BÉZIERS AND NARBONNE.
Position of Béziers--S. Nazaire--The Albigenses--Their
tenets--Albigensian "consolation"--Crusade against them--The storming
of Béziers--Massacre--Cathedral of Béziers--Girls' faces in the
train--Similar faces at Narbonne, in Cathedral and Museum--Narbonne
a Roman colony--All the Roman buildings destroyed--Caps of
liberty--Christian sarcophagi--Children's toys of baked clay--Cathedral
unfinished--Archiepiscopal Palace--Unsatisfactory work of M.
Viollet-le-Duc--In trouble with the police--Taken for a German spy--My
sketch-book gets me off.
The position of Béziers is striking. It crowns a height above the Orb, its
grand fortified church of S. Nazaire occupying the highest point, where
it stands on a platform. This fine church is not the cathedral. In La
Madeleine is the bishop's throne, a church that, with the exception of the
tower and exterior of the apse, has been modernised out of all interest.
But S. Nazaire is a stately and beautiful church of the twelfth to the
fourteenth century, in the style of the country, very little ornamented
externally, and very strongly fortified; even the windows being made
impenetrable by their strong _grilles_ of iron. There are two western
towers, small, with an arch thrown between their battlements, over the rose
window, and this battlemented archway is in fact a screen behind which
the besieged sheltered whilst they poured down molten pitch on those
who assailed the gateway of the cathedral. For this purpose there is an
open space between the screen and the façade. The apse of eight sides,
internally is fine; and there is a beautiful octagonal apsidal chapel on
the north side, entered from the transept.
Beziers is the scene of a horrible slaughter in 1209, after the siege by
the Crusaders under Simon de Montfort. It had been a headquarter of the
Albigenses. As we are now entering the region reddened with the blood of
these heretics, it will not be improper here to give a little account of
them.
The Albigenses are often erroneously confused with the Waldenses, with
whom really they had little in common. Actually, the Albigenses were not
Christians at all, but Manicheans. The heresy was nothing other than the
reawakening of the dormant and suppressed Paganism of the south of France.
There are plenty of documents which enable us to understand their peculiar
tenets and practices.
[Illustration: Béziers from the river.]
They held a dualism of good and evil principles in the world, equally
matched; and they taught that the evil principle was the origin of all
created matter. Accordingly they rejected the Old Testament, and declared
that all the world and man's body were of diabolic origin, and that the
spirit only was divine. With regard to the person of Christ they were
divided in opinion. Some said He had a phantom body, and that He seemed
only to die on the cross. The real Christ was incapable of suffering. But
another school among them declared that He had a true body born of Mary and
Joseph, and that this was due to the evil principle, and that this body did
hang on the cross. It was the Evil God of the Jews who slew Pharaoh in the
Red Sea. They held that the Good God had two wives, Colla and Coliba, from
whom he had many generations of spiritual beings. Of the Good Christ, the
spiritual, they asserted, that He neither ate nor drank, that He was the
source of all mercy and salvation, but that the Bad Christ was the carnal
one following the Good Christ as the shadow follows the body; that this Bad
Christ had Magdalen as his concubine. They were not agreed as to the future
of man. Some denied the existence of souls, some said that the souls were
fallen angels inhabiting men's bodies, others that the soul was pure and
could only attain to blessedness by emancipation from the body, all the
works of which were evil.
The faithful of the Albigenses were divided into two orders, the "perfect,"
who wore a black dress, abstained from flesh, eggs, cheese, and from
marriage; and the "believers" whose salvation was to be attained by a
certain ceremony called the "consolation." This sacrament of consolation
was performed by one of the perfect laying his hands on the believer; and
after consolation, the newly-consoled must starve himself to death. A great
number of trials of Albigenses have been collected by Limborch in his
history of the Inquisition. One only can we now give. It is that of a woman
who had herself consoled, and sending for a surgeon, ordered him to open
her veins in a bath, that so, the blood running out more freely, she might
sooner die. Also she bought poison, as the bleeding did not succeed, and
procured a cobbler's awl wherewith to pierce her heart, but as the women
with her were undecided whether the heart were on the right side or the
left, she took the poison, and so died. [1]
[Footnote 1: We have got the Acts of the Inquisition at Toulouse during
sixteen years, between 1307-1323. The whole number of cases reported is
932. The usual sentence on one found guilty--unless guilty of causing death
by "consolation"--was to wear a tongue of red cloth on the garments. Of
such there are 174 sentences. If a case of relapse, there was sentence of
brief imprisonment, 218 cases; 38 were reported as having run away; 40 were
condemned to death for having caused the death of dupes by "consolation;"
113 were let off penances previously imposed; 139 were discharged from
prison, and 90 sentences were pronounced against persons already dead.
