_Draguignan and Saint-Maximin_
Early on Monday morning I set out to walk to Draguignan, which lay on
the other side of a range of hills to the southwest, at a distance of
about twenty-two miles. I kept to the high road all the way, but did
not pass a single village, although the land was cultivated almost
everywhere, with olives, vines, mulberries and cereals. The only
episode of a rather dull walk that remains in my memory is a chat with
a very stout proprietor of vineyards, who sold me a litre of his _bon
vin_ for fourpence. He said that his wine was very wholesome, and I
had no fault to find with any of its qualities, except possibly that
of taste. He talked to me about Mistral, the poet. He had seen him,
and said he was a very great man; but he did not seem to have read
his poems. There was to be a big Provençal _fête_ at Draguignan in
May, and Mistral would be there, as gay as any of them, in spite of
his eighty-four years. But alas! Mistral's death was to move all this
country for which he had done so much in little more than a week from
that time.
It was on that day that the wind, from which the poet's family took
its name, and which so vexes the plains of Provence, began to blow. I
did not recognize it at first. The sun still shone brightly in a blue
sky, and I was rather glad of the strong clean wind that cooled me as
I walked. There is something about the name _mistral_ that had seemed
to me to connote an unhealthful fever-bringing air. I suppose I had
unconsciously connected it with the word "malarial." But the _mistral_
of Provence is the _magistral_, the great master-wind from the north or
the north-east, which rushes down from the Alps and Cevennes to replace
the hot air that rises from the sun-baked plains in the great Rhône
delta. It is like our east wind, keen and strong, and seems to deprive
the air of all moisture, and to make even a cloudless sky look cold.
I first saw Draguignan some four miles away, as I rounded the shoulder
of a hill. It is the capital of the Department of Var, having replaced
Toulon, which now has more than ten times its population, at the end
of the eighteenth century. Baedeker describes it as an _assez belle
ville_, but it was not _assez belle_ for me. I thought it the dullest
possible sort of town, although there were picturesque "bits" in the
streets of the older quarter. The first thing that struck the eye
as I neared it was an enormous range of new barracks, with a huge
barrack square. The bugles were blowing gaily, and when I came to the
town it was alive with soldiers in dirty white, with dark-blue waist
sashes, puttees and tam-o'-shanters. As I walked up the narrow streets
of the old town into the untidy-looking newer part, I could not help
comparing it with another French military city that I had visited some
months before. This was Besançon, the brightest, cleanest, pleasantest
large town that I have seen in the whole of France, and I have seen a
good many. Perhaps it was hardly fair to compare the two, for I was
in Besançon on a fine mellow September day, and Draguignan must have
been about at its worst, with the _mistral_ tearing along its streets,
filling the eyes with dust and making the pavements look as if all the
waste paper and light rubbish of the town were habitually thrown on to
them.
And they were pruning the plane-trees. No one who has not visited the
south of France when this operation is going on can form any idea of
what it means. These trees are planted everywhere, and in summer give
a most welcome shade to the hot streets and the wide squares of the
bigger towns. They grow to an immense girth, and those in Draguignan
were especially fine. The way they prune them, from the very first time
of their planting, shows that they know very well what they are about,
for they get a wide spread of branch and an even and impenetrable roof
of green. The trees are never allowed to get out of hand, and are kept
at school when they have passed the span of the longest human life.
With ladders and saws and ropes they remove great branches with as
little concern as one cuts into a rose-bush. The reward comes in the
summer, but an avenue or a "square" of these trees in March, when the
saws have been at work upon them, is a desolating sight. Those that I
photographed the next morning are umbrageous compared with some. I have
seen far bigger planes than these kept to three branches, each as big
as a good-sized tree.
I read in the official Directory of the Department of Var that towards
the end of the fifth century the town was infested by an enormous
dragon (symbol of heresy). The inhabitants had recourse to St.
Hermentaire, Bishop of Antibes, who delivered them from the monster.
To perpetuate the memory of this happy disencumbrance the town changed
its ancient name of Griminum to that of Dragonia, from which has come
Draguignan. And St. Hermentaire has been regarded with affection in the
locality ever since, though his name is little known outside of it.
