CHRISTIAN ARLES.
Sunday in France--Improved observance--The cathedral of Arles--West
front--Interior--Tool-marks--A sermon on peace--The cloisters--Old
Sacristan and his garden--Number of desecrated churches in Arles--Notre
Dame de la Majeur--S. Cæsaire--The isles near Arles--Cordes--Montmajeur--A
gipsy camp--The ruins--Tower--The chapel of S. Croix.
I spent the first Sunday after Easter at Arles. It was a bright and joyous
spring day. I went to the cathedral at nine o'clock and found a good
congregation there, listening to a sermon on the obligation of observing
the Sunday. It was dull, and I left. But I may here observe what a great
change has taken place in France of late years relative to this observance.
I can remember when I was a boy how that every shop was open, and business
went on much as on other days. But the Church has made great efforts to
obtain a due recognition of the Lord's Day, and all who consider themselves
to be good Catholics now shut their shops, and others, who find that there
is now very little trade going on upon Sunday, shut their shops also
because it is of no use having them open. It is only the polemical infidels
who continue to keep their factories in full work and their places of
merchandise open to invite purchasers.
Some few years ago I was talking with a Frenchman in Rome, a commercial
man, about the phylloxera that was devastating the vines, and ruining the
peasantry, and I asked him what was being done to correct the evil. "Bah!"
said he. "Everything has been tried. Mon ami. We don't observe the Sunday.
Voilà le vrai phylloxera."
[Illustration: On a house at Arles.]
Now this observation of his was only worth so much, that it showed how that
the clergy had been going hammer and tongs at the consciences of their
sheep, till they had impressed a conviction on them that if they neglected
the commandment of God relative to the observance of one day in seven, He
would chastise them till they realised that they had erred, acknowledged
their error, and endeavoured to rectify it.
The cathedral of Arles is a very interesting church indeed. Externally
the west front is rich in the bold rude style of the twelfth century, and
consists of a deeply-recessed semicircular arch resting on a horizontal
sculptured frieze which forms the lintel of the door, and is continued on
each side upon pillars that rest on the backs of lions and have apostles
and saints standing between them. The interior of the church is very solemn
and striking. It has been cleaned, but judiciously, without sand-papering
away the tool-marks on the ancient stone. Has the reader never been puzzled
to note the difference between old work and new, even when the new is a
reproduction of the old? In the new there is an absence of something, but
what we cannot tell. This something is very probably nothing more than the
old tool-marks. The ancient workers left on the stone the tale of every
stroke they dealt, and to ages on ages these marks tell us: here was a
strong arm employed, here was dealt a vigorous blow; here Symon the hewer
was tickled with a comical story that mason Peter told and he laughed, and
the blow he dealt ran jagged with his laughter. These strokes were done in
the morning, when the workers were fresh; those at even, when their arms
were weary. But nowadays the stone is all gone over with a metal toothcomb,
and scraped till not a tool-mark remains, and wood is glass-papered till
every particle of sharpness and character is taken out of the work.
[Illustration: Samson and the lion, from the west door of the Cathedral of
Arles.]
The aisles of the cathedral of Arles are but five feet wide, the arches are
round, the windows Romanesque; the church is barrel-vaulted, nothing could
be plainer, and yet somehow that old church is full of poetry and charm. I
went to High Mass at eleven. It was all very homely, quiet and reverent.
Another congregation was gathered; a Gregorian simple service sung, which
the congregation knew and joined in heartily. Then up into the pulpit got
a canon, and gave out his text, from the Gospel, S. John xx., end of verse
nineteen. My heart stood still. Why--you shall hear.
[Illustration: On a house at Arles.]
Just twenty-two years ago, I was in Switzerland on Whit Sunday, and went
to the little village church. The _curé_ gave out these same words as his
text, and preached a very good sermon on Peace, though perhaps not very
appropriate to the day. Peace, he said, was an excellent thing, whether (1)
in a country; (2) in a household; (3) in the conscience. There we had the
three heads; on these he dilated. First we had a picture of the miseries of
war in a country, and the converse picture of prosperity in peace. Then,
secondly, we had a description of domestic discomfort, where husband and
wife were at loggerheads, and--naturally, a charming family piece where
both were in unity. Then came, thirdly, the special topic of his discourse,
peace in the conscience, and how it was to be obtained and secured.
