed symbolism of the
interior of the cathedral, and more particularly that of Chartres.
"Now you must observe a peculiarity which is also to be seen in the
Cathedral at Le Mans; the side aisles of the nave in which we are
sitting are single, but they are double round the choir--"
But Durtal was not listening; far away from this architectural exegesis,
he was admiring the amazing structure without even trying to analyze it.
Wrapped in the mystery of its own shadow thick with the haze of rain, it
soared up lighter and lighter as it rose in the skyey whiteness of its
arcades, aspiring like a soul purifying itself with increasing light as
it toils up the ways of the mystic life.
The clustered columns sprang in slender sheaves, their groups so light
that they looked as if they might bend at a breath; yet it was not till
they had reached a giddy height that these stems curved over, flying
from one side of the Cathedral to the other to meet above the void,
mingling their sap and blossoming at last, like a basket of flowers, in
the once gilt pendants from the roof.
This church appeared as a supreme effort of matter striving for
lightness, rejecting, as though it were a burden, the diminished weight
of its walls and substituting a less ponderous and more lucent matter,
replacing the opacity of stone by the diaphanous texture of glass.
It grew more spiritual--wholly spiritual, purely prayer, as it sprang
towards the Lord to meet Him; light and slender, as it were
imponderable, it remained the most glorious expression of Beauty
escaping from its earthly dross, Beauty become seraphic.
It was as slender and colourless as Roger Van der Weyden's Virgins, who
are so fragile, so ethereal, that they might blow away were they not
held down to earth by the weight of their brocades and trains. Here was
the same mystical conception of a long-drawn body and an ardent soul,
which, unable to free itself completely from that body, strove to purify
it by reducing it, refining it, almost distilling it to a fluid.
The building bewildered him with the giddy flight of its vault, the
dazzling splendour of its windows. The weather was gloomy, and yet a
furnace of gems flamed in the lancets of the windows and the blazing
wheels of the roses.
Up there, high in air, as they might be salamanders, human beings with
faces ablaze and robes on fire dwelt in a firmament of glory; but these
conflagrations were enclosed and limited by an incombustible frame of
darker glass which set off the youthful and radiant joy of the flames by
the contrast of melancholy, the suggestion of the more serious and aged
aspect presented by gloomy colouring. The bugle cry of red, the limpid
confidence of white, the repeated Hallelujahs of yellow, the virginal
glory of blue, all the quivering crucible of glass was dimmed as it got
nearer to this border dyed with rusty red, the tawny hues of sauces, the
harsh purples of sandstone, bottle-green, tinder-brown, fuliginous
blacks, and ashy greys.
As at Bourges, where the glass is of the same period, Oriental influence
was visible in these windows at Chartres. Not only had the figures the
hieratic appearance, the sumptuous and barbarous dignity of Asiatic
personages, but the borders, in their design and the arrangement of
their colours, were an evident reminiscence of the Persian carpets which
undoubtedly served as models to the painters; since it is known from the
_Livre des Métiers_ that in the thirteenth century hangings copied from
those which the Crusaders brought from the Levant were manufactured in
France, and in Paris itself.
But, apart from the question of subjects or borders, the various colours
of these pictures were, so to speak, but an accessory crowd, handmaidens
whose part it was to set off another colour, namely blue--a glorious,
indescribable blue, a vivid sapphire hue of excessive transparency, pale
but piercing and sparkling throughout, glittering like the broken glass
of a kaleidoscope--in the top-lights, in the roses of the transepts, and
in the great west window, where it burned like the blue flame of
sulphur, among the lead-lines and black iron bars.
Taken for all in all, with the tones of its stone-work and its windows,
Notre Dame de Chartres was fair with blue eyes. He personified Her as a
sort of white fairy, a tall and slender virgin, with large blue eyes
under lids of translucent rose. This was the Mother of a Christ of the
North, the Christ of a Pre-Raphaelite Flemish painter. She sat enthroned
in a Heaven of ultramarine, surrounded by these Oriental hangings of
glass--a pathetic reminder of the Crusades.
And these transparent hangings were like flowers, redolent of sandal and
pepper, fragrant with the subtle spices of the Magian kings; a perfumed
flower-bed of hues culled at the cost of so much blood in the fields of
Palestine; and here offered by the West, under the cold sky of Chartres,
to the Virgin Mother in remembrance of the sunny lands where She dwelt
and where Her Son chose to be born.
"Where could you find a grander shrine or a more sublime dwelling for
Our Mother?" said the Abbé as he pointed to the nave.
This exclamation roused Durtal from his reflections, and he listened as
the priest went on,--
"Though this cathedral is unique as regards its width, in spite of its
enormous height it cannot compare with the extravagant elevation of
Bourges, Amiens, and more especially of Beauvais, where the vault of the
roof rises to forty-eight metres from the ground. That cathedral, it is
true, was bent on outstripping its sisters.
"Springing into the air at one flight, when it reached the upper spaces
it tottered and fell. You know the portions which survived the wreck of
that mad attempt?"