I had been recommended by my friends among the _commis voyageurs_ at
Fayence to an hotel of the right sort. I should certainly have passed
it by but for that, for it seemed to be nothing but a large restaurant,
not of the first order nor even of the second, and there was nothing
to show that it had much accommodation elsewhere. But when I asked
for a bedroom, and suggested two francs for it instead of two and a
half, I was introduced to a noble apartment, which reminded me of the
pictures one sees in the illustrated papers, when His Majesty the King
is put up for a few days at an Embassy abroad. It was very large, and
the furniture was old, and some of it handsome, especially the bed,
which had more in the way of canopy and curtains than I am accustomed
to. The lady of the house told me afterwards that she kept a shop
of antiquities in the town, which accounted for some of the unusual
splendour. I felt ashamed at paying no more than one and eightpence for
the privilege of sleeping in such a room.
The dinner was the same price, and included a bottle of white wine that
was worth thinking about as one drank it. A good many men came in to
dine, at any time between half past seven and half past eight. Very few
of them looked to be above the rank of a workman, and all of them kept
on their hats as they ate. They sat in groups at different tables, and
enjoyed themselves in much the same way as men do in a club in London.
Probably they paid even less for the same dinner than I did, and I hope
their wives had as good a one at home.
The _mistral_ blew as keenly as ever the next morning, and I determined
to cut off a bit of the distance by train. I wanted to get to some of
the interesting places, which are nearly all in the west of Provence.
It was a two days' march to Saint-Maximin, where there is a noble
church, but I thought I would sleep there that night.
The train did not start until half past nine. I had time to walk out a
few miles on the other side of Draguignan to see a famous dolmen, the
only remains of prehistoric life to be found in this immediate region.
It was a curious well-preserved structure, hard by a little farmhouse
just off the road. I paid a youth who said he was the proprietor fifty
centimes for the privilege of looking at it, but thought his demand
for a further two francs because I had photographed it unreasonable.
He blustered, but made no effort to detain me as I walked off the
field with the two francs in my pocket instead of his. I had already
been asked once or twice if I was travelling for the purpose of taking
picture postcards, and probably that was his idea. But he was a
potential robber all the same, and I doubt if he was the proprietor at
all. I wish I had thought of threatening him with St. Hermentaire.
It took three hours to cover the thirty miles to Barjols, where I took
the road again at half past twelve. Barjols is quite out of the beaten
track, although this pottering little line, which eventually reaches
Arles, passes near it. As I walked through a very wide _place_ I
stopped to ask a group of school children playing marbles which was my
route. At the sound of my voice they scattered away with every sign of
alarm, and I laughed at them and went on, with my vanity rather wounded
at being regarded as an object of terror.
When I had gone a mile down the hill I met a man in his best clothes
reading a newspaper. I had seen the start of a funeral procession in
Barjols, and I supposed him to have the intention of joining it at his
own convenience. He asked me where I was going, and told me I could cut
off four kilometres if I followed the route he would describe to me.
He took immense trouble about it, and it was a kindly thought, but I
wished afterward that he had not had it, although I found his interest
in me soothing after having so lately been run away from.
I left the road bye and bye and followed the path that he had
indicated, but, as generally happens in such circumstances, it soon
ceased to be a path at all, and I found myself wandering among the
hills with a very small idea of where I was on the map. There was
frequent cultivation, but very few signs of habitation, and I saw no
living soul until I struck the high road again more than two hours
later. It was not the high road I had expected, and left me about
eleven miles to do out of what would have been a total of fifteen if my
adviser had been punctual at the funeral. The road to Saint-Maximin was
quite straight for the last three miles, and I saw the long line of the
great church standing high above the roofs of the town from far away.
I approached Saint-Maximin with an agreeable sense of anticipation.
The learned M. Rostan considers that its church shows the fairest page
of Gothic art in the South, and to be the only religious monument of
real architectural importance in Provence. This is perhaps extravagant
praise, but it was at any rate the first big thing of its kind that I
was to see. I had surveyed the country at large for a week, and was
ready for a different sort of interest, especially as the _mistral_ had
blown steadily all day long and walking was beginning to lose the edge
of its rapture.
It is not only the architectural beauties of this noble church that
give it its interest. It is its connection with a tradition that has
left its marks all over Provence, and in past centuries has met with
such universal acceptance that it is small wonder that innumerable
people firmly believe in it to this day. Saint-Maximin was the first
place to which I came that had to do with it.