_See_ Maitland's Tracts and Documents on the Albigenses, 1831.]
We can understand what alarm this great heathen reaction in Provence and
Aquitaine awoke in France, and in the minds of the popes.
Innocent III. at first employed against the Albigenses only spiritual and
legitimate weapons; before proscribing he tried to convert them, but when
they murdered his emissary, Peter de Castelnau, in 1208, he proclaimed a
Holy War against them. It was a war undertaken on the plea of a personal
crime, but in reality for the dispossession of the native princes who
were believed to be in favour of the heresy. "The crusade against the
Albigensians," says M. Guizot, "was the most striking application of two
principles equally false and fatal, which did as much evil to the Catholics
as to the heretics; and these are the right of the spiritual power to
coerce souls by the material force of the temporal power, and the right to
strip princes of their title to the obedience of their subjects--in other
words, denial of religious liberty to consciences, and of political
independence to states."
[Illustration: Béziers.--Church of S. Nazaire.]
In 1208 Innocent summoned the King of France to sweep from southern France
these heretics, "worse than the Saracens," and he promised to the leaders
of the crusade the domains they won of the princes who favoured the heresy.
The war lasted fifteen years (from 1208 to 1223) and of the two leading
spirits, one ordering and the other executing, Pope Innocent III. and Simon
de Montfort, neither saw the end of it. During the fifteen years of this
religious war, nearly all the towns and strong castles in the regions
between the Rhone, the Pyrenees, the Garonne were taken, lost, retaken,
given over to pillage, sack, and massacre, and burnt by the Crusaders with
all the cruelty of fanatics and all the greed of conquerors. In the account
of the war by a Provençal poet, we are told that God never made the clerk
who could have written the muster-roll of the crusading army in two or even
three months. One of the first victims was the young and gallant Viscount
of Béziers, who, the same author assures us, was a good Catholic, but whose
lands and towns the rapacious horde lusted to acquire. When they sat down
before Béziers, then the Catholics within the walls made common cause with
the heretics, and refused to surrender.
[Illustration: Fountain in the cloister of S. Nazaire, Béziers.]
Then the city was stormed, the walls scrambled up by a rabble rout of
camp-followers, in shirts and breeches, but without shoes, who burst over
the parapets whilst the envoys of the town were being amused by mock
conferences with Montfort and the other leaders of the crusading host. A
general massacre ensued; neither age nor sex were spared, even priests
fell. It is said that news of what was being done was brought to Arnauld,
Abbot of Citeaux, one of the commanders of the crusade, and he was told
that faithful and heretics were being slaughtered alike. "Slay them all,"
said he, "God will know His own."
The story is told by a contemporary, but only as an _on-dit_, and may
therefore be quite untrue. But Simon de Montfort, the hero of the crusade,
employed like language. One day two heretics, taken at Castres, were
brought before him, one of whom was unshakable in his belief, the other
expressed himself open to conviction. "Burn them both," said the count; "if
this fellow mean what he says, the fire will expiate his sins; and, if he
lie, he will suffer for his imposture."
An attempt has been made to exculpate the leaders of the crusade from the
atrocities committed at the capture of Béziers, and to clear them of the
charge of treachery. It is so far certain that the town was captured and
the massacre begun by the camp-followers, but the Crusaders soon joined in
and accomplished the work begun by the "ribauds;" and no attempt was made
by the leaders to stay the carnage. In the cathedral church of S. Madeleine
some seven thousand who had taken refuge there were butchered without
regard to the sanctity of the spot. The city was then set on fire and the
cathedral perished in the flames.
After all, it was well that the cathedral should be purged with fire, and
rebuilt. One could not pray, one would not like to see the service of
God rendered in a building that had been thus bespattered with blood. S.
Nazaire is later. It was almost wholly rebuilt in the fourteenth century,
and within it one can forget the horrors of that hateful siege and
butchery.