I bottled up that sermon in my memory and have preached it since, myself,
once or twice.
One day, some fifteen years ago, I was at Eichstädt in Bavaria, on a
Saturday. The church of S. Michael there is reserved for the episcopal
seminary; I wanted to see the interior and found it locked, but discovering
a side door into the cloisters open, I, and my wife who was with me,
entered. The church was empty, save that a sacristan with a feather brush
was dusting the side altars, but to my surprise I heard a sermon being
preached, and caught a glimpse of a priest in the pulpit haranguing and
gesticulating to an empty church.
The sacristan, who saw us enter, went into convulsions of laughter. I did
not understand the situation, and walked slowly down the aisle looking at
the pictures, and listening to the discourse. I was very much surprised to
hear the subject of Peace being chopped into three portions: peace in the
country, peace in the family, peace in the conscience. It was my old friend
the sermon on Peace again. Presently, my wife and I, having finished with
the pictures in the north aisle, crossed the nave of the church to look
at those in the south aisle, when, suddenly the preacher was aware of a
strange gentleman and lady acting as his audience. His voice faltered,
he broke down, searched for his MS., could not find his place, fell into
complete confusion, turned tail, and bolted down the stairs and out of the
church. He was a recently ordained seminarist rehearsing his first sermon.
Two years later I was in Brussels. A new dean had been appointed to S.
Gudule, and was to preach his first sermon. I went there with a friend. He
gave out his text. I pricked up my ears. Then he addressed himself to his
subject, Peace; and showed how it naturally divided itself into three
heads, peace in a country, peace in a household, peace in the conscience.
It was my old friend again.
[Illustration: South entrance to the Cloister, Arles Cathedral.]
Now when I heard this text given out by a canon at Arles, I thought with
a shock: Bless me! we shall have those three heads once more! But I was
mistaken. The old man gave us a simple, crystal-pure discourse of ten
minutes on the peace that passeth man's understanding.
Now I do not mean to hint that the Swiss, the German, and the Belgian
preachers all used literally the same discourse; but I suppose that in the
seminaries there are supplied certain skeleton discourses for the whole
year, and these skeletons are dressed up sometimes in homely fustian,
sometimes in rhetorical tinsel: yet they never remain other than dressed-up
skeletons.
There is very little of colour in the cathedral of Arles--only nine great
pieces of Flemish tapestry, green and soft pale yellow, that are suspended
in the aisles. All the rest is of unadorned limestone blocks, unadorned
save for the chipping marks of the old masons seven hundred years ago.
On the south side of the church is a delightfully rich cloister, the arcade
resting on double columns whose capitals are richly sculptured with sacred
subjects, incidents from the Old and New Testament. In the cloister is a
well, fed, I believe, originally by the old Roman aqueduct that supplied
the town with pure water from the hills, but which was suffered in the
Middle Ages to fall into complete ruin. This aqueduct was older than the
amphitheatre, for it ran in a cut channel through the rock beneath it. One
evening that I was in the cloister the aged sacristan was engaged drawing
from this well and watering a little garden of flowers he had made in the
sunny sheltered nook within the cloister, against the south wall.
[Illustration: Part of the north cloister of Arles Cathedral.]
It was a pretty little subject; the old man in his long black coat, with
silvery hair, stooping over his anemones and tulips, tying up the white
narcissus that a swirl of the _mistral_ had broken; with the quaint
sculptured capitals of the pillars above, and the deep shadows between the
pillars before him; in the junctions of the old blocks above the arcade
were wild gillyflowers blooming, and under the tiles were swallows busy
over their mud nests. And as the old man tied up the bruised narcissus, in
a cracked voice he sang to himself one of the vesper psalms, and I caught
the verse:
"Hæc requies mea in sæculum sæculi: hic habitabo quoniam elegi eam."
("This shall be my rest for ever, here will I dwell, for I have a delight
therein.")
[Illustration: Church of Notre Dame de la Majeus, Arles.]