"Yes, Monsieur l'Abbé; and that sanctuary and that apse, so narrow and
restricted, with columns so close together, and the iridescent light,
like filmy soap bubbles, from walls which seem made of glass, disturb
and bewilder you; on first entering it gives the impression of
indescribable uneasiness, a sort of anxious and distressed anticipation.
And in truth it is neither quite healthy nor sound; it seems only to
live by dint of aids and expedients; it struggles to be free and is not;
it is long drawn and not ethereal; it has--how shall I express
it?--large bones. You remember the pillars? They are like the smooth
muscular trunks of beech trees, which have also the angular edges of
reeds. How different from the harp-strings which form the aerial
skeleton of Chartres! No, in spite of all, Beauvais, like Reims, and
like Paris, is a fleshy cathedral; it has not the elegant leanness, the
perennial youthfulness of form, the Patrician stamp of Amiens, and more
especially of Chartres!
"And have you not been struck, Monsieur l'Abbé, by the way in which the
genius of man has constantly borrowed from Nature in the construction of
his basilicas? It is almost certain that the arcades of the forest were
the starting-point for the mystic avenues of our aisles. And again, look
at the pillars. I was speaking of those at Beauvais as suggesting the
beech and the reed; if you think of the columns at Laon, they have nodes
all up their stems, resembling the regular swelling of bamboos, to the
point of imitation. Note also the stone flora of the capitals and the
pendants of the vault, terminating the long ribs of the arches. Here the
animal kingdom seems to have inspired the architect. Might we not
conceive of a fabulous spider, of which the key-stone is the body and
the ribs stretching under the vaults are the legs? The image is so
accurate as to be irresistible. And then what a marvel is the gigantic
Arachne, wrought like a jewel and heightened with gold, which might have
spun the web of those three flaming rose windows!"
"By the way," said the Abbé, when they had left the church and were
walking down the street, "I forgot to point out to you the Number which
is everywhere stamped on Chartres; it is identical with Paray-le-Monial.
Here, again, everything is in threes. Thus there are three aisles, and
three entrances each with three doors; if you count the pillars of the
nave, you will count twice three on each side. The transept aisles again
have each three bays and three pillars, the windows are in threes under
the three great roses. So, you see, Notre Dame is full of the Trinity."
"And it is also the great store-house of Mediæval painting and
sculpture."
"Yes, and like other Gothic cathedrals, it is the completest and most
trustworthy collection of symbolism; for the allegories we fancy we can
interpret in Romanesque churches are on the whole but artificial and
doubtful--and that is quite conceivable. The Romanesque is a convert, a
pagan turned monk. It was not born Catholic as the pointed arch was; it
only became so by baptism conferred by the Church. Christianity
discovered it in the Roman _basilica_, and utilized while modifying it;
thus its origin is pagan, and it was only as it grew up that it could
learn the language and use the forms of our emblems."
"And yet, to me, as a whole, it seems to be a symbol, for it is the
image in stone of the Old Testament, a figure of contrition and fear."
"And yet more of the soul's peace," replied the Abbé. "Believe me,
really to understand that style we must go back to the fountain-head, to
the earliest times of Monasticism, of which it is a perfect expression;
back, in fact, to the Fathers of the Church, the monks of the Desert.
"Now, what is the very special character of the mysticism of the East?
It is the calmness of faith, love feeding on itself, ecstasy without
display, ardent but reserved, internal.
"In the books of the Egyptian Recluses you will never find the vehemence
of a Maddalena de' Pazzi or a Catherine of Siena, the passionate
ejaculations of a Saint Angela. Nothing of the kind, no amorous
addresses, no trepidations, no laments. They look upon the Redeemer less
as the Victim to be wept over than as the Mediator, the Friend, the
Elder Brother. To them He was, to quote Origen's words, 'The Bridge
between us and the Father.'
"These tendencies, transplanted from Africa to Europe, were preserved by
the first monks of the West, who followed the example of their
predecessors, and modified and built their churches on the same pattern.
"That repentance, contrition, and awe dwell under these dark vaults,
among these heavy pillars, in this fortress, as it were, where the elect
shut themselves in to resist the assaults of the world, is quite
certain--but this mystical Romanseque also suggests the notion of a
sturdy faith, of manly patience, and stalwart piety--like its walls.
"It has not the flaming raptures of the mystical Gothic, which finds
utterance in all these soaring shafts of stone; the Romanesque lives
self-centred, in reserved fervour, brooding in the depths of the soul.
It may be summed up in this saying of Saint Isaac's: _In mansuetudine et
in tranquillitate, simplifica animam tuam_.'"
"You will confess, Monsieur l'Abbé, that you have a weakness for the
style."
"Perhaps I have, in so far as that it is less petted, more humble, less
feminine, and more claustral than the Gothic."
"On the whole," the priest concluded, as he shook hands with Durtal at
his own door, "it is the symbol of the inner life, the image of the
monastic life; in a word, the true architecture of the cloister."
"On condition, nevertheless," said Durtal to himself, "that it is not
like that of Notre Dame de Poitiers, where the interior is gaudy with
childish colouring and raw tones; for there, instead of expressing
regret and tranquillity, it rouses a suggestion of the childish glee of
an old savage in his second childhood, who laughs when his tattoo marks
are renewed, and his skin rough-cast with crude ochres."