As I travelled on to Narbonne, there entered the carriage in which I was
two girls with remarkable profiles, and I wondered whether they bore the
features of the Ligurian race that first peopled all this coast, now
probably represented by the Basques--a race akin to the Lap. These girls
had fine dark eyes and hair, sallow complexions, and their full faces were
not unpleasant, but their profiles were certainly most remarkable. Now
curiously enough, on entering the cathedral at Narbonne, I saw a tomb of
the eighteenth century with mourners represented on it--some six to eight,
and they had all the same type of face. Not only so, but in the museum of
the town is a Classic bust, found among the remains of Roman Narbona, and
the same type is there.
[Illustration: Types of faces, Narbonne. Modern. Sixteenth-century tomb in
Cathedral. Classic bust in museum.]
Narbonne was once a great capital. It stood on a lagoon, and did a large
trade in the Mediterranean. It was a Roman colony, founded at the same time
as Arles, and had its forum, capitol, baths, amphitheatre, theatre, and
temples. But, alas! the necessity for fortifying the city in the Middle
Ages induced the inhabitants to go to these Roman buildings and pull them
to pieces in order with them to construct the walls and towers surrounding
the town, and now not one of all these monuments remains. The walls have
served, however, as a rich quarry of antiquities that have supplied the two
great collections in the town, one in the Hôtel de Ville, the other in a
ruined church. These collections are only second to the Avignon museum, and
abound with objects of interest.
Among the monumental stones for the dead are several with caps figured on
them. The like are to be seen at Nimes, Avignon, and elsewhere. These are
freedmen's caps. When a noble Roman died he left in his will that so many
of his slaves were to be given their liberty, and then this was represented
by caps sculptured on his tombstone.
[Illustration: Freedmen's caps, Narbonne.]
Thus it happened that the cap came to be regarded as the symbol of liberty.
The museum contains a Christian sarcophagus on the staircase, with an
orante, a woman praying with uplifted hands in the midst, on the sides the
striking of the rock and the multiplication of the loaves. On the lid is
the portrait of the lady who was buried in it, with hair dressed in the
fashion worn by the Julias of the Heliogabalus and Alexander Severus epoch,
with whose busts one becomes so familiar at Rome, 218-223--a fashion that
never came in again, that I am aware of. Another Christian sarcophagus
has on it the multiplication of loaves, the denial of Peter, and a
representation of Christ unbearded, which is the earliest form. Another,
again, represents him unbearded holding a scroll, on the right St. Peter
and two other apostles holding rolls, and three apostles on the left; on
the lid is an orante.
In this museum may be seen one or two examples of bronze Gaulish sun-wheels
with four and eight spokes; and, what is to me very touching, a number of
children's toys made in clay, found in children's tombs--cocks and hens,
pigs and horses, very rude. Similar toys are to be found in the Arles and
the Avignon museums. I remember in the catacomb of S. Agnes at Rome is a
whole collection of toys found in a Christian grave there, ivory dolls, a
rattle, bells, and an earthenware money-box, just such as may be bought
for a sou now in a foreign fair. De Rossi, the curator of the catacombs,
has had them all put together under glass in proximity to the little grave
where they were found. In a child's grave at S. Sebastian was found a
little terra-cotta horse dappled with yellow spots. I suppose parents could
not bear to see the toys of their darlings about the house, and so enclosed
them with their dear ones in the last home. I remember a modern French
grave, near La Rochelle; in the centre of the head-cross was a glass case,
with a doll dinner-service enclosed, that had been a favourite toy with the
poor little mite lying under the cross. So human hearts are the same as
centuries roll by and religions alter.
[Illustration: Children's toys in the museum, Narbonne.]
The cathedral of Narbonne is very delightful, after a course of castellated
fortress-churches of early date. It is of the fourteenth century, light,
lantern-like, with glorious flying buttresses.
The church is unfinished, it has no nave, only the lovely soaring choir,
standing alone, like that of Beauvais; and as was that of Cologne till the
last thirty years. Unfortunately this choir is so built round with houses
that it is only in one place at the east end that it can be seen, and just
there, out of delightful play of fancy, the architect has thrown a bow
across from one flying buttress to another high up, and through this stone
rainbow one sees the pinnacles and the sweeping arches of the buttresses
crossing each other at every angle.