Arles was at one time a city of churches, but the hurricane of the
Revolution swept over her, and now she has left but four. On the walls, is
a very early Romanesque church, tottering to ruins, because the Society
for the Promotion of Athletic Sports, to whom it has been surrendered up
for tumbling, climbing, wrestling, are impecunious and cannot keep it
watertight. Hard by is another church, still earlier, a temple adapted to
Christian worship, now half swept away, half devoted to a cabaret. The
church of the Cordeliers is turned into a school, and the octagonal tower
rises out of the roof of the dormitory. The beautiful fourteenth-century
church of the Dominicans is a stable for the horses of the omnibuses that
ply between the train and the town. S. Martin is desecrated, so is S.
Isidore. The earliest church in Arles is Notre Dame de la Majeur, near
the Arènes, but it does not look its age. It was in that church that the
Council assembled in 475 on the doctrine of Grace, when the Gallican
prelates were by no means disposed to admit S. Augustine's predestinarian
teaching. Outside the church in the open space are traces of walls that are
level with the earth; and if I am not mistaken, they are the foundations
of an early basilica, with apse to the west. The church was rebuilt in the
Middle Ages, and made to orientate, and was thrown further east than the
earlier church. That is my impression, but nothing can be determined
without pick and spade.
[Illustration: Tower of the desecrated church of S. Croix, Arles.]
In the church of S. Antonine is a metal font, made to resemble the laver of
Solomon, resting on the backs of oxen.
[Illustration: Part of the courtyard of the convent of S. Cæsarius, Arles.]
The old Grand Priory has a charming Renaissance front to the river, and
some late rich flamboyant work in a street at the back. It is now turned
into a gallery of indifferent pictures. The Church of S. Cæsaire is
modernised, and has, alas! nothing of interest remaining in it, only its
historic memories to hallow it.
[Illustration: Church of the Penitents Gris, Arles.]
S. Cæsarius, son of a count of Chalons, born in 470, had been educated at
Lerins, but thence he was drawn in 501, to succeed the first fathers of
that holy isle, Honoratus and Hilary, upon the archiepiscopal throne of
Arles. He was engaged in erecting a great monastery for women outside
the walls, when the Ostrogoths and the Franks met in a furious conflict
beneath them. His monastery was reduced to a ruin. A priest, a relative of
Cæsarius, had the meanness to let himself down the walls at night, escape
to Theodoric the Ostrogoth king, and denounce him as engaged in secret
communication with Clovis, king of the Franks. As soon as Arles was taken,
Cæsarius was led under custody to Theodoric, but was speedily set at
liberty by that great-minded prince. Another and similar charge was
made against him later, and Cæsarius was forced to travel to Ravenna to
exculpate himself. On his return to Arles he set to work to rebuild his
monastery, not this time without the walls. He made his own sister,
Cæsaria, the abbess, and she governed it for thirty years, and gathered
about her a community of two hundred nuns. This brave Christian woman
caused to be prepared, and ranged symmetrically round the church, stone
coffins for herself and for each of the sisters. They sang day and night
the praises of God in the presence of the new tombs that awaited them. When
each sister was dead, she was placed in one of these stone coffins and
carried off to the Elysian Fields, and most likely some of them are among
those there strewn about or being now broken up. It was into this church
that Cæsarius himself, feeling his end approach, had himself conveyed, that
with feeble uplifted hands he might bestow his final blessing on that band
of faithful women who were labouring to bring a higher ideal of womanhood
before the Arles folk, corrupted by the vices of the decayed civilisation
of Rome.