I read about it that evening sitting before a wood fire in a room more
comfortable than is to be found in most French inns. I had come in
to Saint-Maximin as dusk was beginning to fall and had gone straight
to the church. But it was closed for the night. All I saw was the
disappointing west front, which has never been finished. So I betook
me to the hotel. Saint-Maximin is a town of small importance in the
present day, but it contains a good one, something like an old English
coaching inn, both in appearance and custom. It was a pleasant change
to dine in a medium-sized parlour instead of a large bare _café_, and
to find a fire in it; for the _mistral_ had blown away all the warmth
in the air and was blowing still.
Possibly it was from this inn that Lucien Bonaparte married his first
wife, who was the daughter of an _aubergiste_ of Saint-Maximin, where
at the age of twenty-one he administered the military provisions of the
Revolutionary army. The Revolutionists, disliking any name inclusive of
Saint, called the town Marathon, but it reverted later.
So I sat very late before the fire and read about Saint-Maximin and
about the legend of the three Marys. It must have been after ten
o'clock when I took my candle and went up to bed. Here is the story,
adapted from the learned M. Rostan, who made a life study of the
antiquities of Provence and especially of Saint-Maximin, and whose
memory is deservedly held in honour throughout the country.
After the death of Jesus Christ and his divine resurrection, the Jews,
alarmed by the rapid progress made by the new faith in Jerusalem, began
a terrible persecution, for which the martyrdom of St. Stephen was, so
to speak, the signal. They threw into a boat, without sails, oars or
rudder, the following saints: Mary Magdalene,[4] Lazarus and Martha
with their servant Marcelle, Sidonius, the man who was born blind,
Maximin, one of the seventy-two disciples, Mary the wife of Cleophas,
and Mary the wife of Zebedee, also called Salome, and several others,
including Sarah the black servant of these last two Marys, Trophimus,
and Joseph of Arimathea.
(The list extended itself as the legend grew, for it almost certainly
began with three only, as we shall see later. But M. Rostan includes
most of the above.)
The illustrious confessors were exposed to what seemed a certain and
horrible death, but the sacred barque, far from being overwhelmed by
the waves, floated in a calm that spread immediately around it, and
protected by the mercy of Providence on its long and perilous voyage,
touched at last the shores of Provence at the mouth of the Rhône, at
the place now called Saintes-Maries, or Notre Dame de la Mer.
Mary the mother of James the Less, and Salome stayed in that place
with their black servant Sarah. The other holy men and women spread
themselves over different parts of the country and diligently preached
their religion. St. Maximin went to Aix, of which he was the first
bishop, St. Martha to Tarascon, which she delivered from the ravages of
a horrible monster, St. Lazarus and St. Mary Magdalene to Marseilles.
Now although the church and town of Saint-Maximin bear the name of
that illustrious saint their chief glory is of a still greater. St.
Mary Magdalene made herself celebrated at Marseilles, then one of
the chief cities of the world, by her preaching. After having made
numerous converts and performed striking miracles, she went to Aix,
where she was named in the charter of the Church of St. Saviour as
co-founder with the bishop, St. Maximin. After some years she formed a
wish to take refuge from the eyes of the world, and betook herself to
the heart of the mysterious mountain forest now called Sainte-Baume,
because of the cave in which she passed the last thirty years of her
life in the practice of the most austere penitence. Seven times a day
angels came to her in this wild retreat and exalted her to the summit
of the mountain, so that her ears might be ravished by the celestial
harmonies. As her last moments approached they transported her some
distance from Sainte-Baume near to an obscure spot in which St. Maximin
was then in retreat. She received the last sacraments at his hands, and
a few days later breathed her last sigh, leaving behind her, says the
Golden Legend, "an odour so sweet that the oratory was perfumed by it
for seven days." Her mortal remains were reverently interred, and her
tomb became thenceforward an object of remarkable devotion. Shortly
afterwards the holy Prelate himself, with others of the blessed saints,
was buried at her side, and above these sacred remains arose a church
that became from that time a place of pilgrimage and deep veneration.
It is unfortunate that the invasions of the Saracens in the eighth
century should have made it impossible to produce documentary evidence
of any of this earlier than that date, for those barbarians devastated
everything. Seven or eight hundred years is a big gap to cover, and
when we begin to look into profane history the gap becomes much
bigger; for the legend cannot be traced earlier than the translation of
the relics of St. Trophimus in the twelfth century, and did not receive
general acceptance until three hundred years later still. But since
that time it has exercised an immense power upon the imagination of
Christendom.