The archiepiscopal palace was a fortress, with two strong towers. M.
Viollet-le-Duc was invited by the town to take them in hand and construct
between them a façade in keeping with their architecture, which was to be
thenceforth the façade of the Hôtel de Ville. There was not a man in France
who had a more intimate knowledge of Gothic architecture than he; but,
unfortunately, like Rickman in England and Heideloff in Germany, he was
incapable of applying his knowledge. The consequence is that he has
produced a façade which is disfiguring to the two grand towers between
which it is planted. Viollet-le-Duc was delighted with the grand effect
of the face of the papal palace at Avignon, where the buttresses run up
unstaged and then are united by bold arches that sustain the parapet and
battlements, so he attempted the same thing at Narbonne on a smaller scale.
Now these buttresses or piers at Avignon are 5 ft. 1 in. by 2 ft. 9 in.,
whereas the measurements of M. le-Duc's little props are reduced to 1 ft.
2 in. by 1 ft. 6 in. Relative proportions are changed as well as sadly
reduced. The result is that they are ludicrous. Moreover, instead of
sinking his façade modestly--a little, eighteen inches would have been
enough--he has carried the face of his niggling little buttresses flush
with the massive walls of the great towers. I wished I could have had M.
Viollet-le-Duc there by both his ears and knocked his head against the
abomination he has created. He had a splendid opportunity, and through
incapacity he lost it.
I got into trouble at Narbonne.
As I was walking on the platform of the station, a man in plain clothes
with very blue eyes came to me, touched his hat, and asked if he might be
honoured with a few words privately. I at once suspected he was going to
beg or borrow money, and said I was willing to hear what he wanted to say
on the spot. He smiled, and said that he thought perhaps it would be better
that we had our conversation elsewhere, outside the station. After a little
hesitation, I complied, and when we were by ourselves, "Monsieur," said he,
"I must request you to show me your papers and allow me to identify you.
I am in search of some one uncommonly like yourself. I am--the _chef_ of
the secret police down here. Will you come to my office, and bring your
luggage?"
"Certainly, delighted to make your acquaintance. I will get my Gladstone
bag, and my roll of rugs in a moment. There is a--a hurdy-gurdy--" "I
know there is," said the _chef_ sternly. "It is that _vielle_ that is
suspicious."
So all my luggage was conveyed to the office of the police. I showed no
concern, but laughed and joked.
"What countryman do you say you are?"
"English."
"Impossible. You have not the English accent when you speak. It is rather
German than anything else."
"You think I am a German?"
"But certainly. Your bag has a German address on it, written in German
characters." So it had. I had been in Germany before going to Rome, and had
never removed the address, which, as he said, was in German characters. I
explained, but the _chef_ was unsatisfied. I became now convinced that he
thought I was a spy.
"Here are German newspapers and a German book in your bag!" said the
_chef_.
"Certainly. Why not? I have been in Germany."
"Yet you say you are English?"
"Here is my passport." I extended one to him. He looked at it, shook his
head, and said: "It is a very old one of 1867." That was true, and I had
not had it _viséd_ since.
"Then," said the _chef_, "this passport is for you and your wife. Where is
the wife?"
"Minding the babies. Thirteen of them--a handful," said I.
I had to produce card-case, letters, all of which the _chef_ examined
carefully, and yet he was not satisfied. Then, suddenly, a bright idea
struck me.
"Monsieur!" said I, "I see what you take me to be. It is true I have been
sketching in Narbonne, and along the whole coast. Would you like to see my
drawings? Here is the result of my studies in Narbonne: the very remarkable
profile of a Narbonnaise girl, the face of a lady carved in the cathedral,
of another in the museum, some sketches of children's clay toys found in
Roman tombs, and sundry Gaulish and Merovingian bronzes; also! yes, see, a
bone toothcomb discovered among the remains of the fortifications."
The _chef_ laughed, especially over the beauties of Narbonne, ran his eye
through the book, took it over to his assistant to look at and laugh over
the wonderful girls' faces, returned it to me, and let me off.
"And the _vielle_," said I, "what do you think of that--"
"Mais! with the _vielle_ over your shoulder, and that book of sketches and
thirteen babies--_assurément_--you could only be an Englishman."