As already said, Arles was formerly surrounded by water, river on one side,
meres on the other. Out of the lagoons, however, rose islets of limestone
rock; of these there are two, Cordes and Montmajeur, but there were also
formerly a number of smaller tofts standing above the water, but not always
rocky, forming an archipelago, and were covered with the cottages of
fishermen and _utriculares_, and farmers who cultivated vines and olives on
the slopes above the reach of the water. Such were Castelet, Mont d'Argent,
Pierre-Feu, and Trébonsitte. Nowadays we can go by road to all these spots,
formerly they could be reached only by boat or raft. The isle of Cordes is
about five miles from Arles, it was evidently at one period fortified, and
is believed to have formed for some time the camp of the Saracen invaders
who scourged and swept Provence with sword and flame. In the rocks of
Cordes is a very curious cave, called the Trou des Fées, formed exactly in
the shape of a sword, with lateral galleries to answer to the cross-piece
at the hilt. It was undoubtedly a prehistoric habitation, probably enlarged
by the Saracens and used by them as a storehouse for their spoils. It is
entered through an oval antechamber which resembles the hilt of the sword;
and which most likely was the original prehistoric dwelling. But the
largest of the islands was Montmajeur, that now rises abruptly from the
plain, crowned with ruins. I walked to it in driving rain and _mistral_. As
I approached, I saw a gipsy woman bringing water in a pail to the camp, but
the wind literally scooped the water out of the pail as with a spoon, and
when she reached her destination very little remained. I stopped and had a
little chat with the gipsies. They had tried to set up their tent, but it
had been blown down over their heads, and had been rolled along with them
in it, as they said, like a bag of potatoes. They were now squatted in the
lee of a wall, an old ruined wall, and were endeavouring to boil a kettle,
but the flames were carried by the wind in horizontal flashes, and would
not touch the bottom of the vessel. They wanted me to have a cup of coffee
with them when I returned from seeing the ruins, and I promised to do so,
but, on my return, I found that rain and wind had blown and soused out
their little fire, and they had not been able to get the water to boil,
so were drinking it lukewarm. Good-natured, merry folk, they laughed over
their troubles as though it were a sovereign joke, and yet they were
drenched to the skin.
[Illustration: In the cloisters, Montmajeur.]
Montmajeur was a great Benedictine abbey, with a glorious church founded
in the sixth century, that was rebuilt in the eleventh and thirteenth
centuries, over a large and interesting crypt, and with cloisters at the
side like those of Arles, but by no means as rich. Beneath the abbey are
the chapel and the reputed cell of S. Trophimus, who probably never lived
there--a charming specimen of early Romanesque. Part of this chapel is
scooped and sculptured out of the living rock. But what is one of the
grandest portions of the abbey is the machicolated tower that commands the
plain for miles to the sea, a noble specimen of a donjon, and in excellent
preservation. The abbey buildings adjoining the church were erected about
fifty years before the Revolution, when the monastery was in the plenitude
of its wealth. They form the wreckage of a palace for princes rather than
of an abbey for the sons of S. Benedict, who I am quite sure would have
been one of the first, had it been possible for him to be there, to lay his
hand to destroy it, along with the mob of Arles' republicans, as utterly
out of accord with the spirit of his rule. Indeed, on looking up at these
sumptuous halls and stately galleries, one cannot but feel that the time
was past in which the monastic orders, wealthy and luxurious and idle,
could be endured. The church is no longer in use, and is ruinous.
Below the rock is a spit of land that stood anciently dry above the meres,
and on that is a very singular old church dedicated to the Holy Cross,
round which has been discovered a minor Alyscamp, a place of sepulture
utilised from the earliest times. Sainte Croix is now regarded as a
national monument, and is preserved carefully. It consists of a central
square tower, from which project four equal semicircular apses, that to the
west having a porch attached. It was consecrated in 1019. It is lighted
by three little windows, only one to the east and two to the S. and
S.E. Internally it is entirely deficient in sculpture, and was probably
decorated with paintings. This was a funeral chapel in the midst of the
cemetery, and was never used as a church. "The monks brought their dead
hither," says Viollet le Duc, "processionally; the body was placed in the
porch; the brethren remained outside. When Mass was said, the body was
blessed, and it was conveyed through the chapel and out at the little S.
door, to lay it in the grave. The only windows which lighted this chapel
looked into the walled cemetery. At night, a lamp burned in the centre of
this monument, and, in conformity with the use of the first centuries of
the Middle Ages, these three little windows let the gleam of the lamp fall
upon the graves. During the office for the dead a brother tolled the bell
hung in the turret, by means of a hole reserved for the purpose in the
centre of the dome." A similar but earlier mortuary chapel is at Planès, in
Roussillon.
[Illustration: In the cloister at Arles.]