M. Rostan, who was an antiquarian of note, believed in it. He summons
in evidence the stones of Saint-Maximin itself. In 1859, when the
church was undergoing restoration, he examined a brick-built tomb
which was incontestably of the date of the early Christian era, and
"might well be the primitive burial-place of one of the holy personages
venerated on this spot." It is true that the tomb was empty, but the
sacred relics are stated to have been removed after the persecutions
of the fifth century into the sarcophagi which are there to this day.
The walls of the crypt also, exposed in course of further restoration
thirty years ago, convinced M. Rostan, who saw them uncovered, that
this was "the veritable Cubiculum, the sepulchral chamber of St.
Magdalene, not only in its plan and dimensions, but in its still living
reality, as it existed when the celebrated penitent was buried there,
and where they placed her sarcophagus in the fourth or fifth century
after the triumph of the Church. The vaulting alone is not the same."
Out of all of which the sceptic may at least accept the fact,
interesting enough, that the crypt as it stands is of the date at which
St. Mary Magdalene probably died.
When the Saracens were burning all the churches, and scattering all
the sacred relics that they could lay hands upon, the Cassianite monks
who had been in charge of these peculiarly holy ones for three hundred
years, filled the crypt of their church with earth so as to hide it,
and for further precaution moved the bones of St. Mary Magdalene from
their tomb in the place of honour into that previously occupied by
those of Sidonius, where they remained for five hundred years.
So far, then, we have in evidence the tradition of the landing of
this company of saints on the shores of Provence and their subsequent
missions, not from St. Maximin alone, but also from Aix, Marseilles,
Tarascon and Saintes-Maries, in each of which places are monuments to
their glory. We have also the evidence of a burial-place of the first
century which was an object of veneration at that time and remained so
thereafter.
It is true that during the epoch of the Crusades the magnificent
church of Vezelay in Burgundy, in which Bernard of Clairvaux preached
and Richard Coeur de Lion took the vows, attracted to itself great
honour by its claim to possess the true relics of St. Mary Magdalene.
But M. Rostan points out that this belief on the part of Vezelay, so
far from being in flagrant contradiction to the Provençal tradition,
confirms it; for the monks of the Abbey of Vezelay attributed the
possession of these sacred relics to the piety of their founder,
Gérard de Roussillon, who was Count and Governor of Provence under
the Emperor Lothair. "But as the body of St. Magdalene had not been
visible at Saint Maximin for a long time, and the precise spot in which
it was hidden was not known, the statement of Vezelay was believed,
and conferred great celebrity upon it as a place of pilgrimage, until
the moment when it entered the designs of Providence to clear up the
mystery that enveloped the tomb of the glorious saint and dispel all
uncertainty upon the subject of her relics."
The instrument of this discovery was the Prince of Salerno, known later
as Charles II, King of Sicily and Count of Provence, who was the son of
Charles of Anjou, the belligerent brother of St. Louis.
It was in 1279. While Charles I was fighting in Italy, his son, then at
Aix, moved by a great devotion towards St. Mary Magdalene and a lively
desire to recover her relics, betook himself to Saint-Maximin in order
to have excavations made beneath the pavement of the church. He put
himself at the head of the workers, and on the ninth day of September
had the singular happiness of uncovering the ancient sarcophagus which
held the venerated body. Restraining the zeal of his assistants the
prince put his seal on the tomb, and at once summoned a convocation
of prelates to witness the exhumation of the sacred bones, which took
place on the eighteenth day of the same month. In the dust of the tomb
was discovered a box of cork enclosing an inscription on parchment or
papyrus, which, translated from the Latin, runs thus:
"In the year of our Lord 716, in the month of December, very secretly
in the night, when the most pious Odo was king of the French, at the
time of the invasion of the perfidious nation of the Saracens, this
body of the most dear and revered Mary Magdalene was translated from
its own tomb of alabaster into this one of marble, out of fear of the
said perfidious nation of the Saracens, because it is more secret
here, the body of Sidonius having been removed."
Contemporary historians unanimously report the miraculous circumstances
that accompanied the discovery. All make mention of the delicious odour
that came from the sarcophagus when it was opened. They tell, too,
how a verdant plant of fennel grew from the tongue of the blessed
penitent, whose body had not yet known corruption. The _noli me
tangere_, the spot on the forehead which the Saviour had touched, was
in a perfect state of preservation. Among the eminent churchmen who
vouched for the miraculous events that surrounded the disinternment was
the Cardinal de Cabassoles, Petrarch's friend, whose country retreat at
Vaucluse we shall visit later.
Prince Charles caused a magnificent reliquary to be made at Aix to hold
the head of the saint. It was of silver gilt, in the form of a hollow
bust, into which the skull was fitted. The face and the hair were of
gold, and it was surmounted by a gold crown set with precious stones.
In the next year Prince Charles was taken prisoner by Peter of Aragon,
and shut up in Barcelona for four years. He attributed his deliverance
and the restoration of his kingdom--his father having died in the
meantime--to the influence of St. Mary Magdalene, and set in hand the
building of a church at Saint-Maximin which should be more worthy
of the holy relics it contained. But it was not until more than two
hundred years later that it was finished.
Charles carried to Rome the sacred head, to offer it for the veneration
of the Pope, Boniface VIII. We are not told how it had come about, but
the head had been discovered deprived of the lower maxillary. The Pope
knew that a relic of this sort was honoured at the church of St. John
Lateran in connection with St. Mary Magdalene. It was found to fit
perfectly, and the Pope presented it to the King, who did not keep it
with the greater part of the head, possibly because the magnificent
reliquary would have had to be altered to receive it, but presented
it in his turn to the nuns of Notre Dame de Nazareth at Aix. There it
remained, until the amiable King René, who has left such a pleasant
memory of himself in Provence, finally restored it to Saint-Maximin.
During all the two hundred and forty years that the great church
was in the building the precious relics that it enshrined attracted
pilgrims without number. Six Popes visited them, to say nothing
of two anti-Popes; in one year alone five kings bowed before the
shrine; royalties came from as far off as Sweden; the unfortunate
Albigenses, after they had "abjured their errors," were compelled to
make pilgrimage to it; and finally Louis XIV, with his mother, Anne
of Austria, his brother, afterwards Duke of Orleans, and a numerous
and splendid following, bent his knee at the sacred tomb, and assisted
in the translation of the relics into a magnificent receptacle of
porphyry. These relics would not, of course, include the head. Some
vertebræ were offered to the Queen, who accepted them with gratitude.
The sacred bones were examined by the King's head physician, and
immediately placed in a case of lead covered with gold brocade, upon
which the King placed his seal in six places. It was carried the next
day in procession, and the church was filled with people, who shed
tears of joy to see renewed in their own day "a devotion so holy and
august in the presence of a king and queen so pious and devout."
During all these years, however, the relics had not been preserved
without vicissitude or diminution. Under the Queen Jeanne, Provence
was overrun by brigands, and for three years they were hidden at
Sainte-Baume. King René gave part of the lower arm to the nuns who
had the lower jaw. In 1505 a Neapolitan monk robbed the reliquary of
its jewels, and was caught and hanged. After this mutilation a new
reliquary was presented by the Queen of France, Anne of Brittany, as
splendid as the old one, and a statuette of herself was added to it in
enamelled gold. Louis XIII asked for some fragments of the body, and
was refused. Four years later he asked again, on behalf of the Queens
Mary of Medici and Anne of Austria, and was more successful, obtaining
also a fragment to be presented to the Sovereign Pontiff.
In 1639 a portion of the much venerated _noli me tangere_ was stolen
from the head, and, whether it is the same or not, a minute particle
of the _noli me tangere_ is cherished in the church of Mane, in the
Basses-Alps. In 1781 Louis XVI ordered a thigh bone to be detached and
presented to the Duke of Parma, which was done.
We have followed the story for nearly eighteen hundred years, and now
comes the Revolution, which wrought more havoc than all the successive
disturbances that had taken place before it. The church was spoiled
and the sacred relics profaned. The porphyry urn was violated, and
the documents it contained burnt. The glorious remains of the saint
were thrown pell-mell on the pavement, the head was torn from its gold
case, and the other bones from their reliquaries. But the piety of the
sacristan preserved the chief glory of the church, which was restored
to it five years later. The head, a bone from one of the arms, some
locks of hair, together with the reliquary of the Holy Ampulla, and
sundry fragments of the bodies of other saints were received back when
the storm had passed over, and there the bulk of them remain to this
day.